State representative aims to investigate how campus rape is handled

Article here. Excerpt:

'State Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs) is the chairman of the subcommittee that oversees appropriations for public universities. Ehrhart said he read a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that described a “secret process for judging sexual misconduct allegations,” which troubled him because it outlined what he considers a violation of the right to due process as its laid out by the Fifth Amendment.

“If somebody commits a crime, that’s the purview of trained professional jurists, district attorneys (and) law enforcement. The universities absolutely don’t need to be in that business, so I want to make sure that they’re not,” Ehrhart said. “They don’t need a secondary system of justice on university campuses. That’s the issue.”

He said even if a person is accused of a heinous crime, they should still be considered “innocent until proven guilty” and be granted their right to due process.

“It might be convenient to lock up everybody accused of murder really quickly without any due process, but can you imagine the screams and cries if we did?” Ehrhart said. “We have a system of juris prudence in this country for a reason, and universities don’t need to be involved in star chamber proceedings without due process on a criminal offense.” 

A Star Chamber is typically a legal proceeding done in secret or otherwise out of the public eye, according to Tom Charron, administrator for the Cobb Superior Court.'