Jacques: Limit role of courtroom in the bedroom

Article here. Excerpt:

'While due process in campus investigations is essential — and making a comeback thanks to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and courts which have taken a stand for wrongfully accused students -- it is even more vital when it comes to criminal sexual assault cases.

That’s why it was shocking the nation’s largest membership group of lawyers, the American Bar Association, considered supporting a measure that would have turned due process on its head in these cases.

The ABA’s House of Delegates put up a resolution that would have encouraged legislatures to “define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact.”

In other words, the resolution advocated what’s known as affirmative consent or “yes means yes.” This standard is already mandated by five states, including New York and California, on college campuses. But it would be a huge legal shift to apply affirmative consent to criminal cases — and one that clearly conflicts with constitutional protections, such as due process.

That’s because the burden to prove consent was offered every step of the way falls to the accused, rather than the prosecutor to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that consent wasn’t given.'