Since 2001, 21 individuals wrongfully convicted in Dallas County of serious felonies were exonerated based on DNA evidence. Some sat on death row. Others languished in maximum security facilities for over 20 years. Most if not all were convicted based on eyewitness testimony which is now known to be notoriously unreliable.
I am interested in this case because Liz has taken a set of facts which are not in dispute (i.e., Beebe sexually assaulted her) and morphed them into a menagerie of allegations of conspiracy, gang rape, voyeurism, and the use of date rape drugs.
Notice that she doesn't even mention that no one has ever proven that gang rape occurred or that date rape drugs were in play. She speaks about those allegations as if they are facts.
When pressed, the shadowy figures suddenly become obscured by grand jury protections. As far as I know, no other felony indictments were handed down other than for Beebe. It even appears to me Beebe's attorneys used the allegations of conspiracy to get a lighter sentence knowing that there was nothing there.
After sentencing, Beebe's attorney denied that Beebe had participated in a gang rape. (http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2007/03/15/beebe-gets-18-months-in-1984-battery/)
There is nothing in Beebe's letters which indicates anyone else is to blame but Beebe. Liz's testimony is she had attempted to get into a room where she believed a friend was passed out and get her purse to leave the party, but she was returned to Beebe's room forcibly by two men.
After several years of looking for evidence of a gang rape, the police have been unsuccessful, yet Liz refers to the rape as a gang rape. She also states that she was drugged.
So, at the core, the reason Liz's case intrigues and concerns me is that she's created a situation where she can't be questioned because some portion of her version of the facts is correct.
We have seen how society can get swept up in irrational furvor -- for example, the rash of child sex abuse and Satanic cult abuse cases in the 1980s. Most have ended up to be utterly false.
Liz, who appears to be from the same political persuasion as I am, could probably appreciate how the Bush Administration issued lots of false and misleading claims to get us into the Iraq War and then to subsequently terrorize Muslims both in the US and abroad. We know our frailty as humans is when we go beyond what can be proven and allow ourselves to fall back into irrational behavior.
I don't mind if people hate me for questioning some aspects of the Beebe-Seccuro case, but at least understand why I hold my beliefs. It is not out of a desire to see Liz revictimized, but out of a desire to ensure innocent people are not ensnared when the facts of the case are blown in a more salacious direction.
That's why I am curious to understand what facts have been established because gang rape and date rape drugs are, from a careful reading of the facts, merely suppositions which have not been substantiated. They may have happened, but they seem to be in the realm of faith and not reason.
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