28/03/2008

Women Don’t Convict Men Charged With Rape

A recent study has discovered women are less ready to convict men standing trial for rape than men themselves.

The Rape Attrition Study currently being completed by NUI Galway found that the level of male or female jurors made a significant impact on the outcome of rape trials.

The six year study conducted in the Central Criminal Court looked at the outcomes of 103 rape trials from 2000 to 2005. The study saw in the 18 cases during this period, where women dominated the jury in numbers, no convictions were made. In the 66 trials with men dominating the jury, one in four cases resulted in a conviction.

Law Lecturer, Conor Hanly, said: “it would seem that female dominated juries are less sympathetic to rape complainants than are their male colleagues.”

The results conflicted with two similar Irish studies — the Mitchell Committee (1975) and the Law Reform Commission (1987) — which found little difference between the jury types.

Mr Hanley said the numbers studied were too low to be a truly representative study.

(DW)




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