The Supreme Court Should Strike Down the E. Jean Carroll Verdict

When the accusation is sexual assault or rape, the rights of the accused go out the window. Prosecutors and plaintiffs’ lawyers in civil cases drag in character assassins who know nothing about the alleged assault but instead make their own claims – without proof – that they too were victims of the accused, often decades earlier.

That’s what happened to President Donald Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case, and why he is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the jury’s decision.

On Wednesday, the justices delayed for the 11th time answering whether they will take up E. Jean Carroll v. Trump. In May 2023, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing sex columnist Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman’s lingerie dressing room in the mid-90s. The jury awarded her $5 million.

Court watchers speculate the justices are delaying until a companion case, also involving Trump and Carroll, weaves its way up to them.

Timing aside, it’s essential that the court strike down that jury verdict against Trump to halt the character assassination strategy.

Men accused of sexual assault are losing their right to a fair trial because of misguided changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence that Congress made in 1995 only for sexual assault cases.

That year, Congress kowtowed to the crazy notion that every woman who claims to be a victim of sexual assault is telling the truth and deserves to be hailed as a “survivor.” Congress passed Rules 413-415, allowing a prosecutor or the plaintiff’s lawyer in a civil case to drag in past accusers to voice their own grievances, no matter how unsubstantiated.

The idea is to suggest to a jury that the defendant has a “propensity” to sexually assault women. It makes it easier to sway a jury when you lack real evidence.

Carroll couldn’t remember what year Trump supposedly assaulted her, never reported the assault to police, and couldn’t produce store cameras or witnesses who saw it happen. Though she boasted that she had Trump’s DNA on her dress, she declined in court to permit a DNA test and moved to exclude DNA evidence from the trial.

What’s her lawyer to do when there’s no evidence to prove her implausible claim? Drag in “propensity” witnesses – in this case Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff.

Leeds accused Trump of groping her on an airplane in the 1970s, though she couldn’t remember the precise year, where she was flying or on what airline. She only recalled that Trump had his hand up her skirt.

Stoynoff claimed that in 2005, Trump suddenly grabbed her and kissed her without her consent at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s lawyers are arguing that lower courts should never have allowed the jury to hear this inflammatory evidence. None of it is flattering, but none of it supports Carroll’s charge that Trump assaulted her in Bergdorf Goodman.

In some cases, appellate judges are already acting to curb the abuses caused by Congress’s political correctness. One year ago, the New York State Court of Appeals overruled Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction 4-3 because the trial judge had allowed the prosecution to bring in women to testify about their own grievances with Weinstein. Weinstein isn’t getting off free, but he is getting a new trial.

Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala called the ruling “a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.” But one of the dissenting judges, Madeline Singas, argued the opposite, saying the ruling will “thwart the steady gains survivors of sexual violence have fought for in our criminal justice system.”

Singas insisted that “crimes of sexual violence are far more nuanced and complex than other crimes” and that strict standards of evidence and proof “come at the expense and safety of women.”

Don’t fall for that politically correct blather. Every accused person, male or female, deserves a fair trial before a jury that is presented with actual evidence, not a “This Is Your Life” documentary of past misdeeds.

For well over a century, lawyers and judges nationwide have had to adhere to the well-known Molineux precedent, set down in a famous 1901 New York murder trial. It states that “the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged, and thus, allegations of prior bad acts may not be admitted against them for the sole purpose of establishing their propensity for criminality.” Sexual assault cases should not be an exception.

The Supreme Court should strike down Carroll’s victory over Trump. It’s time to move past one-sided MeToo injustice.

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman & Founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.

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