Or To Put It Another Way....

"Liar, liar, panties on fire!" 

Research by Rape Crisis and Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions, finds that jurors often accept rape myths and thus acquit rapists who are in fact guilty. 66% of jurors do not understand judges’ legal directions which attempt to dispel rape myths, but fail. Jurors need proper rape myth training prior to and throughout trials.

Thomas is scathing about these claims in a paper published this month in Criminal Law Review:

At the time of the petition there had been no research in England and Wales with real jurors on the issue of whether they accepted commonly held rape myths or understood judges’ directions on such myths. This meant that the petition’s claim that research showed jurors accepted commonly held rape myths and did not understood judges’ directions on these myths could not have been correct.

Couldn't be clearer, could it? 

So...how did the State's well-paid servants get it so wrong? Well, the usual way. By stacking the deck to give the answer they wanted.

The answer, she explains, is that public opinion polls and mock jury research rely on people who have volunteered to take part.

The single-issue loons and nutter who take an interest in these things. In other words. 

By contrast, 87% of those who served on juries had told Thomas, in earlier research, that they would never have volunteered to do so.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics, it's said. We can add to that 'and then there's government research'.

H/T: BarristerBlog via Twitter