A 24-year-old University of Nebraska student who was barred from using the term "rape" to describe an alleged assault against her plans to bring her case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lancaster County, Neb., district judge Jeffre Cheuvront defended the motion to ban the word from the trial, claiming it could compromise the defendant's right to a fair trial. However, Tory Bowen, her family and other free speech advocates have argued banning the word compromises the victim's right to free speech.
When Bowen filed a lawsuit challenging the judge's actions as a First Amendment violation, the federal appeals court dismissed the case, but her attorney plans to petition the Supreme Court.
Bowen claims Pamir Safi, 33, raped her three years ago while she was a senior in college. Safi argues the sex was consensual.
Safi, charged with first-degree sexual assault, is scheduled to be tried again July 9, after the first trial ended in a hung jury.
Bowen's case is among many others in which word-censorship is being enforced in courtrooms ostensibly to preserve fair trials.
"It's a topic that's coming up more and more," said Joshua Marquis, an Oregon prosecutor and a vice president of the National District Attorneys Association. "You're moving away from what a criminal trial is really about," the Kansas City Star reported.
In a case in Jackson County, Kan., Senior Judge Gene Martin issued a similar decree requiring that certain words be banned from use in a trial involving a Kansas City man accused of raping a teenage girl. Despite the restrictions, the man was found guilty of forcible rape and two counts of forcible sodomy.
Dennis Bowen, father of the Nebraska victim, explained the restrictions on his daughter's speech.
"She could not use the word rape, victim, sexual assault kit, sexual assault nurse," Dennis Bowen said.
Tory Bowen contended referring to her attack as sex gave the wrong message.
"I refuse to call it sex or any other word that I'm supposed to say, encouraged to say on the stand, because to me that's committing perjury, what happened to me was rape, it was not sex," Tory Bowen, the alleged victim, said.
The defendant, Safi, alleged he met Bowen in a bar in October 2004 and the two voluntarily had sex. She reported she was too drunk to consent, and he knew it.
A defense lawyer, Clarence Mock, had told the Lincoln Star-Journal words such as "rape" could be detrimental to his client's case. "Rape" is not even a legal term, he noted. And while "sexual assault" is a legal term, it references something only the jury can determine, he said.
"Under the rules of evidence, witnesses can't reach legal conclusions," Mock told the newspaper.
At the trial, the words "victim" and "assailant" also were banned, and Bowen said her testimony was tainted, because she had to stop before responding to each question to review her response for banned words.
Bowen eventually launched her action against the judge for his restrictions, which allegedly violated her First Amendment rights to free speech.
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