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Understanding Anogenital Injury in Adult Sexual Assault Cases

Anogenital injury is often seen as the ultimate evidence in sexual assault cases. However, the reality is that anogenital injury evidence has significant limitations. Specifically, in the vast majority of cases we are limited in our ability to distinguish between injuries resulting from a sexual assault and those sustained during consensual sexual activity. This article discusses how these points may not be well understood by legal practitioners and clinicians alike, resulting in a portrayal of anogenital injury as having clear and unambiguous significance. Understanding the emerging research on consensual sexual activity injury can therefore help us provide more accurate information to attorneys, judges, and juries in adult sexual assault cases.

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Supreme Court Continues to Expand the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause: Bullcoming v. New Mexico

This article provides an overview of Bullcoming v. New Mexico, a case holding that the Confrontation Clause prohibits the prosecution from introducing a forensic laboratory report through the testimony of an analyst who did not personally perform or observe the testing. The authors discuss the impact of the case on domestic violence prosecutions to the extent that it expands defendants’ rights under the Confrontation Clause in the area of required live testimony and appears to limit the prosecution’s ability to present physical evidence when laboratory analysis is involved.

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Benefits of a Coordinated Community Response to Sexual Violence

When medical, legal, and victim advocacy systems work together, they provide better, more effective services to victims. This article outlines the importance of multidisciplinary responses as a way to help survivors understand the breadth of available community resources and services. The authors also demonstrate how coordinated responses to sexual violence result in holding offenders accountable while protecting victims and communities.

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Making It Stick: Protecting the Record for Appeal

Having a sexual assault, domestic violence, or human trafficking case reversed on appeal can result in a re-trial with stale evidence, reluctant witnesses, and a victim who is forced to relive the case when she is finally beginning to heal. Though the appellate process is unavoidable, a prosecutor can bring a measure of finality to the criminal justice process by carefully building a strong trial court record that supports the conviction and the sentence imposed and withstands appellate challenges. This article discusses the proper creation and protection of the record during all phases of a criminal case, focusing on investigation, charging, plea agreements, trial preparation and strategy, summation, and sentencing. It addresses pretrial motions, recommends the use of trial briefs on anticipated trial problems, and explains how strategic charging decisions can result in admission of evidence that might otherwise be excluded.

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Absence of Anogenital Injury in the Adolescent Adult Female Sexual Assault Patient

Rates of sexual assault injury vary widely in published reports and may be impacted by a variety of issues, including the types of techniques used to assess the patient and the amount of time between the assault and the exam. This article discusses how documentation from sexual assault medical-forensic examinations often notes that no injury was found to the female genitalia or anus. The absence of anogenital injury does not mean that a sexual assault didn’t occur. Anticipating the circumstances when injury will be identified is a challenge.

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Presence of Victim Advocate During Sexual Assault Exam Summary of State Laws

Following a sexual assault report, victims are propelled into the criminal justice system and faced with an array of strangers, each with his or her own role in the response, investigation, or prosecution of the crime. Victims are often interviewed by multiple people, including police officers, doctors, nurses, social workers, and prosecutors. To help victims cope with these challenges, some state legislatures have passed laws providing them with the right to have a victim advocate or personal representative present during such interviews to offer support. This article focuses specifically on the victim’s right to have an advocate present during a medical forensic exam.

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Establishing Penetration in Sexual Assault Cases

Criminal acts of sexual violence generally fall into three categories: exposure, contact, and penetration. While prosecutors introduce evidence to establish the statutory elements at trial, defense strategies focus on targeting any vulnerability in that evidence. Where the charged offense includes an element of penetration, defenses may also include specific challenges to the prosecution’s ability to prove that penetration occurred. If the prosecution is unable to prove the element of penetration beyond a reasonable doubt, the accused will be acquitted or convicted of a less serious offense. This Strategies in Brief explains the legal requirements for establishing penetration in sexual assault prosecutions and offers strategies for effectively identifying, evaluating, and presenting evidence of penetration. The article: summarizes the categories of criminal sex offense statutes and outlines the legal requirements to establish penetration; provides strategies to prepare for and try sexual assault cases involving penetration; identifies and offers guidance for responding to common defense challenges to establishing penetration in sexual assault cases.

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The Prosecutors’ Resource on Elder Abuse

This Prosecutors’ Resource is designed to assist with investigating and prosecuting cases involving abuse, neglect, and financial exploitation of an older victim. It includes foundational knowledge on the various forms and co-occurrence of elder abuse crimes, the characteristics of victims and perpetrators, the aging body, and issues of competency and capacity that will all inform prosecutors’ decision-making in cases and interactions with victims. This Prosecutors’ Resource also provides prosecution strategies for working with older victims and addresses the individual steps and considerations for prosecuting elder abuse cases from the initial interview and investigation through sentencing.

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SAJI Annotated Bibliography (June 2017)

This bibliography provides an extensive list of studies, best practices, strategies and other resources to support the prosecution of sexual assault, from the victim’s initial report through trial. The annotations offer overviews for every source on topics such as: performance measures, conviction rates, standards of practice, criminal justice reform, promising practices, investigation, responding to witnesses, pretrial, and trial strategies.

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Walking A Tightrope: Balancing Victim Privacy and Offender Accountability in Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prosecutions Part I

Domestic violence and sexual assault crimes are among the most sensitive and challenging cases to investigate and prosecute. They involve extremely personal information, which the prosecution needs and the defense may demand, and which victims are understandably reluctant to share. The purpose of this article is to help criminal justice professionals understand what kinds of information victims generally consider to be private and to facilitate their ability to explain—to victims and other professionals—what information is legally protected as private. This Strategies article is Part I of a two-part series addressing two types of legally protected information: confidentiality and privilege. Part I provides an overview of confidentiality to assist prosecutors in balancing offender accountability with the safety needs and expectations of victims during criminal investigations and prosecutions.

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