A Woman in Black: The last judicial duel in France
laphamsquarterly.org
laphamsquarterly.org
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=524575...
...but generally people feel when stories catalyze social progress that's more important than the details. I think about this a lot, and how it applies to stories we tell in every aspect of life, from personal to business to policy. I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Then there's the Lockerbie case, which was weird on a whole number of levels; I can believe it was carried out by Libya but the actual evidence is unconvincing.
LAPD were still in the news for the Rodney King riots when the OJ Simpson trial kicked off. There were some pretty damning recordings of the lead detective (Fuhrman; had to look it up) with a lot of racist content and talk of planting evidence.
But opinions of the case, by my recollection, fell along predictable racial and political lines. There were an awful lot of people that were certain from the beginning that he was guilty, and they had among their spokespeople Rush Limbaugh, who started practicing talking out of both sides of his mouth right around then by refusing to talk directly about the OJ case but instead spending a lot of air time on the "cultural differences" between white people and black people.
I remember it somewhat distinctly because, unfortunately, both my dad and his dad were listeners of that show and that was about the time I first realized that they were a little bit racist.
Just racial. Hard to believe now, but polling on racial scandals in the 80s and 90s, including OJ, Rodney King, Goetz, etc. didn't show much difference between Republicans and Democrats.
The opposite is true now, of course. Basically the Limbaugh wing now dominates the Republican party.
Social politics aside, it is better for a criminal to go unpunished than for an innocent person to be punished wrongfully. If only everyone accused of a crime was given similar luxury of presumption of innocence, the media circus made a joke out of the process. It shouldn't have been televised.
This is why it is important for police and prosecutors to have integrity and good reputation, else it will be difficult to catch or punish criminals.
Yeah, and what a good thing it was that everyone was in agreement about the obviousness of him being lazily framed. It would have certainly caused a certain amount of discomfort and cultural strife if people disagreed on a matter of such importance. I can't even imagine what it would have been like if such lines were drawn largely based on race. Thank goodness it was all obvious to everyone.
Well, at the time, it was obvious to most people that OJ had murdered Nicole and Ron Goldman.
Once it's in the past, especially long ago and everyone directly impacted has died, we tend to feel pretty free to co-opt stories for our own current needs. It's also hard to not filter stories through the lens of our current lives and culture and draw sometimes wildly erroneous conclusions.
Sort of the reverse of this process or perhaps the antidote (sometimes!) is modern takes on classic stories, such as West Side Story. Retelling it with updated language and updated cultural references can serve to make the story more understandable and relatable.
Of course, it can also just butcher the original story. It can be a case of imposing our current ideas on a story in a way that wildly misconstrues the original tale.
But the general intent is to place a classic story in a more relatable setting so you don't need a lot of explaining to get important details.
Though I have an undergraduate degree in French History I didn’t study medieval law (!) which in any case wasn’t as formal as it was today. But this was clearly not taught under the rules of private duel which would have been arranged and resolved relatively quickly.
There's a third option: a framing of Le Gris by Louvel. The attacker wasn't Le Gris, he just sort of looked like him, and after the assault, disappears. Both Le Gris and Marguerite are telling the truth.
An interesting book.
Women get accused of lying or making up the assault and it's dangerous to them to even report the rape.
A man's reputation is often deemed to be more important than a woman's actual welfare. Male careers are founded upon reputation. They don't want it besmirched by insinuations or ugly truths and will happily do yet worse things to silence such.
Often, a woman has no real power to seek justice in the world. To this day, justice all too often hinges on her having a de facto male champion.
The community at large often tries to sweep sexual scandal under the rug, often very much at some woman's expense, especially if the man in question is "a pillar of the community" type. You will note Le Gris was a squire. In other words, he was (as I understand it) a young nobleman, not a peasant. His reputation, future and career mattered.
We no longer duel to the death, but we still don't seem to have good solutions for a lot of the issues that swirl around such a case.
Excellent read overall, but perhaps an uncomfortable read for a lot of women who have, themselves, been raped or sexually harassed by a man in a position of power, etc.
To discuss this woman's claims at this date is silly. Its not about that at all.
“But when he returned a few days later and heard his wife’s story, he angrily brought charges against Le Gris in the court of Count Pierre of Alençon, overlord to both men. Le Gris was the count’s favorite and his administrative right hand. A large and powerful man, Le Gris was well educated and very wealthy, though from an only recently ennobled family. He also had a reputation as a seducer—or worse. But the count, infuriated by the accusation against his favorite, declared at a legal hearing that Marguerite “must have dreamed it” and summarily dismissed the charges, ordering that “no further questions ever be raised about it.”
“Carrouges, without whom his wife could not even bring a case, resolutely rode off to Paris to appeal for justice to the king.”
It also doesn’t explain why the parlement decided “we have no idea.”
I don't see how that quote advances the case at all. It illustrates my point exactly, then with the brief 'appeal for justice to the king'. Why does anyone imagine that went any differently? It didn't. They wanted to see blood sport, so they decided that way - as the huge crowd confirms, it was a popular decision, not a just one.