Word: trialing
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...when the trial began last October, Mock convinced Judge Jeffre Cheuvront to ban the words rape, victim and assailant from the trial - including from Bowen's testimony - arguing that such words would be "unfairly inflammatory, prejudicial, and misleading." Nebraska state law holds that "evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed" by the potential for unfair prejudice...
Under the language restriction, Bowen testified that Safi "was inside of me and on top of me" when she regained consciousness the morning following their meeting. That trial ended in a hung jury...
Mock felt that the ban ensured his client a fair trial. "She, like any other witness, is subject to the rules of evidence," he says of Bowen. "To say that there is a First Amendment right of the witness to say whatever they want in a courtroom is a silly notion...
...second trial was scheduled to begin last spring. This time, Bowen refused to comply with the court-ordered language ban, which had been expanded to include the terms "sexual assault kit" and "sexual assault nurse." On Bowen's behalf, protesters demonstrated outside the Lincoln courthouse, and a petition, which Bowen signed, circulated on the Internet to change Nebraska law. Because of the publicity surrounding the case, Judge Cheuvront declared a mistrial during jury selection, accusing Bowen of inciting public furor over her case. "Ms. Bowen and her friends hoped to intimidate this court and interfere with the selection...
...third sexual-assault trial has yet to be rescheduled, but in the meantime, Bowen hopes to eventually take her appeal from the federal district court to the U.S. Supreme Court and achieve a national standard for allowable language in the courts - one that upholds a witness's right to free speech without treading on the right of the accused to a fair trial. As Murphy put it, "There should not be a discrepancy as to the fundamental right of a witness to testify truthfully in a court...