Justin Boardman
Appearances
Criminal
The Petition
And basically my view on these types of crimes changed, and I learned some things that I had been doing my job wrong, and I had created a whole lot more harm. The issue was misreading the way that survivors present to law enforcement when something traumatic happens to them.
Criminal
The Petition
And I was misinterpreting it because I was trained when it came to interviewing suspects, you kind of get those hinky feelings and you start hearing what they're telling you and it doesn't make any sense and they can't get their stories straight. But our victims were doing the same thing.
Criminal
The Petition
I mean, you can take Madison's case, for instance, right? When the assault started, his hands went around her throat, and she went into what we call tonic immobility or collapsed immobility. And we all— Most society would go, you know, if that happened to me, I'd fight back, I would kick, I would scratch, I would do X, Y, Z. In all reality, over 50% of survivors don't fight back.
Criminal
The Petition
And so it's very counterintuitive to prosecutors, to law enforcement, even to survivors themselves, because the guilt that, you know, I was taught that I should scream or fight back, and they can't control that part of the brain. And it brings a lot of guilt.
Criminal
The Petition
So the law, that's why they call it an art form, because there's no hard boundaries when it comes to filing a case. I believe that a local prosecutor is one of the most powerful people in the United States.
Criminal
The Petition
From like the 1800s, but it's still on the books, and it looks like some people have tried to use it a few times.
Criminal
The Petition
Basically, there's a mathematical equation, something like 2% of the registered voters who voted in the last gubernatorial race in Kansas, plus 100.