Participants also evaluated whether the testimony depicted rape or consensual sex as the events were described. After pilot work, community members ( N = 212, 3 non-binary, 113 females, 96 males) received either educative instructions or standard instructions and watched video testimony in which the victim described the details of the assault at the beginning or end of the testimony. This research investigated whether providing judicial education about what commonly occurs in rape, and having a victim describe stereotype-consistent events early in their testimony, would guide jurors to interpret the victim’s testimony as depicting rape. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.The victim’s testimony in most rape trials is unlikely to match jurors’ rape stereotypes and may instead seem typical of consensual sex. Coleman, Patton and Kevin McCarthy make the best of underdeveloped characters. Lisa Blount is strong as theĪmbitious DA briefly suspected of the murder. Wirth is effective as the mysterious Martin.
It is hard to believe that a woman as intelligent and accomplished as Gwen would fall into Martin's trap. But in a scuffle in Gwen's attic, Martin is killed.īedelia gives an engaging performance, but her interpretation of the central character may be the film's fatal flaw. Rather than kill Gwen, he wants to see her imprisoned, like his father. Weapon and prove her innocence, Martin returns. She learns that she had sentenced Martin's father to life imprisonment. Knowing that her arrest is imminent, Gwen frantically researches her past cases to discover Martin's identity and motive. She brings the police to Martin's loft, but he has disappeared. She assumes that her husband has framed her, but then she learns that Martin is the one who set
Gwen presides over the case, and discovers that evidence planted at the crime scene links her to the murder. Charles is found murdered, and one of his many lovers is arrested for the crime. Her jealous husband Alan (Will Patton) knows Gwen is cheating, but suspects that her lover is attorney Charles Mayron (Dabney Coleman), Gwen's friend andĬolleague. Her marriage on the rocks, Judge Gwen Warwick (Bonnie Bedelia) begins an illicit affair with a young library clerk, Martin (Billy Wirth). It was released direct to home video after some 1994 festival showings. William Bindley's debut feature aspires to the John Grisham league of legal thriller but, with a pedestrian plot and a lack of sustained suspense, JUDICIAL CONSENT falls well short.
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