Saturday, August 30, 2008

Day 10 - secret recordings and rules of consent - UPDATED

UPDATED:

Former Blue Lake Police Chief David Gundersen has been cleared of all major charges first filed against him in 2008. - Arcata Eye MARCH 2012

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of the strangest trial ever - hearsay, Midnight Express moments, and now, secretly recorded tapes...
☛ ER Phone calls detail wife’s suspicions, hesitation to talk about alleged sex crimes In recorded phone conversations, which Darcie Seal was told weren’t being taped, she told District Attorney’s Office Investigator Wayne Cox on June 10 that she found concerning items in Gundersen’s side of their garage, shed and the BLPD office.

Those items included hard drives, small cameras and video tapes, which Seal indicated may contain nude photos of her taken with or without her consent.

Seal also referenced newspaper articles that mentioned their sex life and said she “won’t talk about it because I don’t want it in the paper.”

“To tell you the truth … I’m supposed to do that in front of everybody and the press?” Seal said. “I don’t want everybody to know.”...

...The prosecution began playing four hours of audio phone recordings Friday between Seal and Cox, as well as Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos. It is anticipated that the court will finish listening to the recordings when the trial resumes Tuesday morning....

,,,Gundersen wasn’t given a rape kit after being arrested, which Cox said in hindsight, should have been done. Cox explained this case isn’t typical “in any stretch of the imagination” and he was instructed by Gallegos to record his conversations and contacts with Seal. At one point in a conversation, Seal directly asked Cox whether she was being recorded, and got “No” for an answer.

“They were never recorded with the intent of playing them or letting the jury hear them,” Cox said.

His intent was to get Seal to tell the truth, “and I believed that if I told her she was being recorded … that was going to end our dialogue. I couldn’t afford that to happen because in the end, what I really need is the truth.”

“I wanted her to feel free to tell the truth without any worries.”...


☛ TS A question of consent

At one point early in the conversation, Cox also tells Seal he has never knowingly lied to her. A few minutes later, Seal asks Cox if their conversation is being recorded and he says no.

”Are you telling the truth?” Seal asks.

”Yes,” Cox responds on the recording....

,,,At various points in the conversations Seal expresses concerns over consent, and whether she explicitly told Gundersen to stop having sex with her against her will, at points even hinting that it's her fault.

”I stayed for eight years, I have some accountability in that,” she says.

During her conversation with Gallegos, Seal again touches on the issue of consent, saying that, though she often laid lifeless and cried while Gundersen had sex with her, she didn't explicitly tell him 'no,' or to stop.

”The question isn't whether you said 'no,' it's whether you ever said 'yes,'” Gallegos tells her. “I don't get to have sex with my wife whenever she doesn't say 'no.' ... Consent is something that's given, not something that's taken.”


Related: California Penal Code
PENAL CODE SECTION 630-637.9
...

"Consent is something that's given, not something that's taken." Did she consent to being recorded?

UPDATED:

Former Blue Lake Police Chief David Gundersen has been cleared of all major charges first filed against him in 2008. - Arcata Eye MARCH 2012

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10 comments:

  1. What is he really saying? exrepublican said:

    “I don’t get to have sex with my wife whenever she doesn’t say ‘no.’”

    The sentence contains a double negative and really reads like so:

    “I don’t get to have sex with my wife when she says yes”.

    0r

    “I get to have sex with my wife whenever she doesnt say no”

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  2. What is the DA ,pvg, doing making recorded phone calls to the victim?

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  3. That's a good question, 9:24.

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  4. Recorded phone calls without consent - lying, in fact, to the victim you are recording. Not the defendant. The victim. or alleged victim.

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  5. The poor woman sounds like she has been misused by both her husband and by Cox.

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  6. Gallegos and Cox, and her husband, yes, Kym, I agree.

    Hers is a grotesquely messed up relationship, no question about it. Tragic, all the way around.

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  7. Hey, Paul: Early retirements has its benefits!!!!

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  8. So let's recap a bit. They kept her seven hours,
    lied to her repeatedly, taped her without her knowledge, ignored her when she recanted, then
    immunized her to tell one version of what she said.
    Which is ok because the experts will explain that this trained police sergeant is, at heart, just a little old housewife victim of domestic violence, and we all know the little ladies just aren't in control of their
    silly selves, are they? They aren't responsible, because their emotions just run away with them, when they are yelled at by the big mean man.

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  9. I have to say "yes" in advance?

    "Oh baby, ohh baby!" won't work?

    How about "Oh God, Ohhh GOD! OHHH GODDD!!!"?

    Will that work?

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  10. only in Humboldt

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