Roy Moore's Bible-thumping lawlessness and his two resulting removals as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court have been widely reported, but his rulings on cases involving sexual assault against minors had largely escaped scrutiny until Thursday's revelations of his own predatory behavior.
What some of those rulings reveal is a man who was deeply sympathetic to the accused and advocated for their right to question the sexual behavior of their accusers as a defense—the classic tactic of shaming women to discredit them, only applied to teenaged girls in his case. Two relevant cases were first mentioned and then edited out of a New York Times story, and although the details of Moore's dissenting opinions are far worse than the Times originally depicted, here's their sanitized summation of them.
In a 2015 case involving a man, David Pittman, who pleaded guilty to raping an underage girl, Mr. Moore wrote in a dissenting opinion that Mr. Pittman should have been allowed to introduce evidence showing his alleged victim’s parents “suspected her of sexual activity,” because it could be relevant to discerning her “alleged motive” in claiming she had been assaulted.
And in a 2014 case, involving a man convicted of abusing two underage girls, Mr. Moore wrote in a dissenting opinion that the man, Sherman Tate, should have had the chance in court to demonstrate that his accusers were romantically involved with each other. Mr. Moore wrote that connection “could be relevant to the victims’ alleged bias against Tate.”
In the first case, six Alabama justices voted to deny the appeal, while two others joined Moore's dissent that the accused should have the opportunity to cross-examine the victim about issues related to her sexual conduct. Here's Moore admitting that while the "sexual behavior" of a claimant isn't usually allowed to be examined in these cases, he thinks it should be.
Generally, Rule 412, Ala. R. Evid., prohibits admitting evidence in rape cases that is "offered to prove that any complaining witness engaged in other sexual behavior." Rule 412(b) provides three exceptions, however, one of which permits "evidence the exclusion of which would violate the constitutional rights of the defendant." I believe Pittman's constitutional rights to be confronted with witnesses against him, protected by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, may have been violated by the denial...
I believe that we should issue the writ to consider whether, if Pittman's motion in limine had been granted, a reasonable jury then "could [have] appropriately draw[n] inferences relating to the reliability of the [complaining][w]itness."
In other words, if the jury had been privy to information about the victim's parents’ concern that their daughter was already sexually active, would that have discredited her enough to cast doubt on her claim that she had been raped?
Moore's dissenting opinion in a 2014 rape case involving a 37-year-old man found guilty of sodomizing two 15-year-old girls while he was working at a youth advocate program they attended is equally, if not more, egregious. Alabama's AL.com writes:
In his dissent, Chief Justice Moore said he felt that if Tate's attorneys had been able to enter evidence of the girls' "romantic relationship," it might have shown their "alleged bias against Tate or their collusion." The possibility of cross-examining the victims about their relationship also could have produced relevant information to the defense, he wrote.
"Tate's knowledge of the victims' romantic relationship, coupled with the fact that Tate informed the mother of one of the victims of that relationship, would make the proposed cross-examination relevant to show that the victims had possibly fabricated the charges against Tate," Moore said in his opinion.
The high court ruled 6-3 (as they did in the 2015 case) to deny Sherman Tate a review of his conviction. The same two justices that joined Moore’s dissent in 2015—Glenn Murdock and Tom Parker—also backed his dissent in Tate’s case.
Similar to the 2015 case, Moore stated his opinion that a jury may have come to a different conclusion if the accused had a chance to introduce evidence related to their sexual behavior.
I believe that "'[a] reasonable jury might have received a significantly different impression of [the witness'] credibility had [defense counsel] been permitted to pursue his proposed line of cross-examination.'"•Olden, 488 U.S. at 232 (quoting Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 680 (1986))
Because anyone who engages in same-sex relations is clearly not credible.
If anything, these opinions completely corroborate the Washington Post's reporting. Moore identifies with the accused and feels they should have every opportunity to discredit the victims of their sexual assaults.
This is how justice is meted out by a man who approached a 14-year-old girl at a court hearing with her mother, offered to watch over the minor as a favor, and then preyed on her vulnerability and the trust he had engendered with her mother.