 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
Sexual Assault
"For truth is always strange,
Stranger than fiction."
Lord Byron
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
George F. Denton,
Director of Corrections
of California
v.
Mike Hernandez
|
 |
Sexual Assault
Justice O'Connor Decision
|
|
May 4, 1992
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Excerpt:
Petitioners are 15 officials at various institutions in the
California penal system. Between 1983 and 1985, respondent Mike
Hernandez, a state prisoner proceeding pro se, named petitioners as
defendants in five civil rights suits filed in forma pauperis. In
relevant part, the complaints in these five suits allege that Hernandez
was drugged and homosexually raped a total of 28 times by inmates and
prison officials at different institutions. With few
exceptions, the alleged perpetrators are not identified in the
complaints, because Hernandez does not claim any direct recollection of
the incidents. Rather, he asserts that he found needle marks on
different parts of his body, and fecal and semen stains on his clothes,
which led him to believe that he had been drugged and raped while he
slept.
... An in forma pauperis complaint may not be dismissed, however, simply because the court finds the plaintiff's allegations unlikely. Some improbable allegations might properly be disposed of on summary judgment, but to dismiss them as frivolous without any factual development is to disregard the age old insight that many allegations might be "strange, but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction." Lord Byron, "Don Juan," Canto XIV
Poem excerpt:
 Byron
But great things spring from little:
Would you think,
That in our youth, as dangerous a passion
As e'er brought man and woman to the brink
Of ruin, rose from such a slight occasion,
As few would ever dream could form the link
Of such a sentimental situation?
You'll never guess, I'll bet you millions, milliards
It all sprung from a harmless game at billiards.
T'is strange, but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction; if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!
How oft would vice and virtue places change!
The new world would be nothing to the old,
If some Columbus of the moral seas
Would show mankind their souls' antipodes.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
