David A. Perea
BLAW 316-M30
New Mexico State University Nancy A. Oretskin
07/26/2013

The accused (Movie)
Substantive Law is the basic law in written form and that defines rights as well as duties, which includes crimes together with punishments (contract law, criminal law, tort law, law of wills, etc.) responsibilities and civil rights within civil law. Procedural law on the other hand provides the mechanism through which the enforcement of the duties and rights would be realized. The procedural law therefore comprises of rules to be adhered to by a court while hearing and determining criminal as well as civil cases.
This paper intends to analyze from the substantive law point of view of the unfolding events within the movie “The Accused” as written by Tom Topper in 1988 (Ebert para 1-10). The movie is a description of unfortunate happenings that involve Sarah Tobias who is the accused of luring herself into the unfortunate rape ordeal and who is accused of the same. Moreover, in a rather twisty way, the case moves from her accusation and she becomes the accuser in trying to seek justice for her own misfortune. The movie therefore depicts that rape victims would stand to be accused in causing it to happen.
The drunkards in the bar where she goes and drinks uncontrollably, shows the substantive sides of the legal movie through the abuse of Tobias rights. The drunkard men blamed the accused for first over-drunkard-ness after which she engaged in provocative dance, which leads to her rape. Under the substantive law provisions, the public (represented by the people who were drinking within the bar at the time of the happening) had the right to disciplined dance by the accused, which was not observed when the accused engaged in dancing provocatively. On the other hand, the accused had the right to personal security as against the assault through rape and jeering by the drunkards in the bar.
From the legal point, the case was to be addressed as a criminal case where the accused (Sarah Tobias on one side and the rapists on the other hand) would be accused of engaging in criminal acts. In the first issue with Sarah as the accused, the plaintiff would accuse Sarah of drinking alcohol to uncontrollable levels, which leads to her the activities that lead to her rape. The plaintiff would argue from the fact that law prohibits extreme drinking of alcohol, which the accused is blamed of. Moreover, while drunk, the accused disrupts the peace of the customers who were enjoying themselves in the bar through indecent dances, which provoked the men to rape her. This was therefore offensive and the accused would be rightfully accused under the criminal law of engaging in risky behavior in the public.
On her side as the defendant, Sarah would argue that she was entitled to taking alcohol in the bar just as any other adult person was. She would justify her dance with the fact that though she was drunk, she was allowed by the law to dance and as such, she was not responsible for any possible offence she would cause the other people through her dance. She was therefore not rightfully being accused for being the cause to her rape but rather, the rapists should have been accused for physically assaulting her and emotionally hurting her through the chanting and the jeers, which encouraged her perpetrators to continue with harassing her.
On the other side of the case was the accused accusing the rapists of causing physical and emotional harm to her through the rape as well as the jeers and the chants. With the plaintiff deciding to lower the charges against the accused in the cases for “aggravated assault,” the complainant feels rather assaulted in that the case involved had the magnitude of brutal rape in front of other people. The court under the substantive law framework had the responsibility to treat the case with the seriousness of such a crime against the complainant’s rights and freedoms. The complainant’s argument was therefore that though she as a woman who acted indecently in the bar had the right to say no to the atrocities and be heard which was not the case. The defendants in the case would otherwise reason that the ordeals suffered by the complainant were self-imposed because she behaved indecently in the drunken condition, which made the men to rape her.
However, in general, I find the two substantive legal concerns varied and in the concern. The occurrence that a woman takes alcohol to unmanageable levels would lead her to behave indecently such as through the provocative dance. Moreover, the provocative dance would be instrumental in luring men into raping her as the case had it. Nevertheless, Sarah’s dance had no justification to her harassment as the men had other ways to stop her from the provocative activity other than raping her. Furthermore, it was criminal for the men to have raped her and causing the physical as well as emotional torture and hence required to be addressed with such seriousness as against lowering the charges to aggravated assault charges. My opinion would be that justice would only prevail when the court subjects Sarah to disciplinary measures for behaving indecently in public and the rapists be subjected to due course of justice in participating in the criminal act of raping Sarah.