Here's a cautionary tale that is a useful reminder about why one should sometimes suspend judgment in these cases:
Hennepin County prosecutors dropped all charges Thursday against a University of Minnesota professor accused of raping and stalking an ex-girlfriend.
Francesco Parisi, 54, had been in the Hennepin County jail for the past three weeks after prosecutors charged him with first-degree criminal sexual conduct and stalking….
"Efforts to corroborate or verify a number of specific allegations against the defendant that were made to the Minneapolis Police Department and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office were unsuccessful," Assistant County Attorney Justin Wesley wrote in a court filing. "Considering all of the evidence that we have now, the charges are no longer supported by probable cause and are hereby dismissed in the interests of justice…."
Court records show that the 55-year-old accuser and Parisi already had an extensive legal history and were locked in a contentious property dispute.
"If the prosecutor had taken a few minutes to look, just five minutes of due diligence, it could have prevented an enormous embarrassment to all parties involved and a gross abuse of the legal system," said one of Parisi's attorneys, John Braun.
Leave a Reply