Court upholds man's conviction for 1987 Roxbury rape and murder; one justice says case shows it's time to start considering femicide as a specific crime

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled contiguous that James Paige, who remained escaped until 2016, got a just proceedings for the aggravated rape and murder of Dora Brimage, 19, connected Warren Street successful Roxbury successful 1987 and truthful volition walk the remainder of his beingness successful prison.

Paige did not come to the attraction of investigators until 2014, erstwhile DNA from semen recovered successful Brimage's assemblage matched a illustration helium had fixed aft condemnation for an unrelated crime. BPD detectives past recovered witnesses tying Paige to the rape and execution of Brimage, who sang gospel successful her religion and who had hoped to go a nurse, and who accepted a thrust location from Paige aft a party.

In its ruling today, the state's highest tribunal acceptable a caller ineligible precedent: That prosecutors nary longer person to trust connected accepted grounds - torn covering oregon carnal harm to the victim's genitals - to beryllium aggravated rape if a intersexual enactment occurs close earlier a murder.

The ruling overturns a portion of a 2015 determination successful which the tribunal ruled that portion a antheral successful a execution lawsuit could beryllium convicted of murder, determination was not capable grounds to beryllium helium had besides raped his unfortunate first, due to the fact that portion the 2 had had sex, and portion she was recovered with 2 of her teeth knocked retired and she had humor successful her mouth, she was besides moving arsenic a prostitute that nighttime and determination were nary signs of ripped covering oregon carnal harm to her genitals.

In today's ruling, the tribunal wrote:

We present conclude, however, that wherever determination is grounds that the suspect severely injured and killed the unfortunate proximate to having enactment with the victim, the assemblage whitethorn infer that the unfortunate did not consent to the intersexual intercourse.

The alteration matters due to the fact that aggravated rape proves the beingness of "malice," 1 of the imaginable conditions for convicting a idiosyncratic of first-degree murder, which carries a condemnation of beingness without parole.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Elspeth Cypher, says it's clip to spell adjacent further, for the tribunal to specifically admit femicide, oregon the execution of a pistillate due to the fact that she is simply a woman, arsenic a chiseled crime.

Because the victims of femicide are targeted based connected their sex, femicide whitethorn beryllium understood arsenic a benignant of hatred crime. See Taylor, Note, Treating Male Violence Against Women arsenic a Bias Crime, 76 B.U. L. Rev. 575, 576-577 (1996). The unit of these offenses serves to terrorize the victims and, thus, to subjugate women arsenic a group. ... As such, hatred crimes nonstop a greater toll connected nine and women, some individually and arsenic a group, than isolated incidents of violence. ...

To usage the word "femicide" besides acknowledges its prevalence successful our nine astatine large. Reliable information connected the incidence of femicide is unluckily lacking. No authoritative sources straight survey male-on-female homicide oregon its motivations. An investigation of cross-sex homicide rates generally, however, suggests that femicide is connected the emergence successful the United States. See Violence Policy Center, When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2019 Homicide Data (Sept. 2021) ("Since reaching its debased . . . successful 2014, the complaint [of women murdered by men successful incidents with 1 unfortunate and 1 offender] has increased, with 2019's complaint . . . up 9 percent since 2014").

Cypher added it's clip to halt blaming prostitutes for crimes committed against them:

I besides privation to code straight the accusation that prostituted women are much apt to consent to a intersexual brushwood earlier being killed. A prostituted pistillate is nary much apt to bash truthful than a nonprostituted woman. Even extracurricular the discourse of homicide, grounds that a pistillate is prostituted does not alteration the likelihood that she was raped. Rather, studies suggest that prostituted women are much apt to beryllium raped than others. See, e.g., Cooney, "They Don't Want to Include Women Like Me": Sex Workers Say They're Being Left Out of the #MeToo Movement, Time (Feb. 13, 2018) (although "[t]here are nary comprehensive, up-to-date statistic connected however galore enactment workers successful the U.S. person experienced intersexual violence," "[o]ne systematic reappraisal of probe recovered that globally, enactment workers person a 45% to 75% accidental of experiencing . . . intersexual unit connected the job"). Additionally, grounds suggests that homicides hap with akin frequence alongside prostitution arsenic they bash alongside rape. See FBI, Expanded Homicide Data Table 11 (2019)(listing 12 incidents of homicide occurring successful discourse of prostitution and commercialized vice and 8 homicides occurring successful discourse of rape).