Giuliani defamed and inflicted emotional distress on Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss after falsely accusing them of election fraud, Judge Beryl Howell ruled.

This is separate from Rudy’s criminal trial with Trump, this was a civil trial between him and the election workers, where Rudy admitted that he lied about them.

  • @meco03211@lemmy.world
    5•10 months ago

    It kinda does though. Standards of proof are different between civil and criminal trials. Your “right to remain silent” is only relevant for criminal proceedings. This is why you will never be required to take the stand in your own criminal trial. This gives you coverage for shady law enforcement inferring criminal guilt based on your silence or reluctance to answer questions.

    Contrast that with civil proceedings where you do not have the right to remain silent. In those if you refuse to answer a question, the judge/jury/finder of facts can legally infer a negative response. So if asked “Did you do the thing?” and you remain silent, they can assume you did the thing. In a criminal trial, they can’t assume you did the thing.

    This brings us back to the standards of proof. For criminal it’s “beyond all reasonable doubt”. For civil it’s “a preponderance of the evidence”. Consider these to be effectively 100% and 50% respectively. Now why this makes sense in this case is he effectively admitted that there’s a better chance someone would think he’s lying than telling the truth. He’s admitting to the 50%, but not admitting it’s provable beyond all reasonable doubt at 100%.