What if There Are Texts or Messages Showing Consent? Combs Waterkotte attorneys Christopher Combs and Joshua Boardman discuss everything you need to know about Illinois sex crime charges, including sexual assault, sexual abuse, rape, and more.
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Interview Transcript
Scott Michael Dunn: What if there are texts or messages showing consent?
Joshua Boardman: Well, often times that comes about at a certain point. Was there consent? Is it expressly represented that there was consent? But is there an allegation that consent was withdrawn in the moment? And that’s all part of circumstantial evidence that surrounds the affirmative defense of consent whenever one of our clients or whenever someone facing one of these charges wants to assert that defense.
Christopher Combs: And often times, I’ll see in the text messages when both people are highly intoxicated that the alleged victim, the female, the text messages often times are kind of questioning. Which can be helpful, like not outright saying I was too drunk to consent. “What did you do to me?” Often times I see kind of just questioning what happened the night before and not outright saying, “Look, I was too drunk to consent.” Moreso like, “Hey, what happened last night? I was awfully drunk…” But, yes, text messages certainly can be evidence and come into play.
Dunn: Yes, it sounds like it would be complicated because of context.
Combs: Yes, and context is huge as Josh touched on. It’s going to be very circumstantial and they’re going to look at the veracity of and truthfulness of both persons’ statements and level of intoxication.
