Legal Commentary

1-to-3-Year Sentence for Knowingly False Accusation of Rape

By Eugene Volokh

The New York Post reports:

A young mother who falsely cried rape, sending an innocent man to prison for nearly four years, will ... spend one to three years behind bars for perjury....

McCaffrey, 33, of The Bronx, was locked up after [Biurny Peguero] Gonzalez accused him of raping her at knifepoint on a Bronx street back in 2005....

[Gonzales had] been hanging out with a group of girlfriends when she accepted an invitation to get into his car.

After she returned, her pals were furious that she?d ditched them ? so she made up the rape story to gain their sympathy....

Gonzalez, 27, had recanted her story last year after new DNA evidence proved she?d been lying and a priest to whom she?d confessed urged her to come clean....

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 25, 2010 (boomark / email).