The penalty for false accusation MUST be the same that the innocent man would have paid. NO exceptions.
That is exactly what should happen.
I think it should be treble damages. Triple the fine/confinement. If I do insider trading as a broker, and make 100k and get caught, I am fined 300k, do 3 years in prison, and lose my license.
False accusations should bear TRIPLE what the victim faces.
“The penalty for false accusation MUST be the same that the innocent man would have paid. NO exceptions”
That ought to eliminate most recantations.
That is simple rational Justice.
But Lady Justice was abducted decades ago, and her whereabouts are still unknown...
needs to be law. That includes “victims” witnesses, cops, DA’s and judges. Up to and including the death penalty.
That's a pleasant fantasy, but American prosecutors strongly disagree with you.
Last time I checked, the average sentence for a man convicted of raping a woman was about eight years, and the average time served was about five years.
Women convicted of lying about being raped receive MUCH shorter sentences on the rare occasions when they are tried at all. I have never seen a study, but my impression is that sentences rarely go beyond one year, long on community service and receiving counseling, short on incarceration.
Usually, the false-accusing woman is treated as a victim deserving sympathy, not a criminal. In the case of Jackie Coakley, most media outlets declined to release her name. The poor dear had to be protected even after she had been proved a liar.
In my personal life I have encountered two instances of false accusation of rape. I wasn't the one accused, but in both cases I knew the accusations were false. In one case, the woman threatened the man after consensual sex. She said she would accuse him of rape unless he did something she wanted done. He declined. (Unfortunately I had to listen to the whole thing through the paper-thin walls of the cheap room I was renting.) In the other, the woman simply wanted attention and synmpathy, and she calculated correctly that she could get away with lying, so she did. (She admitted to me privately that there had been no rape attempt.) Fortunately, in neither case did the woman file a police complaint.
I did receive one false-accusation threat. A woman said she would tell police that I had tried to "molest" her, after I objected to her walking with a very loud boom box through a quiet residential neighborhood. Molestation is not quite rape, but she impressed me with the speed with which she came up with the false accusation. It took her about two seconds after I asked her to turn down the volume.
So, does objecting to false accusations of rape somehow endorse actual rape? Of course not. They are both serious crimes, only one of which is taken seriously in America.