Woman who caused her lover’s shooting death by falsely crying rape convicted

Many of you have sent me articles about the Tracy Denise Roberson/Darrell Roberson case. According to the Associated Press, in that case “Darrell Roberson came home from a card game late one night to find his wife rolling around with another man in a pickup truck in the driveway. Caught in the act with her lover, Tracy Denise Roberson — thinking quickly, if not clearly — cried rape, authorities say. Her husband pulled a gun and killed the other man with a shot to the head.”

Now Tracy Denise Roberson has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and faces two to 20 years in prison. I covered this case in March 2007 after the grand jury indictment. In my blog post Stop the Presses–a Woman Is Held Accountable for Making a False Accusation I wrote:

“A Texas grand jury is actually holding a woman accountable for making a false accusation of rape–an accusation which led to the killing of the man she accused. The jury, correctly, saw that the woman’s husband acted reasonably–his wife screamed to him that she was being raped, so, like any good Texan, he shot the ‘rapist.’ But it turns out that the man wasn’t a rapist at all–she was having an extramarital affair with him. Believe it or not, they dropped the charges against the husband and indicted the wife for manslaughter.

“According to the article, Mark Osler, a Baylor University law school professor and a former federal prosecutor, said the grand jurors evidently put themselves in the husband’s place: ‘I can see one of them saying, `I would have shot the guy, too. I was just protecting my wife.’

“To be fair, the woman acted quickly, and perhaps would not have made a similar claim if she had more time to think. Nevertheless, I don’t have much sympathy for her.”

Those words still seem fair enough to me. The AP article on the jury verdict is below.

Cry of Rape Lands Cheating Wife in Jail
Associated Press, 5/3/08

FORT WORTH, Texas (May 3) – A Texas woman who caused her lover’s shooting death by falsely crying rape was convicted Friday of involuntary manslaughter.

Tracy Denise Roberson, 37, cried a bit when the verdict was announced. The punishment phase was set for Monday, and she faces two to 20 years in prison.

In late 2006, Darrell Roberson came home from a late-night card game to find his scantily clad wife with another man in a pickup truck in the driveway. Tracy Roberson was with her lover but cried rape, and her husband fired four shots into the truck as Devin LaSalle drove off, killing him.

Darrell Roberson initially was arrested, but a murder charge was later dropped and a grand jury indicted Tracy Roberson instead.

During her three-day trial, defense attorneys called no witnesses but blamed LaSalle’s death on Darrell Roberson’s jealousy and rage.

But prosecutors placed all the blame on Tracy Roberson, showing evidence of the affair with LaSalle, 32, and a text message in which she invited him to her house that evening.

Steve Moxon’s The Woman Racket The Woman Racket is a serious scientific investigation into one of the key myths of our age–that women are oppressed by the ‘patriarchal’ traditions of Western societies. Drawing on the latest developments in evolutionary psychology, Moxon finds that the opposite is true–men, or at least the majority of low-status males–have always been the victims of deep-rooted prejudice. As the prejudice is biologically derived, it is unconscious and can only be uncovered with the tools of scientific psychology. Moxon reveals this prejudice in fields as diverse as healthcare, employment, family policy and politics.

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