Regarding #2, testimony may be ‘evidence’ to a court in a civil case, but there still isn’t any direct evidence (unless camera footage somehow ever showed up). So reality is that
@kb02 is right. It’s one person’s word against another. And it’s clear that one is lying.
Regarding #4, you’ve pointed out differences between criminal and civil cases, but for someone like me and likely many others, standards are very different. For me, the accuser needs to prove it. If I know both parties in a he said she said case, then I can likely be swayed to lean towards believing one over the other w/o really knowing for sure. But in a case where I don’t know the parties involved, I’m definitely an innocent until proven guilty guy.
Not referring to Kelli Tennant, who I’ve come to know on TV for many years covering Dodgers games, but I do feel we live in a day and age of opportunists and people who seek attention — good or bad. So it makes it that much harder to blindly believe everything I hear and read.
Expanding upon that, I’ve read on twitter and other sites that “the accuser has no reason to lie”. I find that POV to be extremely shortsighted and naive. Again, not referring to this Tennant/Walton case specifically, but we simply don’t have a clue about that. Lying occurs every damn day — with good reason or not. We can never know the motivations behind the decisions of others.
Conversely, when news first broke of the Mike Tyson, Kobe Bryant and Bill Cosby accusations, my initial, logical reaction was “why would they need to do something like that when they have willing participants waiting for them in every hotel lobby around the world and can get any type of woman they want?”. But that was also an extremely shortsighted and naive POV. Because it in no way means they couldn’t have done it.
People lie, cheat, steal and commit crimes all the time and quite often there’s no rhyme or logical reason for it. Fact is, we can’t ever know what someone is capable of doing or not doing. And emotions can play a huge role in someone doing something completely out of character.
So considering all that, I have a hard time damning someone I don’t have a strong personal connection to w/o hard evidence. But I’m well aware that there are many that disagree.