Oliver Janilovic \nNEW YORK - Oliver Jovanovic will be home for Christmas - bail for the man accused of kidnapping and sexually torturing an online girl friend from Barnard College was lowered to $50,000, which his mother paid at once, according to the New York Daily News.
Prosecutors, however, have promised to appeal Tuesday's ruling from a state appellate court ordering a new trial for Jovanovic, the paper says. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Herbert Adelberg lowered bail from $100,000, after saying Tuesday's ruling "cuts the gut out" of the prosecution's case, the paper continues.
The Tuesday ruling declared the jury in Jovanovic's first trial should have been allowed to see steamy e-mail messages between the alleged victim and Jovanovic before their first date, in order to show a mutual attraction as well as her apparent history of sadomasochistic sexual tastes.
Jovanovic has received support from an otherwise unlikely source - the alleged victim's family, who have suggested to reporters she was all but railroading Jovanovic. He also has support from one legendary journalist, Sidney Zion.
"It is a great decision for the Bill of Rights and for the presumption of innocence," Zion writes in his syndicated newspaper column. "And, of course, he may not be guilty. What matters is that the Appellate Division would not let a trial judge prevent a defendant from having the jury hear his defense.
"If it had gone the other way," Zion continues, "we might as well say that every woman who claims she has been the victim of sexual assault is right and there's nothing to do but go directly to sentencing the pervert...This young woman invited kinky sex in e-mails to Jovanovic in words that ordinarily would never make it into decent newspapers. She talked about her life as a "slave" to a guy who was a sadomasochist, a guy whose treatment of her was "painful." But, she said, the "fun of telling my friends, 'I'm a sadomasochist' more than outweighs the torment."
