I would be careful with singling out the crime of rape for this concern, because contrary to a very popular opinion on message boards, <i>lots</i> of crimes result in convictions without smoking-gun physical evidence. In fact, you&#x27;d expect trials with smoking-gun physical evidence to be somewhat rare: if the DA can easily prove you&#x27;re guilty, they&#x27;re going to tell you that to get you to plead out.<p>Meanwhile, rape has historically been under-prosecuted (within many of our lifetimes, marital rape was exempted from prosecution! <i>That&#x27;s</i> how new rigorous rape prosecution is).