Last week, criminal defense attorneys in Connecticut won a rape case in favor of their client, Saifullah Khan, a 25-year-old Afghan native and senior in cognitive science at Yale University. The attorneys were men.

The case was close. Apparently the defendant and the complainant met at a Halloween concert on campus. The complainant vomited several times during the concert and Khan, to assist her, walked her back to her dorm room. She invited him in. She said she then passed out in bed but awoke in the middle of the night with the accused atop her. She claimed rape.

He testified at trial that she initiated oral sex and that the ensuing sex was consensual. She texted him shortly after the alleged assault: “LOL” (laugh out loud).

The jurors weighed carefully a video showing the couple walking together into her dorm room, which the complainant testified showed she was so drunk that her leg was dragging behind her and her eyes were shut. A juror, questioned by reporters after the verdict, said, “We looked and looked… and could not see what she said.” They acquitted after only three hours.

Any rape case is tough for both defense and prosecution when the defense is consensual sex. It’s tough because there are often no injuries or witnesses other than the parties involved and often no relevant forensics. I say “relevant” because in consensual cases, it’s conceded that sex happened, therefore the fact that the defendant’s DNA or sperm was found on the complainant proves nothing. The cases often occur in private — places where both people agreed to go such as one of the party’s apartments or cars.

A decision of guilt or non-guilt can ride on a whim or prejudice or feelings about #MeToo. That’s why picking the right jury is everything. You need people who will challenge the complainant, believe in the presumption of innocence, and not see the defense attorney as a devil.

Challenging the credibility of the complainant is also key. What did she do leading to the event? What did she do immediately thereafter — when did she tell police; did she maintain communication with the accused? How well does she remember details — i.e., was she intoxicated?

As a female attorney in the #MeToo era, finding the right tone and being willing to ask “politically incorrect” questions of the complainant is tough.

I’ve been doing trial work for decades and consider myself pretty hard-bitten — I don’t cry when I lose trials (they’re gut punches but I move on), and I’ve tried everything from murders to terrorism. But when it comes to mentally preparing myself to cross-examine an alleged rape victim (especially a child), it takes a different kind of fortitude to forge ahead — one that ignores what’s PC. I may feel uncomfortable doing it, but it’s my job to use all the tools available to challenge the credibility of the complainant.

For example, the complainant in the Khan case was dressed in a provocative Halloween costume, a sexy cat outfit, the night of the alleged rape. I’d have to refer to that in suggesting she was a willing sex partner. She drank enough to need assistance to get to her dorm room, then invited the defendant in and, according to him, initiated oral sex. All indicia of consensual sex. The next day she texted him, “LOL” — hardly the response of someone who was a victim of sexual assault.

Blame the victim — that’s the job of effective defense counsel. And as a woman, that job can be tough.

Yet, everybody arrested deserves a good (even a great) defense. It’s not enough to be there in body only, tip-toeing around issues because your approach won’t fall right with your friends or (in my case) children.

Strategizing helps — somehow using the fact that as a woman you can relate to what the complainant believed happened, agree that such things do happen even when the woman dresses provocatively or invites the defendant into her home, but that, in this particular case (the one you’re defending), that’s not what went down. It’s all about convincing the jury that the State must prove there was no consent, rather than the defense prove there was.

It also helps to think of yourself as an actor in a role. Your role is to create reasonable doubt — nothing else. You’re not there to save the world from potential sexual predators. You’re there to save your client from being convicted.

In these types of cases, a juror’s age impacts his or her ability to think through reasonable doubt and not presume guilt. Attorneys for Khan in the Connecticut case, Norman Pattis and Dan Erwin, purposely picked older jurors. According to 61-year-old juror James Galullo, “The jurors were all basically middle-aged. They were able to see through all the noise.”

The strategy worked. As Erwin put it, “There was a seriousness about them insofar as none of them accepted, condoned, or denied the existence of misconduct, harassment, or assault, but they all seriously engaged with the need for due process.”

And that’s what it’s all about — due process. The line in the sand in the #MeToo era seems to have been drawn far from the presumption of innocence and closer to an assumption of guilt.

While it’s sometimes difficult for me as a woman to do this type of case, it’s important women do them. We add a kind of understanding and reasoning that men can’t. No one is presumed guilty, not even of rape. If defending an alleged rapist conflicts with your politics, remember you’re not defending rape or questionable consensual sex, you’re defending everyone’s rights to a fair trial and a jury that believes in the presumption of innocence.

Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.