I blogged yesterday about the intentionally deceptive, callous and cruel cross-examination of a rape victim by the rapist's defense attorney, Michael Armstrong. Readers can see for themselves, from the victim's letter, just how aggressively disgusting defense counsel became with her.
The cookie-cutter, From-on-High excuse for this kind of stuff is that, look, we have an adversarial system, what do you want the lawyer to do?
I have answered that question many times. First, I want each lawyer in the courtroom to conduct himself as a partisan of the truth. That would require (1) caring about it, (2) making at least a minimal effort to find out what it is before you start thundering, and (3) at the least, not intentionally leading the judge and jury in a different direction.
Second, I would like the lawyers to understand that civic life imposes basic obligations of decency and citizenship that come before making the client happy (and therefore more willing to pay, which is what a lot of the self-important lawyer posing is actually about).
If this is too much to ask, then the problems with the defense bar, and the culture that (in more ways than one) licenses it are more poisonous than I thought.
To see just how poisonous, read some of the defense submissions at sentencing.
Courtesy of two commenters, I've been pointed to the letter to the court written by the defendant's father, Dan A. Turner. The text of the letter is here. Among other things, Big Dan defends his son's behavior, highlighting his athletic accomplishments and bemoaning the fact that his "life has been deeply altered forever by the events of January 17th and 18th."
Rather than calling those "events" what they were -- rape -- Big Dan labels them "20 minutes of action."
And there you have it in a nutshell. The defense side's version of rape. Twenty minutes of action.
Now I suppose there's a chance Big Dan sent this letter without defense counsel's having reviewed every single word of it. That would be the same chance I'll be the featured speaker at this year's NACDL Convention.
Opening a window onto just how crude and vicious the defense bar can be is, for me, the main lesson of this case, but far from the only one. One of the others is a reiteration of something I've said time and again: The basic reason for crime is not poverty or race. It's the lack of decent parenting. Incarceration can punish crime and, at least as important, segregate the criminal from civil society (e.g., let's see this defendant try to rape Wendell Callahan). When parenting fails, this is what we can do, and we should do it without apology.
I have sometimes seen the accusation that pointing to parenting is racist, since single-parent families are far more frequent among blacks than whites. This case is Exhibit A that my analysis is not racist.
When the father of this (very white) swimmer can, in a letter to a judge, refer to rape as "20 minutes of action," exactly what attitude toward women do you think his guy got as a teenager? Where do you think this women-are-property problem actually started?
When culture fails to demand and secure decent parenting, we need prison to keep us safe. The last 25 years have shown that prison works. We'd have to be fools to turn away from it, as the current violent crime spree is showing. But people like this rapist -- and like Wendell Callahan, and the next black smack pusher and the next white swindler -- could have spared society a great deal of misery if their parents had instilled respect and discipline.
Since they didn't, we will. Or at least settle for what we can do. It's not a pleasant task, and not a cheap one, either, but it's what we're left with. The "20-minutes-of-action" defense bar to the contrary, we should do it without hesitation or doubt.
Bill, just an FYI, the Dan Turner letter in the link here does not contain the "20 minutes of action" language.
SMilani --
Right you are. Perhaps defense counsel was shrewd enough, and crooked enough, to edit it out before the version I linked got too far in the public domain. I don't know, but given his other actions in this matter, why stop now?
The "20 minutes of action" language from the letter has been quoted by the Washington Post, USAToday, the LA Times, SFGate, the BBC, Huffington Post and numerous other sources. Given that, I stand by my entry 100%.
And I repeat that the defense position in this case, including specifically that of the defense lawyer, was crude, callous, vicious, deceitful and cruel.
Do you disagree? Why or why not? And do you think it's time for the defense bar to start tilting more toward truth and less toward women-are-property?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/06/a-steep-price-to-pay-for-20-minutes-of-action-dad-defends-stanford-sex-offender
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/06/06/father-student-convicted-rape-steep-price-20-minutes-action/85492660/
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-stanford-rape-20160606-snap-htmlstory.html
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Brock-Turner-father-letter-Stanford-swimmer-7965487.php
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36459504
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/stanford-university-rape-father-defends-brock-turner-over-20-minutes-of-action_uk_5755812ce4b04a0827f1eb91
Bill, why no criticism of the sentencing judge here? I find notable and disconcerting that, prior to getting on the bench, he was I became "a criminal prosecutor for the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office." http://www.smartvoter.org/2002/03/05/ca/scl/vote/persky_a/bio.html
Are you going to support the recall effort for this judge?
"Bill, why no criticism of the sentencing judge here?"
Because there's only so much I can concentrate on in one post. But thank you for the reminder.
Do you think we could have used a mandatory minimum here?
And let me also ask you: Why no criticism of the defense view that this was "20 minutes of action." Do you think there is any realistic possibility whatever that defense counsel didn't see that before it went to the judge?
And what do you think of the cross-examination? Anything goes for the slut defense counsel was trying to make of the victim? Are there to be any limits of decency? Yes? No? Being a defense lawyer means never having to say you're sorry?
"Are you going to support the recall effort for this judge?"
Yes. Will you join me?
Bill, do you have any objective reporting about the work of the defense attorneys here?
You are often so very quick to condmen others before you have all the facts established, and in the past you have sometimes gotten important facts wrong. Indeed, in your prior post attacking the defense attorney, you state that "The rapist, a former Stanford swimmer ... did not deny the act." But I surmise from the victim's description of the trial that the defendant took the stand and assert that te victim consented to the sexual acts (which would be, I think, a valid defense).
Like you, I find based on the victim's account of the crime that this defense may have bordered on frivolous. But absent more information beyond just the victim's letter, I am not able to feel comfortable condemning how the defense was conducted. (Perhaps more to the point, given the victim's account of the facts and her eagerness of closure and an apology (as well as the jury's verdict), I am inclined to wonder if the attorney was ineffective for failing to push the defendant hard plead guilty. But, again, I do not know if a deal was being offered or if the defendant was insistent on pressing his consent defense.)
I think there is a chance the defense did not see the "20 minutes of action" letter before it was sent to the judge, but either way this seems like more evidence of ineffectiveness. Wise counsel looks over these letters before they are sent AND encourages edits to strike the right tone with the judge.
As for the judge, I would want to read the full sentencing transcript before deciding whether this judge is not fit to stay on the bench. Again, unlike you, I am not confident condemning others without knowing as many facts as possible and taking time to reflect on these serious matters.
"You are often so very quick to condmen others before you have all the facts established, and in the past you have sometimes gotten important facts wrong. Indeed, in your prior post attacking the defense attorney, you state that 'The rapist, a former Stanford swimmer ... did not deny the act.' But I surmise from the victim's description of the trial that the defendant took the stand and assert that te victim consented to the sexual acts (which would be, I think, a valid defense)."
-- Yes, I am and will remain quick to condemn the indecent treatment of rape victims. So should you. And you'd be plenty quick about it if the attorney involved were a prosecutor, as we both know.
-- And talk about getting important things wrong: In the same paragraph in which you accuse me or error, you establish that I made none. I said that the defendant did not deny "the act." That the defense put forward a (laughably fictionalized) assertion of consent to THE ACT is to affirm, not contradict, my assertion.
Thank you!
-- "I think there is a chance the defense did not see the '20 minutes of action' letter before it was sent to the judge..."
Good grief, are you living in fantasyland? In many years as an active litigator, I never heard of a defense attorney allowing a letter like this to go in without having, at the minimum, read it. The more likely prospect is that counsel either wrote it himself of heavily edited it.
Maybe the letter characterized the rape as "20 minutes of action" because -- ready now? -- that's what its author thinks.
That declaration of a disgusting state of mind is about the only truthful thing I can find in this appalling "defense."
Bill, I am living in the real world where I am involved on the defense side of a lot more cases than you are. And in that role, I have seen many instances in which a defense attorney has been deficient in reviewing submissions by third-parties to the judge before sentencing. I am not saying this is what happened here, I am just saying I do not know what happened.
Part of living in my world is that I do not attack prosecutors "plenty quick" at all. Can you cite me any examples of me attacking a prosecutor without knowing important details about what the prosecutor actully did?
Rape cases involving college kids in particular, it seems, has a history of leading to lots of too-quick judgments --- see, e.g., the Duke Lacrosse case or the Rolling Stone story. I hope you do not think it wrong to want to actually unpack more of the particulars before jumping to conclusions.
Finally, your reference to a "rapist ... not denying the act" creates the unavoidable impression that he did not deny THE ACT OF RAPE. It is true that the offender did not deny the act of sexual conduct, but he apparently did deny this was rape. Ergo, your prior statement was at best misleading, at worst, a missrepresentation of the case as we know it.
But, critically, I do not want to dicker over words, I want to have more details so I can reach an INFORMED perspective on these matters.
DB: Finally, your reference to a "rapist ... not denying the act" creates the unavoidable impression that he did not deny THE ACT OF RAPE.
CALIFORNIA: "A former Stanford University athlete convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in county jail and probation";
"two months after a jury convicted him of multiple felonies, including assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman."
A jury of his peers convicted him, regardless of his claims. The sentence was disgraceful.
[Bundy also denied violent crimes for decades].
~Adamakis