Many of us have been shocked by the recent events in Tampa, FL where a middle school student was sodomized with a broom and hockey stick by four of his flag football teammates. The article found at the link below goes into detail about the case, as well as similar “bullying” cases across the country. A few things stuck out to me in this article. None of them are good things.
In criminal law, part of defending a client involves painting a positive picture of his or her character, past history, the unlikely-hood that this person is capable of rape, burglary, kidnapping, assault, whatever the case may be. And, this works. It IS a good defense. BUT, and this is a big “BUT,” we are seeing so many cases of pastors sexually abusing women and children, upper-class suburban kids committing terrible acts against their classmates, people with perfectly clean records for 40 years robbing banks all of a sudden . Having a good history just isn’t enough. A clean criminal record, positive character witnesses – these are great things. They can help to dramatically reduce time in sentencing (see example from article in footnote 1). But, telling the judge that, “you’re a good guy or gal” doesn’t mean you didn’t do it. An air-tight defense is worth more.
The second thing we should note is that just because an alleged victim of a crime doesn’t speak out right away about what happened or doesn’t immediately start acting strange and coy, doesn’t mean the event didn’t occur. The victim of a rape or sexual assault can go weeks or months without a word out of fear or embarrassment. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard accused individuals tell me, “If I had done it, why didn’t she say anything? Doesn’t that prove that I didn’t do anything? She didn’t talk about it for three weeks!” The problem is that the alleged victim in a trauma-based case may act very similarly whether the event actually happened or not. If no offense has taken place, then obviously the signs of emotional trauma will not be there. On the other hand, the victim may have indeed been through a terrible event, but is so shocked and confused they go on into a state of numbness or denial about the event for a period of time. The arguments related to long lengths of time without a report are still positive in my book, but they’re not deal-closers.
In the end, a criminal defense attorney has the job of putting together a woven tapestry of the defendant’s character and the facts of the event itself.
