Attorneys for both sides in the high profile child-molestation prosecution of pop singing idol Michael Jackson in Santa Barbara are operating under a gag order because of the media attention.
According to a news article defense counsel have asked permission for Mr. Jackson to allow Fox-TV to air a filmed segment in which he denies guilt, to counteract the negative effects of a recent round of harmful publicity.
Among the requests is for an order that the prosecution not refer to the accuser as the "Victim."
In a murder case, the victim is usually the corpse in the autopsy photos. But if the accused was acting in self-defense, then maybe the corpse isn't really the victim. Maybe the corpse, while alive, was trying to make a victim of the accused. In which case the accused is really the victim in a double sense. The corpse, while alive, was trying to kill him, and now the district attorney is falsely accusing him, the defendant of being a murderer.
We won't really know who the true victim is unless and until the jury has spoken after a full consideration of all of the legally admissible evidence and a full comprehension of the operative law as instructed by the judge in something we like to think of as a fair trial.
Same with Mr. Jackson.
Calling the accuser "the victim" presupposes that he's been victimized. Jackson may be the victim of a false accusation made up of whole cloth.
Sure, Mr. Jackson is fodder for late night TV comics, but that's not how we decide important legal matters, is it?
I once represented a man accused of indecent exposure. According to several neighborhood boys he stood in the window of his living room, situated over the garage, and exposed his genitals to them.
He denied the misconduct.
It was not as though he were not good for the misconduct, it was just that he hadn't exposed himself on this particular day.
That was the problem with the case. The man had a long record of getting drunk and exposing himself. But his family (he was a grandfather) knew the problem well and kept tabs on the man. They insisted he committed no crime that day.
It was well-known in the neighborhood that the man had a problem. Kids used to pull pranks by leaving stuff on the top of the stairway to his front door, ringing the bell, and running away. That's what they'd been doing this particular day.
I went to the home, met the family and observed the layout. Directly under the heavily draped front window was a very heavy settee that would have to have been moved, with great effort, and probably two people, in order to stand there and expose oneself. I photographed this scene. It's a good idea for trial lawyers to know how to use a camera and to use it early and often, even if you don't know exactly why you want to photograph a scene early. You might find out later, when it will do some good, as has happened with me.
Further investigation showed that the neighborhood boys had made the indecent exposure story up as a prank, based on the man's reputation, and the DA dismissed the case.
Some time later, however, the man slipped off to a bar, got drunk, and exposed himself in public, for which he was arrested. He was willing to accept his responsibility. One judge thought indecent exposure was reprehensible and wanted to throw the book at the man.
But another judge, an older man who was known for being stern, punitive, and generally unforgiving, had this to say. "I had an uncle who did the same thing. He'd get a few aboard and the next thing you know he was exposing himself. He was a nuisance, but harmless, essentially."
Odd, the things that shape our attitudes.
Another judge had this to say to women convicted of shoplifting: "When a man gets upset about something, he goes out and drinks, gets into trouble, and comes before me. When a woman gets upset and out of sorts, she goes out and shoplifts something she doesn't need, has money in her purse to pay for, and comes before me."
And so it goes.
The trick is not to prejudge cases you read about in the newspapers. Sometimes you may be right in your impressions, but we all know of cases which surprised us.
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