The best defense
Susan Estrich
Wed Jul 26, 6:50 AM ET
Yahoo!News
Could you represent a man charged with sexually abusing a child?
Could you cross-examine the child in hopes of poking holes in the story?
Would it matter to you whether you believed she was telling the truth
or not?
Those are not hard questions for a criminal defense lawyer, but they
are hard questions for me.
Sometimes I forget to ask them, even though I teach criminal law.
That happened to me last week, when I heard about William French
Anderson. After I read the first newspaper account of his conviction, I
was sufficiently horrified that I read everything I could get my hands
on. All I could think about was being a mother of a teenage girl and a
victim of sex abuse myself, and it was from that perspective that I
told the story of the 60-year-old man who was convicted of sexually
abusing a girl 50 years his junior.
I put myself in the place of the girl's mother: Imagine wanting the
best for your daughter. It's your boss who is her mentor, who teachers
her tae kwon do, lets her swim in his pool, takes her out for her first
fancy dinner, and, unbeknownst to you, he is abusing her year after
year. It didn't help that, like her mother (and the man), I too work at
USC. I identified. I was loaded for bear by the time I sat down to
write that column.
There was a paragraph in it that described how the girl had been
questioned by the defense lawyer at trial. That's where I got in real
trouble. I just assumed that the lead lawyer in the case was the man.
OK, maybe the newspapers said that, but of all people to simply buy it,
me? But I went right along with the papers' assertions and elaborated
that, of course, they'd brought in the woman lawyer to try to "destroy"
the girl on cross-examination by picking holes in her story -- whether
the abuse occurred in the back yard or the garage, whether her mother
had been present rarely or occasionally, that sort of thing...
The woman lawyer, Blair Berk, one of the top female lawyers in my town
and one of Anderson's four attorneys in this case, called me the next
day. Of all people, didn't I know that everyone deserves a defense? And
by the way, since when is the man automatically the lead lawyer? And
since when is cross-examination in a serious case "destroying" a
witness?
Touche.
She's right, of course.
Everyone deserves a lawyer. Everyone deserves a vigorous defense,
especially the most heinous criminals. The worse you are, the more you
deserve a vigorous defense.
There is no more honorable pursuit for a lawyer than to represent the
most hated criminals in our society, not because they are innocent, but
because in a free society, the government must always be forced to
present its evidence; be put to its test. Someone has to do that. If
you believe in the adversary system, then both sides must be
represented with vigor.
But as for me, I pick my clients with greater care than that. It's
about what I do with my time, my energy, my life.
I do choose to represent criminal defendants, but I could not represent
William French Anderson. I could not give him the vigorous defense he
has a right to. I could not, because I would not. I would not try to
find the minor inconsistencies in his victim's story. I would not push
her to the limit on the stand. I know my own limits too well. My hat
goes off to Blair Berk and her colleagues, because the system depends
on them to do justice. But my own effort to pursue justice requires me
to travel a different road than that. Everyone deserves a lawyer, but
they don't deserve me.
To find out more about Susan Estrich, and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.