Lying Defendants and their Lawyers

In the Albany County Criminal Court the other day, a drama played out that essentially justified Shakespeare’s advice: Kill All the Lawyers. It was the sentencing of a defendant who had been convicted after a jury trial of raping and sodomizing a young woman he’d picked up in a bar. She woke up later, covered in her own blood, in a bathroom in his house, with a fragmented memory of the night. The jury didn’t buy his story of a consensual sexual encounter (confirming my faith generally in the good sense of juries). The judge sentenced the defendant to 20 years in prison and 15 years of post-release supervision (parole, in effect).

What caught my attention here – as a lawyer who has tried many felony cases to juries, but never a sexual assault – was how the defense lawyer conducted himself in characterizing the female victim. CONSENT is the usual defense in this type of date-rape case – a claim so routine and clichéd that I would be shamed to stoop to dwell on it, to espouse it to a jury except in the rarest of circumstances. (Attack the Victim, in the parlance of the trade). But the defense lawyer in this case had no such qualms. In his opening statement to the jury he promised: “The evidence is going to show that the sex was not just consensual – she wanted it. She asked for it. She was awake for it. She encouraged it. She moaned for it.” For Chrissakes! The lawyer continued in this vein during his cross-examination of the woman.

Interviewed outside the courtroom after the sentencing, she spoke plainly: “I will never forget the sickness I felt in my stomach as he asked me about an invented sexual encounter with the rapist sitting at the defense table,” she said. “The sickness I felt then was similar to how horribly violated I felt the night I was attacked. It was disgusting.”

The Judge’s take on the Consent Defense? “I’m in my mid-60s,” he said in pronouncing sentence. “Other than reading the Marquis de Sade in college, I don’t recall ever hearing of injuries of this type being caused by consensual sex. That was not consensual sex!”

The lawyer responded that his oath requires that he defend his client zealously.

Yeah, right. Makes me think about switching sides.

Robert Knightly

Still Putting Off the WIP, Creatively

Last week when I boasted to you all about my new landless gardening efforts I wanted to show you the actual garden. Alas! my old camera, one of those flat little guys you can put in your back pocket, was malfunctioning. My phone, while it does take pictures, won't email them, but sends them only to other phones. And so I was reduced to stealing images from other people's sites for my container garden piece.

What I took away from this experience was that we needed a new camera.

Being a child of the twenty-first century (or an old lady of the twenty-first century) I went at once to the internet to see what we would like that we could afford. Hurrah! Amazon was offering a Canon PowerShot SX130IS for $159.00, which came to $200 after adding a 32 gigabite flash memory card, an eight-pack of rechargeable nickel-cadmium AA batteries, and a case. (I should also get a lens cap, I think.) This was exactly what I made on Tuesday by working at the polls from 5:15 in the morning until 8:15 at night; as soon as I get the money from the county I'll turn it over to Amazon. But I have the wonderful camera in hand and now I'm in business.

First I took some pictures of my actual container garden.

Then Harold and I went downtown for a bite to eat and a cup of coffee. We stopped in Karen's, AKA Ennis's, on Union Street. The day was so fine that she had the door propped open, inviting the breezes. As we were sitting there a dragonfly the size of a small helicopter came in, buzzed around, and flew back into the window, where it got stuck. The creature had a wingspan of seven or eight inches, too big for that maneuver one does with the paper cup and the cardboard to save it and let it out.

All I could think to do was to take a movie of it with the camera. I would show you how amazing the telephoto lens is (of course I used the long lens. What, you thought I would get close to a terrifying bug?) but it turns out that the camera consumes so much battery life that the batteries die before you can finish uploading a movie to YouTube. So you'll just have to imagine a fantastic movie featuring a huge bug. In case I want to do that again I'm getting a power cord for the camera. It clearly needs a power cord for downloading and uploading.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get back to work on my book.

Kate Gallison

Knowing Thyself at Nine

My grandson, Luke, was nine last month. His mother asked him what theme he would like for his birthday party. He quickly said, “Sherlock Holmes.” (I like to think I had some influence there.)

“Fine,” said his mother, and promptly found him a pipe and a magnifying glass. But I provided the topper. I remembered a Deerstalker hat from some long ago Halloween, and after a brief search I found it on the floor of a closet. A bit dusty and moth-eaten but I brushed it off and sent it to Virginia via priority mail.

According to my sources, Luke put the hat on his head the minute it arrived and wore it until bedtime. When his mother insisted he take it off until the next day, Luke said, “It fits me perfectly.”

At that point, his father came in the room and said, “I thought it was a little big.”

“No, no. I don’t mean the size! I mean my personality.”

Robin Hathaway

Guys Who Do Lunch . . .

By Thelma Straw

Recently POTUS invited Mike to copter down to Foggy Bottom for a cozy a deux at the 1600 Mansion. No mention has leaked as to what the menu was, but I'll eat my hat if the main course was not broiled F.P. (Future Plans)

On both sides.

This wasn't Bam-Bam's first attempt to woo Mike. There have been those cozy golfs a deux on the Vineyard.

But the setting IS cozier in the Residence. And N-6 draws nigh. . .

Unnamed sources told us the date of this lunch did not appear on the public schedule of either guy. That in itself is a loud signal. For both the West Wing and City Hall to Purposely and Studiously ignore such an event between these principals makes the little grey cells jiggle.

Takes two to tango big ideas.

What were they up to? Two of the most Humongous Brain Banks on the planet!

o A new cabinet post on Immigration? Starvation?
o National sheriff of calories and ratings?
o Liaison between the continental US and Putinistan?

Or maybe the topics were more mundane.

o How to win over Diane Taylor's vote
o Dealing with Daughterly Dating
o A job rec if N-6 fizzles
o Did Mike reallyreally tell Rupert Bam was an Arrogant SOB?
o What's the slam dunk way to become a billionaire

The mind boggles.

Maybe POTUS wants to stay in good with Mike in case His Honor decides to run for the WH after he vacates GM.

Or maybe POTUS wants to emulate HRC and run in NY after his second term.

Anything could happen.

Stay tuned...

Yardless Gardening

I plunged into a new craze this week after seeing a lady on TV explaining how to do container gardening. I can do that, I said to myself. Even I, although I have not a square inch of dirt to work with nor any plot of ground to call my own. I can put big flower pots on the sidewalk in front of the house. They can be as artistic as I like. Then I can stuff them with potting soil and growing plants, in the hope that as the summer progresses I won't kill them.

This being Lambertville, I had my secret sources for the various elements of this project. It began with a glorious Mandevilla that I picked up at the Giant Foods in New Hope. It had a small trellis in its plastic pot, but it was begging to be put in a handsome container and trained up a string onto the porch. So off I went to the Homestead Market on North Main Street. There I found some pretty pots glazed in various colors, quite inexpensive at thirty or forty dollars apiece. (The TV lady said they would cost about a hundred.) So I bought three. Having dragged them home, I went across the river to New Hope and wandered around the Living Earth at 234 West Bridge Street, looking for company for the Mandevilla, falling in love with one plant after another.

They had some gorgeous things there. I saw a long table of handsome plants with a sign on it promising that the deer wouldn't eat them. Not a problem for us, but folks on the outskirts of town have trouble with deer. I saw all kinds of beautiful flowers I'd never heard of, plants with pale green foliage and feathery pink spikes, plants with bright round blossoms in impossibly bright colors, plants in the sunlight, plants in the shade. Then I saw a healthy rosemary bush a foot and a half high, pungent with sticky resin. Suddenly I realized that I'd loved it all my life. And if rosemary, why not lavender? And creeping thyme. I didn't have to make a gaudy garden to impress the TV lady, in the unlikely event that she ever came through Lambertville and eyeballed my containers. I could fill my garden with things I've loved forever. It turned out to be one of those moments when you remember who you really are.

You may ask, what does all this have to do with crime writing? Here's what. After your pencils are all sharpened, your software updated, your itchy places scratched, and the lighting in your office adjusted just so, gardening is an elegant way to put off writing.

Kate Gallison