Since this isn’t supposed to happen under our system, the best ever devised, nobody ever thought it was necessary to come up with a simple way to fix it. From the Washington Post :
They believed that their son was innocent but were afraid that Virginia’s penal system would grab hold of him and never let go.
So Cherri Dulaney and Edgar Coker Sr. told 15-year-old Edgar Jr. to plead guilty to raping a 14-year-old friend. Their court-appointed attorney told them that was better than risking adult charges and a lengthy prison term.
Two months after their decision, in November 2007, the girl admitted that she had lied.
To an outsider, it all seems simple enough. The “legal system,” which is personified in the minds of most non-lawyers, should give Edgar, Jr., a call, apologize for the inconvenience while duly shuffling its feet, and wipe the slate clean. Maybe even give him a special wall plaque proclaiming he’s no sex offender. Can anyone doubt that it’s the only right thing to do?
The Cokers have been fighting ever since to rescue their son from the consequences. He served 17 months in a juvenile prison. He remains on the Virginia sex-offender registry, and the family moved to avoid harassment from neighbors.
Last month, Coker, now 20, was arrested during a Friday night football game at the Orange, Va., high school he graduated from after his release from juvenile prison. Unless they have permission from the school, convicted violent sex offenders are not permitted on school grounds. But Coker had received such permission, and he attended school there for more than a year before graduation.
Edgar, Jr., is young, so he’s got a long, long life ahead of him on the sex offender registry, not putting too much angst into the 17 months served in juvey, 15 of which came after everybody involved knew he was innocent. Where are they hiding that magic button that cleans up this mess? There must be a magic button around here somewhere.
The problem is that Edgar, Jr. pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old. In retrospect, it doesn’t look like a really good idea, but staring at a trial, the view was very different. His parents thought it was a good idea, certainly better than spending most of his life in adult prison, where the real meaning of rape is taught. His lawyer thought it was a good idea too.
What about this horrible lawyer who advised his 15 year old client to swear that he committed a crime that never happened? He must incompetent. He’s a danger to society. He should have to live the life his monumentally awful, cowardly, despicable advice laid on an innocent 15-year-old. Right? Right?
Because criminal defense lawyers, as opposed to all other flavors of the species, have the singular ability to see into the future. We’re expected to know what the outcome will be. Or to those who haven’t been paying close attention, the system is so well-tuned, so trustworthy, so sophisticated at distinguishing guilt from innocence, that no poor 15-year-old boy could ever be convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. A crime that never happened.
Look at his face. He’s a good looking young man. Picture him with a smile, and I bet he lights up a room. Would you like to be the one who tells him that room is going to be a prison cell for the next 25 years? Would you like to be the one who assures him that somehow the truth will set him free?
While we often analogize the system to a game, particularly one of chance where we roll the dice and learn later when it’s craps, it’s no game for the kid whose life is on the line. Nor is it a game for his parents, who stand in the background as they likely always have, doing everything they can to guide him, comfort him, protect him from life’s vicissitudes. Most parents would take a bullet for their child. They look like they would too, but there was no bullet to take.
So his lawyer saw a terrible crime, the sort that raises emotions that strangle reason. His lawyer knew what the evidence would be, a 14-year-old girl telling a jury of how she was raped. And the best he could muster was his own client saying it never happened. Who would the jury believe?
Certainty is for the other players in the system. The cops, prosecutors and judges can afford to be certain, and only a few care enough to lose any sleep at night wondering whether they got the wrong guy. They can take comfort in doing their job and letting the system do its. If something goes awry, it’s not their fault. And if something goes awry, they still get to sleep in their own bed no matter what.
The jurors care deeply, but just like feigned claims of passion, deep caring isn’t a substitute for harsh reality. Jurors make a decision with the sense of security in knowing they’ve done their best. Then they too go home to sleep in their own bed. They look in on their children and smile, knowing that theirs isn’t sleeping in a prison cell that night. They’ve done their best to be fair, to be “just,” but they have no magic either. If only there was a big red light over the witness stand that went off when someone was lying. Then they might decide differently. But there’s no light, so they do the best they can.
And if the lawyer for an innocent defendant puffs out his chest and proclaims, we will fight and we will win, does that make it any easier, night after night, for a young man whose world is reduced to an 8 by 10 cell? When the judge, the prosecutor, and probably even the cops, learn that no crime occurred, they probably feel very badly. But then, the defendant was represented by counsel, and he chose to plead guilty. No one made him, they say to themselves. It’s not like we forced this kid to cop out. He could have rolled the dice. He could have taken his chances and risked the rest of his life on the jury believing him rather than the 14-year-old rape victim.
After all, our system is the best mankind has ever invented. What more can we do? Since someone must be at fault, and the person responsible for making sure the entire system doesn’t fail, let’s blame the lawyer who failed to know the future.
The system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there ever was. Keep saying that to yourself. Tell that to Edgar, Jr. Tell that to your own children.
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And what – exactly – happens to the liar in cases such as this? Did the “14 year old girl” face any penalty at all? If not, then perhaps if significant penalties start getting handed out for purjury maybe things like this wouldn’t happen so frequently.
The crime is some variation on a theme of faslely reporting an incident and, possibly, perjury if a sworn statement was involved. But what would you do with a 14-year-old girl? While there must be disincentives for lying, and they must be employed if they’re going to mean anything, lying complainants aren’t much different than many defendants when it comes to thinking about the consequences of their actions.
And in the meantime, nothing that happens to the 14-year-old is going to make Edgar, Jr.’s life any better.
I agree that penalizing the 14-year-old doesn’t directly make Edgar’s life better, but if more of that occurred it might make people think twice in the future before lying under oath. Perhaps it IS happening but just doesn’t get publicized much (not sensational enough for the press?).
Just because something won’t improve the “victim”s situation (Edgar, in this case) doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing, does it? Why else would we prosecute murder cases?
Oh well…things like this just make me p***ed off and I’m just venting steam.
My daughter is in her 1st year of law school, and she tells me WAY TOO MANY stories such as this one that are being studied in her classes. At least it seems as if an honest attempt is being made to raise the awareness of the lawyers and judges of the future.
Now if we could just “smarten up” Congess …
Of course, the other problem is that while there must be disincentives for lying, we don’t want to discourage people who have lied from coming clean.
Isn’t this just another aspect of the problem of plea bargaining? Of course, there should be some incentive for the guilty to confess, but when it is very easy to imagine pleading guilty to something you had not done to avoid decades in prison, isn’t it clear things have gone too far?
A viable incentive system matters, but it’s never so simple, clear or effective that it does enough. It’s just part of a system that presupposes that someone, somewhere, is paying attention and making sure travesties don’t happen.
Absolutely. Pleas of convenience are a regular part of the regimen. And yet, they’re better than convicting the innocent. Those of us who aren’t on the hot seat can argue about which is better, but until it’s our life on the line, the discussion is purely theoretical. We don’t get a vote.
This is the kind of stuff that makes you wonder if our court system has become more of a strange academic meat grinder rather than a system of justice.
Anyone with a brain would say “The kid obviously didn’t do it but made a the wrong strategic decision based on the evidence, conviction rates, and chance of going to jail for life. However, given that the girl admitted she lied, he is is clearly innocent. As such, we must undo the wrong that she caused him.”
However, our court system will actually justify continuing to punish this kid even though 99.9% of people with a brain would say “That’s silly and unfair.”
It’s almost like the system is setup for the benefit of judges, lawyers, court staff, cops, academics, and everyone else, and kids like this are just meat to be fed into the grinder. There’s no real desire for justice or even application of common sense.
We devote so much into the study and practice of law, but we can’t even correct even the most obvious of injustices… how does that happen? Why does it happen? And why are the courts and legal scholars more concerned with writing pretty briefs rather than achieving just and common sense results?
You’ve used the word “justice” and the phrase “common sense” in the same comment. Have I taught you nothing, grasshopper?
You know, in Virginia, the court appointed lawyer got $1096 for defending this case. If it had gone to trial in adult court, he would have made about $120 more (though the $120 would have been for the case in the JDR court, and the $1096 would have been for the trial in Circuit Court.) Virginia pays court appionted counsel $90 per hour up to a statutory cap that can be waived, but it takes a bunch more paperwork and isn’t guaranteed. The other problem for Edgar is that our dear Governor has a policy that pardons are reserved only for those who plead not guilty and persist in that plea. (check it out, it’s on the website.) Habeas you might say? Well, you only have two years from conviction to file that, and you need to be in custody to do it (though probation may qualify as custody.) Coram Vobis? nope, gone on 1/13/11 with Morris v. Commonwealth. Get more attention, that’s the only thing that MIGHT help, but I wouldn’t count on it. Virginia is not known for it’s forgiving nature. (just ask those misguided counties to the west of us. Or maybe you could ask Mr. and Mrs. Loving, rest thier souls. Or maybe the Norfolk 6., etc, etc, etc.)
Yup, that’s Virginia. And you partly laid your finger on the real reason the girl cried rape. They don’t lynch black men (led by the Sheriff) on the mere rumor of sexual relations with a white woman, but I suspect she didn’t want Daddy beating her for admiting same.