Reply #39: Here's the analysis I posted in an earlier thread-Clinton was out of control on this case

[Divernan]

Read a 4 page article with many facts of the case at:

www.newsday.com/news/nationworld
There are many things ethically wrong and questionable with how she handled this case.
I'm a retired atty. who did civil trial work, taught at a law school where I was co-director of a legal aid clinic for the poor, & then went on to work for state govt. I read the entire original article (and had read Clinton's book) and here's my view of what happened.


The rape occurred no earlier than 2 a.m. The accused rapist (Clinton plea bargained him down to 10 months for unlawful fondling ) was described as a hard drinking man who, on the advice of his jailhouse friends, demanded a female lawyer - thinking it would get him points with a jury.

"At 4:50 a.m., the girl walked into a local emergency room, badly shaken. The doctor's report noted that she had injuries consistent with rape. Sgt. Dale Gibson, the department's lead investigator in the case, interviewed her as she huddled with her mother. She offered a chilling detail - a threat from Taylor and his friends. "If I did say anything about it, they would catch me out later," she told the investigator."

Read the entire article, please. It is chock full of details to show you how revolting Clinton's handling of this case was. At that time Clinton was director of the Legal Aid Clinic. This is significant for a number of reasons.

1. She could have handed the case off to someone else.

2. She had no legal trial experience and was required by the code of professional conduct to either refuse to take the case, or get co-counsel with adequate criminal/rape trial experience.

3. Legal aid clinics (based at the law school) have quite limited budgets. As Director, she had to
parcel out her limited resources so that the maximum number of indigents could be represented. She invested time and funds into this case as though it were a capital murder trial.

This 12 year old received a hospital examination at 4:30 a.m., a few hours after she was raped.It provided evidence of rape. At that point, an accused rapist & his attorney can CHOOSE from 2 mutually exclusive defenses. Either he can argue it was concensual sex, or deny he was the perpetrator.

Clinton, acting like a bulldog, according to other lawyers there at the time, pursued BOTH defenses, and mounted such an aggressive defense, local lawyers commented it would have been appropriate for a capital murder trial. She hired a New York based forensic expert to "cast doubt on the evidence" - imagine that. How many Arkansas indigent defendants had an expert brought all the way from New York? That must have cost thousands of dollars of the clinic's limited budget. That kind of money would have and should have been spent on behalf of things like pursuing deadbeats for child support, or helping indigents with landlord tenant or health care issues, or paying LOCAL psychologists in child abuse cases. And any trial lawyer will tell you that when it comes to selecting an expert/hired gun for the battle of the experts, you are much better off to go with someone as local as possible - at least from the same state. This is because the judges and juries are suspicious of outsiders and partial to locals.Note all her hired gun expert could do was "cast doubt". Even with this expensive expert witness, Clinton couldn't get the evidence thrown out. She also went after the victim and argued that the girl "was attracted to older men" and had a history of claiming personal attacks and lying. The evidence of record does not offer any proof of those arguments.

During her first few months on the case, Rodham fired off no fewer than 19 subpoenas, affidavits and motions - almost as much paper as was typical for a capital murder case that year, according to case files on microfilm. She successfully petitioned to obtain Taylor's underwear for independent testing after the state medical examiner found traces of semen and blood. (Again, more fees to be paid for by the law clinic.) She also secured Taylor's release on $5,000 bond after getting his boss at the factory to vouch for him. (If he had run off, the Clinic would have had to pay off that bond.)
But the record shows that Rodham was also intent on questioning the girl's credibility. That line of defense crystallized in a July 28, 1975, affidavit requesting the girl undergo a psychiatric examination at the university's clinic.

"I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing," wrote Rodham, without referring to the source of that allegation. "I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body."

(Strange choice of language, "I have been informed", hearsay, even with a named source and she didn't identify her source -could have been her own client!)rather than my psychiatric expert will testify".
Dale Gibson, the investigator, doesn't recall seeing evidence that the girl had fabricated previous attacks. The assistant prosecutor who handled much of the case for Mahlon Gibson died several years ago. The prosecutor's files on the case, which would have included such details, were destroyed more than decade ago when a flood swept through the county archives, Mahlon Gibson said. Those files also would have included the forensics evidence referenced in "Living History."

Prior to this, in the early '70's, Clinton studied at Yale's renowned child study center to identify physical and behavioral clues of child abuse. Her fluency on the topic is evident in the Arkansas court filings: "I have . . . been told by an expert in child psychology that children in early adolescence tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experience and that adolescents with disorganized families, such as the complainant's, are even much more prone to such behavior. . . .she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way."
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So here we see Clinton substituting Clinton's own evaluation of the child's behavior as though Clinton were an independent court appointed psychologist. This whole case just stinks!

And any of us who have suffered through the terrible 12's with an adolescent daughter know that nearly all 12 year old girls are prone to exaggeration, romanticization, stubbornness and temper. Does that mean that if they are raped, they are not to be believed, even in the presence of medical evidence of rape?

I think Clinton included the self-flattering account of this case in her book because it was a time bomb in her history and she wanted to defuse it. There is no logical connection between having gotten this man off with 10 months in jail, and being inspired to start a rape hotline. This young girl didn't need and would not have benefitted from a rape hotline. Her mother got her to the hospital within hours of the rape. I think Rape Hotlines are very important - I just fail to see how this particular case would have inspired Clinton to instigate one.

Having read the entire account of this convoluted case, I think the 40 something "heavy drinker" was guilty as sin, and that Clinton knew it. So it could have been her attempt to neutralize any damage to her future reputation to be able to say, "But I started a rape hotline."

One final comment. We see Clinton exhibit poor strategy decisions, failing to take into account the local situation, and squandering money on hotshot experts. Fast forward to her current campaign consultants and failure to control her campaign funds.

One law professor commented that criminal was lucky to have Clinton for an attorney. "In terms of what's good for the little girl? It would have been hell on the victim. But that wasn't Hilary's problem." The victim says it was her mother, who had recently been abandoned by her husband, who pushed for a quick plea deal to avoid the humiliation of having her daughter testify in open court. The mother, who died several years ago, was so eager to end the ordeal she coached her daughter's statements and interrupted interviews with police, Dale Gibson recalls.

"We both wanted it to be over with," the victim told Newsday. "They kept asking me the same questions over and over. I was crying all the time."