You hear a lot about blame-the-victim strategies in rape trials, but this seems to take the cake. (It’s a case where three teen boys — one of them the son of an assistant sheriff — are charged with gang-raping an unconscious girl and videotaping the act.)

In just his opening statement, a pacing, finger-pointing [defense attorney Joseph] Cavallo told the jury that the girl—next to the tape itself, the prosecution’s star witness—is “a nut,” “a pathological liar,” “a cheater,” an “out-of-control girl,” “the aggressor,” a wanna-be “porn star,” “a troubled young lady,” “a tease—that’s what she is!” “a mess,” a “master manipulator,” a “little opportunist,” “a compulsive liar,” “a cheat—that’s what she is” and a “callous” drug addict and alcoholic who trimmed her pubic hair, bragged about liking group sex and once drank a beer in a car.

“Why was her vagina and anus completely shaved?” Cavallo asked jurors. “How many teenagers have a shaved vagina and anus? I don’t know, but I can think of a reason. Sex! She’s a sexual person!”

During preliminary hearings, Cavallo called Doe a “slut”; on this day, he stayed away from the word. However, he told the jury several times that everyone, including the girl’s parents, “knows what she is.” Talk outside the courtroom was less coy. In the hallway just outside, a defense consultant openly and repeatedly called Jane Doe “a fucking whore.”

Read the rest to see what happens when the legal profession hits a new all-time low. It’s astounding, really.

13 May 2004

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