run away, no one looking back.
That’s when it dawns on me—the courthouse has become one big, huge, malfunctioning ATM machine—a jackpot at the expense of justice.
We’ve borne a culture of courthouse vultures. Yes, of course there are wrongs that are at least partially righted by money awards. These judgments are well deserved but can never totally set things right. As fantastical as the scenario in my waking nightmare may seem, it is rooted in reality. This wholesale manipulation driven by greed is hell-bent on turning Lady Justice into a whore and lawyers, witnesses, and assorted courtroom hangers-on into her pimps. Don’t believe me?
Read on.
C H E C K B O O K J O U R N A L I S M
It’s become SOP— standard operating procedure—for prosecutors to warn victims and witnesses not to give interviews, much less accept money for them, before trial. The reason behind these admonitions isn’t just a moral one—it’s born out of stark fear that witnesses who trade information for cash will destroy the state’s case. Most often, those who value money over justice are destroyed on cross-examination when it is revealed that they have a financial interest in the outcome of trial. The ammunition that paid interviews provide on cross-exam is a serious threat to a true verdict. Additionally, if the state or a state’s witness taints the jury pool with public pretrial statements, the defense can—and will—ask for a change of venue. Not so for the state, as prosecutors have fewer remedies against defense witness or defense lawyer misconduct.
Prosecutors nationwide learned a valuable lesson from the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in 1991. Anne Mercer, a critical witness for the prosecution, should have been the perfect “outcry” witness for the O B J E C T I O N !
6 9
state. At trial, the outcry witness is typically the first person to whom a rape victim tells what happened, most often in a distraught state. Such witnesses are invaluable to the state because they can either corroborate or discredit a victim’s credibility.
Anne Mercer drove Patricia Bowman, the alleged rape victim, home from the Kennedy mansion in Palm Beach that night, immediately after the reported rape. At trial, Mercer underwent a vicious attack by the defense, led by attorney Roy Black, and with good reason—Mercer had to admit under oath that she was paid $40,000 for an appearance on the television show A Current Affair.
The defense rests.
Another high-profile defendant nearly walked free when a key state’s witness sold his story to the National Enquirer.
Michael Markhasev went to trial for the 1997 murder of twenty-seven-year-old Ennis Cosby, son of the beloved entertainer Bill Cosby.
The young, unarmed Cosby was ambushed and shot as he was changing a flat on a freeway exit ramp. The state’s star witness, Christopher So, testified in no uncertain terms that he overheard Markhasev confess to the shooting. The defense launched its case with an assault on So’s credibility after it was uncovered he had contacted the Enquirer about their offer of a reward in the case. It turns out So pocketed $40,000 for interviews and was promised another $100,000 if Markhasev was convicted. To make matters worse, the detective who investigated Cosby’s case testified under oath that when he interviewed So, the witness actually asked the cop, “Does my story sound good?”
Luckily, Markhasev was convicted and sentenced to mandatory life behind bars in 1998—no thanks to So, whose greed nearly tilted the scales of justice the wrong way.
O. J. Simpson’s trial serves as a textbook primer on what is wrong with the justice system on so many, many levels, this one included.
Does the name Jose Camacho ring a bell? It should. This guy was sliced up like a Thanksgiving turkey on cross-examination by the defense in 7 0
N A N C Y G R A C E
the O. J. Simpson case. In what should have been strong testimony for the state, Camacho said Simpson bought
That’s when it dawns on me—the courthouse has become one big, huge, malfunctioning ATM machine—a jackpot at the expense of justice.
We’ve borne a culture of courthouse vultures. Yes, of course there are wrongs that are at least partially righted by money awards. These judgments are well deserved but can never totally set things right. As fantastical as the scenario in my waking nightmare may seem, it is rooted in reality. This wholesale manipulation driven by greed is hell-bent on turning Lady Justice into a whore and lawyers, witnesses, and assorted courtroom hangers-on into her pimps. Don’t believe me?
Read on.
C H E C K B O O K J O U R N A L I S M
It’s become SOP— standard operating procedure—for prosecutors to warn victims and witnesses not to give interviews, much less accept money for them, before trial. The reason behind these admonitions isn’t just a moral one—it’s born out of stark fear that witnesses who trade information for cash will destroy the state’s case. Most often, those who value money over justice are destroyed on cross-examination when it is revealed that they have a financial interest in the outcome of trial. The ammunition that paid interviews provide on cross-exam is a serious threat to a true verdict. Additionally, if the state or a state’s witness taints the jury pool with public pretrial statements, the defense can—and will—ask for a change of venue. Not so for the state, as prosecutors have fewer remedies against defense witness or defense lawyer misconduct.
Prosecutors nationwide learned a valuable lesson from the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in 1991. Anne Mercer, a critical witness for the prosecution, should have been the perfect “outcry” witness for the O B J E C T I O N !
6 9
state. At trial, the outcry witness is typically the first person to whom a rape victim tells what happened, most often in a distraught state. Such witnesses are invaluable to the state because they can either corroborate or discredit a victim’s credibility.
Anne Mercer drove Patricia Bowman, the alleged rape victim, home from the Kennedy mansion in Palm Beach that night, immediately after the reported rape. At trial, Mercer underwent a vicious attack by the defense, led by attorney Roy Black, and with good reason—Mercer had to admit under oath that she was paid $40,000 for an appearance on the television show A Current Affair.
The defense rests.
Another high-profile defendant nearly walked free when a key state’s witness sold his story to the National Enquirer.
Michael Markhasev went to trial for the 1997 murder of twenty-seven-year-old Ennis Cosby, son of the beloved entertainer Bill Cosby.
The young, unarmed Cosby was ambushed and shot as he was changing a flat on a freeway exit ramp. The state’s star witness, Christopher So, testified in no uncertain terms that he overheard Markhasev confess to the shooting. The defense launched its case with an assault on So’s credibility after it was uncovered he had contacted the Enquirer about their offer of a reward in the case. It turns out So pocketed $40,000 for interviews and was promised another $100,000 if Markhasev was convicted. To make matters worse, the detective who investigated Cosby’s case testified under oath that when he interviewed So, the witness actually asked the cop, “Does my story sound good?”
Luckily, Markhasev was convicted and sentenced to mandatory life behind bars in 1998—no thanks to So, whose greed nearly tilted the scales of justice the wrong way.
O. J. Simpson’s trial serves as a textbook primer on what is wrong with the justice system on so many, many levels, this one included.
Does the name Jose Camacho ring a bell? It should. This guy was sliced up like a Thanksgiving turkey on cross-examination by the defense in 7 0
N A N C Y G R A C E
the O. J. Simpson case. In what should have been strong testimony for the state, Camacho said Simpson bought
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