This is a cautionary tale for anyone who wholeheatedly supports allowing rape convictions based solely or essentially on the word of the accuser without corroboration. Dwayne Dail is a poster child for the wrongly accused. If you aren't familiar with his story, click on his name -- it is must reading. Mr. Dail went to prison as a 19-year-old for an alleged rape of a twelve-year-old girl he did not commit.
He ended up serving 18 years in prison and being victimized by the very same crime he did not commit -- repeatedly. His life was destroyed.
Mr. Dail's conviction was based almost entirely on the say so of a teenage girl.
Mr. Dail's conviction was based almost entirely on the say so of a teenage girl.
If you want to know how easy it is to do an injustice with such scant evidence, read what the district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Dail said about the case. But a warning: don't read this on an empty stomach.
Don Strickland, the attorney who prosecuted the case, said this: "I didn't have the strongest case in the world, but nor did I have the weakest." (See, it's perfectly OK to try someone for a crime that will send him away for decades without having the strongest case.) He explained that his prosecution of Dail hinged on two things -- the victim's identification and the "microscopically consistent" hair found on the rug in her room (which just meant that the hair had the same characteristics as Mr. Dail's hair).
Don Strickland, the attorney who prosecuted the case, said this: "I didn't have the strongest case in the world, but nor did I have the weakest." (See, it's perfectly OK to try someone for a crime that will send him away for decades without having the strongest case.) He explained that his prosecution of Dail hinged on two things -- the victim's identification and the "microscopically consistent" hair found on the rug in her room (which just meant that the hair had the same characteristics as Mr. Dail's hair).
Strickland said the following: "The strongest thing I remember about it was the way she identified him. She was walking in an apartment area and she just froze and said 'Mom, that's him.' She was an excellent witness. She was almost a prosecutor's dream. She positively (identified) him."
A "prosecutor's dream" -- because she seemed so believable. Never mind if she really was telling the truth.
As for the hair: "The science of that hair match was not the greatest in the world, but in those days we didn't have DNA. It was the best we had. I thought it was better than nothing, but it turned out it wasn't."
A "prosecutor's dream" -- because she seemed so believable. Never mind if she really was telling the truth.
As for the hair: "The science of that hair match was not the greatest in the world, but in those days we didn't have DNA. It was the best we had. I thought it was better than nothing, but it turned out it wasn't."
And a pubic hair found at the scene did not match Mr. Dail.
Oh, they had other "evidence," too -- useless evidence -- a vaginal swab, but they weren't able to make an accurate determination whether the semen had come from Mr. Dail or not.
Great.
Wait, there's more. What about the police investigation? "It wasn't the greatest police work in the case. That detective was no Sherlock Holmes."
So, you had junk science with the "consistent" hair that the prosecutor now admits was the same as nothing, you had evidence that was inconsistent with Mr. Dail's involvement, you had evidence that everyone accepted showed nothing (the vaginal swab), you had a mediocre police investigation -- and you had a twelve-year-old girl who was very believable.
Ladies and gentlemen, what this case came down to is this: a twelve year old girl sent a 19-year-old man away for 18 years -- because a district attorney and the jury believed her over him. She was a better actress than Mr. Dail.
As the prosecutor said: "The girl said that he was the guy who did it. I couldn't dismiss that," Strickland said.
Read that last sentence again and again, and let it sink in. A man's liberty, his life, was completely in the hands of a twelve-year-old girl.
His life was destroyed because she turned out to be a better little actor.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, tells us that there is something very, very wrong with the system.
Posts
9 comments:
From that linked article - ”And really, that was what the whole case hinged on -- that and her mother's persistence that got the district attorney's office involved.”
Ah! Never let the power of a parent DEMANDING justice for their little darling in influencing a weak case to go forward be forgotten.
Again, from the article - ”On the other hand, had modern trial rules been in place, the defense would have been required to notify the prosecution ahead of time that they would be offering an alibi defense -- that Dail and his witnesses were saying he had been 15 miles away with no transportation.
"If we'd known about that alibi, it may have made a difference in how we handled the case," he said.”
WTF!?!?! I fail to see why the defense didn’t bring up the alibi. They certainly weren’t precluded from doing so. Any defense attorney should not need to be REQUIRED to provide the clients alibi information.
Look, I’m not trying to diminish the role of the prosecutor in this gross miscarriage of justice, but knowing how defense attorney’s typically scrap & fight to get anything even possibly exculpatory before the court (and jury), this also looks like a instance of piss-poor defense work serving to augment the otherwise weak case against Dail.
I thought of you when I read about that alibi nonsense, slwerner!
I hear what you're saying. But I loved the prosecutor's tone -- "you know, if they had just told me what their alibi was, gee, he might not have gone to prison where he was repeatedly raped and everything . . . ."
Um, you mean to tell us you didn't know he was 15 miles away? Wow!
What's scarier is the possibility that the defense counsel DID do his job -- but the little girl was so effective that the jury didn't buy it. Makes me shudder,
"The girl said that he was the guy who did it. I couldn't dismiss that"
This has something to do with treating girls too nicely and believing them everything
Archivist - "What's scarier is the possibility that the defense counsel DID do his job"
We don't know enough about the original trial to get a good idea one way or the other. But, we can look to see what the defense attorney is doing now:
And, we find that, along with partner Jean P. Hollowell, Shelby D. Benton still practices law in Goldsboro, NC
However, she does NOT practice criminal defense anymore (perhaps she really was that bad).
Practice areas: Family Law (100%)
slwerner, I just shake my head over the whole thing. I think to myself, how many years does Dwayne Dail have on earth? And to have this huge chunk of his life snatched from him, and not only that, but can you imagine any worse existence during in peace time? I mean, to be brutalized like that? What did Dwayne Dail do to deserve that? Other than being born male?
So when someone says a rape is worse than a false rape claim, if you used this false rape claim as your guide, that is patently false. Not possible.
The whole thing just sickens me. It's almost too painful to think about for very long.
Archivist - "I think to myself, how many years does Dwayne Dail have on earth? And to have this huge chunk of his life snatched from him, and not only that, but can you imagine any worse existence during in peace time?"
There is absolutely nothing that could ever make things right by Dwayne Dail. His life WAS destroyed, while everyone else went merrily along with their's. In all likelihood, even his accuser (apparently raped by someone else) suffered little, and got on with her life just fine.
It's a tragedy, to be sure. But, personal tragedies seem to be all too common.
I don't want to sound too crass, because I too am sicked by what happened to him, but I see the best possible outcome from this being that prosecutors get a hard lesson in not checking their zeal in pursuing each and every case, and not looking closely at the nature of the case, the evidence they do (and don't) have, and the potential outcome and impacts of proceeding with questionable cases.
In this case we have a perfect example of why this is important. A girl was raped - a terrible thing; but she survived with relatively little harm, and with plenty of help to get on with a normal life. Dwayne Dail all but lost his life - for something he didn't even do, and for which there was evidence of his innocence (with an alibi by multiple people, putting him miles away, and no way to have gotten there, I don't believe I've met a defense attorney who could have lost the case).
If the prosecutor knew of this, and proceeded anyway, it's prosecutorial misconduct of a felonious nature.
If the defense attorney knew of same, and did not present it as the ultimate, irrefutable defense, then she is well beyond criminally
responsible for what transpired. [obviously, I don't know if either of these was the case, but I'm guessing the latter would have been far more damning].
And, while I know it's just more of my speculation, but I'm guessing that defense attorney Shelby Benton was a public defender assigned to a case she would have never taken if she had he choice [haughty gender-feminist attorney forced to defend a poor white beta male (is there a group that haughty gender-feminist hate more?), against charges of a crime she held most vile and contemptible], and she gave it something less than a half-assed effort.
slwerner said...
Archivist - "What's scarier is the possibility that the defense counsel DID do his job"
We don't know enough about the original trial to get a good idea one way or the other. But, we can look to see what the defense attorney is doing now:
And, we find that, along with partner Jean P. Hollowell, Shelby D. Benton still practices law in Goldsboro, NC
However, she does NOT practice criminal defense anymore (perhaps she really was that bad).
Practice areas: Family Law (100%)
My relationship to clients is such that until they indicate otherwise I am bound to act in their interest. And even then I have a professional responsibility to act in their interest within the scope of my original engagement and beyond.
I would hope that Ms Benton would be very pleased her client has been exonerated and vindicated. Maybe the falserapesociety should give her an opportunity to express this pleasure?
I want to throw up
cbgirl
Prosecutors can always find an excuse to go after innocent men, in particular by using the demeanor of the accuser as "proof." The only solution is to require strong corroborating evidence before charging a man with rape. Until this happens the system will continue to be a cash-and-go for liars.
Post a Comment