"[Prosecuting attorney Mahlon Gibson] called me to tell me an indigent prisoner accused of raping a twelve-year-old girl wanted a woman lawyer. [Prosecutor Mahlon] Gibson had recommended that the criminal court judge, Maupin Cummings, appoint me. I told Mahlon I really didn’t feel comfortable taking on such a client, but Mahlon gently reminded me that I couldn’t very well refuse the judge’s request."
Mahlon Gibson in a Newsday article in 2008:
On May 21, 1975, Tom Taylor rose in court to demand that Washington County Judge Maupin Cummings allow him to fire his male court-appointed lawyer in favor of a female attorney. Taylor, who earned a meager wage at a paper bag factory and lived with relatives, had already spent 10 days in the county jail and was grasping for a way to avoid a 30 years-to-life term in the state penitentiary for rape.
Taylor, 41, figured a jury would be less hostile to a rape defendant represented by a woman, according to one of his friends. Cummings agreed to the request, scanned the list of available female attorneys (there were only a half dozen in the county at the time) and assigned Rodham, who had virtually no experience in criminal litigation.
“Hillary told me she didn’t want to take that case, she made that very clear,” recalls prosecutor Gibson, who phoned her with the judge’s order.
Sources as far as 13 years back state that she was assigned the case. As a public defender, she doesn't really have much choice, and didn't deny a man's constitutional right to counsel.
Even in the video you posted, the news caster emphasizes that she was assigned to this man, not that she chose him herself.
As for the Clinton Tapes, I've watched them a few times already but went ahead and rewatched them again just now through that video you posted. I'm going to break this down into a list to make it easier:
1) I'm not sure where Clinton had shit all over women's rights? Especially in regard to how things were in 1975. We've come a long way since then, as a nation we've grown and changed our viewpoints on women's rights, victims of sex crimes, and so forth.
2) If you're talking about her laughing, she was laughing at the fact that a man she felt was guilty had passed a polygraph, which destroyed her faith in polygraphs. That's laughable, in a very sad way. And she did still have to defend him, even knowing he wasn't innocent. The world isn't Phoenix Wright, where a grand majority of the people accused of crimes didn't actually do them. She didn't need to have a blind faith in her client's goodness. She just needed to do her job. She did. It's also clear, at least from what I hear, that her laughing at her "miscarriage of justice" remark was her laughing at the joke and wording, not the situation. Certainly not at the victim.
3) Hillary was not the one to assert that the victim made up a rape story because she "enjoyed fantasizing about older men-" it was actually a child psychology expert who said this. Clinton actually had the victim undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether that was valid or not.
4) In the tape she said that she plea bargained the case down because the prosecution had no evidence, because the lab had thrown out the scrap of the underwear they'd cut out that had evidence on it. She even took it to someone else to have them test the remainder of the underwear to see if anything could be proven without the piece that had been removed. There wasn't. So, they plead the case down. A majority of rape cases in the absence of concrete evidence end up this way. There's a good chance that had the trial continued, it would end up inconclusive or the defendant would actually go free. With the guilty plea he ended up being given a sentence of five years, of which the judge suspended four and allowed him to count the two months served in county jail as part of the year. I'd also like to note that the victim and her family were the ones who asked for a plea bargain, to avoid having to testify.
If you've not watched the whole thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2f13f2awK4
A lot of what's missing in the video you posted is the full context.
As someone who is a feminist first and a Democrat second, I do fail to see where she shat all over women's rights. She did her job, she upheld the Constitution, she double-checked evidence, did a polygraph, had the victim evaluated, and agreed to a plea bargain to avoid having to go to trial. I'm really not seeing where she did wrong, here.
no subject
"[Prosecuting attorney Mahlon Gibson] called me to tell me an indigent prisoner accused of raping a twelve-year-old girl wanted a woman lawyer. [Prosecutor Mahlon] Gibson had recommended that the criminal court judge, Maupin Cummings, appoint me. I told Mahlon I really didn’t feel comfortable taking on such a client, but Mahlon gently reminded me that I couldn’t very well refuse the judge’s request."
Mahlon Gibson in a Newsday article in 2008:
On May 21, 1975, Tom Taylor rose in court to demand that Washington County Judge Maupin Cummings allow him to fire his male court-appointed lawyer in favor of a female attorney. Taylor, who earned a meager wage at a paper bag factory and lived with relatives, had already spent 10 days in the county jail and was grasping for a way to avoid a 30 years-to-life term in the state penitentiary for rape.
Taylor, 41, figured a jury would be less hostile to a rape defendant represented by a woman, according to one of his friends. Cummings agreed to the request, scanned the list of available female attorneys (there were only a half dozen in the county at the time) and assigned Rodham, who had virtually no experience in criminal litigation.
“Hillary told me she didn’t want to take that case, she made that very clear,” recalls prosecutor Gibson, who phoned her with the judge’s order.
Sources as far as 13 years back state that she was assigned the case. As a public defender, she doesn't really have much choice, and didn't deny a man's constitutional right to counsel.
Even in the video you posted, the news caster emphasizes that she was assigned to this man, not that she chose him herself.
As for the Clinton Tapes, I've watched them a few times already but went ahead and rewatched them again just now through that video you posted. I'm going to break this down into a list to make it easier:
1) I'm not sure where Clinton had shit all over women's rights? Especially in regard to how things were in 1975. We've come a long way since then, as a nation we've grown and changed our viewpoints on women's rights, victims of sex crimes, and so forth.
2) If you're talking about her laughing, she was laughing at the fact that a man she felt was guilty had passed a polygraph, which destroyed her faith in polygraphs. That's laughable, in a very sad way. And she did still have to defend him, even knowing he wasn't innocent. The world isn't Phoenix Wright, where a grand majority of the people accused of crimes didn't actually do them. She didn't need to have a blind faith in her client's goodness. She just needed to do her job. She did. It's also clear, at least from what I hear, that her laughing at her "miscarriage of justice" remark was her laughing at the joke and wording, not the situation. Certainly not at the victim.
3) Hillary was not the one to assert that the victim made up a rape story because she "enjoyed fantasizing about older men-" it was actually a child psychology expert who said this. Clinton actually had the victim undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether that was valid or not.
4) In the tape she said that she plea bargained the case down because the prosecution had no evidence, because the lab had thrown out the scrap of the underwear they'd cut out that had evidence on it. She even took it to someone else to have them test the remainder of the underwear to see if anything could be proven without the piece that had been removed. There wasn't. So, they plead the case down. A majority of rape cases in the absence of concrete evidence end up this way. There's a good chance that had the trial continued, it would end up inconclusive or the defendant would actually go free. With the guilty plea he ended up being given a sentence of five years, of which the judge suspended four and allowed him to count the two months served in county jail as part of the year. I'd also like to note that the victim and her family were the ones who asked for a plea bargain, to avoid having to testify.
If you've not watched the whole thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2f13f2awK4
A lot of what's missing in the video you posted is the full context.
As someone who is a feminist first and a Democrat second, I do fail to see where she shat all over women's rights. She did her job, she upheld the Constitution, she double-checked evidence, did a polygraph, had the victim evaluated, and agreed to a plea bargain to avoid having to go to trial. I'm really not seeing where she did wrong, here.