Eric Goldscheider (Speaking Out at BMG) landed an interview with one Annie DeMartino, a mental health worker who cared for rape victim Lennice Plante following the assault. It’s quite a story, in which we learn more about the victim and the exceedingly dicey circumstances of her ID of Ben LaGuer as the perpetrator. It’s really worth a read. Bottom line: The victim was mentally ill, delusional, and her ID of LaGuer — the sole basis of the conviction — is just extremely doubtful. Again, that’s not what the defense says — that’s what the victim’s mental health caregiver says.
Here’s two of several pretty amazing paragraphs:
And then there is another stunning revelation DeMartino is now willing to share about her experiences with Plante. The victim of this horrendous assault pointed to LaGuer in the courtroom when asked by the prosecutor to identify her attacker. But, according to DeMartino, in the months before the trial and then again on many occasions after the trial, Plante would point to black and Hispanic men on the street or in public places and accuse them of having raped her.
“If I went out in public with her,” DeMartino recalls, “everybody she saw who was either Spanish or black, she would be saying, that’s who did it, that’s who did it, and of course it wasn’t, because basically they were just people in the street. She was very paranoid at that time about everybody… she hated anybody dark-skinned. She would absolutely get horribly frightened.” DeMartino always reported these incidents to the clinicians. “It happened on different days, different times, different months, different years,” she said.
What this may mean legally … don’t know. I would guess nothing. We’ll see.
I don’t know very much about the LaGuer case. For all I know, he could indeed be actually innocent. I am commenting here just to observe that the debates about what really happened in the LaGuer case and others seem to me to undervalue the importance of finality in the law.
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From what I gather, LaGuer’s supporters do not contend that he can prove he was actually innocent. Even taken at face value, DeMartino’s statements do not prove innocence; they simply cast doubt on the victim’s credibility as a witness. Similarly, from what I gather about the DNA test issue LaGuer’s supporters have raised, the question isn’t whether the DNA test proves his innocence, but whether the test that suggests his guilt was flawed in some way.
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It’s not clear to me (or, I think, to the courts) whether prisoners who can prove actual innocence are always and necessarily entitled to a remedy. But given the number of demonstrably actually innocent people who are locked up, I am not sure I understand why LaGuer, whose case is much more murky, has attracted the attention it has. To be blunt, hasn’t he had his day in court?
To be blunt, hasn’t he had his day in court?
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What the SJC is telling all of us, but which some of the people here apparently don’t want to comprehend, is that the criminal justice system guarantees you process, but it doesn’t guarantee perfection.
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On the subject matter of the post, presumably DeMartino, as the victim’s care giver, would have been interviewed by the accused’s defense lawyer. Why was she not put on the witness stand by the defense? (Or was she?) If the defense lawyer did not put he on the witness stand, maybe it was because the lawyer believed that DeMartino would not have made a credible witness.
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Don’t believe everything you read in the media, just because it’s there. If you want to make a case that the accused’s defense was insufficient (i.e., process), make the appeals on that ground. Not on the basis that he is innocent (i.e., perfection).
These arguments remind me of a shocking case documented in the excellent documentary “After Innocence” about the Innocense project and men who have been released from prison after serving time for crimes they did not commit. I highly recommend this documentary, available from Netflix.
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The case that your arguments remind me of concerns a man who the prosecutors kept in prison for two more years after he had been definitively proved innocent, arguing that justice must have some finality – even if it means an innocent person spends the rest of their life in prison!
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I find this argument shocking and disgusting, abhorrent to basic human decency, and not in the spirit of justice.
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In fact, all the arguments I have seen (on this forum and elsewhere) that LaGuer is where he belongs lack substance. Some have been simply name calling.
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Hopefully we will someday see justice in the case of Ben LaGuer.
Is your point that LaGuer has definitively been proved innocent, like the prisoner in the documentary you mention? If so, I think you have a pretty strong argument, though I think that finality has some weight even in that case. My point, though, was that, as far as I can tell, the issue in the LaGuer case is the quality of the evidence against him, not its sufficiency to convict him.
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As I said in my first post, I don’t know much about the case, so if there is evidence that definitively shows innocence, I’d be grateful for a citation. Maybe this has already been discussed on this blog, in which case I’d appreciate a citation to the appropriate conversation.
I did not opine as to whether or not LaGuer was guilty. I have virtually no information about this case except for what I have read here in the last couple of weeks, and virtually all of that has been from the “defense” side. I have learned to look at that, but to be very skeptical about it–it’s like reading one side of a “he said-she said” part of a relationship breakup.
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Let’s understand something. Presumably LaGuer went through a trial in which he was competently represented by counsel. If you want to suggest that LaGuer’s counsel did not compentently represent him, say so. If you want to suggest that the prosecution improperly withheld evidence, say so. The jury believed that the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. I wasn’t at the trial to observe the evidence, and probably neither were you.
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Argue the evidence in the case all you want, but it isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans.
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As far as I can tell, the LaGuer defenders’ case rests on one point. That some fingerprints on a telephone weren’t his–they were somebody else’s. Um, OK, but what does that prove? That he wasn’t at the crime scene? No, it doesn’t prove that at all. All that that might show is that someone else was at the crime scene at some point in time–but when? And that is where your case on the merits founders. When?
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Unless you can show that he was incompetently represented or that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense, you don’t have grounds for a new trial.
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BTW, I am reasonably familiar with the Innocense Project. They have done a pretty good job of using DNA evidence to cast doubt on guilty verdicts in a few cases. But if they are honest, and I believe that they are, they would tell you that the absence of the alleged perpetrator’s DNA evidence does not prove that he, or she, was not at the scene of the crime, and that the presence of DNA evidence at the scene of the crime does not incontrovertibly show when the perp was there when the crime was committed. There are many other issues that they have to look into.
I thought I made my position pretty clear: that I find the notion that we should stop seeking justice so that the law can have “finality” disgusting.
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I also stated that the arguments made by the apologists for LaGuer’s conviction lack substance.
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Specifically, I refer you to a statement made by John Silber, who ran for Governor in 1990 as a tough-on-crime candidate. No one has ever accused him of being “soft.” His statement listed eight serious irregularities in the trial, many involving prosecutorial misconduct, This statement, issued AFTER the DNA test, can be found at:
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http://www.benlaguer…
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When I say that the statements defending LaGuer’s conviction lack substance, I mean that not one of them addresses these eight points. Until they do, I will continue to believe that Ben LaGuer is probably innocent, and that justice has not been served.
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Justice delivered late is better than never. Let’s put the issue of Ben’s innocence aside for a moment. What really bothers me about this case is how many questions are left unanswered, and how blatant misconduct has not been addressed properly. We should at least try to learn from these mistakes, but we can’t do that without a closer inspection of the facts. Without answers to these important points, there is no finality. Our justice system is only going to be the quality we demand it to be.