Another lawyer used the same word, "disheartening," and explained that among defense attorneys, there had been such hope for Guerrero. He had been a defense lawyer after all, a man active in the Democratic Party, one of the many Democrats swept in with Obama. And now, it was clear, he had contracted "black robe disease" — had gone over to the other side.
There was hope that Guerrero would recover, but in the meantime, King was advised to give up on justice in the 174th — not to argue with Guerrero, but simply to focus on the appellate record and hope for reversal.
Daniel Kramer
When defense attorney Vivian King presented evidence that the child
was probably lying, she says prosecutors let her know that "kids don't lie about sexual
assault."
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Thenceforth, whenever Guerrero sustained an objection suppressing testimony, King would exercise her client's right to have the jury out of the courtroom and the testimony put on the record. "It was really pissing him off," King says of the judge, for what was heard challenged everything that occurred in Guerrero's open court.
Janice's stepmother testified, for example, that the rape by the gang member hadn't really seemed to her like rape at all. At four in the morning, she says, she had knocked on Janice's door and, entering, had found Janice sitting calmly on the bed, with a naked boy protruding from underneath. Only after the boy fled out the window did Janice tell her stepmother it was rape. So the stepmother had reported a rape, but ultimately concluded that Janice was merely entertaining at home. It was the stepmother's disbelief in the first rape charge that prompted her to turn Janice over to CPS and into the spiral that culminated in the second rape charge.
The trial on that count was not blown apart until just after the state had rested, when King had the jury file out once more for the testimony of Janice's sister. Officer Morrow had never interviewed her, and, protecting her sister, Jane had not told King everything. But Dunham had been good to her, Jane testified now, and her sister had lied. The first rape charge was only to explain the boy, her sister had admitted. Janice had often let boys in, Jane said, and it was actually some kid named Juan who took her virginity. As for the rape by Dunham, that had never happened either. Jane said she had slept beside Janice the whole night. They had stayed up late talking.
"Her testimony was so compelling," says King, "that the prosecutors just looked crazy and defeated." When King asked Guerrero if perhaps now the jury could hear all the evidence, a number of observers report that the judge looked to the prosecution before ruling. But everyone seemed to know that any conviction would otherwise be overturned. Byrom was willing to allow the evidence in, but would not concede defeat and insisted that it be introduced as state evidence. King had no objection. It was only important that the jury finally see who the accuser really was — a 14-year-old girl who didn't want to be in that school, who needed help and hadn't gotten it. The system had failed Janice just as surely as it had Dunham.
This was essentially King's closing statement, while Byrom, still pushing for conviction, clarified to jurors that finding Dunham not guilty would be telling a child she'd lied about sexual assault. Most of the jurors had earlier declared that a child would never lie about such a thing, but in the end, when they returned with their verdict, an observer sent a message out to the listserv: "Not F-cking Guilty!"
"The whole courthouse busted out crying," King remembers. Dunham recalls coming to his feet then, sobbing loudly, as King — who had hardly slept in two weeks, who lost weight and was involved in a car wreck — embraced him and said, "you didn't pay me enough!" Soon she was gone, away to other trials, as the defendant staggered out of the courthouse to try to recover his demolished life, and the accuser was returned to the care of her parents.
