Resist the Urge to Rush to Judgment

Longtime Orange County defense attorney Eugene Andres was having lunch with a friend Tuesday when the conversation turned to the arrest of Scott Peterson in the killings of his wife and unborn child in Northern California. “How can he get a fair trial?” the friend asked, mindful of the negative publicity swirling around Peterson and the state attorney general calling the case a “slam dunk.”

All Andres could offer was, “It’s pretty tough.”

You wonder sometimes whether anyone other than a defendant’s inner circle cares about the presumption of innocence. Over the years, tough-on-crime advocates have sold America on the notion that concern for a defendant’s rights means a lack of concern for crime victims.

That’s a cheap, cynical proposition that should be shouted down at every opportunity.

Instead, we hear things like what victim advocate Marc Klaas, whose daughter was kidnapped and killed in 1993, said on TV Monday night. Referring to the wrenching comments by Laci Peterson’s family, Klaas said: “The one thing I was kind of expecting that I didn’t see was some talk about the betrayal that they must feel, given the fact that she was murdered by Scott, or at least allegedly murdered by Scott.”

Referring to the family’s dignity, he added, “What you see as a result of what Scott did -- obviously the death of Laci and her unborn baby Conner is extending out.”

What will Klaas say if, once evidence is presented, Peterson is found innocent? Most likely, he won’t say anything because no one is held accountable for talk that merely fills up TV air time without concern for someone’s rights.

Andres, who now concentrates on civil law, says the proverbial “rush to judgment” in high-profile cases is driven by the mob of media outlets that don’t distinguish between allegations and evidence. From the vantage of a defense lawyer hoping for an unbiased jury, the only good news, he says, is that the “feeding frenzy won’t quite be the same” by the time the case goes to trial in a year or more.

That doesn’t address what harm is done in the meantime to the judicial system. Does our society lose something -- anything -- when millions of people assume someone is guilty on the day they’re arrested?

Michael Molfetta is an Orange County criminal defense attorney who got a hung jury last year in a case in which his client was accused of murder. Just as in the Peterson case, enough of the defendant’s behavior at the time of the killings had been described in the media that many people no doubt thought he was guilty. Instead, the jury voted 10 to 2 to acquit, and the district attorney decided against another trial.

Molfetta says that he has abiding faith in juries to sort things out but that the stigma of pretrial publicity doesn’t disappear just because an accused murderer goes free. “It’s like calling someone a racist or a child molester,” he says. Even if the charge is disproved, “it’s still out there. You can’t un-ring the bell.”

In high-profile cases, Molfetta says, defense attorneys must accept that many will see their clients as guilty before the first juror is selected. That kind of thinking -- a turning on its head of the time-honored presumption of innocence -- is part of a larger context, he says.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Molfetta says, a number of laws have passed that infringe on previously held rights, such as the privacy of lawyer-client conversations. “What you’re going to do is have a society that, if not immune to the idea of living in a police state, is more accepting of it,” Molfetta says. “Because they’re willing to allow certain things to happen, that moves us one step closer to guilty unless proven innocent.”

What’s troubling is that so many people will read what Molfetta says, then yawn and say, “So what?”

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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.