Orange County Criminal Lawyer Blog

This week, former New York television meteorologist Heidi Jones plead guilty to falsely reporting rape charges, after admitting that she falsely reported to police that she had been raped.

While we applaud prosecutors for bringing these charges, this story brings to light a too-frequent reality: that charges -- especially sex/rape charges, but charges in general - are often fabricated. And, worse, such charges often make it all the way to jury trials, with little certainty about their veracity.

Clients are often shocked when they are charged with a sex-related offense based only on the word of the accuser. "It's her word against mine, how can they charge me with a crime just based on that?" is a question we as defense attorneys are often asked in this situation. The answer, however, is that prosecutors can and will charge a case just based on the word of the accuser.

Accusers have many reasons for going to the police with allegations about unlawful sex. Perhaps it is a grudge against the accused, or anger over being "used," or feelings of guilt about the sex that happened with coupled with an overwhelming need to make what happened "nonconsensual," or, like in Ms. Jones's case, simply the need for attention (and the layers of psychological complexity that lie beneath).

Whatever their reason, when an accuser goes to police with such accusations, the police will begin an investigation. That investigation inevitably involves first preserving any physical evidence, which, in the case of an accusation based on what was actually consensual sex, will exist in some form. Regardless of whether there is physical evidence, however, the police will then set their sights on the accused, and seeing whether they can get them to make an "admission." This almost always involves having the accuser make a call from the police station to the accused, which is recorded by the police.

For someone not expecting a call like this, even an innocent person can make statements that sound incriminating. For example, when the accuser asks on the recorded call "so you had sex with me when I was passed out drunk?" the accused may respond with "uh, well, you seemed like you were awake." Then when she keeps pressing, he may get annoyed with her and start giving sarcastic answers such as, "I don't know what you're talking about. Fine, if it makes you feel better, then fine, yes, you didn't know what you were doing."

Months later, that statement will still reverberate when a prosecutor argues, "ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what more do you need than the words of the defendant himself: "you didn't know what you were doing." He admits that she didn't know. He admits to taking advantage of her in that state where she didn't know. Based on his admissions, which you and I and the judge and the defendant himself heard on that tape, the tape we all heard loud and clear in this courtroom, you MUST find this man guilty of rape."

And with that, another innocent person is convicted and shipped off to prison.

Ms. Jones's accusation of rape were, thankfully, not directed at any specific person. Instead, she gave a general description of the person she said attacked her, and then police spent many hours attempting to track down the individual she described. However, it must be asked, what if she had named a specific person? Would that person have been arrested? Would charges have been brought? In our modern justice system and the climate that it operates in, i.e., where sex charges are a political and social "hot button" issue, the answer is almost certainly "yes." Then, would a jury have seen through it? Would they have seen the doubt in the case rather then focusing on what prosecutors were saying was evidence of the crime?

L.A. Times Orange County recently reported that a taxicab passenger was arrested on suspicion of malicious mischief after punching and breaking the window of the cab when the driver refused to turn around at a red light, according to police. Police say that the driver flagged down an officer after the incident at 2:03 a.m. last Thursday, at which point police arrested the passenger.

One thing that is always troublesome about crime reports in the press is that the point of view of the accused is never taken into account. The press never goes to the defendant for comment, and even if they did it would not be a good idea for him to make a statement anyway, as anything he said would be used against him in court. The end result, however, is a snippet in the newspaper and on the internet, searchable by the defendant's name, that only includes the point of view of the police and the "victim." Which is to say, in a case such as this, the point of view of the "victim" only, as police were not witnesses to the crime, they simply took the statement of the cab driver, believed him, and then arrested the person who had been riding in the back of the cab.

The problem with this practice, of course, is that it is far too easy for people reading the paper/internet to read the snippet, and conclude that the person in the back of the cab is guilty because police arrested him.

Which may not seem like a problem, unless you are the person who was riding in the back of the cab. Now, your name is on the internet, and this one-sided (in the literal sense, calling the snippet "one-sided" is not a criticism, it is, objectively, one-sided as the paper did not report on the other side of the story), account of what happened in the cab that night now pops up whenever anyone, e.g., future potential employers, future love interests, future clients, and, most insidiously, future jurors, google the name "Ryan Eric Nelson." (Try it, with the quotes around his name, at the time of this blog entry there were 4 results in the top ten discussing the cab incident and how Mr. Nelson had been arrested for it).

In reality, no one should believe Mr. Nelson is guilty of what the cab driver accused him of doing. We are talking about a cab driver. There are cab drivers out there who are good people, I have even met a few, but there are plenty of bad people - some might argue the majority - who are cab drivers. Or let's not go so far as to say "bad people," but liars. Cheaters. People who are willing to lie to the police, or to judges, or on the stand, under oath, at trial. People who are willing to say that "the person in the back punched out a window and all because I refused to make an illegal U-turn at a red light," when, in actuality, what happened was that the cab driver refused to drive him where he wanted to go. Refused to get off his cell phone while he was driving in the wrong direction. For five minutes. And the passenger got concerned. Said something about it. Was ignored. Ten minutes, and the passenger was scared. Tried to get the driver's attention. Talked loudly, interrupting the driver's cell phone conversation, to which the driver reacted, with hostile annoyance, by pointing to his phone insinuating the passenger was being rude. Then the passenger said "let me out," tried to open the door, but the driver had engaged the child safety locks, a "trick of the trade" he had learned to make sure that no passenger could ever leave without paying.

It was this passenger, in this situation, who, now desperate and starting to harbor an increasingly more reasonable feeling that he was being kidnapped, buttressed ultimately by the non-functional door latch and a driver who refused to drive in the right direction, out of this desperation punched the window in the hopes of reaching and releasing the door latch from the other side. It was this passenger who is being written up in the paper as being charged with malicious mischief for all to see for years to come. This passenger who is now in need of a good defense attorney to make sure an otherwise tainted-by-the-media jury pool sees things as they actually happened.

At least, for all the L.A. Times or OC Register know, that's what happened.