“whether defense counsel in a case like this would counsel the defendant to avoid saying anything the least bit critical about the girl and against displaying any anger?”
YES YES YES. I advise accused students (men and women) who are telling their side of the story in essays and interviews, not testimony. But at least in my context, showing anger towards the accuser never makes the accused look better. Ditto anger towards the school proceedings, criminal justice system, etc. You tell the story as you understand it, and you let the LISTENER decide that you were wronged and you have a right to be outraged. But if you show your anger, or suggest that the accuser is vindictive or unstable, anyone with a hint of doubt about whether you’re telling the truth will think: “How dare he! Blaming the victim! That little psychopath! He’s just angry that he got caught!”
The only exception I’ve ever seen was a he-said she-said where they were both drunk and both students were expelled for sexual assault. If your side of the story is that the accuser actually raped you, then I think you can safely show some anger.
Now people are theorizing that he deliberately lost weight?
Can you be serious?
First we have him dying his hair, rather than the completely obvious which is that when brown-haired people are outdoors a lot the ends get gradually sunbleached and when it is cut the darker, newer hair remains.
I was wondering when he would be accused of bleaching his skin or wearing makeup to achieve the English schoolboy complexion he had in court. It never occurred to me that he was going to be accused of starving himself to look thinner.
Gee, too bad he couldn’t shrink himself so that he didn’t tower over his attorneys. /sarcasm
And I have no doubt that if he showed some anger towards the accuser people here would have been all over him, accusing him of being a violent, vicious thug.
@Hanna and @MidwestDad3 must be relieved that I don’t do criminal trials!
@Consolation, yes, I’m serious. Defense attorneys make over their clients and prosecutors make over their witnesses all the time. Labrie dropped a LOT of weight. I just wondered whether it was intentional. I haven’t a shred of evidence that it was in this case, but there are cases in which it is.
While showing anger towards her would have been a no-no, would he also have been counseled not to show any genuine emotion?
I may have missed it, but this is what I was referring to several days ago, when I commented that Labrie seemed so calm and cool under questioning. I found that chilling, personally, like he thought he could dispassionately explain his way out of some terrible accusations. I would think being accused of rape, when you know you’re innocent, is pretty upsetting.
Is it not possible to display genuine emotion without appearing to be attacking the accuser?
“Is it not possible to display genuine emotion without appearing to be attacking the accuser?”
Depends how great an actor you are. And yes, I think smart testimony is acting even if you’re telling the whole truth. You need to be in control of yourself during cross-examination. You have to edit yourself in real time. Otherwise, a good opposing attorney is going to make you his puppet.
It’s an adversarial proceeding. Think of cross-examination like a fencing match. If you just move your weapon the way you feel inspired to, a trained opponent with a careful strategy is going to take you apart.
Not a trial lawyer, but had several in the family (prosecutors mostly).From what I gleaned from them, emotions can be a positive on the stand, the victim who appears to be upset, for example, when testifying can draw sympathy from the jury, but if the emotions are so strong that they appear to be irrational, it can work against them. Likewise, the accused testifying, if they appear slightly scared, slightly angry, can work in their behalf, whereas the cold, calm person calmly rattling off the facts can be seen as being non caring, arrogant, unfeeling, and therefore likely to have committed a crime (I am not saying that proves anything, talking about a jury). Prepping people for a jury is something my relatives and acquaintances talked a lot about. It is why the kid came into the courtroom looking as he did, with the frizzy hair, glasses, looking like the frightened nerd who couldn’t hurt a fly, not the kid who was the captain of the soccer team with the stylish hair and no glasses. I suspect with the kid the lawyer saw the way he was when emotional, and figured that it would look more like a guilty person upset at the fate that awaited him rather than an innocent person facing an unjust fate.
That could be, @musicprnt. I wonder if Carney ever saw genuine emotion from Labrie prior to what he displayed after the verdict was read? THAT struck me as genuine emotion. We’ll never know if that was in reaction to having been convicted of a crime he didn’t commit or if it was the result of his realizing he should have accepted the plea deal.
Regardless, it elicited sympathy in me for Labrie, and that’s something I’d honestly never felt prior to that. I think a little of that emotion may have gone a long way in helping him with the jury.
In contrast to the defendant, his friends seemed a lot more nervous and uncomfortable on the witness stand, which is understandable for teenagers in those circumstances.
My opinions on his guilt or innocence aside, I also found his post verdict response heartbreaking.
His hair looks as dark to me in that photo as it did during the trial.
I’m not a climatologist and I don’t live in New England, so here’s a question for those with more knowledge: is there enough intense sunlight in NH between April 3rd and the July arrest date (when the mug shot was taken) to change a kid’s hair color?
Was the chapel he built over the past year outside in that same intense NH sunlight?
Common sense tells me it’s peroxide, which usually makes hair turn orange. I have no actual knowledge of what was going on with the defendant’s hair … just putting the speculative pieces together. YMMV.
I wonder if the brightness of the camera flash in the mugshot has the effect of making his hair lighter than his natural color. Mugshots are never flattering and I think a lot of that has to do with room lighting (fluorescent most likely) and the brightness of camera flash.
I don’t think anyone would describe NH sunlight as intense.
GnocchiB, three weeks in the sun this summer was enough to turn my hair significantly redder, since I have dark brown hair with red highlights.
In any case, people were saying that he dyed his hair dark for court. That is what seems silly to me. I have no idea whether he experimented with Sun-In or whatever teens fool around with to get blonder highlights that summer.
@Consolation, I hadn’t thought about red undertones … from a family of blondes here … I guess you’re right that those could come out. And @doschicos, yes, I’m sure the lighting in police stations is not exactly the most flattering.
I’m guessing the brown is natural.
His crying when the verdicts were read made me feel terrible. I kept thinking about how he’d fare in jail … not well, I’m afraid. Would he be classified as a violent offender? How much do prisons in NH segregate prisoners based on offenses?
I don’t know. You could be a really horrible person and still be sad/scared to learn that you were convicted of a felony. I don’t think there would be much strategic advantage in fake-crying; the appeals court won’t see it.
I read his reaction to the guilty verdicts to be the result of the realization that he’s not going to Harvard. That reaction compared to his calm, cool demeanor in the clips of his testimony was a bit chilling to me, frankly.
I don’t think labrie’s reaction at the verdict looked faked at all; but I suppose a cynic might say he was trying to gain sympathy from the judge who will determine his sentence.
New Hampshire is a small state with a correspondingly small prison system and prison population. Not many options. I’ve never heard of pay to stay before. I had to google it.
