New York Criminal Lawyer Blog
In the end, the Dominique Strauss Kahn case ended where it all began…the gutter. Detectives with the New York City Police Department arrested the former IMF leader and paraded him before the media. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. obtained an indictment only to dismiss it months later. The press published their “gotch-ya'” photographs while tarring and feathering the accused Frenchman. A sixty-two year old French presidential candidate was exposed as an apparent womanizer possessing an overactive libido and a lifestyle that skirted criminality. A sympathetic immigrant woman who cried rape, but was caught in a web of half-truths and inconsistencies, may be more of a perjurer and victimizer than an actual victim. And lastly, an attorney, who stood to personify the protector of the voiceless victims of sex crime while simultaneously pocketing millions in a civil suit, looked at best ill prepared to manage the intensity of what may be the most sensational criminal case of the decade. At worst, this same attorney may have been a co-conspirator in his clients now debunked claims.
It is likely that one could ask fifty criminal lawyers their respective opinions about whether or not prosecutors rushed into the Grand Jury. It is equally likely that you would, or at least could, get fifty differing and reasonable responses. When asked by various news reporting agencies, I have always maintained that the case should not have been presented to the Grand Jury. Instead, prosecutors should have sought a bail package to avoid having their legal hand forced (it is interesting to note in the extensive Dismissal on Recommendation (DOR) filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, a detailed analysis of the complainant’s failings is given, but no reference whatsoever to the bail discussions). A bail package, similar to the one agreed to post-indictment, would have absolutely circumvented this P.T. Barnum affair that will forever scar a man with a wrongful indictment. Moreover, at no point in the DOR, or to my knowledge in any statement, did prosecutors assert that they believed the witness or the evidence in the case beyond a reasonable doubt prior to stepping into the Grand Jury. Clearly this is now the case, but the omission from the time of the indictment is concerning. Prosecutors should not be presenting evidence before that body in any case unless they subjectively and objectively believe the evidence will reach this level of certainty.