Attack: Right Wing tries to rehash old news on Hillary’s law career

BACKGROUND:

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program today, the show’s hosts and panelists completely ignored widely-reported facts when discussing Hillary Clinton’s appointment by a judge to defend an indigent client accused of a crime.  Pundits speculated that Clinton chose to take the case, even though that right-wing myth has been widely debunked, as a simple check of the facts reveals.

TAKEAWAYS:

• Hillary Clinton was appointed by a judge 39 years ago to defend an indigent client accused of a crime.
• Attorneys take an oath to defend their clients to the fullest extent of the law and are ethically and legally bound to do so.
• Hillary Clinton upheld this oath, defending her client as she was ethically and legally required.
• After the case, as a young attorney, Hillary Clinton led historic action in the fight against rape and to bring rapists to justice by starting Arkansas’s first rape hotline.
• Hillary Clinton addressed this head on over the weekend, once again clarifying that she was appointed by the Judge to represent the defendant in this case and that she asked to be relieved of that responsibility.

Sec. Clinton, on the 1975 Taylor rape case: “I asked to be relieved of that responsibility [defending Taylor] but I was not and I had a professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I did.” According to CNN, “In 1975, Clinton, a 27-year-old attorney, was appointed by a judge to represent Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old man accused of raping a young girl, for free while working at the legal aid clinic at the University of Arkansas. ‘I asked to be relieved of that responsibility but I was not and I had a professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I did,’ Clinton told Mumsnet, a British-based online parenting network, in an interview published Saturday.” [CNN, 7/7/14]

INTERVIEWS WITH PROSECUTING ATTORNEY:

• As much media attention as this story has gotten, few reporters have taken the time to interview Hillary Clinton’s opposing counsel on that case, former prosecuting attorney Mahlon Gibson – one of the only people living who can attest to the facts – who Hillary referenced when she wrote about this case in her 2003 book, “Living History.”
• While the right wing has tried to paint Hillary’s involvement in this case as an attack on women’s rights, they have completely missed the fact that she was appointed by the Judge and did not want to take on the case.
• According to Arkansas political writer/online columnist Michael Cook, who interviewed Gibson, “Clinton was appointed by the court to handle the rape case and legally had to represent Taylor to the best of her ability, regardless of his guilt or innocence.”
• In an interview with CNN, Gibson confirmed that Hillary Clinton “got appointed to represent this guy.”
• Cook writes that, “According to Gibson, it was common practice at the time in Washington County for judges to appoint attorneys to handle the cases of indigent prisoners who could not afford legal counsel.”
• Gibson said that there were 3-4 female attorneys in the county at the time and only one public defender, a male. The defendant reportedly requested a female attorney.
• According to Gibson in an interview with CNN, Clinton said, “’I don’t want to represent this guy. I just can’t stand this. I don’t want to get involved. Can you get me off?’ [Gibson] told her, ‘Well contact the judge and see what he says about it,’ but I also said don’t jump on him and make him mad. She contacted the judge and the judge didn’t remove her and she stayed on the case.”
• Since she wasn’t removed from the case, “She [Hillary] had a legal and ethical obligation to do the very best she could do for her client, appointed or not appointed,”said Gibson.
• As Cook concludes, “With former Prosecutor Mahlon Gibson now on record about this 1975 rape case, all future retelling of this time in Hillary Clinton’s career must note that she was appointed by a court to handle this tough case. It’s an indisputable fact.”
• Gibson’s interviews corroborate Hillary Clinton’s  recount of all of this, written in her own words in her 2003 book, “Living History”:

“One day, the Washington County prosecuting attorney, Mahlon Gibson, called to tell me an indigent prisoner accused of raping a twelve-year-old girl wanted a woman lawyer. Gibson had recommended that the criminal court judge, Maupin Cummings, appoint me. I told Mahlon I really didn’t feel comfortable taking on such a client, but Mahlon gently reminded me that I couldn’t very well refuse the judge’s request. When I visited the alleged rapist in the county jail, I learned that he was an uneducated ‘chicken catcher.’ His job was to collect chickens from the large warehouse farms for one of the local processing plants. He denied the charges against him and insisted that the girl, a distant relative, had made up her story. I conducted a thorough investigation and obtained expert testimony from an eminent scientist from New York, who cast doubt on the evidentiary value of the blood and semen the prosecutor claimed proved the defendant’s guilt in the rape. Because of that testimony, I negotiated with the prosecutor for the defendant to plead guilty to sexual abuse. When I appeared with my client before Judge Cummings to present that plea, he asked me to leave the courtroom while he conducted the necessary examination to determine the factual basis for the plea. I said, ‘Judge, I can’t leave. I’m his lawyer.’ ‘Well,’ said the judge, ‘I can’t talk about these things in front of a lady.’ ‘Judge,’ I reassured him, ‘don’t think of me as anything but a lawyer.’ The judge walked the defendant through his plea and then sentenced him. It was shortly after this experience that Ann Henry and I discussed setting up Arkansas’s first rape hot line.” [Living History, pg. 72-73, 2003]