hoo boy. this is the kind of thing we'll be seeing a lot of when Hillary actually announces

[Divernan]

57. That little 6th grade girl in Arkansas never got justice, did she?

Hillary Rodham Clinton often invoked her “35 years of experience making change” on the 2008 campaign trail, recounting her work in the 1970s on behalf of battered and neglected children and impoverished legal-aid clients.

But there is a little-known episode Clinton doesn’t mention in her standard campaign speech in which those two principles collided. In 1975, a 27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas – using her child development background to help the defendant…

(from Newsday, via http://sweetness-light.com/archive/hillary-versus-the-allegedly-raped-child#.U6C1YUB5uSq

Two years into her career of making change and having Day One-readying experience, 27 year old Hillary Rodham was appointed a public defender in a rape case, and played out deep in the gray areas of morality by attacking the 12-year old victim's credibility. Though nobody involved in the case can recall a shred of evidence that the victim had any sort of history of making false claims, Hillary argued it as a centerpiece of her case anyway. And conveniently omitted this aspect of the case from her 2003 book, "Living History."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/02/24/463280/-Wow-Clinton-Attacked-12-Year-Old-Rape-Victim-s-Credibility-UPDATED

Hillary believed her 41 year old client to be guilty of luring a 12 year old girl into his automobile, plying her with alcohol and sexually assaulting her.

“I had him take a polygraph, which he passed—which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” she is heard telling Reed, punctuating her comment with a laugh.

In a July 28, 1975 affidavit, "Clinton attacked the credibility of the young alleged victim, claiming that she was 'emotionally unstable' and had a 'tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing.'

Isn't that pretty much how she dismissed Monica Lewinsky's allegations? We all know what happened to Monica. I wonder what happened to that poor 12 year old girl in Arkansas. She sure as hell never got justice, did she?

HRC gets a child rapist a reduced sentence (2 months for time served), laughs about it, and there are people here who, even with the ready excuse of it being a long time ago, cannot bring themselves to criticize Clinton. Amazing. Incredibly disturbing, but amazing.

The defense prevailed, Clinton told Reed, when she realized that the crime lab had woefully mishandled the girl’s bloody underwear—a key piece of evidence.

“The crime lab took the pair of underpants, neatly cut out the part that they were gonna test, tested it, came back with the result of what kind of blood it was what was mixed in with it—then sent the pants back with the hole in it to evidence…Of course the crime lab had thrown away the piece they had cut out.”

Clinton said she traveled to New York City and found a renowned forensic expert who would testify that the remaining material lacked a sufficient amount of blood to test. Clinton said she catalogued the expert’s intimidating resume and handed it to the prosecutor. “I said, ‘Well, this guy’s ready to come up from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice.’”

At which point, on the recording, she’s heard bursting into laughter.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-hillary-tapes/

and from another source:

Clinton recounts how she took what remained of the (bloodied) underwear to a renowned forensics expert in New York to have him confirm that the remnants were unsuitable for confirmation testing. She tells the interviewer how she returned to Arkansas with a letter from the expert and a clip of his biography from “Who’s Who.”

“I handed it to [the prosecutor], and I said, ‘Well this guy’s ready to come up from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice,” Clinton says with sarcastic laughter. “So we were gonna plea bargain.”

Facing an evidentiary disaster, and the prospect of defense testimony by a celebrity witness, the prosecutor caved. Instead of a hefty prison sentence, the accused rapist got off with time served – which Clinton recalled was about two months in the county jail.

see also, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2658801/I-never-trusted-polygraph-Hillary-Clinton-LAUGHS-recalls-helped-suspected-child-rapist-walk-free-prosecution-lost-crucial-evidence.html


Clinton’s job at the time was defending those accused of crimes who couldn’t afford to pay for their own defense; her client was a factory worker whom she believed to be guilty. I had classmates who worked for our county's public defender's office. Believe me, it was pulling teeth to get the budget to pay for a local expert witness. So how many other clients of the Arkansas public defender's office got short shrift for funding to develop evidence for their cases so HRC could fly into NY and hire an expert (we in the biz call them hired guns). Air fare, hotel, expert witness fee - that cost a pretty penny. If he was a "celebrity" expert witness, his fees would have been quite high, even back then.

When you hear her voice describing it, and the laughter, it's not hard to picture the air quotes around “miscarriage of justice”. It was never about justice if she believed her client was guilty, it was about going to extreme lengths to win.

You can still vote for her if you’d like. But don't justify her actions, either at the time she went to extraordinary lengths to get a guilty man a greatly reduced sentence, or years later in this interview when she violated the attorney's code of professional responsibility by making these comments about her client. It’s an insult to those who have been victims and it's an insult to lawyers who actually follow the rule of attorney-client confidentiality, and would never disclose to ANYONE the results of a client’s polygraph and guilt (since that is a violation of attorney-client privilege) let alone bragging to a reporter about getting rape charges dropped from a client they believed to be guilty.