Judy Harrison–an experienced legal reporter who attended James Tobin’s trial from voir dire to sentencing–wants to know: Why did Tobin’s attorneys keep him from testifying?
Not putting a defendant on the stand may have been the biggest* mistake Tobin’s defense team made in a trial strategy that at times seemed to be more focused on a possible appeal than on getting at the truth of what happened.
Experienced white-collar-crime Attorney Jay McCloskey, for eight years the U.S. attorney for Maine, is clearly also baffled by their decision. McCloskey told Harrison that “in white-collar cases, my view is that your chances of winning are increased if you put the defendant on the stand.” Harrison lists the very few ways a defendant could hurt his own case:
- Jurors might not like him.
- He lacks the ability to communicate
- He might “hint at a previous criminal history.”
- He might “inadvertently admit to other crimes on the stand.”
(FindLaw gives a similar list.) James Tobin, with a successful career in politics, many friends, and a spotless past, had little to fear.
Keeping Tobin quiet hurt him in obvious ways:
- Jurors don’t tend to like or trust defendants who plead the Fifth.
- Despite Tobin’s silence, prosecution witnesses convinced the jury of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Because of Tobin’s silence, he couldn’t apologize or tell his own side of the story. Put this together with his lawyers’ futile claims that he’d done nothing illegal, and Tobin looked as if he didn’t think messing up an election was any big deal–something the judge explicitly cited when sentencing him to ten months in federal prison.
McCloskey also told Harrison that defendants don’t keep quiet to “take a bullet” for higher-ups. Maybe not–but James Tobin *might* be kept quiet if legal counsel advised him that this was in his own best interests. But was it? Is it still in his best interests? I don’t think so, but of course I am not a lawyer.
For me, this once again raises
the question if the RNC’s $2.8 million paid for Williams and Connelly lawyers to defend James Tobin
or for lawyers whose first interest was instead a cover-up on behalf of the RNC.
* In my opinion, keeping Tobin off the stand was only the defense’s third biggest mistake. The biggest mistake was Tobin’s failure to plead guilty and cooperate. The second biggest mistake was…something I’m not going to explain here, because DC lawyers don’t need any help from me with manipulating juries and jurors.