Judging Lopez, continued

by Dan Kennedy

"The idea that it's unusual for a judge to have an outburst in court is nonsense," says Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers. "If it had been a male judge, I think there would have been much less of this kind of reaction." The problem, Rivers says, is that a "powerful woman" was seen acting in "a very unfemalelike way."

For three years back in the 1980s, when I was a reporter for the Woburn Daily Times Chronicle, I watched as federal district judge Walter Jay Skinner -- a man with a reputation for Yankee rectitude and manners -- repeatedly and angrily berated Jan Schlichtmann, the lawyer for the families in the toxic-waste case made famous by the book and the movie A Civil Action. Those who saw the movie know exactly what I mean, although I think the portrayal of Skinner did him a disservice. Skinner lost his temper on occasion, and Schlichtmann sometimes deserved it. So what? As Globe columnist Joan Vennochi put it on Tuesday: "Style and temperament deemed unsuitable can take any professional woman down -- and quickly. With men, they are just part of the professional package."

* The transgender factor. Charles Horton likes to dress as a woman and to be referred to as "she." That doesn't make what she did any less serious, of course, but neither does it make it any more serious. Yet it has been played up in virtually every story, especially on the lower-rent radio talk shows, where homosexuality is still synonymous with pedophilia and homophobia is synonymous with common sense.

Which brings us to Tuesday's Herald, which featured a big color photo on the front page of Horton dressed as a woman at her high-school prom four years ago, and a black-and-white one inside. There is no way on God's green earth that the Herald was not going to run such photos, and, frankly, to argue that it shouldn't have is to argue that it should cease being the Herald. But publishing them certainly wasn't the most responsible step the Herald could have taken, especially coming at a time when Horton's safety may be in danger. More to the point, the pictures underscore an essential truth: that this story has legs at least as much because it is titillating as because of the merits.

* The juvenile factor. This is an area fraught with journalistic and ethical hazard, but there's no question that the full facts of the case haven't come out because the victim was 11 last November at the time the crime took place, thus making it difficult, if not impossible, to circumvent privacy restrictions regarding juveniles.

Essentially, the Horton case is defined by two competing versions of events. On one side -- the far-better-publicized side -- is the version promulgated by the office of Suffolk County district attorney Ralph Martin: that Horton, 22, lured the victim by asking him for help in finding her child, took him to a secret place, threatened him with a screwdriver, and demanded that he simulate oral sex on the screwdriver. And, in fact, Horton's guilty plea lends credence to that version of events, in that she accepted the prosecution's charges of kidnapping, attempted rape, indecent assault on a minor, and assault with a dangerous weapon.

Competing with the DA's theory is a rather different set of facts being put forth by people familiar with Judge Lopez or close to the defense. This alternative version has been reported most publicly in a story in last Sunday's Herald by Tom Mashberg and in an interview on WGBH-TV's Greater Boston on Monday with William Leahy, head of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, as the public defenders' office is known. According to this interpretation, the physical contact involved embracing and kissing; neither force nor genital contact was involved, and the screwdriver found on the scene was used in neither a threatening nor a lascivious manner -- the latter point supported by a saliva test taken by police, according to Leahy. By Wednesday, the Globe was reporting that it had obtained a copy of said report. A Boston Police officer who happened upon the scene -- and who, as Peter Gelzinis reported in Tuesday's Herald, isn't talking -- is said to have exculpatory evidence that the prosecution refused to pay attention to. Additionally, Lopez had before her a report from a psychiatric social worker who found that Horton does not fit the profile of a sexual predator or a pedophile. There are reportedly no previous convictions in Horton's past. Moreover, Horton is said to have been thoroughly shaken up by a two-month jail stay prior to her guilty plea, and to be putting her life back together by joining a church and going to college.

On Monday, Greater Boston host Emily Rooney asked Leahy about rumors that the victim was found with $50 in his pocket, but Leahy brushed the question aside. Two days later, the victim's grandmother told the Herald that Horton had given the boy $50, supposedly as a reward for helping her find her child. This much is certain: we haven't heard the last of the $50, no matter how much Globe columnist Eileen McNamara -- an outspoken critic of the so-called whispering campaign regarding the victim -- wishes it were so.

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Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www.dankennedy.net

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Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com

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Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here

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