Sunday, March 25, 2012

Allergic to Truth: Stan Levco's Compulsion to Deceive

  The list of documented falsehoods presented by Stan Levco in the 1993 murder trial and conviction of Patrick Bradford is astounding. It is astounding, in part, because of the sheer number of witnesses who lied under oath in contradiction of original, exculpatory statments. It is astounding because of the blatancy with which Levco presented the obviously false testimony. Astounding because of the diabolical logistics that must have been involved. Because of the extent to which the jury didn't notice--or didn't care. The willingness of the perjurors, the indifference of the press....

   The more overt examples, the flagrant perjuries, are a sure guage of Levco's professional corruption, but the State's case was infused with deception from beginnng to end. Perhaps the best indiation of Levco's personal corruption--the abysmal depavity of his moral character--is seen in the pettier examples, not involving suborning or conspiracy. These appear to be deception for its own sake; just Levco being Levco.

   One such example involves information that Patrick volunteered to detectives in his intial interviews. In detailing his final visit with Tammy, Patrick recalled that she had mentioned an incident at the Sports Park where she had worked that evening as an umpire. A couple of young men had harassed her by throwing rocks or pebbles at her. She heard them say something implicity threatening, but not directly to her. Tammy was not especially concerned about it.

   Detectives interviewed three employees of the Sports Park about the incident (whether to check Patrick's story or to find suspects; it is not known which). The chances of finding somebody who saw the minor incident were slim, because there was no way to know who all was present. But surprisingly, one witness was found who reported that Tammy had indeed experienced a problem with a couple of spectators.

   During the trial, however, Levco attempted to obscure the clear and simple truth. He called the two witnesses who had not seen the problem (2138-2178-79). But he deliberately left out the one witness who did see it. The witness, who had to be called later by the defense to correct the deception, testified that two men in the stands had been "aggravating" and "pestering" Tammy at the game (3038-40).The only way the defense knew of the witness was through court-ordered discovery--from the prosecution!

   Is there still a chance that this was not a deliberate ploy to obscure the truth? Any such possibility is eliminatd in Levco's closing argument, in which he again asserted that the incident was fabricated. In a display of almost incomprehensible arrogance, he flies in the face of the plain truth, as though the truth is simply whatever he says it is.

   What is particularly astonishing about such "small" instances of prosecutorial decption throughout the trial is that they were perpetraed as business-as-usual; as though this is the prosecutor's job. Indeed, the present example was not a crime (unlike the suborned perjuries). It may not even qualify as unethical by the standards of the Bar Association (unlike the instances of eliciting false testimony). But even a child knows that the prosecutor's job is to present the truth, not to obscure it.

   They say that power corrupts. It may be more correct to say that power reveals--magnifies--existing character. Corrupt practices are the logical products of corrupt character. It may be incapable of operating within the truth, like some kind of moral allergy.