glad to be here and i want to talk about a lot of things we don't have a tremendous amount of time i'm going to leave time at the end for a q and a and if i keep talking without doing that somebody just do one of these and i'll stop talking because i do think  important reason for us to be here and share information not just listen to me a couple of the stories i want to tell are about some cases that i've had that i think are particularly relevant to the senior center and  involve people and their rights that are not well known enough and there are stories i want to share because they are stories of victory and but they're also about making sure you know that this actually exists that there's a case that provides rights for you that you may not even know about i mean some fortunate that i should be the one to share with you knowledge of your rights as people in this country but in fact there are lots of things that we have as rights that we don't know about because how that information gets shared is controlled by a lot of different factors and you know i don't own my own network otherwise you can hope anyway so as you heard i've worked for a lot of television radio stations over the years probably some of you know me from one or the other of the channels i've been working on t v and radio for about well almost twenty years i think and but i've also always been a real lawyer i haven't just played one on t v and sometimes people say to me oh you're on t v as a lawyer but are you a real lawyer and that kills me because the work that i do know is so important to me and very often i'm known instead for having a you know insulting some guy on television which is fine too but i actually have always been a real lawyer and i've always been really invested in doing law reform work which is to say most of my cases are designed to both help my clients and change the legal system or change a doctrine of law very few of my cases don't fit in that definition so i don't so i'm careful about the cases i choose and i usually only choose cases where if i take it on it will be both good for my client and produce some kind of reform in the legal system a couple of those cases are very important to me and i think would be important you want to talk about those later  but some examples of cases i've worked on but i'm not going to talk about in detail i just want to wet your whistle a little bit and get you thinking because i know someday you might say oh i remember she mentioned she had a case like that so i think i'll color because it's possible that it's  enough situation that you're going to you're going to remember this little bit i told you and here that someone some where needs a lawyer for this issue when i really mean it when i say please call me it'll be for free because these are the kinds of issues that i deal with all over the country and a lot of times the injustices are invisible because the people who suffer them aren't aware that they've suffered them it's kind of related to that same issue of you don't know what your rights are so if you don't know what your rights are in their violated you don't know they've been violated so the few cases i'm about to describe to you in just a few sentences each are examples of cases where when these things happen the people they happen to generally don't know that they have suffered an injustice so example and i often end up suing judges which is really fun and not very easy and really the legal system doesn't like it but it is doable it is doable it's hard to do or you can't in every case but it is doable so for example i sued a judge in nebraska some years ago because he ordered a rape victim not to use the word rape during her trial testimony think about that it was a rape case she was testifying and she was also described what happened to her body and he said she couldn't use the word rape she couldn't use the phrase sexual assault she had to refer to the sexual assault nurse as the sexual nurse she had to refer to the sexual assault nurse examiner as the sexual nurse examiner see where this is going so it was a case i had actually been kind of looking for as a test case to it so i flew to nebraska to represent her and i basically filed a motion with the court saying due respect judge you don't have the authority to tell a human being what words to use when they testify in a court of law if she wants to testify that you know it was baloney and cheese sandwich i mean if she wants to call it something that makes no sense that's home parag to them and the jury will decide how it feels about her her credibility you don't dictate to her what words to use moreover if you say you were a rape victim you're not allowed to call it rape you're not allowed to use the words sexual assault you refused to hear me and as you heard i have five kids i've got five kids back here and i'm in the middle of nowhere in nebraska trying very hard to just let this judge do the right thing and i'm being respectful and he waited me out he knew i would never he knew i wouldn't stay forever and after about four days i left to come back home and as i was on the way to the airport he called my client and ordered her in to the courtroom which was completely predictable i said as soon as i'm on my way to the airport he's going to call you in for a hearing and so i prepared her very well for what was going to happen which was predictable he said do you understand my order yes i do do you understand that you're going to go to jail if you don't obey my orders she said your honor when i raise my hand and swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth that's exactly what i intend to do he was furious because he couldn't be angry with her how can you how can you condemn someone who promises to tell the truth she wouldn't bite she wouldn't go along with his attempt to characterize her as a person who was planning to do something contemptuous to the court she said i will tell the truth and that's what i and you know what i'm supposed to do he slammed the gavel down just missed the case sent the jurors home and was really angry with her for not obeying him even though her refusal to obey him was out of respect for her first amendment right to use her own words in a court of law so after he dismissed the case which was sort of good for us i sued him in federal court i sued the state court judge in federal court for violating the federal constitution because a state court judge can't violate the federal constitution they think they can but they can't so i sued him and asked the federal court to order him when the trial came up again to not tell her that she can't use her own words to describe what happened and the federal court was even more angry that i have to lawsuit against a judge than was the state court judge angry that i had the audacity to cite the first amendment on behalf of my client's interests so the federal judge let's just say in the decision it was a painful decision to read because he was unpleasant about his feelings toward me and said something to the effect of it is shocking that a woman lawyer from boston would show up in nebraska federal court to do her gender politics of course i thought i was doing the first amendment indeed and no in there right there he drops a footnote and says on the other hand it is equally disturbing that a judge in a rape case would order a rape victim not to use the word rape during trial and he said something like it is reminiscent of the kinds of things we hear about from countries where women wear burkas so that footnote is my victory the rest of the case he was slapping me around like who does she think she is she should not be in the brass to run her out of town it was awful but in my work i've learned to see that footnote as a great victory that's a kind of a break in the armor if you well  you know it's important to take those little things as big victories because judges are not happy about criticizing themselves or each other so the wonderful thing about that case was among other things it provoked a lot of public attention and i forget how many times it was on the news but one of the reasons it was on the news it was on a lot of the national channels one of the reasons is that when it got out that i had sued a judge not for money it was you know for it was really like an appeal it wasn't a lawsuit for money it was for injunctive or what we call equitable relief just ordered him not to do not to violate the federal constitution so  after it became known that i had sued him and there were activists there women wearing tape across their mouths so we did have a little protest it's true which also judges don't like but because it got some press a state senator from nebraska decided that he would file a lawsuit against god and he went on c n n and said and i and the only reason he filed the lawsuit against god was to mock what i had done and then he went on c n n and said over and over again if a rape victim can sue and judge then i can sue god and i was like i think god's insulted by that i don't quite get your point but i know you kind of think a judge is like a god which he isn't it was incredible how much of a reaction there was to this idea that it was  to stand up to a judge and say you don't have the power to do that i tell you that little bit of a story because that's basically what i do a lot of my cases are me saying to courts you don't have the power to do that and they don't like to be told that they don't have the power because they think they have the power another example i represented a child in west virginia who had been sexually violated by a family member and didn't report it for several years when she did finally report it the prosecutor investigated the police investigated  charges and the person admitted to doing the act nevertheless i think about three years had passed from the last time there was abuse to the time she reported so they didn't do any forensic exam that's or you know rape kits and so forth and the charges were moving forward and the defense attorney filed a motion to force the victim to submit to an examination by the defense of her high level tissue so they could see whether there was any evidence inside of her body and the prosecutor thought it was such a stupid argument because basically they filed a motion for the court to allow them to rape the rape victim and this is not a joke so the prosecutor thought it was such a stupid thing to ask for and that they barely showed up at the hearing to object and the judge said our last would not kidding they then said well we're going to appeal and of course we're going to win and the prosecutor appealed and they wast the appellate court in west virginia i won't publicly mention that it was west virginia but the public a i know like i said it was west virginia so the prosecutor contacted me and asked if i would represent the victim to take it into the federal legal system again this is kind of what i do is when the state courts do wrong by victims i go into the federal courts so as i have in the brass i sued in this case i sued the entire appellate court of west virginia which they also don't like but i sued them and you know try to go to the supreme court actually sued the entire court in federal court and said the same sort of thing you don't have the authority to order the rape of a rape victim why should i even have to put that in writing you don't have the power you can't do that it's uncivilized i mean it was really barbaric i had the national district attorneys association on my side saying you can't do this it's ridiculous not to mention unconstitutional on so many levels anyway it was so clear that we were going to prevail but they couldn't put it in writing murphy's right let's hope she sues lots more judges right so they can't put that in writing instead as the case was making its way through a variety of very hyper technical procedural arguments around  forth my client was a kid who lived in the mountains and you know they had no money they were extremely poor i think i want to say they lived in appalachian but they were at least near there and i couldn't even communicate because they didn't have a foam and eventually a document was filed in the case that said the case is moot because the victim has submitted to the examination i said that's interesting that my client submitted to an examination but i'm in the middle of litigating my client's of minute house so i was denied an answer to the question but as it turned out what i was told was that the defense attorneys approached the family for some incentive some incentive happened perhaps cash comes to mind and she agreed to submit and my skill went south what that means is we won sort of right because that was clear we were correct on the law otherwise the a court would have written a ruling saying murphy is wrong we're allowed to do this obviously they're not allowed to do that but the way the case got resolved to prevent the appellate court from issuing a decision saying this is barbaric and unconstitutional and you can't do it to prevent that from happening they had to make the case disappear through unethical means it was completely unethical for anybody to communicate with my client because she was represented but the court didn't care or the court did not care the case disappeared  the reason i characterize that as a win i know these are strange kinds of cases to think about as victories but it hasn't happened since and that's one of the reasons to file a case like that right is to not only try to help that individual but to make sure it doesn't happen again and so that doesn't happen anymore at least not in west virginia i mentioned to you because if you do hear about it i get the briefs you call them another case just very briefly and then i want to give you a little queer this and some of you may have read about this because it's been in the news a lot coming in coming and i represent a fourteen year old girl here in massachusetts some of my cases are actually here in massachusetts  represent a fourteen year old girl here in massachusetts who became pregnant from a rape she was in eighth grade and for religious reasons she chose to keep the child the child's just lovely and adorable and wonderful and she  she just loves her child so much and it's irrelevant to my client that how she became pregnant she really does not care it doesn't hurt the child it doesn't hurt her however here's what happened after the man was found guilty of raping a child because if your fourteen that's a child he rapes are he impregnates or she gives birth before the criminal case is over and at the end of the criminal case he's found guilty and the judge sentences him to probation for eighteen well for sixteen years the child was two by then by the time of the sentence sixteen years probation during which time you must go to family court declare yourself the father and comply with the court's orders and my client sitting in the back of the room with her mother going i am not going to family court with him the court's order against him was obviously also in order against her because if she doesn't show up in family court what happens he went with scott's to the he gets the child i mean hit all kinds of things so she would have to go for sixteen years to family court because it's kind of you know it's an issue and it had its initial without a lot of case law so i was hoping to really use it as an example to set the stage to set the standards and to protect women who do become pregnant parade lots of women become pregnant f i mean millions is the right number for rape but the impregnation happens about twenty to thirty thousand times and and that younger ages than ever before  so you know setting the good case law setting the standards was important to be able to say to the women that this was happening to you're going to be protected because here's what was happening anyone any man who was impregnating a victim during a rape was the same to her if you don't call the police i won't seek visitation if you don't testify against me i won't seek custody if you don't trust if you don't testify against me if you agree that i can have a low sentence i'll give up my parental rights they would leveraging their rights against these victims when i got involved i was audacious enough to say to the offender and his lawyer what makes you think you have any parental rights to start with you don't you don't love fridge rights that you don't have do good and i start filing appeals and basically saying you can't you can't assume you have the rights as a father because the victim happened to be arguing waiting on the day you raped or that's not how fatherhood is created your d n a ate all that great well i thought it was such an easy argument that i'm just going to point out d n a is nothing and the way the way the way d n a becomes nothing is not just because i think it's a great idea to say d n a it's nothing it's the people who are families in all kinds of ways these days that have nothing to do with that's not dispositive in so many other ways how in lord's name could it be dispositive in this case in fact the laws settled in massachusetts that if you are a sperm donor you're obviously the d n a father right you have no rights at all you can't even walk into family court they throw you out the back door much less can you file paperwork much less can you demand visitation or parental rights you have donation through violence right at least the sperm donor wasn't violent so rageous that case is still pending here in massachusetts because our state supreme judicial court and our lower appellate court have both avoided the issue for the most part or declined to grant protection to my client whose trial has now supper we've protected her thus far she has not had to be with him at all we've protected her but now we're in federal court saying to the federal court the state courts are just doing it wrong they've got it wrong this woman and her child are entitled to federal constitutional protection liberty the right to be let alone the right not to be forced by the government in the nature of a state court order forced to attend family court for one day much less sixteen years bikeway didn't do anything wrong that a judge would be able to say i order you to go to family court for sixteen years she didn't hurt anybody why should the government be telling her how to spend her sixteen years because she happened to have become pregnant through somebody else's act of violence that's what we're dealing with and that's what i've asked the federal courts to say to just be clear this is a convicted rapist we're not talking about cases where there aren't any police involved or you know there's no prosecution we're talking about a convicted rapist getting parental rights the sanctity of parental rights the gift of parental rights the privilege of parental rights as a reward for committing an act of violence that's messages that i mean i'm sure you read some of the other stuff that's going on in massachusetts like the some of the proposals to eliminate the age of consent did you read about that in belmont paper and you know to his credit will brownsburg or is openly addressing people's concerns about their side met with him i've debated him i've spoke i've criticized him the proposal that the senate supported when he women at the age of consent completely so that a five year old could engage in all sorts of acts with a somewhat similarly aged child so a five and a six year old for example could do certain things i'm trying to be polite here because i know skin to end up on cable like you can at this out but let's just say what the law calls unnatural acts use your imagination so not just intercourse unnatural acts would be permitted as long as the people involved are kind of close in age within a year or two of each other depending on the age and i you know i just said to senator brown sugar why does a six year old need permission from the law are the the authority of the law are to do that what what planet are you i can't speak to that those children need protection protection if they're if that's going on behind closed doors you want social services to be able to get involved in that family and help the child you're going to tie their hands if you say no it's ok for them to do this every single case i've ever had in my thirty years in this business where kids young kids are engaging in that kind of activity it's because the adults around them are doing bad things to them and you want to be able to get social services in that family to help those children to rescue those children giving them consent the giving those children the ability to consent is like saying we're not going to protect them because it's the only thing we have right that's a terrible terrible propose terrible topos the only other case that i want to share with you very quickly is involved a case i had both in colorado and texas and it also military the military story is fascinating a lot of levels because a an air force academy a woman in the air force academy was subjected to sexual harassment and violence by her senior officer when she reported that she was advised smartly to seek counseling outside of the military because if you seek counseling inside of the military sort of like seeking counseling in your college or in your workplace it's really not private it's not private at all if the military provides you with counseling the military will know what your counseling records contain because they own the counseling so she went to a civilian therapist for treatment and then started through the court martial process against her superior officer during which his attorney sent a military subpoena through the court martial judge to the civilian therapist and said turn over your privileged confidential therapy records and the civilian therapist who has sight hello given you my records they're protected under state law up and under federal law and they're protected i'm not giving them to you when you're the military and i'm not giving them to you well the military called her and said the judge has ordered you to turn them over you can get an attorney or you can turn them over those are your choices so she found me i flew to texas to represent her at the court martial proceeding and i filed the same kind of thing at the cases there judge you don't have the authority to and the judge didn't take too kindly to that especially in the military they don't like to be told they don't have authority to do whatever they don't want this judge was very adamant that he was being kind to me by letting me speak that was good enough and you know we left texas and he said i'll let you know my decision and literally three seconds later he issued his decision do you know i'd turn the records over by whatever the date was a few days later or go to jail go to jail my client was terrified so now she's living in colorado the court mar was in texas but the place where this all was happening was in colorado so now i fly the colorado and what did i do i filed a lawsuit against the military i just sue judges  in federal court in colorado and in connection with that case the federal judge said when we first went in the federal i said your honor this is a civilian therapist the military has no power over civilians end of discussion period like i don't need to write a brief i need to write a one sentence thing they have no power here and the judge said ellen de wine well i think  murphy is right you know this is improper this is a correct blah blah blah we went back a day later and let's just say the tide had turned and the judge said i'm not going to interfere with the military and i'm not go i'm not going to stop them they can have what they want and i thought what is wrong with you why would you do that why would you say that who called you and so suspicious so he suggested which is often what i do take it out to whatever court of appeals it was federal court of appeals and you know i kind of saw the writing on the wall and i told my client look the media was covering this case a lot which was good very good for us and they were sympathetic because they knew the military had no power to do this so i said we can appeal but i'm not getting the feeling we're going to win not after what this judge has said they've threatened to arrest you call him on their block but them i dear that to arrest you i'll have cameras there and we'll see it happen would be great let's do it so i sent her back home and i think i went back home to boston i did it because the day came when they were going to arrest her and i said just let me know make sure the camera running and let me know and they marched up her walk knocked on the door she was terrified i said look i don't think they're going to arrest you but i could be wrong let's see what they do and the reason i thought they wouldn't arrest or is because paying me and my client i can't or wait for you to arrest her eye all of it i want all that money do it and they showed up at her door they marched narked she opened the door they said can we have your file and she said nope and they left i love it i love it so she called me she said oh my goodness they asked when i said no they left i said works for me and  then and then it turns out that the judge so that was the would you call them the u s marshals had gone to him to arrest her and the u s marshals now had to report to the judge in texas and they called the judge in texas and why will the u s marshals were told to stand down why put them on the farm so the judge made the marshal's office get on the phone and said why didn't the restaurant ordered you to arrest and they said we were we were told by d c to stand and it turns out they had an emergency meeting the d o d the d o j you know the military various letters of groups they have whatever they're called and they also in the room and s now we're going to get sued and it's going to be expensive if we arrest her because we don't have the power to order her to turn over her file because she's a civilian they then told me one of the people from d c then told me that that judge in texas was relocated great so in a sense we didn't win but we didn't mean it right we didn't win in court but boy did we win because that didn't happen again those are some of the examples of stories of real cases that i work on that i love and that in effect kind of thing ever comes to your attention please call me because these are cases where ordinary lawyers aren't necessarily going to think outside the box the way that these cases require and there are lots of great creative lawyers and i work with bunches of them around the country they work for free they'll do all kinds of stuff for free but it takes that first step of knowing that you should ask for help and sometimes victims don't and then connecting people who know people and you know making that phone call it's really important because it was quite accidental how these people found me in these cases and i know there's a thousand more similar cases that never get addressed never get redressed and that ended in terrible injustice and it makes people sick you know it doesn't just hurt their feelings it actually can hurt physically when you're mistreated in the name of justice it really does hurt people ok and a little bit i'm going to tell you about  watch t v crime do you guys watch some of those new shows have you watched in the past like nancy grace or geraldo rivera ok well we'll see if you remember these i'm going to give you initially and then a hint and you tell me what case i'm talking about ok all right j b are blonde child jon benet ramsey is correct to the woman in the front was the oh was a virginia ok smith s s p very pregnant and jay don't even have to give you the next one m j neverland right this is a this is i think the guys will get this maybe not and they buy into it with a toupee w shaken baby i know that just that nobody should ever have those letters in their name for the rest of eternity right it's nothing good about that sound i don't even like orange juice anymore all right i now want to talk about some of the high profile cases because then at some point we should definitely do some q and a but before we get to those the ruby mcdonough case which was a little bit of a high profile case but not in the national news sense but it's important to me to share with this audience in particular what ruby story entails because ruby mcdonough was literally voiceless alive the stories have told you about  voiceless ness in the legal sense so bad things happen to you you're upset you don't you don't know your rights you're trying to advance your rights you have no lawyer you don't know how to make it happen well ruby was one of those people plus she literally had no voice because ruby had a stroke in her fifty's and that landed her in a nursing home in sudbury called sudbury pints where she began living for the rest of while she still lives or so she began living there after the stroke the stroke had a negative effect on her brain insofar as she was unable to form sentences and have cognitive what's the right word have cognitive abilities to process information in certain ways so for example if you asked her what she had for breakfast she probably couldn't answer she would try but it would come out very  and probably nothing would come out because her brain's trying to say put the question together with the answer in the memory of what it was and if she could she can't do that on the other hand if you asked her what the months of the year were she would take january february march because that's from a different part of her brain so she this was a fascinating woman she also was really smart really smart so the ability to form a sentence or the inability to form a sentence really had nothing to do with her intelligence it was a communication disability while ruby was in the nursing home with this disability which most people perceived when you look at her they perceive her to be a person who la intelligence because she couldn't communicate she couldn't communicate keep her rights think it was her right side was a bit slumped over as many stroke victims have one side or the other sneaked into her room and closed the door and sexually violated her in a couple of different ways he left after a little while she was very distraught and in the morning she tried to tell her social worker and the way she tried to tell was by going like this and touching her body and the social worker said do you to use the bathroom no no no because she she could say yes and she could say no and she could answer those quick answer yes or no style questions correctly if you said you need to go to the bathroom and she didn't she'd say no and she said did you have breakfast and she did say yes she was very good about hearing and being able to say yes and note to things but and she had a word book on her  bedside table of her room where if it was a complicated thing she could point to it i want to brush my teeth to the point to a picture where there's no picture in her word book for what had happened obviously and she didn't have the words so she kept using her gestures with one hand and the social worker just didn't know what to make of it she drove she literally wheeled herself around the nursing home trying to find the man so she could point and say something with her hand that man that man was she couldn't say the words but she could point and she looked for him for a few days and he was off for a few days so she couldn't find him when he came back on shift about three days later she spied him he wasn't ordinarily in her unit but she spied him and she chased him tom hoffa wheelchair yelling you you you you and then the social worker said oh ok she brought ruby into the office she said i saw you pointing at kofi did something happen yes yes what happened and she starts patting her body again the social worker looked at the file turned out this man kofi had done the same thing to another woman in the dementia unit a few months earlier but she couldn't remember what he did so they kept him she couldn't remember so she couldn't reliably tell ruby did not have dementia so she communicated brilliantly once it was clear that this had happened to the social worker the social worker called the police as it happens one of the detectives who showed was a woman whose grandmother had a facia that's what it was ruby had expressive aphasia from the stroke she had a grandmother with the same condition so she do exactly how to communicate how lucky was that and the detective sat with her and within an hour had the whole story because she asked her questions that she could answer and she allowed her to communicate the way she could about using gestures and so forth they left they arrested kofi at his house and asked him you know was there any reason for you to be touching her we'll washing her no no no no well it turns out he was in this country illegally so when he was arrested he was put on a nice detainer a detainer as you know with like a federal warrant that holds you under federal law while you're facing state because you could be subject to deportation depending on what happens in the state case so he was being held by the federal government for the state charges he was charged with which i think was an under because of what he did to her but he was charged with two counts of indecent assault and battery on an elderly person in connection with those charges the defense attorney filed a motion to submit would be to a competency exam she was not incompetent but this was a very disrespectful thing he did to attempt to i think denigrate her and exploit her disability and the judge allowed it so they scheduled a competency hearing and before that happened ruby was examined by the court psychologist in the court psychologist world report saying she's not incompetent she's fine i can speak to her you just have to speak to her in a certain way and she's perfectly fine perfectly competent she can't marry words but she can communicate and she's reliable and she's smart the judge then schedule the hearing everybody shows up at the hearing ruby is sitting in front of  wheelchair sitting at the at the microphone next to the judge the defense attorney is then allowed to ask her questions which is not allowed when you're having a competency hearing only the judge is supposed to ask you questions because it's not an adversarial proceeding it's just for the court to determine whether you're capable of testifying reliably but the judge let the defense attorney ask her questions and knowing that she could only answer yes and no style questions because that was in the psychologist's report the defense attorney nonetheless asked her things like tell us what happened and of course ruby's response was because she can't marry it and then h say can you describe what happened and then he stood exactly in between her and the perpetrator and said do you see the man in court here today who assaulted you and he was completely blocking the man's feet blocking ruby's view of the man who was crouched down behind the barrier where the defendants are in his little orange prison suit he was crouched down ruby couldn't see him so when the defen attorney said can you see it do you see the man in court here today who abused you ruby couldn't say yes because she couldn't see him but she couldn't say no because she knew he was there and she couldn't explain it because she couldn't speak in sentences so she started crying and when she started crying the judge said that's it i've heard enough you're not competent to testify dismissed the case well no i took it back scheduled the case for dismissal sent everybody home that's when i got the call to get involved in the case and again it was one of those cases i was looking for couldn't wait to get my hands on why because never in the history of massachusetts law had the rights of the disabled been recognized in a court of law with regard to testimony anybody here to  guess what rights had people with disabilities been granted with regard to courthouses before this what's the what's the only right you know of what is it what what do we do for people with disabilities in terms of court houses wheelchair exactly see only thing that had ever been granted by the case law people in disability have a right to participate in public matters while court proceedings are certainly public matters criminal cases are the quintessential public matters and here all we had to offer ruby was a wheelchair ramp that got her into the courthouse all right but it did not enable her to participate her participatory rights were nonexistent she was entitled to accommodations to enable her to testify effectively as an equal fully equal human being in a court of law and what happened to her instead the judge discriminated against or the defense attorney blatantly discriminated against her and exploited her disability nobody in the room objected the prosecutor didn't object the prosecutor let it go on that she even had a lawyer in the room from this place that claims to be an advocacy group for victims called the victim's rights law center i considered suing them for malpractise they sat in the room silent while she was treated like that by the defense attorney and by the court disgusting they all should have been sued all should have been sued when i got involved i went to meet with her first because i said if i'm going to advocate for this woman i have to make sure that i can communicate with her before i start telling the court that she can communicate and i went to meet with her in the nursing home and introduced myself and i said  never done this before i don't really know how to communicate i've never known anybody with a facial i didn't know what a facial was but i knew that i cared about the fact that she had been exploited as a person with a disability so the t sesame street know who you know those are the kinds of things and she had such intonation in her voice she was a steranko and it was very clear to me that she was very competent and even we tested her in some point later and you know the there were all these presidents and their wives in pictures on a big board and not only could she say who went with whom she was like which ones of the republicans which ones of the democrats think she knew she was very capable so we filed an appeal i am in a sense i sued the kourt by filing a special appeal and asking the state supreme court to take the issue up as a case of first impression so that other people with disabilities would not be treated like this and what's funny is the court's first reaction was to question whether my client had standing to object and i said you're not serious the entire roomful of people all of whom call themselves lawyers or judges all obligated as officers of the court to protect people's rights all of them discriminated against her and your talent you're asking me if my client has standing to object i'll tell you this much she has standing to sue all of you if you don't take this case if this case doesn't get reviewed by the state supreme court i'm very happy to go down the road to the federal court and sue everybody your choice and so they took the case because i'd really rather not sue everybody and rather just win so they didn't take the case which was just a phenomenal opportunity to make law for the entire country because this wasn't just a problem in massachusetts this was nationwide nobody had ever ever granted accommodations to a person with communication disability in a in a court of law with regard to assisting them with accommodation so they could communicate effectively no one had ever before said for example to an attorney you can't block the witness and then ask a question the witness is incapable of answering because of their communication disability you can't trick the witness by exploiting their disability it's an it's it's a violation of her rights it's an explicit act of discrimination but why was this not ever decided before that was really the problem anyway the case went forward there was an enormous amount of pressure from the defense bar not to have the case resolved because what i was asking was that the defense attorneys be required to ask only certain types of questions and not other types of questions and defense attorneys don't like being told what kinds of questions to ask witnesses in criminal cases they want to be able to ask whatever style they want and i said to them you know it's not her fault that she's got this disability and the the lawyer for the perpetrator is forbidden to discriminate so there's really no fudge room here he has to be told not to ask certain kinds of questions and he has to be told to ask them only in a certain style and we have a very very big fight about it because this would have been the first time that an appellate court constrained and tied the hands of defense attorneys and how they ask questions on cross examination of victims in criminal cases so at oral argument on the case i don't know but you know i do a lot of appellate work and i want to know this but in an appellate court  it's kind of like traffic lights the green light goes on and you start speaking may please the court my name is wendy murphy and so forth and then when the yellow light goes on you start to wrap up and when the red light goes on you stop talking or you go to jail it's like really important don't keep talking and the only exception to that rule is if they keep asking you questions if the court keeps asking you questions and you have to stay even though the red light is up you have to stay in  dozens and dozens of cases i've had an appellate at the appellate court level in my career this one stands out because after my red light came on and i could tell from their questions that they knew they were going to be making law for the entire country so after they started asking me questions it seemed like oh you know they're aware that this is going to be an important decision and then the red light came on and they kept asking questions for a long time and i was up there and up there and up there and they kept going and going and going and i thought wow they don't do that they just don't do that unless they think this is a really important case when i sat down the defense attorney got back up and got up and had less than his entire time and his red light didn't even come on and he set down and then the prosecutor got up who believe it or not throughout the case except for that day was actually on the defense side i know it's hard to believe but it's true that some of the times when i would go to court with ruby the prosecutor in the defense would be together and i was alone and i'm thinking what's wrong with this picture the prosecutor should be with me but the prosecutor was not supportive of this idea in part because if i won then prosecutors have to respect people's disabilities too and that means prosecutors who disproportionately refused to file charges in cases where for example they think an elderly person may not be a strong enough witness or a person with a disability might not come across as credible that's discrimination and a prosecutor can get in trouble for that prosecutor can be sued for that for declining to file charges in in a for discriminatory reasons so the prosecutor didn't really want to support my position either at oral argument they kind of came around and one of the judges even said it appears the commonwealth has changed its view of this case is that correct and they said well sort of and the attorney general was on our side and we had lots of amicus support from groups around the country but my favorite part of the story is what happened after we won so and so i kind of knew we were going to do ok because i felt it from the questions from the justices but when the decision came down i was so happy because they did establish a law for the nation and we went back to court and i wheeled ruby m and i said ah we're going to go in the you know they're going to make they're going to let you testified and you're going to be like the hero and by this point the efficient community in boston was all i'm going to court to support her and go ruby go and we went into court after we won and were standing there and i said good morning your honor we're here to you know put the case back on track for trial so that we can testify with the accommodations that we won and the judge said ms murphy your client will not be heard you have no standing i am not putting the case back for trial i said your honor you can't you can't say that because we just want what she has a right to testify i have a right to file a request for accommodations here is my request i want him i want questions to be done a certain way i want her to have extra time to answer questions i want her to be able to use gestures to testify these are my requests ms murphy i said stop talking you have no standing here your client is not a party i said of course i have standing your honor the  supreme judicial court said i have a right to file a request for accommodations i don't care if you call it standing or something else as a right to file this and she has a right to testify ms murphy if you say another word i'll throw you in jail we're going to i said you're on it you can't do that ms murphy i said you have no standing i said if you're going to rule that i have no standing how will let me argue standing doctrine first before you rule against me on standing up what they argue standing i didn't really stop talking but i did get the i got the message so and i didn't really care about going to jail if i had going to jail the media would have covered the case ten times more effectively would have a nice little murder lee thing to do but instead i said find your own or i'll file another appeal and i did i left that day i said don't worry about it will be will go back up to the supreme judicial court all file another appeal and i found that emergency appeal basically saying you know to the justices would you kindly call that idiot and tell him that we won because he doesn't know and about a week later we got the call you know come back and of course this time we walk in and they were like well come welcome ruby wel mr murphy what can we do for you the same judge would you like to file oh do let me read that would you like to be heard what argument would you like to make those are great and my two very wonderful things happened as we were picking a trial date the judge said is everybody available for let's say march nineteenth whatever the date was and i said i'm available your honor and this was another date we went back ruby was in the back of the courtroom she went to every hearing and it was not easy she went to this day she was sitting in the back of the court room and this was the day we were going to pick the trial and then the next time she would come to court she would be testifying so she's sitting in her wheelchair and  said i'm available your honor but let me check with my client because this judge had never seen this was a different judge than the one who had found her incompetent this was the boss judge because it was so much bad press about how the other judge had mistreated her he was off the case now this was the boss judge so he hadn't ever seen ruby speak he didn't know her capacity he only knew what she looked like and that was often you know like this and she would drool and she you know she looked to be impaired she wasn't but i wanted to give him a chance to see her in some way communicate even though she wasn't there that day for the purpose of communicating but i said let me check with my client to see if she's available of course she would've been available every day for the rest of her life but that's another story so i walked back to the back of the courtroom and i stand aside her wheelchair to make sure he has a clear view of her and i face him and i say very loudly ruby are you available for trial march nineteenth and i'm thinking god let her say the right thing because if she didn't answer that question correctly he might have thrown the case out right there in the air if she had yelled out you knowing rock'n something and i was my heart was pounding as i said please please let her because i know her capacity so i'm really not worried about her but the stress often makes aphasia worse and i thought she might be feeling a little stress so i announce ruby are you available for trial on march nineteenth and she li one good arm and goes yes goes so great i'm like my clients ready for trial your honor marching forward i was so proud i so care what else happens that was beautiful we come back to the trial and i'm sitting in the room now the rooms filled with all the people from the aphasia community and i real ruby n went to turkey time to testify and situate her so she's got a bird's eye view of the perpetrator the judges up there and the lawyers are here and the guys right over there and i'm sitting to her immediate left in the you know where the public sets because again i'm not a prosecutor right i'm her lawyer the prosecutor in the defense attorney up there and it comes her time to testify and she's answering questions and it's and it comes time for her to identify the defendant like she had earlier and the prosecutor says mr mcdonough do you see the man in court here today who sexually violated you and ruby says yes and she said could you point him out for the court and she goes to lift up her good arm and as she does the defense attorney stands up and blocks her view i am not kidding and i'm sitting there watching this thinking this is not happening ths not happening i'm going to punch that man but so i kind of stood like this to object i was going to get out of my seat and object and i sat down because ruby didn't need me she said she gets her arm out there and she goes just like this and i didn't say a word and he kept standing and she kept swiping and he kept standing the room was deadly silent he wouldn't move he wouldn't even look at her he looked straight ahead and she's swiping and the room that you could've heard a pin drop because people were horrified that he was doing it and they were so proud of her for not letting him do it nobody had to say a word for ruby she was saying all that needed to be said after it became she still filled with pride i mean all she needed was to be heard and that guy by the time of trial that man had been sitting in an ice detainer person for two years which he deserved and h d pled guilty on day one he probably wouldn't have even gotten one day behind bars but because of what they put her through he sat behind bars for two years two years very compelling case i'm going to totally run out of time i love ruby i still go see her every once in a while she's awesome she's like the hero at it and she stayed at that nursing home even though we sued the nursing home which was important because they deserved to be sued because they let them keep working there after he molested a woman with dementia but ruby loved the people there and she didn't want to leave and of course now they treat her very well as you can imagine all right so very very quickly on a couple of cases i want to cover some high profile cases those are my low profile but interesting cases i hope you thought they were interesting the let me start with the o j simpson case because i think one of the things the public i'm just going to touch on things i think the public doesn't know i'm not going to read the stuff everybody does know but the o j simpson case for a lot of people is just about you know what if you are if you're black you thought he was innocent if you're white you thought he was guilty it was i don't agree with that i mean i do there's partly that that narrative out there but what really drew him to the case and i think what made it clear he would be found not guilty was when judge ito allowed lee bailey to ask mark fuhrman the question have you ever used the n word remember that you're going to watch that i thought i was a prosecutor right now mike judge whatever let anybody asked that question unless it's relevant right if you're being charged with a race crime or some kind of a civil rights crime and the words you use when you commit the offense are part of your criminal act absolutely fair to talk about whatever words you used and were otherwise to allow that question to be asked and answered i think was both incorrect as a matter of law  and the match that burned down the building because mark fuhrman was racist what didn't matter in the case was whether he was racist in connection with that investigation that was actually never determined it was just not it was not presented as his racism caused the injustice it was his race he's racist therefore o j should be found not guilty those things don't actually go together there is a clear mountain of evidence against the guy and there's clear evidence that mark fuhrman is racist there is no evidence that mark fuhrman's racism caused the mountain of evidence now you may disagree you might say well i think he planted the glove that's fine but there was no evidence of that that was a theory the defense talked about there was no evidence that mark fuhrman actually planted the glove by the way you could you could pla glove and do it because you want the guy to go to jail not because you races cops may plant evidence that doesn't mean they do it for reasons related to your skin color the mark furhman story completely clouded what the evidence actually was which was overwhelming and here's the problem once you switch once you turn on the racism in the room the evidence goes just like this to the jury it doesn't matter it doesn't stick i don't hear anything i'm so angry about racism i'm not listening here goes the d n a evidence here goes all the proof of guilt it just flies right past the jurors and it doesn't matter that's what killed the case and judge ito would never have allowed that question to be asked and answered if there hadn't already been so much racial tension in that area in california at that time remember rodney king had just happened to me there was a lot of anger and for good reason but my concern was why the legal system didn't insulate the integrity of that case from that madness from that anger from that rage because a coup i have a chapter on this in my book i call it acquittal by frenzy if you can whip the crowd into a frenzy the evidence doesn't matter anymore and whipping the crowd into a frenzy about you know coaching roles doesn't bother me nearly as much as what being the crowd into a frenzy about race because when that case ends and people hate each other more based on racism that's unacceptable to me that my legal system produced more racial inequality and hatred so that one man could walk free his freedom is not worth ruining race relations for an entire nation that's how i've always felt about that case his freedom isn't that important race relations is more important now we do have a legal system that allows that gratuitous misuse of racism as a tactic in criminal cases we allow it i wish we didn't but we do other civilized countries don't and canada for example if you exploit racism to win or sexism or any other isn't and it produces an acquittal that's not just the government can actually appeal yeah that sounds weird to us because we know the government can't appeal an acquittal but we should be able to appeal an acquittal if the if the acqui product of racism or the product of any other kinds of social prejudice that we that we care about inequality of these principles and values we care about are more important than unjust  now having said all that about o j i also thought he was over punished for that robbery in vegas you don't give a guy whatever you got thirty years to make up for the unjust acquittal that was insane to him in this notion that that was somehow ok because he got away with it in california that's equally crazy michael jackson i was actually in santa maria for the trial the you know where they were they talked about the five boys that he had raped or molested before i went out for i was there for c b s which which network but when i got there i was expecting mobs and mobs of people at the courthouse because i was watching t v like the rest of you right and every day it was like mobs of people michael michael michael mobs and he's done dancing on the roof and pretending to go to pretending to be sick remember when the day he went to court his pajamas after he pretended to have some kind of medical problem that's a classic you go to the hospital you go to court in your pajamas  even if you're really bad people feel like you're kind of nutty rather than evil it's sort of softens the blow that's why he did that and that was all off the shelf all for show in any case i expected to be mobs and so i get there and i'm literally at the courthouse at about i don't know what seven eight new morning and the only people there were the media truck after truck from everywhere all over the world about thirty five people show up and they're holding signs might go yeah free michael free michael his big black suburban chicago pulls out he gets out he walks through the line of the posters my goal my goal as soon as he's in the courthouse they all leave why do you think because they were paid to know me they were paid to go that everything we saw about those mobs they were paid to  go nobody want nobody there was only media and they had a spill over room so that some of the media couldn't fit in the actual room we're watching the trial on a closed camera television but the public wasn't there the public wasn't there at all they didn't care it was very strange to me but part of what led to his acquittal was this fake idea that there was a frenzy outside that this was all about you know this terrible injustice against this  man in fact remember michael jackson paid i forget what it was ten or twenty million dollars to join what's his name one of the first victims to come forward he paid him not to testify in a criminal case which by the way is called corruption and obstruction of justice you're not allowed to pay somebody not to testify in a criminal case if you were bernie made off never would have been  because he would have paid people not to testify you can't do that can't pay people not to testify but michael jackson paid that kid a bunch of money in the kid declined to testify by the way that kid's life is from what i'm told pretty bad right now probably because he doesn't feel good about how that situation ended but he got a lot of money for the case didn't go forward and i'm the reason he got paid a lot of money was because he knew and some he could identify certain genital markings of jackson's and there's no innocent explanation for how a child would know those things so that case was very strong in that regard while the five kids who ended up testifying in or not five kids testified but there were five victims some of whom testified sometimes the evidence came in through other means in the criminal trial in santa maria and i thought there's no way this jury is going to think that all five cases are fake no way and we all know what happened we all know what happened i have my theory about why they voted not guilty but it has an awful lot to do with simply being starstruck and being from santa maria let's just say where you get your jury from matters a lot because it's a lot easier to trick some people than others and it's very difficult to get a stupid jury in cambridge massachusetts which is why louise woodward was convicted despite the antics of her attorneys and the nonsense they put on in front of the judge remember louise woodward was convicted of murdering a child she remains a convicted child murderer even though the judge w verdict to manslaughter under political pressure and similarly paid protesters out front saying the way the same louise you should not be allowed to win your case because people show up with science is not a beauty contest people the father why do you think the father did ok i mean by process of elimination there were only two adults in the home that night you choose the father because you think the mother wouldn't have done it reasonable anybody else anybody think a stranger did it so nobody thinks a stranger did it who thinks that mom was the mother you do who thinks it was the brother oh interesting in fact let me just say well i do have a lot of stuff in my book about why people don't know them but what i want people to know about the ramsey case because it's important to me that when a child dies and the parents are the suspects they're not going to scream and yell for justice for the child so i think it's our job when when a child's parents of a suspects nobody is going to scream and yell for justice for the child the parents are going to scream and yell about their own issues they're not going to fight for them for the right results for their child so that's one of the reasons i try to speak about the case as often as i can and you know i was covering the case when it first happened you know how long ago it happened twenty years twenty years where in the twentieth anniversary and for what it's worth the parents were indicted some of you may know those the parents were indicted not for murder for child abuse resulting in death and that's interesting i'm going to tell you why it's interesting but it's completely consistent with what i've written about and what i believed was true early on  that wasn't revealed until about three years ago the fact that they were indicted many years ago the mother has since died the father is still alive so what struck me again having been a child abuse and sex crimes prosecutor here in middlesex county for many years what struck me about the evidence right away was how obvious it was to me that the child was a victim of sexual abuse why she had genital injuries that were pretty awful and showed both old and new harm the first three search warrants in the case were for child pornography on the father's computers and the parents hire goers right away which by the way you're allowed to do but i'm allowed to think you shouldn't if you're not if you're not guilty why would you not the government you're allowed to have an opinion about the fact that somebody hires a defense attorney while their daughter isn't yet even discovered but some of the critical pieces of evidence include some of you may know this the child had undying justed pineapple in her belly who remembers the pineapple anybody so she had untied just a pineapple in her belly which means she ate it within two hours of death roughly the parents so she died around midnight roughly the period this was christmas day the parents said that they brought her home sleepy from a christmas party sound asleep around nine thirty and put her straight to bed she fell asleep in the car and they brought her from the car straight to bed and she never woke up there was no pineapple served at the party there was a bowl of pineapple on the kitchen table the bowl of pineapple on the kitchen table had pa fingerprints on it and was seized by the police and tested just remember that the results of the test of the pineapple have never been revealed publicly but she's got undigested pineapple in her belly remember that the parents when they finally agreed to an interview some months later were asked a couple of key questions they were asked questions about two key areas one had to do with the pineapple and the police said she had undigested pineapple in her belly there was a bowl of pineapple on the kitchen table did either of you give her pineapple and they were interviewed separately and john ramsey said no i would never give my kid pineapple and i remember reading them thinking why is a very sick to give your kid helpful i might not admit i gave her pop tarts but pineapple is like healthy food i couldn't get over how adamant he was that he would not want to admit he gave his child pineapple and patsy was asked the same thing and she said oh never i would never have put such a large spoon in such a small bowl because she was sort of a southern belle and matched her spoons to her china apparently i don't  know that was her defense that i would never she would never have use that kind of spoon with that kind of bowl and when john was interviewed and he was adamant that he didn't give her pineapple and the mother didn't give her pineapple and it was so weird john came back on day two of his interview and he said well my lawyer thought i should tell you that she probably knew her attacker and they had a snack before the killing a snack or find out until i read that thinking oh man that's weak that is very we they had to explain away the pineapple because it was in her belly and somehow we got in her belly from the bowl now i ask you why would they be so fiercely adamantly opposed to admitting that they fed the child pineapple what's the problem so the question remains how did she die well we know that there was a lot of violent stuff done to her body you know she had a big fracture to the skull there was strangulation it looks like a brutal homicide however she did not die from a fracture to the skull one of the ways we know th that the skull did not believe and what does that tell you post mortem no more blood flow there was very little blood from the fracture to the skull so you know that was an after the fact crack  appears to be the case is that she died from respiratory failure from a benzodiazepine overdose and you know if you know anything about these drugs when you take them sporadically especially if you're a kid they can really suppress your nervous system and your organs just stop and you can die of respiratory failure if you take too much if you're if especially if you're a little kid and your body isn't used to it you know if you're taking spikes of it so it's likely that's how she when you go back to louise woodward case that was one of the signature indicators when you try to shake a child the the eyes create this accordion fold inside and she had some of that so you  probably tried to shake her out of the respiratory failure which you cannot do you cannot shake a child out of respiratory failure it's very hard to recover from respiratory failure so it's likely that much of what happened was just to cover that up so what did i tell you they were indicted for remember i told you they were actually indicted a couple years after the death they were indicted for not murder child abuse resulting in dea murder see how that works you should know given to those drugs respiratory failure and so one of the other issues is how come it keeps coming up every once in a while why is the file still under wraps this is a really interesting question why is the case still under wraps after all these years i'm overstating my welcome and part of the answer is that homicides are often considered ongoing investigations because there's no statute of limitations but under colorado law apparently there was a request for the file to be released and the judge gave a ten year window if the case isn't solved in ten years i'm going to be if there's no prosecution in ten years because obviously they were indicted right so people aren't out looking for strangers they were indicted they weren't prosecuted they were indicted so if the case isn't prosecuted within ten years the case file gets released unless a new suspect or new evidence appears so ten years ago we had john mark karr pop up member that remember that guy the weird guy from thailand popped up  was propped up as a new suspect and people said oh you know the he's a new suspect so we need another ten years to investigate his situation and his status and they got another ten years well guess when that ten years was up this year which is one of the reasons you started to hear all these documentaries about the d n a and all the silly notice every day every ten years you're going to hear a bunch of documentar they get another ten years of secrecy on the file a lot of people want the case file to be released at some point hopefully it will be released but for now ninety percent of the file is not released and the little bits that we do know in theory anyway explain why the parents were indicted but it remains one of these cases where the public is so perplexed so confused because so much of the propaganda is oriented around misleading us to think that there was a man who was involved or you know that some stranger broke into the house which is crazy to begin with just crazy i mean everybody who's examined the case w logical mind says there were only two people in the house it was christmas night and there was no evidence of anybody else being there that the parents and and their son it takes an enormous amount of energy to come up with a way of adding another person to the story oh yeah it was a stranger who showed up but more importantly the fact that the parents were charged i think is really what we should be talking about on behalf of the child we don't have to figure out the whole case we don't have to prove that there were drugs or porn or anything like that just keep saying the parents were indicted by a grand jury that heard the evidence because the prosecutor is not required to charge every single case that gets indicted you may have heard in harvey weinstein's cases now being presented to a grand jury in new york they announce that today he may be indicted that doesn't mean the prosecutor is going to go after right so you can be indicted and the prosecutor can say i choose not to proceed it's my discretion prosecutors can't be forced to prosecute the question of child porn being found is a bit of a sticky wicket because circle search warrants were executed the returns meaning whatever was found was brought to the attention of the court the contents were not revealed i've never seen the contents i just know that stuff was found and i don't know what it is some of the questioning of patsy ramsey involved the content of photographs but they didn't describe the content they just said i'm showing you photograph number seven and should say i have no idea who would ever take that or how would you know but it's unclear what it is  and then there has been a public release a public statement released saying no pornography no child pornography was found in the home but you notice how the home isn't exactly the same as the computer so i don't know the answer is i don't know station with patsy they refused the child had been to the pediatrician twenty seven times in three years between ages three and six many visits were for genital issues that person is on a mountain somewhere as far as i have no idea where he is i know i know he stopped appearing publicly i don't want to say he disappeared but let's just say pediatrician i mean i have a pediatrician who would never show up at my house to keep me sentence they were tight they had a they had good connections i know that  yeah yeah he was a mandated reporter yep yep and there were no mandated reports to my knowledge but you know it's an interesting question why was he so close to the family i i i don't know why didn't he report that kid was at the doctor alive and i think remember there was a screen in the house around midnight a woman scream was reported i think that it's possible patsy didn't know what was going on possible i don't i just don't know but she screamed either because she didn't know what was going on and she found out or she screamed because the she saw the child was dead but somebody screamed and i think it was patsy at midnight i know it's so sad i hate talking about what we should shift gears to the holidays or something anyway thank you guys so much if you want