Mistrial the price of democracy

I was very disappointed in the letters published in your paper

Thursday and Friday about the Haidl mistrial. Every single letter

supported retrial of the three defendants. Many readers expressed a

view critical of the criminal defense attorneys using great skill in

trying the cases. They felt sorry that the public lawyers (the office

of the district attorney) did not have the same talented trial

counsel.

I am an experienced trial attorney, but my practice is primarily

in the civil courts. I do not know any of the people (witnesses,

lawyers, parties) involved in the Haidl case. I did not see any of

the trial -- nor did any of your readers as far as I could tell.

Like your readers, all I know about the case is what I have read,

heard or seen in the media. I have no particular sympathy for either

side in the trial. However, I am compelled to express my opinion

about the public reaction that the hung jury generated.

I feel that in their collective outrage at the crime of rape, your

readers have forgotten or choose to ignore very fundamental

underpinnings of our democratic society. Our system of justice is

based on the principal of “innocent until proven guilty.” If you

don’t believe in that ideal, then you don’t believe in our system of

government. In this case, that principal is really critical because

the hung jury resulted because 11 of the 12 jurors who heard the

evidence in the trial voted that the defendants were not guilty on

four of the counts. Have we come so far in our search for political

correctness that we should convict the innocent just because the

media overblew the story?

Lastly, the public should not feel sorry for the poor district

attorney’s office. It costs a lot of money to put on a trial, for

exhibits, witness fees, experts, attorney and paralegal time, etc.

The prosecution has (and uses) virtually limitless resources of the

state of California to try a criminal defendant. By contrast, the

accused has to pay for these things out of his own pocket. (If you

have a job or any money at all, you don’t qualify for a free lawyer.)

Parents mortgage their homes, sell their valuables and often go in to

“hock up to their eyeballs.” Then when 11 of the 12 impartial jurors

find the accused not guilty, he faces retrial and paying all of those

costs over again -- and sometimes over and over. The accused may run

out of money and be forced to agree to some plea bargain, or

something else may happen so he cannot mount a proper defense. It

happened in the Haidl case. On Friday, your paper reported that

Haidl’s primary defense attorney bowed out of the retrial because of

the media’s harsh treatment of him as a lawyer and because of its

effect upon his family.

I know it is not the popular view, but I hope your readers will

think about how they might feel if they were charged with a crime and

maybe, just maybe they were not really guilty.

BARRY L. ALLEN

Corona del Mar