Many years ago, as a law student, I had the honor of working with the great prosecutor William J. Kunkle Jr., who put away John Wayne Gacy. I was a young intern at the litigation firm of Phelan, Pope & John and loved listening to Bill’s stories about his famous cases. I even had to take a couple of calls from Gacy from prison when Bill was out. (I was asked to write down everything that he would say in the routine calls. On one call, Gacy told me, “Tell Bill he was wrong. I was not guilty of homicide. I was guilty of running an indoor funeral parlor without a license.”). One story of Bill’s came to mind last night when Democrats released their latest tranche of “bombshell” photos from the Epstein files to suggest that Trump is implicated in the scandal.
Bill told me how he would stage the trial room to maximize impact on the jury. In the Gacy trial, he was allowed to create an exhibit showing the pictures of the victims. He knew that defense counsel would not want the faces staring at the jury throughout the trial. So he made the exhibit so large that it would be difficult to move and waited for the defense to insist that the pictures themselves be removed. When they did so, they found that each picture was attached to the board by Bill with large red tape. Throughout the trial, the jurors stared at each name with a large red X beneath it. It was better than the pictures themselves.
Bill’s story came to mind yesterday when the Democrats released the photos from the Epstein files.
The White House accused Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of spreading a “false narrative” with photos. It is more of an effort to create “false light,” a term from tort law where true photos are presented in a misleading and harmful way.
The photos of Trump show women with their faces obscured as “possible” victims of human trafficking with underaged girls. (The New York Post posted the unredacted picture, which actually came from an entirely unrelated event in Hawaii and was previously published with all of the faces shown).
Even a photo with a single woman on what appears to be a plane is blacked out. There is no context offered, but the blacked-out faces suggest that these women have to be protected as possible victims.
It has the same effect as Kunkle’s Xs.
However, the real question of false light is the inclusion with the other photos selected for release. The Democrats included pictures of sex toys, novelty condom boxes with Trump’s face (saying “I’m Huuuge”) and even Epstein in a bathtub.
The combination is meant to make the other photos seem more sinister, even though we have no information on where they were taken or who the women are in the images. Just Xs.
Trump is not alone in the framing of such photos. The release included a previously public photo of Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz simply meeting with Epstein, who is wearing a Harvard sweatshirt. There is no information on when or where it was taken. (Epstein was a major donor to Harvard, and Dershowitz was a Harvard professor as well as someone who served as counsel to Epstein).
The Democrats have long despised Dershowitz, a liberal who broke ranks with the party and represented Trump in his impeachment. Now, he is included with the photos of condoms and Epstein in a bath.