David Daniels’ attorney lashes out at victim
mainEven by US courtroom standards, the defence put up by the arrested countertenor seems high on personal degradation.
Daniels and his partner, Scott Walters, have been accused of the rape in Houston in 2010 of a baritone, Samuel Schultz, who was 23 at the time. The pair are now awaiting extradition to Texas.
Their Houston attorney Matt Hennessy has issued this counter blast: ‘David and Scott are innocent of any wrongdoing. Sam Schultz is not a victim. He never would have gotten this much attention from his singing, and he knows and resents that fact. He waited eight years to complain about adult, consensual sex to ride the #MeToo movement to unearned celebrity. We will fight this.’
Having a national leader who verbally attacks and defames ordinary people who hardly have any power to fight back empowers other unpleasant people to do the same. Perhaps this is the case here. It would seem parts of the lawyer’s statement are speculative and probably unsubstantiated, and therefore unbecoming of the legal profession. I live in hope that the tide of human communication will soon turn in a more positive direction.
You have admirably high expectations of the legal profession
Yes, calling people “deplorables” is hideous. And loses you an election.
Yes, and calling women “pigs” and “Pocahontas” wins you an election.
She did it first; no getting around that. Insulting half the population of the USA. And if women can be fast and loose with the truth then men should have that equal opportunity. To suggest otherwise is hypocrisy on steroids.
The Pocahontas comment was justified – I thought it was hilarious. Poor little victim; it backfired hugely.
And it was only recently; go check our your calendar. 2016 Trump won, not last year.
Hillary Clinton’s comment on deplorables no doubt made a serious dent in her popularity.
But there is no way this could have insulted half the US population. To beging with, a majority of the US population does not support Trump. Moreover, there are many Trump supporters who are not racist.
Yet Trump is very popular among racists, because he is one of them, and shows it with both his rhetoric and his actions. The recent government shutdown is a prime example of his actions. Standing up for the white supremacists at the 2017 Charlottesville riots is a prime example of his rhetoric.
Along with overt bigotism.
It’s not hideous when it’s accurate.
The attorney sounds like Michael Cohen kicking and screaming on behalf of his #1 client. Until he couldn’t. Or like Rudy Giuliani today. Or like Michael Avenatti for Stormy Daniels. Or Alan Dershowitz for his numerous #1s. All of them a seamy, steamy, sticky lot. Wouldn’t trust them as far as I can throw a stick.
Why don’t you wait until more details come out? Is it not possible that he did consent to sex and felt badly about it later? Regret is a powerful emotion.
Any criminal defence attorneys you actually do like, by any chance?
The headline should have read “alleged victim.”
They look a bit as if they had not quite expected this turn-out of events.
“The best defense is a good offense.”
We’ll see if this is a good offense or not.
If the story is true, such abberations are often the result of mishaps in early youth (as described in well-known pediatrician Beverly Hofstadter’s standard work “The Disappointing Child”).
Are you talking about the alleged rape or the misplacing of the apostrophe?
Mr D and husband have really got lawyered up. Check him out
https://gkhfirm.com/attorneys/matt-hennessy/
As are so many behavioural maladjustments. Most of it stems from upbringing, though there are celebrated cases of crime which leave experts scratching their heads. There would always be standard deviations in behaviour in the spectrum to ‘explain’ these things. For example, are some people ‘born to kill’? Are they also ‘born to’ assault…rob…rape…defraud….abuse….etc.?
The more reasonable question seems to me to be: ‘is the law really serious about these crimes or has the tendency towards leniency provided the petri dish for continual abuse on the basis that ‘I can do it because I can’? We need to confront these disturbing and very realistic questions, look at the failures of the criminal justice system and parole more generally – and then not be surprised about recidivism and a culture in denial that the poor morality of a society moves upward through all the classes and not just horizontally through one!!
Might it be possible to write a macro that automatically clicks “thumb down” on all Sue posts?
There are allegations of a similar drug rape in a major American orchestra. The musician who was alleged to have committed it, and his alleged accomplice, were fired from the orchestra 8 years later, apparently due to the #MeToo movement. And even though strong complaints were made and even a restraining order issued at the time of the incident. If the allegations are true, they should be indicted. Rape should not be overlooked.
Please learn how to use an apostrophe correctly in this headline when the last name ends with an “s.” Your current headline (“David Daniel’s attorney lashes out at victim”) has the grammar of a first grader.
It now reads, ‘David Daniels’ attorney’, which is also incorrect according to Fowler’s Modern English Usage. According to Fowler, the correct form is ‘Daniels’s’, the ‘s”-form being used correctly only for plurals (e.g. ‘the judges’ wigs’) and for names of classical derivation (e.g. ‘in Aeschylus’ words’). People do often maintain that the opposite is correct (e.g. ‘St James’ Park’, ‘St Thomas’ Hospital’), but according to Fowler this is wrong.
The OED agrees with the former, but not the latter. Dissension in the ranks, although the OED is invariably accorded precedence
Dissension even among authorities published by OUP! Of course, the original Fowler was published nearly one hundred years ago, so there is the possibility that usage has evolved since then.
Why should any of us accept Fowler as the binding authority on this issue?
Writing: “Daniels’ attorney” seems correct to me, and that is the only authority I accept. [More strictly speaking, we can only really talk about “common usage” in English, rather than “correctness”; Norman’s usage is common among native English speakers, which makes it “correct”.]
Or a U.S. President….
It’s a despicable tactic commonly used by despicable people.
Survivors of the high-school shooting in Florida went on to make a huge fuss about gun & school safety; someone attempted to dismiss them on (I believe) a radio show by saying “If it wasn’t for this shooting, you wouldn’t even be on the national stage.”
If anyone cares to point out how any accuser has benefited in terms of celebrity and/or career opportunities, please do so as I am unaware of any such results.
There are many. In the US, for example, the story of Anita Hill provides a good example of “how [an] accuser has benefited in terms of celebrity and/or career opportunities.” Despite her allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas being rejected by the panel charged with determining the validity of the charges she lodged against the judge, Hill went from being an unknown assistant professor at a state college in rural Oklahoma to being a full professor at the prestigious Brandeis University in Boston, “a national figure” (to quote her wikipedia page), and a sought-out pundit and commentator on a wide range of public matters. Without having made her allegations, she would never have had the career opportunities that have come her way over the past 20 years.
I desperately look in vain for traces of abuse in my life, other than by my wife, family, and PA.
You don’t think that calling the University of Oklahoma College of Law ‘a state college in rural Oklahoma’ is rather like calling UCLA ‘a state college in suburban California’? Hill graduated JD from Yale and was called to the DC bar aged 24 and was on the faculty of OU Law by the age of 30 having already established a successful career as a lawyer and academic. Why should she not have achieved a full professorship at Brandeis anyway on her own merits? Anyway, Brandeis is a good university, to be sure, but it’s only somewhat more prestigious than OU. It’s not like she got a promotion from Bob Jones to Harvard.
Will they be able to share a cell?
Mr D no longer looks beautiful like on his site:
http://www.danielssings.com/
I wonder how this will play with a jury.
1. I’d say that it’s fairly implausible. Who is going to give work to a singer solely on the basis of transient notability arising from his role as complainant in a criminal trial? If I were sitting on that jury, I’d think it highly improbable that anybody would make up this kind of allegation and go public with it in the hope of gaining a boost to his career.
2. Surely this is no way to get a jury on one’s side. Coming over as nasty and vindictive is no way to persuade anybody of one’s innocence. I know that the jury is supposed to reach a verdict based on the facts, but they are going to interpret those facts based on their opinion of the defendants whether we like it or not.
Yes, I know that they haven’t reached jury trial yet, but I don’t think this defence is going to go down well when they do get to that stage.
Texas seems to have ejaculated quite prematurely.
I’m not sure what this means, and likely Mr. Lebrecht doesn’t know either: “Even by US courtroom standards, the defence put up by the arrested countertenor seems high on personal degradation.”
The defense, to me, seems logical and appropriate, in no way overboard: the accuser is in it for money and waited 8 years to report what was consensual sex.
Surely Scott Walters is not a ‘victim’ but an accuser. We will only know which he is when the jury delivers its verdict based on the evidence.
This kind of act should never be tolerated!! During this “me too” movement, people are very easy jump into conclusion. Let’s allow the law sort things out for us. Every case is so different. Don’t make irresponsible commons unless you are the witness. If one of your loved ones being accused (perhaps falsely accused). What would you do? Thanks for considering what I have to say.
They are obviously attacking the alleged victim’s character. So; this should be a rough road of litigation ahead. Prayers for all to be transparent as the only peace that will be found in this is if they are honest throughout. They will be under oath. So—hopefully they will respect the process and only look for peace in their hearts. And with this peace; their lives may change but will forever feel honest and with integrity going forward. The world and God (If you believe) wants honesty. Let’s go all. Believers or not. Don’t lie. Even if you don’t remember all; admit that you don’t remember, please! The heart does not lie; the ego does.
You do know that defendants can not be prosecuted for perjury don’t you?