Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

The next morning Lieutenant Gordon phoned that his check with Turner’s college town had hit pay dirt. Two years previously Charles Turner had been convicted of attempted rape on a girl he’d picked up in a bar. His father’s influence had gotten him off with a fine and suspended sentence, but the incident could possibly cost him his life now. Once I managed to implant in the jury’s mind that Mrs. Haliburton wasn’t the first woman Turner had tried his cave-man technique on, it wasn’t likely to accept Turner’s version of events as against that given by the two women witnesses. My case against Turner looked airtight.

The rest of the case is history. You’ll recall from news stories that Charles Turner’s father engaged the eminent criminal lawyer, Gerald Winters, to defend his son. And that the defense was approximately what I’d guessed it would be, except that Gerald Winters dropped all reference to the nude calisthenics act Turner had described to me. Apparently the defense attorney realized this was more likely to make the defendant look like a peeping Tom than convince the jury the plaintiff was trying to tantalize him into action. Winters blocked my efforts to bring it in by having Turner blandly pretend he didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked him under oath if he’d ever seen Mrs. Haliburton nude prior to the day in question.

Instead, Gerald Winters attempted to establish that Mrs. Haliburton had been seductively invitational on the several occasions she and the defendant had met in the courtyard. Turner testified that she had; Mrs. Haliburton testified that she hadn’t. So it was left to the jury to decide which was lying.

The prosecution and defense versions of what happened after Turner entered the bedroom differed more radically than their versions of what happened before he entered. The defense claimed there had been no resistance of any sort; I put Mrs. Haliburton on the stand and had her tell that she had resisted with every force at her command, but was finally forced to submit.

It was a rather telling blow for the prosecution when we got across to the jury that Charles Turner weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds, Mrs. Haliburton one hundred and twenty.

The prominence of the defendant made it a page-one case, but we carefully avoided giving the defense any ammunition with which to claim Turner was being railroaded in order to embarrass his father politically. We even went so far as not to try to get a signed statement from Turner, so that the defense couldn’t claim undue duress. We based our case entirely on the testimony of Mrs. Haliburton and her daughter.

Because I made a crusade of the case, and the newspapers enthusiastically backed the crusade, I got considerable personal publicity. As a young and unknown prosecutor facing one of the greatest criminal lawyers in the country, I was likened to David fighting Goliath. Over and over the papers eulogized my fiery spirit and oratorical eloquence.

I would like to say that my eloquence won the case for the prosecution. But I have to admit that if Charles Turner had been charged with any crime other than rape, and I’m including murder, the jury might have given him the benefit of the doubt. For there was the reasonable doubt that the plaintiff had cried rape merely to save her daughter’s opinion of her. The daughter’s testimony established beyond question that at least seduction had taken place, and furthermore the defense admitted it. But establishing forcible rape hinged solely on the word of the victim. And the jury was as obligated to consider Turner’s version of events as it was to consider Mrs. Haliburton’s.

The psychology in rape cases differs from that in all other crimes, however. The constitutional guarantee that the accused is innocent until proved guilty is exactly reversed. No one admits it, but the jury, the press, the general public, and often even the court, automatically regards an accused rapist as guilty until proved innocent. In effect he is told: let the burden of proof of your innocence rest on you.

In all other cases, of course, the burden of proof rests on the prosecution.

Probably the explanation is the general acceptance that no woman would undergo the public shame of admitting she’d been raped unless she had. She might lie about being cheated or robbed, but the average person can’t conceive of her lying about being raped. So despite the constitutional guarantee, in rape cases the burden of proof lies on the accused.

Charles Turner failed to prove his innocence. He was found guilty and sentenced to twenty-five years to life.

I never had any qualms of conscience about the verdict whenever I thought of it later. I was convinced Turner was guilty and got what he deserved. My sole emotion on the gradually decreasing occasions I thought of young Turner in subsequent years was gratification that I had been lucky enough to draw the case. For it had made me politically. The turning point of my career.