ARE GOOD LOOKING PEOPLE MORE OR LESS LIKELY TO BE PRESUMED INNOCENT IN CRIMINAL TRIALS?

Your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Lawyer always assumed that good looking people have a better chance of being acquitted in Criminal jury trials. 
That's why before every trial I always suggest the Defendant take a good hot bath at least a week before the trial is set to begin; after all as Andy Warhol suggested, "the best look is a good, clean look." 

da Vinci, Innocent or Guilty?

But what about those unfortunate folks who are clean, possibly even innocent, but not good looking. Is a jury more likely to convict them just because they're beautifully challenged?

A recent counterintuitive study establishes that the opposite is true. 

In the study it was the most beautiful women who were least likely to be believed by jurors when accused of murdering their husbands. So no more baths for my clients! 

Here's an excerpt from the study:

The results showed that a defendant's physical attractiveness increased the perception of the defendant´s responsibility in committing the crime; and an interaction between prototypicality and attractiveness in assigning credibility to the defendant´s testimony. Moreover, hostile sexism mediated the relationship between the defendant´s prototypicality and controllability. 

In a recent, possibly notorious Tampa Bay, Florida case a defense lawyer suggested at sentencing that his beautiful blonde client, a teacher accused of having sex with her fifteen year old student was, "too beautiful to go to prison," as if prison were somehow a place only for ugly women who failed in their debutante debut.

Perhaps the lawyer was smart to plead, after all the Judge gave probation where many other indifferent looking defendants charged with having sexual battery still sit rotting in jail, in fact in Florida many Defendants spend significant time in prison for crimes involving minors despite never touching a child improperly. 
And maybe it was smart to not let the case go to a jury, where there could have been bias, but a bias to not believe her, to convict her because of her looks. There's at least one Clearwater criminal defense attorney in Tampa Bay, Florida who believes the lives of every person, yes even the ugly, are too beautiful to be ruined by prison.

MORE THAN CONFIDENCE & COMMITMENT: WINNING QUALITIES OF EXCELLENT CRIMINAL TRIAL LAWYERS

Years ago, skipping school, I spent hours one rainy week watching a broken former State Senator defend a murder case. Rumor was he'd stolen money. People said he'd become a drunk. 

Yet I'll never forget that majestic old Florida courtroom of wood, marble and high ceilings and the people who worked there. 
There was the deep voiced stern but fair Judge, the somber Prosecutor dressed for a funeral pecking away at evidence like a crow and that Southern Defense lawyer, all charm, smiles and sunshine in his white seersucker suit. Who would win?

It rained all week until the defense lawyer rose to give his final argument, when as if by the magic of his will the rain stumbled to a stop as sunlight filtered into the courtroom sheltering his client from a guilty verdict.

Even today your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Attorney occasionally, often unexpectedly, finds a lawyer rise to the occasion teaching every other lawyer watching how to be an excellent advocate.

At least one legal publication notes that the best lawyers are excellent story tellers. Here's an excerpt from the American Bar Association Journal :

"A great story is like a well-crafted joke—deliciously brief, immediately memorable, eminently repeatable and virtually impossible to dismiss." —Kenneth Albers, actor and director
Lawyers who want to become effective communicators must understand that stories are at the heart of how people think, learn, exchange ideas and struggle to understand the world around them.

Good stories are not just snapshots of isolated events. Stories deal with the interrelationships that show how people think and how the world works. Stories are at the very heart of what the law is all about.

Besides the ability to present great stories, here some characteristics of the best trial attorneys, who battle for their criminal clients in Courtrooms across America and Tampa Bay, Florida.

• Belief. The Best lawyers can make excellent arguments because they believe in them.
• Confidence. Every courtroom battle includes setbacks. Great lawyers keep cool and confident no matter how many times they're slapped down.
• Commitment. Being fully committed to the goal of finding the best possible solution for the client.
• Compassion. Having empathy with the client, but also with everyone involved including law enforcement officers, the witnesses, the court reporter, the bailiffs, the Judge and the Prosecutor.
• Experience. Knowing what to do when comes by having dealt with many problems in the past with success.
• Enthusiasm. It's catching. It's not enough to just believe in finding the best results it's important to sweep others into believing and that comes with enthusiasm. 

Good advocates at trial also have a knack for knowing what the Judge and Jury is thinking. Maybe that's because they have Judge Posner's book How Judge's Think tucked inside their briefcases. 

And it doesn't hurt toward the end of a hard fought criminal jury trial for a Tampa Bay criminal lawyer to spin a little magic by turning the rain into sunshine.

HOW RELIABLE IS EYE WITNESS IDENTIFICATION TESTIMONY IN CRIMINAL JURY TRIALS IN FLORIDA?

Like many trial lawyers your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Attorney has seen many witnesses at trial; none more effective than Eye Witnesses. While working as a prosecutor it was always devastating to deliver the final punch with the Eye Witness leaving the Defense shattered. And no wonder Eye Witnesses are so effective in trials because the Eye Witness is seen by the jury as simply a teller of truth.

Manet, A Plum Witness

Yet Eye Witness testimony is among the most unreliable at trial. Many guilty verdicts that were proven with Eye Witness testimony have been unwound by the Innocence Project thru DNA analysis establishing Defendants' innocence. In fact the Innocence Project lists Eye Witness Misidentification as being "the single greatest cause of wrongful conviction playing a role in nearly 75% of convictions overturned trough DNA testing." 

The Misidentification comes from two categories of variables:

1. Estimator variables include simple factors like the lighting when the crime took place or the distance from which a witness sees a Defendant, also the amount of stress during a crime because of force used or the presence of firearms or trauma a witness experiences. 
2. System variables include how law enforcement officers acquire witness memory including lineups and photo packs.

As you can see the 'system variables' should be controlled by the Criminal Court System. New Jury Instructions in states such as Florida caution Jurors to be wary of Eye Witness identifications made during criminal trials. Yet one of the confounding things I often see is that Florida Law Enforcement Officers are not required to record witness statements nor statements made by Defendants. Often their notes of what was said by witnesses and Defendants are proven to be wrong.
How reliable is Eye Witness testimony as studied not only be lawyers but by psychologists? Here's an excerpt from The Problem of Eye Witness Testimony found in The Stanford Study of Legal Studies:

The process of interpretation occurs at the very formation of memory—thus introducing distortion from the beginning. Furthermore, witnesses can distort their own memories without the help of examiners, police officers or lawyers. Rarely do we tell a story or recount events without a purpose...
The act of telling a story adds another layer of distortion, which in turn affects the underlying memory of the event. This is why a fish story, which grows with each retelling, can eventually lead the teller to believe it... it is not necessary for a witness to lie or be coaxed by prosecutorial error to inaccurately state the facts—the mere fault of being human results in distorted memory and inaccurate testimony.

Clearly Eye Witness testimony should be viewed with a healthy skepticism, because the goal of a criminal trial must be to provide the Defendant with the fairest trial possible and maybe along the way, to even find the truth.