Tom B.

Tom B., who had no prior convictions, was accused of brutally beating his live-in girlfriend. Tom swore to me that he had never hit a woman, and that everyone who knew him would swear that they knew how important in Tom's values system it was to respect women, and that he had always been the one to speak out against rude behavior toward women. His many friends did in fact report the same.

The case arose out of an evening when Tom was at a local night club /bar playing pool with some friends. He was drinking a couple of beers with his friends, which was part of his Tuesday night with the guys ritual. His girlfriend, an alcoholic and addict, purportedly in recovery, started calling the bar and demanding that he leave and come home to her. He refused.

Within an hour of her last call, she came into the bar yelling and screaming, and came up to Tom and socked him in the face, then slapped him. He reported that he saw stars, and when he realized what had happened, he told her their relationship was over, and tried to leave. She followed him outside, and climbed into the passenger side of his truck.

She first claimed that he hit her with his fist, and that her eye socket had been fractured. Later, during trial, she denied that he hit her, but that he had slammed her face into the dashboard of his truck, and later pushed her down the stairs when they got home.

During the course of the prosecution's case, she claimed several things that she had not told the Sheriff's deputy. She did admit that Tom had never struck her, but that he had hit the brakes in his truck, causing her to fly into the dashboard. She also claimed that when they got home, and he began the climb up the stairs to his house, that he pushed her down the stairs.

The deputy who arrested Tom, and was pretty rough with him because he felt Tom was a woman beater, testified that he believed the woman that Tom had punched her in the face "repeatedly." When I confronted him with the fact that she had testified that Tom did not hit her in the face, his face turned bright red, and he realized that he had been duped.

Several of Tom's friends, including two who witnessed her hitting him at the bar, testified as to Tom's philosophy as a gentleman. They were credible. Tom testified what happened, and acknowledged that she did fall down the stairs. He told how she tried to prevent him from going into the house, and was pulling on his shirt to stop him. He turned around, bent down, and let her pull the shirt off him. She lost her balance and fell down the stairs. He ran into the house to get away from her, and found that the house was trashed. That was why she did not want him to go into the house.

The jury of eight women and four men deliberated for a couple of hours. The first vote was 8 to 4 for not guilty. All of the women were voting not guilty. The foreman, a woman, told me that they turned to the men after the first vote and told them, "don't you see what she is doing?" The next vote was a unanimous not guilty. If Tom had been convicted, he would have been sent to prison. The woman was never prosecuted for her admitted battery upon Tom.