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In May 2016, the image macro shown above began circulating on Facebook, holding that back in 1975 a young Hillary Clinton (then Hillary Rodham) had volunteered to represent a 42-year-old man (Thomas Alfred Taylor) who was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, that Clinton told the judge in the case that the complainant made up the rape story because [she] enjoyed fantasizing about older men, that Clinton got [the] rapist freed, and that Clinton later admitted she knew the defendant was guilty and laughed about the outcome of the case. Although Hillary Clinton was indeed involved in a case of this nature, the aspects of the case presented in the image were largely inaccurate or exaggerated. As Hillary Clinton wrote in her 2003 biography Living History, she didn't volunteer to represent the defendant, but rather was appointed to the case by the judge: That assertion was backed up by the prosecuting attorney, Mahlon Gibson, as noted in a 2008 Newsday article about the case: Gibson said the same thing during a 2014 CNN interview about the case, adding that Hillary had attempted unsuccessfully to get the judge to remove her from the case: Documents from the 1975 case include an affidavit (p. 34) sworn by Clinton, from which the in court, Hillary told the judge that I made up the rape story portion of the claims was derived. That affidavit doesn't show, as claimed, that Hillary Clinton asserted the defendant made up the rape story because [she] enjoyed fantasizing about men; rather, it shows that other people, including an expert in child psychology, had said that the complainant was emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing about persons, claiming they had attacked her body, and that children in early adolescence tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences. Clinton therefore asked the court to have the complainant undergo a psychiatric exam (at the defense's expense) to determine the validity of that information: As for the claim that Hillary Clinton knew the defendant was guilty, she couldn't possibly have known that unless she were present when the incident in question occurred. It's also largely irrelevant given that under Hillary Clinton's handling of the case, the defendant pled guilty rather than going to trial and asserting his innocence. As Newsday observed, the case was a hopelessly convoluted one in which the facts were far from straightforward and in which another person (a juvenile) was also charged: Audio tapes from the 1980s of Hillary Clinton describing the case to journalist Roy Reed surfaced in 2014 and were incorporated into a video clip associated with the image macro's claims: The audio on these tapes is difficult to understand, but Clinton can be heard describing the case as terrible. She did audibly laugh or chuckle at points, not about knowing that the defendant was guilty or getting a guilty guy off (which makes little sense, given that the defendant pled guilty) but rather while musing about how elements of the case that might ordinarily have supported the prosecution worked in the defendant's favor (i.e., observing that the defendant's passing a polygraph test had forever destroyed her faith in that technology): Finally, Hillary didn't free the defendant in the case. Instead, the prosecuting attorney agreed to a plea deal involving a lesser charge that carried a five-year sentence, of which the judge suspended four years and allowed two months credit of time already served towards the remaining year: Additionally, according to Newsday it was the complainant and her mother who pushed the state to make a quick plea deal rather than have the former go through the ordeal of a court trial, with the mother actively interfering in the investigation to bring about that result: Even now, that outcome is not unusual for violent criminal charges: 2014 statistics show that 97% of criminal cases (including rape) are resolved by plea bargain, and only 3% go to trial. The ratio of plea bargains to trials was similar in 1970 [PDF]. Additionally, that 1975 criminal case came before the widespread adoptions of rape shield laws that now protect rape victims in court from some forms of questioning. A case brought in 1975 would have been subject to much weaker legal protection for the accuser than today. As Hillary Clinton said while looking back on the case during a 2014 interview for Mumsnet: I had a professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I did. He later pled guilty to a lesser included offense. When you're a lawyer you often don't have the choice as to who you will represent. And by the very nature of criminal law there will be those you represent you don't approve of. But, at least in our system, you have an obligation. And once I was appointed I fulfilled that obligation. Newsday closed their 2008 article on this case by reporting that the (unnamed) victim had experienced subsequent legal problems but bore Hillary Clinton no ill will: Eight years later, in 2016, the UK's Daily Mail identified the victim (who had previously spoken anonymously to the Daily Beast) as Kathy Shelton and quoted her as saying that she cannot forgive Hillary Clinton for defending her rapist and that she was unaware for many years that Hillary Clinton was the person who had represented the defendant in her case:
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