The Guilt Project by Vanessa Place : Why this book matters

In this Nancy Grace culture, in which suspects are all guilty until proven worthy of being considered innocent (usually by producing the requisite number of tears or volunteering to be hooked up to electrodes for a lie detector test, or forgoing the representation of a good attorney, despite being entitled to said representation), it is rare to find a discussion about crime & justice that avoids the strict dichotomy of "good vs. evil" or "tough-on-crime vs. criminal coddling." This is especially true when it comes to sex offenders: legislators are for the children or against them; against the sex offenders or coddling them. While the emotions driving these sentiments are certainly understandable, given the heinousness of sex crimes and the horrors that victims face, they are not necessarily healthy for public policy - especially where it concerns basic constitutional protections. This is why Vanessa Place's book, The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality, and Law is so important. It asks questions - legal, cultural, ethical, and moral - that heretofore have been swept under the rug. Even if one disagrees vigorously (and righteously) with all of Place's contentions, questions, criticisms, and legal interpretations, the point is to have the conversation.

Place, an appellate criminal defense attorney who specializes in sex offenders and sexually violent predators, never pretends that the great majority of her clients are innocent (legally or factually, although some may be the latter), or that they are "good men." In fact, she refers to them as the "very bad men" that many Americans fear. "Most of my clients," she writes, "are factually guilty by virtue of their acts; all are legally guilty by virtue of their convictions. They are the very bad men, those who trigger the question, 'How can you defend people like that, knowing that they're guilty?'" But for Place, the question is larger than that. For in this Nancy Grace and Dateline culture, where either-or fallacies are tossed around for entertainment and "very bad men" are no longer considered human, something very important is at stake: "our own humanity." In a culture where the innocence of the victim is the yardstick for the evil of the perpetrator, we risk losing our "mercy":

At heart, mercy is simply the steady responsibility to safeguard the humanity of all, including those we hate. There will always be people guilty of great evil. But evil is an act, not a cultural metaphor, not a social backdrop, and not entertainment. As a people, we have to resist the temptation to make our morality contingent on anybody's innocence. You might hate my clients, and you might be right. My clients routinely disprove God. But we can't use them to undo our own humanity.

And so with "our own humanity" at stake, Place approaches everything from the reliability of DNA evidence to involuntary commitments for sex offenders to intoxication and legal consent with a critical eye, posing questions readers will never see on cable news (scratch that: they might see them uttered by one of the talking heads on the Brady Bunch-style grid, but they will be quickly and summarily squashed by the host).

I do not interpret this to mean that Americans need to coddle sex offenders, or feel sorry for them, or care for them more than for victims, or any of those false dichotomies. This is not an invitation (or exhortation) to throw a pity party. Rather, this is about placing larger questions of humanity above fear and hate - or to ground it to something more concrete, to care about the integrity of America's ideals so much that we are willing to uphold them even when it disgusts us to do so.

Place herself is not afraid to divulge (or confess) her own complicated feelings at times; nor is she afraid to "play prosecution" and consider the other side. In fact, reading her book at times feels like a wrestling match of sorts: an adversarial trial in which the system itself is charged with breaking its own ideals. Place is not afraid to say when the state is right, or when the state is acting on good principles or ideals but needs to change its tactics. This is not an "us vs. them" or "defense attorney vs. evil, oppressive state" sort of book. That is what makes it such a remarkable and important addition to the discourse. That is why this book matters.

In the coming days and weeks, I will blog some initial responses to select chapters and sections in Place's book, some of which I find myself vigorously nodding my head to in agreement, and others of which have raised serious questions for me, and I do not quite know where I stand (which I think is a good thing). First up will be the chapter regarding involuntary commitments, in which Place steps outside the box of "should we or shouldn't we/can we or can't we" and poses questions about the kinds of actuary models and testing instruments we use to determine whether someone is a sexually violent predator (and likely to re-offend).