Mon, 9 Oct 2006 09:45:19 EDT
Appeals Court Finds Prosecutor's Fiction Too Close to Facts of Case
Cheryl Miller
The Recorder
10-09-2006
A prosecutor with a book to sell mixed too many facts with her fiction, a 2nd District Court of Appeal panel ruled Thursday.
The three-justice panel said Santa Barbara County, Calif., Deputy District Attorney Joyce Dudley cannot prosecute People v. Haraguchi because her self-published crime novel, "Intoxicating Agent," appears to borrow personal and factual details from the pending rape case against Massey Harushi Haraguchi.
"It is understandable that petitioner would question whether his constitutional rights will be protected by a prosecutor who writes a fictional account about a case similar to his own in which the defendant is depicted as a vile brute," Justice Kenneth Yegan wrote in the unanimous opinion.
Dudley has denied weaving the Haraguchi case into "Intoxicating Agent."
"The fact that I have written and published this fictional book has not affected or impacted any of my decisions in this case," Dudley wrote in her defense.
Published in January, "Intoxicating Agent" chronicles 48 hours in the fictional life of Santa Barbara County prosecutor Jordon Danner. With "the poise and sexiness of a dancer, the brains of a scholar, and the protective passion of a mother," Danner fights to put away a defendant described alternately as a "pig," a "heartless bastard" and a "dirt bag" who is accused of raping a drunk but community-serving victim.
"Talk about felony ugly, [Danner] thought, he looks just like the pig he is!" one passage of the book reads.
The opinion notes that Dudley told a Santa Barbara newspaper that Danner is a "pumped-up version" of herself. Haraguchi argued that a character in Dudley's book -- although not the rapist -- appeared to mirror some of his own "beatnik" characteristics. Haraguchi's lawyer also said Dudley refused to negotiate a plea in much the same hard-nosed fashion as the Danner character. Dudley said there was a settlement conference but Haraguchi's counsel would only consider an unacceptable misdemeanor charge.
The panel said Dudley's continuing as prosecutor in the case would be "unseemly" given the book's content.
"Defense counsel is portrayed as 'disingenuous and manipulative' and as deserving to have his 'ass' kicked," the panel wrote. "These stereotypical generalizations have no place in a current public prosecutor's thinking processes even if they are uttered in a fictional account."
The court called Dudley's conflict of interest "disabling" and overturned a lower court's ruling that retained her role in the case.
The court did deny Haraguchi's motion to recuse the entire Santa Barbara County district attorney's office.
"Intoxicating Agent" ranked 1,588,813th in sales on Amazon.com on Thursday.
