The Bobbitt case - 28 January 1994

I imagine the American people, whoever they are, just now cheering or fuming over the president's State of the Union speech and guessing what may come of it, they'll be lots of time to check the guesses. This time I'd like to recall two figures, an oldish man and a very young woman, who even though we were overwhelmed by the earthquake in California and the continuing arctic invasion of the rest of the country, these two figures were I believe more fascinating to more people than any politician, sports figure or pop star just then in the public eye.

The old man was a retired admiral who saw himself as the victim of a cruel press. The girl in a Virginia courtroom, the sad eyed wispy haired girl holding on to a teddy bear said she'd been brutalised by a bully of a husband. First that young woman her face and her demeanour I have a feeling their not going to forget for a long time to come. Lorena Bobbitt, 22 years old, a tiny – under 5ft, slim girl striking black eyes, which yet never seem to have any lustre, an omission which I think helped in the sense of confirming her testimony that she'd had a nightmare of a married life. She was helped also I think by the charm of a slight Latin accent that remained from her childhood in Ecuador and Argentina.

As I suppose all the world knows, Lorena Bobbitt was on trial for the alarming actions she performed on a night last June when she had she said been savagely raped by her husband, she got up went to the kitchen for a glass of water, spotted a kitchen knife, grabbed it went back into the bedroom flung off the sheets and sliced off her husband's penis.

Of course, the act itself made scandalous headlines the day after she was arrested, pretty soon he was arrested too and in an earlier separate trial he was charged with sexual assault. The jury moved it came out afterwards by the thought that he probably would be unlikely to do it again acquitted him. A surprise and an alarming one to his wife who two months later went on trial for the charge was malicious wounding.

Now you know that whether or not trial proceedings can be televised is not a a federal matter, it's up to each state to decide. Virginia does not allow cameras in court to cover sex cases, so only the press covered the husband's trial, but a nice technical point since the legal charge against Lorena Bobbitt did not mention sex or any sexual object, the case was exempt from the usual prohibition and the cameras came in. How they were to be handled, the direction of the play so to speak was dictated in one or two vital matters by the judge, the jury was never to be shown nor the reactions of the spectators, the camera must stay on the faces and figures of the defendant, her own defence lawyers and the prosecutors.

There were three lawyers on each side, two on each side young women and I must say they were not slow in demonstrating their legal know-how, especially their alertness to the other side's improper questions not in a, not in a peremptory way like the counsellors who regularly bubbled over with fake indignation at Perry Mason's more probing tactics. I don't believe we ever heard irrelevant, inconclusive leading the witness, "I protest your honour this is an outrage", no no this was in life. And the young women counsel challenged their elders in the most seeming Yale Law School graduate way, there was no anger not a maudlin note, everything conducted in a courtly way as you might expect and happily received in a Virginia courtroom.

By the way, speaking as a reporter whose covered quite a few trials of various sorts in his time, I ought to remark with enthusiasm the trials in Virginia are extraordinary perhaps unique in one respect almost a swift as English trials. Unlike trials in the rest of the States they do not take a week or two to corral a jury, they do not think that questioning two witnesses a day is a form of hard labour. The whole trial took four working days, on the last day they riffled through eight witnesses, heard the judge's instruction, the summing up of both lawyers and the jury retired. The jury also, which in such a case in New York or California might have been out for several days and nights was out just over three hours and came back with a unanimous verdict.

To the surprise of many, and it was clear to the stunned surprise of the listless defendant, the jury believed her story and the testimony of six or seven of her friends who had heard or seen the wounding evidence of beatings. Of course, the husband had never heard of such a thing, never touched his wife really. The prosecution maintained that the wounding act was deliberate and malicious, the defence tried to show and did to the jury's satisfaction that she had only the vaguest most contradictory recall, had acted on an irresistible impulse and therefore was temporarily insane.

It's an interesting and by now of course a moot point whether she would have got off in most other states. The oddity perhaps the unique factor in Virginia is that while all the states have statutes recognising murder while insane, Virginia has also this one specifying temporary insanity, so the judge was able to order that the wife should be taken to a state hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. In other words, is she sane today? If the examiners find that she is, she could be released any day they so conclude. The judge gave them 45 days.

When the verdict broke around the country, there were of course ribald responses from humour magazines, a tick in the margin from the good grey New York Times and an entirely predictable chorus of approval from feminists of every stripe. What was hard to disguise behind the mask of their salinity was a sense of triumph, the secret joy of seeing a male of the species wounded where he lives. This was I thought a distressing tasteless reaction, the whole story is not funny, they were a sad bewildered couple. He a dumb sexual robot, she a melancholy beaten girl, IQ of 85 not too far from simple mindedness, an appalling marriage.

Over the weekend, every commentator in America had to tell us in the jargon what signal the verdict sent to us. It seemed to me that only one commentator George Will saw the central point that whether the verdict was right or wrong, it might persuade future defendants elsewhere to declare quite calculated murders or wounding acts as acts of sudden momentary insanity. If there are any such opportunists at large, they should be warned that only Virginia has a statute, which can pardon a murderess or wounding act performed in a state of temporary insanity.

The Admiral. Six weeks ago, President Clinton appointed a new man to replace the retiring secretary of defence; the new man is a former Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, 62, whose credentials in military and naval intelligence are just about unmatched. Once assistant chief of intelligence in the US Pacific fleet, former director of the National Security Agency, former director of the CIA. The moment his name was announced, the press who knew him and the editorial writers who didn't but could check with senators and congressmen who did, the whole media raised a hallelujah chorus. The party leaders in the Senate agreed that when his name came to the floor of the senate he would be confirmed by at least 90 of the 100 senators. There did appear one piece by a New York Times Columnist William Safire that was strangely savage, turning thumbs down on the admiral as a deceitful and manipulative man, weird but it was noticed merely before it sank in the flood of praise.

Last week before the new session of Congress had come into being, the admiral sent a letter of resignation to the president, withdrawal rather, and called a press conference to elaborate. Such conferences usually last no longer than it takes a man to read aloud with proper gravity his letter of resignation. The admiral said he'd always been in two minds about the job had frankly said so to the president, his doubts however were appeased and he said yes. Then Mr William Safire's column appeared, the admiral had also heard that the Republican leader in the Senate, Senator Dole might have some tough questions for him, he brooded over Senator Dole and Mr Safire, perhaps there was a plot between them to discredit him at the start. Senator Dole and Mr Safire had never even talked together about him and Senator Dole said, "Well thank goodness he's not going to be secretary of defence, if has fantasies like that".

I've summarised the admiral's misgivings and fears in 45 seconds and he was convincing for about that length of time and then he mused and he thought aloud and he brooded and he rambled and he talked about the persecuting press and a new form of McCathyism, he went on for over an hour. By the end, even the dumbest media mole must have had doubts about his fitness for any cabinet post. He's a puzzle.

It is tough to come into a political office especially since television and the tabloids got together to breed more and more reporters whose only ambition is to dig up dirt, so the admiral had a point, but not a new one. And the general judgement on him was also nothing new, it was President Truman's advice to any politician with a too tender skin "if you don't like the heat, stay out of the kitchen".

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