“...This was stacking up as a high-stakes swearing match between a nine-year-old girl and a 31-year-old rap star…”
Well, that’s not going to be much of a contest, is it? That mean old shave-headed rap star swearing at a little girl…oh wait, that’s not actually what was going on. Although Lomax presents the trial as some kind of mano-a-mano fist fight between Carlos Coy and the child, we know that most of what goes on in a court room happens between lawyers.
We know that Coy initially had Mark Ramsey as his defense lawyer. We also know that Ramsay mysteriously disappeared from the news reports before the trial, and Chip Lewis took his place.
I have no way of knowing if Mr. Lewis is a great lawyer or not; in the article South Park Monster he is briefly mentioned as if he were some kind of grizzled veteran of the defense bar, seasoned and experienced.
“Almost as fierce were the legal clashes between veteran defense attorney Chip Lewis and prosecutor Denise Oncken.”
Now, here’s the Dictionary.com definition of ‘veteran’:
Veteran, noun. 1. A person who has had long service or experience in an occupation, office, or the like.
According to Mr. Lewis’ own website, he was a prosecutor working for the DA’s office until 2000. This means that he was a defense lawyer for a year, maybe two when he was handed the high-profile case of Coy vs. Texas
This is not any kind of huge, blatant lie by the Houston Press, but it it is one of many tiny little ‘tweaks’ that I find strange. Why say Lewis was a ‘veteran defense lawyer’ when he was not? What kind of picture is Lomax trying to paint, and how does it differ from reality?
1 comment:
Tell SPM why did he take the stand?
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