Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 17, 1993 TAG: 9308170342
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
The hubbub centers on a 1992 case in which Commonwealth's Attorney Joe Morrissey, 35, arranged to let an accused rapist pay $25,000 to his victim and stay out of jail. And that was the legal part.
The problem is that Morrissey cut a side deal to make the attacker's father cough up another $25,000 for distribution to charities of the prosecutor's choice. Charities that, some contend, Morrissey hoped would help him win re-election this year.
If that was the strategy, it didn't work. Morrissey lost a spring primary after being indicted on one count of soliciting a bribe and two counts of accepting a bribe, in the rape case and one other.
Morrissey blames the whole mess on his political opponents; a central figure in the case against him is a law partner of the man who beat him in the primary.
The case is a lawyers' feeding frenzy. A good quarter of the 40-plus spectators on hand Monday were members of the bar. A judge has been called in from Nottoway County to preside. Morrissey is being prosecuted by a lawyer from Alexandria, James Clark.
Stylish and trim in a dark suit with white handkerchief in the breast pocket, Morrissey sat with his attorneys and worked his jaw muscles as Clark laid out the case to the jury. Morrissey's eyebrows moved furiously as he reined in his notorious emotional energy (he spent time in jail last year for slugging another lawyer).
Both sides agree it was Morrissey's aggressively unconventional style that got him into trouble.
Because the rape case had started to fall apart, Morrissey went looking for a creative way to salvage it. The accused man, Robert W. Molyneux III, allegedly grabbed a woman outside a west Richmond nightclub early on June 9, 1991, urinated on her and raped her.
Lab tests gave a 97 percent probability that semen in the woman's underwear belonged to Molyneux, but tests also found semen from another man and showed no evidence of the attacker's urine.
Last summer, after all the tests were in, Morrissey met Molyneux's attorney, James S. Yoffy, for dinner. Yoffy wondered if Morrissey would be willing to settle for something called an agreement of satisfaction, in which the victim would accept a civil financial settlement from the attacker and Morrissey would reduce the charges to the misdemeanor level, with no jail time.
Morrissey liked the idea, but wanted to go further. Clark claims Morrissey was looking for political gain; the defense says he was just continuing a policy of innovative settlements in which defendants were allowed to give money or time to charities in return for reduced criminal charges.
Whatever the motivation, Morrissey suggested a $25,000 donation to his local cable television show, "The Prosecutor's Corner."
Dickering ensued, and finally Morrissey and Yoffy agreed that the extra $25,000 could go to various charities of the prosecutor's choice.
When Morrissey presented the plan to the victim of the alleged rape, he mentioned only her $25,000 and said nothing about the money for charity.
"It wasn't necessary to tell [the victim] anything about that additional $25,000," said defense lawyer Larry Catlett, noting that Morrissey's primary obligation was to the community.
The victim balked at the offer. When she later suggested that she might consider taking $100,000, Morrissey told her no more money was available.
Finally, Morrissey told the victim to attend a special, pretrial hearing. She did not testify; instead, she watched attorneys argue over whether to admit at the trial embarrassing evidence of her troubled emotional past, including suicide attempts.
The judge decided the evidence should not be admitted. But prosecutor Clark claims that Morrissey asked the judge not to make his ruling public, so the victim wouldn't know.
After the hearing, Morrissey took the victim to his office and asked her what she thought. The woman, who is not being identified in this story because she is the victim of a sex crime, testified Monday that she was humiliated by the hearing and asked Morrissey if she would have to go through that at the trial.
She claims he told her the judge might or might not admit the testimony. Terrified by the prospect, the woman finally agreed to the financial settlement.
Once the deal was final, Morrissey began issuing checks all over the city. He would write to the charities that "an anonymous donor" had given him authority to find worthy causes, or in some cases he personally delivered checks to churches and civic groups. He contributed to 46 in all.
Clark claims Morrissey then asked several of the charities for political help, and that he boasted in a campaign memo of a $2,000 donation to the YWCA without mentioning that it came from the settled rape case.
The second bribe charge involves a case in which an old friend allegedly had his mother write Morrissey a check for $5,000 in return for help getting early parole for his prison-bound brother.
That case "involves quite simply the sale of his office by Joe Morrissey for the benefit of a longtime supporter who knew where to look to buy a little justice," Clark said.
Morrissey's lawyer's countered that the second case was just a trumped-up offshoot of the first. And the first, they said, was the product of dirty politics: Yoffy, the lawyer who went along with the money-for-charities scheme, supplied police with much of the information against Morrissey. And Yoffy was a law partner with David Hicks, who defeated Morrissey in the Democratic primary for commonwealth's attorney and is unopposed for the job this fall.
"When this case is over with," said Catlett, "we expect you are probably going to be embarrassed for the way Mr. Morrissey has been treated."
Testimony is expected to last throughout the week and will feature a parade of prominent Richmonders, including Mayor Walter E. Kenney and NFL Hall of Famer Willie Lanier, now a city stockbroker.
by CNB