Justice rarely served by a rush to judgment
The case that came to be known simply as “the dragging mom” brought nightmarish circumstances crashing down on Julie Dubravetz. While she was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, the incident showed with painful clarity the risks such assumptions can inflict on reputation, esteem and the fragile fabric of personal and familial relationships.
For those who spent the past couple of months without a TV or a newspaper, Julie is the foster mother accused of dragging her foster child behind her moving car in a Bellevue parking lot. Witnesses — who saw the fleeting image of a child reaching for the car door handle and falling down — leaped to the wrong conclusion, helped along no doubt by the revelation a few days earlier of an Indiana woman caught on videotape beating her child. They called the police, and Julie found herself arrested, jailed and accused of endangering a child, all under the watchful eye of television cameras and news reporters.
This situation captured public attention because of a fluke of timing and its apparent similarity to another incident half a continent away. The difference was that Julie was innocent. “The dragging mom” case took on a life of its own, fueling its own round of media coverage that bounced back across the country, landing on CNN and the Associated Press wire.
For two grueling months, Julie was separated from her foster daughter. The only stable household the child had known in her short life was broken. Finally, an amazing thing happened: nothing. The King County prosecuting attorney and the Bellevue city attorney both decided that the evidence just didn’t support the notion that Julie was a criminal. She was allowed to return home, to start picking up the pieces of her life and try to put these events behind her and her family.
One of the most important protections in our criminal-justice system is the presumption of innocence. That protection is not necessarily extended to someone tried in the court of public opinion. Readers and viewers exposed to earnest yet incomplete reports of an incident jump to conclusions, especially when the accused’s version is not immediately provided. The fallout lands not just on the accused, but also on her family and friends.
Only those who have actually experienced this can really understand the far-ranging impact. Only those who have been there can appreciate the wrenching dilemma of giving up privacy in order to protect the integrity of their families by facing the cameras and microphones.
Fortunately, our local prosecutors take seriously their responsibility to examine the evidence and make charging decisions based on reason rather than emotion. But the stigma of a false accusation can linger long after prosecutors have closed a case.
There are indisputably bad actors, like the mother in Indiana who beat her child and showed no remorse. Those cases are easy to report — especially when the act itself is caught on videotape. But many situations in life are ambiguous and can’t be adequately explained or understood in a 90-second report on TV or 10 column-inches in the paper.
I would not ask a jury to make a decision based on such limited information. In a trial it can take days or even weeks to set out and explain all the relevant facts, after which jurors can take as much time as they need to review and carefully analyze what was presented.
The truth is usually complex, and people are often not as bad as they are made out to be. In this case, Julie made the difficult decision to come forward at enormous personal cost, and the media did the right thing and allowed her to tell her story. Few people I know have the strength or determination to run that gantlet, nor should they have to.
Savvy consumers of the news need to recognize the natural limitations of what they’re seeing or reading. When a report sounds too simple — or too one-sided — ask yourself who didn’t get a chance to tell their story. Don’t join the rush to judgment; pursue justice instead.
Anne Bremner represented Julie Dubravetz and is a shareholder in the Seattle law firm Stafford Frey Cooper. Bremner also successfully represented King County Sheriff’s Deputy Melvin Miller in the Robert Thomas Sr. inquest, and the city of Des Moines and Des Moines Police Department in the Fualaau v. Highline School District civil litigation arising out of the Mary Kay Letourneau case. Bremner is a former King County deputy prosecuting attorney.