If Michael Jordan left on his own terms, Mike Tyson left on Greg Garrison’s.
Garrison is the Indiana attorney who gained attention for an impressive 1992 courtroom performance, successfully prosecuting State vs. Tyson, the rape case against the former heavyweight champion.
He was in Chicago recently, speaking to students at John Marshall Law School. In the process, he may have left his young audience with a sense of both why he vanquished Tyson’s better known Washington lawyer, Vincent Fuller, and how the courtroom can be as violent, rhetorically at least, as the ring.
The case against Tyson, now serving a six-year prison sentence for the 1991 rape, resulted from a “middle of the road street crime,” said Garrison with blunt dismissiveness. He saw little notable about it other than the fame of the defendant and professional renown of his lawyer.
“That fella (Tyson) is doin’ his time ’cause he got convicted; because he’s guilty, not because of smoke and mirrors and non-sensical arguments about racism. He’s in jail ’cause he did it,” Garrison said with a fierce conciseness.
Garrison is a private attorney who, as is Indiana custom, can be chosen to serve as prosecutor in a specific case. That’s why he left his practice to handle the Tyson case (losing money in the process, he says) and represents Indiana counties in asset forfeiture cases (against drug dealers, for example).
Garrison, 45, who heads a four-lawyer firm, comes off as a tough-minded, folksy country practitioner-and one you would not want to be cross-examined by in a court. He looks like a thin, scrappy and sharp-elbowed basketball guard; a courtroom Jerry Sloan, the former scrappy, sharp-elbowed Bulls’ guard of the pre-Jordan era.
As John Marshall professor John Corkery noted, Garrison’s use of language is spare and direct. That style, combined with insights on collection and presentation of key evidence to the Tyson jury, made the visitor a “gold mine” to students who showed up, says the professor.
Garrison told them, “You win by working your ass off, not by being pretty, looking like `L.A. Law.’ You know the other guy’s case better than they do.”
As a prime example, he cited evidence from an emergency room examination of beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington 24 hours after the rape.
The exam found visible vaginal abrasions, which, to Garrison’s surprise, “didn’t seem very important to the defense.”
He then exhibited an effective, albeit locker room, flair, underscoring why that was important:
“I’m not Don Juan. But in my modest experience, I can’t remember having inflicted any abrasions on anybody,” he said. It was clear to him that the abrasions did not suggest a consensual act.
Garrison took the emergency room evidence to a reproductive endocrinologist, a fertility expert. Why? It was because the expert routinely does vaginal exams of women trying to get pregnant. This particular specialist had done an estimated 20,000 such exams.
How many times, Garrison wondered, had he found visible abrasions? “Zero,” was the reply.
“To me that was a bomb going off,” Garrison recalled.
In response, the defense brought in a fertility expert who also had overseen about 20,000 such exams. She testified to having seen such abrasions in three or four cases. That did not undermine Garrison’s thesis.
Corkery, the professor, was impressed, too, by Garrison’s heavy emphasis on preparing witnesses. That may not sound unusual. But preparation is often briefer than one realizes, especially of experts. And is his custom, he took Washington into a courtroom to practice.
Typical for him was the handling of Tyson’s limousine driver on the fateful 1991 night.
During the day, the driver is a guidance counselor at an Indianapolis high school. Garrison investigated her academic and professional background and learned that she had special training in crisis intervention. In her day job, she interviews rape victims, drug abusers and abused children, among others.
That gave her uncommon experience with people in turmoil. It opened the door to Garrison having her juxtapose how Washington, the pageant contestant, looked and acted as she left the limo and entered Tyson’s hotel and when she returned hours later.
It would have been one thing for a run-of-the-mill limo driver to claim that Washington appeared disoriented and scared upon leaving, said Garrison. “When the words came out of the mouth of a crisis intervenor, it’s different.”
While Garrison rebuked Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, whom he feels was an ineffective showboat in pursuing Tyson’s failed appeal, he found “the Fuller contingent people of integrity.” But he scoffed at their defense theory, which he characterized this way: Washington “was a hot little number who just couldn’t wait to get into the champ’s pants.”
He then summarized the case he put on in this simple way:
“I got a kid who made a bad career move,” said Garrison. “I got a kid who, surprise, surprise, at 18 years old was guilty of poor judgment. She shouldn’t have gone where she went. But a rape’s still a rape.”
“And,” he steely told his Chicago listeners, “it worked.”
It’s not all talk
Chicago TV ratings again suggest the overblown nature of coverage of late-night talk show “wars.” People aren’t necessarily watching David Letterman, Ted Koppel or Jay Leno.
For the period of Sept. 13 to Oct. 1, Koppel, benefiting from the Oprah-fueled all-day power of WLS-Ch. 7, led the pack with a 21 percent share of the viewing audience. He was followed by Letterman at 19 percent, Leno at 18 percent and reruns of “Roseanne” on WPWR-Ch. 50 at 15 percent. “Cheers” reruns on WGN-Ch.9 lured 9 percent and WFLD-Fox’s Chevy Chase was at 5 percent.
And data of both Nielsen and the rival Arbitron service suggest how Koppel, Letterman and Leno are initially helped by spillover from 10 p.m. local newscasts, which extend to 10:35 p.m. When it gets to the period of 10:45 p.m. to 11 p.m., or 10 minutes into their shows, their ratings go down, with a fair chunk of viewers heading elsewhere, a good many to “Roseanne” and a lesser number to “Cheers.”
Jordanonsense
Musings on, and uninspiring declarations made about, the week’s big event:
– “His future, right now, is eating”-Channel 9’s Rich King reporting from Jordan’s restaurant, where Jordan was dining.
– “Michael makes the most shocking pass of his career”-WFLD-Ch. 32 co-anchor Robin Robinson.
– “My phone call came in the first inning at Comiskey Park,” wrote Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti. “With all respect for the playoff moment, one does not continue watching a baseball game when Michael Jordan is retiring. Hands shaking, I unplugged the computer, packed up and left the press box in a daze.” Boy, imagine if he were assigned to cover Somalia.
– No, Channel 9, Michael did not marry his “childhood sweetheart.” He met Juanita after he got here.
– Rusty Ayers, Chicago spokesman for the 33-million-member American Association of Retired Persons, says it’s unlikely Jordan will be offered membership. But it did send an application to Mick Jagger when he turned 50 in July (he hasn’t joined) and bestowed honorary membership on Mickey Mouse when he turned 50 in 1978, while planning to do likewise for Smokey Bear when he turns 50 next year.
– “It’s literally utter chaos, as all the news crews try to get a scoop, so to speak”-WLS-Ch. 7’s Jim (“J.R.”) Rose, who may soon suffer serious withdrawal symptoms, no longer able to serve as Jordan’s journalistic caddy.
– “He’s leaving the game at the height of his career”-U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, who may do the same, albeit involuntarily.
– And with Jordan gone, when do you figure we’ll next see Madonna, Tom Cruise, Don Johnson, Spike Lee, Hammer, Jack Nicholson or Woody Allen at Chicago Stadium?
