Truth should be a matter of principle, not just spin
By MARY JO MELONE
Published April 21, 2004
You remember the case. It created an uproar earlier this month. A sheriff's deputy cuffed a 9-year-old New Port Richey girl for stealing a neighbor's rabbit. When the girl, Stephanie Jefferson, got to court she was faced with the ponderous choice of whether she needed a lawyer.
"Well," her mother asked, "did you take the rabbit?"
Stephanie said yes, to which her mother replied, "Then you don't need a lawyer."
It's a considerable leap from burglary to vehicular homicide, but the principle is the same. It applies to adults like Jennifer Porter and her parents as much as to children like Stephanie Jefferson.
You tell the truth, the whole truth, and go from there.
So far, Jennifer Porter has not told us the whole truth. First, according to her lawyer, she fled the scene of an accident that killed two children. That was three weeks ago.
When Porter finally surfaced 16 days ago, attorney Barry Cohen promised that she would help authorities. "There's an ongoing investigation which we respect and which we will cooperate with," Cohen said then.
He led investigators to her car. That's about as far as it went. A Hillsborough prosecutor said in court Tuesday that Cohen has ignored two crucial and obvious requests to interview Jennifer Porter.
Nothing doing, Cohen says. He's changed his tune, now that things aren't going his way.
So much for the whole truth.
Cohen wasn't happy that Porter's parents were threatened with jail if they didn't testify against her.
Investigators had tried for days to get hold of James and Lillian Porter. Their interviews were vital as long as their daughter remained silent. Note my sarcasm when I say the Porters did what any parent would do. They went out of their way to avoid detectives, the prosecutor said Tuesday.
They have finally given up this game of cat-and-mouse. Through their lawyer, the parents said Tuesday they will sit down with prosecutors in the Hillsborough State Attorney's office Thursday and answer whatever questions get thrown at them.
I'll hold my applause.
There's no doubt that the Porters faced an excruciating decision. But isn't telling the truth part of what parents are supposed to teach children, a lesson driven home by the rabbit case?
Aren't they supposed to learn actions have consequences, and yes, sometimes terrible consequences?
And what kind of example have Jennifer Porter's parents set for her by their own behavior?
The lawyer for the parents, Ralph Fernandez, said outside the courthouse that one of the reasons the Porters decided to testify was that sending them to jail was more than Jennifer Porter could bear.
The guilt - that they would go to jail to protect her - might overwhelm Jennifer Porter and push her over the emotional edge, he said. Fernandez danced around a reporter's question about whether she might be suicidal. He isn't a psychiatrist, he pointed out.
Tell me, please. Who in this crowd is anguishing over the mental state of Lisa Wilkins, who lost two children that night?
Is anybody worrying about how she'll face the future?
Attorney Cohen was said to have pulled off a public relations coup when he put Jennifer Porter in front of the likes of me and other reporters. He made a big deal about how she went to the Wilkins home and tried to speak to Lisa Wilkins and apologize. It rang so sincere then. It's sounding so hollow now.
Her parents sat with Jennifer Porter the day Cohen put her before the TV lights. They looked as grim as she did. Yet, you have to wonder: How well meaning were they, really, when it took the threat of jail time to get them to open up?
We live in an age where the bogus is taken so often for the serious. We get used to every sort of posturing and spin. I suppose it's no surprise that the deaths of Bryant Wilkins and Durontae Caldwell would also be treated that way. It's just life we're talking about - life and the truth.
