Profiles in the Court of Public Opinion

• Author: James F. Haggerty
• Profession: Lawyer
• Pages: 305-334

305

CHAPTER TWELVE

Proles

inthe Court

ofPublicOpinion

A childhood friend of mine, y-shing writer and guide James J. Wynne,

once said to me, “You can have all the equipment and guidebooks in the

world. Sooner or later you’ve got to put a y in the water.” And he’s

right. There is theory, and then there’s practice. Sometimes the two can

be as different as night and day. The PR textbooks that grace the halls

of universities across the land (and the practice guides in every law

library) can sometimes fall a bit short under the glaring heat of the tele-

vision camera and the chaotic rhythm of the courtroom.

With that in mind, what follows are interviews with some of the law-

yers who have been on the front lines of the battle to win their lawsuit

in the court of public opinion. Their insights are candid, at times contro-

versial, but in the end, remarkably commonsensical. Some, quite frankly,

differ with my own philosophy regarding which tactics work best when

managing the public perception aspects of high-prole legal matters.

But all heed Justice Anthony Kennedy’s admonition that “an attorney’s

duties do not begin inside the courtroom door,” supporting the notion

that if you are not tending carefully to the public opinion elements of

litigation, you are doing a grave disservice to your client or your case.

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In the Court of Public Opinion

306

Joseph B. Cheshire V

Founder

Cheshire Parker Schneider Bryan & Vitale

On March 30, 2006, North Carolina attorney Joseph Cheshire

gathered 50 to 60 members of the media into his conference room

at Cheshire Parker Schneider Bryan & Vitale’s ofces in down-

town Raleigh, a room that usually holds 12 to 15 people. Cheshire

was representing David Evans, one of the lacrosse player defen-

dants in the now-infamous Duke rape case.

Wagging his nger vigorously, Cheshire had a message for the

throng: “You people are telling lies, and one of these days, you

are going to be embarrassed by it.”

As he shook his nger, he recalled thinking, “The last person

I saw shake a nger at the media like this was Bill Clinton. And

look where that got him.”

Then he thought, “God knows, Joe, those boys had better be

innocent.”

They were.

Indeed, the Duke lacrosse rape case, which dominated media—

both traditional and Internet-based—in 2006 and 2007, serves as

one of the most remarkable examples in recent history of how

effective management of the media during a court case can turn

the tide. Cheshire and the rest of his legal team successfully took

on a powerful prosecutor, major media (including, as we’ll see,

the New York Times), and general public opinion with a skill and

persistence that I don’t think I’d ever witnessed.

Simply put, the defense team stopped the media in its tracks

and then turned them in the other direction.

It is thus a textbook case on how to manage perceptions in the

midst of high-prole legal disputes, and I believe the lessons have

reverberated throughout the legal and public relations profes-

sions for years.

In the Duke case, Cheshire, his partner Brad Bannon, and other

lawyers representing the three defendants in the case faced a nearly

impossible task: halting a media feeding frenzy mid-bite and then

using that same media to help establish the truth of their clients’

innocence. All this in a case that was, in many ways, tailor-made to

t into existing media biases about race, power, and privilege.

In our interview, Cheshire said, “In the Duke case, the media

had a fact pattern that just t into everyone’s idea of a ‘dream’

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