"I determined that if I ever had the opportunity to become a judge, I would not allow expediency to dictate the course of a trial."
"No matter how innocent our actions may be in life, some quirk may cause us to be in the position of this mother. You have done nothing wrong. Yet here you are: your marriage is over; your children are taken away; one child has suffered a severe mental handicap; you are facing a long prison sentence; most of your friends have abandoned you.
"There, but for the grace of God, go I."
Related Articles in this Issue
U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Calls Guidelines "Political Sentencing."
Mike McCarty '90: Breaking the Cycle of Violence
Cleo Washington '85: Fighting "Vindictive Justice"
Todd Shellenbarger '87: Witness for the Prosecution?
A Judge's Defining Moment—Steve Heimann '77
Magazine
Winter 1999
Law & Order in America:
"Remarkable Progress" or the Calm Before the Storm
One Judge's Defining Moments
Bartholomew County Circuit Court Judge Steve Heimann '77 was an attorney defending a 19-year-old client accused of rape when he had the first of two defining moments in his legal career.
His client claimed that the victim—a married high-school graduate—had consented to have sex. The prosecutor claimed that the victim did not have sufficient mental capacity to consent. The case was not going well.
"At trial, she was dressed to look like a fourteen-year-old. She spoke in very simple terms. She had a library card but testified that she only went to the children's section and checked out picture books," Heimann recalls.
The break for the defense came on the final day of the trial. An acquaintance of the victim approached Heimann at lunch and said that she'd be willing to testify about the victim's mental abilities—that she read Harlequin Romances and that she was quite capable of consent.
"But the judge would not allow her to testify because I had rested the case just before lunch," Heimann recalls. His client was found guilty.
"Clearly, what my client did was morally reprehensible. He did take advantage of the young woman. But the case really took a toll on me. I determined that if I ever had the opportunity to become a judge, I would not allow expediency to dictate the course of a trial."
Years later, Heimann was a judge when a case came before him that disturbs him still. The defendant was a young woman charged with shaking her baby. The woman and her husband had been happily married parents of a three-year-old boy and the six-month-old girl. One morning, the man woke up at 6 a.m., kissed his daughter good-bye, and left for work. The mother woke up at 7 a.m. and checked on her daughter. When the baby slept later than usual, the mother became concerned and took the child to the doctor, who sent them to the emergency room. The little girl was helicoptered to Indianapolis, where a neurosurgeon determined the symptoms had been caused by shaking. The mother was charged with the crime.
Before the criminal trial, the father filed for divorce in Heimann's court, requesting custody of the couple's son. "We went to trial and heard expert testimony about why it was believed that the mother shook the baby," Heimann recalls. "No defense on this issue was presented. I awarded the dad custody of the boy and the mother's parents got custody of the girl. The mom was not allowed to see either of the children unsupervised."
Meanwhile, the criminal trial was still a couple of months away. The woman's attorney finally contacted an expert in "shaken baby" cases who agreed to testify. This testimony combined with hospital records proved that it that the little girl had suffered an aneurysm. The neurosurgeon's diagnosis of "shaken baby" had been wrong. The mother was exonerated, but she and her family had already suffered immeasurably.
"This case showed me how one little professional mistake can alter persons' lives," Heimann says. "Here, the mother was branded as harming her child. Finally she was vindicated, but she was fortunate that her parents had the money to hire a qualified expert to counter the initial mistaken diagnosis.
"A few months after the acquittal, the mother filed a petition to modify the dissolution decree," Heimann recalls. "I granted it and she received custody of her son and daughter. But this case had a profound effect on me. No matter how bad the case looks, I must be extremely careful to keep an open mind. No matter how innocent our actions may be in life, some quirk may cause us to be in the position of this mother. You have done nothing wrong. Yet here you are: your marriage is over; your children are taken away; one child has suffered a severe mental handicap; you are facing a long prison sentence; most of your friends have abandoned you.
"There, but for the grace of God, go I."