According to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, speaking on Anderson Cooper's CNN show Monday night, Eliot Spitzer should not resign nor should he be prosecuted because prostitution is a "victimless crime."
Dershowitz gave us the usual nonsense about how Europeans would regard all this as no big deal, but what does this prove other than the fact that many Europeans have reached the nadir of moral debauchery? Yes, we all know that in France the discovery that a politician has a mistress or even patronizes prostitutes can raise their poll ratings. Is this really an area in which we wish to emulate French degeneracy?
I'm more interested in Dershowitz's claim that Spitzer is guilty of a crime that doesn't have any victims. Is this really true? Let's make a list of all of Spitzer's victims.
His wife: Spitzer's wife of 20 years not only has to cope with the public knowledge that her high-profile husband frequents prostitutes, but she also has to stand alongside him while Spitzer makes a press statement on his sexual and legal offenses. Converting your wife into a political prop--what could be more humiliating?
His daughters: For years the girls could think of their dad as a champion of legal and moral rectitude, fighting Wall Street crooks, shutting down prostitution dens, and so on. Now these innocent children must endure the knowledge that their father is far from what he portrayed himself to be. Spitzer has made shipwreck of his family and disgraced his children in public. What are his daughters going to say when they next see their friends?
New York citizens: Isn't there something outrageous when a high public official, and in this case a former attorney general, somehow gets the idea that he is above the law? That he can break the law with impunity? Why should other New Yorkers be held accountable to the law but not Spitzer? Spitzer of all people has worked to emphasize the idea that no one is above the law. So if Spitzer gets away with this, he will have screwed more than the $4000 hooker.
Alan Dershowitz: There is something about Democratic malfeasance (Barney Frank's relationship with a male prostitute, Clinton sex scandals, the latest Spitzer prostitution scandal) that causes liberal Harvard professors who agree with the politics of the culprits to lose their normal good sense. Whether Dershowitz thinks the law in question is a good one or a bad one is irrelevant here. Laws are made to be followed, and it's odd when law professors think that this doesn't apply to laws about sex. Clearly Alan Dershowitz's legal and moral intelligence has become the latest victim.
Reader Comments ( Page 25 of 25)
361. #334
"Hello, knock-knock is any body home there?"
This rationalization has been used before.
Once, again the charges that his lawyers were negotiating over were federal charges of money laundering. It was not "just about sex". It was about breaking a federal law. Since he is part of the Executive branch of his state the consequences are more serious. The fact that he was a prosecutor makes it even more so problematic for him. As stated before, if he had paid directly in cash or used his AMEX card, he would not be in the predicament that he wound up in. Then the "just about sex" argument would work.
M2D5 at 4:39PM on Mar 12th 2008
362. bump
Somber at 4:39PM on Mar 12th 2008
363. Linda - I have plenty of experience, which is why I can say with confidence that when coaxed ("tipping well" always helps), many call-girls, even the "clean" high priced ones will give in to unprotected sex - there's a price for everything. I say you are naive to think they would never cross that line. They have, and they do. Also, if you read the full court affadavit, you will see that this was a pretty loosly run operation comprised of independent contractors, not your typical prostitution operation. These women weren't closely monitored, weren't stalked by their pimps, and in most cases don't seem to have ever even met their "bosses" - many of them emailed their photos to the ring-leaders and dealt with them over the phone or text messages. It's hard to mandate and enforce STD testing through text messages.
Will Frances at 4:52PM on Mar 12th 2008
364. Will
Are you a pimp? John? Whore?
Help us understand "plenty of expereience".
mac at 5:47PM on Mar 12th 2008
365. ATHEIST
Reply to: His daughters: For years the girls could think of their dad as a champion of legal and moral rectitude, fighting Wall Street crooks, shutting down prostitution dens, and so on. Now these innocent children must endure the knowledge that their father is far from what he portrayed himself to be. Spitzer has made shipwreck of his family and disgraced his children in public. What are his daughters going to say when they next see their friends? Dinesh
___________
Dinesh, you embarrass your daughters with your tirade against atheists.
Calling yourself a Catholic is like wearing a sign "I AM STUPID" on your back.
You are hurting your family. Christianity dumbs you down. You claim you believe in a ghost story about an exorcist who had conversations with demonic spirits.
duh.
_______________
On January 26, the FBI placed a surveillance team on Spitzer at the Mayflower Hotel for the first time. They wiretapped a conversation that he might try to meet with a prostitute when he traveled to Washington to attend a black-tie dinner.
The January stakeout came roughly two weeks after a federal judge authorized investigators to intercept the escort service’s telephone calls and text messages.
A team of FBI agents from New York and Washington was dispatched to the hotel after an escort service employee was heard on a wiretap calling the front desk to say that flowers were being sent to Spitzer and wanting to confirm that he would be there, said a source knowledgeable about the investigation who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Spitzer spent part of the day and evening at the hotel, but
*** if he had a date from the escort service, the agents did not see her or she did not show up. *****
___________
Great work by the FBI.
The guy reported an income of $ 1.9 million in 2006.
When you have over two million in annual income, a decent, caring man would give away thousands to less deserving people.
How do you separate that from what he did?
When a wealthy man spends or gives away his own money in a foolish manner, it is a victimless crime. IF it is a crime at all.
William Hays at 5:18PM on Mar 12th 2008
366. Yes, Will. Perhaps you should turn yourself over to the STD police.
Linda at 5:55PM on Mar 12th 2008
367. This is not just about Eliot Spitzer's ridiculous moral inconsistency (prosecuting the prostitution industry while utilizing their services), it's also about his arrogance and hubris, using his position of power to threaten and intimidate and destroy people.
Dave at 7:51AM on Mar 13th 2008
368. If you can't have sex with your husband for some reason, get divorced, separate, etc. He cheated, plain and simple. Let's not make excuses.
les at 10:50AM on Mar 13th 2008
369. "And as for his kids finding out that their parent is somewhat less than he portrayed himself to be, that is called "growing up".
To purposefully embarrass, disgrace and humiliate your children is unforgivable. How many of us have fathers who are in the public eye and have put us up for ridicule. Maybe some. He cheated on them just as much as he cheated on his wife. If you HAVE to have sex outside of your marriage, separate or divorce, period. And don't give me that there are some places you cannot divorce - you can in the US - we are not a third world, backward country.
les at 10:50AM on Mar 13th 2008
370. Other than to generate a ton of publicity for a controvertial, if flimsy stand on Spitzer's "entanglement" I cannot understand why Dershowitz would go on the news and publish editorials, like the one on the FOrward Jewish newspaper website http://www.forward.com defending spitzer.
Spitzer Has Sinned, But It’s Our Sex Obsession That’s Criminal
Opinion
By Alan Dershowitz
Wed. Mar 12, 2008
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When Eliot Spitzer was my research assistant in the 1980s, he was a young man of great brilliance, high integrity, conservative demeanor and enormous promise. It pains me deeply to see him brought down so far, and so quickly, by private sexual misconduct.
I think somewhat less of him now than I did before I heard this week’s news of his indiscretions, largely because of what he did to his family — but let’s all take a collective deep breath and try to regain a sense of proportion about the essentially private actions of this public man.
Throughout our history, men in high places have engaged in low sexual activities. From Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Roosevelt to John Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton, great political figures have behaved like adolescent boys in private, while at the same time brilliantly and effectively leading our nation in public.
The laws criminalizing adult consensual prostitution — especially with $5,000-an-hour call girls — are as anachronistic as the old laws that used to criminalize adultery, fornication, homosexuality and even masturbation. These may be sins, but there are no real victims, except for family members.
Our nation, unique among Western democracies, is obsessed with the private lives of public figures. Whether it be Larry Craig soliciting favors in an airport bathroom or Rush Limbaugh getting illegal pharmaceuticals in a parking lot, this obsessive focus on the private imperfections of public figures threatens to drive many good men — and soon, good women — out of public life for fear that they will be brought down by their private peccadilloes.
The back pages of a good number of glossy magazines and local newspapers openly advertise what everybody knows to be expensive call girl services. They’re advertised on television, in tourist brochures and on the Internet. Millions of people around the world use prostitutes and call girls.
The trade can be tawdry and sometimes exploitive, as when young girls are enslaved and prostituted against their will. But adult women who make the choice to sell their bodies for sex for $5,000 an hour are not victims, and if the trade is tawdry, it certainly doesn’t warrant 5,000 overheard phone calls, 6,000 intercepted emails and the use of surveillance and undercover agents — all of which could have been put to better use in seeking to prevent acts of terrorism or predation against innocent victims.
We are a nation of hypocrites who publicly proclaim against acts that so many of the proclaimers perform in private.
Yes, Eliot Spitzer can be charged with hypocrisy for prosecuting prostitution rings while patronizing prostitutes himself. The voters would have had every right to hold his hypocrisy against him had he run for office after completing his term. They could have considered the recklessness of his conduct in evaluating his ability to perform his public functions. But forcing him to resign constitutes an abuse of the political and criminal processes, an abuse that would only be compounded by using vague criminal statutes to prosecute him for federal crimes for which no one is prosecuted.
There is another issue that is potentially quite troubling in this case. The story about how Spitzer’s alleged crimes were discovered does not ring true.
As a criminal defense lawyer, I have dealt with many money laundering and other bank-related cases. The financial transactions that allegedly gave rise to the federal government’s interest in Spitzer do not generally result in a criminal investigation.
I strongly suspect that we will learn more about how the feds came to focus on Spitzer’s financial transactions. The money laundering statute is so vague and open-ended that it can be used selectively to target political and economic opponents. On this issue, stay tuned. We have not heard the last of it.
As a nation we must learn how to distinguish between sin and crime, between activities that endanger the public and those that harm only the actor and his family. The criminal law should be reserved for serious predatory misconduct.
Nor should this story of personal fallibility dominate the news, as it continues to do while our soldiers are killed in Iraq and the Democrats choose their candidate for president. Sex sells soap, at least in the United States — but a married man going to a prostitute is simply not a big deal. We must restore our sense of proportion and priorities.
Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard University.
andrew lavin at 1:41PM on Mar 13th 2008
371. Dinesh...
You cease to amaze me...which is the same thing as saying that you never cease to amaze me...with your shortsighted opinions.
I can only deduce from your latest offering that you agree with the notion that prostitution is indeed a "victimless" crime as long as the clientèle (both male and female) are single, honest about their imperfections with their children, and not betraying the public trust.
All of that notwithstanding, the first victims created by the "crime" of prostitution are the participants who suffer the pointless shakedown, the career sabotage, and the public humiliation at the hands of backwards laws based on some superstitious definition of "morality".
The second victims created by the "crime" of prostitution are the American people themselves who fund (through their hard-earned tax dollars) the law enforcement resources needed to chase down anyone involved in prostitution.
The funny thing is, Dinesh, many Christian conservatives will argue that if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will own guns.
DUH!
If you outlaw prostitution then only outlaws will involve themselves in prostitution.
And the news for you gets worse, Dinesh, because you're no better than a common prostitute. The only difference between you and a common hooker is that you rent out your mind...to AOL and the likes. Meanwhile, the street walker rents out their body.
Big bloody difference, right?
Paul at 1:58PM on Mar 13th 2008
372. It is very common for French men to have a mistress and all their wives must be like Cindy Adams. My daighter in law is from France and she says this is true and is accepted.
It seems that many many people today accept cheating,wife swaping,teenage sex as the norm in the USA.
Politicans wives must sit back and act as if all is forgiven that they have not turned their backs on the wayward husbands. It is too bad that they think the American public expects them to "stand by their man" when in fact I think the majority of us say Divorce the bastard! I am sure at home there is quite a bit of loud discussions about all of this but we will never hear of it. They trash Hillary for standing by Bill when he did his cheating but I wonder if maybe their love for these men is stronger than we know ? Id Silsa stands by and stays with this guy maybe she cares more than we know or could ever feel for someone
who has treated her and the girls so shabbily? I don't know but I do know thatif it were me I would be seeing an attorney while he was up there resigning. He could have infected his wife and the mother of his kids with Aids. WHAT A MAN !!!!
Judy at 3:12PM on Mar 13th 2008
373. It's not the cheating that bothers me, it's the lying. Oh wait, he's a politician. In the bible, men had seven or eight wives, prostitutes and had sex with their slaves. Maybe he is simply following the word of God. As far as his wife being a victim, many women know well that this stuff goes on and are willing to ignore it in return for a "good" life. The children are another issue and I'm sure the overly pampered little darlings are embarrassed. Perhaps dad should have been more honest with them and told them that although he breaks the law it's only because their mother is an uptight prude and he couldn't get her legs open with the jaws of life.
DarcIntentions at 4:51PM on Mar 17th 2008
374. DD lists.. Wife, Daughters, People of NY, Dershowitz.
I'll start with Dershowitz. If you think Dershowitz's legal and moral intelligence became compromised by Eliot Spitzer's meeting with a prostitute, you either a)have never heard him speak before, or b)you can't understand that this incident wasn't the momentous event that transformed Dershowitz's mental capacities.
As for Wife, daughters and People of NY, I guess DD is up to his old strawman arguments. He is basing his whole argument of prostitution NOT being a victimless crime on this particular instance being typical - where the 'John' was - a governor, a married man and a father of 3 daughters. Funny that DD didn't mention the prostitute or the governor himself.
In THIS specific case, the John is question carried multiple responsibilities, as a father, a husband and a Governor.
There are millions of single men with no kids who aren't the governor of a state.
So lets try a more typical situation.. If one of THESE men choose to pay a prostitute for sex -or- take a woman to dinner, some wine, well versed empty promises and a nice gift in exchange for some action... who is the victim here?
fabio at 7:47PM on Mar 17th 2008