Lansing Criminal Defense Lawyer Vows To Appeal After Charlotte Michigan Jury Finds Former Okemos Teacher Guilty Of Criminal Sexual Conduct 1st Degree
Finally, the verdict is in. An Eaton County jury in Charlotte has found William Bryan Polston, 39, guilty of multiple counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct in the 1st Degree, a felony carrying up to life in prison. Polston is a former Okemos, Michigan High School teacher. He had been accused of engaging in sexual relations with a student between the ages of 14 to 16.
Under traditional incarnations of the Criminal Sexual Conduct statute, the ultimate penalty (up to life in prison) was applicable in cases of forceable rape. Michigan's current statute, however, sets forth a litany of grounds for charging under the CSC 1 statute. Included in that list is sexual contact involving penetration, between a teacher and a student who is between the ages of 13 and 16, and who is enrolled in the teacher's school. Neither consent nor mistake are legal defenses. That is the net that snagged Polston.
The sexual encounters in this matter occurred in 2003 and 2004. Today, the victim is 22.
Many non-lawyers are surprised to learn that, in criminal trials, the side that presented the stellar lawyering frequently finds itself on the losing end, while the side presenting the more pedestrian case may wind up with a win. The reason for that paradox is simple: It's easier for the shooter to hit the bullseye when he's standing 6 inches from the target. An apt metaphor for what happened in the Polston trial, which, as we shall see, was an air-tight case for the prosecution.
Polston was represented by one of Lansing's best criminal defense lawyers. In the Blog's opinion, the defense strategy was a near textbook example of excellent lawyering.
By the end of the trial, the litigation chessboard looked like this: The prosecutor's main gambit was to hang the criminal defendant with his own words. To that end, the prosecutor used telephone conversations between Polston and the victim, which the victim had surreptitiously recorded. In those conversations the victim asked the defendant to explain why he sought sex with her and why he pursued the relationship.
Polston replied "I have no justification" and "I had the ability to say no, and I didn't". Although falling short of a full blown confession, the statements were usable by the prosecutor as 'party admissions' (a legal term of art).
In a nutshell, a confession is a knowing and voluntary statement that supports all of the necessary elements of the charged crime. The elements of a crime are like the wheels on a car--if one is missing, the car won't drive. In contrast, an admission is a statement by the defendant, whether oblique or unequivocal, which can be interpreted as supporting some (but not all) of the elements of the offense, or which may tend to undermine the defendant's credibility (where the defendant testified at trial).
Couple those principles with a jury instruction which states that, if the jury finds that the defendant actually made the statement, the jurors may give the statement whatever weight [they] think it deserves--and you have a formula for disaster for the defense team.
So what's a competent criminal defense lawyer to do? First and foremost, shift the jury's focus to evidence which tends to tarnish the victim's halo. And of course, few if any strategies get the job done like undermining witness credibility. That is because all evidence comes from the mouths of witnesses (even most documents, photographs and things must be admitted into evidence upon witnesses testimony that the item is what it purports to be). Thus, in the final analysis, credibility is almost always the linchpin upon which the outcome of the trial will turn.
To that end, Polston's defense lawyer deftly turned to the matter of 'witness interest', a principle of evidence. Under current Michigan case law, a jury may view a witness's interest in the outcome of the litigation (or other litigation) as evidence that the witness's testimony is motivated by something other than pure honesty. Another jury instruction informs the jury that they may reject all or part of the testimony of a witness who the jury deems to have testified falsely.
Here, the defense attorney established that, before the matter was ever brought to the attention of the authorities, the victim had retained a lawyer to wring a big payday out of the defendant. Moreover, the jury was informed of the amount of that resolution: $70,000.00. The implication was that the victim concocted the story for pecuniary gain.
Supporting that theory was testimony by the very lawyer who set up the monetary settlement. The attorney confirmed that the victim chose not to push for Polston to be banned from teaching, because that outcome would have left him unable to pay. Since a teacher found to have sexually molested an underaged student must be terminated, a reasonable interpretation might be that the information was withheld from school officials for pecuniary gain (reporting is mandatory under certain circumstances).
And once the matter was finally reported, the informant was not the victim, but another teacher who caught wind of the tale--after the settlement deal was struck.
The potential blowback for the criminal defendant was that the jury would see the payout as hush money, a transaction which could be interpreted as evidence of guilt. The defense lawyer softened that angle, however, by explaining to the jury that defendant's only motivation was to protect his family from public scorn.
Though the statute provides for up to life in prison, on judgment day, the judge must consult the Michigan Sentencing Guidelines in handing down the penalty. The purpose of the guidelines is to ensure uniformity and equal justice in sentencing.
The guidelines provide a formula which quantifies the unique facts of the case. Points are assessed for the various details. The points are distilled into a score, which pinpoints the final proposed sentence. The judge must abide by that recommendation, unless substantial and compelling reasons warrant either an upward or a downward departure.
A cursory review of the applicable sentencing guidelines reveals that even the least egregious version of this crime warrants prison time. And with six proven violations hanging over his head, Mr. Polston would be well advised to engage an experienced Southfield criminal appellate lawyer.
Ex-Okemos Teacher Guilty Of Sexual Misconduct, The Lansing State Journal, January 14, 2011



