Defense attorney Jennifer Bonjean, who has the word “not guilty” tattooed on her right arm, called a woman who accused R. Kelly of sexual abuse a “pathological liar.” She accused another of extortion. She tried to tear their accounts apart and attacked prosecutors for stripping her client, the former R&B star, of “all the humanity he has.”
Bonjean, who served as Kelly’s lead attorney in a criminal trial in Chicago that ended in a conviction last week, represents men accused of sexual misconduct in some of #MeToo’s most high-profile cases. Became known for aggressive tactics. era.
She helped Bill Cosby overturn a sexual assault conviction last year that led to his release from prison. appealed his conviction for sex trafficking and other charges, which was sentenced to 120 years in prison.
“Everyone has the right to affirmative defense,” Bonjean, 52, said in an interview last week, just before Kelly’s conviction for a sex crime involving a minor was announced.
Her theatrical knock-down drag-out style is hardly unusual in the world of criminal defense. In many cases, they testify of being sexually abused in tears.
“We’re in the age of ‘believing women.’ There is no place in court to think like a mob.”
That perspective, and her relentless cross-examination of accusers, which usually involves delving into inconsistencies in accounts and questioning motives, can scare abused women into confessing. It’s been criticized by people who say
Lily Bernard, who sued Mr. Cosby and accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting him in 1990, defended Cosby in a civil lawsuit filed by Mr. Bonjeen earlier this year. He said he was pissed off. She had been sexually assaulted in her teens. Ms. Bernard, who attended her California trial, called the lawyer’s cross-examination of her woman, Judy Hughes, and other accusers “victim-blaming and victim-shaming.”
A native of Valparaiso, Indiana, Bonjean (pronounced Bonjean) is a classically trained opera singer with a master’s degree in music who previously worked at Chicago’s Rape Crisis Center and advocated for victims of sexual assault. was doing. Some, she said, may look “ironically.”
The job prompted her to study law school at Loyola University Chicago with the intention of becoming a prosecutor, but she eventually landed a job in defense after being drawn to “underdog” clients. As a lawyer driven by prosecution’s excesses, he has attracted attention mainly in so-called false accusation cases.
Russell Ainsworth, a staff attorney for the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, has worked with Ms. Bonjean on civil rights litigation for 10 years. “
“If I need a lawyer to go to Matt, I’ll pick that one,” he said.
Her approach was revealed earlier this year in a civil lawsuit filed by Huth, which accused Cosby of sexually assaulting Cosby when he was 16 at the Playboy Mansion in 1975.
While Ms. Bonjean cross-examined Ms. Huss, she challenged her as to why it had taken decades to come to the charges. At one point, she suggested that Ms. Hughes had been quiet about the trip to the mansion. Not because she buried painful memories of her, but because she was uncomfortable telling people because it was the black people who went with Mr. Cosby. Huth strongly denies it.
During the trial, Ms. Bonjean turned her attention to Ms. Bernard and accused her in court of speaking to the jury during intermission. (The judge denied Bonjean’s claim.)
“I felt her anger the moment she tried to unfairly accuse me. I felt how far she would go,” Bernard said in an interview.
Ms. Bonjean, of the New York-based firm, said she considered herself a feminist and argued that the label did not contradict her work as an attorney for the accused. Her responsibility is to exercise all legal avenues at her disposal on behalf of her clients, she explained, adding, “That doesn’t always equate to sensitivity to the victim’s feelings.
If she was a male lawyer, she argues, people wouldn’t think twice about her approach and just assume it was because the lawyer was doing his job.
“I should be an ambassador of sorts, a vagina ambassador,” she said.
During Mr. Kelly’s Chicago lawsuit, Mr. Bonjean was boldly belligerent at every turn. She fought to keep as much video footage as possible away from jurors, maintaining a constant stream of opposition, and sometimes continued to fight for her clients on Twitter.
At one point, the prosecutor appealed to the judge. Tweet She made a post accusing them of playing dirty tricks.She said she had offered to refrain from tweeting about the court proceedings, and the judge agreed. Posted: “I’m not allowed to tweet, but I think I can retweet,” shared a tweet by someone else who quoted her from the trial and identified one of the government’s key witnesses. They called him “a liar, a thief, a blackmailer.”
“I had to find what worked for me,” Bonjean said of his approach. “My aggressive style — some call it fierce, others say whatever words they want to use to describe it, is how I’ve been effective.”
Attorney Debra S. Katz, who has represented high-profile sexual misconduct whistleblowers, cited Harvey Weinstein’s conviction in New York to discredit the woman or criticize her character. He said defense tactics that tried to accuse or accuse him risked failing in juries. She represented one of her women accusing producers of sexual assault.
“Everyone deserves a defense, but attacking women in this way is, in my view, absolutely unconscionable,” Katz said.
Ms. Bonjean’s most famous success was appealing Ms. Cosby’s sexual assault conviction. She and her co-lawyers broke Cosby’s rights in 2004, breaking prosecutors’ apparent promise not to prosecute him over allegations that Andrea Constant was drugged and sexually assaulted. persuaded the Pennsylvania Supreme Court of infringement.
Cosby’s recent civil trial ended with a jury verdict awarding Hughes $500,000 in damages.
Kelly’s recent lawsuit found him guilty of the most serious charges, including coercing a minor to have sex and producing a child sexual abuse video. He was acquitted of several other charges, including attempting to sabotage his earlier investigation.
In both cases, Ms. Bonjean has pledged to vigorously appeal.
Robert Chiarito contributed a report from Chicago.