Taboo Trial Words: 'Drunk,' 'Victim,' 'Rape'

July 1, 2008— -- "Rape." "Drunk." "Victim." "Crime scene." "Homicide." These are the words one would expect to hear in trials for such crimes as drunken driving, robbery, murder, sexual assault.

But these are just a few of the words that have recently been banned from criminal trials around the country in what some prosecutors warn is a growing and disturbing trend.

After a 2007 rape trial in Nebraska in which the alleged victim was barred from using the word "rape," Joshua Marquis, vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, said he was "stunned at the number of phone calls I got -- prosecutors saying they had been in trials where the words 'murderer' and 'crime scene' had been removed" from testimony.

Word bans are "a sort of virus; a very very bad thing," he said. "'Murder' becomes 'death' and 'rape' becomes 'sexual intercourse.'"

"Rape is a crime of power, not about sex, so when a victim has to get up and talk about when she had 'sexual intercourse' with the accused ... it's just wrong."

Restricting what can and cannot be said at trial is nothing new and even prosecutors admit it is appropriate in some circumstances. Defense attorneys for Chicago mobster Chris Petti had the word "mafia" banned from his 1990 trial. The word "victim" was stricken from testimony in Kobe Bryant's 2004 sexual assault case. In other cases, judges have banned words like "terrorist" and "gang."

From a defense attorney's perspective, the logic is obvious: Words like "victim" "homicide" and "crime scene" are often barred from testimony as "the very words themselves assume facts not in evidence," said Kurt Kerns, a defense attorney in Wichita, Kan.

"There is only a 'crime scene' if there is a crime, which is a question for the jury to decide," he said.

Dan Monnat, a defense attorney in Wichita, said he almost always files motions to ban words like "victim." "To permit witnesses to call the complainant a victim where the whole issue is whether or not the complainant has been victimized is inconsistent with the presumption of innocence that every accused person is entitled to," he said.