You are listening to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center Just Rural Podcast Series that highlights innovative programs and success stories from rural communities across the United States. This is Cyndi Simpson, Rural Project Specialist with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. This interview was recorded on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 with Mr. Thom Nolan, Special Project Staff Attorney with the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault in St. Paul, Minnesota. Mr. Nolan is interviewed by Sally Laskey of the NSVRC. Could you talk a bit about how you approach a case as a prosecutor? Sure and it doesn’t matter which case it is, although serious felonies there is more implications, but basically I start with the end in mind, which I guess is a phrase that has become popular recently, but essentially when I receive the investigative reports from law enforcement looking it over, determining what charges are going to be filed in that matter. I then start developing a theme for that case about what my theme is going to be and I look at it as to what I will be actually saying to a jury at a closing argument at the end of a case and then essentially work backwards to determine how I get there. The theme is very important because that is something that has to be consistent. If you do not have a theme you don’t really have a story to tell to the jury. If you do not have a theme that’s consistent the jury hears mixed messages, so you need to develop a theme early on and be consistent with that while knowing that there may be additional facts that are brought in through other investigative reports. There may be damaging facts that hurt your case. You have to be aware of that, but you should not be changing your theme throughout the process because ultimately you will not have the ability to really effectively educate the jury as to what happened in this matter that leads you to believe that they should result in a conviction against the defendant whatever the particular charges are. I do that then by working with my staff, working with the other prosecutors in the office, working with law enforcement and working with the advocates. Ultimately then working with the victim as well because it’s important that you develop a personal relationship with the victim because you need to personalize that story. The jury needs to hear that this individual is a real person that is whole, that is three dimensional and unless you develop that relationship it’s pretty hard to do that and I've seen prosecutors who don’t do that and they really look at the victim as someone who is almost aside from the issue and that’s part and parcel unfortunately with some of our – the philosophy that we have where when you prosecute a criminal case you are representing the state. You’re not representing that individual victim per se, but if you go forward and you have the attitude you lose the ability to communicate effectively who that individual is and so I'm always thinking what is the final thing I'm going to say to the jury at the closing argument that personalizes everything they’ve heard up until that point and I can only do that by stepping back at the very beginning and personalizing from that point going forward. Are there any specific strategies that you use when working with a sexual assault or intimate partner sexual assault case? Well there are several things I think that a very important that are not immediately recognizable by the community at large and that is that so much of what happens with sexual assault and domestic violence in counterintuitive and not only the juries, but sometimes judges. Judges need to be educated about this and so frankly, when I doing a voir dire, which is where I'm questioning the jury, I tell a story. I use hypotheticals. I've always been given great latitude by the courts in doing this, but I bring out what is happening through hypotheticals to get the jury to understand what exactly is happening here, why victims are sometimes reluctant to testify, why they delay reporting, why they recant their statements, why they sometimes decide they’re going to actually testify for the defendant, why after living apart from them after the incident they go back and they rejoin the perpetrator. Those things don’t make sense to the average person. You have to give them some understanding of what that is and why it happens in a hypothetical sense and I find that to be very effective. I think it’s very important when you are prosecuting a criminal sexual case that you actually personalize this individual’s story through the use of hypotheticals, so that you’re not actually trying to offer facts without getting evidence to the jury, but you still get the message across. They get the point. I've been able to see the proverbial light bulb go on in the minds of jurors when it finally clicks and it makes sense and it’s really – to me it’s a very satisfying experience when I see that they get it and we haven’t even introduced the case yet. I find it to be a very effective strategy. Do you see your role as a prosecutor as also a community educator then? Absolutely and I think that has to be holistic. It’s not just prosecutors. It has to be the bench. It has to be advocates. It has to be defense counsel. It has to be holistic and so often because I have done defense that the defense counsel is considered the enemy, but in reality really good defense attorneys are what all attorneys are supposed to be. They are zealous advocates for their clients. That doesn’t make them bad people and the majority of them are highly ethical and they follow the law and the rules of court, but they also participate in this because they understand the dynamic. They know what’s going on. They’re representing their client’s legal interests, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t believe that this doesn’t happen and it’s not a serious problem in our society today, so I think if you bring defense counsel in and you have community organizations that have all the various disciplines playing I think it can be highly effective. And can you talk a little bit about what you would like a survivor of sexual violence to know about a prosecutor, the prosecutor’s role? Well that they are working for you. They are working with you. Even though they represent the state per se as a I stated, they really believe in seeing that justice is done and I think too often historically victims have been reluctant to come forward because they don’t receive the respect and the dignity that they deserve and they also there is essentially been a reputation that is now I think being whittled away that there are a lot of false reports, that a lot of this is manipulation, that law enforcement doesn’t believe them, that the prosecutors, district attorneys, county attorneys don’t believe them or they question whether it – how accurate it is, like how much of it really happened and how much of it is embellishment. I think that attitude as I say is slowly disappearing, but that takes education and I think there is a level of trust that has to be developed and that is coming over time and the only way that happens is if you develop that personalized relationship, that one on one, that the victim feels comfortable with the prosecutor, the victim feels comfortable with the victim services coordinator of the county attorney’s office. If that relationship doesn’t exist they’re not going to feel comfortable. Then they’re going to be reluctant to testify. Then they may come across as non-believable or non-credible because they don’t feel comfortable publically telling their story. You’ve talked several times about the rapport building that needs to happen between victim and prosecutor. Could you share some tools or techniques that you found have been helpful in building that rapport? Well one of the – I meet personally with the victims. A lot of prosecutor’s offices don’t initially. They have someone, an interim person whether it’s the victim services coordinator or a staff person that maybe meets with them or they simply meet with advocates in the community and the prosecutor is estranged from that relationship because they’re simply looking at the legal strategies of the case, but they really don’t know the victim, so the very first thing I would do is you actually have to meet with the victim. In Minnesota one of the things that is required under discovery rules is that if there is a witness that is going to testify at trial you are obligated to disclose to opposing counsel whether it’s the prosecutor, defense or vice versa any communication you’ve had with that witness that may be on the case, so if I meet with a victim and we exchange information I'm obligated to disclose that to defense. I don’t have a problem with that because once I can build the rapport with the victim I feel comfortable that he or she is not going to change their story. They’re not going to contradict themselves, which then defense counsel could use at trial about contradictory prior statements. That’s not likely to happen. When you don’t meet with them and you have someone doing it in lieu of your own presence such as a law enforcement officer going back and taking a further statement or the advocates that sometimes can create problems because that’s when there can be inconsistencies that the defense can use to add a wedge or a chisel to start breaking down their story to question with the jury whether what they’re saying is actually accurate or not. So, if I can develop that relationship with the victim and they can trust me that I am there for them that’s the single most important thing I can do I think. As someone that is involved in training other prosecutors are there some key resources, techniques or strategies that you think would be important for more prosecutors to have access to that you’d like to talk more about? Well there are lots of resources as far as [INAUDIBLE] or organizations, of course this one. There is OVW. There is the National District Attorney’s Association, NDAA that has a wealth of information on their websites. I'm not sure there is anything specifically right now that right comes – that jumps to mind to say go here. A lot of it depends upon the specific of your own case and the dynamics that are involved in it. Well thank you so much for talking with us today. This project was supported by grant number 2009-TA-AX-K042, awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, the findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this program are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women. For more information on our Rural Project visit www.nsvrc.org.