Defense attorney speaks on 'Sex and the Law'

But starting with the Ten Commandments and ending with Monica Lewinsky, famed Miami defense attorney Roy Black used each of those subjects to try to prove one point.

The law doesn't know how to handle accusations involving sexual chicanery.

"This is a powerful tool in the hands of unscrupulous people," Black told the group -- trial lawyers assembled at the Hilton Naples and Towers for a Collier County Bar Association luncheon.

In a discussion titled "Sex and the Law," Black evoked several names that loom from the past to show how some people can manipulate the media and the law.

They are names most remember: Jessica Hahn, paramour of televangelist Jim Bakker; Gennifer Flowers, who claimed she had an affair with Bill Clinton; Autumn Jackson, convicted of trying to extort $40 million from Bill Cosby; Suzen Johnson, mistress of former NFL star Frank Gifford.

Their cases showed how easily the law, the media and greed coincide to smear reputations and destroy careers, said Black, 58.

Johnson's is particularly telling. She was hired by one tabloid newspaper, the Globe, to lead Gifford into a sexual encounter in a hotel that had been bugged with surveillance equipment. She then received money from another tabloid, the National Enquirer, to talk about how sleazy the Globe was.

Then Johnson sued the Enquirer because she said she wasn't paid all the money it owed her. The case is on appeal in federal court, Black said. And in the end, Frank Gifford's name is forever smeared.

"The whole encounter was designed to embarrass Kathie Lee Gifford," Black said.

Most often, the media won't publish the name of a person making an accusation involving sex. The intent of that is to keep the victim from being harassed, humiliated or intimidated.

But Black said people can use those protections as a shield to make unfounded accusations that are difficult to defend against and once made, are irrevocable.

Black would know. Among his high-profile clients have been William Kennedy Smith, acquitted in 1991 of rape in Palm Beach County; Marv Albert, who reached a plea agreement in a sexual assault case in Virginia; and actor Kelsey Grammer, of television's Frasier, who was the target of a statutory rape investigation.

The issue of sex and the law dates far back. Two of the Ten Commandments involve sex, Black said, while "it only took one for murder and perjury."

Since then, courts, prosecutors, the media and the law in general have struggled to find a balance between protecting victims and safeguarding the basic rights of those accused of crimes and other misdeeds involving sex, Black said.

President Clinton's struggles over the Lewinsky affair are a good example, said Black, senior partner at Black, Srebnick, Kornspan & Stumpf and a frequent television commentator.

The 4½-year investigation into Clinton's affair with the now-infamous White House intern cost nearly $80 million for something Clinton was eventually acquitted of doing.

Many of the defense attorneys in the room seemed to understand Black's point about how an unfounded accusation can destroy a client.

"I think he was right on," Naples defense attorney Lee Hollander said. "A lot of the cases one way or the other revolve around sex. Either the client's accused of molesting a kid when he didn't do it or cheating on his wife when he didn't do that."

Domestic violence cases often start out with sex as the issue. One partner thinks the other is cheating, and an argument is the result.

"All of a sudden, he's accused of smacking her around," Hollander said.