No Soap

The year 2022 has started slowly for courtroom watchers after 2021 ended with a splash. The biggie in December was the verdict in the sex abuse trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty on 5 of 6 counts, including sex trafficking of a minor. 

I, like many (most? all?) of you, eagerly followed the daily dispatches coming out of the courtroom. The final summings-up by reporters who daily attended the trial indicated that they believed that the jurors had correctly found Maxwell guilty. For example, Naomi Fry in The New Yorker stated, “The government’s case . . . was damning.”* And this was the view of Choire Sicha, who followed the trial for New York magazine:

A full not-guilty slate would have been shattering. What if four women had presented coherent, believable, similar, interlocking stories about abuse that was, at very best, facilitated by Ghislaine Maxwell — and a jury hadn’t agreed she was at fault? Awful.**

My reading of the case agreed.

*

But I have no interest in discussing the case itself here. What I latched onto in Fry’s article was the view of Maxwell’s character Fry determined from observing her courtroom demeanor. Fry cited Maxwell’s “brand of chilly hauteur.”

Maxwell remained sphinxlike throughout the trial, expressing no frailty and certainly no regret. 

And for Fry, worst of all,

[w]hen the jury announced its verdict, Maxwell, who was wearing a black mask and dark clothing, sat very still. According to the Times she took a sip of water and touched her face briefly, before being ushered out of the courtroom. At no point did she betray any emotion.

Sicha called her, “A reactionless Ghislaine Maxwell.”

*

While the Maxwell trial was proceeding in New York City, on the left coast another fascinating courtroom case was taking place: the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood-testing company Theranos, who was accused of fraud. A few days after the New York jury found Maxwell guilty on 5 of 6 counts, Holmes was found guilty on 4 of 11 counts of fraud, not guilty on another 4, while the panel could not agree on a verdict on the other 3 counts.***

While the verdict was being read, the Times tells us, Holmes

sat motionless. Then she gathered her belongings and whispered to her lawyer. She went down the row of family and friends in the court gallery behind her, hugging each one before leaving through a side door.

*

In both cases, the defendant, when found guilty, did not exhibit any emotion—no soap opera histrionics, rending of garments, tears or shrieks. For Fry, Maxwell’s demeanor was a display of what the title of her article called Maxwell’s “relentless ego.” 

This was a woman [Fry wrote] who has long acted, and has continued to act, as if she had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Fry even found fault in Maxwell’s contention that she need not testify, because 

"the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and so there is no need for me to testify."

While we may never know whether that refusal hurt her defense, certainly Maxwell was within her rights to challenge the government to make its case. Perhaps it was legal judgment (or gamble), not ego, that persuaded Maxwell to decline.

*

One who does show his feelings (of grief) is Hamlet. Clad in an “inky cloak” and “suits of solemn black” and emitting sighs and tears, he, nevertheless, asserts that what he is really feeling no one can know: “I have that within which passeth show.” 

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,

For they are actions that a man might play:

But I have that within which passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

(Act I, Scene 2)

The lesson that Naomi Fry and others should take away from Hamlet is the old saw “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” The lack of emotional display by Ghislaine Maxwell (and Elizabeth Holmes) was not necessarily due to ego or hauteur (it might even have been stoicism). 

Find the women guilty of their crimes, if you wish, but don’t claim to read people's minds or to determine their inner emotions through their outward demeanor. They may have "that within which passeth show."

***

 *  https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-relentless-ego-of-ghislaine-maxwell

**  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/ghislaine-maxwell-trial-it-doesnt-matter-why-she-did-it.html   

***  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/elizabeth-holmes-guilty.html

(What impressed me about the verdicts in both cases was that the jurors obviously took great pains to consider the implications of each accusation, and did not just toss a blanket guilty or not guilty judgment over the cases. It made me feel good about my fellow citizens.)