Lawyer Says His Experience as an Extortion Victim Helps Him Defend Battered Women Who Kill
Michael Dowd, 69, is now a well-known New York criminal defense lawyer who specializes in representing battered women who kill their husbands.
But his career hit a rough patch in the 1980s, when he became a star witness for then-prosecutor Rudolph W. Giuliani in a corruption case after revealing that his company had paid some $30,000 in kickbacks to the Queens borough president in exchange for a parking ticket collection contract, reports the New York Times (reg. req.).
Although he was not prosecuted, Dowd, who says he was the victim of extortion in the kickbacks matter, lost his law license for five years. However, the experience helped him in his law practice, he says, by giving him a taste of how powerless his clients felt when dealing with their abusers.
“Men don’t often get into a position where they feel helpless,” he told the newspaper. “Understanding that feeling gave me insight into what it feels like to be completely trapped, just like an abused woman.”
The abused spouse cases he handles are emotionally draining, and his current client, Barbara Sheehan, whose Queens Supreme Court case is expected to go to a jury soon, may be his last, Dowd says.
Thirty years ago, when he first started handling such cases, women were routinely encouraged to rely on an insanity defense rather than go to trial, he notes. And prosecutors often pointed to a woman’s substandard cooking and housekeeping as an excuse for the abuse.
Related coverage:
New York Daily News: “Woman shot ex-cop husband 11 times out of fear from abusive marriage, lawyer argues”
