BY: VISNUGADA DASA, PsyD in Clinical Psychology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
LAKSMI NRSIMHA DASA, Alachua, Florida
Jun 11, USA (SUN) — We would like to reassure readers that those of us working to defend Vakresvara Pandit Prabhu did not arrive at our conclusions lightly. We spent several months researching the facts and procedures, as well as discussing our concerns with several devotees and attorneys. This was not a knee-jerk response, nor is it a popularity contest being waged by friends of Vakresvara Pandita. We are confident in the points we made and believe that a serious injustice has been perpetrated due to the mistakes and bad procedures inherent in the CPO’s system to determine guilt or innocence.
To be clear, we believe Vakresvara is innocent and that he was wrongly convicted. We are aware that the head of the CPO for Vakresvara’s appeal was different than the one who was involved in the original proceedings, but it makes no difference. The current head of the CPO recognizes that there were “anomalies”, but apparently there is no procedure to reverse the case even if innocence could be proven at this time. Vakresvara has already “served his time” but his reputation has been damaged by a terrible injustice which the NA GBC EC has refused to recognize.
We are aware of Kirtan Rasa Prabhu’s position on this case and cannot understand how he can assess the credibility of individuals without having met them in person (please see Sesa prabhu’s response in a separate article). In addition, he assumed that the record was a complete representation of all the evidence, but it wasn’t. The best he can do is speak in terms of tendencies based on his experience rather than the particulars of this case. Lawyers, like others, make mistakes. In fact, it is not so unusual for legal judgments to be in error, even in the much more developed system of justice prevalent in the US and other countries, what to speak of the more crude CPO system. We encourage readers to google The Innocence Project, which examines cases of many people wrongly convicted of serious felonies on the basis of eye-witness testimonies, later exonerated once DNA analysis became available. The CPO has limited resources, expertise and competence, and should never get involved in setting up pseudo-criminal courts.
In summary, Kirtan Rasa Prabhu indicated that he believed, based on his reading of the records, that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that Vakresvara was not credible, the accuser was credible, and Vakresvara was guilty. To be crystal clear, he never interviewed Vakresvara Pandita or the accuser. If the written record reviewed by Kirtan Rasa Prabhu was incomplete and faulty and he never interviewed the parties, then the opinion should not be given great weight. Our contention is that if Kirtan Rasa Prabhu had been given a more complete picture of the evidence from both prosecution and the defense, he would likely have come to a different conclusion, as we have done. Specifically, he was not made aware of the following:
1. The person in whose apartment the alleged transgression took place never gave Vakresvara a key to his apartment nor let him in the apartment when he was away. No testimony was given about how Vakresvara would have gotten into the apartment without the cooperation or knowledge of the owner.
2. The accuser’s description of the interior of the apartment was completely at odds with that given by the owner. She described the furniture in detail. The owner told us that for that entire year, there was no furniture due to a recent divorce. Moreover, the accuser said that the apartment was in Dallas, but the owner was no longer living there at the time!
3. The accuser’s story about what happened during the incident changed several times.
4. The police was called to investigate, but the police records were never sought by the CPO on the plea of “confidentiality”. What type of criminal procedure keeps out police records about the alleged crime at issue?
5. There is no evidence CPO investigators ever attempted to assess the plaintiff’s possible ulterior motives. This was a grave oversight given that there was a conflict prior to the accusation.
6. There was no physical evidence and no corroborating eyewitnesses.
7. The supposed scientific procedure touted as showing the defendant was deceptive has no validity whatsoever.
8. There is no evidence supporting Pandu prabhu’s theory that because the legal system was overwhelmed with rape cases and karmi investigators don’t do a good job, the case was dropped.
Kirtan Rasa Prabhu also posited the CPO’s procedural errors were not so great as to render the verdict invalid. Again, and with all due respect, we beg to differ. Here are some serious errors:
1. To this day, the defense never got to see the plaintiff’s testimony. How can someone defend himself without knowing what the accuser said? This alone shows that the CPO has no clue how to handle a case.
2. CPO procedures indicate that decisions were to be primarily based on the local temple’s Child Protection Team’s report. Yet in the Vakresh case, this report was disregarded in the CPO decision without explanation.
3. CPO “judges” had no actual legal training and whatever training they received came from the prosecution. They did not know how to evaluate and weigh evidence, cross-examine witnesses, nor had proper guidance. They disregarded the considerable evidence supporting Vakresvara’s innocence, and didn’t know what proper questions to ask to get all sides of the story.
4. The entire investigative and judiciary process was prejudiced against the accused. Before the case began, the CPO office, who trained the “judges”, told a prospective judge that the accused was guilty.
What kind of justice system works this way? A tainted one.
