Jekyll and Hyde

By William M. DiMascio
   Executive Director

Here’s a story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, played out amid the ivy-covered halls of the University of Pennsylvania, a story about the razor thin line between the good and bad that men do, and a story about distorted values and the future of democracy as we’d like to have it.

We’ll call it the case of Tracy McIntosh. At 52, he was a husband and father of two teenage daughters residing in the affluent suburb of Media. The renowned professor was generating huge research grants at Penn for his important studies of the use of stem cells in repairing damage to brain and nerve tissues. His work held promise for stroke victims worldwide.

Beneath the starchy white lab coat, however, Dr. McIntosh had established another reputation as a womanizer who increasingly came close to crossing the line of sexual harasser. The university quietly investigated allegations and, in the interest of keeping the boatloads of grant money afloat, was even quieter in rebuking the professor.

Then, one day, one of Dr. McIntosh’s best buddies from his undergraduate days arranged for the distinguished professor to meet his 23-year-old niece who was going to Penn’s school of veterinary medicine. The wolf and the lamb, as it were, drank at a campus bar until the young woman became physically ill. Prosecutors say McIntosh also provided marijuana and, as a special surprise, sodium pentobarbital, a drug used in the euthanasia of dogs and cats.

From there, he helped the woman to his campus office to complete what the law called sexual assault, but what we know better as brutal, violent, predatory rape.

The Hope of the World tried to cut a deal with the district attorney but it was rebuffed. So, in December Dr. McIntosh entered a plea of no contest in Common Pleas Court; Penn immediately asked for, and received, his resignation from the university.

Judge Rayford Means presided at the trial. Obviously impressed with the professor’s academic credentials and the success he was having in his work (and perhaps a trifle jaded by the type of cases typical in Philadelphia’s Criminal Division), the judge handed down the following sentence: 11½ to 23 months of house arrest, 12 years probation, a $20,000 fine and an order to pay another $20,000 toward psychological counseling for the victim.

The sentence was breathtaking and sparked the outrage of women’s and victim’s groups, as well as others who believe justice should be applied uniformly and without regard to someone’s curricula vitae or social status. At a time when sex offenders are among the last prisoners considered for parole releases, when they are vilified long after serving time by having their photos plastered on the internet, and when communities protest halfway houses that accommodate them with shelter, this predatory professor got away softly with crimes that more than 7,000 men are spending years for in Pennsylvania prisons.

If the line is thin between the good and bad that men do, it is laser-like between the doctor’s depravity and the judge’s injudiciousness. When the legal system takes such a distorted turn, it generates feelings of helplessness, frustration and cynicism among the public.

Is it any wonder that an “outlaw” culture exists within our society when institutions such as the courts apply such strikingly different rules for ordinary people the privileged few?

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham has asked Means to vacate the sentence and put McIntosh in prison for at least 5½ years. “Nobody is too important to go to prison!” she declared.

She’s right.

As difficult as it is for the Prison Society to agree with the district attorney known nationally for her ultra-punitive attitude, it would be inexcusable to suggest that Dr. McIntosh deserves anything less than time in prison. That probably would be in his best interest, too, because it would give him a chance to get in touch with his own ego.

Aside from the damage the victim suffered, and we can only guess how severe that might be, this case presents longer-term harms for society.

If this verdict is allowed to stand, we will all be made to suffer from the fallout caused by such a breach of trust in then consistency we expect from the justice system. In such an atmosphere, it will be easier to further limit the discretion of judges, to make all punishments harsher, and to diminish the use of alternatives to incarceration.

The price of such cynicism is, simply, too dear.