Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [74]
We returned to the courtroom and the judge again took the bench. The next issue was the extent to which Beebe had cooperated with the ongoing investigation—a condition of the plea agreement. This was another source of frustration for me. We had cut the deal so that Beebe might open up and give us more information for the investigation. And while he had, in the strictest sense, cooperated, meeting with Worrell and Detective Rudman on two occasions, he hadn’t provided anything of actual value. It didn’t seem right to me that the deal was still on the table. But what was done was done. We moved to final summations.
In Worrell’s summation, though he couldn’t make up for my own unread statement, he tried to make clear the impact of the crime on my life and that of my family. He recommended that the judge impose a full two-year sentence. He pointed out, too, the impact of the apology letter, which had caused a new round of pain. He insisted that if the letter had been sent in good faith, Beebe should have been prepared to face the consequences of his serious crime.
Quagliana stood up for her rebuttal. Her last chance to minimize Beebe’s sentence. As expected, she had a different view of Beebe’s letter: “What he did in writing the letter was to leave the rest up to her. In turn, she chose to begin an e-mail conversation with Mr. Beebe.” She described how the correspondence revealed different “scripts” of the crime for me and Beebe:
QUAGLIANA: Ms. Seccuro describes a violent attack. Mr. Beebe describes a nineteen year old, sort of, hapless guy who’s drunk himself, who sees a woman or a girl who he thinks he can have sex with and he acts on that impulse, and he knows it’s wrong because he knows that under other circumstances this young lady wouldn’t have stayed with him, wouldn’t have had sex with him and—and that’s wrong and he knows that and it bothers him for the next twenty-two years. Just like, you know, we’ve all done things in our life.
She focused on his cooperation (such as it was) with the authorities. She asked for leniency.
Worrell was allowed a rebuttal.
WORRELL: There is one more thing I’d like to leave the Court with and I’d like you to consider this for a moment. When the defendant was—or Ms. Quagliana, for defendant, was summarizing, she said Mr. Beebe sent her a letter and the choice was up to her. The choice was up to her. What choice is that? The only thing that Elizabeth Seccuro has had choice about as it relates to Mr. Beebe is whether or not to call the Charlottesville Police Department after she received this letter in September of 2005 … But as it relates to Mr. Beebe, Elizabeth Seccuro has never had a choice, and that is certainly the point of every sexual assault case that we have, every sexual assault law that we have. It’s really about overbearing someone’s will and imposing your choices upon them, and there can’t really be any more significant way of doing that than the way in which Mr. Beebe did that when, at the time, Ms. Seccuro couldn’t say no because she was, in the eyes of the law, helpless, and it seems to the Commonwealth that when you take advantage of helpless people, we’re not talking about a sentence that is lenient or a term of months. I can tell you now that Elizabeth Seccuro would certainly be pleased with a two-year penitentiary sentence. That’s what she wants, that’s her choice, and isn’t it about time that the criminal justice system and we-all that are involved in it try to do something that approximates that for her?—because that is really the measure of what justice is here.
At last, Beebe was allowed to speak on his own behalf. Yet another choice I didn’t have.
THE COURT: All right. Mr. Beebe, is there anything you’d like to tell the Court before I impose sentence, sir?
WILLIAM BEEBE: Yes, I do, Your Honor[.] My only purpose in contacting Ms. Seccuro was to make amends for my conduct twenty-two