Mr. Fuster’s Defense
Following the splitting up of the defense team, Mr. Fuster’s
attorney, Jeffrey Samek, appears to have pursued a single direction defense: that of
trying to demonstrate that the methods used by the Bragas to interview the children who
had attended the baby-sitting service were highly suggestive and coercive. Thus, the
reports made by the children were a reflection of the ideas that had been implanted and
suggested to the children during the interviews with the Bragas and prosecutors and
parents, rather than accurate reflections of events that had occurred at the Fuster home.
Mr. Samek also moved pretrial for the exclusion from evidence of
any testimony or other information related to the Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation
Syndrome. This syndrome, which had been described in an article written in 1981 by Roland
Summit, a witness the state intended to use as an expert, purported to describe, explain
the behaviors and conduct of sexually abused children. Mr. Samek objected to the use of
this syndrome testimony on the basis that it had not received general acceptance within
the community of experts and would, therefore, not pass the Frye test for
admissibility. Mr. Samek also objected to it on the basis that it provided an
impermissible mechanism for witnesses to vouch for the credibility of the child
complainants, thereby invading the province of the jury. The defense motion was denied.
(9/4/85, 4-17)
In the days shortly before trial was to begin, Mr. Samek made
three separate requests to the trial court to permit him to withdraw from the case. These
pleas grew more and more desperate and reflected a deep and unbridgable rift between
counsel and client.
During the course of urging his own removal from the case, Mr.
Samek informed the court: that he could not give his all to the case; that there had been
a complete breakdown of the attorney/client relationship; that he felt chilled in his
ability to cross-examine the child-witnesses at trial because he had just been severely
rebuked and threatened with disciplinary proceedings by the Florida Court of Appeals for
the way in which he had conducted the cross-examination during deposition of one of the
child witnesses in Mr. Fuster’s probation revocation hearing; and that his
professional and personal lives were suffering tremendously as a result of his
representation of Mr. Fuster. As Mr. Samek’s anxiety escalated, his appeals to be
relieved of the case became increasingly less professional to the point that he made
highly damaging and prejudicial remarks about Mr. Fuster to the court. Mr. Samek told the
court that Mr. Fuster had assaulted him at the prison when he came to deliver the news
that Iliana had pled guilty. Mr. Samek told the court -- the very judge who would be
presiding at trial -- that Mr. Fuster had been "playing" him like a fiddle and
was playing the court like a fiddle. Mr. Samek announced that he was so afraid of Mr.
Fuster that he would not sit near him at counsel table, he would not accept notes from Mr.
Fuster, he would not consult with him during breaks or at the close of the day. He did not
want to, or intend to, have anything to do with Mr. Fuster during trial. The court refused
to remove Mr. Samek as trial counsel. (8/6/85, 10-11; 8/8/85, 18; 8/15/85, 121)
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