This case generated an enormous amount of mendacious ink as can be seen from this report of the not guilty verdict, but there was a lot more to it.
Lord was alleged to have raped a young mother from Georgia on September 24, 1988. At the time of his trial for the alleged Florida rape, he hadn’t been tried for that one, but this woman was permitted to testify against him in that trial. Lord was subsequently tried for the rape of the Georgia woman and for the attempted rape of another young woman; he was convicted of that crime after only 25 minutes deliberation by the jury. He pleaded guilty to raping the Georgia woman and received a fifty year sentence or life sentence depending on the source you consult.
Chiapponi, who for the most part wasn’t named, refused to testify because she claimed she was scared, a typically vacuous claim. As a result of this, she spent six days behind bars. She also sold her story to a UK tabloid, and appeared on TV, including with Oprah.
As can be seen from the linked article, Lord’s defense was that she was a prostitute who agreed to have sex with him for $100 and cocaine. The reader should bear in mind that the jury acquitted Lord after hearing from the Georgia woman, who was an actual rape victim.
The real furore over this case was the reference to how she was dressed; this led to such allusions being prohibited in future, it being a so-called rape myth. Yeah, right. There can be no doubt though that Blandina was a lady of easy virtue. It came out later that she had indeed been working as a prostitute, in massage parlors and tanning salons. She told several provable lies on the stand.
Alas, her ordeal was far from over. She had a trust fund which was set up for her by her deceased father. It was valued at $82,000; she gave it to lawyer Keith Nassetta to look after, and he stole it, along with over half a million dollars from other clients.
And to cap it all, in November 1990, she received a 15 year sentence and a $250,000 fine for selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. Her boyfriend was convicted of the same charge.
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