Exculpatory -- Don't Blame Me!

It sounds like a term related to a skin disease or some sort of diagnostic procedure, but if you're on the legal hot seat, like former Alaska senator Ted Stevens, exculpatory is a term you embrace with fervor and glee. Today, a judge threw out the corruption verdict against Stevens and ordered a criminal probe into how lawyers at the Justice Department prosecuted the case. The judge's foremost complaint was that prosecutors deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence from defense lawyers.

"Whether you are a public official or a private citizen or a Guantanamo detainee, the government has an obligation to produce exculpatory evidence so that justice can be done," said U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan.

What an archaic sounding term, exculpatory. From Latin root culp-a meaning blame, as in mea culpa or its contemporary equivalent, my bad. But the addition of ex shifts the term to mean out of blame. Which is what some of that evidence might have meant for Stevens. (Or not, but we'll never know.)

The term is largely confined to legal discourse. Us less lawyerly types are generally more apt to use excusable, defensible, justifiable, or pardonable. Athough exculpatory neatly conveys both the sense of excuse and explain in one word.

What counts as exculpatory evidence? Well, when you're scrambling to mount a defense, you might try just anything. Take Jake Blues's impassioned efforts to exonerate himself to the gun-toting ex-fiancee he abandoned at the altar in The Blues Brothers:

"Oh, please, don't kill us. Please, please don't kill us. You know I love you baby. I wouldn't leave ya. It wasn't my fault. . . . Honest. I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO G-O -O-O-D!"

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [ik-skuhl-puh-tohr-ee]
1. Of statements, evidence, etc. Adapted or intended to clear from blame or a charge of guilt; apologetic, vindicatory.