April 8, 2016

“North Carolina’s attorney general (Roy Cooper) should set up a group to investigate claims of wrongful convictions to prevent more innocent people from being in prison, the head of the state NAACP said Thursday.

“The Rev. William Barber also called on Gov. Pat McCrory to establish a task force to recommend ways to strengthen protections against wrongful convictions….”

“Cooper’s office said a meeting was held with Barber and representatives of the NAACP: ‘We look forward to working with them to address systemic issues in the criminal justice system.” Cooper also wants more money for N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, which has been involved in releasing eight innocent men.

“McCrory’s office didn’t… respond to Barber’s comments….”

– From “NAACP: Attorney General should review wrongful convictions” by Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press (March 24) (text cache)

The latest addition to the long list of questionable North Carolina convictions comes from Gaston County (thank you, Elizabeth Leland of the Charlotte Observer). Least surprising sentence in Leland’s series: “The prosecutors who tried the case declined to be interviewed.”

Aug. 11, 2016

“[North Carolina] Assistant Attorney General Jess Mekeel said [Johnny] Small’s motion should be dismissed.

“ ‘Innocence is in vogue now,’ he told the judge, the Associated Press reported.

“Exonerations are certainly on the rise. Last year, about 150 people were exonerated, a record number, according to the National Registry of Exonerations….

“Mekeel [said] he considers reopening cases based on recanted testimony to be a threat to the American legal system.

“ ‘This is an attempt to retry a 28-year-old case. Twelve jurors made that determination already. They heard the evidence. They concluded the defendant was guilty,’ Mekeel said, according to WRAL. ‘They jeopardize the stability and reliability of our justice system.’ ”

– From “Man spent 28 years in prison after his friend accused him of murder. Now, the friend said he lied” by Travis M. Andrews in the Washington Post (Aug. 9)

“Innocence is in vogue now” – what a revealing glimpse of the inner prosecutor! As if exonerations were a fad, an unwarranted threat to “the stability and reliability of our justice system.”

Is it any wonder that district attorneys such as Jon David so eagerly pursue innocence advocates such as Chris Mumma?

May 30, 2015

Ofra Bikel’s eight hours of “Innocence Lost” were surely powerful, but the narrowness of PBS’s audience limited their impact. What if the Little Rascals Day Care case had also inspired a major theatrical release? What if several million moviegoers had watched the dramatic nobody-dunnit even as the real-life Edenton Seven were languishing in jail or standing  trial?

For a brief moment, that seemed possible.

Kurt Luedtke, screenwriter for the ’80s hits “Out of Africa” and “Absence of Malice,” was outraged after seeing the initial “Innocence Lost” in 1991. “You can’t hold people that long without presenting the evidence,” he told the Charlotte Observer.
Now retired and living in Michigan, Luedtke recalls his “indignation mounting and (thinking) I had to do something about the preposterousness of what was going on….”

Alas, his idea apparently made it no further than a preliminary meeting in New York with Bikel and “Frontline” founder David Fanning: “I can’t remember why we didn’t go forward; maybe I had another job.”

May 18, 2018

“Despite the acquittal in [the McMartin Preschool case], the hysteria kept raging there and nationally; mainstream news still gave it credence, police still made arrests, prosecutors still prosecuted, and true believers among psychologists and psychiatrists (and their clients) still believed and proselytized, often with a government imprimatur….

“In a small town in Tidewater North Carolina, children testified that a satanic cult operating a day care center had ritually abused them – and taken them in hot-air balloons to outer space and on a boat into the Atlantic where newborns were fed to sharks; several people were sentenced to long prison terms and served time before their convictions were overturned or charges dismissed.”

– From “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History” by Kurt Andersen (2017)

The ripples from McMartin were even more pronounced in Edenton, after prosecutors brought back from California a crucial lesson: Conceal, obscure or destroy the therapists’ notes that would reveal how relentlessly the child-witnesses had been manipulated.