July 21, 2015

“When Massachusetts exonerated the Salem victims in 1710 it overlooked six women. They remained missing through the 1940s and 1950s as the commonwealth considered pardons but could not seem to make up its legislative mind.

“One lawyer appearing before a Senate committee objected to ‘fooling with history.’ Some legislators feared expensive suits for damages. Others hinted that a pardon might knock Salem’s witches from their tourist-bewitching brooms. As the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had not existed in 1692, it surely had no jurisdiction over a verdict of Massachusetts Bay.

“On Halloween 2001 – weeks after we began to wonder anew about unseen evils – Massachusetts pardoned the last of the Salem witches….”

– From “The Witches: Salem, 1692” by Stacy Schiff (due Oct. 27) 

Jan. 17, 2015

Q: Do you have a better understanding of why people act the way they do in certain situations?

A:   ….Whenever the safety of children is perceived to be in question, we run the risk of responding with emotion rather than reason. Certainly in Salem (where three of her ancestors were accused witches) that was the case. And look at the so-called “satanic ritual abuse” pre-school phenomenon in the early 1980s, which is now seen to have been a tremendous miscarriage of justice. Calls for moderation are dismissed with the assertion that the children have to come first — which, of course, they should.

“But it’s also tempting to read these experiences as expressive of a deeper anxiety about childrearing in an uncertain world, with no guarantees of a good outcome. I feel that it comes from a sense of powerlessness that can’t be expressed elsewhere….”

– From an interview with Katherine Howe, author of “Conversion,” a novel based on a mysterious 2012 outbreak of tics and seizures among teenage girls in upstate New York, in the Daily News of Batavia, New York (Aug. 23, 2014)

March 6, 2013

Anthony “Tony” Oberschall, professor (now emeritus) of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill, wrote extensively – if not prominently – about the insanity of the Little Rascals case. How was Oberschall able to resist the storyline that seduced so many others?

“Before retiring from UNC in 2005,” he recalls, “I taught in universities for 40 years. One of my fields of writing and research concerned collective behavior – collective myths, false beliefs, rumors, how they originate and why they are believed.

“As the Little Rascals prosecution unfolded right before my eyes (actually, as reported in the News & Observer), it became obvious to me that this was but one more instance of moral panic, false beliefs and miscarriage of justice….”

Oberschall likens the prosecution narrative to “the widely believed Iraqi WMD story disseminated by the Bush administration in 2002. Unthinking acceptance of what the authorities are asserting, alas, happens all too often.”

In early 1993, Oberschall sent the N&O both an op-ed column and a response to a Dennis Rogers column, but neither appeared nor drew a response from the paper. (They have now been posted on the Bookshelf of Case Materials on this site.)

“At that point,” he says, “having been stonewalled, I decided to research Little Rascals in depth and wrote several times about it in scholarly publications in subsequent years.”

More about Oberschall’s research in Thursday’s post.

July 19, 2016

“The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations.

“Or the prosecutor may choose a more subtle course and simply have a citizen’s friends interviewed. The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial. He may dismiss the case before trial, in which case the defense never has a chance to be heard.

“Or he may go on with a public trial. If he obtains a conviction, the prosecutor can still make recommendations as to sentence, as to whether the prisoner should get probation or a suspended sentence, and after he is put away, as to whether he is a fit subject for parole.

“While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst….”

– From an address  by Attorney General Robert H. Jackson to the Conference of United States Attorneys, Washington, D.C., April 1, 1940

Although Jackson’s cautionary words were directed toward federal prosecutors, they could hardly be more applicable to the State of North Carolina’s prosecution of the Edenton Seven.  H.P. Williams Jr., Bill Hart and Nancy Lamb surely missed no chance to put forth “veiled or unveiled intimations,” to make a “one-sided presentation” or to otherwise act “from malice or other base motives.”