Sept. 5, 2015

“An 1895 reporter found (Salem) town residents reluctant to talk about the past.

“When they did, it was to impress upon him that they had not burned a single witch. Years later Arthur Miller met with the same silence while researching The Crucible. ‘You couldn’t get anyone to say anything about it,’ he complained of 1692….

“When (an archivist) began an excavation of the parsonage site in 1970, two elderly sisters waved fists at him from across the way…. ‘What are you bringing this up for?’ they demanded….”

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

Schiff has a lengthy related piece in the current New Yorker.

March 8, 2013

“Over 15 years ago, a number of children were sexually abused while attending three different day care centers sponsored by military services…

“This is the fourth follow-up interview with parents of 42 (of those) children….

“(In 1984 children at West Point day care) reported that the perpetrators wore masks and black robes. Pencils and fingers penetrated vaginas and rectums. Children were threatened with harm to themselves and their parents if they told that they witnessed the abuse of other children….

“After extensive investigation, the federal prosecutor declined to bring the case to trial due to the young ages of the children and the fragility of their memories….

“One lingering source of distress for the parents was that two of the criminal cases (Presidio and West Point) fell apart. It seemed to them as if reporting the abuse did not matter. This also added to the mystery of conspiracy that surrounded these two cases….”

– From “Children’s Adjustment 15 Years After Daycare Abuse” by Ann Wolbert Burgess and Carol R. Hartman (Journal of Forensic Nursing, Summer 2005)

Although Burgess’s career-making wrongheadedness isn’t news, I was still surprised to find her clinging to the ritual abuse hoax as recently as 2005. Prosecutors’ cases “fell apart”? – must be a “conspiracy”!

But it was Burgess, after all, whose conclusion that children in the West Point case had been ritually abused (with the obligatory “masks and black robes”) compelled the government to settle a civil suit by parents for $2.7 million. To acknowledge her error would require quite an “Oops!” wouldn’t it?

Footnote: I’ve got a previous commitment, but if you’re in Nashua, N.H., today, you can see Burgess honored by the American Psychiatric Nurses Association.

Dec. 3, 2012

Exoneration is in the air!

From Texas to New York – and of course here in North Carolina – more and more prosecutorial abuses are being dug up, dusted off and exposed to long-delayed doses of daylight.

If you’re keeping score, the National Registry of Exoneration has just hit quadruple digits – that’s Bob Kelly, Dawn Wilson and 998 other wrongfully convicted defendants.

So what are the prospects that the State of North Carolina will at last release a Duke-lacrosse-style statement of innocence for the Edenton Seven?

Since last summer, when my petition was kissed off by Mark Davis, general counsel to Gov. Bev Perdue, and I was advised to try Attorney General Roy Cooper, not a peep has been heard in response. It would take a greater optimist than me to believe this silence suggests ongoing thoughtful contemplation.

As the governor prepares to leave office, a valued ally of littlerascalsdaycarecase.org used his access to lobby on behalf of the defendants. But pardon applications have been torrential, he was told, and the Edenton Seven case isn’t among those Perdue is considering.

That still leaves the attorney general – or does it, Mr. Cooper?

March 13, 2016

“Fran and Dan Keller have been released from a Texas prison after 21 years, yet still have little freedom of movement or circumstance, or even quality of life. Their 1992 conviction on multiple counts of ‘sexual assault of a minor’ – in the now notorious Fran’s Day Care case – has effectively been overturned by a 2015 Court of Criminal Appeals ruling ‘granting relief’ to the Kellers on a single question of retracted medical testimony. But the ruling was not accompanied by actual exoneration from the allegedly heinous crimes.

“Only a single appeals court judge – Cheryl Johnson – was willing to admit no crime had in fact occurred. ‘This was a witch hunt from the beginning,’ wrote Johnson, in her opinion concurring with the opaque ruling of the full court. Johnson would have granted relief on all the Kellers’ claims, and would have acknowledged that the entire prosecution had been an egregious folly.

“The limited ruling, while welcome in itself, left the Kellers in a legal limbo – permanently accused but not cleared…. required to somehow further demonstrate their innocence – of crimes that never happened….”

– From “Learning From Our Mistakes” by Michael King in the Austin Chronicle (March 11) (cached)

So who thwarts the hapless Kellers? Yes, yet another prosecutor who sets the bar for exoneration stratospherically high. Although District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg (here’s why her name rings a bell) supported their release, she now finds herself unable to “find a path to innocence” without the deal-sealing exculpation of DNA evidence. Those darn imaginary criminals sure do clean up after themselves….