goldsborodailynews.com

Johnny Small

Sept. 14, 2016

“[Chris] Mumma said she intends to request a pardon for [Johnny] Small from Gov. Pat McCrory. In order for Small to be compensated for the years he spent in prison, he has to be exonerated of the charges on the grounds that he did not commit the crime. Under North Carolina law, the Industrial Commission can award exonerees $50,000 for each year spent in prison up to a maximum of $750,000. Exonerees also are eligible for job training and college tuition….”

– From “Johnny Small’s freedom makes some question if investigator should be charged” by F.T. Norton in the Wilmington Star-News (Sept. 9)

Let’s hope McCrory responds more willingly and humanely than he did in finally pardoning Henry McCollum and Leon Brown.

Case closed, Governor – no reinvestigation needed!

Oct. 29, 2015

“You have to be … inventive to brand yourself as a Halloween capital – extending a one-night affair into a monthlong celebration and inviting hundreds of thousands of visitors into your streets – when for centuries you were known as the community that put innocents to death for witchcraft. How did Salem, Mass., repackage a tragedy as a holiday, appointing itself ‘Witch City’ in the process?…

“About 200 years after the trials, a Salem silversmith issued a souvenir spoon, featuring a witch holding a broomstick. Other mementos followed. It was difficult to hit the right note: The Salem-based Parker Brothers company issued, then quickly discontinued, a witchcraft card game…. When Arthur Miller visited Salem in 1952, he discovered the subject was taboo….

“Meanwhile the city fell on hard times…. As if by magic, a different kind of enchantment arrived in the form of the ABC sitcom, ‘Bewitched.’ It seemed that an ancestor of Samantha, the main character, had been convicted of witchcraft during the trials….

“In Samantha’s wake, Salem recast its inglorious past, or at least some version of it…. The city transmuted its secret shame into its saving grace. In 1982 it introduced ‘Haunted Happenings,’ later extending the holiday into a four-week festival. ‘Salem owns Halloween like the North Pole owns Christmas,’ The Boston Globe declared….  Halloween is to some extent year-round in Salem, where you might well bump into a goblin in a sandwich shop in July.

“Three hundred years after the trials, Salem unveiled an elegant, understated memorial to the victims. Three hundred and thirteen years after the trials, it unveiled a gleaming statue of the ‘Bewitched’ star, Elizabeth Montgomery, on a broom. Not everyone liked the idea: A former historic district commissioner clucked that one might as well plant a likeness of Colonel Klink at Auschwitz. But the 1992 memorial was arguably not itself possible without ‘Bewitched.’ It isn’t easy to commemorate an atrocity. ABC’s domestic goddess had both laundered and folded the history….”

 – From “First, Kill the Witches. Then, Celebrate Them.” by Stacy Schiff in the New York Times (Oct. 24)

Edenton may lack the springboard of a popular sitcom, but this 1993 letter writer foresaw the tourism potential of remembering the Little Rascals case.  Proposals for a statue – or a spoon – anyone?

iastate.edu

Paul Kix

May 5, 2016

“Psychologists have long recognized that human memory is highly fallible. Hugo Münsterberg taught in one of the first American psychology departments, at Harvard. In a 1908 book called ‘On the Witness Stand,’ he argued that, because people could not know when their memories had deceived them, the legal system’s safeguards against lying – oaths, penalties for perjury, and so on – were ineffective.

“He expected that teachers, doctors, and politicians would all be eager to reform their fields. ‘The lawyer alone is obdurate,’ Münsterberg wrote.”

– From “Recognition: How a travesty led to criminal-justice innovation in Texas” by Paul Kix in the New Yorker (Jan. 18)

Dr. Munsterberg saw clearly the stubbornness of lawyers, even if he may have overestimated the open-mindedness of those other callings.

Jan. 6, 2012

“Innocence Lost” aired too late to save the Edenton Seven, but its influence in deflating the nation’s ritual-abuse bubble is hard to exaggerate. Shock and outrage – and considerable ridicule of North Carolina justice – followed each of the three episodes.

Walter Goodman’s 1993 New York Times review pointed to “the likelihood that no crime was committed, unless convicting innocent people counts as a crime.”

“To say this tragic farce has resembled a hysterical witch hunt,” Phil Kloer wrote in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution in 1997, “is to demean witch hunts.”