Aug. 27, 2017

In 1999, when the last charges against Bob Kelly were dismissed, here’s how Joseph Neff of the News & Observer described the scene:

“The prosecutors in the longest, most expensive criminal case in North Carolina history picked a day when all attention was focused elsewhere to quietly throw in the towel.

“It was Sept. 15, as Hurricane Floyd churned northward toward landfall the next day, that Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lamb filed a two-page document with the Clerk of Superior Court in Edenton, dismissing eight counts of sexual abuse against Robert Kelly.”

 

Oct. 14, 2013

“Whether Nancy Lamb should be promoted to district attorney is not simply a question of Democrats vs. Republicans. (Lamb is a Democrat; the decision on whether to appoint her to fill the rest of the late Frank Parrish’s term rests with Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican.)

“A quarter-century ago, Lamb played a crucial role in the wrongful prosecution of the Edenton Seven, defendants in the Little Rascals Day Care case. Little Rascals was an especially notorious example of a wave of ‘satanic ritual abuse’ day-care prosecutions during the ’80s and early ’90s — virtually all of them based on hysteria and a misguided campaign to ‘Believe the Children.’ Today no respected social scientist believes these bizarre claims were anything more than a ‘moral panic.’

“Although she ranked below District Attorney H. P. Williams and Assistant Attorney General Bill Hart, it was Nancy Lamb who served not only as the prosecution’s closer in the courtroom, but also its public face. And it was Lamb who, after Williams dropped off the case, continued to cling to the discredited ‘ritual abuse’ fantasy and who vindictively conjured up an unrelated charge against Bob Kelly after his conviction had been resoundingly overturned by the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

“Little Rascals will remain a stain on the state of North Carolina until the Edenton Seven receive a statement of innocence such as that given the Duke lacrosse defendants. Neither the prosecutors nor their ill-trained therapists have ever expressed any regrets or made any amends. To even be considered for district attorney, Nancy Lamb should be willing to address her responsibility. If she still wants to argue that the defendants were guilty, let her do so.”

– From a letter I wrote last week to the Elizabeth City Daily Advance, the only daily newspaper in the seven-county First Prosecutorial District, taking issue with its editorial support of Nancy Lamb’s appointment as district attorney. Editorial is here; page PDF; text cache.

The 900-word editorial could come up with “only one possible explanation for McCrory’s reluctance to appoint her: partisan politics.” Unmentioned was Lamb’s responsibility in the district’s most infamous case – perhaps the Advance has forgotten? Or thinks she deserves to benefit from a prosecutorial statute of limitations?

My letter has yet to appear.

Aug. 24, 2014

“The following dialogue is from Daniel Goleman’s article ‘Studies Reflect Suggestibility of Very Young as Witnesses,’ in the New York Times (June 11, 1993). It is an excerpt from 11 interviews of a four-year-old boy, who each week was told falsely: ‘You went to the hospital because your finger got caught in a mousetrap. Did this ever happen to you?’

“First Interview: ‘No. I’ve never been to the hospital.’

“Second Interview: ‘Yes. I cried.’

“Third Interview: ‘Yes. My mom went to the hospital with me.’

“Fourth Interview: ‘Yes. I remember. It felt like a cut.’

“Fifth Interview: ‘Yes.’ (Pointing to index finger….)

“Eleventh Interview: ‘Uh huh. My daddy, mommy, and my brother (took me to the hospital) in our van…. The hospital gave me . . . a little bandage, and it was right here’ (pointing to index finger).

“The interviewer then asked: ‘How did it happen?’

“ ‘I was looking and then I didn’t see what I was doing and it (finger) got in there somehow…. The mousetrap was in our house because there’s a mouse in our house…. The mousetrap is down in the basement next to the firewood…. I was playing a game called “Operation” and then I went downstairs and said to Dad, “I want to eat lunch” and then it got stuck in the mousetrap…. My daddy was down in the basement collecting firewood…. (My brother) pushed me into the mousetrap…. It happened yesterday. The mouse was in my house yesterday. I caught my finger in it yesterday. I went to the hospital yesterday.’ “

– From “Case Study of Implanted Memory” by Martin Gardner in Skeptical Inquirer (Fall 1994)

Does this experiment’s series of 11 interviews strike you as extreme? For at least one of the Little Rascals children, Judith Abbott, lead therapist for the prosecution, conducted biweekly sessions for six months!

March 28, 2016

“I was thinking about recent public panics and started listing a few of them in my mind. This is just off the top of my head:

• Crack babies
• Super predators
• Lehmann/AIG/Countrywide etc.
• Mad cow
• Deepwater Horizon
• Daycare child molesters
• Ebola
• ISIS/Syrian refugees

“I’m not saying that none of these were justified. Big oil spills are no joke. Ebola was certainly a big deal in Africa. The financial collapse of 2008 wasn’t mere panic.

“And yet, generally speaking it seems as if public panics are either completely unjustified or else wildly overwrought. Am I missing any recent examples where there was a huge panic and it turned out to be wholly justified? HIV would have been justified in the early ’80s, but of course we famously didn’t panic over that — other than to worry about getting AIDS from toilet seats. Help me out here….”

– From “Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)” by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones (March 24)