July 5, 2014

“The Burlington judge who has presided over the the Little Rascals Day Care Center case since 1990 resigned in disgust the day after the state Supreme Court refused to review (the overturning of) two convictions.

“D. Marsh McLelland, a retired Superior Court judge, said in a letter dated Sept. 8 that the court’s refusal to review the cases ‘is legally and morally reprehensible.’

“McLelland’s letter to Chief Justice Burley Mitchell said the refusal to review a Court of Appeals order for a new trial raised the term technicality to new heights….”

– From “Judge quits Little Rascals case” from the Associated Press (Sept. 22, 1995)

I imagine that the “technicality” comment was from a direct quote, although I haven’t been able to find either McLelland’s original letter or a more substantial account. It’s no wonder he felt humiliated – the Court of Appeals decision had laid bare his indifference to the rights of the defendants.

Regardless, McLelland’s resignation proved irrelevant, as prosecutors decided not to retry Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson.

March 22, 2013

“’There are some people who said we could have stopped after the first child testified.”

– District Attorney H.P. Williams Jr., expressing confidence that the jury was being persuaded by the state’s stream of child-witnesses against Bob Kelly, The Associated Press, Dec. 9, 1991

Feb. 15, 2012

I asked Mark Montgomery for an update on Junior Chandler’s latest appeal of his two life sentences for child sexual abuse:

“There are two prongs to the appeal. First, I am asking the N.C. Supreme Court to simply do the right thing by Junior. The Court said in 2010 that expert testimony like that in Junior’s case is (and was) inadmissible. That being the case, it is fundamentally unfair for Junior to be facing the rest of his life in prison, when many defendants have been freed because this sort of testimony was used against them at trial.

“Second, Junior’s lawyer objected to the testimony but did not raise the issue on appeal. I argued in a motion in Superior Court that the lawyer was ineffective for abandoning the issue. The Superior Court judge denied the motion without a hearing. If the Supreme Court will not itself set aside Junior’s convictions, it should at least require a hearing on trial counsel’s conduct.”

This is how the process works: “Petitions such as Junior’s go to one of the six associate justices. He or she decides what should be done and then presents the case to the court as a whole in a monthly (sort of) closed door meeting. The justices then vote on whether to grant the petition. If the Court grants the petition, it usually requires full briefs from both parties, but may decide the case of the basis of the petition and the State’s response alone.

“If it denies the petition, that’s the end of the road.”

The court could respond as early as April 13, according to this chart of petitions allowed and denied.

April 18, 2015

“DNA testing has been used 329 times now to prove the innocence of people wrongly convicted of a crime. But what happens when there is no DNA evidence to prove someone’s innocence? What happens when there is only his word, and the mounded doubts of the team that prosecuted and convicted him? And what happens when – despite growing certainty that it has imprisoned the wrong man for more than 20 years – the Commonwealth of Virginia stands poised to keep him locked up, possibly forever?

“Of all the maddening stories of wrongful convictions, Michael McAlister’s may be one of the worst. For starters, he has been in prison for 29 years for an attempted rape he almost certainly did not commit….”

 – From “This Man Deserves a Pardon” by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate (April 13)

Michael McAlister’s story surely qualifies as “one of the worst,” but forgive me if I think Junior Chandler – coincidentally now serving his 29th year of imprisonment – has suffered every bit as much injustice.  And in McAlister’s case at least a crime was actually committed, just not by him.