charlespierce.net

Charles P. Pierce

Dec. 7, 2016

“If you do a Google search right now for ‘McMartin preschool tunnels,’ you will be inundated with ‘studies’ and ‘reports’ that ‘prove’ the tunnels did exist, and that the lurid fictions prompted out of the children by ambitious social workers were therefore true. Nothing dies on the Internet, not even the most arrant lunacy….

“One of [Donald Trump’s] primary surrogates, Scottie Nell Hughes, told an NPR panel that ‘There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.’ But we have not ‘entered’ an age of post-truth politics. We’ve been living in it for years. The Executive Branch of the government just has been slow to catch up. Now, it’s right there with the rest of us, god help the country. We’re all just the children of McMartin now. We’ll say anything we’re told until we come to believe it ourselves.”

– From “America Was Always a Nation of Conspiracy Theorists. Now, They’re Simply More Dangerous: Lessons from Pizzagate” by Charles P. Pierce in Esquire (Dec. 5)

Feb. 13, 2013

“Can we say beyond a shadow of a doubt that any day-care operators in the country are innocent? No. Can we say that those who claim they were abducted by UFOs were not? No.

“(That) is not a frivolous comparison. The methodology used by therapists on the children is the same methodology used by UFO debriefers. The debriefers ask, Did you see a light? The therapists ask, Did you get taken to a secret tunnel? The debriefers ask, Did you feel a probe by the aliens? The therapists ask, Did Mr. Bob stick a knife in your vagina?

“When people, even fully functional members of their communities, regurgitate what they have been told about space probes, we call them lunatics. When children, after constant prodding, regurgitate what they have been told about intimate probes, we put people in prison.”

– From “Abusing Justice, in the Name of Children” by Ed Siegel in the Boston Globe (Sept. 8, 1995)

pbs.org/wgbh/frontline

Dennis T. Ray

April 10, 2016

“(Daniel Green’s) Durham-based defense team says it has new evidence that challenges major parts of the prosecution’s case, while bolstering their request for a new trial. They claim that misleading testimony and misconduct by the prosecutor and jury helped send Green to prison for (the 1993 murder of James Jordan) he did not commit.

“The evidence outlined in court documents includes… a sworn statement from the jury forewoman who admits she did her own investigation of Jordan’s murder, which violated a judge’s order. Paula Locklear says that during the trial, she visited the South Carolina creekside where the body was found and developed her own theory on how the killing occurred. A Charlotte legal expert says her action amounts to a ‘tremendous problem’ for the original case and could get Green’s conviction overturned….”

– From “New questions raised in slaying case of Michael Jordan’s father” by Michael Gordon and Mark Washburn in the Charlotte Observer (April 9) (cached)

Sound familiar? It should! As a juror in Bob Kelly’s trial, Dennis T. Ray not only conducted his own “crime” scene surveys, but also shared a Cosmopolitan article about how to identify child molesters, relayed incriminating claims from a jailhouse snitch and even displayed a supposed “magic key” described by child witnesses.

Unfortunately, Judge Marsh McLelland didn’t consider Ray’s rogue behavior – or that of a second juror, who dramatically revealed during deliberations that he himself had been abused as a child – to be a “tremendous problem.”

In fact, McLelland found precious few reasons to take issue with the prosecution’s case.

Read more here (cached here).

Nov. 9, 2012

“Did I recognize that child sex abuse existed and was a serious problem? reporters would ask. A strange question, that. The discussion of no other crime would require such a disclaimer. Journalists who have written about false murder charges are seldom asked to provide reassurance that they know murder is a bad thing, and it really happens.”

– From “No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusations, False Witness and Other Terrors of Our Times” by Dorothy Rabinowitz  (2003)