{"id":197,"date":"2011-12-07T22:54:41","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T22:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=197"},"modified":"2016-01-09T21:28:27","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T21:28:27","slug":"ex-d-a-not-in-a-position-to-talk-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=197","title":{"rendered":"Ex-D.A. &#8216;not in a position to talk about it&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"style76\" style=\"text-align: right;\">Dec. 7, 2011<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">H. P. Williams Jr. was district attorney during the Little Rascals trial. He now practices\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twifordlaw.com\/attorneys\/h-p-williams-jr\" target=\"_blank\">criminal defense law in Elizabeth City<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">I called to ask whether he had changed his mind about the guilt of the Edenton Seven.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">\u201cI&#8217;m not in a position to talk about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">Why is that? I asked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">\u201cIt&#8217;s just not a question I choose to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">As I made another stab at continuing the conversation, he ended it: \u201cHave a good day. Goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">Williams was 39 when the first charges were filed. Today he is in his early 60s. I held out hope that over the years he had reexamined his role in crushing the lives of seven innocent citizens, had suffered a few dark nights of the soul, had harbored an unspoken wish to make amends, had summoned the honesty and courage to break with the prosecutors&#8217; code of silence when faced with the error of their convictions&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">I was naive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dec. 7, 2011 H. P. Williams Jr. was district attorney during the Little Rascals trial. He now practices\u00a0criminal defense law in Elizabeth City. I called to ask whether he had changed his mind about the guilt of the Edenton Seven. \u201cI&#8217;m not in a position to talk about it,\u201d he said. Why is that? I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}