{"id":2681,"date":"2016-09-11T21:36:34","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T21:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=2681"},"modified":"2016-09-11T21:40:24","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T21:40:24","slug":"emissaries-from-raleigh-bring-kneejerk-resistance-to-exoneration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=2681","title":{"rendered":"Emissaries from Raleigh bring kneejerk resistance to exoneration"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2683\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2683\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2683\" src=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160911Cooper.jpg\" alt=\"Roy Cooper\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160911Cooper.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160911Cooper-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2683\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Roy Cooper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Sept. 11, 2016<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI honestly don\u2019t understand not only how the Attorney General\u2019s Office felt it was necessary to fight us through a full week of hearing in this case, but how they could stand up at the end of that hearing and say they thought Johnny should stay in prison.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is not a minister of justice. A minister of justice should be objective enough to evaluate the evidence in a fair way and there was no way anybody could look at the evidence that came out in that hearing and say Johnny Small should be in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>\u2013\u00a0Chris Mumma of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, quoted in \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.starnewsonline.com\/news\/20160908\/johnny-small-free-after-murder-charge-dismissed\" target=\"_blank\">Johnny Small free after murder charge dismissed<\/a>\u201d\u00a0in the Wilmington Star-News\u00a0(Sept. 8)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I would\u2019ve expected, before my apprenticeship on the exoneration watch, that district attorneys would be less willing to having their fingers pried loose from wrongful convictions than their allies in the attorney general\u2019s office. It\u2019s the DAs, after all, who have to \u2018splain their misfeasance to the voting public.<\/p>\n<p>But this often seems not to be the case, as exemplified by Assistant AG Jess Mekeel\u2019s misplaced concern for \u201cthe stability and reliability of our justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How much of this institutional resistance to exoneration owes to a tradition of prosecutorial blood-brotherhood? And how much springs directly (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wral.com\/despite-decades-in-office-cooper-leaves-faint-email-trail\/15911359\/\" target=\"_blank\">if not via email<\/a>)\u00a0from Attorney General Roy Cooper?<\/p>\n<p>If Cooper took heed of Mumma\u2019s thoughtful plea for \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=2175\">more cooperation between prosecutors and defense attorneys<\/a>\u00a0in their efforts to achieve justice,\u201d evidence of it has yet to surface.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1707\" src=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/LRDCC20.jpg\" alt=\"LRDCC20\" width=\"132\" height=\"20\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sept. 11, 2016 \u201cI honestly don\u2019t understand not only how the Attorney General\u2019s Office felt it was necessary to fight us through a full week of hearing in this case, but how they could stand up at the end of that hearing and say they thought Johnny should stay in prison. \u201cThat is not a [&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-2681","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\/2681","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=2681"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2687,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions\/2687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}