{"id":2861,"date":"2017-06-19T19:11:44","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T19:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=2861"},"modified":"2017-08-01T00:53:44","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T00:53:44","slug":"why-mike-easley-had-to-deny-errors-in-little-rascals-trials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=2861","title":{"rendered":"Why Mike Easley had to deny errors in Little Rascals trials"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mike Easley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

June 19, 2017<\/p>\n

\u201cOur criminal justice famously presumes that every accused person is innocent until proven guilty. But once a conviction is obtained, that presumption is turned on its head. Charges were brought, and a jury, which saw evidence and heard from the witnesses firsthand, voted to convict. At that point, finality sets in.<\/p>\n

\u201cProsecutors tasked with defending a conviction against compelling evidence that it was wrongfully secured typically have two choices. They can accept the responsibility for participating — directly or indirectly — in an injustice, or they can insist that nothing went awry or that whatever mistakes may have been made were \u2018immaterial\u2019\u2013 that is, the jury would have convicted anyway. The justice system strongly pushes them in the latter direction. Ambitious, hard-charging prosecutors know that the way to the top is amassing guilty verdicts, not admitting mistakes. In 47 states [including North Carolina], their bosses \u2013 the county district attorney, the state\u2019s attorney general \u2013 are elected. Incompetence, or appearing \u2018soft on crime,\u2019 can be fatal at the ballot box….<\/p>\n

\u201cThe refusal to admit a mistake \u2013 or even an act of bad faith \u2013 holds true regardless of whether the prosecutor defending the conviction had any involvement at the trial level, personally knew the key players or even worked in the same office…. This may be due, in part, to a phenomenon that [Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed<\/a>]\u00a0calls \u2018the conformity effect.\u2019 Prosecutors… are \u2018culturally aligned with that side and tend to defer to their peers who were the original decision makers.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

\u2013 From \u201cFor shame<\/a>\u201d\u00a0by Lara Bazelon at Slate (April 7, 2016)<\/em><\/p>\n

Although examples of such prosecutorial lockstep are legion, most relevant here is N.C. Attorney General Mike Easley\u2019s response to the overturning of the convictions of Little Rascals defendants Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson. Easley, himself a former district attorney (and future governor), laid it on thick:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision casts no doubt on the credibility of the children or the integrity of the investigation\u2026. In both cases, the facts supporting the convictions were clear and overwhelming. [The N.C. Court of Appeals] disregarded these facts and misapplied the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four months later, throwing in the towel after the N.C. Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeals, Easley managed to find fault not with the prosecutors but with the children.\u00a0 \u201cAll prosecutors know that cases involving children weaken with age,\u201d he said. \u201cA retrial in this matter will be extremely difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LRDCC20\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 19, 2017 \u201cOur criminal justice famously presumes that every accused person is innocent until proven guilty. But once a conviction is obtained, that presumption is turned on its head. Charges were brought, and a jury, which saw evidence and heard from the witnesses firsthand, voted to convict. At that point, finality sets in. \u201cProsecutors […]<\/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-2861","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\/2861","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=2861"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2960,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions\/2960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}