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Nov. 26, 2019<\/p>\nNov. 26, 2019<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve previously cited here<\/a> and here<\/a> Elle magazine\u2019s deeply reported 1993 article on the Little Rascals case. You can read it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n But I had somehow overlooked this response to Greensboro journalists Edward Cone and Lisa Scheer from assistant attorney general Bill Hart. It has not aged well.<\/p>\n Dear Ed and Lisa,<\/p>\n I have read your recent article in Elle Magazine, “The Demons of Edenton.”<\/p>\n I found it interesting that you chose to leave out the fact that Chris Bean, now a District Court Judge, had initially represented Bob Kelly as his lawyer, until he found out that his son had been abused.<\/p>\n I also found it interesting that you chose not to include the fact that Bob Kelly’s jury had the full benefit of the experience, knowledge, and wisdom of both Maggie Bruck and William Kenner through their testimony at his trial.<\/p>\n Notably absent from your article was any balancing psychological viewpoint to the Bruck\/Kenner\/Ofshe propaganda. You had access to the testimony of Mark Everson, a psychologist who testified for the state at Bob Kelly’s trial, but did not quote him. You criticized Roland Summit, but did not quote him….<\/p>\n Sincerely, I won\u2019t use this post to address all of Hart\u2019s claims, but….<\/p>\n \u2013 Chris Bean\u2019s role in the case, far from being culpatory for Bob Kelly, actually provoked stinging criticism<\/a> from the North Carolina Court of Appeals. \u201cThis boils down to the most fundamental questions of fairness,\u201d Judge Gerald Arnold said. \u201cWhen you have an attorney testifying that \u2018I was Mr. Kelly\u2019s attorney and I believed in him very strongly until I learned the truth, that is to say that he\u2019s guilty, and then I was shattered.\u2019 How can there be more prejudicial, stronger evidence put before a jury than to have a former attorney, the defendant\u2019s attorney say that?\u201d Further, Bean was among those parents whom prosecutors inappropriately but persuasively presented as de facto experts on child psychology.<\/p>\n \u2013 Mark Everson, UNC psychologist, was tragically influential with a \u201ccoherent package<\/a>\u201d of misconceptions he clung to long after they had been exposed by updated research. And of course there\u2019s his jaw-dropping \u201cwhere there\u2019s smoke there\u2019s fire<\/a>\u201d argument….<\/p>\n \u2013 Los Angeles psychiatrist Roland Summit, a key player in the McMartin Preschool trial, tried too late to shed responsibility for the many defendants wrongfully convicted by his \u201cchild sexual abuse syndrome<\/a>\u201d theory.<\/p>\n Bill Hart\u2019s letter didn\u2019t mention it, but I have to wonder whether this was the Elle passage that actually got under his skin most annoyingly:<\/p>\n
\nWilliam P. Hart
\nSpecial Deputy Attorney General<\/p>\n
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