Aug. 31, 2012

“Children don’t just come running out of their houses screaming, ‘I’ve been molested!’”

– Assistant attorney general Bill Hart, justifying to the Associated Press (Dec. 31, 1989) why the prosecution’s serial allegations were taking so many months to come to light.

In a case typified by overstatement, Hart’s excuse for delay proved to be a most revealing understatement. Those children resisted mightily and at length before being manipulated into “screaming, ‘I’ve been molested!’”

Sept. 14, 2016

“[Chris] Mumma said she intends to request a pardon for [Johnny] Small from Gov. Pat McCrory. In order for Small to be compensated for the years he spent in prison, he has to be exonerated of the charges on the grounds that he did not commit the crime. Under North Carolina law, the Industrial Commission can award exonerees $50,000 for each year spent in prison up to a maximum of $750,000. Exonerees also are eligible for job training and college tuition….”

– From “Johnny Small’s freedom makes some question if investigator should be charged” by F.T. Norton in the Wilmington Star-News (Sept. 9)

Let’s hope McCrory responds more willingly and humanely than he did in finally pardoning Henry McCollum and Leon Brown.

Case closed, Governor – no reinvestigation needed!

Aug. 26, 2013

“Attorney General Roy Cooper stopped far short of apologizing to (Greg Taylor and Floyd Brown). He said that the SBI had better investigative practices now and that ‘It was in the best interest of the state to settle these cases.’

“And maybe in the best interest of justice, too?

“These two men lost their youths thanks to agents of the SBI. That is an outrage for which they can never be adequately compensated. State officials have been encouraged to offer profuse apologies, and that is not unreasonable, though it’s a little late for it now….

“But let no one involved in prosecuting these two men believe that the debt for their ‘mistakes’ is paid in full.”

– From “Two former prisoners’ lives, valued,” editorial in the News & Observer (Aug. 15, 2013)

As compensation for their flagrantly corrupted prosecution, Taylor received about $4.5 million from the state, Brown about $8 million. Attorney General Cooper seems to find such an outlay easier to swallow than offering an apology – providing yet another example of the “Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)” approach to accountability.

By contrast, in 2007 the Duke lacrosse case moved Cooper to give the defendants a “statement of innocence” and to at least brush up against remorse:

“In the rush to condemn, a community and a state lost the ability to see clearly…. I think a lot of people owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people.”

But in 2009, after yet another wrongful conviction settlement – this one for $3.9 million – Cooper declined to give murder defendant Alan Gell a statement of innocence. ”The Duke case was a clear case, very unusual,” he explained. “There was no crime committed….”

“No crime committed”? Why, I know another “clear case, very unusual” that precisely meets that standard!

Jan. 11, 2012

“It’s worth remembering, in the 1980s we had a whole spate of false accusations of… sexual abuse of children. The McMartin Preschool, all those supposed satanic cults in day care centers, turned out to be false…. It’s worth it to remind people of that.”

– Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, interviewed on CNN (Nov. 15) about the Penn State case

In fact, deep distinctions separate Penn State and the “multi-victim, multi-offender” – MVMO, in the sex-crime argot – accusations typified by McMartin and Little Rascals.

Since 1995, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has investigated 40 alleged MVMOs at 24 locations around the world. Number of substantiated instances of ritual abuse: zero.

According to its research, “Any criminal acts were non-ritual abuse by a single perpetrator… Almost all the crimes with which people were charged never happened.”

Regardless, Toobin’s reminder is a welcome counterpoint to the Judge Nancy Grace school of instant verdicts.