Aug. 14, 2013

“FARMVILLE – A juror in the trial of Robert F. Kelly Jr. testified Wednesday that it was an ‘amazing coincidence’ that information from a magazine article appeared in his notes about jury deliberations.

“Dennis T. Ray insisted during a hearing on Kelly’s bid for a new trial that he did not use information from a Redbook article about child molestation to evaluate Kelly’s guilt. Ray denied that he compared Kelly to characteristics of a molester listed in the article.

“But defense attorney David Rudolf vigorously attacked Ray’s credibility by referring to notes Ray made during the deliberations. Rudolf cited numerous phrases from the magazine article, such as ‘vast amount of child pornography’ and ‘sex fiend’ which were identical to phrases in Ray’s notes.

“Rudolf, his voice rising, asked Ray whether it was just coincidence that so many phrases from the magazine appeared word-for-word in his notes. Ray replied that ‘it must be’ because jurors did not have the article in the jury room. ‘The only explanation you have for this is that it is an amazing coincidence?’ Rudolf asked. ‘Yes, sir,’ Ray said.

“In another sharp exchange, Rudolf questioned Ray’s contention that he did not describe the article in an interview with a producer for (“Innocence Lost”). Ray said he told her (only) that there were books in the jury room. Rudolf: ‘You are under oath, sir.’ Ray: ‘I do not remember saying that to her. No, sir.’ Rudolf: ‘Did you say it or not? You are under oath.’ Ray: ‘I do not believe that I did.’

“Rudolf then played video tapes of the program that showed Ray describing the article. Ray said after viewing the video that he did not remember it.”

– From “Kelly lawyer attacks juror’s credibility” in the News & Observer (Jan. 20, 1994)

Dennis T. Ray seems to have been quite a loose cannon in the jury room. In addition to the “amazing coincidence” of the Redbook article, Ray also (according to other jurors cited in Bob Kelly’s appellate brief) “made visits to Edenton despite instructions by the trial court not to.

Mr. Ray also claimed to have talked with an inmate at Eastern Correctional Institution. According to Mr. Ray, the inmate, a convicted child molester, claimed to know Bob Kelly, and to have personal knowledge of Mr. Kelly’s guilt. The jurors said that Mr. Ray also displayed some sort of object that he claimed to be a ‘magic key’ referred to by several children.”

Unpersuaded that any of this mischief might have contaminated the jury’s decision-making, Judge Marsh McLelland rejected Bob Kelly’s motion for a new trial.

Aug. 6, 2016

It’s appalling to see the New York Times, in its Aug. 5 obituary on Chris Costner Sizemore, “the real patient behind ‘The Three Faces of Eve’, quote as experts Dr. Colin A. Ross and Dr. Richard Kluft, psychiatrists who validated and promoted the “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic of the 1980s and early ’90s.

For decades Dr. Ross has spun out cockamamie ideas from supernatural “eye beams” to CIA conspiracies. And as recently as a 2009 interview on CBS “Sunday Morning,” Dr. Kluft confidently posited a nationwide epidemic of undiagnosed cases of “multiple personality disorder”:

Tracy Smith: So do you think that there are, what, thousands of people walking around out there with MPD who don`t even know it?

Kluft: Oh, easily.

Smith: Tens of thousands?

Kluft: Easily.

Smith: Hundreds of thousands?

Kluft: Easily.

Smith: Millions?

Kluft: We might be at that level.

Do Ross and Kluft really provide the kind of authority the Times needed for this story?

The full obituary on Chris Costner Sizemore is here, cached here.

Nov. 11, 2011

“The first case to raise alarms about predators in nursery schools was that involving the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California…. In 1983, a woman named Judy Jones charged that 25-year-old Ray Buckey, a teacher and grandson of the school’s founder, had sodomized her two-year-old son.

“(Jones) was an alcoholic and subsequently diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

“After her charge against Buckey (who was acquitted in 1990 along with his mother and school owner Peggy McMartin Buckey), she went on to make the same allegations against a member of the U.S. Marine Corps who had, she said, sexually assaulted her dog.”

– From “No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness and Other Terrors of Our Times” by Dorothy Rabinowitz (2003)

 When Rabinowitz, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, the judges cited her series on unjustified child-abuse prosecutions.

March 14, 2016

Darryl Hunt, imprisoned for more than 19 years for a murder he did not commit, was found dead in a car in Winston-Salem early Sunday.

“In 1984 at age 19, Hunt was charged with the rape and murder of a newspaper copy editor….” Read more here.

“Hunt was exonerated in 2004 after DNA evidence led police to Willard Brown, who confessed to the killing, and pardoned by then-Gov. Mike Easley.” Read more here.

He was awarded a settlement of more than $1.6 million in 2007 and founded the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice,  an advocacy group for the wrongfully convicted.

“But Hunt was also haunted by his experiences, said those who knew him. He would use ATMs daily, not so much to get money but so he could create a time-stamped receipt and an image recording his location.” Read more here.

“The trauma of wrongful convictions, years in prison, and the responsibilities he took on after he was free wore Hunt down, (his longtime attorney, Mark Rabil) said.

“ ‘In the long run, he eventually got the death penalty,’ Rabil said.” Read more here.

– From “Darryl Hunt, wrongly convicted of murder, found dead” by Lynn Bonner in the News & Observer (March 13)

Exoneration – what a beautiful word. Misleadingly beautiful for those who forever bear the wounds of wrongful conviction.

In 2007 a New York Times study of 137 DNA exonerees showed that “most of them have struggled to keep jobs, pay for health care, rebuild family ties and shed the psychological effects of years of uestionable or wrongful imprisonment.

Another study suggests New York state parolees experienced “a 2-year decline in life expectancy for each year served in prison.”

Perhaps most chilling: Darryl Hunt surely ranked as one of exoneration’s most heartening success stories.