Sept. 11, 2016

“I honestly don’t understand not only how the Attorney General’s 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.

“That 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.”

– Chris Mumma of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, quoted in “Johnny Small free after murder charge dismissed” in the Wilmington Star-News (Sept. 8)

I would’ve 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’s office. It’s the DAs, after all, who have to ‘splain their misfeasance to the voting public.

But this often seems not to be the case, as exemplified by Assistant AG Jess Mekeel’s misplaced concern for “the stability and reliability of our justice system.”

How much of this institutional resistance to exoneration owes to a tradition of prosecutorial blood-brotherhood? And how much springs directly (if not via email) from Attorney General Roy Cooper?

If Cooper took heed of Mumma’s thoughtful plea for “more cooperation between prosecutors and defense attorneys in their efforts to achieve justice,” evidence of it has yet to surface.

April 20, 2016

“‘If prosecutors have an ethical duty to avoid wrongful convictions, then they should have some sort of ethical duty to remedy wrongful convictions,’ said attorney Brad Bannon of the North Carolina Bar’s ethics committee.

“He wants North Carolina to adopt a rule recommended by the American Bar Association, requiring prosecutors to come forward if they find ‘new, credible and material evidence’ that an innocent person is serving time. Thirteen states have adopted the post-conviction rule. North Carolina isn’t among them.

“The State Bar rejected the rule several years ago but recently appointed a committee to reconsider….”

– From “Rule targets prosecutors who don’t reveal innocence evidence” by Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press (April 16)

Given prosecutors’ disproportionate influence on the state bar, to even “reconsider” the disclosure rule suggests the recent stream of unbecoming publicity  hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Dec. 17, 2012

“(They) are arrogant and self-centered, and feel privileged and entitled. They have a grandiose, exaggerated sense of self-importance and they are primarily motivated by self-serving goals. They seek power over others and will manipulate, exploit, deceive, con, or otherwise take advantage of others, in order to inflict harm or to achieve their goals. They are callous and have little empathy for others needs or feelings unless they coincide with their own. They show disregard for the rights, property, or safety of others and experience little or no remorse or guilt if they cause any harm or injury to others. They may act aggressively or sadistically toward others in pursuit of their personal agendas and appear to derive pleasure or satisfaction from humiliating, demeaning, dominating, or hurting others….”

The passage above, from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders best describes

A. Psychopaths

B. Prosecutors of ritual-abuse day-care cases

C. Both A and B

Oct. 14, 2015

“(Attorney General Roy Cooper) took over a tangled and controversial investigation of alleged gang rape by Duke University athletes, eventually in 2007 making the extraordinary determination that the crime never happened….”

– From “Cooper formally declares campaign to unseat McCrory” by Craig Jarvis in the News & Observer of Raleigh (Oct. 12)

So far, Attorney General Cooper’s willingness to address crimes that never happened hasn’t extended to the Little Rascals Day Care case.