June 10, 2013

“The danger posed by courts and prosecutors who abdicate their responsibilities to uphold the Constitution in favor of overwhelming community sentiment was recently illustrated in State v. Robert Fulton Kelly Jr.

“The trial prosecutor and the Superior Court judge were so overwhelmed by community sentiment that the trial was converted from a proceeding to adjudicate Mr. Kelly’s guilt or innocence into a forum to assist the families of the scores of alleged child victims recover from the gut-wrenching allegations of the 100-count indictment. The result: Justice was poorly served.

“The individuals thought to be victims and their many family members, loved ones and neighbors were frustrated, angered and in the end felt cheated. The individuals accused of heinous abuse of scores of children were deprived of a fair trial and deprived of liberty for more than three years.”

– From a talk by Henderson Hill, director of the N.C. Resource Center, Office of the Appellate Defender, at the Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr. Constitutional Issues Program, (May 18, 1995)

April 4, 2016

Junior Chandler may be the last still-imprisoned victim of the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care panic.

Chandler was a driver for a Madison County, N.C., day care. The prosecutor alleged that Chandler, in the words of appellate attorney Mark Montgomery, “would drive off his route to a park by a river, strip the children of their clothes, troop them down to the river, put them in a rowboat, commit various sexual acts, put them back on the bus and take them home.”

Based almost exclusively on hearsay and no-longer-permissible expert “vouching,” Chandler was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to two life sentences. This month he will begin his 30th year behind bars for a crime that never happened.

July 5, 2015

“In March, A. M. Stroud III, lead prosecutor at trial, wrote a remorseful article in The Shreveport Times, declaring, ‘Glenn Ford was an innocent man,’ taking responsibility for a rush to judgment and arguing for the abolition of the death penalty.

“ ‘I apologize to Glenn Ford for all the misery I have caused him and his family,’ Mr. Stroud wrote. ‘I apologize to the family of (the murder victim) for giving them the false hope of some closure. I apologize to the members of the jury for not having all of the story that should have been disclosed to them. I apologize to the court in not having been more diligent in my duty to ensure that proper disclosures of any exculpatory evidence had been provided to the defense.’

“He concluded: ‘I end with the hope that providence will have more mercy for me than I showed Glenn Ford. But I am also sobered by the realization that I certainly am not deserving of it.’ ”

– From “Glenn Ford, Spared Death Row, Dies at 65” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times (July 2)

By the time Mr. Ford was exonerated and released in 2014, he had served 29 years in Louisiana’s Angola prison. His freedom was short-lived: In less than 16 months he would be dead from lung cancer.

Prosecutor Stroud deserves credit for his humble and agonized apology, however late. His words could just as truthfully have come from the mouths of H.P. Williams, Bill Hart and Nancy Lamb – but of course they haven’t.

Feb. 9, 2015

The Little Rascals Day Care case has often been likened to the Salem Witch Trials, but this lengthy list from “Understanding The Crucible: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents” by Claudia Durst Johnson and Vernon Johnson (1998) drives home the point:

• Both involved children as accusers.
• Convictions were determined almost solely on the basis of the children’s testimony.
• Everything escalated rapidly – the number of children involved, the number of the accused, and the different kinds of charges.
• The minds of the children were in both cases manipulated by adults.
• Charges were instigated by adults who held grudges against the accused.
• There was an absence of corroborating evidence.
• “Fanciful” testimony was regarded seriously. In Salem, it was spectral evidence. In the twentieth-century cases, it included children’s stories of spaceships, sharks, and ritual murder.
• Community hysteria arose from the feeling that evil – witches and sex abusers – had access to their children.
• “Poppets” or dolls were involved. In the Salem trials, little dolls were immediately seized upon as poppets used by witches to pierce with pins with the object of inflicting torture. In sexual abuse cases, “anatomically correct” dolls were used by psychologists to coach details from the children.
• There were charges that satanic rituals were conducted.
• The prosecution showed a single-minded determination, by threat or bribe, to get the accused to confess.
• The prosecution showed a single-minded determination, by threat or bribe, to get children to disclose more and more details of misconduct without regard to truth.