May 18, 2016

Even where (wrongful imprisonment) compensation laws exist, they can be badly flawed. Most states, like Louisiana, place the burden on people who were wrongly convicted to prove their innocence before any payment is made. Several states offer embarrassingly small payouts…. Others have laws riddled with unreasonable restrictions…. Some refuse to pay anyone who pleaded guilty or who confessed to a crime he or she did not commit, despite evidence that many innocent people do both….”

– From “Paying for Years Lost Behind Bars,” editorial in the New York Times (May 18)

And some states – well, actually, just one – have governors who withhold compensation for nine months while gratuitously reinvestigating a DNA exoneration.

Aug. 20, 2012

Endlessly fascinating – and baffling – is how some experts fell headlong for “satanic ritual abuse,” while others managed to keep their wits. This is from an April 25, 1989, Associated Press story:

“David G. Bromley, a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., sees not an increase in satanic crime, but a ‘cult scare’ that has more to do with urban legends and modern psychology than with criminology.

“‘I think it’s all a hoax,’ says Bromley, who investigated allegations of cult ‘brainwashing’ in the 1970s that were never proven.

“Bromley says rumors about rings of adults who start day care centers to find children to abuse in satanic rituals are ‘sheer fantasy’ – but fantasy fed by reports of real child abuse and by today’s parents’ guilt and fears of entrusting their children to strangers.

“‘It is not coincidental that allegations of satanic conspiracies are centered on day care centers,’ he says.”

April 25, 1989! Bob Kelly was attending his probable cause hearing. The first McMartin trial was still ongoing. Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck were six years from publishing their landmark “Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony.” So how was David Bromley able to see through the fog?

“This kind of ‘subversion episode’ is not new,” he told me recently. “There has been one every few decades in American history. The focus has changed but not the phenomenon. Indian captivity tales, Salem witch trials, drug scares, communist scares, immigrant scares, UFO scares.

“There has always been some group or coalition that has found social insecurities a way of advancing its own status. In this case police and therapists made careers out of the episode.

“The story was only plausible for a limited period, and these kinds of events tend to implode eventually. But there are a lot of casualties in the meantime.

“It will happen again, I am sorry to say.”

And when it does…?

June 23, 2014

“The emphasis has got to be on the crime. Once you start using labels like satanic, sadistic or ritualistic, then you’re immediately raising a red flag…. Law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, mental health professionals and especially the general public begin to back off, because it’s so hard to believe these things happen…. We emphasized rape, sex offense, indecent liberties, crimes against nature…Those were the crimes that Bob Kelly was convicted of, those are what the jury heard evidence of….

“We let the defense attorneys bring out the sadistic and ritualistic….”

– From District Attorney H. P. Williams Jr.’s address to “From Heartbreak Through Healing: Facing the Reality of Sexual and Ritual Abuse of Children,” the first national convention of Believe the Children (April 2-4, 1993, in Arlington Heights, Ill.)

I transcribed Williams’ cautionary prosecutorial advice from audiotapes, so I can only imagine the scene on the speakers’ dais he shared with not only one of the Little Rascals mothers, but also Laura Buchanan, author of “Satan’s Child: A Survivor’s Story That Can Help Others Heal from Cultic Ritual Abuse.”

What must have Williams been thinking as Buchanan earnestly recalled that:

“We stood poised with knives in an incomprehensible world where children killed children….  Permitted to live until age four (my sister) was sacrificed by my parents…. My final programming, as a teenager, occurred on an autopsy table in the coroner’s office. A surgical procedure was staged and through a small incision in my scalp I was told that a surveillance device would be inserted into my brain. The supposed implant would be used at national headquarters to continuously monitor my thoughts. For decades the programming was extremely effective. Until the age of 44, I had no idea that my parents practiced satanism….”

With Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson locked away, and the overturning of their convictions still two years away, DA Williams was riding high. But surely he must have experienced the slightest frisson of doubt when he saw Buchanan’s patent insanity being swallowed whole by the same audience that so enthusiastically applauded his case against the Edenton Seven.

Aug. 5, 2016

“Perhaps the virtue of these true-crime stories isn’t how they affect specific cases (indeed, without new and objective evidence that calls into question criminal convictions, it’s important – for the sake of the rule of law – to let decisions stand).

“Instead, series such as ‘Serial’ could have a positive impact on how ordinary Americans – the people who sit on juries and elect local prosecutors and judges – view criminal trials.

“Maybe we’ll be more willing to hold those running for local offices accountable for presenting fair cases and working to eliminate bias against the poor or minorities.

“Maybe we’ll be more appropriately skeptical of cases built on witness testimony alone, or question whether investigators used intimidation or unfair interrogation to get inaccurate information from witnesses….”

– From “How the ‘Serial’ podcast is challenging the criminal justice system” by Robert Gebelhoff in the Washington Post, July 6 (via the Denver Post)