July 19, 2016

“The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations.

“Or the prosecutor may choose a more subtle course and simply have a citizen’s friends interviewed. The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial. He may dismiss the case before trial, in which case the defense never has a chance to be heard.

“Or he may go on with a public trial. If he obtains a conviction, the prosecutor can still make recommendations as to sentence, as to whether the prisoner should get probation or a suspended sentence, and after he is put away, as to whether he is a fit subject for parole.

“While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst….”

– From an address  by Attorney General Robert H. Jackson to the Conference of United States Attorneys, Washington, D.C., April 1, 1940

Although Jackson’s cautionary words were directed toward federal prosecutors, they could hardly be more applicable to the State of North Carolina’s prosecution of the Edenton Seven.  H.P. Williams Jr., Bill Hart and Nancy Lamb surely missed no chance to put forth “veiled or unveiled intimations,” to make a “one-sided presentation” or to otherwise act “from malice or other base motives.”

Dec. 7, 2011

H. P. Williams Jr. was district attorney during the Little Rascals trial. He now practices criminal defense law in Elizabeth City.

I called to ask whether he had changed his mind about the guilt of the Edenton Seven.

“I’m not in a position to talk about it,” he said.

Why is that? I asked.

“It’s just not a question I choose to answer.”

As I made another stab at continuing the conversation, he ended it: “Have a good day. Goodbye.”

Williams was 39 when the first charges were filed. Today he is in his early 60s. I held out hope that over the years he had reexamined his role in crushing the lives of seven innocent citizens, had suffered a few dark nights of the soul, had harbored an unspoken wish to make amends, had summoned the honesty and courage to break with the prosecutors’ code of silence when faced with the error of their convictions….

I was naive.

Jan. 4, 2019

In January 1988 the Memphis Commercial Appeal published a 36-page special section recapping its recent series, “Justice Abused: A 1980s Witch Hunt” by Tom Charlier and Shirley Downing.

“Justice Abused” was the first major news coverage to link “satanic ritual abuse” cases across the country and to
characterize them as a witch hunt.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning criticism of how the news media so often mishandled cases such as McMartin Preschool, David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times credited Charlier and Downing with pointing out “among many other things, the large number of child molestation cases that had resulted in dismissals, acquittals and dropped charges and the startling number of similarities among many of the cases.

Children in both the Memphis and McMartin cases, for example, told of druggings, of animal mutilations, of trips in vans, of bloody rituals, of sacrifices of babies and of being taken on airplanes that resembled those of Federal Express.”

Until now this historically important series has not been available digitally. It is archived in two pieces here and here on our Bookshelf.

April 4, 2012

“An appeals court Thursday overturned the conviction of six people accused of participating in a pedophilia ring in northern France five years ago, unraveling one of the most mismanaged cases in French judicial history and leaving the nation asking how the court system could have gone so awry.

“ ‘I apologize to the acquitted and their families,’ Justice Minister Pascal Clement said at a news conference after the verdict was announced in Paris.

“He ordered a triple investigation of the police, judiciary and social services involved in the case…. ‘I want the French people to know that I will get to the bottom of this,’ he said.

“Paris’s chief prosecutor, Yves Bot, had personally asked the appeal court to acquit the six, calling the case a ‘true catastrophe’ and demanding an investigation into who was responsible for such a gross miscarriage of justice. ‘We must do what is necessary to make sure this doesn’t happen again,’ Bot said.

“But others were heartened by the appeal, saying that it showed that the courts were capable of self-criticism and self-correction.

“ ‘That’s indispensable in a democracy,’ said Dominique Wolton, a sociologist at France’s National Council for Scientific Research.

“The case began in 2000 in the town of Outreau after a number of children told a teacher that they had been abused.

“It was marred by deep doubts from the beginning, said Yves Jannier, France’s attorney general.

“He noted that the investigative report by the police in July 2002 found ‘more doubts than certainties’ in the accusations, but said, ‘No one had enough critical sense to stop the machine.’ ”

– From the International Herald Tribune, Dec. 2, 2005

Thanks to lawyer-neighbor Lou Lesesne for steering me to this account of the Outreau Affair.
Although the case differs in numerous significant ways from such U.S. ritual-abuse prosecutions as Little Rascals and McMartin, I was most struck by the readiness of French officials to acknowledge and apologize for a justice system gone crazy.

Soon after, president Jacques Chirac wrote letters to 13 acquitted defendants and to the widow of a defendant who committed suicide in prison awaiting trial: “Justice is the soul of the republic. We have the imperative duty to draw all the lessons from the immense sufferings endured by all the accused whose innocence has now been established.”

How to explain the French state’s humane response to its costly misdeeds, while our own prosecutors, attorneys general, governors, et al., keep silent?

Why aren’t they too “capable of self-criticism and self-correction”?

Why don’t they too recognize “the immense sufferings endured by all the accused”?