Feb. 15, 2016

“(NYU law professor Rachel) Barkow points to Scalia’s (1990) dissent in Maryland v. Craig, where he railed against the court for permitting ‘a child witness to testify via closed circuit television in a sex abuse case,’ instead of requiring the child to testify live in the courtroom where she would be subjected to cross-examination by the defense.

“The Constitution, Scalia wrote, does not authorize judges to ‘conduct a cost-benefit analysis of clear and explicit constitutional guarantees, and then to adjust their meaning to comport with our findings.’ ”

– From “Antonin Scalia’s Other Legacy: He was often a friend of criminal defendants” by Robert Smith at Slate (Feb. 15)

Scalia’s ferocious dissent in Craig in defense of the Sixth Amendment’s “confrontation clause” featured this jugular-seeking missile:

“Because of (the court majority’s) subordination of explicit constitutional text to currently favored public policy, the following scene can be played out in an American courtroom for the first time in two centuries:

“A father whose young daughter has been given over to the exclusive custody of his estranged wife, or a mother whose young son has been taken into custody by the State’s child welfare department, is sentenced to prison for sexual abuse on the basis of testimony by a child the parent has not seen or spoken to for many months, and the guilty verdict is rendered without giving the parent so much as the opportunity to sit in the presence of the child, and to ask, personally or through counsel, ‘It is really not true, is it, that I – your father (or mother) whom you see before you – did these terrible things?’

“Perhaps that is a procedure today’s society desires; perhaps (though I doubt it) it is even a fair procedure; but it is assuredly not a procedure permitted by the Constitution….”

Further on, Scalia cited a 1983 prosecution in Jordan, Minn., that may have been first of the “satanic ritual abuse” wave.

“As children continued to be interviewed,” he wrote, “the list of accused citizens grew….There is no doubt that some sexual abuse took place in Jordan, but there is no reason to believe it was as widespread as charged….”

Aug. 27, 2017

In 1999, when the last charges against Bob Kelly were dismissed, here’s how Joseph Neff of the News & Observer described the scene:

“The prosecutors in the longest, most expensive criminal case in North Carolina history picked a day when all attention was focused elsewhere to quietly throw in the towel.

“It was Sept. 15, as Hurricane Floyd churned northward toward landfall the next day, that Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lamb filed a two-page document with the Clerk of Superior Court in Edenton, dismissing eight counts of sexual abuse against Robert Kelly.”

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.

Nov. 16, 2013

An update from Mark Montgomery, Junior Chandler’s appellate attorney: “[The N.C. Center on Actual Innocence] reviewed Junior’s case but could not find anything that would help him.  The ‘kids’ were too young at the time to have anything helpful to say now.  Of the two retarded adults who rode Junior’s bus (and testified against him), one is dead and the other incompetent.”

On a somewhat more encouraging note, Mark reports that the governor’s office has notified him that Junior’s clemency application is being considered.
Want to put in a word on Junior’s behalf? Here’s where to write:

Executive Clemency Office
4294 Mail Service Center
Raleigh NC 27699-4294