April 16, 2016

“To many in the criminal justice system, it is now a source of embarrassment that there was ever a time when police and prosecutors were convinced that bands of Satanists had infiltrated the nation’s day care centers in order to abuse young children. Yet in the (Fran and Dan Keller case), which I investigated for the Austin Chronicle back in 2009, I was startled to hear both a veteran cop and a prosecutor say they still believed in even the most absurd of the children’s allegations….

– From “Convicted of a Crime That Never Happened: Why Won’t Texas Exonerate Fran and Dan Keller?” by Jordan Smith at the Intercept (April 8)

May 27, 2014

“The state court system says it hired a local defense attorney to prosecute three murder suspects because the current district attorney had conflicts of interest in all three cases and no other prosecutors were available.

“The N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts hired H. P. Williams Jr. as a special prosecutor on March 27 after attempts to find a prosecutor from either the state Attorney General’s Office or another district attorney’s office failed….”

– From “Williams to prosecute 2 more murder cases” by William F. West in The (paywalled) Daily Advance (May 24)

Yes, that’s the same H.P. Williams Jr. who as district attorney prosecuted the Edenton Seven, who as an ostensible expert appeared at conferences on “satanic ritual abuse” alongside “cult cop” Robert J. Simandl and Civia Tamarkin of Believe the Children, who as a candidate for reelection received only 41 percent of the vote and who after returning to private practice emphatically declined to discuss the Little Rascals case.

Yes, that H.P. Williams Jr….

Nov. 26, 2019

I’ve previously cited here and here Elle magazine’s deeply reported 1993 article on the Little Rascals case. You can read it here.

But I had somehow overlooked this response to Greensboro journalists Edward Cone and Lisa Scheer from assistant attorney general Bill Hart. It has not aged well.

Dear Ed and Lisa,

I have read your recent article in Elle Magazine, “The Demons of Edenton.”

I found it interesting that you chose to leave out the fact that Chris Bean, now a District Court Judge, had initially represented Bob Kelly as his lawyer, until he found out that his son had been abused.

I also found it interesting that you chose not to include the fact that Bob Kelly’s jury had the full benefit of the experience, knowledge, and wisdom of both Maggie Bruck and William Kenner through their testimony at his trial.

Notably absent from your article was any balancing psychological viewpoint to the Bruck/Kenner/Ofshe propaganda. You had access to the testimony of Mark Everson, a psychologist who testified for the state at Bob Kelly’s trial, but did not quote him. You criticized Roland Summit, but did not quote him….

Sincerely,
William P. Hart
Special Deputy Attorney General

I won’t use this post to address all of Hart’s claims, but….

– Chris Bean’s role in the case, far from being culpatory for Bob Kelly, actually provoked stinging criticism from the North Carolina Court of Appeals. “This boils down to the most fundamental questions of fairness,” Judge Gerald Arnold said. “When you have an attorney testifying that ‘I was Mr. Kelly’s attorney and I believed in him very strongly until I learned the truth, that is to say that he’s guilty, and then I was shattered.’ How can there be more prejudicial, stronger evidence put before a jury than to have a former attorney, the defendant’s attorney say that?” Further, Bean was among those parents whom prosecutors inappropriately but persuasively presented as de facto experts on child psychology.

– Mark Everson, UNC psychologist, was tragically influential with a “coherent package” of misconceptions he clung to long after they had been exposed by updated research. And of course there’s his jaw-dropping “where there’s smoke there’s fire” argument….

– Los Angeles psychiatrist Roland Summit, a key player in the McMartin Preschool trial, tried too late to shed responsibility for the many defendants wrongfully convicted by his “child sexual abuse syndrome” theory.

Bill Hart’s letter didn’t mention it, but I have to wonder whether this was the Elle passage that actually got under his skin most annoyingly:

“[Hart] is emotionally involved in the Little Rascals case to a startling degree. Last year he married Patricia Kephart, the mother of a Little Rascals child, who Hart had become romantically involved with during his prosecution of the case. ‘If anything it’s made it more difficult on me,’ he says of his entanglement in the investigation.”

There are huge and obvious problems with Hart’s behavior, but his “difficult” personal consequences don’t rank high on the list.

 

Aug. 6, 2012

Let’s say you were a special deputy attorney general called in from Raleigh to help prosecute the Little Rascals case. Now imagine: What would be the most inappropriate, the most ethically questionable way you could possibly spend your spare time in Edenton? How about starting to date the mother of one of the alleged victims?

Yes, that’s exactly what Bill Hart chose to do. He and Patricia A. Kephart had been involved for months even before Bob Kelly’s trial began.

Readers of this blog won’t be surprised to learn that Hart denied any impropriety and blamed the defense for trying “to divert attention from the case.”

But Rich Rosen, professor of criminal procedure at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Law, told the News & Observer of Raleigh (Dec. 20, 1991) that “It certainly raises questions in my mind. A prosecutor is not supposed to have any personal involvement or interest in the case.”

One question raised in my own mind: Unlikely, yes, but what if Hart had experienced a pang of doubt about the validity of the prosecution’s case? Would he have been able to admit that to his girlfriend (much less to his fellow prosecutors)?

At the conclusion of the state’s case, prosecutors dropped charges related to Kephart’s daughter. Hart and Kephart later married.