May 16, 2014

Exhibit A:

“Last year at a state solicitors’ convention in Myrtle Beach, (South Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty) cautioned that prosecutors in the state have been ‘getting away with too much for too long.’ He added, ‘The court will no longer overlook unethical conduct, such as witness tampering, selective and retaliatory prosecutions, perjury and suppression of evidence. You better follow the rules or we are coming after you and will make an example. The pendulum has been swinging in the wrong direction for too long and now it’s going in the other direction. Your bar licenses will be in jeopardy. We will take your license’….

“If most prosecutors are following the rules, you’d think they’d have little to fear, and in fact would want their rogue colleagues identified and sanctioned….The state’s prosecutors didn’t see it that way….

“At least 13 of the head prosecutors in the state’s 16 judicial districts, along with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, are asking for Beatty to be recused from criminal cases. This would presumably end his career as a state supreme court justice….”

– From “Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.” by Radley Balko in the Washington Post (March 7)

Exhibit B:

“….Decades of studies show eyewitness testimony is only right about half the time – a reality that has prompted a small vanguard of police chiefs, courts and lawmakers to toughen laws governing the handling of eyewitnesses and their accounts of crimes….

“Prosecutors, however, have opposed the efforts, arguing that the changes erode their powers, even as studies have shown that eyewitnesses are about half as likely to choose the correct suspect out of a lineup as they are to choose some combination of the innocent fillers or no suspect at all when the correct one is present. The reexamination of eyewitness testimony comes at a time when technology and other forensic analysis are being given greater weight….”

– From “Eyewitness Testimony No Longer A Gold Standard” by Nigel Duara of the Associated Press (April 19, 2014)

TV prosecutor Jack McCoy suffered his own ethical dark nights of the soul, but I can’t imagine him finding much in common with such miscreants as these.

Aug. 19, 2016

The jury is empaneled in Farmville, N.C., where Bob Kelly’s trial has been moved because of pretrial publicity in Edenton.

Dennis T. Ray would turn out to be a major mischief-maker both inside and outside the jury room. Ray read aloud from a contraband Redbook article on how to identify child molesters,  disobeyed the court’s instruction not to visit the alleged crime scenes, reported that a jailhouse snitch had shared personal knowledge of Kelly’s guilt and displayed a supposed “magic key” referred to by several child witnesses.

Unfortunately, Judge Marsh McLelland told defense attorneys he didn’t consider Ray’s rogue behavior – or that of a second juror, who dramatically revealed during deliberations that he himself had been abused as a child – to be a “tremendous problem.”

At least three jurors would later express deep doubts about the guilty verdict.

Roswell Streeter, at 28 the youngest juror, would write:

“I’ll say this to the last day of my life, that the evidence that came through the courtroom did not prove that Bob Kelly committed any kind of sex abuse.” He told “Frontline” he had felt intimidated and confused.

Mary Nichols was suffering from advanced leukemia,  and Marvin Shackelford had suffered two heart attacks. Both acknowledged afterward that worries about their health had moved them to vote guilty simply to cut short deliberations and go home. It had been nine months since the trial began.

Sept. 20, 2013

“In 1984 in particular we see a turning point in the media representation of American motherhood. Two major media events exemplified the cultural contradictions in which working mothers were caught:

“On one end of the spectrum, the McMartin day-care child-molestation scandal (followed by a barrage of similar scandals), and on the other end the spectrum, the premiere and runaway success of ‘The Cosby Show.’

“The former served as the direst warning of what happens when mothers go to work and entrust their children to others. The latter suggested that you could work at a demanding job, express frequent exasperation with your kids and threaten to murder them on  a regular basis, and yet have a loving husband and children and be a terrific mother….”

– From “The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women” by Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels (2004)

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.”