Feb. 16, 2018

“Eighteen years ago this month, Peter Ellis left prison. He ought never to have been there in the first place.

“[In 1993] Ellis was convicted of child abuse at the Christchurch Civic Crèche. It remains one of New Zealand’s most controversial cases, and one [New Zealand’s] proposed Criminal Cases Review Commission would do well to address.

“If all the allegations were to be believed, Ellis was involved in making children dance naked while some were placed in an oven or suspended in a cage. Others were buried alive, and one child was forced to kill another. One unfortunate lad was turned into a frog and a cat. Needless to say the evidence for these events was not strong…”

– From “Peter Ellis martyr to deranged prejudice” by Jarrod Gilbert in the New Zealand Herald (Feb. 8)

The first allegations against Peter Ellis occurred shortly after a nearby Ritual Abuse Workshop. What a coincidence – the first allegations against Bob Kelly occurred shortly after a
nearby day-care sex abuse seminar….

Feb. 9, 2018

“Both prosecution and defense [in a trial in Palo Alto, Calif.] called expert witnesses to testify to ‘child sexual-abuse accommodation syndrome’….

“Roland Summit, a southern California psychiatrist, coined the term in 1983. He defined the syndrome through five categories: secrecy, helplessness; entrapment and accommodation; delayed, unconvincing disclosure; and retraction. The categories describe how victims often do not resist the abuse because of power dynamics in the relationship with an adult, often delay disclosing the abuse and may change their stories due to pressure or guilt….

“Blake Carmichael, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, Davis, testified for the prosecution that child sexual-abuse accommodation syndrome is not a diagnosis but rather a set of concepts that provide context for a child’s experience of sexual abuse. He testified that research supports Summit’s original claims.

“By contrast, William O’Donohue, a clinical psychologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, testified for the defense that Summit’s paper is ‘junk science’.

“O’Donohue co-authored a literature review of Summit’s work that determined the syndrome is not a scientific theory grounded in research. O’Donohue noted that a second article Summit published in the 1990s described child sexual-abuse accommodation syndrome as his ‘clinical opinion’ and a ‘pattern’ rather than a diagnosable condition.”

– From “Former teacher denies sex-abuse allegations” by Elena Kadvany in Palo Alto Weekly (Feb. 7)

So here we are, 35 years after Roland Summit fanned the flames in the McMartin Preschool case, and prosecutors are still using his cockamamie conceit to win over jurors. It’s not just on the internet that no bad idea ever dies….

June 19, 2017

“Our criminal justice famously presumes that every accused person is innocent until proven guilty. But once a conviction is obtained, that presumption is turned on its head. Charges were brought, and a jury, which saw evidence and heard from the witnesses firsthand, voted to convict. At that point, finality sets in.

“Prosecutors tasked with defending a conviction against compelling evidence that it was wrongfully secured typically have two choices. They can accept the responsibility for participating — directly or indirectly — in an injustice, or they can insist that nothing went awry or that whatever mistakes may have been made were ‘immaterial’– that is, the jury would have convicted anyway. The justice system strongly pushes them in the latter direction. Ambitious, hard-charging prosecutors know that the way to the top is amassing guilty verdicts, not admitting mistakes. In 47 states [including North Carolina], their bosses – the county district attorney, the state’s attorney general – are elected. Incompetence, or appearing ‘soft on crime,’ can be fatal at the ballot box….

“The refusal to admit a mistake – or even an act of bad faith – holds true regardless of whether the prosecutor defending the conviction had any involvement at the trial level, personally knew the key players or even worked in the same office…. This may be due, in part, to a phenomenon that [Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed] calls ‘the conformity effect.’ Prosecutors… are ‘culturally aligned with that side and tend to defer to their peers who were the original decision makers.’ “

– From “For shame” by Lara Bazelon at Slate (April 7, 2016)

Although examples of such prosecutorial lockstep are legion, most relevant here is N.C. Attorney General Mike Easley’s response to the overturning of the convictions of Little Rascals defendants Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson. Easley, himself a former district attorney (and future governor), laid it on thick:

“The decision casts no doubt on the credibility of the children or the integrity of the investigation…. In both cases, the facts supporting the convictions were clear and overwhelming. [The N.C. Court of Appeals] disregarded these facts and misapplied the law.”

Four months later, throwing in the towel after the N.C. Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeals, Easley managed to find fault not with the prosecutors but with the children.  “All prosecutors know that cases involving children weaken with age,” he said. “A retrial in this matter will be extremely difficult.”

Jan. 20, 2016

“The Jan. 15 editorial ‘The limits of zeal’ contrasted the penalty given Christine Mumma with the absence of rebuke to prosecutors for the ‘massive failure’ that kept her client wrongfully imprisoned for more than 36 years.

“It is not enough simply to point out this shameful disparity. The public embarrassment resulting from the hearing should move the North Carolina State Bar to empower a separate disciplinary panel to deal only with prosecutorial excesses. Such a panel would not lack for business.”

– From “A Panel for Prosecutors,” my letter to the editor of the News & Observer  (Jan. 19) (text cache)