March 31, 2017

“A few months ago, I started receiving photographs of young men on my phone. They were accompanied by frantic messages identifying these men as being responsible for some of the current sex crimes and pleading for the widest possible circulation of the information.

“I immediately became suspicious and pressed the ‘delete’ button. Subsequent events proved me correct. The authors were just scorned lovers seeking revenge. This was when the society was becoming excited by a high-profile case of paedophilia and some of the most horrible prescriptions were being proposed to ‘correct’ the problem. It occurred to me that the society was not in the mood for rational reasoning on this matter. Not that Jamaica was reacting differently from any other society. While the public screamings were taking place, I was reminded of the McMartin preschool case in the US….“

“In the US, the National Registry of Exonerations list sex crimes way and above other offences for exonerations. Between 1989 and 2012, sexual abuse accounted for 80 per cent of exonerations and the main reason given was ‘mistaken eyewitness identification.’ For child sex abuse, the percentage [of exonerations] was 74 and the main reasons were perjury and false accusation.

“I would never attempt to minimise the issue of violence against women and children. There is, however, an abundance of evidence that should encourage crusaders to temper their emotions with a little logic before picking up the sword….”

– From “Sex-abuse crusaders, temper your emotions” by Glenn Tucker in The Gleaner, Jamaica, West Indies (March 27)

Sept. 12, 2012

“Connie Tindall wanted to be pardoned before he died. But like Jerry Jacobs, Joe Wright and Ann Shepard before him, Tindall was buried Friday without knowing if the state of North Carolina will ever pardon members of the Wilmington 10.”

– From the Wilmington Star-News (Aug. 10, 2012)

Tindall died at age 62 – younger than Bob Kelly and Scott Privott. Will the Edenton Seven live long enough to see themselves exonerated?

March 22, 2013

“’There are some people who said we could have stopped after the first child testified.”

– District Attorney H.P. Williams Jr., expressing confidence that the jury was being persuaded by the state’s stream of child-witnesses against Bob Kelly, The Associated Press, Dec. 9, 1991

Feb. 15, 2012

I asked Mark Montgomery for an update on Junior Chandler’s latest appeal of his two life sentences for child sexual abuse:

“There are two prongs to the appeal. First, I am asking the N.C. Supreme Court to simply do the right thing by Junior. The Court said in 2010 that expert testimony like that in Junior’s case is (and was) inadmissible. That being the case, it is fundamentally unfair for Junior to be facing the rest of his life in prison, when many defendants have been freed because this sort of testimony was used against them at trial.

“Second, Junior’s lawyer objected to the testimony but did not raise the issue on appeal. I argued in a motion in Superior Court that the lawyer was ineffective for abandoning the issue. The Superior Court judge denied the motion without a hearing. If the Supreme Court will not itself set aside Junior’s convictions, it should at least require a hearing on trial counsel’s conduct.”

This is how the process works: “Petitions such as Junior’s go to one of the six associate justices. He or she decides what should be done and then presents the case to the court as a whole in a monthly (sort of) closed door meeting. The justices then vote on whether to grant the petition. If the Court grants the petition, it usually requires full briefs from both parties, but may decide the case of the basis of the petition and the State’s response alone.

“If it denies the petition, that’s the end of the road.”

The court could respond as early as April 13, according to this chart of petitions allowed and denied.