May 8, 2015

“A new investigation by the governor into ‘culpability’ has some concerned that he may be caving to the political pressure inherent in the pardon process – particularly given the exhaustive review and judicial imprimatur that the (Henry) McCollum and (Leon) Brown cases have already received.

“The original prosecutor, Joe Freeman Britt, has publicly opposed any pardon for the men. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that they’re not entitled to a pardon, and there in no doubt in my mind that they’re not entitled to compensation for the taxpayers,’ he said in the March (16) New York Times story.

“But attorneys involved in the case and other who work in this area say that the governor’s work has already been done for him.

“ ‘A district attorney would not have consented to their innocence, and a judge would not have put innocence in their order, if there was any level of culpability,’ said Chris Mumma, executive director of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence….”

– From “Begging for a pardon: Why some of the wrongfully convicted could go penniless” by Sharon McCloskey at NC Policy Watch (May 6)

Now that Gov. McCrory has returned from the Global Gourmet Games, perhaps he is at last bringing his ‘culpability’ investigation to an end. But the question remains: Why did he open it in the first place? Why was it appropriate to add eight months to North Carolina’s brutal mistreatment of McCollum and Brown? Surely, it wasn’t an effort to satisfy the notorious Joe Freeman Britt!

March 7, 2012

“The one voice we most want to hear is that of Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lamb, who went after the Little Rascals defendants with the righteousness of an avenging angel.

“In refusing to speak with ‘Frontline,’ Lamb’s silence is devastating. She has the most to answer for.”

– Michael Blowen of the Boston Globe, reviewing “Innocence Lost: The Verdict”

Feb. 18, 2013

Gov. Jim Hunt was serving his fourth term (1997-2001) when prosecutors dropped the last Little Rascals charges. Although Gary Pearce, Hunt’s longtime adviser and later biographer, doesn’t remember the governor being involved in the case, Pearce experienced his own Edenton moment:

“I actually got called by one of the parents who had heard of me. I met with them and worked with them on a program that UNC-TV did (in 1993 to give parents a chance to respond to “Innocence Lost: The Verdict”). I did it just out of curiosity. It was one of the damnedest things I ever did.

“What the parents were claiming happened was, in the truest sense of the word, incredible. But they seemed absolutely and genuinely and sincerely convinced that it had happened….

“The best word to describe the whole thing is ‘gothic.’”

Defense attorneys were excluded from the program, UNC-TV director Tom Howe explained, because “We’re not really interested in getting into a tit-for-tat about guilt or innocence.”

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….”