Jan. 25, 2015

Q:  You said that Mr. Bob made spaghetti at the day care…. Now, when did Mr. Bob say that there was poop in the spaghetti?

A:  After we, um, ate it.

Q:  All right. Did – did you ever have to eat poop at the day care?

A:  No.

Q:  Okay. Did anybody try and make you eat poop at the day care?

A:  Yes.

Q: Who?

A:  Mr. Bob.

Q:  Tell me about it.

A:  I don’t remember it.

Q:  You don’t remember it?

A:  No.

Q:  Well, how do you know Mr. Bob tried to do it?

A:  What?

Q:  Did somebody tell you about it?

A:  No.

Q:  Okay. Well, then tell me how Mr. Bob tried to make you eat poop.

A:  Um, he told me, um, to eat it.

Q:  Okay. Where was it?

A:  I forgot.

Q:  You forgot. Well, was it in Ms. Shelly’s room?

A:  No.

Q:  Was it in the kitchen?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Okay. Well, did he make other kids eat poop while you were there?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Okay. Well, um, what happened when they ate it?

A:  I don’t know.

– From defense attorney Jeffrey Miller’s cross-examination of a child witness in the trial of Bob Kelly

This exchange represents only a tiny fraction of the 7-year-old girl’s testimony, which stretched over two days and included similarly incoherent references to Kelly and other defendants having raped her, urinated in her mouth, threatened to kill her parents, sodomized her with pencils and sewing needles, taken her on boat and truck rides, forced her to witness the killing and burial of babies and small animals…..

How funny and trivial such childish imaginings would seem, if only the jury’s gullibility hadn’t sent Kelly to prison for six years. “The children were convincing,” insisted rogue juror Dennis T. Ray.

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.”

April 20, 2016

“‘If prosecutors have an ethical duty to avoid wrongful convictions, then they should have some sort of ethical duty to remedy wrongful convictions,’ said attorney Brad Bannon of the North Carolina Bar’s ethics committee.

“He wants North Carolina to adopt a rule recommended by the American Bar Association, requiring prosecutors to come forward if they find ‘new, credible and material evidence’ that an innocent person is serving time. Thirteen states have adopted the post-conviction rule. North Carolina isn’t among them.

“The State Bar rejected the rule several years ago but recently appointed a committee to reconsider….”

– From “Rule targets prosecutors who don’t reveal innocence evidence” by Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press (April 16)

Given prosecutors’ disproportionate influence on the state bar, to even “reconsider” the disclosure rule suggests the recent stream of unbecoming publicity  hasn’t gone unnoticed.

March 23, 2012

“A given professional must undertake either a forensic examination or therapy, not both, with any given child.

“The roles of forensic evaluator and ongoing therapist are different. The forensic evaluator must not become an advocate for the child, a role often difficult to avoid when one is an ongoing therapist.

“For this reason the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines for Psychological Evaluations in Child Protection Matters (1999) holds, ‘Psychologists generally do not conduct psychological evaluations in child protection matters in which they serve in a therapeutic role for the child or the immediate family or have had other involvement that may compromise
their objectivity.’ ”

– From “A Behavior Analytic Look at Contemporary Issues in the Assessment of Child
Sexual Abuse” by W. Joseph Wyatt in The Behavior Analyst Today (March 22, 2007)

By serving enthusiastically as agents of the prosecution, Betty Robertson, Judy Abbott, Susan Childers and Michele Zimmerman not only ignored that crucial ethical distinction, but also fostered psychological havoc where there had been none.