Nov. 16, 2011

“The Little Rascals defendants never wavered in their contention that the allegations were untrue. Not one testified against the other, even though prosecutors commonly offer leniency to accused people in exchange for damning testimony.

“If the defendants were so depraved that they in fact sexually abused small children wholesale, how is it that none was tempted to ‘tell all’ to save his or her hide?”

– From an editorial in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (June 2, 1997)

March 27, 2013

“Authorities fed… parents and public (in Edenton) a biased reading of the evidence, but few realized it was biased.

“Consider the following: John and David, two friends in the day care, are both questioned. John says he and David were both molested, but David says it didn’t happen. Thus the evidence is 50/50 on John and 50/50 on David. They can’t be both right.

“What now? If David keeps denying, he is dropped from the investigation, and the negative evidence on John exits with David. Meanwhile, John’s parents are not told that David denies, and John’s case goes ahead. From 50/50, the allegation has become 100 percent true.

“For this investigation to inevitably produce more victims of abuse, three things are necessary:

“1. Parents are told that their child was named by others as abused, but not told that their child was not abused according to still other children.

“2. Parents are told that denial by their child is a sign of abuse and that therefore the child should be questioned by therapists until he admits.

“3. In some therapy sessions, the children do disclose even if they were not abused.

“Did the prosecution in the Little Rascals investigate in such a manner? The (North Carolina) Appeals Court certainly was of that opinion. It was the principal reason the convictions of Robert Kelly and Dawn Wilson were overturned.”

– From “Why False Beliefs Prevail: the Little Rascals Child Sex Abuse Prosecutions” by Anthony Oberschall in “Essays in Honor of Raymond Boudon” (2000)

Oberschall doesn’t use the term, but I’m reminded of the widespread and pernicious “file drawer effect” – that is, “the practice of scientific researchers to file away studies with negative outcomes.”

Aug. 27, 2012

“Prosecutors are the most powerful officials in the criminal justice system. They decide whether criminal charges should be brought and what those charges should be, and they exercise almost boundless discretion in making those decisions. Prosecutors alone decide whether to offer the defendant the option of pleading guilty to reduced charges….

“Equally problematic is that the charging and plea-bargaining decisions are made behind closed doors, and prosecutors are not required to justify or explain these decisions to anyone…. The lack of transparency also leads to misconduct, like the failure to turn over exculpatory evidence – a common occurrence made famous by the prosecutors in the Duke lacrosse and Senator Ted Stevens cases.”

– From “Prosecutors’ Overreaching Goes Unchecked” by Angela J. Davis in the New York Times (Aug. 19)

Prosecutors plea-bargained cruelly though futilely with the Edenton Seven. And while the evidence-withholding in the Duke and Stevens cases may have made bigger headlines, it was no more flagrant than in Little Rascals.

One example from the North Carolina Court of Appeals order overturning Bob Kelly’s conviction (May 2, 1995):

“Judge L. Bradford Tillery, a pretrial Judge, directed the State to file and present for in camera review identifying information, medical and psychotherapeutic files and DSS files with respect to the ‘indictment children’….

“In apparent compliance with Judge Tillery’s order… the State turned over a box of files to the trial court, Judge McLelland presiding. The box contained, inter alia, complete medical notes and therapy notes on the 29 indictment children, 12 of whom testified at defendant’s trial and 17 of whom did not….

“After trial, defendant’s appellate counsel went to the Office of the Clerk of Court for Pitt County to view the exhibits. He opened several boxes containing trial exhibits, none of which were sealed. One of the boxes contained 29 files labeled with the names of the indictment children. Appellate counsel reviewed some of the documents contained in the files before requesting the box to be sealed and transmitted to the Court of Appeals…. Defendant argues that the files contained undisclosed information that would have been material to the defense.”

In fact, the withheld files were bulging with exculpation – conflicting claims, evidence of hysteria, eyewitness testimony that nothing happened. Countless other examples are documented in Bob Kelly’s appeal brief.

Attorney General Mike Easley bridled at the appeals court’s concern over such “small areas… none of which are very significant.” And, after all, as prosecutor Bill Hart had asked smirkingly during the trial, “If you were playing poker, would you be playing with your full hand showing?”

March 6, 2013

Anthony “Tony” Oberschall, professor (now emeritus) of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill, wrote extensively – if not prominently – about the insanity of the Little Rascals case. How was Oberschall able to resist the storyline that seduced so many others?

“Before retiring from UNC in 2005,” he recalls, “I taught in universities for 40 years. One of my fields of writing and research concerned collective behavior – collective myths, false beliefs, rumors, how they originate and why they are believed.

“As the Little Rascals prosecution unfolded right before my eyes (actually, as reported in the News & Observer), it became obvious to me that this was but one more instance of moral panic, false beliefs and miscarriage of justice….”

Oberschall likens the prosecution narrative to “the widely believed Iraqi WMD story disseminated by the Bush administration in 2002. Unthinking acceptance of what the authorities are asserting, alas, happens all too often.”

In early 1993, Oberschall sent the N&O both an op-ed column and a response to a Dennis Rogers column, but neither appeared nor drew a response from the paper. (They have now been posted on the Bookshelf of Case Materials on this site.)

“At that point,” he says, “having been stonewalled, I decided to research Little Rascals in depth and wrote several times about it in scholarly publications in subsequent years.”

More about Oberschall’s research in Thursday’s post.