July 27, 2012

“It has always intrigued me that, in a culture that is relentlessly self-critical… the pre-school hysteria and witch-hunts of the 1980s and ’90s (have) attracted little, if any, notice among historians and social analysts.

“Which is odd: We moderns like to think that we are exempt from some of the baser instincts of human nature, but hysteria, mob rule, and spectral fears are still very much with us.

“Moreover, in this instance, the American judicial system failed systematically, blighting hundreds of lives: Many more genuinely innocent people went to prison, and for longer terms, than any Communist during the McCarthy era.”

– From “Remember McMartin” by Philip Terzian in the Weekly Standard (Nov. 11, 2011)

Nov. 8, 2013

While we await Gov. McCrory’s decision on whether to promote Nancy Lamb to district attorney, another key figure in the Little Rascals prosecution is stepping aside.

From the Elizabeth City Daily Advance:

EDENTON – Judge Chris Bean, chief district court judge in the 1st Judicial District, does not plan to seek re-election to another term.

Bean, who has been a judge for more than two decades, said recently he plans to step down when his current term ends in December 2014.

“I have been doing this for 20-some years,” Bean said. “It has been a fascinating career.”

Unmentioned by Judge Bean (or by the Advance, which seems to have purged Little Rascals from its memory)  is his deeply prejudicial testimony against former client Bob Kelly.

Bean and Lamb have continued to share an immunity to just consequences. (Compare the enormity of the Little Rascals prosecution with the penny-ante misconduct that typically brings about disbarment in North Carolina.)

Only their innocent victims – the Edenton Seven, the child witnesses – paid a price, and it was a high one indeed.

March 15, 2014

“In an interview with Entertainment Weekly (True Detective creator Nic) Pizzolato responded to a question about the inspiration for the show: ‘You can Google “Satanism” “preschool” and “Louisiana” and you’ll be surprised at what you get.’

“This is clearly a reference to a 2005 child abuse prosecution in Ponchataoula, Louisiana, that generated lurid international headlines about ritualistic Satan worship inside a church, complete with black robes, animal blood, orgies, and pentagrams.

“This has since led various media sources to report breathlessly on the ‘true story’ behind True Detective. The problem is that this ‘true story’ turns out to be completely false, at least in regard to all the details regarding Satanic ritual abuse.

“These were apparently part of a classic atrocity story, invented by the defendants to garner sympathy from jurors – the idea being that the defendants were victims of an unspeakably evil church-based mind control cult, rather than merely being banally evil and not very interesting child molesters.

“What sort of moral responsibility do artists have not to exploit, and thereby perhaps propagate, moral panics? The aesthetic power of The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will has not absolved their creators for choosing to exploit racist and anti-Semitic beliefs.

“Our shameful history of panics and persecutions over the imaginary satanic ritual abuse of children should have been treated by artists as talented as the makers of True Detectiveas a cautionary tale, rather than as an opportunity for further invidious myth-making.”

– From “True Detective’s dangerous lies about satanic ritual abuse” by Paul Campos at The Week (March 12)

I’m surprised to find myself cutting the just-concluded HBO series a bit more slack than Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado. But True Detective’s potential for doing harm in 2014 seems minimal compared with the hysterically alarmist Do You Know the Muffin Man? which aired on Lifetime while arrests were still being made in the Little Rascals case.

March 7, 2016

“Have any public officials apologized to Dudley?

“No.”

– From “Howard Dudley’s new life: restaurants, cellphones and a cemetery visit” (cached)  by Joseph Neff in the News & Observer (March 5)

Aw, what’s to apologize for – it was only 23 years of wrongful imprisonment  (cached)….