Aug. 13, 2016

“A bill to increase criminal penalties for prosecutors who intentionally withhold or falsify evidence is headed to the [California] state Senate after being approved in committee.

“The measure by Assemblywoman Patty Lopez, D-San Fernando, would upgrade the violation from a misdemeanor to a felony for offending prosecutors. It’s already a felony for police officers to withhold or falsify evidence. The proposal provides for sentences of 16 months, two years and three years.

“The bill received the go-ahead from the Senate Appropriations Committee despite opposition from prosecution groups that say it is redundant and potentially costly.

“Opponents say that boosting the penalty for prosecutors would bog down the courts and that prosecutors already are subject to sanctions by the state Bar Association when they commit misconduct.

“Supporters argue that judges and the Bar rarely take action against offenders.”

– From “Bill boosting penalty for prosecutor misconduct gets OK” by Tony Saavedra in the Orange County Register (Aug. 11)

Is it possible that other states, such as California, aren’t as timid in disciplining prosecutors as is North Carolina?

Jan. 9, 2013

“One question that arises from studies on children’s suggestibility is whether they document false memories or merely false reports. Do children really believe that the fictional events happened? Or do they merely say so to please the interviewers?

“Consistent with the false memory interpretation, approximately one-third of the children in these studies continued to insist that particular events had really happened to them even after they were told those events were not real….

“Lacking any obvious motivation to lie, these children appeared to have developed false memories, perhaps confusing the products of their repeated attempts to visualize the events with the products of direct experience….

“Professionals were no better than chance at discriminating false from true reports. The credibility of a child’s account was related to the amount of perceptual detail mentioned in the child’s narrative. The more details, the more professional tended to believe the narrative, regardless of whether it was true.”

– From “Remembering Trauma” by Richard J. McNally (2003)

To better understand how the Little Rascals therapists went so wildly astray, give that last paragraph a second reading. “Professionals were no better than chance at discriminating false from true reports” – and they were mesmerized by the “perceptual detail” in those tales of sharks and spaceships.

May 22, 2012

Fifteen years ago today: Claiming they want to spare their child-witnesses from another round of testimony, prosecutors drop the last Little Rascals charges against remaining defendants Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson.

Nancy Lamb is referring to the children when she says, “They know who I am and why I walked into their lives and stayed awhile. They remember.” Of course she also “stayed awhile,” as an uninvited guest from hell, in the lives of the Edenton Seven.

Kelly remains on the hook for an unrelated sexual abuse charge filed more than a year earlier.
Finally, on Sept. 23, 1999, that charge too will be dropped, and for the first time in a decade he isn’t living under the thumb of prosecutors.

Jan. 20, 2016

“The Jan. 15 editorial ‘The limits of zeal’ contrasted the penalty given Christine Mumma with the absence of rebuke to prosecutors for the ‘massive failure’ that kept her client wrongfully imprisoned for more than 36 years.

“It is not enough simply to point out this shameful disparity. The public embarrassment resulting from the hearing should move the North Carolina State Bar to empower a separate disciplinary panel to deal only with prosecutorial excesses. Such a panel would not lack for business.”

– From “A Panel for Prosecutors,” my letter to the editor of the News & Observer  (Jan. 19) (text cache)