Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category

Newer Entries »

A (Disturbing) Phone Call From Joseph Allen

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Dear Friend of Justice,

Yesterday Jim D’Entremont and I went out to western Massachusetts, with Bee Baran and his partner, David. We stayed with his niece, Crystal, and her husband Jeremy. We were treated to a wonderful family dinner at Jeremy’s parents. Bee’s parents and his brother and sister-in-law were also there.

Shortly before dinner, I received a phone call from Joseph Allen. (See this link for more information.)

As always, I was glad to hear from him because he is one of my favorite people. But he had two disturbing pieces of news.

One, he has developed a painful infection in one of his toes. But he can’t find a doctor to treat him because he has no money and no health insurance. A family member is going to try to find a free clinic where he can be treated.

The other disturbing thing is that he and his family were invaded by a woman screaming hatred and threats. A neighbor vidoetaped the ugly incident and they hope that the police might take some action.

Joseph’s troubles made me think of all of those people who have not yet received any measure of justice. My organization — the National Center for Reason and Justice — currently sponsors 25. This represents a tiny fraction of the people who have come to us for help. We just don’t have the resources to investigate many cases.

This week I have especially been thinking about the Amirault family. Gerald Amirault was arrested a few weeks before Baran and the hysteria around that case helped lead to the accusations against Baran. But Massachusetts Courts refused to grant any relief to the innocent Amiraults. I am convinced that this was primarily for political reasons. The villains in this case — such as former gubernatorial candidate Scott Harshbarger and current Attorney General Martha Coakley — are major political powers in this corrupt state.

But I can at least hope that the ending of the Baran case might yet lead to further victories of justice over corruption, ignorance, and greed.

-Bob Chatelle

Posted in Innocents, Martha Coakley, Rants, Smith/Allen | Comments Off on A (Disturbing) Phone Call From Joseph Allen

Another Massachusetts Outrage

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

So far it’s been a lousy day.

I became involved in criminal-justice issues back in 1995, because of my concern for the falsely accused and wrongfully convicted. But over the years, my concerns have broadened. For one thing, I came to know people who weren’t 100 percent innocent who had still been wronged by the system — such as the friend who I’ve been calling “Kevin” on this blog.

I also have met some who have never denied their crimes, have taken full responsibility for them, and who have worked hard to rehabilitate themselves.

One such person, who I will call “William,” was a very close friend of Bernard Baran’s in prison. His friendship and support did much to help Bee survive all of those years when his case seemed hopeless. Bee thought “William” and I should become friends, partly because we are both recovering alcoholics.

“William” committed his crimes when he was drunk and stoned. He was 18 at the time. He doesn’t even remember committing his more serious crime. But he has always taken responsibility for his crimes. An alcoholic serious about recovery never excuses unexcusable behavior by saying, “I was drunk” or “I was in a blackout.” But those of us in  recovery also know that we would never have done the terrible things we did, had we been in our right minds.

Our “true” nature does not reveal itself when we are drunk or high. Our true nature only reveals itself after a (sometimes long) period of recovery.

I believe, and most recovering alcoholics and addicts would agree, that no one is hopeless, “no matter how far done the scale they have gone.” I believe — based on my own personal experience — in recovery, rehabilitation, redemption.

“William” is now in his 40s, having spent the last quarter of a century behind bars. He has worked very hard on himself. Five years ago, he asked a jury to look at his progress and to declare him not sexually dangerous. I attended his trial and testified for him. The jury was out about half an hour and came back in his favor.

Since then, he has hopefully gone before the parole board every year. And every year he had been denied. I got to dread those phone calls after his hearings, because I know how high his hope had been. But he knew he could not afford the luxury of self-pity.

This year he called me in jubilation. His parole had been granted! He was told he had to find housing and have a phone installed. He would be coming out under intensive parole, which meant wearing a monitoring bracelet, strict curfews, frequent check-ins with his paole officer, and many onerous restrictions. But it meant leaving prison and “William” was anxious to prove himself.

I hope you don’t think it is easy to find an apartment for someone who has been convicted of a sex offense. But we did it. (The landlord willing to give him the break is a former police officer.) His family and friends found him furniture and stocked his refrigerator. Jim and I bought him a bed. His parole officer approved the apartment. He found someone to pick him up at the prison. He was told that it would only be a couple more days.

And then, two days ago, they called him in and said, “April fool!”

The Massachusetts Department of Correction had somehow forgotten that his release needed the sign-off of the District Attorney of Dukes County. Even though he was declared non-dangerous by a jury, the DA has the right to try to get another jury to recommit him.

Given his record, it’s highly unlikely that a DA could get him recommitted. But the DA can just sit on the request and do nothing. He has until September 5th to decide one way or another.

“William’s” family is far from wealthy. They were able to scrape up one month’s rent and the security deposit. We have personally pledged to pay his May rent, but we can’t really afford to do much more than that.

But we will deal with this situation a day at a time.

It is unfortunate that the credo of American politicians is, “Millions for prison and puncishment, but not one penny for rehabilitation.” The prison-industrial complex is based on the premise that rehabilitation doesn’t work. America has five percent of the world’s population and twenty-five percent of its prisoners. The cost of maintaining these prisons is enormous. Even greater is the cost to society when these mistreated men and women and sent out into society without any resources. The prison-industrial complex needs them to fail. And far too often, that is exactly what happens.

After all of these years battling our dysfunctional criminal-justice system, I have lost most of my capacity for outrage.

But I have not lost my capacity for pain. And the pain has been intense today.

-Bob Chatelle

Posted in Personal, Prisons, Rants | Comments Off on Another Massachusetts Outrage

Reliability and Credibility

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

[Courts have] a responsibility to ensure that evidence admitted at trial is sufficiently reliable so that it may be of use to the finder of fact who will draw the ultimate conclusions of guilt or innocence. That concern implicates principles of constitutional due process. “Reliability is the linchpin” in determining admissibility of evidence under standard of fairness that is required by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Competent and reliable evidence remains at the foundation of a fair trial, which seeks ultimately to determine the truth about criminal culpability. If crucial inculpatory evidence is alleged to have been derived from unreliable sources, due process interests are at risk.

—State v. Michaels (1994) citing Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U. S. 98, 97 S. Ct. 2243
(1976)

I am posting a link to an article, by Robert Rosenthal, that I believe should be required reading for every law student intending to enter criminal practice, either as a prosecutor or as a defense attorney.

One of the most useful things Rosenthal does in this article is to explain clearly the difference between the commonly confused concepts, reliability and credibility:

Understanding the meaning of reliability in the legal context has proven difficult for many lawyers and jurists, as well as scientists attempting to be heard and understood in a courtroom. A primary source of this difficulty is the frequent confusion between “reliability” and two other legal terms: “credibility” and “competence.”

“Competence” refers to the capability or capacity of a particular individual to serve as a witness. Persons are deemed competent if they are sufficiently intelligent to observe, recollect, and recount an event, and have a moral sense of obligation to speak the truth. 3 The determination regarding a witness’ competence is a legal one, made by the trial judge before testimony is given. 4 The competence standard is not very demanding. The vast majority of people offered as witnesses are deemed — and are — competent to testify in a trial. Competence is presumed, and therefore it only becomes an issue in cases involving young children or individuals whose capacity to observe, recollect, and recount is impaired or undeveloped.

“Credibility” refers to how believable a witness is. The credibility of a witness’ testimony is an assessment made by the jury’s it considers each witness’ statements and the challenges to those statements made through cross-examination and contradictory evidence. The jury’s responsibility to determine the credibility of each witness’ testimony is no different than any listener’s judgments about whether a speaker is telling the truth. In the context of a trial, credibility determinations are not matters of law to be decided by the trial judge. Rather, the jury is solely responsible for making these credibility assessments.

Whether evidence is “reliable” is a legal matter that is decided by the trial judge before the evidence is presented to the jury. Unlike “competence,” reliability does not concern the personal characteristics of witness. Unlike “credibility,” reliability does not concern the believability of witness. “Reliability” concerns the inherent quality of evidence.

Evidence is reliable if it is what it is purported to be. For example, photograph is reliable as evidence at trial if it accurately represents the scene that it purports to represent; that is, the scene of the crime at the time it occurred. Similarly, if a witness sees the occurrence of crime and then identifies the perpetrator, that identification testimony is reliable because it is what it purports to be: n identification of the person who committed the crime. If, however, the witness could not positively identify suspect until investigators suggested that a particular person was in fact the perpetrator, the witness’ identification may not be what it purports to be. It may be reflection of the suggestion rather than the witness’ own identification. Because there is no way to differentiate between the two, the identification that is made after suggestion is deemed unreliable and inadmissible at trial as a matter of law, and the jury would never hear about it. 5 Other examples of evidence deemed inadmissible for want of reliability include testimony produced through hypnosis, which may be the product of the hypnotic suggestion rather than reflection of the witness’ experience, 6 and out-of-court statements elicited through suggestive or coercive questions. 7

Each piece of evidence offered at trial is subject to a reliability determination by the judge. For example, if the prosecutor in a trial involving cocaine possession wishes to present bag of cocaine, the prosecutor must establish that the bag of cocaine presented in court is the same as the bag of white powder taken from the defendant at the time of his arrest. To do this, the prosecutor must demonstrate a “chain of custody” documenting the whereabouts of the bag of powder from the time it was collected by the police through the trial. The chain of custody provides an assurance that the cocaine presented at trial is what it purports to be: the bag of white powder confiscated from that particular defendant at the time of the arrest.

It is understandable that lay people and journalists often confuse credibility and reliability. What is neither understandable nor forgivable is that so many judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys either don’t know the difference or simply don’t care.

Testimony produced by the coercive questioning of children is not reliable. (Indeed, coercive questioning can produce unreliable testiminy in adults as well.) This is not to say that such testimpny is necessarily false. But since no jury should hear unreliable evidence in the first place, no jury should have to decide its credibility.

Testimony based on memories previously “repressed” memories is not reliability. No jury should hear such evidence and judge its credibility.

Few (if any) scientists argue for the reliability of evidence produced by coercive questioning or based on repressed memories. Part of the problem is that lawyers, including judges, have little understanding of what science is and often treat non-scientists, such as psychotherapists, as if they were scientists.But if psychotherapists qualify as scientists, then so should astrologers and phrenologists.

A few years ago the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court disgraced itself when it, without dissent, refused to grant a new trial to the obviously innocents defendants in the Fells Acres case. If any of those judges understoon the difference between reliability and credibility, they held their tongues for political reasons.

Soon the massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will hear the new-trial motion for the Paul Shanley case. Once again, they will have to decide which is more important: politics of the United States Consitution.

I wish their past performance gave us more reason to hope.

-Bob Chatelle

Posted in Innocents, Memory, Rants | Comments Off on Reliability and Credibility

Kill Child Rapists?

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Dear Friend of Justice,

Vote-hungry politicians — including Saint Barack Obama — have been getting exercised over the Supreme Court ruling banning the death-penalty for child rapists.

It is understandable that people, especially parents, become so upset by child rape. But few take all of the the facts into consideration.

First of all, a child rapist could be anyone (of any age) who has sex, including consensual sex, with someone under the legal age of consent in his or her state. (This is 18 in most states.)

Secondly, it is extremely difficult for a person accused of child rape to receive a fair trial. The false conviction rate is higher than for almost any other crime.

If the death penalty for child rapists had been in effect, many of the innocent people sponsored by the National Center for Reason and Justice would be dead by now: e.g. Bernard Baran, Ryan Smith, Gerald Amirault, and others.

If our criminal-justice system were perfect, the death penalty would be a valid topic for debate. But given our system’s gross unfairness, I can’t endorse the death penalty for anyone for any reason.

-Bob Chatelle

Posted in Rants | Comments Off on Kill Child Rapists?

Why Senator Kennedy's Serious Illness Scares the hell out of me.

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

Two words: Martha Coakley.

When John Kerry was running for President four years ago, Coakley made it clear that if he were elected, her black conical hat would be in the ring for Kerry’s Senate seat.

And now Kennedy may be forced to give up his.

Coakley seems to think that her deficiencies of ethics and morals are compensated for by her ambition.

I want to beg even the atheists and Republicans among you to pray for Kennedy’s complete recovery.

-Bob Chatelle

Posted in Rants | Comments Off on Why Senator Kennedy's Serious Illness Scares the hell out of me.

The Triumph of Greed

Friday, May 16th, 2008

Dear Friend of Justice,

I am posting this for a number of reasons. First of all, I have a pressing need to get a few things off my chest. Second, we need to ask for help. And third, I think the post is relevant to the concerns of this group.

The building where Jim and I have lived for twelve years is in process of being sold. To find out about the buyer, check out these links:

http://local.yahoo.com/details?id=25783461

http://boston.citysearch.com/review/4743088

http://www.insiderpages.com/b/3715334649

Our building used to be a limited-equity housing co-op. We were able to buy a share here for perhaps 10 percent (or less) of what it would have cost to buy a comparable condominium. Our monthly carrying charges were low. But the value of our share would only increase by a few hundred dollars per year. And we could only sell that share back to the co-op. The intent was to keep out speculators and preserve affordable housing here indefinitely.

Unfortunately, the speculators were not kept out. Ultimately, they destroyed the co-op.

Geese that lay golden eggs have a very short life expectancy.

Because our housing costs were so low, Jim and I were able to work less than full time and devote a great deal of time to our criminal-justice work. Had we not moved here, for example, we could never have done our work for Bernard Baran.

The trouble began not too long after we moved in. Some of us had legitimate concerns about the condition of the building. We wanted to identify necessary repairs and do them. So we hired an excellent engineering company who did a good study. They told us what we should do immediately, what we should do in a few years, and what we should do eventually.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have sufficient reserves to pay for all of this. One way or another, carrying charges would have had to go up a bit.

At this point one of our members sold us the Brooklyn Bridge. She had “found” an architect who would do his own study and also the necessary work. The total fee would be less than our reserves. Carrying charges would not go up a penny.

So our Board bought the Brooklyn Bridge and persuaded the membership to go along. The member was hired to “manage” the project.

It was never disclosed that the architect was the member’s former business partner. Nor was any of their less-than-stellar joint resume ever shared.

The project was a debacle. Our lives were disrupted by the “repairs” for almost a year. The money finally ran out. The building was in worse shape than when the “repairs” began.

The Board hired an engineering firm to evaluate the work. Their scathing report was kept secret until it was finally leaked years later.

The Board, by the way, is a three-member body that meets in private and doesn’t publish minutes of meetings. But it later became known that the Board declined to take legal action against the member and her partner because they didn’t want to sue a member. In my opinion, it would have been more appropriate to press criminal charges.

The social fabric of this co-op was destroyed by this fiasco. But things were relatively quiet for a few years. Tense, but quiet. And then some members decided that we should go condo.

The membership as a whole wasn’t interested. But there was a consensus that we should again look into the building’s problems — which still existed — and create a plan to address them.

The person responsible for the previous repair fiasco soon allied herself with the condo people. I will just refer to this faction as the Greed Party. Their initial objective, it appeared, was to tear-down the building and build luxury condos.

The Greed Party first tried to convince the membership that the building was in horrible shape, that it was dangerous, and that our lives were in danger if we continued to live here. A consensus was reached that we should hire experts to look at the building and advise us of our options.

Since the Greed Party wanted teardown/rebuild to be one of the examined options, we hired an architectural firm, not an engineering firm. The architects found many problems, including code violations. And we discovered that if we tried to fix the code violations, we would trigger a threshold that would require us also to make the building handicapped accessible. Among other things, we would have to install an elevator. Repairing the building was proving to be an expensive option.

Once the study was done and the Board had been informed of the code violations, the Board was forced to act. And if they did not act, the Greed Party could call in building inspectors. The Greed Party could now use blackmail to get its way.

The Greed Party began pushing the idea of selling the building. “We are sitting on a gold mine,” one of them was overheard saying at a local restaurant.

Having convinced most of the membership that the building was in such sorry shape as to be worthless, it now set about convincing the same people that they were sitting on an extremely valuable piece of property. Throughout the rest of the process, the Greed Party kept making both of these contradictory arguments, depending on their immediate goal.

There were some of us who felt the building could be saved with help. My neighborhood has an excellent non-profit Community Development Corporation that was interested in preserving 46 units of affordable housing in this neighborhood. They also had access to several million dollars of “inclusionary funds” (funds escrowed by developers to subsidize affordable housing) that they wanted to invest to save the building. The CDC, not surprisingly, was anathema to the Greed Party.

The Board decided to hire a “development consultant.” Many of us wanted the CDC to be at least considered for the position. The Greed Party lobbied against the Board even sending the CDC a request for proposal (RFP). Finally, the RFP was sent and the CDC came in with by far the best proposal. But the Board hired instead a huge real-estate firm. Their $40,000 report turned out to be nothing but a set of not terribly helpful PowerPoint slides.

And so it went. The full story would take tens of thousands of words. Some of it is quite incredible. But I will spare you the gory details.

In the end, those of who cared about affordable housing and the principles of a limited-equity co-op were crushed by those who cared only about selling to the highest bidder — regardless of who that turned out to be. The welfare and future of the neighborhood did not even appear on their radar screen.

One might think, at least, that the new owner will have to fix the building’s problems — at least the code violations. I am positive that this will not occur. Nothing of the building’s problems was disclosed to prospective buyers. (This is quite legal.) Buildings are often sold “as is.” In these cases, the buyer usually stipulates a due-diligence period so that he or she can bring in experts to examine the building and adjust (or withdraw) the offer depending on their findings.

But the purchaser of this building waived due diligence. He doesn’t want to know about the building’s problems. If he knew, he would be obligated to fix them.

Does the Greed Party in fact believe that this building is dangerous? If so, it doesn’t bother them in the least that future tenants might be risking their lives by living here.

That’s not their problem.

If Jim and I were in a better financial position, we would just use the money we get from the sale to further our work. But we can’t afford to do
that.  We have no assets and we have little income. Without my social security, we couldn’t get by at all. The money we will receive is dirty money. It is worse than tainted. But if we don’t accept it we would end up living in a shelter.

When it comes to real estate and managing money, we are babes in the woods. We haven’t worried about money management because we had no money to manage. And we never thought we might be in a position where buying a place to live was an option.

That is why we need help. And we don’t even know where to begin looking for help.

Much as I hate Massachusetts, I think we have to stay here. Most of the prisoners that I am closest to are in Massachusetts. If I moved away, I could never visit or attend their court hearings. And our social network is here. We are just too old to start anew in a new place.

So if you have any advice — or know someone who might — please let us know.

The next few months will be months of upheaval. And the whole process of finding a place and moving will consume a lot of time and energy.

But my hope is that eventually the dust will settle and I can again turn my attention back to innocent people in prison who have suffered far more than I can even imagine.

In many ways, the members of the Greed Party remind me of those corrupt prosecutors who have done so much to destroy our criminal-justice system. If self-interest is truly the only thing that matters, then these people are behaving reasonably. They further their careers by winning cases. So what if this comes at the expense of innocent people too poor and powerless to defend themselves? Winning isn’t the main thing. It is the only thing.

David Capeless and the members of the Greed party would get along very well. They have so much in common.

And they have no comprehension of people like us. People who have values other than “rational” self-interest.

But self-interest is not rational. If unchecked, it destroys communities. And when our communities are destroyed, so are we all.

-Bob Chatelle

Posted in Personal, Rants | Comments Off on The Triumph of Greed

Fight Fiercely Hahvud

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Dear Friend of Justice,

2008 is a reunion year for me. Until recently, I had been thinking about it as my 35th reunion. But I subsequently realized that it will be my 45th. (And I once was quite good at math.)

I generally don’t attend these reunions. But this year I did submit a class report. The text follows:

I last submitted a Class Report ten years ago. I also sent a copy of that report, as an introduction, to Bernard Baran, an inmate of a Massachusetts prison. I had been urged to contact Baran by a friend who was convinced that Baran was innocent. For some reason, she thought I might be able to do something to help him. Why she thought that, I didn’t know—I was not a lawyer or a person of influence. I was a computer programmer. (She later explained that she prodded me because she knew I was persistent. Stubborn may be a better word.)

Little did I then know that Baran and others like him were going to be my principal occupation for the next ten years. Currently, Baran is out of prison (under severe restrictions) because a judge granted him a new trial. The DA, however, has appealed the decision and the Appeals Court had a hearing in February. (For more information, see my blog (bobchatelle.blogspot.com) or the Web site of the Bernard Baran Justice Committee (www.freebaran.org).)

I could never have done the work for Baran and others without the constant help and support of Jim D’Entremont, my partner for the past thirty-eight years.

Through my work for Baran, I became concerned about others rotting in prison for crimes that they did not commit and the fact that there are really no organizations to help the overwhelming majority of them. The Innocence Project, of course, does wonderful work. But DNA is present in only a tiny percentage of cases.

So I founded another organization: The National Center for Reason and Justice (www.ncrj.org).

During these past ten years, I have become increasingly appalled by what I’ve learned about the American criminal justice system. It doesn’t work. And if you have little money and lack connections—if you are one of the “people who don’t count”—it really doesn’t work. The “people who count”—the wealthy and powerful—can hire the legal help they need to free them, even if they are guilty. The poor and powerless too often end up with lawyers who become their worst enemies. Justice—like education, health care, decent housing, freedom—is now a luxury, out of the reach of most Americans.

Once a conviction occurs, it is nearly impossible to get it overturned. We live under a government incapable of admitting error and that chooses instead to compound it. By relentless repetition, they believe that lies can be transformed into truth. But without a working criminal justice system, none of us can claim to be free. Even the people who count. Even the ones who went to Harvard — whose motto, I believe, is still veritas..

On a more personal note, I must confess that I am one of those many unfortunates who just don’t do well under capitalism. My current economic situation is very challenging. I had been deriving most of my income as a programmer from one client. And I made the mistake of outliving him. His widow took over the company on his death and she severely curtailed my contract.

I have spent several months looking for work. But I have an unconventional resume and my age works against me. I have applied everywhere I could think of, including temporary agencies and all five of the Starbucks in my neighborhood. In short, I am unemployable.

But I do receive a modest stipend from the National Center for Reason and Justice. And I have started to collect social security. So I hope to continue to scrape by.

Jim and I will also be losing our home. For the past years, we have been living in a co-op. But the membership has decided to sell the building. Currently, we have no idea where we will end up. But we certainly can’t afford to stay in Boston.

I have now been living free of drugs and alcohol for over a quarter of a century. I have not forgotten the empty, useless life I lived when I was a slave to booze. Working with our society’s victims is often extremely painful. But I prefer the pain to the spiritual pain suffered by all drinking alcoholics. Anything I may have accomplished, I could not have accomplished without my sobriety. I am extremely grateful.

Most citizens now live in fear. And our government works for the privileged few who own it. One person can do so little to change a corrupt and powerful system. I sometimes wonder if the struggle is worth the pain..

But I recently attended the memorial service for a friend, the novelist Ivan Gold. (A fellow recovering alcoholic.) During the eulogies, someone recalled that Ivan had once said, “If you die still trying to do what you believe is right, you’ve won.”

On that assumption, I will continue the struggle.

-Bob Chatelle, ’63

Posted in Rants | 1 Comment »

Another Reason I'm Glad I Left the People's Republik

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Dear Friend of Justice,

It’s now almost twelve years since Jim and I were run out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I have no desire to live there again, even if I won megabucks and could afford to do so. But I do return once every three months to have my teeth cleaned.

I arrived today in Harvard Square very early for my appointment. The sky was clear and the temperature was in the low 70s. It was a perfect spring day. I decided to stroll down Kennedy (formerly Boylston) Street to the river. But when I reached Memorial Drive, my enjoyment of the day was seriously marred. I discovered that that intersection has been renamed Scott Harshbarger Square.

The renaming, of course, had been done by God’s Chosen Few: the Cambridge City Council. Jim and I had lived in Cambridge a long time and I remember some past political achievements. With particular fondness, I remember the time that the city hired people to comb through its citizens’ trash, so that it might identify and punish recycling miscreants.

I am not surprised that God’s Chosen Few anointed Harshbarger: he has the reputation of being a great “liberal” — whatever the hell that means. But for me he just personifies the current moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Democratic Party. (Note: I am not a Republican.)

Most of you reading this will have no problem remembering Scott Harshbarger. If you need your memory refreshed, here is a link to the text of a flyer I distributed many years ago before a Harshbarger speech: http://mysite.verizon.net/vzex11z4/hflyer.html.

To find out more about the Fells Acres (Amirault) case, follow this link: http://mysite.verizon.net/vzex11z4/amirault.html.

The influence of the Amirault persecution was felt not only in Massachusetts but also across the nation for many years thereafter. Many witch hunters, to this day, consider it a “model” prosecution, an example to be emulated.

Now I am fallibly human and make mistakes all of the time. I have never hesitated to forgive those who admit their mistakes. But Harshbarger has never apologized to any of his direct and indirect victims: the Amiraults, Bernard Baran, the Souzas, many others. The extent of the damage he did and the amount of needless suffering that he caused is anyone’s guess. But he has never admitted the slightest mistake. To this day, he persists in his Spitzeresque arrogance and hubris.

I cannot say whether Harshbarger is evil or merely stupid. And the fact that he went to Harvard rules out neither alternative.

Since he asks for no forgiveness, I shall give him none. But neither will I honor him. To honor him is to say that it is admirable to trample upon justice in pursuit of political ambition.

By choosing to honor him, God’s Chosen Few succeed only in bringing dishonor upon themselves.

-Bob Chatelle

Posted in Rants | Comments Off on Another Reason I'm Glad I Left the People's Republik

The Baran Jury Failed Us All

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

The Berkshire County District Attorney’s office has now put most of its eggs in one basket. They are asking the Court to determine whether the testimony of the alleged victims – the only actual “evidence” in this case – is convincing. If it is convincing, they argue, Baran should be freed. If it is not convincing, then he should be sent back to prison.

You read that right. Bizarre as it sounds, this is the argument that they are really making. A rational person would note that the argument was illogical. But legal logic is very different from ordinary logic. Our legal system exists not in the real world, but in Wonderland.

The DA is saying that the videotapes would not have made a difference because the children’s performance in the courtroom was as bad as it was on the videotapes.

First of all, this is not true. When you see the tapes, it is much easier to understand how the testimony was manufactured. You see much that was not obvious in the courtroom.

But the fact does remain: the child testimony was not convincing. (You can read all of it here.)

If the judges really want to salvage this dreadful conviction, they could claim that the in-court testimony was no more convincing than what was on the tapes. They could then conclude that the tapes wouldn’t have helped Baran, and overturn Judge Fecteau’s thoughtful and compassionate decision.

Juries are given the sole power to ascertain facts. If a jury says the sky is red, then the law says it must be red. It doesn’t matter how many experts you bring in to prove that it is blue. The jury has spoken. The sky is red.

The myth, of course, is that juries weigh evidence and give careful consideration to their decisions. And this sometimes happens. There are good juries. They contain good jurors.

But very often juries do not contain good jurors. Juries base their decisions not on the evidence but upon their emotions. They don’t follow their heads. They follow their “hearts.”

Most of the pain and suffering in the world is caused by good people who follow their “hearts.”

My partner Jim and I attended the trial of Paul Shanley. No credible evidence was presented against him. The only evidence was the recovered “repressed memory” of an obviously disturbed individual who had received a large financial settlement for his claims. But the jury followed their “hearts” and convicted Paul Shanley.

I remember a conversation I once had with Bertha, Baran’s mother. I told her that having read the testimony of the children, it was hard for me to fathom how the jury could have convicted. She said something like: “It didn’t matter what they said. I don’t even think they heard what they said. It was how they looked. They were so cute and all dressed up in their Sunday best. Some jurors were crying before they said a word.”

In the words of one juror:

“Waves of hysteria were sweeping the United States over possible abuse of young children in day care facilities. Like so many others, I was horrified. This was my first time as a juror in an actual trial. I am certain that all of the jurors were prejudiced, just as I was, by the climate at that point and also by the appearance of this young man with his weak look which might well have pegged him as a homosexual. I sat in the jury box and wept as tiny children, almost babies, took the stand and told tales, led on by the prosecutor. I was appalled by this, by the prosecutor holding up naked dolls, pointing to genitals and asking these babies to identify what had happened to them … It didn’t occur to me until later that to get children of that age to tell stories, consistent stories, true or false, they must have been repeatedly prepped – by psychologists, parents, prosecutors, all people with some stake in the process and in the outcome. These tiny children were being asked to serve the needs of adults – for money, for vengeance, for justification, for career rewards, and so on and so forth. I think the jurors made their relatively hasty decision to find Baran guilty on the basis of his unpromising background, on the basis of what they had been reading in the newspapers, and definitely on the lack of a real defense by his publicly appointed defense attorney.”

So this juror followed the “heart” and said, “The sky is red.” This juror now knows the sky is blue. But the DA could care less.

I don’t think I would be comfortable with a system in which jurors all came from the upper tiers of society. I agree that it is important that there be no discrimination based on socio-economic class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. But I wish there was some discrimination based on intelligence. And by intelligence, I mean the ability to think critically, to weigh evidence, to put personal prejudice aside. In short, by intelligence I mean the ability to serve well on a jury.

Fortunately for Baran, the Courts can decide that the testimony against him was appallingly weak and still grant him his freedom. The judges will learn a great deal from those videotapes that they could not learn from the trial testimony alone. Attorney Jamie Sultan, during the Amirault appeal, said that the juries in those cases only saw the last act of a three-act play. The videotapes supply the missing first two acts. They show how the testimony – admittedly weak and incredible – was manufactured.

When they entire record is examined, the judges will know that Baran is innocent. But appellate courts make no rulings on guilt or innocence. They could claim that the tapes, in their subjective judgment, were no different from the trial testimony which was “validated” by the jury. This might “save” the conviction. They might even get away with it. But we must hope that they will not follow this course.

Judges are human beings. Many of them have consciences. I hope Baran’s three judges have consciences. I hope they will not send an innocent man, a man who has already served almost 22 painful years, back to prison for no good reason other than to “save” a worthless and immoral conviction.

Should they do this, they will prove that Dickens’ Mr. Bumble had it right – “the law is a ass – a idiot.”

-Bob Chatelle

Posted in Baran, Rants | 3 Comments »

Newer Entries »