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When the Supreme
Judicial Court of Massachusetts issued
its Aug. 18 decision reinstating the
convictions in the Fells Acres Day
School case, many people believed--and
many also hoped, no doubt--that this
case would fade quietly away. As it
turns out there has been nothing quiet
about the reaction to the decision and
to the court that made it.
"The supreme judicial
court of Massachusetts last week could
have ended perhaps the commonwealth's
worst miscarriage of justice since the
Sacco and Vanzetti trial of the 1920's,"
the Christian Science Monitor declared
in an editorial. This was, the Monitor
noted, "the second time in two years the
court refused to correct . . . a
prosecution that should never have been
brought," a case built on testimony from
children who were bribed and badgered
until they said they were abused. The
Boston Globe had its say, which was that
the court had "moved sensibly" toward
finality, and that the juries had after
all believed the children. The state's
third-largest paper, the Worcester
Telegram & Gazette, took quite the
opposite view.
But it was the
opinion of the Massachusetts Lawyers
Weekly that became a news story in
itself with its September editorial on
the Supreme Judicial Court's latest
decision in the Amirault case.
There was good reason
for the interest in this story, carried
on the wires and the airwaves and in the
Boston papers. Never before in the
27-year history of the weekly had it
taken direct issue or sharply criticized
any ruling by the state's highest court.
What the editors confronted, editor Paul
J. Martinek explained last week, was a
decision that reflected shamefully on
the Massachusetts judicial system of
which he and his colleagues had always
been proud. The justices, he averred,
had put themselves--and the system--"in
the position of being willing to close
their eyes to injustice."
The editorial, titled
"Travesty Of Justice," declared: "In six
different decisions in the Amirault
cases the SJC has seemed determined to
defend the prosecutors and insist that
these defendants belong behind bars.
Virtually scoffing at any possibility
that an injustice may have been done,
the justices have been unyielding in
their refusal to let a new trial take
place."
And further: "The
prosecutors here seem unwilling to admit
any possibility that they might have
sent innocent people to jail for crimes
that never occurred. Yes, confrontation
rights were violated. Yes, investigation
tactics were unduly suggestive. . . .
But, according to prosecutors, the
jurors believed the children and that's
all that matters.
"Such defiance should
perhaps be expected of public officials
who need to be protective of their own
reputations. But it is surprising to
witness this quality emanating from the
SJC--a court that has, over its 307-year
history, earned a deservedly high
reputation for protecting individual
liberties."
The editorial board
vote in favor of running the piece was,
Mr. Martinek says, "overwhelming"--and
it cut across the ideological spectrum.
He could not say he or his colleagues
knew for certain what had happened at
Fells Acres, but he did know that the
same sort of notorious cases as had been
brought against the
Amiraults--prosecuted the same way, on
the same kind of evidence--had been
overturned everywhere in the country.
"Everywhere," says the editor, "but
here. In the cradle of liberty."
Among others now
making their views on the Amirault
prosecution known is Harvard Law Prof.
Charles Ogletree--the sole member of
that eminent institution's otherwise
much-quoted faculty prepared to offer an
opinion on the extraordinary issues
raised by this unavoidably noticeable
case reeking and smoldering in the
neighborhood.
"I could not sit back
and watch this anymore," says Mr.
Ogletree, who has now joined the
Amirault defense team.
Back in Wenatchee,
Wash., others have been watching the
Amirault case as well. On Sept. 22,
Superior Court Judge Wallis Friel
delivered his findings on the questions
a Washington State appeals court had
appointed him to look into. These had to
do with imprisoned farm worker Manuel
Hidalgo Rodriguez, convicted in the
Wenatchee sex-ring prosecutions--and
whether the state had improperly
influenced the testimony of the girls
who had accused him. As to whether Mr.
Rodriguez would be convicted in a new
trial, Judge Friel said this was
unlikely, given what was now known about
the methods of interrogation used on the
children.
In his decision, the
judge took special note of the case of
Commonwealth v. Amirault in the Supreme
Judicial Court of Massachusetts--in
particular, the presentation of research
on the suggestibility of children, and
the recognition since the late 1980s of
the impact of child interviewers asking
repeated, leading questions. This
testimony in Amirault case, the judge
found, was in the same vein as his own
findings in the case of Manuel Hidalgo
Rodriguez. The testimony, which Judge
Friel found lent "great significance" to
the violation of due process, was, of
course, the very research the Supreme
Judicial Court had rejected as nothing
new in its latest decision.
Judge Friel--who had
by now plowed through the details of two
of these prosecutions, as directed by
the appellate court--did not trouble to
conceal a rational mind's response to
what he had found there. In his decision
on the key case of Harold and Idella
Everett (the biological parents of the
two girls who were the accusers and the
state's star witnesses), the judge
reflected on one of the child-services
professionals who had cited the
well-accepted theory that children
subjected to sex abuse did not disclose
secrets.
"This," the judge
mused, "raises the question whether
group sex involving 30 to 60 adults,
carried on for more than 6 years at
several locations in 2 counties on an
almost daily basis, qualifies as a
secret."
Judge Friel's
decision in the Rodriguez case now goes
back to the appellate court for final
action. With these findings, Mr.
Rodriguez has reason to be optimistic
about the chances for a reversal of
conviction.
In Massachusetts,
there isn't much optimism about Gerald
Amirault, now beginning the 14th year of
a 30- to 40-year sentence. In
Massachusetts as in Wenatchee, and in
most prosecutions like them, the weight
of the heaviest sentence fell on the
man--automatically assigned the role of
chief predator. The prosecutors who
built these cases understood that
scenarios with a man as the central
offender were more familiar and more
palatable than those that presented
women as cold-blooded rapists in the
lead of a conspiracy to assault
toddlers. Especially the kind of women
accused in these prosecutions: nursery
school teachers--young mothers, middle
aged matrons, elderly grandmothers.
In the Little Rascals
day-care case in Edenton, N.C., the man
assigned this role was Robert Kelly. Two
weeks ago prosecutors announced they
were dropping the last of the sex-abuse
charges against Mr. Kelly, former owner
of the day-care center. This final
ending of one of the more conspicuous
day care cases, hasn't made any news to
speak of. It began in 1989--a saga
complete with the usual multiplying
numbers of child victims said to have
been molested, nonstop scandal coverage,
the establishment of a large
insurance-paid fund for the pain and
suffering of the supposed victims'
families. When he was convicted in 1992,
Mr. Kelly was sentenced to 12
consecutive life terms. His conviction
was overturned three years later. Miami
police officer Grant Snowden, whose
conviction was thrown out in 1998 after
he had served 11 years, had been
sentenced to a more lenient five life
terms.
Both can consider
themselves more fortunate than Gerald
Amirault, who in the prosecutors'
scenario lurked everywhere--in secret
rooms and behind closed doors, attired
in a clown suit, while his mother and
sister committed crimes of their own,
and everyone had a camera. The former
lead prosecutor in this case, Lawrence
Hardoon has told of a moment of epiphany
in which it was revealed to him that the
Amiraults were all involved in
pornography. Clearly, prosecutors of
these cases around the country--numerous
of which involved the camera,
picture-taking theme--must have had
similar epiphanies.
The next chapter in
this story is unclear--as is the final
resolution. What is clear is that, no
small thanks to the action of the
Supreme Judicial Court, the Amiraults'
prosecution and that court's performance
are now objects of hard and increasing
scrutiny, with no finality in sight. |