Friday, January 15, 2010

One more on Martha Coakley

Ok, I won't say that Dorothy Rabinowitz is my best friend but I think she has a point about Martha Coakley. Mind you, I still want you to vote for Martha Coakley. After all, she's probably fine on issues that aren't criminal justice related, and more importantly, I do want the Ds to retain the majority in the Senate.

But please, people, vote more carefully in the primaries next time.

CC

Ps. Oh, and Ugh.

12 comments:

alkali said...

Rabinowitz is confusing (1) not getting the benefit of a fair trial with (2) actually being innocent. Yes, the interviewing techniques used with child witnesses in the Amirault case were pretty bad, even if they were used in good faith at the time. But there was physical evidence in the Amirault case, and several of the victims in that case -- now fully grown adults, some now married with their own children -- have publicly reaffirmed their testimony against Gerald Amirault. Maybe the physical evidence was misconstrued, and maybe those witnesses are mistaken. But maybe not.

If Coakley believed Gerald Amirault to be innocent, but pushed for him to remain in jail, shame on her. But if she really believed him to be guilty, it's not a prosecutor's job to say "well, he molested a bunch of kids but in my estimation he didn't get a fair trial, so let's let him out." The appeals courts make that call, and every one of them has upheld Gerald Amirault's conviction.

I wish Coakley would talk more directly about this case, because there are troubling things about it. (Unfortunately, that almost certainly won't happen in an election campaign.) I am not familiar enough with the evidentiary record in the case to express a view of whether Gerald Amirault is innocent or guilty, but I wouldn't let him alone with my kids.

Chalicechick said...

If the evidence against them sucks, as it did in this case* and no rational person would believe it, then either Martha Coakley doesn't actually believe it or she's not a rational person.

Either way, I'm not voting for her. Even if I could.

You obviously can make your own choices about your own kids, but to my knowledge nobody has offered any solid evidence that the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" convictions were anything but lies and false accusations against innocent people. Defendants accused of sacrificing small children that no one had ever seen with no evidence that said children ever existed, was pretty much par for the course.

CC

*Again, how the hell do you argue that a little kid with no physical signs of abuse was raped with a butcher knife? Would any rational person honestly believe that wouldn't leave a mark?

alkali said...

If the evidence against them sucks, as it did in this case* and no rational person would believe it ...

Respectfully, this is facile. A gynecologist testified that four girls had physical signs of sexual abuse. One girl had a hymenal scar and a healed anal fissure. Several of the witness who are now full-grown adults have publicly reaffirmed their testimony. That is evidence that rational people would take seriously.

Is it plausible that the gynecologist misconstrued the physical evidence because she was predisposed to find evidence of sexual abuse? Yes. Is it plausible that these adults are mistaken about what they remember, perhaps because of the improper interviewing techniques? Again, yes.

But I don't think the answer on those questions is obvious. You'd certainly have to spend more time with the record than I have to reject that evidence.

As I said above, I am not enthusiastic about Coakley as a candidate, and I wish she would talk about this case so I could understand her thinking.

You obviously can make your own choices about your own kids, but to my knowledge nobody has offered any solid evidence that the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" convictions were anything but lies and false accusations against innocent people.

Respectfully, you're confusing this with other cases. There was no allegation of "satanic ritual" in this case -- right or wrong, it was a straight-up allegation of sexual abuse by workers in a day care center.

PG said...

If the evidence against them sucks, as it did in this case* and no rational person would believe it, then either Martha Coakley doesn't actually believe it or she's not a rational person.

So the jury that convicted Gerald Amirault on all 15 counts of rape and indecent assault was made up entirely of irrational people? Blaming convictions wholly on the attorney prosecuting the case and ignoring the role of the jury sounds like the criminal law version of a standard conservative talking point about civil cases.

Rabinowitz also has a selective recollection of Coakley's role in the events surrounding Gerald Amirault's release. For example, "Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley paved the way for Amirault's release earlier this month, announcing that there was not enough evidence to ask that Amirault be civilly committed to a state treatment center as a sexually dangerous person following completion of his criminal sentence."

Also, Barton's central legal rationale for granting new trials to Violet and Cheryl Amirault was that the children testifying against them did not give their testimony while being literally face to face with the defendants (the minor witnesses faced the jury rather than the defendants). This is a reading of the Sixth Amendment that the 1st Circuit refused to mandate (see 313 F.3d 636) and that even the Supreme Court's Crawford and Davis decisions (re-emphasizing Confrontation Clause obligation to have testimonial witnesses actually appear in court) does not require.

And looking at news coverage from the time, the knife allegation doesn't appear to have been the most significant. It's not even mentioned in anything prior to Amirault's 1989 appeal (404 Mass. 221). There the court, refusing to grant Gerald Amirault a new trial, stated, "Dr. Emans, a pediatric gynecologist, testified with reference to one of the child witnesses, that she had observed a small hymenal scar. The child witness had testified that the defendant had inserted a knife into her anus. Dr. Emans was permitted to testify that based on the proximity of the hymen to the anus, which she estimated as one-half inch, an object inserted into the child's anus could scar the hymen without penetrating her vagina."

Chalicechick said...

But raped with a knife?

A kid anally raped in public in full light of day that no one happened to see?

(((There was no allegation of "satanic ritual" in this case -- right or wrong, it was a straight-up allegation of sexual abuse by workers in a day care center.)))

Then what was with the allegations of animal sacrifice?

CC

Chalicechick said...

I think there was a whole hell of a lot of irrationality going around the country at the time regarding Day Care centers and sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s. Those who were good at finding evidence of it made a lot of money testifying.

I'm not surprised at all that the basic insanity of what these folks were being accused of was downplayed by the media and the accusations that made no sense were treated as less significant. The reporters were caught up in the hysteria too and it sold a lot of papers.

I think the jury didn't have the benefit of what we would later find out about how the kids' testimony was influenced by the interviewers. Coakley did have that benefit and has even more of it now.

Also, the jury was caught up in that hysteria as well and they saw little children testifying who looked like they'd been hurt and they were scared and angry and struck out, even if the little detail of them testifying about things like secret rooms that didn't actually exist should have been troublesome.

And the jury had prosecutors assuring them the whole time that the testimony was solid.

CC
who suspects an inserted knife would do quite a lot of damage to an anus, too.

John A Arkansawyer said...

alkali said, "A gynecologist testified that four girls had physical signs of sexual abuse."

Here's a terrible and terribly depressing question for someone with the numbers at hand and some statistical skill:

How likely is it that a random sample of young girls the size of the group of girls examined in the Amirault case would contain four girls showing signs of sexual abuse, not because they were abused in day car, but because such abuse is commonplace in American society?

While I'm waiting for someone to answer that, I'm going to hug my daughter.

PG said...

I think the jury didn't have the benefit of what we would later find out about how the kids' testimony was influenced by the interviewers. Coakley did have that benefit and has even more of it now.

Those kids are now adults who continue to maintain that they were abused. It would be different if they were all recanting their testimony, but that doesn't seem to be the case. You seem to be assuming that if any one piece of evidence, such as sodomy with a butcher knife that doesn't leave anal scarring, doesn't stand up, then there's no good evidence in the case at all. Has Coakley said that she thinks he committed the crimes based on the evidence you're dwelling upon, or based on other evidence?

Chalicechick said...

John,
For a less depressing thought, a girl's cherry can get popped entirely by a fall down on the stairs or horseback riding.

PG,

According to Elizabeth Loftus' work, once a fake memory is implanted, for the subject to believe forever is pretty much the usual thing. Besides, if you'd always been told that something happened to you when you were a very young child, and indeed that your testimony had sent a man to jail, my guess is you would have a lot riding on it.

CC

alkali said...

@CC: A kid anally raped in public in full light of day that no one happened to see?

You are apparently confusing this case with some other case: that was not alleged. The testimony was that the abuse took place in a second floor bathroom. There were some allegations of anal penetration with various objects, but no allegations of anal rape in the usual sense of that word.

A short summary of the evidence at trial appears in this Mass. Appeals Court opinion (see pp. 223-227).

@CC: I think the jury didn't have the benefit of what we would later find out about how the kids' testimony was influenced by the interviewers.

Not correct. The defense presented expert testimony about that issue at the trial. See the above opinion.

@CC: Also, the jury was caught up in that hysteria ... and struck out, even if the little detail of them testifying about things like secret rooms that didn't actually exist should have been troublesome.

The testimony related to a second floor bathroom, which actually existed.

Again, I'm not asserting that I definitively know Gerald Amirault to be guilty -- I don't know the record well enough to judge. But it's hardly obvious that he is innoncent.

PG said...

CC,

But this wasn't an instance of recovered memory. At least one parent who initially defended the school had a daughter who told her of abuse. It's not like all of the parents were trying to get abuse stories from their children. And why would people be implanting some of the more bizarre stories, like the anal rape with a butcher knife?

Moreover, even prior to conviction, some witnesses were deemed unreliable and those charges in the indictment did not become part of the convictions. Contrary to Rabinowitz's claims (and so far as I know, unrebutted by her), the chief prosecutor of the cases said, "The initial investigation and interviewing of the children was divided among different investigators, contrary to the assertion in the story that the allegations were developed through one pediatric nurse. Uniquely similar disclosures came from children with no connection of any kind to each other who were handled by different teams of investigators. Many children involved in the prosecution were from families who were initially hostile or skeptical toward the prosecution. Only after these children made unexpected disclosures directly to parents did they join the prosecution effort."

I just don't find Rabinowitz a reliable source. She does not present the totality of any story, not even her piece about Gerald Amirault as a wonderful family man that neglected to mention a history of substance abuse (including of cocaine) that nearly caused the breakup of his marriage. She writes as an advocate for the Amiraults, not a reporter.

John A Arkansawyer said...

Let me second that suggestion about voting more carefully in the primaries next time, possibly for someone who isn't an idiot.