[Bhaalspawn]

It seems like there have been two attempted Nifongings here in Oakland County.

(For those of you who don't remember, Mike Nifong is the now disbarred former prosecutor who attempted to railroad three innocent men in the Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax after withholding potentially exculpatory DNA evidence from the defense.)

1. The James Perry case. After a criminal conviction for allegedly raping two kindergartners, a judge threw out the criminal conviction when it was discovered that police and prosecutors failed to interview potentially key witnesses with evidence contradicting the prosecution and suggesting that the real victim in this case was innocent. In the second jury trial, reportedly 11 jurors believe that he is innocent while a lone standout who lives within a couple hundred feet of the defendant believes that he is guilty (and should be removed from the jury because of his proximity to the defendant and his potential for bias). The evidence in the case appears to be very flimsy at best. If he is innocent, and the evidence seems to point in that direction, then I hope he can file a civil suit and recover a large amount of damages.

2. In another case, a father was suspected of having raped his autistic daughter. The teenage daughter supposedly communicated that she had been raped since age six according to a communication assistant who typed what she was supposedly trying to communicate. (Later it was determined that she really couldn't communicate much of anything reliably or at least that this assisted typing method was severely flawed.) Physical evidence was present suggesting that nothing like it had ever happened (her hymen was intact).

Here's where it gets interesting. A police detective then interviewed a 13 year old boy who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome (a form of very high functioning autism where sufferers have difficulty picking up social cues and reading between the lines), grilling him like he might grill an adult suspect, feeding the boy lies in what seems like an attempt to suborn perjury--to get the boy to make up testimony that his father was raping his sister. (A video of this interrogation is available at the time of this writing at the Detrot Free Press website.)

Sadly, the children had to live in foster care for a couple months and the father was jailed for about three months. This case has been dropped and I hope that the family recovers a huge amount of damages in what I assume will be an upcoming lawsuit against the county and the police department, and perhaps the flake (and the school district) who did the "communicating" for the autistic girl.

[Cliffie]

Well, "Nifonging" suggests deliberate intent. It sounds to me like a nasty surge of Nineties "everyone is an incest victim" thinking and/or sloppy investigation. Which is more than bad enough.

[Bhaalspawn]

These attempts appear deliberate to me, an outsider.

[Cliffie]

Originally Posted by Bhaalspawn

These attempts appear deliberate to me, an outsider.

Well, they could really be either one. But what would the reason be to do it deliberately?

Actually, I should amend that statement. The trend in this state for years has been to overprosecute to the point of getting ridiculous. Why, I still don't know. I don't see where it gets anyone -- prosecutors get elected based on their successful prosecution rates, not on their reversible-error overturned convictions. The state pays a fortune every year in court-ordered psychotherapy, drug and alcohol treatment for guys not behind bars and even more for the ones attending the "University of Jackson." It has to be part of the reason MI is in such trouble financially. And it has to be part of the reason that in Michigan, a felon can register to vote and exercise that right unless actually behind bars at the time of the election.

[Bhaalspawn]

The James Perry case ended in a hung jury and a mistrial. I just hope he ends up getting fully exonerated at some point and that he's able to sue someone for a tremendous amount of damages if he truly is innocent. I really wish the newspapers would tell us more about what specific evidence was presented. Was the only evidence that two little boys said he raped them? Why wouldn't there also be medical evidence to prove that something like that had even occurred? I wish the paper would report on that sort of thing 'cause I haven't read anything about the existence of such evidence either way.

Later, if it ends up being revealed that the boys were pressured into making up the accusations, I hope that the perpetrators of the crime of false accusation end up getting sued mercilessly and even criminally prosecuted. (A false accuser should face the exact same sentence that their would-be victim would have suffered. That the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse hoax wasn't (and legally can't be) sentenced to jail for years is an injustice.)