June 26, 2009 - Collectively, the court systems in North America are institutionalized travesties that mete out politics rather than justice; many cases are more about career-enhancement for police, prosecutors and judges than they are about weighing evidence. Indeed, the court system constitutes the largest barrier to true justice in our society.

The headline that sparks my observation is from The Cleveland Plain Dealer (June 24th): “Nancy Smith, Joseph Allen acquitted by Lorain County judge in Head Start sex abuse case after serving 14 years in prison.” The news story opens, A judge Wednesday acquitted a bus driver and a Lorain man in a controversial Head Start sex case after each had served more than 14 years in prison. Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge, who spent months reviewing the case, ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to convict Nancy Smith, 52, and Joseph Allen, 56, of molesting small children.

The Smith-Allen case contains several of the elements that make me staunchly opposed to the sensationalism and hysteria that surround child abuse cases upon which political/legal careers are made. A witch-hunt is afoot across the continent, in which 5-year-olds are believed without evidence and innocent people are dropkicked into Hell on the coached testimony of children.

Accused of sexually molesting children, Smith was sentenced to 30-90 years; the actual 14 years served removed her from the childhoods of her 5 young children. Allen was sentenced to 5 consecutive life sentences.

The case was based on next to no evidence whatsoever. Smith was accused of taking children to Allen’s apartment in order to molest them but there was no evidence that Smith and Allen knew each other, let alone conspired; certainly, they claimed to be strangers. Moreover, no one ever reported seeing a Head Start bus (which Nancy drove) parked in front of a residence for hours and hours. Head Start never reported that children were missing or even late in being delivered home. The testimony of the children was riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. It was also wildly improbable. For example, they claimed to have been tied to trees and violated in their genitals with sticks. Yet the parents saw no signs of scratches, bruises, etc. The children’s testimony was heavily coached - almost rehearsed - by social workers and, so, it was badly tainted (to say the least). Indeed, in the initial police interviews many of the children couldn’t even identify Allen as the man they said molested them. During the trial, no such difficulty was apparent. Evidence was suppressed; trumpeted media reports said that 5 children had chlamydia and were later quietly withdrawn - after all, both Smith and Allen tested negative for the disease.

Tom Cantu, the first police detective assigned to the case, said that he never believed Smith was guilty and advised his superiors not to press charges. The case was later reassigned and the new detectives, Cantu stated, were pressured to charge someonein the case because public hysteria about the alleged child molestation was building.

There is a hero in the story - journalist Paul Facinelli. A must-read analysis of the case in Crime Magazine explains:

Two years after Smith and Joseph Allen went to prison, Paul Facinelli, a columnist for the Chronicle Telegram, decided to take another look at the case. There was something about the whole thing that bothered him. "To believe that this happened," he recalls, "you have to believe that Nancy picked up 25 kids, dropped off 21 of them at the Head Start office and somehow got these other four kids in a 30-foot-long yellow school bus to a site undetermined, where she and Joseph Allen did unspeakable things to them without anybody seeing them over a six-month period. Despite all this horrendous abuse that was alleged, no parents, to my knowledge, saw anything - there was no bruising, no blood in the panties, or anything. The kids told the police about how "Joseph" peed on them and they had to eat urine laced cookies, but there were no reports of any nausea, no foul odors, nothing."

When Facinelli asked Chief Deputy Prosecutor Rosenbaum about Detective Tom Cantu's conclusions that there was no case against Nancy Smith and that "Joseph" appeared to be imaginary, Rosenbaum disparaged Cantu's work, saying that he wasn't "the brightest guy around." [Cantu was promoted shortly after the case erupted.] Facinelli then obtained Cantu's evaluations for 1992 and 1993, and reported that Cantu had received "exceptional" job performance ratings "from three different evaluators."

Facinelli also obtained videotape and the written police reports of the police lineup with Joseph Allen and the children. He realized that what was going on in the videotape didn't match the police reports.

Sadly, as a result of Facinelli’s articles, Rosenbaum decided to ruin Facinelli's career, largely through slander from the bully pulpit of the DA’s office. Facinelli was fired from his job after a defamation suit was filed.

The Morning Journal explains the persecution Facinelli faced as a result of his investigative journalism: Lorain County Prosecutor Greg White complained that Facinelli's investigative bombshells unfairly targeted him in the middle of his re-election campaign. (Despite the controversial Chronicle Telegram investigation, White was returned for his fifth term as prosecutor.) Rosenbaum responded to Facinelli's hard-hitting revelations by bringing a libel suit. Judge Richard M. Markus, who ruled that Rosenbaum had not even specified what, if anything, was incorrect about Facinelli's work, dismissed his lawsuit in 2001. "Despite the court's repeated requests," Markus wrote, "(Rosenbaum) persistently declined to quote the exact language in each publication that he claimed is defamatory.

So the life of another good human being was ruined…or as close to ruined as the SOBs in charge of "justice” could arrange; and they arrange needless devastation rather well.