THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 5, 1995 TAG: 9505050003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
North Carolina Attorney General Mike Easley will ask the state Supreme Court to overrule the state Court of Appeals' order for new trials for Robert F. ``Bob'' Kelly and Kathryn Dawn Wilson. Juries pronounced the two guilty of sexual abuse of small children in the late 1980s at the defunct Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton.
The three-judge appellate court unanimously concluded that the defendants did not receive fair trials. The state's highest court could well agree, given the seriousness of the prosecutorial and procedural errors cited by the appeals court.
A fair trial, which is a constitutional right, need not be a perfect trial. But deficiencies described by the appeals court invalidate the Kelly and Wilson trials. These include the prosecution's withholding of evidence from the defense before the Kelly trial, the trial judge's failure to examine some of the evidence (as required by previous state-court rulings) to determine whether the defense should also scrutinize it, ``grossly improper'' argument by the prosecution in the Wilson trial, testimony by attorney (now Judge) Christopher Bean, who withdrew from representing Bob Kelly after being told that his son had been victimized at the day-care center.
That the Kelly and Wilson trials were improperly loaded against the accused may not trouble anyone in Edenton and elsewhere who is convinced that Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson committed heinous crimes against toddlers entrusted to their care.
But both Kelly and Wilson have consistently proclaimed their innocence, as have Betsy Kelly, Bob Kelly's wife and Little Rascals' co-owner, and Willard Scott Privott who were pronounced guilty after pleading no contest to sundry sex-abuse charges. Each is now free after years behind bars.
The costly Little Rascal prosecutions, like the even more costly McMartin nursey-school case in Los Angeles, drew national attention because scores of child-abuse offenses were alleged to have been committed over many months by several adults in day-care settings.
McMartin and Little Rascals featured shocking but also at times bizarre and fanciful testimony by youngsters. In both Los Angeles and Edenton, corroborating physical evidence introduced at the day-care trials was scant and ambiguous. A television documentary intensified skepticism about the guilt of the Little Rascals defendants, suggesting that they had been wronged by hysteria whipped up by false charges and rumors.
The appeals-court's ordering of new trials for Kelly and Wilson will deepen skepticism. But as Judge Bean pointed out in response to the ruling, ``All of the people who testified testified sincerely and from their heart. The thing people need to understand is the Court of Appeals is not saying that what people testified to is not true, just that there were errors.''
True. The sincerity of the witnesses, including the youngsters, is not at issue. But the appeals court discerned trial errors severe enough to have stacked the deck against the defendants. Whatever one may believe about their guilt or innocence, the Little Rascals defendents should have been tried fairly.
KEYWORDS: DAY CARE CENTERS CHILD ABUSE SEX CRIME
CHILD MOLESTER TRIAL SENTENCING
RETRIAL by CNB