“For a small, progressive state, Massachusetts has an outsize record of wrongfully convicting people. The Commonwealth has paid $8.34 million to wrongfully convicted men and women since 2004, when a compensation law was enacted. From Dennis Maher to Victor Rosario to Fred Clay, it seems like every few months we’re hearing about another conviction getting overturned based on bad evidence or official misconduct. What’s going on?”
Read the article by George Bullen in States of Blue.
“Can a sustained, comprehensive case be made for that inference? [That Sandusky is innocent] It already exists, in a book that was rejected by every major publisher and finally issued in November 2017 by the modest Sunbury Press of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Until now the work has been almost entirely ignored by reviewers. Yet it comes with the strong endorsement of a world-renowned psychologist and memory expert, Elizabeth Loftus, and a leading expert on coercive interrogation methods and false confessions, Richard A. Leo. If they are right, Mark Pendergrast’s 391-page The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment can erase the shame of both Penn State and Sandusky, who languishes in solitary confinement, for 22 hours a day, in a maximum-security state prison.”
Read the review by Frederick Crews of Mark Pendergrast’s provocative and important new book in Skeptic.
“Young also said that he harbors no anger toward his accusers — who were 5 and 6 years old when they accused him of molesting them, only to later recant and confess that it was their mother’s boyfriend who harmed them, not Young. They were afraid of the boyfriend, records show, so they accused Young instead.”
Read the article by Tresa Baidas in the Detroit Free Press.
Victor Rosario spent 32 years behind bars in Massachusetts for arson and homicide of eight people, including five children. Fran and Dan Keller were locked up in Texas for 21 years for “satanic ritual abuse” at their daycare center.
All are innocent. This year Fran and Dan were exonerated. Victor moved a step closer to true freedom.
NCRJ was there for them—the Kellers since 2002, Rosario since 2007—with money, expertise, and practical and moral support. When almost no one would help anyone accused of a crime against children, you were there too.
We helped free the first person falsely accused in the child abuse panics, Bernard Baran, and hopefully the last, the San Antonio Four.
NCRJ will keep working for justice for people wrongfully convicted of crimes against children.
We cannot do it without your support. Before the year is out, please help us with $25, $50 or more.
The child-protection panics live on in the expanding regime of unjust, draconian punishment and control over the lives of “sex offenders,” who range from flashers to consensual teenage lovers to violent rapists.NCRJ fights against ineffective, draconian criminal policies:
We circulate the evidence that these policies do not protect children.
Like you, NCRJ supports child protection that is rational, constitutional, and compassionate. Like you, we want justice, both for the innocent and the guilty.
This work is rarely popular. That’s why your support is critical, courageous, and powerful.
Please help with a gift of $50, $100, or more.
Consider becoming a sustaining donor—to ensure that NCRJ is here as long as we’re needed.
For justice, and with gratitude,
Michael R. Snedeker for the NCRJ Board of Directors
Friedman’s Manhattan attorney, Ronald Kuby, called the decision “an emphatic triumph for the principles of open government” and the wrongfully convicted, who he said “will have a far easier task obtaining essential documents.”
His statement also called the ruling “a stinging rebuke to successive Nassau County district attorneys, who first created a moral panic over nonexistent sex abuse allegations and then tried to create a moral panic as to the consequences of releasing the documents that demonstrate prosecutorial misconduct.”
Read the article by Yancey Roy and Bridget Murphy in Newsday.
In 2014, Nicas wrote a blog post for NECIR describing how main findings in his story were included in the judge’s grounds for a new trial. “There was excitement, disbelief and a sense of vindication,’’ he wrote. “Later, the feeling became relief. Not just that we were right, but that Victor Rosario was free.”
Read the report by Jennifer McKim for the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
“Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan agreed Friday to end the pursuit of murder charges against a Lowell man for a fatal 1982 fire he denied setting, ending a legal roller coaster that saw the man freed three years ago after spending 32 years in prison.”
The NCRJ played an important role in freeing Rosario.
Read the article by Milton J. Valencia at the Boston Globe.
“Dan and Fran Keller, who spent more than 21 years in prison after they were accused of sexually abusing children during supposed satanic rituals at their South Austin day care facility, will receive $3.4 million from a state fund for those wrongly convicted of crimes.”
The NCRJ has long sponsored the Keller case.
Read the full article by Chuck Lindell at The American Statesman.
Copyright 2008-2025 Bob Chatelle. Design by Fort Hill Design.
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