Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“What do you do when you are 25 years old and a county like Williamson County comes after you and you don’t have any money?”
–Troy Mansfield
A chilling case of cruel and unusual prosecutorial misconduct. Read the article by Tony Piohetski in the Austin American-Statesman.
h/t Bill Dobbs of the Dobbs Wire.
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
On August 24, we posted the following article from the Washington Post. The authors have requested that we repost the article with the following preface:
On October 17, 2019, after a two-week civil trial in Arlington County, Virginia, a seven-member jury found Galen Baughman to be a so-called “sexually violent predator” (SVP). Galen was slapped with the SVP label despite having never even been accused of any violent act, nor engaging in predatory behavior—nor even committing any crimes since his teens. If his appeals are unsuccessful, Galen now at age 36, faces the prospect of lifetime civil commitment at the Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation, a high security prison with a different name.
Galen’s trial provides a window into the Kafkaesque legal process for civil commitment, in which the state can violate basic legal rights, including due process; can engage in expert shopping; and routinely draws on what can only be characterized as “junk science” to inflict grossly excessive punishment. Galen was convicted not for anything he has done, but for what the state’s hand-picked experts claimed he might someday do.
The following article was written just prior to Galen’s trial. Our worst fears about the conduct of the trial, and its outcome, were borne out. Only the prosecution’s “experts” were permitted to testify. No exculpatory evidence was admitted. After a one-sided trial, an effective advocate for the rights of people accused of sex offenses was convicted.
—Philip Fornaci and Roger Lancaster.
Here is the article.
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
[Great news from Mark Pendergrast]
Elsie Oscarson is free!
After 21 years in prison, Elsie Oscarson was finally released on September 2, 2019. She was granted a new trial, but because it would be rolling the dice one more time, she took an Alford plea, which allows her to maintain her innocence, but she must still remain on a sex offender registry, cannot be in the same room or in a park or school with anyone under seventeen years of age without another adult present, and has to abide by other restrictions. She also cannot initiate contact with her children, though they may contact her through the courts.
Despite these restrictions. Elsie is ecstatic to be free, determined to abide by all regulations, and is living with her sister in a home in northern Vermont. She looks forward to gardening, cooking, taking walks, and drinking eggnog, and eating whatever she wants. (She has already had a big steak.)
As a volunteer and former board member with the National Center for Reason and Justice, I was instrumental in investigating her case, determining her likely innocence, and helping to get her case taken on by Seth Lipschutz, her lawyer (who retired just as she was freed) for the Vermont Prisoner’s Rights division of the Defender General’s office. The NCRJ has sponsored her case for many years and is delighted that she is finally free after being imprisoned for over two decades for offenses she almost certainly did not commit. –Mark Pendergrast
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
In the Texas courthouse 100 miles east of Dallas that day in September 2012, the prosecutor turned to his expert witness and asked whether he believed the child’s injuries could have been the result of an accident.
“The pattern of her burn injuries is what I would call a forced immersion,” the expert, Dr. Matthew Cox, said, indicating that someone must have intentionally held the child in scalding water.
Later, when pressed by a defense lawyer, Cox was unequivocal: “Absolutely, this is child abuse.”
Following that testimony, the girl’s grandparents, Kenneth and Shelley Walker, 55 and 60 at the time, were both convicted of injury to a child and sentenced to 25 years in prison. They assumed they would die behind bars.
Read the article by Mike Hixenbaugh in the Houston Chronicle.
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“In a case that came down to one man’s word against another’s, jurors believed the police officer. Because of his prior offenses, Vara was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
“What happened to Vara has been unconstitutional for more than 50 years.
“The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that prosecutors must tell anyone accused of a crime about all evidence that might help their defense at trial. That includes sharing details about police officers who have committed crimes, lied on the job or whose honesty has been called into doubt.”
Read the article by Steve Reilly and Mark Nichols in USA Today.
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“In 1973, the idea of repressed memories became popularized with the publication of Sybil, a “nonfiction” book by journalist Flora Rheta Schreiber. Schreiber claimed that under psychiatric treatment, a patient whom she called Sybil recalled severe abuse by her mother, abuse that later manifested as 16 different personalities that all lived within her. The book sold over 400,000 copies and was later made into a movie, bringing the idea of both multiple personality disorder, and repressed memories, into pop culture.
“Sybil was later reinvestigated by journalist Debbie Nathan, who concluded that most of the story was based on lies. But the book sparked an industry. Therapists all over the country began to specialize in this treatment, and more and more books and articles were published legitimizing wild, outlandish stories of abuse.”
Read the article at The Stranger by Katie Herzog.
H/T Bill Dobbs of The Dobbs Wire
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“Swept up in a wave of extraordinary child sex abuse claims in the 1980s and early 1990s, prosecutors across the country charged dozens of parents and caregivers with appalling-sounding acts despite scant physical evidence. Suggestive, leading questioning by untrained police and counselors produced outlandish accusations, including claims of bizarre satanic rituals. Yet an unshakable belief that even young children always tell the truth yielded lengthy prison sentences.”
Read the article by Eric Dexheimer in the Houston Chronicle.
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“That’s a chilling sort of mentality. It’s the kind of thinking that led the good people of California to create a criminal justice system that made eternal pariahs of former offenders and made irredeemable ‘predators’ of troubled juveniles. It’s the thinking that promoted judges and prosecutors who exercised their discretion not for fairness but for unremitting punishment. It’s the mentality that we now are trying hard to correct, after recognizing that not every mistake is a permanent character flaw and not every punishment should last forever.”
Read the editorial by the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times.
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
Please join us for an evening of learning and discussion about one of the most controversial issues in America today!
Thirty-two Years in the Trenches: Recollections of a Clinical & Forensic Psychologist Evaluating and Treating Sexual Offenders (and the courtroom battles that followed)
with Dr. Joseph J. Plaud, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Applied Behavioral Consultants, LLC
Monday, September 16 @ 6:30 pm
Cambridge Friends Center
5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge, MA
Dr. Joe Plaud first began working with sexual offenders as a first year graduate student in 1987 at the University of Maine. His focus of clinical training was on the evaluation and treatment of sexual offenders within a behavioral psychology orientation. In this talk Dr. Plaud will share his personal and professional observances and recollections of how public and societal view have changed during the past thirty-plus years, taking into consideration criminal, civil commitment and registration issues. Dr. Plaud will also discuss his work in the courtroom which has been devoted to the accurate dissemination of empirical data concerning sexual offender recidivism. Finally, Dr. Plaud will also offer his own observances about the future of psycho-legal issues involving sexual offenders. Dr. Plaud hopes for didactic audience participation as he charts out his own professional life course in working with this clinical population in a number of different contexts.
Following the talk the floor will be open for questions, answers and comments.
For more information call (617) 623-5288
About Dr. Plaud:
Dr. Joseph J. Plaud, born and raised in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a clinical and forensic psychologist whose graduate training was primarily focused on behavioral assessment and therapy, with specific emphasis on working with forensic clinical populations. He received his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in psychology in 1987 from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with High Honors in Psychology. His undergraduate minors were in philosophy and American history. Dr. Plaud then enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Maine, in Orono, Maine, where he received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in clinical psychology in 1993, after completing his clinical internship at the University of Mississippi and Jackson Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in Jackson, Mississippi, serving as Chief Psychology Resident. Dr. Plaud then joined the clinical psychology faculty at the University of North Dakota in 1993, where he was actively involved in the training of clinical and experimental psychology graduate students in their Ph.D. programs, as well as pursuing his teaching and research activities in psychology, including behavior analysis, behavior modification and therapy, behavioral assessment, and sexual behavior.
Returning to his native Massachusetts in early 1998, Dr. Plaud served as the Director of Research for the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, and was also appointed a Visiting Scholar of Human Development at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In 2001 he founded Applied Behavioral Consultants, LLC, and serves as its Executive Director. Dr. Plaud provides clinical and forensic psychological services within the United States and internationally involving clinical and forensic cases, lecturing widely in these areas of psychology and the law. Dr. Plaud is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.
Additionally, Dr. Plaud has studied, written and lectured in the philosophical and historical foundations of psychology, with particular interests in the theoretical underpinnings of behaviorism, behavior analysis, and behavior therapy, and the accurate dissemination of behavior analysis in public forums. Dr. Plaud has published and lectured widely in the assessment and treatment of sexual offenders, and his opinion is frequently sought in forensic cases in state and federal courts across the United States.
Dr. Plaud was honorably discharged from the United States Naval Reserve with the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Medical Service Corps. He further served as a Trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Between 2002 and 2008 Dr. Plaud founded and administered an American history museum in Worcester, Massachusetts dedicated to the lives and legacies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal. Among Dr. Plaud’s many other personal, professional, and educational interests, he is currently pursuing graduate studies in sacred theology at Saint Joseph’s College in Standish, Maine.
Dr. Plaud and his wife Eve Plaud reside in the Dorchester Neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts in an historic area known as the Polish Triangle. Their home is located where three Neighborhoods of Boston converge: Dorchester, South Boston, and Boston’s South End.
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“SVPA laws and practices refer to “mental abnormalities,” which sounds scientific. But the American Psychiatric Association has opposed such laws, citing their abuse of civil liberties and the use of unscientific ‘disorders’ as the basis for punishment. In practice, designation as a sexually violent predator (SVP) is not based on substantial scientific research, and the therapy received by detainees in ‘treatment facilities’ is based more on passing fads than on careful scholarship.”
Read the article by civil rights attorney Philip Fornaci and NCRJ Dircetor Roger Lancaster in the Washington Post.
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