After 30 Years In Prison, Judge Releases Inmate Whose Testimony Was Beaten Out Of Him
By Nicole Flatow
ThinkProgress
December 13, 2013
More than a decade ago, a special prosecutor undertook an investigation that revealed a longtime Chicago Police Department detective and commander had routinely tortured black men to coerce them into confessions or false testimony. Some of the convictions were reversed. A few others were pardoned by then-Governor Ryan. And Jon Graham Burge was convicted on related perjury charges and sent to jail.
But Burge’s misconduct is still taking its toll on many of the 148 people who claimed abuse. Just this week, a man who spent more than 30 years in jail was released after Judge Richard Walsh found that officers had lied about beating Stanley Wrice with a flashlight and a 20-inch piece of rubber, and about imposing similar treatment on a witness in Wrice’s case to elicit false testimony against him.
Wrice was sentenced to 100 years for a sexual assault he says he falsely confessed to after police beatings. Others with similar claims remain behind bars, hoping to seize on precedent from Wrice’s case to expedite their appeals. Lawyers will argue next week that these inmate should be certified as a class so they can argue together that they should be granted new trials.
Burge was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993, after an internal investigation found that his abuse was “systematic” over more than a decade. More than 148 individuals — mostly black men — came forward to report that Burge had smothered them, imposed electric shock, and forced them into a hot radiator. Burge’s misconduct led to the state’s death penalty moratorium in 2000. But it took another decade before a special prosecutor embarked on an extensive investigation of Burge’s behavior. It found foul play, but said it would not pursue action against Burge, in part because the statutes of limitations had expired in the cases. Then in 2008, prosecutors developed another way to snag Burge in a civil trial. They charged him with perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about his actions at trial, and in 2011, he was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.
At sentencing, U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow lamented, “How can one trust that justice will be served when the justice system has been so defiled?” She added, “Perhaps the praise, publicity and commendations you received for solving these awful crimes was seductive and may have led you down this path. On your behalf how I wish that there had not been such a dismal failure of leadership in the (police) department that it came to this.”
While Burge’s case is extreme, this reward system exists in any of a number of police departments and law enforcement agencies, accompanied by rare punishment for wrongdoing. False confessions alone account for about 25 of wrongful convictions exposed by DNA, and many others derive from testimony by witnesses who are coerced through both poor treatment and incentives.
Showing posts with label prosecutors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prosecutors. Show all posts
Monday, December 16, 2013
Friday, August 17, 2012
Why judges hand down shorter sentences to convicted psychopaths when their behavior is blamed on the brain
I'm afraid these judges aren't thinking through the actual effect on behavior of being a psychopath. Being a psychopath only means that a person doesn't have empathy.
These judges and prosecutors should read The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. It's hilarious at the same time as being highly informative about an important phenomenon.
It doesn't make anyone WANT to do anything. That's a whole separate ball game. Certainly, most psychopaths aren't interested in murdering anyone, or having sex with children. That's a completely separate mental condition that usually experienced by people who aren't psychopaths.
Horrible things happen, however, when psychopaths WANT to do bad things. These Psychopaths can't blame their motivations on their lack of empathy. While it's true that psychopaths have one less mechanism to control their own behavior, they still have the ability to figure out that they may get caught and punished if they commit a crime. Surely that part of their brain is telling them not to commit a crime.
Also, many psychopaths have brains that are guided by moral principles, and that part of their brain is also telling them not to commit a crime. They may not feel empathy, but they know the difference between right and wrong. They simply can't truthfully say that their brain made them do it.
My Brain Made Me Do It: Psychopaths and Free Will
Why judges hand down shorter sentences to convicted psychopaths when their behavior is blamed on the brain
By MAIA SZALAVITZ
August 17, 2012
TIME
Should murderous psychopaths be punished less severely if their behavior can be blamed on brain differences or genes? Or, conversely, should their sentence be longer precisely because their biology makes them even more intractable and dangerous than other criminals?
A new study published in Science explored these questions by asking judges to impose a prison term on a hypothetical convict. When the judges were initially told that the offender was a psychopath, they tended to consider it an aggravating factor in sentencing, but when they heard additional expert testimony that biological factors could explain the guilty man’s behavior, they saw that information as mitigating and handed down a shorter sentence.
The impact of such expert testimony depended in part on whether the biological arguments came from the defense or the prosecution — it influenced judges’ reasoning more when it was delivered by the defense. But, overall, judges still levied lengthy sentences for the crime and viewed the convict as morally and legally responsible for his behavior: they reduced prison time only by a year, from 13.93 years on average to 12.83, when considering brain or genetic explanations for the convict’s behavior.
“The judges did not let the defendant off,” said lead author Lisa Aspinwall of the University of Utah in a statement. “They just reduced the sentence and showed major changes in the quality of their reasoning.” The researchers noted that they were surprised the judges reduced their sentencing at all, considering that they were dealing with psychopaths who are in general a highly unsympathetic bunch.
(MORE: Which Kids Join Gangs? A Genetic Explanation)
The hypothetical case used in the new study was loosely based on the 1994 trial of Mobley v. State. In 1991, Stephen Mobley robbed a
Stephen A. Mobley, 39, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for fatally shooting 24-year-old John Collins in Oakwood, Ga, during a robbery of a Domino's on Feb. 17, 1991.
Domino’s pizza shop in Georgia, during the course of which he shot the restaurant’s manager to death; at trial, his attorney attempted to present evidence showing that Mobley had a variant of a gene linked to violent behavior: the MAO-A or so-called warrior gene.
Because the scientific data on MAO-A was so new at the time, however, the judge rejected its use in court and Mobley was executed in 2005. But since then, research has supported the link between the gene and violence, and studies have found that men who have the gene and are abused as children are significantly more likely to display antisocial behavior.
In the new study, researchers tweaked the hypothetical case to eliminate the murder; instead, the defendant was convicted of aggravated battery for savagely beating a fast-food restaurant manager with a gun during a robbery attempt and causing permanent brain damage. By taking murder off the table — and therefore the death penalty or a life sentence — the researchers compelled the judges to consider the future dangerousness of a criminal who could eventually be set free. Researchers presented one of four versions of the hypothetical case to 181 judges in 19 states. In all versions, judges read scientific evidence that the convicted criminal was a psychopath and what that meant, namely that psychopathy is incurable. Half of the judges also received expert testimony on the genetic and neurobiological causes of the criminal behavior, presented either by the defense as a mitigating factor, or by the prosecution, which argued that it should increase the convict’s sentence. The other judges got no mention of the idea that biological differences in the convict’s brain could have caused his behavior. Researchers controlled for the fact that different states have different sentencing laws.
The judges who were given a biological explanation for the convict’s psychopathy issued shorter sentences, but notably, all judges committed the criminal to significantly more prison time than their average nine years for aggravated battery. And while all judges viewed psychopathy as an aggravating factor in sentencing, the judges who heard evidence about the genetic and neurobiological causes of the condition from the defense reported viewing it as less aggravating. Nearly 9 in 10 judges listed at least one aggravating factor in their reasoning for their sentence, but when they heard the expert testimony from the defense, the percentage of judges who also listed mitigating factors rose from 30% to 66%. And judges who received this evidence were 2.5 times more likely than other judges to report actually having weighed aggravating versus mitigating factors in deciding their sentence.
(MORE: Understanding Psychopathic and Sadistic Minds)
The expert testimony offered in the study described how the MAO-A gene affects the amydgala, a part of the brain involved in emotion and learning. The amygdala is the seat of the so-called violence-inhibition mechanism, which is what triggers anxiety in normal people when they recognize that others are in pain or distress. People with low MAO-A activity, like the convicted psychopath, don’t experience normal brain development, however; that may explain why psychopaths are incapable of responding to the fear and pain of others with normal distress. Ultimately, the testimony argued, because of their genetic and brain-related differences, psychopaths don’t undergo functional moral development and fail to learn right from wrong.
Interestingly, however, even though the judges handed out reduced sentences when presented with this expert testimony, they did not report viewing the convict as having less free will or as being any less responsible, legally or morally, for his crime. “What this tells me is that the effect of neuroscience evidence may operate at a non-conscious level. People think it does not affect their judgment of responsibility, but in fact it does,” says Barry Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore, who has researched this issue, but was not involved in the study.
It is this basic question of responsibility that many psychologists find crucial — and that so many people misunderstand. “There is a lot of interest these days in the implications of neuroscience for justice and the legal system. Some of this interest focuses on the radical notion that neuroscience undermines the very idea of personal responsibility,” says Martha Farah, director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, who was also not associated with the new study. “The idea is that, since everything I do results from my brain, and my brain is the product of my genes and my life experiences, then how can you hold me responsible for anything? Isn’t it always true that ‘my brain made me do it?’”
Indeed, earlier studies have shown that when participants are presented with neuroscientific evidence in cases involving people who have caused harm or behaved violently, they see it as far more mitigating than psychological factors like child abuse — even though research now shows that brain differences themselves can actually be caused by such abuse and that child abuse is more strongly linked with violence than most neurobiological factors.
Schwartz and a colleague described their findings on such research in a recent New York Times op-ed:
The pattern of results was striking. A brain characteristic that was even weakly associated with violence led people to exonerate the protagonist more than a psychological factor that was strongly associated with violent acts. … In contrast, while psychologically damaging experiences like childhood abuse often elicited sympathy for the protagonist and sometimes even prompted considerable mitigation of blame, the participants still saw the protagonist’s behavior as intentional. The protagonist himself was twisted by his history of trauma; it wasn’t just his brain.
The problem here, however, is that all of our psychology and behavior has a biological cause, even if we don’t understand exactly how it works. As Schwartz put it, “’Was the cause psychological or biological?’ is the wrong question when assigning responsibility for an action. All psychological states are also biological ones.”
Schwartz called the new study “terrific,” noting in particular that hearing evidence of biological causes of behavior had a larger impact on how mitigating the judges considered the convict’s psychopathy than on the actual sentences they handed down. Among the mitigating factors that judges cited after hearing the neurobiological evidence was the idea that mental illness made the perpetrator less responsible for his behavior.
As one judge in the study explained: “The evidence that psychopaths do not have the necessary neural connections to feel empathy is significant. It makes possible an argument that psychopaths are, in a sense, morally disabled, just as other people are physically disabled.”
(MORE: Study: 1 in 25 Business Leaders May Be Psychopaths)
Consequently, as Schwartz says, “If you sentence to punish, it will reduce sentencing. But if you sentence to protect society, it may well increase sentencing, by implying that the perpetrator is incorrigible.”
“This is not the grand, metaphysical, ‘We are all helpless to override the inevitable workings of our brains’ idea that neuroscience is incompatible with moral or legal responsibility,” says Farah....
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/17/my-brain-made-me-do-it-psychopaths-and-free-will/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true#ixzz23r4KWxtZ
These judges and prosecutors should read The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. It's hilarious at the same time as being highly informative about an important phenomenon.
It doesn't make anyone WANT to do anything. That's a whole separate ball game. Certainly, most psychopaths aren't interested in murdering anyone, or having sex with children. That's a completely separate mental condition that usually experienced by people who aren't psychopaths.
Horrible things happen, however, when psychopaths WANT to do bad things. These Psychopaths can't blame their motivations on their lack of empathy. While it's true that psychopaths have one less mechanism to control their own behavior, they still have the ability to figure out that they may get caught and punished if they commit a crime. Surely that part of their brain is telling them not to commit a crime.
Also, many psychopaths have brains that are guided by moral principles, and that part of their brain is also telling them not to commit a crime. They may not feel empathy, but they know the difference between right and wrong. They simply can't truthfully say that their brain made them do it.
My Brain Made Me Do It: Psychopaths and Free Will
Why judges hand down shorter sentences to convicted psychopaths when their behavior is blamed on the brain
By MAIA SZALAVITZ
August 17, 2012
TIME
Should murderous psychopaths be punished less severely if their behavior can be blamed on brain differences or genes? Or, conversely, should their sentence be longer precisely because their biology makes them even more intractable and dangerous than other criminals?
A new study published in Science explored these questions by asking judges to impose a prison term on a hypothetical convict. When the judges were initially told that the offender was a psychopath, they tended to consider it an aggravating factor in sentencing, but when they heard additional expert testimony that biological factors could explain the guilty man’s behavior, they saw that information as mitigating and handed down a shorter sentence.
The impact of such expert testimony depended in part on whether the biological arguments came from the defense or the prosecution — it influenced judges’ reasoning more when it was delivered by the defense. But, overall, judges still levied lengthy sentences for the crime and viewed the convict as morally and legally responsible for his behavior: they reduced prison time only by a year, from 13.93 years on average to 12.83, when considering brain or genetic explanations for the convict’s behavior.
“The judges did not let the defendant off,” said lead author Lisa Aspinwall of the University of Utah in a statement. “They just reduced the sentence and showed major changes in the quality of their reasoning.” The researchers noted that they were surprised the judges reduced their sentencing at all, considering that they were dealing with psychopaths who are in general a highly unsympathetic bunch.
(MORE: Which Kids Join Gangs? A Genetic Explanation)
The hypothetical case used in the new study was loosely based on the 1994 trial of Mobley v. State. In 1991, Stephen Mobley robbed a
Stephen A. Mobley, 39, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for fatally shooting 24-year-old John Collins in Oakwood, Ga, during a robbery of a Domino's on Feb. 17, 1991.
Domino’s pizza shop in Georgia, during the course of which he shot the restaurant’s manager to death; at trial, his attorney attempted to present evidence showing that Mobley had a variant of a gene linked to violent behavior: the MAO-A or so-called warrior gene.
Because the scientific data on MAO-A was so new at the time, however, the judge rejected its use in court and Mobley was executed in 2005. But since then, research has supported the link between the gene and violence, and studies have found that men who have the gene and are abused as children are significantly more likely to display antisocial behavior.
In the new study, researchers tweaked the hypothetical case to eliminate the murder; instead, the defendant was convicted of aggravated battery for savagely beating a fast-food restaurant manager with a gun during a robbery attempt and causing permanent brain damage. By taking murder off the table — and therefore the death penalty or a life sentence — the researchers compelled the judges to consider the future dangerousness of a criminal who could eventually be set free. Researchers presented one of four versions of the hypothetical case to 181 judges in 19 states. In all versions, judges read scientific evidence that the convicted criminal was a psychopath and what that meant, namely that psychopathy is incurable. Half of the judges also received expert testimony on the genetic and neurobiological causes of the criminal behavior, presented either by the defense as a mitigating factor, or by the prosecution, which argued that it should increase the convict’s sentence. The other judges got no mention of the idea that biological differences in the convict’s brain could have caused his behavior. Researchers controlled for the fact that different states have different sentencing laws.
The judges who were given a biological explanation for the convict’s psychopathy issued shorter sentences, but notably, all judges committed the criminal to significantly more prison time than their average nine years for aggravated battery. And while all judges viewed psychopathy as an aggravating factor in sentencing, the judges who heard evidence about the genetic and neurobiological causes of the condition from the defense reported viewing it as less aggravating. Nearly 9 in 10 judges listed at least one aggravating factor in their reasoning for their sentence, but when they heard the expert testimony from the defense, the percentage of judges who also listed mitigating factors rose from 30% to 66%. And judges who received this evidence were 2.5 times more likely than other judges to report actually having weighed aggravating versus mitigating factors in deciding their sentence.
(MORE: Understanding Psychopathic and Sadistic Minds)
The expert testimony offered in the study described how the MAO-A gene affects the amydgala, a part of the brain involved in emotion and learning. The amygdala is the seat of the so-called violence-inhibition mechanism, which is what triggers anxiety in normal people when they recognize that others are in pain or distress. People with low MAO-A activity, like the convicted psychopath, don’t experience normal brain development, however; that may explain why psychopaths are incapable of responding to the fear and pain of others with normal distress. Ultimately, the testimony argued, because of their genetic and brain-related differences, psychopaths don’t undergo functional moral development and fail to learn right from wrong.
Interestingly, however, even though the judges handed out reduced sentences when presented with this expert testimony, they did not report viewing the convict as having less free will or as being any less responsible, legally or morally, for his crime. “What this tells me is that the effect of neuroscience evidence may operate at a non-conscious level. People think it does not affect their judgment of responsibility, but in fact it does,” says Barry Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore, who has researched this issue, but was not involved in the study.
It is this basic question of responsibility that many psychologists find crucial — and that so many people misunderstand. “There is a lot of interest these days in the implications of neuroscience for justice and the legal system. Some of this interest focuses on the radical notion that neuroscience undermines the very idea of personal responsibility,” says Martha Farah, director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, who was also not associated with the new study. “The idea is that, since everything I do results from my brain, and my brain is the product of my genes and my life experiences, then how can you hold me responsible for anything? Isn’t it always true that ‘my brain made me do it?’”
Indeed, earlier studies have shown that when participants are presented with neuroscientific evidence in cases involving people who have caused harm or behaved violently, they see it as far more mitigating than psychological factors like child abuse — even though research now shows that brain differences themselves can actually be caused by such abuse and that child abuse is more strongly linked with violence than most neurobiological factors.
Schwartz and a colleague described their findings on such research in a recent New York Times op-ed:
The pattern of results was striking. A brain characteristic that was even weakly associated with violence led people to exonerate the protagonist more than a psychological factor that was strongly associated with violent acts. … In contrast, while psychologically damaging experiences like childhood abuse often elicited sympathy for the protagonist and sometimes even prompted considerable mitigation of blame, the participants still saw the protagonist’s behavior as intentional. The protagonist himself was twisted by his history of trauma; it wasn’t just his brain.
The problem here, however, is that all of our psychology and behavior has a biological cause, even if we don’t understand exactly how it works. As Schwartz put it, “’Was the cause psychological or biological?’ is the wrong question when assigning responsibility for an action. All psychological states are also biological ones.”
Schwartz called the new study “terrific,” noting in particular that hearing evidence of biological causes of behavior had a larger impact on how mitigating the judges considered the convict’s psychopathy than on the actual sentences they handed down. Among the mitigating factors that judges cited after hearing the neurobiological evidence was the idea that mental illness made the perpetrator less responsible for his behavior.
As one judge in the study explained: “The evidence that psychopaths do not have the necessary neural connections to feel empathy is significant. It makes possible an argument that psychopaths are, in a sense, morally disabled, just as other people are physically disabled.”
(MORE: Study: 1 in 25 Business Leaders May Be Psychopaths)
Consequently, as Schwartz says, “If you sentence to punish, it will reduce sentencing. But if you sentence to protect society, it may well increase sentencing, by implying that the perpetrator is incorrigible.”
“This is not the grand, metaphysical, ‘We are all helpless to override the inevitable workings of our brains’ idea that neuroscience is incompatible with moral or legal responsibility,” says Farah....
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/17/my-brain-made-me-do-it-psychopaths-and-free-will/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true#ixzz23r4KWxtZ
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Sexual abuse lies keep man in prison; courts refuse to hold new trial
Charles Farrar passed a polygraph and turned down a plea bargain, convinced he'd be acquitted at his 2002 trial. His earliest parole date is 77 years away.
Sacha Bruce, now 26, recanted her testimony shortly after Farrar's trial — and was attacked by prosecutors.
Sexual abuse lies keep man in prison; courts refuse to hold new trial
By Alan Prendergast
Denver Westword News
Jul 20 2011
They took away the children eleven years ago. They took away the family photos just the other day — 212 glossy images of kids now grown, of smiling grandchildren he's never seen or held.
Charles Farrar kept the pictures in his cell in the Sterling Correctional Facility, a collection that expanded with every letter, every precious word from his far-flung tribe. He's never made a secret of them. But men convicted of terrible crimes aren't allowed to have certain kinds of photos in their possession. So when a recent shakedown turned up a snapshot of his youngest grandson having his diaper changed, the kid just lying there exposed — well, that was the end of the pictures.
That's what happens when you're condemned to a mountain of time. Piece by piece, inch by inch, they take it all away. Your freedom. Your memories. Your ties to anything human.
But Farrar isn't a man who gives up easily. He's filed a lawsuit over the seizure of his "contraband" family album. The dispute has already cost him his clean disciplinary record, his job in the prison upholstery operation, and his place in an honor pod reserved for the best-behaved inmates in Sterling.
Farrar doesn't care. The pictures mean that much to him.
"Hope has been snatched from me so many times," he says. "They put me in here for life. Family is basically what has kept me going. The biggest reason I don't do away with myself is my kids. I want to make sure they're doing okay."
Family may be what keeps Farrar going, but it's also what put him behind bars. In 2002 an Arapahoe County jury found the former bakery worker guilty of multiple counts of sexual assault on a child after hearing the horrific story told by his oldest stepdaughter, Sacha. She testified that Farrar, often assisted by her own mother, had subjected her to more than a hundred instances of molestation, rape and sexual abuse from the age of eleven until she was fifteen. Judge John P. Leopold sentenced Farrar to 145 years to life — the kind of time usually reserved for serial killers, terrorists or Bernie Madoff.
Like many convicted sex offenders, Farrar has always maintained his innocence. Unlike most of them, he doesn't bother to hide the nature of his conviction, even though child molesters can expect brutal treatment from other prisoners. But what truly sets his case apart is the degree to which family members continue to support him, insisting that he couldn't possibly have done such a thing. And his staunchest defender for the past eight years has been the one person, other than Farrar and his co-defendant, who knows what really happened: his alleged victim.
Shortly after Farrar's trial, prosecutors dropped similar charges against Sacha's mother, Debbie, because Sacha refused to testify against her. A few months later, after Sacha turned eighteen, she went back to court and told a very different story.
She said that she'd lied, that she'd fabricated the allegations against Debbie and Charles so she could live with her grandparents in Oklahoma. That she'd made fools out of the cops, the social workers, the prosecutors, who not only swallowed her preposterous tale, but coached her on how to tell it better on the stand. And when she tried to call the whole thing off, two caseworkers and a prosecutor pressured her into sticking to her story and ignored her assertions that it wasn't true.
"I ultimately testified against my stepfather at his trial because I was scared by threats of being placed in a mental institution," she wrote in an affidavit submitted in court. "I have had trouble sleeping since I made these allegations. When I do sleep, I have nightmares about ruining innocent lives."
Sacha's explosive claims triggered a series of hearings before Judge Leopold. Prosecutors and social workers took the stand to deny any misconduct; relatives testified that they'd expressed doubts about Sacha's story to officials but had been told to keep quiet. If it had been a different sort of crime at issue, in any county other than Arapahoe — which has a formidable reputation for aggressively pursuing child sexual-assault cases — the new evidence might have made Farrar a free man. Instead, the case has become a long, tortuous gauntlet of legal wrangles and appeals, and Farrar remains in his cell.
In America's holy war on sex offenders, it's a matter of gospel to believe the children — no matter how improbable the claims, how inadequate the investigation, how suspect the credibility of the alleged victim. The children must be believed. Unless, of course, they change their story to something nobody wants to hear.
"This is a terrifying case," says attorney Mark Walta, who's worked on Farrar's appeals since 2003. "The prosecution's entire case was staked to this woman's credibility. But when you're dealing with someone who is more or less a pathological liar, you don't know where the truth starts and ends."
"It's crazy," says Craig Truman, the veteran criminal defense attorney who represented Farrar at trial. "I just find it amazing that some judge somewhere didn't say that without this girl, there's no evidence and he deserves a new trial."...
Sacha Bruce, now 26, recanted her testimony shortly after Farrar's trial — and was attacked by prosecutors.
Sexual abuse lies keep man in prison; courts refuse to hold new trial
By Alan Prendergast
Denver Westword News
Jul 20 2011
They took away the children eleven years ago. They took away the family photos just the other day — 212 glossy images of kids now grown, of smiling grandchildren he's never seen or held.
Charles Farrar kept the pictures in his cell in the Sterling Correctional Facility, a collection that expanded with every letter, every precious word from his far-flung tribe. He's never made a secret of them. But men convicted of terrible crimes aren't allowed to have certain kinds of photos in their possession. So when a recent shakedown turned up a snapshot of his youngest grandson having his diaper changed, the kid just lying there exposed — well, that was the end of the pictures.
That's what happens when you're condemned to a mountain of time. Piece by piece, inch by inch, they take it all away. Your freedom. Your memories. Your ties to anything human.
But Farrar isn't a man who gives up easily. He's filed a lawsuit over the seizure of his "contraband" family album. The dispute has already cost him his clean disciplinary record, his job in the prison upholstery operation, and his place in an honor pod reserved for the best-behaved inmates in Sterling.
Farrar doesn't care. The pictures mean that much to him.
"Hope has been snatched from me so many times," he says. "They put me in here for life. Family is basically what has kept me going. The biggest reason I don't do away with myself is my kids. I want to make sure they're doing okay."
Family may be what keeps Farrar going, but it's also what put him behind bars. In 2002 an Arapahoe County jury found the former bakery worker guilty of multiple counts of sexual assault on a child after hearing the horrific story told by his oldest stepdaughter, Sacha. She testified that Farrar, often assisted by her own mother, had subjected her to more than a hundred instances of molestation, rape and sexual abuse from the age of eleven until she was fifteen. Judge John P. Leopold sentenced Farrar to 145 years to life — the kind of time usually reserved for serial killers, terrorists or Bernie Madoff.
Like many convicted sex offenders, Farrar has always maintained his innocence. Unlike most of them, he doesn't bother to hide the nature of his conviction, even though child molesters can expect brutal treatment from other prisoners. But what truly sets his case apart is the degree to which family members continue to support him, insisting that he couldn't possibly have done such a thing. And his staunchest defender for the past eight years has been the one person, other than Farrar and his co-defendant, who knows what really happened: his alleged victim.
Shortly after Farrar's trial, prosecutors dropped similar charges against Sacha's mother, Debbie, because Sacha refused to testify against her. A few months later, after Sacha turned eighteen, she went back to court and told a very different story.
She said that she'd lied, that she'd fabricated the allegations against Debbie and Charles so she could live with her grandparents in Oklahoma. That she'd made fools out of the cops, the social workers, the prosecutors, who not only swallowed her preposterous tale, but coached her on how to tell it better on the stand. And when she tried to call the whole thing off, two caseworkers and a prosecutor pressured her into sticking to her story and ignored her assertions that it wasn't true.
"I ultimately testified against my stepfather at his trial because I was scared by threats of being placed in a mental institution," she wrote in an affidavit submitted in court. "I have had trouble sleeping since I made these allegations. When I do sleep, I have nightmares about ruining innocent lives."
Sacha's explosive claims triggered a series of hearings before Judge Leopold. Prosecutors and social workers took the stand to deny any misconduct; relatives testified that they'd expressed doubts about Sacha's story to officials but had been told to keep quiet. If it had been a different sort of crime at issue, in any county other than Arapahoe — which has a formidable reputation for aggressively pursuing child sexual-assault cases — the new evidence might have made Farrar a free man. Instead, the case has become a long, tortuous gauntlet of legal wrangles and appeals, and Farrar remains in his cell.
In America's holy war on sex offenders, it's a matter of gospel to believe the children — no matter how improbable the claims, how inadequate the investigation, how suspect the credibility of the alleged victim. The children must be believed. Unless, of course, they change their story to something nobody wants to hear.
"This is a terrifying case," says attorney Mark Walta, who's worked on Farrar's appeals since 2003. "The prosecution's entire case was staked to this woman's credibility. But when you're dealing with someone who is more or less a pathological liar, you don't know where the truth starts and ends."
"It's crazy," says Craig Truman, the veteran criminal defense attorney who represented Farrar at trial. "I just find it amazing that some judge somewhere didn't say that without this girl, there's no evidence and he deserves a new trial."...
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