DETROIT: PROTECTING THE PROSECUTION COMES BEFORE JUSTICE

There's good news and bad news for James Perry, the Oak Park kindergarten teacher facing life in prison for two sexual assaults he insists never happened. Perry, 32, was convicted Sept. 20 after two kindergartners testified that he accosted them in an empty classroom at Key Elementary School. But Oakland County Circuit Judge Denise Langford Morris postponed his sentencing earlier this month after Perry's attorneys argued that testimony by newly discovered witnesses proves the crime described by his accusers could not have taken place. Langford Morris says she wants more time to review the transcript of Perry's trial and affidavits provided by two school employees whose testimony Perry's jury never heard.

The good news for Perry is that police and prosecutors have begun interviewing witnesses overlooked in their original investigation. The bad news is that the guy leading the expanded investigation is the same Oak Park detective whose sloppy police work raised so many questions about the original verdict, and that Oakland County Prosecutor Dave Gorcyca seems more interested in protecting his office's reputation than in scrutinizing new evidence with an open mind.

The gist of Perry's claim is that the classroom in which police and prosecutors maintain he molested his victims during the middle of a busy school day was occupied all day by students and adults, none of whom recall seeing Perry or the boys. Perry's attorneys argue that eyewitness testimony refuting the prosecution's version of events, combined with the striking absence of evidence to substantiate the children's ever-evolving accusations, is sufficient to warrant a new trial.

But what is most unsettling is the state's response. Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor Andrea Dean doesn't dispute the new eyewitness accounts, and she seems unconcerned that they cannot be reconciled with the scenario she described to jurors. Instead, Dean makes the astonishing argument that the state has no obligation to prove that the assaults took place in the time and place asserted during Perry's trial, but has only to establish that he assaulted the kindergartners sometime or other, somewhere in Oakland County.

It's not clear prosecutors can still meet even that heavily discounted burden of proof. But surely time and place are more than technical details with which Perry's accusers need not be concerned. Ultimately, Gorcyca's obligation is not to defend Perry's conviction at any cost, but to assure that justice prevails. If new evidence raises serious doubts about Perry's culpability, as many people familiar with his case believe, Gorcyca should rejoice in its discovery, and his office should take the lead in surfacing anything else that points to a miscarriage of justice. Anything less is a betrayal not just of James Perry, but also of the public Gorcyca serves and the principles every officer of the court is sworn to uphold

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)