With a few strokes of a pen, Judge Christine Del Prado dismissed the case against 74-year-old Melvin Quinney — giving him his good name back.
“Mr. Quinney I have signed the dismissal,” said Del Prado “And I thank you sir for your attendance. You are now discharged from this court.”
Applause broke out from onlookers in the same court that 32 years ago had convicted Quinney of indecency with a child and sentenced him to 20 years.
This was the final courtroom step in Quinneys exoneration — a painful journey that saw him spend eight years in Texas prisons, forced him to register as a sex offender and saw his four children pushed into the foster care system.
Now that same court and his family say that abuse never took place.
It was all based on a lie — stemming from a “moral satanic panic” that swept the country, said Innocence Project of Texas director Mike Ware.
Shades of the infamous McMartin preschool hysteria in southern California forty years ago when many, many kids were improperly interviewed in highly suggestive ways, which influenced the kids into making statements that were untrue. It took many years but the defendants in the McMartin case were found innocent. Unfortunately, a little research I did indicates that their lawsuit against the agency that performed the interviews was not successful. One of the defendants spent five years in jail while the case was investigated and he was finally put on trial. He was acquitted of most of the charges and, after two hung juries, the rest of the charges were dismissed when the state declined to retry him. I wonder if the psychologist who interviewed the child in this Texas case lost his license. He certainly deserved to do so given such overt malpractice.
I can relate. Getting a fair trial in such scenarios is nearly impossible. Wrongfulconvictionsblog.org is another group educating people about this serious problem. Is this guy going to take other civil action( tort) on this issue?
Who thinks only a jury of the evangelical ignorant variety would convict someone of Satanism falsely?
It is so hard to get an attorney to take a look at your case even if you’re willing to pay. So many of us was forced into a plea bargain because we were too poor to hire a good defense attorney. Now that you can these lawyers don’t even respond. It’s so demoralizing.
Florida is pushing for the death penalty, yet we have innocent people like this. Imagine what would have happened to this guy.