STORY: "No word yet on Jeffrey MacDonald's 2012 quest for freedom," by reporter Anne Blythe, published by the News Observer on March 14, 2014.
PHOTO CAPTION: "Attorneys on both sides are awaiting a judge’s ruling following a 2012
hearing on MacDonald’s latest request to seek his freedom."
GIST: "Eighteen months have
passed since James C. Fox, a senior judge for the U.S. Eastern District
of North Carolina, told defense attorneys and prosecutors at his bench
that he needed to “get it settled” in his own mind “what we’re doing and
where we’re going.” The comments came at the close of Jeffrey
MacDonald’s latest quest for freedom, a seven-day hearing in Wilmington
in September 2012 that was one of many stops on a tortuous legal
journey. Since then, prosecutors, defense attorneys and others drawn to the case have waited and waited and waited.......... MacDonald,
70, has maintained for more than four decades that he did not slaughter
his wife and two daughters in their Fort Bragg apartment in 1970. The
former Army captain and Princeton-educated doctor has spent half his
life fighting the 1979 conviction that resulted in him becoming federal
inmate No. 0131-177. Over the years since the bloody killing, the
legal file on MacDonald has grown thicker with the focus shifting from
the crime itself on the North Carolina Army base to the procedural side
of the investigation and trial. The hearing in front of Fox was to
consider what the defense contended were new claims about DNA evidence
and statements made by a former marshal and family members of a
drug-addled woman spotted by law enforcement officers near the murder
scene.........MacDonald’s
case, the subject of several best-selling books, countless articles and
one hit TV mini-series, has created strong camps of opinion over the
years. Some contend MacDonald is an exploitative psychopath who
deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison, as the sentence handed
to him specifies. Others argue just as vehemently that MacDonald
is a victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. He claimed to have been
asleep on the living room couch in February 1970 when he awoke to a
strange trio of intruders who not only clubbed him and stabbed him with
what looked like an ice pick, but chanted “acid is groovy, kill the
pigs” after repeatedly stabbing his wife and daughters inside their
home."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/14/3702703/no-word-yet-on-jeffrey-macdonalds.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
Sent from my iPad
