STORY: "Couple Exonerated 25 Years After Being Convicted of Lurid Crimes That Never Happened," by Jordan Smith, published by The Intercept on June 20, 2017. (Jordan Smith is a state and national award-winning
investigative journalist based in Austin, Texas. She has covered
criminal justice for nearly 20 years and during that time has developed a
reputation as a resourceful and dogged reporter with a talent for
analyzing complex social and legal issues, and is regarded as one of the
best investigative reporters in Texas. Her work has also appeared in The Nation, The Crime Report, and Salon, among other places.)
GIST: Twenty-five years after they were convicted of a crime that never happened, Fran and Dan
Keller were formally exonerated on June 20 in Austin, Texas. The couple’s prosecution in 1992 was part of a wave of cases across
the country amid an episode of mass hysteria known as the Satanic Panic.
Beginning in the 1980s, accusations flew that the childcare industry
had been infiltrated by bands of Satanists hell-bent on brainwashing and
sexually abusing young children. The Kellers’ exoneration closes a
decades long chapter of profound injustice for a couple that paid an exceptionally high price for the credulousness of local law enforcement.........The exoneration is the first for the nascent conviction integrity
unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office under the new DA,
Margaret Moore. Court documents filed Tuesday announced that there is
“no credible evidence” against the Kellers. Moore said she personally reviewed the case and believes exoneration “to be a just outcome.” Fran and Dan Keller were each sentenced to 48 years in prison for the
alleged sexual assault of a 3-year-old girl who was an occasional
drop-in at their home daycare center on the rural outskirts of Austin.
The child initially accused Dan of spanking her “like daddy” used to,
but under intense and repeated questioning by her mother and a
therapist, the story morphed to include claims of rape and orgies
involving children. From there, the number of children alleging abuse
increased and the accusations grew even more lurid and confounding: The
Kellers had sacrificed babies; they held ceremonies in a local
graveyard; they put blood in the children’s Kool-Aid; Fran cut off the
arm of a gorilla in a local park; they flew the children to Mexico to be
sexually assaulted by military officials. When I began reinvestigating the case in 2008 for the Austin
Chronicle, I was stunned to learn that police and prosecutors who had
worked the case back in the early ’90s still believed some of the most
outrageous allegations leveled against the Kellers. The Austin Police
Department refused to release its investigative report on the case,
forcing the Chronicle to take the agency to court. We ultimately won the
right to full, unredacted access. After reading the report,
it was not hard to understand why the department had fought to keep it
secret. It was an ALL-CAPS, run-on-sentence fever dream full of
breathless accusations and absent any actual investigation that could
prove or disprove the claims. On multiple occasions, the lead
investigator took the girl who accused the Kellers to lunch at
McDonald’s before setting out for drives in the neighborhood where she
would point out locations: Yes, she had been abused there; yes, she
recognized the cemetery where the Kellers had killed and buried babies;
yes, many of the residents of the quiet neighborhood were in on the
hi-jinx. Not once did investigators question the child’s statements. My reinvestigation
of the Keller case turned up evidence that would ultimately lead to
their release from prison. The only vaguely physical evidence that tied
the couple to any wrongdoing was the testimony of a young emergency room
doctor named Michael Mouw, who had examined the girl and concluded
there was damage to her vaginal area that could be the result of sexual
abuse. As it turned out, the doctor was wrong. Mouw told me that not
long after the Kellers were convicted, he attended a medical conference
where he learned that what he had interpreted as signs of abuse were
nothing more than a normal variant of female genitalia. Mouw’s medical opinion had fundamentally changed, offering the Kellers an avenue to challenge their conviction. During a hearing
in the summer of 2013, he unequivocally stated that there was no doubt
that the child’s genitalia was normal and that he’d gotten it wrong when
he examined her in 1991. He said that he tried to reach out to the
Austin Police Department after he realized his error but was rebuffed by
the detective, who was “convinced they were guilty.” After the 2013 hearing, DA Rosemary Lehmberg — who had been head of
the office’s child abuse unit at the time of the Kellers’ prosecution —
ultimately agreed that the couple had not received a fair trial, and
they were released shortly before Christmas that year. While there was
no doubt the couple would not be retried, over the intervening years,
Lehmberg declined to take the final step and exonerate them, claiming
to my former editor that she could not “find a pathway to innocence”
for the Kellers. She was essentially trying to prove a negative —
seeking evidence that would prove a crime never happened. Without a formal exoneration, the Kellers struggled to rebuild their
lives. They were still saddled with a conviction for sexual assault of a
child, which made it nearly impossible to find work or a place to live.
Without an income, they had to scrape by with the help of family and
food stamps, and they have not been able to get the kind of medical
attention they need for health issues prompted in part by abuses they
suffered in prison. The court filing Tuesday should pave the way for the Kellers to
collect roughly $1.7 million each in state compensation for the 21 years
they spent behind bars. Still, the outcome should not be considered a victory for the
criminal justice system. With a few notable exceptions, the law
enforcement officials in Austin — police and prosecutors, as well as the
state’s Court of Criminal Appeals
— failed the residents of the city and more importantly the Kellers by
accepting the shocking allegations on their face and abdicating their
duty to seek the truth of the matter. If it weren’t for the dogged support of people like Mouw and attorney
Keith Hampton — who has spent more than six years toiling on the case
for free in an effort to bring about this exoneration — the Kellers
would still be in prison, and that is where they would have died. Contrary to what many people might think, you don’t have a right not
to be convicted of a crime you did not commit. For the most part, the
Constitution is silent on this point. Instead, the focus is on whether a
person received a fair trial. Did you have at least minimally competent
lawyers? Were you afforded the ability to cross-examine witnesses
against you? If so, then your conviction — even for a crime that never
happened — should stand. Once a person is convicted, the system works
only to reinforce that outcome. That remains the reality for untold
thousands who sit innocent behind bars today."
The entire story can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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/c
