The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
The case of James Perry has all the signs of a tremendous miscarriage of justice.
- The defendant, Perry, evokes suspicion: A single, 31-year-old male kindergarten teacher in Oakland County, Michigan.
- The accusation: The "heinous" crime of forcing two boys, 4 and 5 years old, to perform oral sex on him.
- Suggestions that Perry's attorney did a poor job of representing his client.
- Statements from the boys that were initially conflicting on several points (including the rather key point as to whether the boys were alone or together when the alleged assaults took place) that later coalesced in to a more coherent story after repeated questioning of the boys, over the course of weeks, by their mothers.
- After Perry's conviction, information came to light that other teachers, who were never interviewed by the police before the trial, were in the room where the assaults allegedly occurred, at the time the assaults allegedly occurred.
While the information presented above is interesting, and points to a real travesty of justice, it is outside the scope of CP Explosion. No, what really concerns CP Explosion are the photos and videos that the police seized from Perry's home after his arrest. The prosecutors wanted to show these images to the jury as evidence that Perry was a pedophile, but their request was denied by a judge who deemed the images irrelevant to the case. What was shown in the photos and videos seized from Perry's home? Certainly not child porn. The photos were mostly of Perry's half brothers and of Perry's students at school and on school field trips. Perry was apparently the unofficial photographer for school events and field trips. The videos, and this is where it gets real juicy, were of such children's staples as The Lion King, Harry Potter, and Little House on the Prairie. The prosecution has stated that the last, Little House on the Prairie, constitutes "non-pornographic erotica" for pedophiles. Better check your collection of old video tapes lest ye too be accused of being a pedophile...
An Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor, Andrea Dean, reportedly described these images as "very disturbing". I wonder what she would think of the images she would find in my home... I wonder what she would think of the images she would find in your home...
In the Perry case, the prosecution wanted to present innocent photos and videos as evidence of the accused being a pedophile. In cases where a person is charged with possessing child porn, the jury typically doesn't get to see the images in question. Only the police, prosecutor, and judge are free to leer at those "terrible" images. The jurors instead must rely on evaluations of the images by the investigators. When we have prosecutors labeling Little House on the Prairie as "non-pornographic erotica" and declaring that innocent images are "very disturbing", it makes me wonder how many baby-in-bathtub photos have been described to juries as child porn...
My source for information about the Perry case was the Detroit Free Press.
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