2nd Buckey Trial Ends in Deadlock

Nobody wanted the McMartin case to happen. Many people have suffered and will go on suffering as a result of this case. If we are to learn from it, however, and not repeat the multitude of errors that caused this case to become a symbol of a system gone amiss, we must analyze what went wrong and how we would do it differently today.

Criminal cases should be investigated by police departments, not the district attorney’s office. They are a prosecuting agency not an investigating one. This does not mean they don’t work together, but investigating expertise belongs to the police who gave it up in this case.

An outside agency, Children’s Institute International, was brought in to do criminal interviewing without being trained on how to do it. As a result the interviews did not meet criminal justice standards and this is where all the fingers of blame have been pointed.

The filings were done blindly. To compound the problem, far too many charges were filed causing the weak ones to make the stronger ones look unbelievable.

Finally, we must look at the enthusiasm and expertise with which the case was prosecuted. From one deputy district attorney who took several days to question experts about turtle shells to another who didn’t even know what city the preschool was in, it becomes apparent there was a lack of a common-sense game plan to a lack of preparation in the case. With all of this, it’s no wonder we spent six years and millions of dollars and still have no resolution.

Many similar cases have been successfully prosecuted across the country by prosecutors who learned from the errors of the McMartin case. Typically, no one involved in this case will admit that there were any errors made. Common sense dictates otherwise. Hopefully, with what we have learned, however, we will never find ourselves in this situation again.

MIKE HERTICA

Torrance

Hertica is a lieutenant in the Torrance Police Department, a trainer for the Southern California Training Center on Child Abuse and on the board of directors for the California Professional Society on the Abuse of Children.