Inmates Freed After Accuser Recants

Two men who have been serving life sentences since 1990 for sodomy convictions were released from prison this week after their young accuser recanted his testimony.

Jack Ray Broam, 38, and Jay Cee Manning, 37, both of Fallon, Nev., had maintained their innocence since Broam’s son leveled the charges eight years ago.

The boy, Neal Broam, was 9 at the time; he is 17 now. He told a judge this week that his mother locked him up and starved him until he testified against his father and his father’s co-worker.

“I prayed for years that my son would remember the truth and someday come and tell it, and that’s what he did,” Jack Broam said from a relative’s home in Oklahoma. He said he and his son remain “best friends.”

Manning said he had held out little hope he would ever be released from prison.

“I just gave up on the justice system and did eight years for something I didn’t do,” Manning said.

District Judge Michael Griffin of Carson City ordered a new trial for the two on Wednesday after hearing Neal Broam’s recantation in Churchill County District Court.

Dist. Atty. Kevin Pasqualie immediately dismissed the charges, and the two men were released.

“This case is one of the most difficult cases I’ve seen,” the judge said.

Neal Broam said he got up the courage to tell the truth after his younger sister told her caseworker that the tales of sexual assaults were lies.

Lawyers said they don’t know the whereabouts of the mother, Angela Broam.

“It was hard at first, but I felt good knowing I was doing the right thing,” Neal Broam said.

The youth said he feared coming forward earlier “because everybody I trusted told me I would go to jail if I were to take back what I said.”

Jack Broam was convicted in 1990 of four counts of sexual assault and Manning of one count. Broam was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences and Manning to one.

The boy testified at the original trial in 1990 that his father and co-worker sexually assaulted him up to 50 times in a single night. He told stories about how they wore pink lingerie and enlisted the help of two prostitutes in the sexual assaults.

The judge said this week that he found the stories to be false, especially claims the boy made about satanic rituals in an underground cavern near the Mustang Ranch, a legal brothel.

The two men served their sentences the past eight years in state prisons in Ely, Lovelock and Carson City.

Jack Broam said he felt a “spiritual high” when he walked out of the courthouse a free man.

“I just felt like I was floating. I was 10 feet tall and bulletproof,” he said. He credited his lawyers for never giving up on his case.

“I’m not the only innocent man who was ever put in prison, and there’s a lot more who need to get out,” he said.

Rick Cornell, one of his lawyers, said “it shows the system of justice does work.”

“Anybody who’s been in this business has war stories about how the system broke down, but this is a case where the system broke down and repaired itself. This case was just a tragedy.”