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Testy"]

08/12/2003

Bakersfield Blues, Again — The Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine features an excellent, if belated, look at the problem of the Bakersfield, California, witch hunt, a series of wrongful convictions overturned in recent years and examined in depth in Mean Justice. The Times' John Johnson looks at ongoing attempts to overturn one of the last cases standing, John Stoll’s, in a piece ironically titled Kids Don’t Lie — the naive and false mantra that fueled cases like the witch hunt nationwide in the eighties (McMartin Preschool being the prototype). Another of these witch hunt prosecutions by the Kern County District Attorney in Bakersfield recently led to a $4.25 million settlement.