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Friday, February 27, 1998
Report finally changes tone of stories
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER There is no shortage of official or self-appointed watchdogs who can respond whenever police or the courts don't work the way the Constitution and judicial standards demand. They are a saving grace of America's justice system. In the legal debacle that marked Wenatchee's sex cases, most of the watchdogs were sleeping, silent or looking the other way. Newspapers, network television and radio talk shows had a field day reporting the horrors purportedly inflicted upon the children of the orchard-filled valley. They relished stories of men in black suits and sunglasses defiling boys and girls on a church altar, of the heroics of small-town Detective Bob Perez for busting the nation's largest child sex ring, and of homely, obese welfare parents raising their children in roach-infested squalor. Kathryn Lyon, a Tacoma public defender turned writer, released her 3-pound "Wenatchee Report" in 1995 -- and suddenly the tone of the few stories still being reported began to change. Some of the media began to highlight allegations that many defendants received inadequate defenses, that the detective had reportedly coerced mentally retarded suspects and bewildered children, and that judges and prosecutors apparently forgot their responsibilities. The shift in news coverage, however, did not win new trials or new scrutiny of the evidence. Such action could come only from the police, the courts and legal professionals -- groups such as the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, state Attorney General's Office, bar associations and the American Civil Liberties Union.
"Justice is and was the victim of the entire horrible affair, because it was raped and molested by bias, conflicts of interest and prejudice at every local level," says Auburn attorney Robert Van Siclen, who has defended several of the accused in Wenatchee. But all of the watchdogs stood mute. In Wenatchee, Earl Marcellus took office as a Chelan County commissioner at the height of the trials. As a newly elected official, the 53-year-old father of five was immediately swamped with calls of concern. "The allegations that the police, prosecutor and CPS caseworkers had rigged a kangaroo court seemed absurd, the half-baked ramblings of people with too much time on their hands," says Marcellus, who carries a copy of the Bill of Rights in his shirt pocket. But as weeks passed, the new commissioner learned more from the police and prosecutors and watched what actually was happening in court. Marcellus, a third-generation logging company executive, started to believe that something had gone wrong. "I've never seen our justice system work like this," Marcellus says. "I can't say all are innocent, but I believe they all had their rights violated. I don't believe many of them received full due process before being deprived of their freedom." He waited for someone to demand an investigation into what was occurring in his county courthouse. "People had called the bar associations, the AG's office, the ACLU, other groups that claim to care about political injustice, but nothing happened," Marcellus says. "We weren't saying that these people had to be freed from prison, but just that some impartial group should come in and see if the process was as corrupt and unfair as it appeared." Lyon delivered her "Wenatchee Report," which presented chapter and verse on the alleged improprieties, to the Justice Department, the state attorney general, the bar and criminal defense and public defenders associations and the ACLU. Again, no one stepped forward. Van Siclen has spent most of the past two years defending people in Wenatchee. "This was just the sort of issue that the ACLU and the Justice Department should have jumped into with both feet," he says. "We have multiple cases of severely retarded people being tricked or terrified into confessing to avoid losing their children, of green public defenders not being allowed to hire the investigators or expert witnesses, of misconduct by prosecutors and blatant violations of the appearance of fairness doctrine among some judges. "And neither the ACLU nor the Justice Department is anywhere to be found." Ignoring advisers who told him he was committing political suicide, Marcellus told concerned citizens that if they got 300 signatures on a petition requesting an outside investigation, he would take it to the governor. He got more than 2,000. On Oct. 3, 1995, then-Gov. Mike Lowry asked U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to examine the allegations of judicial wrongdoing in Wenatchee. With much fanfare, Reno said the Justice Department would investigate.
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