Update: Nancy Smith spoke with the Morning Journal this weekend.
Few courtroom dramas in Northeast Ohio have rollercoastered as erratically as Lorain County’s infamous “Head Start case.” In the mid-’90s, Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen were tried, convicted, and sentenced for molesting a pack of four- and five-year-olds in Lorain. The salacious case drew attention far and wide, not least because the prosecution’s argument sagged under accusations of misrepresentation and inaccuracy. Many observers were quick to charge the pair had been railroaded.
Through some surprise legal left turns that could have come straight out of an hour-long TV drama, the pair was released from prison in 2009, a happy ray of sunshine capping a long legal nightmare.
The story zig-zagged again Thursday when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Smith and Allen must head back to prison.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2011.
Hasn’t history shown that nearly all this kind of accusations are trumped up and end up hinging on prosecuritorial misconduct?
When is someone going to examine the prosecuter and get this corrected?
Is there an ounce of physical eveidence that this even happened.?
Just watched this case, it seems that these kids have had this garbage drummed into them and words put in there mouths, it’s there actually a scrap of evidence to support these aligations, it would seem not, by 46 mins into the programme nobody had asked the nursery if the kids were actually there or not and she supposedly kept them away to take them to be abused, did angel add fire to the situation because she didn’t like nancy, we’re these children terrified of the situation they were put in by having to participate in a line up, they were babies and to that to them was disgraceful.. We all know full well that things can intentionally be put into anyone’s mind by how you talk to them and questions you ask and how you ask them, this had been going on for years and years by police all over the world not just in this case, it is obvious to anyone who reads enough into this case that there is no justification in these convictions, yet again propergander and promotion wins, This case should have been dropped 8 days before the promotion but never was so how can it get from being dropped to 30+ years for nancy and 5 life sentences for Joseph, all on the word of the bag head/ dealer that began all this.. It’s an outrage and they should 100% be acquitted, all that was gained from this was a few millionaires and a lifetime of misery for 2 people who are innocent, I hope every time that coke dealer spends her Ill gotten gains she remembers the suffering she caused for nancy and Joseph… She will answer to the lord one day and I’m a true believer in karma.. What goes round always comes back round to bite you in the arse