This is a sad situation where it shows that even recanting isn't enough soemtimes. This article tells the history of this family's troubled past and their sad future.
A man serving 40 years for raping
his eight-year-old daughter has lost his bid to be released from prison, even
though the alleged victim has insisted for the past 15 years that the crime
never happened, and that she only said it had because her drug-addicted mother
threatened to beat her.
In a letter to Daryl Kelly's
attorney, Orange County D.A. Francis Phillips said he stands by Kelly’s 1998
prosecution, because of the findings of a re-investigation conducted at his
request by the Committee on the Fair and Ethical Administration of Justice of
the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York (DAASNY).
“After a thorough investigation, the
CFEAJ has determined that Kelly was not wrongfully convicted,” wrote Phillips.
“That conclusion is, in my opinion amply supported by the evidence and the
reasoned analysis in the report.”
“I’m absolutely devastated,” said
alleged victim Chaneya Kelly, now 25, who first told her story to NBC News in
August. “My father didn’t rape me, and I don’t know why they just won’t believe
me.” She vowed to continue fighting on behalf of her father, and has written a letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
saying she was “completely insulted” by the re-investigation. “Every time I
told them that my father did not commit any of the malicious crimes he was
convicted of,” she wrote in the letter, “they treated me as if I was lying.”
The DAASNY reinvestigation included
extensive interviews with nearly everyone involved in the original prosecution.
The report, which Phillips received last month, says “every conceivable effort
has been undertaken to find the unvarnished truth regardless of how or whom it
impacts.”
Daryl Kelly’s attorney, Peter Cross,
disagrees. “Anyone who looks at the facts of this case will see that Daryl is
obviously innocent,” said Cross. “Based on information I’ve gathered since this
report was written, it is provably biased.” One of the individuals interviewed
by the state committee sent Phillips a letter saying the report contains
“misleading and inaccurate quotes,” and an expert he hired sent Phillips a
letter calling the committee’s rejection of Chaneya’s recantation
“unscientific.”
Representatives of the DAASNY did
not respond to requests for comment.
Courtesy of Chaneya Kelly
Chaneya Kelly, her son and her
father Daryl at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York, 2012.
It all began in October 1997 in
Newburgh, N.Y., where Daryl Kelly was living with his wife, Charade, and their
five children. Chaneya, their oldest child, was two months shy of her ninth
birthday.
At the time, Daryl -- a Navy veteran
-- says he was trying to kick a drug habit to take care of his kids. But
Charade was at rock bottom, even turning to prostitution to feed her addiction.
Chaneya remembers being downstairs
with her father one morning before school when she had to use the bathroom.
When she was done, she went upstairs, and that's when Chaneya says her mother
asked her a question that came out of the blue.
"She repeatedly asked me, has
my dad touched me," recalled Chaneya. "I was like, 'What do you mean,
did he touch me?' And she was like, 'Did he touch you in your no-no spot?' And
I would repeatedly say no."
Chaneya says the more she denied any
abuse, the more irate her mother became - and even threatened her with a belt.
According to Chaneya, her mother said, "If you don't tell me the answer
that I want to hear, I'm going to beat you." To avoid a beating, says
Chaneya, she told her mother that her father molested her even though it wasn't
true.
Chaneya repeated the charge of
molestation to police, and was examined by nurses and doctors. They issued a
report in which they determined there was "possible sexual abuse"
because of some redness -- but Chaneya's hymen was intact even though she
claimed her father had penetrated her.
But with both Chaneya and her mom
telling police the same story, Daryl Kelly was charged with multiple counts of
rape and sodomy.
Kelly refused a plea deal that would
have made him eligible for parole in six years, and within a year he faced a
jury, was found guilty and sentenced to 20 to 40 years.
Six months after her father's
conviction, however, Chaneya came forward to her grandmother, saying she was
never raped, and that the story had been born out of fear of her mother.
Chaneya’s grandmother took her to
Kelly’s appellate attorney, who videotaped her recantation. On the tape,
Chaneya looks uncomfortable, mumbling short, hesitant answers like,
"No," and "I think so." The prosecutor argued that
the recantation looked coerced, and the same judge who oversaw Kelly’s original
trial a year earlier agreed. He refused to vacate Kelly's conviction.
When NBC News spoke with Chaneya's
mother in August, she said she'd been drug-free for many years, and said that
she had threatened her daughter with a beating, blaming the incident on a drug
binge. "I was really deep in the grip of my addiction." When asked
why she would threaten her daughter if she didn't lie, Charade said, "I
have no idea, I really don't."
Over the years, Chaneya says she
never gave up on her father. When she was 15, she convinced the courts to allow
her to once again have contact with him -- and that’s when she went to visit
him in prison.
“The first thing my dad did was that he hugged
me and he told me that he loved me and … that he doesn’t blame me for
anything,” Chaneya recalled. “It was priceless to me.”
Since then, she’s been talking to
anyone who would listen about her father. Ultimately, the case was reopened at
Chaneya’s request, but it didn’t end the way she hoped.
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/16/21880908-daughter-said-she-lied-and-sent-dad-to-prison-for-rape-but-da-upholds-conviction?lite
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If you have questions about this article or are interested in Criminal Defense contact Rhode Island DUI and Criminal Defense Lawyer Joshua Macktaz at 401-861-1155.
For more information, please visit my website at:
www.sjoshuamacktaz.com
