The NYT, LAT, and WP have not yet published obits for Richard Matheson. However, the A/V Club has a very nice tribute.
I feel kind of blocked when it comes to paying tribute to Mr. Matheson. The one thing I can say is: whenever I was trying to think of “who wrote this story?” – the box with the button, the family fleeing their home planet, the girl who falls into the fourth dimension – at least seven times out of every ten, the story I was trying to think of was written by Richard Matheson. It is impossible to overstate the depth of his influence on the genre.
In other news, I’m sure some of my readers remember the 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans about the child abuse convictions of Arnold and Jesse Friedman. Since the documentary was released, there’s been a lot of back and forth about the guilt or innocence of the Friedmans, leading up to an investigation by the Nassau County district attorney.
…it concluded, “By any impartial analysis, the reinvestigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman, his advocates and the Second Circuit, has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea and adjudication as a sex offender.”
More, and I apologize for the length of this quote:
The report centered on four points raised in the film and by the appeals court: that the case may have been tainted by repeated police interviews that pushed children toward confessions; that children may have been hypnotized to recover memories not based on fact; that the case was distorted by a “moral panic” that created false accusations and a predisposition toward conviction; and that Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea may have been unlawfully coerced by the police, prosecutors and a hostile judge.
The review rejected them all. It said that though some interviews late in the case may have been flawed, the rapid pace and early flow of accusations from children in the classes indicated that the allegations arose from spontaneous accounts, not from investigators pushing children toward accusations. It said the first child interviewed reported improper behavior, 12 children leveled accusations of illegal sexual behavior at Arnold Friedman in the investigation’s first two weeks and, five weeks into the investigation, 13 boys described criminal behavior by Jesse Friedman.
It said, that despite one student’s account in “Capturing the Friedmans” of making allegations after being hypnotized, any use of group therapy or hypnosis came after all the indictments were filed. It disputed the one account of hypnosis in the film.
Additionally, the report points out that Jessie Friedman had “competent legal representation, weighed his options intelligently and pleaded guilty after determining it was ‘the optimal strategy’ in light of the available choices.”
Mr. Friedman’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, and the film’s director, Andrew Jarecki, reacted with disappointment and anger, saying the report was a biased whitewash by the office that originally botched the case.
About that: the investigation was overseen by a “four-member independent advisory panel” that included Barry Scheck of Innocence Project fame.
The report was prefaced by a four-page statement by the panel. It said its job was about process more than findings. It did not reinvestigate the case itself, and it was not given access to key documents like grand jury records and interview reports.
Still, it commended the investigation, and said that if the evidence had pointed toward exoneration, “we have no doubt the Review Team was prepared to recommend without reservation that Friedman’s conviction be overturned.”
The statement, signed by all four members, said it was not the role of the panel to make an ultimate judgment about Jesse Friedman’s guilt, but added: “We do have an obligation to express a view as to whether we believe the conclusions expressed in the Review Team’s report are reasonable and supported by the evidence it cites. We think they are.”