HEADLINES:
R/€ 
R/£ Tough-on-crime prosecutor's laws now criticised
November 16, 2009 Edition 2
BAKERSFIELD, California: The molesters drank blood, the children said, and hung them from hooks after forcing them to have sex with their parents. They murdered babies, prosecutors told jurors, and snapped photographs as the horror unfolded.
Ed Jagels, renowned as one of California's toughest district attorneys, built his career on the Kern County child molestation cases of the 1980s, putting more than two dozen men and women behind bars to serve decades-long sentences for abusing children.
Appellate judges now say most of those crimes never happened. Still, generations of voters have embraced the crusading prosecutor's tough-on-crime agenda in this blue-collar basin north of Los Angeles.
Now, as Jagels prepares to retire, the get-tough laws he championed are being criticised in a state crippled by soaring prison costs. And some of those he put away are going public with stories of wrongful conviction in a documentary film narrated by Sean Penn, one of his most ardent critics.
But the silver-haired prosecutor maintains that justice was done in the cases, even though many relied only on children's testimony. - Sapa-AP
© 1999 - 2010 Star & Independent Online (Pty) Ltd. All rights reserved.