Did Santa Clara County prosecutors withhold evidence in sex-abuse cases?

[Waylon]

Did Santa Clara County prosecutors withhold videotape evidence in sex-abuse cases?

By Tracey Kaplan
Mercury News - Article Launched: 12/20/2008 09:03:45 PM PST

Amid the discovery of videotapes from thousands of medical examinations of children in sex-abuse cases that had been withheld for years, the nurse who conducted those examinations has testified under oath that local prosecutors have long known she was taping the procedures.

Her former boss, the doctor who oversaw the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center unit, agrees the videotaping was no secret. He said he made the decision to keep the tapes from defense attorneys, at least in part, because they could have hampered prosecutions by "muddying" the evidence.

The bombshell disclosures dramatically raise the stakes in the videotape controversy. The testimony of Mary Ritter, physician's assistant at the hospital, contradicts claims by District Attorney Dolores Carr that the office was unaware of the taping.

It adds fuel to questions about whether the prosecutor's office has fulfilled its legal obligation to make sure defense attorneys are provided any potentially helpful evidence. And it puts the district attorney in the peculiar position of challenging the credibility of Ritter, who is a star witness for the prosecution in many child sex-abuse cases.

The Mercury News reported this month that Ritter has tapes of as many as 3,000 examinations that were never turned over to defense lawyers, a disclosure that could jeopardize an untold number of past sexual-assault convictions. The paper has since learned of Ritter's testimony, which came as she was questioned about the videotapes in an October deposition in connection with a federal lawsuit alleging that the county wrongfully removed children from a home based on an erroneous claim of sexual assault.

Full Story: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11280969?nclick_check=1