Guilty until proven innocent
by David Atkins
The safe rescue of the young women involved in the horrific kidnapping case in Cleveland has brought a mixture of relief and horror to an entire nation. But it also put a small spotlight on this miscarriage of justice:
A registered sex offender who was jailed in 2006 after a tipster wrongfully accused him of murdering kidnap victim Gina DeJesus wants an apology from the city of Cleveland.
“I’m happy they’re home and safe,” Matthew Hurayt said of DeJesus, and fellow kidnap victims Michele Knight and Amanda Berry, who were rescued by a neighbor Monday after years of captivity.
But Hurayt, whose home was searched in 2006 with TV cameras and a crowd of spectators watching, said there are still injustices connected to the case that need righting. “I want justice for the men that really did it, (the tipster) locked up and the city of Cleveland to make a public apology,” he said.
Hurayt, whose criminal record includes a conviction for sexual battery of two children, told NBC News that on Sept. 21, 2006, he and roommate John McDonough were arrested after a tipster said that he had raped and killed DeJesus and buried her under his new garage.
“The police jumped on that and plastered me all over the news,” said Hurayt.
Hurayt and McDonough were held for several days in the Cleveland City Jail on suspicion of the aggravated murder of DeJesus, who vanished in 2004. As a crowd gathered, police and FBI agents searched the house for 10 hours. They dug under his garage with a backhoe and chopped the cement floor into sections, and dug under the structure. They also dug under a dog house.
Authorities said that cadaver dogs had “indicated” at several places on the property, and they removed a number of items from the house for further investigation. But they found nothing tying Hurayt to the disappearance of DeJesus or that of Amanda Berry, who got into a strange car in 2003 and never came home.
“We’re disappointed that the search wasn’t as fruitful as we hoped,” police Lt. Thomas Stacho told the Cleveland Plain Dealer at the time. “But we would have been remiss if we didn’t investigate this lead.” An FBI agent told the DeJesus family, which had already been notified of a possible break in the case, that nothing had been found, the paper said.
After Hurayt spent a weekend in jail, a judge ordered him released on Sept. 25, 2006, rejecting an assistant county prosecutor’s request to increase his bond on an unrelated assault case. Hurayt’s lawyer, Mark Marein, compared the search for remains on his client’s property to the search for Jimmy Hoffa.
Hurayt filed a claim for compensation for $20,000 in damages to Hurayt’s property with the city’s Moral Claims Commission, but it was rejected, said Marein.
Whatever one feels about the crimes of which this man was convicted, we live in a nation of laws and at least the pretense of rehabilitation. Conservative voters just last night seemed more than capable of forgiveness for transgressions by sending Mark Sanford back to Congress.
Hurayt had paid his debt to society, but found himself an outcast in the community anyway due to the sex offender registry. A tipster lied to the police, who with great fanfare, media and a crowd of onlookers proceeded to dig up and destroy parts of the man’s property while jailing him for days. When it became clear he didn’t commit the crime of which he was accused, he was denied restitution for the damage to his property and made a bigger target than before, while the lying tipster apparently suffered no repercussions.
One of the keys to ending recidivism is reintegration in the community. Legal and social discrimination of this kind and laws like Jessica’s Law that prevent offenders from living anywhere but under bridges encourage recidivism. They actively harm society and put children at risk while shifting the focus away from the home, where most sexual abuse of children actually occurs.
The law needs to decide if certain kinds of sex offenders are capable of rehabilitation and reintegration. If not, they (like the actual perpetrators of this horrific kidnapping) shouldn’t be released. But if so, they deserve a chance to pay their debt to society and become productive citizens like everyone else. Branding them with a scarlet letter of subhumanity and treating them as second-class citizens beneath the protections of the law serves neither justice nor the public interest.
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