Modahl Case News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana
Stay updated with breaking news from Modahl case. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
Top News In Modahl Case Today - Breaking & Trending Today
at one point, this was a 12-man cell. there was people sleeping under the beds, on the tables, under the tables. all accused of the same thing? all child molesters. it was just like this great upheaval of child molesters. two cells full of them. and there in jail, while awaiting trial, stoll befriended an inmate whose case was almost identical to his. though jeff modahl had been accused of belonging to one of the other alleged child sex rings, modahl s 10-year-old daughter, carla, had testified her father, along with his friends and family, had molested her. but modahl, like grafton and stoll, said the stories were lies. you know it s a famous story that everybody is in jail, they all say they re innocent. sure. but we were. nobody believes sure. and i can understand that. that s okay. i mean, i finally realized that nobody believes this. perhaps because in court the children gave such graphic accounts of how they had been ....
Still, prosecutors insisted these people were guilty. and all the while two things remained unchanged. the d.a. who oversaw the prosecutions was still in office and john stoll was still in prison. jeff modahl, after his release in 1999, tried to throw a lifeline to his old friend. it s important to realize that john stoll had no record before this started. modahl s attorneys contacted this group of lawyers with the california and northern california innocence project. we began looking through the trial transcripts. each of the children were inconsistent with their own testimony. many admitted during the trial that they were lying at times. what really struck me is john was so open about his whole story, that it had the ring of truth about it. can you really tell? some people are awfully good at answering questions about that. we re not naive about innocence and guilt. if it s a case we decide to commit our limited resources to, it s got to be a good case. we each came t ....
Months passed, the wait seemed interminable. and then finally the decision. motion granted. a judge would rehear the case against stoll. no cameras were allowed during the testimony. but outside the courtroom, those little boys, now men, described circumstances in 1984 which they said were surreal. terrifying. so how did all this stuff get started? the sheriffs came to my house and told my parents that other kids had seen stuff happen to me. what kind of stuff? that sexual acts occurred between me and john stoll and i had seen stuff happen between john stoll and other children. that s a lie? yeah, they were asking telling me i had to lie. donald grafton was 7 at the time he says he was pressured to testify against stoll. i knew i was forced to lie but i still i gave in. ....
48-year sentence. and when carla at age 10 took her letter to court and begged to have her dad released, it didn t work. they didn t believe me. they only believed that story. what i said the first time. 14 years later in 1999, there was another strange twist in the modahl case. exonerating evidence surfaced. a medical examination given to carla shortly after her dad jeff was arrested said there is no evidence at the present time of sexual molestation. that information was never shared with the jury. modahl s conviction was overturned and he was released from prison. by the time he was set free, jeff modahl had spent 15 years in prison. when you got out of jail, what did you do? the most humiliating thing when i got out of prison, got out of jail, i had no place to go. i didn t have a home. i didn t have i had no place ....
sampley and the others say they were finally told what to say. not only by social worker morillo, but also by a prosecutor. they did coach us totally. they made us go over stories over and over. children, manipulated says sampley, by powerful authority figures. now as adults, they took the stand and proclaimed john stoll innocent. grown men reverted to little boys. they exhumed humiliating guilt riddled memories. they sat up on the stand and they looked down at john stoll in the courtroom and they begged for his forgiveness. to see him sitting up there, tears running down looking over at me telling me how sorry they were. i apologize, john. oh, man. but if the young men thought their new testimony would make everything better and get john stoll out of prison, they weren t so sure once the case was heard. for one thing, ed jagels, the ....