John Edison Rape Case Update

I will be interviewing the family of 16-year-old John Edison, Jr., tomorrow afternoon to discuss more of the details behind the rape accusations levied by a 12-year-old girl against Edison in early July. In anticipation of that meeting, however, I wanted to point out some very disturbing news about the top county prosecutor overseeing this case.

St. Mary's County (Md.) State's Attorney Richard Fritz (along with two other men) pled guilty in 1964 to having carnal knowledge of a 15-year-old girl (Carla Henning Bailey) when he was 18. The story came to light in 1998 on the eve of election day as Fritz was campaigning for state's attorney of St. Mary's County when St. Mary's Today publisher Ken Rossignol ran the headline, "Fritz Guilty of Rape," on the front cover of his newspaper.

In retaliation, Rick Fritz teamed up with then-St. Mary's County Sheriff Richard J. Voorhaar in the wee hours of the morning on election day to dispatch sheriff's deputies across the county to buy up all the newspapers condemning Fritz. They, along with six deputies, have since been found liable for civil damages to Rossignol for violating his first amendment rights under Maryland law (case law here).

Fritz won the 1998 election with 54 percent of the vote, but the resulting brouhaha over Fritz's high school conviction compelled Bailey to break her silence after 35 years and tell her side of the story about what she calls a "gang rape" when she was 15.

In 2000, Chris Wallace interviewed Fritz, Rossignol, and Bailey for a 20/20 story, during which Fritz, perhaps out of some sense of guilt or attempt to clear his tainted name, made this damning statement:

"I know that, as a prosecutor myself, if a 15-year-old girl came in and told me that she was held down, raped by three different people, I’d immediately have them arrested and charged with first-degree rape."

That was eight years ago, but Fritz's outlook apparently hasn't changed much because today a 16-year-old boy is at this very moment confined to a government cage, awaiting trial for allegedly violently raping a 12-year-old girl despite a wholesale lack of any physical evidence whatsoever that the girl was a victim of a sexual assault.

Let me repeat that: JOHN EDISON, JR., IS RIGHT NOW SPENDING DAY AND NIGHT IN AN ADULT JAIL ON CHARGES OF RAPE DESPITE ANY PHYSICAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE GIRL'S CLAIM.

St. Mary's County's top prosecutor apparently believes, in his own warped sense of justice, that a mere accusation of rape constitutes enough probable cause to see a teenage boy banished to a jail cell, locked away from friends and family for months on end, as he awaits trial.

In essence, Rick Fritz doesn't care whether you're really innocent or guilty; if some girl decides to accuse you of rape, why, he's "immediately having you arrested and charged with first-degree rape." Case closed.

I'm not going to sit here and condemn 18-year-olds for having consensual sex with 15-year-olds. And while Carla Bailey insists that Fritz and his buddies gang-raped her, they nevertheless pleaded guilty to statutory rape. However, how Fritz and his government cronies reacted to the story in 1998 -- by dispatching their lackeys to conceal the truth from the citizenry -- should speak volumes about Fritz's character and judgment.

This is the man who currently retains authority to bring criminal charges against alleged offenders within his jurisdiction, and a child's future is now in imminent danger because Rick Fritz apparently reserves the right to use his office to issue edicts of guilt based on accusation alone.

If State's Attorney Fritz and John Edison were to swap places right now, the term "justice system" would carry a helluva lot more weight here in St. Mary's County, Md., than it does right now.