Astuteness? This word is not a good word.

“Astuteness” is a very clumsy word, isn’t it? It should be something different, something that delights you when you say it, like “perspicacity”. Ah, perspicacity, now there’s a word that knows how to say what it’s trying to say.
Wgtn journo-blog Poneke has delivered some news that the mainstream media, er, printed shortly afterwards – the evidence against Peter Ellis is very dubious indeed.
Ellis is the man at the centre of one of NZ’s most discussed criminal cases. He was convicted in 1993 of sexual abuse of children, and served six years, maintaining his innocence the whole time. As well he should have done – the whole affair was a textbook example of the type of Satanic Panic that turned up occasionally throughout the 80s and early 90s, where suggestive children are led into describing wild tales of ritual abuse. The prosecution excised all the wild bits of the stories and just left in the more conventional evidence, and Ellis went down for the crime. Many who were involved in the prosecution fiercely maintain his guilt, but public opinion was always iffy and came down firmly on the side of his innocence with the publication of Lynley Hood’s incredible account of the case, A City Possessed.
The source of this news is the Innocence Project, which grew out of the Psyc department at Victoria University, principally driven by Prof Maryanne Garry, who is passionate about how misconceptions about psychology can damage the course of justice. Her principal interest is memory, and particularly the fallibility of eyewitness testimony and the suggestibility of witnesses. Maryanne taught me for several years, and I unashamedly admit that she has convinced me about these matters. Ellis should have his name cleared. It is an appalling state of affairs that the merits of his case are still being argued.
The Innocence Project (led by Dr Matthew Gerrie) means to draw attention to cases where wrongful conviction is a distinct possibility. The Scott Watson case, another prominent conviction about which New Zealand has become uneasy, has also received attention.
I applaud the Innocence Project, and look forward to the day when our collective wisdom about ourselves has grown to the point that it will no longer be necessary.
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Also on the wires: in Colombia, the government has mounted a big campaign to stop people from involving themselves with the drug trade. The premise of the campaign: what would your mother say? As Bob Harris notes at the link, I can’t quite see that working over here…