Dear Governor Romney:

I am writing to ask that you immediately grant Gerald Amirault a full 
pardon for his wrongful conviction for crimes that never occurred. 
Anything less will only compound the grotesque injustice that an 
innocent family has already endured for over seventeen years and mean
that Massachusetts learned nothing from the Salem witch trials.

As you are aware:

* The entire investigation stemmed from an original incident in which
he changed the diapers of a child who had wet himself at the day care
center. He was helping one of the teachers. The police never 
interviewed him before filing charges.
* There is no credible evidence that any children were ever abused at
the Fells Acre Day Care center.
* His conviction was based solely on the coerced statements of a small
number of the children there who had been subjected to repeated 
interrogations using leading questions, techniques that an appeals
court judge has since ruled "forever tainted" their testimony and that
would cause the evidence to be excluded were the case retried today.
* For some of the accusing children, there is documentary proof that 
the children repeatedly, unambiguously denied that they'd ever been 
abused in any way, only changing their testimony after repeated 
leading questioning.
* The claims of those children who made accusations included wild, 
fantastic, contradictory, and clearly untruthful claims such as having
been tied to trees and sexually abused by robots and lobsters, and 
that one child was stabbed with a 12 inch butcher knife. (This could 
not be done without leaving a wound or scar, which wasn't present.)
* The accusing children also accused most of the other teachers at the
center of witnessing and/or participating in abuse, yet the other 
teachers were never charged.
* The claims of the accusing children were contradicted by the 
testimony of ALL of the adults at the day care center and the 
statements of other children as well.
* His original legal counsel has acknowledged that he seriously erred
in the original trial by failing to challenge the unconstitutional 
manner in which the accusing children were deposed at trial.
* Dorothy Rabinowitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the Wall 
Street Journal, has written that "three entirely innocent lives have 
been shattered."
* One of the jurors who originally convicted Amirault has now said 
that he erred and that Amirault is innocent.
* Your state parole board recommended 5 to 0 in favor of commutation 
of his sentence, noting that there is "real and substantial doubt" 
about his guilt.

For more information, see the web page 
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_fells.htm online. It is true that
the children at Fells Acre were victims. Not of the Amiraults, but of
well-meaning but poorly-trained investigators and social workers who 
unwittingly led vulnerable, suggestible children to develop false 
memories of imaginary abuse, and of prosecutors who continued to 
pursue a case they should have abandoned for lack of evidence.

A pardon by the governor is the last chance at justice for a wrongly
convicted person. It is your moral and statutory duty to intervene 
for justice where the legal system has failed. Act now. There is no 
excuse for delay.