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{Editor's note on Richard Cornell, Esq.: Rick Cornell has been our daughter's lawyer, and has consistently fought for her freedom. Before we met both Glynn Cartledge and Rick Cornell, we'd lost faith in lawyers, and they restored that faith by being everything lawyers should be. To give you an idea of why we respect Rick Cornell, below is an excerpt from an email he sent me about this case}
"Never has there been a day when I would ever say that I am ashamed to be a lawyer. On the other hand, there have been days when I feel ashamed to be a Nevada lawyer. Today is such a day.
"I represent a guy, Richard Pruitt, who has been in prison now for about 7 years, on charges of molesting his daughter. Specifically, he was accused by her on 3 occasions of "attempting to give him a blow job."
"I am 100% convinced that Richard is innocent. I am 100% convinced that the daughter, Christina, made this story up in order to get freedom from him, as he was her sole parental custodian, and he was putting the clamps on her relationship with the boy she wanted to date at the time of the accusation."
Richard Pruitt -- framed for Child Molestation?
By Rick Cornell, lawyer for Richard Pruitt
Edited by Clara A. Thomas BoggsThe Richard Pruitt story begins in 1990. Richard and Cindy had two children, Christina and Kevin. They went through a very bitter and litigious divorce, and child custody was awarded to Cindy. Then in April of 1990, Christina accused Cindy's boss of molesting her on a boat in South Lake Tahoe. The accusation was false, but it put the boss through difficulties. An enraged Cindy banished Christina, born in 1978, from the house and Richard ended up with custody of her. Soon, contested custody proceedings began with respect to Kevin. Christina bounced back and forth between Richard and Cindy, but by 1992, Richard had custody of both children.
Richard worked for the water company in Carson City, and was the youth minister in the Baptist Church in Dayton, NV, population (at that time) of 5,000 (today, 10,000). Richard grew up in a family of 5 sisters, and had learned to be very playful around women/girls. In the summer of 1992, three teenaged girls visited Richard and his new wife, Kathy. True to form, Richard engaged in some horseplay with the young girls, but one of them (Tamara) interpreted what Richard did as molestation. She filed a police report. The Lyon County Sheriff's Office investigated the matter. The Lyon County DA decided that there was no case, and declined to prosecute.
By September of 1993, things were not going well between Richard and Christina. Christina began to date a boy named Chuck, and demonstrated teenage rebelliousness to her father. Richard laid down the law: handholding and kissing only, and strict curfews. Christina pushed the edge of the envelope, exhibiting her frustrations. Finally, one day in October of 1993, Richard caught Christina and Chuck in bed in his house (doing more than hand-holding!), and terminated the relationship.
Two days later, Christina filed a police report with the Lyon County Sheriff's Office, contending that Richard had forced her to administer oral sex to him on 3 occasions, twice in September of 1990 and once in July of 1993.
Richard was arrested and the case went to trial in October of 1995. Not only did Christina testify, but Tamara also testified. The trial lawyer proved 8 different ways and reasons that Christina's stories could not have been true. The first way was that in September of 1990, Christina was wearing a full set of orthodontia. There was no evidence in the record that Richard is a sexual masochist!
The jury convicted Richard, and per Nevada law, Richard was given a mandatory life imprisonment sentence.
The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in an unpublished opinion. Based upon their own precedent, they should have reversed based on the admission of Tamara's testimony. They ignored that precedent.
I was hired to investigate and write a petition for habeas corpus, which I did. In investigating this thing, I discovered a set of witnesses, all of whom never testified at Richard's trial, with a lot of very pertinent things to say:
1) Roberta, a coworker of Christina's (Christina had an after-school job as a waitress in a Mexican restaurant) heard the rumor from her daughter that Christina, in the autumn of 1993 (before charges were filed) was claiming that she was sexually molested. She confronted Christina, who denied ever saying such a thing and denied that any such thing had ever happened. She was simply frustrated with her father.
2) Joyce, the owner of the Mexican restaurant in question, overheard Christina say, in the late summer/early autumn of 1993, that she was going to get her father for interfering with her relationship with her boyfriend.
3) Carie, Roberta's daughter, saw Christina administer oral sex to a boy at a campground in 1991, in a manner exactly as she had described at trial that her father had engaged in. I.e., this is how she gained sexual knowledge prior to filing the charges and this was how she could describe it so graphically from the witness stand. Carie also heard Christina say in the autumn of 1993 that she would do what it took to get her Dad for interfering with her relationship with Chuck.
4) Megan, another church friend of the Pruitt family, heard Christina say in 1992, when Richard was being investigated on the Tamara case, that her father simply was not the kind who would ever molest a child under any circumstance. (Remember, Counts I and II allegedly happened in 1990).
5) Danaye, one of the three girls at the Pruitt house in 1992, had never been interviewed by anyone until I spoke with her. What happened with Tamara in 1992 was horseplay, purely and simply, and no sexual touching of any kind went on with anyone--and she was there the whole time.
6) James, Christina's stepbrother and Kathy's son, didn't care for Richard, but showed me the layout of their house, and showed why, physically, Christina's stories as to Counts I and III simply could not have happened the way she said they happened.
7) Christina was in a bedroom with three girlfriends, shortly after she made the charges. Janelle, one of the three, heard Christina say, in a defiant, bragging tone, that she made up the stories, that her Dad didn't do it, but she was going to teach him a lesson because he had made her life a "living hell."
Before the hearing, I took Christina's deposition. Nobody was present but her, the prosecutor, the court reporter, and me. When I showed her the affidavits of Roberta, Janelle, Megan, Carie and Danaye, she didn't deny making the statements in question, but claimed "she couldn't remember."
At the hearing, Christina's new husband and grandmother (who had been her guardian and custodian since the accusation, until she graduated from high school) sat right in front of her. Under oath, she denied making any such statements to Roberta, Janelle, Megan, Carie or Danaye.
However, I showed Christina a letter she wrote to Richard in February 1996, four months after the trial and three months after the sentencing. She said, "Dear Dad: I love you and I miss you. I'm crying all over this letter. Please, don't lay any guilt trips on me." I asked her what she meant by "Please don't lay any guilt trips on me." She said, "I don't know."
By my count, the trial lawyer proved eight different ways why and how the case could not have happened. By the time we were done with the hearing, I added fourteen more--and that's before we get to the admissions to Roberta, Megan and Janelle.
I had the hardest time psychologically getting motivated to set this case for hearing, though, because I knew the proclivities of the presiding judge, Archie Blake, all too well. Archie is the toughest, hangingest judge in the State of Nevada. He has not only never granted a habeas petition in his fourteen years on the bench, one lawyer told me that he had bragged about that fact. As if that was something of which to be proud. Nevertheless, he was sufficiently bothered enough by the case that he ordered briefs.
In the DA's brief, the prosecutor argued that the "newly discovered evidence" was submitted too late, without citing any authority supporting his position. He also argued that everything I presented was merely cumulative. To put it in other words, here was the argument of the Great State of Nevada: "The trial lawyer proved that Richard was innocent. Therefore, he was not ineffective. Because he proved that Richard was innocent, everything you've presented wouldn't have changed this stupid jury's mind. Because the jury was stupid, Richard must spend the rest of his life in prison. That, ladies and germs, is justice with a capital J."
I naturally pointed out in reply the case law nationwide (including Nevada) that, in so many words, says, "that may be the law in the old USSR or the Old Nazi Germany, but it ain't the law in this here country, my friend."
On Wednesday, 7/24, Archie issued a 2 page opinion, agreeing with the DA. Writ denied. Justice denied.
The trial lawyer's investigator was so bothered by this that, when he heard of all that happened during the writ hearing, he went to the DA of Lyon County and pleaded for some kind of justice for Richard. According to this investigator, here was the DA's response: "If this writ is granted, I will not retry Richard. But Archie won't grant this writ. You want to know why? Because the prosecutor who tried this case is now his colleague on the bench, and that guy thinks Richard is guilty. Besides, by the time the Nevada Supreme Court reverses him, Richard will probably be paroled. So, Archie doesn't care."
© Justice Denied
