Word: forney
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...friendly and generous Newsome caused outrage in the tiny mountain town, brought the local Ku Klux Klan out of the shadows and put tremendous pressure on police. They finally arrested four local youths, relying on the statements to investigators of one of them. That man, Roderick Maurice Forney, initially denied involvement, but later, during a session with Charlotte Hypnotist Stann Reiziss, blurted out a barely coherent story in which he implicated at least eight people in the murder, even though physical evidence at the scene suggested the presence of only one. Two of the three other defendants, Brothers Lester...
...principal defense witness at the Flacks' trial was Dr. Martin Orne, one of the nation's foremost experts on hypnosis, who says that Forney's description of events was a classic case of "confabulation," in which a hypnotized subject fills in gaps in his memory with information sometimes suggested to him by police or the hypnotist. Orne, a University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist, says that Forney was particularly susceptible to suggestion, given his borderline IQ of 74 and a history of mental problems in his family. The psychiatrist, who has for years been conducting a relentless campaign against...
That suits the defense lawyers in the Nannie Newsome case just fine. Speaking of Forney's fantastic tales, Attorney James Ferguson says, "It's really quite amazing and shocking that someone's life or liberty can hinge on that sort of testimony...