I just e-mailed the Bakersfield Visitors Bureau. I told them I would not even drive through their county. They have re-elected seven times a prosecutor who sent completely innocent people to prison for years and years, 12, 15, 20. I believe 42 was the number, all exonerated… but 2 died in prison.
Donny Youngblood is sheriff and he was part of the “witch hunt”. That is the title of a 2 hour program on MSNBC which details this horrible tragedy. If all the social workers, sheriffs, prosecutors, and judges involved in this had been deprived of their licenses and jobs, perhaps sent to prison themselves, I could see how the county might have cleansed itself. But the people of Bakersfield and surrounding Kern County have continued to reward these men for what they did.
To me, this is the same as letting the torturers in Brazil and Argentina walk free. No, it’s worse b/c in some cases the torturers’ reputations followed them and they couldn’t get work and some even had bouts of conscience. These people have no morals and no conscience and what does that say about the people of Kern County, that they continue to elect them to offices of the utmost public trust?