The Kansas City Star’s exhaustive investigative piece on a horrifying rape case in Maryville, Mo. sparked outrage across the country and relit a fire on what had appeared to be a closed case, with an unsettling outcome. The outline of the Maryville rape case, as Slate’s Emily Bazelon points out, “is grimly familiar from Steubenville, Ohio, and the Rehtaeh Parsons case near Halifax, Nova Scotia.” (Here’s more from Bazelon on the Maryville case.)
On Tuesday evening, apparently in response to growing criticism, and concern, about how the case was conducted, Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder released a statement calling on the state’s attorney general and the county prosecuting attorney to revisit the Maryville case.
Here’s the text of the statement, via the Missouri Torch:
Since Sunday I have read with growing dismay the media accounts of the Daisy Coleman case in Nodaway County. I make no claim to knowledge of all the facts. Still, facts revealed in exhaustive media reports, including the 4,000-word piece in the Kansas City Star, raise all kinds of questions that it is now clear won’t be put to rest. These questions will fester and taint the reputation of our state for delivering impartial justice to all.
Kinder goes on to say that he’s disappointed that Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster “would wash his hands of the matter through a brief statement by a spokesman” and that the facts of the case “cry out that responsible authorities must take another look.” Kinder calls on Missouri authorities to convene a grand jury to “make the final call on whether criminal charges should or should not be filed.”
