r/news • u/TealOcelot • 7h ago
New Mexico judge tosses charges against actor Timothy Busfield, citing prosecutor misconduct
https://apnews.com/article/timothy-busfield-sexual-contact-charges-c7f72755f5b779c7f18db44c13bf6fb6173
u/rainbowgeoff 6h ago
Big thing i noted in the article.
The state does not disagree that in the children's first interview with police, they did not allege any harmful or improper touching. They only did so after the second interview, after they had spoken to their parents once more.
If the state struggled at the grand jury stage, this is a nothing case. A couple of parents got mad their children weren't kept on a show, coached them into this story, looking to get money and sympathy.
Makes normal adults not want to be around any children other than their own. Somebody can make shit up and your life is ruined before anyone has heard the first bit of corroboration.
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u/59eurobug 6h ago
I was literally talking to my SO about this. If allegations are true, I feel bad for the children and I hope their life from this moment forward is better. If it's not true, nobody is going to want to work with any children(maybe those who fancy them might) just to avoid all the BS
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u/rainbowgeoff 6h ago
Agreed. If it is fake, I hope he takes action against the parents. Those are the most serious allegations you can make.
I would love to hear some discovery as well. What were things like in the lead up? Was everyone getting along? Probably not considering the kids got fired. How long was he around them before then? He waits till they're about to be let go to molest them? That seems odd. Further, do the kids tell similar stories?
Lastly, the reason the judge through it out was because the prosecutor deliberately chose to lie to the grand jury about the availability of witnesses the grand jury wish to testify. She lied. She told the grand jury those people would have to be subpoenaed, i.e. weren't available that day. They were in the fucking hall! She chose to lie to the grand jury and not let them hear from witnesses she knew were unfavorable to the state.
If all that is true, the prosecutor should be suspended at a minimum, disbarrel being preferable.
Reminds me of a LA prosecutor, who I believe still works there. She bragged about a 100% conviction rate on every murder she asked for the death penalty on. She fought head long against a mountain of evidence that she had charged the wrong man. She still wouldnt admit she was wrong when the judge dismissed the case. She instead pursued his family for drug charges after searching the house. I think the brother was on parole. Falsely accused guy then took the blame for his family so they wouldnt go away for a long time. He also described being repeatedly placed in with nothing but white or black inmates when he is Hispanic. Major jails and prisons, race is everything. He was nearly killed several times. His last day in, they placed him in a cell with at least 10 other, black inmates. These inmates had just had two of their friends killed by the Latino gang in that jail. Any latino would do in revenge. Only a guard noticing the situation got him moved to a different cell. It was obvious he shouldn't have been in there. No doubt in my mind the state arranged those conditions on purpose. Too many coincidences.
But yeah, that lady still thinks she did nothing wrong and is still working there.
Another example would be DA Nifong from the Duke lacrosse case.
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u/Ru4pigsizedelephants 2h ago
That's fucking horrible. I think people often forget there are likely more sleazebags on the prosecution side of the law as there are on the defense side.
These people convince themselves that it's ok to do unethical things in the interest of getting a conviction because they're "protecting society".
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u/NotSoSureBigWaves 3h ago
And this IS what happened. It wasn’t a secret to anyone that the parents were enraged and threatening when their kids lost their roles.
This entire case was a travesty.
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u/Complete_Entry 6h ago
You can't showboat in a case like this. You run a clean investigation before you file any charges, because you don't want exactly what happened here.
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u/matunos 6h ago
> Bernalillo County District Attorney Greer Staley countered that the defense hadn’t followed the correct process for submitting evidence to a grand jury and that Busfield himself improperly and “excessively” tried to steer grand jurors toward favorable witnesses and exhibits during his three-hour testimony.
lol what? How dare the accused steer the grand jury toward favorable witnesses and exhibits?
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u/stuck_in_the_desert 5h ago
“Your Honor, I object!”
“Why?”
“Because it’s devastating to my case!”
(Yes I realize there are no judges present during grand jury proceedings)
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u/Flyinghud 6h ago
If I had a nickel for every time a judge in New Mexico dismissed charges against an actor for prosecutorial misconduct I would have 10¢, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice
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u/Unumbotte 4h ago
You'd actually owe a dollar. But that's just because of more prosecutorial misconduct.
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u/GeorgeStark1 7h ago
Corey Feldman will reveal more names as soon as he gets paid.
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u/ImTooSaxy 6h ago
Dude, he can't name names or he'll be blacklisted from Hollywood and won't ever star in a movie again! Also, they might kill him. I mean, it would probably be smarter of them to kill him before he named names, but so far that hasn't happened.
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u/BanjoTCat 5h ago
Wasn't he threatening to name names like 15 years ago?
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u/GeorgeStark1 4h ago
He crowd funded 10 million to make a movie where he revealed already known names.
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u/ImTooSaxy 2h ago
Actually he's been threatening to name names for about 25 years. At this point everyone who gets molested in Hollywood has Corey Feldman to thank for it. If he wasn't keeping this giant cabal of pedophile's identities secret, Hollywood might actually clean up its act.
When Barbara Walters admonished him, it was for the fact that he was painting all of Hollywood as a giant pedophile party brush, and she was pointing out that as much as he talks about it, he's never named anyone who hadn't already been arrested. She was basically telling him to shit or get off the pot already.
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u/Abba_Fiskbullar 1h ago
This seemed dodgy. I worked with the Busfield brothers a bit decades ago, and while I didn't really like Tim personally, this just didn't seem credible. His brother Buck is a real mensch.
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u/Adisney990 1h ago
Pedophiles don’t advertise their pedophilia. People only show you the version of themselves that they want you to see.
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u/vashthestampede121 7h ago edited 7h ago
So he definitely has a case to sue for damages right? They basically destroyed this man’s reputation for nothing
EDIT: Apparently this dude just got lucky I guess
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u/Tsquared10 7h ago edited 6h ago
A. His reputation was already screwed based on documented history of assault allegations, so not much there.
B. While these charges were dismissed the judge left the door open for them to bring charges back so long as proper procedure is followed.
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u/NotSoSureBigWaves 3h ago
He had no history of sexual assault allegations. Stop making shit up.
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u/Tsquared10 3h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Busfield#Legal_Issues
1994, 2012, and multiple this year
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u/WasteProfession8948 2h ago
Can only assume that this is either Busfield’s or Melissa Gilbert’s burner since that history is well known and documented.
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u/NefariousnessFew4354 7h ago
He will be charge again, prosecutors were idiots. Hopefully this time it will someone competent.
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u/monsieur_cacahuete 6h ago
The recasting was due to age of the character from season 3 to season.
Seems a bit odd that a man accused of grabbing adult women would also be grabbing male children? Like yeah he's gross but this story stinks. Someone can be a predator and also accused of stuff they did not do.
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u/ExultantSandwich 5h ago
He’s married to Melissa Gilbert, who got a lot of flack for staying completely silent about it. There hasn’t been a divorce announcement or a defense of him, it’s just been radio silence.
Which is probably the smartest move in this case. This case being dismissed won’t exonerate him in the court of public opinion, but it injects a significant amount of doubt. And it will be retried, but it’s tough to say how it will go.
The children were 7 when the alleged abuse occurred. That is old enough to differentiate if they were coached, I’m confident a prosecutor can figure it out
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u/TheSaltyAstronaut 5h ago
Gilbert has spoken out publicly in his defense:
From her April GMA interview on the topic:
"Our life as we knew it is done. We are grieving what we had. All of our plans, all of our dreams, all of our ideas, all of our projects," said Gilbert, who wed Busfield in 2013. "For Tim, it's done. He's canceled ... even if he's exonerated, he will always be that guy. The last person in the world who would hurt a child."
She continued, "And believe me, if I thought for a second that Tim Busfield hurt a child, he'd have a lot more to worry about than prison."
When asked by Stephanopoulos why she is speaking out now, Gilbert replied, "It's time."
"We've been hearing and reading too much -- untruth," she added. "And we felt that the time was right to speak out. Also, honestly, I wasn't capable until now. It's been a very traumatic time."
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u/ExultantSandwich 5h ago
It happens all the time. Lily in Modern Family was a set of twins for the first two seasons. They were getting a little old to just be a baby in the scene, noisier and able to move, but too young to take instruction.
So they replaced the twins with a girl who was about a year older, and they got someone who was already walking and talking.
It’s tough to have a kid in a scene who’s old enough to walk when they feel like it, but too young to walk unassisted. It requires the actors to stop and wrangle the kids, which is realistic and perfectly natural, but breaks the tight pacing needed for a 22min sitcom. The scenes are timed before they’re even filmed.
Mary Kate and Ashley Olson persisting through the entirety of Full House is really a rarity. Not every baby will be able to act at such a young age. Not every showrunner is willing to wait for a baby to age in real time.
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u/Alarmed-Bumblebee667 7h ago
Him being rich and famous has nothing to do with it.
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u/RevelArchitect 7h ago
Ironically, it does, but not in the way you’re thinking. This can give a prosecutor a lot of attention. This can make a prosecutor very eager to get a conviction. This can lead to a prosecutor engaging in misconduct.
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u/1HappyRoadrunner 7h ago
Same thing happened in the Alec Baldwin case, the prosecutor got loose with things because they saw their name in the headlines
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u/RevelArchitect 7h ago
OJ Simpson as well. There’s a number of examples where fame and fortune backfires for someone on trial but then it comes around full circle and it backfires on the prosecution when they try too hard to sensationalize everything.
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u/selfhostrr 6h ago
I hope Laura divorced his ass and went right back to the homestead.
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u/dmode112378 4h ago
Nope. She smugly stood by him.
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u/1HappyRoadrunner 7h ago
Honestly this doesn’t surprise me at all. Second time recently a prosecutor got too zealous trying to charge a Hollywood type to make a name for themselves.