Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 6, 1991                   TAG: 9103061118
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHY IS CAROLYN SNYDER IN JAIL?

It is the guilt, first, of the person or persons who abandoned the baby. This person presumably is the mother, and perhaps the father or a friend. Secondarily, depending on details not yet known, the story also may involve the guilt of a society that gives little care to its more unfortunate members.

For a while, Carolyn Ann Smallwood Snyder appeared to be the key to the puzzle. The 19-year-old woman - mentally retarded, homeless, and with a record of prostitution - fit the description of an apparently pregnant woman who had frequented Roanoke shelters during the fall. And after getting in touch with police last month from Louisville, Ky., she confessed to being Isaiah's mother.

As of late Tuesday, Smallwood was still in jail on a charge of felonious neglect.

Except that she almost certainly is not Isaiah's mother. Her confession, later recanted, almost certainly was false. Medical records from a Tennessee hospital show she is telling the truth about a 1988 operation that, by removing her Fallopian tubes, made it virtually impossible for her at age 16 ever to bear children.

The mystery is not why a troubled young woman would falsely confess to a well-publicized crime. The mystery is why she's still in jail.

Even before medical records confirmed her recantation, why was bond set at $25,000 (later raised to $50,000)? For someone in her circumstances, that's the functional equivalent of being held without bond. Yet she posed no immediate threat to society, nor was she likely to disappear. (It was she, after all, who had gotten in touch with local authorities from Louisville.)

And why, with the medical confirmation, is she still in jail? Perhaps Snyder soon will win her release at a bond hearing. But prosecutors say they want her held until results of DNA tests - probably not available until mid-April - prove beyond all doubt that she's not Baby Isaiah's mother.

That's screwy logic. In America, you convict people of crimes after proving beyond a reasonable doubt that they're guilty. You do not jail Americans - even Americans as mixed up as Carolyn Snyder - until they can prove beyond a doubt that they're innocent.

Roanoke police have worked long and hard on the case. In light of the confession, authorities had reasonable cause at the time to charge Snyder.

But even then, the size of the bond was questionable. Now, with evidence that Snyder could not be Baby Isaiah's mother, keeping her in jail on the neglect charge compounds the tragedy.