WILLIAMSTOWN- Last week's news that the Massachusetts Appeals Court had upheld a Superior Court judge's ruling that Bernard F. Baran is entitled to a new trial on charges that he sexually molested five young children at a day care center in Pittsfield in 1984 inspired a review of a tall stack of documents related to the case.

This work, undertaken largely to re-affirm a long-held opinion that Baran was railroaded into state prison by a lethal combination of homophobic prejudice, bad lawyering, bad science and weak judicial oversight was light duty compared with the task that now faces Berkshire County District Attorney David F. Capeless.

Capeless must decide whether to appeal the decision to the Supreme Judicial Court, re-try Baran or drop the case, in which event Baran would go free. He was released from prison in 2006 after serving 21 years, but his every move is monitored electronically and the threat of re-incarceration hangs over him constantly. At best, he's half-free, haunted by uncertainty about whether he will ever regain full liberty.

To be sure, there are those who would wish this misery — and much more — on Baran, but even the most vociferous of his detractors, assuming that they possess even elementary knowledge of the facts of the case as they have been revealed in recent years, would be hard pressed to deny that there now is much more reason to question his guilt.

The pool of reasonable doubt has become far deeper and wider than it was in 1985. Baran has never stopped proclaiming his innocence, and it's likely that he would have been free long ago if he'd purchased his liberty with a (false) admission of guilt. It's worth noting that the prosecution has never disputed Baran's trial lawyer's public statement that his client was offered — and rejected outright — a deal in 1985: plead guilty and serve six years "local time" in the House of Correction. A reasonable person could be excused for wondering why a guilty man would turn that down.

Given that this layman's knowledge of the ins and outs of appellate practice is nonexistent, it's obvious that the district attorney is in the best position to decide whether or not to pursue an appeal. He is, indeed, the only person who can make that call, and if he decides to try to take the case "up" to the SJC, a fresh blizzard of paper will cover the ground and there's no telling when it will be cleared up.

Given the comprehensive findings of the Appeals Court, it now seems to be fairly well settled that the first trial was fatally flawed, but if the high court decides to have another look, so be it. All a citizen can ask is that matters be expedited to the fullest extent possible. After all, justice delayed is justice denied, even when it's the prosecution's appeal under consideration.

A new trial is another matter entirely, and if the district attorney decides to take that route, the order of events is somewhat more predictable. It begins with an indictment. If a grand jury delivers one, it's on to court, where it's certain that things will proceed in a manner far different from the way they did in 1985.

Witnesses will be cross-examined by lawyers supplied with extensive "discovery" material that wasn't available to Baran's original trial counsel. The investigation conducted by lawyers defending the day care center against a parent's civil suit for negligent supervision yielded extensive evidence suggesting that people other than Baran had sexually abused the children.

Also, the video tapes of interviews with the children will likely be shown in their entirety. In 1985, jurors saw only pre-selected sequences.

The unedited tapes display the use of a wide range of since-discredited interviewing techniques that produced answers that well-meaning adults wanted to hear. Besides, nowhere on the tapes is a child shown being asked an open-ended question, much less making a spontaneous, unsolicited or un-coached accusation against Baran.

At sea or in court, undercurrents lurk, and one of the most troublesome — and troubling — of these is the statement, supported only by indirect evidence, that in at least one case, it was suggested to a child that receipt of "a lot of money" — an insurance settlement — hinged on the identification of Baran as the culprit.

As they did in 1985, and as they always will, children aim to please adults, and the children in the Baran case could be said to have been victimized twice, once by being sexually abused and again by the cruel twisting of their natural and innocent desire to make grownups happy.