Archive for category Crime & Punishment
To The Pope: Your Silence is Now Deafening
Posted by Lance Haley in Catholic Church, Crime & Punishment, Cultural Issues, Morality, Religion, Religion & Spirituality, The Pope, crime on April 10th, 2010
“Joseph Carol Ratzinger”
Hey Pope, there it is in black and white. Your signature.
In 1981, an American priest AND his superior bishop had requested in writing that you remove him from the priesthood – officially have him defrocked - because he was violently molesting young boys.
Your belated response 4 YEARS LATER:
Let’s give it some more time, noting that . . . “the good of the Universal Church” was an important aspect of the consideration in reaching a final decision.
In other words, screw your young parishoners’, and their safety and security -literally and figuratively. You had to preserve the reputation of the Church.
Now your lawyers respond to this new evidence with the pathetic defense claim that you acted “expeditiously” in that matter? By what reasonable legal or moral standard? What an absurd notion.
What next?
Are your minions in the Vatican going to continue to obfuscate, this time by way of attacking the victims’ lawyers and the media for releasing this letter? Or are you just still going to willfully avoid responsibility by standing silently with that disgustingly pious grin on your face ?
DENIAL AIN’T A RIVER IN EGPYT!
Vatican Now Invokes Anti-Semitism in Shameless Ploy to Deflect Criticism Regarding Sex Abuse Scandal
Posted by Lance Haley in Crime & Punishment, Cultural Issues, Culture Wars, Ethics, Legal & Justice, Morality, Religion, Religion & Spirituality, crime on April 2nd, 2010
“You shall not merely be deported. You shall be killed..And this will be your punishment for your killing of our saviour.”
– Slovakian Catholic Archbishop Karol Kmetko, responding to Jewish plea for assistance from Nazi persecution (March of 1942)
The Vatican has now reached a all-time low in it’s attempts to silence critics of its vain crusade to exculpate itself from any responsibility for 50+ years of a perpetual international criminal conspiracy to cover-up the widespread existence of pedophiles among it’s clergy.
This author posted several recent entries, here and here, providing undeniable proof demonstrating the Church’s willful and wanton actions to conceal evidence of these incomprehensible moral and legal crimes against children all over the world. Moreover, the Vatican and it’s proxies further facilitated these reprehensible acts by allowing pedophile priests to continue in their vocation, thereby allowing them to further sexually molest other innocent children.
All in the name of God.
In response to it’s indefensible and unconscionable acts, the Vatican is now comparing criticism of it’s scandalous behavior to anti-Semitism. So like changing water into wine, I now have been miraculously converted into the likes of an anti-Semite merely because I have assisted in exposing the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy?
How utterly despicable.
Notwithstanding historical evidence of anti-Semitism within its own ranks, coupled with a papal apology for the Church’s contribution to the Nazi Holocaust, what is most paradoxical are the uncanny similarities in which two of the greatest crimes against humanity – the Holocaust, and now this global Catholic pedophilia conspiracy – were both denied by their respective perpetrators. In the case of the former, by the German people; in the case of the latter, by The Vatican.
The comparisons stop there. In the case of the German people, at least they voluntarily worked up the courage to accept responsibility when faced with the overwhelming evidence of the horrific crimes committed by their government while they idly stood by and did nothing. Their ongoing repentance has garnered a remarkable forgiveness from the rest of the world as time has gone on. Germany has even gone so far as to criminalize anti-Semitic behavior, as well as Holocaust denial.
In contrast, these cowardly ploys by the Vatican to demonize it’s detractors only further serves to demonstrate the deep denial that masks the manifest socio-pathological condition that envelopes this evil organization. One can expect nothing less from such a spiritually-corrupt, and morally bankrupt institution. The hour is now way too late for any apology.
The Vatican’s acts speak for themselves.
Pope Benedict: You May Have Damned All Mankind
Posted by Lance Haley in Crime & Punishment, Cultural Issues, Ethics, Morality, Religion, Religion & Spirituality, crime on April 1st, 2010
![Dantes Inferno [1]](http://screwedus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Dantes-Inferno-1.jpg "Dantes Inferno [1]")
DEPICTION OF DANTE’S INFERNO (HELL)
Unfortunately, this post is not some bad April Fools Day joke.
The Pope has now been implicated in the global sex abuse scandal that the Catholic Church has become deeply embroiled in these past few months. And the list of these scandals grows larger as time goes on.
This author first wrote about the developing scandal in Ireland back in December of 2009 – noting the dissonance between the Pope’s willful ignorance of that problem, coupled with his ostensibly “deep concern for Christian and Family Values.” It was all to obvious to me at that time that this blatent hipocrasy which revolves around the Pope – pun intended - might develop into the final stake in the heart of the single most corrupt institution on the face of the earth.
The scope and depth of this issue is finally coming to light, and the Vatican is beyond criminally culpable – just look at this recently-uncovered secret Vatican document from 1960, wherein the Church explicitly instructed all Bishops around the world to cover-up the ongoing child sex abuse cases, or face excommunication. This is explosive evidence of an ongoing international criminal conspiracy dating back 50 years.
However, the highest moral crime committed by the Church was that the victims and their families were also threatened with excommunication if they revealed anything. It’s right there in black and white – these are the official words of the Vatican. For that alone, there should be a very special place reserved in Hell for all of them.
Unfortunately, the Vatican’s legal status as a sovereign state gives it absolute immunity from prosecution or civil suits. Sovereign Immunity is a legal concept granted to nations – and their diplomats – that shield them from criminal liability. It should come as no surprise that the Church has been granted this extraordinary legal status, given the fact that it is the most powerful non-govermental institution on the face of the earth. That is how the Vatican has been able to shamefully protect former American Cardinal Bernard Law from extradition back the United States to testify before a Grand Jury in Massachusetts regarding his participation in the decades-long cover-up in this country.
Now even the Pope is invoking immunity under the same doctrine. However, I’ve got news for you, Pope – that WILL NOT protect you when it’s time to meet your maker.
What is even more incredulous is that fact that the Pontiff and his pathetic minions inside the Vatican are denying that he had any knowledge of a memo authored from his office regarding re-assignment of a pedophile priest during his tenure as Archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982. Moreover, his unbelievable claims that he was not aware of the monumental scope of this problem is betrayed by the fact that he served as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal official from 1982 until his election as pope in 2005 – during that 23 year stretch of time, it was his responsibility to oversee all priest pedophilia claims anywhere in the world.
Even Cardinal Sean Brady, head of the Irish Catholic Church, initially denied any responsibility in that scandal and refused to resign – despite the most damning evidence to the contrary. Here is his unconscionable rationalization for not taking any action when confronted with the evidence:
“I felt I did my duty, the duty that was assigned to me by my bishop. It’s not fair to judge actions of 35 years ago by the standards we are following today . . . Thirty-five years ago we were in a different world. We had no guidance, we were in uncharted territory.”
Let me get this straight: you knew that one of your priests was screwing 10 year old boys in the ass 35 years ago, but you did not say anything about it because “things were different back then”?
In fact, a priest that has been accused of molestations in Germany now has the audacity to claim that priests should be supervised by other priests to ensure they do not engage in sexual deviant behaviors with children. WTF? You are now excusing your behavior by saying “well, it would have never happened if someone had been monitoring me”?
Are we finally getting the picture here? These pedophile priests, as well as those who have harbored and protected them, are ALL a waste of human skin. And the Catholic Church’s behavior these last 1000 years has given no doubt that it’s sole purpose was to use it’s power and authority to spiritually imprison countless souls for it’s own narcissistic ends.
One apologist tried to deflect criticism of the Church, stating that ”This is far from being just about the Church: 80 to 90 percent of the cases happen in families.” In other words, well they do it more than we do. Notwithstanding that reprehensible “whitewashing” job, the “stench of evil”regarding the Pope’s career, as Christopher Hitchens so eloquently stated it, is both beyond palpable, as well as indefensible.
In the final analysis, the most paraxoical aspect to all of this is ironically divined from Article 1 of the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law:
“The Roman Pontiff . . . is the Vicar of Christ . . . ”
Under the Church’s interpretation of the Code of Canon Law, the Vicar of Christ is Jesus’ substitute here on earth – defined by serving as ” . . . someone who is authorized to act as a substitute or agent for a superior - compare ‘vicarious‘—serving in the place of someone else.” If this man is Christ’s agent, what does that say about Jesus Christ or God? I can already hear the rationalizations for this one . . . the same one’s that have been offered, ad nauseum, for 2000 years.
While serving as the Vatican Prefect [Cardinal Joeseph Ratzinger], on September 5, 2000, The Pope authored a document referred to as “Dominus Iesus“. In that decree, he unabashedly declared that the Catholic Church was the sole “instrument for the salvation of humanity.”
IF that is true, with one swift stroke of the pen, the Pope damned all mankind.
Can Liz Cheney Really Keep America Safe?
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Conservatives, Crime & Punishment, Dick Cheney, Fox News, Legal & Justice, Media & Communication, National Security, Politics, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, al Qaida, foreign policy on March 11th, 2010
ATTICUS FINCH (Gregory Peck) in “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”
Hardly!
Why? Because she advocates the use of fear that rises to the level of McCarthyism, as demonstrated in the recent video released by her political organization, Keep America Safe.
A significant number of well-respected Conservatives have deeply criticized the video’s characterization of current Justice Department lawyers as Un-American because of their previous legal representation of suspected terrorist detainees. One of the greatest callings in the American legal system is defending both the unpopular and the guilty. This role is epitomized by the lawyer Atticus Finch in the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird“, rated as the best courtroom movie of all time by the American Film Institute.
Liz Cheney is a lawyer. If she attended her classes in law school, she should have a basic understanding of the Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, as well as the principles of American Jurisprudence, all of which ensure due process for everyone who is charged with a violation of the laws of the United States, regardless of citizenship. Her failure to grasp those most fundamental principles of the American justice system only further undermines any semblance of credibility regarding her legal or political opinion.
One of her former law professors, the esteemed Richard A. Epstein, of the University of Chicago School of Law. said it best: “There’s something truly bizarre about this.” Which only begs the question: Is she a moron, or just pathologically shameless and void of any conscience? Maybe it runs in the family?
Most importantly, however, is the real reason why Liz Cheney cannot “Keep America Safe”.
If she relies on the argument that America was much safer from an attack by terrorists during her father’s tenure with the Bush Administration, one need look no further than the Presidential Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”, in order to completely discredit this notion. Her father publicly admitted in May of 2002 on Fox News that he read the brief, and then attempted in vain to dismiss it’s warnings as inconclusive, while simultanously advocating that the brief not be released for public disclosure. Interesting . . .
As this author has pointed out in the post titled “Failing to Connect the Dots: The Lights Were Blinking Red“, that evidence is the most damning indictment of Dick Cheney’s part in the collective negligence of the Bush Administration’s failure to prevent the attacks on 9/11. No wonder he did not want you to read it’s contents. To compound matters even further was their colossal failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden at the battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in December of 2001. Simply put, Dick Cheney obviously has no valid standing to criticize the Obama Administration’s policies regarding terrorism and the prosecution of terrorists.
By extension, as well as by her own volition, neither does Liz Cheney.
Case closed.
If You Cannot Beat a Guy Who is Stoned – Make Him Compete While He is Straight?
Posted by Lance Haley in Crime & Punishment, Drug Policies, Humor, Legal & Justice on March 10th, 2010
DOES THIS STONER LOOK UNBEATABLE TO YOU?
If you accept the conclusions underlying the U.S. drug policies opposing the use of marijuana, then you should find this story a little ironic.
If you do not accept the conclusions underlying the U.S. drug policies opposing the use of marijuana, you still should find this story a little ironic.
It seems Lance Mackey, the current consecutive three-time Champion of the Alaskan Iditarod dog-sled race, openly admits he uses medical marijuana while he races. In a competition where they have never previously drug-tested the participants – although they have had a policy prohibiting the use of alcohol or illegal drugs - the organizers of the Iditarod have now declared that they will administer random drug testing during the race (Note: the dogs have been tested for performance-enhancing drugs [PED's] since 1994).
So now marijuana is a PED?
Look. I have serious doubts about whether riding on a snow-sled in sub-zero temperatures for fifteen straight days while stoned out of your freakin’ gourd gives anyone a distinct competitive advantage. If anything, I would think there is a much higher (no pun intended) likelihood they might find the guy frozen to death out in the middle of the Arctic while his dogs are trying to lick that stupid smile off his face. After all – according to opponents of legalizing marijuana - smoking pot makes one both lethargic and unmotivated, as well as affecting their judgment and ability to think.
Conclusion: If you cannot beat a person who is stoned for three straight (pun intended) years in the Iditarod, you need to just “throw in the towel” guys.
Or taking up smoking pot.
Harry Markopolos’ $50 Billion Dollar Failure
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Business and Money, Capitalism, Congress, Crime & Punishment, Economics, Financial Crisis, Financial Terrorists, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Legal & Justice, Politics, Sarah Palin, Show Them the $$$, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, economy, financial industry on March 2nd, 2010
![dumb and dumber [2]](http://screwedus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dumb-and-dumber-23.jpg "dumb and dumber [2]")
S.E.C. LAWYERS’ GRADUATION CLASSES: 1999-2008
If you hired a security guard to watch your house, and it kept getting burglarized – even after someone told him countless times who the thief was – would you let him keep his job?
Stupid question, you say? Really?
So why do we keep the same morons on our government payroll to watch the financial markets? Now that is a good question. And there really is a simple answer. The foxes make sure to instruct their under-lords to have those dumb sharecropper farmers whom they pay beggars wages to for working their land, to keep that same old deaf and blind dog guarding the chicken coop. This metaphor should not be lost on anyone.
Bernie Madoff may be a household word – and one of Time magazines 2009 Top 100 people who affected the world. But Harry Markopolus is just another quiet hero in a global financial market run by pimps and whores. Markopolus has a new book coming out today called, “No One Would Listen“. The book chronicles the story of how Markopolus doggedly pursued a fraud case against Bernie Madoff from 1999 through 2008 by trying to get the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawyers to investigate Madoff’s House of Cards. All to no avail.
WTF you might ask? At least that’s what I have been saying since this story first broke in early 2009 when Markopolus testified before Congress (you can read his testimony right here), and then was interviewed by CBS’s 60 Minutes.
This is beyond a comedy of errors. This is Dumb and Dumber, The Three Stooges, and Beevis and Butthead all working in concert to unwittingly thwart one another while the criminals continued to steal from us with unbridled impunity. Now is that not a terrifying image? Meet your S.E.C., America. Wall Street owns these guys.
Starting in 1999, Markopolus made several attempts to give the most fundamental proof of Madoff’s fraud to numerous investigators at the S.E.C. - all of which was either willfully or woefully ignored (Markopolus calls them “idiots” – that is too kind, don’t you think, Sarah Palin? I would have called them retards). By 2007, he was fed up with their wanton stupidity, and decided to document it by submitting a nineteen (19) page memorandum to the S.E.C. outlining the basis for his claim. That too, was ignored.
View the complete 60 Minutes interview with Markopolos - or just watch the real BOMBSHELL from minute 7:25 to 8:18 of the interview. That brief one minute segment is incomprehensible. And you wonder why so many investors were “Madoffed” by Bernie?
So after all this, has anything changed?
Hell no!
Harry Markopolus is still trying to settle his first big whistle-blower case, he has spent years living in fear, and yet he remains undeterred in his dogged pursuit of financial racketeers and corporate fraudsters. Of course, his new book should help keep his wife and young boys fed until payday comes. Ironically, Markopolus refers to himself as a “$50 Billion dollar failure”- because he could not get the S.E.C. to listen. One might conclude that he is being flippant, since he all but beat them over the head with his evidence. However, he is serious about characterizing this as his “failure” - he honestly takes it very personally that all these people were hurt by Madoff’s fraud in the face of the S.E.C.’s utter incompetence.
You just have to love this man. After all this, the crooks and the “police” shirk responsibility, and the hero feels guilty? And you wonder why it seems the world has started spinning in the other direction?
Meanwhile, back at the S.E.C., they are still re-disorganizing the deck chairs on the U.S.S. Financial Titanic, and there should be smooth sailing on the calm seas of Neo-Capitalism all the way back to port. No need to worry. They have their securities regulation minions fast asleep on night watch while the next massive financial iceberg awaits in the darkness. And brace yourself, because this next one’s really going to be a doozy folks.
In the meantime, bring them some Dom Perignon, the exquisite pate’, and that rare Russian escargot they just had imported, all paid for with your financial bailouts. And don’t forget to put that on a silver platter.
Oh, they almost forgot to mention it. You can ignore the water rising on the Italian marble dining room floor. That’s just from the watered-down financial regulation reform we are about to get from Wall Street’s wholly-owned public subsidiary, Congress. They have the S.E.C working on that minor leak down in the hull right now.
One Final Note: please do not bother counting the number of lifeboats. Those seats have all been reserved.
Enjoy the cruise. 
P.S. They saved several seats in the lifeboats for the S.E.C. lawyers. You didn’t really think the Financial Terrorists were going to row those things themselves, did you?
Were Dick Cheney’s Chest Pains and Terrorist Najibullah Zazi’s Guilty Plea in NY Federal District Court Earlier Today Just a Coincidence?
Posted by Lance Haley in Conservatives, Crime & Punishment, Dick Cheney, Government, Legal & Justice, National Security, Politics, U.S. Attorney's Office, U.S. District Courts, War on Terror, al Qaida on February 22nd, 2010
It would take a really big washrag to wipe that huge grin off my face right now.
Click here and here – then read ScrewedUS.com Memo to Dick Cheney.
Don’t you just love life’s little ironies?
Wizards of Moronic Destruction (WMD) in Louisiana Watergate Have Assured Senator Landrieu’s Re-election
Posted by Lance Haley in 2010 Election, 2012 Election, Campaigns, Conservatives, Crime & Punishment, Glenn Beck, How and Why We Get Screwed, Legal & Justice, National Security, Politics, crime on February 11th, 2010
Well if you are too young to remember the Watergate scandal, it almost tore America apart at the seams. In fact, our country has never been as close to a Constitutional crisis as it was back in 1974, when President Richard Nixon was serving his second term in office. With impeachment proceedings looming, Nixon was forced to resign as President of the United States for his participation in the Whitehouse’s cover-up of a burglary of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) offices in the Watergate office building in Washington, D. C. by Republican operatives at the direction of staff members of the Nixon Administration.
This is certainly not to insinuate that anything as remotely sinister as the Watergate scandal crimes against the country took place down in Louisiana near the end of January. However, there are some very strange similarities that cannot be overlooked in respect to the Watergate burglars and the perpetrators of this political criminal escapade in Louisiana.
First, in both cases at least one of the men had a relatively cozy relationship to a U.S. intelligence agency. E. Howard Hunt was a former C.I.A. officer, and one of the Whitehouse operatives who planned and helped execute the break-in of the offices of the DNC. In the present case, it was reported today that Stanley Dai was the assistant director of the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence program at Trinity Washington University, a small Catholic college in Washington D.C., – a program completely funded by the National Intelligence Agency. Moreover, Dai was listed as the principle contact for a symposium that featured officials of the National Intelligence Council, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the C.I.A.
Second, in both cases one of the participants has a “relationship” to a federal law enforcement agency. In Watergate, it was the still-infamous G. Gordon Liddy, a former F.B.I. agent who assisted Hunt in the planning and execution of the burglary. In the Louisiana case, one of the participants is Robert Flanagan, the son of Shreveport-based acting U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan.
Third, it should come as no irony that in each of these cases the actors were low-level political hacks obviously trying to infiltrate offices of Democratic party members and engage in politically-motivated espionage in order to win an election. It should not be lost on anyone that for these petty criminals, democracy is far too dangerous to be left in the hands of the your political opponents.
Finally, the participation in the Louisiana case by one of the principles in the political “sting operation” to discredit ACORN - a molehill that looks bigger than a mountain to Glenn Beck’s deranged mind – should give a whole new meaning to political karma.
To James O’Keefe: a word of advice - acting like a big pimp when you are just a little political whore will eventually catch up with you.
Bank of America’s CEO Ken Lewis Will Play the “But We Made Lots of Money” Card in his Criminal Case?
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Capitalism, Crime & Punishment, Economics, Financial Crisis, Financial Terrorists, How and Why We Get Screwed, Legal & Justice, Politics, Show Them the $$$, Wall Street, financial industry on February 5th, 2010
There is plenty of blame to go around in Washington and New York for the financial meltdown and subsequent bailout debacle. These Wall Street financial terrorists – Wizards of Mass Derivatives (WMD’s) – with the assistance of their Washington lackeys, Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke, et al., robbed the national treasury to pay the piper for their incompetence and then left us standing alone on the dance floor. And do not even go there about the fact that they “paid the money back” in their defense.
That dog won’t hunt!
Since our federal prosecutors would not grow some testicles and bring criminal indictments against any of these guys – with President Obama’s U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder leading the “Charge of the Lightweight Brigade” – New York AG Andrew Cuomo has demonstrated that he has big enough balls to make at least a couple of them pay for screwing us.
Ken Lewis, former CEO of Bank of America (BoA), was charged with committing fraud yesterday in a New York state court for his failure to divulge to BoA shareholders the extent of Merrill’s losses, as well as an undisclosed agreement to pay former Lynch executives massive bonuses, and that he intentionally misled the government by threatening to scuttle the deal in order to get another $20 billion in bailouts from the Treasury.
Sources from Lewis’ criminal defense team have indicated that they may subpoena Henry Paulson, former Bush Treasury Secretary, as well as Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the FederalReserve, to testify at Lewis’ trial in an attempt to persuade the jury that Lewis did not mislead the government about the severity of BoA’s financial condition subsequent to the banks merger with Merrill Lynch. They will further argue that the bank made money after the deal, and repaid all of the TARP money it received from the federal government, so the government and shareholders were not harmed – and in fact benefited from his actions (or inactions, as the case may be).
What is so unnerving is the audacity of Lewis to claim that “they made the company lot’s of money” as a defense. Worse yet, the Wall Street Journal comes to their defense, claming among other things that “TARP was a gilded straitjacket that every bank, including BofA, wanted to flee as quickly as possible”.
Really? Let’ review this twisted and misleading logic.
We made some really, really bad bets, and the financial system will collapse if you do not give us unprecedented bailouts to fix the system. Of course we understand that the government is giving us this money to restore the necessary liquidity - a continuous flow of money to keep the economy running – so that businesses can continue to borrow money, and keep people working. Now we are not going to making any promises to that effect, but we will do what we think is right for the financial system . Also, we accept that we have to purchase/merge with some of the other failed financial institutions as a condition of getting our asses saved. But we will not be obligated to deal honestly, nor follow financial regulations, in these business dealings, and if we see an opportunity to squeeze more money out of this mess, we will. Moreover, we will probably accept this unreasonable condition that you may limit our pay structure while we are under the obligation to pay the government back, but once we retire that debt to the government, you have to get off our ass and we can transact business however we like.
How dare them now have the arrogance to say they made money as a result of some uncanny business acumen. As I have stated previously in this blog – give me $15 or $20 Billion, I can make a Billion or so investing in some very conservative financial instruments over the course of a year, pay you back, give myself an obscene bonus – and then tell you to go FxxK youself!!
Moreover, REMEMBER THIS: they did NOT have to accept the money. Furthermore, they were supposed to lend the money, not hold it in reserve while waiting for the markets to turn North, and then invest it in order to make a quick killing so they could line their fat pockets, all the while leaving many Americans and businesses hung out to swing in the cold, harsh winds of their utter malfeasance. How utterly disingenuous of both Wall Street and the Wall Street Journal.
This author has previously commented several times about the criminal malfeasance of BoA in this blog – in this entry and in this entry - and questioned the refusal of federal prosecutors to bring charges in this matter. A Federal District Court Judge was appalled by BoA’s behavior, and was obviously disgusted that the U.S. government – specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – was not doing more. If we have to wait for a New York Attorney General to act, this begs the question as to how deep in bed people at the top of this government are with Wall Street?
President Obama – you took money from Wall Street, and now you say you want them to be accountable? Prove it!
P.S. This same picture was used in a previous entry – it is the finest representative illustration of the BoA bailout I have seen on the Internet. Illustration by graphic artist David Dees of DeesIllustration.com
Prosecutor’s Witch Hunt Obscures Search for the Truth
Posted by Lance Haley in Crime & Punishment, Death Penalty, Legal & Justice, Uncategorized on November 10th, 2009
” The United States Attorney [a prosecutor] is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape nor innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor—indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.”
- United States Supreme Court Justice Sutherland’s majority opinion in Berger v. U.S., 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935)
Imagine you have just spent tens of thousands of dollars to send your college-aged student to a prestigious university. He/she is pursuing a degree in journalism, and received an “A” in one of their classes which involved investigation of the case of a man convicted of murder and serving time in prison. Now a state prosecutor wants to subpoena records pertaining to your student’s grade in that class, as well as their private emails, in order to see if they possibly received a high grade as a result of being pressured to find evidence of the convicted man’s innocence.
Unfortunately, this is a real case, and the potential consequences could have a very chilling effect on the future of the privacy students have in pursuing an education of their choosing.
Professor David Protess of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism established the Medill Innocence Project in 1999. That project has investigated over a dozen cases in Illinois since that time, which has resulted in the exoneration of eleven men convicted of serious crimes, including one man that was sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit. As a result, former Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on the death penalty, and commuted the sentences of all Illinois death-row inmates in 2003. Moreover, the Illinois Legislature has payed-out over $10 million dollars in reparations to those who were wrongfully convicted, all of which served lengthy prison sentences as innocent men.
In an investigative journalism class that serves as an adjunct to the program, Professor Protess gives students a project case to research in order to inquire whether the evidence that was used to convict the person prosecuted for the crime was accurate and valid. The students then review the case file, interview people involved with the case, and look at how physical evidence was tested in order to determine if the process was fair and just. One of those cases revealed serious doubts as to the validity of the evidence used to prosecute and convict a man back in 1978.
Now Anita Alvarez, Prosecutor for Cook County (Chicago), has to reply to the petition filed by the Medill Innocence Project on behalf of the man serving time for the crime. In response to this legal imposition placed upon her office, Alvarez also has filed a subpeona asking for the grades and the private emails of the students who participated in this investigation, as well as Professor Protess’ syllabus for the class. One can fairly glean from her action that Ms. Alvarez has no interest in her duty to seek justice nor the truth, as stated above by Justice Sutherland in the Berger case. Instead she is attempting to intimidate the university, the professor, and it’s future journalism students.
Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based Student Press Law Center, said it best. “Background material about the investigators [is not] legally relevant to guilt or innocence. It is worrisome that the response of the justice system is not to interview the witnesses, but to investigate the investigators.” This is particularly magnified by the fact that these were college students engaged in a class project to learn about investigative techniques. Unfortunately, they are receiving a lesson in the midguided and malicious actions of an individual who is othewise held in high esteem as part of this ostensible system of justice.
If you have not personally had the displeasure of battling people who sit in a position of enormous power, and then utilize their office and the law in order to skirt their legal duties to pursue both justice and the truth, you have not seen the legal system from the inside. I have been witness to this behavior. And it is often every bit as disturbing as some of the people it prosecutes.
When that sword in Lady Justice’s right hand is used to slay the innocent, and those who only seek the truth, something has gone horribly astray in the justice system.