The attempts by Isanti County authorities to throw Joe Collins into prison on fake charges seems to have run into a bit of a roadblock: a judge who actually knew the law, a good defense attorney, and 11 jurors who understood what was happening. As one juror later said, the charges never should have been brought in the first place.
The charges consisted of two gross misdemeanor charges of "witness tampering" and one felony bribery count. One of the misdemeanor charges was dismissed before the state presented its case. After the state rested, the judge ordered a directed verdict of "not guilty" on the felony charge, leaving only the misdemeanor "tampering with a witness to provide false information to police" accusation.
Jurors deadlocked 11-1 to acquit, and the judge declared a mistrial. As I see it, because the Isanti County prosecutors would not present the case themselves (claiming "conflict of interest"), they dumped the charges on prosecutors of a neighboring county, and I don't think that prosecutors are going to want to go through this nonsense again.
The question is this: Why were Isanti County prosecutors so anxious to go after Joe Collins? The answer is simple: He is a much better investigator than they are, and time after time, he uncovers lies and misconduct, and given that police in America today are little more than assortments of criminal or near-criminal gangs, an honest investigation is the last thing cops want.
As they did with Eric Echols and Ron DeLaby, prosecutors have brought criminal charges against Joe Collins not because these men created crimes, but rather because the police and prosecutors no longer want the truth as part of their investigations. That is a sad commentary on "law enforcement," but it also is the truth.
People in Minnesota may think of themselves as being more "civilized" and "honest" than folks in Georgia, but police "testilying" and prosecutorial misconduct are found all over this country. Even in Minnesota, ya betcha.
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5 comments:
After all, it seems to be SOP across the country for cops' performance to be based on citations and arrests, and for prosecutors' performance to be based on indictments and convictions. These performance metrics seem to provide a powerful incentive against letting the truth come out.
Thank's for another great blog..You are right Rob. What has happen to the truth.. How can they keep doing this to innocent people. Lord help them.
KC, I know this is off topic...but it is about that bill we were talking about waaay back. This is from the Library of Congress.
366. S.3817 : CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010
Sponsor: Sen Dodd, Christopher J. [CT] (introduced 9/22/2010) Cosponsors (4)
Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; House Education and Labor
Senate Reports: 111-378
Latest Major Action: Became Public Law No: 111-320 [GPO: Text, PDF]
Ooops...didn't give the link....
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/d?d111:300:./temp/~bd1TfA:[[o]]&items=100&
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