Channel 9's Sorry Record of Ignoring Due Process

Of all the news operations covering the Tonya Craft case, WTVC, Channel 9, stood alone in its utter badness. In fact, the coverage was SO bad that Holly "Thumbs Up" Kittle has included this rogue PR operation for corrupt prosecutors as one of her "likes."

One of the reasons I despise Channel 9 so much is that when it comes to people accused of child molestation, there NEVER even is the possibility of a false claim. Furthermore, there is no presumption of innocence at 9, just guilt, guilt, guilt. Its February 19, 2010, coverage of the arrest of James Combs is especially bad, although nothing will sink to the low level that 9 achieved with Tonya Craft, even after the trial was over.

I include the entire article, written by Karen Zatkulak, as from beginning to end, because it is just atrocious and guilt-assuming and shamefully so (my comments in bold):

A man is charged with child molestation while he's substitute teaching. We got the report that confirms the incident took place at an elementary school. (Yes, an accusation means that there definitely was molestation.) This report says James Combs was inside this school, teaching as a substitute, when 2 children say he touched them in a sexual manner.

Parents like Brianna Campbell are not just shocked but disturbed that a man trusted inside the classroom has now spent time inside jail. She says, "Surprising because they hire the teachers to teach not to hurt the kids." (Yes, after people are arrested, they usually are taken to jail. However, there is no "alleged" here. Channel 9 is spreading hysteria among parents, just as our vaunted news team did when it sent reporters to Tonya's neighborhood to scream, "CHILD MOLESTER!!!")

James Combs is charged with child molestation at Boynton Elementary School, leaving Campbell worried about her little ones. "It bothers me, but you still have to send your kids to school and hope and pray they come home okay."

We got the report from the Catoosa County Sheriff's Office. It says two children reported that Combs had touched them in a sexual manner. We wanted to know more about the young victims (How do we know they are victims? Again, Channel 9 assumes guilt.) and exactly when and how this happened, but were told Sheriff Phil Summers was the only one to answer those questions and was unavailable.

We also went to Combs' address to hear his side of the story, but no one was home. The school system did confirm that Combs was a substitute teacher when this happened.

Superintendent Denia Reese says, "James Combs completed the application process to be a substitute in our county, we did a GBI background check and FBI background check and they all came back clear." (Now, this is interesting. Here is a guy who never had been accused of any crimes before, who also passed an extensive investigation in order to be able to adopt two girls from overseas. Does not this raise questions to our Good People at Channel 9 about Mr. Combs' character, and that maybe, just maybe, these charges are fishy?)

Reese says immediately after they received the parent's complaint, they called the Sheriff's Office. "Mr. Combs was then immediately removed from the substitute list."

Campbell is glad that Combs is facing charges, but says she's still worried about the other students and the victims. "You are putting your kids lives and trust in the school system and when they break that trust it's hard to get back." (Why does Campbell get to be an accuser here? Do you think that Campbell would like to be falsely accused? Why does Channel 9 take her for an expert?)

While 2 children reported the misconduct, this report says Combs faces one count of child molestation.

We will be working to get more information, and will pass it on as soon as it's available.

In reading this story, I am utterly amazed at the outright evil that it represents. According to Darrell Patterson's employer, an accusation is proof of guilt, period, especially if it involves child molestation.

Having taught at Rossville Junior High School for a couple years, I have experience with some of the people from that area, and I can say that there were some students who (along with their parents -- and especially their mothers) would be anxious to make a false charge against a teacher. In fact, the only reason that we did not see any of these charges get momentum was that the LMJC had not yet discovered the riches that could be mined from Mondale Act money.

Notice that Channel 9 really made no effort to find out what happened. It just ran the official PR from the LMJC, interviewed a guilt-assuming parent of another child, and then presented it as "news."

I will say up front that I am convinced that James Combs is innocent of these charges, and that this is yet another perjury-filled action from Perjury Central itself, the LMJC. Since the LMJC and Channel 9 are at war with innocent and good people, I will officially say that I am at war with them. They can try to destroy innocent people -- and generally are successful at it -- but I will fight for James Combs and his family just as I fought for Tonya Craft. From everything I can tell, he is a good and decent man, and if Buzz Franklin, "judge" Brian Outhouse, and Alan "Wannabe a Criminal Like Facebook and The Man" Norton are going to try to railroad him into prison, I hope that the good people of the community will show that this is evil.

What is going on in the LMJC is not right. It is illegal and immoral. That Channel 9 continues to run PR for such corrupt people is proof enough to me that it no longer is a news operation. Instead, it consists of people who kiss the posteriors of corrupt liars, and then repeats the lies as "news."

On Deck at Perjury Central

The end of August is upon us, and that means that a new trial calendar at Perjury Central is about to begin. Two of the trials that I will be covering on this blog are those involving Eric Echols and James Combs. Conveniently, Alan Norton will be the ADA in both of them, and since he is anxious to follow the dishonest examples of "Alberto-Facebook" and "The Man," I will be there to tell readers when he is lying, suborning perjury, and generally acting like the felon he apparently wishes to be.

Norton, however, is not the only person in my cross hairs. According to my sources, Holly Nave Kittle is going to be testifying in the bogus child molestation case against Mr. Combs, and I believe that my readers need to learn more about Kittle. As I see it, she is a combination of incompetence, dishonesty, and sheer arrogance, which makes her quite welcome in the LMJC, but does not make her welcome around people who are honest and decent.

(Actually, I know that Kittle has friends among the decent and honest, and I have spoken to at least one of them. If Kittle were doing some other line of work, I would have nothing against her, but since she is engaged in the false accusation industry in which families are destroyed and the innocent sent to prison, I will oppose her and what she does with everything I have, and that means telling the world that when she testifies as an "expert" witness, she is a fraud, a very dangerous fraud.)

Things will be slow for a few more days, but it will pick up, especially after Tonya Craft has her first show on WGOW on September 7. Something tells me that Tonya is going to be a heck of a radio host.

John Mulkey, Again

Two weeks ago, I wrote about John Mulkey's situation and there have been some developments since then. Yesterday, Judge Ralph Van Pelt in Catoosa County found Mr. Mulkey "not guilty" for a weapons charge, although Van Pelt's editorial comments exposed the mindset of judges and prosecutors in the LMJC, where justice is a random event.

Before going further, I will note that I have heard (through the grapevine, of course) that the judges and prosecutors in the LMJC have been unhappy with my editorial comments. So be it, but I have some advice for them as well: do what is right, follow the law, stop lying and protecting liars, and stop fabricating charges and documents, and I then will stop telling the truth about the daily outrages that occur every day in the courtrooms of that God-forsaken judicial district.

Furthermore, a very prominent attorney told me earlier this year that in judicial matters, "Georgia is Atlanta surrounded by Alabama." I believe that his comments were a grave insult -- to Alabama. At least Alabama authorities refused to bring charges against Brad Wade for lack of evidence, but the LMJC of Georgia did not let non-evidence stand in the way of railroading this innocent man into prison.

So, while Judge Van Pelt and others may not like my comments, I believe they are well-founded, and if these people are not willing at least to follow the law, then perhaps they need to find another line of work for which they will not be subject to public criticism. I know none of these people; I only know their deeds.

So, let us go back to the hearing in which Judge Van Pelt, unlike "judge" Brian Outhouse, at least agreed to follow the law he was sworn to uphold. The judge said that Mr. Mulkey had not violated the law, according to the legislature. However, he added that he did not like the law, so his "not guilty" verdict was given with reluctance.

This brings us to a most interesting point, one that Van Pelt refused to address. Alan Norton, who is bringing charges against Eric Echols in defiance of a Georgia Appeals Court ruling on the very same kind of case originally was assigned to the case. (This is another example of the "We do this because we can do this" attitude that Georgia prosecutors have, despite the code of ethics handed down by the Georgia State Bar that clearly forbids this kind of conduct. However, since the Bar refuses to discipline prosecutors no matter how egregious their conduct, we can expect lawlessness from those who claim to be upholding the law.)

Because Norton could not be there, Chris "Alberto-Facebook" Arnt was the ADA bringing the charges. So, we see yet another example of how Arnt spits on the law. As I noted in my previous post, Arnt and his partners-in-crime Len "The Racist-Misogynist-The Man" Gregor had no problems suborning perjury -- and obvious perjury at that -- along with forging documents. Once again, I find it curious that a man who openly commits felonies -- and subornation of perjury and forging documents are felonies -- is permitted to claim to be "enforcing the law."

In fact, we should look more closely at Van Pelt's decision. Since it was clear that Mr. Mulkey was not breaking the law, Van Pelt should have dismissed the charges and given an apology to Mr. Mulkey for having him dragged into court in the first place. Instead, Van Pelt basically declared that while he wished he could have convicted Mr. Mulkey and sent him to prison -- even though the man is no criminal -- even he could not do that. And we are supposed to "celebrate" these moments of "justice." God help us.

Unfortunately, Mr. Mulkey's ordeal is not over. From another grapevine, I hear that the authorities are unhappy that Mr. Mulkey has chosen to publicly proclaim his innocence, as opposed to being silent and letting the police and prosecutors run all over him and destroy his rights. This is amazing. The authorities have no problem with making outrageous public statements and bringing false charges, but when a citizen directly affected by this illegal behavior speaks up, then the people in the system get up their backs and display their anger.

The "molestation" charges against Mr. Mulkey do not pass the "smell test." Furthermore, their star "witness," Mr. Mulkey's own daughter, has said the charges were not true, and that her relatives in Washington had their own ulterior motives for making the allegations.

Unfortunately, we are dealing with Georgia, and that is enough. Georgia is a state where prosecutors and judges and police are not bound by the law, and where even an admission by a judge that a defendant broke no law is Really Big News.

The players of the Georgia "justice" system remind me of spoiled children who decide to change the rules of games in order to make sure that they can win, and when they lose, they throw fits. With children, however, it really is a game; in Georgia, we are seeing the utter destruction of innocent life.

The Joal and Sarah Perjury Show, One More Time

[Note]: Eric Echols is scheduled to go on trial on September 13, as a retired judge from Cobb County is supposed to preside. We shall see if he is like other Georgia judges who ignore the law.

Alan Norton is the ADA, so I guess he is anxious to join the ranks of Perjury Central, and since the only way he can present this case is to suborn perjury, a number of people either will be present or blogging on the trial to detail the crimes that Norton will be committing. Because the indictment does not specify how Mr. Echols actually "intimidated" a witness, it clearly does not pass the test given by the Georgia Court of Appeals in Delaby. Beyond that, it is absolutely clear that prosecutions witnesses at some point will have to commit perjury, but, as we have seen already, perjury is perfectly acceptable to prosecutors and judges in the LMJC, as it always goes unpunished whenever the prosecution witnesses commit it.

On another note, please take time to vote for my daughter and son-in-law, Leah and Russell Golden. [End Note]

While I have dealt with Joal and Sara Henke, that couple which demonstrated the miraculous ability to "recover memories" while on the witness stand, I believe that once more I need to lay out just how dishonest they were, how their perjury was obvious, and why they committed it -- at the encouragement of Chris "Alberto-Facebook" Arnt and Len "The Racist, Misogynist, and THE MAN" Gregor. It is hard to know which incidence of perjury committed during the Tonya Craft trial by prosecution witness was most egregious, but I can say that the lies that Joal and Sara told perhaps were the most obvious.

There were three huge whoppers that these dishonorable individuals told while under oath:

• Joal's sudden recollection of Tonya's "lesbian affair" with Jennifer Sullivan. (It should be noted that "judge" Brian Outhouse refused to let Ms. Sullivan testify as to the falsity of Henke's statement, thus demonstrating again that he was nothing but a bootlicker for the prosecutors.);

• Sara's lie that the reason she was showering with Tonya's daughter was that the child was "dirty" and had "matted hair" and smelled bad, which meant she was saying that Tonya severely neglected the girl. (Henke had Tonya's daughter literally hold Sara's labia while she shaved her pubic hairs -- something she denied, but something that Tonya's daughter clearly explained. Oh, I forgot, prosecutors in the LMJC only believe children when the children tell them what prosecutors WANT to hear, not the truth.);

• Sara's other lie that the child would wake up in the middle of the night holding her vagina, and screaming, "It hurts, it hurts!" She also claimed that the child's vagina was "reddened."

The important thing to note with all three of these claims is that the Henkes had not said anything to ANY investigators before the trial began, not to detectives, not to Laurie Evans, not to anyone else at the CAC, no one. Instead, they claimed that they "just remembered" these things, something that the prosecutors AND Outhouse encouraged. Again, when one receives a paycheck from Perjury Central, one is going to employ perjury. It's that simple.

OK, it is time to apply some logic to these "revelations," beginning with the "lesbian" business. (My sense is that Joal and the Dishonest Duo, not to mention Outhouse, hoped that jurors would be shocked by such information.) I doubt seriously that had it happened, Joal would have conveniently forgotten about it until that magic moment on the witness stand. (In reading the transcript, I see that the prosecutor on direct asked Joal about this incident, which means that these people planned that moment before the day's activities began. So, now we not only have deliberate subornation of perjury, but also a conspiracy to commit a felony.)

Furthermore, since Ms. Sullivan was named in trial testimony as Tonya's "friend," the fact that Outhouse would not permit Ms. Sullivan to testify as to the veracity of Joal's statements tells me that neither Outhouse nor the Dishonest Duo believed anything Joal was saying. After all, if Ms. Sullivan were going to lie, then the Masters of Perjury Central could have threatened to charge her with, well, perjury.

Now to Sara's contention that Tonya's daughter, after being in her mother's care, was "dirty, smelly," and had "matted hair." Had this evidence of obvious neglect been true and apparent, I have no doubt that Joal would have run to the courthouse and had his attorney, Chuck Dupree, immediately file for permanent custody. Given the visceral hatred Joal had (and has) for his ex-wife, he would not have missed this opportunity to make a custody grab for the children.

Instead, there were NO allegations of this sort -- not until Sara Henke took the stand. Then, to make matters even worse, Sara then claimed that Tonya's daughter would wake up during the night screaming, and suffering from a "reddened" vagina. Now, if this were my child, I sure as heck would want to know why she was having these problems.

And if that were the case with my child, readers can bet that my wife would be making a doctor's appointment first thing in the morning. Little girls don't just wake up in the night screaming about painful vaginas, and with Sara being a registered nurse, which also makes her a legal "first responder," the woman would have been utterly derelict in her legal duties by doing nothing.

Furthermore, if this really had been the case, I am sure that Joal would have been very interested and would have seized the opportunity to make Tonya's life miserable. We already know what happened when Sandra Lamb presented Joal with the opportunity to make false allegations against his ex-wife in the late spring of 2008.

Trials in the State of Georgia are designed against the "Perry Mason Moments," as both prosecutors and the defense are supposed to have turned in their material by the time the discovery process begins. Prosecutors are supposed to give all of their relevant material to defense counsel, and the defense is supposed to do likewise, and all sides are supposed to have their witness lists. What we saw in the Tonya Craft trial was highly extraordinary, as prosecutors time and again introduced "new" material, ALL of it very suspicious.

Judges are supposed to impose very high standards for accepting "new" material. In the case of Tonya Craft, Outhouse accepted everything the prosecution threw in, but denied the same to the defense (i.e. the resume for Sandra Lamb's daughter that had the child's acting lessons and the infamous Kelly McDonald power bill). This was not because of the veracity of the material. Indeed, a power bill with Kelly McDonald's signature on it and an on-line resume with a child's acting teachers fall into the HARD COPY category, something that is irrefutable.

On the other hand, not one "new" allegation by the prosecution could be verified by anything close to hard evidence. The material was not in the investigative notes, nor were there any independent witnesses that could verify this material. None of this should be surprising, for people who know they can commit perjury without penalty and prosecutors who know they can forge documents and suborn perjury without fear of any sanctions are going to follow their darkest and most base paths. That is something we know about human nature and, if anything, the Tonya Craft trial proved that in spades.

The Adoption that Did Not Happen: How the CAC and Prosecutors Make Adoptions Extremely Hazardous

[Update: Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 3:25 PM]: Just a reminder for all the readers to vote for Leah and Russell! (Yes, it is called "stuffing the ballot box," but since everyone else is stuffing the box, we might as well do it better!) [End Update]

As I note on my website, I have four children, three of them adopted from overseas. One is a girl from Guatemala, now age 11, and two boys from Ethiopia, now 14 and 15. The process of adoption was expensive and time-consuming, and the process of integrating three very different children into our household understandably has been difficult and always is a work in progress.

In fact, I know that two of my children were sexually abused in their home country before coming here, and we have had to deal with the consequences of what other people did to these youngsters. Thus, when someone tells me that I don't know anything about sexual abuse, or that my standing up for Tonya Craft was a slap in the face of abused children, I have to tell them that they don't know of what they speak.

For the past two years, we have looked to adopt again, this time a girl anywhere from ages 9-13, and from the USA, and the process has been extremely difficult, and generally has involved pushing a rock to the top of a hill, only to see it roll to the bottom time after time. More than once, we have given up altogether, but still continue to pursue what might be an opportunity.

Last week, an organization contacted us to see if we were interested in adopting a 13-year-old girl who grew up in Russia, but was adopted here at age 9. The child has severe attachment problems, and huge amounts of anger directed at her adoptive mother due to things that happened to her in Russia.

First, she was sexually abused by her father from ages 3-6, and then, second, her mother committed suicide. The family here hoped that they could make a difference, but try as they might, the efforts to achieve meaningful bonding failed, and now she is in a group home, which financially is draining her family.

Obviously, we knew that this would be problematic, but we pursued things on a preliminary basis, including contacting a very highly-regarded attachment and bonding clinic (which we have used for our other children) to get a sense of what the therapists there had to say. We then had the parents get in touch with us.

Unfortunately, the child is interested in all things sexual, and here is where the modern child molestation witch hunt policies kicked in. First, this girl would be in close proximity to the bedrooms of both of our boys, and it does not take much imagination to understand the things that could happen, all of them destructive.

Second, and more important, this young girl would be a potential fountain of false accusations of sexual abuse against the boys and against me. Let me explain.

We limit the access our children have to television (we don't have cable or satellite, nor local reception, just videos), the children do not have cellphones, and we limit their computer access. That is not the case in most households, and from what I understand, this child almost is addicted to these things.

Thus, if I were to say "no" to her regarding these things, there is no telling how she would retaliate, and one of the things that young girls are taught to do is to make accusations of sexual abuse. As my wife and I see it, bringing her into our house, given her situation and given how the law encourages false accusations, would be like bringing a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse into our family.

Thanks to federal laws, which mandate that states have specific guilt-assuming procedures when accusations are made, I would be arrested, have my mug shot in the paper (as a child molester, no doubt), be subject to abuse myself as prisoners love to go after "child molesters," and then have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to have a fighting chance to stay out of prison for the rest of my life.

I'm not being paranoid. Right now, false accusations of the sort we saw with Tonya Craft are epidemic in this country, and even though the majority of these "reports" are deemed false, each one must be investigated as though it were true. Furthermore, when there are Children's Advocacy Centers like the Greenhouse and in Fort Oglethorpe, and prosecutors like Chris Arnt and Len Gregor, and judges like "judge" Brian Outhouse all over the country, then one can see the danger.

If it were not for current law and the ease at which false accusations destroy lives, I believe my wife and I would have taken a chance with this young lady, or at least seriously looked into it. We know how to deal with bonding issues, but there is nothing, NOTHING one can do to avoid false accusations of sexual abuse, especially when the system is tilted toward them.

When Buzz Franklin claimed that the acquittal of Tonya Craft would keep others from reporting real instances of abuse, he was not telling the truth. Because the law does not permit punishment of people who make false accusations of child abuse and molestation, there is no downside to an estranged ex-spouse trying to gain custody of children (as in the case of Joal Henke) by telling lies.

Furthermore, not only is there no punishment for children who make false accusations, but the law and current government policies actually encourage false abuse claims. Don't kid yourselves. Arnt and Gregor LOVED the challenge of trying to get a conviction on Tonya Craft, even if they themselves never believed the charges. (As Kerwyn and I note in the article we sent to Reason Magazine, had prosecutors actually believed Tonya was guilty, they would not have tried to add what clearly was perjured "evidence," and their strategy would have been different that what it actually was: pure character assassination.)

So, this young lady will remain in a group home, and her family will continue to be bankrupted. Here is one child who might have had a chance, but given the Mondale Act and the outright lies that come from prosecutors and CAC "interviewers," there is no way that my family and I can take even a chance in adopting this child.

The consequences of false accusations are horrendous, but don't tell that to Arnt, Gregor, and Outhouse, not to mention Holly Kittle, Ione Sells, Suzi Thorne, Tim Deal, and Sharon Anderson. They are having too much fun trying to put innocent people into prison to pay any attention to the wreckage they are leaving behind. As the woman at the Georgia State Bar told me, "They are just doing their jobs," and their "jobs" today involve the destruction of innocent life.

It Doesn't Get Much Worse Than This

During the erstwhile Duke Lacrosse Case, Joe Neff from the Raleigh News & Observer helped carry the day. In the early days of the affair, the N&O drove the coverage in a dishonest, smarmy way, with one of its resident leftists, Samiha Khanna, writing most of the copy.

However, the adults soon took over and Joe Neff from late spring until the end of the case compiled an extremely impressive list of articles that ultimately exposed the case for the sham it was. Since then, Neff has written a series of article on the scandal that has engulfed the North Carolina "justice" system involving the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) crime lab, a place where "forensics" often was a sham and where employees tricked the results in order to help prosecutors gain convictions.

If you wish to get a good sense of what happened, read the series in the N&O, as well as Radley Balko's excellent Reason crime column. Balko writes:

A stunning accompanying investigation by the Raleigh News & Observer found that though the crime lab’s results were presented to juries with the authoritativeness of science, laboratory procedures were geared toward just one outcome: putting as many people in prison as possible. The paper discovered an astonishingly frank 2007 training manual for analysts, still in use as of last week, instructing researchers that “A good reputation and calm demeanor also enhances an analyst's conviction rate.” Defense attorneys, the manual warned, often “put words into the analyst's mouth to try and raise inaccuracies.” The guide also instructs analysts to beware of “defense whores”—analysts hired by defense attorneys to challenge their testimony.

Indeed, it was that same mentality shown by prosecutors in their "win at all costs" (the main cost being the truth) in the Tonya Craft trial that led Chris Arnt and Len Gregor to tell a jury that highly-respected defense witnesses Dr. Nancy Aldridge, Dr. Nancy Fajman, Dr. Ann Hazzard, and Dr. William Bernet were nothing but "whores of the court" and people who "lied for pay." At the same time, "Alberto-Facebook" and "The Man" expected people to believe that the poorly-trained and educated, giggling, eye-rolling, sighing, and shoulder-shrugging charlatans at the local Children's Advocacy Center were crackerjack experts.

Why do these things occur? They occur because the legal system protects the criminals within it. Suborning perjury, tampering with evidence, forging documents, and lying in official documents all are crimes, yet no matter how egregious the violations of the law, no prosecutor (and usually no cop) ever is in danger of facing the bar of justice.

In short, prosecutors run the system, and judges (most of whom are former prosecutors) go along with the crimes, and then make rulings that protect all of the wrongdoers from punishment. As a woman at the Georgia State Bar told me, all of these things are just examples of prosecutors "doing their jobs," and she approved of everything I just have listed.

As I have read through the years of example after example of prosecutorial misconduct, I have come to realize that there really is no more hope for the system. The defense bar has been emasculated, and innocent people are convicted each day as prosecutors run about like wild animals. Indeed, if you want to find a group of criminals in the LMJC, don't go to the local jails; just go to Buzz Franklin's office.

While North Carolina claims to be trying to "reform" the system, one cannot "reform" anything when the prosecutors are in charge. The only way there can be any meaningful reform in American criminal justice is to end immunity for prosecutors, police, and judges. If the rest of us have no immunity, and we continue to do our jobs, then why should this class of people be protected from having to obey the law?

As I go through the various links demonstrating misconduct on behalf of prosecutors around the country, I come to realize that nothing is going to change. We see a charlatan like "dentist" Michael West testifying for prosecutors and helping to win convictions, even though all prosecutors who use West know that he is a fraud. Radley Balko explains:

I’ve written extensively on West over the last few years, most recently in a feature about the 1992 Louisiana murder trial and eventual conviction of Jimmie Duncan. In that case, I obtained a video showing West repeatedly jamming Duncan’s dental mold into the body of the young girl Duncan was accused of killing. Forensic specialists say that what West does in the video isn't a remotely acceptable method of analysis, and may amount to criminal evidence tampering. Duncan is on death row in Louisiana, based in part on West's analysis.

The whole thing is so outrageous that one does not wonder why West is not behind bars, but even today, prosecutors in Mississippi seek out the services of this lying charlatan and the disgraced "forensic pathologist" Steven Hayne. (I am sure that both men would be welcomed with open arms in the LMJC both by prosecutors and judges. Liars and charlatans feel very, very comfortable around each other. Maybe they can have a group hug.)

In a country where people actually cared about justice, men like Arnt, Gregor, West, Outhouse, and many others would be looking for honest work or would be sitting in the crowbar motel. Instead, they draw large salaries on the public till, lie in court, present false evidence, send innocent people to prison, and are touted in the local press as "heroes."

Save Us From Rand Paul! (And Other Nonsense From the New York Times)

In the recent article entitled, “America’s Ruling Class,” author Angelo M. Codevilla writes that the ruling elite of this country

…whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

In other words, the god of those who use state power to push the rest of us into line is, well, the state, and anyone who might say anything against this god should be banished, if not from America, at least from Congress. So, a recent editorial in the Official Publication of the Ruling Class, the New York Times, should not be surprising as it paints Rand Paul and others as a threat to our very souls, declaring:

These new Republican candidates are out of touch with mainstream American values of tolerance and pretty much everything else. They need to be challenged head-on.

Obviously, this is Really Serious Stuff. So why is Rand Paul a threat, along with others running for office? Well, read this and then shake in your boots:

Rand Paul, the United States Senate candidate in Kentucky and physician, who has criticized the minimum-wage law and the civil rights and fair housing laws. He wants to cut way back on unemployment insurance and has denigrated Medicare as “socialized medicine.”

How DARE anyone even utter words about a law that has helped create record teenage unemployment! As for the civil rights criticism, he questioned whether or not state agents should have the power to dictate to owners of private property who they should permit to be on that property. (Paul also stated that he believed that refusing to serve someone in a restaurant because that person is of another race is immoral and could not personally support such action. The Slimes leaves out that part because the Ruling Class mentality does not want anyone to believe that one can hold to the sanctity of private property and not be a racist.)

Even leaving out the “cut way back” comments on unemployment “insurance,” I find especially amusing that the Ruling Class Representatives hold that telling the truth about Medicare – that it really is socialist medicine – is to “denigrate” it. The reason I find this curious is that no entity has been more vocal about the need for the state to force socialist medical care on us than the NYT.

One has to remember that the Ruling Class today has its roots in the Progressive Movement of more than a century ago, and so-called Progressives believe with all their heart that “progress” occurs when the state advances against individuals and private property. Thus, to criticize ANY growth of the state (except to restrict abortions) is to criticize “progress” itself, and in “progress,” we find all Goodness and Virtue. Therefore, any cutback is seen as “turning back the clock,” and that, dear readers, Is A Very Bad Thing.

However, there is even more to dislike. In taking on Ken Buck, who is the Colorado Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, Those Who Would Rule Over Us declare (with horror, I’m sure):

A former district attorney, he has said that the separation of church and state is too strictly enforced and wants to eliminate the Energy and Education Departments. Until recently, he supported repealing the 17th Amendment, which provides for direct election of senators. In the primary, he said he should win because “I do not wear high heels” — his opponent was a woman. As a federal prosecutor, he was reprimanded by a United States attorney after he gave information about the weakness of a case against gun dealers to the defense.

Again, anyone who wants to eliminate ANYTHING that the NYT calls progress – the advance of the State – is evil. Now, Tom DiLorenzo has written this about the 17th Amendment (but his words cannot mean anything to the Ruling Class, as DiLorenzo thinks it was not a good thing for Abraham Lincoln to start a war, eviscerate habeas corpus, and arrest thousands of people who disagreed with him).

But there is more. The reprimand of which the NY Slimes speaks was a reprimand of Buck for telling the truth, and what could be a bigger threat to the state than a federal prosecutor who actually does something other than lie? Of course, there is more to that case than the “Newspaper of Record” wants us to know. According to the Greely Gazette:

“I didn’t believe I had done anything wrong,” Buck said. “so I refused to resign, and I knew that an investigation would be started. But, I truly felt I had done the right thing and would be justified.” In the end, Buck’s evaluation of the case turned out to be accurate. More than 37 felony charges against two defendants were dropped, and the third man -- the main defendant -- walked out of court with a misdemeanor conviction, a $25 dollar fine, and one day of probation.

“A lot of financial resources were wasted to prosecute a felony case that merited only a misdemeanor charge,” Buck said. “That’s exactly what I said in the beginning. I was right. That’s what people need to know.”

There is another point about Buck that must really rile the Monitors of the Ruling Class: he recently secured perjury indictments against a detective whose lies in a murder trial more than a decade ago led to a wrongful conviction. Of course, that is intolerable to the Newspaper That Propped Up Mike Nifong, for the state must be free to imprison those who, well, should be imprisoned.

And the editorial goes on and on. Someone else is in favor of “repealing the progressive income tax” and other such Things That Are Intolerable Our Rulers. (I mean, how else can they live at our expense except to take as much of our property as possible?)

So, we see that our nation is under siege, as people are running for office who don’t worship the gods of Progressivism. Even worse, we have prosecutors who tell the truth and seek justice, at least once in a while. Now, I hardly am going to claim that these people will turn around things, and I’m sure that at least some of these “radical” candidates have no problem with our military adventures around the world.

Nonetheless, one gets a picture of the mentality of Our Rulers. Anything or anyone who raises questions about those things that others have imposed upon us is a Threat To Our Very Existence.

The Roger Clemens Indictment

[Update: Friday, August 20, 2010, 9:55 PM]: Just a reminder for all the readers to vote for Leah and Russell! (Yes, it is called "stuffing the ballot box," but since everyone else is stuffing the box, we might as well do it better!) [End Update]

Last year, Candice E. Jackson and I published "Putting Stars Behind Bars" in Reason Magazine in which we chronicled how federal authorities are targeting prominent athletes and finding clever ways to get them thrown into prison.

Today, it is Roger Clemens, one of the greatest pitchers of our time, and so far I have not read anything in the mainstream media questioning why this really was necessary. Yes, yes, he was indicted for perjury, allegedly lying to Congress. (Why, I ask are not members of Congress regularly indicted for lying to us?)

The New York Times breathlessly reports:

At that hearing, Clemens and his former trainer Brian McNamee contradicted each other about whether Clemens had used steroids and human growth hormone. Andy Pettitte, Clemens’s friend and a longtime teammate, provided a written statement under oath to Congressional investigators in which he said Clemens admitted to him in 1999 or 2000 that he had used H.G.H.

Days after the hearing, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the committee asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into Clemens’s testimony.

If convicted, Clemens could face up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine, but under current sentencing guidelines, a conviction would most likely bring a 15- to 21-month sentence. He would probably receive less prison time if he accepted a plea agreement.

OK, I have a question. Why is Congress dragging a professional athlete in front of one of its bloviating committees for an inquisition? These are the same people who have helped to destroy the U.S. economy, get us into wars that are intractable, and who constantly enrich themselves at the expense of those of us who don't share their privileges.

The last time I checked, Major League Baseball was a private organization, and if Roger Clemens actually too steroids at a time when MLB did not prohibit the practice, then he actually broke no rules. Nonetheless, like Barry Bonds, who was dragged in front of a federal grand jury, Congress decided to place Clemens in a "perjury trap" in which he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

Of course, what inquisition can be complete without a self-serving statement from a federal prosecutor. (As I have noted elsewhere, federal prosecutors are notorious for breaking the law, but not indicting themselves.) We hear the following from yet another self-righteous U.S. attorney:

"Our government cannot function if witnesses are not held accountable for false statements made before Congress,” said Ronald C. Machen Jr., the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. “Today the message is clear: if a witness makes a choice to ignore his or her obligation to testify honestly, there will be consequences."

Uh, I hate to tell him, but our government "does not function" at any level other than to hold everyone else to standards that no one in Washington seems to be able to meet. Nonetheless, we are forced to listen to this self-righteous drivel by someone who probably could not tell the truth in a court of law even if he wanted to do so.

(Don't forget, the Washington, D.C., office is that same office that gave us the massive misconduct in the trial of the late Sen. Ted Stevens. Notice that while federal prosecutors lied in that case, none of them faced even a second of mild sanctions. So much for the love of "honesty" among the ranks of the feds.)

Now, there is an even bigger target for the feds: Lance Armstrong. Here is a guy who never failed a drug test, but apparently the criminals running the U.S. Department of Injustice will not be happy until Armstrong is thrown into prison. In the meantime, federal prosecutors will suborn perjury, lie to judges and the general public and generally make a mockery of the law -- all in the name of "upholding the law."

Why are federal prosecutors so dishonest AND out of control? There is this thing called "immunity," which is the same reason that prosecutors in the Tonya Craft case also knew they could lie, suborn perjury, and fabricate "evidence," knowing that no matter how criminal their conduct, they would not face a single sanction. And this is what these people call "rule of law." I call it something else.

Did Tonya Craft's Trial Produce an "O.J. Verdict"?

[Update: Thursday, August 19, 2010, 12:35 PM]: Just a reminder for all the readers to vote for Leah and Russell! (Yes, it is called "stuffing the ballot box," but since everyone else is stuffing the box, we might as well do it better!) [End Update]

In an email the other day from someone who seems to believe Tonya Craft was guilty, he laid out the issue of what we call the "O.J. Verdict." According to people like Sandra Lamb, Sherry and Dewayne Wilson, Buzz Franklin and others in the LMJC, jurors rejected a "mountain of evidence" that "proved" Tonya's guilty and acquitted her on (at best) flawed beliefs that she did not "look like a child molester."

Before dealing with this question, however, I need first to deal with, well, the O.J. verdict. As readers know, O.J. Simpson was acquitted in October 1995 of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole, and Ronald Goldman in a gruesome stabbing at Nicole's Los Angeles home. As the story goes, the mostly-black jury, after being presented with almost incontrovertible evidence of Simpson's guilt after six months of trial, engaged in what some have called "jury nullification" to acquit him of all charges.

Unfortunately, the whole thing was pictured in a black-white perspective (a mainstream media favorite topic) in which blacks were seen as celebrating the verdict and whites were dismayed. Certainly we saw these pictures on the news, so there was some truth to the reports of the divide. However, we have to understand that no matter what some people might think -- that American blacks were celebrating a black celebrity getting away with murdering white people -- the truth was that the black press and blacks in general looked carefully at how the "evidence" was collected and presented.

The standard for a guilty verdict is "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," not, "We think he might have done it." Shortly after the verdict, I was speaking to an older African-American man in a grocery line in Auburn, Alabama (where I was going to graduate school), about the case and he asked me if I thought Simpson was guilty. I told him I did not know, but that I believed the defense had established reasonable doubt.

No, I do not believe it was a "jury nullification" situation. As one white juror told researchers later, he went into the jury room not convinced Simpson was guilty, but wondered if he was the only one thinking that. I do believe that the prosecution did a miserable job, and there were enough questions about the prosecutors' tactics to give jurors the reasons for the decision they reached.

Let us turn to the jury's decision in Tonya Craft's case. Franklin's post-verdict statement (which violated the Georgia State Bar's Rules of Conduct) claimed that Ms. Craft actually was guilty, but that jurors were guilty if not of misconduct, then of terrible judgment.

(Franklin claimed that the reason jurors voted to acquit was because some of them did not think Ms. Craft "looked like a child molester," and that the jury was not convinced because there were no "videotapes, confession or physical evidence." Jurors who spoke to the media after the trial did not mention any of these things, and especially the latter. Instead, they noted that there were huge gaps in the prosecution's "evidence," and that prosecutors were acting like bullies and the judge was openly biased in favor of conviction. Jurors also noticed that the CAC "expert" witnesses for the prosecution acted like disrespectful, spoiled teenagers whenever defense counsel cross-examined them, while the defense "experts" acted like adults and clearly were more credible than the eye-rolling, shoulder-shrugging, openly-sighing CAC gang.)

There is another huge difference between Tonya Craft's trial and the O.J. Simpson affair: with the Simpson case, there were two dead people. In Tonya's case, however, there are real questions about whether or not there was any molestation at all. Having examined the timelines, the police notes, and the interviews the three children had with the police and the CAC "interviewers," I and others are convinced that there was no molestation at all.

As I see it, not only was there "reasonable doubt" for Tonya's supposed guilt, but there also was "reasonable doubt" as to whether or not molestation even happened, which was a double-whammy for the prosecution. In that sense, Buzz Franklin was right; child molesting is not likely to be on videotape.

Keep in mind that the charges against Tonya Craft did not arise from the children, and the interview transcripts with Stacy Long and Suzi Thorne demonstrate this very well. Instead, they arose from an atmosphere of score-settling, as the Wilsons already had said they would get revenge on her for Tonya's recommendation that their child not be promoted to first grade. (Ms. Craft already had experienced a falling out with Sandra Lamb over a dispute at the birthday party of Ms. Craft's daughter.)

When one add Joal Henke's decision to try to get revenge for Tonya's objections to Henke's wife, Sarah, showering with Ms. Craft's daughter, it is clear that the atmosphere absolutely was poisonous. Furthermore, these are the very kind of people who gladly would bring false charges against someone else.

The second point about this group of people is that they are well-connected to police and prosecutors. For example, in her complaint against Eric Echols, Lamb lists Chris Arnt as her "attorney friend" who was advising her in what actually was a civil case. (Arnt allegedly told Lamb that she did not have to accept a subpoena in a civil case, which is bad legal advice, and especially bad for Arnt, since he stepped outside of his role as a prosecutor, which would raise questions about his immunity protections.) Thus, it was not hard to get these people to act against Tonya Craft, and since the LMJC personnel really are a law unto themselves, there was no risk or downside, in their view.

There is one other important point, and that was the sheer volume of perjury that prosecution witnesses committed, as well as the deliberate attempt by Arnt and Gregor to misrepresent the defense's expert witnesses during the closing statements. I am speaking of Lamb's denial on the stand that her daughter had taken acting lessons, Kelly McDonald's "power bill" perjury, the "hand rape" lies told by Lamb, her daughter, Tim Deal and Suzi Thorne, not to mention the lies that Joal and Sarah Henke told under oath.

Had the prosecutors really believed they had the "slam dunk" case they claimed before trial, then why all the subornation of perjury? Why the fabrication of documents, why the "Animal House" behavior, and why the lies at closing?

I find it interesting that "judge" Brian Outhouse kept out reams of exculpatory evidence, and he also kept out material that would have demonstrated Lamb was lying about her daughter's acting lessons, the Wilson power bill lies, the questionable (at best) Deal documents, not to mention the material from Dr. Ann Hazzard regarding her interviews with Tonya's daughter. Nor were jurors able to see any of the information that came from Eric Echols' investigation because of the trumped-up charges that "Alberto-Facebook" Arnt and his pals from the LMJC cooked up.

In other words, the jury was not permitted to see material that would have case even more doubt on the state's case, yet Franklin, Deal, most LMJC judges and employees, Arnt, Gregor, Lamb and her little friends all are crying that this was an "O.J. Verdict." Outhouse gave the prosecutors pretty much everything they wanted and still it was obvious that the case was a lie.

Following his acquittal, O.J. Simpson's life went downhill and he finally self-destructed and now is in prison, where he likely will remain for the rest of his life. In Tonya Craft's case, Ms. Craft is doing pretty well, but I would not be surprised to see the main players on the prosecution's side have some sorry turns in their lives down the road. After all, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "Character is fate," and I think that in this situation, Fitzgerald's words are going to be proven true.

Vote for Leah and Russell!

My daughter, Leah, and Russell Golden are in a contest for a scholarship to the EntreLeadership Seminar with Dave Ramsey. You can go to this link, see their video (if you want) and then vote below!

I'm proud of both of them. Vote early and often!

Integrity, a Sham Investigation, and Tim Deal

During his testimony in the Tonya Craft trial, Tim Deal declared that he did not like seeing his integrity questioned, and that he would not "jeopardize" his career over this case. Those are high-sounding words, and he was right, at least on the second part: Lying does not jeopardize one's career in the LMJC, at least if one is a police officer or a prosecutor, or a prosecution witness.

However, since Deal has claimed that standing up for Tonya Craft is tantamount to attacking innocent people, and because he has claimed that any questioning of his work is the same as attacking his "integrity," then I believe that we need to take a much harder look at what he has said - and how it compares to what he actually did.

First, during his testimony, he made this declaration:

"What the media and what Tonya Craft's cronies have put these families through, I don't know anyone that would allow their child to go through garbage, and subject their child to this kind of abuse."

I'm not sure who Ms. Craft's "cronies" might be, although I have an idea. (Deal believes that if one is innocent, then one should not even contact an attorney, something that Gregor said as well during the trial, and Deal is adamant that Tonya's attorneys were bad people who simply wanted to harm the poor and innocent "Mommie Dearest," her friends Kelly McDonald and Sherri Wilson, and Joal "I Just Remembered" and Sarah "Shave Down There" Henke, along with their families.)

What concerns me more, however, is the fact that Tim Deal has the authority to have people charged with crimes (or at least to be very influential in that process), yet apparently has no idea of what a legitimate criminal investigation entails. For example, during testimony, when asked why he had not conducted a search of Tonya's house for evidence (including looking for pornographic images on her computer), he replied that he had not believed there was "probable cause" for a search.

That is most interesting. If there is "probable cause" for an arrest, then there certainly would be for a search. Furthermore, there is a known connection between child molesters and pornography and Angela Carroll already had made an allegation that Ms. Craft was involved in taking pornographic images of young boys.

(We should not forget that "Dirty" Deal and others from the LMJC now are spreading the Big Lie that they had "material" that "was not allowed into evidence," referring to the Carroll nonsense. The notion that Outhouse would have disallowed ANY request of material from the prosecution is a very sick joke, and the fact that Deal and others are trying to claim that Outhouse kept out the "magic bullet" that would have enabled them to gain a conviction in the Craft case tells me more about those people than it does about the case itself.)

In what is supposed to be a routine or normal police investigation, the narrative is supposed to flow from the facts that they discover, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. One would think that an alleged vicious child molester like Tonya Craft would have incriminating evidence around her house that a detective might want to find, not to mention to view the lay of the house to get a better picture of where the supposed molestation had taken place.

Deal's lack of curiosity about Tonya's house and computer tells me that he was involved in a very different kind of investigation, one that paralleled what Michael Nifong and the Durham police conducted in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case four years ago. In that case, Nifong refused to interview anyone (except to offer another stripper, Kim Roberts, a sweetheart deal to get her to change her story) and had a curious lack of interest in important materials, like Reade Seligmann's electronic and photographic proof that he was miles away from where the alleged rape occurred AT THE TIME when it supposedly was happening.

(Nifong's response was to arrest the cab driver who had given Mr. Seligmann a ride and then to change the timeline of the events in an attempt to deal with the alibi. In other words, his deliberate failure to launch a real investigation came back to bite him.)

Likewise, it is clear to me that Deal and his cronies conducted a sham investigation. When Stacy Long interviewed Sandra Lamb's daughter and when Suzi Thorn interviewed the Lamb and Henke children, those interviewers were under orders from Deal and others to get something - anything - they could use for indictments. To make matters worse, "Alberto-Facebook" Arnt and "The Man" Gregor fashioned six indictments from Thorne's "Who's On First" interview with Tonya's daughter in which the only thing established was that Tonya put medicine on her child's bottom when the girl had a rash, and if that is a crime, then every mother in this country is a felony child molester.

(Of course, there also is the sticky issue of the so-called fabricated "hand rape" document that magically appeared in Deal's file after it had not been there when Tonya's defense team photocopied everything before the trial. Given what I have seen from "Dirty" Deal and the prosecutors, I find it hard to believe the detective's story.)

One can draw only one of two conclusions from Deal's handiwork. Either Deal really does not know how to conduct a real criminal investigation - and neither does anyone else in the LMJC - or Deal and his friends perpetuated a sham investigation in which one pretends to be looking for evidence when, in fact, one actually is attempting to avoid evidence that might not fit the narrative.

Either conclusion tells us that Deal and his friends are not fit to be wearing their government-issued costumes and tin badges. If the truth really coincides with the first conclusion, then they are incompetent and really learned nothing from their police academy and all the cop shows they watch on Fox.

However, if the conclusion is Door Number Two, then they are felons who actively are engaged in crimes of obstruction of justice. I happen to believe that if he wants to do so, "Dirty" Deal can carry out an authentic and competent investigation, and in the Craft case, the LAST thing he wanted was to find evidence that would not fit what Sandra Lamb, Dewayne Wilson, and French Newton were demanding.

As I have said before, a number of felonies were committed in the Tonya Craft case. All of them, however, were committed by the people bringing charges and by those who are given a special public trust to seek the truth.

Does this mean I am questioning Tim Deal's integrity? Actually, I am not "questioning" it at all. I'm saying forthrightly that he has none.

SPEAKING OF SANDRA LAMB, I have found out through reliable sources that Lamb, Sherri Wilson, and Kelli McDonald have been given the privileges of parking in the teacher parking lot at Chickamauga Elementary School. All other parents are supposed to park elsewhere.

I also hear about attempts by officials to intimidate the CES teachers who testified for the defense in Tonya's trial. Why am I not surprised to be hearing this? I'm also hearing other things that I won't repeat on this blog, but it seems that Sandra Lamb is a very busy woman.

The Ordeal of John Mulkey

Police and prosecutors in Georgia are out of control. They bring charges where there are no crimes, and then refuse to back off once the charges are debunked, and because the authorities at the state level refuse even to investigate any wrongdoing, these people are free to act lawlessly and ruthlessly as they engage in criminal activity.

Thus it is that John Mulkey of Cartersville, Georgia, is facing the nightmare ordeal that Tonya Craft, Brad Wade, James Combs, Eric Echols and countless others in North Georgia already have been (or are currently) experiencing. The able Dennis Norwood of The Chattanoogan recently had a story on Mr. Mulkey and I urge people to read it to find the facts of the case. I won't repeat them here, but, instead, will deal with some of the reasons that the authorities will not bend to the obvious and end this man's ordeal.

First, I wish to deal with the weapons charge against Mr. Mulkey, a charge into which the ancient doctrine of mens rea factors. Until U.S. Justice William O. Douglas led a "Progressive" charge against this doctrine and eviscerated it at the federal level, mens rea was the bedrock of American and English criminal law.

This doctrine dealt with intent, that is, intent to commit a crime. The great English jurist William Blackstone, who more than any other person influenced American and English law, called it a "vicious will," in which one intends to engage in criminal activity.

Take, for example, two car wrecks in which someone is killed. In the first, everyone can see that it truly was an accident. Perhaps a tire blows out, a deer runs into the road, or something happens that no one expected. In the second, however, the driver of one car deliberately steers his vehicle into the other vehicle and pushes the accelerator, hoping that the end result - a death - will occur.

In the first incident, if no traffic laws have been violated, almost certainly the authorities won't charge the driver with a crime. However, in the second situation, the authorities see that the driver was using his car as a weapon and will charge him with homicide, and the charge would be justified.

In both situations, there is a death, but in the second, one person acted recklessly in order to visit the injury upon the other party. However, if the authorities were to charge the first driver with murder, then there likely would be public outrage, and the person would appeal to mens rea.

Thus, that is the situation involving the weapons charge against Mr. Mulkey (filed, appropriately, in Catoosa County, where the law disappeared years ago and only venal, criminally-minded police, prosecutors, and judges remain). Since he clearly was not aware that there was an outstanding warrant against him, he could not have known that he technically was in violation of weapons laws.

(In fact, he even told the police officer that he had a weapon in the car, which hardly would be the actions of a man who was holding an illegal firearm. Again, the authorities don't care; they just want to throw people into jail, justified or unjustified.)

So, we see just how men like Buzz Franklin and the magistrates and judges of the LMJC really don't care about legal doctrines. However, this story gets worse, at least as far as Mr. Mulkey is concerned.

As Mr. Norwood's story goes, Mr. Mulkey's wife, Casey, died of leukemia. They had a daughter, and Casey's parents wanted custody of the girl. According to Mr. Mulkey, they allegedly convinced the girl to accuse Mr. Mulkey of molesting her, a charge that the child says she never made. (The actual charge came from the in-laws, who told Bartow County police, when then took out a warrant for Mr. Mulkey's arrest.)

So, that is where we stand. For the time being, there has been no indictment, but the authorities refuse to back down. We need to understand that the authorities LOVE to pursue child molestation cases, and from what I can tell, they really don't care if there was actual molestation or not. Why do they love these charges?

First, there is no need for physical evidence. If they can get someone to give hearsay accusations - even if the person who supposedly was molested denies it happens - then they have a basis for a charge.

Second, there is money in it. States and localities receive millions of dollars in federal money to pursue these kinds of charges, and the more "molestation" they "uncover," the more money and prestige for the authorities.

Third, it is a power game. We now are in an age in which people in the legal system no longer care if the charges they pursue are true or not. The usual line is, "We will let a jury decide," but the laws and rules governing judges and prosecutors clearly state that they are to pursue the truth, not what is convenient to them.

More and more, we are seeing narcissistic prosecutors like Len "The Man" Gregor (who constantly bragged on himself during Tonya Craft's trial, wanting jurors to see him as a Greek god instead of the lying fraud that he really was) taking over. These are people who enjoy bullying others, and the more lives they destroy, the better they feel about themselves.

Today's prosecutors, because they almost never are disciplined by authorities, feel free to break the law and to lie constantly about charges or bring charges that the courts already have said are not legal. In John Mulkey's case, the authorities clearly have no legal or moral basis by which to bring charges, yet they refuse to do what is right.

In my devotions this morning, I read Proverbs 14:34, which states: "Righteousness exalts a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people." Indeed, people like those who have authority in the LMJC and elsewhere in Georgia have become a "reproach" in every sense of the word. They no longer care about right and wrong; they just want to win, and all too often the so-called gatekeepers are nothing more than foxes guarding the hen house.

I will say unequivocally that no society can withstand this kind of official misconduct without breaking down and becoming an out-and-out police state based solely upon fear. The John Mulkey case might seem to be just another Georgia "child molestation" case, but it symbolizes much more, for we have a situation here in which the authorities so far have shown no inclination whatsoever to do what is right - and what the law supposedly requires of them.

A society can withstand people committing crimes, as criminals always have been in our midst. No society, however, can withstand those in authority utterly disregarding the law, for that goes to the very heart of the system.

The Blagojevich Deadlock

[Update, Thursday, August 12, 2010, 9:20 AM]: I have deleted yesterday's post on scientific fraud because I am not sure that the false temperature listing was deliberate. There may have been an error by the satellite readings that people did not pick up until later. I do try to make sure that what I put on my website is reasonably accurate, and I am not sure that what I have alleged is true, given the information I have now. [End Update]

When U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, already a media darling for his relentless pursuit of...Scooter Libby, announced that he had tapes of then-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich cutting illegal deals left and right, the media storm followed and "good government" Democrats and Republicans leaped into the affair. The self-righteousness was evident, as Fitzgerald claimed that Abraham Lincoln would have "turned over in his grave" to hear such things.

(Actually, Lincoln was a deal-cutter in his own right and when he was president, Americans tolerated political corruption but drew the line at the kind of things that government routinely does today: interfere with about everything in our lives.)

Today, we hear the the jurors are deadlocked over at least some of the charges, and I only can hope that they are not deadlocked on any "not guilty" charges against Rob, Rod's brother, whose "crime" apparently was being a sibling to the disgraced former governor.

Last year, I wrote the following on Lew Rockwell's page, as I thoroughly was disgusted with the government's conduct and especially Fitzgerald, who I believe is as loathesome a public figure as exists today on any continent. Anyway, here is my article, and I believe it still is relevant:

After Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, they sent a word to firms and associations which lobbied Congress that they needed to do two things. First, these organizations needed to start sending campaign contributions to Democrats instead of Republicans, and, second, they had to hire Democratic lobbyists. Any organization that failed to follow those two simple rules would find itself shut out of any discussions regarding upcoming bills, which was a nice and clear threat that Congress would loot them or even try to destroy them altogether.

I mention this because there were no "We’re shocked, SHOCKED" editorials in the New York Times or Washington Post. Common Cause, which is trying to continue the old Progressive canard of "good government," did not file suits or issue press releases. Most important, no federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or Charles Schumer, accusing them of "depriving the citizens of the United States of honest government."

Lest anyone think I am being partisan, don’t forget that when the Republicans controlled the Congress, they let companies and lobbying firms know that there were certain rules to follow, to whom the financial contributions must go, and who would benefit. Granted, the New York Times and Washington Post were "shocked, SHOCKED" over that set of facts, although it seems that even the Post decided recently to get into the "pay to play" act, too.

The simple fact that governments control the game when it comes to property rights, regulation, and taxation means that politicians always will hold a Sword of Damocles over the heads of productive people, and they generally wield that sword viciously. When President Barack Obama recently chided African heads of government for "skimming 20 percent from the top" of business investment, in their countries, most people I know were stunned. I mean, when was the last time government in the USA took anything close to as small an amount as 20 percent? Would be that government took only 20 percent, given the present realities of the rapacious state.

I use this long introduction to point out that as long as politicians are properly connected, then they can engage in government as usual without being molested by federal prosecutors. However, should one fall from favor or one is too successful for the mass of Salieris that inhabit the bowels of government, then one is easily targeted. As Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s head of security, once stated, "Show me the man, and I will find you the crime," which seems to be the motto of the United States Department of Justice.

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who last provided political theater in the Scooter Libby case, claiming that he did not know who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the press when, in fact, he did, is in the news again with the indictment of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. (It is OK for federal prosecutors to openly make false statements, but if you are not a U.S. attorney, I would advise you not to try this at home.)

Appealing to the "good government" goo-goos in the press and elsewhere, Fitzgerald first released portions of secretly taped conversations of the governor in action, claiming that Blagojevich did things of which Abraham Lincoln would have been ashamed. Thus, Fitzgerald proved he was utterly ignorant of Lincoln’s record both as a legislator and as President of the United States. It is one thing, however, to be ignorant of history, as that is a common disease among government officials and their media allies; it is quite another to demonstrate ignorance of law itself, especially if one has the power to secure indictments and put people on trial. It seems that Fitzgerald’s dishonesty is not limited to his public statements, but also to the indictments that he gains against others. Let me explain.

The case against Blagojevich and five other people (including Blago’s brother, Robert), centers around the nebulous and confusing charge of "honest services fraud." According to federal law, people are entitled to "honest" services from someone, but it is up to the government to define what such a term means.

For example, when Jack Abramoff was a lobbyist, his efforts saved his Indian clients billions of dollars as he was able to head off Congressional schemes to tax the casinos owned by his clients. His record of success is clear, yet federal prosecutors forced him to plead guilty to "bilking" his clients of millions in fees, despite the fact that his fees were negotiated in the open and he did nothing that other lobbyists (including the lobbyists now favored by the Democrats) don't do every day.

Thus, Fitzgerald can claim with a straight face that Blagojevich "and a circle of his closest aides and advisors allegedly engaged in a wide-ranging scheme to deprive the people of Illinois of honest government." Furthermore, Fitzgerald and his staff redefine terms like "extortion."

For example, when Blagojevich was governor, he was in negotiations with the Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Cubs and its famous Wrigley Field, to provide state aid for the firm, which was experiencing financial difficulties. However, the editorial staff was very critical of Blago and often lambasted him on both the news and editorial pages of the Chicago Tribune, and the then-governor demanded that the editorial board be replaced before he sign off on sending aid to the company.

Now, this certainly does not make Blago look like a nice guy, but it hardly makes him an extortionist. First, and most important, extortion as it has been historically defined is the act of unlawfully obtaining "money, property, or services" from other individuals or organizations through coercion (according to Wikipedia). Second, it is interesting how many favored groups are permitted to threaten lawsuits against someone unless that person or the organization pay up. (Environmental groups are well-known for this, yet Congress has legalized it for certain favored constituencies.)

I can find no instance in which Blago was threatening harm or demanding money or even services via coercion. Instead, he, the government of Illinois, and the Tribune Company were "conspiring" to take money from taxpayers and give it to a media company that had made some bad business moves. Note that the "aid" was not illegal, but Blago’s "threat" was criminalized. This is not extortion by any stretch of the imagination, and if one were to apply the same standard to members of Congress and even the President of the United States, one would have to construct a new set of prisons to hold the new inmates.

Of course, Fitzgerald, by charging Blago and the others under the "racketeering" statutes, is demanding huge amounts of property and financial forfeiture before trial. This is done in order to make it very difficult for the defendants to pay for competent legal representation, and it clearly goes against every sense of legal decency that used to be part of the "justice" system before prosecutors were able to completely control the process.

There is more in Fitzgerald’s faux indictment. Witness the following passage:

The RICO conspiracy count alleges that Blagojevich personally, the Office of the Governor of Illinois and Friends of Blagojevich were associated and, together, constituted the "Blagojevich Enterprise," whose primary purpose was to exercise and preserve power over Illinois government for the financial and political benefit of Blagojevich, both directly and through Friends of Blagojevich, and for the financial benefit of his family members and associates. Blagojevich and Kelly, the only RICO conspiracy defendants, allegedly conspired with Monk, Cellini, Harris, Robert Blagojevich, Rezko and previously convicted cooperating defendant Stuart Levine, to conduct the Blagojevich Enterprise through a pattern of multiple acts of mail and wire fraud, extortion, attempted extortion and extortion conspiracy, and state bribery.

While this sounds onerous, it describes absolutely nothing, at least when one looks at criminal activity from an historical perspective. The secretly-taped telephone calls found Blago telling someone that if a person wanted the U.S. Senate seat, he or she would have to come up with future financial favors for the governor and his family. Now, the "good-government" types want us to believe that the mechanism of government is pristine by nature and that people like Blago and those who "peddle influence" ruin it.

Right. First, in Blago’s defense, the guy was talking big, which is not unusual when it comes to elected officials. Second, nothing specific was laid out, no plans, no nothing. The guy simply was talking.

Third, when we see "crimes" like "wire fraud" and "mail fraud" thrown about, please remember that these are not real "crimes" but simply are the acts of mailing a letter or making a telephone call. The "fraud" statutes do not exist to protect individuals; they exist solely to provide prosecutors with leverage in pursuing criminal indictments. That is because if a person is found guilty of one charge, then the other charges automatically kick in, so there can be multiple crimes that are derived from the same act. That is why Candice E. Jackson and I have referred to them as "derivative crimes" in many of our articles.

I add that while these charges fall into the category of what the noted attorney Harvey Silverglate has called "giant garbage pails," they do carry real-live penalties that could put these people into prison for many years. Furthermore, given that Blago’s brother, Robert, had a long career in business and was well-regarded before taking a temporary job to head up Blago’s campaign fund, I doubt that the man (or any of the others) were involved in any "wide-ranging conspiracies" to do anything except get Blago elected, which generally are what political campaigns are geared to do.

I now turn to the behavior of Fitzgerald himself. Prosecutors and other "officers of the court" are supposed to refrain from making public statements that demonize defendants, make judgments about their guilt, or attack other officers of the court. Michael B. Nifong, the infamous prosecutor in the Duke Lacrosse Case, was disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar in part because he made a number of inflammatory remarks against the lacrosse players prior to obtaining indictments. (The Bar also found him guilty of withholding evidence and lying to the court, which is one of the few times in U.S. History that a prosecutor has paid any price at all for breaking the law.)

Not only did Fitzgerald make inflammatory statements, but he also selectively released material that clearly made Blago look bad. (Notice that U.S. attorneys don’t release information or transcripts of their "negotiations" with defense attorneys when it comes to making plea deals, nor do they ever release any transcripts of conversations they have among themselves. This probably is smart, given the sorry record of lies that is fundamental to the federal "justice" system, something exposed more than a decade ago by journalist Bill Moushey. Notice that no U.S. attorney ever has been charged with "honest services fraud," which is too bad, given that it is rare that people receive any honest services at all from federal prosecutors.)

According to the law, once Fitzgerald had openly declared Blago to be a criminal suspect, he had 30 days in which to secure an indictment. One would think that with this supposed "criminal" behavior that he had "exposed," it would not be difficult getting a grand jury to hand down indictments, but that was not the case.

No, even after making inflammatory public statements and releasing selected information to the media, Patrick J. Fitzgerald had to scrape and scrape to find anything worthy of "indictment." It is instructive that he decided to unleash the horrible RICO statutes and to reach into the muck of "honest services fraud" to make his case.

Now, I would like to say that the outright fraudulence of these charges would be clearly seen by juries and judges, but think again. Federal juries regularly convict people of nonsense charges and judges sign off on abominations every day. Federal criminal courts are little more than the playthings for U.S. attorneys, who I would say are pretty much in the same category as the "prosecutors" who worked for Stalin in his "show trial" heyday. Perhaps we should not be surprised that federal criminal law has much more in common with the old Soviet "law" and its "crimes of analogy" than anything this country received in its English heritage.

So, I wish Blago and the other defendants luck. Their "crime" was not doing anything criminal; instead, their crime was not having the name of Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. Because federal criminal law is so expansive and pervasive, federal prosecutors are able to pick their targets and selectively prosecute. If one thinks this is tyranny, one is correct.

Today's Links: Police and Prosecutorial Misconduct

Because I am working on three major writing projects, I won't be able to do a full blog post today. Instead, I have these links that should remind us that for the most part, the proverbial line has been crossed in this country to where the police and prosecutors have become the law.

The first lesson for anyone is never to call the police if one actually needs help, for the police are not there to help anyone: they are there to try to find a way to arrest someone or worse. This woman begged the police not to tase her Downs Syndrome child, but the officer did it anyway. Now the mother and her other son are charged with crimes.

In this one, not only did the police officer kill a youngster on a bicycle, a youngster who had committed no crime but apparently was in fear from the officer -- a well-founded fear, given that the officer killed him. However, what makes it worse is that the officer then is seen ON CAMERA planting a gun on the dead youngster, but nothing happens to him. So, as we saw in Tonya's case in which Tim Deal and the prosecutors planted false evidence, even when police manufacture evidence and do it in broad daylight, the authorities always protect them. Here is commentary by Tom DiLorenzo and Will Grigg on this homicide.

(Yeah, I know, had the kid stopped, the officer would not have run over him and killed him, so it is the kid's fault. The officer showed good judgment, and when the cop planted the gun on the dead youngster, he was just "doing his job.")

Finally, if you cannot afford an ambulance, but try to get to the hospital anyway, you are likely to meet your friendly police officer who not only will threaten you, but also will make fun of your condition. One of these donut-eaters even threatens to arrest one of these elderly men -- after the man gets out of the hospital.

Yes, "Protect and Serve" actually means that police protect each other and you and I are to serve those who wear the blue costume. As one who has been brought up to respect the police and those in authority, I will say that I have come to my present position with a lot of fear and, frankly, disillusionment. I want to believe that police and prosecutorial work is honorable. I want to believe that judges really want to do what is right.

However, what I have seen in the last several years absolutely shatters that belief that I have held since childhood. What is the problem? It is the lack of accountability. These people have "captured" the apparatus that holds them accountable, and there really is nothing we can do any more except to try to expose it and hope that some sunlight helps.

Rubashkin's Appeal

As one who often writes about courts and prosecutorial misconduct, I must admit to having no confidence anymore in American judges having any integrity at all. One of the defining moments for me came in the Tonya Craft case in North Georgia when the judge, Brian House, literally took cues from the prosecutors during the trial, as they gave him hand signals and other indications of what he needed to do in certain situations.

It should surprise no one that House desperately tried to rig a conviction, and when he received the “not guilty” verdict from jurors and read it before the verdict was read to the people in the courtroom, his face turned ashen and his expression was one of utter shock. However dishonest and sordid his actions, at least House was unable to get the jurors to vote his way; Shalom Rubashkin was not so fortunate, as his judge not only was hostile to him throughout the trial, but now we find that the judge played an important role in the prosecution of the case.

In my first article on Rubashkin’s conviction, I dealt with the charges and the sentence that Judge Linda Reade imposed on him – 27 years, which is longer than many murderers receive – and was entirely out-of-kilter with what the law is supposed to do. Readers know that I have trouble with how federal criminal law is imposed and how prosecutors can take about any action, including a legal action, and roll it into the “fraud” statutes that enable prosecutors to make their careers.

However, new documents released now demonstrate that Reade was far more involved in this case than I could have imagine, and that there is no way humanly possible for her to have done what supposedly is her job: be an impartial jurist:

A federal judge conspired with the Bush Department of Justice to plan the largest immigration raid ever in the United States, and then presided over the trial of the plant’s manager, eventually sentencing him beyond even prosecutors’ recommendation.

New documents show Linda Reade, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, was involved in the planning of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raid on the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant at least six months before it occurred in May 2008. She asked for briefings from law enforcement and went as far as to ensure the raid was conducted around her vacation schedule.

But the judge never said a word of this to the defense lawyers for Sholom Rubashkin, the Agriprocessors manager, when she presided over his trial on bank fraud. She didn’t recuse herself from the case, either.

Indeed, all through the proceedings leading up to the trial, and then during the trial itself, it was clear that Reade has utterly hostile to the defendant. Furthermore, the very notion that she played what effectively was a “law enforcement” and prosecutorial role even before Rubashkin’s kosher meat processing plant was raided automatically should have disqualified her. Furthermore, by stepping outside of her role as a judge, she opens herself to lawsuits, as she has absolute immunity only in her role as a judge, not as a law enforcement officer.

The media and the courts have framed this as a “financial fraud” case, as though Rubashkin was the Second Coming of Bernie Madoff. However, the “financial fraud” that Rubashkin committed was not “fraud” at all in the historical sense. This is what I described in my previous article:

In the case of Agriprocessors, the loan was a revolving $35 million payout that enabled the company to keep a steady cash flow, meet payroll, and pay its bills. The firm was not arrears in payment, and all indications were that the company would be able to meet its obligations to the bank.

Because the federal courts have eviscerated the ancient doctrine of mens rea, which means that prosecutors needed to prove that a person charged intended to commit a crime, intent to defraud no longer matters. In fact, one can argue that Agriprocessors did not "defraud" First Bank at all, and there are indications that the bank knew that Agriprocessors was overstating its revenues and underestimating its costs (something the federal government does every year, but never results in anyone’s arrest), but did not care because its good customer paid its bills on time. The company was profitable, and so was the bank.

That was not all, according to the feds. Apparently, certain suppliers of cattle and other things are required by a little-known (and almost never enforced) law from the 1920s to be paid within 24 hours. No one had complained about the late payments, to my knowledge; instead, it was yet another of those "legal technicalities" that federal prosecutors use when they want to convict someone on something.

Now, the bank would not have called the loan and lost all those millions had the federal government not shut down Agriprocessors. However, the government is claiming that the business itself was a $35 million fraud, as though Rubashkin were running a Ponzi scheme. (Oh, sorry, only the government is permitted to run a Ponzi program that we know as Social Security.)

Thus, the real cause of the losses was not the business practices of Rubashkin per se, but rather the way that the federal government dealt with the situation. The Bush administration wanted to make a statement to its conservative base regarding illegal immigrants being employed in the United States and it chose to make an example of Rubashkin and Agriprocessors.

Keep in mind that the feds can do the same to any business, even those businesses that absolutely operate above board in every way. Federal agents can act on false allegations (which they do all the time), raid the place, shut it down, and then claim that the entire operation was fraudulent after the company cannot pay its bills, and don’t think they don’t do this.

Federal agents have absolutely no personal stake in the success of a business or even private enterprise in general. They are in privileged positions and can extract whatever they want from people who are not so well-placed, and they do it on a regular basis. That means that if they drive legitimate businesses into bankruptcy, that is no problem to them, and if other lives are ruined and the economy sinks a little bit lower, who cares? The prosecutors and judges get their paychecks.

If anything, the revelations that Reade was involved up to her eyeballs in the Rubashkin case from the very beginning sets a new low in federal criminal law – if it is impossible for these people to sink any lower. It absolutely is clear that from the start, Reade was trying to engineer an arrest and conviction, and if she had an ounce of integrity (honest federal official, of course, is an oxymoron), she would resign immediately.

However, I am sure that Reade will go on as though nothing happened. One hopes that the appellate courts will note the misconduct, but I will not be holding my breath.

Did Tim Deal Fabricate the "Hand Rape" Document?

[Update, Friday, August 6, 2010, 4:20 AM]: On today's Lew Rockwell site, I have an article about the Eric Echols case. The more we can get this message out, the better. [End Update]

On Wednesday night, in response to my Wednesday post, an anonymous poster left the following comment:

I work in a jurisdiction close to the LMJC and have had an opportunity to testify in court there. I've also talked with Det. Deal about this allegation: "yet he was willing to fabricate a document". This is an outright lie. It's easy to throw this allegation out there without corroboration. It's as proposterous (sic) as the allegation that there was an audio feed for the state's witnesses. This has never happened in any case I've been involved with.

Obviously, when someone accuses me of lying, I need to take the accusation seriously. I certainly don't claim perfection in my writing of my posts, although I would like to believe that my errors are unintentional. However, this person (who did not wish to identify himself or herself) has accused me of fabricating a story that is about, well, an alleged fabrication.

All of this has come about because the attorneys for Tonya Craft claim that Tim Deal illegally manufactured the "hand rape" document that suddenly appeared in the case files during Tonya's trial. Specifically, it dealt with the claim made first by Sandra Lamb's "child actress" daughter during her testimony on April 14, which I have discussed at length in this post.

The importance of this testimony and this claim is not, I repeat, NOT in the claim made by the child that Ms. Craft performed what would be called a "hand rape" with all of her fingers and her thumb. The girl actually made that claim during an April 1, 2009, interview with Holly "Thumbs Up" Kittle. (I do think that it was appropriate that she made this claim on "April Fools Day," given that had Tonya done what she was accused of doing, there would have been substantial medical harm done to the child, none of which was found in any medical exams.)

However, during her testimony, the girl claimed that she had told Suzi Thorne during her June 4, 2008, interview at the Greenhouse, that Tonya had performed the "hand rape," a claim which set a number of other things in motion, including testimony from Sherri Wilson and Sandra Lamb that had not been in police documents or other interviews.

Thorne herself claimed that Lamb's daughter told her of the "hand rape," but she never documented it, which would seem strange, given that up until then, the girl had not "disclosed" anything even close to such an act. In other words, in a real forensic interview, this would have been equivalent to striking the Mother Lode, and we are supposed to believe that no one would document such a moment. Right.

To cover herself, Thorne claimed that a detective was present, but she couldn't remember who it was, which also was strange given that she told the court she had conducted more than 1,000 interviews, many in the company of Catoosa County detectives. For her to claim she could not remember who was in the room definitely makes me a bit suspicious. Tim Deal was not at the Greenhouse that day, and, instead, the detective who was present was Steven Keith, but the "hand rape disclosure" was not in any of his notes, either.

Obviously, the prosecution was in a pickle, but, not to worry, as a few days later, the documented "notes" that were allegedly written on July 7, 2008, and allegedly typed on July 27, 2008, were "discovered" in the case files. Deus ex machina!

It is important to note some things. First, the defense, in a May 17, 2010, letter to U.S. Attorney Sally Yates, signed by Dr. Demosthenes Lorandos, claims the following about the document I have mentioned:

My specific concern is that Exhibit C and supporting testimony appear to have been fabrications and fraud upon the citizens of north Georgia, in an effort by the Detectives, a Children's Advocacy Center Interviewer, two witnesses and the State Prosecutors to obtain a conviction and subvert justice in this matter. If I am incorrect in this concern, I owe several apologies. If I am correct in this concern, serious crimes have been committed. (Emphasis his)

The letter goes on to say that this particular document was not in any of the case files, reports, interview DVDs, and the like. They say it simply was not in any of those things, but that it suddenly appeared.

There is another point I believe needs to be made here, something I hold supports the defense theory. When Tim Deal suddenly came up with the document (that he claimed to have had in the files all along), the attorneys and prosecutors had a meeting in the chambers of "judge" Brian Outhouse. During that meeting, Dr. Lorandos made the following specific requests to test the authenticity of Deal's document:

• That they would be able to have their own and state "experts" examine Deal's computer and the computer from which the document came in order to see if, indeed, this material was printed on the day that Deal and the prosecutors, "Alberto-Facebook" Arnt and "The Man" Gregor were claiming;

• That the judge would allow the defense to have experts test the ink on the original document to see if it was recent or had been printed when Deal and the others claimed it was printed.

Readers will be shocked, SHOCKED to know that Outhouse refused all defense requests. In fact, according to one observer, Outhouse asked Dr. Lorandos is a demanding voice a question along the lines of, "Are you claiming that we in the LMJC use fabricated documents?" to which Dr. Lorandos allegedly replied, "I did not know that you were part of the prosecution's team."

Indeed, as any observer of the trial will tell you, "judge" Outhouse was no judge at all, but simply part of the prosecution, doing the bidding of Arnt and Gregor, watching their eye and hand signals, engaging in unreported ex parte meetings with them, and trying to rig the proceedings. I believe that the ashen expression on his face when he saw the jury's verdict tells us everything we need to know about his attitude and his behavior during the trial.

It seems to me that had Tim Deal been telling the truth, he and the prosecutors would not have objected at all to have an expert check the ink dating and the computer from which the document came in order to verify that it had been produced in 2008, and not during the trial. That they strenuously (and successfully) objected tells me that these men had something to hide, especially, since NO OTHER NOTES AND DOCUMENTS of that time -- and I have them in my possession -- mention anything about this so-called hand rape and its alleged "disclosure."

Yes, I have made a serious allegation against Tim Deal, and if I am mistaken, then I have done him a grievous wrong. It is not my intention to do wrong to him; however, when I see the facts laid out in front of me, and when I apply simple logic to the situation, Deal's story, and the prosecutors' stories, simply don't add up. They don't make sense, and when I see people in that situation not making sense, knowing that they lied elsewhere and that they suborned perjury, I tend to think that they are lying about this document, too.

I would welcome Deal or anyone else associated with this case to prove me wrong. However, I don't think anyone in the LMJC is up to the challenge at the present time, and that does not surprise me.