Texas prosecutor (now a judge) enables a murderer to kill again (while pursuing the wrong suspect)

It is hard to describe Texas and its system of state-sponsored homicide and its out-of-control prosecutors except to say that prosecutors and judges in the Lone Star State must be taking lessons from Buzz Franklin, Chris "Cruisemaster" Arnt, Len "The Man-Racist" Gregor, and "judge" brian outhouse. However, a former prosecutor who now is a judge, not only engaged in prosecutorial misconduct, but his misconduct virtually guaranteed that a woman would be murdered.

The case centers around the wrongful conviction of a man for murder and, as this article in Forbes demonstrates, by deliberately (yes, deliberately, given the evidence) going after the wrong man, the prosecutor, Ken Anderson -- now Judge Ken Anderson -- made sure that the real murderer was not impeded, and two years later the killer struck again. The article notes:

AUSTIN, Texas -- Caitlin Baker was 3 when her mother, Debra, was beaten to death and left naked in bed in her Austin home. Although the pain of the loss has faded in the 23 years since, her anger that her mother's killer was never caught has not.

Less than two years before that January 1988 slaying, unbeknownst to all but a few people until recently, the mother of another woman bludgeoned to death in bed during an attack at her home about 15 miles away told an investigator that her 3-year-old grandson watched a "monster" do the killing, not his father, as police suspected. She urged him to pursue other leads, but her daughter's husband, Michael Morton, was instead convicted of murder and sentenced to life.

There is much more to this sickening story. In the original case that Anderson prosecuted, there was the usual aspect of the prosecution ignoring evidence that led to another killer. (Like the drunk looking for his keys under a street lamp instead of where he dropped them because the "light is better" under the lamp, Anderson was like most prosecutors in that he went for the easy conviction and the truth be damned.)

Anderson's misdeeds included hiding exculpatory evidence (a favorite tactic of prosecutors throughout this country) and lying (something prosecutors do all the time):

Investigations have been ongoing into the actions (or lack thereof) by the prosecutor in this case because there is reason to believe that evidence which would prove that Morton was innocent was withheld by the district attorney’s office of Williamson County.

The evidence withheld includes: (1) the eyewitness account of Morton’s young son, who said that the killer was not his father; (2) the victim’s Visa card found later at a store in San Antonio; (3) a cashed check, made out to the victim, with an apparent forged endorsement on the back where it was cashed almost two weeks after the homicide; and (4) the bandanna found at the crime scene with DNA evidence on it (which has been the basis of the vacated conviction).

Why did Anderson withhold this crucial evidence? Like any typical prosecutor, he wanted to win and knew that prosecutorial immunity protected him, and once he had focused upon Michael Morton, he wanted to do what he could to pound square pegs into round holes.

So, Morton went to prison where he sat there for 25 years until the courts ordered him to be free. However, this is not a typical story of "new evidence exonerates innocent man." No, it was a case of one of Anderson's successors, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley who, according to Time Magazine, is "a well-connected ally of Texas Governor Rick Perry" and "who fought tenaciously for six years to keep Morton behind bars."

I'll get back to the Bradley-Perry-Anderson show, but in the meantime, there is even more to this sickening story. Two years after the murder of Morton's wife, another woman, Debra Baker, was murdered in the same way that Morton's wife had been killed, a crime that police and prosecutors did not bother to solve. (Was it because in solving it, they would have been forced to take a hard look at the Morton case? I would not be surprised, given the depraved nature of police and prosecutors in this country today.)

Lest one think I am exaggerating, DNA evidence from both crime scenes implicate the same man:

New DNA testing linked the killings of Debra Baker and Christine Morton to another man with a prison record in several states. Police have not publicly identified the suspect, whom they are trying to locate, but his genetic links to both slayings led to Morton's release from prison last week after nearly 25 years behind bars, and his formal exoneration by an appeals court on Wednesday.

However, we are fortunate that Morton's attorneys were able to find the DNA, given the efforts of Rick Perry's allies, of Bradley and Anderson to suppress evidence. Again, the record shows:

In early 2005, Morton’s attorneys sought DNA testing on a blood-stained bandana found outside the Morton home on the day after the brutal murder, which took place on Aug. 13, 1986. Court records show that Bradley, who was appointed by Perry in 2001 and was not Morton’s original prosecutor, sought to prevent that testing from ever taking place and tried to limit its effect on the case.

At first, Bradley argued that testing the bandana would open the floodgates to an indeterminable amount of new evidence. “One has to wonder whether petitioner would file another motion at some future date seeking additional testing of even more items,” he wrote in October of 2005. In a 2009 filing, Bradley argued that the bandana was irrelevant because it was found “a football field’s length” from the Morton’s house, and that if any DNA testing did take place “it should not incorporate the possibility of a match of any DNA profile recovered from the bandana to a known offender.

District attorneys vary widely in their willingness to consider new evidence, but Bradley’s efforts make him an outlier. The Innocence Project says it has to fight a prosecutor’s objections to DNA testing in less than half of its cases, and most resistance dries up quickly. Death penalty opponents are particularly critical of prosecutors who resist DNA testing. Steve Hall, director of the StandDown Texas project, called Bradley’s behavior in the Morton case “abhorrent.”

Morton’s attorneys ultimately prevailed on the DNA issue in May 2010. A 2011 lab report showed that blood on the bandana matched Christine Morton’s DNA, and that DNA from a hair on the bandana matched that of a convicted felon in California, as well as DNA recovered at the site of a similar, unsolved murder of another Texas woman.

DNA wasn’t the only potentially exculpatory evidence that Bradley tried to wall off. Morton’s lawyers had long wondered about the original prosecutors’ decision not to seek testimony from the chief investigator in the case, Sgt. Don Wood of the Williamson County Sherriff’s office. But when they filed a Public Information Act request in 2008 to view Wood’s files, Bradley tried to block the release. TIME reviewed a flurry of correspondence about the records request between the Innocence Project, the sheriff’s office, and the Texas attorney general’s office. A 2008 letter from the AG to the sheriff’s office notes that, “The Williamson County District Attorney’s Office is a party to the litigation and has requested that the information be withheld.”

Again, when Morton’s attorneys ultimately prevailed, they found compelling evidence that their client was innocent: a transcript of a phone call in which Morton’s mother-in-law told Wood that Morton’s three-year-old son had witnessed a different man commit the murder, and a hand-written message to Wood dated August 15, 1986, showing that Christine’s credit card had been recovered at a jewelry store in San Antonio two days after the murder. With the new evidence he sought to block made public, Bradley capitulated and freed Morton last week.

This is depraved behavior from a man voted by Texas district attorneys several years ago as the "top prosecutor" in Texas. (If anything, it demonstrates just how dishonest and utterly depraved prosecutors and "law enforcement" in Texas really are.)

Unfortunately, there is even more, and this deals in the infamous Cameron Todd Willingham execution in which it is strongly suspected that the State of Texas executed an innocent man:

At the same time that Bradley was showing his penchant for stonewalling evidence in the Morton case, Perry appointed him to another sensitive position. By 2009, several studies had been conducted suggesting that the 1991 house fire that killed Cameron Todd Willingham’s three daughters was not arson and that the experts who sealed Willingham’s conviction with testimony to the contrary had based their investigation on outdated techniques.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission, a state organization tasked with ensuring that forensic investigations adhere to the highest scientific standards, began reviewing the evidence. But in late September 2009, Perry fired three commission members, including its chairman, just days before they were scheduled to hear testimony from an outside arson expert who had determined that the evidence against Willingham was based on shoddy science. Perry chose Bradley to take over the commission, and he quickly cancelled the testimony, effectively burying the investigation.

Again, we are dealing with utter depravity and one of the people responsible for the State of Texas covering up its misdeeds is Rick Perry, who now wants to be President of the United States. A well-known Baptist minister recently endorsed Perry from his pulpit, and I have the sinking feeling that the minister is quite aware of the perfidy outlined in this post -- and could not give a damn.

Just like the churches in the LMJC that have helped enable people like "judge" brian outhouse and Len Gregor, we see that the churches in Texas are placing their stamp of approval upon behavior that in the Old Testament would have resulted in men like Bradley, Anderson, and Perry being stoned to death. And apparently, they want those anti-Christian "standards of justice" to be the standard for the USA. All I can say is God help us.

The framing of Bradley Cooper

I have despised the "justice" (sic) system in North Carolina for a long time, beginning with the railroading of the Little Rascals defendants when prosecutors and police falsely accused a number of people of horrible acts of child molestation, although it was clear from the substance (or lack, thereof) of those charges that the Laws of Time and Space contradicted what the authorities were claiming. Unfortunately, many lives were ruined before the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the convictions.

That was only the beginning. The Duke Lacrosse Case, with all of the lies told by government officials and others in authority, told me that once and for all, North Carolina is a dangerous place to live, as the authorities are not bound by the law or even common decency. The Durham Police, along with Durham County DA Mike Nifong, did everything possible to frame Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans, and while the case fell apart, it was only because some members of the North Carolina State Bar actually did their duties and ultimately disbarred Nifong.

I had no forum by which to protest the lies told by authorities in the Little Rascals case, but by the time Nifong went after the Duke students, there was Lew Rockwell's blog, and he generously let me fire away at the false charges, which I did on a regular basis for a year. When Tonya Craft was falsely charged with child molestation in my old stomping grounds of North Georgia, I had this blog, and utilized it to expose the lies being told under the direction of prosecutors Len "The Man-Racist" Gregor, Chris "Facebook-Cruisemaster" Arnt, and "judge" brian (out)house.

Craft was acquitted and one of the ringleaders of the farce, Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Buzz Franklin, blamed me in part for the state's failure to secure a wrongful conviction. I deeply appreciate the compliment that Buzz gave me, although something tells me he wasn't saying those things as praise.

Over the next several days, I will be spending a number of posts examining the trial and conviction of Bradley Cooper, who allegedly murdered his wife, Nancy, in Wake County, North Carolina. I have looked over a lot of the evidence and have become convinced that Cooper was framed.

Readers should understand that I don't come to this conclusion easily. When Cooper's wife was murdered three years ago, like the police, I immediately suspected that Bradley was the killer, as he seemed to be the obvious choice.

However, as the case went on, and especially during the trial, I came to believe that (1) the state had destroyed or hidden possible exculpatory evidence, and (2) their "smoking" gun, a Google search map of the area where her body was found that allegedly was found on his computer, was the work of the authorities themselves.

In other words, I am accusing North Carolina authorities of deliberately framing someone because they could do it. This is not a hard thing for me to believe, given what I have seen in past incidences in that state.

Yes, it is true that NC Attorney General Roy Cooper did declare the lacrosse players to be "innocent" after his appointees did their own investigation. What else could have he done, given that the "evidence" already had been made public and there was no way that the charges could have had an ounce of truth? Likewise, Cooper could have further investigated the whole mess and found criminal conduct on behalf of authorities, but neither he nor anyone else in government, state or federal, wanted to go there.

Would a North Carolina cop lie on the stand? Absolutely. "Testilying," a term made up by police officers themselves to describe what they do after taking an oath to tell the truth, is common all over the country and North Carolina is no exception. A middle class woman was murdered and the police and prosecutors had the pressure to find a killer.

Given the lawlessness and dishonesty that dominates the police and prosecutorial culture in North Carolina, I doubt that framing Cooper was a difficult decision. And, if there is a conspiracy to lie, destroy or alter evidence, and to railroad an innocent man into prison, what better people to do it than the men and women who wear the blue costume.

When people speak of the infamous "Blue Wall of Silence," they are speaking of the various police departments in the United States. No one lies better than a cop and no one covers up a lie better than a whole police department.

I make this point because one of the problems of holding conspiracies together is that someone spills the beans. Police departments tend to be the exception because cops tend to stick together, and if a cop were to tell the truth, he knows that his life afterward most likely will be very short.

Bradley Cooper was convicted by a jury that saw only weak and contrived circumstantial evidence. A judge who was in league with the prosecutors oversaw the trial, or whatever one calls one of those things in North Carolina. While it was true that the authorities from police to the judge in Craft's trial were trying to rig a conviction, jurors in Catoosa County saw through the lies.

Jurors in Cooper's case, however, did not. But their verdict will not stop me from presenting the case against guilt over the next several days.

"An Absolute Honest-to-God Texas Frame-up"

People have written me on occasion asking if I were familiar with the "Mineola Swingers Club" case, and while I was, I can say I didn't know much about it. As this article in Texas Monthly demonstrates, those who did know the facts decided that the facts were not good enough, and that the only "satisfactory" outcome would be to frame the defendants. And that is what the authorities did.

The facts are fairly well-known. A group of adults supposedly had young children engage in sex behavior on stage at a "swingers club" in Mineola, Texas. The children alleged a number of wild things, but at the beginning the authorities in Woods County could see through it, but, as often happens, someone else got involved, the "child protective" workers did their guilt-assuming, suggestive interviews, and the rest was history. Innocent people went to jail.

Writes Michael Hall:

To recap, from 2005 to 2008, four Tyler children--three siblings and their aunt—all aged 4 through 7, made allegations that in 2004 seven adults, including their parents, had forced them to attend a sex kindergarten in a trailer park, where they learned to play sex games, and then took them to a swingers club in nearby Mineola, where they performed sex acts on stage in front of crowds of as many as 30 adults, who videotaped the shows. The stories told by the kids were wildly inconsistent and sometimes outright bizarre: adults casting spells, wearing witch outfits, and sacrificing chickens; one child said she had flown around on a broomstick. Every single child initially denied to social workers knowing anything about a sex kindergarten or club; it was only after multiple interviews that they started making outrageous allegations. But there was nothing to back them up: no adult witnesses and no physical evidence—no DNA, no fingerprints, not even any videotapes.

In fact, Wood County, where Mineola is located, did its own investigation, back in 2005, when just one child was talking about a sex club. Investigators (including an FBI agent), found absolutely no evidence to back up her accusations.

Unfortunately, the truth was not enough:

This didn’t stop the criminal justice machinery of Smith County. A Texas Ranger got involved and before long he was helping interview the other kids. In 2007 arrests were made; the public was outraged that a sex kindergarten and a sex club would operate under their noses. Three of the adults went to trial in 2008 and their juries, made of good country people who want nothing more than to protect their children, found them guilty in a matter of minutes. A fourth defendant was found guilty last summer.

If you wish to know why I have no hope at all that authorities will want to do what is right, the following pretty much explains the current state of "law" in this country:

I find it unfathomable that so many good people could allow and encourage these prosecutions to go forward. What happened to the lawyerly skepticism of Judge Jack Skeen and DA Bingham and the other men and women in his office?

*Why didn’t they look closer at the kids’ weird, implausible stories?

*Why didn’t they look closer at the foster mother of three of them, a woman named Margie Cantrell who moved to Mineola from California in 2004 and who has a history of manipulating her foster kids? (One of her California kids characterized her to me as “the puppet master” and said, “She brainwashes the kids to believe the stories she makes up.”)

*Why didn’t they give serious credence to the fact that not one of the seven defendants would testify against the others in exchange for a lesser sentence?

If they had done just one of these three, much less all of them, they would have realized the obvious: Nothing happened. There was no crime. There was no sex kindergarten and there were no child-sex shows at a swinger’s club. Ultimately, I can’t help but believe that Bingham knows this. Let’s put it this way: If he really believed these people put on live sex shows with children, would he really be setting them free now?

I always figured the cavalry would ride in and save the day for them. First I thought it would be the office of the Attorney General, which, in the summer of 2009 sent two lawyers to help investigate the case after Bingham tried to recuse his office from further prosecutions. But the AG’s office didn’t do anything. Then in the spring of 2010 two of the defendants had their verdicts thrown out by the 14th Court of Appeals in Houston—a process which saw the DA in neighboring Wood County file an extraordinary amicus brief in which he officially called into question everything the Smith County DA had done. “[N]o evidence was found to corroborate the stories told by the children,” he wrote.

But that was it. No cooler or wiser heads stepped in to actually free these people. In fact, those two defendants whose cases were overturned were going to be folded in with the remaining defendants (two of whom are grandparents of two of the children) into one mass trial in June. It is these six who pled guilty.

No matter how many times these kinds of cases are exposed, no matter how much research is published on problems that we find when "child protective" workers interview young children, no matter how many times that the "evidence" contradicts the Laws of Time and Space, the authorities will bring charges and compliant juries will vote guilty. Why does it happen?

It happens because people in authority are not held accountable for their actions. Protected by legal immunity and the mainstream news media, which needs these people as sources for their stories (no matter how fantastic those stories might be), the bad actors are free to lie, suborn perjury, and conspire with judges to rig trials. Protected by politicians and the U.S. Supreme Court, police, prosecutors, and "child protective" workers will pull off this scam time and again -- because they can do it.

Hall ends with this depressing thought:

Why would they do this if they aren’t guilty? Well, innocent people plead guilty all the time. They confess to crimes they didn’t commit (about a quarter of the DNA exonerations involve some form of false confession) and they plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit. They especially do it when they are certain they will be found guilty, no matter what they do or how good their attorneys are. In these cases we’ve already seen four different juries vote guilty—in the time it takes to watch a movie. These defendants know the realities. They can go to prison for life—or they can go home. They don’t have a whole lot to lose by pleading guilty. Their lives have already been ruined—they’ll always be known for these allegations anyway.

So, Patrick “Booger Red“ Kelly told his mother that he was taking the plea. “I don’t like it at all,” she told me. “But he’s screwed here. Despite all anybody can do, he’s never going to be found ‘not guilty’ in Tyler. He’s at the end of his rope. He told me, ‘Mama, I’m tired. I’m in here for something I haven’t done. I want to go home.’”

I usually believe in the ultimate good will of good people; justice will triumph. Of course, that only happens if people actually do something about injustice. In this case decent people turned away from doing anything about a terrible wrong. They’ve got a word for that, and the word is “evil.”

In Smith County, the bad guys won.

In Catoosa County a year ago, the "bad guys" did not win when jurors saw through the lies of the authorities and acquitted Tonya Craft. But they still are on the job, still trying to frame innocent people, still lying, still suborning perjury, still fabricating "evidence." As long as people like this are in positions of power and authority, the "bad guys" will be winning.

Sean Lanigan is lucky: At least the Fairfax County Police didn't murder him

Fairfax County, Virginia, is a Washington, D.C., bedroom community, and most people there owe their employment either to government or to businesses that serve government workers. It also is the home of a brutal and marauding police force that is quick to gun down unarmed people and to make false accusations against good people.

The sad case of Sean Lanigan, a teacher in Fairfax County falsely accused of child molestation and the victim of police and prosecutorial misconduct, is only one of many victims in that county, where the police and prosecutors run amok because they can. But I say that Lanigan is lucky, given the fate of Salvatore Culosi, who was gunned down by a member of a Fairfax County SWAT team.

Culosi, an optometrist who bet on a few football games, had made the mistake of befriending a Fairfax County detective whom he met in a bar. David J. Baucom, the detective, decided to see if he could get Culosi to bet more money, and he finally talked him into betting $2,000 on a game, which meant Culosi could be arrested in Virginia for "running a gambling operation."

Keep in mind that this "crime" was masterminded by the police, and then the authorities sent a SWAT team to arrest Culosi. When police arrived, Culosi walked out unarmed, and then he was gunned down by officer Deval Bullock. (As this article in Reason shows, Bullock's official story was a lie, and all that he received for punishment was three weeks off from work.)

The police were not content in murdering an unarmed man (and if any of us were to shoot down -- even accidentally -- an unarmed person, we would be tried for murder, since we don't wear a blue costume and tin badge). Radley Balko's Reason article explains:

In the months that followed (the shooting), Baucum continued his investigation, badgering Culosi's grieving friends and relatives after pulling their names and numbers from the cell phone he was carrying and a computer taken from his home the night he was killed. Steve Gulley, Culosi's brother-in-law, told The Washington Post the following April that Baucum called him and menacingly asked, "How much are you into Sal for?" Scott Lunceford, a lifelong friend of Culosi's, told the Post Baucum called him and accused him of being a gambler. The calls, Gulley told the paper, smacked of intimidation aimed at discouraging a lawsuit.

In the end, the family of Sal Culosi settled with Fairfax County for $2 million, but no one at the department was prosecuted and only Bullock received a mild punishment.

Following the shooting, Fairfax Chief David Rohrer wrote a report of the incident which turned out to be fabricated. As Balko explains, in response to Rohrer's claim that the shooting was accidental, as Bullock was bumped by a car door and the gun simply went off:

The Culosis were dubious. They believed Bullock mistook the cell phone their son was holding the night he was shot for a gun. They hired their own investigators, who determined, based on the department's own measurements of the crime scene, that when Bullock pulled the trigger he was away from his vehicle and much closer to Culosi than he had claimed. Using the recorded locations of shell casings, police vehicles, and Culosi's body, they produced computer animations showing that the incident could not have happened in the manner described by Chief Rohrer's report.

Writing false reports is a crime called "obstruction of justice," but Rohrer did not have to worry about being charged.

However, in Lanigan's case, Fairfax police threw the possibility of charging people who were contradicting the story the cops wanted to be told with "obstruction of justice." (Again, if one wishes to lie, it helps to be wearing a blue costume and tin badge. After all, government workers are "heroes" in Northern Virginia.) Writes Tom Jackman, who covered this story for the Washington Post:

But when others – staff, parents – tried to tell (Fairfax Det. Nicole) Christian anything she didn’t want to hear, she threatened them with prosecution for obstruction of justice, the staff members and parents said. School district investigator Steve Kerr’s investigative report, written after Lanigan’s acquittal, confirmed those claims, noting that: “Because of the jury’s decision, the detective [Christian] advised that she will not pursue criminal charges against [staff member] or [staff member].”

In other words, in the Orwellian world of Northern Virginia, lies told by government employees in blue costumes are the truth, while the truth told by Mere Mundanes is considered to be a lie.

But, Christian's smarmy tactics did not stop with threats against witnesses with exculpatory evidence. No, it gets MUCH worse:

In addition, the accuser’s close friend and corroborating witness to the incident quickly tried to retract her story, her mother said, but Christian wasn’t hearing it. In a letter to the mother of the witness from assistant superintendent Kevin North after the trial, North confirmed that “you requested a re-interview with your daughter, which the detective declined.”

Police feel that child victims and witnesses can be manipulated or intimidated into changing their story, and the witness’s mother said Christian told her, “if she changes her story, they’re going to wonder why she changed her testimony. She said, ‘I know how to do my job. Don’t tell me how to do my job.’ ”

But when Christian and assistant Fairfax prosecutor Katie Pavluchuk approached the witness and her mother outside Lanigan’s preliminary hearing in March 2010, the girl and her mother refused to speak with them. The girl then joined the accuser in recanting the claim that Lanigan had lain on top of the accuser.

Not long after that hallway encounter, Fairfax County launched a Child Protective Services investigation into the witness’s mother -- the reasons for which have not been made public for alleged inappropriate behavior by her boyfriend. The witness’s mother was eventually cleared of any allegations of misbehavior, but also had to undergo the pressure of being investigated. The girl and her mother have since moved from the area. (Emphasis mine)

In other words, if people want to tell the truth, the Fairfax County police counter with tactics of intimidation, just as they did to Sal Culosi's parents after police gunned down their son. And even after a jury quickly acquitted Lanigan, police and prosecutors STILL are insisting that he was guilty, apparently telling each other that it was an "O.J. verdict."

In other words, the police and their social services allies did what they do best: intimidate through false accusations. (No, I don't think that the social services investigation was a coincidence.)

For all of the accolades that Jackman laid on Christian for her supposed experience, one thing stands out: she clearly fabricates "evidence." First, she is so incompetent that even when she was at the school where the alleged molestation occurred, she never even looked a the room where the alleged incident was supposed to have occurred.

This is important, because (like the tiny bathroom in the Duke Lacrosse Case that could not have fit three young men raping a woman in the way that Crystal Mangum described) the room could not fit the tumbling mats that the lying 12-year-old accuser claimed she was placed. In other words, there was a key piece of evidence that Christian ignored, but then she threatened to charge people who pointed out that issue with "obstruction of justice."

But, it gets worse. Jackman writes:

Police declined to allow Nicole Christian, the lead detective on the case, to be interviewed for this article. Several months after Lanigan was acquitted, Fairfax prosecutors dismissed another of Christian’s child abuse cases in the middle of trial, a rarity, when the detective acknowledged that she had “misstated” some key facts in her sworn testimony. (Emphasis mine)

In police vernancular, a "misstatement" actually is a lie. In other words, Christian was caught fabricating material, but she still remains on the job and no doubt will be instrumental in destroying other innocent lives.

The people of Northern Virginia consider themselves to be "progressive," and if "progressive" means the endorsement of the lying, smothering state, I guess we can say that it is a "progressive" community. Yet, for all of the sophistication these people claim for themselves, in reality there is a brutal underside to this area. Police and prosecutors are free to lie, falsely accuse, and even commit murder, and nothing ever is going to be done about it. People who choose to live there do so at their own peril.

And the Winner Is...Christopher Arnt!

When Radley Balko opened voting for the Worst Prosecutor of 2010, it seems that he assembled an all-star cast. There was the Great Andrew Thomas of Maricopa County, the man who almost became Arizona's attorney general, save the wisdom of about 850 Republican voters who kept him from receiving the party's nomination and an almost sure-fire win in November.

However, Thomas is out of work right now and he and two of his former underlings, Lisa Aubuchon and Rachel Alexander, are now candidates for disbarment. That means that these cretins and liars are likely to get at least a little bit of what is coming to them.

There is Tanya Treadway, recently featured on this blog for her vicious attack on the free speech rights of Siobhan Reynolds, and the Wicked Witch of Kansas happens to lead in Radley's voting right now. Treadway has discovered some usefulness of keeping federal grand jury proceedings secret, which is amazing in itself, since federal prosecutors are notorious for leaking such information -- when it suits their purposes of keeping defendants from being able to receive a fair trial. Yes, for federal prosecutors, it is, "Heads I win, tails you lose."

The list has other villains such as Jim Hood of Mississippi and Carol Chambers of Colorado. (Don't get Kerwyn started on the misdeeds of Chambers, as the phone lines are likely to melt between your ear and her phone's mouthpiece, given the fire that is coming your way!)

A favorite of mine is Delores Carr, the district attorney of Santa Clara County, California. Carr ran on a platform condemning the "win at all costs" mentality of prosecutors -- and then proceeded to engage in "win at all costs" conduct while in office. Radley definitely has her number, given her bio.

However, even with these Towering Giants of Evil, I believe that Christopher Arnt, the ADA of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit who headlined the efforts of the State of Georgia to wrongfully convict and imprison Tonya Craft on bogus child molestation charges, is most deserving of the Worst Prosecutor of 2010 Award.

(I have suggested to Radley that he rename it the Michael Nifong Award, or just The Nifong after the disgraced former DA of Durham County, North Carolina, who engaged in lies and perverted misconduct in his effort to convict three Duke University lacrosse player of rape nearly five years ago. As I see it, if anyone is worthy of The Nifong, it is Arnt, or should I say, "Facebook-Cruisemaster" Arnt.)

It is impossible to list all of Arnt's prosecutorial sins in this brief space, but I do wish to remind readers that Arnt was a one-man crime wave as he teamed with Len "The Man, The Racist, The Misogynist" Gregor and "judge" brian outhouse to try to railroad Ms. Craft into prison. In order to pull off this Herculean effort, Arnt engaged in numerous acts of misconduct, including:

• Knowingly seeking false charges against Ms. Craft and Eric Echols.
• Lying to jurors during closing arguments.
• Breaking a number of rules of conduct for prosecutors as set by the Georgia State Bar. (Not that anyone at the state bar gives a damn, given that one of the so-called investigators told me that she had no problem with Arnt's lies, and that he was just "doing his job." Doing the job on innocent people is more like it.)
• Openly and knowingly suborning perjured testimony, including perjury from both Joal and Sarah Henke, Sandra Lamb, Suzi Thorne, Jerry McDonald, and Sherri Wilson.
• Fighting admission of exculpatory evidence and calling respected expert witnesses for the defense "liars" and "whores of the court."
• Participating in a scheme to fabricate a document during the trial in order to cover a huge hole in the prosecution witnesses' testimony.
• Arranged for prosecution witnesses and their friends to have their own special room in which they were permitted to bring laptops, cellphones, food, water, and reading materials into the courthouse, as well as avoid any security checks. Everyone else was forced to go through security and leave everything in their cars.
• Continually disrupted the court proceedings (with permission from his "boy," "judge" brian outhouse) by engaging in "Animal House" behavior.

These only are a few of the reasons as to why I believe Christopher "Facebook-Cruisemaster" Arnt deserves The Nifong. Now, readers have to remember that Arnt hoped to ride Tonya's "conviction" all the way to high state office in Georgia. (His first step was to win the District Attorney's election in 2012 after the coming retirement of Buzz Franklin. Something tells me that the guy is going to have a hard time winning an election for dogcatcher.)

Given that Arnt's political dreams are gone -- and if the guy ever runs for any office, you can bet some people are going to give him some unwanted publicity -- perhaps he can strive to win The Nifong. As I see it, this is the best this guy can do.

WikiLeaks and the LMJC Tactics

Julian Assange is a wanted man. Yes, while Sarah Palin wants him to be assassinated outright and others want him tried and convicted of treason (and then executed, after undue process of law), it seems that the actual "charges" against him come right out of the LMJC playbook: charge him with a "sex crime."

Somehow, I am not surprised, although I am kind of surprised that Chris Arnt has not yet claimed that Assange is wanted for child molestation in Northwest Georgia. Given that child molestation charges seem to dominate the criminal court dockets in the LMJC, what is another false charge, given that the LMJC specializes in prosecutors that suborn perjury, lie, and fabricate "evidence."

So, in this age of Political Correctness, suddenly the Swedes want us to believe that Assange is a deranged sex criminal (although the charges for which he is wanted in Sweden would bring only two years in prison upon conviction), and Interpol is looking everywhere for him. Somehow, I am not surprised.

Truth for Tonya and Truth for the Rest of Us, Too

As I write this post, Tonya Craft is preparing once again to take the stand in order to tell the rest of the world about the truth. As what happened more than six months ago in Catoosa County, her adversaries depended upon lies.

Six months ago, a jury believed her and set her free. Will Judge Marie Williams do the same?

During the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case more than four years ago, Duke lacrosse coach Mike Pressler urged then-Athletic Director Joe Alleva to look for the truth and not act rashly. Alleva answered with perhaps the most notorious statement in a case known for lies and notoriety: "It's not about the truth, anymore."

It's not about the truth. Think of the heartache and the acrimony and the outright personal destruction that could have been avoided had someone, somewhere, in an official position in the Duke case simply sought the truth. Think of what might NOT have transpired had Duke's administration and faculty demanded that the truth be told instead of running down the rabbit trail of Postmodern lies.

It certainly is not about the truth with Joal Henke and his wife Sarah. Both of them have been caught telling lie after lie, and right in front of Judge Williams. Tonya and her attorneys have documented time and again how Joal and Sarah openly and arrogantly violated the very court orders that Judge Williams set down.

One would hope that this would mean something not only to Judge Williams, but also to everyone else in the Hamilton County court system. One would hope that District Attorney Bill Cox, who apparently is pulling out all stops to throw a popular teacher in prison because he confronted a gang of kids who were out after hours, would take note that Joal and Sarah Henke are openly lying under oath in the very building where he works.

One would hope that anyone who sees what is at stake and has decision-making power can see that Joal Henke is a sociopath, and a serial liar and adulterer, and that such a person should not have primary care of children. One would hope that someone in a position to make decisions would understand that Joal and Sarah lied in a court of law in order to try to send a woman they knew was innocent of child molesting charges to prison, just to get her out of the picture and to destroy her life and to forever separate her from the children she loves.

One would hope that even though the courts of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit are not about the truth, that the people who make decisions in Hamilton County do care about the truth. One would hope that Judge Williams and others are willing to send men like "judge" Brian Outhouse, Len "The Man" Gregor, and Chris "Facebook-Cruisemaster" Arnt a message that their lies are not welcome in Tennessee.

One would hope that Judge Williams and others in the system would understand that if they permit Joal and Sarah Henke to get away with lying -- and telling transparent lies at that -- then they are sending a message to everyone else that taking an oath to tell the truth in a Hamilton County court means absolutely nothing.

One would hope that someone, somewhere would be willing to say: It IS about the truth, now and in the future. That is what is at stake in Judge Marie Williams' courtroom, and nothing else. It is not about custody; it is about the truth.

Joal and Sarah Henke: Perjury in Their Own Words, Part III: "The Principal Told Me to Lie"

[Note]: The depositions are not directly related to the criminal charges against Tonya Craft, but, instead, we part of the custody battle that began after Ms. Craft was arrested in 2008. Joal and Sarah were demanding permanent custody of the Henke children, and the depositions are related to that case.

Keep in mind that Joal helped to orchestrate the false charges against Ms. Craft in part as a way to get her out of the picture permanently by having her go to prison for the rest of her life. (He was not the conductor, but played an important role.) [End Note]

After Tonya Craft's arrest in 2008, Joal and Sarah Henke were granted temporary custody of Tonya's (and Joal's) children. One of the first things Joal did was to take the children from the school where they were going and transfer them to Westview School.

There was one problem, however: Joal and Sarah did not live in the district where Westview was located, but for someone like Joal Henke, telling a lie was not a problem. Instead, he simply put a false address and enrolled the children.

As readers will see below, Joal claims that the principal of Westview, Margot Williams, told him to lie. As readers will see below, Joal's version of events differs from that of others. This is taken from the February 18, 2009, deposition. The "Q" is Cary King and "A" is Joal:

Q Have you ever lied on any application relating to the children's school?
A When we spoke with Margo Williams and asked her
Q Would you answer my question, please
A I am answering.
Q yes or no?
A: I am answering the question. I put yes to if we lived in the school district, and we put woody Hollow as the address. And the reason being is we asked the principal: If we cannot get a variance from the school board, we will move in with
her parents, if necessary, to be in that school system. So
Q But you never
A she said go ahead and put Woody Hollow, and if before school starts we have not done that, then then we would we would go from there.
Q All right. Are you done?
A So, yes, I did.
Q You done?
A Yes.
Q Okay. So you lied on your application?
A Yes. I
Q Okay. So you lied to the school

After an objection by Henke's attorney, Charles Dupree, the session continues:

Q See where it says signature of parent or guardian?
A oh, yes. That's my signature.
Q That is your signature. And you filled out this form here, correct?
A Yes, I did.
Q And about four rows down from the top, it says, student address, 9416 Woody Hollow?
A Correct.
Q So that was a lie, wasn't it?
A That was at the time is correct.
Q okay.
A That was not where we lived.
Q And it's still a lie, isn't it?
A Yes. We do not live there.
Q Okay. Have you ever lived at woody
Hollow at any time since these children were enrolled in that school?
A No. We have not.
Q Okay. And who lives at woody Hollow?
A My in-laws

In the July 24, 2009, deposition at Dupree's office, Cary King picks up on this subject. Because the transcript I have is scanned, in the interest of time, I cannot give a full Q and A. However, what transpired is the following:

1. Henke continues to claim that the Westview principal, Margot Williams, told him it was OK to put down a fraudulent address;
2. Cary King asks: "And if Margot Williams said that was not true, would she be lying? (Dupree objects);
3. Henke replies, after Cary asks him again following the objection: "I suppose."
4. Cary King then plays a recording of an interview between Eric Echols and Ms. Williams in which she emphatically answers "No" when Mr. Echols asks her if she told Joal that it was okay to put down "false information."
5. Ms. Williams asks, "Why did he (Henke) tell you that?"

The subject is not covered further, although the CD of the recording made by Mr. Echols is listed as "Exhibit 9." I also will make one other point: Eric Echols was doing a very, very good job of not only uncovering the lies being told by prosecution witnesses and the police and prosecutors themselves, but also finding out past incidents of alleged "bad conduct" by Joal Henke.

Thus, I believe readers can understand why Chris "Facebook-Cruisemaster" Arnt and Tim "Dirty" Deal were anxious to get Mr. Echols out of the picture. That is why they trumped up charges against him, and that is why Buzz Franklin and his little minions have insisted on taking Mr. Echols to trial (which is scheduled to take place in March 2011).

So, if Ms. Williams is correct -- and I believe she is -- then we have yet another instance of Joal Henke lying under oath. This is what is called perjury. Of course, Joal and his attorney, Dupree, will claim that "it is just her word against his." That is true, but let me ask the readers this question: If you had to believe either Margot Williams or Joal Henke, which person would you believe?

I do hope that Judge Marie Williams and the other officials involved with this case will take a hard look at what Joal has said. Furthermore, I believe that every word Joal and Sarah Henke say in court needs to be scrutinized (for obvious reasons).

Further posts will deal with more of Henke's deceit.

Joal and Sarah Henke: Perjury in Their Own Words, Part II: Joal "Just Remembers" to Lie

In putting together posts of the lies that Joal and Sarah Henke told during depositions and the trial against Tonya Craft, Kerwyn and I have found it to be a more daunting task than we could have imagined. We have come to the conclusion that we cannot expose every lie, given that there are not enough bytes in the universe to handle all of that material.

However, with the Tonya-Joal child custody hearing scheduled this week in Judge Marie Williams' court in Hamilton County, we figured that we needed to get something in front of readers to give everyone the opportunity to judge Joal's credibility. That is why we had some of Sarah's falsehoods featured in this post, and now we turn to Joal.

First, there is no way to handle all of Joal Henke's lies in one post, given that I have no intention of competing with Moby Dick and War and Peace for length. Second, if we wait until we have compiled everything, Tonya's children will have grown up and will be celebrating their grandkids. Thus, we need to zero in on a few things.

In this post, I wish to zero in on Joal's April 23, 2010, testimony in which he claimed to have "just remembered" some pretty awful allegations against his former wife. As readers will see, what Joal says is highly questionable, and given that the testimony was drawn out by Chris "Facebook-Cruisemaster" Arnt and upheld by "judge" Brian Outhouse, the two of them are implicated in promoting perjured testimony, not that anyone in an official capacity in the State of Georgia gives a rip.

Almost immediately into the direct questioning, Arnt asks Henke about any allegations of pornography and other extra-sexual activities involving Tonya. Because the transcripts are scanned and not in a format I can copy, I will paraphrase, although I am making sure everything is correct.

Joal replies that Tonya got pornography tapes of women-on-women sex and she and Joal then watched the tape together. (This is something Tonya denies.) Then Arnt asks about an alleged "girls' night out" with her friend Jennifer Sullivan.

Henke replies that Tonya woke up in bed afterward with Jennifer, something that both women deny. It should be noted that "judge" Outhouse refused to let Jennifer Sullivan testify about the alleged incident, declaring, instead, that if Tonya had engaged in "bad acts," that these allegations were germane to the case, since they went to her character.

What is important to point out here is that when Henke was deposed by attorneys twice in 2009, Tonya's attorneys, Cary and Scott King, repeatedly questioned Henke about any affairs or sexual "incidents" that Tonya might have had with others. Henke said that he could not think of any.

Suddenly, he comes to testify and his memory "improves." In fact, Scott King reminded him that none of this material he suddenly was alleging was in any petition for custody, in the depositions, or any other legal document, and the depositions in February and July 2009 lasted for many hours. What was Joal Henke's response?

King: Okay. Have you told the detectives at any time about this pornographic material?

Henke: Just as coming into this trial and just remembering things.

King: So you just remembered it right when this trial started; is that right?

Henke: Probably in the last short while.

So, just as Sarah had "just remembered" that Tonya's daughter was dirty and smelly with matted hair (which is why Sarah claims to have showered and bathed with the little girl), Joal suddenly "remembers" all sorts of things about his ex-wife.

What makes this worse is that Joal Henke's allegations came out on direct with Chris Arnt. Remember that Arnt was familiar with Henke's previous testimony and with the materials regarding the custody fight and divorce, so Arnt also was fully aware that Henke never had alleged anything like he was claiming on April 23.

In other words, Arnt openly and knowingly suborned perjury, and "judge" Outhouse upheld it. This is significant, for in my mind, we are seeing a criminal conspiracy at work (not that it will be prosecuted, of course). The idea that Henke would have forgotten about something like what he had just alleged -- especially when it could have been used as ammunition in a custody battle -- just does not pass the smell test. Henke knew he was lying, Scott King knew Henke was lying, and, most important, Arnt and "judge" Outhouse knew Henke was lying.

Out of the mouth of babes

During Henke's cross examination, Scott King asked him if he had told his daughter that Tonya had lied to the police.

Henke: No
King: Do you know where Child #3 would have gotten that concept?
Henke: No.
King: Okay. Do you know why Child #3 would have said my daddy told me she (Tonya) lied to the police?
Henke: No.

(A few lines below)

King: Do you agree that that would have been a bad idea to tell Child #3 that her mommy had lied to the police prior to the forensic interview?
Henke: Yeah, yes, yes.

The interview to which they were referring is seen below when Tonya's daughter had her infamous "Who's on First" interview with Suzi Thorne, the high school graduate masquerading as a "forensic interviewer" for the Greenhouse and the CAC.

SUZIE: Okay, and you said you used to live with your mom?
CHILD #3: Yeah but she was lying to them.
SUZIE: [Tonya] was lying to who?
CHILD #3: The, uh, police.
SUZIE: What about [What was Tonya lying about]?
CHILD #3: They [police] asked her a question and she was just lying about it.
SUZIE: Well, what did [Tonya] lie [to police] about?
CHILD #3: I don’t know. She just lied about something.
SUZIE: Oh, you don’t know what she lied [to police] about?
CHILD #3: But my dad told me that she lied about something. (Emphasis mine)

So, according to Arnt, Len Gregor, and "judge" Outhouse, Tonya's daughter is a trusted source when she was claiming (after much coaching and manipulating) that her mother had molested her. However, when the child says that her father told her that her mother "lied to the police," that is discounted.

More to the point, Joal Henke contradicted his own daughter in court, and the prosecution went along with it. And why should we not be surprised, given that the prosecutors not only suborned perjury, but also lied to jurors during the closing arguments.

As for relevance in the upcoming custody hearing, it is clear that Joal Henke has engaged in Parent Alienation, and has been pretty successful at it, given that he is both dishonest and manipulative. Courts tend to take harsh action against parents who engage in this kind of conduct; we shall see if Judge Marie Williams takes a hard look at it, or gives Joal a free pass -- as so many other people have done.

We are not simply dealing with lies; no, we are dealing with pathological liars. There is a difference. People will lie at times when cornered, but from what I can gather, Joal Henke lies constantly, and given that the members of the LMJC prefer lies to the truth, I think we certainly can say that people like Arnt, Gregor, and "judge" Outhouse also fit into that category (and Buzz Franklin deserves at least an honorable mention).

In my next post, I will continue to deal with Joal's various contradictions in his testimonies.

Joal and Sarah Henke: Perjury in Their Own Words, Part I: Sarah's "Memories"

The supposed case against Tonya Craft was built on lies from Day One. However, those involved were not satisfied just with creating a foundation of lies; no, they kept trying to outdo themselves all the way past the trial, continuing to throw lies and half-truths into the mix in order to create what has been an ugly edifice.

Orchestrating the entire Symphony of Lies was Chris "Facebook-Cruisemaster" Arnt, with Sandra Lamb and her parents providing the background support, along with the Wilsons, the McDonalds, the CAC (which always is game for false accusations), Tim "Dirty" Deal, and one very pious woman whose brother and father send me nasty emails if I mention her name. These are people who knew from the start what they were doing, but they did not care. They wanted to win, destroy Tonya Craft's life, and claim victory.

Two other important people in that toxic mix have been Tonya's ex-husband, Joal "Homewrecker" Henke, who provided both lies and "I just remembered" comic relief, along with his wife, Sarah "Clean Shaven" Henke. Both of them lied under oath, and at the custody hearing scheduled for next week, I guarantee that both of them will continue to lie under oath, this time in Judge Marie Williams' court. Whether or not Judge Williams puts up with their deceit is another matter, but we do know that in Catoosa County, "judge" Brian Outhouse was a not-so-silent partner in enabling the Henkes and the rest of the prosecution team to turn the courtroom into the House of Lies.

I have been fortunate enough to gain possession of both the pre-trial depositions and the trial testimony of the Stinky Henkes and the smell has wafted all the way to Kerwyn's residence, and she has been giving these documents the flyspeck that only she can do, given her uncanny ability to sniff out details that even experienced attorneys might miss. While the length of the material could give even War and Peace a run, one thing has become abundantly clear: what the Henkes said at their depositions versus what they said under oath at trial are not even similar, except that the same people allegedly were occupying the Stinky Henke bodies.

In today's post, I deal with Sarah Henke's deposition and trial testimony, and later, I look at the conflicting words that Joal said under oath. I think it will be clear to the readers that there is a huge conflict between what was said under oath in February 17, 2009, and what was spoken under oath during the trial on April 23, 2010.

Sarah is not on Joal's witness list for the upcoming custody hearing, and I believe that readers will understand why after reading this post. However, I also think it is important for readers to remember that Sarah Henke is a nurse at Parkridge Hospital, and if someone will commit perjury in a court of law, it does not take much of an imagination to think that perhaps she might also make false statements on the legal documents with which she deals every day on the job.

Claims of "Vaginal Tearing"

Even though Sarah Henke is a nurse, she showed a lot of ignorance not only about the SANE exam of Tonya’s daughter, but also about the alleged injuries that were claimed. First, let us look at an exchange during the deposition:

Q Has Child #3 -- has anybody submitted Child #3 to a physical medical examination to confirm or deny whether or not there's any physical evidence of any sexual misconduct?
A yes
Q ok. And where was that conducted?
Q At the advocacy center
Q Advocacy center. And do you know the results of that examination
A yes
Q what were they
A Evidence of penetration
Q ok. And you say at the Advocacy Center. Was it by a doctor?
A I believe it was two nurses. However I do not know their (inaudible)
Q Two nurses.
A I do not know their credentials positively. I know there was one nurse.
Q What was the evidence, as you understand it, of penetration
A that there was some type of tearing
Q Some type of tearing of the vaginal area?
A Yes
Q Ok. Ok. And who is it that told you that there was a medical examination that showed there was tearing in the vagina?
A Joal
Q Joal. Ok. And who did he say told him
A. The advocacy center.
Q ok Has joal taken her to any private pediatrician or other physician to verify the results that these nurses allege occur?
A No


Here is her trial testimony under Chris Arnt’s questioning:

Q Now, Later on when Child #3 goes for a medical exam at the CAC in Ft. Oglethorpe did she request someone to go into that medical examination with her?
A Yes. She asked me to go in there with her.
Q And were you physically in the room while the medical exam was done?
A Yes
Q and at whose request was that?
A Child #3s

Notice that there are no “vaginal tearing” claims now. This whole thing is interesting because either Joal was lying to Sarah, or Sharon Anderson, the SANE, made a medical diagnosis, which she is not supposed to do.

However, if a child actually has a “vaginal tearing” injury, then it would be imperative for the parents to seek a medical exam for the girl. In fact, I cannot imagine Sharon Anderson not calling in a doctor if she had seen this kind of injury. Furthermore, Sarah Henke is a nurse and a nurse would have had an idea that she was dealing with something that required more medical help. I simply cannot imagine a nurse not doing something.

There also is another possibility. Someone is lying. Notice that Sarah claims that Joal told her about the alleged vaginal tearing, but even if Joal had said it, Sarah’s lack of curiosity is, to use Sharon Anderson’s own words, “highly suspicious.”

Showering and Bathing with Tonya’s Daughter

The “perfect storm” against Tonya Craft came with two situations. The first situation involved Sandra Lamb and her friends trying to find a way to have Tonya charged. (In other words, they had to plan their lies, with Steven Keith, Tim Deal, and Chris Arnt serving as the facilitators.)

The other side of the storm came when Tonya registered a complaint against Sarah Henke not only for showering with Tonya’s daughter (on a regular basis), but also for allegedly having the child help Sarah shave her own private parts. After Tonya filed with the authorities, Joal decided to turn around the situation, and that is when a flurry of phone calls went between him, Lamb, and others. (Yes, we have the phone records, and they made lots and lots and lots of calls to each other.)

Sarah’s deposition and trial testimony about this particular situation fall into the “mutually-exclusive” category. In other words, if one set of answers is true, then the other set must be false.

This is from the deposition:

Q. All right, you've indicated to me that there were too many times, too many numerous times to count how many there were. How many times would you say that you have bathed with her since may 30th, 2008?
A. You're saying a bath?
Q. A bath
A Twenty times
A Ok
A thats a guess
Q and how many times would you say you've showered with her since May 2008
A I said I couldn't count
Q. more than ten?
A yes
Q More than 20?
A Yes

Compare what she said under oath at the deposition with her trial testimony (also made under oath):

Q Ok. Now, let's talk about the showering stuff. Child #3 was how hold when she came to stay with you and Joal?
A A far as --
Q In may of 2008
A She was six
Q Ok. She was able to bathe herself at that point, correct?
A At that point she still -- I think she still needed assistance in the shower.
Q That's what you thought?
A uh-huh
Q Did you ask her?
A No
Q Ok. And what assistance did you give her while you were in the shower with her?
A I made sure the shampoo was out of her hair. I didn't bathe her. I made sure she was bathing herself, that's it
Q You started bathing with her about a month or so after you married Mr. Henke, correct
A It was about six months
Q So if Mr. Henke told us it was a month or two, that wouldn't be correct?
A It was during the Summer --
Q Ok
A -- After we got married
Q Did you talk to her about it before and say I want to bath with you, is that okay?
A We, we -- and I going to explain my answer. We--
Q If you can give me a yes or no first and then you're welcome to explain
A Ok. Say the question again
Q Did you talk to her first --
A yes
Q -- about whether she wanted you to bath with her?
A yes
Q ok
A And I am going to explain why we did decide to do that. Child #3 had been coming to our house. Her hair was matted. She was dirty. She was -- I could -- when she was sitting there I could smell her. Joal and I both could.


Joal said will you please teach her how to bathe. And we had done, you know, I let her take a bath by herself and she would do it and it was -- it just took a long time. So I just -- we talked, joal and I just talked and we asked, you know, Child #3 if she cared if we just took a shower and she didn't. I mean, have a problem.

Keep in mind that Sarah made no such claims during the deposition. Furthermore, no one had made any such claims until this testimony. (One of Tonya’s defense witnesses later testified that she never saw Tonya’s daughter in that condition. Is this something one can prove as a lie under oath? Clearly not, but let us just say that statements like this do not help establish Sarah Henke as a credible witness.

In fact, as Kerwyn noted the following in the document she sent to me:

There are 41 instances where she is questioned about taking a shower or bath with Child #3. SHE NEVER even hints it is because the child is dirty and smelled. There are 4 instances where they ask her if Child #3 was capable of bathing herself to which she says yes. (Emphasis mine)

Sarah’s Sudden Remembering of Injuries to Tonya’s Daughter

As Kerwyn and I have gone through Sarah Henke’s deposition, other than the claim of “vaginal tearing” which she admits not to have seen, she does not say at any time during the deposition that she observed vaginal injuries, redness, or anything else like that. From the deposition:

Q Ok. Now, when -- during visitiation, when Child #3 spent the night, were there ever occasions where you had to clean her up after she went to the restroom?
A. No
Q Help her wipe herself or anything like that
A. I have wiped her, her bottom.
Q. Ok. Has she ever had a rash or anything where you had to apply any medicine?
A. No
Q. Ok. When you help her wipe her bottom, do you use those wet wipes or do you use toilet tissue.
A I use toilet paper.
Q Ok. Has she asked you to help with that
A She -- she did. this has been a while ago, not recently
Q Have you ever noted whether she's had a rash in any area around in --
A I haven't looked
Q -- around her private area? Ok.

Compare that with her trial testimony:

Q You -- how often did you shower with Child #3?
A A few times a week.
Q a few times a week?
A uh-huh
Q saw her naked, I guess, at that point, correct
A yes
Q right. Never saw anything that concerned you in what you saw naked in terms of --
A Yes. One time or, actually two to three times she had come to our house and I remember one occasion she was getting into the shower and her outer -- her labia, the outer part of her private area was red and then she had complained. She said it hurts. And I thought, well, she's not showering correctly. And then probably two more times. I remember one time specifically she woke up in the middle of the night and she was crying and she was grabbing her privates saying it hurts, it hurts. And, you know, you don't suspect abuse. I mean, you just don't. I remember that night all I knew what to do is I let her take a bath. I didn't take it with her. I let her take a bath and that's the only think I knew to do.
Q Well, now, ma'am, we took a deposition of you --
A yes.
Q -- back last year, correct?
A Correct
Q Hours, correct?
A uh-huh
Q never mentioned that in there, did you?
A That's a good thing about depositions, you remember things afterwards.
Q oh, you remembered after the fact
A uh-huh
Q Was that after you spoke with the district Attorney's office?
A No. I've never spoke to them
Q Is that after you spoke to the detectives in the case?
A I didn't talk to any detectives about that.
Q Ok Have the detectives interviewed you?
A no
Q ok Did you mention it to Brandon Boggess (of Child Protective Services)?
A I had not remembered it at that time
Q oh, ok. You only remembered --
A it's something that you just think back in hindsight that you think, oh, my gosh, I remember this because at the time you didn't think it's important
Q Ok. And you were so concerned you took her to the doctor right away, right?
A Well, No, because I asked her if she -- if it hurt when she urinated. She said no. Usually by the time she left she was feeling better.
Q Well, you at least called Tonya and told her that you saw something that was bothering you right?
A no
Q well, who did you talk to about it?
A I just told Joal
Q Oh, you told Mr. Henke
A uh-huh
Q ok. He then, or course, talked to Tonya, right?
A no
Q He took her to the doctor, right?
A no
Q He must have then told Brandon Boggess when Brandon Boggess came there, right?
A like I said, this was --
Q is that a yes or a no, Ma'am
A Let me explain my answer
Q As soon as you give me a yes or a no you're welcome to
Q He did not talk to Brandon Boggess and the reason is Brandon Boggess came to our house in 2008, the summer of. Well, I guess it had happened before that, but I had not remembered that until actually just recently.
Q ok Mr. Henke spoke to the detectives in this case, correct?
A I assume, yes
Q Do you know if he told them this face?
A no
Q Ok, No, he didn't or no you don't know
A I don't know

Deposition NOTE: She never mentions, not in all the pages of her deposition any occasion where Child #3 woke up or had any redness. Also note, she again admits to having talked to Boggess a fact she denied repeatedly during the deposition. (Emphasis mine)

And there is more, this from questioning by Scott King:

Q You said that Child #3 told you that her vagina hurt during that --
A she said it hurts
Q Ok. So if she told us in her interview that she never told anybody that it hurt, that wouldn't have been true?
A She probably didn't remember that
Q Like you didn't remember, right?
A Yes
Q Got you. Now, when you thought of this incident you, of course, called the other side who had deposed you and said I thought of something else?
A. It was almost a year later that I remembered
Q Whenever it was
A The only thing I did was write it and give it to the DA
Q Oh, you did?
A And that as actually this week.
Q this week?
A uh-huh
Q did you send a copy to us?
A Was I suppose to?
Q I don't know. The question is did you
A I didn't.

(This information never was turned over to the defense. So, either the prosecution was trying to hide something, in violation of the law, or Sarah never gave them anything, and she was lying. Furthermore, the prosecution tried to run with it, which means that if Henke was lying, prosecutors suborned perjury, which not only is an ethical violation – not that anyone at the Georgia State Bar cares – but also a felony.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is what is know as perjury. When asked how it was that her memory had improved so much at trial, she told attorney Cary King that the deposition itself had jogged her mind. My guess is that some meetings with her husband and others might have contributed to her “suddenly-clear” memory at the trial.

What makes this worse in my view is that Sarah Henke is in a profession in which she deals with legal documents all the time. It is imperative that nurses tell the truth, and if Henke will lie under oath, one should not be surprised if she lies when she does her charting or fills out other documents. If her supervisors at Parkridge Medical Center are not interested in Henke's lack of truthfulness, then it is apparent that they have no respect for their patients or the medical system.

Sarah Henke fully understood the stakes at hand. She had to have known that Tonya Craft was innocent, yet facing a lifetime in prison. Furthermore, all during the trial, Sarah had a picture on her Facebook page of her holding Tonya's daughter and basically claiming the child was her own. Why am I not surprised that this woman would lie under oath in order to destroy another person and to steal her children?

Monday's post will deal with Joal Henke's trial testimony and his testimony during the deposition.

More Antics of "Mommie Dearest"

When we last left Sandra Lamb, she was prevailing upon the principal of Chickamauga Elementary School to place letters of reprimand in the folders of teachers who had the audacity to testify in favor of Tonya Craft at her trial.

(Yes, these are private letters, but their being put in the folder of teachers by the principal is tantamount to an official reprimand. I can guarantee you that this is legally actionable. Interestingly, no one from the local Georgia Association of Educators affiliate stood up for the teachers. One wonders just why these teachers bother to pay dues if their union sells them out.)

Well, it seems that Lamb has outdone herself, which is a mighty big feat, given what we know about Mommie Dearest. No, she has not gone into professional wrestling or challenged Tonya Harding to a fight, although we already know that Lamb is a tiger when it comes to her fists.

Instead, she is known to carry around a picture of, get this, her daughter's vagina (which was used as "evidence" during Tonya Craft's trial). Furthermore, she shows it to people as "proof" that Tonya molested her child. I'm not kidding.

Now, for the record, Dr. Nancy Fajman, who really does know more about the vaginas of children than does Mommie Dearest, testified that this little girl had a normal you-know-what. Nonetheless, Lamb insists on carrying around this picture.

Given that she has run of the prosecutors' offices in Catoosa County (during the trial, Lamb and Sherry Wilson spent several hours a week in those offices), Lamb does not have to worry about being charged with possession of child pornography. Nonetheless, the idea of a woman carrying a picture of her daughter's vagina -- and waving it in front of other people -- is sick, just sick.

As we said many times during the trial and its aftermath, you just cannot make up this stuff.

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.

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.