Is the Eastwood Church's New Motto "Perjury, not Purity"?

The Eastwood Church, which is the church home of serial perjurers Joal and Sarah Henke, likes to fashion itself as part of the "Emergent Church" movement which claims to emphasize "deeds, not creeds." That is a nice way of saying that the church has a pretty nebulous belief system into which a lot of heresy can be stuffed.

I recently visited its website and read its "mission" statement, and in reading it, I can see how Joal and Sarah believe they are justified by their lies, and there is nothing in Eastwood's "mission" that contradicts that point. An especially telling paragraph states:

Jesus was extremely critical of the religious leaders of His day because they set rules above relationships. We desire to follow in His footsteps and place people above these man-made rules -- whether they are cultural, traditional, or religious.

This sounds good on the surface, but it actually undercuts the Gospel and it certainly can be used as a tool for deceitful, predatory people like Joal Henke. I will explain why I believe that.

Jesus did not speak out against the Law, no matter how much the Emergents want us to believe He did. Furthermore, He did not condemn the Pharisees and other religious leaders for following the Law; he condemned them for breaking the spirit of the Law, for placing the rules that made up their interpretations of the Law above the Law itself.

This is much different than what the Eastwood people want us to believe. They want us to think that as long as we claim to have a "relationship" with Jesus, then everything else is fine. The fact that a number of Eastwood members refused even to look at the evidence and instead blindly followed Joal and Sarah -- despite their obvious perjury -- seems to be living proof that they don't consider things like "truth" to be relevant. In the Emergent view, "truth" is relative; it is subordinate to relationships, and because of it, one can justify almost any behavior that clearly violates the Law of God.

As I am going to point out in future posts, there is no question that the Henkes lied on the stand. They were part of a prosecution strategy that kept introducing "new, I just remembered" material in an attempt to fill the obvious holes in the prosecution's evidence against Tonya Craft. Furthermore, Sarah kept a Facebook page up during the whole trial in which her featured picture was that of her holding Tonya's daughter, claiming that the child was her own.

This, people, is sick, sick, sick. It is evil. It is a woman being willing to lie in a court of law in an attempt to steal the child of another woman, and receiving encouragement from her church in telling those lies.

However, because the lies were about "relationships," the Eastwood Church swallowed the falsehoods whole and justified the action with its "mission" statement. The members of that church fool no one other than themselves, and they certainly don't fool God.

So, if the Eastwood Church needs a new motto, it can be: "Perjury, not Purity."

Working on a Case that is a Huge Travesty

I'm putting together material in order to write about a case near Chattanooga that I consider to be as big a travesty as was the Duke Lacrosse Case. A woman is accused of sexual molestation, and from what I can see, the charges are as legitimate as were the sexual molestation charges of nearly 20 years ago in the mass of "witch hunts" that polluted our legal landscape.

This means that I am going to give the authorities in this particular jurisdiction the same treatment I gave Michael Nifong and his minions in Durham, North Carolina. If there is one thing that I hate, it is authorities pursing and destroying innocent people, and because I have multiple forums, I am going to use them.

Harvey Silverglate on Volokh Conspiracy

Harvey Silverglate has been an important mentor to me for many years, and I always recommend his comments to people. His post today on the Volokh Conspiracy blog is spot on -- as usual.

In this post, Harvey points out just how vague -- and dangerous -- the so-called terrorism laws have become. Below the terrorism post is a post on "honest services fraud," the favorite tool of federal prosecutors, as it enables them to criminalize what actually is legal behavior.

Read and weep, for we have to understand just what we have lost by permitting federal prosecutors to run amok.

Bowman: Law is a Weapon, Not a Shield

Besides inheriting the English language, Americans also enjoyed the fruits of the legal system developed in Great Britain which, over time, was to be known as a "shield for the innocent," according to the great jurist William Blackstone. This view of law was reflected in our own Declaration of Independence in which the purpose of government was not to lord it over subjects, but rather to protect the God-given rights that people already owned.

Fast forward to 2009 in which very few people in power believe this about law, and nowhere is contempt for the legal principles of Blackstone and Thomas Jefferson more evident than in American law schools. As prosecutors become the living dictators of criminal law, the very concept of law has been perverted to become something other than a "shield" to protect the rights of the innocent. Law today -- and especially federal criminal law -- is nothing more than a weapon that federal prosecutors wield against people supposedly to keep them in line. As the Great Harvey Silverglate has written in his wonderful book, Three Felonies a Day, federal criminal law today more reflects the law of the old Soviet Union with its "crimes of analogy" than anything we inherited from Great Britain more than two centuries ago.

An unfortunate legacy of this terrible development has been the matriculation of federal prosecutors into law schools, where their own perverted views of law are now taught as being morally and legally legitimate. One such person is Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri. I came upon this man through an interesting article in The New York Times in which the paper noted in a surprised manner that both leftists and conservatives have joined forces to oppose the abuses that federal criminal law has wrought.

Of course, being that the Times served as the main cheerleader for the disgraced Michael B. Nifong, the now-disbarred prosecutor who pursued charges in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case that he knew were false, it is not surprising to see the "Newspaper of Record" take the side of the prosecutors. They interviewed Bowman, and he clearly did not disappoint:

Some scholars are skeptical about conservatives’ timing and motives, noting that their voices are rising during a Democratic administration and amid demands for accountability for the economic crisis.

“The Justice Department now acts as a kind of counterweight to corporate power,” said Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri. “On the other side is an alliance between two strands of conservative thinking, the libertarian point of view and the corporate wing of the Republican Party.”

First, and most important, the notion that "corporate power" is equal to the power of the state is laughable. I don't recall any "corporate" forces from Wal-Mart gunning down innocent people (and paying no price) and Wal-Mart does not enjoy the immunity from being punished for criminal acts, as do the people championed by Bowman and his ilk. Corporations cannot engage in home invasions like your friendly police force, and if someone from a corporation guns you down, the killer -- unlike your friendly police protectors -- is likely to be prosecuted.

In fact, Bowman's former employer, the federal government, recently argued in the Pottawattamie case that prosecutors should be absolutely immune from any legal consequences, even when it is clear that they knowingly tried to frame innocent people. Instead, the government argued that no one has a Constitutional right not to be framed.

Second, the view of law being a "counterweight" violates every foundation upon which Anglo-American law was built. This "counterweight" view is a backdoor way of approving the tactics which prosecutors use to gain convictions of innocent people. As Harvey Silverglate has noted, federal criminal law is so abusive and prosecutors are so powerful (there is no "counterweight" to their power, and they are demanding even more power) that innocent people find it in their own best interests to plead guilty to something because the alternative is too terrible.

Third, as I note in an upcoming article on federal criminal law in Regulation Magazine, the very basis for "white collar crime" law is the elimination of the Constitutional protections that we supposedly enjoy, including presumption of innocence, and the establishment of the mens rea principle. As LSU law professor John Baker noted in an article about the "father of white-collar crime laws," Edwin Sutherland, the law specifically targets people for what they are, not for what they do.

(Sutherland and his followers believed that almost all business transactions should be viewed inherently as being "criminal." It is clear that Bowman follows in that tradition.)

As former Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson pointed out in a 1940 speech, federal criminal law is written in a way that permits prosecutors to target and individual, and then look for crimes with which to charge that person. Keep in mind that in 1940, prosecutors did not have the RICO statutes and most of the "fraud" laws that they can bundle into just about anything.

Thus, Bowman and many other law professors of his ilk are arguing that we in reality need to do away with the Constitution -- and the Rule of Law -- altogether. Instead, they want us to depend upon the good will of prosecutors and, at the same time, give them unlimited power over our lives.

No doubt, Bowman believes that he is morally superior to the rest of us and would make a wonderful and benevolent and fair dictator. However, I prefer the words of Lord Acton, who was a far more learned and good man than Bowman ever could hope to be: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Even the New York Times takes notice of our efforts

Over the past several years, I have been part of a movement of people of many backgrounds challenging the near-dictatorship that we have of prosecutors, and especially federal prosecutors. One of the worst offenders of supporting the abuses of prosecutors has been the "Newspaper of Record," a.k.a. the New York Times. However, today the Times has a different take, and has publicized the efforts of people like the Great Harvey Silverglate and Radley Balko in exposing the abuses committed by this untouchable class of prosecutors.

While the Times piece mostly is sympathetic, at the end it quotes former federal prosecutor and now law professor Frank O. Bowman as basically saying that any of us who oppose this federal abuse, especially in the area of "white-collar crimes," is a corporate stooge. The article is worth reading, but I will be dealing with Prof. Bowman in a future post, as his are fighting words, and I am up to the fight.

Free Plaxico Burress!

Although Wilt Alston has written a piece good enough to be the Last Word on the unjust imprisonment of Plaxico Burress, nonetheless, I figure I will do mop-up duty, as well as second his excellent commentary. Indeed, I believe that Burress is a political prisoner who is being disguised by the press as a felon. Given that the mainstream media today is little more than a mouthpiece for the political classes, I think it is safe to say that the press does not "get it," nor ever will.

I was struck by the quote by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg that Wilt used at the beginning of the article, and I will present it again:

"If we don't prosecute [him] to the fullest extent of the law, I don't know who on Earth we would. It makes a sham, a mockery of the law. And it's pretty hard to argue the guy didn't have a gun and it wasn't loaded."

Usually, anything that takes Bloomberg’s mind off wanting to establish the anti-smoking policies of Adolph Hitler (as well as Bloomberg wanting to tell the rest of us what we can and cannot eat) is a good thing, but not in this case, as I would rather hear him lecture against Twinkies than hear his flawed reasoning for locking someone in a government cage. Hizzoner’s quote does not tell me that, somehow, the judicial apparatus in the Large Malus Domestica is geared up to give "justice for all." Instead, it seems to me that the government of the city has engaged in selective prosecution – all in the name of "blind justice."

Once upon a time, the authorities would have seen Burress’s wound as being substantial punishment for not having his equivalent of a firearms hall pass, and he would have received a legal slap on the wrist – which would have been less unjust than throwing him into the can for two years. I seem to remember that 40 years ago, Ted Kennedy managed to kill someone, a small detail that the authorities on the Kennedy payroll in Massachusetts seemed to forget when they charged him with a misdemeanor for "leaving the scene of an accident."

That Kennedy received a recent near-million-dollar burial of which the extravagance exceeded that of someone from an actual royal family tells us that the political classes are being held to much different standards than someone who actually is a valuable member of society. (Catching the winning touchdown pass in the Super Bowl is a much greater and more socially-useful feat than ramrodding God-awful bills like "No Child Left Behind" and worse into law and tom-catting with Christopher Dodd through the District, and having sex with a bimbo on a sailboat in full view of the rest of the world.)

No, Plaxico Burress managed to violate a "law" that really should not be a law, period. This is a statute that declares that people in NYC are not permitted to engage in self-defense without permission, while city employees wearing blue uniforms and badges are entitled to empty the clips of their handguns into unarmed people and not go to jail.

New Yorkers were not always so squeamish about firearms. John Lott writes that a few decades ago high school students who were on rifle teams would carry their rifles on the subway and into their schools, where the guns were put into safe keeping until the students went to practice at a shooting range. Unfortunately, New York has political leadership that no longer realizes that just because a person is carrying a private firearm does not mean the person is going to shoot other people.

Bloomberg is fond of saying, "I don’t know why people carry guns. Guns kill people." No doubt, Hizzoner demands that the police that tend to his entourage be disarmed. Oh, I forgot; only privately-owned guns "kill people." Cops never shoot anyone, and they certainly never kill people and certainly not unarmed people.

The imprisonment of Plaxico Burress reveals a real smugness with the New York political classes, as though a Great Deed of Justice has been carried out. In the name of "justice for all," the authorities in New York have carried out selective prosecution, making sure that a high-profile person who has offended the mayor’s worldview goes to prison.

The political classes – and especially the New York City political classes – protect their own. When the city collapsed financially in 1975, it turned out that city officials were selling municipal bonds to pay off previously-issued municipal bonds, an act that clearly broke a host of fraud statutes. However, no one went to jail despite the fact that the city officials clearly were engaged in a financial swindle that would dwarf even what Bernie Madoff did 30 years later.

Far more people were harmed by New York’s financial fraud than were hurt by Plaxico Burress carrying a loaded handgun. New York cops each year kill innocent people, yet they pay no price. Burress is in jail, while city employees who are guilty of far greater crimes go free. That is the lesson of the imprisonment of Plaxico Burress and none other.

My Recent Letter to a Federal Judge

I recently wrote this letter to a judge who will be sentencing a man who recently was convicted of "honest services fraud," which is based upon a "law" that I believe is unjust and immoral. (I have written about this "law" here.) The names of the judge and the man being sentenced have been omitted.

Your Honor:

I am writing in connection with the recent conviction of "Mr. X" on the charges of "honest services fraud" and "money laundering." While I am an economist (I am an associate professor of economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland), I also have spent many years writing specifically on federal criminal law and especially so-called white-collar crime. My work has been published in academic journals and magazines such as Reason.

First, I need to say that any conviction for "honest services fraud" troubles me. If there is a vague criminal statute on the books, this is it. If there is a criminal statute on the books that is, de facto, an ex post facto law, this is it. About a week ago, "Mr. X," after reading some of my work on "honest services fraud," emailed me and asked if I would write this letter. I’m not receiving a penny of compensation for this, but am doing it, instead, because I am fully convinced that any conviction under "honest services fraud" is unjust and is an affront to our Constitution and the rule of law.

I say this because there is no real hard and fast definition of "honest services fraud." For example, I am writing this letter in my university office on a university computer. I am using my university stationery and letterhead, and one can argue this falls into the scope of what I do, given I have published academic articles on the subject of federal law. A prosecutor who wished to indict me for "honest services fraud" could jump on this and say that I am providing "dishonest services" to my employer.

Have you ever made a personal call while at work? Have you "surfed" the Internet while at your desk to find sports scores or to purchase something for your private use? If so, an enterprising federal prosecutor could try to indict you, although I doubt that would be the case.

For that matter, I highly doubt that your representative in Congress has fully read any of the bills on which he or she has voted, yet I have seen people indicted and convicted for "honest services fraud" because those people had not read every word in every legal document they had signed. Why is no one from Congress indicted? Let’s call it, "professional courtesy."

Second, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear an "honest services fraud" case (involving Conrad Black), and at least some of the justices have publicly said they are troubled by the implications of this very, very vague law (if we can call it "law," as it goes against every principle for which people like William Blackstone stood).

In other words, "Mr. X" very well might have been convicted of a law that really is not a law and might be struck down by the court, which should trouble everyone involved. (Of course, the "money laundering" statutes automatically kick in when there is a "fraud" case involving money. The idea that the feds pile one law upon another for a single act also troubles me and I believe such actions also are affronts to the Constitution and everything for which the rule of law once stood.)

All too often, federal criminal law is little more than a conviction awaiting someone to be charged. As the economy tanks, we now see federal prosecutors effectively criminalizing business failure when, in reality, much of what we see in many cases such as that of "Mr. X" is a situation in which the financial risks that might have made sense when taken in a financial boom turn into huge liabilities in a downturn. An economist already has testified to you that as much as anything, "Mr. X’s" business failure was more due to the general economy than any "fraud" on his part – if there was any fraud at all.

When recessions happen, unfortunately, enterprising federal prosecutors are all-too-eager to claim that a normal business failure really was the result of fraud, and because they have "laws" that permit them to criminalize just about anything, they usually win what I believe are unjust convictions in court. Thus, a case in which people were up front about their finances suddenly turns into "fraud," not because real-live fraud was committed, but rather because the failure was more spectacular.

Now, let me give you another example. This past year, my pension, which is run by administrators in charge of our pension system, lost 25 percent of its value. Now, this is a major loss to many of us in the Maryland university system, yet I don’t see any federal prosecutors hauling our pension administrators off in handcuffs and chains. Substantively, there really is no difference between our pension losses and the losses suffered by "Mr. X" and others in this particular set of business deals. Both sets of losses were due to the steep economic downturn.

So why do prosecutors go after one person and not another? It is that modern phenomenon we know as "selective prosecution." As one trained in the law for many years, you know that historically, "selective prosecution" has been looked down upon by those people who truly cared about rule of law. As a layperson, all I can say is that a regime of "selective prosecution" is an immoral regime. It is not right; it goes against everything we have been taught in our lives about rightness and fairness and the law itself.

Yes, I know that when "Mr. X" was doing well, he spent a lot of money, drove nice cars, and went to Las Vegas. Yet, college professors also go to conferences in Las Vegas and spend university money. (I have gone to a couple conferences there, myself.) Does traveling to Las Vegas make someone a criminal or somehow demonstrates that a person who did so should be sentenced to a long prison term? As far as I am concerned, what "Mr. X" did with the money he made in previous deals is a non sequitur when it comes to dealing with the issues at hand, even if the press makes a big deal out of it.

As I have stated before, I do not know "Mr. X," nor is he paying me to write this letter. I am doing it because I do not want to see one human being going to prison after being convicted of breaking a law that is so vague and so expansive that every one of us could be put in the dock for violating it.

The great civil libertarian and attorney Harvey Silverglate recently published a new book, Three Felonies a Day, and if you have not read it, I would highly recommend it to you. Mr. Silverglate is a friend and has been a mentor to me for many years, and he takes a very jaundiced view of "honest services fraud" and all that it entails, which means that I have some very wise company in expressing my views against this unjust law.

Thank you for taking time to read this letter. I do hope that it will influence you as you face the very difficult task of sending "Mr. X" to prison.

Sincerely,
William L. Anderson

Judge Napolitano on "Positivism" in the law

For the past seven years, I have written a number of columns and papers on law and especially federal criminal law. (Candice E. Jackson, an attorney on the West Coast, often has been a co-author, and a great writing partner she is!) I wrote more than 60 articles on the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case in which the prosecutor, Michael B. Nifong, pushed on with charges that he had to have known were false.

Unfortunately, there are numerous "Nifongs" in the federal system, and I am currently working on an article that outlines some of the more egregious things happening in the federal system. The larger problem here is what Judge Napolitano calls "positivism," which he defines in the following way:

Positivism teaches that the law is whatever the lawgiver says it is, providing the rule is written down. Under positivism, so long as the legislature in a democracy was validly elected and followed its own rules in enacting a law, the law is valid and enforceable no matter what it says.

This is as opposed to "natural law," which Vice-President Joe Biden condemned during the 1991 hearings for the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Napolitano writes this about "natural law":

Natural law teaches that our rights come from our humanity. Since we are created by God in His image and likeness, and since He is perfectly free—or, if you prefer, since we are creatures of nature born biologically dependent but morally free—freedom is our birthright. Liberty comes from our humanity, not from an outside source such as the government.

This is an article worth reading, for it outlines why the law has moved in the way that it has over the last hundred years or so, and especially since the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.