OT The Civil Rights Lawyer

Jesus Christ

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-selling-restricted-guns-posties/

Adair, Iowa, had a population of 794. So, it seemed suspicious when its three-person police department asked regulators to buy 90 machine guns, including an M134 Gatling-style minigun capable of shooting up to 6,000 rounds of ammunition every minute.

Federal agents later discovered Adair's police chief, Bradley Wendt, was using his position to acquire weapons and sell them for personal profit. A jury convicted Wendt earlier this year of conspiracy to defraud the United States, lying to federal law enforcement and illegal possession of a machine gun. Wendt is unapologetic and has appealed his conviction.

"If I'm guilty of this, every cop in the nation's going to jail," Wendt told CBS News just days before a federal judge sentenced him to a 5-year prison term. Wendt's crimes appear to be part of a nationwide pattern.

 

I posted in the "rock bottom" thread about my recent journey into the legal system, but I figured some observations were better made here.

The Civil Rights Lawyer talks about how "freedom is scary, deal with it." Well, I'm going to let you know just how scary it can be.

Keep in mind, this is all perfectly legal. Unlike a lot of people in these videos, no one is getting hurt or dying. Police, prosecutors and judges can do the following and it's not violating your Constitutional rights for them to do it.

I was arrested and charged with stalking and harassment for leaving a sympathy card. I didn't see the person for whom I left the card. The last time we had contact was three years ago, and that was an email I sent them for graduating from college. BTW, I got them into college, which got them the degree they used to get the job at the place where I left them the card.

An element for both stalking and harassment, at least here in Pennsylvania, is what they call "course of conduct." It means there have to be repeated acts intended to make someone reasonably fear bodily injury or experience extreme emotional distress. The statute of limitations for both of those crimes is two years.

The police officer that made the investigation and the arrest knew this, and you'd think would have been enough to end it right there. After all, in a jury trial, the state is supposed to have to be able to prove all elements of the charge to get a conviction -- that's not really true, either, but I'll get to that. Anyway, the officer isn't bound by the legal code. They aren't required to talk to the accused or even to confirm the accuser's report. In my case, several aspects of the report could have been dismissed with a phone call to either me or certain third parties.

The officer isn't required to do that, though, to file for an arrest warrant. And, because of qualified immunity, the officer is largely shielded from punishment for being overzealous in getting an arrest.

The officer that arrested me was at the very same time on civil trial for a false arrest when he cuffed a middle-aged woman driving a truck pulling a trailer with hay to an animal rescue on a rainy night on the suspicion of being on meth. She was taken to the hospital and forced to undergo an involuntary blood test ... which showed she was clean. Even the broken tail light for which he pulled her over in the first place apparently wasn't broken. He settled with an arbiter in October but still is on the job, and he arrested someone else on the suspicion of being meth again within a day or two. Oh, and the woman that was arrested? A story on her arrest went into the local paper and it took six months for them to note in the story online that she passed her bloodtest, no correction or story or anything.

The fiancee of the officer that arrested me went to school with the person who accused me. To get an arrest warrant, they went to a magistrate who grew up with the complaintant's mother. The magistrate that handled the prearraignment oversaw the complaintant's college internship; he kept pushing me to have a public defender who works in the same building as the prosecutor to handle my defense. I think the magistrate that presided over the preliminary hearing had a prior relationship with the accuser -- he heard the complaintant admit everything they said to get an arrest report either was wrong, false, or a mistake ... and they still moved the case to a trial.

There isn't anything for Pennsylvania residents to do for something like a district judge overseeing a proceeding in which a friend is involved on either side. A complaint could be filed, but that might get a letter of reprimand, but nothing else.

The trial judge in my case worked with the complaintant almost every day for more than two years. A judge is supposed to recuse themselves from cases where they have a relationship with the complaintant or defendant. He didn't. When they don't, you can file a motion ... which is ruled upon by the judge you're trying to get off your case. This judge will decide all motions, will rule on all objections, will decide what is admissable, will give the jury instructions before deliberation and would be the one to rule if they didn't think the jury's verdict was correct.

When a judge might be partisan -- even if it's done subconsciously -- doesn't recuse themself from a case, it is grounds for an appeal. However, you still have to go through the case and spend all the money that goes along with it. If you win the appeal, you don't win your case. You just start over.

The judge in my case had the complaintant introduce her new fiance to the court at the pretrial, even though he had nothing at all to do with the case. Gee, wonder what that was about.

You can't sue a judge in Pennsylvania, though. He can do whatever he wants and there's nothing you can do.

The DA is friends with the complaintant, and during the early part of the process was liking her bikini pics on social media. The arresting officer asked me not to hold this against him because "I have to do what the DA tells me to do."

You can't sue a district attorney in Pennsylvania, though. You can file a complaint. Nothing more.

As the Civil Rights Lawyer makes clear, the police don't have to be honest with someone they're investigating or arresting. They can lie to get whatever they want.

In my case, they took my phone. They had every text I ever sent, my direct message history, all of it. And they didn't need to prove a thing to get it. They just needed a magistrate to sign a warrant or just to take it without a warrant and say I let them have it.

The officer made me dress in front of him to be taken to prearraignment. What was the purpose of that? Your guess is as good as mine.

If I went to a jury trial, the prosecution is supposed to have to prove all elements of the alleged crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Any good attorney will tell you that's not true. You're at the mercy of whatever 12 people decide and then the judge can accept or reject their decision, whether it's proper or not. My attorney told me they didn't have a case, but he also said you can't predict what a jury will do, and he's seen it work both ways. He's a former prosecutor. He said he didn't expect the prosecution to argue the illegality of what I did, but to take a small piece of one bit of evidence out of context and try to use that and the fact that I talked to friends -- not even in a negative way -- about the complaintant to make me look like a bad guy and get the jury to convict me based on that. The complaintant herself didn't even say what they were going to try to say, but they aren't under any obligation to act in the interest or guides of the law to win their case.

On the first day my attorney met with the DAs, the state offered to drop the stalking completely and reduce the harassment to the much lesser charge of disorderly conduct. After the preliminary hearing and despite having everything they could get from my phone, they even reduced that before pretrial, even with a judge that appeared to be in their corner -- he wanted to allow the complaintant to testify over the phone when she lied and said she couldn't be at the pretrial hearing (surprisingly, she had no problem being there when she found out she didn't need to testify).

With no prior record, I still was facing more than a decade in prison and tens of thousands of dollars in fines if I went to trial and lost. The prosecution offered probation and court costs, and I took that.

However, in taking that, I also apparently lost any chance to bring civil action against anyone, even though the crime I pleaded to was completely different than what they overcharged me with. A civil attorney that has won a bunch of cases against the people that did this to me said my chance of winning a civil case was small anyway, because, in the U.S., even though filing a false police report, malicious prosecution and conspiracy are against the law, proving them is next to impossible.

TL;DR The legal system in the U.S. is as messed up as the healthcare system. It's for profit and the idea isn't to find justice but to get people into the system, along with their money. And there's not a lot anyone can do to get relief from them or make them accountable if they decide to screw with your life.

 

I didn't even mention that the complaintant and her family tried to make contact with me and get me to do things during the process that either were intended to harass me or would have violated my bail if I reacted to it. I got crank calls. I was attacked by fake social media accounts that seemed likely to be her.

The local newspaper wrote three stories about my case. They never tried to contact me or my attorney. They didn't attend the public preliminary hearing where they would have heard the accuser invalidate everything that got the arrest warrant. Then they screwed up the headline on my plea agreement and said I pleaded to harassment, which had people spamming my Facebook account on Christmas Day. Pretty reckless, right? Well, getting defamation against a news outlet is almost as hard as winning a case against the police.

In addition to my expenses in my defense, I lost my job just on what was in the later disproven police report, and I probably won't ever get hired back because stalking was attached to my name, even though there never was stalking.

All that happened over a sympathy card. That's your justice system at work. That's what people in that county pay their taxes to see pursued.

 

Is this the "great" America we're trying to get back too? Asking for a friend.......and to be honest, I grew up in a very social justice atmosphere and it was made very clear to me at a very young age that justice in America almost always goes to the highest bidder. The exceptions are few and far between. Donald Trump is a classic example of an American getting away with absolutely anything if you have enough money.......

 

https://mappingpoliceviolence.us/

 

I liked your post, but I wish I could have "disliked" it in support.

This is not right and it should not be happening.