Inquisition 21
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Mechanisms of repression
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Mechanisms of repression
Mechanisms of repression
Scroll down for Incompetant lawyers and 'Now defence is criminalized' .
See also drop down menu on left for states of mind, the opportunists, mechanisms of repression, undesirable affects, what will be next and what we can do. Included there are the NGOs and censorship.
The mechanisms of repression are the moral imperative (religion, enemy, designated perversion or crimen exceptum), the demand for conformity, censorship and torture.
People who think for themselves everywhere hardly need to be told about the power and abuses of organized religion in both our times and throughout history. We know that religion used as a moral imperative is both a method for the control of populations and for making war on others. There is little difference between the blind drives against Islam of the Crusades, the holy wars of today against the West, and the US government’s assumption that it has God on its side against the ungodly. For much of the lifetime of the editor of this web site, the Roman Catholic Church ran the country of Ireland with an iron fist. Prime Ministers deferred to the bishops. Courts and judges were implemented the ideologies of Irish Catholicism. The government and the courts, even the Constitution, were all instruments for serving the moral imperatives decided by the Roman Catholic Church. Moral imperatives are being defined all over the world today by the US government.
The moral imperative, whether or not it is religious in nature (that is an accepted religion in the Western sense), can also be constructed out of social panics and mass delusions, including those based on concepts such as enemy, heretic, devil, witch, terrorist, communist, designated pervert or the label covering all of these, the crimen exceptum, the crime so loathsome and dangerous that all normal methods of law and even logic must be suspended – the witch, the Satanist, the child sex abuser. There are signs that the American crimen exceptum, may be passing from child sex abuse to foreign terrorist.
Whatever the moral imperative, if it is planted firmly into the community psyche, it becomes a powerful instrument for social control and repression.
The demand for conformity
The demand for conformity comes both from within the community itself and from those in power seeking more control over the population, or seeking personal power and profit from manipulating the tendency towards conformity of people. As we saw in the section above on ‘States of mind’, a whole repressive regime is held together, and made workable, by political correctness, which is a main manifestation of conformity.
We also saw above how effective the creation of a ‘sacred state’ of sexuality, social or religious fundamentalism can be, capable of producing lynch mob responses and a highly repressive state.
From all this is become obvious that a central controlling mechanism is censorship.
Censorship
Young Americans welcome censorship is at bottom
The coruption of censorship
Brian Rothery
Censors are either corrupt or corrupted. These are not opposite states but conditions of awareness. The corrupt censor is the one who consciously chooses censorship, or becomes a self-appointed sex expert, to increase his or her access to pleasure-producing material, or simply for power or profit. Various levels of awareness, naivete, righteousness and self-loathing may cloud the original corruption, but they are merely variations of it. If there is one so clear of conscience, and so above human passions, that he or she can truly sit in judgement of what others should and should not see, read and think about, then, upon becoming a censor, he or she will be corrupted both by the material being censored and the act of judging its morality.
On March 16 2004, child sex expert witness, Stephen King, was jailed in the UK for seven years for abusing three girls. He had been advising the police and courts for years, one of a number of both ‘officially appointed’ and ‘self appointed’ UK child sex expert witnesses, all of whom work for, and are paid handsomely by, the state or the EU or other official bodies. It transpired that King had advised the Crown Prosecution Service, the Metropolitan Police, the Sentencing Advisory Panel and the Appeal Court. A number of interested people, including this writer, have been observing, and will continue to observe, the activities of other advisers to these bodies, some of them highly vocal in their pursuit of ‘child rights’.
During their investigations, the police discovered that King had been convicted for gross indecency and making indecent material in 1989, when he was using another name, so he was already a convicted sex offender during the period he helped the police and the courts to convict others. He would still be an expert witness for the prosecution, had the police not seized his computer for possible benefit fraud, to their surprise finding both child pornography and a detailed log of his past activities with children.
In court it was claimed that King had no formal qualifications in the field but was a ‘self-proclaimed expert’ on child pornography, who ‘made it his life's work’. This is a deeply flawed observation, as time and time again, in case after case of massive injustice, both the ‘experts’ and their ‘science’ have been shown to be without scientific basis. The more deadly the evidence given, the more likely that the expert was a political activist, employing a belief system rather than science. Unfortunately police, prosecution services and the judiciary too often shared that belief system.
But what is the evidence for other corrupted censors, expert witnesses, police and members of the judiciary? There is plenty, most of it as yet unusable for legal reasons. What can be used are the words of some judges overturning previous convictions on the grounds of malice on the part of members of the police, expert witnesses and the prosecution service. Why did these people employ malice? A reading of all the high profile cases under ‘Country by country’ in the menu may help the serious researcher, but briefly it seems because malice is fundamental to systems of belief that masquerade as science. Malice is fundamental to all extreme ideologies and to fundamentalism. You want to hurt or kill the non-believer or the pervert or heretic. In the most shocking cases reported on this web site, so-called experts who simply hated men caused great damage. If we bring this mindset to bear on censorship, we can see how a loathing of men, humanity, or even self, can influence the moral making process.
Malice may be the amongst the worst of the abuses of the censoring expert, but simple opportunism may be the more likely motivation, the power achieved, the funding to be attracted, or simply the opportunity for ‘legal sexual gratification’, under the guise of moral judgement.
If pornography has one single virtue, it has to be its truthfulness. The Emperor has no clothes. The censor has an erection.
One of the most revealing discoveries by Lynley Hood, partially revealed in her brilliant book A City Possessed, a discovery that almost resulted in her arrest, was that a juror in the infamous Peter Ellis trial sought counseling when he found himself sexually attracted to one of the accusing children, and possibly aroused by the bizarre nature of the child’s allegations.
When a judge requests that the police give him a file of child porn images so that he can study them in his private chambers, should we not ask why he did not study them in the public courtroom? Are we to believe that amongst the hundreds and thousands of images the police and their assisting experts study, most of them photographs of young girls either simply nude or in erotic poses, that the censoring viewer is not sometimes aroused. Do not the very acts of deciding on the ‘lasciviousness’, lewdness, or the graphic nature of genitalia require the employment of sexual evaluations. Can we ask the director of one organization that studies child porn if he or his staff ever take work home?
As we have already noted, journalists are beginning to declare their dismay at discovering that our obsession with pedophilia is forcing us to look at the world 'through the eyes of the pedophile’. When we visit the playground, the school, the swimming pool, the beach, we are forced to say, “How would the pedophile feel if he saw what we are now seeing?” Anybody who was ever falsely accused of child sex abuse, or suffered an exaggerated allegation, understands this only too well, as the first ever fantasy about child sex probably came with the accusation, as such an accused can never look in innocence at a child again.
Now perhaps there may be some relief for accused individuals as the whole world has learned about child sexuality, and so many are beginning to fantasize about it, their interest fanned daily by the censors and the media. It has all happened before. The British Home Office launched the subject of lesbianism onto an unsuspecting world in the 1920s in their ridiculous attempts to suppress Radycliffe Hall’s book. It became a global fantasy. The ‘crime against nature’ of homosexuality was so suppressed that it metamorphosed into the gay revolution.
A distasteful aspect of censorship is the hypocrisy of the censors, the police who complain about ‘burn-out’, the strident child rights activists who talk of tidal waves of child porn, the phony projection of being somehow separate from or above human passions. It is not ‘burn-out’ that is acquired by those who constantly scrutinize images of children engaged in erotic or sexual activity, but addiction.
It would be interesting to hear from readers about the activities of Stephen King in organizing or lecturing at sex abuse conferences. Our writers would particularly like to know who he shared platforms with, or worked with. One of the avenues that is bearing most fruit for us is that where our contacts around the world identify the same individuals making mischief in different places.
Resisting censorship
There is no better source on this than Don't just condemn censors, confront them, an edited version of a speech given by Paul McMasters, reported by the First Amendment Center Online. The link is given after a brief review below.
As the title suggests, the worst thing we can do, which we do all the time, is to suffer it, despite how ‘easily and seamlessly censorship slips from one form of communication to the next, without slowing down or discriminating’. He says: “There is no one — not in the law-making bodies, not in the courts, not in academe, not in the press, not in public libraries — who is championing the idea of expanding freedom of expression, despite the fact that the majority of Americans consistently rate freedom of speech as the right they consider the most valuable.”
And so, “There is little wonder, of course, that the censors quake in the presence of the power of words. Words allow us to witness mankind's struggles to discern and distil life's goodness and worth. Dare to intrude on that process, to deny certain words, and you damage truth and desecrate reason. Dare to strangle words and the author of words and you kill that which may be beyond our grasp but is lovingly embraced by our imaginings.”
Watch out for those who say that surely some things require censorship. As he puts it, “We can start by being a little less generous in ‘seeing the censors' point’. We are reminded by this that every time we write about or discuss child pornography, the listener, reader or editor demands the de rigueur disclaimer that we are against paedophilia. It’s probably a crime to say nowadays that we do not believe in the existence of paedophilias as presented by society, and that we are more likely to accept that we have all become paedophiles, because of the way we are now forced to see the world and the to consider the bodies of children. Paul McMasters points that “anything of consequence in the care of libraries offends someone somewhere. That to remove or restrict access to controversial material is to invite the ultimate suppression of all material.”
He goes on to warn that censors are never satisfied. Witness the progress of the child pornography legislation to written material and simulated images of children, to erotic posing and simple nudity. An insult to us all is the new concept that what may be ‘appropriate’ for one to view or possess may be ‘inappropriate’ and criminal for another, thus putting policeman, censor and judge above the rest of us. He says, “We must find ways to remind the censors among us that censorship is always imposed for the best of reasons with the worst of results.” One way is to remind them that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
He says that speech must be free to be meaningful. We could go further and say that all that is great comes from the exercise of liberty in the human imagination.
Finally he says, “The censors have been among us from the beginning, exhorting us to cower like brutes in caves, snorting and stamping in fear at the wondrous things dancing outside in the sunlight.”
Read him at the First Amendment Center Online.
For a highly relevant case see 'Britain’s Satanic Verses - Reflections on Tom O’Carroll' below.
SS officer on trial for possession of illegal images
An example of why it can be very important to resist censorship is presented by one of the first cases of a conviction for taking, possessing or distributing images of a crime. In Poland in 1942, an SS police officer stood trial for the possession of illegal images. They were photographs of Jewish children being shot, and one can imagine today many people agreeing that the officer was depraved for wanting to take and possess such mementos, and not be surprised at the media branding him a fiend. But his crime was the taking and possessing of the pictures only, as shooting Jewish children was both acceptable and desirable to the authorities, as it was to many of the people and to the media of the times. As with images of sex with children, any evidence of the crime, even that leading to the censoring or conviction of the perpetuators was forbidden. Collecting or disseminating evidence was the real crime.
The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values
Brian Dyer reviews Tammy Bruce’s book. See Bookstore in menu on left to find it in Amazon.
If you believe children should be seduced into warped sexual behaviour by the Gay Elite, if you think confessed murderers should be set free by defence attorneys who know how to wield the race card, if you feel promiscuous gay men should be empowered to spread AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, don’t read this book.
But if you’ve always suspected that factions on the Left are trying to destroy the values that define our civilization, this book proves it. Through its pages, author, activist, and pundit Tammy Bruce takes you inside the chilling world of the Left - a place where morals and decency have been turned on their heads and the crisp distinction between right and wrong has been blurred into a mushy, grey mess.
A fascinating insight into the mind of the Left so well exposed by Tammy Bruce comes from a bad review of the book by the influential magazine Publishers Weekly, possibly one of the few, if not the only, bad reviews. The review is full of a priori bias and leftist labelling, as it attempts to character assassinate the author for the unforgivable crime of exposing the deceits of the Left. Here are some examples of the language used in the brief review:
‘Self-proclaimed lesbian pro-choice feminist Bruce’, is how she is introduced. Although she comes from what most of the world would call the Left, her book is described as a ‘lurid right-wing screed’. She writes ‘with an apostate's zeal’. Fascinatingly, in the next bit of the criticism, the reviewer actually makes us want to read the book: “She pillories the Feminist Elite's hatred of men, marriage and motherhood, the Black Elite's championing of violent rap, the Gay Elite's ‘grab for children’ by insinuating let-it-all-hang-out sex-ed programs into schools, the Academic Elite's nihilism and anti-Americanism, and the Entertainment Elite's ‘moral depravity beyond measure’. - - - She lumps together such disparate figures as Bill Clinton, Mumia Abu-Jamal and the ‘moral terrorist’ Ozzy Osbourne as emblems of a monolithic Left. She decries academics' rejection of all moral values - - -. She complains of being ‘demonized’ by leftists, then describes said leftists as a ‘diseased seed’ that ‘hate themselves and hate this country’.”
Sounds pretty good to this reviewer!
But back to the book. In the Left ruled world she describes, the Gay Elite exploit our children, under the guise of tolerance and education, to satisfy their sexual obsessions. The Black Elite laud convicted murderers as community heroes and award-winning ‘artists’. The Feminist Elite fawn over a woman who mercilessly killed all five of her children.
She breaks through the facades of ‘tolerance’, ‘understanding’, and other Leftist slogans to reveal the ugly truth of their agenda. She reveals the Left’s attempts to undermine our millennia-old code of morals and values, aided by politically biased media and academia. And if the news headlines of today are any indication, they are winning the culture war. Unless we act now, we are doomed at the hands of special interest groups on the Left who want nothing more than to undermine our ability to judge right from wrong in order to foist their own selfish, anything-goes, society on the rest of us. This book reveals what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and what we can do to restore decency in our society.
Our lives have been and are being destroyed deliberately at the hands of the ‘malignant narcissists’. Unfortunately, through this agenda to destroy value and virtue, everyone is painted through the lens of the worst offender, even those within those groups who are good and decent people.
"The Left has to restrict thought to destroy the concept of judgement and undermine notions of right and wrong." She describes the Left's worldview as one of self-gratification that requires an end to personal responsibility. Values, decency, and knowing right from wrong - and having the courage to act on that knowledge - are all forbidden. The Elite Left has managed to degrade the American psyche and strength. And of much of the Western world’s.
The ACLU Arts Censorship Project
Pornography and the First Amendment - published by The American Civil Liberties Union.
Intense public controversy surrounds efforts to curb material considered by some people to be ‘pornographic’, ‘indecent’, or ‘obscene’. Indeed, the very meaning of such words is controversial. The American Civil Liberties Union contends that all expression, no matter how objectionable or offensive it may be so some or even most of us, is protected by the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and press. Following are the ACLU's answers to questions frequently asked by the public about our position on pornography.
Why should pornography be entitled to the same constitutional protections as fine art or political speech?
We cannot trust the government to make such distinctions. History shows us that obscenity laws have often been used to suppress speech or publications about sexuality. For example, Margaret Sanger was arrested in the 1920s for speaking out about birth control and abortion. More recently, Ms. Magazine, which often features articles about sexuality, was banned in a California community; Our Bodies, Ourselves, a well-regarded feminist book on women's health and reproduction, has been the target of many assaults.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never been able to come up with a definition of obscenity that is specific enough to make clear to artists, authors, filmmakers, publishers and producers exactly what is prohibited and what is permitted. Thus, in recent years obscenity prosecutions have been brought against a museum director for exhibiting homoerotic photographs and a music store for selling rap music.
I don't think sex education materials should be censored. But since most pornography is sexist -- it exploits and degrades women -- doesn't it violate civil rights statutes?
Many of the same feminists and others who believe that pornography is harmful to women also caution that obscenity laws have always been used to curb women's access to information about sex and reproduction. A world without demeaning attitudes toward women is a desirable and worthy goal, a goal that the ACLU is working to achieve. But government curbs on speech are not the way to achieve that goal. The ‘civil rights’ approach to pornography may seem attractive but, like all other anti-pornography measures, it could easily backfire by empowering the state to control speech, and to use its power to limit more than just the speech we abhor. For example, the government might use its censorship power over speech considered sexist to censor other speech that might be shocking, but that criticizes pornography in the course of examining the problem of sexual violence in society.
But hasn't it been shown that pornography incites sexual assault and other violent crimes, and isn't that a justification for curbing it?
Countless attempts have been made (most recently in the largely discredited Meese Commission report of 1986) to show that exposure to pornography causes violent criminal behavior. Such a link has yet to be proved. But even if that connection could be demonstrated -- and all such evidence is questionable -- censorship of books, magazines or films cannot be justified by the effects they might have on some disturbed people. Throughout history, passages from the Bible of Shakespeare have been said to inspire violent acts. The movie ‘Taxi Driver’ supposedly inspired John Hinckley to shoot Ronald Reagan in 1981. If we were to hold pornographic images or words responsible for some people's errant behavior, then we would have to ban some of the world's greatest literature and art.
Surely some exception must be made for child pornography?
The sexual exploitation of children is a crime. Criminal, sexually abusive acts committed against children -- not books or films that depict such criminal acts -- should be vigorously prosecuted. As for young people's access to pornography, the ACLU has found that efforts to render material inaccessible to minors generally end up restricting the freedom of adults as well. Parents, not the government, should monitor their children's reading and viewing habits.
The courts don't agree with you that all expression about sexual matters is protected by the First Amendment, so why do you keep at it?
We keep at it because civil liberties are always under attack and, therefore, must always be defended. Our commitment to protecting all the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights requires our constant presence in the courts, in legislatures, and in forums of public opinion. It may take years to prevail in these arenas, but in the meantime we seek as much as possible to limit the scope of obscenity laws, to mitigate penalties, and to ensure that they are applied only in compliance with due process of law.
The American Civil Liberties Union, founded in 1920, is non-partisan and is the nation's only organization devoted solely to defense of the Bill of Rights. Our Arts Censorship Department, established in 1991, combats censorship of artistic expression, including expression related to sexuality.
Young Americans welcome censorship
The Inquisition is working. A study commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted by the University of Connecticut has found that young Americans no little about the First Amendment or freedom of speech, and one in three of them would welcome more censorship of the media. The researchers interviewed 112,000 high school students and more than 8,500 teachers, principals and administrators.
Seventy-three percent of students polled did not know how they felt about the First Amendment or took their rights for granted. (The government will look after us.) The more than 30 percent that would welcome press censorship, believed that the First Amendment went too far in the rights it guaranteed. Fifty percent incorrectly believed that the government can now restrict indecent material on the Internet.
Shocked observers of these results have concluded that America has produced a generation of docile school leavers, whose lives have been controlled and regimented in every way from play to lessons. Appropriate social behaviour has become the Orwellian manifestation of good citizenship, not free thinking or questioning of authority. Social workers would not agree, knowing that compliant students grow up to be compliant adults. The Taliban also knew this.
The important link between censorship and ignorance has been pointed out by David Mindich in a new book, Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News, which reveals the slide toward ignorance and news illiteracy among post-baby boomers. He warns that tomorrow's leaders are already as passive as today’s and will have little appreciation for current events or quality writing, including good journalism.
Put down your iPod, some are begging.
New Zealand’s schools are in the Twilight Zone
New Zealand education has entered the Twilight Zone. Students can use the internet for study, but can only visit sites approved by a company run by fundamentalist Christians, who comb the records of sites visited by students to find new ones to ban and who encourage denouncement of sites they have not found themselves. They can do this because they have helped create a climate of fear where the internet is regarded as a lurking menace; they have used this fear to make profits and to impose their bigotry on students in our schools. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, this censorship is now available free of charge.
From ‘Who Watches the Watchdog?’ by Paul Litterick, NZ Association of Rationalists and Humanists
Torture
This section is so important that it is dealt with as a main category in the menu on the left.
Defense lawyers - the weakest link
The stories about bad defense lawyers greatly outnumber the ones we are hearing about good ones.
Here is an attempt to build a profile that reflects what we are hearing about the bad defense lawyers. For convenience the male gender only is used here to describe the lawyer.
He, the lawyer, pays little attention to the ‘facts’ of the case as represented/presented by the police. He appears to adopt the policy that once accused of certain crimes, in particular child sex abuse, child porn, unsocial behavior, unpatriotic activity, and threats to national security that the accusation is tantamount to conviction and that dealing with the new state brought about by the accusation is more relevant than defending against the possible false accusation. It is, in short, an acceptance that to be accused is to be guilty.
This attitude appears to smooth the way for an incompetent, disinterested approach to the defense and gives the accused the impression that the defense lawyer believes in the accusations, which can be thoroughly demoralizing and which has caused many men to commit suicide at an early stage in the possible proceedings.
The impression that this is indeed the attitude is re-enforced by the lawyer’s obsession with obtaining huge, often unaffordable, legal fees, while the police and prosecution are financed by the state. This further crushes the accused.
Thus prepared, the accused is made to accept the lawyer’s advice that an acceptance of some guilt through plea bargaining is the desirable course of action. If held on bail, the lawyer may advise that more time in jail is needed to ‘cool one’s heels’ and so on. Advice from the lawyer may also weaken support from other family members and may precipitate the breakdown of a marriage. Other advice may be to do nothing to attract further police harassment or more bad media attention
In one of our many cases (which we will report on soon as it will be very high profile), the lawyer rarely spoke in court and the accused wryly states that the judge spoke up more often against the DA in his defense than did his own lawyer. Judges are often seen to be irritated at how little preparatory work defense lawyers have done for their clients, even to the extent of trying to read the files as the court proceedings begin.
The lawyer will say one thing now, such as an assurance of a small term to be served and say another thing later, denying that he ever said the first thing. He will even say that one should stay put and ‘reflect upon what one has done’, so that he appears more like the prosecution.
Don’t rock the boat or make waves with the police is his constant advice. “Accept your status as one who has been publicly shamed and humiliated and it is my job to take you from here if you and your family can find the cash to pay me.”
The lawyer may want to maintain one’s status in jail or on probation simply to run up his own billing, and make one pay for multiple reports and examinations to the point where one is broken and cannot consider further fighting.
Thousands convicted because of incompetent lawyers
On Friday February 11 2005, the American Bar Association published a report in which it admitted that thousands of suspects unable to afford lawyers are wrongly convicted each year because they are pressured to accept guilty pleas or have incompetent attorneys. This is a tremendously important admission because it appears to be the first official confirmation of what we have been describing as the weakest link in our western system of justice.
The ABA study pulls no punches, although cynics could say that it was another ploy to get more funding for lawyers through legal aid. It says that legal representation of poor defendants, whom it calls ‘indigents’, is in ‘a state of crisis’, that such defendants are at constant risk of wrongful conviction and unjust punishment, including the death penalty. It goes on: "The fundamental right to a lawyer that Americans assume apply to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the United States. All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights."
The report calls on Congress and local governments to create ‘oversight groups’ to guard against shoddy legal representation. It also asks judges to be more vigilant in ensuring defendants have competent counsel.
It seems that the shoddiness of lawyers has hidden from many accused the fact that forty years ago the US Supreme Court ruled that the government must provide legal counsel to poor defendants charged with serious crimes. There should now be a case for many to look for appeals based on this.
It noted that over 150 people, exonerated by new DNA evidence, had served a total of 1,800 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.
It is a great relief to see language like the following used by the American Bar Association: incompetent attorneys, shoddy legal representation, negligent or otherwise unprepared lawyers, and faulty convictions. And to see admissions such as that there is no formal training for lawyers for indigent accused in Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania or Texas, the last of which puts more people to death than any other state.
Add to this another criticism of the report – that in the majority of the states surveyed, money for prosecutors outpaced that for public defenders, and we have a very bleak scenario. The government finances police and prosecutors, not defence for the accused, falsely or otherwise. With defence lawyers either incompetent or not available to the ‘indigent’, there is little or no justice for the wrongfully accused. The report itself confirms this in several places including the following: "Needless to say, criminals or accused criminals are not a very powerful lobby or a group that particularly draws sympathy for more dollars and cents." Accused criminals. To be accused is to be a criminal today.
And there are stories on this web site which bear out the following in the report: In the South, there are “meet 'em and plead 'em lawyers”, meaning that lawyers in states such as Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia often negotiate a plea agreement the first day they meet their clients. This is true all over the US and the western world where the charges, false or otherwise, concern sex abuse or child pornography.
Worst of all perhaps, the report tells of prosecutors persuading defendants to accept plea deals without a lawyer present.
One other point is worth noting as it is widespread. The report advises that lawyers should refuse new cases if their workloads are so excessive that a new case would substantially impair their defence preparation. Over and over we see defence lawyers trying to read their clients’ files for the first time as a case opens in court. And these lawyers are fat cats, some living in great mansions.
An example from Texas
In 2000, a Chicago Tribune investigation found that of all 131 executions during Bush's tenure as Governor –
- With their client's life at stake, defence attorneys in 40 cases presented no evidence whatsoever or only one witness during the trial's sentencing phase.
- In at least 29 cases, the prosecution presented damaging testimony from a psychiatrist who, based upon a hypothetical question describing the defendant's past, predicted the defendant would commit future violence.
- In most of these cases, the psychiatrist offered this opinion without ever examining the defendant. Although this kind of testimony is sometimes used in other states, the American Psychiatric Association has condemned it as unethical and untrustworthy.
-In 43 cases, or one-third, a defendant was represented at trial or on initial appeal by an attorney who had been or was later disbarred, suspended or otherwise sanctioned. Though most were punished after they handled these cases, their disciplinary records raise questions about their suitability for such a complex job.
- In at least 23 cases, the prosecution's evidence at trial or sentencing included a jailhouse informant form of testimony so unreliable that some states warn jurors to view it with scepticism.
- In at least 23 cases, the prosecution presented a visual comparison of hairs, a kind of evidence so inexact that it is restricted or barred in some jurisdictions.
- In many of these 131 cases, justice has been shaped by witnesses, experts and lawyers of questionable merit.
They include a forensic scientist who was temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to provide incriminating testimony in a capital case; a pathologist who has admitted faking autopsies; a psychiatrist, nicknamed ‘Dr. Death’, who was expelled from the American Psychiatric Association; a judge on the state's highest criminal court who has been reprimanded for lying about his background; and a defence attorney infamous for sleeping during trials.
According to the Tribune's investigation, the roster of attorneys who defended the 131 men and women executed under Bush included convicted felons, disbarred and suspended lawyers, and attorneys who were inexperienced or whose work was inept.
At least 43 of the 131 defendants were represented at trial or on their initial appeal by a lawyer who had been or was later publicly sanctioned for misconduct by the State Bar of Texas. In 34 of those 43 cases, the sanctioned attorney was disbarred, suspended or given what is called a ‘probated suspension’, which allows the lawyer to continue practicing if certain requirements are met for example, seeking drug treatment or paying restitution to victimized clients. In the other nine cases the attorney was reprimanded. The misconduct included lying to clients and judges, accepting money to pursue a case and then ignoring it, repeatedly missing filing deadlines, and attempting to fix a criminal proceeding.
Take the case of the lawyer, Jose Luis Pena, who although an attorney for only 17 months, was appointed by Judge Darrell Hester in 1985 to defend Davis Losada, accused of raping and murdering a 15-year-old San Benito girl. Pena later admitted that his work suffered from a conflict of interest because he had also represented the key witness against Losada. Although that witness' testimony was crucial to the prosecution's case, Pena asked him only three questions on cross-examination and even then, it was the same question asked three times.
As a result Losada was found guilty, and then when it came time to plead for his client's life, Pena delivered the following initial remarks, "Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday when I was talking to you all the lights went out. I don't know. Maybe that was a message. Today it rained. Maybe that was a message. Maybe the rain drops are the key issues, but that's what you have to decide today."
When challenged later he replied, “The system. Justice. I don't know. But that's what y'all are going to do."
Losada was executed. Three years before that execution, Pena was disbarred for pocketing money that belonged to his clients. The lights have indeed gone out – in America and much of the western world.
But we cannot leave Texas without again mentioning Joe F. Cannon, a Houston attorney now deceased, infamous for sleeping during trials and speeding through cases to please judges with heavy backlogs, who was the court-appointed attorney for three men executed under Bush.
Nor can we avoid mentioning again the Texan expert witness, James Grigson, a Dallas psychiatrist who came to be known among defence attorneys and the media as ‘Dr. Death’. Grigson was reprimanded twice in the early 1980s by the American Psychiatric Association, then expelled from the group in 1995 because it found his testimony unethical and untrustworthy. From the mid-1970s through the late 1980s, his testimony helped send scores of people to Texas' Death Row.
The criminalization of the defense
As the Mark Henning story unfolded on this web site, we were treated to the shock and indignation of police entrapment, judicial corruption and the appalling lack of competence and objectivity of US defense lawyers. Through this case and others we came to learn that defense lawyers were not simply greedy and incompetent but that in the US at least they lacked independence to the extent that it can be said that they work for the prosecution. Although it is difficult if not impossible for us to have sympathy for them, or for any member of a corrupt legal profession, we began to realize how powerless they were and how the establishment allowed them scope only in the show trials of celebrities.
But a new depth was plumbed in the Mark Henning story. Friends from across the ocean came to mark’s assistance, offering him good advice and forensics support and then he had the extreme good fortune to find a good US forensics expert. Then what happened? That forensics expert, Mark T Vassel, of Midwest Data Group, LLC in Ohio came under attack from his professional colleagues.
Read this shameful material.
Mark,
It has come to the attention of the Ohio chapter of HTCIA that your firm is working for the defense in a criminal matter. I have copied the section of the HTCIA bylaws pertaining to criminal defense work. Please see the International web site for more information.
We, as officers are obligated to advise the International Board of Directors of this matter. The new membership rosters are not out yet, so I can't check to see if you have renewed your membership with our chapter for 2004. If you have not, then you are free to do the work you choose, but we ask that you remove the HTCIA logo from your web site.
ARTICLE V MEMBERSHIP
Membership in this organization shall be limited to:
1) Law enforcement personnel, investigators, technicians or specialists, and prosecuting attorneys engaged in the investigation and prosecution of criminal or civic activities in which computers and/or other advanced technologies are utilized. A member shall be in the employ of a federal, state or local government entity.
2) Private/public sector employees or those employees of a not for profit organization who are employed as management or senior staff security level personnel whose primary duties are for corporate security investigations in a high technology environment by virtue of their position or interest can provide, or have a need for, information, training in the areas of security or computer investigations, or other high technology environments.
3) Members in good standing who retire or transfer from their employment whose continued membership is desirable and beneficial to HTCIA. Members in this category shall be granted continued membership subject to the approval of their Chapter Board.
4) Members must be of high moral and ethical integrity.
5) No member by virtue of their employment be in a position to represent or assist the defense in a criminal prosecution.
6) Membership may be denied if the applicant or any organization to which the applicant may belong has aims or interests which conflict with the goals and purposes of the Corporation.
7) Having met all qualifications for membership in the HTCIA, no applicant will be denied membership on the basis of sex, color, race, religion or ethnic origin.
8) The International Board of Directors shall make the final determination as to eligibility.
Thanks,
Diamond Boggs
Secretary, Ohio HTCIA
And
Mark -- It has been brought to my attention that you are accepting criminal defense work. Is that true?
James
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From: jnj@infobin.org
Folks -- A reminder to all members. While we recognize the right of every person to a competent defense, experts that take criminal defense cases and hold themselves out as a resource to the defense are not permitted on this list. CFID follows the same basic guideline in this matter as the HTCIA -- if the HTCIA does not allow you in, then chances are you'll probably not be permitted to use the CFID list. (Please note: CFID is *NOT* affiliated with HTCIA, just of the same mind on the matter.)
I realize this is a VERY controversial topic but the current system has worked for 10 years running and has only crossed up 1 or 2 individuals in all that time so we will not be changing the policy anytime soon.
I work hard to make sure that this guideline is upheld to a reasonable standard. Someone who worked one defense case 5 years ago is not a defense resource -- someone who is currently taking cases most assuredly IS a defense resource. In spite of diligent attention to this matter, there is no way I can possibly keep up with who has moved into defense work and who declines cases that involve defense work.
If you are aware of someone on the list who is taking defense work, please send me a private e-mail (as in OFFLIST) letting me know. In all fairness, I will send the person an e-mail asking if the information I've received is accurate, however I will not mention my source of the information.
If you have decided to accept defense work, then please use the unsubscribe command and remove yourself from the list.
Thank you for your cooperation in maintaining this list's guidelines.
James
{Computer Forensic Investigators Digest Listserv Designed for discussions in the field of high technology crime investigations. For comments/subscription information, E-mail: jnj@infobin.org}
Another case
Some press commentators in the US are describing it as revenge from the police and prosecutors. Dean Boland, 38, a lawyer and expert witness and a former prosecutor who has turned to defender of those accused of child pornography, was arrested on Friday 24 June 2005 by FBI agents, who raided and searched his home in Cleveland and then briefly detained him in custody. This is the latest step in a campaign against him by police and prosecutors.
Boland, a specialist in digital-imaging technology and the ways it can be used to enhance, adapt and publish images, has been successfully defending those accused of possessing or distributing child pornography, to the chagrin of police and prosecutors. Their condemnation of him was already vocal before the raid and his arrest.
In court he forces the prosecutors to follow the US law that says to obtain a conviction they must prove that a digital portrait of suspected child pornography is, in fact, a picture of a child, and be verified to be that of a child and not an adult digitally enhanced to look like a child.
Boland’s own lawyer, Ian Friedman, said that he suspects that success as a courtroom consultant was the reason for the FBI investigation. "What it's saying is that any person wanting to help the defence in one of these cases is now being targeted by the government. Here we have an educator, a teacher, an officer of the court being persecuted for something that is considered unfavourable in the public's eye.”
The seriousness of this situation can be gauged by considering that even before this move against a defender, it was almost impossible to mount a defence anywhere in the western world, and in particular in the US, against charges of either child sex abuse or child pornography. The powerful state pays for the police, prosecutors and expert witnesses that prosecute and convict those accused, and there are virtually no available lawyers or expert witnesses for the defence. If an expert witness works for the defence he or she will get no more lucrative prosecution work from the state, so a virtual monopoly had been created in both legal and expert witnesses. This latest action could crush any pockets of resistance.
Those accused are guilty of being accused, and there is little or no defence, and now defence itself is criminalized as it was in all the former inquisitions.
It has moved to the UK
As the above was happening in the US, individuals were being harassed by the police and websites shut down in the UK because they were trying to report police corruption.
The only ‘expert witnesses’ accepted during the notorious Operation Ore were those working for the prosecution and they were a private company staffed by former police with links to the prosecuting police. When Jim Bates entered the arena for the defence, attempts were made to character assassinate him. Other individuals who worked on a voluntary basis for the defence were sent illegal child porn images in an attempt to incriminate them. This web site is constantly bombarded with viruses, Trojans and diallers. The diallers try to access illegal sites.
Instrument of Inquisition - The Grand Jury
The original purpose of the grand jury was to act as a buffer between the king (and his prosecutors) and the citizens. Critics argue that this safeguarding role has been erased, and the grand jury simply acts as a rubber stamp for the prosecutor.
Since the role of the grand jury is only to determine probable cause, there is no need for the jury to hear all the evidence, or even conflicting evidence. It is left to the good faith of the prosecutor to present conflicting evidence. This wide, sweeping, almost unrestricted power is the cause of much of the criticism. The power is virtually in complete control of the prosecutor, and is pretty much left to his or her good faith.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires a grand jury indictment for federal criminal charges. Only about half the US states now use grand juries.
In most jurisdictions, grand jurors are drawn from the same pool of potential jurors as are any other jury panels, and in the same manner. The pool generally consists of names culled from various databases, such as national voter lists, motor vehicle license lists and public utilities lists. [Generally, those who are able to sit for the 6-month term. This usually rules out individually gainfully employed.]
Does anyone screen grand jurors for biases or other improper factors? No. Unlike potential jurors in regular trials, grand jurors are not screened for biases or other improper factors.
How independent is the grand jury? The grand jury hears only cases brought to it by the prosecutor. The prosecutor decides which witnesses to call. The prosecutor decides which witnesses will receive immunity. The basic questioning is done by the prosecutor on a theory he or she articulates. Occasionally the grand jurors may be asked whether they would like to hear any additional witnesses, but since their job is only to judge what the prosecutor has produced, they rarely ask to do so. The prosecutor drafts the charges and reads them to the grand jury. There is no requirement that the grand jury be read any instructions on the law, and such instructions are rarely given.
At one time, the defendant in a criminal trial was never given access to the grand jury testimony that resulted in the indictment. By the 1980s, in most jurisdictions, if a witness who testified before the grand jury was called to testify at the eventual trial, the defendant was given a copy of that witness's grand jury testimony to use for possible impeachment.
A grant of immunity to a grand jury witness overcomes the witness's privilege against self-incrimination, and the witness is then required to testify. The prosecutor is prohibited from using that testimony or leads from it to bring charges against the witness.
Can a witness refuse to appear before the grand jury? Not without risking being held in contempt of the court that issued the subpoena to compel their testimony. A witness who refuses to testify without legal justification will be held in contempt of court, and is subject to incarceration for the remaining term of the grand jury.
Is there a judge in the grand jury room when testimony is being taken? No. Normal rules of evidence do not apply to a grand jury investigation, and a judge is generally needed only to rule on privilege issues or issues relating to contempt.
What protection does a target have against witnesses lying to the grand jury, or against the use of unconstitutionally obtained evidence? None. The target's only redress is to challenge the evidence at trial. One of the reasons a witness may assert the Fifth Amendment is that he or she does not know if the prosecutor has presented witnesses who have lied. The witness cannot risk testifying contrary to those witnesses, for fear of being charged with perjury if the prosecutor does not believe his or her testimony.
Source: Grand jury.
Mechanisms of repression
One click and you’re out - Pervcheck
Free speech in Britain under threat
The US lurches to the right
Sarah’s story
Kafkaesque from the National Crime Squad
More Big Brother building blocks in place
How porn is being used to quash dissent
Book burning in Canada given Royal Assent
And the net draws tighter.
Response to AOL
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