2010 year end reflections and season’s greetings

2010 was a mixed bag, with anti-Nifong fervor as strong as ever, thanks in large measure to the biased media which cherry picks stories in determining which ones to report on based in large measure on how they adhere to the Carpetbagger Jihad agenda. For example, it jumped on the story about Crystal Mangum (the Duke Lacrosse victim) when she was battered in mid-February by an ex-boyfriend. After police conspired to turn the domestic call into the criminalizing of Ms. Mangum with ludicrous, trumped up and excessive charges, the media saturated the airwaves and newsprint with stories about her arrest. When it became apparent to the media (people in the media are very intelligent) that the charges against Ms. Mangum were bogus and nothing more than a vendetta against her for her role in the Duke Lacrosse case, the coverage output was lowered to a whisper, as media-types were too embarrassed to continue with the charade. When the jury deadlocked on the most serious charge against Mangum in early December, media-types barely touched on the story.

Media stories about Ms. Mangum’s so-called criminal charges were heavily weighted with rehash of the Duke Lacrosse case. Typically, Ms. Mangum was referred to as the “false Duke Lacrosse accuser” and almost all stories misled their audience by proclaiming that the boys were declared innocent. It was a pitiful example of journalism that not only tainted Ms. Mangum’s ability to receive a fair trial, but which was highly propagandistic.

Another abominable anti-Nifong story from the year has to do with the blatant, malicious, and premeditated discrimination against Sidney Harr, the Lay Advocate for the Committee on Justice for Mike Nifong. Harr was nearly arrested on the Duke campus after attending an event open to the public… an interview with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. What was obviously discrimination based on Harr’s stance with respect to the Duke Lacrosse case and his support for former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, the university came up with a cockamamie excuse that security escorted him off campus because he handed out some business cards and asked people to visit his website. This incident was brought to the attention of the media, but they elected not to cover it as it contradicted their jihadist’s goals.

Media-types and politicians eagerly jumped into the fray when a lesbian was booted from the ROTC program for violating the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military, and when two lesbians were asked to leave Cameron Village mall because they had publicly expressed some affection. The latter case got national media attention and even the ACLU got involved. It seems, and is unfortunately a reality, that discrimination directed at Mike Nifong supporters is legally acceptable and condoned by the media.

In other social justice issues, the wrongful and lengthy incarcerations of Gregory Flint Taylor and Derrick Allen came to light. Their convictions were in part won through SBI lab misconduct, of which their prosecutors were well aware and in which they possibly had a hand. Although the SBI lab and SBI agents have taken the brunt of the media focused attention, the prosecutors have been given a free pass, in accordance with the PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) policy. And, the one prosecutor, Gregory Butler, who acted with the integrity of a Mike Nifong, was taken before the North Carolina State Bar. This was a deliberate waste of time, as the unregulated State Bar filed bogus charges against Butler due to media stories critical of him. Butler provided defense with discovery as soon as he became aware that attorneys for the defendant did not possess it, and it was nonsensical of the Bar to pounce on him for that, especially when it had no outcome on the fairness of the proceedings or the judgment meted out. Like Nifong, the Bar’s charges against Butler were laughably without merit, but unlike Nifong, Butler received no disciplinary action from the Bar whereas Nifong received the severest punishment at their disposal…disbarment. Another year in the books, and Mike Nifong remains the only prosecutor to be disbarred since the NC State Bar’s inception.

Finally, an attempt by the state to execute an innocent man was recently revealed. Wilmington’s Shan Edward Carter was wrongfully convicted in 2000 for in the 1996 kidnapping and murder of drug-dealer Donald Brunson. Although prosecutors sought the death penalty, Carter received a life sentence in that case. Prosecutors used this false conviction (which relied on hearsay testimony from unreliable witnesses and which was totally lacking in physical evidence, DNA, eyewitnesses, etc.) to win two death penalty convictions in the self-defense death of drug-dealer Tyrone Baker and the accidental death of Demetrius Green, an 8 year-old boy tragically caught in the line of fire. The cases against Carter are fraught with inappropriate actions and misconduct on the part of the prosecution, SBI lab, judges, investigators, and even Carter’s own defense and appeals lawyers.

Because the media, like the state’s justice system, follows its own tenet of reporting based on Class and Color, it is questionable whether this case will garner the attention in the mainstream media which it deserves. But these cases, along with documents supporting the contention that Shan Carter had nothing to do with the Brunson murder, and that the sentences reached in the Baker/Green case are unfair, will be put before the public in this venue during 2011 and the upcoming years until Carter receives justice.

Finally, I would like to thank all commenters throughout 2010 for taking the time to get involved and voicing their opinions. Because of your involvement I have learned a lot, and I hope that you have benefited by the process also. In appreciation to the commenters I will be paying homage to them in Episode V of “The MisAdventures of Super-Duper Cooper.” More is to come on that later.

For all readers, my fondest wishes for the holidays, a following link will take you to my e-Christmas card. (Unfortunately, I did not know how to control the audio, so before linking up to it, set the volume low and adjust upward.) Enjoy.

LINK: http://justice4nifong.com/direc/xCardBtn.htm

DAs on board regarding SBI lab shakeup… Hogwash!

According to The News & Observer editorial of August 31, 2010, the state’s district attorneys understand that clouds over the SBI hurt their ability to make cases. What the district attorneys should be concerned about is that the clouds interfere with the administration of justice. As so-called “Ministers of Justice,” prosecutors should have their priority as the goal of justice before that of winning a case. For many, if not most North Carolina prosecutors, that has definitely not been the case. The recent case exposed in an article by N &O investigative reporter J. Andrew Curliss about Derrick Allen is a prime example of a prosecutor, Freda Black, placing a conviction ahead of seeking justice. Ms. Black is also the prosecutor responsible for winning an armed robbery conviction against a 14 year-old Erick Daniels. There was no credible evidence or forensic findings tying the young Daniels boy to the crime… only the robbery witness’s linking the shape of Daniels’s eyebrows in a school yearbook to those of the assailant. He served more than half of a 14 to 20 year sentence before he was finally released on appeal. Tom Ford, Wake prosecutor responsible for unapologetically stealing seventeen years of a man’s life (Greg Taylor) because Taylor did not implicate an innocent man in a murder, is unfortunately representative of many of the prosecutors who have no qualms about unjustly incarcerating innocents who are poor, disenfranchised, and people of color.

Although The News & Observer would have you believe otherwise, it is the prosecutors and not the people in the SBI lab who are driving the show. The lab people are merely backseat passengers in the prosecutor’s vehicle. It is the prosecutors who benefit from winning a conviction, not the lab technicians. Even the SBI agents don’t get the glory of convicting the defendant in a heinous crime. Therefore, when a prosecutor’s case is weak, he/she has the built-in incentive to lean on people in the lab in order to force them to skew, omit, fudge, tweak, or otherwise manipulate lab results in hopes of improving their odds at trial. Not all prosecutors take this devious avenue; just the unscrupulous ones such as Tom Ford, Freda Black, Bill Wolfe, and Michael Parker.

The fact that justice is a secondary or tertiary concern of prosecutors is best illustrated in the Alan Gell case. Prosecutor David Hoke was in possession of 17 eyewitness statements that proved beyond doubt that defendant Alan Gell could not possibly have committed the murder for which he was charged. Hoke withheld this information from the defense counsel, and won a capital conviction against Gell. Now, The News & Observer wants to blame this wrongful conviction on the lead investigator in the case, Dwight Ransome. However, a decade after Gell’s conviction when the existence of these witness statements came to light, and the Attorney General’s Office was aware that there were 17 witness statements that proved Gell could not have committed the murder for which he had languished in jail (half on death row), the Attorney General’s Office went ahead and prosecuted the case in a second trial. Roy Cooper didn’t issue an “innocent promulgation” on Gell’s behalf. He tried to keep an innocent man in jail. However, once the jury got the case, they immediately found Gell not guilty. How does The News & Observer explain that? The Attorney General’s Office used SBI agent Ransome’s work to support their case against Gell at re-trial. Somehow, it is not the prosecutors at fault… it’s Ransome.

Currently, Alan Gell is incarcerated on a convoluted vendetta charge concocted by a Johnston County prosecutor. His unreasonable and lengthy sentence is nothing more than payback for having the audacity to file a complaint for the malicious and blatant injustice he suffered with his death penalty conviction. Although he wrongfully served ten years, he was convicted on technical trifle and is serving a five year sentence. According to my math, even with the ridiculous five year sentence, he had five years credit. He should never have served one day of this most recent vindictive sentence.

What is truly tragic is that the prosecutors with integrity who prosecute in good faith and act as “Ministers of Justice” are the ones that are targeted, mainly by the Powers-That-Be, and the unregulated North Carolina State Bar. Gregory Butler was a prosecutor in Johnston County, who when he became aware that the defense attorney lacked some of the prosecutor’s discovery, immediately notified the defense. This act, publicized in The News & Observer, resulted in a delay in the court proceedings while the defense was granted time to review the information presented. It also prompted the North Carolina State Bar to initiate a complaint against Mr. Butler, which forced him to remove himself from the case, causing a further delay. Fortunately, there was no bounty on Mr. Butler’s head, and F. Lane Williamson and his band on the Bar’s grievance panel, did nothing more than give Mr. Butler a slobbery tongue lashing.

But what happened to Mr. Butler pales in comparison to the persecution administered to the prosecutor of the Duke Lacrosse case, Mike Nifong. This prosecutor, with 27 years experience as a prosecutor, and who was appointed to the Durham district attorney position by Governor Mike Easley, had a stellar reputation as a fair and hard-working prosecutor. Since he first practiced as a prosecutor, Mike Nifong had always maintained an open file discovery policy… that is, he provided the defense attorneys with all of the evidentiary information he had in his file. (This was decades before such policy became mandated in the state.) Most of the ardent defense attorneys who sparred with Nifong in courtroom, gave him high marks when it came to opening his files for them and prosecuting fairly. As it is with individuals who possess both high ethical standards and courage, Mr. Nifong was not swayed by pressure applied by peers and higher-ups. He followed his conscience… which made him too independent… which made him too dangerous. Therefore, he was brought down by the big power machine, with assistance from the biased media. The state, along with the Carpetbagger families of the Duke Lacrosse defendants and their attorneys set out to make an example of him, and make him pay, every day, for the rest of his life.

When Mike Nifong was taken down, Durham lost the best district attorney it will most likely ever see. He was a prosecutor who prosecuted cases in good faith based on sound evidence and good science. He did not lobby lab technicians for reports or results favorable to his case, and as a result, the lab technicians and agents did not feel the need to help effect the outcome of his cases. Mike Nifong’s priority was to see justice fairly administered, and to see equal justice for all. He did not subscribe to the state’s tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color.” If he did abide by that principle, he certainly would not have prosecuted the Duke Lacrosse defendants… especially when doing so severely compromised his chances of winning the election for Durham district attorney.

The News & Observer editorial did get it right. The state’s district attorneys understand that clouds over the SBI hurt their ability to make cases… and that’s what they’re interested in; making their cases. Unfortunately, unlike Mike Nifong, they are less interested in seeing that equal justice prevails for all.

N&O SpinMeister Joseph Neff is at it again

News & Observer staff writer Joseph Neff’s December 22, 2009 front page article titled “Agency raps DA’s office” is a prime example of the double standards used by the North Carolina State Bar and by the media. Mr. Neff is quite accurate when he describes the State Bar’s disciplinary actions against the prosecutors of Alan Gell as being “tepid.” Actually, tepid is an understatement. Gell’s prosecutors actually withheld evidence that resulted in a death penalty conviction of an innocent man who was wrongfully incarcerated for nine years due to prosecutorial misconduct. Mr. Neff goes on to describe the State Bar’s disciplinary action against former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong as “vigorous,” again, an understatement. The reason for the discrepancy in the degree with which the State Bar goes after its prosecutors, I believe, has to do in large measure to the autonomy of the attorney. Mike Nifong, in pursuing the principle of “equal justice for all,” went against the attorney general, and the Duke University fixer when he would not drop charges in the Duke Lacrosse case. That made Mr. Nifong a target, not unlike Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett who defied England’s King Henry II. Like Beckett, Mr. Nifong was made to pay a steep price for not kowtowing to the wishes of the powers that be.

What is troubling is that the North Carolina State Bar, as stated by Mr. Neff, would selectively discipline some prosecutors tepidly, while vigorously disciplining others. It is the inconsistency and selective nature of the Bar’s actions that brings its fairness into question. There is no question that Mr. Nifong was given the end-stage disciplinary punishment for trumped up, merit-less accusations of trivial minutiae, and that the prosecutors of Alan Gell were given the mildest sanction possible (a reprimand) for falsely putting a man on death row, and having him spend nearly a decade wrongly in prison. It is not surprising that the prosecutors of Gell, unlike Mr. Nifong, went along with the state’s playbook of “selective justice based on Class and Color.”

Now the double standard use by the media is the blatant act of withholding the identity of the prosecutors of Alan Gell from the public. Those prosecutors, David Hoke and Debra Graves, did not have their names mentioned anywhere in the article. That is because of the conscientious effort by the newspaper to shield them from bad press. This is a tact that is commonly used by the media, especially the News & Observer and Mr. Neff. In many articles on issues of social injustice wherein prosecutors have not acted as “ministers of justice,” the media will refer to their “bad deeds” but not publish their names. It is the absolute contrary when it comes to Mr. Nifong. As in this article, Mr. Nifong’s name is mentioned twice whereas the names of Hoke and Graves are never mentioned, period.

The media further goes out of its way to minimize the egregious actions of prosecutor David Hoke by writing that he “failed to hand over favorable evidence to Alan Gell…”

“Failed to hand over” sounds much more innocuous and more accidental that “withholding” (term used in the article to describe Mr. Nifong’s alleged misconduct). Furthermore, the Meister of Spin describes evidence that Mr. Hoke withheld from the defense as being “favorable.” This is, itself, a joke, because the evidence was prima-facie example of “exculpatory evidence.” Hoke withheld evidence that proved beyond doubt that Mr. Gell could not have committed the murder for which he was eventually convicted. At re-trial when the exculpatory evidence was introduced in the proceedings, the jury, when handed the case, immediately found defendant Gell not guilty.

Mr. Neff states that the Bar prosecuted Mr. Nifong for withholding evidence. The media, in general, has consistently disseminated and perpetuated this lie. Mr. Nifong did not withhold evidence. Like Gregory C. Butler, the Johnston County prosecutor in the Tiffany Bassett case, Mr. Nifong turned over all evidence to the defend attorneys, and he did so well before a trial date was even set. The defense team had plenty of time to work with all the DNA evidence in preparing a defense for their clients. Defendants in the Duke Lacrosse case were not prejudiced in the least by DNA evidence being presented to them in October 2006, instead of May 2006.

The fact is that Mr. Nifong has always utilized an open file discovery policy as a practicing prosecutor, doing so 25 years prior to it being mandated into law. On May 17, 2006, the Duke Lacrosse attorneys asked the courts for a discovery motion. On May 18, 2006, the following day, Mr. Nifong’s office had provided each of the three defense attorney teams with 1,267 pages of documents, a cassette, and a CD. The gathering of these items was not supervised by Mr. Nifong, and was undertaken by staff members who had no inkling of the relevance or value of the items that they were copying in compliance with the discovery motion. In essence, Mr. Nifong would provide the defense with all evidence at his disposal as soon as he became aware of it (not unlike prosecutor Butler).

Mr. Neff also wrongly claims that the Mr. Nifong withheld evidence that the Duke Lacrosse defendants were falsely charged with rape. Although the rape charge was later dismissed by Mr. Nifong, there was no evidence in the possession of the prosecutor or defense that was exculpatory in ruling out the possibility of a sexual assault.

To his credit, Mr. Neff does include the following paragraph: “This failure to produce evidence happens in virtually all complicated cases, said Jim Woodall, district attorney for Orange and Chatham counties, and president of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys.” However, it begs the question that if it happens all the time in complicated cases, then why is it that Mr. Nifong is the only prosecutor to be disbarred? The answer has to do with the nature of the “selective and unjust system of justice based on Class and Color.”

The article by Joseph Neff has many problems as referenced to above, but despite the spin, the newspaper does deserve kudos for bringing this matter to the attention of the people. Like all media covering legal issues and referring to the Duke Lacrosse case, it needs to be more objective in its reporting (such as being consistent in mentioning/or not mentioning the names of all prosecutors), not biased in gratuitously singling out Mr. Nifong in a negative way, and reporting more accurately and honestly (cease and desist from referring to the Duke Lacrosse defendants as “innocent” and/or “falsely accused”).

The media needs to stop misleading people who believe everything it publishes and airs, and stop insulting the intelligence of those of us who know better.