Another wcbstv.com online article, this one titled: “Ousted DA Nifong’s Past Convictions May Appeal,” is totally misleading and prejudicial. It is yet another arrow from the quiver of a biased media agenda to destroy former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong by misleading the malleable media consumer with outrageous lies and innuendos. Another headline patent made for pulling the wool over the eyes… another Jedi mind-trick. This ridiculous headline infers that Mike Nifong’s actions in handling the Duke Lacrosse case were not only far outside the bounds of acceptable prosecutorial practice, but that his past convictions were won using unacceptable practices. What’s worse is that it states that those who were convicted by Mike Nifong in the past are entitled to an appeal. How absurd. Again the media insults the intelligence of those who no better, while misleading those who don’t.
Steve Cron, a defense lawyer from Santa Monica, California, stated: "But his behavior in this case was so outrageous and so beyond what's required of an ethical prosecutor that everyone's going to start going back and looking." Please give me a break. Mr. Nifong acted well within accepted standards of prosecutors within the state. Mr. Cron did not mention what Mr. Nifong did that was so “outrageous.” Mr. Nifong did not withhold evidence from the defense attorneys, like prosecutor David Hoke did in winning a wrongful conviction against Alan Gell, or like prosecutor Tom Ford did in winning a wrongful conviction against Greg Taylor, or like Jim Hardin did in winning a conviction against Michael Peterson and depriving him of a fair trial. Furthermore, Mr. Nifong did not lie to the court, as the court would want everyone to believe. The court purposely misinterpreted Mr. Nifong’s statements in order to levy the cockamamie charge against him… then, used it as a basis for a contempt of court charge and a 24 jail sentence. This chain of events is totally mind boggling. Statements Mr. Nifong made to the press, which defense attorneys labeled as so prejudicial and inflammatory, were made prior to indictments being handed down. They were mild, and made for the purpose of encouraging party-goers to break from the “athletic no-snitch rule” and give truthful honest statements about what transpired during the party.
The headline is, in fact, cruel in giving false hope to those convicted under prosecutor Nifong, and it encourages those convicted by Nifong to entertain the possibility of seeking an appeal. Worst of all, the headline suggests that others convicted by Mr. Nifong were victimized by his inherent prosecutorial misconduct. The article presents nothing to substantiate its reckless, illogical, and biased headline.
If one wants to investigate past cases, then I would strongly recommend looking into convictions won by Wake prosecutor Tom Ford. His conviction of an innocent man, Gregory Taylor, should be overturned by the three judge panel at its hearing which begins on February 9, 2010. The vendetta prosecution by Ford was made against Mr. Taylor because Taylor refused to wrongfully implicate another innocent man (Johnny Beck) in a murder. Ford offered Taylor a reduced sentence if only he would implicate Beck, an African American male. When Taylor refused, he was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit. And Ford won a conviction against Greg Taylor on the testimony of two witnesses… a prostitute and a jailhouse snitch. Both had received deals, similar to the one Ford offered Taylor… testimony Ford wanted them to give in exchange for a reduction in their sentences. It was an offer which they could not refuse, because they did not have the moral values of Greg Taylor. And, it was an offer that Prosecutor Tom Ford withheld from Greg Taylor’s defense team, in violation of ethical rules.
Rather than do the right thing and get the conviction overturned, Wake District Attorney Colon Willoughby is fighting to keep an innocent man in jail in order to protect his prosecutor, Tom Ford, from complaints of prosecutorial misconduct.
From the prosecution of Gregory Taylor in 1993, Tom Ford displayed a propensity of winning convictions by making deals in exchange for testimony to suit his agenda. This type of conduct by a prosecutor is frightening, and leads one to question the testimony used by Ford to convict others in the seventeen years since. If past cases should be examined for prosecutorial misconduct in hopes of establishing grounds for appeals, then Wake Prosecutor Tom Ford is the ideal prosecutor with which to begin investigating. They should scrutinize whether backroom deals were made with witnesses in exchange for a favor from Ford, and whether the knowledge of such deals was withheld from the defense team.
Don’t expect the media to advocate such a position, however, because it operates under the PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) policy. The media wants to stir the public and those convicted under Nifong into a frenzy against a prosecutor (Nifong) who acted well within acceptable standards, yet tiptoe around the minefield of misdeeds of the truly unethical prosecutors and shield their wrongdoings from the public. This is indeed a pathetic situation.
Showing posts with label Jim Hardin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Hardin. Show all posts
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, November 12, 2009
CNN legal observer Kendall Coffey gets it all wrong on Mike Nifong
In a January 1, 2008 CNN.com posted commentary titled: “The Best and Worst of a year of celebrity justice,” former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey got it all wrong with his blurb about former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. The Miami, Florida commentator’s statements were as far off base as those made by MSNBC legal analyst Susan F. Filan, who claimed that Mr. Nifong damaged the sport of lacrosse and damaged the reputation of Duke University when he prosecuted the Duke Lacrosse case.
Although the column did not go into depth about Mike Nifong’s role in the Duke Lacrosse case, he begins with a zinger by labeling the prosecution as being one about a “bogus sexual assault.” The media has gone out of its way to portray the alleged sexual assault as being “bogus” despite the fact that the accuser/victim has always maintained that it did occur. The media has never used the term bogus to describe the prosecutions of Alan Gell (for a murder which he could not have possibly committed), James Arthur Johnson (who solved a heinous murder), and Erick Daniels (a 14 year old prosecuted for an armed robbery based on the shape of his eyebrows from a photo in a school yearbook). The bogus tag is used to discredit the prosecution against the three Duke University students who come from families of wealth, status, and privilege, and the media, in general, has definitely assumed a biased position in favor of the student defendants.
Mr. Coffey then makes a statement that is both true and false. He accurately states that the main excuse used by the North Carolina State Bar to disbar Mr. Nifong is because of his “failure to promptly disclose DNA (results)…” Unlike the majority of media types and Nifong detractors, he did not follow the universally accepted mantra that Mr. Nifong withheld DNA evidence. To his credit, Mr. Coffey stated that the excuse used was that Mr. Nifong did not turn DNA evidence over to the prosecution quick enough. Never mind, that when all DNA evidence was received by the defense team on October 27, 2006, a trial date had not even been set. The Duke Lacrosse defense had adequate time to mount a defense utilizing those DNA results. Compare this with Prosecutor Jim Hardin who withheld from defendant novelist Mike Peterson’s defense team the knowledge of the existence and testing performed on a possible murder weapon. Such lack of disclosure by the prosecution caused irreparable damage in building the best possible defense on Mr. Peterson’s behalf.
Secondly, Mr. Coffey refers to the delayed DNA evidence provided by Mr. Nifong to the Duke Lacrosse defense team as being “testing that exonerated the defendants.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Lack of DNA test results from the accuser’s rape kit exam being linked to any of the Duke lacrosse players was not exculpatory… its absence did not rule out the possibility that a sexual assault occurred. This is unlike the exculpatory evidence withheld by Prosecutor David Hoke from Alan Gell’s defense attorney. In that case, seventeen independent eyewitnesses gave statements that they saw the murder victim alive during a period when his suspect, Mr. Gell, was incarcerated on an unrelated charge, and could not possibly have committed the crime. Although these exculpatory statements were available well before trial, their existence was never disclosed by Prosecutor Hoke, and it never came to light until nine years after the defendant was convicted and served time in prison, half on death row.
Next, Mr. Coffey writes that Mr. Nifong was convicted and served a day in jail for failing to deal honestly with the court. If you’re looking for a bogus charge, the contempt charge against Mr. Nifong is about as fitting as one can find. Mr. Nifong’s explanation about a statement (which had no bearing on the case) was ignored by the judge, who sided with the defense team’s interpretation of the innocuous statement made by Mr. Nifong in court… “This is the first that I’ve heard of this situation..” It is apparent that the situation he is referring to is the complaint of withholding evidence lodged against him by the defense. Instead, the defense claimed that Mr. Nifong was referring to the first that he heard of certain DNA test results. Such a claim doesn’t make sense, and for him to serve jail time because of it is a travesty of justice.
Again, going with the media, Mr. Coffey refers to the Duke Lacrosse defendants as being “falsely accused.” I presume this is based on Attorney General Roy Cooper’s proclamation that the three Duke Lacrosse defendants were “innocent.” Such a pronouncement coming from a prosecutor, much less an attorney general, is unheard of. Attorney General Cooper definitely overstepped his boundaries, yet the media, including Attorney Kendall Coffey, gives credence to Cooper’s judgment instead of questioning its appropriateness and validity.
Mr. Coffey ponders “whether Nifong’s high-profile disaster is sufficient to give other prosecutors a chill.” It will if they, like Mike Nifong, believe in following the principle of “equal justice for all,” instead of the current North Carolina tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color”… the latter which was reinforced by the persecution of Mike Nifong. To put things in perspective, the ethics complaint was filed by the North Carolina State Bar to create a conflict of interest for the purpose of forcing Mike Nifong off the case. Mr. Nifong was too independent, and would not let the charges against the Duke students to be swept under the rug, as was standard protocol prior to his appointment as Durham district attorney. As a result, he, like the independently minded Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett who defied England’s King Henry II, suffered the consequences at the hands of the state and the media. Likewise, he was used to set an example for other prosecutors. Lessons learned for North Carolina prosecutors to maintain their law license in good standing would be as follows: follow the state’s tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color;” don’t defy protocol or positions of the state; and don’t go against the North Carolina State Bar, the unregulated agency that is capable of arbitrary, selective, and unjust disbarment.
In prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse case, Mr. Nifong was honorably performing his duties as district attorney. The assertion that his actions in doing so were politically motivated is nothing but baseless speculation. To make this reckless promulgation is to suggest that while running for re-election, Mr. Nifong or any incumbent candidate for district attorney should suspend all professional activity on grounds that his/her acts could be construed as pandering to the public for votes.
Finally, CNN’s special observer Kendall Coffey concludes that Mike Nifong makes a good poster-boy for prosecutors who pursue baseless charges. Obviously, I strongly disagree, and instead would offer the following nominees: Prosecutor David Hoke (who withheld from defense attorneys exculpatory evidence which clearly exonerated the defendant, Alan Gell); Prosecutor Bill Wolfe (who, without probable cause, charged James Arthur Johnson with murder, rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery even though Johnson heroically supplied information to police which solved the crimes); and Prosecutor Freda Black (who without probable cause convicted a 14 year old boy on armed robbery charges based on the shape of his eyebrows from a school yearbook, despite the fact he did not fit the victim’s description and another inmate who was later jailed and fit the description confessed to the crime).
By using wording such as “falsely accused,” “bogus sexual assault prosecution,” “testing that exonerated the defendants,” and “politically motivated, baseless charges,” Kendall Coffey does a superb job in subtly molding the minds of the public in generating sympathy for the three Duke Lacrosse defendants, and overt hostility against their prosecutor, Mike Nifong. For those who are not knowledgeable about the case, who are not fair-minded, who accept what the media spews out as truthful without question, and who are not objective when it comes to the Duke Lacrosse case, the Jedi-mind trick is working… and it is very effective.
Although the column did not go into depth about Mike Nifong’s role in the Duke Lacrosse case, he begins with a zinger by labeling the prosecution as being one about a “bogus sexual assault.” The media has gone out of its way to portray the alleged sexual assault as being “bogus” despite the fact that the accuser/victim has always maintained that it did occur. The media has never used the term bogus to describe the prosecutions of Alan Gell (for a murder which he could not have possibly committed), James Arthur Johnson (who solved a heinous murder), and Erick Daniels (a 14 year old prosecuted for an armed robbery based on the shape of his eyebrows from a photo in a school yearbook). The bogus tag is used to discredit the prosecution against the three Duke University students who come from families of wealth, status, and privilege, and the media, in general, has definitely assumed a biased position in favor of the student defendants.
Mr. Coffey then makes a statement that is both true and false. He accurately states that the main excuse used by the North Carolina State Bar to disbar Mr. Nifong is because of his “failure to promptly disclose DNA (results)…” Unlike the majority of media types and Nifong detractors, he did not follow the universally accepted mantra that Mr. Nifong withheld DNA evidence. To his credit, Mr. Coffey stated that the excuse used was that Mr. Nifong did not turn DNA evidence over to the prosecution quick enough. Never mind, that when all DNA evidence was received by the defense team on October 27, 2006, a trial date had not even been set. The Duke Lacrosse defense had adequate time to mount a defense utilizing those DNA results. Compare this with Prosecutor Jim Hardin who withheld from defendant novelist Mike Peterson’s defense team the knowledge of the existence and testing performed on a possible murder weapon. Such lack of disclosure by the prosecution caused irreparable damage in building the best possible defense on Mr. Peterson’s behalf.
Secondly, Mr. Coffey refers to the delayed DNA evidence provided by Mr. Nifong to the Duke Lacrosse defense team as being “testing that exonerated the defendants.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Lack of DNA test results from the accuser’s rape kit exam being linked to any of the Duke lacrosse players was not exculpatory… its absence did not rule out the possibility that a sexual assault occurred. This is unlike the exculpatory evidence withheld by Prosecutor David Hoke from Alan Gell’s defense attorney. In that case, seventeen independent eyewitnesses gave statements that they saw the murder victim alive during a period when his suspect, Mr. Gell, was incarcerated on an unrelated charge, and could not possibly have committed the crime. Although these exculpatory statements were available well before trial, their existence was never disclosed by Prosecutor Hoke, and it never came to light until nine years after the defendant was convicted and served time in prison, half on death row.
Next, Mr. Coffey writes that Mr. Nifong was convicted and served a day in jail for failing to deal honestly with the court. If you’re looking for a bogus charge, the contempt charge against Mr. Nifong is about as fitting as one can find. Mr. Nifong’s explanation about a statement (which had no bearing on the case) was ignored by the judge, who sided with the defense team’s interpretation of the innocuous statement made by Mr. Nifong in court… “This is the first that I’ve heard of this situation..” It is apparent that the situation he is referring to is the complaint of withholding evidence lodged against him by the defense. Instead, the defense claimed that Mr. Nifong was referring to the first that he heard of certain DNA test results. Such a claim doesn’t make sense, and for him to serve jail time because of it is a travesty of justice.
Again, going with the media, Mr. Coffey refers to the Duke Lacrosse defendants as being “falsely accused.” I presume this is based on Attorney General Roy Cooper’s proclamation that the three Duke Lacrosse defendants were “innocent.” Such a pronouncement coming from a prosecutor, much less an attorney general, is unheard of. Attorney General Cooper definitely overstepped his boundaries, yet the media, including Attorney Kendall Coffey, gives credence to Cooper’s judgment instead of questioning its appropriateness and validity.
Mr. Coffey ponders “whether Nifong’s high-profile disaster is sufficient to give other prosecutors a chill.” It will if they, like Mike Nifong, believe in following the principle of “equal justice for all,” instead of the current North Carolina tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color”… the latter which was reinforced by the persecution of Mike Nifong. To put things in perspective, the ethics complaint was filed by the North Carolina State Bar to create a conflict of interest for the purpose of forcing Mike Nifong off the case. Mr. Nifong was too independent, and would not let the charges against the Duke students to be swept under the rug, as was standard protocol prior to his appointment as Durham district attorney. As a result, he, like the independently minded Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett who defied England’s King Henry II, suffered the consequences at the hands of the state and the media. Likewise, he was used to set an example for other prosecutors. Lessons learned for North Carolina prosecutors to maintain their law license in good standing would be as follows: follow the state’s tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color;” don’t defy protocol or positions of the state; and don’t go against the North Carolina State Bar, the unregulated agency that is capable of arbitrary, selective, and unjust disbarment.
In prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse case, Mr. Nifong was honorably performing his duties as district attorney. The assertion that his actions in doing so were politically motivated is nothing but baseless speculation. To make this reckless promulgation is to suggest that while running for re-election, Mr. Nifong or any incumbent candidate for district attorney should suspend all professional activity on grounds that his/her acts could be construed as pandering to the public for votes.
Finally, CNN’s special observer Kendall Coffey concludes that Mike Nifong makes a good poster-boy for prosecutors who pursue baseless charges. Obviously, I strongly disagree, and instead would offer the following nominees: Prosecutor David Hoke (who withheld from defense attorneys exculpatory evidence which clearly exonerated the defendant, Alan Gell); Prosecutor Bill Wolfe (who, without probable cause, charged James Arthur Johnson with murder, rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery even though Johnson heroically supplied information to police which solved the crimes); and Prosecutor Freda Black (who without probable cause convicted a 14 year old boy on armed robbery charges based on the shape of his eyebrows from a school yearbook, despite the fact he did not fit the victim’s description and another inmate who was later jailed and fit the description confessed to the crime).
By using wording such as “falsely accused,” “bogus sexual assault prosecution,” “testing that exonerated the defendants,” and “politically motivated, baseless charges,” Kendall Coffey does a superb job in subtly molding the minds of the public in generating sympathy for the three Duke Lacrosse defendants, and overt hostility against their prosecutor, Mike Nifong. For those who are not knowledgeable about the case, who are not fair-minded, who accept what the media spews out as truthful without question, and who are not objective when it comes to the Duke Lacrosse case, the Jedi-mind trick is working… and it is very effective.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The N & O news team - Part of the NC Attorney General's Office's team?
In today’s issue (Thursday, December 11, 2008) of the News & Observer, the newspaper had a nice column that featured its news team. Joseph Neff, a veteran investigative reporter was cited for his stories which helped lead to the exoneration of Alan Gell. There, however, was no mention of the fact that the prosecutors in that case, David Hoke (who is currently Assistant Director of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts) and Debra Graves withheld exculpatory evidence from Gell’s defense team that proved that he could not have possibly committed the crime of murder for which he was charged. The article failed also to mention that Mr. Gell is currently back in jail serving a five year sentence for a case which barely made the limits for a statutory rape charge, after having served nearly ten years wrongly incarcerated for murder (half of it on death row). This sentence against Gell is nothing more than payback because after being exonerated for the murder conviction, he sued (unsuccessfully) the state. It seems that Mr. Neff is perfectly content to allow Mr. Gell to languish in jail because of retribution by the state.
Today’s column also mentioned that Mr. Neff’s five part series about the Duke Lacrosse case and the “prosecutorial misconduct of Mike Nifong” garnered honors by the NC Bar Association and the NC Press Association, and was a finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. I do not consider that much of an accomplishment. All that is required is to write or do something negative against Mr. Nifong and that will automatically qualify one for an award. The taxi cab driver who vouched that he had given Reid Seligman a ride home from the lacrosse party received a Heroes award (from the Reader’s Digest, I believe).
The person who deserves an award for being a hero is James Arthur Johnson, the African American young man who risked breaking the “no snitch” rule of the streets in order to turn over a violent criminal to the Wilson police. Instead, due to prosecutorial misconduct of Bill Wolfe, Johnson was incarcerated for 39 months on murder charges for which he was threatened with execution. The prosecution team, which had no case, used plan B to extricate themselves from their predicament. Plan B consisted of having an “independent” special prosecutor come in and drop the charges of murder, kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery, and then lodge a charge of “accessory after the fact” because Johnson had stated that while under duress he had wiped fingerprint off of the victim’s SUV.
The News & Observer has been purposely holding back coverage of what has recently transpired in the case. (Because the Administrative Office of the Courts had been unable to find a state salaried prosecutor willing to prosecute the frivolous “accessory” case against Johnson, Private Sector Special Prosecutor W. David McFadyen was hired at extra taxpayer expense to pursue this case.) The Brittany Willis murder case, which by consensus has been considered to have been terribly mismanaged by the Wilson police and prosecutors has racially divided the city (the confessed killer is an African American, and the teenage female victim is white). In November 2008, Johnson’s defense attorney requested a change of venue from the city of Wilson, and the private sector prosecutor was agreeable to the motion. However, Judge Milton F. Fitch, Jr., without giving any explanation, refused, stating that he wanted to keep the trial in Wilson, and that he also wanted to be the judge for the trial. His so-called remedy to give appearances of an unbiased jury was to bring in jurors selected from outside Wilson’s county. He initially agreed to have a jury selected from Wake County, and then he changed his mind and decided to have the jurors picked from Edgecombe County, a neighboring county. All of these actions are of major significance, are unjust, and do not bode well for the defendant or justice. The News & Observer’s position is to keep its readers ignorant about the state’s justice system malfeasance that is taking place in this case. To date they have refused to write about these recent developments.
Another issue in the Johnson case that warrants attention is the twenty thousand dollar ($20,000.00) reward that was offered by the family and friends of Brittany Willis for information leading to Ms. Willis’s murderer. James Johnson earned that reward because he turned in the murderer who later confessed to the crime. The killer, after learning from police investigators that Johnson had “snitched” on him, then implicated Johnson in the crime out of anger. The Wilson police even used the reward as a motive for Johnson coming forward to the police. The initial Wilson police version is as follows: James Johnson, with a friend, robs, kidnaps, and rapes Brittany Willis. James then kills her. Days later, when the $20,000 reward is offered by family and friends of Brittany Willis, James (who had never been in trouble with the police, had no criminal record, and was considering soccer athletic scholarships to college at the time) decided to accuse his friend of the crime in order to collect the reward. About four and a half years after Johnson gave information to the police that resulted in the arrest and conviction of the confessed perpetrator, Mr. Johnson has not been paid the reward that was offered.
Why? Is it possible that the prosecution team requested that the reward not be paid, for by doing so, it would be favorable to Johnson’s public perception, and make the prosecution against him more difficult? I asked reporters at the Wilson Times to look into the matter, but they refused. The News & Observer likewise refused to investigate or offer and editorial opinion about the matter. One News & Observer editor did tell me, however, that it was not against the law for a private citizen to offer a reward and then renege on it.
The bottom line is that the local media, especially the News & Observer is as selective in the stories that it publishes, as the Attorney General’s Office and state prosecutors are in their application of the law. The application of justice in North Carolina is selective, based on Class and Color, and that is why an attorney, of Mike Nifong’s stature, reputation, and 27 years of exemplary service to the state of North Carolina, has been disbarred (the only prosecutor to be disbarred by the NC State Bar since its inception), prosecuted, persecuted, and sentenced to jail. Selective justice is also why the state is going out of its way, at taxpayer expense, to protect Wilson prosecutor Bill Wolfe while vilifying the hero James Arthur Johnson. Selective justice is also why the North Carolina State Bar will not take any action on a complaint (filed with it on December 9, 2008) of prosecutorial misconduct against former Mike Petereson prosecutor Jame “Jim” E. Hardin, Jr. (currently serving as a Superior Court judge) and Durham prosecutor Freda Black for withholding exculpatory evidence from the defendant’s legal team (the existence of a possible murder weapon and tests its lab ran on it).
The media, by its selective coverage of news events and subjects of editorial it chooses to publish, is complicit in the injustice that continues to be administered in the state of North Carolina.
Today’s column also mentioned that Mr. Neff’s five part series about the Duke Lacrosse case and the “prosecutorial misconduct of Mike Nifong” garnered honors by the NC Bar Association and the NC Press Association, and was a finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. I do not consider that much of an accomplishment. All that is required is to write or do something negative against Mr. Nifong and that will automatically qualify one for an award. The taxi cab driver who vouched that he had given Reid Seligman a ride home from the lacrosse party received a Heroes award (from the Reader’s Digest, I believe).
The person who deserves an award for being a hero is James Arthur Johnson, the African American young man who risked breaking the “no snitch” rule of the streets in order to turn over a violent criminal to the Wilson police. Instead, due to prosecutorial misconduct of Bill Wolfe, Johnson was incarcerated for 39 months on murder charges for which he was threatened with execution. The prosecution team, which had no case, used plan B to extricate themselves from their predicament. Plan B consisted of having an “independent” special prosecutor come in and drop the charges of murder, kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery, and then lodge a charge of “accessory after the fact” because Johnson had stated that while under duress he had wiped fingerprint off of the victim’s SUV.
The News & Observer has been purposely holding back coverage of what has recently transpired in the case. (Because the Administrative Office of the Courts had been unable to find a state salaried prosecutor willing to prosecute the frivolous “accessory” case against Johnson, Private Sector Special Prosecutor W. David McFadyen was hired at extra taxpayer expense to pursue this case.) The Brittany Willis murder case, which by consensus has been considered to have been terribly mismanaged by the Wilson police and prosecutors has racially divided the city (the confessed killer is an African American, and the teenage female victim is white). In November 2008, Johnson’s defense attorney requested a change of venue from the city of Wilson, and the private sector prosecutor was agreeable to the motion. However, Judge Milton F. Fitch, Jr., without giving any explanation, refused, stating that he wanted to keep the trial in Wilson, and that he also wanted to be the judge for the trial. His so-called remedy to give appearances of an unbiased jury was to bring in jurors selected from outside Wilson’s county. He initially agreed to have a jury selected from Wake County, and then he changed his mind and decided to have the jurors picked from Edgecombe County, a neighboring county. All of these actions are of major significance, are unjust, and do not bode well for the defendant or justice. The News & Observer’s position is to keep its readers ignorant about the state’s justice system malfeasance that is taking place in this case. To date they have refused to write about these recent developments.
Another issue in the Johnson case that warrants attention is the twenty thousand dollar ($20,000.00) reward that was offered by the family and friends of Brittany Willis for information leading to Ms. Willis’s murderer. James Johnson earned that reward because he turned in the murderer who later confessed to the crime. The killer, after learning from police investigators that Johnson had “snitched” on him, then implicated Johnson in the crime out of anger. The Wilson police even used the reward as a motive for Johnson coming forward to the police. The initial Wilson police version is as follows: James Johnson, with a friend, robs, kidnaps, and rapes Brittany Willis. James then kills her. Days later, when the $20,000 reward is offered by family and friends of Brittany Willis, James (who had never been in trouble with the police, had no criminal record, and was considering soccer athletic scholarships to college at the time) decided to accuse his friend of the crime in order to collect the reward. About four and a half years after Johnson gave information to the police that resulted in the arrest and conviction of the confessed perpetrator, Mr. Johnson has not been paid the reward that was offered.
Why? Is it possible that the prosecution team requested that the reward not be paid, for by doing so, it would be favorable to Johnson’s public perception, and make the prosecution against him more difficult? I asked reporters at the Wilson Times to look into the matter, but they refused. The News & Observer likewise refused to investigate or offer and editorial opinion about the matter. One News & Observer editor did tell me, however, that it was not against the law for a private citizen to offer a reward and then renege on it.
The bottom line is that the local media, especially the News & Observer is as selective in the stories that it publishes, as the Attorney General’s Office and state prosecutors are in their application of the law. The application of justice in North Carolina is selective, based on Class and Color, and that is why an attorney, of Mike Nifong’s stature, reputation, and 27 years of exemplary service to the state of North Carolina, has been disbarred (the only prosecutor to be disbarred by the NC State Bar since its inception), prosecuted, persecuted, and sentenced to jail. Selective justice is also why the state is going out of its way, at taxpayer expense, to protect Wilson prosecutor Bill Wolfe while vilifying the hero James Arthur Johnson. Selective justice is also why the North Carolina State Bar will not take any action on a complaint (filed with it on December 9, 2008) of prosecutorial misconduct against former Mike Petereson prosecutor Jame “Jim” E. Hardin, Jr. (currently serving as a Superior Court judge) and Durham prosecutor Freda Black for withholding exculpatory evidence from the defendant’s legal team (the existence of a possible murder weapon and tests its lab ran on it).
The media, by its selective coverage of news events and subjects of editorial it chooses to publish, is complicit in the injustice that continues to be administered in the state of North Carolina.
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