Prosecution’s last bargaining chip… Crystal Mangum’s house arrest

A desperate Durham prosecution team, led by Assistant District Attorney Angela Garcia-Lamarca, is coveting the house arrest of Crystal Mangum which was made a condition by Judge Claude Allen of her release upon making $250,000 bond. When Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway reduced the bond to $100,000, he left the house arrest condition in place. Prosecutors never thought they would need to rely on it until Hammond & Hammond Bail Bondsmen, Inc. of Durham unexpectedly satisfied the bond for Mangum’s release from the Durham Detention Center, where she had been held for three months.

Garcia-Lamarca’s plan was to drag out pretrial events while Ms. Mangum languished in jail for a year or two, then offer her a plea deal in order to get out of jail. She anticipated that public defender Clayton Jones would do his part by persuading Ms. Mangum to accept the deal for “time served” in exchange for pleading guilty to misdemeanor arson… or some charge. The fact is that neither Ms. Garcia-Lamarca or Public Defender Jones planned on this case going to trial because the prosecution had no case. There was no credible evidence. Charges against Ms. Mangum related to the 2010 events of February 17th and 18th were excessive and trumped up… suggesting malfeasance and misdeeds on the part of law enforcement. Therefore, the end-stage of this legal melodrama is, and always has been, a plea deal… with the taste of freedom from behind bars, as opposed to a long and indefinite incarceration, being the surefire incentive.

Leverage of using hard time to force a plea deal was undercut from the prosecution when the $100,000 bail for Ms. Mangum was provided pro bono by the owners of Hammond & Hammond. This was a major blow to Team Garcia-Lamarca as living under house arrest is far more tolerable than the restrictive, punitive, dangerous, and overbearing conditions that exist in jail. Though electronically confined to the house and its porches, Ms. Mangum under house arrest is able to set her own routine, has unlimited and unsupervised contact with family and friends, enjoys the comforts of home and the privacy not available in a correctional facility.

So even though Ms. Mangum is out of jail on $100,000 bond, is no flight risk, and is no danger to society, the prosecutors tightly are grasping to the house arrest… for without it, the prosecutors would have no leverage to pry an acceptance of a plea deal out of her. Zilch. Nada. Therefore, even at a waste of taxpayer money and without justification, the prosecution will fight tooth and nail to see that house arrest is maintained. And, there is always hope that she will take one step too many from the porch or otherwise violate terms of the house arrest, thereby providing grounds for placing her back behind bars. This would also serve as retaliation against the bondsmen for releasing her from jail in the first place.

Prosecutors always felt confident that they could mistreat and abuse Ms. Mangum because the media had so successfully molded the minds of the public against her, as it had against Mike Nifong. They had no reason to believe that the elected officials or politicians would get involved in seeking justice for someone sullied by being on the “wrong end” of the Duke Lacrosse case. And they were right. Durham County representatives Larry Hall, Mickey Michaux, and Paul Luebke, along with Durham County Senator Floyd McKissick Jr., have all refused to write a letter about Ms. Mangum’s selective and unjust treatment. They were willing to allow her to sit in jail for a year or two on obviously trumped up charges, rather than seek justice on behalf of their constituent. But it is not only politicians, but civil rights organizations that have been ignoring Ms. Mangum’s plight. The NAACP, on any level, has kept its distance from Ms. Mangum, abandoning her just like the organization abandoned the wrongfully accused and charged Scottsboro Boys. Other Durham civil rights organizations are idle and silent as well.

The prosecution’s last bastion in securing a plea deal with Ms. Mangum was her court-appointed attorney from the Public Defender’s Office. With state malfeasance and misdeeds involved in the prosecution of Ms. Mangum, Public Defender Clayton Jones is presented with a mammoth conflict of interest, and he has chosen the path that is better for his career than his client. The hearing that was scheduled for Friday, July 2, 2010, was initially planned to pressure Ms. Mangum into accepting a plea offer from the prosecutors wherein she would plea guilty (to a crime she didn’t commit) in exchange for release from house arrest with time served). This, of course, would have accrued to the benefit of the state, not Ms. Mangum. This is what happened with James Arthur Johnson who spent 39 months in jail with prosecutor Bill Wolfe offering plea deals up until the day of the trial, before turning the case over to a special prosecutor. Like the Wolfe prosecution team in the Johnson case, Garcia-Lamarca is unable to take her case to trial because she has no case.

Members of the Committee on Justice for Mike Nifong however, like the Hammonds, unexpectedly became another fly in the ointment. This organization is taking on the fight for justice for Crystal Mangum alone, as politicians, elected officials, media columnists and op-editorialists have opted to remain out of the fray. In most instances, it is the media higher-ups who control the content of what is aired and published, and they are thoroughly indoctrinated by the Carpetbagger Jihad Agenda.

The July 2, 2010 hearing for Ms. Mangum was mysteriously cancelled, as three members of the Committee showed up for court, along with defendant Mangum, only to find that she was not on the day’s docket. According to staff in the Superior Court Clerk’s office, the next scheduled event for Ms. Mangum is a hearing on Wednesday, July 7, 2010. The reason given by Public Defender Jones for the hearing is vague and mysterious. But it is very likely that it has to do with some Hail Mary attempt by the attorneys and all prosecutorial staff involved, to force Ms. Mangum to accept a plea offer… something that is definitely not in her best interests.

Stay tuned.