Showing posts with label Derrick Allen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Derrick Allen. Show all posts
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Thursday, December 23, 2010
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
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
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Prosecutors lie and work with defense team to pressure man who’s maintained his innocence to accept guilty murder plea
Exposure of typical widespread prosecutorial misconduct was once again made apparent in an article in August 29, 2010’s The News & Observer, titled “‘Bloody’ evidence misused to elicit plea deal in death.” The article by J. Andrew Curliss actually eschewed the paper’s PAPEN (Protect All Prosecutors Except Nifong) Policy by actually mentioning the name of the prosecutor responsible for the prosecutorial misconduct, Durham Prosecutor Freda Black… even though buried deep in the article, it was nonetheless mentioned. Mr. Curliss deserves kudos for this, but it is not surprising (as he has taken on former Governor Mike Easley and other heavyweights with his investigative reporting). The article about the injustice against Derrick Allen, who was recently granted a new trial, only reinforces the contention that North Carolina follows a tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color.”
In the summer of 1999, Durham prosecutors, led by Freda Black, were pursuing the death penalty against Derrick Allen for allegedly killing and sexually assaulting the two-year old daughter of his girlfriend. When Black received confirmatory lab results stating that what was presumed to be blood stains on the victim’s clothing was in fact not blood, the prosecution changed course and sought a plea deal. In offering the deal, prosecutors lied to defendant Allen, who had always maintained his innocence, telling him that their was blood on the child’s garments. They offered a deal which would remove the death penalty from consideration in exchange for a lengthy prison sentence.
Although he knew of his innocence, Allen agreed to pleading guilty to committing a murder which he knew that he did not commit because of what he believed to be honest and accurate lab results, and because his own defense attorneys expended their efforts in advising him to accept the offered plea deal rather than preparing for his defense against the charges in court. Unfortunately, and all too often, defense attorneys pressure their clients to accept deals even when they know it is not in their clients' best interests. The reasons may be due to shear laziness or in the form of incentives, but let there be no doubt that defense attorneys often purposely work with prosecutors to get their clients to plead guilty… even in a case that is weak and has no credible evidence.
A “Minister of Justice” would not lie about such important evidence in order to wring out a knowingly false admission of guilt. To make it more palatable for the defendant to enter into a plea deal despite insisting upon his innocence, the Alford Plea was introduced. It is the same tool that was successfully used by the prosecutors in the James Arthur Johnson case. Unfortunately, although it facilitates the prosecution’s ability to obtain a plea deal, it has no legal bearing or benefit to the defendant. In other words, the Alford Plea is nothing more than a “legal Jedi Mind-trick”… just another sinister weapon in the prosecutor’s arsenal to gain an unfair advantage over the defendant.
Wake prosecutor Tom Ford tried unsuccessfully to force Gregory Taylor to enter into a plea deal which included fingering another innocent man (an African American) for a murder that neither of them committed. Taylor stood on his principles and refused to implicate a man he knew to be innocent, and therefore he was subjected to the wrath of Ford who convicted him with phony and misleading blood testimony… not unlike that used by Prosecutor Black to sway Derrick Allen to admit guilt. Sadly, Taylor served 17 years of a life sentence before he was cleared by a three judge panel in February 2010. During this hearing, Ford, the original prosecutor in 1992, fought to keep Taylor behind bars for the rest of his life based solely on the testimony of two witnesses who offered statements in exchange for a reduction of their time of incarceration. Tom Ford, and his district attorney, Colon Willoughby, are definitely not “Ministers of Justice.”
In another article by Mr. Curliss, titled “Defense sees evidence 12 years after plea deal,” he explains that the defendant, Derrick Allen and his current attorneys are seeing for the first time important evidence about the murder and sex charges brought against him 12 years ago. Evidence of particular importance that prosecutors held back from the defendant was a statement by the state’s main witness against Allen in which she stated that she and Allen had an intimate relationship that had turned sour and that she considered him her enemy. Since his incarceration more than a decade ago, Mr. Allen has been trying to obtain all evidence prosecutors had in their file, but prosecutors have been reluctant to release it to him.
So with regards to his case 12 years ago, Prosecutor Black withheld from defendant Allen crucial lab evidence regarding alleged “bloody” stains, withheld from Allen crucial information about a witness statement that was favorable to the him, and she lied to the Allen about results of a lab test in order to coerce him into accepting a plea deal instead of a possible death penalty conviction.
Former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has never purposely withheld evidence from defendants, including the Duke Lacrosse defense teams (although the media has grossly misled the public into believing that he did just that). Furthermore, he has never lied to the defense to give the impression that he had incriminating evidence for the purpose of forcing a defendant to accept a plea deal. Mr. Nifong has always maintained an open file policy which granted the defense counsel complete access to the prosecution’s evidence… he did this for more than two decades before it was mandated into law. He has prosecuted in good faith to uphold equal justice for all, not unlike principles that guided Wyatt Earp and Eliot Ness. And Mr. Nifong acted independent of pressures brought by his superiors and public sentiment… actions were guided by his overriding desire to see that justice prevailed. In the Duke Lacrosse case, he proceeded with his prosecution of the defendants despite its unpopularity with the Attorney General’s Office, Duke University, the media, and the general public. He prosecuted despite the fact that by doing so it markedly damaged his chances for being elected to the post of Durham district attorney. And, like another courageous man in history, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett, Mr. Nifong suffered the consequences.
Yet, it is Mr. Nifong that the state persecutes and the media crucifies. Prosecutors like Freda Black, Tom Ford, Bill Wolfe, and others of their ilk are protected by the Attorney General’s Office and the media, in general. The articles in The News & Observer by Mr. Curliss are an unexpected and pleasant change from the PAPEN Policy. Without doubt, had Joseph Neff authored the story, the identity of the prosecutor responsible for the misdeeds and malfeasance against Derrick Allen would not have been mentioned.
Because of problems with the SBI lab, as exposed during the Greg Taylor hearings and which are really reflections on the prosecutors, Derrick Allen now has an opportunity to get justice. However, even if he is found “not guilty” on re-trial, if the prosecution chooses that route, do not expect for Governor Bev Perdue to issue a pardon. Do not expect to see him compensated for a dozen years wrongfully spent behind bars. The North Carolina justice system does not work that way… it is not fair. In North Carolina, justice tends to benefit those who are well-heeled, privileged, and not people of color.
Likewise, do not expect an upsurge in demands for sanctions or disciplinary actions against Prosecutor Black by the media, the governor, the Attorney General’s Office, or the public. After all, Allen does not come from a family of wealth, power, and privilege, so injustice meted out to him is readily tolerated by the Tar Heel masses. To paraphrase Rae Evans (mother of Duke Lacrosse defendant Dave Evans) and put things in perspective, Prosecutor Freda Black, in pursuing and prosecuting Derrick Allen, picked on a person from the “right” family to indict… namely one that is poor, disenfranchised, and of color. Because Mr. Nifong picked on people to indict who came from the “wrong” families, the avenging agenda of the Carpetbagger Jihad that calls for his total destruction in appropriate in the eyes of many.
In the summer of 1999, Durham prosecutors, led by Freda Black, were pursuing the death penalty against Derrick Allen for allegedly killing and sexually assaulting the two-year old daughter of his girlfriend. When Black received confirmatory lab results stating that what was presumed to be blood stains on the victim’s clothing was in fact not blood, the prosecution changed course and sought a plea deal. In offering the deal, prosecutors lied to defendant Allen, who had always maintained his innocence, telling him that their was blood on the child’s garments. They offered a deal which would remove the death penalty from consideration in exchange for a lengthy prison sentence.
Although he knew of his innocence, Allen agreed to pleading guilty to committing a murder which he knew that he did not commit because of what he believed to be honest and accurate lab results, and because his own defense attorneys expended their efforts in advising him to accept the offered plea deal rather than preparing for his defense against the charges in court. Unfortunately, and all too often, defense attorneys pressure their clients to accept deals even when they know it is not in their clients' best interests. The reasons may be due to shear laziness or in the form of incentives, but let there be no doubt that defense attorneys often purposely work with prosecutors to get their clients to plead guilty… even in a case that is weak and has no credible evidence.
A “Minister of Justice” would not lie about such important evidence in order to wring out a knowingly false admission of guilt. To make it more palatable for the defendant to enter into a plea deal despite insisting upon his innocence, the Alford Plea was introduced. It is the same tool that was successfully used by the prosecutors in the James Arthur Johnson case. Unfortunately, although it facilitates the prosecution’s ability to obtain a plea deal, it has no legal bearing or benefit to the defendant. In other words, the Alford Plea is nothing more than a “legal Jedi Mind-trick”… just another sinister weapon in the prosecutor’s arsenal to gain an unfair advantage over the defendant.
Wake prosecutor Tom Ford tried unsuccessfully to force Gregory Taylor to enter into a plea deal which included fingering another innocent man (an African American) for a murder that neither of them committed. Taylor stood on his principles and refused to implicate a man he knew to be innocent, and therefore he was subjected to the wrath of Ford who convicted him with phony and misleading blood testimony… not unlike that used by Prosecutor Black to sway Derrick Allen to admit guilt. Sadly, Taylor served 17 years of a life sentence before he was cleared by a three judge panel in February 2010. During this hearing, Ford, the original prosecutor in 1992, fought to keep Taylor behind bars for the rest of his life based solely on the testimony of two witnesses who offered statements in exchange for a reduction of their time of incarceration. Tom Ford, and his district attorney, Colon Willoughby, are definitely not “Ministers of Justice.”
In another article by Mr. Curliss, titled “Defense sees evidence 12 years after plea deal,” he explains that the defendant, Derrick Allen and his current attorneys are seeing for the first time important evidence about the murder and sex charges brought against him 12 years ago. Evidence of particular importance that prosecutors held back from the defendant was a statement by the state’s main witness against Allen in which she stated that she and Allen had an intimate relationship that had turned sour and that she considered him her enemy. Since his incarceration more than a decade ago, Mr. Allen has been trying to obtain all evidence prosecutors had in their file, but prosecutors have been reluctant to release it to him.
So with regards to his case 12 years ago, Prosecutor Black withheld from defendant Allen crucial lab evidence regarding alleged “bloody” stains, withheld from Allen crucial information about a witness statement that was favorable to the him, and she lied to the Allen about results of a lab test in order to coerce him into accepting a plea deal instead of a possible death penalty conviction.
Former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has never purposely withheld evidence from defendants, including the Duke Lacrosse defense teams (although the media has grossly misled the public into believing that he did just that). Furthermore, he has never lied to the defense to give the impression that he had incriminating evidence for the purpose of forcing a defendant to accept a plea deal. Mr. Nifong has always maintained an open file policy which granted the defense counsel complete access to the prosecution’s evidence… he did this for more than two decades before it was mandated into law. He has prosecuted in good faith to uphold equal justice for all, not unlike principles that guided Wyatt Earp and Eliot Ness. And Mr. Nifong acted independent of pressures brought by his superiors and public sentiment… actions were guided by his overriding desire to see that justice prevailed. In the Duke Lacrosse case, he proceeded with his prosecution of the defendants despite its unpopularity with the Attorney General’s Office, Duke University, the media, and the general public. He prosecuted despite the fact that by doing so it markedly damaged his chances for being elected to the post of Durham district attorney. And, like another courageous man in history, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett, Mr. Nifong suffered the consequences.
Yet, it is Mr. Nifong that the state persecutes and the media crucifies. Prosecutors like Freda Black, Tom Ford, Bill Wolfe, and others of their ilk are protected by the Attorney General’s Office and the media, in general. The articles in The News & Observer by Mr. Curliss are an unexpected and pleasant change from the PAPEN Policy. Without doubt, had Joseph Neff authored the story, the identity of the prosecutor responsible for the misdeeds and malfeasance against Derrick Allen would not have been mentioned.
Because of problems with the SBI lab, as exposed during the Greg Taylor hearings and which are really reflections on the prosecutors, Derrick Allen now has an opportunity to get justice. However, even if he is found “not guilty” on re-trial, if the prosecution chooses that route, do not expect for Governor Bev Perdue to issue a pardon. Do not expect to see him compensated for a dozen years wrongfully spent behind bars. The North Carolina justice system does not work that way… it is not fair. In North Carolina, justice tends to benefit those who are well-heeled, privileged, and not people of color.
Likewise, do not expect an upsurge in demands for sanctions or disciplinary actions against Prosecutor Black by the media, the governor, the Attorney General’s Office, or the public. After all, Allen does not come from a family of wealth, power, and privilege, so injustice meted out to him is readily tolerated by the Tar Heel masses. To paraphrase Rae Evans (mother of Duke Lacrosse defendant Dave Evans) and put things in perspective, Prosecutor Freda Black, in pursuing and prosecuting Derrick Allen, picked on a person from the “right” family to indict… namely one that is poor, disenfranchised, and of color. Because Mr. Nifong picked on people to indict who came from the “wrong” families, the avenging agenda of the Carpetbagger Jihad that calls for his total destruction in appropriate in the eyes of many.
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