Six More J20 Protest Prosecutions Dismissed As Gov't Admits To Hiding Exculpatory Evidence From Defendants
from the self-defeating dept
The government has dismissed more defendants from the J20 protest prosecution. A mass prosecution that ensnared journalists and activists -- along with those who may have actually participated in damaging property -- has gradually disintegrated as the government has undermined its own efforts again and again. (To say nothing of the multiple times the government tried to undermine the prosecution, starting with the mass First Amendment incursions of arresting journalists, before heading on to broadsides of the Fourth thru Sixth Amendments.)
The government isn't done blasting holes in its feet just yet. Alan Pyke, reporting for ThinkProgress, says the prosecutorial fiasco the government is trying to abandon contained a host of Constitutional violations.
Federal prosecutors hid scores of videos from the hundreds of anti-Trump demonstrators they charged with serious felonies in an unprecedented crackdown on Inauguration Day protests, defense lawyers alleged in an overnight filing Wednesday.
The new accusations exacerbate an existing crisis for prosecutors, who already admitted last week to hiding one 55-minute video and misrepresented edits they made to another video. That initial screw-up, known to lawyers as a Brady violation, already jeopardized the case.
But that initial, single Brady violation is actually part of a much broader pattern of evidence-concealing, the lawyers now say. The government has concealed another 69 separate recordings — three audio files and 66 videos — of planning meetings for the Inauguration protests known as #DisruptJ20, defense lawyers say in the motion.
The government had an unlikely ally in its prosecution -- right-wing, half-arsed sting operation Project Veritas. The prosecution relied on videos supposedly containing protesters discussing plans for mayhem and violence. This is what the government needed to rope 50-some protesters in on conspiracy charges, something it could salvage when tying defendants to actual violence or destruction proved impossible.
But the videos the government obtained -- but did not turn over to the defense -- showed something else.
The recordings, which were made by employees of the right-wing Project Veritas, purportedly show defendants discussing de-escalation tactics and their intent not to initiate physical violence with anyone unless they are attacked first. The prosecutor had previously told the judge that no recordings existed from the meetings where the newly revealed audio and videos were made.
The government now says it will not use any videos from Project Veritas in the trials of the 59 remaining defendants. This gesture may be too little, too late. It's also completely self-serving. If the government ditches the Veritas videos, the defense will struggle to have charges dismissed because of the government's Brady violation. The court may rule the violation only concerned evidence the prosecution isn't using -- a "no harm, no foul" ruling that lets the government have its Brady violations and its prosecutions too. Hopefully, the court will take note of the government's attempt to have it both ways and deny it in full.
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Filed Under: brady violation, doj, free speech, j20, protests, withholding evidence
Companies: project veritas
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What's a few lies in court between friends, right?
The new accusations exacerbate an existing crisis for prosecutors, who already admitted last week to hiding one 55-minute video and misrepresented edits they made to another video. That initial screw-up, known to lawyers as a Brady violation, already jeopardized the case.
But that initial, single Brady violation is actually part of a much broader pattern of evidence-concealing, the lawyers now say. The government has concealed another 69 separate recordings — three audio files and 66 videos — of planning meetings for the Inauguration protests known as #DisruptJ20, defense lawyers say in the motion.
Yeah, if the judge involved doesn't, at a minimum dismiss the charges with prejudice after that they might as well just let the prosecutor have their seat, because it'll be clear they aren't there to do anything other than whatever the government tells them to and are more than willing to be lied to directly by the prosecution.
If anyone can get away with such blatant contempt for the law and concept of justice in the court then the judge might as well retire in disgrace and let someone who's actually competent and/or not completely corrupt take the job.
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Re: What's a few lies in court between friends, right?
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Re: Re: What's a few lies in court between friends, right?
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Re: Re: Re: What's a few lies in court between friends, right?
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Also, if the DOA think they might loose, they are likely to drag out the case as long as possible out of pure vindictiveness, if they cannot use the delay to force a plea bargain.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What's a few lies in court between friends, right?
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Sounds like a rap song...or something from HAIR
DAs DOA in the DoJ
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Re: Re: Re: What's a few lies in court between friends, right?
Seems to me that the Defense could also subpoena the videos,couldn't they?
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like a Department of Justice that upheld the law & pushed to punish those who violate the law of the land & pervert the course of justice.
So the witch hunt gets worse...
I mean they already tried to tell Jurors that reasonable doubt wasn't a thing...
We are wasting millions of dollars trying to frighten people into not protesting Trump.
They can't manage to find the people who actually committed crimes, so they try to portray all of them as bad apples.
By that metric, shouldn't they arrest themselves?? Their oversight in Congress engages in insider trading so because they are in the same place we should arrest all of them.
'Merika.... and you all laughed at the idea that giving up rights was a slippery slope.
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Sadly, the only US institution by that name seems to be intent on using it in an Orwellian fashion.
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It is not the only US institution that uses it's name in an Orwellian fashion... What to think of
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LOL
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When you politicize "Justice" to serve your partisan agenda, you get things like this. We've been seeing increasing politicization in recent years, and now it's just seen as the norm in that department to serve the current master.
The question is how we get back to a bureaucracy that actually is non-partisan. Perhaps a first step is to prevent partisan appointees from "burrowing-in" to various departments at the end of each administration. Right now it's very typical for political appointees to become allegedly unbiased administrators at the end of each administration. Preventing that would certainly defuse things like Lois Lerner's IRS behavior and the crap storm that raised.
Of course, routinely punishing Brady violators would be a huge deterrent if applied to prosecutors personally. It's actually quite disturbing that judges aren't more willing to slap down prosecutors for such a basic violation of Constitutional rights.
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Slay that cow.
They seem to be one of the only entities doing anything resembling investigative journalism anymore. Except they're willing to go after the wrong sacred cows.
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And the sad part is:
Because the whole world is so used to prosecutorial misconduct in America, or heck, government misconduct in general, that we've all been completely desensitised to stories like this.
Now, I shall attempt to pretend that this sort of story isn't normal.
"Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. I can't fucking believe this. This is beyond disgraceful. These prosecutors are a disgrace to the entire world. Hiding and editing evidence to get a conviction is something only a totally corrupt dictator could possibly allow.
I've started a petition at example.com/petition_badprosecution to get these monsters fired for daring to fabricate crimes so they can send innocents to prison; share the link so we can get as many names as possible to show our president, and spread word of just what these scumbags tried to do."
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Re: And the sad part is:
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No. That's not the sad part.
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I'll bite the bullet on this one.
Nice.
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Well there's your problem
Deception and attempted entrapment, followed up by doctoring the secretly-obtained videos until they appear the show the complete opposite of the source material, to prop up bizarre right-wing theories that otherwise have zero "evidence" behind them, is Project Veritas's one and only function for existing.
They're the ones behind these lies, and the videos that "prove" them:
"Planned Parenthood sells baby parts"
"WaPo's reporting on Roy Moore are deliberate hit pieces"
"Twitter is specifically targeting Conservatives for silencing."
It's like when Lamar Smith and Judicial Watch based their "NOAA faked global warming data" lawsuits (that failed) on a whole-cloth made-up claim in an article from the Mail on Sunday, a sister tabloid to the Daily Mail.
One would think basing your court case on works of sensationalist tabloid fiction, like they did and the J20 prosecutors are doing, wouldn't exactly be the smartest course of action. But hey, if you have no integrity like this administration, than anything that fits your narrative must be automatically valid.
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When "preview" mode lies to you about how the formatting will actually look.
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Your comments are not germane in this instance.
The Project Veritas folks released all the videos/audio. It is the government that lied about the contents. Reread that ThinkProgress report:
Further:
In this case the Veritas guys are blameless and we need to blame the government and its prosecutors for both withholding and altering (!!!) the videos in question.
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More blind tribal nonsense.
Instead they went against what's supposed to be their presumed narrative.
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Whenever Veritas is involved, the truth that they record only finally comes out whenever some third party gets their hands on the unretouched source videos. There' no indication en either article that this was not also the case.
It's factually unsupported to claim that Veritas was a good guy here simply because someone got their hands on the before-intentionally-deceptive-edits videos. But that's par for the course for trolls and trash.
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Goodhart's law strikes again
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Re: Goodhart's law strikes again
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"prosecutorial misconduct"
That's the phrase I was looking for.
Agents of the state (in the form of prosecuting attorneys) using deception to secure convictions is a gross betrayal of the people and the institution of justice and law.
So why aren't these people getting tried and imprisoned, if not drawn and quartered?
Considering how corrosive such methods are to the integrity of society, given it demonstrates the established system fails to serve justice, this may actually warrant vigilantism. Pirates might serve the people where emperors fail to do so.
I suppose, historically, this is how mafias gain power.
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Re: "prosecutorial misconduct"
Because "prosecutorial immunity" trumps "prosecutorial misconduct," and that particular fact always benefits the people currently in power, and always will, so good luck getting them to change it.
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I wouldn't say equal, I'd say doubled at the least, with an even higher multiplier when it can be demonstrated that they are knowingly, blatantly violating it, as is the case here.
Those who are supposed to defend and/or enforce the law should be punished all the more for violations of it, especially when those violations stand to make others suffer.
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"They hate us for our freedoms"
The aristocracy always feels the rabble take too many liberties.
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Typo spotted
The aristocracy always feels the rabble have too many liberties.
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Question
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Love this idea..
Police/state/fed??
AND getting back the videos??
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