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View Full Version : If you don't despise prosecutors yet, you will after reading this.




Anti Federalist
05-01-2011, 01:29 PM
Incredible story out of Texas.

Corrupt prosecutor jails an innocent man for 18 years for murder.

The state denies him the wrongful imprisonment judgment due to him, and then, confiscates part of his monthly salary to pay for a child support order that was slapped on him while he was wrongly imprisoned!!

I swear, we're only two degrees of separation from the old USSR, where, when the state would murder a political prisoner, the family would get a bill for the bullet.



Multiple links at the story...

If You Don’t Despise Prosecutors, You’re Not Paying Attention

Posted by William Grigg on May 1, 2011 12:57 AM

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/86824.html#more-86824

The State of Texas stole eighteen years from Anthony Graves. If the despicable people who fraudulently convicted him of murder had their way, the State would have murdered Graves years ago. Charles Sebesta — the corrupt former D.A. who prosecuted Graves — suborned perjury, misrepresented physical evidence, and withheld exculpatory evidence during the capital murder trial. Last February, the Texas Comptroller’s Office denied Graves the $1.4 million to which he was entitled as compensation for being unjustly imprisoned: Through a judge’s “oversight,” the words “actual innocence” didn’t appear in the judicial order authorizing Graves’s release from prison.

For all it has done to him, the State is not content to leave Graves alone: The Attorney General’s Office is pilfering $175 from the $3,000 monthly salary he earns as an investigator for the Texas Defenders Service, an organization representing other death penalty defendants. This is supposedly required to satisfy a child support order imposed on Graves while he was in prison — where he wouldn’t have been, of course, if Sebesta and his corrupt little clique hadn’t conspired to frame him for a murder he didn’t commit.

On April 20, Graves was invited to Prairie View A&M University to address an “overflow crowd” concerning his case, reports the Houston Chronicle. The school offered a $250 honorarium to compensate him for his time and travel expenses. That money was never paid: The Attorney General’s Office “garnished” — that is, stole — it before Graves saw a penny.

“The state of Texas tried to kill me for something I didn’t do and now they are trying to get child support out of me,”complained Graves. This is typical behavior from the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which “persisted in prosecuting him for four years after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in 2006,” notes the Chronicle.

Graves has filed a lawsuit against the AG’s office demanding that it acknowledge his actual innocence. The AG’s office, which insists that it would be illegal to offer formal recognition of that irrefutable fact, also maintains that it has the sad duty to continue stealing from Graves, because it is “obligated to collect the money that the court has ordered be paid.” Their scrupulosity over such matters is quite selective: When ordered to release an innocent man, the AG’s office can contrive sufficient wiggle room to justify keeping him imprisoned another four years — but when ordered to mulct the pittance that innocent man makes after being wrongly imprisoned, the AG is hyper-fastidious in applying the strict letter of the “law.”

Attorney General Greg Abbott “is clearly a vindictive guy and he’s ordering this retaliation,” explains attorney Jeff Blackburn, who has represented the long-suffering man. “It’s a completely immoral position, and to me it proves that Greg Abbott is at best a hypocrite and at worst just a cruel monster.”

To paraphrase one of Mencken’s more memorable lines, this kind of thing is enough to make even those who believe in non-violent resistance hoist the black flag and strike up the Deguello march. While there are a handful of honorable exceptions, the execrable Abbott — who, like Sebesta, clearly is made of the kind of stuff generally seen only in specimen jars in hospital gastrointestinal units — is quite typical of his almost uniformly loathsome profession. Anybody who doesn’t despise prosecutors simply isn’t paying attention.

aGameOfThrones
05-01-2011, 02:20 PM
Hope you get what's coming to you Greg Abbott!!!

TheNcredibleEgg
05-01-2011, 03:04 PM
If you don't despise prosecutors yet, you will after reading this.

I don't despise prosecutors based on reading that. I just despise that prosecutor - and the others involved in that case.

Just sayin'

WilliamC
05-01-2011, 03:13 PM
Some things are worth dying for, and some are worth killing for.

Not saying I would suggest either, but if 20 years of my life were stolen I think I'd come out of prison with a whole different attitude about it.

pcosmar
05-01-2011, 03:16 PM
Yet ?
I despise the whole corrupt system.
Based on years of personal experience and observation.

This is just one more added to the huge stinking pile.
:mad:

edit to add; good time for this,
http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm


PRIVATE PROSECUTORS

For decades before and after the Revolution, the adjudication of criminals in America was governed primarily by the rule of private prosecution: (1) victims of serious crimes approached a community grand jury, (2) the grand jury investigated the matter and issued an indictment only if it concluded that a crime should be charged, and (3) the victim himself or his representative (generally an attorney but sometimes a state attorney general) prosecuted the defendant before a petit jury of twelve men.15 Criminal actions were only a step away from civil actions — the only material difference being that criminal claims ostensibly involved an interest of the public at large as well as the victim.16 Private prosecutors acted under authority of the people and in the name of the state — but for their own vindication.17 The very term "prosecutor" meant criminal plaintiff and implied a private person.18 A government prosecutor was referred to as an attorney general and was a rare phenomenon in criminal cases at the time of the nation's founding.19 When a private individual prosecuted an action in the name of the state, the attorney general was required to allow the prosecutor to use his name — even if the attorney general himself did not approve of the action.20

Private prosecution meant that criminal cases were for the most part limited by the need of crime victims for vindication.21 Crime victims held the keys to a potential defendant's fate and often negotiated the settlement of criminal cases.22 After a case was initiated in the name of the people, however, private prosecutors were prohibited from withdrawing the action pursuant to private agreement with the defendant.23 Court intervention was occasionally required to compel injured crime victims to appear against offenders in court and "not to make bargains to allow [defendants] to escape conviction, if they ... repair the injury."24

Agorism
05-01-2011, 03:44 PM
I don't trust trial lawyers or prosecutors either.

I also am beginning to think our system of trial by jury is becoming outdated as many people don't get a trial by their peers depending on what the trial is about. Society has become so specialized that unless some of the jury members work in the field that is being talked about, details of the trial become all convoluted to the jury.

WilliamC
05-01-2011, 04:11 PM
I don't trust trial lawyers or prosecutors either.

I also am beginning to think our system of trial by jury is becoming outdated as many people don't get a trial by their peers depending on what the trial is about. Society has become so specialized that unless some of the jury members work in the field that is being talked about, details of the trial become all convoluted to the jury.

I just think that there are too many unnecessary and needlessly complicated laws that don't involve a victim.

PatriotOne
05-01-2011, 05:13 PM
He is a monster. Abbott is also the same AG who held up the investigations of the pedophiles running the Peyote, TX Youth Detention Center for 2 yrs. They were sexually abusing the inmates on a regular basis. He was finally FORCED to investigate because the Texas Ranger who had gathered all the evidence finally forced him to by going public with the evidence. Abbott allowed the activity to continue for 2 yrs even after seeing the tons of evidence compiled by the ranger. There was something bigger going on and Abbott appeared to provide cover or maybe even be part of it.

Teen sex scandal ignored
by AG, others for 2 years
Probe widened, involving hundreds of complaints of sexual abuse in system

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=40796

Posted: March 27, 2007
1:00 am Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WorldNetDaily.com



Sgt. Brian Burzynski
The Texas juvenile justice sexual abuse scandal – in which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton are accused of failing to take action – is a broader scandal that was covered up for two years, involving hundreds of serious complaints and investigations against dozens of staff members, according to officials.

The Texas Youth Commission scandal went unnoticed, says Texas Ranger Brian Burzynski, despite his numerous attempts, beginning in early 2005, to get local, state and federal prosecutors to investigate allegations teachers, administrators and guards had sex with minor male inmates.

Burzynski exposed the situation March 8 in testimony to the Texas legislature's Joint Committee on Operation and Management of the TYC. He stated he began his investigation Feb. 23, 2005, after a phone call from a teacher at the West Texas state school in Pyote, Texas, alleging another teacher at the school was involved in sexual misconduct with boy inmates.

In his testimony, Burzynski detailed being rebuffed by federal, state and local prosecutors for two years.

(Story continues below)
Burzynski presented a timeline asserting his investigation was, in turn, stonewalled by Ward County District Attorney Randall Reynolds, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

All refused to prosecute, he claimed, despite being presented evidence of sexual abuse at the Pyote school.

Sutton also is under fire for decisions to prosecute two Border Patrol agents and Deputy Sheriff Gil Hernandez after the alleged intervention of the Mexican government. Gonzales faces heavy congressional pressure in the controversy over the recent forced resignations of eight U.S. attorneys.

Burzynski testified that the first serious discussion of prosecution in the case occurred Feb. 13 in a meeting with Reynolds in the Ward County District Attorney's Office, only after the story of his investigation finally broke in Texas newspapers.

Emerging evidence suggests the scandal was systematic and statewide, perpetrated by a criminal conspiracy of staff employees.

Texas authorities are investigating allegations that pedophiles on the TYC staff conspired to recruit and hire other pedophiles to engage in criminal acts of forced sex with the minor inmates.

Among the charges in a Texas Ranger report was that administrators would rouse boys from their sleep for the purpose of conducting all-night sex parties.

On March 2, Gov. Rick Perry appointed Jay Kimbrough, his former staff chief and homeland security director, to serve as "special master" to head the TYC investigation. On March 17, the entire TYC governing board resigned.

Ted Royer, spokesman for Perry, told WND Kimbrough's investigation has found "hundreds of new complaints about abuse and neglect and abuse at facilities across the state."

"There is a culture at TYC that has all too often turned a blind eye to sexual abuse and instead of addressing the issue, people have attempted to cover-up the scandal," Royer said.

TYC spokesman Jim Hurley told WND more than 1,200 complaints are now being investigated.

"The staff under investigation includes the whole range of TYC staff, from the top to the bottom," said Hurley, who was asked by Perry's office to take on the spokesman's job as a special assignment.

Three actual arrests have been made, and more are pending, according to Hurley, whose permanent job is communications director for the Texas Department of Insurance.

"There was a failure of leadership in the Texas Youth Commission," Hurley explained. "The board failed and the executive director failed."

The resigned board transferred its power to a new acting executive director, Ed Owens, former deputy director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Hurley said.

Along with the board and the executive director, the TYC also has dismissed its general counsel, the deputy general counsel, the deputy executive director and the inspector general.

Hurley confirmed TYC management and staff personnel were hired despite prior records of felony offenses or previous sexual misconduct.

"Apparently having a prior felony record did not preclude you becoming a TYC employee," Hurley admitted. "A lot of the vetting of prospective employees were simply reviewed at the local unit level."

WND asked Hurley if the evidence suggested a group of criminal pedophiles sexually abusing minor boys were hiring counterparts just like themselves.

"It is conceivable that you could have a situation like that," Hurley responded. "In the past week we have conducted criminal background reports on all TYC employees. We are also looking at the records of every extension of term that has been issued for every inmate to see if the people running TYC were extending sentences of these inmates."

Hurley told WND Kimbrough was determined to expose the full extent of the corruption at TYC.

The TYC has opened up the results of the investigation to the ACLU, NAACP, (League of United Latin American Citizens, Texas District and County Attorneys Association and the Special Prosecution Unit at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

At the conclusion of his testimony to the Texas legislature joint committee, Burzynski spoke personally, saying he wanted to "shed some light on the real reason why I am here."

"When I interviewed the victims in this case, I saw kids with fear in their eyes, kids who knew they were trapped in an institution where the system would not respond to their cries for help," he said.

He emphasized the personal commitment he felt to the victims in the case.

"Perhaps their family failed them, society failed them, TYC definitely failed them," he said. "But I promised each one of those victims that I would try to do everything in my power as a Texas Ranger to insure that justice would be served and that this didn't happen again. The Rangers would not fail them, and I made that perfectly clear to each one of them."

Burzynski said he "can only imagine what the students think about the Ranger who was unable to bring them justice. I feel like I played a very small part in chipping away at an iceberg."

At the conclusion, he received a standing ovation from the joint committee and audience in the room.

The Texas Rangers told WND Burzynski was not available to be interviewed and referred inquiries to the governor's office.