The Freedom Bulletin

Guest post by John Victor

The following was written by John, a visitor to this blog who reached out to share his views about the Pring-Wilson case. All opinions belong to him and are not necessarily my own. Thank you again John for providing your opinions and analysis!

The Pring-Wilson/Michael Colono murder trial involved a Harvard graduate student who was attacked by two Puerto Ricans in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This should have been an open and shut case of justifiable homicide. All Alex Pring-Wilson’s lawyer had to do was to reenact the case for the jury and demonstrate physically what actually happened during the attack. He did neither. Instead reports lead me to believe that he attempted to create “reasonable doubt” by attacking the hostile witnesses that were associates of the victim. This bit of legal “bullying” itself fell right into the trap set by the prosecutor, who portrayed Pring-Wilson as a “rich kid bully” that beat up and killed a poor innocent street kid. The result was a conviction of manslaughter in the first trial, and a hung jury (with 10 of the 12 jurors voting to convict). Pring-Wilson then pleaded guilty and took a plea bargain after family finances became an issue.

I’m a 5th degree black belt who does analyses of physical attacks as part of my teaching. The following is my analysis of what actually happened in this street fight. I’ll be willing to put on a demonstration of events for anyone who challenges my conclusions. As it turned out, I’m the only one that has actually tried to reenact this fight.

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Lots of new evidence, including photos, video, audio, and 200 pages of documents, have been released in the Trayvon Martin case, some helpful to George Zimmerman‘s defense and some not.

First, according to photos and police reports, Zimmerman had a broken nose and cuts to the back of his head. Martin had only a cut on his finger in addition to the fatal gunshot wound to his chest. Zimmerman’s injuries seem to support his claim of self-defense…but the relative lack of injuries to Martin could argue against that theory that they were engaged in a violent physical fight before the shooting.

Released earlier by ABC News, medical records from Zimmerman’s doctor go into more detail about his injuries. He had a “closed fracture” of his nose, two black eyes, two cuts to the back of his head, a bruise to his lip, and a back injury the day after the shooting.

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As soon as I finish a blog post about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a pretty significant new development happens. On Monday, as first reported by the New York Post, the man who arguably should be the new president of France filed a civil suit against Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel maid who accused him of attempted rape and sexual assault.

A year to the day after his shocking arrest and tragic fall from grace, it looks like DSK is seeking justice. He’s asking for $1 million for malicious prosecution, abuse of process, false imprisonment, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Good for him.

According to AFP, DSK’s lawyer, William Taylor, said that Diallo “is directly responsible for his being arrested, imprisoned, and subjected to extraordinary pain, anguish, and expense. He is not required to simply endure what she did and her effort to profit for herself without fighting back.”

In his complaint, filed in the Bronx Supreme Court, DSK calls Diallo’s account a ”malicious and wanton false allegation.” As a result of this false allegation, according to the complaint, he lost his job as head of the International Monetary Fund and missed out on other professional opportunities, suffered “grievous harm to his personal and professional reputation,” was “subjected to a degrading and humiliating strip search; photographed naked; and forced to provide penal swabs as part of a forensic examination,” and finally, was “paraded in front of international media in handcuffs as part of a ‘perp walk’ intended to humiliate him, even though he committed no crime.”

I am appalled by the way the New York Police Department and Manhattan D.A.’s office treated Strauss-Kahn (at least before they changed their tune and dropped the charges against him due to lack of evidence). As far as I’m concerned, if anyone was sexually assaulted in this case, it was DSK. It is difficult to believe that an office that prosecutes people for (alleged) sexual assaults can itself inflict what is described above on a person that it is prosecuting. Yes, these invasive and degrading searches might be useful in gathering evidence, but they equal sexual assault, and it is never, ever acceptable to sexually assault someone.

Strauss-Kahn will never be able to fully undo the damage that was done to him as a result of Diallo’s accusations and law enforcement’s response. But I hope that with this lawsuit, he might be able to obtain some semblance of justice. Even if his lawsuit doesn’t succeed in court, I admire that in addition to seeking justice for himself, DSK is also, in a way, taking a stand for defendants’ rights, human dignity, and freedom.

5/16 update: Thanks to David Bookstaver and Arlene Hackel of the NY courts communications office, you can read the document filed by DSK here:

Defendant Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s Answer and Counterclaims (PDF)

For reference, here is Diallo’s original civil complaint against DSK, filed last August.

Since Francois Hollande will be sworn in as France’s new president today, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arraigned in a New York courtroom one year ago tomorrow, I figured this was a good time to give my opinion on the French election. Or more specifically, my opinion about how French politicians have reacted to the trials and tribulations of Strauss-Kahn, the former frontrunner for the presidency.

Naturally, DSK’s political enemies have mercilessly bashed him. When he gave an interview about the sexual assault case that he faced last year, soon-to-be former president Nicolas Sarkozy of the center-right UMP party said that DSK “should have the decency to shut up. The fact that he dares to speak shows that he does not get it.” The horror! God forbid that an unpopular person be allowed to speak. I guess Sarkozy does not care about freedom of expression, or about the people who might actually be interested in what Strauss-Kahn has to say.

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After the Obama love-fest that overtook much of the Internet and the general public this past week after he announced his support for gay marriage, I figured I would be remiss if I did not at least give it a mention on the Freedom Bulletin.

Obama’s endorsement wasn’t exactly surprising, especially after Vice President Biden kind of spilled the beans by saying he was “comfortable” with the idea of gay marriage.

And, despite all the gushing about how courageous Obama is, in my opinion, it wasn’t any more courageous of him to support gay marriage than not to support it. Yes, Obama took a political risk, but he would also have been taking a risk by sticking to his previous position of only supporting civil unions. Most of Obama’s base supports gay marriage, and he decided to gamble that energizing his base would outweigh any objections from his religious supporters and more conservative Democrats. If you look at the myriad polls that have been done, it seems like the American people are, overall, divided pretty evenly on gay marriage, so it’s not as if Obama went out on a limb and took an unpopular position for the principle of it.

Unlike what many newspaper columnists, activists, and online commentators seem to think, gay marriage does not equal “marriage equality” or “equal rights.” As long as our society treats it as better to be in a couple relationship than to be single, there will not be true equality. As I explained before, the government should get out of the business of marriage altogether and allow people and religious institutions to categorize relationships as they see fit. The only way to truly have equality and justice is for the law to treat people equally, regardless of their romantic relationship status. For a politician to stand up for single people, now that would be courageous.

Appeals have been winding their way through the court system in two high-profile Massachusetts federal cases that The Freedom Bulletin has been following:

In the Gary Sampson case, prosecutors today got the right to appeal the ruling that granted the convicted murderer a new sentencing hearing. Sampson killed Jonathan Rizzo, Philip McCloskey, and Robert “Eli” Whitney during a 2001 spree, and he pleaded guilty to federal charges, making him eligible for the death penalty. In 2003, a jury voted to give him the ultimate punishment, a first in more than 50 years in Massachusetts. Today, Judge Mark Wolf issued a certificate of appealability, allowing the U.S. Attorney’s Office to lodge an appeal against his ruling last year to give Sampson a new penalty phase of his trial because a juror had lied about domestic violence in her past. This is called an interlocutory appeal because it is taking place before the sentencing re-trial, putting that proceeding on hold. The First Circuit Court of Appeals now gets to decide whether to hear the government’s appeal and, if yes, whether to grant it.

Source: Boston.com

Yesterday, oral arguments took place in the appeal of former Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, who was convicted in 2010 of extortion under the color of official right (AKA taking a bribe). The main issue of debate before the First Circuit was the instructions that Judge Douglas Woodlock gave to the jury. Turner’s defense lawyer, Charles Rankin, argued that Judge Woodlock should have fully explained the difference between a “gratuity payment” and a bribe. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Lawrence argued that the jury instructions were fine and that Turner was clearly taking a bribe and not just a gratuity payment because he said to the FBI informant, ”You take care of me, I’ll take care of you. I’ll see you again.” A ruling will likely not be issued for a few months.

Source: Metro

It seems like there have been a lot of cases in the news lately where the government arrests and prosecutes someone not for actually carrying out a crime, but merely planning or plotting to carry out a crime.

The suspect in the airplane “underwear bomb” plot that was foiled by the CIA turned out to be a CIA informant himself, and it’s unclear whether charges will end up being filed against anyone involved in the plot.

But last week, on May Day, five self-described anarchists were arrested for participating in a plot to blow up a bridge in Ohio. The FBI had been watching and working with them for months, and an undercover agent provided them with defective bombs which they placed on the bridge and punched in the code to detonate. To their surprise, nothing happened, and the FBI assured the public that no one was ever in danger.

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