So you don't care about Jose Padilla

Status
Not open for further replies.
I suspect if you looked at his actual file you'd see a waiver of speedy trial signed by him or his attorney. This website sets off my BS o' meter. It sounds like someone complaining about how a bail hearing went.
 
A conservative is a liberal who has just been mugged.
A liberal is a conservative who has just been arrested.

:rolleyes:
 
flechette said;
The way the system is currently working:

1) The police/DA suspect a individual of a crime (or simply don’t like him).

2) The police arrest the individual, may or may not charge him, and put him in a cell.

3) No one gets to talk with the individual.

4) Years go by. People forget, or make excuses and assume that the government is right.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ with you, but this is how the system is currently working. I have first hand knowledge of this:

1) An alleged criminal act is reported to the police. Sometimes we stumble onto one in progress, but mostly someone reports it after the fact.

2) The police investigate. This includes searching for physical evidence, interviewing the victim and witnesses (if any) and suspects (if any).

3) If enough evidence can be found to charge a suspect, he/she is arrested and taken to the nearest jail. Here in Illinois the suspect can post bond right there at the jail for misdemeanor offenses. The bond is already set and the jail is authorized to accept it for the court. Suspects charged with felony offenses are booked into the jail and the next day that court is in session they are taken to the court house where they are arraigned and bond is set. Once bond is set, the suspect can post bond and secure his/her release. In most cases they only have to come up with 10% of the actual bond. If the suspect cannot afford a lawyer, one is appointed at this time.

If the suspect can't make bond, they sit in jail until their trial date. Under Illinois law, you are entitled to go to trial within 120 days. If the suspect's crime was not too serious, the states attorney may order his/her release before arraignment if he decides not to file the case. This happens more then you think it does, because there aren't enough prosecutors, public defenders, judges or courtrooms to get all those cases tried by 120 days. If the crime is serious enough to charge but the caseload is such that a jury trial would be impossible to conduct within the 120 day timeframe, the suspect is offered a plea bargain in order to dispose of the case. The theory is that the suspect will get some punishment for his/her criminal act.

While sitting in jail awaiting trial, the suspect gets visitors during recognized visiting hours and earns or loses priviledges according to his/her behavior.

4) Trial happens, suspect is either aquitted or found guilty.

In the case under discussion here, the suspect is a man of some financial means and many overseas connections. I'm not at all surprised that the judge granted the prosecutions no bail request. It would be a terrible waste of resources to build a case that complex and never be able to bring the suspect to trial.

I'm sure Cosmoline is right. The suspect, most likely under the advice of counsel, signed a waiver giving up his right to a speedy trial. I'm sorry that jail isn't exactly the lifestyle he's accustomed to living. But he signed the waiver. I would bet the prosecution was ready to go to trial within days of his arrest.

Sorry but this is nothing like the Jose Padilla case.

Jeff
 
3) Once sufficient evidence is gathered, the police arrest the suspect and charge him with a crime. If they cannot charge him of a crime in a reasonable amount of time (a couple of days) he must be released.
Click to expand...
This among other things is icorrect.
You are held on suspicion of a misdemeaner for 3 days a felony is 21 days.

The police don't charge you they arrest you, the DA decides whether to chrage you.

And I ask again
How do you know for a fact that he is not allowed to see his lawyers except by shouting through glass?

How do you know any of hisaccusations are factual?

What is your personal connection to the case?
 
Jose Padilla had hearings in court after court after court.

Hardly an example of someone locked way without any due process.
 
I love how the statists, (most usually .gov employees, why is that?) are moved to discredit stories claiming government misconduct. Standard fare: quote chapter and verse of the regs, thus proving the claims false. What makes you think the regs are always followed?

Faith?
 
Jeff White, I would merely add that if the defendant cannot afford his bail, he may motion the court for a reduction of his bond.

joab, the Supremes have held that there must be a probable cause finding within 48 hours, whatever the crime.

hammer, the rules and regs are NOT always followed. That's why the "system" has bleeding-heart, mamby-pamby criminal coddlers like El Tejon about. When the rules are not followed as they are not followed every single day, we throw a yellow flag and jump up and down.

For an alleged offense such as this case, it is not unusual in federal court for the bail to be set at no bond, at least initially. The defendant may motion the Court for a reduction of the bond, or ask for a speedy trial. Denial or interference with meetings with his attorney is very strong grounds for a vacation of any conviction.

Cosmoline, how could you say such a thing? Are you telling this jury that PEOPLE IN JAIL WANT OUT? I remind you, sir, that you are under oath.:D
 
hammer4nc said:
I love how the statists, (most usually .gov employees, why is that?) are moved to discredit stories claiming government misconduct. Standard fare: quote chapter and verse of the regs, thus proving the claims false. What makes you think the regs are always followed?

Faith?
Click to expand...

What makes you believe the claims presented in this purportedly smuggled letter and a website dedicated to dear old Walt are true? Oh, it's faith, right?
 
I don't buy his arguement - and as the header suggested regarding Mr. Padilla - No, I don't care. Until someone convinces me otherwise, I still put him on the terrorist side of the ball. He might be a quaterback, or he might be a waterboy - we'll probably never know.
 
The man was denied bail, it happens all the time it's not unconstitutional.

He doesn't like the food,medical care,housing etc.,who in there does ?

The jails/LE are sued daily over them, around DC the jails are all run by "court order & injunctions," If you didn't like it in jail take it up with the judge they're one running the jails now days.

What does any of this have to do with Padilla ?

If Jose was given access to the legal system like this man is,I would stop sticking up for him,because of the principles involved.

Personally I think Jose's a puke and should spend his life in jail,but thats another post.
 
buzz_knox said:
What makes you believe the claims presented in this purportedly smuggled letter and a website dedicated to dear old Walt are true? Oh, it's faith, right?
Click to expand...


The website was put up by a friend of Walt whom I know. So while I do not know Walt directly, I do know his friend.

Why can't we simply follow the rules and charge Padilla with a crime (without holding in prison without charge for years)? Why can't Walt Anderson post bail as he is clearly not a threat to society? Why is it that people feel that it is ok to ignore the Constitution when their personal opinion is being followed?
 
rick_reno said:
I don't buy his arguement - and as the header suggested regarding Mr. Padilla - No, I don't care. Until someone convinces me otherwise, I still put him on the terrorist side of the ball. He might be a quaterback, or he might be a waterboy - we'll probably never know.
Click to expand...

I read this post, and then read your sig line.

?
 
joab said:
And I ask again
How do you know for a fact that he is not allowed to see his lawyers except by shouting through glass?

How do you know any of hisaccusations are factual?

What is your personal connection to the case?
Click to expand...

See above reply - I know the website operator. He is a close frind of Walt. Even if Walt is making up stuff about his treatment inside prison, it is uncontestable that he is being denied communication with friends, family and even legal defense. His lawyers (third string) are the only ones allowed to talk (shout) with him, and only occasionally.

Also, I'll give you three guesses as to which friend tried to send Walt stamps that got confiscated...
 
Fletchette said:
The website was put up by a friend of Walt whom I know. So while I do not know Walt directly, I do know his friend.

Why can't we simply follow the rules and charge Padilla with a crime (without holding in prison without charge for years)? Why can't Walt Anderson post bail as he is clearly not a threat to society? Why is it that people feel that it is ok to ignore the Constitution when their personal opinion is being followed?
Click to expand...

Dear old Walt probably isn't getting bail as he's a flight risk. They tend to not get bail.
 
it is incontestable that he is being denied communication with friends, family and even legal defense. His lawyers (third string) are the only ones allowed to talk (shout) with him, and only
Click to expand...
No it is not incontestable. It is only the word of this friend.

How does a billionaire not have a team of lawyers that can make this appear on the 6 o clock news every night?

where's his dream team?

You still have done nothing to corroborate his story, in fact you have simply given a motive for blindly believing his story.

And again where has the constitution been subverted?
 
For those eager to accept .gov's pronouncements villifying someone, all I'm asking is don't discount the possibility of a politically motivated, malicious prosecution, and govt. corruption (whatever it takes) to destroy someone.

Case in point: ATF vs. David Hudak:

CTV.ca News Staff

Updated: Fri. Feb. 13 2004 10:45 AM ET

It’s been a long year and a half for David Hudak. In August 2002, the Canadian’s New Mexico ranch was raided by several law enforcement agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Hudak was charged with illegally possessing nearly 2,400 missiles and warheads, and a cache of weapons worth an estimated $83 million was seized from his property.

From the way the ATF painted it to the media outlets camped outside the ranch at the time of the raid, Hudak was a security threat, training elite Arab forces at his remote facility. Less than a year after the 9/11 attacks, this portrayal played on America’s terrorism paranoia, and the media had a field day speculating about what Hudak was up to.

In fact, Hudak was running a specialized training facility called HEAT – High Energy Access Tools – where clients learned tactics such as hostage rescue and explosives handling. But contrary to what the ATF and other departments would have had people believe, it was all above board – and not only was Hudak’s business legal, he had even previously provided training and equipment to local Canadian police forces, the RCMP and the Department of National Defence.

But that didn’t stop the American government from going after him, or from throwing every available resource at the high-profile case. Hudak’s lawyers, Bob Gorence and Tim Padilla, say officials were out to make their case – at any cost -- from the beginning.

“They were going to go that way no matter what the evidence would show,” says Padilla. “If they had done their homework … they would have found out a lot of other things, but they didn’t want to find that out, so they didn’t do it.”

“There was a great disparity of resources, and obviously, that’s the way when you’re taking on the entire United States government,” says Gorence. “They had limitless, limitless resources with regard to all the lawyers they could throw at it – ATF agents, customs agents, FBI agents. … They were traveling around the world, up to Canada, enlisting the support of the RCMP to do whatever they needed, executing search warrants in Canada.”

Ken Walton, a retired FBI agent who now works as a legal investigator, took on Hudak’s case, and he says he was appalled at the way the ATF and other government departments conducted their investigation. “It was not a professional investigation, it was shoddy. It was essentially an effort to uncover information that would support a pre-conceived idea. The preconceived idea was that something was wrong with David Hudak.”

In examining the evidence against Hudak, Walton says it was clear there were “aberrations.” In fact, he goes as far as to say the investigation was so poor, “the U.S. government would not ordinarily tolerate (it) let alone condone (it).”

“There were statements by investigators that seemed inappropriate; there were investigative techniques that, based on my experience after 24 years in the FBI, were not authorized and were not appropriate … I still think that there was improper activity on the part of the United States government in the investigation and the prosecution.”

Walton is quick to point out that the ATF is the same agency behind the botched raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993. But he says the driving force behind Hudak’s prosecution is higher up. “I think ATF was marching to the drum of the U.S. Attorney’s office,” he says.

Gorence agrees that the Hudak case was a top-level operation. “You know, as they say, a fish stinks from the head down,” he says. “In the end, I put full responsibility on this, not on these investigative agencies – whether it’s Alcohol and Tobacco, Firearms, U.S. Customs Service -- the fault in this case lies squarely with … the U.S. Department of Justice and his prosecutors out in New Mexico, because in the end, they’re the ones that had all of the facts. … They knew exactly where David got these things, these alleged warheads, and they knew exactly the circumstances.”

Hudak’s case took 14 months to come to trial, and inside the courtroom, the prosecution used all kinds of bells and whistles to play on the jurors fears of terrorism. Evidence included a video produced by the U.S. government where two of Hudak’s “missiles” were used to blow up a car. “Of course there was no testimony whatsoever of any (explosives) ever being in a car for the purpose of a car bomb,” says Gorence. “What they also did was that they wasted $81,000 of U.S. taxpayer money on that test.”

But members of the jury saw through the scare tactics. In the case of the missiles, jurors weren’t convinced that Hudak intended to use them for the purpose expressed by the prosecution. “He bought them as demolition charges and that’s what he was going to use them for was demolition charges – and nothing else,” says juror John Turner.

“After getting halfway through, you just wonder. All the pieces weren’t falling together,” says Shannon Haynes, who also sat on the jury.

“He had been open and honest with the federal government. He had the FBI out (to see his ranch prior to his arrest), he had the ATF out, he had the local sheriff and some other people out, so he was being open and honest about what they were doing,” says Turner. “You begin to wonder why all of a sudden they decided that they didn’t like what he was doing.”

When the trial finally came to a close, it took the jurors less than a day to reach a unanimous verdict: Not guilty. The acquittal should have ended Hudak’s nightmare, but it didn’t – not by a long shot. Before he could even leave the courtroom to enjoy his first taste of freedom in more than a year, Hudak was ordered back into custody. This time he was charged with a visa violation, because the papers that allowed him to stay in the U.S. had expired while he was in prison.

Gorence calls the development “truly unbelievable.”

“When you combined how it was charged with how long he’d stayed in jail -- the idea that the U.S. government in their mean-spiritedness and refusal to accept defeat, decided in a very punitive way, ‘Let’s just keep him in jail longer.’ And on this ridiculous immigration matter – that David is no longer legally in the country because his visa expired. But the visa expired because he was in custody for 15 and a half months.”

The jurors were furious. “They’re undermining our decision,” says Roberta Garcia.

“Why do we have a trial,” says Haynes. “Why do we have the right to a trial, because obviously, the government’s going to turn around and they’re going to make will of it what they want anyway.”

Hudak was finally released on bail in November 2003, almost 16 months after he was taken into custody. But until his immigration hearing, scheduled for March, he can’t return home to his wife and sons in Vancouver.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Department of Justice don’t want to talk about the case, and they refused W-FIVE’s requests for an interview. But in a written statement, the Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico stood by its handling of the case. (Read the statement here).

While Hudak’s legal battle may not paint a flattering picture of the American system, one would expect that as a Canadian facing life in prison on the weapons charges, Hudak would have received assistance from his own government. But as W-FIVE’s investigation reveals, that wasn’t the case.

Because he had previously held contracts with Canadian government and law enforcement agencies, Hudak’s lawyers tried to get officials to come down to New Mexico to testify as to the type of work he did. But after months of emails, the government refused – and in fact, agreed to help out the prosecution if required. Initially, the Canadian Justice Department refused to comment on the case, but finally, officials said the request had been denied because Hudak’s lawyers didn’t go through the proper channels.

Dan McTeague, a federal Liberal who was recently appointed to the new position of Secretary of Canadians Abroad, calls the handling of Hudak’s case “unsettling.” Because the Hudak matter was working its way through the system before McTeague’s appointment, he was unable to comment on what went wrong in that particular case. But he insists that regardless of the message the Hudak case sends, Canadians can count on their government if they run into trouble internationally.

“No stone should be left unturned in trying to help a Canadian who finds themselves in a difficulty before the law in any country,” he says. “I certainly can’t respond to what happened before my time, and that’s not an excuse, but the reality for me is that if there is a David Hudak somewhere in the world today, I suggest they contact my office as soon as possible.”

After a year-and-a-half-long legal battle that still isn’t over, those words are probably of little comfort to David Hudak. And he’s not optimistic that he will be the only Canadian to ever face this fight.

“I’m a good guy and I’ve worked for them for 18 years building these businesses,” he says. “If this can happen to me, it can happen to anybody – and that is a scary thought.”
Click to expand...

link: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNe...5047318_72094247/?hub=WFive&subhub=PrintStory
 
So should I now find a link to a flawless arrest, investigation, prosecution and conviction to counter your above post.

How would that apply to the case of Walt Anderson?

Nobody here has called the government infallible.
There's just a general opinion that Walt (and his friend's) word is questionable
 
joab said:
No it is not incontestable. It is only the word of this friend.

How does a billionaire not have a team of lawyers that can make this appear on the 6 o clock news every night?

where's his dream team??
Click to expand...

Ugh. Well, if you had actually read the letter, you would have seen that his assets were frozen so that he could not hire a "Dream Team". Imagine the outcry if O.J. Simpson's assets were frozen during trial.


joab said:
You still have done nothing to corroborate his story, in fact you have simply given a motive for blindly believing his story.
Click to expand...

Since turn about is fair play; what have you done to corroborate your position (that the govenrment is not railroading this guy)? Any proof? At least I know someone close to the issue. You are simply believing the govenrment because you want to. Battered wife syndrome.

joab said:
And again where has the constitution been subverted?
Click to expand...

Oh, where to begin? Not allowing bail for a suspect that is no threat to society. Not allowing legal council. Freezing assets without proof of guilt. No speedy trial. No grand jury.

You know, there once was a time when the average American agreed that the government should not be able to arrest someone without charge or trial, put them in jail and throw away the key. In fact, I remember this being one of the reasons the Soviets were so 'evil'.

I guess principles do not amount to much nowadays.
 
You are simply believing the government because you want to.
Click to expand...
No I'm simply not drinking Anderson's koolaide ( that was in response to your ridiculous BWS comment)

I guess principles do not amount to much nowadays.
Click to expand...
There you go anybody that does not believe your buddy has a principle deficiency
 
So, in your opinion, has the government ever made a mistake or abused it's authority? Waco? Ruby Ridge? Eleon Gonzoles? Wen Ho Lee? Eminent domain?

Or were all these cases hunky-dory in your world?

I ask because you seem to have two different standards of proof - one which says that the accused must have all sorts of uncontestable proof (and even that may be suspect), and another standard where the government doesn't have to prove a thing - you just take their story on face value.

Government said he evaded paying taxes - you believe them, even without a trial. The government's word is good enough for you.

Government said Jose was a terrorist - you believe them, even without a trial. The government's word is good enough for you.

That is the definition of Battered Wife Syndrome. You believe what you want and ingore facts that may prove otherwise.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

S
  • Locked
Land of the Free? Not anymore...
Replies
12
Views
771
armoredman
armoredman
R
  • Locked
Padilla indicted!
2
Replies
25
Views
979
Flyboy
F
K
  • Locked
OKC bombing: I told you so.
Replies
13
Views
1K
hankrearden2000
H
Gary Slider
  • Locked
VA Cities. . . NM City. . . SYG. . .Updates
Replies
2
Views
481
Gary Slider
Gary Slider
A
  • Locked
read in today's New York Times on-line edition
Replies
6
Views
518
c_yeager
C
Back
Top