Police raid the home of San Francisco journalist, seeking info on a leaked death document, in a scene reminiscent of my "arrest for blogging" in Alabama

San Francisco cops prepare to break into
the home of journalist Bryan Carmody

San Francisco police detained a freelance journalist last Friday and raided his home in an effort to obtain the source of reporting on the death of a public defender in February.

Given my "arrest for blogging" in October 2013, and subsequent five-month stay in the Shelby County (AL) Jail, the San Francisco story hits close to home. As a matter of record, it appears I remain the only U.S. journalist to be arrested since 2006, and I'm clearly the only one to be incarcerated in that time. The detention of Bryan Carmody in San Francisco likely was lawful because it sought information related to a possible crime. My arrest, over a wholly civil matter, clearly was unlawful -- violating more than 200 years of First Amendment law.

That's not to say Carmody's detention wasn't disturbing to anyone who cares about freedom of the press. It certainly seems to speak to the rise of a police state in the Age of Trump. Like my arrest, it involved use of police violence inside a home, and that should alarm all citizens -- journalists or not. What kind of brown-shirt actions did police take in San Francisco? Here's how National Public Radio (NPR) describes it:

San Francisco police raided the home and office of a freelance journalist on Friday, taking a sledgehammer to the gate of his house and seizing his computers, phones and other devices.

Their goal: to uncover the source of a leaked police report in the possession of freelance videographer Bryan Carmody.

The raids on Carmody's home and office are the latest in a series of events concerning the death of San Francisco public defender Jeff Adachi in February, at age 59.

Within hours of Adachi's collapse in a San Francisco apartment, details from a leaked police investigation into his death were already showing up in news reports, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

A number of the details in the police report were salacious, suggesting that perhaps one or more members of the police department were trying to tarnish the reputation of Adachi, who was known as a police watchdog and fierce advocate for criminal justice reform. In San Francisco, the public defender is an elected position.

Was Adachi, the public defender, targeted because of his willingness to stand up to cops? Does that explain law enforcement's rough treatment of Bryan Carmody? Those are two of many questions surrounding Adachi's death. From CBS News:

A freelance journalist is vowing to protect his source after San Francisco police raided his home and office while keeping him handcuffed for several hours as part of a criminal investigation, according to a newspaper report. Bryan Carmody told the Los Angeles Times that officers banged on his door Friday and confiscated dozens of personal items including notebooks, his cellphone, computer, hard drives and cameras.

A judge signed off on search warrants, which stated officers were investigating "stolen or embezzled" property, the newspaper reported Saturday. Authorities said the raid came during an ongoing probe into who leaked a confidential police report about the Feb. 22 death of San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi.

Carmody said investigators had asked him a few weeks earlier to identify the source that provided him with the report. The reporter said he politely declined. 

While he was shackled, officers got a second warrant to search his newsroom, where police seized a thumb drive, CDs and, inside a safe, the leaked police report about Adachi's death, the Times said.

Curious details about Adachi's death quickly surfaced earlier this year, and that is when Carmody's investigative instincts kicked in, leading him to obtain the leaked police report. Thomas Burke, Carmody's lawyer, said the raid was "designed to intimidate" and "it's essentially the confiscation of a newsroom."

Jeff Adachi

What about those details on Adachi's death? CBS has details:

The document, as reported by KGO-TV in San Francisco, detailed that shortly before his death, Adachi had dinner with a woman named "Caterina" who was not his wife, then returned to an apartment he arranged to use for the weekend. The woman called 911 for emergency medical help, and Adachi was taken to the hospital, where he died. Later that night, officers went to the apartment and found "alcohol, cannabis-infused gummies and syringes believed to have been used by the paramedics," the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Photos of the apartment circulated online by KTVU-TV and other news outlets.

Carmody told the Chronicle that he sold his news package on Adachi to three TV stations.

How has the raid impacted Carmody's ability to earn a living as a journalist? So far, his business is pretty much wiped out. From the Los Angeles Times:

The search has brought Carmody’s business, North Bay News, to a halt. As a freelance videographer for nearly three decades, he works through the night to supply the locations, video, images, and on- and off-camera interviews that feed the beast of local TV news. The search warrant documents show police collected check stubs from Fox, Disney and CBS, among others.

He estimates that police hauled off between $30,000 and $40,000 worth of equipment, along with personal photos. Without functional equipment, he cannot work — so his friend Aaron Lee started an online fundraiser to collect donations.

Carmody is insisting on protecting his source’s identity. And he swears he never paid the person for the police report. “No,” he said, “not even a cup of coffee.”

Gynecologists say "fetal heartbeat" bills popping out of legislatures in the South and Midwest are built largely on medical ignorance and fraudulent language

Alabama is one of about a dozen states that are in various stages of trying to pass "fetal heartbeat" laws that generally would outlaw most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy -- before many women even know they are pregnant. The legislative efforts, which tend to be centered in the South and Midwest, "represent the largest assault on abortion rights in decades," according to a recent Associated Press report.

A group of high-profile gynecologists -- people who know a thing or two about the human biology related to pregnancy -- say "fetal heartbeat" bills tend to be based on medical ignorance and fraudulent use of the English language.The gist of their argument: At six weeks, there generally is no fetus and there is no heart; that makes it pretty difficult to claim there is a "fetal heartbeat." From a recent report at The UK Guardian:

“These bills present the idea that there’s something that looks like what you or a person on the street would call a baby – a thing that’s almost ready to go for a walk,” said Dr Jen Gunter, a gynecologist in Canada and the US who runs an influential blog. “In reality, you’re talking about something that’s millimeters in size and doesn’t look anything like that.”

That early in a pregnancy, Gunter said, an embryo does not have a heart – at least, not what we understand a human heart to be, with pumping tubes and ventricles. At six weeks, a human embryo throbs, but those tissues have not yet formed an organ, so the pulsing should not be confused with a heartbeat.

Notice Gunter's use of the term "embryo." That's because that's what it is at six weeks, not a fetus. Also notice that she says a "human embryo throbs" at six weeks. But those throbs are not heartbeats because there is no such organ:

It would be more accurate to call these bills “fetal pole cardiac activity” measures, said Gunter. Though it doesn’t roll off the tongue, the term would capture the state of an embryo at six weeks, which appears more fish-like than human baby.

Other gynecologists agree:

“When throbbing of some tissue begins, it’s not a heart,” said Dr Sara Imershein, a gynecologist and obstetrician in Falls Church, Virginia. “Really, we call it an embryo until about nine weeks from last menstrual period,” or roughly three weeks after the new laws prohibit termination of pregnancy. . . .

"It’s a process – the heart doesn’t just pop up one day,” said Imershein. “It’s not a little child that just appears and just grows larger”, in contrast to imagery often invoked by anti-abortion campaigns of embryos as tiny, miniaturized infants.

The Alabama Senate is expected to vote today on a bill that wold ban virtually all abortions in the state, pending the signature of Gov. Kay Ivey -- and likely court challenges. The vote is expected to come down to 31 men and three women in the Senate.

The "pro life" movement, it seems, is built on a mountain of contrived language, apparently designed to deceive and base the public discussion on religion, hysteria, emotion, and threats -- anything other than facts and medicine:

Misleading names like “heartbeat”move the debate away from medical considerations for a woman’s decision to get an abortion, said Gunter.

Similarly, the phrase "late-term" is misleading. A normal human gestation is 40 weeks. Medically speaking, "late-term" means 41-42 weeks.

But anti-abortion activists twisted the phrase into a political construct understood to be any abortion after the 21st week, late in the second trimester. “Nobody is doing late-term abortions – it doesn’t happen,” said Gunter of the medical definition. “But it’s become a part of our lexicon now.”

In Alabama, Republican sponsors of a "fetal heartbeat" bill admit it is designed to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. That, of course, is serious business, so you might think drafters of the bill would at least base it on scientific facts and correct medical language. But you would be wrong; in essence, it's a political stunt:

Gunter said six weeks is not enough time to make informed medical choices. It’s before most women know they’re pregnant, and before fetal malformations can be diagnosed. The risks of medical conditions, such as lupus, won’t be apparent that early. There are some heart conditions “where we say, you should not be pregnant”, said Gunter. “The risk of death is 50%. We know that the second the pregnancy test is positive. But what if that person doesn’t seek medical care until they’re eight weeks?”

“The whole point [of these bills] is to introduce terminology that makes people think differently about pregnancy,” said Gunter.

In practice, she said, six-week measures are effectively abortion bans – a fact that misleading names such as “heartbeat bill” could obscure. “We can’t use the incorrect language in the bills,” said Gunter. “Because once you start using incorrect language, you’ve basically conceded.”

(To be continued)

The influence of Judge Bill Pryor, with his ties to 1990s gay porn, seems to be growing as Trump seeks to pack Alabama courts with devotees of the Federalist Society

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Sandra Bland's video of Texas traffic stop, released posthumously this week, shows officer lied about threat to his safety and likely lacked grounds to arrest

Sandra Bland, the black motorist who died of an apparent suicide in a Texas jail three days after being arrested in a dubious traffic stop, took her own video of the stop, according to news reports this week. The Bland video raises new questions about the nature of her death and adds to the mountain of evidence that suggests law-enforcement officers are among the most dishonest people on earth.

My wife, Carol, and I have firsthand experience with that, from our unlawful eviction that ended with Missouri deputies breaking Carol's arm -- and then alleging SHE had assaulted one of them, even though the officer in question, Jeremy Lynn, admitted he initiated physical contact with Carol, not the other way around. That meant, as a matter of Missouri law, Carol could not possibly have assaulted a law enforcement officer. But Greene County Judge Jerry Harmison, in a farce of a bench trial, found her guilty anyway.

In retrospect, Carol probably was fortunate to come out of the incident alive. Sandra Bland was not so fortunate -- and the video she took shines new light on her experience. From a report at The New York Times:

Ms. Bland, a 28-year-old African-American from the Chicago area, was taken into custody in southeast Texas following the confrontational 2015 traffic stop and was found hanging in a jail cell three days later in what was officially ruled a suicide. The case, which drew international attention, intensified outrage over the treatment of black people by white police officers and was considered a turning point in the Black Lives Matter movement.

The video surfaced for the first time publicly Monday night in an investigative report on the Dallas television station WFAA that included interviews with Ms. Bland’s family and supporters, who accused officials of concealing information that they said should have been made public early in the investigation.

The authorities released the trooper’s dash-cam video days after Ms. Bland’s death, but Ms. Bland’s own recording was never made public — except, it appears, to lawyers and investigators involved in the case. The Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement that the video recording was referred to “multiple times” in its investigative report on the Bland case and was released to the WFAA reporter in response to a public records request. The video “has in no way been concealed by the department,” the statement said.

The 39-second video from Bland's cell phone can be viewed at the top of this post. The full WFAA report can be viewed at the end of this post.

Why is the Bland video important? The Times explains:

The images aired Monday night marked the first time that most people had seen the traffic encounter as Ms. Bland had seen it: a close-up view of the face of the state trooper, Brian T. Encinia, contorting in anger as he pulled out a stun gun and shouted at her to get out of the car. 

“I’m going to light you up!” he yelled, his voice growing hoarse. 

State Representative Garnet Coleman, an African-American lawmaker who chairs the State House’s County Affairs Committee, which conducted statewide hearings following Ms. Bland’s death, said on Tuesday that he plans to call legislative hearings before the current session adjourns on May 27 to look into why the newly surfaced video was not made generally available to the public until now. 

“It is very disturbing to those who have followed the case of Sandra Bland,” he said.

A lawyer for the Bland family takes it several steps further:

Cannon Lambert, a lawyer who represents the Bland family, said he had not seen the video until it was shown to him by the television journalist. “I immediately called my co-counsel and asked whether he had seen it, and he hadn’t seen it either,” he said.

Mr. Lambert said the video, by showing Ms. Bland with a cellphone in her hand, seriously undercut the trooper’s claim that he feared for his safety as he approached the woman’s vehicle.

“What the video shows is that Encinia had no reason to be in fear of his safety,” Mr. Lambert, who represented the family in a $1.9 million legal settlement, said in a telephone interview. “The video shows that he wasn’t in fear of his safety. You could see that it was a cellphone, he was looking right at it.”

Mr. Encinia said during internal interviews with Department of Public Safety officials that he had been worried about his safety. “My safety was in jeopardy at more than one time,” he told department interviewers.

The Bland video shows the officer lied. Our experience with thug cops in Missouri indicates lying is second nature for many of them.


(To be continued)

U.S. Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat, who helped cheat Don Siegelman in political prosecution, blasts Alabama lawyer Ken Lay for allegedly violating precedent, but the judge himself has a history of failing to follow rules

Gerald Bar Tjoflat

A federal judge in the Deep South recently upbraided an Alabama lawyer for filing a complaint that allegedly violated court rules. The judge was so incensed that he upheld the trial court's dismissal of the complaint and threatened to order the lawyer to pay the opposing parties' "double costs and their expenses, including the attorney's fees they incurred in defending these appeals." Our research, however, indicates the judge is not so good about following court rules himself.

U.S. Circuit Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat played a prominent role in cheating former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. For good measure, Tjoflat also was part of three-judge panels that issued unlawful rulings -- wildly contrary to precedent -- that cheated me on several matters. In fact, Tjoflat is a central figure in a cheat job against me at this very moment. (Details on that in future posts.)

As for the most recent matter, Tjoflat used his opinion in Jackson v. Bank of America, NA, 898 F. 3d 1348 (11th Cir., 2018) to label the pleadings of Birmingham attorney Kenneth James Lay as frivolous "garbage." Tjoflat further claimed Lay and his clients -- Karun and Ursula Jackson, of Daphne, AL -- "obstructed the due administration of justice."

Lay, of the firm Hood and Lay, represents the Jacksons in a wrongful foreclosure proceeding. Tjoflat, who turned 89 in December, was appointed to the federal bench by Richard Nixon and elevated to the appellate bench by Gerald Ford. Tjoflat is the longest serving federal-appeals judge in active service and has served on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (covering Alabama, Georgia, and Florida) and its predecessor, the Fifth Circuit, since 1975.

It's ironic that the Jackson case involves the loss of a house because we've seen signs that Tjoflat repeatedly violated black-letter law on the appeal of our own wrongful-foreclosure complaint, which we call "The House Case" to distinguish it from "The Jail Case" (involving my unlawful arrest and incarceration for blogging in Shelby County, AL.) We've also uncovered evidence that suggests Tjoflat routinely violates statutory law (28 U.S. Code 455) and ethics rules that prohibit a federal judge from hearing a case in which he has a financial interest.

Does Tjoflat tend to side with banks, mortgage companies, and the like? The public record reflects the answer is a resounding yes, and our research reveals why Tjoflat might favor certain financial institutions in cases that come before him. (More on that in an upcoming post.)

In the Jackson matter, Tjoflat almost seemed to take offense that Lay's clients weren't happy about facing a foreclosure and eviction that they considered dubious, at best -- and the record includes factual allegations that show why they might have felt that way.  From the Atlanta-based Daily Report:

In a blistering opinion, Tjoflat chided Lay for filing a clearly deficient complaint as part of a scheme “engineered to delay or prevent execution of a foreclosure judgment on a residence and the consequent eviction of its occupants.”

Lay “effectuated this scheme by filing a multi-count, incomprehensible complaint that flouted the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and this circuit’s well-established precedent,” Tjoflat wrote.

In addition to upholding the trial judge’s dismissal of the case, Tjoflat said the frivolous filings constituted an abuse of judicial process and ordered Lay to show cause why he should not be ordered to pay the defendants’ double their costs for defending the appeal.

Lay did not respond to requests for comment.

Notice that Tjoflat goes apoplectic when an Alabama lawyer supposedly acts contrary to precedent. We will seek comment from the judge about his own failures to follow "well-established precedent, and we feel certain he will have plenty of excuses for that.

Tjoflat got his judicial dander up because Lay filed what the judge considered to be a "shotgun pleading." What is that? The Daily Report explains:

After granting multiple extensions to an Alabama lawyer fighting a foreclosure, a federal appeals panel was decidedly unimpressed when he said in oral arguments that their concerns about his “shotgun” complaints may be “an issue in federal court,” but they “are not disfavored in Alabama courts.”

Federal rulings have defined shotgun complaints as containing multiple counts, each incorporating by reference the preceding allegation with no clear cause of action asserted. They often assert those claims against multiple defendants without specifying which is responsible for each claim.

Here is how Tjoflat, in his opinion, characterized the complaint Lay filed on the Jacksons' behalf:

The Jacksons' complaint alleged fourteen causes of action under Alabama and federal law in separate counts, spanned twenty pages, and contained 109 paragraphs of allegations. The causes of action were not defendant-specific, all were based on all of the complaint's twenty-four introductory paragraphs, and all fourteen causes of action incorporated all previous allegations. This made it impossible for any Defendant to reasonably frame an answer. The crux of the complaint appears to be that Defendants classified their home mortgage as in default, accelerated their loan, turned over their  account for foreclosure, and reported the foreclosure to the credit reporting agencies without any legitimate basis for doing so.

How does that run afoul of 11th-Circuit procedure? Tjoflat explains, while noting that "All told, Mr. Lay sought and obtained ten extension requests from this Court":

The amended complaint is an incomprehensible shotgun pleading. It employs a multitude of claims and incorporates by reference all of its factual allegations into each claim, making it nearly impossible for Defendants and the Court to determine with any certainty which factual allegations give rise to which claims for relief. As such, the amended complaint patently violates Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8, which requires a plaintiff to plead "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). At twenty-eight pages long and having incorporated all 123 paragraphs of allegations into all sixteen counts, it is neither "short" nor "plain."

Kenneth Lay

This Court has filled many pages of the Federal Reporter condemning shotgun pleadings and explaining their vices:

Shotgun pleadings, whether filed by plaintiffs or defendants, exact an intolerable toll on the trial court's docket, lead to unnecessary and unchannelled discovery, and impose unwarranted expense on the litigants, the court and the court's parajudicial personnel and resources. Moreover, justice is delayed for the litigants who are "standing in line," waiting for their cases to be heard. The courts of appeals and the litigants appearing before them suffer as well. Cramer v. Florida, 117 F.3d 1258, 1263 (11th Cir. 1997).

Did Lay waste court resources by filing a deficient, "incomprehensible" complaint and seeking an excessive number of time extensions? Maybe. Does Tjoflat have  legitimate gripe about the "shotgun pleading"? Possibly.

But our reading of Tjoflat's opinion suggests the Jacksons raised legitimate legal issues involving the foreclosure on their home -- and we see no sign that either the trial or appellate court addressed those. That's in keeping with Tjoflat's documented history of favoring financial institutions -- and the apparent reasons, which we'e uncovered, for such unlawful favoritism. It's also in keeping with Tjoflat's history of issuing opinions that run contrary to black-letter law -- and we have personal experience with that.

We will examine both of those issues in upcoming posts.


(To be continued)

Anonymous commenter hints he has inside knowledge about cheat jobs we've experienced in court cases -- and Jessica Garrison's role in possible obstruction

Jessica Medeiros Garrison and Luther Strange

We recently received an anonymous comment indicating the sender has knowledge of criminal acts in our court cases, across multiple states and jurisdiction. The comment suggests connections between bad actors in Alabama and Missouri and even points to a possible conduit between the two.

Specifically, the comment raises the specter of broad criminality -- including obstruction of justice, wire fraud, conspiracy, misprision of a felony, and possibly more. All of these could form a pattern of racketeering that might be part of future criminal or civil (or both) cases under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO).

How much do I know about the comment? Well, I know it was sent at 8:45 p.m. on Dec. 5, 2018, via blogger.com, which should make it highly traceable. From my blog statistics, I'm about 90 percent certain it came from Springfield, MO, where we currently reside. The comment references a less-than-famous political figure in Alabama, suggesting the commenter has more than a casual interest in cheat jobs against us. That makes me 95 percent certain I know exactly who it is. Even if my instincts about that are off, the sender likely has left enough of a digital footprint to be tracked down.

Here are the contents of the comment, which was sent to a post titled "Reporting on Steve Marshall's acceptance of illegal campaign funds in Alabama AG race shines light on the theft of our home via a wrongful foreclosure." I did not post the comment at the time because it clearly was from a troll. But I think it might yield important clues to wrongdoing against us, so I am posting it now:

You do realize you are never going to get your house back right? You know you are never going to win in a suit of any kind right? You know Jessica Garrison probably never thinks about you anymore but you think about her all the time right? This whole “House” thing jumped the shark long ago. Why not just save up and get another house. I like your blog because of the comedy elements but you have beat this joke to death. Get some new material champ.

Let's look at a few of these sentences and consider what they might mean?

(1)  You do realize you are never going to get your house back right? We've pointed to all kinds of corporate, political, legal, and judicial corruption associated with the theft of our Birmingham home via wrongful foreclosure. (See here, here, here, and here, for starters). The commenter suggests he knows about events connected to our wrongful foreclosure. Perhaps he would like to testify under oath about that?

(2) You know you are never going to win in a suit of any kind right? This blog is bursting at the seams with posts about unlawful court rulings against us. (See here, here, here, and here.) The commenter suggests he has an insider's knowledge about those rulings. Perhaps he would like to testify under oath about that?

(3) You know Jessica Garrison probably never thinks about you anymore but you think about her all the time right? If the commenter is from Missouri, how would he know much about Garrison, the one-time campaign manager and girlfriend of former Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange? Perhaps Garrison has communicated with the commenter and other bad actors in Missouri? Perhaps the commenter, and Garrison, would like to testify under oath about that?

(4) All of this leads to another question: Does the commenter have inside knowledge about multiple financial transactions involving Garrison and her curious ability to obtain pricey housing in Birmingham's "tiny kingdom" of Mountain Brook? For example, public records indicate Garrison has not had a steady job for quite some time, but she managed to purchase a house at 212 Dexter Avenue in Mountain Brook for $835,000. How does that happen? I've had a number of friends in the Dexter Avenue area over the years, and sources say several sets of eyes (with no prompting from me; they have a healthy case of curiosity) are keeping a regular watch on activities around the 212 address. Ironically, I happened to be in Birmingham a few months back and drove through the heart of Mountain Brook. Another such trip might be developing soon, so maybe I can join the "Neighborhood Watch" activities.

Is it possible the commenter is a con artist, one who doesn't know much of anything and is just jerking my chain? Yes. Is it possible the commenter knows even more than he's letting on and would be a strong candidate for a deposition in a federal lawsuit? Yes. Either way, I'm in the process of learning more about him and his apparent ties to Ms. Garrison.

Could the commenter wind up deeply regretting that he sent his vile little message, and do I intend to make sure he is unmasked in a glaring and painful way? Absolutely. Will Jessica Garrison regret screwing around with me for accurately reporting on her tawdry affair with Luther Strange? I don't know exactly how Ms. Garrison's mind works -- and I don't care to know -- but her notorious interview at Marie Claire suggests she has more emotions than brain cells. I suspect that has led her to take some ill-advised steps. -- the kind that could prove costly, even for someone living in Alabama's "tiny kingdom."

After all, Garrison already is defendant in two pending lawsuits, and more may be on the way.

Child-pornography cases are being dropped around the country as prosecutors balk at defense demands for details about software that scans file-sharing programs

From propublica.com

Child-pornography charges have been dropped in more than a dozen recent instances around the country because defense attorneys raised questions about software tools used to investigate such cases.

Could the pending U.S. v. Scott J. Wells case in the Western District of Missouri, which we have covered extensively, produce such a result. That's hard to say because charging documents indicate the Wells case began with a "cyber tip" from Facebook, rather than the use of investigative software. Also, the software scans for child porn on peer-to-peer networks, and there is no evidence Wells used such a network -- strongly suggesting he did not knowingly receive or distribute child porn.

Our recent research on the Wells case reveals signs that the prosecution's case is frightfully weak due to a lack of probable cause that has nothing to do with technology. That is particularly alarming when you consider that Wells has spent more than two years in federal detention, mostly at Leavenworth, KS, because U.S. Magistrate David P. Rush has deemed him a "threat to society," even though he's been found guilty of nothing, is virtually blind in one eye, and must use a walker to get around due to a benign brain tumor he's had since childhood.

Our recent discoveries in the Wells criminal complaint and affidavit are shocking, and they come on top of weaknesses in the prosecution's case on which we've already reported. New details about the case are set for upcoming posts.

As for the recently dropped child-porn cases, those are outlined at a ProPublica article titled "Prosecutors Dropping Child Porn Charges After Software Tools Are Questioned," with the sub-hed "More than a dozen cases were dismissed after defense attorneys asked to examine, or raised doubts about, computer programs that track illegal images to internet addresses." From reporter Jack Gillum:

Using specialized software, investigators traced explicit child pornography to Todd Hartman’s internet address. A dozen police officers raided his Los Angeles-area apartment, seized his computer and arrested him for files including a video of a man ejaculating on a 7-year-old girl. But after his lawyer contended that the software tool inappropriately accessed Hartman’s private files, and asked to examine how it worked, prosecutors dismissed the case.

Near Phoenix, police with a similar detection program tracked underage porn photos, including a 4-year-old with her legs spread, to Tom Tolworthy’s home computer. He was indicted in state court on 10 counts of committing a “dangerous crime against children,” each of which carried a decade in prison if convicted. Yet when investigators checked Tolworthy’s hard drive, the images weren’t there. Even though investigators said different offensive files surfaced on another computer that he owned, the case was tossed.

At a time when at least half a million laptops, tablets, phones, and other devices are viewing or sharing child pornography on the internet every month, software that tracks images to specific internet connections has become a vital tool for prosecutors. Increasingly, though, it’s backfiring.

How does the software backfire? Gillum has the details:

Drawing upon thousands of pages of court filings as well as interviews with lawyers and experts, ProPublica found more than a dozen cases since 2011 that were dismissed either because of challenges to the software’s findings, or the refusal by the government or the maker to share the computer programs with defense attorneys, or both. Tami Loehrs, a forensics expert who often testifies in child pornography cases, said she is aware of more than 60 cases in which the defense strategy has focused on the software.

Defense attorneys have long complained that the government’s secrecy claims may hamstring suspects seeking to prove that the software wrongly identified them. But the growing success of their counterattack is also raising concerns that, by questioning the software used by investigators, some who trade in child pornography can avoid punishment.

“When protecting the defendant’s right to a fair trial requires the government to disclose its confidential techniques, prosecutors face a choice: Give up the prosecution or give up the secret. Each option has a cost,” said Orin Kerr, an expert in computer crime law and former Justice Department lawyer. “If prosecutors give up the prosecution, it may very well mean that a guilty person goes free. If prosecutors give up the secret, it may hurt their ability to catch other criminals. Prosecutors have to choose which of those outcomes is less bad in each particular case.”

Our coverage of U.S. v. Wells iindicates courts tend to treat child-porn matters as cut-and-dried, with defendants often pressured into guilty pleas, whether they committed the offense or not. ProPublica's investigative work shows such cases can be more complicated than some courts want them to appear:

In several cases, like Tolworthy’s, court documents say that the software traced offensive images to an Internet Protocol address. But, for reasons that remain unclear, those images weren’t found on the defendant’s computer. In others, like Hartman’s, defense lawyers said the software discovered porn in areas of the computer it wasn’t supposed to enter, and they suggested the police conducted an overly broad search.

These problems are compounded by the insistence of both the government and the software manufacturers on protecting the secrecy of their computer code, so as not to imperil other prosecutions or make trade secrets public. Unwilling to take the risk that the sensitive programs could leak publicly, they have rejected revealing the software even under strict court secrecy.

Nevertheless, the software is facing renewed scrutiny: In another case where child pornography identified by the software wasn’t found on the suspect’s computer, a federal judge in February allowed a defense expert to examine it. And recently, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch asked the Justice Department to review, in part, whether one suite of software tools, the Child Protection System, had been independently tested.

The government often wants to have its prosecutorial cake and eat it, too, says one expert:

“The sharing of child-sex-abuse images is a serious crime, and law enforcement should be investigating it. But the government needs to understand how the tools work, if they could violate the law and if they are accurate,” said Sarah St.Vincent, a Human Rights Watch researcher who examined the practice.

“These defendants are not very popular, but a dangerous precedent is a dangerous precedent that affects everyone. And if the government drops cases or some charges to avoid scrutiny of the software, that could prevent victims from getting justice consistently,” she said. “The government is effectively asserting sweeping surveillance powers but is then hiding from the courts what the software did and how it worked.”

What about a big-picture view of child-porn cases? ProPublica's Gillum provides one:

The dismissals represent a small fraction of the hundreds of federal and state child pornography prosecutions since 2011. More often, defendants plead guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence. (Of 17 closed cases brought since 2017 by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, all but two resulted in plea deals, ProPublica found.) Even after their charges were dropped, Tolworthy and Hartman are both facing new trials. Still, the dismissals are noteworthy because challenges to the software are spreading among the defense bar and gaining credence with judges.

Software developers and law enforcement officials say the detection software is an essential part of combating the proliferation of child pornography and exploitation on the internet.

“This is a horrendous crime, and as a society we’re obligated to protect victims this young,” said Brian Levine, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who helped develop one such tool, called Torrential Downpour. “There are a number of victims who are too young to speak, or can’t speak out of fear. This tool is available to law enforcement to rescue those children who are abused.”

Evidence is mounting, however, that the tool does not always work the way it's supposed to:

In cases where previously flagged porn isn’t turning up on a suspect’s computer, investigators have suggested the files have merely been erased before arrest, or that they’re stored in encrypted areas of a hard drive that the police can’t access. Defense attorneys counter that some software logs don’t show the files were ever downloaded in the first place, or that they may have been downloaded by mistake and immediately purged.

Scott J. Wells

Defense lawyers are given a bevy of reasons why porn-detection software can’t be handed over for review, even under a protective order that limits disclosure to attorneys and their experts. Law enforcement authorities often say that they’re prohibited from disclosing software by their contracts with the manufacturer, which considers it proprietary technology.

Prosecutors are also reluctant to disclose a coveted law enforcement tool just to convict one defendant. A Justice Department spokeswoman referred ProPublica to a government journal article, which argued peer-to-peer detection tools “are increasingly targeted by defendants through overbroad discovery requests.”

“While the Department of Justice supports full compliance with all discovery obligations imposed by law,” wrote lawyers for the Justice Department and the FBI, “those obligations generally do not require disclosure of sensitive information regarding law enforcement techniques which, if exposed, would threaten the viability of future investigations.”

Prosecutors, in essence, are telling the public to "trust us" with this sensitive technology. But as we've shown in U.S. v. Wells, prosecutors are not always deserving of trust:

“Courts and police are increasingly using software to make decisions in the criminal justice system about bail, sentencing, and probability-matching for DNA and other forensic tests,” said Jennifer Granick, a surveillance and cybersecurity lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project who has studied the issue.

“If the defense isn’t able to examine these techniques, then we have to just take the government’s word for it — on these complicated, sensitive and non-black-and-white decisions. And that’s just too dangerous.”

The government apparently wants to keep the public in the dark about software used in child-porn cases. But ProPublica has shined a troubling light on the technology:

One common suite of software tools, the Child Protection System, is maintained by the Florida-based Child Rescue Coalition. Although the coalition says it’s a nonprofit, it has ties to for-profit data brokers and the data company TLO. (TransUnion, the major credit-reporting agency, has acquired TLO.) CRC has hosted some of its computer servers at TransUnion since 2016, according to a review of internet records collected by the firm Farsight Security.

A redacted user manual filed in a federal case, portions of which were un-redacted by Human Rights Watch and confirmed by ProPublica, indicates that the Child Protection System draws on unverified data gathered by these firms. It says TLO “has allowed law enforcement access to data collected on internet users from a variety of sources,” with enhanced information that includes “marketing data that has been linked to IP addresses and email accounts from corporate sources.”

“No logs are kept of any law enforcement query of corporate data,” the manual continued. It cautioned that subscriber data was unconfirmed, and that it should “be confirmed through other investigative means that are acceptable with your agency and prosecuting attorney.”

Software that relies on unconfirmed information from big data brokers, civil liberties advocates say, may not only point police to the wrong internet address owner, but it also enables them to gather a mountain of personal details about a suspect without a court order, sidestepping constitutional protections. . . .

Another widely used detection tool, Torrential Downpour, was developed by the University of Massachusetts a decade ago with U.S. government funding, court records show. Levine told ProPublica in an interview that the program is accurate enough to find probable cause for a search warrant, but that it can only be effective if police and the courts do their jobs. “The software is one part of an entire process,” Levine said, “followed by investigators and courts to produce reliable evidence and to follow a fair judicial process.”

Think tank provides details that suggest both William Barr and Robert Mueller are giving the Trump crowd an unwarranted free pass on collusion with Russia

William Barr

As U.S. Attorney General William Barr faced grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday over his handling of the Mueller Report, hardly anyone (among lawmakers and news analysts) mentioned Vol. 1 of the report -- the part about possible collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russian officials.

It was as if Barr's finding (and Mueller's) of "no collusion" is widely accepted as accurate, with the only remaining questions surrounding obstruction of justice. But a report from a prominent think tank, released more than five months before the redacted Mueller Report became public, raises serious questions about the accuracy of the "no collusion" finding. In other words, Team Trump is no more home free on collusion (the legal term is conspiracy) than it is on obstruction.

The Brookings Institution, on Oct. 31, 2018, issued a report titled "Considering Collusion: A Primer On Potential Crimes." It showed that publicly available information at the time pointed to violations of 18 U.S.C. 371 (Conspiracy to defraud the United States), and it named names -- specifically Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr.

We've already shown that Barr lied to the American people about the law governing hacking of Democratic Party emails and possible dissemination by Team Trump and/or Russians. But it's almost as if the Brookings Institution knew Barr, or someone involved in the investigatory process, would try to claim there was "insufficient evidence" of collusion -- and Brookings makes a powerful case, well ahead of the Mueller Report's release, that such claims are not based in fact or law.

Before focusing on the facts of possible collusion, Brookings spells out the law (pp. 16-17 of report):

A conspiracy requires that the parties share the same agreement to defraud. An affiliate of the Trump campaign could potentially be criminally liable as a co-conspirator of the indicted Russian defendants if he or she agreed to participate in Russia’s scheme to impair any of these government functions—the most likely being interference with the FEC’s regulation of campaign expenditures. We now know that Trump campaign officials reportedly had at least 82 contacts with Russian individuals and officials during the 2016 election cycle, including the now infamous meeting at Trump Tower between Russian nationals and senior members of the Trump campaign. Those contacts potentially presented opportunities to agree to support Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But even without evidence of an explicit agreement between co-conspirators, courts permit triers of fact to infer the presence of an agreement based entirely on circumstantial evidence due to the secretive nature of conspiracies. [See United States v. Wardell, 591 F.3d 1279, 1287 (10th Cir. 2009)]. Relevant circumstantial evidence includes: concert of action among co-defendants [See United States v. Fisch, 851 F.3d 402, 407 (5th Cir. 2017)], the relationship among co-defendants, negotiations in furtherance of the conspiracy, mutual representations to third parties, and evidence suggesting “unity of purpose or common design or understanding among conspirators to achieve the goals of the conspiracy.” [See Wardell, 591 F.3d at 1287-88].

Key note: Circumstantial evidence can prove a conspiracy? Have we heard anything about circumstantial evidence from either Barr or Mueller? I'm not aware of it. Brookings then shows that extensive digging is not required on this issue in the Trump-Russia probe; the facts already were in the public realm:

Based on the known facts, there already is circumstantial evidence of possible agreements by Trump associates to conspire with the Russians. Two episodes potentially relevant to the agreement analysis are detailed in the July 13, 2018, indictment filed by the special counsel’s office against twelve Russian military intelligence officials:

The first such episode involved Roger Stone:

On August 15, 2016, Russian military officers posing as Guccifer 2.0 sent a direct message via Twitter to Roger Stone (described in the indictment as “a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign”) thanking Stone for “writing back” and asking him “do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted.” Two days later, Guccifer 2.0 added, “please tell me if i can help u anyhow it would be a great pleasure to me.” On August 21, 2016, Stone tweeted, “Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel.” On September 9, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 and Stone discussed a document stolen from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that detailed voter turnout methods.

Is this circumstantial evidence of "concert of action" and "unity of purpose" that points to conspiracy, under the law. Do these written documents go beyond circumstantial evidence?

The second episode involved Donald Trump Jr.:

On October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks (described in the indictment as “Organization 1”) released the first set of emails that Russian operatives had stolen from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Although not detailed in the special counsel’s indictment, we know that Donald Trump Jr. was in direct contact with WikiLeaks during this time. On October 12, 2016, WikiLeaks contacted Donald Trump Jr. via Twitter to suggest that then-candidate Trump tweet a link to the stolen emails. Fifteen minutes later, candidate Trump tweeted: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!” On October 14, 2016, Trump Jr. tweeted the same link to Podesta’s stolen emails. If there is evidence of additional contacts between WikiLeaks and the campaign—particularly any contacts before October 7—that evidence would be probative of whether there was an agreement.

Trump Jr. did exactly what WikiLeaks asked regarding stolen emails. That's not "concert of action"?

Brookings then provides more legal analysis that shows why Stone and Trump Jr. should be in serious legal doo-doo:

In addition to sharing an agreement to impair a government function, each participant in a defraud-clause conspiracy must have known of the illegal goal and willfully joined the unlawful plan. Evidence need not show that a conspirator had specific knowledge of the regulations or government functions alleged to have been impaired. The government must only show that the defendant had “a general awareness” of the scope and objective of the plan, not necessarily that a defendant knew every detail.

Therefore, a Trump affiliate could potentially be criminally liable so long as he or she had knowledge of Russia’s plan to disseminate hacked emails; he or she need not also have had knowledge of the means and methods of Russian hacking. Nor would American co-conspirators need to have known that Russia’s hacking and dissemination of campaign-related emails impaired the FEC’s ability to carry out its regulatory mission. Similar to proving an agreement to enter a conspiracy under Section 371,knowledge may be established using circumstantial evidence. Intent to defraud the United States may also be inferred from circumstantial evidence related to “the relationship of the parties, their overt acts, and the totality of their conduct. . . .

Accordingly, evidence that tends to show President Trump or his associates attempted to conceal interactions with Russian nationals, helped guide Russia’s social media influence efforts, or attempted to direct the distribution of stolen emails could be used to prove intent to join a conspiracy. Of the reported facts, Roger Stone’s purported technical and sustained discussions of stolen campaign documents with Russian military officers posing as Guccifer 2.0 tends to show the type of active participation that courts have found sufficient to infer intent to participate in a conspiracy to defraud.

I would argue that Trump Jr.'s actions were at least as incriminating as Stone's. But Mueller can't find circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy? After yesterday's hearing, I'm not sure any rational American takes William Barr seriously. A lot of Americans take Mueller seriously, but the weak language in his redacted report raises questions about whether that trust is misplaced.

How did Mueller reach his "no collusion" finding? That's hard to say, given that huge chunks of his "Prosecutions and Declination Decisions" section (pp. 174-199) have been redacted. The closest we get to an explanation from Mueller is found on page 181 of his report:

The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law-including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws, both of which are discussed further below. The Office therefore did not charge any individual associated with the Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offense arising from Russia contacts, either under a specific statute or under Section 371 's offenses clause

The Office also did not charge any campaign official or associate with a conspiracy under Section 371 's defraud clause. That clause criminalizes participating in an agreement to obstruct a lawful function of the U.S. government or its agencies through deceitful or dishonest means. . . . The investigation did not establish any agreement among Campaign officials or between such officials and Russia-linked individuals-to interfere with or obstruct a lawful function of a government agency during the campaign or transition period. . . .

The investigation did not identify evidence that any Campaign official or associate knowingly and intentionally participated in the conspiracy to defraud that the Office charged, namely, the active-measures conspiracy. . . . Accordingly, the Office did not charge any Campaign associate or other U.S. person with conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the Russia-related contacts. . . .

As Brookings shows, all of these elements can be shown via circumstantial evidence. But Mueller and his elite band of investigators could not manage to do that? Unbelievable. Perhaps someone forced them to use an impossibly high evidentiary standard, one that does not exist under the law?

Mueller is using a lot of "trust me" language here in his report. He feeds the public phrases such as "the investigation did not establish any agreement" or "the investigation did not identify evidence," while providing few specifics about how his office reached its conclusions on collusion. Release of evidentiary materials might be the key to understanding his actions.

After Barr's combative and deceptive performance yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee -- and his decision to skip a hearing today before the House Judiciary Committee -- a number of Democrats are calling for his resignation or impeachment. But Democrats should not give Mueller a free pass; he needs to be questioned thoroughly and aggressively, especially on the matter of collusion.

The Mueller Report, as we have it right now, hardly is a model of clarity and transparency on that issue. The public needs to know why.

With Morris Dees and others hitting the exits at SPLC, a Montgomery institution likely needs a federal investigation to save itself from dysfunctional leaders

Morris Dees

With the recent departure of three top executives, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is in such disarray that one news outlet reported "the wheels had come off" at the venerated civil-rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama.

In dozens of news accounts about the firing of founder Morris Dees and the resignations of president Richard Cohen and legal director Rhonda Brownstein, the same theme appears over and over: The SPLC has not been what it appeared to be for years; it essentially is a fraudulent organization, finally facing a reckoning amid multiple reports from staffers about racial and gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace -- the very issues SPLC supposedly was designed to fight.

Another recurring theme: The SPLC mostly is about fundraising, with limited concerns about actual justice. From my former home base in Birmingham, AL, I've heard for years about dysfunction and phoniness at the SPLC. Ultimately, the organization's disinterest in fighting for constitutional rights hit home in a personal way.

The situation at SPLC is so dire that prominent voices are calling for a federal investigation. From The Washington Post, written by former Montgomery Advertiser managing editor Jim Tharpe:

Dees has said little about why he was shown the door after 48 years at the organization he had come to define. But to those of us familiar with the SPLC and its inner workings, the allegations swirling around the latest drama were familiar. The question isn't what went wrong at the SPLC; it is why it took so long for the rest of the country to learn what local reporters already knew. It will probably take a federal investigation to fully unravel this Deep South mystery and provide a credible, long-term fix.

More than two decades ago, I was managing editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, which was located one block from the SPLC in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. I proposed an investigation into the organization after ongoing complaints from former SPLC staffers, who came and went with regularity but always seemed to tell the same story. Only the names and faces changed. The SPLC, they said, was not what it appeared to be. Many urged the newspaper to take a look. . . .

In February 1994, after three years of research, the Advertiser published an eight-part series titled "Rising Fortunes: Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center" that found a litany of problems and questionable practices at the SPLC, including a deeply troubled history with its relatively few black employees, some of whom reported hearing the use of racial slurs by the organization's staff and others who "likened the center to a plantation"; misleading donors with aggressive direct-mail tactics; exaggerating its accomplishments; spending most of its money not on programs but on raising more money; and paying its top staffers (including Dees and Cohen) lavish salaries.

What should be the focus of such an investigation? Tharpe provides insights:

Any investigation should take a close look at the SPLC's finances. It should look at what the center has told donors in its mail solicitations over the years. And it should take a close look at how that donor money has been spent. Investigators should also look at how SPLC staffers have been treated over the years. Where was the center's board when this mistreatment was going on? And why did no one step up sooner?

The feds owe that to the young progressives who work at the SPLC. And they certainly owe that to the donors who have put their own first-class stamps on the checks they mailed to Montgomery.

Multiple press reports suggest Morris Dees' primary talent, since founding SPLC in 1971, has been separating liberals from boatloads of cash. On the flip side, he and his staff -- while promoting the notion that "hate groups" are proliferating in America -- did relatively little to stand up for those whose civil rights had been violated, often by judges, lawyers, bar associations (the legal tribe), law enforcement, and conservative politicians.

Ray Scott

In fact, we now know Dees long has been in bed with the very entities that tend to abuse civil rights. One source who has seen Dees operate in an up-close way tells Legal Schnauzer that Dees has a history of manipulating courts -- especially the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta -- to help ensure his allies receive favorable treatment. If this means sucking up to Republicans -- even those with records of opposing civil rights -- Dees is willing to do it.

Some have suggested SPLC practices a form of reverse racism, against white people. From National Vanguard:

The SPLC works closely with the judiciary, law enforcement, secret police agencies, the media, and academia to quash the rights of White Americans by targeting, terrorizing, and destroying them and their families emotionally, reputationally, economically, and organizationally. . . .

In 2001 the morally bankrupt American Bar Association published a ghost-written hagiography “by” Dees called A Lawyer’s Journey: The Morris Dees Story. The real author is named Steve Fiffer. The book carried cover blurbs by Jimmy Carter, Kurt Vonnegut, and Establishment Black icons Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King. Amazon’s “customer reviews” seem to have been doctored to present a glowing picture of readers’ opinions.

Is National Vanguard over the top on some of this? Perhaps, but the record is clear that Dees has enjoyed a cozy relationship with law enforcement, courts, and the legal establishment -- all entities that are riddled with corruption and tendencies to quash due-process rights.

For a supposed civil-rights icon, Morris Dees has kept curious company over the years. Some examples:

* Dees long has been close to Ray Scott, founder of the Bass Anglers Sportsman's Society (B.A.S.S.) and friend of the Bush family. A 2003 affidavit from Missouri lawyer Paul Benton Weeks provides details about the relationship between Dees, Scott, B.A.S.S., and the right-wing Bushies. From item No. 45 of the Weeks affidavit, focusing partly on former federal judge Ira DeMent, who had been appointed to hear a lawsuit against B.A.S.S.-- in which Weeks served as a plaintiff's lawyer:

Simply doing my job, I researched Judge DeMent's background and discovered that while serving as an Alabama U.S. attorney, Mr. DeMent was involved in three of the 1970 B.A.S.S. anti-pollution suits and had been told in a letter by a B.A.S.S., Inc. attorney (Morris Dees) that B.A.S.S. is a"national association. . . . " My research and investigation led to other information suggesting that Judge DeMent might have knowledge of facts material to the B.A.S.S. case.

So, we learn that Dees represented B.A.S.S. and had a tendency to write curious communications to a federal judge presiding over a case involving B.A.S.S. As for Ray Scott and the Bushes, Weeks provides more insight:

There are also politics at work in the B.A.S.S. case. Since the late 1970s, Ray Scott has used his (ill-gotten) wealth and prominence to align with the Bushes. In a 1999 vanity-press biography, Scott repeatedly mentions his connection with the Bushes. . . . Scott'sbiography reports that both father and son Bush have helped Scott when requested.

Scott's 1999 biography also suggests that Scott enjoys special access with Gov. Bush, now President of the United States and a "life member of B.A.S.S." Scott is also quoted in this book as saying that:"George W. told me that outside his father and family, the two men who had the most profound effect on his life were Billy Graham and Ray Scott. One had taught him about faith and the other about bass fishing."

Ray Scott's claim to enjoy a special connection with the Bush family is not mere braggadocio. Former President Bush wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal in January 1996 criticizing the WSJ for publishing its December 13, 1995, article about the B.A.S.S. case and its obvious merit.

* Dees has other curious ties to right-wingers, perhaps most notably with Edward Carnes, current chief judge of the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. While chief of the Capital Punishment Division in the Alabama Attorney General's Office, Carnes earned the nickname "Death Penalty Ed." Carnes' background was as a solid opponent of civil rights, but Dees pushed for his elevation to the Eleventh Circuit anyway. From an article titled "King of Fearmongers," at the Weekly Standard:

Dees further alienated opponents of the death penalty—and Southern liberals in general—by successfully lobbying the Senate in 1992 to confirm George H. W. Bush’s nomination of Edward Carnes, head of the capital-punishment unit of the Alabama attorney general’s office and a leading death-penalty advocate, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. “He was up in Washington staying at the Four Seasons Hotel [in Georgetown] and lobbying Congress every day,” recalls Stephen B. Bright, a Yale law professor and president of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, a criminal-justice public-interest law firm that opposed the Carnes nomination. “He was the great Morris Dees, so he gave cover to the Democrats in Congress to vote to confirm Carnes,” said Bright in a telephone interview. Bright’s Southern Center has a $2 million annual budget, with nine staff lawyers pulling down relatively modest salaries. “Their annual budget is $30 million,” said Bright of the SPLC, “and we accomplish more than they do with a lot less.” Bright called Dees “a shyster if there ever was one—Morris is a con man.”

Why did Dees push so hard for Carnes to be planted on the Eleventh Circuit? Sources tell us it's because Carnes gives Dees a favorable ear on the appellate court, that Carnes essentially serves as a fixer for the SPLC and its allies. Here is more on the nomination from The New York Times:

As the Senate prepares to vote . . . on the nomination of Edward E. Carnes to be a Federal appeals court judge, some civil rights groups are trying to dispel the perception of a split in their ranks on the nomination, which they say they unequivocally oppose.

But there is no question that the nomination of Mr. Carnes, an Alabama assistant attorney general, to succeed Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. of Alabama, who is widely revered as a hero of the civil rights era, has caused a rift among forces generally considered to be allies.

Edward Carnes

That rift centers on Morris Dees, the crusading Alabama lawyer and foe of the Ku Klux Klan, who since January has aggressively championed the nomination of the 42-year-old Mr. Carnes, who is often referred to by critics as Alabama's chief defender of the death penalty. It has been Mr. Dees more than anyone else who has kept the nomination afloat in the increasingly choppy waters of controversy.

Those who oppose Mr. Carnes include civil rights groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and figures like Coretta Scott King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Most cite Mr. Carnes's support of the death penalty, but they also criticize his lack of experience in other areas of the law and his efforts to limit inmates' appeals to the Federal courts.

Mr. Dees, although himself an opponent of the death penalty, says he supports Mr. Carnes because he is fair and progressive on racial issues. As founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which runs educational programs on racial tolerance as well as battles white supremacists, Mr. Dees carries weight in the Senate.

Perhaps that kind of underhandedness and manipulation of the court system, plus his lack of genuine concern for the rights of others, led to Morris Dees' downfall at SPLC. From a recent article titled "The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Everything That's Wrong With Liberalism," from currentaffairs.org:

The Southern Poverty Law Center perfectly shows social change done wrong. It was a top-down organization controlled by an incompetent and venal leadership.* It was hypocritical in the extreme, preaching anti-racism while fostering a racist internal culture and being led by men whose own commitment to equality was questionable. It didn’t care about listening to and incorporating the viewpoints of the people it was supposed to serve. It was obscenely rich in a time of terrible poverty, and squandered much its considerable wealth. Finally, it picked the wrong political targets, and focused on symbolic over substantive change. Each of these practices goes beyond the SPLC, and is endemic to a certain kind of “elite liberalism” that desires “progress” without sacrifice. It is the kind of liberalism recognized by Phil Ochs in 1966, and its chief characteristics are a deep hypocrisy and a lack of willingness to seriously challenge the status quo.

What the SPLC doesn’t do with its money is a problem. But there is also a problem with what it does do. The story here has been told many times: After beginning as something vaguely resembling a “poverty law” firm in the ’70s, and winning a number of important anti-discrimination fights, the SPLC turned much of its attention to going after “hate groups.” It pursued the Ku Klux Klan in court on behalf of its victims, winning large judgments. Over time, it began to track “hate” across the country, and it now has a 15-person staff producing “intelligence reports” on hate groups.

I know how the SPLC's fraudulent act plays out in real life. I've seen the impact it has on victims of injustice.


(To be continued)