What Kept The Etan Patz Jury From Guilty Verdict?

Etan Patz disappeared on his way to school in the Soho neighborhood in New York, in 1979. He was only six years old. He has never been found, and there have not been many viable leads or suspects over the years. In 2010, a basement was dug up in search of remains, but none were found. There have been age progressed pictures, and another suspect, Jose Ramos, the significant other of a babysitter sometimes used by Etan's family, was successfully sued in civil court by the Patz's in a wrongful death suit. There was never enough evidence to charge him in criminal court.

In 2012, an emotionally unstable man named Pedro Hernandez told law enforcement that he had killed a child. Members of his church supported that story, stating that he had repeated his account of having killed a child since the early 1980's. As for the remains, Hernandez claimed he had put the body in the trash. He was finally arrested, and his case went to trial. Aside from a haphazard confession, seven hours of which were not recorded, there was no evidence. Hernandez did not even get the name of the child he allegedly killed, and because there were no remains, against which to compare dental records or DNA for a positive identification, jurors would have had to make not only the leap that Hernandez actually did the deed, but that the victim was truly Etan Patz. Suppose Hernandez actually killed someone, but it wasn't Etan? Would Etan get justice? Or would a killer still be free to commit another murder?

The trial ended in a hung jury, and the judge finally declared a mistrial. There was one juror who did not agree that guilt should be determined in an American court with no evidence. It is a bit disturbing that only one juror would hold out, resisting the social pressure to convict without evidence, but thankfully, at least one person was willing to demand that the judicial system work the way it was designed to work. Coercion of a mentally ill suspect for hours on end by police is not likely to result in reliable information. And why would seven hours of such a conversation not have been recorded, so as to be available to a jury, later on? Could the seven hours possibly have been erased in order to preserve the ability of involved police officers to lie their asses off and get the wrong man convicted, thereby closing the case? With so many open and loose ends here, that seems like a distinct possibility. The only other supporting "evidence" the prosecution had were a few disorganized statements from Hernandez's former churchmates, claiming that he had "said he killed someone." Great. If he had really made such statements; and he actually may have; why in bloody hell didn't these church people go to the police back in the eighties, when Hernandez told them these things? Not that the statements are evidence, mind you. In the real world, third hand information is called "hearsay".

Hernandez is still in jail, waiting for the mumbo jumbo experts who engineered this mockery of a resolution to a missing persons case to decide when and if they want to retry the case. He is scheduled for a status hearing on June 10, 2015. Hopefully, if the case is tried again, there will at least be evidence and compelling testimony which will lead to the location of Etan Patz, and allow his family closure. 

Private Message

Why did you kill him, Laura? Was he failing to plea properly, for your convenience? Did he insist upon a jury trial? Did you scare him into believing that his loved ones no longer cared about him? Did you tell him that he would never see his friends or his family again? How could you do a thing like that? He had only committed a misdemeanor, and had not even had the chance to put on a defense. Why did you kill him, Laura?

Did you suspend all medical treatment and physician's orders until he confessed to something he didn't do? Is the taking of another's life seriously better, in your world, than allowing a man to have his day in court? You're darn tootin' the whole thing is a tragedy for his family: just not so much for you! Was the cause of death even truthfully determined? It doesn't matter though; he was healthy, and you know you killed him.

When you ask for "privacy", a lot of us are able to see that request for what it truly is: code for a demand  for silence from the community about your misconduct. The only way to sidestep a thorough investigation, complete with reports of what you told him and how you threatened him is to push for privacy. Secrecy is always your best friend, Laura. You always want to hide your best work, but if you do something, you should have no problem standing behind what you do. Marshall County Kansas should be enraged with you because of this young man's death, Laura. If all of us, even your supporters, were given the choice between you and this young man, we would all have chosen him. His smile was beautiful, and will never be seen again because you killed him.

Derrick Deacon Is Finally Free

Derrick Deacon just got released from prison in New York, after serving almost twenty-five years behind bars for a murder he did not commit. After new testimony and new evidence surfaced, Deacon was granted a new trial. It took a jury all of nine minutes to find Deacon "Not Guilty" with the new evidence. Congratulations to Derrick Deacon for standing up for himself all these years, but why did he get convicted in the first place? It seems that the district attorney's office in Kings county, New York, didn't have the balls to go after a gang member who shot a teenager during a robbery, so police arrested a homeless man, Deacon, instead. A young woman by the name of Colleen Campbell saw the actual killer, and told law enforcement. While she did not know the identity of the actual killer, she knew who Deacon was, and that he did not commit the murder. This should have been sufficient, in the absence of any other evidence, to rule Deacon out. but not so fast......gangs are dangerous and notorious for vengeance, and homeless people do not put up much of a fight when coerced and pushed around, and Kings County needed a conviction, right? A homeless man is much safer to victimize than a gang member, so the prosecutor saw to it that Deacon was arrested and prosecuted for the crime, instead of the guilty party. When Campbell didn't want to convict an innocent man, investigators and prosecutors threatened to have her children removed from her home!

"Deacon's case raises troubling questions about how he was convicted in the first place. The Village Voice reports that Deacon was convicted after investigators coerced a witness named Colleen Campbell, who knew he hadn't commited the crime.

At Deacon's retrial, Campbell said authorities had threatened to take her kids away if she testified that she knew Deacon wasn't the killer, according to the Village Voice. Another witness testified that Deacon did commit the shooting, which was enough to convict him."......Mike Krumboltz, Yahoo News.

Since when does testifying in court, or not testifying in court, or telling the truth, for that matter.....equal child abuse or child neglect? This stunt of threatening the children of witnesses in order to gain untruthful testimony seems to be a prosecutor's ace in the hole, these days! Is this the true role of Child Protective Services, assisting prosecutors in the attainment of wrongful convictions by threatening to hold hostage the children of witnesses? That might help explain why caseloads are bursting at the seams, and why Child Protective Services isn't always available to the child who actually needs them! Taxpayers are forced to pay them to enforce the whims of crooked court officials! Sad, but apparently true.

Twenty-five years of an innocent man's life.

 

The Justice Community Wonders Why It's Not Getting Justice

In light of the recent shooting of a district attorney and spouse in Texas, this article was published on ABC News concerning the recent expressions of disrespect and violence toward law enforcement and prosecutors in the last year or so. Before I say any more, let me state that I do not condone violence, murder, or threats, and that I do not think that violence is an appropriate answer to the misunderstandings that have been mounting, for awhile, between the judicial community and the people they should serve. I think awareness and information are much better tools. That said, I also hope that the families of Mike and Cynthia McClelland will find peace.

Since the Declaration of Independance was drafted, the judicial process has been used, not only for seeking actual justice, but for more subtle means of "sending messages" to certain segments of the American population. The American public has seen, tolerated, and wholeheartedly accepted racist laws and policies, laws that have targeted the poor, sexist practices within the justice system, selective uses of prohibition laws to hound otherwise innocent people, and many, many more abuses of authority and justice. The reluctance of many courts to set aside or throw out guilty verdicts that are contradicted by forensic evidence that becomes available after trial dates is also disturbing. When the population at large begins to take note of criminals with more money and better lawyers experiencing favor in the courtroom, while poorer criminals, and sometimes innocent people, do not get proper legal counsel and are often found guilty of felonies, what do judges and cops expect everyone to think? Not that we haven't always had a certain amount of corruption within government agencies, we have; but since the dubious "election" of Bush Jr. in 2000, the judicial "war on the poor" seems to have become more fervent. Along with that, the economy has gotton less stable, and the number of citizens who have found themselves targeted by law enforcement for no reason and shafted by the courts with no recourse to competent legal counsel has increased. Also, has anyone noticed the number of misdemeanors that have turned into felony crimes lately? Not only does this put certain minorities in prison to serve longer sentences, it strips the targeted minorities of voting rights. Hence, the Fair Sentencing Act. When an entire population becomes legally disenfranchised, and everyday exchanges become criminal acts, the judicial and law enforcement communties should not be surprised at a certain amount of hostility.

Recently, I witnessed an exchange between two people, which; unfortunately, resulted in an arrest. While I witnessed most of the incident, I did not see a crime committed by either party. One of the "officers" involved insisted that I had seen a criminal act, and when I continued to tell him what actually happened, he became agitated and told me what my statement should be, informing me that I was about to "find out how powerful police in Marshall County, Kansas are" if I did not "cooperate". Verbatim quote, folks. He also threatened to go inside my house, wake up all my children, and take them away from me if I did not begin to make statements that coincided with the report he so much desired to write. Because I am stubborn and truthful, I stuck to my guns (no pun intended) and stuck to the truth. He got off his high horse when he ran out of threats, went back to the police station in his shiny police car, and wrote a statement that basically and unbasically isn't true. He even referred to yours truly as a "liar' several times. Lots of impartiality he expects from the court, I guess.

Later on, the district attorney, still lacking a written statement of events from yours truly, contacted me to tell me what I needed to say. I interrupted to her to remind her that the truth is more meaningful than her expectations of a guilty plea and the fines she was hoping to collect from the defendant. She became quite disturbed, and told me that she would contact social services and have them remove my children from my home if I did not "cooperate" with her..........! So; not only would I discover how "powerful" the police are when someone confuses them with the facts, I might also discover the consequences of refusing to read a "script" written by a crooked district attorney, rather than offering true testimony!

As it happens, I have been threatened by smarter, more powerful, and sexier individuals than this district attorney, so I promised her that I would be honest and never back away from what I know to be moral and honest. And social services has apparently been too busy with things that are real to come and visit me. But suppose I had taken the bait and drunk the koolaide? "We're gonna have your children taken away from you if you do not testify according to our script that we write for you in advance." "We're gonna take your children away if you don't say the right things to get your neighbor/friend/family members put in jail." That's a loaded threat. If this kind of crooked game is becoming commonplace across the country, it's no big surprise that prosecutors and law enforcement are having problems maintaining their own safety in their communities. Here's another example of the Marshall County Kansas district attorney's tactics, this time with a defendant. The woman was coerced into a guilty plea via threats to her children by the district attorney. According to the Marysville Advocate: "During court proceedings, Baynton’s motion claims, Kraushaar assured her she could file for a departure from the prescribed sentence for the crime she was pleading to, but after she entered her plea she said the attorney told her no departure would be allowed and that she must agree to consecutive maximum sentences. She also states that the state "repeatedly used the issue of the custody of the defendant's children to coerce her plea of guilty." The motion says her attorney "should have blocked this coercion and did not."


The defendant in the above case has already been granted a new public defender. If the court grants her motion to change her plea, that will indicate a lot of judicial and personal waste and aggravation just because the prosecuter is ungifted enough in courtroom strategy to threaten the children of witnesses and defendants whenever possible so as to avoid any real show of litigation skills, or as in this prosecutor's case, lack thereof. If law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys have actually turned a corner in legal strategies and decided that using the children of defendants, witnesses, and others involved in cases is the new forte in courtroom finesse, we can probably expect more anger turned toward the judicial and law enforcement communities.

Chance Hartner

May 28, 2010

"hey adkins how about i kill you if you get on my computer again"

......Excerpt from Facebook page of the youthful police officer who enjoys telling older women that they are going to "find out how powerful" he and police force are. In a lot of places, law enforcement is expected to be more mature and set a better example than this. It's also the kind of response law enforcement wants the rest of us to believe they don't want in their everyday lives. Why, then, do they exhibit it and force everyone else to live with it?