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 Marysville Advocate, The Nice Newspaper

There was a jury trial that lasted all day in Marysville, yesterday. The defendant, Keith Henry, was found not guilty on all charges. Since a jury trial is rather unusual in Marshall County, how come the Marysville Advocate has not given this much notice? There are always headlines in the Advocate when a defendant loses; why not when Justice speaks by exonerating someone who is not guilty? In fact, why isn't there ever much coverage of anything controversial in the Marysville Advocate? From the Keystone Pipeline to one of the school districts on the verge of losing financial solvency, (USD 380) there are certainly enough "good" topics involving Marshall County and Northeast Kansas about which to begin a constructive conversation. Instead, the Marysville Advocate only publishes articles about subjects that are "nice", and won't stir up much of a reaction from it's readers.

Yaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwn! Are Nice and Good the same thing? 

The staff at the Marysville Advocate should be ashamed of their willingness to smear an innocent person and let the truth go unheralded when that person is exonerated by a jury of his peers. Reporting when the county prosecutor gets her posterior parts handed to her on a platter actually makes better reading than the redundant guilty verdicts, and would serve to force the prosecutor to be more honest and professional and less likely to play on the internet all day.

Congratulations, Keith!

George Zimmerman Is Scared Of Vigilante Justice

George Zimmerman has been found not guilty of the second degree murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida, and now he is worried about vigilante justice. Why didn't he worry about vigilante justice before he confronted Martin? The media has covered a lot of material today about the verdict in the trial, and about possible riots, and racism, but there remains one question does not appear to have been properly answered by Zimmerman, or by anyone else. That question is, why didn't Zimmerman just leave Martin alone and stop following him when the police dispatcher told him to stop? George Zimmerman is not a police officer, and often enough, civilians who interfere with police officers, or even look like they might be thinking about interfering with police officers but have not actually done so, get arrested and/or shot, so why did Zimmerman think he was special the night of the shooting? That question was not properly revisited during the trial, and if Zimmerman had simply done what law enforcement asked him to do, Martin would still be alive.

Now that Zimmerman has been found not guilty, he should be getting back to work, which is probably a good thing, because there is plenty of ground for a wrongful death suit to be filed, against the gated community where Martin was staying with his father, the neighborhood watch that chose Zimmerman in the first place, and George Zimmerman, himself. The guidelines for proof are not as stringent in civil court as they are in criminal court, and there is a good chance that a defendant may be found responsible for wrongful death in civil court. That would mean that a good paying job would be essential, especially of the defendant is Zimmerman. Hopefully, vigilante justice will not play as heavy of a role in the future as it apparently did on the night a seventeen year old accidently looked like someone a neighborhood watch dude might not like.

Meanwhile, here is another matter that Florida should reopen: