Other Cases
Collateral Damage
A man that I helped was released from prison by order of the governor in 1996. This was after I proved in court the prosecutor who tried him had arrested his key witness the night before his trial started and had that witness hidden away in the San Diego County Jail. That same prosecutor told the jury, the defense, and the trial court judge on the morning of the first day of the trial he had no idea where that witness was, and that the last time he had located that witness the witness had been somewhere in Australia. Mysteriously, a manila envelope with no return address appeared in this man’s mail at his prison which had the NCIC teletypes between the prosecutor and the San Diego County Jail wherein the prosecutor arranged for the witness to be held during the trial. Upon complaint filed by me to the F.B.I. of a Criminal Civil Rights violation by the prosecutor for intentionally depriving the man of his 6th Amendment right to Compulsory Process, a full field investigation was launched. The F.B.I. concluded after interviewing the witness and the Sheriff’s Department in San Diego that had the witness testified he would have provided a complete defense to the technical securities violations charged. The F.B.I. filed a recommendation to the U.S. Attorney that the State prosecutor be indicted for a criminal civil rights violation similar to the charges faced by the officers in the Rodney King case. The U.S. Attorney exercised his discretion and declined to prosecute the prosecutor because over 6 years had passed since the civil rights violation had occurred. In other words, because it took us 6 years to find the evidence and argue the case in the State courts, the prosecutor got away with it.
At this point, I should clear up another misconception the public has. Prisoner’s have strict time limits for filing and appeals that are at a maximum 45 days. So, when you hear about a prisoner’s conviction challenged 10, 12, or 15 years after the conviction, understand that the prisoner himself is only responsible for a few months of that delay that were required to prepare the briefs. All the other time involved was while his case sat on some judge’s desk gathering dust. The stronger the prisoner’s issues, the longer the case lays there before a ruling is issued, and in many cases the prisoner has to file in a higher court and force a ruling to be made.
My Case
In another case