Judge: FBI Helped Frame 4 Men for Murder

[caligirl]

Source: san francisco chronicle

A federal judge Thursday ordered the government to pay more than $101 million in the case of four men who spent decades in prison for a 1965 murder they didn't commit after the FBI withheld evidence of their innocence.

The FBI encouraged perjury, helped frame the four men and withheld for more than three decades information that could have cleared them, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said in issuing her ruling Thursday.

She called the government's argument that the FBI had no duty to get involved in the state case "absurd."

Peter Limone, Joseph Salvati and the families of the two other men who died in prison had sued the federal government for malicious prosecution.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/07/26/national/a085338D36.DTL&tsp=1

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The perfect statement here in the article to repeat over and over:


"No lost liberty is dispensable. We have fought wars over this principle. We are still fighting these wars," Gertner told the packed courtroom.

[MidwestTransplant]

1. Let's see what happens when the Bush Admin. appeals to the SCOTUS.

[clixtox]

2. These are only four of hundreds...

If not thousands of innocent people imprisoned due to a law enforcement and prosecutorial culture of "fixing evidence" and lying. As persistent seekers of true justice re-examine questionable or suspicious convictions, hundreds innocent victims of our so-called "justice system" are finally being freed.

Part of the institutional problem is that these scofflaws, under cover of authority, are never prosecuted themselves, personally, for their criminality.

What a system! It certainly has a voracious appetite for poor and minority folks to consume. They are the most powerless and easiest to victimize.

Who cares!

Who?

[MrPrax]

3. Right said...

Add to it, the insatiable appetite of the 'prison industry', and the legalized brigandage of 'asset' seizures and usual white power freaks and you have a justice system that is anything but just and prone to covering up cover ups, just to hold on to it's authority. All of the elements of the justice system have to go along with it, so the whole house of cards doesn't fall down.

It's like the state and gambling; they are so depend on the revenues that they are forced to look the other way and apologize for the corruption and addiction.

[DeSwiss]

4. On further, the article says....

"A Justice Department lawyer had argued that federal authorities couldn't be held responsible for the results of a state prosecution and had no duty to share information with the officials who prosecuted Limone, Salvati, Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco."

Couldn't be held responsible? Had no duty to share information? Then what good are you to us? If you are a law enforcement agency, then you're responsible for upholding THE LAW. And to do that they had a responsibility to share the information. If it were a citizen under prosecution the feds ALWAYS argue what our responsibilities and duties are, but they think that they have none to us? The FBI doesn't hesitate sticking its nose in the state's business any other times, like when they decided to start raiding and prosecuting medical marijuana stores even while the states and cities objected. If they have no responsibility to states, then get the hell out!

I've concluded that the corruption at the federal level in justice and law enforcement is so endemic that it is no longer possible to salvage these agencies -- like Homeland Security, the FBI, the NSA and the DoJ, and that they should be totally disbanded. Let's just start all over. And run background checks on everyone before they're hired at their replacement agency. Even give the agencies new names. And no holdovers from previous employment. The experience they hold just isn't worth the trouble...

[Kagemusha]

5. The 'encouraged perjury' and 'helped frame' parts make the no duty part crazy.

Because the FBI was already deeply involved, just only in assistance of the side it liked, the side it knew was framing the four. I'd like to see how that argument stands up in a case of clean hands. This isn't it.

[ellie]

6. Now they have to do this for

Leonard Peltier.

[Barrett808]

7. Word. n/t