I'm a big fan of The Innocence Project, which assists individuals unjustly convicted of crimes. But I did a massive double-take when I saw that Janet Reno is on its board of directors. Janet Reno! She bears as much responsibilty as anyone for the child abuse witch hunt trials of the late 80s that claimed many innocent victims, including several prosecuted by her office, via the "Miami method" she pioneered. To my knowledge, Reno has never apologized for what we might euphemistically call the "excesses" of her prosecutorial tactics. But let's let two of her victims speak for themselves, via Frontline:
INTERVIEWER: At the moment of your liberation, had you been able to come face to face with Janet Reno and her prosecutors, what would you have said to them?
GRANT SNOWDEN: I don't have anything to say to them. I want to know what they have to say to me. I want to know what they have to say to me for taking my entire life away from me, 12 years in prison. I lost my children's childhood. I lost my wife, my home, everything that I ever owned. What do they have to say to me? They know they did wrong. They know they maliciously prosecuted me, and they sent me away for something I didn't do. And I'm- I'm not happy about it at all.
INTERVIEWER: If Janet Reno were to come into this room right now, what would you have to say to her? What would you ask her?
BOBBY FIJNJE: "Why?" That would be my one question. "Why? Why did you spend so much money trying to convict a 14-year-old kid? Why- why- why even try to place a kid that's 14 in a maximum-security prison? Why would you even think of doing something like that if you're a crusader for children?"
I assume it has more to do with her bringing in psychologists whose questionable interviewing techniques led to the overturned convictions of people like Snowden. However, to what extent was Reno aware of flaws with the psychologists' particular methods, and to what extent is she responsible for those flaws? Otherwise, from the information that was available to prosecutors at the time, it probably seemed that medical evidence and witness testimony supported continuing the prosecution of this case. Some relevant facts (e.g. regarding the reliability of the gonorrhea tests) came to light only later, as far as I know.
In line with Oren's comment, her experience in these very situations might lead her to be a very useful advocate and advisor for this particular group today.
=)
Maybe. What's Mike Nifong doing these days?
"Hi, I'm Janet Reno and I would be a good addition to the board because I've put many innocent people behind bars"?!?
The Innocence Project is no doubt a valuable resource for wrongly-convicted people who fit its stereotype of people oppressed by the criminal justice system (black people, poor people, etc.).
But my guess is that it will often turn a deaf ear to cases in which prosecutors railroad supposedly "privileged" people like the Duke Lacrosse players. That assumption is based on Peter Neufeld's disgraceful remarks, the Project's failure to speak out against Nifong's wrongdoing, the presence of Janet Reno on its board, and the fact that a North Carolina state judge tied to it defended Nifong as he was being subject to disbarment proceedings.
What an evil B**ch she was!!
As for the Innocence Project, they say that in a significant numbers of cases, they have not only exonerated a wrongfully convicted person, they have actually identified the correct offender. Much as I'd like, I can't argue with that. I don't think every case they champion is as open-and-shut as some of the physical evidence (DNA) cases they correct. But I guess no one's perfect.
It certainly depends on the crime. False acquittal of a serial killer who goes on to kill again is pretty costly; false conviction of a jaywalker is pretty cheap.
With Waco, I pretty much have a standing rule that I have no sympathy for people who fight back when the cops show up at their door. The place to protect your rights is in the court room, not behind the barrel of a gun. This isn't even a situation where you can say that the people in the Branch Davidian compound were confused and thought that someone was breaking into their home. They had plenty of time to surrender peacefully and if they did so, they would all be alive today. Instead they started a fire fight with police officers. In the end, the government will always have bigger guns than you and if you try shooting at them, you are basically deciding to commit suicide by cop.
With regard to Elian Gonzalez, I don't see anything wrong going into the house with overwhelming force. You can't exactly send one or two patrolmen to go pick up a kid in the middle of a giant protest and expect things to go smoothly. As it was executed, no one got hurt and this is almost certainly because the SWAT Team members that were in were well trained and prepared for the raid.
Unless that jaywalker is repeatedly gang-raped in prison before being murdered.
Your attempt at being too clever by half fails.
I refer to my comment from the last go-around on who is to blame for the Satanic sex abuse hysteria:
The co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, Peter Neufeld, responded to criticism of Michael Nifong's baseless prosecution of the Duke Lacrosse players, by claiming that "the absence of evidence [of guilt] is not the same as evidence of absence."
The Innocence Project is no doubt a valuable resource for wrongly-convicted people who fit its stereotype of people oppressed by the criminal justice system (black people, poor people, etc.).
But my worry is that it will often turn a deaf ear to cases in which prosecutors railroad supposedly "privileged" people like the Duke Lacrosse players. (Even "privileged" people can be railroaded, and if they can be railroaded, it sets a bad precedent for people with fewer resources and means to fight back).
My worry is based on Peter Neufeld's disturbing remarks, the Project's failure to speak out against Nifong's wrongdoing, the presence of Janet Reno on its board, and the fact that a North Carolina state judge tied to it apparently defended Nifong as he was being subject to disbarment proceedings.
Rubbish. When an innocent person is convicted, it's a tragedy, yes, but it only hurts that one person. When a criminal goes free, it undermines our entire justice system, because it feeds the liberal claims that our police arrest innocent people, which leads to perversions like the "Innocence Project" and "fair trials" for terrorists captured on the battlefield.
Partial transcript of one surviving videotape from one case is here, commented upon by a lawyer for one of Reno's targets.
Are there flaws in the interview? I'd say it is intuitively obvious that the "expert" is manipulating and intimidating the child to "remember" things that never happened. And I'd say that most any reasonable person except Reno and like minded witch hunting fanatics would conclude much the same.
If anybody deserves to serve time for child abuse, it is Reno and her "experts". Whether or not she knew what those charlatans were doing, she had a duty to know.
I can't find too much technically wrong with the Elian Gonzalez snatch, but I do have a question for the folks who are defending Janet M. Reno and Waco: what flavor is today's Kool Ade?
/snark
Tell that to the people who are injured when the criminal goes out and commits additional crimes.
I pretty much have a standing rule that when you stage a armed assault over the vague possibility that a victimless crime might have been committed, and go in guns blazing, you deserve to end up a bullet riddled corpse. But that's just me, I never did buy into this notion that a badge gives you the right to commit murder without worrying about people defending themselves.
It's especially disgusting that Reno claimed that part of the reason for the government investing so much energy in seizing the compound is that there were reports of child abuse. We sure as heck made those children better off, huh?
So you are saying that the people who were rounded up and murdered at Auschwitz weren't REALLY murdered for being Jwish, or Roma, they were murdered because they were committing child abuse and polygamy and then started shooting at the police who came to arrest them? Pardon me while I get sick.
As I'm sure you know, what the Innocence Project claims is that their post-conviction DNA testing has found on occasion the correct match in justice system databases. I don't like their self-righteous posturing either, and they certainly overstate the so-called failings of some cases (example? The Davis case from Georgia on their web site), but their idea of testing DNA samples with science unavailable at the time of original trial sounds good to me, and if they find compelling evidence of someone else's guilt at the same time that they exonerate some poor dumb SOB in jail for something he/she didn't do, why would anyone complain about that?
If their testing were somehow flawed, the samples contaminated, like that, don't you think prosecutors would be screaming, instead of co-operating with the testing? Or, if there really is some fault with the testing, i'd certainly be interested in hearing about that.
Yeah, like those 23 children who got burned to death at Waco. They definitely had it coming! But of course dear old Janet might have saved a couple of teen-aged girls from a 'fate worse than death,' so that makes everything OK.
"We had to destroy the children in order to save them."
That's a pretty nasty word to be calling people.
2. When the Davidians figured out that the BATF was in town to investigate them, they extended an invitation for them to come over peacefully and conduct a search. Said invitation only resulted in the plans for a armed assault being accelerated.
3. The charges of child abuse and polygamy came up after the initial raid, reportedly because the agents knew those were Reno's hot buttons.
Pardon me while I get sick over people who drink the government's koolaid after murderous atrocities.
And I'm pretty sure (but not 100%) that Texas law explicitly states somewhere in their Penal Code that a citizen does have the right to use deadly force against a police officer if the officer initiates *unprovoked* violence against the citizen.
The use of force to resist an arrest or search is justified:
(1) if, before the actor offers any resistance, the peace officer (or person acting at his direction) uses or attempts to use greater force than necessary to make the arrest or search; and
(2) when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the peace officer's (or other person's) use or attempted use of greater force than necessary.
And what has Texas law got to do with this raid/assault? It was an FBI operation. Janet Reno was acting under cover of Federal law; she was a Federal employee! Got it? Jeeees!
Of course it's possible that the cultists started the fire; it's also possible that it started by accident. But either way, the blood of those children is still on the Government's hands because they callously escalated trivial allegations of nonviolent crime into a deadly confrontation. Don't forget that the whole thing started as a BATF publicity stunt.
This sounds like the Catholic bishops who blamed their subordinates abuse of kids on psychologists.
I see. So if someone enters your property guns blazing, you have to check their IDs before defending yourself. If they are from the State of Texas, go ahead and shoot them; if they are Feds, bend over.
The point is that reasonable people (in this case, the Texas Legislature) believe that ordinary citizens do have a basic, God-given right to defend themselves against unprovoked attacks from rogue cops. It's not just wild-eyed anarchist Libertarians like me who feel that way.
In other words, I was trying to make a moral argument, not a legal argument. ... Oh, and by the way: Where in the Constitution is the Federal Government authorized to investigate allegations of statutory rape?
As I understand the chain of events, the BATF was looking to suffer badly at it's budget hearings, due to exposure of their participation in the "Good old boy's roundup", a sort of jamboree for racists. So they picked out a conveniently unappetizing patsy, and planned a spectacular armed raid on "dangerous cultists", timed for maximum media exposure right at budget time. Only to blow it big time, and end up having to call in the FBI to clean up their mess.
The FBI were fed a line about child abuse, to get Reno's dander up, and proceeded to take no prisoners. And the rest is history.
Use of overwhelming force obviously bothers some people more than others. It disturbs me that Reno learned nothing from the Ruby Ridge fiasco (not on her watch but she had to deal with the aftermath). Why not sort things out man to man, not send three helicopters to fly over people's houses?
I cannot believe that anyone could say that it is better for an innocent man to be convicted than for the guilty to go free.
Training indeed, although I suppose the question could be construed as ambiguous (i.e., they meant how NOT to ask leading questions). The psychologists came around with their own garbage.
I do not blame Reno any more than any other prosecutor, though. A lot of otherwise sane individuals lose all trace of reason when child sex abuse is alleged. It is only the politicians (and DAs fall within this category) who are morally blameworthy for exploiting and exciting people's passions.
Start poking around and get hip to Bobby Fijnje's case.
That woman should count herself lucky if she were forced to walk the land in sack-cloth and ashes for the rest of her worthless life.
The moral argument was obscured by your legal citations. I have a feeling that your characterization of the Texas legislature as being composed of reasonable people stretches the meaning of reasonable, nonetheless, the attack by the FBI and Janet Reno was absolutely a gross misuse of force and a despicable example prosecutorial misconduct. Gonzalez is a saint compared to Reno and she walked scot free while Gonzalez has lost his career. There was absolutely no justification to make a forceable entry. A long waiting game was a very viable option. But we know that the controlling personality of typical law enforcement types (including prosecutors) won't allow for any defiance of their power. "YOU MUST OBEY ME" is their over-riding principal, and leads very often to bad but preventable outcomes.
Question: How many (if any) of the Assistant Attorneys that Gonzalez got fired were hired under Reno's tenure? Just asking.
I don't think so, but there is a principle made to order here:
I would rather see ten guilty men go free than see a single innocent unjustly imprisoned.
The person with that job is called "the prosecutor".
Carry on.
I don't usually quote myself from other threads but this seems opportune:
I have nothing to say about Elian Gonzalez, although I expect others do.
great, but that wasn't the issue in the duke case, as neufeld should have known. heck, i knew it just from reading media reports.
there wasn't merely an absence of evidence, there was a LOT of evidence that pointed not just towards reasonable doubt but towards "this case stinks to hell and they almost certainly DIDN'T do it"
iow, long before nifong finally gave up, there were tons of factors that screamed that the "victim" was a crazy lying idiot, and that the guys didn't rape her.
So you are saying that the people who were rounded up and murdered at Auschwitz weren't REALLY murdered for being Jwish, or Roma, they were murdered because they were committing child abuse and polygamy and then started shooting at the police who came to arrest them? Pardon me while I get sick.
Yankev, I demand that you apologize for referring to Jewish people as child abusers and polygamists. Your insults closely mirror Adolf Hitler's epithets from the 1930s.
Ah, but the federal agents were getting "fatigued" after 51 days of siege!
Makes me think of Flavius Silva and Legio X at Masada.
Or Tiberius Gracchus in Spain, laying siege to a city where the city fathers told him they had 10 years of food stockpiled... and he retorted, "Fine, we'll take you in the 11th year."
And hey... neither Silva nor Gracchus had helicopters flying in cheesburgers and milkshakes for the troops every day.
RE: Let's Not Forget...
"Why would you even think of doing something like that if you're a crusader for children?" -- BOBBY FIJNJE, as cited by David B.
...how much she cared for all the dead children from the Waco Massacre.
There's no need for Bobby F. to ask the question, "Why?" It's blatantly obvious to the reasonably prudent individual that Janet Reno doesn't care one iota ABOUT children, except that she should make her career on their pain, blood and corpses.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out....even though it takes 30 years after Janet Reno is dead. But history will remember her accurately.]
Also, what is a 'false acquittal'? If the government cannot prove a case, then the defendant should walk regardless of factual guilt. I can protect myself and my family from predatory criminals. It is much harder to protect oneself against the government. That is why criminal trials are weighed the way that they are.
It seems that they had actually killed more people than they rescued. Tom Clancy even mentions it in his Jack Ryan series novel, The Sum of All Fears; published in 1991.
i probably shouldn't have mentioned it either...and I did have to look it up, so it's not like I was immediately offended. No harm, no foul.
I have always (cynically) suspected that at least some of the DNA-based exonerations are actually ID'ing contaminants, since evidence handling protocol 20 years ago wasn't exactly pristine. But I can't find any substantiation, and I can't argue if they get a hit out of DOJ or state felon databases. Lately, they're using their poster children to hammer eyewitness identifications in toto. See the Davis case on the Innocence Project web site.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1242.php
and then read the GSC decision. Hard to believe they're talking about the same incident.
http://www.gasupreme.us/pdf/s07a1758.pdf
Sorry, don't know how I got here from funny comments about the BIG WOMAN, as we used to call her in Miami. Actually, there was another adjective between Big &Woman, but I just chided you for bad language.
JC
Seventh Day Adventists look forward to the persecution because it will affirm their belief that the end of the world is fast approaching. However, the Branch Davidians viewed such end time with dread and chose to stock up with food, guns, and ammo to withstand a siege by the U.S. government. When the ATF and FBI surrounded the Branch Davidians' compound at Waco, it was as if the final prophecies of Revelation were being fulfilled.
Either the Feds were too stupid to do their homework on "end time" theology or they deliberately ignored it and decided to eliminate the Branch Davidian sect under the guise of rescuing children. All the Feds had to do was stand down and "retreat" for a lengthy period of time until the Branch Davidians let their guard down and resumed their daily routine in which case the Feds could have quickly secured the compound without loss of a single life. Janet Reno is not stupid and I know there was a Seventh Day Adventist theologian at the scene at all times advising the Feds what the Branch Davidians were thinking and how the Feds could defuse the situation. Instead, the Feds set up cross firing lines and executed everyone who tried to escape the fiery inferno.
The analogy fails. The "Innocence Project" is not the same as the public defender. If there is some dot org bent on reversing improper convictions, there should also be a dot org bent on reversing improper acquittals.
Right?
They must have "remembered" a divine revelation of that "fact", since Weaver's trial began after the siege started and didn't end until almost three months after the Waco compound burned down.
There sure is: Death Wish.
In the Fed's defense at that situation, only half or less of the 'seals' had been opened under that belief system.
That's not to say their actions were intelligent, but more idiotic from a "send heavily armed military forces against a bunch of paranoid isolationists over tax violations and possible but unsubstantiated child abuse", rather than the "send people against cultists". I'm willing to wager Reno would have had run into some issues if she encountered a bunch of (evidently justly) paranoid survivalist gun owners who happened to be agnostic and decided to send in the armed forces. There's just a certain issue of cross purpose when sending in military folk on one hand and trying to get a person to pay money they owe or protect children standing nearby. Military people are great at killing Y and anything including X within a couple dozen feet, stopping anything with a certain aspect from getting within a few dozen yards of location Z, and similar goals. Note that there's a rather problematic difference between those exceptional capabilities and the ability to get Y to pay back taxes or protect X.
Uthaw wrote back What about the people who are injured when a real criminal evades justice because some other person was convicted and then strikes again?
It is an absolute mathematical certainty that, given that a crime was committed, it is strictly better to acquit the guilty than to convict the innocent. In the former case, you do indeed have a criminal "out on the streets", in a position to commit more crime. In the latter case, however, you also have the criminal out on the streets PLUS the added injustice of putting an innocent man behind bars.
Avoiding wrongful conviction has just as much to do with keeping the streets safe (by convicting the right people) as the oft-cited (and wholly laudable) goal of not punishing the innocent.
But you knew that already.
There was no analogy. The office of prosecutor remains. The office of the prosecutor is the government funded dot org bent on going after bad guys. If he can't get around the fifth, he should have done a better job the first time.
This is just a guess based on your posts, but you chose your name to demonstrate your support for repealing the 22nd Amendment and electing Bill Clinton president every four years, right?
Even with contaminated DNA, if markers of the suspect are absent it proves that the suspect made no contribution to the DNA. Contamination can only add markers, it cannot take them away.
This is just a guess based on your posts, but you chose your name to demonstrate your support for repealing the 22nd Amendment and electing Bill Clinton president every four years, right?
I chose "Gaius Marius" because it shares the same initials as General Motors.
There was no reason for the waiting game because the feds could have sent two agents to knock on the door and ask to inspect the premises. There was no reason for an armed assault. Even if the Branch Dividians were a bunch of kooks, they showed no signs of a violent threat before the raid. The Feds could have backed off at anytime during the siege, the Davidians could have been tracked down later if necessary.
As soon as I heard the first news about the raid (day one), I knew that the people in the compound would wind up dead. I happened to have lived near Oakland, CA at the time of Jonestown and the similarities were obvious. Unfortunately, not to the Feds.
The Federal Government - especially the DoJ - is a blunt and destructive tool. This is excellent when turned against our enemies, but loathsome when used against American citizens.
I find you last post very interesting. I never really understood the mindset operating inside the compound at Waco.
Prior to the incident, there was rumor in law enforcement that ATF was going to be reduced to a civil tax revenue agency, and that the FBi was going absorb ATF's criminal responsibility (mainly firearms) &investigative personnel. The talk was that ATF's management planned - maybe better described as they took advantage of an existing investigation - the Waco thing as a big splash of publicity for ATF, preventing the power grab by the FBI. Thus the media circus atmosphere of the beginning of the raid. Once the first Federal agent died, there was no way the government would back off what was in their view a crime scene, still occupied by homicide suspects, who remained armed and, if surrounded, not in custody. Eventually, the inability of either side to grasp the logic of the other made an unhappy ending inevitable. There was obviously poor decision making by the Feds, and the debacle was probably unavoidable once the first shots were fired. This is not to release the armed adults inside from culpability either.
BTW, this description of what happened is far from universally accepted, even among law enforcement types. just like the posts here, there remains substantial disagreement about who bears responsibility for the deaths, the ATF agents who showed up for a meeting, got briefed and just did their jobs as it was explained to them, unaware of what they were walking into, or the poor people inside who, if Gaius is right, thought they were at the cusp of the 2nd coming.
Pretty depressing no matter which way you see it.
the "latest 'cultist' bruhaha, where four hundred odd wives and children have been kidnapped and are currently being held incommunicado because of one unsubstantiated report of 'child abuse'" was done by Texas state authorities, not the feds.
And so far, no one has died.
From what I know of Reno, I'd be afraid she'd seek to overturn rightful convictions! She struck me as a cutthroat.
Chris,
That's not always accurate. If the organic material, sometimes decades old, was not dried and preserved correctly at the time of collection, bacterial contamination renders the original material unidentifiable (bacteria can actually consume the organic material). Mold can destroy the scientific value as well. As for contamination that introduces a new DNA, we are starting to learn that the most minimal contact can leave DNA traces. In the next few years, the test may be differentiating among a multitude of discrete DNA residue as collection science improves. Now obviously, if the DNA test of old evidence ID's a person not likely to have contacted the item (except via the crime itself), like a felon serving time, that is much more compelling than multiple unidentifiable fragments that might belong to 25% of the population, and probably came from the evidence being handled improperly back in 1985 or something. If that contamination falls outside the suspect's DNA markers, like 75% of the population, viola! it's not his DNA. he must be innocent. But suppose the detected DNA really belongs to that fat guy who used to check in evidence at the Police Department, before he retired to Arizona back in '92. I don't know this has happened, but I suspect it probably has.
The relative validity of analyzed samples is situational. A sterile swab from a body cavity taken under controlled circumstances has much more provenance than, say, a bloody shirt handled by a half dozen people, maybe sneezed or coughed over by a police photographer.
There is no doubt the Innocence Project has righted miscarriages of justice. However, in many (some? Who knows?) cases, I suspect (again - no certainty) that what they have done is raise serious doubt, not prove innocence. I guess what irks me is that they seem to use this "scientific certainty" aura to bludgeon law enforcement over other practices as well, as part of a larger agenda. Remember that one of the leading lights of the IP made his reputation destroying the value of DNA evidence in courts. His courtroom criticism of DNA collection, preservation and testing is often well founded. It would be unreasonable to expect pristine methodology in every single case that points to possible innocence.
Just a thought.
JC
This would be the name of a reality TV show if FOX were a quality outfit.
Everything to you is about Israel, isn't it. All David Bernstein has to do is post to get your frothing.
I recommend you take a look at Will Saletan's piece on Slate published not long after the event:
Seeing isn't always believing. Pictures don't always tell the whole story.
If you don't like the politics of the Elián case, that's one thing. But using the picture to make your argument is something else.
I have no problems with DB's post here. But I have to admit I found many of the pile of comments it provoked to be pretty amusing examples of "frothing."
Take just one example:Where, pray tell, was Elián's home? His mother was a refugee and dead. His biological father he had never met. He was in the home of blood relatives who had been caring for him for months.
It's all like that. The DOJ wanted ink and it went after that goal with the same grace and finesse it showed at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
It's not entirely Reno's fault personally, but she obviously didn't stop it and probably exacerbated it.
How valuable is this principle?
How about more than ten? A hundred? A thousand?
Just asking.
I would be happy to go as high as every single criminal rather than knowingly keep one innocent person inprisioned.
Like the line from Starship Troppers, it doesn't matter whether it's one or one thousand, you fight.
Safely Carrying Firearms
Rule Number One of Gun Safety:
1. ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
This is the primary rule of gun safety. A safe direction means that the gun is pointed so that even if it were to go off it would not cause injury or damage. The key to this rule is to control where the muzzle or front end of the barrel is pointed at all times. Common sense dictates the safest direction, depending on different circumstances.
In contrast, the way that Heckler &Koch MP5 submachine gun is being carried endangers the lives of the little boy and the man who's holding him.
One of the feds' more Orwellian moments: I remember thinking at the time, "So what is it? Architectural massage and aromatherapy?"
"Some people have mentioned her role with Waco and Elian Gonzalez. I never really understood the objection to how the government acted in these incidents.
With Waco, I pretty much have a standing rule that I have no sympathy for ...
With regard to Elian Gonzalez, I don't see anything wrong going into the house with overwhelming force..."
Uh, Yeah. Maybe in a tactical sense, but I don't think that's what we're talking about. Should the people in the Warsaw Ghetto never have fought back? In fact,is it true that government is "always right" and should never be resisted? Government should always use the maximum amount of force to achieve their objectives, because ... because ... it has a nice "chilling effect" on the rest of the sheep. Huh?
And given where Reno ended up, we can be pretty certain that she'll never be brought to justice for her abuses. So much for fighting it out in the legal system. This is a case of wolves getting in with the sheepherders, and the sheepherders don't recognize what happened. Still don't.
A nighttime SWAT entry, where justified, should be done with overwhelming force. But that's the kicker ... where justified. Hardly anyone believes that it was justified to go in that way. They were "sending a message" to the community at large ... not doing it because it was necessary to get the boy.
Abuse of power is not best dealt with by submitting to that power.
It may not be proof. But it surely is evidence.
1. The BDs were using lanterns for light, as they had no electricity.
2. The gas the government used was highly flamable.
3. It was publicly stated IN ADVANCE that using such gas would cause the whole compound to catch fire due to the combination of 1 and 2.
So, when they did that, they did it KNOWING it would result mass death. They killed all those people on purpose, end of story.
How it got started is only slightly less clear. Janet Reno shouldn't be in prison, she should be executed.
I suspect the family of a dead victim would differ with you sharply on that. As would the dead victim, if he could speak.
The LEO's even FED LEO's are NOT supposed to shoot unless they have a TARGET. They are not supposed to just shoot into a structure. But that is what they did. AND NOBODY CALLED THEM ON IT!!!
THE ATF FIRED FROM HELOCOPTERS into the BD COMPOUND. They denied this saying the Helocopters were not armed. Therefore the helocopters could not have fired. A very Clintonesque LIE. The people in the helocopters fired. AND NOBODY CALLED THEM ON IT!!!
At trial what were the BD's convected of? Using a machine gun in the commission of a felony!! THEY WERE NOT CONVECTED OF A FELONY. THe FIX was in.
NO FED was punished for ANYTHING that happened at WACO. Even the two ATF agents in charge that disobeyed orders and made the raid after they were told that the BD's knew they were coming were not punished.
If the web and blogs had been available then as it is now some justice might MIGHT have been gotten for what was done at Waco.
Full time SWAT should be outlawed. Dynamic entry should be outlawed. The militaration of the police should be stopped.
If you look at footage of one day or another at the BD compound, you'll see the wind is almost permanently extremely strong, flags out straight, not even flapping much. The prarie or the plains, I guess.
Anything remotely flammable would burn like a shingle factory.
Wood buildings with flammable gas inserted?
Heard one line of questioning which led to the info that when fed agencies borrow military equipment, they have to pay to have it fixed up before they return it. Unless it's a drug issue, in which case the military eats the expense.
Surprisingly, there was a report of a suspicious, drug-related heat source in one of the buildings. Might have been an institutional coffee pot. A hot water heater. But no evidence of drugs. In fact, at the hearings, the boys admitted they'd not brought the sort of equipment they would normally bring to a drug bust.
Reno admitted the report of child abuse was false. No word on what happened to the evil son of a bitch who wrote it. Pension's secure, is my guess.
Besides the double jeapordy problem, you also have the issue that the Innocence Project is not a government supported entity. Its supported by people who believe in justice. You want to start an organization focused on improper acquittals etc. Easy. Go do it. Tell people what you want to do and see if you can raise money. If you can't, maybe there shouldn't be an analogous organization because people don't see that as quite as much of a problem.
Sig wrote: He would absolutely not differ! In both cases (false conviction or false acquittal), the man that killed him goes free. In both cases, that criminal is on the streets capable of striking again. In both cases, justice has not been done for the victim.
Oh, and in the case of false conviction you get the added bonus of ruining an innocent's life and making a mockery of the notion of justice.
that evades the issue. the concept is better that 10 guilty go free than 1 innocent convicted.
that's because we know the process, knowledge, perception, etc. is imperfect and without a very high standard (beyond reasonable doubt) an unacceptable amount of innocents will be convicted.
however, the issue is not "knowingly" convicting innocents. the point is that it is a GIVEN that innocents will be convicted. there is absolutely NO solution to that. just out of sheer bad luck (not to mention lying witnesses, etc.) really really bad coincidence can cause somebody to seem guilty when they are not.
we accept that SOME innocents will be convicted , as long as the process is not unfair. or else we cannot convict ANYBODY because there is always a chance that somebody is innocent.
iow, like most aspects of politics and law - it's about tradeoffs.
but we have to accept that SOME innocents will be convicted OR just decide not to try anybody for any crime. because we don't have perfect knowledge.
so, again - what is the metric? ours is reasonable doubt, and the 10:1 principle.
we could raise the standard and the underlying principle (let's say 100:1) but where is the "sweet spot" is the point. surely, if we raise the standard fewer innocents will be convicted. but far far far more guilty will go free.
The license to use force to carry out a duly issued warrant is not unlimited (yes, RA, the ROE at Ruby Ridge were outright criminal) and the government should make every effort to take recalcitrant suspects in peacefully. The strategy at WACO was poorly thought out and even more poorly executed (although Texas seems to have done alright with the child-rapists). These errors are certainly evidence in favor of reforming the method used to apprehend suspects but I don't see any relevance to the principle that, if the law is to have any meaning at all, everyone must submit to its jurisdiction on equal terms.
im not sure if this is true, but it certainly passes the smell test and is consistent with my experience (both in law enforcement in general, and with my experience dealing with the feds and the ATF specifically)
you see this all the time in govt. agencies. fire depts, after the fire safety field got MUCH better (iow. they fight far far far fewer fires than back in the day) had to justify their existence - they moved into emergency medicine, etc.
i know tons of DEA agents, and many think marijuana enforcement is a waste of time, and many even support decrim/legalization, but no agent in his right mind would publically advocate for that... cause it affects the bottom line and their career.
and the ATF was kind of a 2nd tier "what exactly do they do" type agency before ruby ridge, waco, etc. although they got major 2nd (or 3rd wind) expost 911
i've even seen this with local PD SWAT, where they have to justify their existence (especially as a fulltime unit), so they will try to influence the criteria in which SWAT is called out/used, so as to make it SEEM like they are more needed than they are - in many cases for incidents that are better handled by patrol or other units.
this has even affected training. columbine is the perfect example. columbine was the grossest example of institutionalized police cowardice i have ever seen. another was mardi gras riots in seattle. in both cases (i am much more familiar with the latter, since i read the post incident reports, etc.), orders were given for street cops NOT to 'engage'. in the former, it was a "wait for SWAT". this is also how the academies TRAIN now. it's the politically correct training - wait for SWAT in cases like this. iow, "be a coward and let somebody get shot" principle.
did SWAT units and commanders affect that training? absolutely. in the old days, if a few people were shooting up a school, cops would have ran in, not be ordered to stand outside like frigging cowards. and in the aftermath, training changed to ASAP (Active Shooter...) protocols where patrol is again expected to do their frigging job.
ATF needs their piece of the federal pie, so of course they are going to want to overemphasize the need for them in various law enforcement situations.
Unfortunately, in these two cases, it wasn't.
Only those who were not The Right Sort suffered any sort of punishment. The fed casualties were part of the screwup, not any punishment under the law.
Nobody, whether it was the entrappers in Idaho, the DA who deliberately backdated the court order, the shooters, nobody.
Ditto, only worse (because there were so many actors) in Waco.
In addition, the double standard of the chattering classes was infuriatingly obvious. Media, columnists, politicians, the clergy who are constantly bewailing this, that, or any other injustice. Quite literally, they didn't care.
Even if the warrants were bogus, even if the DA deliberately backdated an order, even if the branch dividians never touched a gun or a drug in their lives and were perfect saints targeted by a vengeful government -- they are still required to submit peacefully to the jurisdiction of the court. There are no exceptions.
Unless there was no crime in the first place, as many believe about the cases of alleged child abuse discussed here.
I agree with you completely. Oren's post at 9:44pm does a much better job making my point than I did.
Here three vehicles respond to every EMT call: A (contracted) ambulance, a paramedic truck, and, for no reason that I can see, a pumper truck. It's nice to see all the gleaming chrome and the mysterious dials though.
I fully agree, almost. If they walk up and serve the warant like the Texas Rangers said they would have, or like the Waco sheriff had done before Yes you are absolute correct. The BD's were willing to submit to peacefully to the jurisdiction of the court. Why else would Koresh have been OUTSIDE and UNARMED? Why else would Koresh have INVITED the ATF to come out and search. They didn't even need a warrent!
BUT!! When you are ATTACKED for NO good reason. When the attackers open fire FIRST. When you are fired upon from helocopters. When the DUBM (&()*(*@&#^)&%^)&ATF has a 60second plan of BATTLE and NOTHING ELSE. When the BD's were on the phone to 911 trying to stop the shooting and 911 COULDN'T contect to the ATF. When the ATF expected the BDs to just roll over and beg for mercy. I am sorry the time has come to fight. Under Texas Black Letter law the BD's commited no crime.
Also the BDs STOPPED shooting as soon as the ATF asked for a truce!! Why did the ATF ask for a truce??? BECAUSE THEY WERE OUT OF AMMO!!!! WTF were they shooting at, that they ran out of AMMO?? Look at the pictures. No one was visible inside the compound.
When the LEOs screw up that bad they deserve to be shot at. It is the only thing that can stop them from screwing up like that. Dynamic entry causes one of two reactions. Socked so that you can do NOTHING or FIGHT like HELL. SWATs normal reaction when they were in the wrong and they killed people is "Sorry about that" and NOTHING else.
But according to you that is JUST fine. Get on your knees and beg for mercy. The
ImperialFederial Stormtroopers have arrived.If as a prosecutor you encounter a defendant who has a prior conviction for sexually abusing a 9 yr old, is currently married to a teenager, and 3 diff children are claiming he has abused them, with medical evidence backing two of the claims, are you really overstepping your bounds so far if you pursue that case vigorously? I would say Reno is clearly guilty of one thing here: accepting the claims from psychologists like the Bragas that their methods were reasonable. I'd agree she should have known better, now that I've read a little more about them. On the other hand, they were being presented as alternatives to a system that was already failing, and in a way that was probably allowing guilty defendants to go free and continue abusing other kids. Other psychologists and experts were supporting people like the Bragas. So although I blame Reno to some extent, at least I can see many reasons beyond malice, lunacy, etc. for her decisions.
Do others agree that we should take this as a cautionary about embracing new theories, but nevertheless that other changes Reno's office made with respect to gathering evidence from alleged victims were a good idea? Or is that issue simply too trivial to be considered, when Waco can be discussed again?
You don't have to be a genius to watch kids being manipulated into agreeing with what they had earlier denied and come to the conclusion that something is wrong. I would have to reread some of the reports, and I may be getting them mixed up with other atrocities. But in some of them, other factors like no actual access, were passed over as inconvenient.
But, anyway, Oren is right that if you are arrested you must submit.
There are two other issues here. One is that neither the Weavers or the BDs were criminals except for the conniving of the federal government. And in both cases, the feds shot first.
If you think, for whatever reason, that the feds intend to kill you instead of arrest you, there's no real reason not to fight back.
And in both cases, the feds shot first, hitting and killing some of the potential subjects.
You'll notice the feds, having gotten a bit of Weaver fever, waited out the Montana Freemen and the Republic of Texas nutcases. Nobody got killed. I'm sure some of the cowboys were disappointed, but life sucks, sometimes.
All of which is to say they could have waited out Weaver and the BDs, or, heaven forfend, not connived at making them criminals in the first place. They chose not to.
But you can't have everything.
I don't see how this history can be put aside and only a few bogus prosecutions considered against Reno as an adviser to the Innocence Project. Bogus prosecutions are supposed to be wrong. I read that someplace.