This Is A Good Idea

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner posted an opinion piece about a group called “Look Ahead America” lead by Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign aid.

The opinion piece notes:

A group fighting for the release of Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot suspects is urging voters to press candidates on the fairness of the extended jailings of many of those arrested after the pro-Trump protests.

Matt Braynard’s “Look Ahead America” is hoping to create a small citizen-journalist army that will film its questioning of candidates about those held, some for months.

“We encourage all of our fellow Americans to ask candidates for federal office the following question: What are you going to do about the patriots who are being politically persecuted for their participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol Protest?” he said.

He dubbed the effort the “J6 Question Project” and pledged to post the recordings on his website, which lists about 100 suspects who are behind bars.

The fact that these people are still in jail is a disgrace to our country. Our Congressmen took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. They are supposed to abide by it. The extended jailing of the January 6th defendants is in direct violation of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

The January 6th defendants have been in jail for more than a year. Where is the Congressional outrage? Where are the Congressmen defending the Constitution?

The opinion piece concludes:

Braynard’s group has held about 70 events around the nation to draw attention to the unusually long holding of Jan. 6 suspects arrested by the FBI, including many who never entered the Capitol but were seen in the crowds outside the day that President Joe Biden’s election was certified by Congress.

Several conservative members have also drawn attention to the long jailings, notably Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.

Braynard, in a statement Thursday, said: “For the last year, Look Ahead America has successfully held approximately 70 events across the country to raise the profile of the hundreds of Americans who have been politically persecuted. Now is the time to turn that public awareness into action by confronting candidates for public office and recording their statements on what they plan to do about our brothers and sisters who have been persecuted not for what they have done but for what they believe.”

We Need People In Office Who Will Defend The Constitution

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution states:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Sounds pretty basic. So why do we still have people who were sent to jail for their activities on January 6th sitting in solitary confinement that have not yet had trial dates or trials?

Yesterday The American Thinker posted an article about Thomas Caldwell (who is mentioned on this blog here.)

The article reports:

It’s become clear since the January 6 protest that there’s not a scintilla of truth to the leftist narrative that an insurrection occurred. Nevertheless, the Democrats have used this hoax narrative to criminalize conservative protests. In Biden’s America, conservatives will always be too paranoid — and rightly so — to exercise their First Amendment rights because they know that the crowd will be infiltrated by FBI agents acting as agents provocateurs. They know that if they’re illegally entrapped this way, they will become Public Enemy No. 1 and end up as political prisoners. And Julie Kelly has a heartbreaking article to prove that.

…If there was an insurrection, it was the Deep State against ordinary Americans.  And that’s where we get to Julie Kelly’s heartbreaking article about the horrifying experience one Navy vet (with 20 years of service) had with our government because he dared to communicate with the Oath Keepers about potentially providing security (a plan that fell through).  Notably, he never entered the Capitol, nor did he commit any serious crime.

It began with a nighttime raid fit for a drug kingpin surrounded by Dobermans and armed guards:

Thomas Caldwell’s wife awakened him in a panic at 5:30 a.m. on January 19.

“The FBI is at the door and I’m not kidding,” Sharon Caldwell told her husband.

Caldwell, 66, clad only in his underwear, went to see what was happening outside his Virginia farm. “There was a full SWAT team, armored vehicles with a battering ram, and people screaming at me,” Caldwell told me during a lengthy phone interview on September 21. “People who looked like stormtroopers were pointing M4 weapons at me, covering me with red [laser] dots.”

…Caldwell spent 53 days in jail, 49 of them in solitary confinement. He could not access his medication to relieve excruciating back pain caused by spinal injuries Caldwell suffered while serving in the Navy. When prison guards asked why he was incarcerated, he said, “I’m a political prisoner because of January 6.”

In prison, Caldwell said he suffered “sadistic brutality by some correctional officers and there was warmth and compassion, the latter by other employees and every single inmate.” His faith, he said, and the love of his wife sustained him. “I thought I would die in jail.”

That should not happen in America.

Is The Constitution Still Relevant?

A website called Becker News posted an article on Monday about what is happening to  the January 6th defendants.

The article reports:

The Department of Justice has provided one of the first documented concessions that prosecutors are withholding potentially exculpatory evidence in court cases concerning January 6 defendants.

Acting United States Attorney Channing D. Phillips suggested on Monday that this is the motivation behind keeping more than 14,000 hours of documentary footage of the January 6 events out of the hands of defense attorneys and the public in United States v. Couy Griffin.

Griffin, a county commissioner for Otero County, New Mexico, was arrested for Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building and Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building, on January 19. The prosecution sought to waive the defendants’ right to a speedy trial.

The defendant was released on his own personal recognizance on February 5, 2021. On March 18, 2021, the United States filed a motion for a 60-day continuance of the proceeding, according to the court filing.

Why would the prosecution want to waive the defendants’ right to a speedy trial?

The article explains:

The government’s reasoning on the continuance motion was that the Capitol Breach investigation was so complex and sweeping that it would “make the immediate legal proceeding impossible, or result in a miscarriage of justice,” the prosecutors argued. The defense called the prosecution’s bluff. The U.S. attorneys did not want to give the defendant a speedy trial because they have other concerns.

“The same day, Defendant filed an opposition to the government’s motion, objecting to tolling of his constitutional and statutory rights to a speedy trial. Defendant asserted that there was nothing complex about his case, which ‘actually involves pictures of [him] with a bullhorn on the Capitol steps,’ argued that the government had mischaracterized its own ‘logistical and manpower burdens’ as a complexity created by the case itself, and essentially accused the government of weaponizing the STA ‘to strategically manage which trials and cases it wishes to put forward to the public first’,” the court filing states.

The obvious issue is a complication arising over the matter of potentially exculpatory evidence within the more than 14,000 hours of archival footage and other documentary evidence related to the January 6th events at the capitol.

The article concludes:

“What is obvious now in hindsight is that the Biden Justice Department prosecutors sought and obtained felony charges in many cases based on almost no meaningful review of actual evidence about what happened; it used fear and hysteria to justify doing so,” Shipwreckedcrew of Human Events observes. “Now they are being pressed to provide the evidence that is supposed to support the felony charges they brought, and are unable to do so in the timeframe required by law. So they are abandoning the cases on the best possible outcome available—the least serious of all federal crimes, ‘petty’ misdemeanors.”

“Now that the DOJ has gone down the path of exchanging guilty pleas to misdemeanors for some defendants charged with felonies, it will become more difficult to not do the same for a much larger number of defendants where the facts are substantially the same,” the Human Events piece added.

The Department of Justice appears to have politicized the charges against the Jan. 6 defendants for effect. This is not consistent with “justice,” this is the weaponization of the nation’s highest law enforcement agency to do the bidding of the dominant political party.

The treatment of those who entered the Capitol Building on January 6th is a blight on our justice system. The protesters should not have entered the Capitol or engaged in behavior other than peaceful protest, but the way they have been treated is much more typical of a third-world country than a representative republic.

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

It’s time we started following our Constitution.

North Carolina Voters, It’s Up To You To Uphold The Constitution

The following is taken from Michael Speciale’s website:

On the November ballot you will be asked to vote on a change to the North Carolina Constitution. The change is to allow individuals who appear in Superior Court, in cases where the State is NOT pursuing the death penalty, to waive their right to a trial by jury. With the approval of the Judge, they will go in front of a Judge only. The question on the ballot will be as follows:

[ ] FOR [ ] AGAINST

Constitutional Amendment providing that a person accused of any criminal offense for which the State is not seeking a sentence of death in Superior Court may, in writing or on the record in court and with the consent of the trial Judge, waive the person’s right to a trial by jury.

To some, the proposed amendment seems benign. It seems like no big deal, until you look at the ramifications, the precedence being set, and the liberty safeguards being forfeited.

Next to our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms, whose inclusion into the Bill of Rights was intended to ensure that we the people had the ability to fight a tyrannical government, our 6th Amendment right to trial by jury is the next most important right that we have.

This right is another measure to ensure that we can overcome a tyrannical government because juries have the power to judge the law as well as the facts of a case.

What would be the purpose of this amendment? I can only reason that its purpose is intended to clear the backlog of cases. On whose backs will this come? The State would like to cut down on costs for providing legal defense to the indigent. Sadly, they will be the ones targeted because disposing of their cases by a Judge alone is generally quicker and cheaper than dragging out a Jury Trial.

Let’s take a look at a couple scenarios to determine what could happen:

   1. Promises and Coercion: The indigent defendant is sitting in their cell awaiting trial because they cannot afford bail. They are approached by an officer of the court and the conversation goes like this: “It will likely be months before we can get you in front of a jury, but if you sign this waiver, we can get you in front of Judge so-and-so in a week or two. He’s usually pretty lenient in cases like yours.” What do you think the defendant is likely to do? He wants out of the cell; he wants his freedom. He is likely to sign the waiver under the belief that he will be out of there quicker, and with a lighter sentence. It is not likely that all will go as promised.

   2. Juries have the right to judge the law as well as the facts of the case. That means that, even though you may be guilty of violating a law as written, the jury may choose not to convict you because they believe the law to be a bad one, or they believe that the law simply should not apply in your case due to mitigating, extenuating, or exigent circumstances. This is called Nullification, and a Judge is not likely to consider this.

   3. What about Justice? The powerful and the politically connected commit crimes like everyone else. Picture a Senator or other powerful individual manipulating the system by choosing to waive his/her right to a jury trial in order to get in front of a Judge that he/she knows, such as a friend, a supporter, or someone who owes a favor. Justice would not be served in this case.

   4. When the government gets their ‘foot in the door’ the next step is to kick it wide open. Think of the seat belt law. In order to calm public opinion when the seat belt law was being considered, we the people were told that this would be a secondary offence. In other words, we would not be pulled over just for a seat belt violation, but we could be ticketed for not wearing a seat belt if we were pulled over for another offence. The reality is that shortly after the law was passed, it was changed to make it a primary offence. Just like that, once this amendment is passed, after a short time I can easily envision a change making it no longer a choice in certain cases, but a mandate. I can envision the law being changed to state that if you are charged with certain crimes, those particular crimes will no longer allow trial by jury, but will be tried in front of a Judge only. Can you see it?

We are losing our rights by the day, and we should not just give them away. I voted NO on the bill to put this on the ballot.

I recommend that you vote NO on the amendment.

Representative Larry Pittman has released the following statement:

[…] Last year, all of us except Rep. Michael Speciale messed up on a bill
that was brought to the floor for a vote when some of us had never
seen it. It was heard in committee that morning and brought to us in
the afternoon session.

I really didn’t get a chance to study it for more than a few minutes.
Sometimes there are just so many bills in the

queue, especially the last few days of the session, that if you are
trying to study as many as you can as closely as you can, there will
be some you don’t get to study that closely before they go through
committee. So you listen to the debate and try to read the bill as it
is being debated, and make the best decision you can, based on the
debate presented.

On this one, there really was not much of a debate.
We were told by its House sponsors how great it was and how it would
enhance the rights of the accused in court proceedings. It was SB 399.
The whole Senate, and everyone in the House except Rep. Speciale,
voted for it. You will see it as a constitutional amendment on your
ballot in the election this November. I am asking you to correct our
mistake and vote NO on this proposed amendment. Thank goodness for Rep. Speciale for seeing through it and pointing
out to me how bad it actually is. I just wish he could have had the
chance before it was too late for the vote. I guess he didn’t speak
against it on the floor because he thought it was so bad it didn’t
have a chance to pass. Our District Attorney here in Cabarrus County
has also spoken out publicly against this very bad amendment. Please
vote against it.[…]

We as the voters have a chance to vote against this amendment. Many of our legislators and state officials are now speaking out against the amendment, saying that it takes away a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Please vote no.