Relentless Pursuit of Truth

Washington, DC (TLS). In today's criminal justice system, it is important to approach allegations with a few simple yet profound adages.

First, hold everything up to question.

Second, things are often not as they appear to be.

Third, when facing a mob mentality, take the opposite view to flesh out the truth.

Fourth, never assume that an arrest is to be equated with guilt.

Five, if something doesn't make sense, trust your gut and assume that something is amiss.

Six, constantly question your own motives and assumptions.

Seven, always be ready to recognize and correct your own errors.

Eight, always go where the truth leads, even if it leads to the unthinkable.

In the years 2000-2002, former Governor Ryan of Illinois began to notice some disturbing trends in the state's criminal justice system. Although as a state legislator, Ryan had been a law-and-order, pro-capital punishment zealot, as Governor he noticed some glaring discrepancies that were troubling.

For one thing, the state's attorneys seemed to be displaying an alarming cavalier attitude in the aggressive prosecution of citizens who appeared to be easy targets with little means of defending themselves. In short, Illinois was going after poor minorities in disproportionate numbers.

Further, the vast majority of these poor minorities were being found guilty and sent up for lengthy prison terms or winding up on death row.

A bit of personal investigation on Ryan's part revealed even more disturbing information. The evidence in a significant number of these cases was purely circumstantial and subject to an astute attorney's objections. The problem was that most of these particular cases had been tried by public defenders who simply let these glaring lapses pass by unquestioned.

And then came the most damaging information of all. DNA testing, which was at the time coming of age in forensic science, had shown several prisoners on death row to be totally innocent of the charges. These men were immediately set free.

Governor Ryan was so disturbed by all of these facts that he announced an immediate moratorium on the death penalty in the state of Illinois until a full investigation could be conducted into the practices and protocol of the state judicial system.

In all over 20 human beings sitting on death row were found to be innocent of the charges when DNA evidence was tested and presented.

What does this tell us about our criminal justice system in America?

It is not perfect, that's for sure. Mistakes are made, sometimes innocently due to nothing more than sheer human error.

Much of the time, however, a more sinister process is at work involving overly-zealous prosecutors who want to rack up the 'wins.' This win-lose mentality spills over to the officers who investigate and charge persons with crimes. The entire system begins to judge itself solely on the basis of the percentage of convictions per arrests. It becomes a numbers game like a baseball team racking up wins and losses based upon the number of convictions it gets out of the arrests made.

This mentality totally disregards truth and justice.

The result in Illinois was that scores of human beings were arrested, tried, and convicted by the courts and by juries, and sent to prison and to death row. The only problem was that a significant number of these persons were innocent.

And most of them were black.

My point is that in the pursuit of truth, one must cast aside all assumptions and question everything, particularly the 'party line' provided by law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys. This is not showing any disrespect. If they are truly engaged in the pursuit of truth, they will not mind being questioned and held up to doubt.

The mob mentality must always be held up to suspicion, merely because mobs tend to feed off of frenzy. There is a good reason why blacks in the South came to fear lynch mobs. The nature of the mob mentality is that reason is thrown out the window and pure emotion takes over. The result is that innocent black persons were sent to their deaths, hanging by a rope.

Black persons today can perpetuate a mob mentality that is every bit as dangerous as KKK lynchings in the past. We saw it in Durham, and we see vestiges of it in Clinton. While the end result is not a white person hanging from a rope in the woods, the mob of today has the criminal justice system do its dirty work by using corrupt politicians who will hang an innocent person out to dry, all in the attempt to appease certain groups for political gain.

This behavior is abhorrent and is to be condemned.

Having said these things, we must remember that truth often leads us down roads where there are big surprises. Over 20 black men in Illinois that were vilified, accused, condemned, and given up to be executed were found innocent when ALL the evidence was considered.

This means that many state's attorneys were forced to recant their vitriolic words used to convict these innocent human beings. And what about the juries who were sure these men were guilty?

Sometimes even those we are 100% sure are innocent turn out to have secret lives hidden from view. The Liberty Sphere is prepared to accept and admit our mistakes in those incidents. But we will never cease the relentless pursuit of truth, even in the midst of overwhelming odds.

At times a reporter, an investigator, an attorney must 'go with their gut.' There are times when your gut tells you something just isn't right when a unanimous chorus all around claims it has the truth. I learned a long time ago to go with my gut. When my gut instinct tells me something isn't right, then a thousand Huns with swords can't force me to believe that all is well.

If I am wrong, I will admit it. But if I am right, one innocent human being on the brink of ruin is worth facing down a mountain of opposition.

To my way of thinking, the absolute worst thing that can happen to a human being in this life is to be falsely accused, charged, and convicted, and having the entire community believe you are the devil incarnate, in spite of the simple fact that you are innocent. If I can prevent that from happening to one innocent human being, then I will consider my efforts a success.

Duke Lacrosse Accuser Goes Mum

Charlotte, NC (TLS). The adult entertainer/stripper/prostitute who accused three Duke students of rape and then changed her story numerous times is now refusing to cooperate with investigators. Her partner in crime who also formerly provided police and D.A. investigators with information is also refusing to talk.

This curious turn of events comes after a year of one of the most shameful chapters in American jurisprudence as multiple sources of evidence emerged proving that Durham D.A. Mike Nifong had no case and that he engaged in political opportunism at its worst in using the suspicious story of the strippers to conjure a hoax in order to get re-elected to office.

For the better part of a year, the strippers in question appeared to cooperate fully with the purveyors of the hoax. Now that Nifong is no longer on the case, and special prosecutors have been assigned to pour over documents and evidence (what little there is of it), the two supposed 'victims' are no longer cooperating with authorities.

This could well be the signal that the case is truly beginning to unravel from the perspective of the Special Prosecutors and N.C. Attorney-General Roy Cooper.

When an accuser who played up the role of the victim so vociferously comes under fire for contradictions, changes in testimony, making wild accusations and then withdrawing some of the accusations, and then goes mute, this is usually a fairly good indicator that the said accuser realizes that he/she has been had, that authorities are onto them, and that they had better keep their mouths shut so as not to further implicate themselves should they be charged with falsely accusing innocent persons and lying to the court.

We can also be fairly certain that the next thing we will hear out of these two sleazy characters is that they have hired attorneys and that all further questions directed to them by the Special Prosecutors must be handled through their attorneys.

If there is one single ounce of integrity left within the N.C. Judicial System, the Special Prosecutors will drop ALL charges against the three students and proceed with charges against the two strippers/prostitutes whose false testimony started this entire fiasco.

Is the Teacher Sex Scandal in S.C. a Hoax?

Washington, DC (TLS). The time has come to ask the question, is the teacher sex scandal in S.C. involving Allena Williams Ward a hoax? Has she been set up? Has someone 'born false witness'--the Biblical term for false accusations against the innocent--against her?

In no way does The Liberty Sphere seek to grant any excuses to anyone who has committed unlawful acts of assault--including sexual assault--against innocent persons, particularly children and under-age teenagers. Such perpetrators must face the consequences for such heinous deeds.

As much as we deplore such acts, however, we also deplore false accusations against the innocent and the loathsome horror of the possibility that an innocent person could go to jail and have their lives totally ruined on the basis of false testimony, trumped up charges, or a frame-up.

And these things DO happen in the United States of America these days, my friends--much more so than we realize.

Students in the nation's public school system are a far cry from the students of my day. Teachers in countless schools across the country fear for their very lives as students have turned violent and deadly. Discipline in the classroom is a joke. Parents obviously have not raised the present generation to be respectful toward adults and authority.

If I had said to my teacher what countless students say to their teachers today, I would have been permanently expelled.

Yet schools more often than not feel that parents have tied their hands in meting out discipline.

It is not beyond the scope of possibility that the charges against Ward were trumped up by young teenage boys in retaliation for disciplinary action. I make no accusation here at all. I do not even know the identities of the accusers. All I am saying is that it is not beyond the scope of possibility that today's students would so such a thing.

After all, this is an era where eight-year-olds have been caught with guns at school, 12-year-olds have had sex in the classroom out of view of the teacher (yes, they get help from their friends in distracting teachers while they engage in sexual activity), and parents have not come to the defense of education professionals but have instead defended their little angels, refusing to believe that 'any child of mine could do such a thing.'

So many factors in this case make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Allena Williams Ward is a child of Clinton, South Carolina--one of its very own, born and bred. Not only was she born and raised there, but she was educated there and taught school there. Instead of leaving home to to to college, she stayed home, in Clinton, and attended Presbyterian College, where she received her degree in Middle School Education.

Ward's family is well-known in the community. They are ministers in their church. They are described as upright, wholesome, honest, and outstanding citizens.

Clinton, South Carolina only has 10,000 residents. A home-grown girl WILL have a reputation in a small town, and Ward's reputation was above reproach.

If she were a dangerous threat to the town's youth as a hardened, wild-eyed child molester, it is hard to believe that somebody in Clinton would not have known.

Her friends said her life-long dream was to become a school-teacher. She would boil with righteous indignation at news reports of teachers who brought reproach upon the profession by involving themselves in sleazy scandals.

The allegations state that she basically had sex with these teenage boys all over town--in Clinton--population 10,000. She supposedly did it in the very school in which she taught. She did it in a motel in town. She did it in a public park in town. She did it behind a restaurant in town...or so the accusers allege.

And yet, not a single soul noticed?

In order to accept these allegations as fact, one would have to believe that not only did an upright, respectable Christian girl suddenly turn hot, but she would have to possess incredible skills of becoming invisible in a small town.

I have been wrong in my hunches in the past. But I have been right as well. I may well be proved wrong in this case. But so far, I smell a hoax.

MORE LATE-BREAKING NEWS ON BORDER PATROL HOAX

Washington, DC (TLS). WorldNetDaily News is reporting late today that documents obtained by the news service show ties between the investigator of the case in the Department of Homeland Security and the illegal alien who was shot by the Border Patrol attempting to enter the country illegally.

Special Agent Christopher Sanchez of the Department of Homeland Security was charged with the responsibility of managing the case and conducting the investigation that landed the two Border Patrol Agents in prison. Yet Sanchez had a history with the illegal alien in the case, dating all the way back to 2005, and even gave a border pass bearing his name to the illegal alien, allowing multiple entries into the country.

It was Special Agent Sanchez who testified that bullet fragments collected at the scene implicated the two Border Patrol officers. Yet, the weapons identifications ballistics analysis performed by the Texas Department of Public Safety on the bullet fragment held by Sanchez did not match the bullet to the weapons fired Feb. 17, 2005 by Border Patrol Agents Ramos or Compean.

The entire fiasco has led to calls for resignations by Congressman John Culbertson, R-TX. Culbertson has pointed the finger at Department of Homeland Security officials Richard Skinner and Elizabeth Redman as being among those who should resign. Add Christopher Sanchez to that list.

Thus, with each passing day the intrigue grows deeper. And the scandal broadens.

Read the complete WND report here:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54166