[News] Justice for Sale in Sean Bell, et. al.?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Justice for Sale in Sean Bell, et. al.?
http://www.amsterdamnews.com/News/article/article.asp?NewsID=86223&sID=34

by ALTON H. MADDOX JR.
Amsterdam News
Originally posted 2/21/2008

Michael Vick was prosecuted for slaughtering pit bulls. He was 
shipped off to a federal prison. Meanwhile, he is awaiting a trial on 
similar charges in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This is double 
jeopardy. When the defendant is Black, animal rights are taken seriously.

On the other hand, three members of the New York Police Department 
pumped 50 bullets into the vehicle of an unarmed Sean Bell and 
others. The three cops are about to walk away from a rigged and 
toothless indictment. Blacks have neither civil nor human rights.
These cops were never in harm's way. Two days after this inhumane, 
wanton and reckless shooting, Mayor Michael Bloomberg summoned Black 
selected leaders to City Hall to write a script to pacify the Black 
community and to exonerate the cops. Bloomberg had studied the 
pitfalls of the Koch administration.

Without blinking an eye and before Bell had been buried, these 
leaders were behaving like house servants who had been summoned by 
their master to sip tea with him in the Bighouse. This is the state 
of affairs in New York. No Cameras! No Peace!

Within the past year, this column has correctly predicted the 
outcomes in the cases of Henry Richards, Don Imus and the "Jena 6." 
The outcome in the Sean Bell case is pending. I take no solace in 
being a legal forecaster. Blacks were not allowed to lay a glove on 
any of these malefactors. A protection racket is afoot.

I did have help, however, from our revered ancestors. In "The 
Mis-Education of the Negro," Dr. Carter G. Woodson referred to Black 
leaders, in 1933, as "racial racketeers." This was seventy-five years 
ago. Their modus operandi is still intact today. Of course, Malcolm X 
had a solution.

During January 2008, the three assassins of Sean Bell filed a sham 
motion in People v. Oliver et. al. for a change of venue because of 
supposed, prejudicial, pre-trial publicity. This was part of the 
script. Predictably, the Brooklyn Appeals Court said that the motion 
was premature. The motion was a cover for the conspiracy.

Before demanding a mock trial with only a judge, the cops had to make 
it appear as though they had exhausted their legal remedies. This 
criminal prosecution was already compromised when no effort was made 
to secure a special prosecutor. After a defendant chooses a bench 
trial, a new trial judge should be chosen by lot.

In making the motion for a change of venue, the Detective's Endowment 
Association made Rev. Al Sharpton the primary, but not the exclusive, 
villain. Every time that Rev. Sharpton posed for the cameras, cops in 
New York City would add another notch to their claim that the 
assassins were the victims of prejudicial, pre-trial publicity.

The New York Police Department gladly gave Rev. Sharpton a permit to 
march down Fifth Avenue during the height of the Christmas shopping 
season. The media was an accessory. The white media encouraged Blacks 
to march down Fifth Avenue. "Shopping for Justice" became the rallying cry.

It is customary for an intermediate appellate court to deny a motion 
for a change of venue before the commencement of the voir dire unless 
the questioning of potential jurors would clearly and unquestionably 
constitute an exercise in futility. This is a rare occurrence.

No criminal defendant waives a jury trial unless the trial judge has 
given the defense a wink. In any case, where a question of fact is 
involved, a jury trial is preferable to a bench trial. A hung jury is 
not an option in a bench trial. A defendant needs an option.

Within the past thirty years in New York, People v. Katherine Boudin 
et. al. is the best example of a motion for a change of venue. An 
interracial group of revolutionaries, including members of the Black 
Liberation Army, were accused of robbing a Brink's armored truck in 
Rockland County, NY and killing a Brinks armored guard and two police officers.

The federal government opposed attorney Chokwe Lumumba's pro hac vice 
admission in order for him to represent one of the Brinks defendants, 
Samuel Brown. Lumumba was from Michigan. The government had described 
Lumumba as a "terrorist." His potential client, Samuel Brown, had 
been nearly beaten to death by policemen after the bank robbery on 
October 20, 1981.

Brown was paralyzed and, afterwards, was denied medical treatment by 
federal and state law enforcement agents. Subsequent to a federal 
hearing and appeal, I secured Lumumba's admission to the New York bar 
pro hac vice. After I filed and argued a writ of habeas corpus, Brown 
was given medical treatment.

The defendants then moved for a change of venue. Like in People v. 
Oliver, et. al., the Brooklyn Appeals Court found that the 
application was premature. It is customary for an appellate court to 
await the outcome of jury selection before deciding the motion.
In their second motion, venue was changed to Orange County and, in a 
fourth motion, venue was changed to Westchester County for Boudin. 
The defendants in Oliver et. al. jumped the gun and decided, 
prematurely, to seek a bench trial. This is suspect.

Out of a group of several revolutionaries, Boudin was white and the 
wealthiest of the group. The trials of most of the indictments were 
moved from Rockland County to Orange County but Boudin avoided 
prosecution in Orange County. Her fate became a class issue.

After most of the other defendants had been wrongfully convicted in 
Orange County, Boudin's trial was moved to Westchester County. Racial 
prejudice has always permeated Orange County. Those defendants 
suffered a mob trial. See the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dempsey 
v. Moore and the impeccable legal skills of attorney Scipio Africanus Jones.

The attorneys for Boudin included Martin Garbus, attorney for Don 
Imus and Leonard I. Weinglass, former attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal. 
The convicted defendants included Sekou Odinga and Abdul Majid. Most 
Blacks, committed to violent, Black struggle, have already been 
co-opted, assassinated, imprisoned or exiled.

Although the worst examples of prejudicial, pre-trial publicity are 
generated from trials involving Black defendants, it is only white 
defendants who are able to convince courts to change the venue of a 
trial. Compare, for example, the ill-fated trials of the "Jena 6," 
the "Central Park 6," Malachi York, Yahweh Ben Yaweh, Mumia 
Abu-Jamal, Wayne Williams and Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.

The "Central Park 6" resembled the Scottsboro Boys in terms of 
prejudicial, pre-trial publicity. Donald Trump took out a full-page 
ad in the New York Times demanding that these innocent boys be given 
the death penalty. Black and white public officials referred to them 
as a "wolf pack" and "animals." A change of venue was out of the question.

The most important decision affecting New York's criminal justice 
system was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2008. The 
case was New York State Board of Elections v. Torres. Party bosses 
attempted to ice or shakedown Surrogate's Court Judge Margarita Lopez 
Torres before her nomination and election to this judicial post.

Black and Latino voters are still disenfranchised after the U.S. 
Supreme Court said, last month, that its hands were tied. Party 
bosses select judges and, accordingly, judges are beholden to them. 
This arrangement puts justice on sale. Clarence Norman was a 
beneficiary of this arrangement.

The outcome in a request for change of venue in the Amadou Diallo 
case resulted from the assignment of a Black female jurist to the 
Amadou Diallo trial. A change of venue was necessary to remove her 
from the trial as an acting justice of the Supreme Court. Usually, 
these justices play to the commands of party bosses. This jurist was 
different, however. The PBA had a problem.

Black leaders are unable to connect the dots. The judiciary in New 
York consists mostly of Democrats. Black and Latino voters are 
political pawns. Special interest groups, like the PBA and the DEA, 
supply the cash to the Democratic Party. These groups enjoy a quid pro quo.


For further information call United African Movement at 718-834-9034.
See: www.reinstatealtonmaddox.net for "Black Congresspersons Kiss 
White Doll," and "UAM: Make-over or Break-up."




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20080221/9f6ab712/attachment.htm>