there seems to be a
pattern of charges being
filed without merit
From the New York Times article, They Were Charged With Assaulting ICE Agents. The Cases Are Crumbling by Mike McIntire, Danny Hakim, Alexandra Berzon, Jazmine Ulloa and Lauren McCarthy.
The article is sub headed: The Trump administration has lost or abandoned hundreds of criminal cases against protesters and immigrants, a Times investigation found.
The article opens with: The New York Times found that the Trump administration has filed assault charges against more than 550 people who were caught in its immigration dragnet — far more than previously known. Of the more than 400 cases resolved so far, nearly half have unraveled: Juries acquitted defendants, judges threw out charges, or prosecutors withdrew them.
Today’s haiku is based on the passage: “There seems to be a pattern of charges being filed without any merit,” said Jimmy L. Arce, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago who served on a commission that investigated immigration raids in the city last year. He added that some defendants were “having their speech criminalized by the U.S. attorney’s office.”
And the article states:
In the half of assault cases that ended in the government’s favor, almost all were guilty pleas. The Times’s analysis of the 213 cases that the government has lost or abandoned found that:
In dozens of cases, court records and videos show that federal agents were the first to get physical — including shoving, tackling or pepper-spraying defendants. Many defendants successfully argued that the assaults they were accused of were actually acts of self-defense.
Judges repeatedly chastised prosecutors and immigration agents for misconduct including distorting facts and withholding evidence. Two judges found that agents purposely destroyed evidence, including ordering a defendant to delete cellphone photos.
Officers charged more than two dozen people who were filming or following agents, often while honking car horns, blowing whistles or shouting warnings like, “La migra is coming!” There was no allegation of physical contact with agents.
In more than 100 cases, prosecutors did not claim that any agents were injured. In at least seven other cases, officers’ injuries were caused by their or their colleagues’ actions. For example, a judge last fall dismissed assault charges against an immigrant, ruling that the agent involved had been cut by shards of glass from a car window he himself had smashed.
Sixty-five times, prosecutors abandoned or downgraded charges before hitting a deadline to present evidence to a grand jury or judge. Former prosecutors said that this pattern of rapid retreat was unusual and signaled that the cases should never have been brought.
The article also states: The Trump administration’s strategy hinges on a once-obscure statute, 18 U.S.C. 111, that makes it a federal crime to assault or forcibly impede a government officer. Punishments range from a fine to 20 years in prison.
For decades, prosecutors used the law sparingly. One exception was when the Biden administration invoked it to charge hundreds of people involved in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Prosecutors had a perfect record of winning convictions in those cases, until Mr. Trump returned to office and issued blanket pardons.
I am reminded of Martin Luther Kind’s speech in Memphis, the night before he was killed where he said:
If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there.
But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly.
Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.
Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press.
Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.
Where is the love?
Where is the compassion?
For crying out loud, where is even the sense of humor.
I recently took my place in the line in a street side demonstration to hold up signs and flags in protest of the ICE actions nation wide.
The group stretched out along over a mile of road and as cars went by we waved and called out and people in cars waved and cheered and honked their horns in support.
This one car came by windows open, music blaring and hands out the window.
But the fingers of the hands were raised in the middle finger we-are-number-one sign and the song blaring was rapper Vanilla Ice’s “ICE ICE BABY.”
We all looked at each other and broke out laughing and this one lady looked the line up and down and says, “well … it was pretty funny.”
Is there hope yet?
Looking up that quote of Dr. King’s I came across this from the same speech.
Dr. King said: I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.”
Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up.
The nation is sick.
Trouble is in the land.
Confusion all around.
That’s a strange statement.
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.
And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world.
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.
And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world.
One last time.
Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.
