Just the facts. YOU DECIDE.
I'm posting one question and answer each day on this issue. Share this with everyone you know. QUESTION # 2. What nation has the highest rate of conviction in the world? THE WINNER IS: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! The United States is also the clear winner of QUESTION #2. Of every 1,000 citizens who enter America's courts as defendants today, only 13 go free. A nation's rate of conviction is generally considered a good gauge of the fairness of its system of justice. The United States government's 98.7% conviction rate is a clear sign that the process has become nothing more than a conviction machine for all who are trapped within the system, with the exception of the very wealthy who can afford to fight against the stacked deck of a government prosecution. How much does it cost to fight a criminal charge? Government on the one hand has any amount of money it chooses to spend, and is armed with the blunt tools of secret grand juries (where the truth is rarely told), the power to seize its victims assets so they have no money to fight or go to trial, and the prosecutor can grant immunity to witnesses who agree to support government's case by giving testimony against you. This testimony is quite rarely true, and I have witnessed cases where government makes its witnesses say the exact opposite of what is already on record, and they get away with it. So how about the few who are wealthy and/or powerful enough a) to mount a defense against such a powerful bully, and 2) keep the bully from stealing their assets up front to prevent them from defending themselves? From seven years of working on federal criminal cases, I can tell you that the answer is shocking. Take the recent case of Raj Rajaratnam, who was charged with insider trading. He spent over $40 million in legal fees during his trial, and that does not even include the appeal. Goldman Sachs board member, Rajat Gupta, spent over $30 million so far, and the bills are still coming in. Bill Ruehle, CFO of BroadCom, successfully defended himself against a federal onslaught where government falsely claimed he had backdated stock options, but it cost him, "tens of millions of dollars," according to Forbes Magazine. (The High Cost of Mounting a White- Collar Criminal Defense, May 30, 2015) So what about us mere mortals when we are chosen as government's victim of the day? How much would it cost us to even try and fight against a false charge? An estimate by Duke University Law student, Sarah Ribstein, who studied several criminal cases, estimates that a trial of one week will cost the defendant approximately $1,000,000.00. Quotes from two criminal defense firms with whom I worked closely for defending a provably innocent victim of government attack were $1.3-1.5 million, so she's probably close. That is why the United States has the highest rate of citizens pleading guilty, and the highest rate of conviction of any nation on earth. Only the extremely wealthy can afford to fight the biggest bully on the planet, so they plead guilty in hopes that their family might survive the attack financially. This is wrong, and needs to change. Government must be held to the same standards as its victims, and when they break the law or make false charges, someone on their side needs to go to jail instead of getting a raise (as is the case today) and their victim needs to be compensated. We don't need a Revolution, my friends, we simply need a Devolution. Yes. That's right. A Devolution back to our rule of law. A return to our Constitution, but this time, let's get it right and make sure that everyone of every color, creed and social status enjoys the fruits of liberty. That should include the 25% of the nation who have been deprived of their constitutional rights by this incredibly corrupt system which has created 314,000 ways to deprive us of those freedoms and protections, and given prosecutors the blunt tools by which to always win against us, no matter how ridiculous the charge. A 98.7% conviction rate should be an alarm that justice and fairness no longer exist in our courts. Every American citizen should have the right to vote, the right to defend, and the rights enumerated in our Constitution, without exception, whether they've been accused/convicted of a crime or not. They're still U.S. citizens, still required to pay taxes, and must still have a say-so in how the country is run. Back to Rule of Law and our ultimate Law of the Land, the United States Constitution. VIVA LA DEVOLUCION! Howell W. Woltz, Author Justice Denied: the United States v. the People, and The Way Back to America: a 10-step plan to restore the United States to constitutional government www.justicedenied.com www.howellwoltz.com woltzh@gmail.com 540-529-8998
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Just the facts. YOU DECIDE.
I'm posting one question and answer each day on this issue. Share this with everyone you know. QUESTION # 1. What nation has more laws with prison as penalty than any on earth or in human history?: THE WINNER?: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! FACTS: The United States Congress has invented 314,000 ways to send American citizens to prison. One should keep in mind that the U.S. Constitution only allows the federal government to punish three things: 1) Piracy; 2) Counterfeiting; and 3) Treason; so 314,000 is quite a stretch. All other "punishments", by law, are withheld as powers of the States or the People, which is my point. Our federal government is acting way outside of the authority granted it by We the People,(and this 314,000 ways to go to prison does not even include the criminal statues of our 50 states). No other nation in world history has ever come close to outlawing so many normal human behaviors as the "Land of the Free". We might need to change our moniker from "Land of the Free" to "Incarceration Nation." There is already a not-so-funny joke going around about my home state of North Carolina, which once billed itself as "The Variety Vacationland." That was on our car license plates when I was a kid. NC's new moniker is, "Come to NC on vacation, and leave on Probation." I wish that really were a joke. Back in 2007, due to the illegal incarceration of Norwegian citizen, Kjell Bjerke, the government of Norway advised it's citizens when they applied for a visa to America, to not to even pass through North Carolina, due to the corruption of our judiciary at both State and Federal levels, so this really is not funny anymore, and unfortunately, the corruption has become nationwide. It's not just North Carolina anymore. The United States is the clear winner of QUESTION #1. No dictator, alive or dead, can possibly sneak up on us to win this category, as we are thousands of percent ahead of any repressive regime in history. Isn't it great that we're still number ONE at something? We've dropped from #1 to #43 in freedom (Freedom House Index) but we're now number ONE in ways to put decent people behind bars. Wait a minute! Could these two items possibly be related? But we don't need a revolution, quite yet....the system of governance outlined in our United States Constitution is still the most brilliant ever designed for a free people. The fact that the leaders of the United States government chose not to share the privileges of freedom with our poor, our wives and mothers, our black citizens, or our native American hosts for most of our nation's history was the problem. It was certainly not the system itself, but rather the arbitrarily imposed restrictions of its application. Today, the rights and privileges guaranteed us as a free people have been robbed in equal measure from all Americans, except two groups: 1) the very rich who have our politicians' ears; and 2) those politicians whom that elite crew has put in power to govern us. Both have exempted themselves from the laws, rules, healthcare, and mandates, by which the rest of us have to live. We don't need a Revolution, my friends, we simply need a Devolution. Yes. That's right. A Devolution back to our rule of law. A return to our Constitution, but this time, let's get it right and make sure that everyone of every color, creed and social status enjoys the fruits of liberty. That should include the 25% of the nation who have been deprived of their constitutional rights by an incredibly corrupt system which created 314,000 ways to deprive us of those freedoms and protections. Every American citizen should have the right to vote, the right to defend, and the rights enumerated in our Constitution, without exception. Back to Rule of Law and our ultimate Law of the Land, the United States Constitution. VIVA LA DEVOLUCION! Howell W. Woltz, Author Justice Denied: the United States v. the People, and The Way Back to America: a 10-step plan to restore the United States to constitutional government www.justicedenied.com www.howellwoltz.com woltzh@gmail.com 540-529-8998 This shocking report in The Washington Post sent chills down my spine:
"The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000." I've known all of this for many years and experienced it personally long after the year 2000, so these words weren't what gave me chills but rather the fact that this was all finally being exposed by The Washington Post. So how does the FBI -- this rogue agency -- continue in operation after this and other recent admissions of criminal conduct under color of law? Where are the hearings by the Judiciary Committee and the massive overturns of convictions illegally garnered by this tainted evidence and the even more tainted prosecutors who knowingly used it? You might be surprised, and when one learns a little history of this outfit, it comes clear.... In 1907, then-U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte (grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte) was caught using private agents to spy on public officials and targets of the Theodore Roosevelt Administration. Congress chastised the Administration for these acts. Undeterred, President Roosevelt demanded that Congress set up a "federal bureau of investigation," which it refused to do, pointing out to the president that a national police force was unconstitutional. It was unconstitutional in 1907, and it still is today, so how did the FBI come to life outside of law? The answer? "Illegally." In 1908, President Roosevelt created the bureau anyway, using another unconstitutional device known as an "executive order," which is quite common today, but like a national police force, there is no constitutional authorization for it. The Executive Branch cannot legislate from the White House, nor does any clause in Article II (Presidential Powers) allow such a thing as creating an agency without Congressional approval or specific constitutional authorization. Within weeks of the FBI's creation, agents from this rogue outfit were caught going through South Carolina Senator Benjamin "Pitchfork" Tillman's mail, and they've been breaking the law for the Chief Executive ever since. Tillman was an opponent of the Roosevelt Administration and was targeted for political reasons. Allowing such unrestrained power to be controlled by the nation's chief politician was a very poor (and illegal) idea in 1908, and it is a horrible one in 2015 after seeing what it has become. A century later, the current administration has been targeting conservative groups at the rate of roughly seven (7) Republicans to every one (1) Democrat according to recent Congressional hearings. If you think I'm picking on President Obama, I'm not; I'm picking on an unconstitutional agency, illegally acting under the control of a politician in the Executive Branch. For the record, President Obama's immediate predecessors, President George Bush's FBI and Department of Justice, targeted and prosecuted Democrats at the same rate (7:1), so its not the players I'm hating, it's their game. The FBI is a blunt political tool, which has finally admitted what I saw while working on hundreds of criminal cases over a seven year period between 2006 and 2013. Evidence is fabricated or falsified to match the desired outcome of a prosecutor's theory rather than the facts, in almost every case. The FBI agents are simply told what the U.S. Attorney wants proven (U.S. Attorneys are also political appointees of the President) and the FBI then does whatever it has to do to match or fabricate the evidence to suit what the prosecutor wants. This is criminal conduct on the part of not only the FBI, but the 93 Offices of U.S. Attorney all over America, and it must stop. There is no salvation for such incredibly lawless groups, especially ones which are responsible for wrongfully putting millions of Americans in jails and prisons for a century. How can any court in America now trust evidence from the FBI or charges from a politically appointed U.S. Attorney who knowingly uses this agency to pervert justice in our federal courts to serve his or her master in The White House? The FBI simply needs to be disbanded. As Congress pointed out in 1907, a federal police force is unconstitutional. It was then and it is now. As for the Department of Justice, which has also been created outside of our Constitution and somehow come under control of the nation's chief politician, it should either be disbanded or moved to the control of the Judicial Branch to prevent further abuse as a political tool. We did quite well without it for much of our nation's history. If kept, The Department of Justice could be used solely to investigate criminals in government.... which may actually be a constitutional purpose for it.....and no doubt a much needed one. This has all gone way too far, and it is time to get back to rule of law in this land. Yes. That's an idea. Back to Rule of Law. Back to the United States Constitution. We don't need a Revolution, we need a Devolution. Vive la Devolution! Howell W. Woltz, TEP Author of: Justice Denied: the United States v. the People, and The Way Back to America: a 10-step plan to restore the United States to constitutional government. Contact Howell at woltzh@gmail.com for speaking engagements |
AuthorBorn in North Carolina and educated at the University of Virginia, Wake Forest University and Caledonian University in Scotland, Howell now lives in Warsaw, Poland with his wife, Dr. Magdalena Iwaniec-Woltz. Howell is the European Correspondent for The Richardson Post and Chairman of The International Centre for Justice. Archives
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