Our Constitution guarantees us the privilege to force our captors to take us before a court of jurisdiction and explain why we are being held. It is known as the privilege of habeas corpus, which cannot be suspended except in time of war or insurrection. We haven't had a legally declared war since WWII nor an insurrection, yet Congress and our courts have robbed us of this power for all practical purposes. Filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus today is like wetting your pants in a dark suit. It gives you a nice warm feeling, but no one really notices.
This constitutional privilege is important because Government has proven itself no better at prosecuting citizens than anything else it does today. The obvious answer to those who governed was to basically remove our right to challenge illegal detention. This suspension and other perfidy has led to America now having the highest prison population on earth and in human history. No dictator or tyrant has ever come close to the numbers of citizens held in jails and prisons in the "land of the free." That is largely the result of our no longer being able to challenge illegal detention. So how often do they get it wrong? Most of the time, is the answer, which is why it has been so important throughout our history to keep this right. In my own review of over 400 criminal cases, the prosecutors and/or the courts themselves violated law or the prisoner's constitutional rights in order to garner the conviction in every single case. In a Columbia Law School review of nearly every death penalty appeal between 1973 and 1995 (the year Congress basically outlawed our sacred privilege of habeas corpus with the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act) "courts found serious reversible error in nearly 7 of every 10 capital sentences that were fully reviewed during that period." In other words, the courts were reviewing for error rather than an independent person or body, and had to admit that they violated law and the person's rights in almost every case. If these guys and girls in black robes and pin-stripes get it wrong 70% of the time when they are killing one of us, how careful do you think they are when the stakes are lower? Since 1996 when Congress decimated "The Great Writ of Liberty" with the AEDPA, the granting of petitions for overturn have neared zero. People are now jailed and held until they cry "Uncle" because the prosecutors and courts know that no matter how badly they violate their victims' rights in order to force a confession of guilt from them, nothing will ever come of it, as the Great Writ of Liberty is dead in the "land of the free," thanks to our elected representatives who swore to uphold the Constitution that requires it. Before you vote for any candidate next year, ask them what they are going to do about restoring our constitutional privilege of habeas corpus before you even considering voting for them. They had no right to constrict it beyond effective use back in 1996 and that restriction has all but eliminated our power to challenge wrongful convictions. When somebody gets it wrong 70% of the time, by their own admission, the right to challenge them is imperative. The Great Writ of Liberty must be restored or our very nation is at risk. Plus, it is our rule of law. That's an idea! Let's go back to our United States Constitution, which every one of these judges, prosecutors, and politicians who violated it swore an oath to uphold. Back to rule of law. Back to the United States Constitution. The Way Back to America. Howell W. Woltz 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
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OR, "ONCE A "PUBLIC" PROSECUTOR, ALWAYS A PROSECUTOR"
The Founding Fathers never imagined, or saw a "Public" Prosecutor. The fair and equitable system they designed was led and controlled by a Grand Jury. This is not the wannabe grand jury of today, but the one described in our Constitution. Though still the law that "presentments" of a grand jury are the process, our state and federal governments have discarded the true purpose and means of prosecution in exchange for a 98.6% conviction rate. Such a rate of conviction does not tolerate truth or justice as anyone who has suffered today's system can quickly tell you....and you don't have to look far to find someone who can explain it. According to the Department of Justice, approximately 25%...one in four Americans....now have a "criminal" record. In fairer days, the grand jury controlled the prosecution process and was especially effective in ferreting out corruption that involved government officials. Perhaps that is why the grand jury has been reduced to nothing more than a rubber stamp to give the "public" prosecutor the indictment he or she wants. They don't want 'We the People' to have such power anymore, because "We" might go after them! But for starters, let's talk about what a grand jury used to be. It was an open affair where the grand jury investigated allegations of wrongdoing, called their own witnesses, and sought out evidence of innocence or guilt. The accused was allowed his or her witnesses and advisors, as the grand jury was after facts, not indictments. If criminal conduct was likely, a true bill or indictment was issued. If not, the person was released of suspicion. The prosecutor was a person from the community, usually an attorney, chosen by the grand jury, who had to be fair because he might be representing the jurors or defendants in his regular practice in the future, and could not afford to be seen as being unfair or malicious. In contrast, the grand jury of today is spoon fed only what the "public" prosecutor wants heard. In my experience of working on many federal cases, I have never reviewed a single grand jury transcript where it could not be proven that government's attorneys lied, put forth or encouraged knowingly false testimony by its witnesses, withheld exculpatory evidence, and/or presented false evidence to garner an indictment. Former judge and U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of North Carolina, Samuel T. Currin, once told me, "Before I die and meet my Maker, I must go to every prison in the Southeastern United States and get down on my knees to beg the forgiveness of those I put there." I was shocked to hear those words, and asked Sam why he would say such a thing. In response, he said, "We lied, we made up charges, fabricate evidence, gave informants time-cuts for telling lies on the stand, falsified evidence, hid evidence and did any and every thing necessary to win." When I asked why he did that, he replied that the system is now structured to reward convictions, not fairness. He said advancement as an Assistant U.S. Attorney was based on just two things: 1) the number of convictions a public attorney could get, and 2) the number of years the defendants were sentenced for those convictions. And guess what these "public" prosecutors often do for a living after they've committed such serious crimes against 'We the People?' All too often, they become judges, just like Sam did. A leopard doesn't lose its spots just by putting a black robe over them. It's still a dangerous animal and still has those spots. Judges who once broke the law for a living, are unlikely to enforce it just because they change sides of the bench on which their chair sits. Former prosecutors should never, ever, be appointed or elected as judges after serving in present day American system. And don't try telling me the myth, "But it's still the best system in the world," as that simply is no longer the truth. Statistically, the United States judicial system is now one of the least fair on earth. We have more prisoners than any other nation in history and the highest conviction rate ever known. We have more police (18,000 separate organizations) and the greatest number of laws with prison as penalty (314,000 at the federal level alone). That is a really terrible situation, and it will not get any better until prosecutors and judges who violate our rights go to prison, or we take back our grand jury process from these thugs. But we are unlikely to ever get back our grand jury from the "public" prosecutor, so I have an alternative idea. Let's start making these prosecutors and former prosecutors ( called "judges") live by the law themselves. They obviously are not going to prosecute each other, so I suggest we force Congress to create non-partisan elected offices of Ombudsman under Article III in every federal district with the authority to: 1) prosecute government officials who violate law or the rights of citizens, and 2) grant immediate relief to those citizens so violated It would be even better if we just go back to the rule of law and our U.S. Constitution and get our grand jury back, but that won't happen until one in two of us have a "criminal" record. Yeah...a devolution. That's what we need. Go back to what worked and was fair. Viva la devolucion! Howell Woltz 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." THE RUIN OF OUR REPUBLIC?
QUESTION- IF CONGRESS DID NOT PASS THE 300,000 LAWS NOW ON THE FEDERAL STATUTE BOOKS THAT CAN SEND US TO PRISON, WHO DID ??? Laws and penalties can only be meted out at the federal level through the passage of legislation, voted upon by elected by members of Congress. There is no other mechanism within constitutional authority for placing restraints upon the freedoms of the American public, or of imposing a penalty for exercising activities so restrained. Under Section 8, Article I, Congress is restricted to the punishment of but two human behaviors: Clause 6. To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; Clause 10. To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations; The only other crime which federal government was authorized to punish is treason, but that falls under the purview of the Supreme Court of the United States (Clause 1, Article 3), not Congress. While Congress was also delegated the authority to regulate commerce, it was not granted the power to criminalize or punish it. SO HOW DID ALL THESE "CRIMINAL" STATUTES COME TO BE? Instead of following this constitutional delegation of powers, our Representatives have not only outlawed 14,000 human behaviors outside of granted authority (4,000 “crimes” under Title 18, and 10,000 civil regulations to which the criminal penalty of prison has been assigned) but have delegated lawmaking authority to dozens of agencies not authorized by or found in the United States Constitution. These agencies of questionable origin and authority have now criminalized, sua sponte, in excess of 300,000 additional human behaviors, none of which were previously against the law (Source: American Legislative Exchange article, pasted below). No dictator, tyrant, or “evil empire” in human history has ever generated so many ways to send its citizens to prison. The ‘land of the free’ now has a total of 314,000 statutes with prison as penalty, resulting in the highest level of mass incarceration the world has ever seen. These are the steps that must be taken to stop unconstitutional legislation: 1. Only legislation passed by Congress has force of law. Any legislation or rule by agencies or any entity other than the Congress of the United States, is null, void, and unenforceable. 2. Before voting for any legislation, each Representative should be required to go on record as having fully read the entirety of the proposed law or regulation. This would act to limit the length of legislation and restrain those outside of Congress who currently write many, if not most, of our nation’s laws, criminal statutes, and regulations, from overburdening our elected Representatives and passing unjust laws. 3. Require that no law be passed that does not require criminal intent on the part of the accused to be proven by government, beyond a reasonable doubt, before a penalty can be imposed. The principle of mens rea must be restored to rule of law. 4. Legislation by the Executive Branch is also unlawful. There is no provision in Article 2 of the United States Constitution for “executive orders,” and no such authority was ever so granted to the Executive Branch by ‘We the People.’ All Executive Orders must be declared advisory in nature, and legislation passed to preclude such unlawful attempts to legislate by the Executive and further attempts to be cause for impeachment. 5. Put an end to seizure of private assets by police or government until a citizen has a) been charged and proven guilty of a crime and b) a relation between those assets and the crime has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. 6. To end the current situation of “government for sale,” I would ultimately suggest that Congress follow the advice of Austrian Economist, Frederich von Hayek, who once said, “Pass one law. Make every statute written or advantage granted, apply equally to all. Only then will the legislature be unable to grant favors to one group, at the expense of, or detriment to, others.” Our government will no longer be for sale to the highest bidder if this sage advice were followed. Back to rule of law. We need to devolve back to our ultimatel law of the land….The United States Constitution. Viva la Devolucion! Howell W. Woltz Author, “The Way Back to America: a 10-step plan to restore the United States to constitutional government.” Source of facts: http://solutions.heritage.org/overcriminalization/ It only stands to reason that the Department of Justice was constitutionally designated by the Founding Fathers to be under the auspices of the Judicial Branch, would it not?
But, alas, there was no constitutionally designated "Department of Justice," nor did the Founders see any need for one, as Congress has purview over the punishment of only two crimes: Piracy and Counterfeiting. On the rare occasion that such crimes were committed, the Attorney General presided over their prosecution....until 1870, when the present-day Department of Justice was contrived and created by the Republican Congress under President Ulysses S. Grant, before allowing the Southern States to return to the Union. Why? To give the Executive Branch the means to use federal prosecution as a blunt political tool against enemies, and concurrently, for the promotion of friends. No other purpose existed then, and no other (constitutional) purpose exists today. No such department is authorized by the Constitution, nor does the Executive Branch have such power appropriated to it under Article II, yet 28 USC section 501 is without ambiguity: "The Department of Justice is an executive department of the United States at the seat of Government." For those who doubt what I am saying about the purpose of this unconstitutional department, please note the recent hubbub over the Obama Administration's use of prosecutions and denial of tax-exempt status to political advocacy groups of a conservative bent at approximately nine-to-one over their Democratic counterparts. Before the Conservatives cry foul, however, please be reminded that Democrats were similarly prosecuted at the rate of nine-to-one Republicans under the Bush Administration's Department of Justice during its tenure in office. The Department of Justice is a blunt political tool, used by both parties in an equally scurrilous fashion, for the advancement of their respective agendas, and it is high time for it to go away. Since the advent of this unauthorized department of government, Congress has invented 314,000 federal laws with prison as a penalty (though only the two listed above are authorized as being under congressional authority to punish) and due process of law has been transmogrified from the most honored in the world to statistically, the least "just" on earth. As a result, the United States now leads the world and human history with the highest rate of conviction (98.6%) and far more prisoners than any dictator, tyrant, or "evil empire" in mankind's days on the planet. Not much of a recommendation for its continuation. The Department of Justice was not authorized by our Constitution, and is, therefore, precluded from being established as a power of Government under Amendment 10 of the Bill of Rights. Putting the power of public prosecution and imprisonment under the direct control of the head of a political party destroys the balance of powers any appearance of propriety. Such a vulgar abuse of power must end or our nation must stop its charade of calling itself a constitutional republic. Suggestion: Perhaps we could devolve back to the rule of law and the actual words of our Constitution. Yes. Back to rule of law. Devolve back to what all of these politicians still swear to uphold....the United States Constitution. Viva la Devolución! Howell Woltz Author of "The Way Back to America: a 10-step plan to restore the United States to Constitutional government." It is encouraging to finally see the subject of illegal torture abroad by our government brought to light and addressed. This is a stain on what little remains of our national honor. But why is the press also so mum about daily torture of unconvicted U.S. citizens here in the Homeland?
It is a very well-kept secret, but it happens every day. My personal efforts over the years to expose this judicial and government crime have been snubbed by media outlets. I must suppose our remaining (five) mainstream purveyors shy away from such subjects out of fear of retaliation by government (or not getting their next big merger approved), but torture of innocent American citizens does occur every day, under color of law, on U.S. soil. No one seems to be talking about it, though many of the torture techniques are precisely the same as suffered by the victims of the CIA's clandestine operations abroad. Public prosecutors allow and/or prompt such illegal conduct, and the former prosecutors sitting on the bench as judges, condone and suborn it, though both parties are in violation of federal criminal statutes 18 USC section 241 and 242 (deprivation of constitutional rights under color of law, and conspiracy to deprive). Were we still a nation of laws rather than men, these criminal acts would place these judges and prosecutors in prison for many years. So why doesn't such criminal behavior get punished? Why do judges and prosecutors seemingly never suffer penalty for their constant and daily crimes against We the People? Primarily, because there is no one to charge them with these crimes. Prosecution has become the prosecutors' sole prerogative in post-constitutional America. Our founding fathers never heard of a "public prosecutor." These hired guns are unlikely to charge themselves or their co-conspirators on the bench for criminal conduct and at present, there is no one else to do it. Worse, the courts granted themselves immunity from prosecution back in 1967 (in a string of questionable Supreme Court decisions beginning with Pierson v. Ray) and this slide into complete lawlessness by prosecutors and judges has worsened now to the point of being a daily occurrence. There is no penalty for their crimes, as long as they are at work when they commit them, and their only oversight is what is known as peer review. Most jails with which I am familiar have some form of a sleep deprivation program where non-compliant citizens (who do not agree to plead guilty to uncommitted crimes or are trying to prepare for trial) are only allowed to sleep...on the floor....for no more than 4 hours per day. The rest of the 24 hour period, the unconvicted citizen is required to stand or sit up straight. The temperature is kept in the 50-62 degree Fahrenheit range. The unconvicted citizens are dressed in skimpy prison pajamas, with 24 hour lighting, making sleep even four hours a day nearly impossible. Government's victims becomes zombie-like after just a few days of this torture. Diesel therapy, as it is known, is another common torture of unconvicted American citizens who do not want to plead guilty. Government's victims are simply ridden around at taxpayer expense between jails and prisons all over America to break them down, while concurrently keeping innocent-until-proven-guilty citizens from their attorneys and support of family, just to elicit government's desired outcome of a guilty plea without trial. Taking a defendant out of the federal district or division of charge is also a federal crime on the part of the judge and prosecutor who order this to be done (see Rules 18 and 20, F.R.Crim.P. and 18 USC sections 3232 and 3234), though the judge in the case is the only party who can order such criminal conduct. The worst and most common crime committed by judges and prosecutors every day, however, is simply holding citizens illegally who have not been tried within 70 days, as is required by the Sixth Amendment and 18 USC section 3161(c). Absent a legally excludable delay (and there are only seven such reasons), a trial has to commence within 70 days of arrest, or the case can be dismissed (see 18 USC section 3162(a)(2)), but I've never seen this law followed on a single occasion or in a single case, state or federal, though it is a constitutional right under the Sixth Amendment. I've also never seen the court follow this law when a motion for dismissal was filed. Attorneys are now sanctioned for doing so. Worse, any citizen not yet tried in 90 days, must be released on bond (see 18 USC section 3164(c)). This law applies to the state courts as well, according to Article Six of the U.S. Constitution (as well as Amendment Six), but I have never seen this law followed by any court, federal or state, either. These criminals of bench and bar continue to get away with it because they suffer no penalty for their crimes and there is no independent authority over them, other than Congress, which has been asleep at the wheel on this issue for a century or more. The Fourteenth Amendment demands that all of us be treated equally under the law. So how is it that this elite group of common criminals in pinstripes and black robes who violate federal statutes and constitutional law every day are immune from penalty of law themselves? Good question, and one that should be asked of every member of Congress. It is not just Guantanamo Bay and CIA torture rooms around the globe that are violating law and human rights, friends, and it is certainly not just so-called "terrorists" who are suffering these abuses. These crimes occur to some extent in almost every jail and prison across America every day. The victims are unconvicted American citizens, and the criminals are judges and prosecutors who took an oath to uphold the laws they violate. Doubt me? Don't. I personally suffered each torture described above, during 29 illegal moves between jails and prisons all over America during 87 months of illegal incarceration. This criminal government conduct was committed, ordered, and suborned by a still-sitting senior federal judge in Raleigh, North Carolina (who had no more jurisdiction over the case than you or me) and two Assistant U.S. Attorneys. None of these criminals were ever charged or punished for their violations of federal law, though it was reported to the highest echelons of government. No one can tell me it doesn't happen, nor are protections in place to keep it from happening, because I have lived it and seen it first hand, but like Jan Karski, the famous Polish officer who warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the Holocaust, no one is listening or taking action. The press has its head in the sand, and those tasked with preventing such government crimes are complicit in them through willful blindness. CIA and foreign torture? Criminal and horrible. Domestic torture of unconvicted American citizens? Criminal and unforgivable. I say let's get back to the United States Constitution which precludes all of this government lawlessness both abroad and at home, and let these dark criminals of bench, bar, and spookdom get their just reward. It won't take many of them being put in jail and prison for the word to spread around that We the People have had enough. Yes. That's the answer. Let's devolve back to the rule of law and U.S. Constitution, where none of these perpetrators are above the law! Back to our Constitution! That's the answer. Viva la devolución! Howell W. Woltz BIG WIN FOR JUSTICE…AND ‘JUSTICE DENIED’
As part of the competition for the best student film worldwide, Justice Denied: the Film, was seen by more people than ever since its creation. (Film can be seen at www.justicedenied.com) By connecting the film, which describes the sordid state of America’s judicial system, with the protestors on the streets this weekend marching against police brutality, the toxic cocktail of where we stand as a nation was mixed and consumed by a world agape in disbelief. Everything once held sacred by our nation, including due process of law, integrity in policing, and in court proceedings, has seemingly been cast to the wind. We have become that against which we once fought. Your vote for Justice DeniedBIG WIN FOR JUSTICE…AND ‘JUSTICE DENIED’ As part of the competition for the best student film worldwide, Justice Denied: the Film, was seen by more people than ever since its creation. (Film can be seen at www.justicedenied.com) By connecting the film, which describes the sordid state of America’s judicial system, with the protestors on the streets this weekend marching against police brutality, the toxic cocktail of where we stand as a nation was mixed and consumed by a world agape in disbelief. Everything once held sacred by our nation, including due process of law, integrity in policing, and in court proceedings, has seemingly been cast to the wind. We have become that against which we once fought. Your vote for Justice Denied in the quarter-finals, propelled this issue (and film) onto the world stage. Thousands as far away as India and China watched and then voted for Justice Denied, as will be possible again when the film is entered into the next semi-finals on Wednesday, December 17, 2014. PLEASE CARRY THIS ALL THE WAY THROUGH TO THE FINISH LINE MAKING ‘JUSTICE DENIED’ NO. 1 IN THE COMPETITION BY VOTING IN THE NEXT ROUND, WHICH IS SCHEDULED FOR WEDNESDAY. To all of you, worldwide, who have made this happen, a hearty thanks. By bringing the world’s attention and awareness to what may ultimately prove to be America’s human rights tragedy of the 21st century, pressure from abroad – as well from within -- can move the ball forward for long-overdue change. For more information about the issues addressed in ‘Justice Denied,’ please see: www.howellwoltz.com The United States now has over 18,000 separate police organizations with the legal authority to kill American citizens. No dictator, tyrant, or "evil empire" has ever had such a police presence, either in sheer numbers of gun-toting officers, or the number of independent police authorities with the authority to use lethal force.
By every definition, our nation has become a police state. We have more laws with prison as penalty (314,000 of them), the highest conviction rate in the world (98.6%) and more prisoners than any nation on earth or history (7.3 million, or one in every 31 Americans are currently imprisoned or suffering liberty restraint). There are marches going on all over the United States this weekend, and public attention is finally focusing on this tragedy. Twitter posts abound from #MillionsMarchNYC #blacklivesmatter #ICantBreathe #Justice LeagueNYC all calling for an end to senseless police brutality, but no one in power seems to be listening....yet. What troubles those of us intimately familiar with what is still called the "justice" system in America is that once arrested and charged, there is no longer a system of due process to allow them their day in court. Much like the police brutality that often starts this process, there is a brutal conviction machine that will end up destroying all but 14 of every 1,000 of its victims and 95% will be forced to plead guilty rather than going to trial. If you would like to argue this issue with me, I ask that you first watch the 15 minute film, Justice Denied, at the link below. I hope you then vote for it to go to the Sundance Film Festival. If you still want to argue with me, which I very much doubt, feel free to call, write, or email, and we will talk all day or night. My contact information is at www.howellwoltz.com and I would love the opportunity for anyone to prove me wrong. http://studentfilmmakerawards.com/matchup/justice-denied-vs-posthumous/ Please spread this to your friends and anyone interested in a return to justice in America. Thank you, Howell W. Woltz There is no excuse for the murder of unarmed Americans by those charged to "serve and protect" them period, and it must stop. But don't hold your breath, because that won't happen any time soon.
Why? Because those who commit crimes against "We the People" no longer suffer penalties for their own misdeeds. Judges and prosecutors have been above the law, by law, for 47 years. This was not a status granted them by our elected representatives (though even that would violate the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment). The courts granted that "above the law" status to themselves, judicially, beginning with Supreme Court decision Pierson v. Ray in 1967. This de facto immunity for criminal conduct has been less officially granted to the agents and police who assist these gatekeepers in keeping America's prisons full and overflowing, mostly with young men of color. How? The Not-So-Grand Jury is the answer. This once revered and very public institution is now held in secret. Defendants cannot even have an attorney, and a defendant is more likely to win some lotteries than get access to the transcripts of those proceedings. It all boils down to what the prosecutor tells the grand jury rather than the facts in the case. My trainer was recently on a grand jury for one whole year. I asked him yesterday how many times he and his fellow grand jurors refused to indict. His answer, "Not once." I asked how many times he felt like the prosecutor gave both sides of the story. His answer was the same, "Not once." When it is a friend (read Robo Cop), all manner of exculpatory evidence and excuses will be given, as proven in Ferguson, Missouri recently and again in New York City this week where a police chokehold of a non-violent man selling cigarettes became a homicide but the cop was not indicted. A recent Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia determined that a prosecutor has no obligation to tell the whole truth (including exculpatory evidence) when it is one of 'We the People' being indicted, which is absolutely outrageous. This Supreme Court case came about because a prosecutor had failed to tell the whole truth about a defendant. Our most esteemed high court has decided that is OK. I disagree, as would the founders of this nation, who never knew a public prosecutor, because no such position existed in their day. Attorneys took turns prosecuting, which built a sense of fairness into the equation, as next week they had to make their living getting business from the same community they prosecuted the week before. Not so with "public" prosecutors. So how does it work for the rest of us, you ask? I'll tell you from experience...not too well. In every case I worked on where I was able to get a copy of a grand jury transcript, the prosecutor lied to the grand jury to garner the indictment. Every case. Prosecutors are above the law, by law, so there is no penalty for that criminal conduct. The judges (usually former prosecutors themselves) often know what their colleague is doing, but he or she used to do the same thing when they were prosecutors, and I'm unaware of a single case in recent history where the prosecutor has been restrained by the former prosecutor sitting on the bench. This has led our nation to the highest conviction rate on earth (98.6%). Less than one in 20 defendants now risk going to trial. The deck is so severely stacked against them that they will be found guilty in all but 14 cases out of 1,000, and they know it. Think of that for a moment. 1,000 of your fellow citizens walk into America's courts, but only 14 of them walk back out free. No nation on earth...no dictator or tyrant.....no "evil empire" has such a rate of conviction. Statistically speaking, an indictment is a conviction in America today. If prosecutors can and do lie in almost every case, and exculpatory evidence can be excluded by them, then our system is nothing more than a conviction machine. No one should be above the law in America. Not judges, not prosecutors, and certainly not those on the street granted the power of lethal force to be used only in our protection. This judicial, prosecutorial, and police crime-wave must be brought to a stop. The best way to do that is to return our grand juries to the open, public, honest affair they once were, where both sides are heard and the subject of a potential prosecution can defend him or herself while represented by counsel. In other words, we need to devolve back to constitutional rule of law, where no one is above it, and every citizen has the right to defend against unwarranted attack or prosecution by government. Yeah. We need a Devolution. Back to rule of law and Constitution.... Viva la devolución! Howell W. Woltz Author of "The Way Back to America: a 10-step plan to restore the United States to Constitutional government." The United States has 7.3 million citizens locked up or on parole. No dictator or tyrant has ever come close to such shocking numbers of incarceration. That's one out of every 31 Americans, in jail or under the thumb of a parole officer,who can send them back to prison.
One of every four of us now have a "criminal" record for violating any of over 314,000 laws that carry prison as a penalty. While real crime has been plummeting for decades, ever more draconian laws and sentences are passed and handed down, respectively, robbing American citizens of their rights and the opportunity to succeed. To put this in perspective, the 'land of the free' would have to set 7 million of these 7.3 million prisoners free, just to be on par with communist China's prison population. That's how far out of bounds our nation is today. That big scarlet "F" on one's chest for "Felon" is also a job and opportunity killer for the one in four Americans who carry it like Hester Prynne carried her "A". Laws and sentences target minorities, making this the new Jim Crow era with prisons supplanting plantations. But could it be that the winds of change are finally upon us? There are stirrings in our two-headed, one-bodied party system that would indicate some semblance of sanity is finally coming to both Dems and Repubs, with Libertarian-leading Rand Paul leading the charge. Paul's appeals have been two-fold. He seems to be awakening Republicans to the gross waste of flushing $80 billion a year down the toilet to keep (mostly) non-violent marijuana smokers in jail or prison. That waste is just at the federal level, by the way. Senator Paul has made equally convincing arguments on the Democratic side of the aisle questioning the constitutional basis for such crazy restrictions of freedom, and those arguments seem to be resonating as well. When one can go to prison for catching rainwater off his or her own roof or for helping set a whale free that was accidentally caught in a fishing net, things have clearly gone too far. With 314,000 ways to send us to prison, it's just a matter of who gets picked to be queen for a day. I once had a prosecutor tell me, "All of you out there have done 'something'. We just haven't gotten around to you yet." Unfortunately, he was correct under our current Too many laws, too little Justice way of doing things, and it is past time for change. It would not be unfair to describe this as the most pressing moral and financial problem in America. Imagine if we spent half of that $80 billion a year trying to build these troubled young lives into productive citizens rather than destroying them and their futures through decades of incarceration? Would that be so bad? We'd save money doing the right thing. Meanwhile, almost none of what is being done in our "justice" system can be found in the United States Constitution, though it is still supposed to be the ultimate law of the land. For starters, we could try devolving back to this rule of law which precludes federal government from punishing any crimes but piracy and counterfeiting. The puts an end to government's moral turpitude while keeping it from bankrupting us. Not a bad idea....let's devolve back to our Constitution. Viva la devolution! Howell W. Woltz VOTE AGAINST THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ON THE BALLOT TODAY!
An attempt is afoot to change our state’s constitution for the worse. A trial by jury is a long-honored and constitutionally protected right that is about to be diminished. This mistake was made at the federal level some decades ago, and has resulted in a 900% increase in our prison population and the elimination of trials by jury in 96% of those cases. There is little reason to expect a different outcome at the state level if citizens can be pressured into waving this right, as is now common in federal cases. As Albert Einstein once said, “True madness is the expectation that the same people doing the same thing can possibly produce a different outcome.” There will be a winner- the prison industry; and there will be a loser- the North Carolina taxpayer. VOTE NO. |
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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