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Posted on 06/22/2017 8:36:49 AM PDT by Morgana
In a huge victory, a California court today dismissed almost all of the criminal charges abortion activists filed against the pro-life advocates who recorded undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood selling the body parts from aborted babies.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed 15 felony charges against both David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. Becerra is a longtime abortion advocate with financial connections to the Planned Parenthood abortion company that the two pro-life Advocates exposed in the videos for selling body parts such as fetal brains and livers.
At the time, pro-life advocates said Becerra’s 15 felony charges were bogus charges meant to belittle the expose’ campaign and to cast aspersions on Daleiden and the organization behind the videos. They said the attempt was about drawing attention away from Planned Parenthood’s sales of aborted baby parts.
The San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday dismissed 14 of 15 criminal counts but the pair are still charged with one count of conspiracy to invade privacy. However the court dismissed the charges with leave to amend — meaning Becerra could re-file the charges with additional supposed evidence against the pair.
The court ruled that counts 1-14 were legally insufficient. The state has the opportunity to amend if it can plead a more legally sufficient and specific complaint. The California’s Attorney General filed 15 criminal counts against Merritt, with counts 1-14 for each of the alleged interviews and count 15 for an alleged conspiracy. San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Christopher Hite gave the state attorney general’s office until mid-July to file a revised complaint.
In a statement to LifeNews, pro-life attorney Mat Svaer of LibertyCounsel, representing Merritt, said, “This is a huge victory to have 14 criminal counts dismissed.”
“We will now turn our attention to dismissing the final count. Sandra Merritt did nothing wrong. The complaint by the California Attorney General is unprecedented and frankly will threaten every journalist who provides valuable information to the public. This final count will also fall,” said Staver.
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Liberty Counsel argued that the criminal complaint for illegally recording supposedly “private” conversations (in restaurants, hotel lobbies and other public places) – the first ever filed against undercover journalists – was legally deficient for numerous reasons, not the least of which was the Attorney General’s decision to prosecute Merritt in secret proceedings, without identifying even the names of her accusers or purported “victims.” The complaint did not provide Merritt with the minimum notice required by the Constitution and California law as to what she supposedly did wrong, so that she can mount a proper and vigorous defense. The complaint was also vague and full of inconsistencies.
“Today we asked the San Francisco Superior Court to dismiss these outrageous and baseless charges against Sandra Merritt, and the court agreed to dismiss 14 of the 15 counts” said Horatio Mihet, Liberty Counsel’s Vice President of Legal Affairs and Chief Litigation Counsel, who appeared with Sandra in court today. “Sandra did not break any law and the criminal complaint against her is legally deficient, vague and full of inconsistencies. No other citizen journalist or organization has ever been charged with a crime for undercover recordings,” said Mihet.
These charges where the second set of charges filed against Daleiden and Merritt as the first were filed by pro-abortion prosecutors in Houston. Those charges were also eventually dropped and we’re condemned as bogus political charges.
Today’s decision by the San Francisco Superior Court seems to lend additional credence to the fact that abortion advocates and their pro-abortion friends in politics are filing the charges for political rather than substantive reasons.
It’s only a temporary victory. Revised charges are pending.
1. It that even a law that could be broken?
2. If the 'no expectation of privacy' argument can be made, then why does this charge stand when the others were vacated?
and in a San Freakinciso court..... #ReallyWinning !!
It was just lawfare on the massive scale of actually being initiated by the government itself. How many tens of thousands are the plaintiffs now in debt for having to defend themselves?
They DEFINITELY should come back at this dirtball.
I’ve no end of scorn for do-gooder legal orgs who will work like this to get charges dropped, then just walk away like nothing happened; like there was no trauma, no disruption of life, or exorbitant expense for the victims.
Getting bogus charges dropped is on thing, but if you just stop there, all you’ve done is send a loud-and-clear message
that these pernicious orgs and their legal hacks can go pick a different target tomorrow and try again.
No!
These wrongly-charged people and their legal team now need to come back with criminal charges of their own on whatever bases exist, AND a Civil case noting the egregious nature of the prosecution and seeking damages in at least the mid-seven-figure ballpark; higher if the offending parties are part of a much larger organization.
Given the connections enjoyed by the prosecution in this case, I’d think seeking damages of $10M for EACH victim is pretty reasonable.
God’s work.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Amen.
Praise be to God for this small measure of justice.
Q: Why aren’t prosecutors held criminally liable when they pursue criminal charges for political reasons?
A: Because the populace is too stupid to MAKE it happen and the elected/connected have gamed the ‘law’ in their favor.
Not one shred of news on this, anywhere.
Don’t let your heart be troubled. Becerra will be deported to hell with the rest of his amigos.
This.
Why aren’t prosecutors held criminally liable when they pursue criminal charges for political reasons?
The Supreme Court ruled that Prosecutors have almost unlimited immunity.
1976 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbler_v._Pachtman
It is amazing what prosecutors are capable of getting away with.
It was not always so.
Pro-Life PING
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