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Posted on 10/30/2005 4:44:45 PM PST by JTN
Jackson County's DA Has Convicted 28 Black People on Drug Charges Via Manufactured Evidence and Railroaded Trials. Now a Small-Town Exile, Her Family, and a Few Neighbors Are Fighting Back
Frederick "Rick" Patterson was born in the small Southeast Texas city of Edna, seat of Jackson Co. and just north of Port Lavaca, in 1954, the same year the rural community earned its first moment in the national spotlight. That January, the U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal brought by convicted murderer Pete Hernandez, an agricultural worker in Edna, who argued that Jackson Co. prosecutors denied his right to equal protection under the law by excluding Mexican-Americans from the jury pool. Hernandez's attorneys had discovered that from 1929 to 1954, not a single Mexican-American had ever served on a Jackson Co. jury - nor, for that matter, had any black juror. The state Court of Criminal Appeals had rejected Hernandez's argument - ruling that Hispanics were a subset of whites and therefore could not be considered a "special class" under the 14th Amendment. But on May 3, 1954, in a precedent-setting opinion authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren, a unanimous Supreme Court disagreed. Hernandez had "the right to be indicted and tried by juries from which all members of his class [were] not systematically excluded," Warren wrote. Indeed, Warren noted that courthouse practice itself belied Jackson Co. officials' assertion that Mexicans were considered equal to whites, for the courthouse had two separate men's restrooms - one for whites, and the other labeled for "Colored Men" and "Hombres Aqui."
Fifty-one years later, it seems, too little has changed in Edna.
(Excerpt) Read more at austinchronicle.com ...
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Wouldn't surprise me. We already now about a certain DA in Texas who uses his office as a way to attack prominent Republicans. I would hope that Texas has fewer corruption problems than some other gulf states, but there certainly seem to a few creepy individuals in high places down there.
Good question. I suppose because the assertion here is that some of the accused are probably not guilty.
Of course, the pliant juries and the judges in these cases are also part of the problem. Not to mention the drug laws that give prosecutors god-like powers in many cases.
Damn, I thought someone had arrested Markos Moulitsas and Ted Rall.
Sounds like Tulia. The Drug War continues to run amok.
If a person buys a small stash for personal use but later agrees to sell a rock or a joint to someone else, that doesn't make them a dealer as the term is usually known.
This is about much more than drugs. It is probably not even about drugs at all but more about redneck power and intimidation. The jury is most likely compliant out of fear of the DA and his friend the judge. Justice is just an abstract term in those situations.
There have been several cases in the news in the last 20 years about east Texas "justice" and not all of it deals with race or drugs. It is about local power and asserting it so that it is never challenged. They say that all politics are local but that doesn't mean that local politics are fair. Louisiana and east Texas are similar.
Thus far Joycelyn's appeals have been denied, and on Oct. 6, Rick's appeal was denied by the 13th Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi. In the end, the court declared the corroboration sufficient. "We are aware of the absence of guiding case precedent in this area of the law, but we are confident that the legislature would have combined the informant and accomplice corroboration provisions if it had intended to prohibit an informant from corroborating the testimony of an accomplice and vice versa."
The leftists that wrote this hit piece did their best to make Bell look like a fool and Edna look like an evil little town. But the fact is that THEY WERE CONVICTED BY A JURY OF A CRIME. Are we to overturn juries which know all the facts of the case, on the basis of slanted MSM articles like this? Or is the objective to let the legal system, which we generally agree is tilted FOR defendants, do its job, and let the press do its job of reporting the facts instead of smearing people with faux investigative reporting like this?
I don't know Bell, I don't know Edna, but I do know this kind of article and this kind of paper. And I am not about to kneejerk to the side of the dealers simply because the newspaper thinks it's possible some OTHER "big Rick" did it. If you don't like the law, work to change it. I do. If you don't like Bell, change Edna and get them to elect someone else, or move. But I'm not about to deny the validity of the jury system from afar. The convicts had their chance to convince a jury and failed to do so. I doubt they were railroaded, no matter how this article makes it sound, or the court of appeals would have ruled differently.
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Who said anything about overturning juries?
Post 6, for one. Anyone on this thread who decries the conviction of these folks on the basis of this screed, for another. And that is EXACTLY the result this paper wants--they would prefer that the convictions BY JURY of these people are vacated and the juries in these areas are basically neutered either by reversal on appeal or broadening jury pools to the point that crimes would have to be tried in big-city convention halls so the jury was 'unbiased' (unbiased being lawyer-speak for 'willing to acquit guilty folks').
I don't like the law, these folks sure got spun as nice folks who are victims of a corrupt system, but the fact is the law IS the law, and they were convicted within the system. Playing the race card and whining about how corrupt justice is in East Texas ignores the fact that all these 'railroaded' folks had a jury vote to convict `em.
Not one word in there about overturning juries.
"Of course, the pliant juries and the judges in these cases are also part of the problem."
C'mon, you gotta be kidding me. And what would the poster have to say about ameliorating those 'pliant' juries, do you think? Certainly he would make them less pliant somehow. Either you have a call for 're-education' of juries or a call for an end to a jury verdicts. Either way, the gist is that the juries need to be 'fixed.'
Which is different than overturning them.
Not so different. There are already lots of re-education camps for the people that would be on juries...in Vietnam and Cuba.
They're all innocent. Ask 'em.
Gimme a break. Do you think the O.J. Simpson jury could have used a little more education? I do.
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