Posted on 10/31/2013 3:37:11 PM PDT by dontreadthis
BRISTOL — A Panhandle jury found suspended Liberty County Sheriff Nick Finch not guilty on charges that he tried to cover up his role in intervening in a gun case.
The jury took about an hour to reach its verdict Friday afternoon.
Finch was elated with the verdict and said he left a voice mail for Gov. Rick Scott, asking to be reinstated. Finch was charged with official misconduct, a felony, as well as falsifying public records.
Prosecutors insisted that Finch tried to destroy and alter records in the arrest of Floyd Eugene Parrish. Parrish was arrested in March following a traffic stop where he was discovered carrying a pistol in his pocket without a concealed weapons permit. Finch, who testified on his own behalf during the three-day long trial, said he let go Parrish go because he believed that 2nd Amendment gun rights trumped state gun laws.
But Assistant State Attorney Jack Campbell contended that Finch was lying about his reasons for letting Parrish go. He pointed out that other Liberty County sheriff's office officials were never told about a policy to not prosecute gun crimes.
"The 2nd Amendment doesn't have anything to do with this case," Campbell told jurors during his closing statement on Thursday. "It's about the truth."
Finch's case has divided this small rural county of 8,000 people located west of Tallahassee. It also gained attention among conservative media outlets and gun rights activists who have criticized prosecutors and Gov. Rick Scott for suspending Finch from office.
(Excerpt) Read more at constitutionclub.ning.com ...
That’s what I was saying.
So? How is there even a procedure for appealing an acquittal? Doesn’t the appeals court just look at the guy, shake their head, and tell him to FO?
Those fees go into the pockets of “the judges, clerks, janitors, and others who are involved on the other side of a case like this.”
There need to be a lot more cases brought for malicious prosecution. Not just for bringing a case and losing, but if the grounds seem in retrospect to have been flimsy. Then, if prosecutors are AFRAID to bring marginal / agenda driven cases, the ability of leftists and other statists to use taxpayer resources as a political and personal weapon will be gone.
That takes time, money and energy. Most non-Democrats have to use those things to earn a living. Democrats have plenty of time for Alinsky pursuits because they are busy collecting government cheques.
True. Still needs to be done though. You can’t win if you’re always on defense.
My instructors told me [us, the class] when I was studying law that a not guilty verdict could not be appealed, they also told us that a jury’s guilty verdict could be over ruled by a Judge and a direct verdict of not guilty rendered. However that said that a judge could not over ride a not verdict and direct a verdict of guilty. In other words, once the jury rendered a not guilty verdict; it was over. But that was then and this is now.
That’s my understanding as well. Overruling a jury acquittal in the absence of misconduct directly involving the jury sure seems like double jeopardy to me.
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