Posted on 11/15/2019 12:55:40 PM PST by Morgana
FULL TITLE: BREAKING: Jury rules against Daleiden, pro-lifers who exposed Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts
SAN FRANCISCO, California, November 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress undercover investigators have been found guilty of multiple crimes and must pay millions in damages to Planned Parenthood for the work they did in exposing organ harvesting on aborted babies.
The jury of nine men and one woman released its verdict Friday afternoon after deliberating less than two days, even though the landmark civil trial took six weeks.
The exact amount the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) investigators must pay in the civil suit has not yet been determined.
The case was heard by San Francisco’s U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick III, who has ties to Planned Parenthood, but refused to disqualify himself when defense requested him to do so.
CMP released videos in 2015 exposing Planned Parenthood’s apparently illegal trade in aborted baby body parts after a 30-month undercover operation.
The groundbreaking videos showed top-level Planned Parenthood executives haggling over prices of aborted baby body parts, and discussing how to change abortion procedures to obtain more intact organs, and sparked public outrage, congressional and senate hearings, and an ongoing Department of Justice criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood.
In the retaliatory lawsuit, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and 10 affiliates accused CMP project lead Daleiden, investigators Sandra Merritt and Adrian Lopez, and founding board members Albin Rhomberg and Troy Newman of Operation Rescue of multiple crimes, including illegal taping, fraud, and violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute in connection with CMP journalists going undercover at Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation conferences in 2014 and 2015.
They were seeking $630,000 in base damages and millions of dollars in punitive damages.
Lawyers for the CMP citizen journalists say they were hampered by Orrick ruling out a First Amendment defense.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t get Judge Orrick to back off from his insistence that the jury be instructed that the First Amendment … does not state any kind of defense to the charges in this case,” said Thomas Brejcha, founder of the Thomas More Society, in an update on the case last week.
“Which, frankly, we think is a terrible misreading of our fundamental constitutional laws about free speech,” he added.
Orrick instructed the jury Tuesday on points of law to consider when reaching their verdict.
The judge “had already found that the defendants trespassed when they attended, undercover, Planned Parenthood conferences in Miami and Orlando and met with Planned Parenthood executives at Planned Parenthood facilities in Colorado and Texas,” according to an Archdiocese of San Francisco report.
Orrick “instructed the jury to only concern themselves with the damages that the defendants are liable for that trespass, both punitive and actual,” it stated.
He also told the jury that the “defendants breached contracts with Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation and the jury should award damages because of those breaches,” the archdiocesan report stated.
In closing arguments by Planned Parenthood’s lawyers “pretty much called David and the other investigators every name in the book,” but principally “liars,” said defense lawyer Peter Breen, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, who referred to the case as “the blockbuster trial of the century.”
In four days on the witness stand, Daleiden testified he undertook the 30-month sting operation after reading testimony of the 2000 congressional hearings into illegal aborted baby body parts harvesting and seeing a 2000 ABC 20/20 exposé of a Planned Parenthood Kansas abortionist selling fetal organs for profit.
He also testified that he found a 2012 Circulation article citing StemExpress supplying human fetal hearts to Stanford for a study that, he was told, required the hearts be harvested from live babies.
Planned Parenthood’s lead counsel Rhonda Trotter “lied to the jury” in closing arguments by claiming Daleiden did not report Plaintiffs Planned Parenthood Orange & San Bernardino Counties or Planned Parenthood Mar Monte to law enforcement agencies, CMP reported.
“In fact, CMP had produced the reports to law enforcement in discovery in the case and Planned Parenthood has been aware of them for over a year,” CMP stated.
Daleiden and Merritt are also facing 14 felony counts of illegal taping under California’s anti-eavesdropping law. Judge Christopher Hite of the San Francisco Superior Court is expected to rule soon if there is sufficient evidence to proceed to trial.
Developing...
They counted the parts sold to date and multiplied by 10.
San Francisco jury. What’re ya gonna do?
“I wonder what the punitive damages could be based on?”
Public embarrassment of the Planned Parenthood execs, for one. If anybody is deserving of a RICO suit it’s that outfit.
This is evil.
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Civil suit. Punitive damages by San Francisco shit jury. Teaching the Christians a lesson. Don’t mess with satan.
Christians will have the last laugh. As Jesus said, “ If the people of the world hate you, remember they hated me first. “ John 15:18
> Christians will have the last laugh. As Jesus said, “ If the people of the world hate you, remember they hated me first. “ John 15:18
thanks
A$$hole judge must be from the ninth circuit!!!
I’m thinking eventually SCOTUS will rule on this case.
They were seeking $630,000 in base damages and millions of dollars in punitive damages.
The ABC News / Food Lion ruling should prevail here. That would mean that Daleiden should only be fined $1 for trespass.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that even though ABC was wrong to do what they had done, Food Lion was not suing for defamation, but rather for tort as a way to get around the strict First Amendment standards for defamation. Food Lion did this because the company was not contesting the truth of anything ABC reported in the broadcast.
The same thing is happening here. Did Planned Parenthood contest the truth of anything that Daleiden reported?
-PJ
I’ve lost ALL faith in “the system” (of justice) at this point, as EVERY case is decided by the judge’s political leanings.
John Roberts famously said there are no “Obama Judges” or “Trump Judges”, to which I say...
BULLSHIT.
I think we’re all alert here to the Satanic forces roaming the land. As for the sober part, I believe we should soberly consider taking actions against fellow “Americans” that at one time would be unthinkable, but now seem but a foregone conclusion. This is our Fort Sumter.
Justice Roberts said there’re no Planned Parenthood judges.
Does this mean we can now offer our organs or that of our loved ones for sale to the highest bidder? With the understanding that freshness counts?
Seriously preborn children (and why not those already with us) are now ,by virtue of this verdict, commodities. Logic dictates this means the only restrictions on reproductive technology will be those to prevent fraud, intellectual property theft, and other such laws pertinent to trade in goods and services. We can finally put to rest any debate on the personhood of the preborn. They are possessions to be disposed of as the owner sees fit.
And yeah I am disgusted but sadly not surprised by the verdict.
I wonder if a change of venue was argued?
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil..
Bad juries and bad laws have bad consequences.
San Francisco is a VILE, EVIL city full of VILE, EVIL, VICIOUS LYING DEMOCRATS!
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