Posted on 12/14/2004 11:33:45 AM PST by DJ Taylor
"I want to go to trial on Monday; I've been locked up for nearly eight years," declared Charles Thomas Sell. "The federal court has no evidence, they have no witnesses. I want my trial one week from today. I am not incompetent in any way, shape or form."
His statements rang true to bystanders attending his hearing on Nov. 22 in the federal courthouse in St. Louis. Whatever happened to the right of an accused to have a speedy trial? Once a successful dentist in St. Louis County who treated many indigent patients, Sell was accused of Medicaid fraud in 1997. Although he has never hurt anyone, and a federal court held that he poses no danger to those around him, prison officials frequently placed him in solitary confinement for periods that totaled nearly two years.
Prison officials tried to drug Sell, allegedly to make him fit for trial, and lower courts ruled in favor of mandatory drugging of this non-convicted, non-dangerous, nonviolent prisoner. The federal government fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for the power to forcibly drug Sell and, even though it lost its case there, the government continued to imprison and prevent him from receiving proper medical care. The forced medication was designed to correct Sell's attitude toward the government. Sell seemed to think the government was out to get him, and the government wanted to drug him to get him to change his mind.
Is this occurring in the United States of America? Psychiatrists were frequently employed by the Soviet Union to cover up atrocities and silence critics, but U.S. veterans who fought against the Communists in Korea and Vietnam never expected such tactics to be used by their own government.
Earlier this year, a government psychologist declared Sell mentally fit for trial. Apparently, that medical opinion was unsatisfactory to Sell's persecutors, and to everyone's surprise that government psychologist reversed his diagnosis without re-examining him, and declared Sell unfit for trial. An independent psychiatrist then confirmed Sell's own view that he was fit for trial, and the court agreed and scheduled a trial for Nov. 29. But on Nov. 22, lawyers insisted Sell was not ready for trial and persuaded a judge to cancel it.
The lawyers argued that Sell is not competent to stand trial because he insists on talking about the abuse he has suffered in prison, abuse that could be proved by prison videos the government is keeping secret. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons filed a motion for the court to release these tapes, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch also intervened to demand their public release.
But it appears that the government is doing everything it can to prevent a trial of Sell that would expose the record of this case.
In investigative reporting worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, Carolyn Tuft of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed on Nov. 23 some of the evidence on the still-secret videos. She reported that two videotapes of Sell show him being stripped, scalded, humiliated and brutalized in a way that sounds shockingly similar to the abuse of inmates by their U.S. captors at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Is there no accountability for this type of government misconduct? Instead of investigating and punishing the wrongdoers, federal officials are moving heaven and earth to avoid a public trial that could expose the tapes and the fact that a man has been held in prison so long without trial.
The only one in the courtroom making any sense at what should have been the final hearing before trial was Sell himself, who stood up to assert his constitutional rights. His plea was to no avail, as the judge ordered him shipped to North Carolina for yet another examination by a government psychiatrist.
By now Sell knows the game all too well, and he announced in open court that he would not submit to another sham mental evaluation. Nevertheless, he will be transported cross-country to find another government psychiatrist to deliver the desired diagnosis to save officials from public scrutiny.
We've all seen the pictures of Abu Ghraib, so why can't we see pictures of prisoner abuse in the federal prison at Springfield, Mo.? Congress should demand the immediate release of the shocking videos showing the mistreatment of Sell and also order a full accounting of the taxpayers' money spent by the government to keep a man in prison nearly eight years without trial.
Even assuming you're legit and this is true, I still don't want to see anyone locked up indefinitely without being tried, much less convicted. Quite simply, I do not trust the government with this power. The Constitution has all sorts of protections intended to avoid this circumstance, and the government uses the excuse of "mental illness" to circumvent them. I don't care if Sell thinks he's Napoleon, try him or let him go.
Questions about Sell’s mental state have been raised for quite some time. For example, some have expressed concern that Sell believed that the government intentionally brought about the deaths of the Davidians in 1993 in Waco. Sell, a Major in the U.S. Army Reserves, was brought in to Waco as a forensic dentist, but was sent home shortly after the death of 81 Davidians without having performed any forensic analysis. Since then, he has made various conspiratorial claims about the federal government’s handling of the Waco tragedy.This is from part II of the following series:
JMHO - YMMV
And what do your comments have to do with the fact that this guy is entitled to a trail? The comments some people make here are enough to make me loose complete hope in this country- based on the people who have been so carefuly brain washed into not being able to thing rationaly by themselves. So you see nothing wrong with locking a guy up for 8 years and not giving him a trial? Perplexing.
In my opinion, this would be a major ethical violation, but that's just my opinion. I think I'll send this thread to the managing partners of the firm, and let them decide.
Carefull - I agree with you that the above statement was unethical. However, you have no way of verifying that the poster actually does work the law firm. He could be anybody - what if you write the law firm, and somebody there gets in trouble who wasn't the poster, because the poster wasn't ever there at all?
Let them figure it out. They're lawyers, right? It should be fairly easy to prove up through computer records.
Now why on earth would anyone think that?
Doctors are under quite a bit of danger while dealing with Medicare or any other Government program. It is quite easy to make a mistake and be subject to draconian laws.
Perplexing and disturbing.
Without a doubt, there is a much different side to this story.
(I don't know what it is; but I usually sound much smarter this way)
"The case involves a Missouri dentist named Charles Thomas Sell, who was charged with Medicaid fraud in 1997. Dr. Sell also has been diagnosed with paranoid delusional disorder and ruled incompetent to stand trial. But he has refused the government-ordered anti-psychotic medication, claiming such drugs interfere with his thinking and have serious side effects."
Crazy talk. Hence the need for forced drugging to "help" him.
Cordially
I'm not certain. It's one thing to divulge information that a client divulges. What you have done is divulge your impressions of the client. Not quite the same... but certainly questionable.
These are his lawyers?
Cordially,
The charge wasn't murder, it was conspiracy to commit murder. And at least three of the four witnesses have some shady stuff going on -
snip
"But, since then, flaws in the four main witnesses against him have been uncovered. Three of the witnesses have been shown to have fabricated testimony in other cases. The fourth, his wife Mary, agreed to testify against him only after signing a lucrative plea agreement."
snip
"A wired FBI office assistant produced much of the initial evidence underlying the case against Dr. Sell. That evidence asserted that Sell had altered X-rays to get Medicaid money for work that he never actually performed. Sell claims that the X-ray alterations were done in order to avoid using mercury fillings, which were required at the time by the government. His supporters also point out that the wired office assistant, Jane Alderman, ordered drugs under another doctor's name for her own personal use. That included nearly 2000 doses of drugs such as codeine. She has since admitted to lying to a DEA agent about the doctor whose name she used to procure the drugs. After Alderman implicated Dr. Sell in Medicaid fraud, Sell was released on bond on the condition of seeing a psychiatrist.
snip
Alderman claimed that while Sell was out on bond he stood outside Alderman's new workplace and made threatening gestures. The gestures included pointing to his head while making his finger look like a handgun. Oddly, Sell was in the building because the judge had sent him there to see a psychiatrist who worked in the same building as the dentist that had hired Alderman.
snip
"At a second bond revocation hearing, it was revealed that Alderman claimed to have seen Sell's threatening gestures through a glass door in her employer's office. The defense, present in that second hearing, revealed that the doors of the office were wooden. Furthermore, there were no glass windows in front of the office."
snip
Just when you think that things couldn't get any stranger, enter Rebecca Gamble and her brother Jonathan. The Gambles contacted Dr. Sell's wife, Mary, after the second bond revocation hearing saying that they could prove that Alderman was not even in the building when she said Sell threatened her. At the time, Mary Sell did not know that the Gambles were wired informants working for the FBI. Transcripts of those conversations now seem to indicate that Mary was trying to purchase employment records. The records were supposed to be exculpatory, indicating that Alderman was not "clocked in" when she said she was threatened by Dr. Sell. But the Gambles told the FBI that the recorded conversations were about something else. According to the Gambles, Mary Sell was trying to hire a hit man to kill Alderman and an FBI agent.
Later, Jonathan Gamble visited Dr. Sell in jail and recorded a conversation, which was somewhat ambiguous in terms of subject matter. Sell's defenders say that he was talking about payment for a home or office break-in to obtain the records of Alderman's work schedule. The FBI says that the discussion was about the hit man. Later, Sell was indeed charged with conspiring to kill Alderman as well as an FBI agent named Box. It is the government's contention that Sell offered less than $300, not for a break-in, but for the murders of both Alderman and Box.
He may or may not have committed fraud but, IMO, there may be something else behind the conspiracy charge.
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