Prosecutorial Abuse
One of my theories I have mentioned before on this blog is that the worst abuses of freedom occur when the Left and Right in this country agree. Here is another great example -- combine the Right's law-and-order drive to hand more power to, and remove accountability from, police and prosecutors with the Left's need to string up some executives after the Enron collapse -- and you get this:
The DOJ has inexplicably teed up another trial of Brown, who was the only one of the Merrill defendants who was convicted on additional charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for having the temerity of protesting his innocence to the grand jury that originally investigated the Nigerian Barge deal. Brown's new trial is currently scheduled to begin on September 20.
But in the meantime, Brown's legal team has been leafing through enormous amounts of exculpatory evidence that the Enron Task Force withheld from the Merrill defendants in connection with the first trial back in 2005, but which the DOJ has recently been forced to disclose.
The result of the Brown team's effort is set forth below in the Supplemental Memorandum in support of a motion for a new trial for Brown on the perjury and obstruction charges (the downloaded version of the memo is bookmarked in Adobe Acrobat to facilitate ease of review). The memorandum details the appalling length that the Enron Task Force went during the first trial in suppressing exculpatory evidence in favor of Brown and his co-defendants and generally disregarding the rule of law in order to obtain convictions. As the memorandum concludes:
The conclusion is now inescapable that the ETF engaged in a calculated, multi-step process to deprive Brown of his constitutional right to Due Process. (1) They repeatedly denied the existence of Brady material, told this court they had met their Brady obligations and fought vehemently against producing anything [exhibit reference and footnote omitted]. They highlighted only selected material in a veritable garden of Brady evidence "“ much of their selections being vague, tangential or marginal"“while working around clear, declarative, relevant exculpatory material even in the same page, paragraph or document. (3) When ordered by the Court to produce summaries to the defense, they further redacted even the Brady material they had themselves highlighted and withheld the crucial facts that they had highlighted as Brady. (4) They egregiously capitalized on their misconduct at trial by making assertions that were directly belied by the exculpatory evidence they withheld. . . .
The memorandum goes on to set out dozens of Brady violations, including charts that compare the exculpatory statements that the Enron Task Force withheld prior to the first trial with the incriminating statements that the Enron Task Force extracted from witnesses during that trial.
Folks, this is really bad stuff. But as bad as it is, I have not seen any mention of it in the mainstream media.
