Constitutional Chaos

Constitutional Chaos: or How I learned to forgive Martha Stewart

I bought this book based on the little teaser on the side of the book “What happens when the government breaks its own laws.”

This book opened my eyes and has formed how my opinion

It was on page 30, 31, and 32. In those three pages I saw torture that was authorized by an elected official. Torture that was not based on a crime with a real threat to the life of anyone, Torture that was based on expert witnesses that the court said could not be challenged in court. It was based on scientific evidence that was hardly scientific and was destroyed before the case happened. In this single case a public official over ruled her prosecutors and pushed a case for politics and a man is now in jail for 165 years.

And what happened to this woman, the one who authorized the torture? Well first Janet was appointed Attorney General and later became a candidate for Governor of the State of Florida. I am sure Janet is serving on boards and foundations and has made a small fortune. Let me show you how Janet Reno opened my eyes and made me lose all respect for public prosecutors in this country.

In 1984 Janet Reno was facing a tough race for re-election. Reno as she did previously she focused on Day-Care center sex abuse in Miami. Laurie and Jo Braga child care experts with no psychological expertise interviewed these children for up to 3 hours without stop until they “uncovered” repressed memories of abuse. On the stand just as she had before she got a judge to rule that no impeachment of the Braga’s testimony could be brought up in court.

One of the children had a test for bacteria in family of gonorrhea found in her throat, a test that was destroyed 3 days after it was destroyed by order of the prosecutors office and thus was unable to be challenged by the lab. So she could represent it as a positive test –for- gonorrhea.

These things were not sufficient to make a case so Reno ordered Mrs. Fuster held naked in Solitary confinement. She would be thrown naked, cold and wet back in her cell after her showers. The jail guards took her out dressed at night to restaurants and told her “if you want to see a restaurant you better testify”

Janet Reno paid series after series of Psychologists and therapists to try to bring out her memories. One night Naked in her dark Jail cell Janet Reno came into her sell. She told Ilena that her husband was guilty, but that she was not. This large woman visited her cell naked again and again asking her to “help her” out of the jail cell. But she held fast. Finally Reno hired a company called “Behavior Changers”” to meet with her over 34 times and to hypnotize her. Reno was there squeezing her hand much as she did during her testimony. After months of this treatment she finally broke and testified against her husband. Once she was free from her jail cell she recanted immediately.

(Note: Brown University challenges these claims. Based off of the claims made in this Brown page I am going to say that discounting the claims of torture the sheer disregard for the facts of basic justice by allowing witnesses without credentials to be unimpeachable makes my point. I am not sure now how accurate the judge is)

His book details other incidents such as the FBI failing to prosecute a murderer and allowing him to testify falsely at another trial because he “might” be a good source later on.

Prosecutors, FBI agents, and the government can lie with impunity.  The Judge recounts a story of a police officer claiming he saw a broken tail light a mile away and felt a brick that was really cocaine to justify a bogus search.

I find the story rather eye opening. As such unless a –real- crime is committed I have no support for charges such as lying to investigators or even lying to the grand jury (which FBI agents and prosecutors can do).

If a real crime happens I’d have more respect for prosecutors… but clearly they have no respect for the people