PROLOGUE

“There is no more cruel tyranny than that which is exercised under cover of law, and with the colors of justice."

                          Montesquieu De L’Espirit du lois, 1748

                                   in   U.S. v Jannotti 673 F2d 578 (3 Cir 1982)

                          “Experience hath shown that even under the best form of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

                                    Thomas Jefferson [1779]

 

 

 

          “Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”

                                                              Friedrich Nietzsche [1900]

                    “The primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict but to see that justice is done.  The suppression of facts or the secreting of witnesses capable of establishing the innocence of the accused is highly reprehensible.”

 

                             Canon 5 American Bar Association (1926)

 

                    “When he lays aside the impartiality that should characterize his official action to become a heated partisan and by vituperation of the prisoner and appeals to prejudice seeks to procure a conviction at all hazards, he ceases to properly represent the public interest which demands no victim, and asks no conviction through the aid of passion, sympathy or resentment.”

                                                       

                             People vs. Fielding 158 NY 542-547 [1899]

                                   (Sacco and Vanzetti, Appeal 1927)

 

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          A terrible abortion of justice has been performed in Mayes County, Oklahoma, and this miscarriage of justice continues to hemorrhage as an advancing cancer.

                    Our blind faith in our constitution and officials sworn to uphold these great documents leaves us with no concern that a single innocent person - much less two - could be sent to prison to die when no crime was committed by either.

                    Our laws are great laws, written by great people, but these laws that are to keep order and punish errants were primarily designed to protect the innocent from tyranny.

                  Why do we innocent even need these laws now - unless there are still tyrants from whom we need protection?  Tyrants, not unlike Hussein, after power and recognition.  Violating more than a dozen of our great laws to send two innocent citizens to prison to die.  Selling two lives for a smiling photograph on the front page of a small town newspaper captioned “I won.”  Justice loses.

                 Justice stands blindfolded.  We all honor her as she stands - ready for the tyrants’ firing squad.

                 It only takes one rotten apple to ruin a barrel.  And apathy to allow that to happen.

                 Without honorable great minds to stand by as watchdogs to guard justice and our great constitution and laws, all so very well written in the books and statutes, to see that they are upheld, they become useless but for compost and landfill and we all lose.

                 As this vignette unfolds, I ask you to bear in mind to thank god that it will not happen to you, or a loved one or a friend.  But it could, though there may be less chance of this as winning a lottery.  Nonetheless, remember also, all sweepstakes and lotteries do have winners.

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