This week, on Tuesday evening, April 28th, 2020, I became the 2020 Democratic Nominee for the Democratic State House of Representative seat for the 96th District of Ohio.
It was a hard long unusual and not ordinary primary given the covid 19 virus emergency interruptions and distancing requirements.
All told however, it was most gratifying to win among the people and the common citizens of our Southeastern Ohio District.
It wasn't without a fight and my young opponent fought hard and clean and performed well as a first time candidate at this level. I never took this election for granted and knew I was in a genuine race for a high seat in a State of Ohio government level office. I valued the opportunity to run for this office and saw the need for experienced and battle tested leadership to continue on with leading the Democratic banner in the State House from our region.
Now, its time for the Jefferson, Belmont and Monroe County Democratic Parties to unify and come together so we can keep the seat that so many strong Democratic Representatives have maintained in the blue column for decades and most recently Jack Cera who has done a great job while serving the citizens of this District.
We have an advantage; during this time of crises; As JFK often stated during his Presidential race, the Democratic party IS the party who created and originated unemployment insurance, the party of minimum wage and the party of worker's comp and all the social contract safety net programs like Social Security that are keeping this nation and this state and region running through this crises.
We having nothing to apologize for as the programs that FDR, Truman and JFK and all those who followed created and developed and strongly support, are now operating in the manner they were first intended; to keep the nation safe, healthy and sound as possible during a national crises;
We continued now, at this time in particular, need to work hard to make sure such programs are actually benefiting the people in need. and we need to do more also.
But at this time, I want to take this moment and publicly thank once more, as I did in my interviews but the word didn't make it through the News editing rooms;
First, I want to thank the Upper Ohio Valley Building Trades council and also the leaders at the IBEW electrical workers unions here in Steubenville and in Wheeling local 141. their support and endorsements came at critical moments in this primary and i appreciate deeply their acknowledgement of my life's work on critical issues important to the working men and women and to even our children for the past 30 years.
I also want to dedicate this victory to my parents, Dominick and Theresa Olivito Sr. My mom is 93 and still alive and lives next door to me.
My dad passed 10 years ago and i think of him every day and his great contribution to both the Ohio Valley, his hometown and to the State of Ohio''s judiciary and just his love for the ordinary and the sense of fairness and justice he brought to the bench and to all with whom he came into contact with.
His sense of public service and his dedication to the same became widely known up and down the entire eastern Half of Ohio and he blazed a trail from the Beaches of Normady on D Day to the Battle of the Buldge...to winning the ability to enjoy the pubic trust for decades and grew our family name into one that today still holds so much value.
Its a victory for him and my mother, I give the credit most for this opportunity and ability to serve the people of the 96th to what they did and what they stood for all their lives in making my win possible this past week.
And I also want to give a clear credit also to my campaign manager and treasurer Robert Martin of Wintersville, Ohio who is the Wintersville Council President this year.
Rob and his wife and family and his extended family were my main day to day supporters and he and Royal Mayo and my good friends from years back, were the one's who kept hope alive and gave me the encouragement when things seemed at times to be both challenging and just alot to continue with especially when there were days of doubt as this primary lingered on well past the original election night.
Rob placed his professional and public position right next to mine and never waived once during some very challenging moments of this campaign. He always spoke of having hope and faith and putting all things in the hands of the Lord. His strong personal reputation only helped to bolster my own at critical junctures and when certain negatives were spoken about. Rob understood elective politics and he enjoys this win and deserves as much credit as anyone for his loyal support for me from the first hours of my decision to run for this office.
Royal Mayo is more than a brother to me. What people don't know about Royal is he is the most caring and supportive friend anyone ever could have in this life. When my mother was placed in teh emergency room months ago, royal was there instantly for me and her. When I was in the hospital for three days right near the end of this campaign, in March, Royal made sure my mother ate, was kept company and he made meals to order and brought tears to my mother's eyes; hes a much better cook by far than I and he's the true son and brother of our Olivito family today. His voice is well known across the Valley and even in Columbus. and he and I, together know something about the eternal hunger for justice and equality as Jesus our Lord, Himself, often spoke of....
Also, I want to mention my only son. Joshua He is a graduating senior from SHS and i'm so very proud of him and his class. With all those graduating seniors this year from our regional schools I understand well the disappointment with the restrictions placed upon your final months of your primary education. Nonetheless, it does NOT in ANY take away the long years of hard work and daily effort of getting up and heading into school not feeling great, not necessarily always prepared and oftentimes, just having to overcome so much more than many.
To those who have overcome everything and are ready now to graduate into a new era and new life and new moment in your young journey, i say congratulations and so proud of you Joshua and all your classmates and friends. dont be deterred by this momentary setback. its what you have already accomplished and achieved that makes you the winner that you already were and are today. Joshua you are loved and promised everything best I can possibly give you and your grandfather would be so proud of you today and I know your grandmother on my side tears up at the notion you came through so much and are now graduating with honors.
Thankyou finally and most importantly to the voters of the 96th District. You are the reason why this democracy makes sense and keeps on going despite all the challenges that have faced our nation since its founding.
its truly as the brilliant self taught man once spoke, its a government "of the people, for the people and by the people"...and if we continue to participate in this sometimes burdensome process of elections and crazy races, we will continue what makes this nation great...
in closing, here on the Midwest Center's main blog page
i just want to say again
I am humbled by this win and will now work hard to make it a win in November so we can get the Ohio Valley back up and seriously progressing as it needs and should be. the people of this district are the hardest working, most serious enduring people one could meet anywhere. the sheer grit and determination of the citizens of this Valley have fought wars, made the steel and mined the coal and added to the intellectual and sports of our entire nation for decades. We have now been providing serious revenue to the State of Ohio so it can better operate. its time we focus on the continued progress of making our valley worthy of the people who work so hard and those youth who have sacrificed and worked hard to make it through to their graduation day.
We all will have a 96h district graduation day, also, soon, come November and we will make our voices heard and i thank all of you for your support going forward.
Friday, May 1, 2020
Thursday, January 5, 2017
1997 -2017 The New Year Brings the 20th Anniversary of the DOJ Civil Rights Division Steubenville Consent Decree Re Its Police Dept
https://www.justice.gov/crt/united-states-district-court-southern-district-ohioeastern-division-united-states-america
The Steubenville Consent Decree as it was called, was among the original pattern and practice police enforcement actions ever taken in US history under the then new law Public Law 94 and what is now termed 14141 pattern and practice Federal USAG actions....
its critical to any student and serious advocate and/or educator or informed citizen or official to understand the historical context of this new federal authority and grant of oversight of American policing that began in the mid 90's under the Clinton Justice Dept with Janet Reno being the AG at the time.
Steubenville was an unlikely city in many ways to come under such a major original federal enforcement action but given its deep history of such policing issues when combined with its rather troubled past and colorful history, it made sense given the circiumstances on the ground that created the basis for the Special Litigation Unit ...setting their focus on this small southeastern Ohio city on the Ohio River, not far from Pittburgh, Pa...back in the mid 90s when the US attorneys who were working at Justice and its Civil Rights Division were looking for a place to first apply, create and first both determine and accomplish what the both the limits of the law and its sweeping powers were designed to do: to eradicate bad policing methodologies and to create a new higher federal uniform standard of constitutional plicing for all the nation to uphold, see and enjoy;
In 1997, it was a little known law and the enformcement action among most cities and journalists and scholars was a complete unknown at the time. Also unawares and unknown to most everyone in the storied civil rights movement and law schools and judgeships of America, was that there was a complete new legal authority and paradigm that was being both developed and applied by the federal government via the Civil Rights Division Special Litigation units newly minted powers....down, way down, into the locality of American policing among cities and towns, large like Pittsburgh and small like Steubenville.
Very Very few, in 1994-7, knew that this paradigm shift had occurred. Few legal observers ever knew about it or even heard of it and particularly not even the nation's Federal Courts or its associates.
But, then, in 1997, a very few, a limited rarified few, and the privileged advocates of STeubenville, Ohio, all three or four of us, understand what was about to dawn upon the citizens and the authorities of this small town and soon, from there, outward...towards ALL America. only a local lawyer, and his wife, and a african american city councilman and a handful of others, truly understood what was then happening in terms of this new federal authority breaking down upon the local officials like a virus bug just beginning to take hold inside our national bloodstream of american policing. Only a few understood its implications and among them, oddly were...those inside the movie industry and a few of those who had walked the walk in the 60's when their lives too were placed routinely in danger...just on behalf of those for whom they were advocating...
But, in 1997, through the efforts of several, not the least a Columbus attorney with a obvious bent for the 60's kind of appearance and advocacy and from a handful of brave citizens and victims of this very seriously affected city on the Ohio, the final signatures were applied to the original consent decree; and it came to pass and the resulting enforcement action and its standards that were developed during this and another original decree in Pittsburgh Pa, were to become the "gold standard" of how to "do" and literally apply this new federal AG authority over such local law enforcement agencies and small to large city departments throughout America.
It is with this new authority, that this nation once again has come face to face with ..lately through and by very graphic and sometimes very complex and disturbing events such as we witnessed in Ferguson and Cleveland with Tamir Rice and in Baltimore and New York and well beyond.
Now, today, over 30 major cities have been investigated under this law and many have or were placed under such "decree's" from New York to Seattle to New Orleans and Cleveland most recently.
Many other places have been provided with certain guidelines based on the developments under this law and many cities are clearly impacted and influenced strongly by its limitations and standards that have been recreated in many places many times over since the mid nineties..when the DOJ and a young lawyer from Steubenville were cautiously approaching the problem of unconstitutional and seriously degraded and brutal police misconduct occurring in the city on the River, known for its steel mills, Dean Martin and football (and a gal named Judy Jordan in her heyday of the 40'/50's with her ties to the New York mobs directly...)
It is from the tangled downtown streets of this city that the legacy of the nation's FIRST FULLY DOJ "investigated" consent decree developed and originated from.... So, On the year of its Twentieth Anniversary...the DOJ's efforts and this milestone legal event still 'speaks'...
it still has meaning and it still makes its impact both known and seriously engaged in the most substantial civil rights issue of modern american today...the "unfinished business of the civil rights movement" as Dr. King himself once said, before his death...
modern era problem policing...to put it mildly...was first addressed by the federal government in a wholesale comprehensive definitive approach here.
the Steubenville events, circumstances and those who were the key actors who helped it come about....are older but with us in number today; they have a story that is yet to be told...
but its meaning is not NOT going speak to us...i believe...
...for a very long time to come, as well...
here is is...my friends, fellow advocates, and judges and yes ...my most ardent enemies and opponents; i give to you, once more....
the milestone civil rights event of our city's legacy that will last ...as long as this city is here...
with Love for the legal system...that my father himself...devoted so much of his life and times to and all those who in good conscience who ever advocated for the highest ideals of our nation and our legal system, in memory of Dominick E Olivito Sr...
it is from him, my amazing father, the most humble yet best legal mind ever known and to my only son, where I fought hard...and tried, along with a few others, once upon a time, ....to give him (even before he was to be born,) a better city, country, and simply a better place...to live, breath and to enjoy his evenings...at home...
with much Love...
i post this post...
richard a olivito
The Steubenville Consent Decree as it was called, was among the original pattern and practice police enforcement actions ever taken in US history under the then new law Public Law 94 and what is now termed 14141 pattern and practice Federal USAG actions....
its critical to any student and serious advocate and/or educator or informed citizen or official to understand the historical context of this new federal authority and grant of oversight of American policing that began in the mid 90's under the Clinton Justice Dept with Janet Reno being the AG at the time.
Steubenville was an unlikely city in many ways to come under such a major original federal enforcement action but given its deep history of such policing issues when combined with its rather troubled past and colorful history, it made sense given the circiumstances on the ground that created the basis for the Special Litigation Unit ...setting their focus on this small southeastern Ohio city on the Ohio River, not far from Pittburgh, Pa...back in the mid 90s when the US attorneys who were working at Justice and its Civil Rights Division were looking for a place to first apply, create and first both determine and accomplish what the both the limits of the law and its sweeping powers were designed to do: to eradicate bad policing methodologies and to create a new higher federal uniform standard of constitutional plicing for all the nation to uphold, see and enjoy;
In 1997, it was a little known law and the enformcement action among most cities and journalists and scholars was a complete unknown at the time. Also unawares and unknown to most everyone in the storied civil rights movement and law schools and judgeships of America, was that there was a complete new legal authority and paradigm that was being both developed and applied by the federal government via the Civil Rights Division Special Litigation units newly minted powers....down, way down, into the locality of American policing among cities and towns, large like Pittsburgh and small like Steubenville.
Very Very few, in 1994-7, knew that this paradigm shift had occurred. Few legal observers ever knew about it or even heard of it and particularly not even the nation's Federal Courts or its associates.
But, then, in 1997, a very few, a limited rarified few, and the privileged advocates of STeubenville, Ohio, all three or four of us, understand what was about to dawn upon the citizens and the authorities of this small town and soon, from there, outward...towards ALL America. only a local lawyer, and his wife, and a african american city councilman and a handful of others, truly understood what was then happening in terms of this new federal authority breaking down upon the local officials like a virus bug just beginning to take hold inside our national bloodstream of american policing. Only a few understood its implications and among them, oddly were...those inside the movie industry and a few of those who had walked the walk in the 60's when their lives too were placed routinely in danger...just on behalf of those for whom they were advocating...
But, in 1997, through the efforts of several, not the least a Columbus attorney with a obvious bent for the 60's kind of appearance and advocacy and from a handful of brave citizens and victims of this very seriously affected city on the Ohio, the final signatures were applied to the original consent decree; and it came to pass and the resulting enforcement action and its standards that were developed during this and another original decree in Pittsburgh Pa, were to become the "gold standard" of how to "do" and literally apply this new federal AG authority over such local law enforcement agencies and small to large city departments throughout America.
It is with this new authority, that this nation once again has come face to face with ..lately through and by very graphic and sometimes very complex and disturbing events such as we witnessed in Ferguson and Cleveland with Tamir Rice and in Baltimore and New York and well beyond.
Now, today, over 30 major cities have been investigated under this law and many have or were placed under such "decree's" from New York to Seattle to New Orleans and Cleveland most recently.
Many other places have been provided with certain guidelines based on the developments under this law and many cities are clearly impacted and influenced strongly by its limitations and standards that have been recreated in many places many times over since the mid nineties..when the DOJ and a young lawyer from Steubenville were cautiously approaching the problem of unconstitutional and seriously degraded and brutal police misconduct occurring in the city on the River, known for its steel mills, Dean Martin and football (and a gal named Judy Jordan in her heyday of the 40'/50's with her ties to the New York mobs directly...)
It is from the tangled downtown streets of this city that the legacy of the nation's FIRST FULLY DOJ "investigated" consent decree developed and originated from.... So, On the year of its Twentieth Anniversary...the DOJ's efforts and this milestone legal event still 'speaks'...
it still has meaning and it still makes its impact both known and seriously engaged in the most substantial civil rights issue of modern american today...the "unfinished business of the civil rights movement" as Dr. King himself once said, before his death...
modern era problem policing...to put it mildly...was first addressed by the federal government in a wholesale comprehensive definitive approach here.
the Steubenville events, circumstances and those who were the key actors who helped it come about....are older but with us in number today; they have a story that is yet to be told...
but its meaning is not NOT going speak to us...i believe...
...for a very long time to come, as well...
here is is...my friends, fellow advocates, and judges and yes ...my most ardent enemies and opponents; i give to you, once more....
the milestone civil rights event of our city's legacy that will last ...as long as this city is here...
with Love for the legal system...that my father himself...devoted so much of his life and times to and all those who in good conscience who ever advocated for the highest ideals of our nation and our legal system, in memory of Dominick E Olivito Sr...
it is from him, my amazing father, the most humble yet best legal mind ever known and to my only son, where I fought hard...and tried, along with a few others, once upon a time, ....to give him (even before he was to be born,) a better city, country, and simply a better place...to live, breath and to enjoy his evenings...at home...
with much Love...
i post this post...
richard a olivito
Sunday, November 20, 2016
To My Midwest Center Friends, Members and fellow Readers and even Distractors:
Its Time to Speak Again:
Its been quite some time that I have added anything to the Midwest Center's official blog page.
The year has expired like a winding road, with its variances and crazy electorial national politics, the routine mind boggling public comments combine with the mind numbing failure of local lawyers and judges and many others across the nation... who just simply fail their duty, their clients, the legal profession, the system of laws that are in place
to protecct the most basic fundamental due process rights of ours.
Its not only the citizens who are to blame for the recent elections, the disaffected white rust belt voter
and those who have been left out of the elite media blitz we all have been so treated to for the past decade or so,
We here who have been living in the fly over districts of America, have not only seen our jobs and our lives disenfranchised, lost, depressed, corrupted and uphended unlike anything many other places in this nation have not
we also have been treated as "fly over" in terms of our civil liberties being ignored, trampled upon, mis treated and completely and forever jarred from us, by rude, crass, at times, ignorant eventual trump wanna bes, in office, locally across these midwestern states also. In particular..for this article...by the very third branches of our midwestern states that just delivered to America its stunning new world order...the presidency of Donald Trump and his rampant nationalistic fervor (fever?) pitched campaign that may lead to our first real serious experience with homegrown modern world fascism.
In other words, this region is NO area of the country to be a civil rights lawyer or advocate as much as its not any place to be a liberal forward thinking politician or media reporter for major mainstream media.
Its the fly over districts of America that have been left out, left behind, forgotten and simply trampled upon and as the Bi Coastal and the southeastern coastal regions of this nation grew exponentially not only in terms of population but jobs, nice condos, beautiful new shopping centers, beautiful landscaped as if 3d printer moulded dream home neighborhoods were simply shipped in and stamped down onto the Florida and Carolinas' east coast or the Georgia and Alabama coastal one's also ...
But rather, its the places like Warren, Waverly and Cadiz Ohio, that grew this nationalism among others like it....where....but for the gas and oil industry fracking efforts of late, with its billion dollar injection of cash into this region, giving many a republican governor the chance to crow that he, not the Texas and Oklahoma industries brought jobs to this once totally defunked, once proud but down on its knees, rust belt 'appalachian' center of the universe
it was here, where its hard working citizens were completely forgotten by the many ambitious politicians and wall street billionaires, of donald trumps cabinet, who sought political refuge in major corporate donors offices, in DC, and many of the east coast, west Coast and southern ocean view
office buildings...
Its for many a reason Donald Trump won this election this year; racism and xenophobia at clearly near its head and not without a good amount of mysiogeny.
But, what else was there?
There was this very extreme, long march to death, long in the tooth, well-developed institutional legal movement with its serious but intentional blundering and slouching ever growing tendency inside our midwestern state and FEDERAL COURT systems that have treated the citizens's individual rights as put forth by the Founding Fathers First Principles as if they were nice written tablets belonging to some archaic past archeological find, from a long ago extinct ancient culture which once roamed the North American continent...
The push and urge we see now taking actual real form and shape in our national elections and most disturbing to many inside our national government with Trumps' election did not begin with just the lost of jobs and long term unemployment, inside the underemployed midwest.
Its also must give its salute to the Clinton era appointee federal judges who also treated the lowly citizens of Ohio Michigan and Kentucky and western Pa and many other such places across all of America, as if these people were something lesser, something other, something to use for cheap labor and/or to be used for heavy industry labor practices for three or four decades then to be discarded in their pensions as if they were mere fodder, food for the capitalist pigs who took their old tired worn out factories and moved them down south of the border, sometimes, just down to Georgia, or to the republican strongholds of Alabama and Tennessee...
not always, just to Mexico necessarily but just across the Mason -Dixon line.
and not necessarily to China (though so much was actually moved there)...but to Texas and South Carolina and Tennessee ...places where no union was ever truly welcomed..and never will be until Pat Robertson and Jesus together show up on their respective White Horses...
(and I'm not sure who will be leading that amazing assembly either, after this past decade of the "great migration of jobs southward"....will it not CrefloDollar and his 30 million dollar yatcht crew'? or will it be the Only Son...?}
not quite sure... after living thru these past years in the midwestern wilderness...
The point being and I'm making this, as a civil rights lawyer who was shockingly 'defrocked'
{never disbarred but just silenced}
sometime ago now ...with the pain and suffering of how that was done to me, and with the shock of the same, fading, the pain a direct factor due to the once very high regard I once enjoyed and viewed along with the high institutional respect I held for the legal profession and the positions of higher laws and Courts I obtained from my own father, a former 32 year senior trial judge who loved his tomato garden more than any country club...and yet worked in every type of law and in 76 of 88 Ohio counties, from Cincinnati, to Chillicothe, from Columbus and Toledo to Cadiz and Marietta, from Dayton and Youngstown, to Steubenville, and Dillonville, Ohio
yes....i have seen the beast arising inside this nation's heartland ...long before this national election ...
and Ive had the hot breath of the beast of something "other", breathing down on me for years
Not even this nation's highest officers or some of its Highest Government Agencies could stop nor prevent from happening what has happened to me.
more importantly, most if not all, do not even care and no longer feel its even necessary to discuss
but now, perhaps, because of the fears of millions and the threat to muslims and to mexicans
and to so many lesbians and others...
This American white male civil rights lawyers can share his story and have it become relevant
...just maybe
I knew something of what this nation is sensing today...sometime ago...
it started long ago but it became very clear and personal to me
when i was put through for about 3 to 4 years by the Ohio Supreme Court and a local democractic strongly hold's bar associations, about 9 years ago now,
I witnessed and was afforded the private email account treatment, of
how a high court was corrupted by lies and politicization and influenced by serious corporate creepy special interests and mere man's jealousy and yes, a good dose of midwestern institutional racism
I witnessed personally, how easily it was for the highest courts of a entire state and region in both the state and federal judiciaries...
to simply fail...their duty to uphold the concept and truth of what a highly devout christian 19th century figure once authored, fought for and himself paid a terrible price politically for getting into the constitutional framework of this nation. called the 14th Amendment.
and soon afterwards, to witness it to be promptly forgotten and buried and much later, only resurrected merely in bits and pieces case by case, year by year almost a century later, in after a King and Kennedy arose,
they were the ones who critically applied, what this single devout serious equality minded 19th white male from Cadiz, Ohio had envisioned for America....John Bingham's 14th...was the KEY to all of our modern notions of individual equality and due process rights...he authored the most important constituitonal amendment one may say, after the original 10 and the 13th which abolished slavery. it is easy to forget him. this nation did afterall for over a century after he wrote the same. and today??
well, in many many cases, sadly its my experience, in many high courts today, they don't seem to wish to adopt even now, what this pious devout christian white male wrote;
in many instances, the judges on high courts, in many instances are simply imposters
...and have been for a generation now.. they are just as much responsible for the rise of any would be dictator whether or not its Trump or some other would be strongman, to rise in the near future, over America, for they themselves, these high courts, have invited in and conjoured up such a spirit of NON DUE process, with resulting shocking outcomes and surprising results...to what would to the ordinary citizen and American would readily think is only just and fair and equal
the federal and state courts of America, particularly in the midwest regions of America have been well ahead of the national mood and curve in burying the individual rights contained in the 14th Amendment for years...
in a significant manner, places and times, they have plowed the ground and seasoned the roots of the rise of a modern tyranny.
its not the tyranny of old, like in France with Napolean or a Roman like Caesar..
its not the third world dictator tyranny ...and its not even the garden variety Soviet style tyrant modern or former like Stalinists flavor;
no rather, its a tyranny by another name, another form
and its been welcomed in through the back door of the forgotten, over the heads of the millions found not fully nor gainfully employed in the bread basket of America..
like Mike Moore, the middle finger of White working class people who were left out of their jobs and their lifestyles, having to watch their children go far away just to find life, not just a job..but life...
were the one's who voted the neo con liberalism out of existence
and it was Hillary who paid the price for it no doubt..
but the darker impulses we see underlying the foundation and the true spirit of how this was appealed to, came from another more potent and much more powerful institution
The federal and state and in some instances, the forgotten small town local courts who have treated individual rights as if they were so many plastic action figures on a children's gamestop table game...
They created the legal judicially created form of today's heavily immunitized local and state acting officials that can not be very easily held accountable and therefore the did as the ancient scriptures would say " they did what seemed right in their own eyes...so says the Lord..."
and for this reason.. the once held universal ideal that upheld the highest forms of constitutinality and all that flowed form those first principles and universal ideals meant, were no longer held as the boundaries and limitations upon a governmental actor, even as they acted wrongfully towards the citizens of their very government.
so, the truth and the universal notion of individual rights, today, is weakened and no longer holds true,
and with this, comes a rising up...of what always comes from the failure of the consensus of men and their rules, the breaching of the social contract in the form of a strongman arising who "will make the nation great again"
this is the talk and language of all Musollini's.... the fascist rise was begun not with only dick cheney and Bush's waterboarding white house lawyers and AG...
not only with what Snowden revealed to us about our own government's top down, complete capturing of every single keystroke on this computer I am writing on...
but, also, it was given its legal and powerful impetus, the first and second and third, and thousandth and hundred of thousandth
time, a judge, a federal magistrate, a hearing office a lawyer failed to grant a citizen their true 14 th Amendment Due Process...
inside of a hearing that held in the balance their entire life, their life's work, their career, their reputation
when high courts and high court appointed officials and hearing officers and lower courts
lie and lie seriously and intentionally disassociate themselves from the very founding principles that create the basis for what the law is in our open society
we have already taken the steps....to that which we see, hear and fear all around us today
...in Germany, the tribunals who operated under a very highly developed set of laws before the rise of Nazism...were doing so under a formal Constitution and a formal set of due process standards.
However, in order to politically please the higher ups and commands and the prevailing winds of the day, politically
the courts of Germany long before the invasion of Poland, began to treat "the other" as if ...they were simply "fly over people"....to be stripped of their civil liberties, slowly almost hidden at first.
it was then, they were lost Germany as a republic lost its soul, inside its own courts, well before the people embraced and longed for a leader, a Furher...to take them into the new millienial 1000 year reign of near heavenly rulership.
it was the german nationalists who decided to short cut the treatment of the individual and his/her right to due process and the truth,
that created inside the system for a rise of the Nazi party inside of Germany...
and so...i fear and more than just intellectually surmise
but i bear the very scars....of that which I write and speak herein
when a nation and when a high court chooses to ignore the most fundamental due process guarantees to its citizens to those its considers public enemies and to those who dare to be different and who decide to put their careers on the side of the unpopular, the disenfranchised the poor and outkast
then that nation no longer is operative of a truly open society Democratic in form but dangerously overpowering of the individual, within its truer self...
in form we're a functioning democracy
but many, many of my former clients, and acquaintances even today, i witness in my friends case...the housewife of a small town being tortured to death literally
because of the failure of the local courts and the lawyers to a person, ...to simply do their jobs and to protect her civil liberties
whatever she is into, what ever she does and doesn't do good or bad
their abandonment wholesale...from high end super lawyers in Columbus, to the lowly bunch of local legalize
its hard to witness once again...that which I myself endured ...not so many years ago
and have to be treated to a front row seat
while her...and my own
and nearly every one i know...civil liberties, are being trampled upon, shorn, ripped into pieces
and even mocked and treated with deliberate indifference
not by the police outside....nor by the enemies from overseas
but by those seated in black robes
and those who bring their briefcases full of cookies and favors for judges
around those land granted rural appalachian courthouses, built in an era, when america was just industrializing
when Ameria's future wasn't as globally conceived
When its better technologically days were just ahead
when American's still believed....
and when courts and lawyers, to a larger degree....
had come from a place where a civil war over slavery and citizenship
had just become....a recent faded memory
but the afterglow
made everyone realize then....as Lincoln stated in his final address
we either get along and "treat all humans, equally...or we as a nation that is dedicated to freedom will perish from the face the earth"
putting it bluntly if not paraphrased...
Its Time to Speak Again:
Its been quite some time that I have added anything to the Midwest Center's official blog page.
The year has expired like a winding road, with its variances and crazy electorial national politics, the routine mind boggling public comments combine with the mind numbing failure of local lawyers and judges and many others across the nation... who just simply fail their duty, their clients, the legal profession, the system of laws that are in place
to protecct the most basic fundamental due process rights of ours.
Its not only the citizens who are to blame for the recent elections, the disaffected white rust belt voter
and those who have been left out of the elite media blitz we all have been so treated to for the past decade or so,
We here who have been living in the fly over districts of America, have not only seen our jobs and our lives disenfranchised, lost, depressed, corrupted and uphended unlike anything many other places in this nation have not
we also have been treated as "fly over" in terms of our civil liberties being ignored, trampled upon, mis treated and completely and forever jarred from us, by rude, crass, at times, ignorant eventual trump wanna bes, in office, locally across these midwestern states also. In particular..for this article...by the very third branches of our midwestern states that just delivered to America its stunning new world order...the presidency of Donald Trump and his rampant nationalistic fervor (fever?) pitched campaign that may lead to our first real serious experience with homegrown modern world fascism.
In other words, this region is NO area of the country to be a civil rights lawyer or advocate as much as its not any place to be a liberal forward thinking politician or media reporter for major mainstream media.
Its the fly over districts of America that have been left out, left behind, forgotten and simply trampled upon and as the Bi Coastal and the southeastern coastal regions of this nation grew exponentially not only in terms of population but jobs, nice condos, beautiful new shopping centers, beautiful landscaped as if 3d printer moulded dream home neighborhoods were simply shipped in and stamped down onto the Florida and Carolinas' east coast or the Georgia and Alabama coastal one's also ...
But rather, its the places like Warren, Waverly and Cadiz Ohio, that grew this nationalism among others like it....where....but for the gas and oil industry fracking efforts of late, with its billion dollar injection of cash into this region, giving many a republican governor the chance to crow that he, not the Texas and Oklahoma industries brought jobs to this once totally defunked, once proud but down on its knees, rust belt 'appalachian' center of the universe
it was here, where its hard working citizens were completely forgotten by the many ambitious politicians and wall street billionaires, of donald trumps cabinet, who sought political refuge in major corporate donors offices, in DC, and many of the east coast, west Coast and southern ocean view
office buildings...
Its for many a reason Donald Trump won this election this year; racism and xenophobia at clearly near its head and not without a good amount of mysiogeny.
But, what else was there?
There was this very extreme, long march to death, long in the tooth, well-developed institutional legal movement with its serious but intentional blundering and slouching ever growing tendency inside our midwestern state and FEDERAL COURT systems that have treated the citizens's individual rights as put forth by the Founding Fathers First Principles as if they were nice written tablets belonging to some archaic past archeological find, from a long ago extinct ancient culture which once roamed the North American continent...
The push and urge we see now taking actual real form and shape in our national elections and most disturbing to many inside our national government with Trumps' election did not begin with just the lost of jobs and long term unemployment, inside the underemployed midwest.
Its also must give its salute to the Clinton era appointee federal judges who also treated the lowly citizens of Ohio Michigan and Kentucky and western Pa and many other such places across all of America, as if these people were something lesser, something other, something to use for cheap labor and/or to be used for heavy industry labor practices for three or four decades then to be discarded in their pensions as if they were mere fodder, food for the capitalist pigs who took their old tired worn out factories and moved them down south of the border, sometimes, just down to Georgia, or to the republican strongholds of Alabama and Tennessee...
not always, just to Mexico necessarily but just across the Mason -Dixon line.
and not necessarily to China (though so much was actually moved there)...but to Texas and South Carolina and Tennessee ...places where no union was ever truly welcomed..and never will be until Pat Robertson and Jesus together show up on their respective White Horses...
(and I'm not sure who will be leading that amazing assembly either, after this past decade of the "great migration of jobs southward"....will it not CrefloDollar and his 30 million dollar yatcht crew'? or will it be the Only Son...?}
not quite sure... after living thru these past years in the midwestern wilderness...
The point being and I'm making this, as a civil rights lawyer who was shockingly 'defrocked'
{never disbarred but just silenced}
sometime ago now ...with the pain and suffering of how that was done to me, and with the shock of the same, fading, the pain a direct factor due to the once very high regard I once enjoyed and viewed along with the high institutional respect I held for the legal profession and the positions of higher laws and Courts I obtained from my own father, a former 32 year senior trial judge who loved his tomato garden more than any country club...and yet worked in every type of law and in 76 of 88 Ohio counties, from Cincinnati, to Chillicothe, from Columbus and Toledo to Cadiz and Marietta, from Dayton and Youngstown, to Steubenville, and Dillonville, Ohio
yes....i have seen the beast arising inside this nation's heartland ...long before this national election ...
and Ive had the hot breath of the beast of something "other", breathing down on me for years
Not even this nation's highest officers or some of its Highest Government Agencies could stop nor prevent from happening what has happened to me.
more importantly, most if not all, do not even care and no longer feel its even necessary to discuss
but now, perhaps, because of the fears of millions and the threat to muslims and to mexicans
and to so many lesbians and others...
This American white male civil rights lawyers can share his story and have it become relevant
...just maybe
I knew something of what this nation is sensing today...sometime ago...
it started long ago but it became very clear and personal to me
when i was put through for about 3 to 4 years by the Ohio Supreme Court and a local democractic strongly hold's bar associations, about 9 years ago now,
I witnessed and was afforded the private email account treatment, of
how a high court was corrupted by lies and politicization and influenced by serious corporate creepy special interests and mere man's jealousy and yes, a good dose of midwestern institutional racism
I witnessed personally, how easily it was for the highest courts of a entire state and region in both the state and federal judiciaries...
to simply fail...their duty to uphold the concept and truth of what a highly devout christian 19th century figure once authored, fought for and himself paid a terrible price politically for getting into the constitutional framework of this nation. called the 14th Amendment.
and soon afterwards, to witness it to be promptly forgotten and buried and much later, only resurrected merely in bits and pieces case by case, year by year almost a century later, in after a King and Kennedy arose,
they were the ones who critically applied, what this single devout serious equality minded 19th white male from Cadiz, Ohio had envisioned for America....John Bingham's 14th...was the KEY to all of our modern notions of individual equality and due process rights...he authored the most important constituitonal amendment one may say, after the original 10 and the 13th which abolished slavery. it is easy to forget him. this nation did afterall for over a century after he wrote the same. and today??
well, in many many cases, sadly its my experience, in many high courts today, they don't seem to wish to adopt even now, what this pious devout christian white male wrote;
in many instances, the judges on high courts, in many instances are simply imposters
...and have been for a generation now.. they are just as much responsible for the rise of any would be dictator whether or not its Trump or some other would be strongman, to rise in the near future, over America, for they themselves, these high courts, have invited in and conjoured up such a spirit of NON DUE process, with resulting shocking outcomes and surprising results...to what would to the ordinary citizen and American would readily think is only just and fair and equal
the federal and state courts of America, particularly in the midwest regions of America have been well ahead of the national mood and curve in burying the individual rights contained in the 14th Amendment for years...
in a significant manner, places and times, they have plowed the ground and seasoned the roots of the rise of a modern tyranny.
its not the tyranny of old, like in France with Napolean or a Roman like Caesar..
its not the third world dictator tyranny ...and its not even the garden variety Soviet style tyrant modern or former like Stalinists flavor;
no rather, its a tyranny by another name, another form
and its been welcomed in through the back door of the forgotten, over the heads of the millions found not fully nor gainfully employed in the bread basket of America..
like Mike Moore, the middle finger of White working class people who were left out of their jobs and their lifestyles, having to watch their children go far away just to find life, not just a job..but life...
were the one's who voted the neo con liberalism out of existence
and it was Hillary who paid the price for it no doubt..
but the darker impulses we see underlying the foundation and the true spirit of how this was appealed to, came from another more potent and much more powerful institution
The federal and state and in some instances, the forgotten small town local courts who have treated individual rights as if they were so many plastic action figures on a children's gamestop table game...
They created the legal judicially created form of today's heavily immunitized local and state acting officials that can not be very easily held accountable and therefore the did as the ancient scriptures would say " they did what seemed right in their own eyes...so says the Lord..."
and for this reason.. the once held universal ideal that upheld the highest forms of constitutinality and all that flowed form those first principles and universal ideals meant, were no longer held as the boundaries and limitations upon a governmental actor, even as they acted wrongfully towards the citizens of their very government.
so, the truth and the universal notion of individual rights, today, is weakened and no longer holds true,
and with this, comes a rising up...of what always comes from the failure of the consensus of men and their rules, the breaching of the social contract in the form of a strongman arising who "will make the nation great again"
this is the talk and language of all Musollini's.... the fascist rise was begun not with only dick cheney and Bush's waterboarding white house lawyers and AG...
not only with what Snowden revealed to us about our own government's top down, complete capturing of every single keystroke on this computer I am writing on...
but, also, it was given its legal and powerful impetus, the first and second and third, and thousandth and hundred of thousandth
time, a judge, a federal magistrate, a hearing office a lawyer failed to grant a citizen their true 14 th Amendment Due Process...
inside of a hearing that held in the balance their entire life, their life's work, their career, their reputation
when high courts and high court appointed officials and hearing officers and lower courts
lie and lie seriously and intentionally disassociate themselves from the very founding principles that create the basis for what the law is in our open society
we have already taken the steps....to that which we see, hear and fear all around us today
...in Germany, the tribunals who operated under a very highly developed set of laws before the rise of Nazism...were doing so under a formal Constitution and a formal set of due process standards.
However, in order to politically please the higher ups and commands and the prevailing winds of the day, politically
the courts of Germany long before the invasion of Poland, began to treat "the other" as if ...they were simply "fly over people"....to be stripped of their civil liberties, slowly almost hidden at first.
it was then, they were lost Germany as a republic lost its soul, inside its own courts, well before the people embraced and longed for a leader, a Furher...to take them into the new millienial 1000 year reign of near heavenly rulership.
it was the german nationalists who decided to short cut the treatment of the individual and his/her right to due process and the truth,
that created inside the system for a rise of the Nazi party inside of Germany...
and so...i fear and more than just intellectually surmise
but i bear the very scars....of that which I write and speak herein
when a nation and when a high court chooses to ignore the most fundamental due process guarantees to its citizens to those its considers public enemies and to those who dare to be different and who decide to put their careers on the side of the unpopular, the disenfranchised the poor and outkast
then that nation no longer is operative of a truly open society Democratic in form but dangerously overpowering of the individual, within its truer self...
in form we're a functioning democracy
but many, many of my former clients, and acquaintances even today, i witness in my friends case...the housewife of a small town being tortured to death literally
because of the failure of the local courts and the lawyers to a person, ...to simply do their jobs and to protect her civil liberties
whatever she is into, what ever she does and doesn't do good or bad
their abandonment wholesale...from high end super lawyers in Columbus, to the lowly bunch of local legalize
its hard to witness once again...that which I myself endured ...not so many years ago
and have to be treated to a front row seat
while her...and my own
and nearly every one i know...civil liberties, are being trampled upon, shorn, ripped into pieces
and even mocked and treated with deliberate indifference
not by the police outside....nor by the enemies from overseas
but by those seated in black robes
and those who bring their briefcases full of cookies and favors for judges
around those land granted rural appalachian courthouses, built in an era, when america was just industrializing
when Ameria's future wasn't as globally conceived
When its better technologically days were just ahead
when American's still believed....
and when courts and lawyers, to a larger degree....
had come from a place where a civil war over slavery and citizenship
had just become....a recent faded memory
but the afterglow
made everyone realize then....as Lincoln stated in his final address
we either get along and "treat all humans, equally...or we as a nation that is dedicated to freedom will perish from the face the earth"
putting it bluntly if not paraphrased...
Monday, February 8, 2016
Update: Keturah Krankovich's Case's Plea: The Failure of the Local Criminal Justice System and The Media's Complicity In The Effort to Tear Down the Individuals' Right to Presumption of Innocence
Recently, a felony drug case that had been pending for over a year inside of Harrison County, Ohio was quietly, (very quietly) dismissed and all the pending aggravated drug trafficking and possession charges were dismissed. A plea instead was taken by the tired but still spirited Defendant, Keturah Krankovich, after she fought off the allegations that had taken on a life of their own inside the local court and also, oddly, the local media, including the everywhere local TV NewsStation, NewsNine.
Keturah Krankovich in other words successfully defended herself against the powers that be and two separate indictments, a 10 month malicious prosecution, twice a week drug testing for 10 months and she defended herself against a three aggravated felony charge indictment and overcame all of these officials hot accusations against her, on January 19th. She won. In a word, she won against the greatest of odds after having spent tens of thousands of dollars, and retaining no less than three separate defense lawyers over the course of the past year.
She won because she would not give in and give up on her defense and her own statements. She won because she was committed to defending her professional background as a local experienced RN and she won for her young adult children who have had in her son's case, his own issues and serious problems. And keturah won because of her faith, not so much in the human system of laws, but in the Kingdom of God and His ability to still influence the affairs of men.
Keturah may have bended at times and she was made to endure things that very few mothers and career women and housewives would ever endure inside the same year. She was bruised and hurt by the local reporting and the relentless prosecution of something that ended up not having much if any official discovery and therefore evidence ever presented against her.
She won because she insisted upon her own rights to counsel, right to cross examine evidence, to have the state prove their hot and very damaging allegations against her and the imbalanced local prosecutor's seeming personal agenda in bringing such weakly supported allegations and then sustaining them for months, long after his own assistant had spoken to Keturah's various competent criminal defense attorneys for months, about how weak the case was, and how the case ought to be resolved and done so by either a dismissal and/or low misdemeanor.
Its happened and she did take a "no contest" plea to a third degree minor misdemeanor non drug charge. She was NOT requested to take a plea to ANY DRUG charge whatsoever. She wasn't given any jail sentence and no reporting probation. She has no more drug testing to perform at all.
And this win, and it is a significant win, is largely based on the complete lack of evidence that the State's case, inside the Harrison County Prosecutor's office had in prosecuting her for most of the entire past year. And its a material victory for her, despite the local media's constant attention to this case for months, as if it were a major felony drug case. Yet, when the case was resolved two weeks ago, very strongly and very much in her favor, the local media was not present, and/or either mainly silent and in effect, not so interested any more. After all, an American citizen who overcomes the most serious kinds of legal threats this nation's local governments can do to any individual, to any of u s citizens, just isn't news anymore, when the citizen wins and basically defeats the local powers that be who have made her withstand a year of hell itself, night and day for over 11 months.
In our nation anymore, its a total a crap shoot if American citizens can retained their fundamental civil liberties. Most women in Keturah's position would have given up and given in a very long time ago. The amazing thing about this case is the person who withstood all that the local prosecutor's and probation officers were willing to sustain for a year against her and do so, with strength, with courage and the kind of self-dedication and personal grit that it takes to stand up against the uneven balance of power that the individual has to face inside of our court system today. Keturah simply never give in completely to their serious high pressure and coercive tactics, for months, all the while she was undergoing the searing pain of a difficult unwanted personal divorce brought in part against her by a husband who stated repeatedly to her, "I can't be seen with you in public even."
This is what this young mother and woman who is an experienced RN has had to endure for the past year. Now, she is resting in the aftermath of having overcome the serious felony indictment and she is truly the victor. And its a victory not only for Keturah but for all of us, who believe in the constitutional rights of the accused in this country, a country supposedly based on the right of the accused to enjoy the right of presumption of innocence before being considered and promoted as guilty in the public square by a media that often simply is way to eager to buy every single thing the local police and prosecutors have to say. This case if anything, stands for the right to confront evidence that the state has brought against the beset individual and where and when it is completely lacking, the Defendant ought to win and/or achieve a significant outcome in their favor and Keturah certainly did. Her retained counsel often told her they thought they could win at trial and they knew the case was weak against her. But they all also strongly advised her to forego the rigors of a jury trial and the outside chance that the local jury system would be tainted by all the local negative media coverage that made her out to be less than innocent even though there was scant, if any actual direct evidence that the state ever did produce, even in its 10 month old delay in presenting to her, its discovery....there was so little evidence that the state would be able to present before a Jury, it was difficult for Keturah to take a plea. But given she would face no jail, no fines, and most importantly NO DRUG CHARGES WHATSOEVER, she took the minor misdemeanor and got the pressure over with and with this, begin to heal up from what was a ordeal that no one, much less a younger mother and wife going thru a painful time of personal life ought to have had to endure and do so, under our alleged 'best' legal system in the world, with the kinds of constitutional rights it is supposed to be based upon and deliver to the citizens of our nation.
Its a lesson learned and Keturah is now basically free from the terrible year long personal prosecution she has had to endure risking everything in her life, including her professional and personal life. She's learned some very important but difficult if not hard lessons about local prosecutors, local legal systems and just how bizarre a local small town criminal justice can become when they wish to create a threat to one's very liberty interest and life and family.
Its nothing one wishes to ever experience or endure. She once she has, she will never be quite the same and for this, we hope that by not giving in and not succumbing to the seriously over indictment felony charges and fighting the local powers that best she could, she has not only secured her own liberty interests once again, but in some significant way, she has helped secured all of ours in believing enough in herself and in her cause to not just take whatever dish the local prosecutors and authorities had hoped she would in furtherance of their own agenda and personal and political careers
The Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the 14th Amendment, written by Cadiz' hometown legendary 19th century congressman and lawyer, John Bingham, guarantee individuals in Keturah's status, this past year, the power of that which all of our Founder fathers fought for and believed in. Its what men died in World War II for at Normandy and beyond. Its the very basis of why our own Civil War was fought over; human freedom and human rights for all, equally.
It may seem odd to some, but in fact, every time someone is focused upon and indicted in this nation, all of these basic sacred rights are put to the test. So it was the same inside Keturah's year long felony drug prosecution.
It was terrible that she was treated by the local prosecutor and probation office AND THE LOCAL MEDIA FOR THE MOST PART, as guilty before proven innocent repeatedly and she was constantly pressured and threatened with jailing and was in fact, jailed twice by the local officials pre trial for allegedly violating the pre trial court drug testing program. One major problem with this; THEY NEVER PROVIDED ONCE EVEN ONCE THE EVIDENCE OF HER FAILED TESTS INSIDE THE COURT OF LAW!
ITs a very troubling day in America when a defendant has to argue for months and stand up and face jail time for simply wanting the state to present, not prove, just present its evidence against a defendant accused of serious crimes. When a defendant faces a multiple level felony indictment, one would expect the evidence of her infractions and the discovery that is accompanied to every single criminal case ever brought inside this nation, ought to be reasonably and quickly if not timely provided to the Defendant and her counsel. This NEVER HAPPEND INSIDE OF KETURAH's case for over 10 MONTHS!
This is the reason why Keturah's win....and her brining the state's railroad to a pause and finally to a stop against her on January 19th. She is one very seriously tired individual and she has paid out tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers, just to survive, to fight on and try to get her points across and to finally overcome all of this, this past year.
Yet, she has her pride intact and she owns her own reputation once again, despite the heavy media coverage of the state's allegations; She needs it to be more fully restored now, no doubt. She has her dignity and with this, she has stood the test and she literally helped all of us, who care deeply about the civil rights and constitutional liberties of our nation. Watching this from a certain third party distance and yet up close and personal with her at times, it is something else to try to express today, anywhere to just try to demonstrate and write about what it takes for one individual to assert ones' innocence and those all important constitutional rights before a Court of Law today in smallville USA, against a few select, highly personally agendized locally powerful local prosecutors and courts.
Its nothing small to be able to meet them on a field of battle and overcome their tactics and their unsubstantiated allegations. This has happened and it took everything inside of her to fight this fight
But now, for her, its the time to heal, a time to rest and for those of us who were near her, and watched having to endure this long night of the soul, we are left to only help watch and admire and help her realize and those watching from within the public who followed this case closely, and thru the media, to realize just how serious a win and overcoming this woman obtained not only for herself, but all of those who oneday just may find themselves unexpectedly in the same position as she did, one year ago this week.
Its an American narrative and nothing is more important than what she did to overcome this seriously falsely maintained criminal multi level felony prosecution which now is all dismissed and gone forever out of her life in the legal sense. The experience itself, of being so prosecuted, however, sadly, will never be.
She has several things to do and she will get to them in due and reasonable time. But the war is over, the battlefield is now silent largely and she now is rebuilding her life. Its a time of gathering stones for Keturah and for some peace and quiet. Its also time for the government to leave her alone and let an American citizen, a young mom and career woman to get back to what can be called normalcy when things in this nation, are anything but normal given our present weakened constitutional framework within our courts today.
Recently, a felony drug case that had been pending for over a year inside of Harrison County, Ohio was quietly, (very quietly) dismissed and all the pending aggravated drug trafficking and possession charges were dismissed. A plea instead was taken by the tired but still spirited Defendant, Keturah Krankovich, after she fought off the allegations that had taken on a life of their own inside the local court and also, oddly, the local media, including the everywhere local TV NewsStation, NewsNine.
Keturah Krankovich in other words successfully defended herself against the powers that be and two separate indictments, a 10 month malicious prosecution, twice a week drug testing for 10 months and she defended herself against a three aggravated felony charge indictment and overcame all of these officials hot accusations against her, on January 19th. She won. In a word, she won against the greatest of odds after having spent tens of thousands of dollars, and retaining no less than three separate defense lawyers over the course of the past year.
She won because she would not give in and give up on her defense and her own statements. She won because she was committed to defending her professional background as a local experienced RN and she won for her young adult children who have had in her son's case, his own issues and serious problems. And keturah won because of her faith, not so much in the human system of laws, but in the Kingdom of God and His ability to still influence the affairs of men.
Keturah may have bended at times and she was made to endure things that very few mothers and career women and housewives would ever endure inside the same year. She was bruised and hurt by the local reporting and the relentless prosecution of something that ended up not having much if any official discovery and therefore evidence ever presented against her.
She won because she insisted upon her own rights to counsel, right to cross examine evidence, to have the state prove their hot and very damaging allegations against her and the imbalanced local prosecutor's seeming personal agenda in bringing such weakly supported allegations and then sustaining them for months, long after his own assistant had spoken to Keturah's various competent criminal defense attorneys for months, about how weak the case was, and how the case ought to be resolved and done so by either a dismissal and/or low misdemeanor.
Its happened and she did take a "no contest" plea to a third degree minor misdemeanor non drug charge. She was NOT requested to take a plea to ANY DRUG charge whatsoever. She wasn't given any jail sentence and no reporting probation. She has no more drug testing to perform at all.
And this win, and it is a significant win, is largely based on the complete lack of evidence that the State's case, inside the Harrison County Prosecutor's office had in prosecuting her for most of the entire past year. And its a material victory for her, despite the local media's constant attention to this case for months, as if it were a major felony drug case. Yet, when the case was resolved two weeks ago, very strongly and very much in her favor, the local media was not present, and/or either mainly silent and in effect, not so interested any more. After all, an American citizen who overcomes the most serious kinds of legal threats this nation's local governments can do to any individual, to any of u s citizens, just isn't news anymore, when the citizen wins and basically defeats the local powers that be who have made her withstand a year of hell itself, night and day for over 11 months.
In our nation anymore, its a total a crap shoot if American citizens can retained their fundamental civil liberties. Most women in Keturah's position would have given up and given in a very long time ago. The amazing thing about this case is the person who withstood all that the local prosecutor's and probation officers were willing to sustain for a year against her and do so, with strength, with courage and the kind of self-dedication and personal grit that it takes to stand up against the uneven balance of power that the individual has to face inside of our court system today. Keturah simply never give in completely to their serious high pressure and coercive tactics, for months, all the while she was undergoing the searing pain of a difficult unwanted personal divorce brought in part against her by a husband who stated repeatedly to her, "I can't be seen with you in public even."
This is what this young mother and woman who is an experienced RN has had to endure for the past year. Now, she is resting in the aftermath of having overcome the serious felony indictment and she is truly the victor. And its a victory not only for Keturah but for all of us, who believe in the constitutional rights of the accused in this country, a country supposedly based on the right of the accused to enjoy the right of presumption of innocence before being considered and promoted as guilty in the public square by a media that often simply is way to eager to buy every single thing the local police and prosecutors have to say. This case if anything, stands for the right to confront evidence that the state has brought against the beset individual and where and when it is completely lacking, the Defendant ought to win and/or achieve a significant outcome in their favor and Keturah certainly did. Her retained counsel often told her they thought they could win at trial and they knew the case was weak against her. But they all also strongly advised her to forego the rigors of a jury trial and the outside chance that the local jury system would be tainted by all the local negative media coverage that made her out to be less than innocent even though there was scant, if any actual direct evidence that the state ever did produce, even in its 10 month old delay in presenting to her, its discovery....there was so little evidence that the state would be able to present before a Jury, it was difficult for Keturah to take a plea. But given she would face no jail, no fines, and most importantly NO DRUG CHARGES WHATSOEVER, she took the minor misdemeanor and got the pressure over with and with this, begin to heal up from what was a ordeal that no one, much less a younger mother and wife going thru a painful time of personal life ought to have had to endure and do so, under our alleged 'best' legal system in the world, with the kinds of constitutional rights it is supposed to be based upon and deliver to the citizens of our nation.
Its a lesson learned and Keturah is now basically free from the terrible year long personal prosecution she has had to endure risking everything in her life, including her professional and personal life. She's learned some very important but difficult if not hard lessons about local prosecutors, local legal systems and just how bizarre a local small town criminal justice can become when they wish to create a threat to one's very liberty interest and life and family.
Its nothing one wishes to ever experience or endure. She once she has, she will never be quite the same and for this, we hope that by not giving in and not succumbing to the seriously over indictment felony charges and fighting the local powers that best she could, she has not only secured her own liberty interests once again, but in some significant way, she has helped secured all of ours in believing enough in herself and in her cause to not just take whatever dish the local prosecutors and authorities had hoped she would in furtherance of their own agenda and personal and political careers
The Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the 14th Amendment, written by Cadiz' hometown legendary 19th century congressman and lawyer, John Bingham, guarantee individuals in Keturah's status, this past year, the power of that which all of our Founder fathers fought for and believed in. Its what men died in World War II for at Normandy and beyond. Its the very basis of why our own Civil War was fought over; human freedom and human rights for all, equally.
It may seem odd to some, but in fact, every time someone is focused upon and indicted in this nation, all of these basic sacred rights are put to the test. So it was the same inside Keturah's year long felony drug prosecution.
It was terrible that she was treated by the local prosecutor and probation office AND THE LOCAL MEDIA FOR THE MOST PART, as guilty before proven innocent repeatedly and she was constantly pressured and threatened with jailing and was in fact, jailed twice by the local officials pre trial for allegedly violating the pre trial court drug testing program. One major problem with this; THEY NEVER PROVIDED ONCE EVEN ONCE THE EVIDENCE OF HER FAILED TESTS INSIDE THE COURT OF LAW!
ITs a very troubling day in America when a defendant has to argue for months and stand up and face jail time for simply wanting the state to present, not prove, just present its evidence against a defendant accused of serious crimes. When a defendant faces a multiple level felony indictment, one would expect the evidence of her infractions and the discovery that is accompanied to every single criminal case ever brought inside this nation, ought to be reasonably and quickly if not timely provided to the Defendant and her counsel. This NEVER HAPPEND INSIDE OF KETURAH's case for over 10 MONTHS!
This is the reason why Keturah's win....and her brining the state's railroad to a pause and finally to a stop against her on January 19th. She is one very seriously tired individual and she has paid out tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers, just to survive, to fight on and try to get her points across and to finally overcome all of this, this past year.
Yet, she has her pride intact and she owns her own reputation once again, despite the heavy media coverage of the state's allegations; She needs it to be more fully restored now, no doubt. She has her dignity and with this, she has stood the test and she literally helped all of us, who care deeply about the civil rights and constitutional liberties of our nation. Watching this from a certain third party distance and yet up close and personal with her at times, it is something else to try to express today, anywhere to just try to demonstrate and write about what it takes for one individual to assert ones' innocence and those all important constitutional rights before a Court of Law today in smallville USA, against a few select, highly personally agendized locally powerful local prosecutors and courts.
Its nothing small to be able to meet them on a field of battle and overcome their tactics and their unsubstantiated allegations. This has happened and it took everything inside of her to fight this fight
But now, for her, its the time to heal, a time to rest and for those of us who were near her, and watched having to endure this long night of the soul, we are left to only help watch and admire and help her realize and those watching from within the public who followed this case closely, and thru the media, to realize just how serious a win and overcoming this woman obtained not only for herself, but all of those who oneday just may find themselves unexpectedly in the same position as she did, one year ago this week.
Its an American narrative and nothing is more important than what she did to overcome this seriously falsely maintained criminal multi level felony prosecution which now is all dismissed and gone forever out of her life in the legal sense. The experience itself, of being so prosecuted, however, sadly, will never be.
She has several things to do and she will get to them in due and reasonable time. But the war is over, the battlefield is now silent largely and she now is rebuilding her life. Its a time of gathering stones for Keturah and for some peace and quiet. Its also time for the government to leave her alone and let an American citizen, a young mom and career woman to get back to what can be called normalcy when things in this nation, are anything but normal given our present weakened constitutional framework within our courts today.
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