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Racist Suspect Watch


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Cress Welsing: The Definition of Racism White Supremacy

Dr. Blynd: The Definition of Racism

Anon: What is Racism/White Supremacy?

Dr. Bobby Wright: The Psychopathic Racial Personality

The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)

What is the First Step in Counter Racism?

Genocide: a system of white survival

The Creation of the Negro

The Mysteries of Melanin

'Racism is a behavioral system for survival'

Fear of annihilation drives white racism

Dr. Blynd: The Definition of Caucasian

Where are all the Black Jurors? 

The War Against Black Males: Black on Black Violence Caused by White Supremacy/Racism

Brazen Police Officers and the Forfeiture of Freedom

White Domination, Black Criminality

Fear of a Colored Planet Fuels Racism: Global White Population Shrinking, Less than 10%

Race is Not Real but Racism is

The True Size of Africa

What is a Nigger? 

MLK and Imaginary Freedom: Chains, Plantations, Segregation, No Longer Necessary ['Our Condition is Getting Worse']

Chomsky on "Reserving the Right to Bomb Niggers." 

A Goal of the Media is to Make White Dominance and Control Over Everything Seem Natural

"TV is reversing the evolution of the human brain." Propaganda: How You Are Being Mind Controlled And Don't Know It.

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"Zapsters" - Keeping what real? "Non-white People are Actors. The Most Unrealistic People on the Planet"

Black Power in a White Supremacy System

Neely Fuller Jr.: "If you don't understand racism/white supremacy, everything else that you think you understand will only confuse you"

The Image and the Christian Concept of God as a White Man

'In order for this system to work, We have to feel most free and independent when we are most enslaved, in fact we have to take our enslavement as the ultimate sign of freedom'

Why do White Americans need to criminalize significant segments of the African American population?

Who Told You that you were Black or Latino or Hispanic or Asian? White People Did

Malcolm X: "We Have a Common Enemy"

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« NACDL Tells Court Congress Violated the Equal Protection Clause and Ignored Racial Disparity When it Reaffirmed the Federal Sentencing Disparity for Powder to Crack Cocaine | Main | Permanent War Economy: Congress authorizes $577 billion in defense spending »
Saturday
Dec272014

DOJ Persuades Federal District Court to Keep Its Federal Criminal Discovery Blue Book From Being Disclosed to the Public

NACDL

On December 18, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a decision in National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers v. Executive Office for United States Attorneys et al. The Court upheld the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) denial of NACDL’s Freedom of Information Act request that DOJ release to the public its Federal Criminal Discovery Blue Book, finding that the Blue Book is attorney work product that was prepared to protect DOJ from litigation and therefore it is protected from disclosure. NACDL plans to appeal this decision granting Defendants’ motion for summary judgment, and denying Plaintiff’s cross-motion for summary judgment.

In response to public furor over the "egregious misconduct" by DOJ prosecutors in the case of the late Senator Ted Stevens, whose conviction was vacated after post-trial investigations revealed that prosecutors had withheld significant exculpatory evidence from the defense, DOJ’s Office of Legal Education published, but has not made available to the public, a text referred to as the Federal Criminal Discovery Blue Book. Despite obvious public interest in ensuring that DOJ had taken adequate measures to prevent further abuses, DOJ steadfastly refused to make the Federal Criminal Discovery Blue Book public. As set forth in NACDL’s latest report, Material Indifference: How Courts Are Impeding Fair Disclosure in Criminal Cases, a major study produced jointly with the VERITAS Initiative at Santa Clara Law School, the problem of non-disclosure and late disclosure in criminal cases is significant; in addition to legislation codifying prosecutors’ Brady obligations, the report calls for courts to do more to address this issue.

As set forth in NACDL’s Complaint filed February 21, 2014, during a series of congressional hearings concerning prosecutorial misconduct in Sen. Stevens’ case:

…DOJ asserted that federal legislation was unnecessary to prevent future discovery abuses because it had instituted various internal reforms.  During the hearings, DOJ asserted it had implemented "rigorous enhanced training" to ensure that “prosecutors and agents [have] a full appreciation of their responsibilities” under federal law.  Statement for the Record from the Department of Justice: Hearing on the Special Counsel’s Report Before on the Prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 112th Cong. 3 (2012) ("Statement for the Record").  As part of this effort, DOJ stated that it had created a "Federal Criminal Discovery Bluebook" that "comprehensively covers the law, policy, and practice of prosecutors' disclosure obligations" under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972), and their progeny.  Id. at 4.  According to DOJ, the Blue Book was "distributed to prosecutors nationwide in 2011" and "is now electronically available on the desktop of every federal prosecutor and paralegal."  Id.  

Contrary to what DOJ told Congress, the ruling and DOJ pleadings suggest that the Federal Criminal Discovery Blue Book contains strategies for avoiding discovery. Indeed, the Court, which, unlike Congress, reviewed the text, suggested that “it was prepared to ‘protect [ ] agency clients from the possibility of future litigation[.]’”

NACDL President Theodore Simon said: “It is deeply troubling that the Department of Justice endeavored to thwart legislation in Congress to codify prosecutors’ disclosure obligations by representing that the problem had been rectified by a Federal Criminal Discovery Blue Book it had prepared, but now asserts is secret. And last week, a federal court has indicated that that very text appears to be a document prepared to protect the government from future litigation. The problem of nondisclosure and late disclosure in criminal cases is one of a Constitutional dimension – it speaks directly to the right to due process under the law. Fairness and transparency demand the release to the American people of the contents of a document the Department of Justice told Congress was intended to protect and preserve the public’s right to due process.”

NACDL Executive Director Norman L. Reimer said: “We have not seen the Blue Book. All the public can do is rely upon what the Department of Justice told Congress, and that is at odds with DOJ’s description of the Blue Book in this case and ultimately the Court’s ruling.”

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