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Articles by Subject
The Bollyn Trial
Malice Exposed - Prosecuting a Journalist for his Writing
Malice Exposed - Prosecuting a Journalist for his WritingApril 14, 2007 MALICE EXPOSED - Bollyn Prosecuted for "anti-Israel" Views Yesterday, I spent several hours at the Rolling Meadows (Chicago, Illinois) Cook County Circuit Court (3rd District). My lawyer had filed a motion to either dismiss the charges against me or to disallow the state from presenting any evidence of the events that would have been captured in the police video tapes of their assault and TASERing of me in my front yard on August 15, 2006. This motion was filed because this video evidence, which would have shown what happened during the police assault, was destroyed by the police in clear violation of their own policies and procedures. The judge, the Hon. Hyman I. Riebman, denied the motion saying that I had not filed an order to preserve the evidence. The fact that I had filed a FOIA with the police requesting a complete record and manifest of my arrest was not reason enough to preserve the evidence, Riebman said. My FOIA was submitted to the Hoffman Estates Police Dept. on September 11, 2006, within 30 days of the incident. This should have obliged the police to preserve the evidence. Although a FOIA is civil and not a criminal procedure, it seems odd that a criminal court would not find it to constitute adequate notice to preserve the evidence. The FOIA is state law of which criminal state courts must take judicial notice. My first attorney, Jack Smeeton, who I retained near the end of September, refused to file the subpoena although I had given him a well prepared rider demanding all the evidence that the police had regarding my case. This is how Smeeton, the first attorney of record, through unwarranted inaction sabotaged my case and protected the police by allowing them the time to destroy evidence which he request that they preserve. Yesterday afternoon, because the state was not prepared to argue the motion, the prosecution side was given extra time to find an attorney who was familiar with the case. Riebman, himself, said he was not familiar with the case although he has handled the case for several months. Riebman said he could not make a decision simply because the police had violated their own policies and general orders by destroying the video evidence. The police video taken by Ofc. John Fitzgerald, whose patrol car was about 30 feet from the scene, certainly caught the entire violent arrest in which two plainclothes officers assaulted me from behind, handcuffed me, broke my right elbow, and TASERed me with a "drive stun" in which the TASER was applied directly to my back while I was held to the ground. The police video tape of the entire incident has been destroyed. I was charged with resisting arrest and aggravated assault while the police "recycled" the video evidence of their assault. I recently learned from a source close to the Cook County State's Attorney's office that I am to receive special treatment in my upcoming trial because of my journalism and writings, which are perceived by some as "anti-Israel." Although my charges are misdemeanor offenses of aggravated assault and resisting arrest, I was told that two Jewish prosecutors want to prosecute my case because of my investigative research and writings that they are apparently opposed to. My source informed me that two Jewish attorneys working for the prosecutor's office want to prosecute my case when it comes to trial on April 23, because of what they perceive to be my "anti-Israel" writings. The source told me that these two prosecutors were named as attorneys named Rubenstein and Gerber. This was what was going on behind the scenes, he said. I was shocked, but not surprised, to hear this. This indicates that there is malice against me in my upcoming trial because some of the attorneys working for the Cook County State's Attorney's office disagree with my writings. Furthermore, it shows that these attorneys intend to play a role in the prosecution of my case simply because they are opposed to my political views. Is this blind justice? Does freedom of speech and thought still exist in America? If I am being prosecuted because of my writing, why do they charge me a thought crime instead of disguising their malice behind trumped-up charges of my having assaulted three heavily-armed men wearing body armor who were trespassing on my property last August 15? Is this the original source of the malice that I experienced during the assault against me on August 15? For this reason I will request that my attorney file a motion to move the trial. This trial is supposed to be about the facts of what happened when three unidentified armed men assaulted me at my house during the evening of August 15 – not the lynching of an independent journalist. |
