It seems a Memphis TV station has obtained his resume.  The headline tells the best part of the story (and, if one calls the number listed for Gov. Barbour, you get the voicemail for [...]]]> Folks may remember Mr. Ozment, the murderer Haley Barbour pardoned who was last seen being served with process in Wyoming.

It seems a Memphis TV station has obtained his resume.  The headline tells the best part of the story (and, if one calls the number listed for Gov. Barbour, you get the voicemail for Mrs. Barbour.  I’m not kidding).

Ozment also tumpets his experience directing classes at the Marshall County Correctional Center, a commercial prison run by Wackenhut.  He does not mention which side of the bars he was on while working in that capacity.  It has lots about his college experience, but nothing about the two decades in stir).

h/t Razor in comments.

The WLBT headline (to the story with the quote by family member of a murder victim, above) is hilarious:

Pardoned Trustee Living With “AntiChrist” in Alabama

This is a strange one.  A [...]]]>

“It’s not safe. David is a cold-blooded murderer and he’s living with a self-proclaimed antichrist. That’s dangerous,” said Tammy Gatlin’s sister, Tiffany Ellis-Brewer.

The WLBT headline (to the story with the quote by family member of a murder victim, above) is hilarious:

Pardoned Trustee Living With “AntiChrist” in Alabama

This is a strange one.  A TV reporter went to the house of one Ernest Jacks in Alabaster, Alabama to talk to David Gatlin, who had been given a pardon from a life sentence by Governor Barbour.  Gatlin had moved to Alabaster to live with his friend, Jacks.  While the reporter was there, Jacks talked on camera.  The Birminham news reports:

Ernest Jacks Jr., 68, of 121 Kentwood Way, was arrested this afternoon after he threatened to bomb Arizona and Florida to rid those states of senior citizens on Social Security during a television interview. He also called himself the “anti-Christ” in the report that aired Wednesday on Fox 6. …

Jacks is being transported to the Shelby County jail, where he will be held on $15,000 bond.

“Threats of harming people is not something that’s acceptable in our society,” Rigney said. “He caused alarm and fear in the community, and he’ll have to answer for those statements.”

I have never heard of an en banc argument set just over a week out!

Tom Fortner seems to have got their attention.

Update:

So if you look up from sleep and see a chain saw cutting through your door, what are you rights?  Can you start shooting this unseen, unknown, unannounced assailant?

At 6:04 last Thursday morning, just before Sanchez’ alarm was set to go off, she heard a pounding outside her second floor apartment.

“I [...]]]>

So if you look up from sleep and see a chain saw cutting through your door, what are you rights?  Can you start shooting this unseen, unknown, unannounced assailant?

At 6:04 last Thursday morning, just before Sanchez’ alarm was set to go off, she heard a pounding outside her second floor apartment.

“I just happened to glance over and saw this huge chainsaw ripping down the side of my door,” she explains. “And I was freaking out. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Within moments, the chainsaw had cut through most of her door, and someone on the FBI’s arrest team kicked the rest of it in.

“That’s when I heard the clicking of a gun and I heard ‘FBI, get down!’, so I laid right on down.

And they left Ms. Sanchez on the floor with her dog (they shouted that she was to get her dog) and her three-year-old daughter in the next room screaming for mommy for a half an hour until they figured out they had the wrong apartment.

Radley Balko (where I got this) has been documenting these outrages– police military-type invasions of homes, invariably part of a drug war that law enforcement has apparently come to think authorizes a literal war on the population.

I don’t know when we started down the road toward a country where this sort of thing was acceptable– not just that it was the wrong apartment, but that this sort of home invasion seems to be more and more common– but it’s terrifying and wrong.

Also worth reading are the exhibits, which include a number of documents from the circuit [...]]]> As I noted, Tom Fortner has sought an emergency appeal of the pardon case, which Kingfish has up.  His papers present an elaboration of the argument he made in his motion to dismiss, and are worth reading for that.

Also worth reading are the exhibits, which include a number of documents from the circuit court proceeding.

First, the second amended complaint was verified, although the allegations are such that I would not call that a personal knowledge verification.  It does allege facts about the individual defendants, their pardons, and to what extent there had been publication.  So it comes a lot closer to alleging the underlying facts.

Second, the first hearing is in its own way as amazing as the second.

General Hood does acknowledge (contrary to what is in the TRO itself and his requests for relief) that the burden just might be on him and not the pardonees.  He said:

I’d like to take the position that, you know, they got a duty to come forward.

But in all fairness I think they have a valid pardon until we prove otherwise.

Then there’s this startling exchange in which General Hood explains how he took “the safest route:”

THE COURT: You’ve talk about thein terms of what needs to be alleged for an injunction at this point.␣ And if the court were to issue an injunction and set a hearing, is there any detriment that would occur to the five people or what do you propose to those five people who were released on Sunday so as to not jeopardize them should the pardons be valid?

ATTORNEY GENERAL HOOD: Your Honor, I wanted to treat them as if it was an invalid pardon and they had escaped and have them arrested today. But our lawyers looked at it every which way we could and so we found the safest option was to ask the court to order that they report immediately to the Department of Corrections and continue to report every 24 hours, and then show up for a hearing to prove or show some proof that they may have actually met the publication requirements.␣ So that was the safest route to avoid a 1983 action that we could determine.

I would say whoever talked him out of just putting out some arrest warrants for recipients of facially valid pardons was giving him good legal advice.

We also get Judge Green announcing that (without hearing from anyone, really, in the way of legal arguments) that she’s got this fully decided and narrowed the issues:

The Constitution is clear.␣ It is not ambiguous. There are condition precedent and the publication is required to be published by the applicant or on behalf of the applicants, which it-means that attorneys could file them, family members could file them. They should be provided back either to the MDOC, the parole board or the Governor, and there should be some record to indicate compliance. And as such, that’s what the court will be looking for on next Monday.

While on the subject of due process, General Hood opines that pardonnes, faced with the prospect of incarceration and the loss of what I would have thought was a fairly valuable right nevertheless “don’t have a right to an attorney in this type of civil action…”

The third document of interest to me is the order overruling Tom Fortner’s motion to dismiss.  It raised, among other issues, the one most interesting to me:  That a court has no power to question the governor’s excercise of the pardon power.  Judge Green’s order has this passage in it:

The court also finds that pardons are acts of grace and mercy, thus, they do not automatically confer due process rights upon the Defendants, except to allow a defendant an opportunity to present evidence and to show that the applicant, has met constitutional prerequisites to the issuance of a purported pardon.

The Court further finds that the Complaint for Injunctive Relief is not a challenge to the Governor’s authority to pardon, but addresses the issue of whether a pardon exists or has been granted, n accordance with constitutional mandates.

It is well-settled that the Governor may, by proper pardon, extend mercy or forgiveness to murderers, rapists, child molesters, or any other persons convicted in the courts. The review by this Court will in no way challenge, question, or interfere with the Governor’s motives, reasonableness or judgment in granting such pardon.

I would have thought that, to get relief– which requires showing likelihood of success– the attorney general would have had to show that a specific defendant got a pardon and he didn’t advertise [...]]]> Here are the complaint, motion for a temporary restraining order, and the order granting the TRO in the pardons case, from Attorney General Hood’s webpage.

I would have thought that, to get relief– which requires showing likelihood of success– the attorney general would have had to show that a specific defendant got a pardon and he didn’t advertise (laying aside the legal argument over whether a court can even inquire into that).  I don’t know what happened at that first hearing, but here’s what’s in the papers:

• The complaint alleges that some of the defendants may not have advertised.  The motion alleges the same thing.  There’s no suggestion of who might have failed to advertise, just the general statement.  Nothing is sworn, and the only attached exhibit is a list of the folks pardoned.
• The complaint and motion then ask as relief that the defendants be held in jail (if they aren’t out already) and that those already out be ordered to appear at the next hearing, and that all of them be made to prove they advertised.  In other words, it says “hold ‘em till they prove I’m not likely to succeed.”
• The restraining order states that “some or all” of the pardonees failed to advertise, but doesn’t suggest who that might be.  It also orders the pardonees to prove they published.

The complaint also invokes the court’s power to use the temporary restraining order to “preserve the status quo,” a commonly held view of the use of a TRO (as opposed to the actual formal purpose, to prevent irreparable injury, something that is mentioned in the motion without elaboration).

I’d be curious other lawyerly reactions, in comments.

Update:

Tom Fortner has filed for an emergency appeal; in his filing (which Kingfish has put up on his site) there are a lot more of the pleadings and orders, and much of interest.  One thing that you can read is the transcript of the first essentially ex parte hearing; there was some hand-waiving toward proof (that is, Attorney General Hood talked about what he’d learned about publication for some of the pardonees, and some unsponsored exhibits were admitted).  I’m going to put up some thought about Fortner’s filing in a separate post.

I’ve been reading the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of the Stanford trial, and just started reading that from Patsy Brumfield, who appears to have arrived at the trial today as it is heading into week 2.  Their coverage includes a blog and live tweets from their primary reporter.   The judge has given each side [...]]]>

I’ve been reading the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of the Stanford trial, and just started reading that from Patsy Brumfield, who appears to have arrived at the trial today as it is heading into week 2.  Their coverage includes a blog and live tweets from their primary reporter.   The judge has given each side 65 hours to present their case, which has resulted in at least one odd objection– the prosecutors argued that the defense lawyers were attempting to complicate admission of exhibits (basically, objecting to use of collective exhibits by the Government) in order to cut into the government’s time.*  According to a tweet from the Chronicle, the judge is using a chess clock to time each side.

The trial got off to a slow start.  The first witness worked at the firm from 1987 to 2002, marketing the bank Stanford had in Antigua; she was fired in 2002 after telling Stanford they were having trouble convincing prospects that investing in the bank was safe.  The next witness was hired to do advertising brochures for the Antigua bank; he testified to seeing Stanford in the office changing numbers in an annual report.

The third witness, who worked for Stanford in Baton Rouge, described the collapse in late 2008 early 2009, during which Stanford was first putting pressure to get more deposits, then prohibited early withdrawals to attempt to start a run on the bank.  On cross, he acknowledged he thought the company “visionary” and that he was not aware of any illegal activity.  He was asked to read from the securities documents depositors received:  “You may lose your entire investment under circumstances where we may be financially unable to repay those amounts.”

After a minor witness (a depositor who lost over a million), the government called Mark Collinsworth, a Stanford executive who worked directly under Lara Holt (whose trial, according to Patsy Brumfield, begins June 11th), and should be the most interesting witness so far, although it’s hard to tell that from the twitter traffic.  The heart of his testimony began this morning.  One tweet from Brumfield about Collinsworth’s testimony:  ”Laura PH’s first report on Tier 2 ‘made us feel warm and fuzzy,’ then later it didn’t make sense.”

_____________

*An unusual objection from the other side:  That Stanford was being forced to subsist on peanut butter sandwiches at lunch, which did not provide enough protein to get through the long trial days.

“Please tell Uncle Haley that one [...]]]>

“Maggi and I wanted to begin by thanking you and Marsha for a lovely and special lunch at the Mansion last Tuesday,” began a letter to the governor by the family friend of Doug Hindman, one pardon applicant. “It was very interesting to see the historical quilt upstairs.”

There’s also this:

Mr. Barbour declined to comment on the pardons, but a spokeswoman said that every application had been treated alike. “If you were poor or rich, you were told to go through the parole board process,” said the spokeswoman, Laura Hipp.

Well, yes, there’s a process.  Did it turn out the same for everyone?

Finally, there’s a nod to this blog for writing about the Bostick pardon.  I greatly appreciate the acknowledgment.