GAG ORDERS PREVENT FAIR TRIALS

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

LewRockwell.com

In Stalin’s Soviet Union as well as in Hitler’s Nazi Germany a person would be arrested and sent to a concentration camp if they were accused of speaking out against the state. Even worse, they probably would be executed just for talking. This was a basic rule under fascist and totalitarian governments. It was just one part of a plan of total censorship and oppression as a means of controlling the very thoughts and opinions of its citizens. In the 1930’s, political speech and criticism of the government were dealt with by placing its citizens in labor camps and later by mass execution. There is nothing more despised by Americans than this kind of censorship. Every citizen has the right to defend him/herself in the public forum.

This is America; it is not Hitler’s Germany nor is it Stalin’s Russia.  When Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed a gag order on Roger Stone it brings to mind both of those despicable regimes.  This gag order is a prior restraint on the free speech rights of the one person qualified to publicly defend himself from criminal accusations; Roger Stone.  The idea of a gag order is to prevent the defendant or his counsel from materially prejudicing a jury. It also extends in scope to preventing the defendant or his counsel from tipping public opinion in favor of the defendant. The gag order then is for the honorable desire for a fair trial.

How … is a gag order on defendant Stone going to ensure a fair trial?  The media has already convicted Stone as part of the Russian collusion delusion.  The fact that CNN had their cameras rolling as 29 Federal officers (in full tactical SWAT type uniforms) invaded his home in a pre dawn raid went a long way to condemning Stone in the public forum.  All day long media outlets played the video tape of his arrest.  If that’s not creating a bias against a fair trial, I don’t know what is.

The media has all the means to say anything they want about Roger Stone. The fact that a gag order prevents Stone from defending himself in the press guarantees a unfair trial.  A gag order undermines the ability of a defendant to obtain a fair trial.  Does Judge Amy Berman Jackson really believe that if Stone spoke out about his case he might change the world’s opinion of him?  Does she really think that Stone’s criticism of Mueller’s tactics will somehow damage the case against him? Is it fair that he not be allowed to make statements in his own behalf to the public while the media continues to paint him as a shady conspirator who colluded with the Russians?

In the late 1980’s, the Supreme Court ruled in a case involving a Las Vegas attorney who during a press conference attacked the prosecution for covering up police corruption and for scapegoating his client. The Supreme Court said this: the lawyer “spoke at a time and in a manner that neither in law nor in fact created any threat of real prejudice to his client’s right to a fair trial or to the State’s interest in the enforcement of its criminal laws.”  In addition “means “an attorney may take reasonable steps to defend a client’s reputation and reduce the adverse consequences of indictment, especially in the fact of a prosecution deemed unjust or commenced with improper motives.” This includes “an attempt to demonstrate in the court of public opinion that the client does not deserve to be tried.”

Roger Stone makes his living by speaking and writing.  Judge Jackson is considering putting Stone in jail for criticizing Mueller in the introduction section of his new book.  Are Mueller’s feelings hurt? Stone couldn’t possibly think that briefly criticizing Mueller in print would constitute a violation of the gag order.  He’s not allowed to talk about his books, he can’t sell his books through social media and he’s not allowed to give his opinion on the most important and life threatening situation of his 66 years.  He is basically prevented from earning a living.

This situation is intolerable.  It goes against the principals of the very ideals that make America the greatest country in the world.