the U.S. government may have to pay at least $600,000 toward his defense fees
Posted on 01/26/2013 11:54:47 AM PST by virgil283
"A Tewksbury motel owner who just beat back U.S. Attorney three-year bid to seize his business has become the latest critic to accuse ...of prosecutorial bullying.
I don’t think she should have the power she has to pull this stuff on people,” Russ Caswell, owner of the Motel Caswell, .... The feds first tried to grab Caswell’s property in 2009 under drug seizure laws, citing numerous drug busts at the motel. Caswell’s defense team argued that he was not responsible for what guests did. And his lawyers found there was actually more drug activity at nearby businesses, and theorized the government was going after Caswell, who has no criminal record, because his mortgage-free property is worth more than $1 million.
“It’s bullying by the government. And it’s a huge waste of taxpayer money,” said Caswell, whose father built the motel in 1955. “This has been a huge financial and physical toll. It’s thrown our whole family into turmoil. You work for all your life to pay for something and these people come along and think it’s theirs. It’s just wrong. The average person can’t afford to fight this.”
(Excerpt) Read more at iowntheworld.com ...
the U.S. government may have to pay at least $600,000 toward his defense fees
(Native Bostonian ex-patted in Pennsylvania .. not too far away from ex-pattin' to the Philippines)
The US government pays nothing,it is the people that will foot the bill. This prosecutor should have it come out of her pension. This would be a lesson for the other prosecutors. They would think twice before trying something like this.
...I support that idea 100%
God bless Mr. Caswell.
Ortiz is also facing criticism for her role in the prosecution of Internet hacker Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this month.
Let's see, Property worth more than $1,000,000 and no mortgage on it. Who wanted that property to be taken away from it's owner, and what connections did he have to the Government?
As always: FOLLOW THE MONEY.
BTW: Jackie Chan is 100% right about our Government being corrupt to the core. It has been for decades.
Nice try dude!
If Swartz was in fact a hacker I believe he did the world a favor. Nothing to criricize the prosecutor about.
On the other hand, if in fact he can be proven innocent, she should be prosecuted for 2nd degree murder.
I thought he was the JSTOR hacker?
First of all, I’m not a dude.
Secondly, what do you mean by “nice try”? I’m not trying anything, just stating a known fact.
The penalty for prosecutorial misconduct like this should be burning at the stake.
Protect our private property rights!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Swartz was downloading freely available stuff hooking on to the university servers, which made someone mad. He basically was “stealing” server power is what I would argue if I was his lawyer and that is not illegal.
As an aside, the Graham-Tewksbury feud, aka the Pleasant Valley War, almost wiped out both families, with more killed than the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
Related to that is this thread (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2982162/posts) about the Anonymous hack today of the US Sentencing Commission website, where they indirectly blame the prosecution by Ortiz, US Attorney for the District of MA for her role in the suicide Aaron Swartz.
He was downloading information from a pay service that the university subscribed to for its students. This was an expensive science database. The information was by no means ‘free’ to everyone, which was in fact the reason he did the action. The man had some delusional notion that all information must be free.
What pirates of his ilk don’t grasp is that if such information is to be free, everyone who produces and distributes it must be slaves.
well, that is certainly not what I read. He was downloading in bulk from a free info site. I am sure now that he committed suicide, the powers that be are attempting to magnify whatever he did into a huge deal. You are buying into it, like that he had it coming. That is wrong.
I never said he had it coming.
You are also misinformed. The site was free info for the students because MIT paid for the service. It was a non free web service.
Here’s a fairly sympathetic article to him, but even it says he violated the contract. It does, as I agree, also point out that the prosecutor went overboard. Which is in keeping with what she tried to do to this property owner, so she has a pattern of abuse.
wow! great article.
I remember when the downloading of music became a huge deal and people were petrified that the govt would demand impoverishing fines because their teens had downloaded some albums.
The government should not behave as a bully or a killer.
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