Posted on 12/23/2010 8:33:25 AM PST by TPOOH
Why is this man still in jail? Why was this man forced to spend seven years in solitary? Why is still confined, languishing, festering in jail for a total of twenty five years?
Solitary confinement is the most barbaric of punishments. Few people can withstand this form of torture without becoming very ill, both physically and mentally.
Am I talking about the Soviet Gulag? Or about some hell-hole in Afghanistan or Iran?
Last year, The New Yorker ran a piece about solitary confinement. The article concludes that this punishment amounts to torture, that it can even induce “acute psychosis with hallucinations.” The article describes the cases of two political prisoners or prisoners-of-war: AP’s Middle East correspondent, Terry Anderson, who was put into solitary by Hezbollah in Lebanon for six years. Anderson “felt himself disintegrating”; his mind went blank; he had hallucinations; he started to become “neurotically possessive about his little space”; he felt his brain was “grinding down.” He also describes Senator John McCain who said -----------
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
He’s a traitor to the United States and he can rot right there.
I think the last jew to be put in genpop was Irv Rubin and he committed suicide by launching himself off the upper level onto the floor below at least a 20ft headfirst dive. It was such an ugly scene that an officer described it on one of those NatGeo “locked Up” shows as the worst thing he has witnessed in 20 years. So careful what you wish for this holiday season, which seems to be when the Pollard is a hero threads get posted.
He committed espionage.
It doesn’t matter if he did it for altruistic reasons (i.e. - he wanted to help Israel).
He was in a position of responsibility and chose to betray his nation.
The only reason he’s not doing life in prison (like Aldrich Ames and Richard Hanssen) is because Israel was an ally and the secrets he revealed didn’t rise to level of those Hanssen and Ames gave away.
Pollard should have been executed.
If for no other reason than were the tratorous bachelor’s child dead, we would not have whining articles about ‘poor, ickle, Pollard’ befouling the Internet.
Execute him now - spare my gag reflex.
FTR I don’t think Irv deserved to die, and placing him in San Quentin’s genpop was tatamount to a death sentence.
Pollard got US spies killed
All for a few bucks
He is lucky he is still breathing
This is a game too folks, you HAVE TO show that if you are caught spying it will not be good. You also have to do everything possible (on the other side) to retrieve your caught spies- otherwise no one will be willing to do that kind of work.
Real spies KNOW this and have to be willig to sacrifice their lives for their country. This is why countries willingly ‘trade’ captured spies. they are both anctious to find out what was given over to the other side. Very complex game.
Slimy weasels selling out their countryman for a few buck don’t know this and suffer- and the more the better, I say.
Did you enjoy those fancy vacations and nice home Pollard? Were you happy living there knowing some one may have been tortured to death thanks to you? I hope you rot.
“Terry Anderson, who was put into solitary by Hezbollah in Lebanon for six years. Anderson “felt himself disintegrating”; “
So they are comparing a man who woke up every day wondering if someone would shove a camera in his face and chop his head off to a man that is essentially living at a Motel 6 with every need provided for him including cable tv, three squares a day and a doctor on call 24 hours a day?
“Why is this man still in jail?”
Because he wasn’t executed.
Sympathy card does not seem to have been effective.
Some people hate all spies (except Nathan Hale of course), and insist that all spies should be executed.
Other people confuse spies with traitors (they’ve never read the US Constitution it seems).
Other people still buy Aldrich Ames cover story that Caspar Weinberger fed to the judge in the Pollard case.
Other people hate Jews.
Other people hate Israel because of the 1967 Liberty accident (which they insist was no accident).
Other people say they like Israel, but resent its “control over Congress”.
Other people are covert Muslims (I wonder who?).
Add them all up, and Pollard has drawn the short straw. He’s the whipping boy for all of the above, and some I may have overlooked.
Like other spies - Pollard took money and gifts. This - “he did it for Israel” argument is BS.
Everytime I read one of these articles (and I just started noticing them 10 years or so ago), Pollard’s health is “poor and declining”. He is a tough old bird if he is still around after repeatedly declining so much.
Q. “Why is this man still in jail?” Ans. Because he wasn’t executed.
Not really. Pollard is held in isolation as a lesson to Israel not to spy against your best friend and ally (America). I remember that Israeli agents actually ran and paid Pollard and his wife. The Israeli guilt must be agonizing for them to have to watch their agent be so tormented.
Irv Rubin was set up like a bowling pin. Did a year in solitary and died the day of his hearing. The jailers said he ‘cut his own throat’ then he jumped off a balcony.
Right.
Oh, and by the way, I am one of those who believe that Pollard has done enough time. They should let him go.
Not quite. The lesson here is, “Don’t get caught.” And the reason Pollard is still in prison is the Israelis haven’t offered us anything (or anyone) we’re willing to trade him for. He’s a chip on the table, nothing more.
One thing Pollard apologist don’t address is that even after Pollard was in prison, he kept on trying to release classified information.
“In 1993 Secretary of Defense Les Aspin reported that Pollard had tried 14 times to disclose classified information in letters written to various recipients from his prison cell. The letters were monitored by prison authorities, who presumably excised classified material that Mr. Pollard included from memory after years in prison.”
Pollard is a hero to the left and there is a reason why. Pollard also spied for Communist China in addition to Israel.
“Just because Pollard started off spying for Israel, and most Jews think Pollard was spying only for Israel, a new report from the Department of Defense, “Changes in Espionage by Americans: 1947-2007,” lists China, on Page 108, as a beneficiary, alongside Israel, of Pollard’s espionage.
Are Pollard’s defenders now going to say that spying for China is spying “for a friend,” a harmless Zionist prank? Israel has interests, and apparently those interests included sharing U.S. defense secrets, stolen by Pollard, with China.”
Proof: Look at page 108 of this PDF file - http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/changes.pdf
Why is he in jail?
Because that’s what happens to spys.
Yesterday Pamella Geller (she of the anti-Islam site “Atlas Shrugs”) suggested we all call the White House several times a day on Pollard's behalf. Really?
It seems to me you almost have to be Jewish to interpret this as such a colossal ‘wrong’ that it deserves that level of attention.
There are, we know, actual innocent men and women in America's prisons. (Not all who claim to be, to be sure, but some.) The Innocence Project has a pretty good track record of identifying those who have really fallen through the cracks in the system and deserve reprieve.
Here is one of their recent cases:
Walter Swift
Incident Date: 09/02/1984
Jurisdiction: MI
Charge: 1st degree criminal sexual conduct, robbery
Conviction:1st degree criminal sexual conduct, robbery
Sentence: 20-40 Years
Conviction Date: 11/10/82
Exoneration Date: 5/21/08
Sentence Served: 25.5 Years
Real perpetrator found?No
Contributing Causes: Eyewitness Misidentification, Unvalidated or Improper Forensic Science, Government Misconduct, Bad Lawyering
Compensation? Not Yet
Walter Swift served 26 years in Michigan prisons for rape before evidence of his innocence led to his exoneration and release in 2008. He was wrongfully convicted based in part on a highly questionable eyewitness identification and incomplete forensic testimony.
The Crime
On September 2, 1982, a woman was playing with her seven-month-old son in her Detroit home when an intruder grabbed her from behind. He dragged her to her upstairs bedroom, where he removed her clothing and raped her. He allowed her to cover herself with a robe before leading her downstairs to locate her purse. He took $60 from her purse, as well as her wedding band and another $100 in cash from the house. The perpetrator raped the victim again on a rug on the first floor. He then told the victim to close her eyes and fled.
The Investigation
When police arrived at the victim's house, they collected the robe she was wearing and the sheet from her bed. She was taken to a local hospital, where a rape kit was collected. The victim described the perpetrator as a clean-shaven African-American man between 15 and 18 years old, about 5'10’’ tall, with an unusual hairstyle with very small braids.
Eight days after the crime, the investigating officer, Janice Paavola, showed the victim several hundred photos of black men between 15 and 25 years old. The victim selected seven photos based on various characteristics in common with the perpetrator. At this time, Paavola decided that the person in the next photo the victim chose would be included in a live lineup. Walter Swift's photo happened to be the eighth she chose, saying his eyes were similar to those of the perpetrator. Paavola wrote in a 2003 affidavit that the victim did not say Swift was the perpetrator and didn't place any emphasis on his photo compared to the other seven photos. The officer “was confident that she would not identify Mr. Swift as the perpetrator in the lineup.”
Officers learned that Swift did not have braids, had a mustache and had a black eye at the time of the crime. Despite these inconsistencies, the lineup was conducted a few days later. Swift and four other men participated; they ranged in age from 20 to 34 and ranged widely in height and build. The officer told the victim that the man whose photo she chose would be included. The victim tentatively selected Swift, saying “I believe it is number 2.” In her 2003 affidavit, the officer said she did not consider this a positive identification and scheduled a polygraph test for Swift to further investigate his possible role in the crime.
Paavola scheduled the polygraph examination, but would soon learn that it had been cancelled by a sergeant and a warrant had been issued for Swift's arrest. The sergeant told Paavola that “Mr. Swift may not have done this crime but [the sergeant] was sure that he did some crime before and had gotten away with it.” Based almost exclusively on the victim's questionable identification, Swift was charged with sexual assault and robbery.
The Trial and Forensic Evidence
Swift was tried before a jury in Detroit two months later. He was represented by a court-appointed attorney.
The state's case focused on the victim's identification of Swift and presented an incomplete account of how the victim identified him. Most critically, during trial, the jury was led to believe that the victim was shown hundreds of photographs at the police station of men who fit her description of the perpetrator, that she selected only Walter Swift's photo out of that photo array, and that she later confirmed the selection in a live lineup. As a result of suppression by state witnesses, and defense counsel's failure to investigate, the jury never learned that the victim selected the photographs of seven other men as well and only identified Swift as the perpetrator after a highly tainted lineup.
Strong biological evidence of Swift's innocence that existed before trial was also never presented to the jury. Prior to trial, defense counsel was provided with a report showing that Swift was a secretor (an individual whose blood group is evident from bodily fluids like semen and saliva) and that testing on semen stains from the robe and the sheet indicated that the semen stains may have been deposited by a non-secretor. Prosecutors called one of the two forensic analysts who conducted tests in the case. The analyst testified that semen was detected on the victim's robe and sheet, but that he did know whether the person who deposited the semen was a secretor. He said that the other analyst on the case had knowledge of this result. The defense did not cross-examine the analyst presented at trial, and waived the testimony of the other analyst entirely.
Swift's attorney, however, was not solely responsible for the failure to provide the jury with complete information about the forensic analysis. A second version of the lab report, which included additional lab results, was withheld by the police and never released to the prosecution or defense. The updated report provided further evidence that the source of the semen was likely a non-secretor and therefore unlikely to have been Walter Swift.
Swift's defense consisted mainly of an alibi. His girlfriend at the time testified that he was with her when the crime occurred. Swift's defense attorney, Lawrence R. Greene, failed to reveal serious flaws in the identification procedure, declined to cross-examine the forensic analyst who testified and did not call the other analyst as a witness. The attorney has been suspended from practicing law several times in the last decade based on misconduct and inadequate representation in other cases and his license was eventually revoked in Michigan.
After a two-day trial, Swift was convicted. Before his sentencing, Officer Paavola visited the judge to explain that she thought he had been wrongfully convicted. Later the same week, Paavola was transferred from the Sex Crimes Unit to patrol duty. Swift was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison.
Post-Conviction Appeals and Exoneration
The Innocence Project accepted Swift's case in 1998 and began requesting searches for the biological evidence in the case. Although all evidence in the case had been lost or destroyed, the investigation began to uncover solid evidence of Swift's innocence. In addition to staff attorneys and clinic students at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, a student from Ireland named Niamh Gunn was assigned to work on the case in 2003, and she would play a significant role in Swift's exoneration.
Gunn won a competition at her college in Ireland to work at the Innocence Project in the summer of 2003; she extended her stay as she became more involved in Swift's case and continued to work on his case for five years after returning to Ireland. In part because of her efforts, the police officer and lab analyst who worked on the case before Swift's trial supported his quest for exoneration.
The cooperation that brought about Swift's exoneration was unprecedented. The prosecutor who originally convicted him and Janice Paavola, the former police officer who testified at his trial, filed affidavits in support of vacating his conviction. The Innocence Project presented all of the evidence it had developed in the case to Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney Kym Worthy, whose office investigated the case thoroughly. Worthy's office joined the Innocence Project on May 21, 2008, in asking a Michigan judge to vacate Swift's conviction and dismiss the indictment. He was freed that afternoon after 26 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
People who are considering spending time on the Pollard case might better persue some of the cases highlighted at the above web site, and spend time on them.
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