Posted on 09/17/2012 9:08:09 AM PDT by Bratch
So, how was the public convinced that MacDonald was guilty despite all of these “reasonable doubts”?
Enter my old neighbor Joe McGinniss.
MacDonald signed a contract giving McGinniss exclusive rights to his life story, and so McGinniss was given unprecedented access to the defense team – living with them, working with them, eating with them. But when the guilty verdict came down, McGinniss did a one-eighty on them. Apparently, falsely convicted men don’t make for good books. McGinniss decided it was a better story to agree with the jury. MacDonald wasn’t a sympathetic figure. He did himself no favors with some media appearances. So, McGinniss went about writing a book that would convince people the government got the right verdict and we could all pat ourselves on the back and leave Jeffrey MacDonald to rot in his jail cell till Judgment Day.
McGinniss’ book actually embellished the prosecution’s case – even supplying a motive. According to McGinniss’ theory of the case, MacDonald secretly wanted to break free of his wife and kids and so he murdered them one night in a fit of rage induced by some diet pills he was taking. (Oddly enough, the millions of other people who were also taking those same diet pills somehow avoided murdering their families.)
Morris’ final description of McGinniss is apt: “a craven and sloppy journalist who confabulated, lied, and betrayed while ostensibly telling a story about a man who confabulated, lied, and betrayed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Posted on September 17 2012 - 11:38 AM - Posted by: Stacy Drake | Follow Stacy on Twitter!
Governor Palin wrote an article for Breitbart today, which showcases the behavior and twisted character of Joe McGinniss. She reviews a book written by Errol Morris which calls into question the prosecution of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald for the murder of his family, and McGinniss’ role in distorting the public’s perception of the story. She wrote:
I don’t normally read “true crime” books, and I’ve certainly never written a review of one, but Errol Morris’ new book, “A Wilderness of Error,” isn’t typical of the genre. It’s much more interesting and I think important. It’s a book about the failings of a legal system administered by very fallible human beings, and it’s a book about how we buy into false media narratives that tidy up uncomfortably complex stories and give us permission to call off any further search for truth – and, yes, Morris argues with refreshing clarity that objective truth is real and worthy of being sought after despite the pretentious nonsense preached in faculty lounges about all truth being relative. In fact, he argues passionately that the search for truth is what journalism and justice is all about.
Morris describes how false narratives can become a sort of prison. He opens by reminding us of the story of “The Count of Monte Cristo” – the novel about an innocent man who escapes from the seemingly inescapable island prison he was sent to. Morris writes that today we have an even worse prison than that fictional one – only ours is “built out of newsprint and media. A prison of beliefs. You can escape from prison, but how do you escape from a convincing story? After enough repetitions, the facts come to serve the story and not the other way around. Like kudzu, suddenly the story is everywhere and impenetrable.”
Like a relentless gardener, Morris tries to remove the “impenetrable” vines forming one such prison. Most people of a certain age will recall the story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald. People remember him as the Green Beret doctor who killed his family and blamed it on hippies. That quick description also conveniently sums up the conventional narrative about him. The murders of his wife and two little daughters in 1970 at Fort Bragg were monstrous, and for the last three decades society has been content to know that MacDonald is serving three life sentences for the crime. But Morris asks his readers to consider something very upsetting: What if this man is innocent? How horrible is it to imagine a man first having to witness the brutal murder of his family and then being falsely convicted for it and spending over thirty years in prison?
[...]
Forget the fact that a racist good old boy judge was openly contemptuous and hostile to MacDonald’s Jewish lead defense attorney and his opinion seeped into his decisions. Forget the fact that the prosecution withheld evidence and lab reports (and, according to new evidence, actually threatened the key defense witness to make her change her testimony). Forget the fact that the crime scene itself was badly mishandled – with evidence moved, destroyed, contaminated, and even stolen. Forget the fact that MacDonald had no motive for the crime, and that the in-laws who testified against his character had previously testified under oath praising his character. And most of all, forget the fact that MacDonald gave the police who arrived at the crime scene detailed descriptions of four suspects, and the police had spotted a woman who fit his description wandering around his neighborhood at 3 a.m. while they were on their way to the crime scene. Forget the fact that this same suspect also coincidentally confessed to multiple people that she and three men who fit MacDonald’s descriptions were involved in the murder of his family. Forget the fact that she was spotted that night with these three men by multiple witnesses – including by a witness who saw blood on her boots. Forget the fact that one of the men also confessed to the murders. Forget the fact that they even confessed to having a clear motive for wanting to commit the crime specifically against MacDonald and his family.
So, how was the public convinced that MacDonald was guilty despite all of these “reasonable doubts”?
Enter my old neighbor Joe McGinniss.
MacDonald signed a contract giving McGinniss exclusive rights to his life story, and so McGinniss was given unprecedented access to the defense team – living with them, working with them, eating with them. But when the guilty verdict came down, McGinniss did a one-eighty on them. Apparently, falsely convicted men don’t make for good books. McGinniss decided it was a better story to agree with the jury. MacDonald wasn’t a sympathetic figure. He did himself no favors with some media appearances. So, McGinniss went about writing a book that would convince people the government got the right verdict and we could all pat ourselves on the back and leave Jeffrey MacDonald to rot in his jail cell till Judgment Day.
McGinniss’ book actually embellished the prosecution’s case – even supplying a motive. According to McGinniss’ theory of the case, MacDonald secretly wanted to break free of his wife and kids and so he murdered them one night in a fit of rage induced by some diet pills he was taking. (Oddly enough, the millions of other people who were also taking those same diet pills somehow avoided murdering their families.)
Morris’ final description of McGinniss is apt: “a craven and sloppy journalist who confabulated, lied, and betrayed while ostensibly telling a story about a man who confabulated, lied, and betrayed.”
There is much more to this story. Please go here to read the entire article which includes a VERY telling diary entry from McGinniss, as well as Governor Palin’s own thoughts on the man who once stalked her and her family from the house next door.
The words of a murderer or an innocent man wrongfully convicted and then betrayed by a writer who lured the public into complacently accepting a false narrative? I don’t know with 100 percent certainty. But I do know from personal experience that McGinniss is a stone cold manipulative liar.
McGinniss shattered long-time relationships within my circle of friends and family with his horrendous actions while living 12 feet away from my kitchen and lying to people for his book about me and making them lie or twisting their words or even inventing “sources” out of whole cloth. The result of the “evil thing” he “constructed” was unjustly trashed reputations, shattered relationships, and a book of lies vomited into the public record.
What McGinniss did in my town and to my family was sick and vicious. I sympathize with MacDonald and his defense team because I saw firsthand the twisted way McGinniss operates. Before he moved in right next door to spy on us, he stalked us for months, making creepy unwelcomed “visits” to our house, as he tried to manipulatively win our trust the same way he won the trust of MacDonald and his defense team – all so that he could betray us just as he betrayed them.
Of course, I realize that what McGinniss did to thrash my reputation is nowhere near as horrible as what he did to corrupt the narrative of a murder case (especially if it helped keep an innocent man in jail), but it’s still egregious and disgusting because many in the media ran with it in order to add another chapter to their own false narrative. An “artificial view of reality” was sold to the public and no doubt many Americans were led to believe the garbage McGinniss wrote.
"How do you fight it?” I don’t know. But I recommend reading Morris’ book as a start and understanding for yourself what a character our former neighbor Joe McGinniss really is. If MacDonald is indeed innocent, I sincerely hope he receives justice. For what it’s worth, I am confident that with his track record of destructive lies, McGinniss will understand justice someday, in this life or the next.
McGinniss is a poster child for the MSM and the left.
I can understand Palin’s antipathy towards McGinniss but MacDonald was convicted of murder before McGinniss was involved and appeals courts have upheld the conviction at several levels. Trying to blame everything on McGinniss 40 years after the murder probably isn’t going to cause him any discomfort at all.
But Macdonald is a sociopath and a murderer. He has been a liar all of his life and just after his wife died, had sex with a fifteen year old girl he took on a cross country road trip.
The federal government got the prosecution of Macdonald right. McGuiness didn’t convict him, a jury did. And rightfully so.
I can see her animosty toward McGinness, but she should be very careful with this because the courts found McDonald guilty.
Maybe he is creepy. But McGinniss didn’t write his book until after the case was decided by a jury. I don’t think McDonald’s conviction is his fault.
Fascinating. And horrifying.
And it makes you think. How many deaths are the corrupt, left-wing liars in the press responsible for, directly or indirectly, with all their lies and coverups?
They enabled Pol Pot. They enabled Uncle Joe Stalin. They take great pleasure in covering up and sometimes abetting all those murders of Christians by Muslims around the world.
And their reward is to go on the talk shows.
The same can be said about MacDonald.
I always thought MacDonald was innocent. Good article. Nice comments.
So it is "drug hysteria" to believe the claim that hippies on acid did the murders but "sound science" to believe the claim that someone did it in a fit of "diet pill" rage?
The fact that McGinniss is a scumbucket doesn’t make MacDonald innocent. In fact, I’m not interested in the status of the guy’s scumbucketry, but rather, in the refutation of his account. I’ve read it, and have no problem with it.
Quoting Rob Nelson, ABC News, New York.
Quoting Rob Nelson, ABC News, New York.
But Macdonald is a sociopath and a murderer. He has been a liar all of his life and just after his wife died, had sex with a fifteen year old girl he took on a cross country road trip.
What? Something unusual about that?
/facepalm
Seriously?
'acid' is clearly a mind-altering drug and is taken for that very effect while diet pills are taken to lose weight...
and the point is that the ONLY case of 'diet pill rage' was McDonald's and that thousands of other users of diet pills never experienced any similar symptoms...the same cannot be said of LSD/acid
try again
I agree. MacDonald acted too cavalier and just didn’t seem to care about much of anything-except having a jolly old time-as the case went along.Even his in-laws,who were his most ardent supporters in the beginning,began to sour on him because of his inappropriate behavior. He certainly didn’t act like a man who was grief-stricken over the loss of his entire family. There may or may not have been marital strife,but a loving and decent father would be devastated and inconsolable at the death of his children. He was just too cool about everything-certainly not what you would expect. I,too,think the law got this one right.
MacDonald’s lawyer plans on concentrating on two bits of evidence – hairs that don’t match MacDonald or his family’s DNA and a statement from Jimmy Britt, a deputy U.S. marshal when the case was tried.
When those two things are considered with the rest of the evidence, “you would conclude no reasonable juror would find Jeffrey MacDonald guilty,” defense attorney Gordon Widenhouse said.
The first witness of the hearing was Wade Smith, who is testifying about Britt’s statement. MacDonald’s lawyer said that Britt heard prosecutor Jim Blackburn threaten Helena Stoeckley, a troubled local woman whom MacDonald had identified as one of the attackers.
A previous MacDonald attorney has said Stoeckley was prepared to testify she was in the MacDonald home the night of the murders until Blackburn threatened to charge her with the slayings. She later testified she couldn’t remember where she was that night.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/15/macdonald-goes-to-court-in-fatal-vision-case/
I remember reading McGinniss’s book years ago and falling for it hook, line & sinker. I was shocked when I heard he was stalking Palin.
I will be buying Morris’ book today.
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