Free Republic

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The St. Louis County prosecutor who convened the grand jury that investigated the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown says some witnesses before the panel obviously lied under oath. Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch spoke Friday to KTRS radio (http://bit.ly/1v16wTk ). It was his first interview since his Nov. 24 announcement that the grand jury would not indict Ferguson officer Darren Wilson. McCulloch referred to one woman who backed up Wilson's account with details clearly pulled from a newspaper account. The Aug. 9 shooting of the black and unarmed Brown by a white officer spurred significant unrest,...

The prosecutor that announced Darren Wilson will not face charges for the murder of Michael Brown is a Democrat. From the 8th paragraph of a CBS report from the summer: McCulloch, a Democrat who has been in office since 1991, referenced his father's death in his initial campaign. He survived a Democratic primary earlier this month and faces no Republican opposition in his re-election bid.

As reported in The Boston Globe: "What in God’s name is Pope Francis, a Jesuit, doing? Does he understand the outrage of parents worldwide at rampant priest child abuse? Pressures beyond Vatican control, as I discuss in detail below, can be expected soon to compel much more severe changes if Francis fails to act now effectively and transparently both to curtail child abuse and to make the hierarchy, including himself, accountable to independent Catholic oversight. This governmental pressure has already begun to be applied with respect to Vatican finances, as a result of the continuing European investigations of multiple misdeeds...

The Jesuit tapped by Pope Francis to serve as the Vatican’s top clergy sex abuse prosecutor failed to remove an abusive priest from ministry even after learning about that priest’s long record, The Boston Globe reported today. As the second-highest official with the Chicago Jesuits in the 1990s, the Rev. Robert J. Geisinger, SJ, was privy to documents chronicling the abuse of Rev. Donald J. McGuire, SJ, whom the Globe describes as “a globe-trotting priest with many influential supporters, including Mother Teresa of Calcutta.” A review of Church records by the Globe’s Michael Rezendes shows that Geisinger had knowledge of...

Today in Texas, former prosecutor and judge Ken Anderson pled guilty to intentionally failing to disclose evidence in a case that sent an innocent man, Michael Morton, to prison for the murder of his wife. When trying the case as a prosecutor, Anderson possessed evidence that may have cleared Morton, including statements from the crime's only eyewitness that Morton wasn't the culprit. Anderson sat on this evidence, and then watched Morton get convicted. While Morton remained in prison for the next 25 years, Anderson's career flourished, and he eventually became a judge. In today's deal, Anderson pled to criminal contempt,...

A group of Washington overlords -- federal prosecutors -- sometimes break rules and wreck people's lives. President Obama may soon appoint one of them to be America's next Attorney General. The prosecutorial bullying is detailed in a new book by Sidney Powell, "Licensed to Lie." She reports that the Department of Justice's narcissistic and dishonest prosecutors destroy people by doing things like deliberately withholding evidence. Remember the Arthur Andersen accounting firm? It was killed off by ambitious prosecutors who claimed the company helped Enron commit accounting fraud and then shredded the evidence. But instead of charging people who allegedly ordered...

It was a summer evening 50 years ago when a knife-wielding kidnapper made the kind of malevolent move that defines a boy for life: The kidnapper snatched a police officer’s gun and used it to kill a canine officer, leaving 12-year-old Robert P. McCulloch without his father. The boy would grow up with dreams of becoming a police officer, too, but a few years after his father’s death, those hopes were scuttled when cancer claimed his right leg. He went on to become the St. Louis County prosecutor instead.

Rep. Trey Gowdy's rise from obscure South Carolina backbencher to chairman of the House's new special Benghazi committee took a quantum leap last October, when he stole the show at an otherwise mundane Republican news conference about the terrorist attacks. While only in his second term, the conservative Gowdy rushed to the podium and — with the conviction of a preacher and the erudition of a prosecutor — launched into a passionate yet disciplined plea for "justice" that mesmerized those watching, including his GOP colleagues on the dais. "No one has been arrested, no one has been prosecuted, no one...

House Republicans plan to vote next week on a resolution that would urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups. In a statement announcing the vote, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Republicans have no faith in the investigation that is already being carried out at the Justice Department. “It is time for Attorney General Holder to appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS targeting scandal and bring the appropriate charges against those responsible,” Cantor said in a statement. “This is far too serious a matter

Preet Bharara, the legal troll most recently in the news for going after Dinesh D’Souza, the director behind a movie critical of Obama, and causing a major diplomatic incident with India by strip searching one of their female diplomats, has an even wackier case.Unlike many of the Indians targeted by the Sikh US Attorney, this time Bharara went after a building over a dog. This is a crazy case in a very literal sense.In December, Preet Bharara, who puts out more press releases than most spammers, announced that the government was suing a building for discriminating “against a disabled tenant”...

Born in 1980 in the village. Mikhailovka Perevalsky district Voroshilovgrad region in Ukraine. Education: higher legal. Professional career after graduation in 2002, she worked in the Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine, where she held various positions, including: For 2002-2006. - Assistant Attorney Krasnogvardeisky region of Crimea, 2006-2010 gg. - Assistant Attorney Yevpatoriya, 2010-2011,. - Attorney, Deputy Head of Department oversight of law enforcement special forces and other institutions that fight against organized crime, prosecutors Crimea. In 2011-2012. headed Simferopol interdistrict environmental prosecutor's office. From October to December 2012 worked as head of the participation of prosecutors in the proceedings the Court...

Via TCOT Report'Is the Prosecution of ‘Pocketknife Felon’ Jordan Wiser about Electing Harold Specht to a Judgeship?'Many have read with outrage the story of 18 year old Jordan Wiser; a young man whose car was searched without permission at his vocational school, resulting in his expulsion, arrest, felony indictment, imprisonment, and separation from his beloved, terminally ill grandfather. The prosecutor in this case, Harold E Specht, Jr. has been quoted saying the reason for Wiser’s arrest and felony prosecution centers on the discovery of a four-inch pocketknife, which was locked in the trunk, inside his EMT kit – a duffel...

What does it take for an employee to get fired in Eric Holder’s Justice Department Civil Rights Division? Certainly perjury doesn’t do it. Neither does using a government credit card to book airfare for romantic liaisons with a Miami girlfriend — that just gets you a nice buyout. Want to use civil rights laws to protect only black victims of discrimination? Ho hum. The culture of lawlessness is so pervasive at the Civil Rights Division that a former Voting Section chief felt comfortable telephoning current DOJ employees and suggesting they turn over confidential memos … because they were worth cash...

Florida State’s Attorney Angela Corey has been indicted by a citizens’ grand jury, convening in Ocala, Florida, over the alleged falsification of the arrest warrant and complaint that lead to George Zimmerman being charged with the second degree murder of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. The indictment of Corey, which was handed down last week (see www.citizensgrandjury.com), charges Corey with intentionally withholding photographic evidence of the injuries to George Zimmerman’s head in the warrant she allegedly rushed to issue under oath, in an effort to boost her reelection prospects. At the outset of this case, black activists such...

It will be interesting to learn, someday, exactly how much Florida spent in time and tax dollars, only to lose its case against George Zimmerman. Now that Zimmerman has been acquitted of all charges, the state may have to pay up even more. Florida statute 939.06(1) reads: “A defendant in a criminal prosecution who is acquitted or discharged is not liable for any costs or fees of the court or any ministerial office, or for any charge of subsistence while detained in custody. If the defendant has paid any taxable costs, or fees required … in the case, the payment...

Congressional Republicans shouldn't give President Barack Obama the tax increases he wants without getting something in return. Many of the Republicans strongly opposed to tax increases believe Obama won the election because of voting irregularities in some states. They might find a tax increase more acceptable if the legislation were accompanied by appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of voting irregularities. I don't know how valid the allegations are or if the actions could actually have changed the outcome of the election. However, ignoring these allegations won't make them disappear. Those who believe the allegations are valid will...

SANFORD, Fla. - As controversy over the $200,000 George Zimmerman raised on PayPal took center stage Friday, Special Prosecutor Angela Corey's decision to ignore legal questions raised over whether she's obeying Florida's public record law went largely unnoticed. But the issue of whether Corey has the legal right to continue preventing the public from seeing the evidence she says proves Zimmerman committed the second degree murder of Trayvon Martin seems to be coming to a head. The special prosecutor's office on Friday refused to make that evidence public -- even though an attorney fighting for the public's access insists Friday...

<p>TOULOUSE, France - The U.S. army sent a Frenchman currently besieged by police in Toulouse after the killings of seven people, back to France after he was arrested in Afghanistan, a prosecutor said Wednesday.</p> <p>Afghan police detained the man at a road checkpoint and handed him over to the U.S. army "who put him on the first plane headed to France," prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.</p>

The chairman of a House committee investigating the failed “Fast and Furious” operation demanded on Thursday that the Justice Department make a key federal prosecutor in Arizona available for questioning about “his role in and knowledge of” the controversial gunrunning probe. Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made the demand in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., saying Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Morrissey played an “integral part” in Fast and Furious and has information not available from other sources. Mr. Morrissey’s supervisor, Patrick J. Cunningham, chief of the...

A guy who makes late-night deliveries can carry a handgun for protection while he goes about his work, assuming he has a legal permit and his boss doesn’t mind. County prosecutors, who try to send violent people to prison for a living, can’t carry a handgun anytime they are on the work clock. The tragic shooting of a county prosecutor and a witness in a Grand Marais courthouse recently shows the need to amend the state’s conceal/carry gun law. Cook County Attorney Tim Scannell was shot by Daniel Schlienz, who had just been convicted of criminal sexual conduct. There have...