Jeff Olson, 40, is facing a potential 13-year jail sentence for perhaps the world’s most costly sidewalk art. A former aide to the U.S. Senator from Washington, Olson used water-soluble statements like “Stop big banks,” and “Stop Bank Blight.com” outside Bank of America branches last year to protest the company’s practices. He eventually gave up his protest but prosecutors later brought 13 charges against him. Now a judge has reportedly banned his attorney from “mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial.” It appears someone associated with Bank of American could finally go to jail, but it will not by the bank officials in the financial scandal. It is the guy writing slogans in chalk in the sidewalk.
I have long been critical of the degree to which American judges are now barring parties from making defenses and arguments before juries. These rulings often have an outcome determinative impact on trials. In this case, free speech was the motivation of Olson, but he will reportedly have to defend himself as just a guy who walked up and started drawing in front of this bank.
Olson and his partner had been campaigning to get people to take their money out of the bank. This campaign led to a confrontation with Darell Freeman, vice president of Bank of America’s Global Corporate Security, who reportedly demanded action from local prosecutors. Olson stopped when contacted by the San Diego Gang Unit in 2012.
Yet, the bank insisted the chalk caused $6,000 to clean up, a rather suspicious claim. These were slogans written on the sidewalk. Prosecutors hit him with 13 counts of misdemeanor vandalism charges and $13,000 in restitution to the City and to Bank of America.
Freeman reportedly continued to hound police to bring charges and reports state that on April 15, Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard contacted Freeman with the good news. “I wanted to let you know that we will be filing 13 counts of vandalism as a result of the incidents you reported.”
Then Superior Court Judge Howard M. Shore entered the case. Shore granted Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard and law student and city attorney employee William Tanoury. Also accompanying Hazard were two other representatives from the City Attorney’s side.
For Olson, and any free-speech advocates and political activists, the day couldn’t have gone much worse.
Judge Shore granted Hazard’s motion to prohibit Olson’s attorney Tom Tosdal from mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial. Shore ruled that “The State’s Vandalism Statute does not mention First Amendment rights.” Of course, he could simply instructed the jury that it is not a defense but clearly worries about jury nullification.
While the law does not mention the first amendment, should that mean that Olson is barred from testifying on motivation?
There is also the question of the constitutionality of a statute that bars political statements on a sidewalk written in chalk. The greatest question for me however is the overcharging by the prosecutors. I am also surprised that Bank of America (which avoided charges of its own officials in financial scandals) did not reign in its security contractor and state that they do not ask for charges in the case.
Olson will clearly not receive anything near 13 years and may not serve any time in jail. However, this seems like a case of overkill by the prosecution. What do you think?
Source: Reader
This prosecutor’s office tried to convict a mentally challenged man of molesting children when there was no evidence. I know someone from the office that quit in protest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Chapel_Church_ritual_abuse_case
How about starting a Wall of Shame over on the side of this website? Then, all these creep judges can have their names immortalized in shame as they should be.
Otherwise, there are so many of these horrid judges that after awhile we forget their names and they get to keep doing their bad stuff.
A Wall of Shame would keep their names (with a link to their actions) in front of the public until and if they have mended their ways or apologized.
Are the prosecutor and the Judge going to be receiving a pension from BoA?
Still OT on DOMA:
http://projects.nytimes.com/live-dashboard/2013-06-26-supreme-court-gay-marriage
SCOTUSblog quotes from the decision:
“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others.”
OT:
10:06 am
The New York Times
Supreme Court Strikes Down Defense of Marriage Act
The Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 on Wednesday that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstituional.
From SCOTUSblog
Roberts dissents. Scalia dissents. DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.
From the decision: “DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled ot recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty.”
The darlings of democracy at work.
My impression is that it is quite common for judges to bar defendants from using the defense that they want to use. Three cases come to my mind immediately:-
1/ Bradley Manning has been barred from bringing up his motivations for leaking to Wikileaks;
2/ Aafia Siddiqui was barred from mentioning in court in 2010 that she had been imprisoned and tortured by the US for 5 years between her kidnapping in 2003 and 2008 when she mysteriously turned up on a street in Ghazni. This fact would have been necessary to indicate that the US was acting in bad faith in her prosecution and therefore the numerous army and FBI witnesses had reason to conspire in lying;
3/ I came across an article this week about a US attorney in one of the medical marijuana states prosecuting medical marijuana suppliers and getting the judge to forbid the defendants mentioning in their defenses that the state authorizes supply of medical marijuana.
Elaine,
Oh yeah. He should be getting some critical scrutiny of his finances and suspended as well. I’m just especially outraged at Shore given that the stop gap for the prosecutor’s foolishness not only didn’t throw out the specious charges, but actively participated in what appears to be a fascist/corporatist witch hunt because BoA got upset some citizen thought they were a blight upon our society.
Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail
The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep bailing it out?
By Matt Taibbi
3/14/12
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314
Excerpt:
At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they’ll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world’s worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt’s funeral. They’re out of control, yet they’ll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.
It’s been four years since the government, in the name of preventing a depression, saved this megabank from ruin by pumping $45 billion of taxpayer money into its arm. Since then, the Obama administration has looked the other way as the bank committed an astonishing variety of crimes – some elaborate and brilliant in their conception, some so crude that they’d be beneath your average street thug. Bank of America has systematically ripped off almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, depositors, homeowners, shareholders, pensioners and taxpayers. It brought tens of thousands of Americans to foreclosure court using bogus, “robo-signed” evidence – a type of mass perjury that it helped pioneer. It hawked worthless mortgages to dozens of unions and state pension funds, draining them of hundreds of millions in value. And when it wasn’t ripping off workers and pensioners, it was helping to push insurance giants like AMBAC into bankruptcy by fraudulently inducing them to spend hundreds of millions insuring those same worthless mortgages.
But despite being the very definition of an unaccountable corporate villain, Bank of America is now bigger and more dangerous than ever. It controls more than 12 percent of America’s bank deposits (skirting a federal law designed to prohibit any firm from controlling more than 10 percent), as well as 17 percent of all American home mortgages. By looking the other way and rewarding the bank’s bad behavior with a massive government bailout, we actually allowed a huge financial company to not just grow so big that its collapse would imperil the whole economy, but to get away with any and all crimes it might commit. Too Big to Fail is one thing; it’s also far too corrupt to survive.
Doesn’t engender much respect for the “justice system”.
Society is dependent on people adherring to the spirit as well as the letter of the law. When injustice becomes rampant, then people find ways to game the laws and society starts to break down.
Thank you BofA and Judge Shore.
Gene,
What about the prosecutor bringing charges against Olson for writing on the sidewalk with washable children’s chalk? Does the sidewalk belong to Bank of America?
The judge is being a good warrior for his money masters.
Seriously. I’m almost impossible to anger, but this? This really pisses me off.
Take your thumb off the scales of justice, “Judge” Shore.
Judge Shore should be suspended immediately.
And he should be subject to a very thorough and unpleasant examination of his finances and his relationship to Bank of America.
If this isn’t the appearance of impropriety, no such thing exists.
The words “fascist puppet” come to mind.
The judge’s ruling would sound better in the original Russian. Does California allow appeals against judges’ trial rulings while the trials are still going on, or only after a verdict or plea deal?
You don’t mess with the unscrupulous folks with the government money…
When a goverment is by the corporations and for the corporations, the humans have no rights. Need we say more?
Now a judge has reportedly banned his attorney from “mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial.”
*****
How does a judge have the legal power to ban an attorney from mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech when defending his client in court?
I’d say overkill is an understatement!
I think the judge, the deputy city attorney should be thrown out of office.
Wow…