Fitzpatrick: “This is What We’ve Been Exposing for Three Years”

WHAT PROMPTED THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA TO REPORT ON PUBLIC CORRUPTION NOW?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 14, 2012) — On August 12, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III contacted The Post & Email to advise that The Chattanooga Times Free Press had begun a six-day series of reports on alleged corruption within the prosecutor’s office in Tennessee’s Tenth Judicial District.

The online version appears to be a composite of lengthier articles available in the print version based on reports from those who have purchased the print copy.  The name of the series is “Justice in Question.”

Sunday’s report stated that various defense attorneys in the Tenth Judicial District, which comprises Monroe, Polk, McMinn and Bradley Counties, have alleged misconduct on the part of prosecutors which Fitzpatrick and The Post & Email have been reporting for nearly three years.

Fitzpatrick has been beaten, tasered, robbed, incarcerated, libeled and slandered after reporting the same kind of misconduct, having labeled District Attorney General R. Steven Bebb and Assistant District Attorney General Jim Stutts “criminals.”

Fitzpatrick also reported on the case of Michael Ellington, who was imprisoned for life by Judge Amy Reedy without so much as a police report on the incident or forensics completed.  Reedy has also ordered U.S. marshals to arrest a Florida man, formerly from Monroe County, without a charge having been issued against him, a story which The Post & Email covered exclusively.

In the print version of the first article in the series, three names of people suspected of having been involved in the murder of Monroe County Republican Elections Chairman Jim Miller were stated.  Two of those names had been reported to the FBI more than a year ago by Fitzpatrick without a response.

On Sunday, The Post & Email took issue with the claim that Chattanooga Times Free Press Managing Editor Alison Gerber made:  that “no one else” was reporting on the corruption within the criminal justice system in eastern Tennessee.  Gerber did not respond.

The Post & Email gave full credit to the Times Free Press upon its reporting of an ethics complaint being acted upon against Assistant District Attorney Paul D. Rush, who is prosecuting Fitzpatrick for “tampering with government records” and has made false statements during the June 28, 2012 hearing.

The Times Free Press has published erroneous information regarding Fitzpatrick’s cases within the Tenth Judicial District and has not issued a correction to date.  In an article dated October 6, 2010, just six days after TIME Magazine released its feature on “Extreme Militias” with false statements about Fitzpatrick and Darren Huff, Times Free Press writer Pam Sohn wrote:

Naval retiree Walter Fitzpatrick III, 56, of Sweetwater, Tenn., has been challenging grand jury panels throughout the country, charging that grand jury foremen and forewomen have become “tools” of prosecutors and judges.

Fitzpatrick conducted the citizen’s arrest because the acting grand jury foreman, Gary Pettway, had been serving for 28 years in violation of Tennessee law.

Sohn also stated:

Darren Wesley Huff, 41, of Dalton, Ga., after hearing of Fitzpatrick’s arrest in Madisonville, led a group of armed individuals there “to take over the town” and help Fitzpatrick on April 20, the day the retiree was to be arraigned.

Sohn’s statement is unsourced, and Huff did not “lead a group of armed individuals” to “take over” anything.  No arrests were made that day despite “reports” of a number of people carrying guns near the courthouse.  Like many others who attended Fitzpatrick’s arraignment on April 20, Huff was barred from entering the courtroom, went to a restaurant to have lunch, and returned home.  On April 19, the FBI had had full knowledge that Huff had planned to go to Madisonville, and even though no crime was committed on April 20, Huff is in federal prison today, labeled a “sovereign citizen.“

Fitzpatrick and Huff have been depicted as violent criminals in a DVD production which the Department of Justice and Southern Poverty Law Center produced with taxpayer money.  On October 25, 2011, Huff was convicted of carrying a firearm with intent to cause a civil disturbance, even though he locked his firearms in his toolbox as highway patrolmen witnessed prior to arriving in Madisonville on April 20.

Neither Sohn nor Barton Gellman, author of the TIME article, has interviewed either Huff or Fitzpatrick, although Fitzpatrick has contacted Sohn on numerous occasions.  Then where did they obtain their information on the two Navy veterans?

Fitzpatrick was not a “leader of American Grand Jury.”  Contrary to published reports, Fitzpatrick has maintained that he had no idea that anyone was coming to his arraignment hearing, which should have taken only a few minutes.  There were no plans to “oust Obama from office.”

Has the mainstream media published propaganda instead of truth?

Fitzpatrick stated on Sunday, and the website shows, that the subject of corruption within the judiciary and the grand juries will not be featured in the Times Free press series.

Regarding the Times Free Press’s report on prosecutorial malfeasance in the Tenth Judicial District, Fitzpatrick said, “Barton Gellman, working for TIME Magazine, reported on September 30, 2010, long before Judy Walton said anything, that Gary Pettway was the “real” grand jury foreman.  Why did he use the word ‘real?’ If they’re willing to report the corruption as Judy Walton has now begun to do, we know that they’ve been corrupting the juries for as long as we have reported they have.  Steve Bebb knows about this; it’s been nationally reported for years.  In the meantime, I was getting arrested and beaten up…They have been getting these cases into plea-deal situations because they’ve been rigging the grand juries.  This is what we’ve been exposing for three years, and it all goes back to the grand jury.”

Fitzpatrick believes that the FBI should have investigated the Tenth Judicial District misconduct which he has reported to them on numerous occasions, naming judges, police officers, and members of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department as complicit.  On April 8, 2010, he had met with Special Agent Whitehouse at the Knoxville FBI, who told him, “We can claim distress and wouldn’t know where to start.”  Fitzpatrick had been jailed from April 1-6 that year following his citizen’s arrest of Gary Pettway, which is legal in Tennessee.

“They’ve been prosecuting me as an innocent man.  Jim Stutts is up to his eyeballs in this,” Fitzpatrick said.  “This whole thing about the sovereign citizen campaign…in that slide show, they said that I was court-martialed.  They don’t mention that I was discharged honorably and that that court-martial is still under scrutiny.  The corruption in the Tenth District is like the corruption in John Bitoff’s command,” referring to the admiral who court-martialed him in 1990. “It’s when you step forward with accounts of government corruption that you are retaliated against and made a rag doll.”

When Fitzpatrick spoke with Special Agent Roxane West on June 28, 2011, she told him that a recording of a judge admitting to rigging the juries would be needed to prove judicial misconduct.  In January of this year, when several sources, including Fitzpatrick, supplied an audio-recording of Judge J. Reed Dixon stating that “the judge picks the grand jury,” West did not provide a response.

As the Chattanooga Times Free Press is now reporting that justice might have been denied citizens in the Tenth Judicial District because of prosecutorial misconduct, what else which The Post & Email has been reporting for years might soon be brought to light?