AMERICANS AWAKENING TO THE CRIMINALIZING OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT
by Sharon Rondeau, h/t Pat Shannan
(Jul. 25, 2014) — The Post & Email has learned that Atty. Van Irion will be a guest on Liberty Works Network Radio (LWRN) at 6:00 p.m. EDT on Friday to detail the highly questionable convictions of CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (Ret.) for attempting to approach his local grand jury about criminality on the part of public officials.
On March 18, Fitzpatrick had attempted to submit evidence to the McMinn County, TN grand jury detailing the misconduct of criminal court judges, the grand jury foreman, prosecutors, and others. While state law mandates that jurors be drawn from the community by automated means, criminal court judges have been permitted to select their own grand jury foremen “from wherever they choose,” thereby tainting the process by which citizens are tasked by the Fifth Amendment to objectively examine evidence against an individual to determine whether or not probable cause exists to indict him or her.
As Irion explained on The Roth Show this past Monday, because the trial jury voted to convict without any evidence, he himself is “now afraid to go to the grand jury.”
The judge in the case, Jon Kerry Blackwood, was compromised but refused to recuse himself. Fitzpatrick’s is not the first case in which Blackwood has been known to have been biased in some way but insisted on staying on the bench. In 2012, Blackwood was forced off the bench by an appellate court after the attorney general filed a complaint against him for failing to remove himself from hearing the case.
Corruption in Tennessee is rampant, uncontrolled, and systemic. Nearly six decades ago, a group of World War II veterans engaged in “the Battle of Athens” to rid McMinn County of corruption in the form of the sheriff and several of his deputies, who illegally took control of ballot boxes and engaged in voter intimidation and abuse.
Capt. Neil Turner has been networking with Dr. James David Manning and James Neighbors, president of Overpasses for America, to have signs drawing attention to Fitzpatrick’s wrongful convictions held at rallies protesting various policies on overpasses across the country.
Tonight’s show will be hosted by Larry Becraft.