FITZPATRICK: EVIL MUST BE CONQUERED, NOT TOLERATED
by Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III, TDOC #540003, ©2015
(Dec. 9, 2015) — [Editor’s Note: the following is the remainder of a report received by Tennessee prison inmate Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III last week, the first part of which was published on December 4. The subject matter is the evolution of Tennessee’s corrupt judiciary as aided and abetted by the legislature and executive branch and what Fitzpatrick describes as a “tame” population.
Fitzpatrick’s reference to a “1919 law” refers to legislation which allowed criminal court judges to hand-pick the grand jury foreman from anywhere they wished rather than from within the jury pool presumably impaneled by lawful means.
An 1883 Tennessee Supreme Court case recently unearthed by another inmate, Jerome L. Johnson, reveals that at that time, the foreman was chosen from the jury pool. The unconstitutional grand juries used throughout Tennessee bring into question every indictment issued since judicially-selected foremen were embedded in the grand jury to achieve certain desired results in 1919.
Despite the repeal of the law in 1979, judges continue to select the grand jury foreman “from wherever they choose,” as asserted by Monroe County, TN Chief Court Clerk Martha M. Cook.
During Fitzpatrick’s sentencing hearing on August 19, 2014 on convictions of “aggravated perjury” and “extortion,” Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood was heard to ask rhetorically, “Who cares if the grand jury foreman is serving illegally?”]
Pages 28-33 are not published here for a specific reason.
