"Punishment Has Been Achieved" (Update, August 16)

Scenic Sandpoint, Idaho -- home to a ruling elite worthy of Soviet Russia.

“Punishment for this offense has been achieved.”

With those words, which are found near the end of an August 8 motion to dismiss a spurious battery charge against Sandpoint, Idaho resident Rita Hutchens, the author – Bonner County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Shane Greenbank – incriminates himself. 

For about a year, Greenbank tirelessly pursued a charge he knew to be entirely devoid of merit. His petulant motion to dismiss – a document littered with grammatical errors that occurred because the author’s protruding lower lip obstructed his view of the computer screen – offers unambiguous proof that his objective was not to convict Hutchens of an actual crime. Instead, he sought to inflict punishment on her for seeking redress for criminal violence she suffered at the hands of a Sandpoint, Idaho police officer. 

Rita Hutchens is a tiny 57-year-old internationally respected quilt artist who has never committed a violent act against anybody. She was accused of “criminal battery” because she allegedly threw a ballpoint pen at a desk in the Sandpoint City Hall while doing research for a potential lawsuit against the city. 

That writing utensil supposedly ricocheted off the desktop and glanced harmlessly off the blouse of a deputy city clerk named Melissa Ward. The supposed victim suffered no injury and did not press charges. Yet his incident, insisted Greenbank in a complaint filed last October 5, was a violent assault and a “grave offense against the peace and dignity of the state of Idaho.”

Greenbank, whose flair for rhetorical exaggeration would strike a hormonal adolescent girl as excessive, accused Hutchens of “willfully and unlawfully us[ing] force or violence upon the person of Melissa Ward.” Bear in mind that this was not a case in which a pen was employed as a shank, as occurred in a previous episode here in Idaho, nor was the pen hurled like a javelin. It was tossed carelessly at a desk, which means that there was no criminal intent – an indispensable element of an actual crime. 

The same cannot be said of the assault she endured at the hands of a Sandpoint police officer named Theresa Heberer, who attacked Hutchens in front of her home in November 2011. After jumping Hutchens from behind and handcuffing the victim, Heberer held a lengthy conference with her supervisor in an effort to contrive a charge that would justify an arrest. They eventually settled on “obstruction,” a charge that was thrown out of court by Judge Barbara Buchanan several months later. 

“There was no reason to touch her,” Judge Buchanan observed. “She did not have to answer [Officer Heberer’s] questions. She has a Fifth Amendment right not to do that…. You can’t be charged with resisting and obstructing for exercising your Fifth Amendment right, and she did have every right to say, `I don’t want to answer your questions, I want to go in my house.’ There is no basis for an arrest, there is no reason for a search warrant.”

After seeking medical treatment for the injuries she had suffered, Hutchens filed a damage claim with the City of Sandpoint. When that request was denied, she filed a notice of tort claim against the city. She was doing research into that claim on August 8 2012, when the pen-throwing incident took place. 

The existing audio record of the August 8, 2012 confrontation at Sandpoint City Hall was made by one of several city officials who had surrounded Hutchens while she was trying to examine records of her unlawful arrest. Her chief antagonist was city attorney Scott Campbell, whose office had turned down her damage claim several weeks earlier. The specific official who rejected that claim was Lori Meulenberg, who had prosecuted the obstruction charge against Hutchens.

Hutchens wanted to be left alone to examine the records without Campbell and others swarming her and looking over her shoulder. It should be recalled that she was the victim of a violent crime committed by one of their associates. She finally gave voice to her exasperation.

“I’m tired of you people! Just leave me alone!” she exclaimed. “I just want to look at the record, which I have a right to do, now, in private.”

“Actually, you don’t have a right to do [that] in private,” Campbell said in a taunting voice that oozed condescension. 

As Hutchens attempted to read the records, Campbell continued to violate her personal space in a fashion that he would have considered legally actionable if he had been on the receiving end. This could be considered a deliberate provocation, and if so it had the intended effect.

“Do not look over me!” she shouted at Campbell, who continued to behave like an adolescent bully. 

“Is this a public place, Rita?” Campbell said, mockingly. “I have as much right to be here in a public place as you have.”

At this point, Hutchens took the initiative to de-escalate the situation by saying that she would leave and “come back tomorrow with a witness.” 

What this means is that Hutchens was not looking for a fight; she was looking to avoid one. She was never the aggressor in any sense. Outnumbered, harassed, and mocked by city officials who had no respect for her rights, she withdrew from the office, allegedly throwing down a ballpoint pen as she left. 

A few seconds after Hutchens departed, the silence was broken by Melissa Ward, the supposed victim. 

“She just threw a pen at me,” Ward snickered. Yes, the “victim” laughed at the incident. 

“Should we prosecute her?” an audibly amused Campbell asked Ward. 

Significantly, there is no indication that Ward – the identified “victim” – agreed that Hutchens should be prosecuted.  Ward's giggling comment is the only indication that a pen was thrown by anyone. Hutchens adamantly insists that she didn't hurl the object, but simply left the building in disgust.

 

Scot Campbell is on the right.

After Hutchens was charged with battery last November, she filed a subpoena demanding that Ward, the purported victim, provide a signed criminal complaint. Campbell, who instigated the persecution campaign against Hutchens, filed a motion to quash that subpoena. 

That motion was granted by the Idaho First District Court, which ruled that “requiring Ms. Ward, the victim in this matter, to provide a signed complaint is unreasonable.”

In what sense would it be “unreasonable” to require the alleged victim of criminal battery to sign a complaint? Ward didn’t require medical treatment, and she’s not functionally illiterate, so she is physically and intellectually capable of either writing or dictating a coherent narrative. The only way that the term “unreasonable” has relevance here is as a description of the charge itself – and Campbell’s desire to prevent any critical scrutiny of the incident responsible for that charge. 

 

Rita's midnight arrest, April 16, 2013.

The confected charge was a misdemeanor offense. Yet after Hutchens declined to appear at a pre-trial hearing late last year, an acting judge named Don Swanstrom (who is no longer in service, and might not have been authorized to act as a judge at the time) issued a day-or-night bench warrant for her arrest. 

According a 2011 state Supreme Court ruling (Idaho v. Skurlock), a warrant of that kind is generally inappropriate because at night time people enjoy “a heightened expectation of privacy that should not be disturbed by a knock on the door and the presentation of a search warrant.” 

Nonetheless, three officers kicked in the front door to Hutchens’ home on April 16 and dragged her away. In the course of this Gestapo-grade act of overkill, one of the officers discovered what was identified as “drug paraphernalia” under her sofa – which resulted in yet another charge being filed against her. 

The judge who was originally tapped to hear the “paraphernalia” case was Lori Meulenberg – yes, the same Lori Meulenberg who prosecuted the obstruction charge and subsequently denied Hutchens’ damage claim for the injury she suffered during her unlawful arrest in November 2011. 

Finally, on July 23 – more than three months after this case was reported in detail in this space – the Bonner County Daily Bee published a story offering a critical examination of the campaign to incarcerate Rita Hutchens. 

“Despite being a low-level offense, the battery case against Rita Nancy Hutchens has some of the trappings of a high-stakes affair,” observed the Bee. The article noted that the midnight arrest was questionable (at best), and that the treatment of Hutchens “stirred dismay by those in the community who contend law enforcement and the courts are running amok in Bonner County.” 

It was likewise notable that the case was “being closely followed by city officials. City Attorney Scot Campbell attended [the July 19] hearing, as did police Chief Corey Coon and Det. Derrick Hagstrom.” 

Why was the crème de la scum of Sandpoint’s ruling clique so interested in this trivial case, and so perversely determined to see Rita Hutchens incarcerated? Why did Shane Greenbank insist on having her submit to a mental evaluation – a demand that resulted in her being arrested for contempt on two occasions?

Shortly after Hutchens was seized in her home in a midnight police raid, Greenbank filed a motion demanding that she be forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because of what he described as “unusual behaviors and affects – both in court and in her filings.” He also made the remarkable claim – without providing a molecule of supporting evidence -- that he had also been “battered” by Hutchens “outside of court when he served papers to her in the clerk’s office….”

The absence of any further description may lead the otherwise uninformed reader to assume that Rita Hutchens, who is 5’1” tall and weighs about 110 pounds, knocked Greenbank on his tax-fattened ass, which is something he richly deserves. What happened, in fact, is that Greenbank shoved a sheaf of legal documents into her face – and Hutchens shoved them right back. This, we are supposed to pretend, was an act of criminal “battery.” 

It should be acknowledged, I suppose,that this act would be sufficient to hurt Mr. Greenbank’s feelings. He is an individual of remarkably delicate sensibilities: About five years ago, while defiling Kootenai County as an assistant prosecutor, Greenbank was slapped down by a judge who declared a mistrial in a domestic violence case because Greenbank, in an attempt to manipulate the jury, started crying during his opening statement.  

After initially trying to deny what he had done, Greenbank was forced to admit: “I did have tears running down my face, I did have snot running down my face.” First District Judge Fred Gilber pointed out to the snot-faced prosecutor that this was not the first time the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office had been censured “for appealing to the passions or prejudice of the jury.”

Greenbank’s repeated demands that Hutchens undergo a psychiatric evaluation were similarly intended to prejudice the public against her. This is a violation of the ethical standards that govern prosecutors (yes, I was also surprised to learn that such guidelines exist, although they do nothing to inhibit the corrupt ambition of those who occupy the office). 

Rule 3.8(f) of the ABA’s ethical standards specifies that prosecutors must refrain from making “comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused”; Rule 3.6(a) forbids prosecutors to make comments that they know or reasonably should know “will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.”

Greenbank’s untutored speculation about Hutchens’ mental health was widely reported, echoed by camp-followers of the ruling municipal clique, and had a hugely damaging impact on her public reputation.

Rita Hutchens in her metier.

 “They set out to destroy my reputation – really, to destroy me,” Hutchens told Pro Libertate. “The claims they made about my mental health were in the paper all the time, and it’s absolutely destroyed my business. If this had actually gone to trial, there’s no way I could have been treated fairly by a jury after they had done so much to prejudice the community against me.” 

After being incarcerated for contempt of court in mid-July, Hutchens finally underwent the psychological evaluation, which resulted in a terse and unembellished statement that she was entirely sound of mind. This didn’t deter the irrepressibly snotty Mr. Greenbank from using his motion to dismiss the charge to traduce his victim one last time.

“[W]hile it is unfortunate that the psychological evaluation did not result in some treatment recommendation that may benefit the defendant – and, by extension, the public – the State has done all it is able to do in order to minimize further risk to the public,” sneered Greenbank. He neither explained why his judgment of Hutchens’ psychological condition was superior to that of a credentialed mental health professor, nor did he provide any evidence that she ever posed a risk to the public. 

The down-market Javert took some measure of comfort in the gratuitous suffering he had inflicted by incarcerating, impoverishing, and defaming an innocent and helpless woman whose “defiance” (his word) simply had to be punished. 

Since Hutchens “has spent many more days in jail than she would have if she had actually been convicted of this offense,” Greenbank gloated, “punishment for this offense has been achieved.” 

It is widely known, though rarely acknowledged, that prosecutors pursue punishment at the expense of both truth and justice. Bonner County is host to a specimen of that tribe in whom resides the distilled malice one so often finds in that occupation, untempered by the rudimentary intellectual discipline necessary to maintain the pretense of a commitment to principle. Greenbank’s persecution of Rita Hutchens was nothing less than criminal, and if so much as a particle of justice still exists he will face the consequences of his actions. 

Update: Snapshots of Soviet America -- The Rita Hutchens Story

 

This is the five-minute teaser for a documentary I'm producing on the Rita Hutchens case:

 

 

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Dum spiro, pugno! 

Abolish Your Local Police

Two gangs gathered near a home in California. The man who lived there avoided one, and was severely beaten by the other.

Ronald Weekley, Jr. , a 20-year-old college student from Venice, California, was riding his skateboard on the “wrong side” of the street in front of his house when he was assaulted by four armed gangsters and severely beaten. The assailants then abducted the victim and accused him of a criminal offense because he was insufficiently docile while being beaten. They also claimed that Weekley had previously been seen on their turf, without permission, after sundown.

The assailants belonged to that privileged caste of social misfits and intellectually stunted functionaries called “police officers.” According to a friend named Alexis Parker, the police pounced on Weekley after he tried to avoid a confrontation with an unlicensed street gang on the other side of the street. 

Weekley had done no harm to anybody by riding his skateboard on the “wrong” side of the street, but because he didn’t immediately stop with an armed stranger in a government-issued costume demanded it of him, he was taken to the ground in front of his house and beaten nearly to death, while onlookers screamed in terror. Another member of the sanctified fraternity of official violence ran interference for the four who mauled Weekley, ordering spectators to keep their distance while his comrades pummeled the helpless man. 

Weekley, who suffered a broken chin bone, a broken nose, and a concussion, was then charged with the non-crime of “resisting arrest.” 

The cretinous bullies who had participated in the thugscrum also claimed that the 20-year-old man had “outstanding warrants” for “curfew” violations that he supposedly committed before he turned 18. (A curfew, it should be understood, is a martial law measure.)

“I was screaming because I thought they were going to kill him,” one eyewitness to the atrocity, which took place about a year ago, told a local television station.

This episode offers a splendid opportunity to examine the kinship between the street gang we call the “police” and their much less dangerous private sector competition. If Weekley had been confronted by the private gangbangers he sought to avoid, and then fought back when they assaulted him, the assailants would not have had the privilege of prosecuting him for resisting. That is the most significant material difference between those contending groups of armed thugs. It’s also worth pointing out that common street gangs don’t have tax-supported employee unions who demand that the public celebrate their acts of unprovoked criminal violence. 

Weekley’s predicament brings to mind the passage from the Old Testament describing how “a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him; …. [then he] went into his house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him” (Amos 5:19). He had done no harm to anybody, and was trying to avoid a violent confrontation – and then encountered an even more acute threat before winding up enduring lasting and unjustified injury in his own home.

This incident likewise underscores the wisdom expressed by Edmund Burke in his essay “A Vindication of Natural Society”:

In a State of Nature, it is true, that a Man of superior Force may beat or rob me; but then it is true, that I am at full Liberty to defend myself, or make Reprisal by Surprise or by Cunning, or by any other way in which I may be superior to him. But in Political Society ... if I attempt to avenge myself, the whole Force of that Society is ready to complete my Ruin.

In any free society worthy of that description, the innate right of an innocent person to resist criminal aggression by government functionaries is recognized, respected, and cherished. While stipulating that politics is a snare and a delusion, I earnestly hope that Americans will agitate for the restoration of legal protection for the right to resist unlawful arrest. Eventually, however, we must demolish the spurious legal protections that allow the continued existence of government “law enforcement” agencies that claim a monopoly on aggression. 

In the decades leading up to the American Founding, Anglo-Saxon common law recognized not only a right to resist unlawful arrest, but also the duty of bystanders to intervene to prevent an abduction by law enforcement officers. 

In the in the 1710 case Queen v. Tooley, the Queen’s Bench ruled that every Englishman “ought to be concerned for Magna Charta and the laws. And if any one against the law imprison a man, he is an offender against Magna Charta.” 

An illegal arrest is an act of lawless violence against a helpless person, which “is a sufficient provocation to all people out of compassion” in any circumstance, observed the court. In fact, a criminal act of that kind carried out by a law enforcement officer is “a provocation to all the subjects of England.”

This ruling grew out of the attempted arrest of a woman named Anne Dekins by a constable named Samuel Bray. When Bray attempted to arrest Dekins for what we would now call “disorderly conduct,” she put up loud, insistent resistance. Her cries for help drew the attention of a man named Tooey, who – in the company of several others – confronted Bray and demanded that he explain his actions. 

Bray produced his official credentials, which failed to impress Tooey and the others. He then called for backup. When the other constable arrived, he drew his sword and engaged in combat with Tooey, who defended himself. The constable, as it turned out, was not the better man. Several other constables arrived, seized, Tooey, and charged him with murder. 

The trial court threw out the murder charge, ruling that the warrant was defective. Since the arrest was illegal, the court pointed out, Dekins had a right to resist. 

In trying to enforce an invalid warrant, Bray “did not act as a constable, but a common oppressor,” observed the trial court. Tooley and the other bystanders were properly “provoked” by the act of aggressive violence against Anne Dekins, and their forceful but measured response – first demanding that the abductor release the hostage, then exercising defensive force to free her – was entirely appropriate. 

There is no place in a genuinely civilized society for any group of people – however accoutered, by whatever name they call themselves – who claim the supposed authority to commit violent aggression. Anybody who countenances such behavior in the name of “supporting your local police” is an enemy to human liberty and basic decency.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Committing War Crimes is a Duty; Reporting Them is a Felony

Bradley Manning is the only combat veteran of the Iraq war whose service is worth honoring. Like hundreds of thousands of servicemen, Manning carried out unlawful orders to participate in an illegal war. Unlike any of the rest, he took necessary action to expose discrete criminal acts committed in the larger context of that illegal enterprise.

While serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning sometimes felt as if he were “watching nonstop snuff films,” according to a New York magazine profile.  His job consisted of sitting at a work station and evaluating Iraqis as targets. This meant “reducing a human being to a few salient points. Then he made a quick decision based on imperfect information: kill, capture, exploit, source.”

Unlike countless other U.S servicemen who took refuge in the idea that obedience to superiors immunizes criminal behavior, Manning tried to discriminate between “insurgents” and innocent bystanders, only to find that such distinctions do not exist when one is fighting a war of aggression. When he expressed concerns about this to his superiors, Manning was told to choke down such questions and get back to the task of killing people who resented being occupied by a prohibitively stronger foreign power.

In late 2009, Manning told a psychological counselor “about a targeting mission gone bad in Basra” in which an unambiguously innocent bystander was killed. That incident left Manning incapacitated with guilt and remorse. It’s quite likely that it also led Manning to confront the moral reality that every use of lethal force by U.S. personnel in Iraq was an act of murder.

Shortly after speaking with a psychologist about the Basra incident, Manning performed a heroic act in the service of his country and the rule of law by leaking the Iraq war logs and the notorious “Collateral Murder” video documenting the slaughter – by two U.S. Apache helicopter gunships – of twelve innocent civilians.

During the recently concluded show trial of Manning, the prosecution insisted that by publicizing the “Collateral Murder” video, the whistleblower had given material aid to the enemy. In fact, he had exposed a criminal policy imposed and carried out by the superior officers to whom he was expected to report such atrocities. Former U.S. Army Specialist Ethan McCord, who can be seen in the video attempting to carry two wounded children to safety – has testified that the crime documented in the video was the product of “standard operating procedure” dictating “360 degree rotational fire” in residential neighborhoods in retaliation for IED attacks on occupation troops. 

When Manning became aware of war crimes, he was legally and morally obligated to report them – not just to his superior officers, who were at best aggressively indifferent to them, but to the public from whom those officers derive their supposed authority. Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers witnessed war crimes, but as far as we presently know, Manning was the only soldier deployed to Iraq who had the character and moral courage necessary to avoid silent complicity in them.

Although Manning was acquitted of the charge of aiding the enemy – which carried a potential sentence of life without parole – he was convicted of 19 criminal counts, including five espionage charges, and could still find himself facing the equivalent of a life sentence. Prior to his trial, Manning was held for nine months in an especially severe form of solitary confinement that involved forced nudity, sleep deprivation, and persistent abuse. His treatment, which constituted torture, won him a reduction off 112 days from the prison sentence he will receive for the supposed offense of exposing officially sanctioned crimes. 

If Manning had been a war criminal, rather than an honorable soldier who exposed war crimes, his pre-trial confinement would have led to dismissal of the charges against him – or his sentence being overturned.  

Like Private Manning, Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins served in Iraq. He committed war crimes of the kind Manning helped expose to the public. He led an eight-man squad that kidnapped an innocent Iraqi man from his home, took him to a ditch and shot him in the face. They then planted a gun and a shovel and claimed that the Iraqi, a retired police officer, was a suspected insurgent.

Hutchins was sentenced to 11 years for murder. A military appeals court has overturned that conviction, claiming that his rights were violated when he was unlawfully detained without a lawyer for seven days. Hutchins was released after serving roughly five and a half years in prison. Manning has already spent more than three years behind bars. His father described the convicted murderer as a “scapegoat,” insisting that he “was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 

The same was true of every other U.S. soldier who took part in the occupation of Iraq, including Private Manning. The difference was that Hutchins faithfully carried out orders to murder Iraqis, and Manning understood that the government that employed him is not exempt from the moral law. 

Sgt. Ray Girouard is another war criminal who was granted leniency by the government that had employed him. Like Hutchins, Girouard commanded a combat unit that committed an atrocity – in this case, the murder of three handcuffed Iraqi detainees. Like Hutchins, Girouard was convicted on the testimony of his comrades, all of whom were given lighter sentences in exchange for testifying against their squad leader. And like Hutchins, Girouard claims that he is a “scapegoat” who carried out orders and then covered up for his men “out of loyalty” when they “messed up.”

Girouard commanded a May 9, 2006 mission in which he was ordered to “kill all military-age males” in an area described as a terrorist training camp. His unit dragged three men out of a house, zip-tied their hands, and called for a chopper. Girouard claims that when he left the house, “I [heard] this volley of gunfire…. I run back and see these three bodies lying on the ground with their blindfolds half-off. My guys are shouting, `They tried to escape. We shot them. They were terrorists. They were going to come back and kill us.’”

It should be acknowledged that attempting to kill foreign invaders who have occupied your country is not an act of terrorism. It’s also worth underscoring the fact that this account, if taken at face value, marked the soldiers under Girouard’s command as incurable cowards. Their behavior is eerily reminiscent of the conduct of police officers who lose bladder control and gun down unarmed citizens who are seen as a threat to “officer safety.” This isn’t surprising, given that the crime in Iraq was carried out by another branch of the Regime’s fraternity of armed bullies.

According to Girouard, he covered up the killings by filing a false official report claiming that the victims had attacked his men. That would make him an accessory to murder. However, the soldiers who carried out the murders later testified that they had done so under Girouard’s orders. One of them, Specialist Juston Graber, claimed that he had “finished off” a wounded detainee after being explicitly ordered to do so by Girouard.

 

Girouard reviews his Army discharge papers.

After being found guilty of negligent homicide, Girouard was given a ten-year prison sentence. He spent three years in Ft. Leavenworth before his conviction was overturned and he was given a “general discharge under honorable conditions.”

“It’s such a blessing,” exulted Girouard after returning to his home in Sweetwater, Tennessee. “I get all my benefits and everything now.”

Such leniency is reserved for those who are faithful in carrying out imperial crimes. From the perspective of those who control the Regime, committing war crimes is a duty, but reporting them is a felony.

Dum spiro, pugno!