The Department of Justice is scheduled to file a court motion on Friday November 16th. We expect that DOJ will argue that admitted misconduct by US Attorneys Booth Goodwin and Steve Ruby and other United States government agencies and their employees did not impact the jury verdict wherein I was found guilty of a misdemeanor but was found not guilty of all felony charges.
The misdemeanor is an incredible story in itself. No one thought miners telling each other an inspector had arrived at the mine was a crime at all and no one in American history had ever been charged for a crime or even been written a civil violation for doing so. Yet following my conviction for not stopping miners from doing this I was sent to a federal prison prior to any opportunity to appeal. A federal prison which except for me, housed only felons. Again, I was not even convicted of telling miners that inspectors had arrived but rather I was convicted of not stopping miners from doing so. This at a mine which I had not been at for more than 10 years.
As background, The United States Constitution requires that the government provide a defendant with evidence that is favorable to the defendant and important to determining the question of guilt. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has already admitted that they did not even make a reasonable effort to comply with this Constitutional requirement when prosecuting their case against me. The DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility even wrote in their investigation report that if United States prosecutors Goodwin and Ruby were still working for DOJ they would have recommended that DOJ take “whatever action it thought appropriate to ensure such conduct was not repeated”.
Yet, this Friday November 16th, following months of delay and musical chairs having been played with my case, (as it moved from West Virginia, to Kentucky and now to Columbus, Ohio), the fourth US Attorney to be involved with the case in the past year is expected to file a motion that my conviction should be upheld. The motion will be filed under the supervision of US Attorney Benjamin Glassman who now heads the government’s clearly corrupted effort to sustain a verdict achieved only through lies, evidence destruction, evidence tampering, threatening witnesses, forgery, shredding parties, and United States Senators making false proclamations pre-trial that they believed I was guilty and that I did not deserve a fair trial.
My case is a prime example of the great extent to which the American justice system is corrupt. President Trump is right when he says DOJ is corrupt. But he has turned a blind eye to a case which is unprecedented in the level and extent of its corruption. The United States government is seeking to sustain a conviction which clearly followed intentional misconduct by United States Attorneys, by the Department of Labor, and by United States Senators. Misconduct that has been found and disclosed in a DOJ internal report. The DOJ motion will be an attempt by US Attorney Glassman (Columbus, Ohio) to uphold a conviction which the “West Virginia US Attorney” had already signaled that he knew was improperly achieved. A case that was likely removed from West Virginia solely in order to prevent the conviction from being invalidated.
We expect that Glassman and his associates will likely acknowledge the government’s misconduct yet they will argue that the misconduct did not alter the Jury’s verdict. An argument no one can take seriously nor sensibly make.
It is absolute insanity for anyone to claim that they know that the guilty verdict would have been the same had the government done what the Constitution requires. The Constitution requires that evidence favorable to the defense be provided to the defense so that a fair trial is assured for all Americans. Glassman, no matter whether he graduated from Harvard nor what experiences he has had, cannot make a straight face claim that he knows that all twelve jurors would have voted exactly as they did, had the government complied with the Constitution. Any such claim is pure corruption and INSANITY! It can only be sustained if the Judges are corrupt as well. All that will be achieved, should Glassman’s and the government’s position prevail and the verdict be upheld, is more tyranny by the United States government and the so called Department of Justice.
The question that must be answered is “why does the law require that in order for the government to be in compliance with the Constitution it must provide evidence favorable to the defense if the government can simply say afterward that the defendant would have been found guilty anyway”.
This entire fiasco is nothing but pure corruption. Why would prosecutors withhold evidence other than to impact the outcome of the trial? What other purpose can there be? They admit having intentionally withheld information which should have been provided. Prosecutor Ruby even testified under oath that the evidence was withheld because Goodwin was angry that my attorneys were aggressively defending me. Think about that. Glassman is essentially arguing that United States Prosecutors can take the position that if your attorney aggressively defends you the government has a right to violate the United States Constitution so long as other US prosecutors and Judges say it did not impact the verdict.
The behavior of Goodwin and Ruby; the behavior of the Mine Safety and Health Administration; the DOJ moving the case from state to state; Manchin and Rockefeller destroying any chance of a fair trial by saying I had “blood on my hands” and “did not deserve a fair trial”; and now US Attorney Glassman filing a motion to defend all this nonsense is making a pure mockery of the United States justice system. It is also obvious that the DOJ decision to object to the verdict being invalidated is “politically” motivated which can only be defined as “tyrannical”. “Politically motivated” judicial decisions cannot be defined any other way. In fact, it is the very definition of “tyrannical”.
The facts of how convicting me was achieved makes a pure mockery of the US justice system. No reasonable juror would ever convict a fellow American if they had known all of what we now know. The government by opposing my motion to invalidate my conviction is saying to all of us that it is more important to them to uphold a false misdemeanor conviction (for a crime they made up and which is not actually a crime) than it is to maintain the protections afforded all Americans by the Constitution. I was falsely imprisoned. Glassman, McConnell, Goodwin, Ruby, coal miners, and many in the public now know it. The big issue is not my misdemeanor conviction. The big issue is whether other Americans accused of crimes by the United States government will have the protection Brady, Giglio, Jencks, and the Constitution are intended to provide them.
The question that will be answered by US Attorney Glassman and the courts is not a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat, a Republican, or a political question. It is not whether a misdemeanor conviction will be invalidated. It is not what caused the UBB explosion. It is a question whose answer is critical to all Americans. The question that will be answered by the outcome of my long and expensive efforts will be “do Americans really have the right to a fair trial”. Or are enhancing Glassman’s or Goodwin’s career, securing McConnell’s power, hiding the UBB truth, or defending the winning percentage of DOJ prosecutions more important? That question has already been partially answered by Glassman’s decision to oppose my motion to invalidate a corruptly achieved conviction.
Separately I am providing a description of just one of many examples of how horribly corrupt the Department of Labor, MSHA, and the DOJ are.