CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-The genius of Weinstein Game Plan was simple: (1) abuse people, and (2) use your power to silence your victims. Perhaps, it’s more accurate to call Weinstein’s plan The Standard Operating Procedure for America’s Powerful.
Let’s look at some of the other people who follow this Abuse and Silence pattern.
- Donald Trump
- Larry Nassarand the U.S. Olympic Committee.
- George Tyndall, a USC gynecologist, and USC President C. L. Max Nikias.
- Gerald Arthur Sanduskyand the Penn State Administration.
- California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, presiding over a judicial system marked by an epidemic of misconduct.
- J. Simpson, LAPD’s inaction to take seriously Nicole Simpson’s complaints of battery (since then, the LAPD has undergone serious reform).
- OC District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, whose most recent scandal is the Seal Beach Mass Murder trial’s use of lying jailhouse informants; more scandals to follow.
- Justice Paul Turner, issuing orders taking away property without jurisdiction, notice or due process; corrupting his fellow justices.
- Former Superior Court Judge David Yaffe,imprisoning attorney Richard I Fine for exposing that LA County judges received millions of dollars in illegal payments.
- And one could use a thousand words without naming even a tenth of the powerful people who abuse and intimidate their victims with help from the judicial system.
Silence Is Golden — Golden for the Abuser
The victims live in eternal turmoil. As scores of women are explaining now, they were mocked, ridiculed, and shoved aside while the abusers continued to receive accolades. As Matt Damon observed in 2017 – after five minutes with Harvey Weinstein, you knew he was bully, an asshole.Weinstein knew that any victim who spoke out would be shunned, while he would receive more honors.
Sexual Abuse Does Not Live on a Planet of its Own
Because sex titillates, the nation is presently fixated on sexual abuse. We live in “America the Predatory,” not “America the Beautiful.” For example, predatory prosecutors and judges have railroaded hundreds of thousands of people into prison. While the United States has only 4.4% of the world's population, we have 22% of the world's prisoners. According to PolitiFact Georgia, at 724 people per 100,000, the U.S. now has the world's highest incarceration rate; Russia’s rate of incarceration is 581 per 100,000.
We should ask ourselves whether poor Americans are so horribly criminal that we merit the world’s highest incarceration rate or is something else operating?
As the proliferation of innocence projects shows, for decades prosecutors have routinely used lying jailhouse informants, falsified evidence, and have concealed evidence that showed defendants to be innocent. We also know that when predators have been wealthy like Harvey Weinstein or have been backed by powerful institutions like the U.S. Olympic Committee or the University of Southern California, prosecutors have turned a blind eye. We continually hear that criminal cases cannot now be brought against wealthy abusers because the statutes of limitations have run. The time to charge these criminals expires because prosecutors protect powerful predators.
The Weinstein Game Plan Is Only Partly Crumbling
In some isolated places, a backlash against judicial predators has begun. As we saw in January 2015 with the Johnny Baca v Derral Adamscase, the prosecutor not only solicited a lying jailhouse informant, but he himself took the stand and committed perjury by vouching for the lying informant. When the State Appellate Court learned of the Baca prosecutor’s perjury, it brushed it aside saying that the perjury, which is a crime, was not reversible error! When the justice system uses its power to suppress the truth and protect the abusers, society suffers. It took many years and the federal courts to take action against the judicial predators. http://bit.ly/1As5sLJ
The U.S. has the world’s highest incarceration rate but with virtually no prosecutions of powerful. None of the Wall Streets criminals who crashed the world’s economy in 2008 were prosecuted. We have a viciously predatory judicial system which allows the powerful to abuse the weak.
We Know the Remedy
In 1914 Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” Although our courts currently have their curtains closed to shut out the light of publicity, we are seeing how society is transformed when people speak out. Extremely reluctant prosecutors in New York City and in Los Angeles have been forced to open investigations about Harvey Weinstein and Dr. George Tyndall. Dr. Nassar has been convicted and a courageous judge gave his victims days of impact statements rather than squelching their voices as was the prior judicial custom.
The Court of Public Opinion
As we have just seen, the court of public opinion can be a more efficacious forum. Whether or not Roseanne Barr tweeted under the influence of Ambien, the world saw the thought patterns behind institutionalized racism. Although she claims that she was an idiot rather than a racist, ABC knows that being stupid is not a defense to bigotry. The prejudiced thinking of Roseanne infects our courts. Unless judges and prosecutors accepted these racist memes as real, they would not be incarcerating so many minorities by using falsified evidence.
When we see minorities as the off-spring of terrorists and apes, it is no wonder prosecutors and judges see it as holy work to falsify evidence and solicit lying jailhouse informants.
A More Perfect Union
Our Founding Fathers would not let powerful abusers silence them, and so began our Republic: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice…secure the blessing of Liberty…” (Preamble of the U.S. Constitution. A just nation does not permit the powerful to abuse and then silence their victims.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
