Feature Articles "Quest for Closure" vs "Search for Truth"
	Justice Department Reviews New Times' Charges Against Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Becker By J. Patrick O'Connor I happened to be in New York the day the story broke two weeks ago about the brutal police assault of a Haitian man. All three New York dailies carried front-page coverage and numerous sidebars about the horrific beating the handcuffed man sustained in a police precinct bathroom. Each succeeding day the newspapers came forward with more revelations of the incident: more police officers were involved than first thought; the officer who allegedly sodomized the victim with the handle of a toilet plunger boasted about the assault at the hospital while the victim was undergoing surgery. As the days went by the story just kept unraveling in a daisy-chain of recriminations and denials. I'm sure you're well versed in this particular case. After a week in New York, I feel like an expert on it. What struck me about this case is that what made it so notable wasn't its essential element - the justice system meting out gross injustice to a poor person - but rather the manner in which the injustice was meted out. The sodomy element of the assault is what gave this story its notoriety. Even the crowd of Haitians who gathered at the precinct station in Brooklyn to protest the brutality of the assault, emphasized the deviant nature of the attack rather than the gross injustice of it. Their signs referenced "Faggot Cops!" rather than criminally brutal ones. What does it say about our society when it's the form of the injustice rather than the injustice itself that determines media interest. When the local ATF office conspired with the U. S. Attorney's Office for Western Missouri to frame five innocent people with the deaths of six firefighters, no one - other than the immediate families of the accused - seemed to care. The accused were all paupers from the wrong side of the tracks. When U. S. District Judge Joseph Stevens made a mockery of justice at their trial and then later sentenced each of them to life in prison without the possibility of parole, his brutality against the defendants went down without a sigh from the mainstream media Articles by J.J. Maloney Firefighters Case: Part I Railroaded, Firefighters Case: Part II Analysis of the 8th Circuit Opinion in the Firefighters Case. Articles reprinted with permission. Articles by J. Patrick O'Connor Talk of the Times Frame-Up: The Untold Story of the Firefighters Case The Devil's in the Details: Part II of the Firefighters Case Blacking Out the Firefighters Case New Times Calls For Federal Investigation of Firefighters Case The Arrogance of Judge Joseph E. Stevens Justice Department Reviews New Times' Charges Against Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Becker Articles reprinted with permission. despite the fact that he had done far more damage than ram a wooden handle into the defendants' butts and mouths. No church groups came forward to protest this form of violence against the poor. No one thought to picket the U. S. Courthouse and carry signs saying "Asshole Judge!" In May, we published a two-part, 20,000-word series written by J. J. Maloney that showed how none of these defendants had a single thing to do with the murders of the firefighters back in 1988. Maloney revealed how ATF Special Agent Dave True repeatedly manipulated witnesses in order to frame the five defendants, going so far as to lie to the grand jury to get the indictments. Maloney documented how Assistant U. S. Attorney Paul Becker intimated government witnesses to get them to testify falsely against the defendants and how he defied court orders by withholding evidence from the defense that it was entitled to have. Back in mid-June I wrote on behalf of the New Times to Sens. Kit Bond and John Ashcroft and to Rep. Karen McCarthy asking them to call for federal investigations into the premeditated and flagrant misdeeds of Becker and True in the firefighers case. Neither Bond nor Ashcroft has made any reply. Rep. McCarthy has informed me by letter that the legal counsel in the Executive Office for the United States Attorneys has referred our allegations against Becker to the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. "OPR reviews allegations of prosecutorial misconduct against Department attorneys and United States Attorneys' offices. If the OPR determines that a further investigation is warranted, it will conduct an investigation and upon its completion, issue a report of its findings," McCarthy's letter said. Our charges against True were referred by McCarthy to the Treasury Department because it oversees the ATF. There's been no follow-up from Treasury to McCarthy. The ATF probably doesn't think much of our charges against True. Framing innocent poor people with murder charges pales in comparison to what the ATF did at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Hell, by those standards of agent conduct, True is something of a hero in the ATF. Think I'm kidding? In July the ATF awarded the now-retired True its Distinguished Service Medal.

| Main Page | Case Background | Feature Articles | Appeal Opinion | | Trial Transcripts | Reports | The Defendants | News Articles | Links | Contact Us | Questions and comments should be directed to kcfirefighterscase@gmail.com Web Site Development by DRDesign Copyright © 1998 - 2005