The practice of judicial findings punishes innocence, as it did in this story…
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You are about to encounter injustice piled upon injustice, followed by the solution we are promoting to end some of these outrages. Here's the story...
Suicide
Jim Larkin, the co-founder of the website Backpage, committed suicide on July 31, 2023. Years of unfair federal prosecution and harassment drove him to this at age 74. He left behind a wife and six children.
A life sentence for a non-crime
On August 28, 2024, a federal judge sentenced Larkin's business partner, Michael Lacey, to five years in prison. Since Lacey is 76 years-old, that might be a life sentence.
What crimes warranted such terrible punishment?
These men made powerful enemies over many decades. For one thing, they ran alternative newspapers, out-competing advertising revenue away from the establishment press.
Even worse, Larkin and Lacey published award-winning, investigative journalism that attacked political officials and establishment power brokers. But...
Their real undoing came when they permitted sex workers to advertise on their website, Backpage.
Some people think sex and commerce are both evil
Is there a First Amendment exception for commercial or sex speech? Lacey and Larkin didn't see one.
And the sex workers who ran the ads saw the internet as a way to escape pimps and streetwalking. Internet advertising on sites like Craigslist and Backpage made sex work safer. It also helped remove unsightly sidewalk solicitation from American cities.
This seemed like a win-win, so of course...
The control freaks had to stop it!
The FBI began by targeting Backpage's banking relationships. If you can't process funds, you can't run a business. And if you can't run a business, then you don't have the income to defend yourself when the prosecutors call.
The banks complied, making Larkin and Lacey's business an economic non-entity. This forced Larkin and Lacey to find alternative approaches for handling transactions. They made everything they did transparent to federal officials, but that would not help them in the end.
The new prosecutorial playbook
Once the FBI had severed Backpage from the banking system, the criminal prosecutions began. Eventually, there were 84 charges for everything under the sun. All of this is straight out of the new prosecutorial playbook.
STEP ONE: Sever the accused from their income and their assets so they can't fund a defense.
STEP TWO: Compound the number of charges to overwhelm the defense lawyers and force a plea deal.
This two-step is powerful for securing convictions but destructive to justice.
Still, the jury could clearly sense the lack of justice in this case. Despite prejudicial instructions from the judge, they hung on nearly all counts.
The judge then threw out many of the charges and announced a new trial date for the remainder.
It was at this point, with more legal stress pending, that Jim Larkin committed suicide, leaving Michael Lacey to soldier on alone.
The next-to-last outrage
Do you remember what I wrote above about how Larkin and Lacey had to find an alternative to the official U.S. banking system? Well, do you remember that they disclosed everything they did to the authorities? As I said, it did them no good. Here comes the next-to-last hammer blow...
Larkin and Lacey were accused of money laundering because they operated outside of the banking system – despite the fact that they disclosed everything they were doing.
THIS – this alone – is why Lacey has a five-year prison sentence in the twilight of his life.
But it gets worse...
The judge used judicial findings to render a draconian sentence
Lacey isn't getting a five-year sentence for money laundering; he's getting five years for all the other things he was accused of, even though the jury hung on those other issues.
Judges created something called judicial findings to impose punishments for things that weren't proven in court.
The same thing was done to Ross Ulbricht in the Silk Road case.
Forget about being innocent until you're proven guilty. You can be sentenced just because you were accused of something! And remember...
Ambitious prosecutors and corrupt cops can gin up lots of charges to make against you.
Judicial findings punish innocence, so we are working to outlaw this practice. We need your help to…
End judicial findings!
If you haven't already joined The 300 for our campaign to end judicial findings, please do so.
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If you haven't yet contributed or started a monthly pledge to help us find more people to support our reforms, please do so. Your contributions are our budget.
Set your own agenda,
Jim Babka, President
Agenda Setters by Downsize DC
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