United States v. Flaherty: Part 10 of 10 – Summing Up

2015 08 21_3000I’m really at a loss when it comes to this case. I see no good that can come from the prosecution. The whole matter is devoid of any concept of justice. To twist and turn the law in such a manner for the purpose of destroying a lawyer with a good reputation is contrary to doling out justice.

Martin W. Healy, the chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Bar Association said this about Flaherty: “The alleged actions run counter to Attorney Flaherty’s well known reputation as a skilled trial lawyer. Flaherty has been known as a go to attorney for tough criminal matters around the greater Boston area. Attorney Flaherty is considered one of the top criminal defense lawyers, having honed his skills as an assistant district attorney, and someone not afraid to try a difficult case.”

I can only surmise we are dealing with prosecutors so isolated from life that even little acts without consequences look like a big crimes. Remember it was the Boston U.S. attorney Carmen Ortiz who said:…..stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars.” I’d suggest Attorney Ortiz would not understand the quote attributed to Mary Harris Jones, “I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.” Ortiz would have fit well in Merry Old England where they hung starving people who stole a loaf of bread.    

Under Ortiz we have had the notorious prosecution of Aaron Swartz and the attempt to steal the Caswell Motel. There are other matters that rub one wrong such as the raid of the taxi company in Boston without a showing of any real crime. The Flaherty case is close to the top of the list of wrongful prosecutions. It is hard to understand how federal prosecutors can stoop so low in an attempt to destroy an attorney’s life. One thinks that like those college co-eds on spring break the prosecutors in that office have gone wild. Like the college co-eds time hang heavy on their hands so they confuse justice with mischief and play around with the lives of people as if they are meaningless.

In considering this case we should consider what one of our revered Supreme Court justices Robert Houghwout Jackson said in 1940 when he was attorney general of the United States discussing the role of a prosecutor.

“The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.”

That is pretty much how I saw the function of a prosecutor when I practiced. It was not to hurt or be vengeful but to punish real criminals and to let those who lived clean lives and perhaps had erred in something of little consequence to slip by. I did not look for artful ways to create criminals.

Justice Jackson, who became an associated justice of the Supreme Court and the chief prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg prosecution of Nazi war criminals, earlier in the same address stated: “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other per­son in America. His discretion is tremendous.” That is why it is so important to our society into whose hands this control is put. Because as we’ve seen in Boston, the judiciary seems to be no more than aiders and abettors.

Tim Flaherty became the target of federal prosecutors under circumstances so unusual that something else was at play. The alleged federal civil rights investigation did not involve him. It has yet to result in any charges. (I hope the 65-year-old guy doesn’t get indicted by them because I pointed this out but who knows with that crew.)

The victim of the so-called attempt of intimidation was working hand in hand with the federal prosecutors so in a sense the attempt, which had no intimidating aspects to it but was an attempt to settle a case, never had a chance to interfere with the victim cooperating.

Perhaps someone will explain what good will come from this prosecution. Perhaps the prosecutors themselves can explain what evil occurred, if any, that makes them want to destroy a lawyer’s livelihood. Was anyone damaged in any way? Did Flaherty cause anyone the slightest of harm? The  truth is NOTHING HAPPENED!

13 Comments

  1. Any coverage of Black Mass coming up on the blog? How about parts 1 to 10?

    • Norwood,

      I read somewhere that the Director cut Catherine Grieg’s character out of the movie entirely at the last minute.

  2. You are right. NOTHING HAPPENED here or in the Swartz, Probation, Murphy, Fitzpatrick, Turner, Connolly and Rico cases. All were manufactured crimes. Someday in the future we may get an honest DOJ which we clearly don’t have now. The public is unfamiliar with the actions of the Court system and are totally misinformed by the media. It’s indifference results in these abuses. As Rushdie said we live in a dumbed down and frightened age. 2. Is America committing a war crime in Yemen? Our weapons are being used by the Saudis. They have killed thousands of civilians and created a humanitarian disaster. It looks like a repeat of Libya and Syria. Do Arab lives matter? Who has destabilized the Middle East? Happy Labor Day.

    • Add Attorney Robert George to the list. The problem is, everyone cares when it affects someone they know. Bob George? Whatever. Paul Rico? Never heard of him. Someone close to me? SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!

      Not pointing fingers..its human nature I guess. Not to mention that the individual who is targeted, no matter how credible they were, immediately become marginalized and thought of as criminals the minute Ortiz or Wyshak whispers their name to their private “journalists” at the Globe.

  3. Reminds me of the old days sneaking
    into the Rialto Movie theater in Scollay
    Square to watch Buck Rogers in ten part
    installments.
    yawn…

    As I have said before the MTC blog
    is nothing more than a psychological
    soup kitchen for the political homeless.

    in other news
    FOIA
    Burning Books has produced the two short online videos below on How to Use the Freedom of Information Act and The Freedom of Information Act in Action featuring attorney Michael Kuzma. These videos are intended to assist and encourage individuals and activists in taking advantage of this important and underutilized resource to release documents from government agencies. Many thanks to Artvoice, the Buffalo chapter of the Coalition for Economic Justice, Squeaky Wheel and the Buffalo Chapter of the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee for support and assistance with this project!
    http://burningbooksbuffalo.com/pages/foia

    also see

    FBI Workers Suspected of Secretly Taping Teens in Dressing Room

    April 20, 2009

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517222,00.html

    Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall.

    The FBI employees have been charged with conspiracy and committing criminal invasion of privacy. They were working in an FBI satellite control room at the mall when they positioned a camera on temporary changing rooms and zoomed in for at least 90 minutes on girls dressing for the Cinderella Project fashion show, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said Monday.
    also see

    Former top FBI agent charged with child porn distribution

    May 15, 2012
    http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/15/justice/ex-fbi-agent-pornography/index.html

    A former supervisory FBI agent has been arrested and jailed on child pornography charges.

    Donald Sachtleben was taken into custody and charged Monday after a nationwide undercover investigation of illegal child porn images traded over the Internet.

    A federal complaint alleges 30 graphic images and video were found on Sachtleben’s laptop computer late last week when FBI agents searched his home, about 23 miles north of Indianapolis.

    Sachtleben is currently an Oklahoma State University visiting professor, according to his online resume. He is director of training at the school’s Center for Improvised Explosives, but all references to his work have now been removed from the university’s website. There was no indication from the school as to whether it had suspended him. Calls to the university and his Indianapolis attorneys were not immediately returned.

    He had been an FBI special agent from 1983 to 2008, serving as a bomb technician. He worked on the Oklahoma City bombing and Unabomber investigations, according to his university biography.

    A separate LinkedIn profile filled out by Sachtleben says he is an “accomplished investigator with more than 25 years of experience in FBI major case management, counter terrorism investigations, bombing prevention, post blast investigations and public speaking.”

    • ms,

      “… the MTC blog
      is nothing more than a psychological
      soup kitchen for the political homeless.”

      Yet, here you are ….as a prominent subscriber and frequent mega-content commenter almost running your own blog within the MTC blog (I wonder if that annoys him) offering your own brand of soup to us…..
      “uneducated and uneducable”…..
      followers who apparently have no political beliefs and need to be spoon fed our ideas by eminently qualified pontificators.

      Thank you, msfreeh, for that.

      • blogging is not truth
        behaviour is truth

        • ms,

          I said nothing of truth.
          I understand that everything that the owner, yourself, myself, and everyone else posts on this blog is a reflection of their own personal opinions.

          I am not commenting on the content, stories, and links that you post….
          just the insults that you not-so-subtly slip in occasionally….which reflects your opinion of your fellow subscribers here.
          For the most part, an individual’s behavior is reflected by their opinions (and beliefs).
          Food for thought.

          • With regard to msfreeh and the excess of quasi-comments that emanate from msfreeh’s keyboard into this hallowed space, I can only guess that there is some series of running humor going on here, directed by msfreeh towards MTC and perhaps his close friends who read this blog. Even if this not the case, it seems that MTC is for whatever reason or reasons reluctant to boot msfreeh from the commentariat.

            If I’m wrong on the second count, let msfreeh’s comments be gone from here, immediately following an announcement of msfreeh’s new blog(s).

  4. Ten installments over twelve days.
    I have to admit I’m all Flahertied out.

    Matt,

    -No good will come out of this and can not and will not be explained by anyone (except you)
    -the prosecutors will never explain their real motives, evil or not
    -Flaherty appears only have unwittingly triggered the waste of state and federal taxpayer dollars on frivolous and overzealous investigation and prosecution
    -The truth is…Something Happened…but it doesn’t appear to rise to the level of initiating all this nonsense

  5. Sadly, it seems that all the Federal shenanigans (in this and other cases) will escape MSM’s notice, thereby escaping the notice of nearly all citizens.

    But suppose I’m wrong. What hope do we Americans have when it comes to the tyranny of the FBI (assuming that the DOJ, in large part, is unwilling or incapable of standing in the FBI’s way)?