Assassinated! First My Character, Then My Personhood
After seventeen years the true me is still wrongfully convicted.
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Over the years I have read a lot of stories about individuals who have used fibs or outright lies to pursue an agenda, sometimes a career, a marriage, a promotion, a date, a vacation, or even a whim.
Just a few months ago I read in The New Yorker about a student photographer who pretended to be a well-known foreign billionaire so as to gain access to some of the most exclusive and luxurious residences in Manhattan.
She used her access to photograph the exquisite NYC skyline and later published a book from her exploits. The media charmingly described her actions as “creative ambition” and “clever fibs,” despite the fact that she was openly representing herself as another living person for personal gain.
The media can be an enabler to errant behaviors, whether we are talking about billionaire CEOs, grafting politicians, or just the famous. Then there are the trials by headlines, where the once adored are converted overnight into pariahs.
We often justify these types of media exploits or witch-hunts under the guise of our constitutionally protected right to free speech and expression. We tout things like FOIA and the First Amendment, and then point to the American flag as proof of our democratic freedoms.
All of which we do without recognizing that mainstream media doesn't sell truth, it sells advertising. And never is this more apparent as when there is a tragedy to prosecute and blame to assign.
My own personal experience took place primarily between August 2004 and February of 2006, when the mainstream media became a willing accomplice to the assassination of first my character and later my personhood. I was accused of murder by the very friend who lured both me and the victim to a vacant residence under false pretenses.
The victim’s brother was a high-ranking federal marshal. And the then - D.A. was one of the most corrupt politicians to touch law-enforcement in a generation.
The media wasn't interested in digging for truth or substantiating claims. The state simply said that I was basically a Bond-villain without the gadgets or the resources. “Womanizer,” a “conman,” and let's not forget a “cold-blooded murderer,” who allegedly – we can't overlook “allegedly,” as that's the adverb they use to placate all kinds of media sins – killed a man because of a “mafia obsession” and a “hitman fantasy.” And who was the source for there accusations against my character and person?
He was the once friend who lured both me and the victim to a vacant residence under false pretenses. The very friend who was part of a much larger plot and sequence of events that began in Arizona, where a business mishap and a divorce gave birth to a macabre plot to either deposit me into a cemetery or a prison, so as to recuperate certain financial losses at my expense.
The arbiter of truth for all this wasn't, as you might think, a thorough investigation, an adherence to fact or, for that matter, a fair trial. It was none other than the then - D.A. Kari Brandenburg, a politician known to play fast and loose with the facts and be irreverent to the law.
A politician whose 16 year career as district attorney for Bernalillo County constantly tested the limits of public tolerance for scandal, corruption, and outright cynicism.
She was the defacto head and prosecutorial arm of what she herself described as a “continuing criminal enterprise,” the largest police department in New Mexico, APD.
Imagine for a moment what it would feel like to see a series of lies perpetuated against you on the headlines of mainstream media, because of which you become a pariah to your own family and friends as you watch them turn their backs to you one at a time. For me it was like experiencing death on repeat. How does one ever recover from such infamy?
More importantly, how is one to defend him or herself from the state’s immense prosecutorial and slander power? The state’s judicial apparatus knows the law, will publicly pay homage to the Constitution, but doesn't always choose to enforce it.
“The truth is,” said Emile DeWeaver, a senior strategist of advocacy at Prison Policy Initiative, “we punish people less because of what they do and more because of who they are.”
A statement that also extends to constitutional rights. Where who you are, the wealth you possess, the influence you wield are more indicative of the constitutional rights you will be afforded than your mere existence as a citizen or human being. A tragic truth that more than 40,000 wrongfully convicted in this country could attest to every single year.
If anyone can appreciate the harsh and unforgiving reality of having your character and personhood assassinated by a less than scrupulous media and governmental actors, it's Amanda Knox. Ever since her exoneration in 2015 she has repeatedly had to defend her innocence and rightful exoneration for a crime and murder that she did not commit.
Her life has been usurped and fictionalized by Hollywood and television at least three times for commercial profits and ratings, to her detriment, and as far as I can tell she has never had a say in any of it. Most recently it was the film directed by Tom McCarthy, Stillwater, starring Matt Damon, where once again rather than portray the truth they opted to sell the fiction.
In an article that she wrote for The Atlantic, she said, “A jury convicted my doppelgänger, and sentenced her to 26 years in prison. But the guards couldn't handcuff that invented person. They couldn't escort that fiction into a cell.”
She spoke about being “sentenced to life by the court of public opinion.” An experience that she still lives to this day, despite her actual innocence or rightful exoneration.
But since I am yet to live the latter part of her experience – the part where the governmental corruption is exposed and I’m liberated from my wrongful conviction – I'm left to only empathize with the front end of her experience, the conviction of her doppelgänger.
As I mentioned, in my own case, the mainstream media facilitated then-D.A. Brandenberg's agenda of depicting fiction as fact, first, for the trial of public opinion, then, for the actual trial of systematically deleting my life without constitutional safeguards or protections.
Eloy Montano, the first suspect in custody was rightfully afforded his Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate himself, yet the very same court did not afford me my Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine him – since he was my only accuser and his testimony was presented against me for the truth of the matter asserted.
It's this type of selective and preferential treatment to some at the expense and detriment of others that undermines the legitimacy of democracy and the rule of law in this country.
This nation affords us equal rights, which is hard to see given the constitutional differential that exists between each and everyone of us based on the arbitrary determinations of a justice system run by corrupt operatives and assisted by a profit-oriented media.
Likewise, it's hard to believe in democracy and freedom when your very life is proof positive that corruption rules, corruption votes, and corruption is what democratic institutions in this country have become. Yet, despite all of these realities and truths I still believe in democracy over tyranny.
I believe that free people can chart their own course through history, guided by the rule of law, human decency, and, of course, democracy. But let's not sugar-coat this for ourselves, because this isn’t the reality that we have before us.
When the leader of the free world stands behind the presidential podium and says, “We've got to prove democracy works,” I can't help but hear prosecutors like Kari Brandenburg shouting, “We've got to find so- and-so guilty!”
I understand the justified frustrations of the exonerated like Amanda Knox, Marty Tankleff, Kristine Bunch, Terrance Lewis and so many of the other wrongfully convicted who have had to stand by as one botched and biased investigation after another costed them countless sleepless nights and decades of their lives, not to mention all the other secondary infringements on their freedoms, privacy and pursuits of happiness.
I understand. I get it. Because I‘m living it right now!
President Biden expects us to help him sell the world on the American narrative that we are the center of freedom and democracy, despite the fact that we are the largest carceral state in the world.
And despite the fact that we wrongfully convict 40,000 people every year, handing out prison and death sentences like they were giveaway prizes at a carnival.
Where most of those wrongful convictions are because “alleged” defacto- mob-boss-politicians like Brandenburg ambitiously and arbitrarily choose who gets constitutional protections and who doesn't.
So I'm sorry, Mr. President, but unless you're willing to actually be our leader and step into the trenches with us to help rescue our liberties and democracy, I don't think I'll participate in your PR push to sell more fallacy to the world. What I will do, however, is continue to speak truth to power.
I will not be deterred by threats or corruption. Because at the end of the day I still believe in democracy and the power of our collective voice to effectuate change.
Recently, we started a petition at change.org/mylifeplus25 to help bring about change by shining light on the fact that governmental misconduct caused by professional ambition and corruption are permitting the Constitution to be sidestepped so as to arrive at convictions that are illegal and undemonstrative of a democratic republic of free people guided by human decency and the rule of law.
And I'm asking for your help in putting more signatures on this petition than there are people in the state of New Mexico.
Because the simple truth and verifiable fact is that the media is always complicit in the systematic character assassination of the state’s targets. In my particular case the then - D.A. Brandenburg propagated the lie of a “hitman fantasy,” based on the jailhouse confession of the actual killer. That's rich! Both a testimony and accusation I was never able to pass through the “crucible of cross-examination” as the law dictates.
A lie she eagerly sold through the media long before the criminal investigation was completed and the actual culpable parties were revealed. In fact, the more the truth unraveled and her propagated theory contradicted, the more adamant she became to defend the lie.
Why? Because to admit such an error, publicly, with all the corruption and scandal that her administration had suffered – not to mention having a high-ranking federal marshal breathing down her neck for justice – would have been career suicide.
She did exactly what we've come to expect from our politicians of late, she prosecuted the lie with more lies. And after seventeen years the true me is still wrongfully convicted.
Change.org/mylifeplus25
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