Attorney General or Inquisitioner General?
Every newsletter on MYLIFEplus25 is public and free to everyone, but we ask for your support. Please consider becoming a patron now to help fund our ongoing legal efforts that dare to speak truth to power. This isn't journalism, it's activism! And these efforts are only possible through the support of good people just like you who believe that change is possible.
Thank you and I hope you enjoy today’s post.
__________________________________________________________________
It is not everyday we get to witness the assassination of a sitting governor, especially one so illustrious as to be dubbed Emperor Cuomo II. Nobody even blinked when it was revealed that a once chieftan of New York politics had been slain in broad daylight, or even thought twice that the alleged killer was none other than New York Attorney General Letitia James.
And it matters not that I’m only referring to the political and character assassination of former governor Andrew Cuomo, because the Constitution that was desecrated and dragged on the bottom of the A.G. James’ shoe, like a soiled piece of toilet paper, was the true unnamed victim of what was undoubtably an assassination.
This is not about being a fan of Cuomo. Personally he reminds me too much of Obama, who at the end of it all was no better or different than the rest of the corrupted political class that he lambasted against in his run for the presidency in 2008. Cuomo is a politician polished to the point of being greasy, someone I wouldn't turn my back on if we were on a prison yard together.
His actions during the pandemic represented him as someone gladly willing to trade the lives of his constituency for political expediency. But either we are a nation of laws or we are a nation of men. We can't have it both ways. And if it's the former and we are a nation of laws then it's time for us to demand from our governing officials accountability to those laws.
The current reality of our nation is a place where it's acceptable to convict someone of a crime based solely on accusations and misplaced rhetoric. The Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, the state’s chief law enforcement official, apparently couldn't be bothered with a little old legal concept called Due Process. In the same way the New York Times couldn’t be
restrained from declaring that:
Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually assaulted 11 women
Despite the fact that those are serious charges and he's never seen a judge, jury, or been given the opportunity to confront his accusers.
Naturally, as I'm sure most will agree, it's an alarming thing to see the President of the United States demanding someone's resignation for criminal behavior. It makes us think WOW! Biden must really know something that the rest of us don't. But then, for those of us who have actually taken the time to review James’ report, what's even more alarming is to read the report and not find what we would expect to find for what amounted to declarations of guilt.
Maybe because I know a thing or two about being wrongfully accused, or simply because seventeen years in a cell – where the only thing worth reading is the law – has left me possessing a certain expectancy of a constitutional nature when it comes to criminal accusations. Because as far as I can tell, the last time a prosecutor was permitted the power of judge, jury, and executioner was during the Inquisition.
Regardless of how thorough James’ report is I fail to see formal charges, discovery, a trial, investigative scrutiny of the evidence, or the crucible of cross-examination of Cuomo’s accusers. For reasons that are beyond me we’re just expected to believe whatever the Attorney General determines as fact. I'm sorry, but I fail to see why anyone should just take a prosecutor’s word for anything. Is it because she performed an investigation? Because that in itself doesn't mean much.
Every day prosecutors perform biased investigations to substantiate questionable theories before juries.
Many of us probably don't know that there are actual historical reasons why our legal system demands confrontation between the accused and the accuser, also known as cross-examination, also known as “the greatest legal mechanism for the discovery of truth.”
As far back as the Roman Empire, being confronted by one’s accusers was considered a basic legal tenet. But, in England, 1603, there was a famous political trial brought against a Sir Walter Raleigh for treason. The charge was substantiated by the written letter and confession of Raleigh's alleged accomplice Lord Cobham. At Raleigh’s trial his confession was read to the jury by the prosecution. And in his own defense Raleigh demanded for the judges to call Cobham to appear, arguing that:
The proof of the Common Law is by witness and jury: let Cobham be here let him speak it. Call my accuser before my face…
That didn't happen and Sir Walter Raleigh was executed for treason. After the tragedy of Raleigh’s trial more than one judge lamented that “the justice of England has never has never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of Sir Walter Raleigh.”
Here in the U.S., with the Bill of Rights came the Sixth Amendment which is what guarantees us the right to cross- examine our accusers. The principal evil to be avoided with this is the use of ex parte examinations as evidence against the accused. And today this includes anything recorded – video, audio, or written – collected by law-enforcement for purposes of investigation.
If I seem familiar with this part of the law that's because what was done to Sir Walter Raleigh was done to me, not to prove treason, but murder. And to see the Constitution so flagrantly disrobed for nothing more than what appears to be political pandering is
infuriating! We expect this from a small town D.A. like Kari Brandenburg, where the state’s unofficial and more repeated motto is The Land of Entrapment. But on New York's flag I see Excelsior, which should signify above all else – excellence.
There are many upsetting aspects to this political assassination of sorts, and Cuomo himself isn't at the top of the list. First amongst my concerns is the complicity of the mainstream media and Letitia James’ unconstitutional finding of Cuomo's guilt. Because the first question out of any journalists mouth should have been guilty by what trial? By what jury? And before which judge on tribunal?
Obviously Cuomo doesn’t need me or anyone else to advocate for his rights. He has more than adequate resources to hire the best lawyers in New York to litigate the obvious on his behalf. But what he does need from the nation at large is that we stand up and demand accountability from New York's Attorney General.
As a public official she expended public resources to investigate criminal behavior, then as Inquisitioner General prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced her victim to infamy. To observe such surreal behavior from a state Attorney General makes me think that our American democratic experiment has long since failed. I don't know when or where it happened, but apparently we’re no longer governed by the rule of law.
So what are we governed by? Is it just cynicism? Public opinion formed by questionable media sources? Political expediency? Governmental vendettas?
Is it now officially confirmed that if we're rich, powerful, influential, or famous we’re free to physically or sexually assault any number of people, be declared guilty by an Inquisitioner General, and all that happens is that we're asked to resign from our jobs?
If this is the reality and true face of our legal system, our democracy, our republic, and the culmination of our freedoms, liberties, and what we know as the rule of law then I'm terrified to think what this means to the literally thousands of men and women, like myself, who are fighting tooth and nail to be liberated from beneath their wrongful convictions.
---
Thank you for supporting MYLIFEplus25 and for reading today’s publication. Thanks for subscribing to MYLIFEplus25 by Mario Chavez. All posts are public, so feel free to share it.
To help support even more please take a moment to subscribe to my podcast on one of the following channels:
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mylifeplus25/id1562605207
Google Podcasts:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy81NThjMWE5MC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==
Spotify:
And follow me on Twitter here: Follow @lifeplus25
Follow me on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/MYLIFEplus25-106918954788500
Look out for next week’s publication.
