‘Voter fraud’ hoax redux

Voter Fraud hoax redux—

C of C

They’re at it again, predictably. Some groups and other entities legitimized as ‘conservative’ are cranking up the time-honored tactic of ‘vote fraud.’ This, for anyone not up to speed on the topic, is the false allegation spread by C of C types that individual voters are casting more than one vote in a single race.

Looks as though some of our friends on the right are not entirely confident about the outcome of Midterms 2010.

If they had the complacency that ought theoretically to be generated by some helpful political reporting this election season, they would surely be less frantic to aver that individual voters are going to turn over the election.

Come to think of it, that’s exactly what they fear; the deep structure in these ludicrous allegations is a valid proposition–individual voters can make a difference.

But back to the bogus accusation: Put simply, once again, the charge is that individual voters are voting or will vote in more than one race at the same time. They do not usually put it that simply–for obvious reasons–but that is the basic accusation: individual voters could cast more than one vote. Generally the wild propagandists do not specify how an individual voter might do so, whether by showing up using someone else’s name, or by voting in more than one precinct in the same election. Both of these options are so difficult to implement that the accusation of either is ridiculous.

A couple of facts are in order here:

1) Within the state of Maryland, for example, voting more than once is impossible. A voter registered in Maryland cannot vote in more than one precinct. When we vote, in Maryland, our vote is tabulated in the precinct where we vote. If I were to show up at another polling place attempting to vote, it would be impossible for me to vote via the voting technology in which my vote would already be recorded. Note: It is possible to vote in a new precinct, within Maryland, if you moved without changing your registration–but in those special cases you have to vote by provisional ballot. The provisional ballots are checked and tabulated later, separately from the vote machine totals.

2) Every other state in the union has some similar or parallel safeguards. The best safeguards are still the old-fashioned paper ballots, counted publicly–vote privately, count publicly, as another writer said. But the barriers to voting in more than one race, within the same state, are impossibly high.

3) Theoretically it would be possible to pose as someone else and steal that person’s vote. If you had all the necessary data about someone whose vote you wanted to steal–address, date of birth, etc.–and you were willing to go to that person’s precinct, risking the obvious possibility that someone there would actually know the other person, you might, underscore might, get away with it. Unlikely, but theoretically possible if every conceivable aspect of luck and snakiness went your way. Of course, if the other person–the rightful voter–later showed up trying to vote, you would still be found out. It should also be noted that this kind of snakiness could be attempted by members of any party, or of no party. Attributing it to Democrats, or to any other single group, is propaganda rather than statistics. Historically the genuine and exceptional examples of voter fraud, over the centuries, have occurred within all ranks.

4) That leaves only the theoretical possibility of voting across state lines. Now here I have an anecdote, shared with me by one of my Republican neighbors. According to what she told me, a relative of hers is still registered to vote in Maryland after having moved to another state–where he is now registered to vote. He is (or was until recently) thus registered to vote, as a Republican, in two states. There is not an automated system in either state to erase a registered voter from one voter roll because s/he is registered more recently on another. So the grain of truth, as my candid GOPer points out–her relative, who of course would never do this, could conceivably either fly back to Maryland on election day to vote in his former precinct, having voted at his new home, or could cast an absentee ballot in Maryland while also voting at home.

Once again–and this should be self-evident–if this individual voter took either of these wildly exceptional actions, it would be as a GOP voter. This particular anecdote is about a Republican. Genuine, and highly exceptional, vote fraud occurs across partisan lines.

Let us take it as a given that flying across state lines to cast more than one vote in an election would be, by far, the exception rather than the general rule. Let us further point out the obvious, that doing so would be more feasible for some of the better-paid wingnuts than for most other people. Glenn Beck could do it; I could not.

By the same token, absentee ballots cast by voters living in another state would be limited to the people who could afford to move to another state. If those people registered to vote in their new homes–this being the year of that ‘voter enthusiasm gap’ we hear so much about–and then went to the lengths described here, odds are that they are not among the voters being caged, monitored, intimidated and otherwise targeted by the C of C legions.

N.b.: If any of the propagandists so ardent about ‘vote fraud’ were serious, they would at least check the data. For a broad beginning or thumbnail, one could look in census data for the total number of people, all ages, who moved from one state to another in the U.S. between the last election and this one. Then one could consult the data or do the actuarial work to compute the number, out of those who moved, who are of voting age. Then one could check to see, or could project, how many of those who moved and are 18+ are also registered to vote.

That would be your maximum number of conceivable instances of ‘vote fraud,’ if everything fell right, if all those people either traveled across state lines or voted absentee across state lines.

That would also be the number of people subject to federal prosecution for vote fraud.

The State of Arizona–What is Jamestown Associates doing in Arizona?

What is Jamestown Associates doing in Arizona?

 View the folksy ad on YouTube . . .

 

As most of West Virginia knows by now, Jamestown Associates is the Republican consultantship responsible for that infamous ‘hicky’ ad boosting the GOP candidate for senate in West Virginia. Like most populist appeals from the GOP, the image of two shirt-sleeved guys boosting the party of corporate conglomeration and secrecy in WV turned out to be fake.

 

Hicksville (WV) ad

Statements by Jamestown Associates—which touts its efforts on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce and Republican candidates around the nation—to distance itself from the ad by blaming the casting agency for the language were also false. The original email from Jamestown Associates calls explicitly for actors with a ‘Hicky’ blue collar look. The H-word is capitalized like the name of a sect.

Attorney Charles Graber says on behalf of Kathy Wickline’s casting agency only that “we are still considering our options, going forward”; Jamestown Associates and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which eagerly disavowed the ad, have apologized to Wickline. Jamestown Associates has not responded to questions.

 

One obvious question is whether Jamestown Associates employs that hicky attitude elsewhere in the United States, and if so, where. The company’s website lists four locations: “With offices in Washington, DC, Princeton, NJ, Baton Rouge, LA, and Dallas, TX, our clients benefit from the combination of a national firm’s experience and a regional firm’s knowledge of local issues and techniques.”

 

Jamestown illustrates its Baton Rouge website with a photograph of the Louisiana state capitol building; the office, however, is located on Jones Creek Road in Baton Rouge. Local and Internet directories do not turn up the name Jamestown Associates—which is registered as active and in good standing with the Louisiana Secretary of State—at that or any address. The Jones Creek Road office offers instead a few names of attorneys and an entity called ‘Capitol Consulting Inc,’ not in good standing in Louisiana.

 

Jamestown Associates also has company locations not referred to on its website, including at least one listed in public record in Arizona. Both the Dun corporation database in LexisNexis and the Arizona secretary of state’s office give the address as 6670 E. Edgemont Street, Tucson 85710. Listed personnel dovetail with the list of persons given on the main Jamestown Associates website, starting with Lawrence or Larry Weitzner as president, owner and CEO. No current phone number is accessible; the real estate website Zillow indicates that the property was foreclosed and sold. Calls placed to the house at the street address or to persons listed at that address have returned no information on the company. Dun and Bradstreet lists sales for the Arizona location of Jamestown Associates at $52,000. There is no mention of the AZ office on Jamestown Associates; the man listed as Vice President of Jamestown’s Arizona company, George M. Gobble, is not available for comment.

 

Jamestown Associates advertisement

The Capitol Consulting entity is also found in Arizona, although the only address given is a post office box, with no telephone number and no personnel listed. “Business type”: “providing political solutions.” “Owner”: same name, Capitol Consulting, but as an LLC rather than a corporation.

 

Back in Louisiana, Laura B. Lancaster, listed at LinkedIn as Media Director for Jamestown Associates in Baton Rouge, is also President of Magnolia Media LLC (not connected with a company of the same name in Mobile, Ala.) listed as inactive by the Louisiana Secretary of State. Its Registered Agent (RA) is attorney Frank D. Blackburn, whose office is the Jones Bridge Road address.

The Democratic Party in New Hampshire has filed a complaint that Magnolia Media LLC, in Baton Rouge, is a shell company. Laura Lancaster of Magnolia Media LLC, of the Jones Bridge Road address in Baton Rouge, is also listed among personnel at the Arizona Jamestown Associates in Dun and Bradstreet.

So what if anything is Jamestown Associates or Capitol Consulting doing in Arizona? The Arizona state campaign finance database lists no monetary donations from Jamestown Associates, and only one from Capitol Consulting: Capitol Consulting gave $1K Sept 29 2010 to push Proposition 302, billed as “Kids First” by interest groups. As The Arizona Republic reports, “Proposition 302 seeks the repeal of First Things First, an early-childhood health-and-development program that voters approved in 2006.


If voters approve Proposition 302, the program’s $345 million fund balance would be funneled into the state general fund for lawmakers to use as they want. Legislators already have earmarked that money for deficit relief.” The “Kids First” campaign spins its campaign to destroy the early childhood program as a way to save kids’ programs. However, as AZCentral points out, some programs named by the Prop 302 boosters have already been cut, frozen or capped. “And it’s not certain the passage of Prop. 302 would protect the programs from cuts or reverse the freezes,” since Proposition 302 does not compel the state legislature to save specific programs.

As noted above, Gobble, of or formerly of Jamestown Associates, is also on the Board of Advisors of the Aidchild Foundation, along with Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.). Jamestown Associates has handled reelection campaigns for Kolbe, and Gobble was a congressional aide to Kolbe before joining Jamestown Associates in Arizona.

Capitol Consulting also gave $1K to the AZ Republican Party in 2008—a modest amount suggesting that it may not have been among Sen. John McCain’s strongest supporters. No in-kind contributions are listed for either election cycle, either from Capitol Consulting or from Jamestown Associates. The Tucson Weekly published some good articles a few years ago on action pertaining to Jamestown Associates in Arizona. This piece from 2003 and this from 2002 are particularly illuminating. Kolbe is entrenched, if his former aide is not, and the one-hand-washes-the-other culture in higher-up GOP circles in Arizona demonstrates the effectiveness of cooperation between candidates, consultants and ‘nonprofits’.

N.b. As of now the top GOP money recipient in AZ, for U.S. House races, is Ben Quayle, son of former Vice President Dan Quayle.


More on Jamestown Associates and other states to follow.

NY State–Carl Paladino, the World Trade Center, and eminent domain

 New York State–Carl Paladino, the World Trade Center, and eminent domain

Paladino

First, from the transcripts:

CARL PALADINO (R), NEW YORK GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: “This is Carl Paladino. As governor, I will use the power of eminent domain to stop this mosque and make the site a war memorial instead of a monument to those who attacked our country.”

(video clip, Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, July 29, 2010)

 

CNN INTERVIEW WITH CARL PALADINO, REPUBLICAN NEW YORK GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE INTERVIEWER: RICK SANCHEZ SUBJECT: NEW YORK GUBERNATORIAL RACE; PROPOSAL TO BUILD MOSQUE NEAR WTC SITE TIME: 3:00 P.M. EDT DATE: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2010:

“MR. SANCHEZ: You say that you will use–here, let me read from your letter once again. You’re right. This is the point that you’re making and you’re correct, you’ve been very consistent on this.

“The governor”, you write, “has a legal power to use the state’s right of eminent domain to seize this site and make it a memorial of which we can be proud. That is exactly what I will do if I’m elected governor.”

So, as governor, you will go in there and take this property away from this people and turn it into a memorial because they want to use it as an Islamic cultural center.

MR. PALADINO: No. Let me correct on that, okay. That was a partial misstatement on my part. We will go in there and we will put a restrictive covenant on the property and all of the property in the Ground Zero site. Ground Zero for me is the extended site over which the dust cloud containing human remains traveled. That Ground Zero site will be protected in the memory of those who fell at the World Trade Center, as well as the memory of the thousands and thousands of soldiers, of American and allied soldiers, that fell in the ensuing wars, and 150,000 troops we still have over there defending our right to speak like this today.”

 

[continued]

“MR. SANCHEZ: Okay. But you just said the property for which the dust cloud–

MR. PALADINO: I’m sorry. I missed the point. Yeah, let me explain that. Eminent domain is a very broad term. You can actually take property or you can just put a restriction on property. In this case it would be the restriction on the use of a property that a zoning board would consider the issue when proposed use is introduced for any property within the district. And if the zoning board determines that it is an affront in any way to the American people to those memories, then it would be rejected, the use would be rejected.”

 

For more than one reason, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino was sagacious to amend his initial campaign promise to ‘seize’ the World Trade Center site under eminent domain. For one, the Islamic Center to include the mosque and ecumenical chapel for religious use is not planned for the World Trade Center site itself but for a site two blocks away. As one attorney expert in eminent domain cases comments, seizing ‘Ground Zero’ would hardly prevent a mosque from being built blocks away. Widening the terrain to that hit by ‘dust’ from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, parries this point—although it also includes all of Lower Manhattan.

 

For another, hearing a GOP candidate for governor of the nation’s third-largest state aggressively proclaim the use of eminent domain to seize property—“we do it every day in zoning”—would hardly sit well with Paladino’s ‘tea party’ constituency.

 

Telephone and emailed questions and requests for comment placed with the Paladino campaign, whose slogan is “Paladino for the people,” have not yet been answered. Paladino’s campaign website further emphasizes, as Paladino said in the Rick Sanchez interview, that Paladino’s use of eminent domain around the World Trade Center site would be restricted–“but not by taking the property.”

 

Still, Paladino’s track record includes some aggressive threats to use eminent domain:

[transcript:]

“MR. SANCHEZ: So you believe that a government–a government has a right to make a decision, a property rights decision, based on its own sensibilities, how its affected. How would that stop, in the future, someone from–

MR. PALADINO: We do it every day in zoning–we do it every day in zoning law.

MR. SANCHEZ: But how–but in this case you’re–

MR. PALADINO: Zoning laws–

MR. SANCHEZ: But this case it’s a First Amendment argument that you’re deciding.

MR. PALADINO: No, we’re not.

MR. SANCHEZ: Aside from sensibilities, if the Constitution says we have a right to worship as we please, where we please, how can you go in and say I don’t want you worshiping that way there because it affects my sensibilities?

MR. PALADINO: I’ve clearly said to you that it’s my opinion that this is not a question of freedom of religion.”

 

Even after widening the geography to that covered by the “dust” from the attacks of September 11, 2001, and restricting the use of eminent domain to “covenant” rather than seizure, Paladino’s rhetoric raises issues that should concern his ‘base.’


The big one, of course, is the First Amendment. [ O’Donnell]

 

Even with the limitations or after-the-fact qualifiers, Paladino’s barn-burning rhetoric basically boils down to saying that as New York governor he would use “any means”—his words—to prevent the ‘mosque’s’ being built, including the power of eminent domain.

Setting aside any other questions, a key legal question for a lay person is, could he really do that?

Any exercise of the power of eminent domain must be based on a legitimate public purpose of the condemning authority, in this instance the State of New York. That fundamental principle raises the immediate question whether preventing a ‘mosque’ at or near the WTC site could be a legitimate public purpose.

Most lawyers would argue, to the contrary, that the expressed purpose of preventing a ‘mosque’ is a direct violation of the First Amendment.

Attorney Thomas M. Olson, of the firm of McKirdy & Riskin in Morristown, N.J., interviewed by telephone, has represented clients in numerous cases confirming that indeed First Amendment issues can arise in relation to eminent domain. Whether the First Amendment issues outweigh other concerns varies from case to case, Olson says, but the First Amendment does not automatically go down to defeat just because the state—at the federal or state level—advances other interests. Boiling it down to lay terms, sometimes the church or cemetery wins.

 

Side note: Purely anecdotally, it used to be a truism that Constitutional Law was the law school course that law school students took least interest in, the one on which they typically placed least priority. The constitution being the terrain only of future constitutional law profs or a smaller handful of future Supreme Court Justices, the conventional wisdom went, Con Law was perceived as offering little payback to the prospective lawyer who wanted to go out and land a well-paying job at one of the big burnout law firms. Indeed, in this (surely) over-cynical and oversimplified view, a well-grounded regard for the constitution was something of a handicap to be reticent about, not a selling point in a job interview with Gordon Gekko.

 

Back to the phone interview–Olson clarifies that the government does have power to use eminent domain in regard to private property—but not for free: when a property is condemned, for example, the property owner still has to be compensated. The government does have power to seize land for public use—a freeway, a school. But whether the government has the right in a particular case depends on what purpose they would seize it for. An unquestioned public use such as a school is much more solid ground for eminent domain; a quasi-private use such as redevelopment is more of a gray area.

Olson’s firm, McKirdy & Riskin, generally represents property owners in eminent domain matters in New Jersey. The religious issue, “a very interesting issue,” Olson comments, “has never been finally resolved by the courts” in an across-the-board way.

When you want to run a road through a church, it can be difficult. There are rights on both sides. A church versus a cemetery might be even tougher.

To deal with the First Amendment issue, Paladino’s rebuttal is simply to deny it:

“MR. SANCHEZ: They may very well be, sir, and I understand your perspective. But what you can’t get away from, and I guess what I’d like to ask you because we’ve got to get a break in and we’ll continue but maybe it gives us a chance to think about this a little bit. How do you get away from the fact that there is a constitutional argument here that seems to say that you can’t deny someone–

MR. PALADINO: There is no constitutional argument because it’s not freedom of religion.

MR. SANCHEZ: It’s not? Okay–

MR. PALADINO: If it was freedom of religion they’d put their mosque someplace else.

MR. SANCHEZ: Okay. Let’s continue that part–

MR. PALADINO: And enjoy their religious experience.”

 

According to Paladino, the building is “ideological,” not religious. Set aside the point that ideology might be protected by the First Amendment and that religious denominations have their ideological components. Set aside that the building is being called ‘ideological’ and is being opposed because some people do not like it. Set aside the point that people could be prevented from enjoying their religious experience anywhere other people were minded to prevent it, on whatever grounds. Set aside even the sad possibility that Paladino may not consider Islam a religion to begin with. Even giving him all these set-asides, his argument pretty much boils down to a statement that the building is not religious because he (speaking ex officio as hypothetical governor) says it’s not.

It is a given that media attention to Paladino’s statements will dwindle because nobody foresees that he poses much threat to Andrew Cuomo. But his is a worrisome train of thought for a chief executive, and should be seen as such by tea partiers as well as others.

Cuomo, Ackerman

A better argument for Paladino to have made as gubernatorial candidate would have been the common-sense reminder that the First Amendment is not absolute and government can abridge constitutional freedoms, within reasonable limits, to serve other legitimate purposes such as curing blight to foster the health, safety and welfare of a community. 

Back when he was talking about ‘seizing’ the property, he could also have reminded the audience that any property seized would have to be paid for. So the taxpayers would be on the hook for any property abruptly picked up by the State of New York, including the footprint of the twin towers.

 

Back—again—to when Paladino was talking about seizing the World Trade Center site, it is intriguing to note that he was talking about using eminent domain in order to create a “public memorial.” This would be his concept of the public use under which eminent domain could be used—a memorial, rather than a road or bridge, etc. A memorial park might indeed be such a public use, or public purpose, but once again it would have to be paid for. It would be interesting to run this one by the deficit hawks among the tea partiers. Fair market value for the property, as paid by the State . . .?

 

Another legal issue, perhaps a future project for legal research, is whether New York State has power to seize property owned by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey for any purpose. 

 

btw a memorial on the 9/11 site is already under construction. Paladino’s proposal to exercise eminent domain ‘restriction’ or ‘covenant’ could overlap significantly with—i.e. come into conflict with—the memorial underway. Thus the argument of a legitimate public purpose would have to be weighed against, again, fiscal costs–the large public maintenance obligation and presumably the loss of tax revenue.

 

But the fundamental concern is that eminent domain must have a legitimate public purpose. The purposes of government are defined by the constitution and by statute. A governor cannot simply declare that something is a public use in order to justify taking private property. This is a Tea Party candidate?

Final note: The Corpus Juris Secundum, the encyclopedia of American law, devotes 752 pages to eminent domain, plus suppl., give or take, which is what eminent domain is all about. See vol. 29A.

 

Pages 167 and 168 of the CJS deal with cemeteries as public use of land. Page 189 deals with cemeteries as property appropriate for the exercise of eminent domain.

 

The CJS makes clear that land, including private property, may be taken by the government—federal or state—for public use, with two conditions: 1) the use has to be public, i.e. open to all, as for example roads and bridges; and 2) the property owner has to be fairly compensated (paid).

 

Any land taken for use as a cemetery or, presumably, as a memorial, must be for public use. It cannot be an exclusionary private cemetery.

 

[This article, deleted by the system among hundreds of articles and blog posts in summer 2011, is re-posted using archives and Word files.]

 


NY State–Carl Paladino, the World Trade Center, and eminent domain

NY State–Carl Paladino, the World Trade Center, and eminent domain
 

First, from the transcripts:

 

CARL PALADINO
(R), NEW YORK GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE:

On the Paper Trail of a Pedophile, Part 7: Atchison was connected in Florida as well as in Alabama

On the Paper Trail of a Pedophile, Part 7: Atchison was connected in Florida as well as in Alabama

 

Roy Atchison

This blog is the seventh concerning John David Roy Atchison, Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Florida, Pensacola, arrested in Detroit in September 2007 on charges relating to pedophilia. He committed suicide in federal prison in October 2007; arrest and suicide were not foregrounded by the Justice Department in the Bush administration, and family connections have further obscured the matter.

 

 

From the Southern Center for Human Rights

In 2005, the Southern Center for Human Rights and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a lawsuit in federal court in Gulfport, Miss., on behalf of a number of poor plaintiffs, alleging that the City of Gulfport had established basically a debtor’s prison. Among the plaintiffs was an illiterate woman, mentally challenged, who had been incarcerated repeatedly for unpaid fines in spite of her impairment and the fact that her income consisted of a small monthly SSI check. Plaintiffs alleged through counsel that Gulfport was rounding up people with unpaid fines, mainly in black neighborhoods, and corralling them in the overcrowded county jail with little process.

 

Defendants in the lawsuit, settled in January 2007, included the City of Gulfport and then-Chief Municipal Court Judge William B. (Bill) Atchison.

 

Bill Atchison’s brother was Roy Atchison, the federal prosecutor in Pensacola, Fla., who killed himself in prison after being arrested on charges basically of pedophilia in 2007.

As said, the lawsuit was settled in January 2007, with Bill Atchison, the Chief Municipal Court Judge, and the City of Gulfport both represented by city attorney Jeffrey S. Bruni. Other defendants included a fellow municipal court judge, Richard Smith; Gulfport Municipal Court Administrator bill Markopoulos; and Senior Warrants Officer Walter Eighmey of the Gulfport Police Department. The lawsuit was filed in July 2005. A McClatchey newspaper, the Biloxi, Miss., Sun Herald, had reported in June that the City of Biloxi had a backlog of $10.7 million in unpaid fines assessed in its municipal court.

 

Bruni and the city office of Gulfport have not yet returned a call for comment.

Judge Atchison’s brother was arrested in September 2007, as previously written. News reports did not mention the family connections to Gulfport’s Chief Municipal Court Judge. The Atchison brothers’ parents live in Gulfport. Roy Atchison’s death in prison occurred Oct. 5, 2007.

 

A little more than a year later, the chief judge himself was arrested, on Feb. 4, 2009, charged with abusing prescription drugs after an investigation of several months, according to the Harrison County, Miss., sheriff’s office and Gulfport police. Bill Atchison was placed under house arrest. Concerns about his safety in the presence of inmates he had sentenced kept him from having to do jail time in the facility to which the debtors above, for example, had been remanded.

 

As the Sun Herald reported, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics alleged that in April 2007 Bill Atchison obtained a 15-day supply of hydrocodone from one physician, another prescription from a second physician five days later, and a third prescription from a third physician two weeks later.

 

Thus the case against Bill Atchison in Mississippi developed during 2007 and 2008—resulting in the early 2009 arrest–and must have overlapped with the developing FBI investigation against Roy Atchison in Florida and Detroit. Their father, retired physician William David Atchison, was allegedly among the doctors from whom Bill Atchison acquired some of his prescriptions. Atchison went on administrative leave after his arrest and resigned his judgeship.

 

A call for information has been placed with Bill Atchison’s attorney, criminal defense lawyer Wayne Woodall. Woodall told reporters that Bill Atchison had undergone two surgeries and was in pain requiring painkillers.

 

Nonetheless, the entire legal matter corroborates a key claim in the Southern Center and NAACP lawsuit about a debtors’ prison in Gulfport, that there is a different justice system for the affluent and well-connected than for the poor.

So does the delicate and muted handling of these legal matters in the press.  There has been little or no media follow-up regarding the numerous cases on which the Municipal Court Chief Judge in Gulfport handed down decisions, including decisions in drug cases, before he resigned in April 2009 after his arrest on charges of abusing prescription drugs. McClatchy, which ran the story on Bill Atchison, did not note the kinship when the Roy Atchison story surfaced but did report the physician father’s alleged involvement.

 

The staff at the Southern Center for Human Rights, located in Atlanta, includes investigator and paralegal Lauren Brown, who according to the Center’s website investigates conditions at jails in Alabama. A report from the Center is linked here.

On the paper trail of a pedophile, part 6: Suicide in federal custody

On the paper trail of a pedophile, part 6: Suicide in federal custody

 

Roy Atchison

This blog is the sixth on John David Roy Atchison, Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Florida, Pensacola, arrested in Detroit in September 2007 on charges relating to pedophilia. He committed suicide in federal prison in October 2007; arrest and suicide were not foregrounded by the Justice Department in the Bush administration. FBI material obtained under the Freedom of Information Act suggests that Atchison’s suicide in federal prison could have been prevented, leaving him alive to cooperate with authorities targeting an alleged large pedophile ring.

 

As written previously, the prison death of an alleged pedophile tends to receive little attention. Although Atchison could have assisted law enforcement going after a large pedophile ring had he survived, his death received little media beyond the immediate event; predictably, the Bush administration did little to bring it to public notice. Nor was there a congressional investigation, amidst the highly publicized focus on other problems at the Justice Department, often homing in on the individual career of Alberto Gonzales. The facts in Roy Atchison’s suicide are as painful as is much else in the story, including the similar lack of oversight.

Briefly, the chronology:

  • Atchison was arrested at the Detroit airport Sept. 16, 2007, having flown to Detroit to meet what he thought was the five-year-old daughter of a single mom, actually an FBI agent working an online pedophilia sting. He did not resist arrest and went quietly. Interviewed by the FBI en route from the airport to the Clinton Township, Mich., FBI office, he said he went to Detroit to talk the mother out of selling her child for sex. He was placed in custody at the Macomb County Jail.
  • The FBI field office in Detroit issued a press release on the arrest Sept. 17, 2007.
  • A search warrant for Atchison’s home and computers was signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis Sept. 17, and searches were executed that day; the inventory included hundreds of images of child pornography stored in his PC, laptops and flash drives.
  • Atchison was assigned to the Sanilac County Jail in Michigan’s Thumb, Mich., to await trial. Authorities told the press that they were taking special precautions with Atchison, as customary for prisoners at risk—those in law enforcement, those accused of crimes against children, and those who might be informants. Atchison fell into all three categories.
  • On Sept. 18, Atchison was placed on suicide watch in detention.
  • Atchison was taken off suicide watch Sept. 19, by U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia M. Morgan, who said that the suicide watch had been imposed out of “an abundance of caution.” Morgan, like Atchison himself, came into office under the Reagan administration. Both Atchison and his Detroit attorney, James C. Thomas, assured the judge that Atchison would not try to harm himself. Thomas said, “We think he is not a risk to himself and it certainly will be argued that he is not a risk to others.” Atchison consented to continued detention, waiving his right to a detention hearing in Detroit but reserving his right to a future bond hearing.
  • The same day, a grand jury in Detroit handed down a three-count indictment.
  • Atchison tried to hang himself in the county jail Sept. 20, using a bed sheet. A cellmate who saw the 4 a.m. attempt alerted a guard; Atchison was not harmed. U.S. Marshals immediately transported him elsewhere. Thomas, his Detroit attorney, told reporters, “At the time, I thought it was the right decision. Apparently it was a mistake. I feel as bad about it as anyone.”
  • Suggesting that he might have provided further information had he lived, Atchison changed his statements to the FBI in a subsequent interview on Oct. 3. He repeatedly denied having had sexual contact with a child but admitted that he had flown to Detroit for that purpose, dropping the initial story that he was investigating pedophilia, trying to talk mom out of it, etc. On Oct. 3, he told the FBI that he had flown to several cities for sex encounters. He also said that he knew of a pedophile ring in the western United States. Atchison consented to have his online identity assumed by undercover investigators.
  • On Oct. 5, 2007, Atchison was found dead in the shower area of the Milan Federal Correctional Institution, a low-security federal prison in York Charter Township, Mich., used for detention of defendants awaiting trial. He had hung himself with a sheet, as in his previous attempt. The FBI commenced an immediate investigation of the death.
  • Photographs taken by investigators include photographs of the shower area, shown with Atchison’s clothes. The baggy prison pajamas and other garments clearly had enough room in them for Atchison to smuggle a bed sheet from his cell to the shower, where he was unobserved for long enough to hang himself with a sheet.

 

There was little left for the FBI to do, beyond establish that the death was not foul play. The evidence is definitive that indeed Atchison’s death was suicide and not murder.

 

Nonetheless, it should be considered evident by this time that his death was most awfully convenient for the Bush administration, saving the Justice Department further embarrassment in the form of a trial that might have shed light on the atmosphere in the Pensacola office where Atchison worked—including among other things his computer use at the office, his friendly relationships with co-workers who unwittingly facilitated his tendencies, the sloppy overview that enabled him to tote laptops to and from work, and the acceptance of his work habits as an open ‘wheeler-dealer.’ Arguably little of this would have played well, in Florida or nationally, in election year 2008.

 

Second, it seems clear even to a non-lawyer that the most elementary preventive measures were not taken. Atchison had already clearly signaled his desire to kill himself, and had even signaled the method of choice. Smuggling a bed sheet from his cell to the shower area is an act as preventable as it was foreseeable. Be it noted that we live in a country where detainees routinely, underscore routinely, have to hand over their shoe laces and belts.

 

Atchison’s former friend George Witcher, also an Alabama attorney, demurs at this view. Interviewed by telephone, Witcher declares firmly that the authorities could not have stopped Atchison: “This was the end. His life was over.” His career gone, his family affected–there was no way they were going to keep him from killing himself, Witcher states.

 

Still, as said, elementary preventive measures went missing. The suicide watch was lifted remarkably quickly, leaving nowhere near enough time for the prisoner to catch up on sleep, let alone undergo a dependably thorough psychological evaluation.

The post-death photographs of Atchison’s cell, showing his few personal effects, include reading glasses and a book—by Pastor Rick Warren, title partly obscured but beginning The Purpose . . .

Signs were abundant that Atchison intended to take matters into his own hands.

 

Final note: Sad as the death is, the sadness would not seem to be an adequate explanation for refusing to take steps to keep the same thing from happening again, or for refusing to shine a media light that might lead to such steps. Deaths in jail are not supposed to happen.

Similarly, the argument that refusing to face these events somehow spares the family pain does not hold water. Had the judicial process been handled more professionally, the death might well not have happened. In all likelihood, the man’s relatives would prefer to have him alive and trying to work toward recovery.

 

Next, Part 7: Further fall-out?