U.S. Government Stands the Meaning of "Fair Trial" on its Head

You probably thought it meant fair to the defendant. No, it means fair to the prosecution.

In the case of Barrett Brown, a victim of savage persecution by the FBI and Department of "Justice" in Texas, the Federal judge has issued a gag order at the request of the prosecution barring Brown or his attorneys from discussing the case with the media. The transparent purpose of this is to stop the generation of political support for this victim of state repression. Brown is a published journalist and book author.

Brown has been locked up without bail for a year, and the government is looking to sentence him to over 100 years in prison. He must have done something pretty awful! Maybe he killed and ate a bunch of small children, perhaps.

No, what he did was 1) post a link to a site that had some stolen credit card numbers- this was part of the hack into the private secret police firm Stratfor, that targets journalists like Glenn Greenwald and activists like the Occupy Movement for destruction, and 2) hide his computers in his mother's house- this constituted "concealing evidence" (you're not allowed to hide your property from thieves if the thieves happen to be the FBI, apparently), and 3) he "threatened" an FBI agent- he posted a crazy youtube video, in which he was obviously emotionally distraught after the FBI threatened to imprison his mother (forcing family members to turn against one another is a habit of totalitarian regimes, often used in the U.S. media to revile enemy nations for doing it). In the video, Brown spouted at one point that he would kill an FBI agent if the agent attacked his mother's house.

Brown sometimes spoke for the Anonymous group of anti-corporate oligarchy hackers. So he presented a known target for the Government, which despises Anonymous for their political activism.

Seems the Judge thought it would be unfair for the defendant to try and defend himself (or his lawyers to defend him) to the public at large, who have been told by the media that Brown is a devil.

As it is, it is virtually impossible for defendants to get a fair trial in Federal courts. The over 90% conviction rate isn't because everyone is guilty. It is because all the laws and procedural rules are heavily slanted to favor the prosecution. Additionally, it either requires hundreds of thousands of dollars to mount any effective defense at all, or one is dependent on the Federal Defenders Service (for the indigent). The NY Times just reported that the amount of money Congress allocates to Federal prosecutors is 28 times as much as the budget for the Defenders- whose budget is being slashed, resulting in layoffs and less money to pay for investigations and expert witnesses. (Guess a mere 28-fold advantage for the prosecution wasn't sufficiently "tough on crime" for the politicians.)

And of course government agents are given a presumption of credibility, their testimony is assumed truth, despite the long, long record of their perjury and their "crime labs" fabricating evidence.

[See "US stops jailed activist Barrett Brown from discussing leaks prosecution,"
"Gagged: Federal court says accused hacktivist Barrett Brown can’t speak to the press," "Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years in Jail," "The Strange Case of Barrett Brown," "Why Is Barrett Brown Facing 100 Year In Prison?" For a description of Brown's published work, see Huffington Post. A more extended bio is at Wikipedia.]