November 1, 2002- Prosecution Tales

Now that we have the Beltway Sniper dudes safely in the custody of the Pigs, the great debate has begun over where they shall be prosecuted and for which crimes. It seems that every day there is another twist to this case. As time has been going on, it has become clearer and clearer that these two individuals are far more than just the cats that terrorized Washington, D.C. And its environs for a few weeks last month. As the Pigs learn more and more about these two, it becomes apparent that these guys are the first entries in the 21st Century's list of serial killers in America. For evidence is mounting that ties these gentlemen to killings all across America this year. Ballistics tests on their gun have shown that it was used in many murders around America other than the sniper shootings. The more murders that these dudes are suspected of, the murkier the whole story becomes. For as these tales of cross-country murder sprees comes to light, more and more jurisdictions of the Pigs are moving in to the picture, as they find out that the snipers may have been responsible for murders in their areas this year. The more that this happens, the more complicated everything gets n terms of bringing these two killers to justice. For with America's system of jurisprudence, where the Federal courts and State courts are all different things, a crime spree that crosses the country becomes a complicated thing in terms of prosecution. Because under American law,every place where you commit a crime has the right to prosecute you for it, no matter what you may have done elsewhere. This system was ostensibly set up to have a division of powers between the federal government and the governments of the states, but there is another purpose to it. That purpose is to complicate things for the offender so that he has a lesser chance of escaping the system without some sort of punishment being meted out. If an offender is able to escape a guilty verdict on a crime committed in one place, the right of another place to prosecute him for another crime can ensure that he is found guilty of something in that jurisdiction, and the penal system gets something out of it after all. It is very easy to commit crimes in different jurisdictions in America, there are all sorts of laws on the books that define where one jurisdiction ends and another begins, and they are not all about geography. You can be in one place and do separate crimes that will be prosecuted by different jurisdictions in America. That is because the Federal legal statutes apply everywhere throughout America, but will only be used in certain cases. Like various gun crimes have Federal sides to them, like if you kill a Pig ot whatever, or you did not properly register your guns with the Feds or whatever. In the big cities, it is not at all uncommon for defendants to pick up State and Federal charges for the same crimes, so much so that every city has a Federal court building in it along with its various State courts. So, if it is easy to get multiple jurisdictional charges filed against you for shit like making PCP or selling it, it is very easy to get charges filed against you in many State jurisdictions and the Federal one too when you go around the land killing people assassin style. So the big haggle has begun with the snipers as to where they are going to go for prosecution first. Every time that they think that they have that figured out, another jurisdiction comes into the mix. It seems that they are all eager as hell to not only prosecute these dudes, but to be the ones to execute them as well. Every prosecutor that has chimed in on this case has aid that they would indeed execute these guys if they are found guilty, and thee cats have about as much of a chance at a fair trial in America as an icicle in a volcanic eruption, in other words, none at all. This all started with the prosecutors in the states where the sniper killing actually occurred fighting over who was going to kill these guys, but now there have been states like Louisiana and Georgia have said that they will do the honors if they can, and there are other states like Oregon that are looking to do the same once they can conclusively link these guys to crimes there. So the list gets longer everyday as far as states that want a piece of these guys. But wait! Isn't there another entity that has a vested interest in all of this? That would be the Federal government, wouldn't it? If their laws are the ones that are the highest laws in the land, then wouldn't something that these killers have done fall under their jurisdiction? In fact, there are several things that fall under federal jurisdiction here, it was a Federal arrest warrant that was issued for them on gun charges that ultimately led to the release of their identities and their ultimate arrests at that rest stop on the highway. So the Feds do indeed have many charges that they have filed against these guys too. The federal Government also has a death penalty, one that is far more stringent than those of many states. Part of the debate over what to do here has centered around the application of the death penalty to Lee Malvo, the 17 year old Jamaican kid that was part of all of this. Many of the states that have dibs on this case have statutes that are not as stringent about giving Malvo the death penalty as they are to Mohammed. Because of his age and his status as a non native born American citizen, he could escape the death penalty in many of the states that have a claim on him. The Federal statutes make no such promises. In fact., America has refused to sign on to an international treaty concerning the death penalty that has states in it that say that a country cannot execute anyone that was not a native born citizen of that country, and they cannot execute juveniles as well. America has refused to sign this treaty because they say that they reserve the right to execute anyone that their system of jurisprudence has deemed eligible for that penalty. So Malvo would have no special protections from execution under federal statutes. That means that the Federal government could execute him just as dead as any state can. So if that is the case here, that would mean that the Federal charges would take precedence because that is the highest law in the land, one that lords over state charges of any kind.. This would make it sem as if the easiest solution to all of this would be that the Feds took charge and that they had the first charge at prosecuting these guys on their charges, and the state shit would come after that, if it ever came at all. After all, that is the way that it worked with Timothy Mc Veigh, he was tried, convicted, and executed on Federal charges, and the Oklahoma state charges against him never came to light. The Feds took charge there and made sure that they were the ones that executed that fucker, not the state of Oklahoma. However, in this present case, they are not taking that same stance They seem very willing to let the various states fight it out as to who will prosecute these cats when the time comes and who will get the chance to execute them. This does not make any sense at all on the surface. Why don't the Feds exercise their authority here like they did with Mc Veigh? They are making it seem like they are doing this because they respect the rights of the states to have their days in court with all of this, etc. That is total bullshit on a stick. The Feds have no respect for the state courts, they never have and never will. Why then are they stepping aside here and lettign the states have first crack at these fuckers rather than exerting their ultimate authority like they did with Mc Veigh?

The answer to that one is rather simple. See, when there is a criminal trial, a story unfolds, the story of the particular crime that is being tried. Portraits are created, portraits of the criminal, his life and times,. And the crime for which he is being tried. Every detail of that crime is brought out into the open, no aspect is spared. The intent of bringing these details to light is to show why the Pigs think that the person committed the crime, and to try and make that person look bad in the eyes of the judge and/or jury. Sometimes, however, the details that emerge in a trial are those that do not make the Pigs look good rather than the defendant. The best known example of this is the O.J. Simpson trial of the 1990's. All throughout the circus that was that trial, detaiuls and stories en=merged, that trial became a story unto itself for many a month, with all sorts of twists and turns. The twist that turned it all around was the one where O.J.'s lawyer's brought out the fact that one of the main Pigs that was on this case had a history of making all sorts of racial slurs and cracks. Whether he was saying that shit as part of a book that he was writing as he claimed, or he said that shit because he was a racist, this disclosure made the Los Angles Pigs look real bad, look like they were white racists that were out to railroad a famous black man. That worked, because O.J was found not guilty, in no small part because of what came out about the Pigs during the trial. So the Pigs have been much more sensitive about trials where information that makes them look bad might occur since that time. If they see that something might come out that will make them look bad, they will cut deals and shit like that much more often than they used to. The Pigs are very image conscious, especially today, when they have this reputation of being such Good Guys these days. So they will not risk bad exposure in most cases anymore. The best example of this is the Unabomber case. The Pigs had to make a deal with Ted Kaczynski's brother not to seek the death penalty against him in return for his brother turning him in. They were set to go to trial against Ted and send him to prison for life, but at the last minute, a deal was announced that sent Ted to prison for life with out a trial because he just pled guilty to everything. The Pigs did this for a reason, and that reason was as follows. They knew that Ted and hi slawyers were going to use the trial as a showcase for ted and his philosophies. As Part of that, they were going to make a big deal about how Ted held the Federal Pigs at bay for 20 years, taunting them all they way, showing how inefficient they were because they could not catch a vagrant that lived in a shack, and so on. The {Pigs did not wish to be mocked and embarrassed any further by Ted in court, he had done enough of that to them over the last 20 years. So they cut a deal, and ted went away and never told his story in open court, so the public never heard how truly inept and inefficient the Pigs were in trying to catch him. So the Pigs kept their reputation intact. This sniper case is no different for the Pigs. This sniper duo taunted the Pigs, albeit for three weeks and not 20 years, but they acted in much the same manner. They showed all of America how dangerously inefficient and inept the Pigs were when it came to real serious crime. The Pigs don't want that coming to light, especially one aspect of it. That aspect would be the fact that there were ransom demands made by the snipers. These were alluded to by the Pigs during the final days of the saga. They don't want the public to know just how much was being demanded by the sniper, and how close he came to getting it too. They don't want the people knowing just how helpless they were before this guy. He came as close as you can get to extorting something like 10 million dollars from the Pigs. There were plans to at least feign giving him the money, they just could not come up with it all. The Pigs don't want us hearing all about that and finding out that they had no chance of ever catching this guy until Malvo got all cocky and called the Pigs himself and tipped them off, just like they had no chance of ever getting the Unabomber until his brother tipped them off. So the Federal Pigs don't want their story coming out in open court, it will make them look bad. So they are all for the various states fighting it out over prosecution right, because once one entity prosecutes and sentences these fuckers, that is it, the other shit will become moot points because they can only be executed once, and every jurisdiction that has a crack at them is virtually promising to do so. These states don't have any embarrassing stories that they don't want coming to light either. So the Feds will happily let them handle this case, and execute these dudes, and the story of how the Federal government was almost extorted out of millions of dollars never comes to light. That is why they won't exercise their authority here and prosecute these guys. This case will be about more than a prosecution, it will be about setting examples, examples that the Pigs want us all to see so that we won't go down the road that these guys did. That is every bit as important to them as executing these guys, and they will do whatever it takes to accomplish that, and the mixture of state and Federal charges offers them the opportunity to do that, and they are taking full advantage of that, and that is what is driving the way that these cases will be prosecuted.