Idaho Is a Constitution Free Zone: U.S. Government Uses Criminal Defendant’s Communications With Defense Team to Prosecute Him
August 19th, 2011You may find it hard to have any sympathy for a guy like Edgar J. Steele, but if you think that what the government has done to him is ok, you’re worse than the Nazis that Steele has defended and promoted.
One of my core struggles on here is against the fascist eugenics that Steele advocates, but if the government can use a defendant’s private communications with his defense team against him, criminal proceedings are a total farce. Anything goes in the American gulag.
Via: Free Edgar Steele:
In a stunning, far-reaching and precedent-setting ruling issued by the Idaho Supreme Court this past week, the right to confidential communications between attorneys and individuals charged with crimes under the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution henceforth is no longer enforced in Idaho.
Without comment, the entire bench of the Idaho Supreme Court has ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution no longer applies within the boundary of Idaho. This result was obtained from the summary dismissal of a complaint lodged against Assistant US Attorney Traci Whelan by Attorney Edgar J. Steele, formerly admitted to practice before all courts in the states of Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California, as well as virtually all Federal Courts up to and including the US Supreme Court.
Steele’s complaint about AUSA Whelan’s behavior first was sent to the Idaho State Bar (ISB), and then was forwarded to the Idaho Supreme Court because Whelan herself sits on the ISB attorney committee.
Attorney Steele’s complaint went much further than making out a prima-facie case of criminal behavior on the part of AUSA Whelan and the entire justice department of the United States of America up to and including President Barrack Obama, not to mention his Attorney General, Eric Holder, who nominally heads up the US Justice Department as all of them are complicit in the intrusion into the former right to confidential attorney/client communication.
“I asked them (the Idaho Supreme Court Judges) to take judicial notice of documents in the custody of both the justice department and Idaho’s Federal District Court,” said Steele, reached today in his jail cell in downtown Moscow, Idaho.
“I wrote letters to attorneys plainly marked ‘Legal Mail’ and addressed to lawyers with the title Attorney at Law. The FEDS opened those sealed letters, photo copied them, then sent them back to me as part of their pre-trial document production, a clear violation of US Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantee of ‘Assistance of Counsel’ to criminal defendants like me.”
For over 200 years the US Supreme Court has held that a criminal defendant’s right to “Assistance of Counsel” is among the oldest of rights held inviolate and necessarily includes the ability to communicate in strict confidence with any attorneys about the defendant’s situation. Until this week’s ruling by the Idaho Supreme Court, that is.
Steele alleged (and proved, by reference to documents both on file with US District Court and included with his formal complaint) that AUSA Whelan intentionally and secretly eavesdropped into conversations between Steele and all three of his to-date “attorneys of record,” Roger Peven, Robert McAllister and Wesley Hoyt. Conversations that Whelan invaded included those made by telephone at two different county jails (Spokane, Washington and Bonner, Idaho), in the attorney visiting booths at Spokane County jail. Further, eavesdropping into attorney/client communications also occurred in the previously-believed sacrosanct confines of the US District Court’s own attorney-client interview rooms in the US Federal District court building in Boise, Idaho.
The confidential conversations secretly recorded by AUSA Whelan spanned several months, both prior to and directly following Steele’s trial and conviction on four federal charges that, combined, could net him over 70 years in a federal penitentiary.
Steele alleges that the confidential information gleaned from his conversations with his lawyers is what led to his conviction in what he maintains is, “The phoniest, trumped-up, case I’ve ever seen.” The Federal Judge Lynn Winmill who presided at Steele’s trial, ruled retroactively on February 11, 2011 that Steele had “waived” his attorney-client privilege simply by daring to speak with a private attorney by phone, seeking to interview him for possible representation. Thus, the Court’s Order provided AUSA Whelan with cover from being charged with a variety of State and Federal felonies that could see her put behind bars for as long a sentence as Steele now faces.
“Now that the Idaho Supreme Court has reinforced the federal judge’s clearly illegal ruling without considering all the evidence,” said Steele. “This gives the appearance of the vast conspiracy involving the US Justice Department, the US Federal District Courts, Idaho Supreme Court, the FBI, and local counties who fraudulently tell inmates that their calls are not being recorded, then record them anyway, giving copies over to the U.S. prosecutor. This is what a police state is based on, absolutely no privacy when even the pretense of attorney confidentiality is gone. Even now, it can be seen that both Idaho’s ‘private’ state bar association and its supreme court are conspiring with the Feds to deprive its citizens of their Constitutional rights.”
…
“Help me, please,” cried out Steele as he was dragged away “somebody please make them obey the law protecting attorney client privileged communications or we are all doomed.” Idaho state officials refuse to comment upon whether Idaho’s state constitution has also been suspended by this week’s Idaho Supreme Court ruling, as it, too, obtained a provision formerly thought to provide a measure of confidentiality to communications between criminal defendants and their attorneys.
Research Credit: pookie
I read that many observers and supporters believe Steele was targeted because he was writing a book on Israeli sex slave rings tied to European governments. It’s well known that Steele was a major critic of Israel, and he wrote from jail that “the ADL was quoted extensively in the government’s opening papers in court.”
First they came for…
http://www.stephencovey.com/blog/?p=16
The Federal Judge Lynn Winmill who presided at Steele’s trial, ruled retroactively on February 11, 2011 that Steele had “waived” his attorney-client privilege simply by daring to speak with a private attorney by phone, seeking to interview him for possible representation
Holy friggin’ Christ. So, the simple act of trying to obtain legal counsel counts as waiving your right to attorney-client privilege.
That’s a neat little rules they’ve got there. Almost sounds like something they made up on the spot after they were caught red-handed, doesn’t it.