The lead attorney for one of the undercover pro-life reporters indicted this week in the aftermath of last year’s exposing of Planned Parenthood says prosecutors are pursuing bogus charges, Planned Parenthood officials are the obvious criminals and America is reaching a “scary” point where politics determine the outcome of the justice system.
On Monday, a Harris County, Texas, grand jury elected not to indict Planned Parenthood for allegedly selling organs and other body parts of aborted babies. Instead, the members returned a felony indictment of tampering with a government record against Center for Medical Progress President David Daleiden and his colleague, Sandra S. Merritt. If convicted, they could each spend as much as 20 years in prison.
“These two individuals will be exonerated. There’s no question about that,” said Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver, who is lead counsel for Merritt. “They’ll have their day in court. We look forward to that.”
Since news of the indictment began to spread, pro-life supporters launched the Twitter hashtag #IStandWithDavid to show their support.
Daleiden was charged with an additional misdemeanor of trying to purchase organs from aborted babies.
According to the indictment, the felony tampering charge accuses Daleiden and Merritt of fabricating California driver’s licenses to gain entry to the Houston Planned Parenthood facility.
Staver said the statute is being badly misapplied in this case.
“They were using journalistic tactics like lots of journalists do,” Staver said. “It’s not just David and Sandra. This is something that has been done by journalists for a long time.”
In addition, he said there is an explicit exception to the law.
“If you take a driver’s license and you tamper with it and make it look like it’s valid for you because you have had your driver’s license revoked for a DUI or whatever, and you then present that as your driver’s license to the police officer knowing that you really have no driver’s license, that is what’s covered by this situation,” he explained.
As a result, Staver is supremely confident both defendants will be cleared.
“This indictment really goes beyond what the statute words say, and certainly the intent of the statute,” he said. “That’s why I think this will be thrown out at the end of the day.”
Staver said the misdemeanor charge against Daleiden may be even more bogus.
“That’s even more outrageous because he’s purchasing what from whom, and the seller doesn’t get anything to that effect? If someone’s going to purchase something, you have to have a seller selling something, and it’s illegal to sell body parts,” Staver said.
He said Daleiden has even stronger ground in that he had no intent to actually buy any body parts from aborted babies. He said no one would videotape their activities and then disseminate it far and wide if they believed it was criminal.
Staver believes the absence of charges against Planned Parenthood is the greatest travesty of all in this case.
“It’s obvious what they’re doing. They’re on video. It’s multiple times, multiple people, high-ranking Planned Parenthood individuals. They’re talking callously about aborting baby body parts. They’re talking about preserving certain fetal organs intact because they can get higher prices for them. Then they’re talking about selling these body parts, so it’s pretty obvious,” Staver said.
He continued, “Planned Parenthood is the one that has committed criminal acts here. They’re the ones that should be indicted and having to reveal to the rest of the public the inner workings of Planned Parenthood, this brutal, barbarous kind of activity that Planned Parenthood is doing and being funded by state and federal tax dollars in the process.”
So how did this happen? Staver sees two potential issues, beginning with the grand jury process itself.
“[A grand jury] is basically giving one side of a story without the other side represented,” he said. “Certainly we need to respect the grand jury’s process, but I do know there are situations where grand juries don’t get all the information, and they are going on information that is being presented to them, which is a very narrow slice of the pie. That’s why prosecutors need to be so ethically above board.”
That last point leads to Staver’s second major concern. While Harris County District Attorney Davon Anderson is a Republican who calls herself pro-life, one of her assistant prosecutors most certainly is not.
LifeNews revealed that Lauren Reeder, a prosecutor in Anderson’s office, is listed as an unpaid director for the Houston Planned Parenthood clinic in question on the facility’s most recent 990 tax form from 2014.
“The district attorney or the assistant district attorney has a lot of power in either giving evidence to give one side or withholding evidence to not give the other side,” Staver said.
In the big picture, Staver fears America is entering a “very scary” phase in which politics and ideology matter more than the law in resolving hot-button cases.
“When you get into two different particular areas, abortion and the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, it seems all the common sense, all the logic, all the rules of procedure, frankly, the rule of law just gets tossed to the side and you have these outrageous, shocking situations,” he said.
“What’s driving it? It’s not the rule of law. It’s ideology and it’s politics and it should have nothing to do with judicial proceedings. When you ultimately mix ideology and politics with the judiciary, you’re really messing up the system that the founders envisioned. All of us should be concerned about that because [we] all lose our liberty,” said Staver, noting that those who cheer today’s decisions could find the winds blowing against them soon.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/attorney-for-indicted-pro-life-reporter-its-outrageous/#SXogbrUVYilWDl26.99
______________________________________________________
Planned Parenthood Board Member Works in Office of D.A. Who Prosecuted Pro-Life Investigator
BY HEATHER CLARK
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes
HOUSTON, Texas — A member of the board of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast works in the office of the district attorney who pursued the prosecution of a pro-life investigator before a grand jury, while the abortion giant went free.
David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) was indicted on Monday by a grand jury in Houston on a felony charge of “tampering with a governmental record” for creating a fake driver’s license in conducting his undercover investigation, as well as a misdemeanor count related to the purchasing of human tissue.
Daleiden, 27, had posed as a representative of a fetal tissue procurement company in order to engage in discussions with Planned Parenthood officials as a potential buyer of bodily organs. He recorded the interactions, conducted at various locations across the country, as part of his “human capital” investigative series that was released in July.
Sandra Merritt, 62, was also charged with tampering with a governmental record for likewise printing the license, which was used to obtain access to Planned Parenthood gathering in Houston.
While Daleiden and Merritt were charged for seeking to buy fetal tissue, Planned Parenthood was not charged for agreeing to obtain compensation for the body parts of aborted babies, nor outlining that it had been doing so with other scientific companies nationwide. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards announced after several of the videos were released that the organization would cease accepting compensation for fetal organs following outrage over the matter.
“The Center for Medical Progress uses the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades in exercising our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press, and follows all applicable laws,” Daleiden said in a statement.
“We respect the processes of the Harris County district attorney, and note that buying fetal tissue requires a seller as well,” he noted. “Planned Parenthood still cannot deny the admissions from their leadership about fetal organ sales captured on video for all the world to see.”
There have also been concerns following the discovery that a prosecutor in the Harris County district attorney’s Division of Criminal Family Law also serves as a director on the board of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.
According to reports, Lauren Reeder told District Attorney Devon Anderson earlier this year about her work with the abortion giant in order to be “transparent.” However, she also said that she didn’t see a conflict of interest in the situation.
“I don’t think there’s any conflict in my dual roles in two separate organizations,” Reeder told reporters.
Anderson said that Reeder would not be involved with the case.
“She will not be involved in any manner in this investigation,” she told the Houston Chronicle. “If at any time in the future, reliable and credible information is brought to my attention that would question our ability to continue to perform a fair, thorough and independent investigation of this matter due to her board membership, I will revisit the issue of seeking the appointment of an independent prosecutor and act accordingly.”
Some still find the situation to be ironic.
“Daleiden is being charged with the very crime he was exposing? Seriously?” writes Tim Brown with Freedom Outpost. “He can play the part, just like police do when they engage in drug busts, but have only the intention of exposing the crime and yet, he is the one charged with what these devils are engaged in?”
“Why are the company executives shown in the videos not also being indicted for being willing to make the sale? If it’s wrong to make a purchase of baby parts, surely it is wrong to be selling them,” he said. “The double standard of the DA’s office is right out in the open for all to see! This is an injustice!”
_____________________________________________________
Jury That Prosecuted Pro-Life Investigator Never Voted on Charging Planned Parenthood
