Sunday, March 31, 2013
Peace, Joy and Freedom to all:
I begin with a confession. I have been awfully slow to identify the core issue presented by W8, who was assigned a fake name (Dee Dee) by the prosecution to protect her privacy. That alone should have been sufficient to trigger my curiosity. I could offer some excuses, but that would detract reader attention from where it should be.
Mark O’Mara is changing the practice of criminal defense from winning the case in the courtroom to winning the case before trial in the court of public opinion. He uses the internet and the media to dispense false information to the public about the case and to discredit and intimidate prosecution witnesses by character assassination.
For example, he has enlisted the support of two reporters at the Orlando Sentinel, Rene Stutzman and Jeff Weiner, who report the information that he gives them on a daily basis as “news. He also has endorsed a website (i.e., the Conservative Tree House) as a legitimate source of ideas and assistance. He also uses motions for discovery and motions to reconsider or clarify prior court orders as a vehicle to repeat his false narrative.
Intentionally dispensing false information about the case to the media is a low-risk strategy with high-reward potential, since the the media is willing to report the defense statement without reviewing it for accuracy and the prosecution is prohibited from commenting about the case.
Although anyone who is familiar with the evidence released to the public via the State of Florida’s remarkable Sunshine Law knows that the media consistently reports a false and misleading narrative favorable to the defense, there is little that we can do as individuals to correct false information reported by the media.
Fortunately, we can do our part here in this blog and others like it to identify and correct false information. Unfortunately, however, the national media prefers to ignore us and instead provide Robert Zimmerman, Jr., with multiple opportunities to deny that anyone in the Zimmerman family is racist and to proclaim that his brother, George Zimmerman, is a decent American who acted in self-defense to prevent Trayvon Martin from killing him with his bare hands. Never mind that Trayvon was an unarmed 17-year-old kid walking home in the rain talking via cell phone to his girlfriend in Miami when he supposedly launched this attack. Move along. There is nothing to see here, folks.
That brings me to O’Mara’s second strategy, using character assassination to intimidate witnesses and destroy their credibility before trial.
Character assassination has been used for many years to discredit and defeat political opponents and win national elections. If you should visit the Conservative Treehouse, take a look at the banner on the home page. You will see a shrine to a person described as a great American patriot and within that shrine you will see a photo of the man to whom the site has accorded godlike status. The man depicted in that photo is Andrew Breitbart who so perfected the use of manufactured evidence to support false accusations against political opponents that his name has entered our lexicon as a new verb. To Breitbart someone means to destroy that person’s reputation with a campaign of malicious lies based on manufactured or doctored evidence.
My wife and I have been subjected to a vicious and continuing campaign of character assassination by lie for daring to operate a blog that promotes evidence-based discussions of the Trayvon Martin killing. We are not alone. Sybrina Fulton, Tracy Martin, Benjamin Crump, Natalie Jackson and many others, including Trayvon Martin, the innocent victim of the killing, have been subjected to a similar, if not worse campaign of lies.
That brings me to Dee Dee. As a victim who continues to endure breitbarting, I have some idea how she must feel knowing that two innocent girls in Miami, whose only crime was to have been named Dee Dee, were successively breitbarted by mistake. I imagine she also knows about the doxing and breitbarting of W9 (the defendant’s cousin) whose only crime was to have reported to police that George Zimmerman sexually molested her for 10 years beginning when she was 6-years-old and he was 8-years-old.
I know that if I were Dee Dee or Bernie de la Rionda I would not believe that Mark O’Mara would honor his duty as a lawyer and officer of the court to assure that no information that might assist in identifying Dee Dee is leaked from his office.
I am well equipped to survive breitbarting because I am self-employed with this blog and I have the strength, willpower and self-assurance of a warrior forged in the heat and pressure of high stake courtroom battles during a long career. I chose to create and operate this blog and I accept responsibility for what we do here.
Dee Dee is a child and she did not choose to be a witness to a murder. Yet, she is and I worry about her. The media and the general public appear not to realize that she too is a victim of the defendant’s violent act on February 26, 2012. I wonder if she is plagued with panic attacks and nightmares generated by a brain stuck on a spin cycle of fragmented memories, what-ifs, and if-onlys. No one, especially a child, should be subjected to such torture.
The realization that she also must know that she has been targeted for destruction by breitbarting frightens me and makes me wonder how any human being could be so full of hate that they would even consider hurting her, let alone setting out to destroy her with lies.
I can only regard Mark O’Mara with horror and disgust
The god of my understanding and belief is not going to be OK with this.
I think Bernie de la Rionda is doing his best to balance his duties as a prosecutor, including his duty to comply with the Brady rule, with his duty as an empathetic member of the human race to protect her from the coming onslaught.
I applaud his decision to withhold the information that O’Mara requested until the night before the hearing on the defense request for a subpoena duces tecum.
He did not violate the Brady rule because he disclosed the potential impeachment information a week before deposition, which is the first time that O’Mara could have used it for a legitimate purpose. O’Mara suffered no inconvenience and the defendant’s constitutional rights to due process of law and a fair trial have not been violated.
Mark O’Mara’s motions for sanctions, fees and costs are frivolous because they are not supported by law.
I will close with this warning. Breitbarting a witness in a murder case is witness intimidation under Florida law. Anyone convicted of that crime can be sentenced to life in prison.
I sincerely hope that anyone who participates in the coming effort to intimidate Dee Dee will be charged, convicted and sentenced to a very long and unpleasant time in prison.
Posted by masonblue 
