Burns Chronicles No 50 – Informants – What to do About Them #2
Burns Chronicles No 50
Informants – What to do About Them #2
Mark McConnell
Merry Christmas, Mark
Gary Hunt
Outpost of Freedom
December 25, 2016
Merry Christmas, Mark McConnell
The matter of informants, and the government’s efforts to protect the names of those who have snuck into our midst is a denial of justice and to some degree, the Sixth Amendment right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
Now, we can look at what the government wants us to believe. We can also look at what common sense dictates that the Framers of the Constitution meant. Just because a person doesn’t take the stand in court, when that person has provided information to the government, upon which the government builds its case, he has witnessed against the accused. The defendants, then, had every right to confront that “witness”, as he is privy to what he saw, what he heard, and what he said to the government. He is as much a part of the case against the defendant as the person who takes the stand, takes an oath, and testifies. Quite often, he is the justification for a search or arrest warrant to be issued, or a criminal indictment to be brought, before the court.
However, when that ‘witness’ is hidden from the defendant, the defendant is denied information that may aid him in a proper and fair defense. In some cases, their testimony might provide exculpatory evidence, testimony that might prove his innocence, that would undermine the contrived case made by the government.
With the recent trial of Ammon Bundy, et al, we can begin to put together a picture of the injustice and the dishonesty of the government’s pretext for hiding such “witnesses.”
We will begin with a partial trial transcript of the trial on October 17, 2016:
THE COURT:
I would like to start first with Ms. Harris’s motion with respect to the identity of a witness. [Some of] the defendants have subpoenaed, it’s Docket No. 1443, And it is really a subset of the larger issue raised both by Ryan Bundy in previous filings and by Ammon Bundy in his motion to compel 1423. Before, I received Ms. Harris’ filing, which I only received this morning about 7:00 a.m. it showed up in my system, I had emailed to the parties my preliminary conclusions having reviewed, in camera, the unredacted reports related to the so-called CHSs confidential human sources, 15 different individuals, 112 reports, and I conveyed in that email to the parties that I have compared the redacted to the nonredacted reports and according to the applicable standard, did not find any basis to disclose the identity of those 15 confidential human sources. I observed to the parties that as I compared the redactions from the unredacted material, I really didn’t find any substantive significance. The redactions primarily looked to me as necessary to protect the identity of the informant, and so with respect to that general review, I conveyed to the parties my intention was to deny the motion generally.
Then came in Ms. Harris’s motion on behalf of Ms. Cox with respect to a very particular one of those 15 confidential human sources, identified in her motion as number two, as to whom I have the redacted and unredacted materials. That was one person’s records I went through.
The motion indicates that the defendants have found the actual CH#2 who was known to the — who went by an alias, according to this motion, of John Killman. K-I-L-L-M-A-N. And so the motion goes on to argue why it’s relevant, first of all, for the defendants to call this person whose alias is John Killman and to introduce evidence from his personal knowledge of observations he made at the refuge.
And I presume defendants already know his true name in that they — Ms. Harris tells me in this filing that he’s been subpoenaed in his, is physically present, and needs to testify first thing because of other issues in his life.
We can see that the identification of the informants is a primary concern of Judge Anna Brown. Next to speak is one of the Government attorneys.
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