It’s all arbitrary. In Keene, sometimes activists are arrested for wearing hats, sometimes not. Sometimes people are threatened and arrested for using video cameras in the court lobby, sometimes not. Here’s video of Free Talk Live host Mark Edge taking a speeding ticket to trial and being found guilty. You’ll also see court security attempting to intimidate Liberty on Tour’s Pete and Ademo into removing hats and gum. They fail. Chief of security Lance Walton instructs the lumbering goons to back off and let the robed man decide, then the robed man ignores the hats and gum.
Local Keene-native liberty activist Kate Ager has written a blog post on her facebook regarding this morning’s kidnapping of Ademo Freeman and Derrick Horton:
I woke up this morning (Tuesday June 28, 2011) to a Keene 411 text message alerting me that, “Ademo Freeman just got arrested at city hall,” so I went down there. When I arrived, I passed Jason Repsher downstairs who was doing Don’t Take the Plea outreach and proceeded to the second floor where the first thing I saw upon opening the door was a Keene Police officer grabbing Derrick Horton’s arm; he was ordered to put his camera on the counter, placed under arrest and taken into a back room. Ademo, who was being held in the conference room, was taken to a room off to the side where I could see him through the window and spoken to by multiple police officers. After their encounter, Ademo was taken to the Keene Police Department. Jason Repsher stayed at the Keene District Court to watch Derrick’s proceedings while Rich Paul and I went to the police department to gain further information about Ademo. At the police department, the woman at the front desk said that she did not know any information and would speak with the arresting officer when he was free for a moment. We checked in with her multiple times, but she did not follow through. About forty-five minutes after arriving, I was standing outside with Rich and Jason, when Officer Short drove into the parking lot and informed us that Derrick had been transported to the police department and would be released shortly, and Ademo was being charged with a Class B Felony, Improper Influence [*]. (more…)
The United States Supreme Court just ruled that an individual facing civil commitment for failure to pay child support does not have an automatic right to a lawyer.
“The 14th Amendment’s due process clause allows a state to provide fewer procedural protections to civil contempt defendants than in a criminal case, which is governed by the Sixth Amendment,” said Justice Stephen Breyer.
As someone who has arrested and caused the imprisonment of quite a few people for child support warrants, two questions always floated in my mind.
First, it costs a county roughly $30,000 a year to imprison someone. That’s about $82 a day. During this time the individual obviously cannot work, find work, or do anything productive. The children the individual is supposed to be supporting isn’t receiving any money either. Wouldn’t that $82/day better be spent feeding, clothing, or housing a child?
Second, civil commitment for child support really is a debtor prison. Didn’t this country allegedly abolished them in the 1800’s?
This morning, locals report that government workers were spraying and scrubbing in an attempt to remove the evidence of yesterday’s apparent self-immolation in front of the Cheshire superior court. I stopped by early this morning to file some motions in another case and talk to the Sheriffs about yesterday and took a picture of the damage. Click the pic for a full size version.
It’s going to take more than a hose and brush to make this issue go away. People need to know who this man was and why he made this horrific choice.
More as it develops. Thus far, no return calls from Keene Police or Cheshire Sheriffs.
Update for search results: The man who self-immolated was Thomas Ball aka Tom Ball. Here’s a detailed article about it.
