This has already been covered by Days of Our Trailers, War on Guns, and undoubtedly others, but what Jay Wallace (of Adventure Outdoors) is enduring at the hands of Mayor Bloomberg and his minions (a group that includes the Judge, Jack Weinstein) needs as much exposure as it can get.
As mentioned last week, Commissar . . . er, Judge Weinstein decided not to risk something as fair as a jury trial for Mr. Wallace, and decreed that the jury would serve only in an advisory capacity. Seeing the futility of trying to play the game with such an impossibly stacked deck, Mr. Wallace and his attorney backed out of the case, with the idea of skipping directly to the appeals stage.
That brings us to the latest development.
But Taber [an attorney for the city] said in a telephone interview Wednesday, “We have serious doubts about the appealability of any of the issues arising from these proceedings. There is some case authority … for the proposition that when you default in a case this late in the game, you don't have any further appellate rights. The default terminates the action.”Not being an attorney myself, I have no way of judging the legal merits of Taber's argument. Whether or not there is a legal basis for his contention, there certainly is no moral or Constitutional justification for A) denying a trial by jury, and B) denying the right to appeal. I should also point out that Taber seems to base his assertion that Wallace lost his right to appeal by withdrawing "this late in the game," but Taber apparently sees no problem with Weinstein changing the rules and denying a jury trial less than a week before the proceedings were to begin.
Jay Wallace is doing his part (much more than his part, really) to defend the Constitution against a jihad waged with the combined resources of a billionaire mayor and New York City's vast tax revenues. We cannot ask Wallace to fight that battle alone.
Stumble it!
2 comments:
Two problems with his theory, from a layman:
1. He's been telling us his case was great since day one, and since day one his actions have made it clear that he had no confidence in the case--he needed Weinstein to rig the game.
2. It wouldn't make much sense (not that sense is required in the law!) to consider the late date of the "defeault" and not consider the late date of the decision that prompted it--Weinstein waited until late to deny the 7th Amendment right to trial by jury, after all, and it's not very reasonable to demand that Adventure Outdoors should have predicted the future and defaulted months before he did so.
The bottom line is that this the kind of mess we should expect when there's no judge in the courtroom. If the judge gives up his position to become an advocate for one side or the other, then we only have two of the three forces that are supposed to balance each other in a court of law.
Jimm Larry Hendren and Clevert come to mind with every hearing or reading of "Weinstein". Evil men in positions of power and for sale.
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