Judge Alex Kozinski on Prosecutorial Misconduct

Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 9th Circuit, (official photo).

Did the government react in horror at having been caught with its hands in the cookie jar? Did Justice Department lawyers rend their garments and place ashes on their head to mourn this violation of their most fundamental duty of candor and fairness? No way, no how. Instead, the government argued strenuously that its ill-gotten conviction should stand because boys will be boys and the evidence wasn’t material to the case anyway.
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Eugene Volokh in the Washington Post offers remarks on the most American of derangement and inhumanity: the Police-prosecutor state.

Prosecutors from the United States Attorneys' offices to county district attorneys to municipal attorneys' offices are left unchecked with near-absolute power to cite with civil citations, prosecute, financially ruin and destroy lives under the color of law.

This near-absolute power does tend to corrupt nearly always.

Critical reading; notes Volokh:

... I began serializing “Criminal Law 2.0,” a new article by Judge Alex Kozinski — for whom I clerked 20 years ago, who is one of our nation’s most prominent appellate judges and has long been seen as on balance a libertarianish conservative (appointed by President Ronald Reagan). The introduction gave 12 reasons to worry about our criminal justice system; Wednesday’s post discussed wrongful convictions; yesterday’s post discusses the jury system, and ways to improve it; today’s post discusses prosecutorial misconduct; and I’ll post other parts of the article in the days to come. I’ve added some paragraph breaks and removed the footnotes (which are available in the PDF version), but otherwise this is as Judge Kozinski wrote it. [Writes Kozinski]:

Prosecutors hold tremendous power, more than anyone other than jurors, and often much more than jurors because most cases don’t go to trial. Prosecutors and their investigators have unparalleled access to the evidence, both inculpatory and exculpatory, and while they are required to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense under Brady, Giglio, and Kyles v. Whitley, it is very difficult for the defense to find out whether the prosecution is complying with this obligation.

Prosecutors also have tremendous control over witnesses: They can offer incentives — often highly compelling incentives — for suspects to testify. This includes providing sweetheart plea deals to alleged co-conspirators and engineering jail-house encounters between the defendant and known informants.

Sometimes they feed snitches non-public information about the crime so that the statements they attribute to the defendant will sound authentic. And, of course, prosecutors can pile on charges so as to make it exceedingly risky for a defendant to go to trial. There are countless ways in which prosecutors can prejudice the fact-finding process and undermine a defendant’s right to a fair trial.

This, of course, is not their job. Rather, as the Supreme Court has held, '[A prosecutor] is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor — indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones.'

All prosecutors purport to operate just this way and I believe that most do. My direct experience is largely with federal prosecutors and, with a few exceptions, I have found them to be fair-minded, forthright and highly conscientious.

But there are disturbing indications that a non-trivial number of prosecutors — and sometimes entire prosecutorial offices — engage in misconduct that seriously undermines the fairness of criminal trials. The misconduct ranges from misleading the jury, to outright lying in court and tacitly acquiescing or actively participating in the presentation of false evidence by police.

Prosecutorial misconduct is a particularly difficult problem to deal with because so much of what prosecutors do is secret. If a prosecutor fails to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense, who is to know? Or if a prosecutor delays disclosure of evidence helpful to the defense until the defendant has accepted an unfavorable plea bargain, no one will be the wiser. Or if prosecutors rely on the testimony of cops they know to be liars, or if they acquiesce in a police scheme to create inculpatory evidence, it will take an extraordinary degree of luck and persistence to discover it — and in most cases it will never be discovered.

There are distressingly many cases where such misconduct has been documented, but I will mention just three to illustrate the point. The first is United States v. Stevens, the prosecution of Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican Senator in history.

Senator Stevens was charged with corruption for accepting the services of a building contractor and paying him far below market price — essentially a bribe. The government’s case hinged on the testimony of the contractor, but the government failed to disclose the initial statement the contractor made to the FBI that he was probably overpaid for the services. The government also failed to disclose that the contractor was under investigation for unrelated crimes and thus had good reason to curry favor with the authorities.

Stevens was convicted just a week before he stood for re-election and in the wake of the conviction, he was narrowly defeated, changing the balance of power in the Senate. The government’s perfidy came to light when a brave FBI agent by the name of Chad Joy blew the whistle on the government’s knowing concealment of exculpatory evidence.

Did the government react in horror at having been caught with its hands in the cookie jar? Did Justice Department lawyers rend their garments and place ashes on their head to mourn this violation of their most fundamental duty of candor and fairness? No way, no how. Instead, the government argued strenuously that its ill-gotten conviction should stand because boys will be boys and the evidence wasn’t material to the case anyway.

It was only the extraordinary persistence and the courageous intervention of District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who made it clear that he was going to dismiss the Stevens case and then ordered an investigation of the government’s misconduct that forced the Justice Department to admit its malfeasance — what else could it do? — and move to vacate the former senator’s conviction. Instead of contrition, what we have seen is Justice Department officials of the highest rank suffering torn glenoid labrums from furiously patting themselves on the back for having 'done the right thing.' ...

I have never heard a prosecutor of any variety say of the wrongfully convicted, the wrongfully fined: Something must be done, an innocent has suffered.

Mueller Team Investigating Trump-Campaign-Russia Has Fixable Problem

Updated - A Reuters report by Karen Freifeld this morning notes the prosecutorial experience of two members of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller's team: Andrew Weissmann and Kathryn Ruemmler, (New York Times).

Weissman and Ruemmler have garnered plaudits, yet, Weissman and Ruemmler share a troubled history as prosecutors. One wonders why this history does not inform national reporting as indictment Summer begins.

Freifeld's Reuters report notes of Andrew Weissman that he "headed the U.S. Justice Department's criminal fraud section before joining Mueller's team last month, is best known for two assignments - the investigation of now-defunct energy company Enron and organized crime cases in Brooklyn, New York - that depended heavily on gaining witness cooperation."

Omitted is Weissman's conduct on the Enron Task Force that to any fair observer is appalling. Ever hear of the proven innocent James Arthur Brown of Merrill Lynch? Likely not. Bill Fuhs?

Bill Fuhs was pursued by Weissman and colleagues under the ludicorus "honest services" provision of a federal wire fraud statute, (Powell, Enron Barge). Brown was later proven innocent, and on two counts was effectively relieved of the charge stacking-induced perjury and obstruction of justice criminal counts in 2015. [If you live in Wisconsin, mention of honest services may bring to mind the corrupt prosecution of the proven innocent Georgia Thompson in 2007, (U.S. v. Georgia L. Thompson, argued and decided on April 5, 2007))]

Bill Fuhs should never have been indicted, and the prosecutions are a stain on the United States Department of Justice and the American federal judiciary.

Consider as well Kathryn Ruemmler of the Mueller team.

As noted by one of the nation's foremost federal appellate attorneys, Sidney Powell, Ruemmler ignored the mandates of the Brady Rule to disclose exculpatory evidence in the same criminal persecution that her colleague, Andrew Weissmann pursued, in the Enron mania:

They, [Weissmann and Kathryn Ruemmler], not only hid the exculpatory evidence they had yellow-highlighted, [revealing intent of prosecutors to ignore clear evidence], but in defiance of a court order, they gave the defendants misleading summaries instead.

Even the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, whose record on the Enron Task Force’s trials was embarrassing at best with several Supreme Court reversals, held that Ruemmler and her team 'plainly suppressed' evidence favorable to the defense. That finding establishes a clear violation of ethical rule 3.8–not to mention the Supreme Court’s admonition that the United States Attorney 'seek justice.' This is NOT what we would call 'impeccable legal credentials' or 'impeccable judgment'–unless that kind of calculated dishonesty and win-at-any-cost mentality is exactly what you want. Indeed, why is she still practicing law?, (Seeking Justice).

Staffing up one of the most monumental investigative units in American history is not off to an even start.

Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to this republic.

So, why is Robert S. Mueller even considering Andrew Weissmann and Kathryn Ruemmler when their records reveal they pursued innocents, acted without regard to ethics, effectively betraying our country no less?

Trump's PR messages now is that Robert Mueller's investigative dream team is engaging in a withhunt.

With Weissmann and Ruemmleron on the team, the accusation has at least prior plausibility.

My god, Robert Mueller, please don't screw this up. Staff should be beyond reproach.

Consider that prosecutors who pursue innocents without regard to ethics and human decency do not pay a price in their careers at the United States Department of Justice, American law, or society broadly.

Prosecutors should pay a price.

The valuation of this price ought not lead to blotching the pursuit of justice of the most dangerous man on the planet, President Donald Trump, who after-all retains the rights of the innocent as he is being investigated by the United States Department of Justice under the color of law.
-- Both Bill Fuhs and James Brown were among those prosecuted by the Enron Task Force.

Book Review: The Federal Prosecutor, An American Horror Story

Licensed to Lie by former Assistant
United States Attorney and Chief of
of the Appellate Section for the
Western and Northern Districts of Texas,
U.S. Department of Justice

At no time in modern American legal history has this book been needed as urgently.

"Overcriminalization is a dangerous trend that should alarm everyone. With over 4,450 crimes scattered throughout the federal code, and hundreds of thousands more hidden in federal regulations, “doing the right thing” just isn’t enough to keep you on the right side of the law. Every day people can become overcriminalization victims in a heartbeat and the consequences can be devastating," notes the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

In Sidney Powell's Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice (Brown Books Publishing Group, 2014) the villain is the United States Department of Justice and a host of federal judges.

In tales rivaling legal thrillers by John Grisham, Ms. Powell cogently lays out stories of death, and corruption plaguing the DoJ in this non-fiction account of the betrayal of America.

The stories are familiar to us as recent history—the Enron collapse and the wrongful prosecution of a beloved U.S. Senator—but what we think we know is turned on its head.

With this work, the former federal prosecutor and appellate attorney Ms. Powell stands among the great whistleblowers in modern American history as she exposes the injustices and inhumanities perpetrated by the self-aggrandizing members of two federal DoJ Task Forces, who had a license to lie and destroy innocent lives.

Many jurists already know of Sidney Powell's brilliance and dedication, and Licensed to Lie should be required reading for every high school political science class, every undergraduate college constitutional law class and is a must-read for any American with a passing interest in freedom.

No one reading this work—with a jaw-dropping foreword written by Judge Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—can do so without being appalled.

Ms. Powell working in various capacities in defense of the innocent faced down prosecutors acting as a veritable Star Chamber in some instances, aided by an oppressive judiciary, unyielding and obtuse.

Powell names the names, and tells the facts, and nothing in the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) ought to be the same after this story is told of criminal justice as an American horror story.

Lawful duties of federal prosecutors such as the disclosure of exculpatory information to the defense (the Brady Rule), were abandoned in the quest to secure criminal convictions of innocent people.

In roughly the same timeframe as the Enron Task Force, DoJ prosecutors from the Public Integrity Section (PIN) of Main Justice targeted U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska; 1968-2009) in a prosecution so contrived, the presiding federal judge, Emmet Sullivan, ordered a special prosecutor empaneled to investigate the prosecution.

The DoJ PIN in this period operated an ongoing investigation into alleged public corruption in Alaska, nicknamed Polar PEN, begun in 2004.

Sidney Powell chronicles the criminal prosecutions and miscarriage of justice committed by Polar PEN, resulting in at least one suicide, the unlawful and wrongful 2008 conviction (later set aside at the request of Attorney General Eric Holder in 2009) of World War II hero and Senator Ted Stevens in a repulsive tableau of prosecutorial misconduct.

"I wondered how much the Enron Task Force had collaborated with the Polar Pen prosecutors and  who had concocted all of these overly creative cases without crimes as bogus 'honest services' allegations. The prosecutors had obviously cross-pollinated to produce baseless crimes and tortured law in both major investigations. The Enron Task Force cabal had about a two-year head start on Polar PEN, but the investigators and prosecutions overlapped for several years," writes Powell. (pp. 238-239)

Similar cases of prosecutorial torture of federal statute occurred in the contemporaneous U.S. Attorneys scandal as the creative employment of the Honest Services statute was used by unscrupulous U.S. attorneys such as Steven Biskupic.

Honest services. This is an ironic statute used by prosecutors who have no conception of honesty and even less regard for public service.

We can be grateful to Judge Richard Posner, of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, for writing an important opinion this last January (Fields v. Wharrie, 2014) establishing the right of the wrongfully convicted to sue corrupt prosecutors, who in Posner's opinion, no longer enjoy the absolute immunity used by prosecutors as a license to lie.

Every prosecutor who withheld exculpatory evidence, as demonstrated by Powell, should face a civil action.

Powell's appellate brief on Honest Services devastated the DoJ's use of its myriad honest services prosecutions, but Powell’s work is about the innocent and the prosecutors, guilty of betrayal.

Someone should write about Sidney Powell, the advocate from the south who just blew the lid off the hidden history of the judiciary and the American prosecutor.

(A longer version of this review appeared here in April 2014.)

Book Review: The Federal Prosecutor, An American Horror Story

Licensed to Lie by former Assistant
United States Attorney and Chief of
of the Appellate Section for the
Western and Northern Districts of Texas,
U.S. Department of Justice

In Sidney Powell's Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice (Brown Books Publishing Group, 2014) the villain is the United States Department of Justice and a host of federal judges.

In tales that would rival any legal thrillers or action-packed novels by John Grisham or Nelson DeMille, Ms. Powell systematically and cogently lays out stories of death, deceit, and corruption plaguing the DoJ in this non-fiction account of the betrayal of America.

The stories are somewhat familiar to us as recent history—the Enron collapse and the wrongful prosecution of the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senator in history—but what we think we know is turned on its head as we learn what really happened.

With this work, the former federal prosecutor and appellate attorney Ms. Powell stands among the great whistleblowers in modern American history as she exposes the injustices and inhumanities perpetrated by the self-aggrandizing members of two federal DoJ task forces, who truly had a license to lie and to destroy innocent lives without any federal prosecutor having conscience enough to even acknowledge the suffering they caused.

Many jurists already know of Sidney Powell's brilliance and dedication, and Licensed to Lie should be required reading for every high school political science class, every undergraduate college constitutional law class and a must-read for any American of whatever political persuasion with a passing interest in freedom.

No one reading this work can do so without being appalled by the intentional and repeated injustices inflicted onto the innocent.

Steven J. Phillips published No Heroes, No Villains (Vintage, 1978) explaining the procedures of criminal law in a gripping account of a real-life criminal law, murder case. Phillips' classic work today is quaint. In today's culture, the American prosecutor is not a friend, not a force dedicated to justice, and in a civilized and truthful explication is a villain.

"The right to do what the law does not prohibit, without fear of harassment or punishment, is one of the hallmarks of a free society." —Judge Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (foreword)

"I wondered if my friends, Judges Carl Stewart, Jacques Wiener, and, Pete Benavides, along with (Judge) Ewing Werlein, who denied all our motions for release twice, even knew, considered, or cared about what their wrong decision had done to this young man [the proven-innocent Bill Fuhs, represented by Seth Waxman] and his family." —Sidney Powell, Licensed to Lie (p. 144)

Enron Task Force

The Houston-based Enron Company morphed from a hard asset pipeline company into a sociopathic energy-trading company in the 1990s, led by Jeffrey Skilling and Chief Financial Office, Andrew Fastow. (p. 13)

In 2001, Enron—with its myriad equity funds, frauds and shell games—imploded into the largest corporate collapse in United States history.

This collapse was a good thing for some, a perfect opportunity to make careers for a collection of prosecutors lacking ethics and working pathologically in pursuit of power—their own power.

Find some people, make up crimes, prosecute these people, and these innocents and their families will just have to suffer.

This is precisely what occurred, during the Enron Task Force prosecutions that saw innocent Americans implacably pursued by a criminal, out-of-control band of prosecutors operating under cover of the United States of America.

As noted by Sidney Powell, "Incited by public outrage, political pressure and cries for vindication from Enron shareholders, the Department of Justice promptly [January 2002] assembled the Enron Task Force—a joint effort of the department, the SEC, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Because of the Bush connection to Ken Lay, the Enron Task Force was untethered from the department." (p. 25)

The Task Force was staffed with ambitious prosecutors from across the country, and was given virtually unlimited resources.

The Task Force was also untethered from ethical adult supervision and prosecutors looking to make a career from the ashes of Enron determined to get somebody, anybody in their pursuit of a group of innocents, along with the perpetrators at Enron.

Ms. Powell working in various capacities in defense of the innocent (particularly James Brown of Merrill Lynch) worked tirelessly in her advocacy, facing the corruption of the prosecutors of the Task Force acting as a veritable Star Chamber in some instances, aided by an oppressive judiciary in the Fifth Judicial Circuit, so unyielding and committed to letting obvious injustices go uncorrected that this brilliant veteran jurist, Sidney Powell, witnessed the physical disintegration of innocent people and their families as an oblivious nation immersed by the trauma of 9/11 never knew their story, until now.

Powell names the names, (Task Force leaders and prosecutors, Leslie Caldwell, Andrew Weissmann and Matthew Friedrich, for example) and tells the facts, and nothing in the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) ought to be the same after this story is told of American criminal justice as an American horror story inflicted by federal prosecutors.

Any impediments, lawful duties of federal prosecutors such as the disclosure of exculpatory information to the defense (the Brady Rule), were abandoned in the frenzied quest to secure criminal convictions of innocent people.

The former federal prosecutor, Powell, concludes: "As long as they [a small group of federal prosecutors] are free from accountability, the innocent are at risk and the public can have no confidence in our legal system." (p. 403)

Polar PEN

In roughly the same timeframe as the Enron Task Force was unleashed, overzealous DoJ prosecutors from the Public Integrity Section (PIN) of Main Justice targeted U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska; 1968-2009) in a prosecution so disingenuous and self-consciously artificial that the presiding federal judge, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan (aided in part by an FBI agent who blew the whistle on the prosecutors), after learning of massive and systemic withholding of exculpatory evidence by federal prosecutors, ordered a special prosecutor (Henry F. Schuelke III) be empaneled to investigate the criminal wrongdoing of the prosecution.

The DoJ PIN in this period operated an ongoing investigation into alleged public corruption in Alaska, nicknamed Polar PEN, begun in 2004.

Sidney Powell chronicles the criminal prosecutions and blatant miscarriage of justice caused and committed by Polar PEN, that resulted in at least one suicide, heroic whistle-blowing of prosecutorial misconduct by a FBI agent, Chad Joy, the unlawful and wrongful 2008 conviction (later set aside at the request of Attorney General Eric Holder in 2009) of World War II hero and Senator Ted Stevens that ruined Stevens' political career, and the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the prosecutorial misconduct.

Two main perpetrators of Polar PEN are Matthew Friedrich and Rita Glavin. who took over control and manipulated the prosecution of Stevens, but who, Powell notes, "were way too politically connected and savvy to take the fall." (p. 8)

The failure of the Polar PEN prosecutors of Stevens to turn over exculpatory evidence the prosecution had in its possession should have landed the bunch of legal thugs in prison; the Polar PEN persecutors were guilty though not ultimately held accountable, the grisly suicide of Nicholas Marsh, PEN prosecutor notwithstanding, who found himself on the wrong side of a criminal investigation.

Marsh committed suicide after being investigated for his (and several others') criminal withholding of exculpatory evidence from Sen. Stevens.

Cases without Crimes

"I wondered how much the Enron Task Force had collaborated with the Polar Pen prosecutors and  who had concocted all of these overly creative cases without crimes as bogus 'honest services' allegations. The prosecutors had obviously cross-pollinated to produce baseless crimes and tortured law in both major investigations. The Enron Task Force cabal had about a two-year head start on Polar PEN, but the investigators and prosecutions overlapped for several years," writes Powell. (pp. 238-239)

Powell does not put the corruption of these atrocities in the context of American legal history, in the context of what Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned federal prosecutors about in his memorable April 1, 1940 address: "Any prosecutor who risks his day-to-day professional name for fair dealing to build up statistics of success has a perverted sense of practical values, as well as defects of character. Whether one seeks promotion to a judgeship, as many prosecutors rightly do, or whether he returns to private practice, he can have no better asset than to have his profession recognize that his attitude toward those who feel his power has been dispassionate, reasonable and just."

It's for the reader to decide the relevancy of jurists like Jackson.

Nor does Powell mention the contemporaneous U.S. Attorneys scandal though the creative employment of the Honest Services statute was used extensively by unscrupulous U.S. attorneys such as Steven Biskupic (Eastern District of Wisconsin, 2001-2008) in his infamous Georgia Thompson prosecution, a case without a crime reversed in oral arguments in a spectacular action by a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2007.

Wrote Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook: "Thompson was convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 1341 as well as under § 666. Section 1341 forbids 'any scheme or artifice to defraud' that predictably employs the United States mails. What 'fraud' did Thompson commit, and who was the victim? Thompson did not bilk the state out of any money or pocket any of the funds that were supposed to be used. ... (I)n response to McNally v. United States, ... Congress enlarged the scope of criminal fraud by enacting 18 U.S.C. § 1346. This statute provides: For the purposes of this chapter, the term 'scheme or artifice to defraud' includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services. ... It is linguistically possible to understand 'private gain' as whatever adds to the employee's income or psyche-anything the employee would pay to have, rather than pay to avoid-but the Rule of Lenity counsels us not to read criminal statutes for everything they can be worth. ... Thompson's conviction is reversed, and the case is remanded with instructions to enter a judgment of acquittal." (U.S. v. Georgia L. Thompson, argued and decided on April 5, 2007)

Honest services. This is an ironic statute used by a gang of outlaw prosecutors who have no conception of honesty and even less regard for public service.

We can be grateful to Judge Richard Posner, also of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, for writing an important opinion this last January (Fields v. Wharrie, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 1333) that establishes the right of the wrongfully convicted to sue corrupt prosecutors, who in Posner's opinion, no longer enjoy the absolute immunity used by prosecutors as a license to lie.

Every prosecutor who withheld exculpatory evidence, as demonstrated by Powell, should face a civil action from his and her victims.

Powell's appellate brief on Honest Services devastated the DoJ's use of its myriad "honest services" prosecutions in several cases, a catch-all invention that these prosecutors used for its apparent fun and their profit. (pp. 298-99)

But the suffering endured by the many innocents she describes, and the utter lack of integrity, fair play and justice by the federal prosecutors leave Ms. Powell without faith in the American legal system as a forum where justice might be attained.

Outside of a small group of jurists, and friends and family of the innocents, who among us knows and cares that deceitful federal prosecutors remain free as victims struggle to build shattered lives?

Powell throws this question to the reader:

The games and tactics of (federal prosecutors) Friedrich, Ruemmler, Weissmann, Caldwell, and others on the Enron Task Force should never have been tolerated by the Houston federal judiciary or by the Fifth Circuit—much less invigorated by Friedrich and Glavin as heads of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice to pervert the trial of a United States Senator. There is no telling how many others have been or will be wrongfully convicted as this cabal of corrupt cronies ambitiously climbs and weaves through the highest ranks of the Department of Justice, the FBI and the White House—in between their powerful partnerships in some of our country's most prestigious and influential law firms.

What happened to the defendants in this book can happen to anyone. Blind judges do not render blind justice.

If it were your husband, your sister, your child on trial, what should the rules be? Should the prosecutors be required to disclose everything that only he possesses that is favorable to the defense? Should those who are supposed to enforce the laws be required to abide by them?

Senate Bill 2197, the Fairness in Disclosure of Evidence Act (codifying the Brady Rule), is still sitting in Congress. It would create a clear rule that federal prosecutors must produce all evidence favorable to the defense. (pp. 402-403)

Its fate, and the fate of justice is ultimately up to the American people.

The United States of America seems to have lost its way; it surely has lost its moral compass as the prosecutor and the judiciary inflict grievous harm onto innocent people in the name of justice.

A problem for the public is that what Sidney Powell writes about, what Powell warns us about, occurred and is occurring off the public's radar, beyond our awareness and thus beyond the reach of decency and the rule of law that could not be found by the innocent.