Uninteded Consequences

[Annie]

It's a Quagmire!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25690-2005Mar10?language=printer

Antiabortion Activist on Trial in D.C.
Protester Displayed A Fetus, Police Say
By Henri E. Cauvin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page B01


It was the furtive movements of a couple of demonstrators that caught the attention of police officers last spring outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on 16th Street NW. And then the officers saw it, in a glass jar passed from one protester to the other:

A human fetus.

Holding it in his pocket, according to police testimony, was Jeff White, an antiabortion activist. When officers asked what he had, White pulled out the jar and confirmed that it contained a fetus. Set in a clear liquid, the tiny limbs were plainly visible.

It took a while for the officers to determine what law was at issue with the alleged display of what turned out to be a 15- to 17-week-old female fetus. After phone calls to commanders and prosecutors, they arrested White and charged him with keeping and exposing a dead body or body part.

White, a lay minister from Lake Arrowhead, Calif., who lectures at schools and colleges, was in Washington last spring for counter-demonstrations to an abortion rights rally on the Mall. The fetus, he told the police, was a "teaching tool."

Now, nearly a year later, White, 47, is on trial in D.C. Superior Court, being prosecuted by the District's attorney general in a case that White's attorney says underscores the contradictions in U.S. law over the legal standing of a fetus.

The argument of abortion rights advocates has long been that a fetus is nothing more than a cluster of cells and is not a human being, White's attorney, Brian Chavez-Ochoa, said in an interview.

"If that argument is correct," he said, "then how can somebody be charged by the District of Columbia with displaying a human being" when it was a fetus?

"It's a contradictory argument," Chavez-Ochoa said. "If it's not just a clump of cells, is the attorney general willing to concede that a . . . fetus is in fact a human being?"

So far, though, the defense has not advanced this argument in the trial before Magistrate Judge J. Dennis Doyle, who is hearing the misdemeanor case. Instead, Chavez-Ochoa has spent much of the past two days attacking the testimony of the arresting officers and suggesting that what happened April 24, 2004, hardly constituted a "display" of a dead body.

But a surprising revelation yesterday by prosecutors could change the course of the trial. Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Massengale told the judge that she had had learned overnight that a video recording of the incident was on the Internet. The recording appears to show White holding the container outside Planned Parenthood and police stepping in.

Chavez-Ochoa challenged the government's effort to introduce the video as evidence, saying it was an unfair surprise in the middle of a trial that left him with no way to properly assess its authenticity and challenge its contents.

But Massengale said that because she only just learned of the video's existence, she had not breached the government's obligation to apprise the defense of any relevant evidence in the case.

Doyle said he would take up the issue of the Internet video today, after the defense had had a chance to examine the recording.

Unless the judge rules that the video is an "unfair surprise," Chavez-Ochoa plans to carefully examine the recording. He said the process would take weeks and involve an outside expert, he said.

The judge said he, too, would want to ensure the veracity of the government's proposed evidence. "Something coming off the Internet would be viewed with a certain amount of skepticism," Doyle said.

 

[William Joyce]

Good point the lawyer has (for once). You can't have it both ways. It's not a dead body if it's a cluster of cells. But too many cops, unfortunately, are brainwashed against conservatives and would scramble for ways to arrest anyone whose demonstration is too much on the conservative side. An AIDS activist who throws blood won't get in trouble, for instance. They know the pressure would be for them in the media. They make police go to all these seminars sponsored by the ADL about "tolerance" and "diversity" and this is the result. In Philadelphia, they arrested some Christian protestors of a gay parade under the "hate crimes" law.

Check it out.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42705

 

[fuzzykitten99]

i would love to see the liberals explain this one!