The idiotic – look, you don’t arrest the whistle-blowers when they catch Planned Parenthood on tape trying to talk up their profitable baby-harvesting business, OK? – Harris County prosecutors smartly offered David Daleiden a plea deal. He has declined. The case goes to trial. As Steve Berman in that link sums it up:
If Daleiden were to go to trial, the videos he made along with Sandra Merritt and the Center for Medical Progress exposing Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts operation would certainly enter into evidence. And they’d be found to be truthful. And Planned Parenthood officials would be subpoenaed to testify at the trial. And they’d be found to be lying.
I should also note that David Daleiden is apparently prepared to go to jail over this. If that bothers you – if you don’t like the fact that a jury could put a man in jail for twenty years because he used a fake ID in one of the few ways that society finds acceptable and even moral* – then, well, that’s why people do civil disobedience. REAL civil disobedience, not the petulant, look-at-me garbage that the Activist Left revels in.
Moe Lane
*That aside will make absolutely no sense to people who have elevated abortion to some sort of sacrament. I do not believe that these people are the majority of pro-choicers, but; there’s more of them than there used to be. It’s frankly a bit alarming.
**Oops!
Discovery should be…. interesting.
While I’m sure that medical record privacy will mean that some things will be under seal, the accounting books will not be. However there is always the possibility of direct testimony by those who were involved as well.
If someone has come to regret what was done, and they make it to the stand…
I’m really wondering whoever decided to prosecute really thought this through.
They probably thought that Daleiden would take a plea bargain, because that’s how it usually works with activists. The idea that somebody might say “Yeah, sure, put me in jail for twenty years for what I believe in” may have not legitimately occurred to them. The interesting part is what happens when the pro-abortion types start screaming that Daleiden needs to do hard time…
Would the prosecution be able to exclude any evidence that does not directly bear on whether Mr. Daleiden used a fake ID or not?
Having not looked at this closely, I am reminded that Popehat likes to point out that when you see “up to twenty years” that usually requires a whole bunch of aggravating factors and if he is actually found guilty, the odds are he’s going to facing an actual sentence of, I dunno, more like 2-5 years.
Umm.. except that if he’s held awaiting trial, he can be held *until the trial* .. and bet on PP generating lots of appeals on technicalities.
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Mew
IF there’s lengthy holding pre-trial, can’t that also be considered “time served?”
It can, although it depends on how it’s served – a sufficiently severe house arrest can count, time in the county lock-up certainly counts.
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The mildly interesting question, in that direction, is just who could be sued in the event time served awaiting trial exceeds the sentence .. i.e. if he gets off with no sentence, can he somehow make that rebound on PP?
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Mew
The “abortion as sacrament” crowd had been crowing happily about the arrest. I am so looking forward to the end result of this.
When the PP crowd started crowing ‘Gotcha ” , I’m thinking ‘ be careful what you wish for ‘ PP wants the whole baby parts for sale to go away , this will put it in page 1 for a while . Course like Gosnell ,this is only a local story and has no interest outside of Houston, so sez the NYT / WaPo /MSM
The other thing to remember is that Gov Greg Abbott is NOT happy about this nonsense, and has more than enough stones to a) pardon Daleiden and b) have the TX AG launch an investigation of the Harris County DA and PP.