Pat Shannan's MUSINGS
Of Tyrants and Tyrannists; Ignorance and Arrogance
If I sound angry, it is only because I am. Another innocent man went to jail for life today.
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered," said Thomas Paine at the beginning of this nation.
Not much has changed since then except the faces. The tyrants are boisterous and obtrusive. Just see the front page of your newspaper each day. The tyrannists are subtler. Like weevils, and with announced good intentions, they silently destroy liberty and everything holy. This is how they feed themselves. Ignorance is bliss, and who can penetrate it? They are not in charge, but arrogantly flaunt their way into the influential spotlight and revel in the glory. Since college or sooner, they have believed that they are of the upper crust, the chosen few. In fact, they are fools.
Okay, so you cannot find "tyrannists" in your dictionary. That's okay. You get the drift (only they would not). Tyrannists are the second-level, tympanitic, lower-echelon, useful idiots who aid and abet the tyrants. How do I know the meaning of this word? Because I just made it up and defined it this moment. Ahh, we can see the headlines of the NYTimes now: Shannan Coins a Term and Eulogizes Us Forever! (Well, probably not.)
The tyrannists are the establishment news morons who believe that their (sometimes really good!) investigative pieces continue to go unpublished only because of a pre-empting by editors with a more important news item of the moment.
The tyrannists are the liberal professors who spew their ungodly garbage into the fertile minds of the future generation of "leaders" - thereby perpetuating their lies into history. And the most insidious gang of tyrannists of all is that which falsely portrays itself to be "of the law." The !@#$% attorneys and judges. And they are able to mold another group of semi-intelligent, law-abiding citizens into simpleton, tyrannist dolts, once these 12 people sit in a jury box.
I have seen it with my own eyes and still do not comprehend the legerdemain used by the courts to spellbind and stupefy a group of otherwise disassociated, seemingly normal, adult human beings and transform them into complete buffoons in only a matter of hours. Is this some type of mesmerizing mind control over which the victim cannot resist?
Almost every member in all the groups will continually and arrogantly espouse his/her ignorance with pride.
It was a political trial in Birmingham, carefully crafted from the same plastic mold as the several previous ones of the last decade, masquerading under the phony label of "final justice" and resurrected for the sole purpose of garnering future election votes from a deluded segment of the population. No eyewitnesses (in fact, a few to the contrary), no smoking gun, but with resourcefully planted evidence and solidly schooled witnesses, the jury fell for it once again. Bobby Cherry, 72, was convicted of four counts of murder - the four little girls killed in a 1963 "dynamite explosion" at a church from which no dynamite residue was ever found. His real crime: associating with the wrong group and the public display of his beliefs.
Initiated by FBI Lies
The case began with the resurfacing of a 1964 FBI "302" report from Special Agent Bill Fleming, who had written that his white informant on Klan activities at the time, Mary Frances Cunningham, had told him that she saw Bobby Cherry place the bomb at the church on Saturday evening.
However, when Cunningham was brought forth as a defense witness on May 18th, she emphatically stated that she had never said such a thing to the FBI or anyone else and that Fleming had arbitrarily placed the statement in his report and that it was his own fabrication. The case had been at a standstill until the report resurfaced in a 1997 investigation instigated by U. S. Attorney Doug Jones. (Jones lost his federal job with the advent of the new Bush administration but was brought in by the state court as a special prosecutor and was paid $55,000 by the State of Alabama.)
Mary Cunningham affirmed that Fleming had falsified the same report 36 years later when he attested to its veracity in front of the 2000 grand jury that indicted Cherry.
Retired FBI Agent Bob Eddy admitted under cross-examination that he knew at the time that it was not true that Cunningham had made such a statement and said under oath that Fleming's 302 report concerning Cunningham was not accurate.
It would seem that any juror with half a brain would be able to see from this testimony that the whole case was a fabrication from the outset. None did. And they disregarded the fact that Cherry wore a back brace during the month of September, 1963, because of an trucking accident, and would have found it nearly impossible to tote a bomb heavy enough to inflict the resultant damage. And they were not even allowed to hear the testimony of the six policemen who guarded the church the previous night. At least four signed affidavits saying that the only people allowed inside the building were two FBI agents. Because the defense attorneys failed to use this and other evidence at trial, it will not be an appealable issue.
Cherry was approached numerous times before the trial with plea deals offered by Jones but rejected them all. Some of these included no jail time. As a man of principles, he would not plead to a lie, even if it could save his own hide. He wouldn't have to "rollover" on anyone, of course, because he didn't know anything about the crime anyway. Just say that he hauled dynamite across a state line, and the prosecutor would have his scapegoat, conviction, and headlines.
It was an offer that no guilty man could refuse. But by turning it down, Bobby Cherry became the latest victim of the arrogant, ignorant tyrannists.