Letters to the Editor
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"Frankly, assuming she did participate in the alleged acts..."
I rather surprised that so few of you seem to understand how 'our' government works when it comes to things like this! The fact that she's been convicted on the basis of testimony by bribed/threatened (your choice) witnesses under the new post-9/11 Big Brother counterterrorism laws ought to be a HUGE RED FLAG! Yet here you are, gentle Salon Readers, willingly stipulating that because a jury was convinced to vote guilty, it's probably true and then happily moving on to discuss how harshly she should be punished!
As far as I'm concerned, when the Government tries to send someone up the river on the basis of basically nothing but coerced testimony, it's virtually guaranteed that they have no case. The US Government simply has ZERO credibility when it comes to things like this, they've lied under these circumstances FAR too many times! Even if they had 'concrete' evidence, there's a good chance it may have been planted. It's also entirely possible that FBI instigators stirred the pot, so to speak. Look up 'Thermcon', an (exactly) similar plan. Not that that's necessarily what happened here, just that it speaks to the Government's lack of credibility.
From the article: "According to two women who testified against her in return for dramatically reduced sentences, Waters hid in a shrub near the Center for Urban Horticulture with a walkie-talkie, ready to alert the others if the campus police strolled by. Waters testified she wasn't even in Seattle that night." Later in the article it states that neither of these witnesses remembered Briana Waters having anything to do with the case for weeks; they named names but not until they'd been through several interviews and had been offered plea deals did they name Ms. Waters.
Do you really suppose that the jury was allowed to hear about how this testimony was obtained? Knowing how it was obtained would any of you, as a juror, consider it to be reliable and untainted? Just because the government told you so?
Also: "A third cooperating defendant, Stanislas Meyerhoff, who had earlier implicated Phillabaum, his own fiancée, in the fire, told investigators that he was "familiar" with Waters but that she was "not involved" in the arson." Even 'reliable' eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, and none of these witnesses are even remotely reliable. So who're you gonna believe, the unreliable witness with nothing left to lose, or the ones with plenty to gain?
The assertion in other articles that she's responsible for the getaway car seems also to be unsupported by any actual physical evidence, in fact there appears to be NO forensic evidence at all to support the government's case. On the other hand, there's the usual evidence of the government stacking the deck: closed hearings, exculpatory evidence not admitted, defense expert witnesses not permitted to testify, 'modified' FBI interviews admitted... sound familiar yet?
This isn't the Judi Bari case, actual arson did occur, but does anyone remember how that one worked out? Exoneration plus a multi-million dollar civil verdict against the FBI? And have you ever looked into the ugly details behind it, the connections between the timber companies and the government? And remember this is very small potatoes compared to what the CIA does and has done routinely for decades.
I think many of you are WAY too eager to pass judgement here without looking behind the curtain.