Trial by website - Part 2

This is is a continuation of the earlier hub, “Trial by website.” It furthers the story of how a forthcoming felony trial is possibly being manipulated by the accuseds and their various supporters. The first hub, mentioned above, was based on court documents and media reports. This sequel hub is based on media reports, some of which reports are articles written by or on behalf of the accused themselves, plus my own suppositions as to what may be going on.

I came away from this current study thinking, “If you believe that this sort of thing cannot happen to you, then you had best think again.” The setting for your downfall may not be in the courthouse. It could be in your home, at work, at school, on the sports team – anywhere and anytime.

It all depends upon who it is that can be influenced into causing you problems, talked into doing so by your enemies, enemies you know of or perhaps even enemies you did not know you had. I suppose that is where that commonly voiced question began, "Who would have thought?"

As of now, the trial of the accused pair, Frederick Ray Akins and Edward Shauberger, is scheduled to start in the Liberty County (Texas) Courthouse at nine o'clock on the morning of September 7, 2011. the pair are accused of committing multiple felonies – “tamper with government record defraud/harm” and “engage in organized criminal activity.” (Those are the descriptions of the charges as listed on the district clerk's Internet site.) Their trial has been pending for a very long time. During that pendency, both of the accuseds have vigorously declared their innocence of the charges against them despite the documents forming the physical evidence in the matter. Plus there is also the already adjudicated knowledge of their having worked together in the defrauding of a small company - the company they had tried to take over.

During the long waiting time prior to the forthcoming trial, the website (blog) to which they ascribe, LibertyDispatch.com, has published article after article complaining about their adversaries – the state and local officials, lawmen, news media people, and those victims they defrauded. None of their complaining has been what you might call “genteel” in language and manner. In fact, most of it has been very course, full of name-calling, and replete with lots of half-baked information that the uninitiated might mistake as factual. (Check out the LibertyDispatch.com website and you will see what I mean.)

Inexorably, calendar pages flip. Trial day gets closer and closer. What should accuseds do but to try their best to become un-accuseds, right?

So, let's do a bit of conjecturing.

The case against these guys is built around physical evidence and adjudicated association of the two accuseds in the predecessor fraud case. That civil suit is now largely completed in a different court, a court located in an entirely different venue. Looking at that situation, it is difficult to see how the accuseds can wiggle out of hard, physical evidence and court-recorded facts in the earlier civil trial. Even so, the application of evidence in a new and criminal trial has to be “by the book,” and “the book” is in the hands of the judge and the prosecutor. In this particular felony case, the judge is new to this courtroom, having only recently been elected to that post. The prosecutor assigned by the district attorney's office is one of the District Attorney's long-time assistants, Joe Warren. If another prosecutor must for some reason be appointed in Warren's place, the trial might again be delayed, abandoned altogether, or simply thrown into confusion and disarray such that the accuseds walk away free and exonerated. Were you or I one of the accuseds, we might very well consider getting out from under the ready-to-roll prosecutor, might we not?

Now, let's walk back away from the felony case in point and follow along the twisty old road down which we could possibly chase our at-the-ready prosecutor, Joe Warren.

A Harris County Sheriff Deputy, one Louis Guthrie, was relieved of his job by the sheriff after having led a multi-sheriff-unit “raid” on a local car wash establishment when Guthrie's wife complained of “being robbed” of about $16 from her car as it was being washed there. According to the tales about this firing, Guthrie's “raid” was a final straw that broke the sheriff's back, so to speak. Out went Guthrie. He was hired by the newest sheriff of Liberty County and was assigned as an investigator. Guthrie was obviously possessed of enthusiasm, but perhaps was not renowned for his common sense. Some might have thought of Guthrie as some sort of “wild-hair” type. In fact, many may have thought of him as a lawman with a hair-trigger mind.

Also, a little more than a year in the past, the assistant District Attorney, Joe Warren, had quite a squabble with his next-door neighbors, people by the name of Strawn. It seems the Strawn's two pit bull dogs got into Warren's yard somehow and killed Warren's dog. This caused Joe Warren to become most unhappy such that, when one of the Strawn human males came onto Warren's property, Warren told the man to leave or Warren would shoot him with the gun he was toting, the gun he had in hand probably to be able to shoot a pit bull dog or two. The Liberty police were called. They arrived, investigated the fussing, the dogs, and the gun-toting Joe Warren, and then the police left the scene without citing or arresting anyone except for impounding the two pit bull dogs.

Several weeks ago, Joe Warren, the Assistant District Attorney, the prosecutor for the Akins/Shauberger felony trial, found himself on the receiving end of an arrest warrant for what had occurred more than a year ago in the long-closed Warren/Strawn/Pit Bull Dog squabble incident. The many-page accusational affidavit was personally prepared and signed by Sheriff Deputy Investigator Guthrie. Guthrie, after having taken a complaint about Warren from someone, thus became Warren's accuser. Guthrie's affidavit became the basis for issuance of the Warren arrest warrant. All of the Liberty judges and magistrates refused to issue the warrant, so it was issued by a magistrate in a different jurisdiction. The Liberty County Sheriff has declined awareness of his deputy's doings in this matter. The District Attorney says he did not know about it. There was no grand jury indictment involved. Likewise, the County Attorney claims to have no knowledge of any plan to arrest Joe Warren.

Indeed, you might want to protect yourself from all of the wind being generated in and around Liberty, Texas, due to all of the head shaking and skull scratching going on.

Just the other day, Akins' defense attorney, a lawyer named James D. Evans, III, asked the court to remove Joe Warren from his prosecutorial duties in the Liberty County District Courts due to his being charged with one or more felonies. Akins' attorney is also a defense attorney for accuseds other than Frederick Ray Akins, and his motion was made to the court seemingly only on behalf of three of those other cases.

Below is a part of the addressing of the attorney's motion to the court in one of those other cases:

"STATE OF TEXAS
VS.
MICHAEL AARON CLIFTON
CAUSE NO.: CR28756
IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF LIBERTY COUNTY, TEXAS 75th JUDICIAL DISTRICT
MOTION TO DISQUALIFY OPPOSING COUNSEL,
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY, JOE WARREN,
FROM PROSECUTING DEFENDANT'S CASE"

(Source: LibertyDispatch.com)

“DA Mike Little- a pathological liar... He lies to the people and judges of Liberty County as he keeps an accused criminal felon in his office and prosecuting cases like everyone in Liberty County is a bunch of idiots. Vanesa Brashier of the Cleveland Advocate and Dayton News is clearly spinning lies to protect Mike Little's lies. Vanesa Brashier must also think everyone in Liberty County is an idiot to fall for her lies too.” LibertyDispatch.com

(Note the really lawsuit-risky structure of the above LibertyDispatch.com quotation. The writer is referring to the District Attorney's worker as a criminal felon who is "accused" - rather than describing him as a person accused of felony. Kinda risky saying stuff like that, wouldn't you think? The writer also would have us believe that the editor of several newspapers, plus the district attorney, Mike Little, are bigtime liars, the latter being a "pathological liar.". What surprises me is that the people so often and so crudely attacked by LibertyDispatch.com do not simply sue the pants off of those who write such things.)

Anyway -

The question might be asked if all of this new activity on a very old, closed neighbor-squabble case might have been inspired and promoted by Frederick Ray Akins and his LibertyDispatch.com friends and supporters. Take a look at his LibertyDispatch.com website and form your own opinion. Did the Liberty Dispatch crowd have friendship and/or dealings with the Strawns, with Guthrie, and with Attorney Evans? Were those folks open to influence and suggestion? Who opened up the Strawn case and why? Why Guthrie and not a grand jury, or a judge, or the County Attorney, an official by the name of Wes Hinch?

Interesting, this "Trial by website." is it not?

"Wait, there is more..."

Well, there is bound to be a lot of water flowing down the Trinity River over there in Liberty County before all of this Akins/ Shauberger/ Warren/ Strawn/ Guthrie/ Little/ Brashier/ et al mess comes to some possibly lasting conclusion, but that all depends...

First of all, the weather has to cooperate. Rain is needed. Lots of rain is needed to get the water flowing. This whole area has been in drought seemingly forever and the "burn bans" have been in effect for ages. Maybe they will never go away - much like the Akins/Shauberger trials that never seem to get started.

However, I'll try to keep abreast of developments in this continuing legal adventure such that you will be involved right to the finish. My fear is that the nutcase half of Liberty County residents will be after me at the urging of the LibertyDispatch.com crowd, and, as do those goofy Islamist types, try to remove my typing fingers before the Akins/Shauberger tale comes to an end.

Wish me luck.