Bridge of Lions Reopens, Now We Can Get Our Public Forum Back

In 2005, United States District Court Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr. ruled that our Bridge of Lions is a public forum and that the City of St. Augustine cannot discriminate against GLBTQ people. He ordered Rainbow flags to fly from June 7-13, 2005 in honor of St. Augustine GLBTQ Pride Week, recognizing 11,000 years of G/L history here.

Now that our Bridge of Lions has been rebuilt, it's time for human rights to be respected here.

Our City claimed the right to regulate flags on a state-owned bridge -- an issue that was not known to the Federal Court.

The Lighthouse Festival, 40th Accord and other community groups were historically allowed to fly their flags from our Bridge (as well as the Broward Yacht Company and Flagler College).

After the Rainbow Flags flew in 2005, City Commissioners ERROL JONES, DONALD CRICHLOW and GEORGE GARDNER voted to ban all but government flags from our Bridge. That would include the Confederate, US, UN, Spanish, French, British, South African, Florida and Micronesian flags, but not the Rainbow flag.

This resolution must is a mockery of the First Amendment. It must be undone.

Then-Commissioner, now-Mayor JOSEPH BOLES, was the lone dissenter who voted against the government flags resolution. BOLES was the only one to vote correctly twice -- BOLES also voted (with SUSAN BURK) against the three-vote majority that the Federal Court found violated our First Amendment.

We look for moral leadership on this important First Amendment issue to Mayor BOLES -- who has twice spoken to Gay Pride audiences in recent years, and who gave two outstanding speeches on civil rights on the occasion of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday (at the Slave Market Square and World Golf Village), again at Rev. Andrew Young's presentation of "Crossing in St. Augustine" at Flagler College, also lighting a Menorah on Hannukah at the Plaza.

The Lighthouse, 40th Accord, Gay Pride and other community groups must again be empowered to fly their flags on our Bridge of Lions.

It's our town and it's our public forum.

What do you reckon?

American Bar Association: Fifth Circuit, En Banc, Upholds Kidnapping Conviction of Alleged KKK Member

Media Alerts on Federal Courts of Appeals

Case Name: U.S. v. Seale

Headline: Fifth Circuit Upholds Kidnapping Conviction of Alleged KKK Member

Area of Law: Criminal

Issue(s) Presented: (1) Whether the Government's forty-year delay in bringing an indictment was done in bad faith. (2) Whether the defendant's statement to the FBI should be suppressed for failure to provide a Miranda warning. (3) Whether the evidence was relevant and sufficient to support conviction.

Brief Summary: James Ford Seale was convicted of a 1964 kidnapping associated with his alleged membership in the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). A prior Fifth Circuit panel reversed his conviction as time barred, but the en banc court reinstated the conviction. Hearing the remaining issues of Seale's appeal, the Fifth Circuit rejected all of his challenges to the lower court proceedings and affirmed his conviction.

Extended Summary (if applicable): The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld James Ford Seale’s kidnapping conviction by a 2-1 vote. Seale, allegedly a member of the KKK, was charged with conspiring with fellow KKK members to kidnap and murder two African-American men in 1964. Believing the victims to be Black Panthers who were stockpiling guns and planning an insurrection, Seale and his co-conspirators allegedly beat the victims and then dumped their bodies into the Mississippi River. The Government lacked the evidence necessary to prove the elements of the crime until 2007, when Charles Edwards, one of the alleged coconspirators, provided enough information for the Government to obtain an indictment against Seale. Seale was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by a jury in 2007. In 2008, a Fifth Circuit panel unanimously reversed his conviction, concluding that Seale’s prosecution was time barred. However, the full Fifth Circuit disagreed with the panel decision, reinstating Seale’s conviction by an equally divided 8-8 vote. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and the Fifth Circuit was asked to decide the remaining issues of Seale’s appeal. Although the court had already rejected the argument that Seale’s conviction was time barred, he raised the argument that the indictment was brought after unfair delay. He claimed that the Government intentionally delayed the indictment in bad faith in order to seek some tactical advantage. The court rejected this argument, noting that the primary reason for the delay was a lack of evidence. A prosecutor has a duty not to bring an indictment until he has sufficient evidence to prove each element of the underlying crime. In this case, the Government did not have enough evidence until Edwards came forward. Although the Government did not bring charges for more than forty years after the crime, there was a reasonable basis to justify the long delay. Seale also argued that statements he made to the FBI when he was first arrested in 1964 should not have been admitted at trial. He claimed that he was not given a Miranda warning and was coerced into providing a statement. The court acknowledged that Seale should have been given a Miranda warning but declined to reverse his conviction on this basis because he failed to raise the proper challenge at his trial. Seale raised several other arguments regarding the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence introduced at trial. The court held that the trial judge and jury had opportunities to consider these issues and were better-suited to evaluate issues of relevance and credibility of witnesses during the trial. Judge Harold DeMoss, who authored the original Fifth Circuit panel opinion that had reversed Seale’s conviction, dissented from the majority opinion, again stating his view that Seale’s conviction should have been reversed. He first reiterated his position that the entire prosecution was time barred by law. He also opined that Seale had raised the Miranda issue at trial indirectly, and thus that the conviction should have been reversed because Seale was not read a Miranda warning prior to his statement to the FBI in 1964. The full opinion may be downloaded here: http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/07/07-60732-CR3.wpd.pdf.

Panel (if known): Davis, Smith, DeMoss

Argument Date:

Argument Location:

Date of Issued Opinion: 03/12/2010

Docket Number: 07-60732

Decided: Affirmed

Counsel: Tovah R. Calderon and Jessica Dunsay Silver for the United States; Kathryn Neal Nester and George Lowrey Lucas for James Ford Seale

Author: Davis

Circuit: 5th Circuit

FLORIDA MODERN-DAY SLAVERY MUSEUM COMING TO ST AUGUSTINE

FLORIDA MODERN-DAY SLAVERY MUSEUM COMING TO ST AUGUSTINE

MARCH 24, 2010 (Wednesday)

10 AM to 6 PM

FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH - REAR LOT

Corner of King and Riberia Streets

Sponsored by Unitarian Universalist Church

And

First Coast Slow Food Movement

The Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum consists of a cargo truck outfitted as a replica of the trucks involved in a recent slavery operation (U.S. v. Navarrete, 2008), accompanied by displays on the history and evolution of slavery in Florida.

The museum's central focus is on the phenomenon of modern-day slavery – its roots, the reasons it persists, and its solutions. The exhibits were developed in consultation with workers who have escaped from forced labor operations as well as leading academic authorities on slavery and labor history in Florida.

The museum will be in the back parking lot - off Riberia St. - look for signs.

CNN Hires Racist, Misogynist Homophobe ERICK ERICKSON to Appear Regularly On-Air

Dear Mr. Feist:
1. Erick Erickson is a homophobe, a racist, a misogynist and a potty-mouth, who has no business appearing on CNN as a regular.
2. Please explain your actions in hiring him in order that I might learn about the psychopathology of a “news” organization that just hired someone who compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler.
3. My father machine-gunned Nazis for the 82nd Airborne, jumping out of airplanes to do so. My father was wounded in Normandy and wore pieces of Nazi shrapnel in his knee from 1944-2003, when he died. Comparing our President to Nazis is offensive to every person who lost kinfolk in the Holocaust and sequelae, including the families of some 300,000 Americans who gave their lives fighting fascism.
4. CNN’s hiring of Mr. Erickson is morally offensive and shows a lack of appreciation for the public interest.
5. CNN is biased, pro-Big Business, and lacks journalistic integrity. As a former newspaper editor recommended for a Pulitzer Prize for exposing Oak Ridge mercury pollution, I find your coverage of environmental racism lacking. Ever since the CNN investigative unit was disbanded and reporters like Steve Singer and David Lewis were discharged, CNN has been mediocre, at best.
6. FAIR reports that Erickson stated that President Obama won the Nobel Prize because of "affirmative action quotas" (Think Progress, 10/9/09). He's a misogynist who suggested that "feminazis were enraged" by an anti-abortion Super Bowl ad because "that's what being too ugly to get a date does to your brain." He urged that "ugly feminists return to their kitchens" (Media Matters, 2/8/10) . He's a homophobe who asserted that "the full gay rights agenda" means that "men and boys can have sexual relationships free of prudish moral people frowning" (Media Matters, 10/9/09). As a Gay man I find this to be blood libel, the sort of thing that encourages hate crimes, including murder. Erickson is an all-around hater who, upon Justice David Souter's retirement, called him "the only goat-fucking child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court" (Crooks and Liars, 5/1/09). He declared that White House spokesperson Linda Douglass "really is the Joseph Goebbels of the White House healthcare shop" (TPM, 10/12/09). Meanwhile, he suggested that Obama might be worse than Hitler, writing, "Does it say more about the IOC or Obama that the IOC gave Hitler the Olympics, but not Obama?" As if that weren't enough, he's also an advocate of political violence (Yglesias, 4/1/09): “At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to Hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot? At some point soon, it will happen. It'll be over an innocuous issue. But the rage is building. It's not a partisan issue.... Were I in Washington state, I'd be cleaning my gun right about now waiting to protect my property from the coming riots or the government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation.” (The “tyranny” against which he was calling for armed resistance involved regulation of dishwashing soap.)
7. I look forward to your explanation and apology for hiring Erickson. You should cancel his contract for good cause.

Sincerely,
Ed Slavin
Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-829-3877