Friday, July 31, 2015

NO BUDGET, NO TIME RECORDS AND NO TRAVEL RECORDS FOR Orlando State's Attorney JEFFREY LEE ASHTON's "INVESTIGATION" OF September 2, 2010 Michelle O'Connell Case

Update:  State's Attorney JEFFREY LEE ASHTON's office wrote and explained, " the O’Connell investigation did not have its own budget and, therefore, there are no budget documents specific to this investigation.  This fulfills your request as to #5."

#4        There are no specific travel authorizations, investigator and attorney time records and expense reports related to the O’Connell investigation. "

Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has quoted his father, who said, "Show me your budget, and I'll show you where your priorities are."   

No  budget, no time records, no travel records.  No meeting with the family.  No meeting with experts.   Leads that were not followed.  This is Flori-DUH corruption at its worst -- the third inept clueless State's Attorney investigation.

The painfully mismanaged JEFFREY LEE ASHTON report deserves FBI and Florida Bar investigation.  It reeks as badly as the "investigation" by the North Carolina District Attorney disbarred as a result of his false allegations of rape against Duke University lacrosse team players. 


The family lawyer for Michelle O'Connell's family, Benjamin Crump, has arranged for an independent autopsy.
Good news -- no longer will justice be delayed or denied by junk science.
No longer will the case be stymied by obstructionism by our $225,000/year Medical Examiner, PREDRAG BULIC. 
Michelle O'Connell was shot to death with Deputy JEREMY BANKS' service pistol in BANKS' residence, on September 2, 2010. 
The St. Augustine Record, our local newspaper, and our local law enforcement failed to perform their "watchdog" functions.
The case was never taken to a Grand Jury.
Evidence was not preserved and destroyed -- spoliation.
The O'Connell case was badly botched by inept incurious investigations by St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID BERNARD SHOAR, State's Attorney RALPH JOSEPH LARIZZA, Assistant ROBERT KEITH MATHIS and another State's Attorney BRADLEY KING, and another State's Attorney, JEFFREY LEE ASHTON, with enough defects to make this an international scandal.
But thanks to the FBI Corruption Task Force, the persistence of the O'Connell family, the majesty of the First Amendment -- and the will and skill of editor Anne Schindler, Folio Weekly, three-time Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Walt Bogdanich, The New York Times, investigative producer Glenn Silber, PBS FrontlineDateline NBC, First Coast NewsDr. Phil, investigator Clu Wright, reporter Susan Cooper Eastman and O'Connell family attorney Ben Crump, the case remains alive.
Florida Governor Richard Lynn Scott responded to some 180,000 petitions last October by appointing Special Prosecutor JEFFREY LEE ASHTON, the Orlando State's Attorney.  
Our Federal Bureau of Investigation is also investigating.
Commencing September 4, 2015,  St. Augustine will commemorate our Nation's Oldest European-founded City's 450th anniversary of founding by Pedro Menendez de Aviles on September 8, 1565.Let justice be done though the heavens fall. (Fiat justitia ruat caelum.)  
Expect pickets.
Let justice flow like a mighty river, in the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoting the prophet Amos.
Keep asking questions. 
Demand answers. 
Become involved. 
It's our town and our time and we're defeating corruption.
No more coverups.
Salud!
Venceremos!
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085
904-377-4998

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING:
The New York Times, "Two Gunshots on a Summer Night" by Walt Bogdanich & Glenn Silber (November 24, 2013): http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/two-gunshots/PBS/Frontline, "A Death in St. Augustine (November 26, 2013):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-in-st-augustine/ NBC News Dateline, "Two Shots Fired" (April 18, 2014):
Folio Weekly: Jeff Billman, "Somebody's lying -- An activist accuses the St. Augustine Record of bowing 
to pressure from Jeremy Banks' attorney. The paper accuses her of spreading misinformation" (September 17, 2014), http://folioweekly.com/SOMEBODYS-LYING-ST-AUGUSTINE-RECORD-ACTIVIST-JEREMY-BANKS,10912
Dr. Phil, "The Mystery of Michelle O'Connell" (November 3, 2014): http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/2298
Folio Weekly, "Murder, He Wrote," by Susan Cooper Eastman (November 19, 2014), http://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2014/11/michelle-oconnell-shooting-read-folio.html
Folio Weekly, "The Proxy War," by Derek Kinner (March 4, 2015): http://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2015/03/folio-weekly-deputy-jeremy-banks-and.html

Photo credit: The New York Times



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