Free Stater and journalist Sam Dodson, who also occasionally co-hosts the popular Free Talk Live in Keene, New Hampshire, has been released from jail after he was arrested for videotaping the lobby of the Keene District Court on April 13, 2009. Dodson had been confined to a cage mandated by Judge Burke, the same presiding officer of the Keene District Court who arrested Ian Freeman last November simply for not sitting down fast enough in the courtroom in the beginning of his arraignment on the charge for having a couch on his lawn.
Sam, 33, whose real name is Sam Miller (which was revealed in the Keene Sentinel on May 17* along with information regarding his malnutrition and health), had been languishing away in the Cheshire County Department of Corrections for nearly eight weeks following his arrest. The unexpected news of Dodson's release came out at approximately 2 p.m. EST, thanks to a NHUnderground poster by the name of Silent_Bob who posted on the website's forums that Sam's order "for his release was issued." At 3 p.m. EST, Sam left a message on Porc411, which reads as the following:
Hello free staters! This is SamIam and the jail has just thrown me out. The forced me to agree to PR terms that I’m already in violation of, I told them I did not understand. That I did not agree to them. I did not sign them. I requested my attorney who’s going to be here in 10 minutes. And they pushed me out the door, in the orange close. I guess I get to keep them. And gave me all my stuff. I was escorted out. They would not explain anything or put anything in writing. They were told just to release me and so I’m out of jail. Thank you guys for everybody who’s helped me, sent letters, cards, emails, done all the things you had to do to support me along the way and I’m looking forward to getting back to life and challenging a lot of this in court. Thank you, glad to be out, looking forward to talking all soon. Goodbye.
[*Note: The recorded .wav message that Sam sent was a tad bit shorter than the actual message posted on Bile's jailedactivist.info blog; here's the file.]
After his release, he was picked up by Free Stater Lauren Canario and brought to the Free Minds TV studio for an exclusive interview. Later that night, he appeared on FTL, resuming his duties as an occasional co-host. His preliminary trial is scheduled to commence at 1:30 p.m. EST at the same court where he was arrested -- Keene District Court in Keene, New Hampshire on June 15.
This is outstanding news, considering that the court had previously violated his First Amendment-protected, Fourth Amendment-protected, Sixth Amendment-protected, and Eighth Amendment-protected rights. After all, it was unconstitutional and federally illegal for Burke to arrest him on the bogus, trumped-up charges of
I, for one, wouldn't want a law enforcement goon putting his hands on me and cuffing me for any charge, especially when the charges for the alleged crimes happen to be nonviolent. Moreover, why would I want to bow down to the state just to give it my legal name in order "to be processed," when the authorities can access my driver's license and other pertinent information if they wanted to identify me really bad? My real name and identity are on record, and therefore, I am under no legal obligation to give them that information. Besides, if what happened to Sam had happened to me simply because I refused to "participate" in the government's process by playing by their rules in order to acknowledge its legitimacy (which is the best way the system is employing simply as a PR scheme), then it would show how thuggish they were to me. However, even if I did play by a court's rules and recognized its legitimacy simply by giving the officials my legal name, it wouldn't make a difference anyway. Would the court really let me go and not throw me in a cage simply because I "participated" in a process that was coerced upon me at gun point? I sincerely doubt it.
The court officials, including Burke, incarcerated Sam because they wanted to make him an example of him and made certain that they wanted to "be right." It looks like they never got their wish.
As I have said before, courts, even the federal ones, are supposed to be open and transparent under the terms of the Sixth Amendment, yet they are breaking their own rules and expect the public at large to follow them at taxpayers' expense. Courts forbidding the videotaping on their own property are, by all means, creating a toxic environment where closed and tyrannical courts reign. Because Americans are not told the truth about the vile actions of the courts (particularly when there are high numbers of abuses and corruption practiced by judges, prosecutors, and police officers on government-owned and government-run property), the court's image from a PR standpoint will more than likely sit well with the public. As I noted in my previous blog entry on the subject:
Considering the courts are mechanisms for public relations, if the American people see through their PR nonsense, and see them for what they really are (I prefer to call them "prison processing centers"), then the American public could revolt against these statist judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement "government" officers and fight the system at all turns.
I can definitely see a very massive civil rights and civil liberties lawsuit aimed at these stooges being filed shortly, if not the not-too distant future.
[Cross-posted at The Freeman Chronicles and the Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity Movement website.]
*This is the link to the Keene Sentinel's reporting on Sam's real identity.
[Update (5:51 p.m. EST): Here's Sam's full recording of his cell phone call to Porc411 he made yesterday at 3 p.m. EST]
Posts
