prisonplanet.com — Matt Lepacek, the reporter who was kicked out of the CNN press room and arrested after asking Rudy Giuliani's staff a question, has now been released on bail. Criminal indictments are now being pursued against the police involved as well as Giuliani's staffers for their flagrant abuse of the First Amendment, assault and wrongful arrest.
Jun 6, 2007 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountJun 6, 2007
"The fact of this matter is that a qualified person (any American citizen, according to the 1st amendment of said Constitution), with further press credentials certifying and allowing his presence and ability to ask questions was removed from the post-debate events, simply for engaging in the very purpose derived from his, and many others in his same proverbial shoes; to ask questions based on political, social, and national curiosities which satisfy the ever-growing curiosity of a nation growing ever-curious."Okay, let me explain to you just how wrong you are. First of all, press credentials do not mean that you get to go anywhere you want or do anything you want. You can have press credentials but if you are ordered to leave a particular place for causing a disturbance you had better leave because if you don't you can be subject to arrest and imprisonment. Press credentials are generally not legal documents and have no legal standings. If the local police or whoever give you press credentials it's usually just to identify that they have checked with the media outlet that you work for to confirm your employment. It's doesn't mean that you can walk in to a crime scene or interfere with a fireman without being subject to arrest. It also doesn't mean that you can ignore a police officer's order. In most cases, members of the press are held to a higher standard by police than a common citizen because a member of the media is supposed to know better. This wasn't about the questions he was asking even though they were stupid and pointless. Many of the questions asked of politicians are stupid and pointless. It was his behavior that caused him to be asked to leave and it was his refusal that caused him to be arrested. From what I can see on the tapes and what I'm hearing here I can see no reason to believe that the police acted inappropriately at all.
Closed AccountJun 6, 2007
What makes the trespassing charge bogus? He was asked to leave and he refused. The cops tried to escort him out but he wouldn't go. At that point the cops had no choice but to arrest him for either trespass or disorderly conduct. If it had been me I'd have charged him with both. Looks like the cops gave him a break. If there's anything bogus about this entire affair it's this "reporter" from infowars. He did what he did precisely to cause something like this to happen so Alex Jones could exploit it for political and financial gain.
wrecklessrandyJun 6, 2007
Thank you God for heroes like this that are willing to put their butts on the line to get the truth out.
fiatlux88Jun 7, 2007
A) Giuliani told Jennings, "I--I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse." Sept 11, 2001<a class="user" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTSinAhJgVE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTSinAhJgVE</a>B) Giuliani replied by saying, "I didn't realize the towers would collapse." He later added, "No one that I know of had any idea they would implode. That was a complete surprise." May 29, 2007<a class="user" href="http://video.wnbc.com/player/?id=112179">http://video.wnbc.com/player/?id=112179</a>A and B are at variant, therefore either A or B is untrue or could it be that A and B are untrue and there is a C which is undisclosed?. Which is it Rudy?At best you are suffering from memory loss and should not be trusted with the presidency. Or, you are a lying fascist and should be doing the “perp” walk yourself, and spending the rest of your natural life in prison, not unlike your Mafioso father. <a class="user" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWdE8xeFHgs">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWdE8xeFHgs</a>
timemasterJun 8, 2007
@blueprintTurn on the sound and remove the rose coloured glasses.Arresting reporters for asking questions? You'll be hanging them from the lamp posts next to set an example.
timemasterJun 8, 2007
I think thats what Bush and his cronies has in mind for the majority of American Patriots!
codewarriorzJun 9, 2007
Earlier a poster asked "What makes the trespassing charge bogus? ".First off, the New Hampshire criminal statute is clear about what the elements of criminal trespass are. If you have two people in a room, and one says to the other "leave" and the other does not leave, this does not necessarily constitute a case of criminal trespass. Firstly, only an owner of the premises or an "authorized" person, can legally demand the person leave. Number two, the owner of the Spin Area apparently did not ask Mr. Lepacek to leave. Number two, Ed Goeas may not be, under New Hampshire law, an "authorized person". Number three, we need a transcript of both what Ed Goeas and Matt Lepacek are saying, and a timeline. Are there words by Ed Goeas directly to Matt Lepacek on the video in which Lepacek is asked directly to leave the premises? I haven't heard those words delivered by either an owner of the premises nor an "authorized person".Before assuming the elements of the New Hampshire criminal trespassing statute are in place ,. please review the actual statute cited below (or visit the link and read for yourself).THE EXACT LAW ON CRIMINAL TRESPASS LAWS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE <a class="user" href="http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/lxii/635/635-2.htm">http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/lxii/635/635-2.htm</a> CHAPTER 635UNAUTHORIZED ENTRIESSection 635:2635:2 Criminal Trespass. – I. A person is guilty of criminal trespass if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he enters or remains in any place. II. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor for the first offense and a class B felony for any subsequent offense if the person knowingly or recklessly causes damage in excess of $1,000 to the value of the property of another. III. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor if: (a) The trespass takes place in an occupied structure as defined in RSA 635:1, III; or (b) The person knowingly enters or remains: (1) In any secured premises; (2) In any place in defiance of an order to leave or not to enter which was personally communicated to him by the owner or other authorized person; or (3) In any place in defiance of any court order restraining him from entering such place so long as he has been properly notified of such order. IV. All other criminal trespass is a violation. V. In this section, ""secured premises'' means any place which is posted in a manner prescribed by law or in a manner reasonably likely to come to the attention of intruders, or which is fenced or otherwise enclosed in a manner designed to exclude intruders. VI. In this section, ""property,'' ""property of another,'' and ""value'' shall be as defined in RSA 637:2, I, IV, and V, respectively.Source. 1971, 518:1. 1979, 377:7, eff. Aug. 22, 1979. 2005, 125:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2006.
codewarriorzJun 9, 2007
As far as what police, or "ordinary people" will do, when they are "just following orders", please review the Milgram experiment.<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment</a>"The Milgram experiment was a seminal series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,[1] and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.[2]The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"[3] Or, put another way, why were there so many "Good Germans"?Milgram summed things up in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[4]"
suprememasterJul 7, 2007
Don't see many Christians these days.--I'm all of those things, too.
suprememasterJul 7, 2007
O.....k.....
lobotomyxxSep 7, 2007
. . . where is the part where you tell me how wrong I am? you took a semantic issue and made a big winded rant about it. 'press credentials' meant exactly what you said of it being equivalent to a piece of paper that says you checked in, and nowhere did i suggest otherwise.But thank you for your anti-democratic notion that some questions are stupid and can not be asked; I hope your vote helps instill such fascism round the world.