Additional examination of the
evidence has established a few points in the habeas document that need to be
more clearly.
Time Driveway
Empty: 9:30 – 9:45 PM
In the habeas document, the time that the driveway was empty is shown to be from 9:30 to 9:55 PM. A re-evaluation of the statements and testimony of Pat Gimothy, who passed the driveway at 9:45 PM, Sylvia Sellers, who must have passed the driveway between 9:45 and 9:50 PM and David McGaha who testified that he passed the driveway at 10:00 PM but must have passed the driveway about 9:55 PM, establishes that the victim’s car was alone in the driveway from 9:45 to about 9:58 PM.
Examination of the
trial testimony established that Mr. Gravitt responded to the district attorney as he had been
coached – that he first passed the muffler shop driveway between 9:40 and
9:50 PM. Later, still under direct examination by Porter, Mr. Gravitt slipped in his
testimony and testified to the effect that he first passed the driveway and
saw the blue lights at 9:57 or 9:58 PM. Because of the changing
weather conditions at about this time and other testimony, The 9:57 or 9:58
PM estimate is more in line with these events.
Collusion
Realized Only When Too Late for Complete Revision of Habeas
That
there was collusion between the district attorney Danny Porter and the lead
defense attorney during Michael Chapel’s trial was realized only just before
the deadline for the petition. A ground
on collusion was added to the petition, but there was no time to adjust the
entire document before the due date. The habeas court thus judged the material
in the collusion ground to be redundant.
Additional Notes:
Reddy stated that he
left the firehouse alone, and he did not mention a time. The testimony of the
firefighters only indicated that Reddy left the firehouse after Chapel. If, as
is most likely, Chapel left the firehouse about 9:55 PM, and Reddy followed
shortly thereafter, Reddy could well be the officer that passed the driveway
just after and then passed the Omodt/Kautter automobile for all of the reasons
given in the narratives of this event.
Why Porter Needed Fite’s Testimony On Chapel’s Raincoat
See Above under Collusion Realized.
Truth
is the greatest of all national possessions.
A
state, a people, a system which suppresses the truth or
fears
to publish it, deserves to collapse. – Kurt Eisner.
I'm
accused of murder here, and the truth ain't working. –
Police officers and
other law enforcement personnel are routinely trained not to tell the truth in
trial testimony by prosecutors to subvert the whole concept of truth. Police
academies train recruits in how to give testimony. Michael Chapel was trained
to do so by both his defense counsel Johnny Moore, when he was the chief
prosecutor in the district attorneys office, and by District Attorney Danny
Porter himself. The nexus of that training is to answer specific questions with
specific answers, usually out of context. Before each important trial they are
rehearsed in their testimony. Worst of all, the police will follow orders about
what they say on the witness stand. This perversion of what should be a sacred
oath is ubiquitous in this country and probably in most others. This perversion
and others are the result of the “us against them” concept that has developed
over the years in law enforcement.
Law
enforcement officials should not be given the privilege of swearing an oath
when giving testimony. To swear an oath requires that the attester knows the
meaning of the word honor and that they use that concept in their official
capacities. Police and other law enforcement officials routinely lie on the
witness stand, and the concept of the whole truth means nothing to them. Since
police officers cannot or will not or are ordered not tell the truth and the
whole truth on in official proceedings, they should not be allowed to swear
what to them is a meaningless oath, but courts should allow counsel to
interrogate them on the stand.
The police consider their primary function is not to “keep the peace” as Michael Chapel tried to do, but to make arrests that will stick. Prosecutors consider that their primary function is not to find “the truth” but to get convictions. Facts mean nothing to either of these groups, only form. The truth is the victim.
Trial courts
consider their primary function to be obtaining decisions that will not be
overturned on appeal. Facts mean nothing to these courts, only form. The truth
is the victim in the Michael Chapel trial was Michael Chapel, the trial court
allowed into evidence and testimony that had been egregiously shaped,
manufactured, hidden from the jury and other wise suborned by the police and
the district attorney. I am certain that I did not find every instance of
misconduct and obstruction of justice in Michael Chapel’s case, but I found many.
I have been shocked every time another of these instances works its way to the
surface when each time I think I have found them all, but certainly there must
be enough now shown to demonstrate the Chapel did not murder Emogene Thompson.
Appeals courts
consider their primary function to be the assurance that the trial courts
follow the correct form and that precedents are correctly applied. Facts mean
nothing to these courts, only form. The truth is the victim. These courts pay only
lip service to the facts and deny new evidence with outrageously constructed
bases. For example, the Supreme Court held that the hearsay evidence of the
victim’s friends was admissible because Chapel was identified as the officer
in the driveway. This is not true. Chapel was allegedly identified as the officer
that passed the Omodt/Kautter automobile when they were passed after Peachtree
Industrial Boulevard some 500 feet north of the driveway. The facts establish
that they could not have been the same police officer. The Supreme Court also
held that the recovery of the victim’s purse after the trial had no value
because that area had been searched
“thoroughly” one year after the murder. The facts establish that the purse
was buried, and that the search was conducted by two middle-aged officers and a
female reporter in a wooded area
that covered at least two acres, and the search was conducted in the dark.
The Supreme Court also held that Kelly Fite’s blood spatter analysis was valid
because the garment had
not been checked for human blood. The facts establish that Chapel’s
raincoat had been checked for human
blood on July 7, 1993 by a GBI serologist, and those stains found were
marked by the serologist. The additional stains found by Fite could not have
been human blood unless the garment had been
contaminated. Chapel’s habeas
court cited material that was grossly incorrect in denying his appeal to
obtain a writ.
This title should read “The
People and the Government”, but in this country they are supposedly the same.
It is becoming more and more the factual that the police decide prime suspects
in notorious cases on the flimsiest bases. One only has to refer to the
security guard who brought evidence to the police in the Olympic bombing case,
or the chemist in Maryland who is still being hounded by police in the 2001
anthrax letters case. In my own town, two 15-year-old high school girls were
found shot to death in the trunk of their own car after returning from some
function. When no suspects were immediately found, and the reward kept
mounting, a young man tried to bring evidence to the police, possibly in an
attempt to obtain some part of the reward, and he was arrested for the murders.
Even after a semen sample proved that another was probably responsible for this
outrage, the police still insisted that the young man was the murderer. They
would never give a basis for their arrest and continued confinement of the
suspect. Finally, a county grand jury had sense enough not to indict this man.
Otherwise he may well now be sitting in death row.
The easy drug money
that is so readily available to police officers and others in law enforcement
and these rushes to judgment resulting in arrests that are never acknowledged
as wrong by the police and prosecutors are just two of the reasons that the
people are losing confidence in the system of American justice. Soon, probably
very soon, the people will stop any cooperation with the police and prosecutors
lest they themselves be arrested and tried for the crime and the entire
infrastructure of jurisprudence in America will collapse. Just watch our own
cops shows on TV where the first thing the police do is to scream orders to get
on the ground and if they do not instantly comply throw people to the ground
then handcuff them. Or they will grab people on the streets and throw them
against the nearest wall or over the hood of the nearest car before searching
them, sometimes beating them with anything they have in hand in the excitement
of the moment. One can only admire the reserved English law enforcement system where
people “assist police in their inquiries”, hasty arrests are seldom made and
suspects are released with apologies when the evidence shows their innocence.
In America, this never seems to happen, as in Chapel’s case, if the facts show
that a suspect is innocent, the facts are changed or covered up.
The Object lesson for
the people in the Michael Chapel case to mind your own business, and when you
are confronted by law enforcement say nothing. This will destroy our system. Is
this what we want?
Newspaper accounts, affidavits and
proceedings of State Board being digitized for display in this section.
