WFB: The pro-life activist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s organ harvesting operations is planning to appeal a jury’s verdict in favor of the abortion giant.
On Friday, a California jury ruled that Center for Medical Progress head David Daleiden must pay $2.2 million to Planned Parenthood after he published a series of undercover videos in which employees candidly discussed harvesting and selling body parts from aborted babies. Daleiden’s attorneys said they are already planning an appeal, saying the lawsuit threatens the First Amendment.
“This case puts the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech on trial. It tests the sacred tenet of freedom of the press,” Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society said in a press release. “Planned Parenthood decided that it was above the law. Planned Parenthood was wrong, and I am confident that we will win on appeal.”
The jury found that Daleiden, an undercover journalist, is required to pay the damages to compensate for Planned Parenthood’s security costs and because the undercover journalism caused substantial harm to the organization.
Daleiden has argued that his undercover techniques were no different than those employed by traditional journalism organizations, pointing to a 2000 ABC News report in which 20/20 reporters posed as organ buyers.
Pro-life groups criticized the verdict, as well as federal judge William Orrick’s handling of the trial. Daleiden’s attorneys had called on the Obama appointee to recuse himself from the case, citing his involvement with a charity that works directly with Planned Parenthood. Orrick instructed the jury before deliberations that Daleiden illegally trespassed during the course of his investigation, according to the Daily Wire.
“I have already determined that these defendants trespassed at each of these locations. Because I determined that these defendants trespassed, the law assumes that Planned Parenthood has been harmed and is entitled to an award of nominal damages such as one dollar for each trespass,” Orrick told the jury.
Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress criticized the verdict as “a dangerous precedent for citizen journalism and First Amendment civil rights across the country.”
Daleiden faces both civil and criminal litigation. He is charged with recording the Planned Parenthood employees under false pretenses. The criminal case, which was launched by then-California attorney general Kamala Harris, is ongoing. read more
SNIP:
David Daleiden Twitter
DavidDaleiden.com
The Center for Medical Progress- youtube
Please spread their stuff around to help get the word out.
Legally, the jury did not have to do what the judge told them to decide. The jury may not have known that they have the power to decide what they want. Jury nullification. Also the judge did not have the legal right to instruct the jury in what to believe, or what to decide. So much for a just legal court.
This is a movie about injustice in the court, but a just jury, and a fighting defense lawyer
Outrage! (1986) Beau Bridges, Robert Preston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TplvHdB7arg
Even today, judges are known to send juries back to deliberation until they bring the decision the judge wants. The problem is planned ignorance, as you point out. They don’t know that’s not how trial BY JURY is supposed to work.
I’m going to grant that the judge was biased, and quite possibly the jury also was biased or else snowed. And that there may be an appeal merited on those grounds.
That said, I’m having a hard time with the case. Change the subject matter of the investigation. Make it a completely different business, whether lumber yard or car dealership or tech company or political campaign. Make the investigators people with an agenda, such as business competitors or politically-motivated do-gooders presuming wrongdoing (e.g. lack of “diversity” hiring practices, or antipathy toward a Christian company) where it may or may not exist.
They infiltrate the business under false pretenses, and violate individuals’ personal privacy, as well as the law, by surreptitious taping and leaking. They stay long enough to document miscellaneous errant employees (and there always could be some) saying or doing stupid things, legal or not. Or maybe stuff that’s just embarassing. (I also just recalled that Trump staffer who got drunk and said things about Ivanka to reporters.)
What has spying and breaking the law to do with the First Amendment?
I dunno.
I have to add.
PP’s practices are obscene and disgusting. In my opinion, illegal. Violations by the civilian investigators would not negate that. Both could be true. Where are the authorities against PParenthood, where are the charges. The lack of repercussions against PP is where I’m having a problem.
I do think we would want to limit these kinds of infiltration and spying operations to instances in which the object of the investigation is so serious that the journalists would be willing to take this risk and suffer the consequences.
What about the rights of the President to free speech when talking on the phone??? Oh, let me see that’s a crime.
Poor David didn’t stand a chance having this heard in CA. Thomas More Law is handling it pro bono. If,if,if you can spare a few dollars, please help ♥
to be expected from another gro-bama d-sucker “judge” & jury
Look at it this way – If things don’t get overturned, 2 mil is not a very big budget for a video documentary in the whole scope of things. Fiction and fabrication obviously costs a whole lot more when you consider what the democRATs have spent on their relentless pursuit of Donald Trump! Meanwhile President Trump is placing more and more Conservative judges every month!
A jury in CA?
Biggest mistake is not demanding a change of venue – to another state, if possible.
So, what’s thg is difference between the exposure of PP by Veritas and “cruel farming” by Peta?
If Peta can get away with it, so can Veritas.
I’d have hung that fucking jury until the Second Coming, the activist judge be damned.
Of course, I no longer get selected for juries: successful middle-aged businessman and former Marine, well-groomed, well-dressed, and well-spoken. The judge and empaneling attorneys make me Target Number One for peremptory dismissal every time.
Modern American courts don’t like people who can think for themselves. That’s the problem: voir dire is used as a tool to weed out anyone with free will and critical thinking skills. Both sides want a jury full of mental silly putty which they can mold to their will. Our justice system has become a bad joke.
Guilty of practicing Journalism without a license.
BTW, same Obama judge and donor that issued a nationwide injunction against Trump’s withholding fed funds from sanctuary cities, coordinated hundreds of thousands to Dems and sits on the board of a joint venture with Planned Parenthood.
But he doesn’t recuse himself from a case involving his business partners.
Orrick III.
BrassG, that is the plain truth. “Modern American courts don’t like people who can think for themselves.” But change “modern” to Marxist/Communist. The trial for Daleiden was blatantly a Communist show trial, not a Constitutional one.