Martin Garbus on the new legal step in the case of the Cuban Five

Press conference with lawyer Martin Garbus on the new legal step in the case of the Cuban Five

Martin Garbus, a renowned First Amendment and civil rights attorney, who joined the Five’s legal defense team in April, 2012 held on Monday 20 a press conference on a new affidavit that supports Gerardo Hernández’s habeas corpus appeal and seeks the overturning of his wrongful conviction, based on the government’s massive misconduct, with its multi-million-dollar payments to Miami journalists during the Five’s prosecution.

If Judge Joan Lenard does not agree to Hernández’s appeal to vacate the conviction, the affidavit asks the Court to order discovery and grant an oral hearing. The objective of discovery is full exposure of the government’s illegal and secret operation. Knowledge of the government payments to “independent” journalists was first revealed in a Sept. 8, 2006 Miami Herald article.

The affidavit states that:

“The Courts cannot permit the integrity of American criminal trials to be made vulnerable to prosecutorial manipulation directed specifically to the trial outcome, which is then shielded from examination by assertions of classification and national security privilege.“

The 82-page Affidavit concludes in part with:

“Every dollar for every article, image, radio or television show that was spent on this secret program violated the integrity of the trial. That is why the prosecutor resists discovery. 

“Every person who decided to pay , paid, took funds, or covered up those payments in this secret program, violated the integrity of the trial. That is why the prosecutor resists discovery. 

“It is surprising to see this prosecutor so minimize the effect of the printed and spoken word. It is as if the founders of this government, American history, the Constitution, and the First Amendment, never existed. 

“The fundamental concept of a fair trial was negated as the Government created a consistently intolerable influence that is structural error. 

“Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. was not responsible for this prosecution when it began. He is now. Movant’s conviction should be vacated. The Department of Justice should forward the facts of these events to the President and Congress so that we may hope that this will never happen again in the United States.”

Listen to Martin Garbus press conference

http://www.freethefive.org/multimedia/audio/MartinGarbus82012.mp3

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