Wednesday 15 March 2017

DALLAS 6 UPDATES: Another Legal Victory for Dallas 6 member Carrington Keys

Another Legal Victory for Dallas 6 member Carrington Keys
In 2016, Carrington Keys filed a lawsuit against several parole board agents alleging retaliation, discrimination and falsification of reasons to deny parole, among other charges of conspiring with prosecutors to indefinitely detain petitioner and coercion to confess to charges of “riot” in violation of 5th amendment right to remain silent about an open case. A local judge decided to dismiss this suit on grounds that a prisoner could not challenge board decisions, claims were frivolous and the court lacked jurisdiction.
Keys disagreed with the judges clearly erroneous and bias decision, therefore he appealed. The higher court agreed with Keys, which included the president judge of the commonwealth court. 
 
The commonwealth court issued an order January 4th, 2018 which reversed the lower court's dismissal of the suit. (see memorandum and order). 
 
The parole board will now be forced to defend themselves in court. Keys said, they will not be given any breathing room. Long live the Dallas 6!
This is one of four pending Pro Se lawsuits Carrington hasin the courts including cases against the Pennsylvania DOC and two newspapers who maliciously reported lies after his victory in court on the Dallas 6 case.
Victory is not to the swift but to those who endure all the way until the end.
Link to memorandum opinion and court order:


Tuesday 12 April 2016

Court Report Mon April 11 – Day 5 of the Dallas 6 Trial

MAKE A DONATION! Online at http://tinyurl.com/rally4dallas6 or send check/money order payable to Abolitionist Law Center, P.O. Box 8654 Pittsburgh PA  15221  Memo line: Dallas 6

DROP THE CHARGES!  For those who can’t make it to the trial but want to show support, please take part in a CALL-IN/FAX-IN to the DA demanding she drop charges. Details and talking points at - http://tinyurl.com/dallas6letter

UPDATE: Closing arguments Wed morning (April 13), jury verdict could come anytime after. Let’s pack the court! Contact us about rides from Philadelphia (see below).

Prison official witnesses contradict themselves; more video proof.
·  Lt Mozier testified today that he did not order pepper spray and "no one was sprayed," yet the video of the debriefing after Andre Jacob's extraction, played just after his testimony shows him saying, "OC [pepper spray] was applied to the front and back of the cell."
·  That and Lt Mozier saying only "OK" twice, without issuing further orders leading up to the extraction lends credence to Andre's defense that the cell extraction was planned ahead and staged.
·  The video of the debriefing after Carrington Keys' extraction shows that nowhere does Lt Mozier say that feces was flung, as previously stated by the 6 guards. Nowhere can you see feces on the uniforms or shields of the same guards, and all the officers report "no injuries sustained" and "no concerns."
·  Lt Martin testified, "I don't remember Captain Wilson asking to speak to the defendants" (during the investigation into the "riot" charge) while Captain Wilson had said in his testimony that the men told Lt Martin that they wouldn't "effing" speak to him.
·  Captain Bromsburg contradicted himself and other testimony that cell extraction always happens when prisoners refuse to comply with orders to remove the covers from the windows when he said that "every situation is different, every lieutenant is different." 
·  Bromsburg also said he didn't remember that when he was at SCI Mahanoy, 17 inmates covered their cell doors but none of them were extracted, that he had ordered only misconduct charges. 
·  Those two statements are significant because the prosecution is saying that the men knew that cell extraction would be the result of their actions and that they were coercing officials to extract them and therefore it is a "Riot".
·  Robin Lucas, Asst to the Superintendent, who herself was named in a lawsuit from Andre Jacobs, read out loud a letter from HRC outlining the torture Andre experienced and his request to be separated from named prison officials. 
·  Video from a fixed camera during the cell extraction showed Dep. Superintendent Mooney making a hand gesture which appeared to mimic firing a handgun, which he said was just to signal that their fire suppression equipment needed attention.
·  The prosecution produced prison logs stating that in April the prisoners had been contacted by their "counselors" and there were “no complaints”, that therefore the prisoners hadn't utilized a complaint channel open to them, while the defendants said they made official, written complaints directly to the pertinent authorities every chance they got, that counselors don't have authority over those matters and that one counselor serves 90-100 prisoners.  Carrington raised that his mother and Pastor had been calling on his behalf.
·  Attorney Wiseman got Deputy Mooney to agree that by asking to speak to an attorney, Duane Peters was making an attempt at dialogue and the psychologist on their hostage negotiating team could have responded to that and sought to break the impasse without cell extraction/use of force.