A Personal Aside

    I am going to set aside continuing the topic of [*]'s affidavit for tomorrow. Instead, today I wanted to talk about something more general.
Last night, I was watching Heroes on NBC. Anyone following the show knows that the present storyline basically revolves around Peter's brother, as US Senator, forming an extra-legal organization to capture and contain people with powers, ie, the heroes. But Peter had a line last night that really struck home and I wanted to go off-topic today and talk about this a bit while it was still fresh.
    Last night, Peter retrieved a video file that showed government officials taking US citizens, hooded and shackled, into custody without trials. The line that Peter says is something to the effect of, "What would people do if they knew they were abducting US citizens on US soil and holding them without trial?" Of course, that's paraphrased, but it gets across the general message. Ironically enough though, that is almost exactly what is going on in Montana and has been for decades at least!
    As I have previously said, anyone who is charged with a crime in Montana immediately loses the first two safeguards of criminal justice: the rights to a grand jury and to challenge probable cause. But it's a bit more complex than that...
    Essentially, the way it works in Montana is that any prosecutor can allege a crime was committed, submit that accusation before a judge and have that person arrested without that person even being forewarned that such an allegation has been made. It's the ultimate blindside. If John Doe is not liked by a prosecutor for any reason, all that prosecutor needs to do is submit an application to file an information and have the judge, acting solely upon the prosecutor's sworn statement (though the law actually requires that the statement be "supported by evidence", the courts in Montana consider the affidavit as the evidential requirement), can determine probable cause and have Mr. Doe arrested. After that, since the determination of probable cause has already been made, Mr. Doe does not get a preliminary examination of evidence hearing to challenge probable cause.
    Of course, everyone thinks that a person arrested can bond out while waiting for trial. However, this does not happen properly in Montana. The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution provides for no excessive bonds, which basically means that a person be permitted a bond which they can reasonably pay. Unfortunately, in Montana the entrenched system relies upon keeping accused people in jail and they routinely post excessive bonds upon people accused to keep them incarcerated. And I have personally witnessed the courts in Flathead County actually raise the bond amount if a person actually manages to raise the original bond amount! The idea here is that the system is designed to first deprive a person of his liberty without constitutionally mandated protections and then to keep that person incarcerated indefinitely in order to coerce them into accepting plea deals or to provide the State an exorbitant amount of time to railroad an accused into a conviction.
    Take my own experiences. I sued the City of Kalispell and became a political enemy to those in power in local government. When it became clear that they could not really defend against my suit, the powers that be elected to remove me from my own support structure by charging me with a crime that had been previously investigated and dismissed. They filed for an information and got an arrest warrant issued on February 20, 2004, and then sent that warrant to Washington to have me arrested that night in Goldendale. I grand jury was never convened and my later pushes to get one convened were ignored. A week after I was arrested, the State did the same thing to arrest [*], my girlfriend and business partner, and [*]'s mother, upon a fabricated claim of witness tampering.
    Keep in mind, [*] never supported [*]'s accusation, except for the brief period following being told by Officer Myron Wilson that I had a "prior record" (which I proved through police and sheriff records to be untrue). She knew her daughter's penchant for lying and knew the background of the allegation well enough to know that [*]'s story did not add up. As such, [*] was a staunch supporter of my innocence and as such I had entrusted all of the original documents that exonerated me into her care when I went to Washington. It never occurred to me that the authorities would go after her or that she would bow to threats if some kind of pressure was exerted. Proves how badly I misjudged [*]...
    At any rate, the point here is that the local authorities were able to remove a political enemy and isolate him from his support structure without any constitutional prerequisites. After a week, when it became obvious that I would continue to have support from [*] (all outgoing communications from jail, both phone and post, are monitored and while I was in Washington, they were being conveyed to Kalispell authorities), the authorities trumped up a false charge on her and had her arrested. They released [*] after roughly a week in jail (I have never been able to get exact dates), but she was only released upon the very specific limitations that she would have no contact with me, direct nor indirect, and that she would not provide me any access to my personal or business records or assets. Effectively, the local authorities not only isolated me, but completely severed me from my primary source of external support.
    After this, a rumor began circulating that got back to me that anyone who supported me in any way would go to jail, just like [*]. I heard this from Carrie Beth Mountjoy in a phone call shortly after [*]'s arrest, and she said that the person who had started the rumor was James Valentino, a volunteer worker for the youth program, and another volunteer, Joe (whose last name I cannot recall), joined in shortly thereafter. Conveniently enough, both of these "gentlemen" were engaged also in trying to court [*] (according to reports from another friend, both were publicly kissing [*] and being very physically affectionate within Arcadia). Joe, by the way, succeeded and [*] cheated on me with him within a month of my arrest. Irregardless, the rumor was devastating and led to every single person I ever knew turning their back on me - the explanation that was given to me by one such "friend" was that noone could afford to go to jail and lose their jobs and families and such.
After all of this, I ended up sitting sixteen months in jail prior to a trial that was little more than a kangaroo court. The assigned public defender worked for the State, not for me, and refused to challenge any impropriety. And as a result, I was falsely convicted of a crime I did not commit.
    The point of all of this is that the threat of US Citizens being arrested on US soil without constitutional protections is already going on. And everyone is ignoring it. So what happens when the public learns of these things? Well, so far, very little - the public either does not care or they simply choose not to believe that any of this is true. But I've lived through it and I can assure you that all of it, and much more, is tragically very, very true...
    Benjamin Franklin said, "Let us all hang together, or surely we shall all hang separately." So why is noone else willing to hang with me to oppose this corrupt agency in our midst?
    Okay, enough on this - tomorrow I will return to the account of [*]'s affidavit...

Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004