By BARBARA SIMPSON
(Editor’s Note: This article first appeared November 22 on World Net Daily [www.wnd.com] and is reprinted here with permission. All rights reserved. Barbara Simpson has a 20-year radio, TV, and newspaper career in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
(See also the related article on the Simpson trial on p. 1A of this week’s issue.)
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As I watch the news of what is transpiring in this country, I find it hard to continue believing that we have an honest system of justice under which good and truth ultimately will prevail — whether we’re talking about politics and the travails of President Trump against his political enemies, or federal trials held across the country that put the lives of American citizens in the hands of what appears to be biased federal judges and courts.
A most egregious verdict was handed down in San Francisco two weeks ago. A federal jury awarded Planned Parenthood Federation nearly $2.3 million in a case involving secretly taped interviews that revealed the organization is involved in the procurement and sale of baby parts.
Oh, you don’t know what “baby parts” are? Well, let me explain. We’re talking about actual parts of human babies, dead from abortions, cut into pieces and sold, part by part, for commercial use.
Companies that use the “parts” let Planned Parenthood know what parts/organs they want — brain, eye, liver, skin, you name it — and they will be provided, for a nice price. It is, after all, all about the money. Planned Parenthood charges for the abortion and then charges for the individual parts of the dead child it can sell. It all adds up.
It was a six-week trial with nine men and one woman on the jury, which deliberated only two days to reach a verdict. The charges were against the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), activists David Daleiden, Sandra Merritt, two board members and a phony company, Bio Max, which they created to support their effort to collect evidence against Planned Parenthood.
Daleiden and Merritt used false identities to go to PP centers and secretly tape interviews while pretending to represent a company wanting to purchase baby parts. It was a 30-month undercover investigation. The tapes were later posted online, and then everything “hit the fan.” I saw the videos, and they were shocking.
Planned Parenthood was furious and denied the accuracy of what the tapes showed. Their main defense was their claim that the tapes were edited to incriminate them. They called it a malicious campaign against PP by abortion foes, and of course, they got lawyers involved and sued.
The issues were fraud, illegal recording, trespassing, racketeering, and breach of contract — in that a promise to keep the information confidential was broken.
Keep in mind that the sale of human body parts in this country is illegal — whether of an infant or an adult.
You also need to know that the judge in this case, William H. Orrick III, is notorious in San Francisco for his biases — especially in this case.
He essentially undermined Daleiden’s case.
The judge refused to allow a First Amendment defense. He declared the defendants had trespassed in their undercover investigations.
The Daily Wire quoted Orrick as telling the jury that “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.”
Orrick also prohibited the jury from seeing all of the undercover videos shot by Daleiden and his group. According to David Daleiden, “The Planned Parenthood judge blocked the jury from seeing full evidence.”
How about politics?
Judge Orrick is the founder of a Planned Parenthood of Northern California Clinic in San Francisco in which his wife is active. She is known as an abortion activist. In addition, Orrick is an Obama appointee, was a bundler for the Obama campaign for some $230,000, and, as reported in Breitbart, is best friends with millionaire Democrat Tom Steyer who is running for president.
The defense early on requested that Orrick recuse himself from the case, but he refused. And so the “trial” continued.
The jury found for Planned Parenthood to the tune of $870,000 in punitive damages and $468,361 in compensatory damages for any “harm” the organization might have suffered.
But because the case was also carried under the federal anti-racketeering RICO law, the compensatory damages will be tripled to $1,405,083. As reported in Bay City News, Planned Parenthood attorney Jeremy Kamras said that makes the total award $2,275,083.
Acting Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson summed it all up, saying that Daleiden’s goal was to ban “safe, legal abortion” and prevent Planned Parenthood from “serving the patients who depend on us.”
The case will be appealed by the firm that defended Daleiden, the Thomas More Society. Chief Counsel Tom Brejcha said, “This case puts the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech on trial.
An important point to remember is that the judge ruled before the trial that journalism was not a defense against claims of illegal acts.”
David Daleiden posted a response on CMP’s website, and he minced no words.
“Justice was not done today in San Francisco. While top Planned Parenthood witnesses spent six weeks testifying under oath that the undercover videos are true and Planned Parenthood sold fetal organs on a quid pro quo basis, a biased judge with close Planned Parenthood ties spent six weeks influencing the jury with predetermined rulings and suppressing the video evidence.”
He called it a “dangerous precedent for citizen journalism and the First Amendment…sending a message that speaking truth and facts to criticize the powerful is no longer protected by our institutions.”
As far as I’m concerned, this is another example of this country going down a dangerous road to losing the foundation of our freedoms.
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