An Open Letter to the Governor of Virginia --PARDON FRED WEBER
Caryl Rosenthal
June 15, 2007
OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR TOM KAINE OF VIRGINIA:
PARDON FRED WEBER and while you are at it,
GET TO THE BOTTOM OF CORRUPTION IN NORFOLK PROSECUTORS and MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICES
Frederick Arnold Weber, Inmate number 246175, is presently incarcerated at Lunenberg Correctional Facility in Victoria, Virginia, where he has been since 1996 waiting for the chance to clear his good name. Now may be the time because of the Duke LaCrosse team and the prosecutor who now stands in front of the North Carolina Bar for ethical violations. The public is finally aware of the damage an entrenched prosecutor can cause.
The unfortunate Duke LaCrosse player, Reid Seligman, one of the accused who has been completely cleared by the state’s attorney general, has had to endure scorn of former black friends. Fred Weber has had to endure almost twelve years of loss of his freedom because of the same kind of prosecutorial shenanigans as perpetrated against innocent people by Mike Nifong, the North Carolina prosecutor who is actually looking for excuses to explain himself.
Fred isn’t from the side of the tracks where LaCrosse teams are formed. He is from the other side, where he is one of two sons of a single mother who wanted to be a minister of the gospel, served in Desert Storm as an E-5 in the United States Navy, and was convicted of second degree murder of his 30-day son with such evidence as an autopsy report which had listed, as the cause of death, “Shaken Baby Syndrome,” (SBS)a question of fact at best. God, that sounds horrible – what kind of a man would do that to an infant, he deserves worse than the 23 years he got. That is exactly what the prosecution counted on, and used the help of the medical examiner to make sure the point was driven home. Luckily, Fred is white, a refreshing change from the usual perpetrator for this class of crime, and he couldn’t afford top legal talent, though he had a private attorney. In retrospect, he would have been better off with someone from the public defender’s office.
Actually, with a "diagnosis" of SBS, which, according to supporting testimony of the medical examiner, the infant had to be assaulted with tremendous force, yet in her own written report, there were no injuries consistent with the diagnosis. Fred denied using brute force, but he had to be lying because SBS is very violent. That is the basis of this conviction, which the autopsy report refutes.
Project Innocence can’t help because there is no DNA evidence, his case was not of interest to Alan Dershowitz’s Harvard team because he was not on death row, hasn’t the money to hire a crack legal team, and no one was interested in buying his story because it was not unique, so he couldn’t raise the money that way. He just looked like a thug who beats up on infants for no reason. So, he is still sitting and will for a total of 12 years.
A complete review is in order of the Norfolk constabulary, including the police department which needs a policy and procedures review, Child Protective Services, which needs to bring in medical experts to analyze medical conditions that can be confused with child abuse, the commonwealth’s attorney who needs accountability and oversight and has far too much discretion, and the medical examiners from the state office down, who should all be fired and tried criminally for obstruction of justice for the way Fred Weber was railroaded into prison as were others, and, in the case of Derek Barnaby, the case tried just before Fred’s with the same prosecutor and defense attorney, to the death house, where he has since been executed.
Please take the time to do your own investigating, and have the decency to pardon Fred Weber. I have sent you, under separate cover, irrefutable documentation which will take you where you need to go. Then, form a task force to investigate the malfeasance that results far too many unwarranted convictions that have to be deeply entrenched in Norfolk now. Only you can right the travesty your people have caused. It is time to fix it, starting with Fred.
PARDON FRED WEBER and while you are at it,
GET TO THE BOTTOM OF CORRUPTION IN NORFOLK PROSECUTORS and MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICES
Frederick Arnold Weber, Inmate number 246175, is presently incarcerated at Lunenberg Correctional Facility in Victoria, Virginia, where he has been since 1996 waiting for the chance to clear his good name. Now may be the time because of the Duke LaCrosse team and the prosecutor who now stands in front of the North Carolina Bar for ethical violations. The public is finally aware of the damage an entrenched prosecutor can cause.
The unfortunate Duke LaCrosse player, Reid Seligman, one of the accused who has been completely cleared by the state’s attorney general, has had to endure scorn of former black friends. Fred Weber has had to endure almost twelve years of loss of his freedom because of the same kind of prosecutorial shenanigans as perpetrated against innocent people by Mike Nifong, the North Carolina prosecutor who is actually looking for excuses to explain himself.
Fred isn’t from the side of the tracks where LaCrosse teams are formed. He is from the other side, where he is one of two sons of a single mother who wanted to be a minister of the gospel, served in Desert Storm as an E-5 in the United States Navy, and was convicted of second degree murder of his 30-day son with such evidence as an autopsy report which had listed, as the cause of death, “Shaken Baby Syndrome,” (SBS)a question of fact at best. God, that sounds horrible – what kind of a man would do that to an infant, he deserves worse than the 23 years he got. That is exactly what the prosecution counted on, and used the help of the medical examiner to make sure the point was driven home. Luckily, Fred is white, a refreshing change from the usual perpetrator for this class of crime, and he couldn’t afford top legal talent, though he had a private attorney. In retrospect, he would have been better off with someone from the public defender’s office.
Actually, with a "diagnosis" of SBS, which, according to supporting testimony of the medical examiner, the infant had to be assaulted with tremendous force, yet in her own written report, there were no injuries consistent with the diagnosis. Fred denied using brute force, but he had to be lying because SBS is very violent. That is the basis of this conviction, which the autopsy report refutes.
Project Innocence can’t help because there is no DNA evidence, his case was not of interest to Alan Dershowitz’s Harvard team because he was not on death row, hasn’t the money to hire a crack legal team, and no one was interested in buying his story because it was not unique, so he couldn’t raise the money that way. He just looked like a thug who beats up on infants for no reason. So, he is still sitting and will for a total of 12 years.
A complete review is in order of the Norfolk constabulary, including the police department which needs a policy and procedures review, Child Protective Services, which needs to bring in medical experts to analyze medical conditions that can be confused with child abuse, the commonwealth’s attorney who needs accountability and oversight and has far too much discretion, and the medical examiners from the state office down, who should all be fired and tried criminally for obstruction of justice for the way Fred Weber was railroaded into prison as were others, and, in the case of Derek Barnaby, the case tried just before Fred’s with the same prosecutor and defense attorney, to the death house, where he has since been executed.
Please take the time to do your own investigating, and have the decency to pardon Fred Weber. I have sent you, under separate cover, irrefutable documentation which will take you where you need to go. Then, form a task force to investigate the malfeasance that results far too many unwarranted convictions that have to be deeply entrenched in Norfolk now. Only you can right the travesty your people have caused. It is time to fix it, starting with Fred.
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