Attorney Gives Notice Of Appeal Against Ford’s 6 Months Custodial Sentence: First Step In Getting The Case Tossed…

So the court slapped Jephthah Ford with a six-months cus­to­di­al sen­tence on each of the two counts of attempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice charges he was con­vict­ed on.
In the greater scheme of things this offend­er should have been sent a strong mes­sage by the court that cor­rupt­ing pub­lic offi­cials is a seri­ous crime.
As was to be expect­ed and as I pre­dict­ed, the courts gave the defen­dant a tap on the wrist.

What I found curi­ous is that the defen­dan­t’s attor­ney Bert Samuels all but admit­ted that his client broke the laws Quote: “He has allowed his good inten­tion to cloud his bet­ter judg­ment.”
Samuels said the fore­gone while [petion­ing the court for a non-cus­to­di­al sentence.
According to report­ing Bert Samuels told the court that he acknowl­edged his client com­mit­ted a seri­ous offense but lec­tured the court that it involved no vio­lence and result­ed in no mon­e­tary val­ue to Ford as if that negates the seri­ous­ness of the offens­es. He said Ford’s action was out of a desire to assist, but con­ced­ed that this was a wrong intervention.

After Samuels made his sub­mis­sion the court announced the sen­tence of six months in prison on each of the two counts as charged to run (con­cur­rent­ly) mean­ing he would only serve six months or less in prison.

Now here’s the kick­er, there is much talk of too many cas­es clog­ging up the ros­ters at all lev­els of the jus­tice sys­tem to include the appeals court.
Yet imme­di­ate­ly Samuels learned that Ford was going to spend time in prison, despite his own admis­sion that his client com­mit­ted the crimes, and despite admit­ting to the court that the crimes his client com­mit­ted were seri­ous crimes, Bert Samuels announced he would be fil­ing an appeal.
This was the very same Attorney who asked the court to impose a fine on his client.

Now to the casu­al observ­er, this seems ridicu­lous, gen­er­al­ly, an appeal may only be suc­cess­ful if the defen­dant can show new evi­dence which was sup­pressed by pros­e­cu­tors or wrong­do­ing on the part of inves­ti­ga­tors and or pros­e­cu­tors. Samuels admit­ted that his client com­mit­ted the crimes in his summation.
On what grounds then will his appeal be enter­tained except because of who his client is?

The idea in this case as I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, is to do what­ev­er it takes to make sure that Ford does not spend a day in jail, that’s okay that’s what defense lawyers are sup­posed to do.
There was no sug­ges­tion of police impro­pri­ety, there was no sug­ges­tion of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al impro­pri­ety. In fact, Bert Samuels con­ced­ed his client com­mit­ted the crimes he was charged with committing.
But dur­ing the appeals process which will drag on and on, new alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety will begin to creep into the nar­ra­tive until the appeals court make a deci­sion to toss the case.

I will be watch­ing this case as it lan­guish­es in the appeals court and Jephthah Ford con­tin­ues with his life unobstructed.
Justice demands that some­one keep and an eye open, fair­ness and our Democracy demand that we keep a can­dle­light on so that the dark forces of injus­tice are kept at bay.
I will be watch­ing this one.