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Why not $1,203?

Like most Americans, I had anticipated my $1,200 CARES Act payment to be electronically deposited into my bank account. Instead, I received an envelope from the U.S. Department of the Treasury containing a paper check. At the time, I dismissed that inefficient delivery method. Perhaps, I even enjoyed the experience of touching a check.

What happened next is what bothers me. A week later, I received a follow-up letter, this time bearing the return address Internal Revenue Service stating that it contained Notice 1444. Naturally, I opened this envelope with even greater speed than the one from the Treasury Department. Instead of hopeful anticipation of its contents, the IRS return address had sent my mind into a temporary panic mode.

Fortunately, I quickly realized that Notice 1444 was merely a notification confirming that I will be receiving, or should have already received, a $1,200 check or debit card. Whew.

Surprisingly, the mysterious notice was merely a form letter printed with The White House as its letterhead, and it contained an image of the presidents signature. Am I the only person who found the essence of Notice 1444 to be a political mailing issued at the taxpayers expense?

Maybe I should give President Donald Trump a break and even follow his lead. Perhaps, every time I pay my bills, I should send follow-up letters informing my vendors/creditors what a good guy I am to have sent them the payments that were already due to them. I wonder if the government printing office will produce my Notice 1444 letters/envelopes at taxpayer expense, then arrange for the post office deliver them, postage free.

I estimate that copies of Notice 1444 cost our government (yours and mine) over $3 each. Quite frankly, I would rather have seen everyone receive $1,203. Wouldnt you?

James Donovan

Waikoloa

Greens idea would make Hawaii safest destination

Lt. Gov. Josh Greens idea for diagnostic testing of tourists before travel to Hawaii (Travel with Aloha) and serial testing once arrived, would make the Hawaiian Islands the safest vacation destination in the world. People would want to come here. For starters, a testing arrangement could be made with western states like California, Washington, and Alaska, and countries like Japan. Those locations would want their travelers tested before their return home. It would be a win-win. If the Hawaiian Islands become a hot spot, tourism may take years to recover.

Barbara Feliciano

Waimea

A restriction of a right?

Can Gov. David Ige restrict tourists from coming to Hawaii? My first impression as a Constitutional lawyer is absolutely not.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the right to travel is a part of the liberty of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. The right to travel, to go from place to place as the means of transportation permit, is a natural right subject to the rights of others and to reasonable regulation under law.

And, guess what? This provision, which is a very powerful one, also applies to inter-state travel. So therefore, Iges Proclamation or Executive Order restricting us from traveling between islands is unconstitutional on its face.

So, the issue under the Constitution is whether the governors proclamation restricting us as American citizens, and tourists, as American citizens was reasonable. My answer is No. Whats your answer?

Lei Kihoi

Kailua-Kona

Fact or fiction?

Claims that nearly 70% of our countys property taxes come from the luxury home developments that are on the west side of the Big Island? Philanthropy from the targeted tax group? There are only absentee owners whose properties exceed $2 million in value. Give millions a year into the local charities of their choice? Are these really the jewels of our economy as he suggests? Why have I never read about all of this philanthropy in WHT? We always hear about the Sayre Foundations philanthropy.

There are many luxury homes on the west side that are exempt from the proposed tax increase just look at the real estate section in your Sunday paper under $2 million, of course the ultra wealthy never want to pay their fair share. Just look at Bill and Melinda Gates: opposes the 2% wealth tax on wealth over $50,000 but likes to be known as a great philanthropist.

Mark Zuckerberg, who also does not pay his fair share of taxes, recently gave $1 million to some charity of his choosing. Truth is society would be much better off if all of these super rich people and corporations would just pay their fair share to fund the social functioning of the societies in which they live, occupy, and rely on.

Come on Hawaii County Council and Mayor Harry Kim do the right thing by your constituents.

Rusty Iijima

Waikoloa Village

Letters policy

Letters to the editor should be 300 words or less and will be edited for style and grammar. Longer viewpoint guest columns may not exceed 800 words. Submit online at http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/?p=118321, via email to letters@westhawaiitoday.com or address them to:

Editor

West Hawaii Today

PO Box 789

Kailua-Kona, HI 96745

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Letters to the Editor: May 29, 2020 - West Hawaii Today

Activism in the cause of something you deeply believe in, when carried out by a private citizen is a noble thing and a precious right of our Republic.

But when institutions, put in place to serve the public in a fair and impartial fashion step over the bias line, it harms the very foundation of liberty and justice for all our nation was founded on.

I am going to deal with three.

Of course, the media went rogue a long time ago, which being in most cases private entities is their prerogative, although they violate their original mandate, to deliver news, untainted by personal political preferences.

One only has to look at the actions of Judge Emmet Sullivan in his handling of General Michael Flynns case to see the American judicial system at its worst.

Judge Sullivan has evidently decided that he will be prosecuting attorney, judge, jury and arbiter of jurisprudence, in essence reopening a case where the charges have been dropped by the prosecution, charges that were obviously bogus to begin with.

Or Dallas County Judge Eric Moye, who took it upon himself to sentence a woman to seven days in jail for violating a reopen order, when, if any penalty at all, a small fine would have been more in keeping with the actions of a lady who just wanted to feed her family.

Yet, just because he could and because of his personal feelings Judge Moye decided it would be better to incarcerate her in a jail where actual criminals, who had committed seriously harmful crimes had been turned back out on the street for fear of a Coronavirus spread in the jail.

When the premier law enforcement and finest investigative agency in the world stoops to the deceptive antics they have been guilty of the last few years, indictment by trickery, threats of financial ruin, trying to script testimonies, lying to obtain warrants and sullying the reputations of a time-honored agency like the FBI, it is a dark day for due process, and an even darker day for the thousands of honest and dedicated men and women who make up the rank and file.

James Comey is a national disgrace and a dangerous loose cannon, who, as the Bible says, gags on a gnat and swallows a camel.

Hillary Clinton used an unsecured internet server to conduct the business of the United States State Department, destroyed thousands of subpoenaed documents and Comey, in spite of mountains of evidence of criminal wrongdoing, exonerated her.

And Comey, along with other FBI officials signed FISA warrant applications issued on information they knew to be false.

Why was Lois Lerner, who weaponized the Internal Revenue Service never pursued past her fifth amendment plea?

Easy answer, because the trail would have led to places the powers to be at the time didnt want to go.

Why was Susan Rice not questioned about the supposed video that so angered the Islamists in Libya they attacked an embassy killing four Staff including a US ambassador, while four more Americans were left to fend for themselves for 13 hours while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton twiddled their thumbs.

Was the person who made and released the video ever identified and his case tried for whatever crime the Obama administration deemed him guilty of?

Why did it take a swat team the size of a small army to arrest Roger Stone in the middle of the night? Was such a show of force with armored vehicles and frogmen for the benefit of the CNN crew that just happened to be in the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning?

The three institutions Im speaking about, media, law enforcement and judicial system have the conglomerate power to hound, charge, or not charge, convict and sentence innocent people to jail time, to defend or condemn, to investigate or ignore, to pass out light or heavy sentences or no sentences, all dependent on politics, ideology or sometimes, just personal like or dislike.

These three, acting in concert could subvert justice to the point where it doesnt even really exist.

Agenda driven media, activist judges and crooked law enforcement are the things that make up nightmares and dictatorships.

Pray for our troops our police and the peace of Jerusalem.

(PUB. NOTE: Charlie Daniels is an iconic, best-selling American recording artist, singer, songwriter, fiddle player, and author whose recordings including The Devil Went Down to Georgia have sold in the tens of millions. He is a member of The Grand Ole Opry and The Country Music Hall of Fame. Readers can follow Charlies SoapBox blogs on his website, http://www.charliedaniels.com, where you can also find his tour schedule and news of upcoming events.)

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SOAP BOX: Judicial, media and agency activism: the scourge of the twenty-first century - Therogersvillereview

By Michael Loucks

Law360 is providing free access to its coronavirus coverage to make sure all members of the legal community have accurate information in this time of uncertainty and change. Use the form below to sign up for any of our daily newsletters. Signing up for any of our section newsletters will opt you in to the daily Coronavirus briefing.

Law360 (May 29, 2020, 5:00 PM EDT) --

When the pandemic erupted in earnest in March and states began implementing stay-at-home orders or guidances, the federal courts, which supervise the federal grand juries, suspended (virtually) all nonemergency sessions. As the country begins to emerge from home confinement, the courts will begin to loosen restrictions on the sitting of grand juries. Will they fully recover and what does that mean?

The U.S. Supreme Court has called the grand jury a "kind of buffer or referee between the Government and the people" and asserted that an "independent and informed grand jury" is a "necessity to society." The Department of Justice Manual provides that the grand jury "is an independent body, whose functions include not only the investigation of crime and the initiation of criminal prosecution but also the protection of the citizenry from unfounded criminal prosecutions."

The rules permit the prosecutor to seek an indictment based solely upon hearsay evidence, so long as the grand jury knows that the evidence is indeed hearsay to the witness presenting it. Criticism of the grand jury as a barrier to unfounded prosecutions has included the statement by New York Judge Sol Wachtler: "If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich."

The grand jury is an efficacious investigative tool. It acts in secret, which allows witnesses to recount events far from the glare of publicity and pressure that accompanies it. Individuals under investigation may not know who is testifying and accordingly may not bring improper pressure to bear.

Witnesses who refuse to provide evidence can be compelled to testify, and even immunized upon assertion of the Fifth Amendment to decline to answer questions. Subpoenas may be issued to collect documents from third parties, including those reluctant to help in the investigation of criminal conduct. And, as the DOJ itself recognizes, it can act as a protection for defendants from meritless charges.

Two things are clear: Only a grand jury can return an indictment, and only a grand jury that is given the opportunity to evaluate the government's core evidence can act as a bulwark against unfounded prosecutions.

While prosecutors can seek an indictment with only the presentation of hearsay evidence, following such a practice in all matters and for all evidence not only eviscerates the efficacy of the grand jury as an investigative tool (it is hearing only evidence already collected), such a practice effectively eliminates the grand jury's efficacy as a bulwark.

Until 2014, the DOJ reported the number of "proceedings before grand jury" in the aggregate for all United States attorney's offices. The number of grand jury proceedings rose fairly steadily from 23,925 in 1990 to a peak of 47,253 in 2010. After reporting consecutive annual drops to 41,324 in 2013, the DOJ eliminated, without explanation, further reports of this data from the annual report.

Nevertheless, the DOJ has continued to report the number of hours that the individual United States attorneys' offices spend in the grand jury. The reported grand jury hours present a stark picture of diminishing grand jury investigations and protections for citizens.

The chart below reflects, at five-year intervals from 1985 and for each year from 2006, the grand jury hours reported by the DOJ, the total criminal cases filed, and the grand jury hours per criminal case (the total for years 2005-2007 have been corrected using an average for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia across 2003 through 2009 given apparent reporting errors for the middle three years for that federal court).The hours per case overstate the actual hours spent on each matter in which an indictment is returned as there will be in each year matters that are investigated and for which no indictment is returned.

The drop in hours is even more startling for certain United States attorneys. In 2008, the Chicago United States attorney spent 2,718 hours before the grand jury; by 2011 that number had dwindled to 360, and would drop further to just 133 in 2018. The United States attorney in Boston spent 2,889 hours before the grand jury in 2008; in 2011, those hours had dropped to 1,281 and would further dwindle to 566 in 2018. The United States attorney in Los Angeles spent 1,353 hours before the grand jury in 2008; in 2018, these hours had dropped to 495.

One might consider these numbers to simply be erroneous reports; the drops are so prodigious. Corroboration exists. The federal courts have reported total grand jury hours and criminal proceedings filed by indictment since 2012; the courts' data reflects 36-42 minutes per indictment during the period 2012-2018. While slightly higher than the 24-36 minutes reported by the DOJ, both reports are in the same small ballpark.

The DOJ's data reflects poorly on the use of the grand jury as either an investigative tool or a bulwark against unfounded prosecutions. Where the grand jury spent on average two hours collecting and evaluating evidence in a criminal case between 1985 and 1995, by 2000, that time had been cut in half, to just 60 minutes.

The grand jury time remained relatively unchanged through 2009, when the grand jury time per case stood at 54 minutes. The time per case then resumed its slide; by 2011, grand juries were spending just 30 minutes per criminal case indicted. After rising marginally for three years to 36 minutes, the time per case has again dropped, to just 24 minutes in 2018.

In short, in a generation, the grand jury time per case has dropped from 126 minutes to just 24. Factoring in the time necessary for introducing a matter to the grand jury, swearing in witnesses, requesting the return of an indictment, deliberating, and appearing before a judge to return the indictment, grand jury time spent hearing actual witness testimony is hardly likely to be even 10 minutes per indictment returned.

Assuredly, the pandemic has not changed this trend; while most federal court orders closing court houses do not explicitly shutter all grand jury proceedings, the major United States attorney's offices have announced few, if any, indictments since early March.

In the near term, citizens called upon to serve in grand juries may be reluctant to do so in the shadow cast by the coronavirus and the potential for it to reemerge. Federal prosecutors, already using the grand jury less than they were 20 years ago, may themselves be reluctant to use them. With the reopening of grand juries by the federal courts this summer, can we expect a return to a further dwindling of their use by federal prosecutors?

The vanishing grand jury over the past 35 years marks step with the DOJ's dramatic reduction in all prosecutions since 2011. If the DOJ believes as its manual states, the DOJ must also be concerned that the grand jury, as presently used, has lost much of its efficacy as a barrier to unfounded prosecutions.

Conclusion

Beginning in 2011, the United States attorneys and the Department of Justice have substantially reduced all criminal prosecutions; with limited exceptions, that across the board reduction continued into 2018.

This drop was coupled with a reduction in the use of the grand jury as an investigative tool. In those seven years of declining prosecutions, the time spent by federal prosecutors per case in actual grand jury investigation dropped from 60 minutes to less than 25 minutes per case.

The courts have in the past refused to look behind the curtain at the extent and nature of a prosecution's presentation to the grand jury, including refusing to require presentment to the grand jury of exculpatory evidence. At some point, though, there may be a tipping point, and a court will conclude that the government's presentation to the grand jury in seeking criminal charges is so spare as to not satisfy the Fifth Amendment's requirement of a "presentment or indictment of a grand jury." With just 24 minutes per indictment, we may be at that tipping point.

The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the firm, its clients, or Portfolio Media Inc., or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.

For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.

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Will Grand Juries Ever Recover From The Pandemic? - Law360

PRESIDENT Donald Trump has asked Attorney General William Barr to personally intervene in the George Floyd investigation, citing concerns of national security and public outcry, Your Content can exclusively report.

This goes all the way up to Washington, said the individual briefed on the investigation into George Floyds death, who spoke to Your Content on condition of anonymity.

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Barr, at Trumps recommendation, has asked the US Attorneys Offices to orchestrate an elite team in Minneapolis, placing them on standby and ordering them to expedite the investigation as a matter of national security.

As Your Content readers know, the Minneapolis Police Departments 3rd Precinct building is engulfed in flames as protests continue in Minneapolis and St. Paul on Thursday night.

The President seems adamant on ending the threat against law enforcement for good by bringing everyone responsible to justice.

The source said officials at the federal level are fed up with the racial discourse and brotherhood of secrecy that initially slowed the investigation down.

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One officer is behaving very oddly. Anyone who invokes the Fifth Amendment is likely to get charged. Several officers have been playing the Minneapolis Police Department for years.

Your Content exclusively reported that President Trump had been briefed on the massive fire at the police department Thursday night, hinting hed be sending the cavalry in to assist.

Theres been one delay after another and the hammer is about to fall. The president is playing this somewhat close to the vest.

Washington said the officers savagery must be met with a commensurate response. A memo circulated noted: Ferguson. History repeats itself and history is on our side in this fight!

Barr was told to take charge, take action and indict immediately, the insider continued. Arrests are coming. Its a matter of time. And the clock never ticked faster.

On Thursday, multiple law enforcement sources exclusively told Your Content that charges should be expected within the next 96 hours.

There will be at least two arrests within the next 96 hours, the insider said. There is a 100 percent chance that two of the officers will be charged in that time-frame.

President Trump took to Twitter Thursday night but was quickly censored.

I cant stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right, President Trump declared.

These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I wont let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

The deadly protests in the Twin Cities were sparked by the death of 46-year-old George Floyd, a black man who died Monday after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes ashe was being arrested over alleged forgery.

Stay with Your Content for the latest updates. Have a story or news tip? Contact our 24/7 newsroom at 833.336.8013.

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Pres. Trump Urging AG to 'Take Action' and Indict Minneapolis Cops: 'Matter of National Security' - YC

All four former Minneapolis cops involved in the death of George Floyd have invoked their Fifth Amendment right to silence as investigators probe the case, according to a report.

Officers Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng have refused to answer questions about what led to Floyds death, citing their right to avoid self-incrimination, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman told CNN following a news conference Thursday.

However, Thomas Kelly, the attorney for Chauvin the white officer captured on camera pinning Floyd, who was black, to the ground by his neck denied his client invoked his Fifth Amendment right following the report, according to Newsweek. Freeman did not return a request for comment from the publication.

As protests rage over the incident, Freeman said his office has been flooded by emails demanding to know, What are you going to do about the murder of George Floyd?

But while Freeman condemned the now-fired officers actions as graphic and horrific and terrible, he said the footage alone isnt enough to bring charges.

He vowed to conduct an investigation as expeditiously and thoroughly as justice demands, adding that hes reviewing the case of Freddie Gray for guidance. Gray, a 25-year-old black man, was killed while in police custody in Baltimore in 2015.

The question in my business is, is it criminal? Freeman said at the Thursday news conference, according to Newsweek.

Thats what I have to prove and there are cases that you can quickly and easily evaluate. Most cases, particularly cop use-of-force cases, are specifically more complex and have to be done right.

None of the four officers had been charged Friday.

Viral video footage of Chauvin pinning Floyd down before his death on Monday sparked nationwide protests, some of which have turned violent.

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Cops involved in George Floyd death invoke Fifth Amendment right - Filmy One