The Roughton Report

Orlando, FL - The Orange County Sheriff’s Department released more "evidence" from their case against Casey Anthony this week.  After a review of all the information, it has been determined that most, if not all the released information, would not be admissible as evidence against Ms. Anthony in court.

It appears that this is just another attempt on the part of the Orange County authorities to manipulate the justice system by releasing information to the public that would cause potential jurors to convict Ms. Anthony in their minds even before being selected to serve as jurors. The authorities also seem to be promoting a form of vigilante justice by not protecting the rights of citizens to live in peace, without the threat of violence.

Vigilante justice has been outlawed since the Constitution was written. The Founding Fathers believed that a person should be considered innocent until PROVEN guilty beyond ANY reasonable doubt and that such proof should be presented in a court of law and that the accused has the right to face his/her accuser. The burden of proof is placed squarely on the accuser and not on the accused. The evidence must be obtained legally and must be relevant to the charges leveled against the accused. Information that is not relevant to the charges cannot and will not be weighed when considering the case. The case is to be decided by an OBJECTIVE jury of peers that have not been tainted by irrelevant information, rumor or innuendo.

Orange County Detectives figure that if they can build enough outrage against Ms. Anthony in the community, they can convict her no matter how flimsy their case is. They accomplish this by releasing irrelevant information in a context that is sure to incite the public to the point of near riot. They insinuate that because the accused has not done or said what they want, they are indifferent and therefore must be guilty.

Do you think they ever stopped to think that someone might not want to cooperate with authorities that they deem to be untrustworthy and/or corrupt? I doubt it.

Just this week, I had a discussion with some people at the supermarket in my neighborhood concerning this case. Most of the employees at the Publix Market on West Rd in Ocoee, Florida, were adamant in their opinion that Casey Anthony was guilty of murder. I made them a bit angry by my comment that people such as them are what is wrong with this country. In essence, this was my argument:

This is a country that was founded on the Constitutional form of government. The Constitution of the United States states that this is a country of laws and that those laws should govern our society. It further states that anyone accused of a crime has the right to face an impartial jury of their peers and to face their accuser in a court of law. They have to right to hear the evidence relevant to the charges against them and to present their own evidence to support their innocence. The jury is charged with weighing the evidence presented to them and to find the accused innocent unless that evidence PROVES BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT the guilt of the accused.

Patriotic citizens of this country should uphold these principles and anyone who assumes guilt of any individual based rumor and innuendo outside the courtroom is not the kind of person I would want my children to exposed to. I want my children to grow up to respect and obey the Constitution that our Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, put on paper to found this Great Nation.

We are a nation of laws. I think it’s time we demand that the people who have sworn to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic" uphold and obey the rule of law in this country. The authorities in this country should be held to the highest standard and jury tampering is not among those standards.

I say, "Orange County, Florida,: If you can’t do the right thing, step down and let others do the job who can play by the rules"!

Orlando, FL - The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has engineered their latest episode in their ongoing saga. The masterminds at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, knowing full well that the media was planning to cover a scheduled protest at the Anthony home, orchestrated their latest episode by arresting Casey Anthony in full view of the protesters and media cameras in yet another attempt to convict the young woman in the public eye.

The arrest was made last night on charges of uttering a forged check, fraudulent use of personal identification and petit theft of $100 or more. These charges are all economic crimes that detectives have been aware of for months, yet it was not economic crimes division detectives that made the arrest. It was homicide detectives John Allen (right) and Yuri Melich (second from right) that were shown on camera placing Casey into custody.

This all smacks of the typical grandstanding that the Orange County Sheriff’s Office has been known for all along in this case.

Detectives has consistently leaked supposed evidence to the media concerning this case in a thinly veiled attempt to convict Casey Anthony in the court of public opinion. Why? Because NONE of the supposed evidence they have collected even begins to amount to enough to convict her in a court of law of the crime they have imagined she has committed.

The media, in their quest for higher ratings at any cost, has played right into the detectives hands. The only reason that this has received the attention that it has is because the media keeps siding with detectives in their own attempts for recognition. The evidence of this is in every news teaser and advertisement the media airs concerning their coverage.

What ever happened to objectivity in the news? The greatest news anchors of the past are all rolling over in their graves now wondering what has become of their industry. It’s no longer about reporting the truth. It’s about what "Enquiring minds want to know", meaning, what the gossips and folks with nothing better to do with their time need to feed their habits.

Anthony’s attorney, Jose Baez of Kissimmee, went on record at the scene of Casey’s arrest last night accusing detectives of "grandstanding".  In his statement he reported the facts that he had offered to surrender Casey to authorities on the financial crimes charges if it was their intent to make and arrest by both FAX and telephone call to detective Allen at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Baez went on record stating (that he told detective Allen), "If you plan on arresting my client, you let me know and I will surrender her. We’ll do this like professionals. He assured me that they had no intention of doing it. Why? Because he didn’t have his stage or his cameras. Okay? This is the type of display that these law enforcement officers are doing. They decide what they want to leak, when they want to leak it so that they can have public perception." He also stated that he will not try his case in the court of public opinion as detectives are doing. He will present his case in a court of law and not allow detectives to force him to reveal his case in an inappropriate forum.

Recently leaked information include reports that the DNA evidence that was processed from Anthony’s car indicated that Kaylee was killed in the car. Experts that I have spoken to have stated that "DNA is DNA. It can’t tell you if the donor is dead or alive, much less where they were killed. That evidence was falsified." Apparently, this was just another attempt to influence public opinion by generating outrage against Casey Anthony.

Good for you, Mr. Baez. Stick by your guns and do the right thing. Maybe when this is all over, there will be a real investigation into the deliberate misuse of authority by Orange County Sheriff’s Detectives as well as their attempts to manipulate the system and circumvent your client’s constitutional rights.

Orlando, FL -  When is it okay to ignore the constitutional rights of the accused?  When is it okay for the authorities to ignore the rule of law to get what they think is justice?  Is it okay for those in authority to do abuse their authority in order to get what they want?

This is what the TV writers are building episodes of your favorite TV shows to promote.  They are systematically using the story lines of their series to desensitize the American TV viewing public to the corruption going on around them.  They are pulling on the heart strings of the viewer in order to promote a “the end justifies the means” mentality in the public.  All this does is make the public less likely to object when it happens in real life so that the offending official is not penalized for violating the law to get results.

Case in point:

Question:  Is it okay for a police officer to take the law into his own hands by hunting down and killing someone he suspects of murder when he is unable to provide the proof needed to convict the suspect in a court of law?

Answer:  No it is not.  We are a nation of laws and, under the constitution, all people are entitled to be confronted by their accuser and have the evidence produced that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he/she is guilty before judgement is passed against them.  Yet, one of TV’s most popular shows, “CSI: Miami”, had two of the main characters leave the country and murder the man that they suspected of ordering the murder of Horatio Cane’s new wife.  No consequences were dealt out and the whole murder was glorified by the show.

Question:  Is it okay for officers to make money from drug sales in their beat in return for protection from arrest and raids.

Answer:  No it is not.  The laws of the state and the United States are to be equally enforced.  They are there for a reason.  Yet, “The Shield” justifies the officers of the drug task force’s corruption by stating that, on their beat, violence as a result of drug dealing rival gangs is lower as a result of their interaction with the gangs and sales to children at schools has stopped as a direct result of the rules they set to allow the drug dealers to stay in business.  The laws are there to stop drug dealers, not regulate them!

I could go on and on about how the writers for these series’ have made corruption seem palatable to the viewer.  The only way that our Constitution will survive is when we speak up and tell these people that we refuse to allow them to sway our thinking on right and wrong by justifying it or glamorizing it in the mainstream media.

What ever happened to right is right and wrong is wrong.  They would have us believe that right is right and wrong is only wrong when it is not justified in our own minds. 

Fight corruption wherever we find it!

Orlando, FL -  The terrorists of 9/11 were more successful than they ever dreamed.  Ever since the attacks, the people in power in this country have been ecstatic about the prospects it has opened for them.  The rage that was caused by the attacks on our home soil have made the people of this country willing to sacrifice their constitutionally protected freedoms in order to achieve a perceived measure of protection from repeated attacks.  The power brokers in this country have promoted this in order to attain even greater power over the citizens of America.

Our founding fathers would have been greatly disappointed in the citizens of our great nation.  They fought the great fight to make this country and it’s citizenry free from governmental control.  We have given in to the powerful of this nation and the shame is ours for the mistake we have made in believing that others should be responsible for our safety.

Most of us have never had the power to control others and, therefore, have never experienced the addictive feeling of possessing such power.  The adage that says “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is very relevant in this sense.  As we continue to surrender our constitutional freedom to govern ourselves and thus our right to protect ourselves from governmental abuses, we are slowly destroying the reason for the founding of this great nation.

I, for one, am frightened at the direction this country is moving.  I see that the powerful are, by claiming to be acting in the interests of protecting the citizens of this country, slowly eliminating the rights that enable the individual to protect themselves from government control.  The whole purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that the people were never placed in a position where the government could oppress them.  We are allowing the government that we are supposed to be controlling the power to control us instead.

I fully expect that the power brokers in this country, most of which harbor that belief that the average citizen (meaning anyone but themselves) doesn’t know what is good for them, will eventually rule us all by martial law and the suspension of the constitution thereby eliminating our ability to legally challenge their regime.  We will become the next third-world country with a despot ruler and there will be no other country to come to our rescue, as we have come to the rescue of so many others in the past.  Freedom will end and the world will be ripe for the anarchy that terrorists have been fighting for.

I pray that the people of this country wake up in time to stop this insanity.  But, somehow, I just don’t think that it will happen until after it is too late.

Orlando, FL -  What would you think of having a Sheriff that advertises his belief that crime is terrorism?

While on my way to take my wife to work the other day, I saw a sign that had been posted on the corner of Lee Rd and Hwy 17-92 in Winter Park. The sign was an advertisment for a candidate for Orange County Sheriff. It read “Crime is Terrorism” and it got me thinking.

With the meteoric rise in violent crime in Pine Hills, the area in which I live, I almost believed it. Then I started to look into what this belief would mean for the people of Orange County.

I started my research on the internet with a “Google” search for the phrase “Crime is Terrorism” and was inundated with thousands of “hits”. It took me quite some time to filter through them to find the ones that were relevent to the subject. When I was through, I was scared out of my mind at the direction that the country has taken since 9/11.

I found a Blog on the internet that summed up the information that I want to say quite nicely. It is publiushed by an anonymous citizen of Orange County. It is in the form of an emailed letter to a local television station’s news department. I strongly encourage everyone who reads my blog to read this person’s posting as well. You will find the blog by clicking HERE.

I followed the links in this posting and found that the person that wrote the information had already done most of the research that I wanted to look into.

Please, if you care about the United States; if you want this country to remain free and true to the constitution as it was authored by our founding fathers, read the information and then contact your state legislators, congressional representatives and senators and express your concerns that this country not fall into a state of martial law where violating our rights becomes a trivial matter.

Don’t let men like Stewart Malone run things. I would hate to have my rights suspended and be placed in custody without the right to trial or legal representation just because men like Stewart Malone want the power to bypass the constitution to achieve their goals.

Some may think that I am taking this to the extreme; that nothing like this would happen. “Not here, not in America.” What are you going to do when men like this decide to interpret the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act in such a broad manner as to violate your privacy because someone in power didn’t like something you said or did? There is nothing you will be able to do AFTER THE FACT. Be proactive and let’s get rid of the possibility NOW.

Do yourself a favor, do it TODAY. Tomorrow may be too late.

    I know that the tone of the title of this article may elicit some real controversy. I certainly do not want the make myself seem like an racist, which I am not. However, I do want to express my opinions on this sensitive subject.

    I have many close friends that are African Americans. They are polite and courteous and conscious of the feelings and beliefs of others. They do not seek to offend others. They work and provide for their families. They make a significant contributions to their community. They are law-abiding, productive members of society. However, this is not the case with a majority of black people in my community.

    When I moved into my community, some 27 years ago, it was a quiet, peaceful and active place to live. It was full of people from a very diverse cultural base. People here cared about their community, their property, their neighborhood and their neighbors.

    Approximately ten years ago, a new trend began to form. The people and community that I had come to love and respect was slowly moving away. In their place, new people began to arrive that did not share our since of community. They cared not for others, nor, it seems, did they have pride in themselves. They had no respect for the law, the property of others or even the privacy and comfort of anyone but themselves.

    They had a culture all their own. No outsiders were welcomed nor did they care that others did not want to have the peace of their homes invaded by their disregard for anything other than what they wanted. They speak disrespectfully to one another and to anyone that they come in contact with.

    Why is this? What has given these people the attitudes that prevail among them? I have some theories about that.

    Many decades ago, this country and its people held the black man in low esteem. We treated them badly and denied them the basic human rights granted to all men under the constitution. Once these deficiencies were addressed and the black race was given equality, the majority of them began to live with the pride and dignity they should always have had. But, there were a few that would not accept what was granted to them and move on to become an integral part of the society around them. These few were bitter and felt that because of the way their ancestors were treated, they were owed reparations that would end their need to earn their way in society. They felt that their people had served others long enough and that others should now serve them instead.

    Now, I don’t know about you but, I and everyone I have ever known have contributed to getting everything that we enjoy in life. None of us have just sat back and had everything in life handed to us. We have always had rules that ensured we would not encroach on the freedoms of others. If we did not obey these rules, we were punished and lost what we had worked for. We respected others and, in return, expected others to respect us.

    These malcontents have stirred up, among the laziest in the black community, this feeling of entitlement. The feeling that the rules don’t apply to them. That they can do whatever they want even if it encroaches on the rights of others. The idea that if they want something, they can take it.

    Beyond this, what can we do to regain some semblance of order? I don’t see much that we can do other than demand that the government stop enabling these people. Stop the programs that give them money when they don’t want to work. Stop giving them homes to live in unless they are willing to work to maintain them. Stop allowing them to run rampant in the streets with their blatant disregard for the rights of others. Enforce the laws of this land regardless of the race or the culture of these people. If they don’t want to be a part of this land of laws then we should invite them to leave or to suffer the consequences of their actions. Murderers should be killed, not housed or released. Crime will not stop if the consequences do not fit the crime.

    There is something to be said for the biblical justice system. If you stole, you lost the hand you stole with. If you murdered, you were killed. If you cheated others, you worked to repay them, with interest. If you disregarded the rights of others, you were banished. At least the punishment fit the crime. There was a simpler way to convict them also. If there were two or more witnesses to your crime that were of good reputation, you were guilty. If one man accused another without proof positive that the accused was guilty, he was exonerated and freed with no stigma attached. Simple? Yes, but effective.

    Some of you may be asking yourselves, “What has caused this man to write this article?” Well, the straw that broke the camel back was this:

    The State of Florida has a law that states that if a vehicle is using an amplified sound system (ie a radio) that can be heard more than 20 feet from the vehicle then the vehicle is in violation of the law. I understand that there are young men that want to play their music so that they and their friends can hear it standing outside their vehicle. I have no problem with that in moderation. I do have a problem when the people in question blast the stereo so loud that I can clearly hear it INSIDE my living room when the car is over 100 feet away from my home. I approached the vehicle and asked the occupant if he could lower the volume so that I would not have to hear it over my TV in my home. I was cursed and threatened. When I made a complaint to the Sheriff’s department, the officer did nothing but have them turn it down long enough for him to clear the area. No citation was issued and no penalty paid. To top it all off, the radio was turned right back to max volume as soon as the officer left.

    It is this attitude of no respect for others that has prompted my writing this opinion. If this offends you, I am truly sorry. That is not my intention. I merely wish to state my opinion as is guaranteed under the constitution. Truly, I wish that there was something other than moving that I could do to get the word out to these people that giving common courtesy and respect gets the same in return.

I sometimes wonder how it is that so many people can afford to have vacations every year. With the worsening economy and the lack of decent wages being paid across the nation, I just can’t fathom anyone being able to save the money to do these things.

The picture to the left shows the only real vacation that the family has ever really had. At least the Bahamas cruise was available on our tiny budget.

The cost was super modest and there was very little that we needed to spend extra money on. All meals are included, not just breakfast, lunch and dinner, but snacks, too.

We had to pay a percentage for a gratuity for the staff each day, but that was minimal. I doubt that we will be going again any time soon, with the work slowdown and the bills mounting. Still, I think that this is probably the most affordable vacation plan available.

The next time we vacation, this will probably be what we do. Maybe we can even get the rest of the Roughton clan to join us. It will take a bit of advanced planning, but I think that it is doable.

The little princess enjoyed her first taste of theme park visits on September 30, 2007, with a visit to Sea World, Orlando.  We decided to get annual passes so that we all can keep going back and see all there is to see.  We get to go anytime and free admission to special events also.  It was a good deal and the kids will love it.