Updated: Diebold Whistleblower charged with 3 Felonies
Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 09:31:18 AM PDT
From
Huffpost via
Democratic Underground.
Two Years ago Stephen Heller, an actor in LA who worked part time for the law firm of Jones Day, discovered that one of the firm's clients, Diebold, was possibly going to disenfranchise thousands of voters in the next election.
Heller did the honorable thing, and provided this information to the California Attorney General and then Secretary of State Kevin Shelley - which ultimately resulted in the decertication of Diebold in California.
But last year Kevin Shelley was forced to resign as Secretary of State due to a fundraising scandal. Ah-nald promptly appointed a new Republican Secretary of State who has proceeded to Temporarily certify Diebold despite the information provided by Stephen Heller, and Heller himself is now facing criminal charges.
More over flip...
Stephen Heller is alleged to have exposed documents in Jan. & Feb. 2004 which provided smoking gun evidence that Diebold was using illegal, uncertified software in California voting machines. The docs also showed that Diebold's California attorneys (the powerful international law firm Jones Day) had told them they were in breach of the law for using uncertified software, but Diebold continued to use the uncertified software anyway.
Heller is alleged to have come across these docs while temping as a word processor at Jones Day, and he is further alleged to have taken the docs and exposed them to the bright light of day. Now, after sitting on this for 2 years, the Los Angeles District Attorney, under pressure from Jones Day, is going after this whistleblower with 3 felony charges, each of which carries the potential of time in state prison.
So tell me is it a crime to report the commission of crime now? Apparently it is if the criminals include a large and powerful law firm like Jones Day.
Let's make this clear, folks. The docs Heller is accused of exposing were important evidence. First, they show that Diebold and their attorneys, Jones Day, conspired to mislead the California secretary of state, and that the lie they told was material, and resulted directly in the disenfranchisement of voters. Second, another document demonstrates that Diebold lied to the secretary of state when it represented that certain problems with its software were "fixed." This document, the release notes for the new software, showed that the problems were not fixed. Third, the documents showed that Diebold had been advised by Jones Day that what it had been doing with its uncertified software was illegal. Fourth, the documents show that Jones Day advised Diebold that it was subject to criminal prosecution. So in a nutshell, Diebold was defrauding the state government and taxpayers of California, and disenfranchising the voters of California. And the documents PROVE it.
The Huffpost article goes on to suggest that those who oppose the continued illegal certification of Diebold speak out in support of Heller. I concur. They suggest contact the relevant parties with the following talking points:
- Don't prosecute Stephen Heller. He's a whistleblower, not a criminal, and he should not be prosecuted.
- Diebold is the criminal here. Stephen Heller is alleged to have exposed Diebold's criminal activity, and that makes him a whistleblower. He should not be prosecuted.
- Diebold's election malfeasance strikes at the very heart of our democratic republic. Without clean elections, we don't have democracy anymore. Those who expose such crimes are whistleblowers and should not be prosecuted.
- America has a long history of whistleblowers exposing criminal activity, and prosecuting them is wrong; it puts a chilling effect on others who might see criminal activity and want to expose it.
You can email the Los Angeles District Attorney's office at lada@co.la.ca.us.
And of course, "a good old fashioned snail mail letter is very powerful tool":
District Attorney's Office
County of Los Angeles
210 West Temple Street, Suite 18000
Los Angeles, CA 90012-3210
Phone calls also help:
Telephone (213) 974-3512
Fax (213) 974-1484
TTY (800) 457-7778 (8:30am - 5:00pm M-F)
Update - 02-27-06 I posted this diary because California is going to be a 2006 Battleground State for Control of Congress, we can't afford to lose any ground on the issue of voting security.
Now I don't care to get involved in the Bev Harris debate - but quite a bit of the commentary on this has focused on the issue of whether or not Steve Heller actually did break the law by revealing priveledged material. And in fairness it seems that he just might have - technically, and if so he probably should face the music. But that doesn't mean he did the wrong thing.
From the original LATimes peice:
Although state law protects whistle-blowers from retaliation by their employers, they can still be criminally prosecuted, said Tom Devine, legal director at the Washington, D.C.-based Government Accountability Project.
"It's very rare that it's successful," he said. "It's a tactic where the primary goal may be to scare other would-be whistle-blowers rather than a realistic attempt to obtain a conviction."
And I think this is the precisely point. This prosecution is a
scare tactic. My feeling is that sometimes it just may infact be neccesary to risk legal punishment in order to accomplish a far greater good. This is doctrine behind all acts of Civil Disobedience from sit-ins to marches. Those people who abuse the law, and the color of authority to accomplish their ends frequently exploit the
of the law to intimidate and silence dissenters.
If CBS and Dr. Jeffrey Wigand hadn't taken the legal risks facing them, we probably still wouldn't know that nicotine is addictive.
If people like Russell Tice hadn't spoken out about the NSA domestic spying program, we still wouldn't know a thing about it.
I'm not saying the "ends justify the means", I'm simply saying there's a reason we have whistle-blower laws, there are reasons these people need to be protected from retalitation. IMO The fact that someone can be a witness and source for the California Attorney General only to be trashed by the LA District Attorney is a loophole that needs to be closed to protect all future efforts by people to speak Truth to Power.
If Linda Tripp can get immunity from Ken Starr, Steve Heller deserves a decent and robust defense.
Naturally, reasonable minds may disagree.
Vyan
