Awakening News 20120716 Judge Halts US City’s ‘Extortion Racket’

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Written by Associated Press, Montgomery Advertiser -  July 15, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/6n3ze2v

COLUMBIANA — A judge has temporarily shut down what he called a “debtors prison” run by the municipal court of a central Alabama city.

In an order filed Wednesday in which he issued a preliminary injunction against the town and a private probation company, Shelby County Circuit Court Judge Hub Harrington said the Harpersville Municipal Court was running a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket.”

The court’s actions repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of defendants that appeared before it, Harrington wrote.

“Most distressing is that these abuses have been perpetrated by what is supposed to be a court of law. Disgraceful,” the judge wrote in his order.

If defendants weren’t able to immediately pay court-imposed fines and fees, their cases were turned over to Judicial Corrections Services, the private probation company, the judge found. Many were later tossed in jail, which led to more charges that led to more fines and court costs and more debt, the judge wrote.

Harrington also ordered the mayor and every member of the Harpersville City Council to attend a hearing Aug. 20 and all subsequent hearings in the case.

The city also must give defendants at least 30 days to pay initial fines and fees before any further fines or fees can be imposed. And the city must have written authorization from him before detaining any defendant subject to post-conviction proceedings, on a suspended sentence or on probation in local jails.

The order stemmed from a 2010 lawsuit.

Lawyers for the city have, in the past, acknowledged mistakes and said an immediate review would be undertaken to correct those errors, Harrington wrote. But the court has received no documents detailing the status of those actions, despite repeated requests, and recently filed depositions exposed the extent of the city’s mistakes, the judge wrote.

http://the2012scenario.com/2012/07/judge-halts-us-citys-extortion-racket/

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