How would they know if he's travelled abroad?
From my link re: the fingerprint
Quote:On May 24, the government filed a written motion to dismiss the material witness proceeding. According to the government, over the weekend of May 22-23, two FBI examiners traveled to Madrid, Spain, "in order to obtain images of the highest possible resolution to help resolve the concerns about Mayfield's fingerprint identification."40 The FBI examiners were granted "full access to the fingerprints of the other individual and the item on which the latent had been left." The information obtained through this examination was brought back to the United States, where it was examined by four FBI latent fingerprint examiners. Following this examination, the FBI "determined . . . the latent print previously identified as a finger print of MAYFIELD to be of no value for identification purposes.
<snip>
Resolution of some of the more significant issues posed by Mayfield will undoubtedly take time, but the thorough investigation and open discussion needed for any such resolution is likely to produce some productive changes in how fingerprint identifications are conducted, and how material witness arrest warrants are used. The FBI's contention that Latent Fingerprint No. 17 has "no value" has been challenged by Moses, and by noted fingerprint identification expert Allan John Bayle. Upon being advised of the FBI's "no value" contention, Moses stated he could not understand what the FBI was saying.44 Bayle found that the clarity of the latent print was "very good" and that there was easily enough detail to do a Level 3 analysis.45 Bayle also concluded that the Level 1 pattern detail in the latent is distinguishable from the Level 1 pattern detail in Mayfield's fingerprints.46 With respect to the misidentifications made by the FBI fingerprint examiners, and by Moses, Bayle drily observes: "There were many discrepancies. A competent expert should have seen all the discrepancies." The FBI's contention that the misidentification of Mayfield occurred as a result of problems with the quality of the digital image has been questioned and criticized by all of the forensic fingerprint experts with whom we have spoken.
Don't forget -- they did identify, arrest and convict that Algerian guy based on that "of no value" fingerprint.
I suppose they knew he hadn't left the country because they had been doing "sneak and peeks" on his house, office and computer.
For ten years? How long was he a suspect? Why would they have had him under surveilance?
Did you read the article?
If someone did a sneak and peak in my house, they would have no trouble finding my passport, and any previous passports, which are neatly stamped with dates for every entry and exit of every country visited.
Yeah, like a terrorist is going to leave that laying around?
er, McG. That should be "lying" around. Sorry. I had to say something, ya know.
He hadn't been under investigation that long.
His passport was expired which, I assume, would have been pretty easy to check.
He told them he hadn't traveled out of the country in more than a decade. I believe they researched this statement and found that he was telling the truth.
The chronology is all laid out in the link I posted.
In March the Spanish National Police had already said "conclusively no" that the print did not belong to Mayfield.
In May the FBI obtained a warrent to search Mayfield's home and computer and arrested him as a material witness.
I think they just wanted to snoop on this guy becaue oh my gosh....
.... he was an attorney who took Jeffery Battle as a client in a child custody case!
.... he advertised his legal services on a Muslim web page!!
.... he was married to an Egypitan born woman!!!
.... he had converted to Islam!!!!
So, let me get this straight... they found evidence pointing at a person who had ties to a known criminal, was a recently convert to Islam, had ties to the muslim community, they investigated him, held him in custody, then released him once the investigation proved he was innocent, apoligized for the inconvenience and this is bad how?
All lawyers who represent criminal at any time have ties to known criminals. Why did they need to arrest him and hold him in custody for two weeks? What would you do with a two week vacation in the slammer with no charges filed against you?
Quote:Brandon Mayfield is a 37-year old licensed attorney who resides with his wife Mona and three children in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. After graduating from high school, he joined active duty in the Army and also spent time serving in the Reserves.(95) After an honorable discharge, he served in the ROTC and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. Mayfield returned to active duty service as an Air Defense Artillery Officer and was later honorably discharged due to a shoulder injury.(96)
After completing law school and passing the Oregon State Bar Examination, Mayfield began to work as a family law attorney in Oregon.(97) Mr. Mayfield embraced Islam in the late 1980s after he had married his wife Mona Mayfield, an Egyptian-American. He was a regular attendee of Friday prayers at a mosque in the Portland suburb of Beaverton, Oregon.(98)
I don't really consider the late 80s a recent conversion to Islam.
And how odd that a family law attorney would take a custody case.
I can't understand why a Muslim person seeking an attorney would hire a Muslim attorney.
I wonder why so many Christian attorneys use the fish symbol in their advertising and why so many gay attorneys use a rainbow.
Do you think perhaps they are trying to attract like minded clients?
Each one, individually isn't much. It's when you add it all together that it matters. That's why they did what they did.
If having worked with the wrong person and having joined the wrong church are enough to cause having my home, office and computer searched, having my privileged files confiscated and not returned and being locked up for a couple of weeks then I guess I don't want to go to work or church ever again.
Did you even bother reading this thread? It isn't just that he was a muslim. It wasn't that he just represented one guy, it wasn't that his wife was egyptian, it wasn't that his fingerprint was positively identified by both government and independent analysts. It was ALL of them put together.
Synonymph wrote:"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
Yes, so the
majority of Americans who chose to fight against the Fascists across both oceans who were murdering millions of innocent people should have reflected and just stayed behind out oceans.
The
majority of people who agreed that it was time to ensure the civil rights of African Americans in this country should have taken a few more decades of reflection.
And I suppose the
majority of those people who believed that women suffrage should have come about should have taken a long ... LONG pause of reflection before empowering women with the right to vote.
I HATE when people use little pithy phrases like this that only apply to a few instances and use it to attempt to sound like a deep thinking intellectual.
Read a book!
Prior to December 7, 1941, the majority of Americans supported isolationist policies, to the extent that Roosevelt had to act covertly to give England the support of the United States Navy and the United States Coast Guard. When the English hunted down Bismark, she was found after she sank Hood by USCG long-range recon aircraft, which were "sold" to England, and then flown there by their air crews, who stayed to "train" the English, and who in fact simply flew the missions themselves. The United States Navy extended their area of patrol responsibility to Iceland, and landed Marines who set up an American base there--and the Marines landed on Greenland and took out a German weather observation station which had operated there--all without the American people being aware, because it might have cost FDR too much politically. When the Japanese attacked, Americans were then ready to go to war--and if the idiot Hitler hadn't declared war on us, FDR would have played hell committing major resources to Europe.
There is not good reason to assume that the majority of Americans supported the actions of John Kennedy and his Attorny General, Robert Kennedy, in acting against the KKK and obstructionist Southern state governments. Kennedy did not succeed in passing his Civil Rights bill--Lyndon Johnson did so almost two years after Kennedy's assassination, using that event for leverage, and putting the squeeze on Southern Democrats in Congress, because LBJ had been in Congress so long, he knew where all the bodies were buried.
New Jersey allowed women who met a property qualification to vote in 1776--but then rescinded that. Montana and Wyoming later gave the vote to women, long before it became national law, and Jeanette Rankin was sent to Congress when women in other states still could not vote.
I, too, personally do not care for the simple use of a quotation to stand for an argument--it's facile. It is equally facile to use oversimplistic or naïve statements which purport to describe history to support an argument. Those who do so need to read a lot of books.
You win McG.
