What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Update on Zodhiates and both Millers

Well. Things are not so good for either Timothy Miller or Kenneth Miller. As for Philip Zodhiates, it's unclear how his trial, which has just begun, is going to go.

Let's start with Timo Miller, who is in the worst situation of all: As of this past Tuesday, he has not been brought to the United States. He remains in the custody of the Nicaraguan authorities. No one seems to know for sure why, after leaving him alone to carry on his life for years, the Nicaraguans suddenly decided to arrest him in connection with his role in the so-called "kidnapping" of Isabella Miller--a charge (of course) originating in the United States and in the laws of the United States. It is all the more mysterious since they haven't yet sent him back to the U.S.

Here is what the U.S. Prosecutor is reported to have told Christian News:

Co-prosecutor Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Van De Graaf confirmed to Christian News Network on Tuesday that Timo Miller is currently behind bars in Nicaragua and might be deported back to the U.S.. However, the decision is up to Nicaraguan officials as there is no extradition process in place.

Clever, huh? There's no extradition process in place, so he just remains in limbo indefinitely in Nicaragua. A much worse outcome than being brought to the United States for a trial. It avoids all that pesky habeas corpus stuff.

Someone did something, probably recently, to bring about his arrest. His family was told "Timo does have a red card against him in the Interpol." A quick googling indicates that a "red card" means that the person has been listed as wanted for arrest and extradition by some other country. So it looks like the U.S. somehow got a red card put out on him through Interpol, which got him arrested, but...then what? If Nicaragua is not bound by or doesn't consider itself bound by an extradition treaty with the U.S., why did they bother to arrest and hold him pursuant to the red card? His family was apparently told on August 31 "that in 2 weeks the states plan to have him up there," but we are now well past that, and he's still in Nicaragua, according to the U.S. co-prosecutor. Is this a result of incompetence causing the Nicaraguans to take a surprisingly long time to "do the paperwork" to send Timo Miller back to the States, of warring factions in the Nicaraguan government, or of someone's malice, wanting to keep Timo Miller in bad prison conditions in a foreign country in such a way that he cannot even receive due process of law? And if so, whose malice? And why did a red card suddenly get put on him now after all these years, after he was cooperative back in 2011? All of these questions are unanswered, and the strain must be terrible for his family. They need prayers.

Moving on from Timo Miller to Pastor Ken Miller: He has declined to testify in the trial of Philip Zodhiates and has been found in civil contempt and told that he could be found in criminal contempt. Here is a moving account of the court scene in which he refused to testify. Right now no sentence has been given to him for either civil or criminal contempt. He is being held in Buffalo for the remainder of the Zodhiates trial in case he changes his mind about testifying. We should pray that he is not punished further for this refusal and also pray for his wife and family who must be in great anxiety about the possibility that his sentence will be lengthened and the uncertainty about how long it would be lengthened for.

Here are some details on the initial arguments in the Zodhiates trial. Evidently the lawyers are duking it out over the state of the law at the time of Zodhiates' "offense." Also over what Zodhiates did or didn't know. Since at the time of Lisa's and Isabella's flight the actual transfer order from the judge, ordering full custody to Janet Jenkins, had not been officially made (he had merely warned of it), Zodhiates' lawyer is arguing that he did not break federal law against assisting in a parental international kidnapping. Not being familiar with the niceties of that law, I can't say how much wiggle room there is there. It's certainly the case that Lisa Miller had been flouting other judicial orders to send Isabella to visit Jenkins unsupervised, and those orders predated her flight. It may be that any time there is dispute over child custody of any kind between people to whom a family court has given some sort of parental or visitation rights, the federal law forbids leaving the country with the child to cut short the dispute. I don't know. It will be interesting to see what the jury thinks.

Comments (7)

The Satanic zeal with which the authorities are pursuing the upstanding individuals who helped Lisa leave the country so that she can raise her own daughter in peace is sickening. Absolutely sickening. Words fail me.

It is not as if these so-called ministers of justice are motivated to act for Janet's sake -- this is all just a legal pretense for them to pursue their own hatred with reckless abandon. To spend the few years of one's life in the service of evil like this is utterly shameful.

It's going to get worse before it gets better. I don't know if you saw my earlier piece in which I pointed out that Janet Jenkins is waiting in the wings with a *civil suit* against all of these same people, once the criminal trials have run their course. Even if they either avoid getting incarcerated criminally, or (like Ken Miller) humbly serve their criminal sentences, it still won't be over. Jenkins will then attempt to ruin them financially via civil damages. And may succeed.

I would sort of wish I could believe that the federal prosecutors are acting as automata in the service of their twisted idea of the "rule of law," but that becomes difficult to maintain in the face of various facts. Viz., the bizarre red card out on Timo Miller. He has been cooperating since 2011 and actually allowed himself to be deposed and his testimony to be used in the trial of Kenneth Miller. Unlike Kenneth, Timo did not even resist testifying. So if they had wanted him to come back to the U.S. and testify in the current trial, all the evidence shows that he would have done so voluntarily. Why the sudden drama leading to the arrest in Nicaragua, then? It's pretty unexplained but has an air of weird vengeance. And against the most cooperative of all the people they are after, too. It makes no sense.

Then there is the statement in the news story that the prosecutor smiled/smirked when the judge just recently found Ken Miller in contempt for refusing to testify. Maybe I shouldn't read too much into that, but it sounds unpleasant. I know that prosecutors and judges sometimes get so caught up in their own legal positivist self-righteousness that they do take pleasure in seeing someone punished purely for a failure to submit to "the law" and "the court," but that would be bad enough.

I did not know that.

More likely than not, these people will already be financially ruined by the time Jenkins gets around to filing her civil suit unless they're being represented pro bono for the criminal trials. But, of course, we both know this isn't exactly about money for Jenkins. I would imagine that for her it would be enough of a reward to know that these people are continuing to suffer for depriving her the pleasure of raising Lisa's daughter. What else has Jenkins and her associates to live for other than "the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless" (quoting Orwell).

Then there is the statement in the news story that the prosecutor smiled/smirked when the judge just recently found Ken Miller in contempt for refusing to testify. Maybe I shouldn't read too much into that, but it sounds unpleasant.

I come from something of a legal family and that sounds about right to me. Most people have no idea just how bad things really are in our lower courts.

Thanks for the regular updates on this appalling case, Lydia.

A truly horrifying number of prosecutors in this country have been reduced by viciousness, exhaustion, distraction, or sheer ennui, to almost Soviet levels of heartless inflexibility. And not a few are crusading radicals in their own right, having gained office with an explicit or implicit design to make it an organ of cultural revolution.

I also wonder at the quality of these good folks' legal representation. To fight these kinds of prosecutors you must have tough and clever lawyers ready to do justice by you. And even with good representation, it remains true that the judge, prosecutor and defense counsel will almost always have more in common, socially, with each other, than they do with you.

Incidentally, all this is why the furor on the Right, these days, for law and order, often leaves me cold. Folks are just not aware of how gravely the integrity of our legal system has degraded, how callous it is toward the liberties and dignity of unpopular people.

Paul, I honestly don't know how good, in the sense of clever and pragmatically useful, their lawyers are. Obviously Ken Miller's lawyer failed in one sense--he was convicted. I remember being a bit put off because I read that Ken Miller's lawyer tried to throw the blame on Lisa, implying that she somehow manipulated Ken, played on his sympathies, and induced him to help her.

Zodhiates' lawyer seems to be going for the claim that a) Zodhiates didn't actually break federal law and/or b) Zodhiates had no intent to break federal law.

I don't know if that's more likely to be successful, but it sounds promising as far as it goes if he can get a jury to believe it.

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