|
UPDATE.
Camille was released from the Doña
Ana County Detention Center on July 20, 2015. Thank you for your support. |
For several years, Camille A. Marino has been dedicated to the effort to stop
the torture, mutilation, and murder of animals in research laboratories of the
University of Florida. This university, like others, desperately wants its
faculty members and other employees to "experiment" on animals, because the
"experiments" attract grant money offered by the U. S. national government.
It seems to be a fact of life that, when someone like Camille presents a
challenge to the continued flow of grant money to a university, she is perceived
by the following kinds of people to be a threat that must be neutralized:
● The university that desperately wants the revenue.
● The university's employees who receive a portion of the revenue and who
receive other rewards, possibly including tenure and promotions.
● Similar institutions that want to "experiment" on animals and various
agricultural and industrial entities that fear new policies that may interfere
with their
profitable exploitation of animals.
● Rivals in the animal-welfare and animal-rights movement who do not want to be overshadowed by
her.
During her years as an advocate for the animals, Camille has been threatened,
arrested, and imprisoned any number of times by people and institutions in the
aforementioned categories who have wanted to put an end to her expressions of
speech and her organization of public assemblies. Every police officer,
prosecuting attorney, and judge would be presumed fully aware of the plain
fact that Camille's speech and assemblies are protected by the First Amendment
of the U. S. Constitution. Therefore, every time she has been arrested and
imprisoned, the authorities who have ordered and implemented these measures have
done so knowing full well that they were acting in flagrant violation of the law
of the land.
They don't care. It is a horrifying feature of American government,
politics, and law that an individual will get as much justice as he can afford,
and no more than that. You are welcome to read
my sobering lecture
titled "Judicial Power." Camille does not have money, and, therefore,
she has gotten no justice. The University of Florida has dispatched its
paid police officers to arrest her. When another animal-rights activist
with access to Camille's Web site posted an essay threatening a butcher of animals at Wayne State University
in Detroit, the University of Florida
paid for
Camille's transport in a prison van to Michigan, where she faced
prosecution for posting that essay, although she was not the author. Can you
imagine? When a Florida citizen criticizes UF for carving up animals in
laboratories, UF‑‑an agency of the state government of Florida‑‑has money in its
budget to pay for the citizen's deportation out of Florida! Some guarantee
of free speech!
Camille and the aforementioned activist, a resident of New Mexico, proceeded to
have a very public falling out. Much of it appeared online.
I would think that it is unfortunate for fellow animal-rights activists to
engage in acrimony, but it seems to me that both of them possess the
constitutional right to insult each other. However, Camille's rival, who
has access to many more resources than Camille does, petitioned a New Mexico
court for a "domestic violence" order and got it. This happened despite
the fact that
Camille lives
in Florida, not New Mexico; that she never engaged in domestic
violence or threats of physical harm; and, therefore, that the court
had no
jurisdiction over Camille. Nevertheless, a New Mexico judge
[Darren M. Kugler; see article about him that appears below]
ordered Camille to be extradited to New Mexico and, upon her arrival, sentenced
her in February 2015 to
6 months of
incarceration in a county detention center for violating the protective
order because she posted on the Internet regarding the falling out with her
former ally. The judge also banned her from the Internet, another
violation of her right to free speech. Camille cannot pay
the enormous legal bills that this absurd situation has necessitated, and has no
money to appeal this unjust decision, even though the New Mexico protective
order will remain in effect for 12 years and her rival intends to wield it like
a club against her if she dares to try to exercise her right to free speech.
This is the sad state of American justice.
This is a country in which courts ruled, pursuant to the First Amendment, that
neo‑Nazis, clad in Nazi uniforms, were welcome to parade in Skokie, Ill., a
Chicago suburb that has been home to many Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust,
and express Hitler's ideology of hatred and intimidation. This is a
country in which courts ruled, pursuant to the First Amendment, that fanatical
organizers of the "Westboro Baptist Church" were welcome to noisily protest near
funerals of brave men and women killed in military service to our country and
display picket signs expressing their incomprehensible rationale that "G•d hates
fags."
However,
it is increasingly apparent that, in our country, neither the First Amendment
nor the other panoply of constitutional provisions, laws, Supreme Court
opinions, and rules for judicial proceedings protects
somebody who
takes the wanton torture and destruction of animals personally and vehemently
protests those acts of brutality.
The crackdown
on grassroots animal-rights activists like Camille, while fascists, bigots, and
theocratic traitors are free to disseminate their vicious propaganda, is not
random. It amounts to a conscious policy of state
governments and the national government to protect every industry that butchers
innocent animals, because those industries are flush with cash and state- and
national-government officials aspire to capture a piece of that action.
All of
them want the slaughter of animals to persist, and so Camille
must be kept incommunicado. She is in jail for 6 months, and‑‑make no
mistake‑‑this is only Round 1 for this brave woman. Her enemies will do
whatever they can to keep her there for years, because they are so threatened by
what she wants to say about what happens to innocent animals in research
laboratories. Why shouldn't they be able to keep her in jail, when the
court's decisions are based exclusively on the cavalier rule of "because I have
the unilateral power to steamroll her"?
If you relate to Camille's passionate devotion to the well-being of animals, and
if you believe in the right of every American to express and expose the truth, it
makes perfect sense that you should care about Camille, just like I do. If
you care about Camille,
please support
Camille, just like I do. Here are two ways in which you can
show your support for Camille:
Please, on occasion, write a letter to Camille. Here is her mailing
address:
LAS
CRUCES - Darren M. Kugler, who served as the Division 3 judge in 3rd
Judicial District Court, permanently resigned from the bench last month
amid allegations he violated the judicial code of conduct, according to
court filings obtained by the
Sun-News.