New legal step
in the case of
the Cuban Five
ON
June 6, 2012, a motion on behalf of Gerardo
Hernández requesting an Oral Argument and Discovery
was filed with the U.S. Southern District Court of
Florida (Miami Court) by counsel Tom Goldstein and
Martin Garbus*, through his local counsel Richard
Klugh.
This
motion is part of the collateral appeal process
initiated on June 14, 2010, and is based on the
right Movant and his co-defendants have to know
whether the Government was funding a negative
publicity campaign about them during the trial whose
purpose was to ensure their convictions.
Its purpose is to obtain, through interrogatories,
document production, depositions and subpoenas all
the necessary evidence to be fully examined by the
Court in an evidenciary hearing and prove, at that
hearing, that the legal consequences of the evidence
will be that the convictions must be set aside.
The discovery seeks to establish:
(1) The full scope of the issue by identifying
all journalists and media organizations that
received funds from the United States and then
published false, hostile, inflammatory and
prejudicial statements about Movant and his co-defendants,
as well as the specific articles, interviews, and
television and radio segments in which those
statements appeared;
(2) The precise degree of the Government’s
influence and control over these journalists and
media organizations;
(3) The degree of knowledge held not only by the
U.S. State Department, which actually paid the
journalists, but also by other branches of the
Government, including the U.S. Department of Justice;
(4) The prejudicial impact of the Government’s
propaganda campaign on Movant’s trial.
The discovery requests include 84 individuals
connected to inflammatory press coverage relating to
this case, 7 TV Stations and 13 Radio Stations.
* Martin Garbus is one of the country’s leading
trial lawyers and has appeared before the United
States Supreme Court as well as U.S. trial and
appellate courts, in over 100 cases. His cases have
established new legal precedents in the Supreme
Court and courts throughout the country. Mr. Garbus,
who taught trial practice at the Yale Law School and
Constitutional law at Columbia, is the author of six
books and numerous articles, which have appeared in
The New York Times and the
Washington Post, among other publications. He
was a long-time personal friend and colleague of
Leonard Weinglass. (www.thecuban5.org)
