The state of California has slapped 15 felony charges on David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who made the undercover videos that revealed the organ-trafficking and other moral corruption of Planned Parenthood. The charge: recording “confidential information” without permission.
California has not, however, prosecuted similar secret video stings that exposed the mistreatment of ducks and chickens. Rather, the state investigated the farm for its violations of animal rights. Ducks and chickens evidently have more value to prosecutors than unborn human children.
David French, who points this out after the jump, also observes that there is California case law that exempts investigative reporters from charges against hidden recordings. Furthermore, in this case, the Planned Parenthood employees did not know whom they were talking to and said what they did in a public place. It could hardly be construed as “confidential information.”
A Texas grand jury also tried to convict Daleiden and Merritt on the even more ridiculous charge of trying to buy harvested organs, since that was the part they were playing when they recorded Planned Parenthood’s sales pitch. That case was thrown out of court. This one certainly deserves that treatment too.
But what we are seeing is the left’s attempt to criminalize its opponents.
From David French, California Charges Pro-Life Journalists with Felony Counts for Planned Parenthood Videos — Selective Prosecution | National Review:
It’s becoming increasingly clear that in the state of California, the right to abort a child is the chief liberty in the land, and all other liberties must bow before it. Few things illustrate this sad and morbid truth more than the decision of the California attorney general to prosecute (or, more accurately, persecute) David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt.
Yesterday California charged Daleiden and Merrit with a whopping 15 felony counts based on their undercover videos — released through the Center for Medical Progress — showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing, among other things, harvesting and possibly even selling the organs of aborted babies. The heart of the indictment (14 of the 15 counts) is the claim that Daleiden and Merritt wrongly recorded alleged “confidential communications” between complete strangers at public conferences and at public restaurants.
California’s case not only fails on the merits, it reeks of selective prosecution. There is no shortage of examples of concealed-camera videos in California exposing scandalous behavior (the Federalist’s Sean Davis has been tweeting them since the indictment), often in the arena of animal rights. In 2014, a group called Mercy for Animals released an undercover video that “allegedly show[ed] widespread animal abuse and cruelty at one of California’s largest duck farms.” Authorities reportedly responded to the video — by investigating the farm.
[Keep reading. . .]
Photo by diegoattorney, Pixabay, Creative Commons
The state of California has slapped 15 felony charges on David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who made the undercover videos that revealed the organ-trafficking and other moral corruption of Planned Parenthood. The charge: recording “confidential information” without permission.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In