This post from late last year noted this self-righteous NY Times Magazine piece  in which Andrew Meier decried the Russian government’s unjust prosecution and treatment of former Yukos chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Meanwhile, the Times and most of the rest of the mainstream media have largely ignored the United States Government’s unconscionable treatment of R. Allen Stanford, who is still awaiting trial in downtown Houston’s Federal Detention Center. Stanford’s current legal team — which includes Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz — has filed another motion seeking Stanford’s release, this time on Constitutional grounds.

The deprivation of due process and other Constitutional arguments contained in Stanford’s latest motion are interesting, but what is even more compelling is the description of what the government has done to Stanford while he is presumed to be innocent of the charges asserted against him:

Mr. Stanford, a man who is presumed to be innocent, is being, and has been, subjected to substantial and undeniable punishment long before the trial of his case has even begun. He has been physically assaulted; he has suffered significant medical injury and psychological debilitation; he was held in solitary confinement two separate times for a total of 40 days; he has been subjected to 335 days of pretrial incarceration as of May 18, 2010; and before his scheduled trial concludes, he will predictably serve another nonspeculative 439 days.

Pivotally, he has, and will continue to have his constitutional rights compromised, including his fundamental right to assist counsel in the preparation of his defense, to personally review even a small fraction of the evidence that is material to his prosecution, to locate exculpatory evidence, and to have his core cognitive faculties undiminished by unnecessary conditions of confinement in a high-security prison which, in a myriad of ways .   .  . have prevented and will prevent him from preparing for trial.  .  .  . [T]he conditions of confinement to which Mr. Stanford has been subjected have been and continue to be manifestly punitive. [.  .  .]

On June 18, 2009, when Mr. Stanford surrendered to authorities, he was a healthy 59 year-old man, with no substantial physical or mental health issues. Now, nearly one year in detention later, Mr. Stanford’s pretrial incarceration has reduced him to a wreck of a man: he has suffered potentially life-impairing illnesses; he has been so savagely beaten that he has lost all feeling in the right side of his face and has lost near field vision in his right eye. The major injuries from his assault while in prison required reconstructive surgery under general anesthesia and was performed while he was under restraint.

Rather than placed in medical isolation or the general population to recover, immediately post-operation, Mr. Stanford was placed in the maximum security Special Housing Unit (“SHU”) area of the prison where he remained detained in solitary confinement for roughly 23 days, and denied all outside human contact with the exception of his attorneys; extreme measures which are generally reserved for only the most violent of convicted criminals.

Mr. Stanford has experienced, according to the Declarations attached hereto, a precipitate, severe, and ongoing deterioration of his mental and emotional health caused by the conditions of his confinement. Mr. Stanford has, moreover, been denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, to assist counsel in the preparation of his defense, and has been for the entire 335 days of his ongoing critical pretrial period deprived of the requisite confidentiality of his discussions with his attorneys by enforced institutional review of every document which his attorneys wished to discuss with him during their meetings.

Trial of this case is not scheduled to begin until January 24, 2011, and is expected to last six months, bringing the total, non-speculative, duration of pretrial detention to a minimum of 774 days; well over two full years without a determination that he is guilty of any crime.

And just to make sure that Stanford will never be of any meaningful assistance to his defense counsel, get a load of the routine that Stanford faces each day of his expected six-month trial if he continues to be incarcerated during the trial:

Mr. Stanford’s inability to assist counsel during trial will be magnified by the reality of the system for bringing detained defendants to court, which forces defendants to undergo procedures which result in elapsed time of 14-17 hours between wake-up in the morning and return to cell in the evening. The physically and mentally exhausting and degrading procedures which Mr. Stanford would be forced to endure day in and day out during the six month trial if he remains incarcerated — procedures which leave insufficient time for sleep and virtually no time for additional preparation — are roughly as follows:

The inmates are awakened at around 4:00 to 4:30 AM. A body search is done before leaving the cell.

They are then taken to a receiving area where they have to strip naked, go through another body search, and then given a set of green clothes.

The inmates are then placed in a concrete holding cell where they may sit for 2 to 3 hours. GEO guards come into the holding cell where they shackle the inmates’ hands to a chain around their waist and shackle the ankles.

After they are shackled, the inmates are taken down to the first floor and placed in a van. After about a 30 minute wait, they are driven to the U.S. Marshal’s office at the Federal Courthouse.

The inmates are then searched by the U.S. Marshals and placed in a steel cell where they wait until they are called and taken to their hearing. Mr. Stanford stated that he goes to the hearing with his shackles in place.

After the hearing, the inmates are taken back to the steel holding cell and they remain there until everyone is done with their hearing.

By the time all the hearings are done it can be anywhere from 5:00 to 7:00 PM. At that time, the inmates are taken to the van and driven back to the FDC.

At the FDC, the inmates strip naked, undergo a body search, and change back into their regular jail garb.

The inmates remain in the holding cell while a counselor spends 5 minutes with each inmate asking what happened at their hearing, whether they feel suicidal, etc. After everyone is interviewed, the inmates are taken back to their cells somewhere around 7:00 to 9:30 PM.

For years, we watched as an out-of-control federal task force – egged on by a vacuous media members – rode roughshod over local citizens’ Constitutional protections. Now, before our eyes, the presumption of innocence has been eviscerated in the Stanford case with nary a peep of protest other than from Stanford’
s attorneys and a few bloggers.

"When the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat? .  .  .[D]o you really thing you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"