Lula Smart cleared by a jury in third trial.
Third strike by the prosecutors: they’re out!
Will they stop wasting our taxpayer dollars now?
Katheryn Hayes Tucker, Daily Report, 17 September 2014, Acquittal in Trial Over Absentee Ballots,
Lula Mary Smart was acquitted on 19 felony charges of voting irregularities Wednesday following a month-long trial in Brooks County Superior Court in South Georgia.
Continue reading
“Thank you for not plea bargaining” said George Boston Rhynes
starting his series of videos on the ongoing third trial of
Lula Smart of the Quitman 10+2.
No newspapers, radio, or TV reporters at this trial
about voters’ rights.
But George is there.
Will three strikes against the prosecution make it give up on trying to convict the Quitman 10+2? Dear prosecutor, we know you read this blog, because you asked potential jurors at Lula Smart’s second trial,
Have you read or talked to or followed a blog called “On the Lake Front?”
So, dear prosecutor, when is enough enough?
Fannie MJ Gibs
notes that Quitman Free press
posted on facebook yesterday:
The retrial voter fraud case has been set for August 19 at Brooks County Courthouse. See this week’s issue for details.
So far as I know, Quitman Free Press only prints on paper and does not post any articles online, so we have to guess they’re referring to the Quitman 10.
When George Rhynes first posted about the arrests of the Quitman 10 in December 2010, he remarked:
Today’s arrest will surely end up in the courts.
Who would have expected it to be in the courts three times?
In July 2012, the Chair of the Brooks County Board of Elections
tried to throw George Boston Rhynes out of her board’s meeting Continue reading
How many mistrials does it take before the whole Quitman 10 +2
case gets thrown out of court?
Two and counting, as of Friday.
George Boston Rhynes interviewed Brooks County Commissioner James Maxwell outside the courthouse in Quitman on a rainy day:
Mistrial! Another mistrial.
And the prosecutor wants to schedule another trial. George asked the Commissioner how much another trial would cost Brooks County.
It will cost quit a bit of money. We could use that money on a day like today to repair roads. People can’t get in and out and here we are wasting the taxpayers on another mistrial.
No evidence! No evidence! And another mistrial.
Here’s Part 1 of 2: Continue reading
George Boston Rhynes is reporting the retrial of Lula Smart
of the Quitman 10+2
in Brooks County, Georgia, and its serious issues of voting rights,
justice, and education;
his first three videos are linked in below.
First an amusing observation from yesterday, posted here with permission.
I am lounging outside the Brooks County Courthouse and this is just what I was thinking. We have been here since 8 AM and jury selection is ongoing. To actually eyeball perceived enemies is an humbling experience. How pitiful you have to be to live your life consumed with hatred, venom, bigotry, and a multitude of demonic spirits! Anyway, the greatest take away from day one of the Lula Smart retrial aka the Quitman 10 + 2 is the prosecuting attorney’s question to potential jurors: “have you read or talked to or followed a blog called “On the Lake Front?” Hilarious for those of us who knows what that means!! This kind of evil does kill, but I refuse to allow it to rob me of my joy! Blessed nite. Nite!
-Fannie MJ Gibbs
I’ve always said we had a reader. I just didn’t know it was the Quitman 10+2 prosecution.
Here are George’s first three videos:
Continue reading
The trial of Lula Smart ended in a mistrial,
reports George Boston Rhynes from the Courthouse in Brooks County.
So the first of
the Quitman 10
is going
like the Madison 9 did.
Here’s Part 1 of 3:
George says witnesses today talked about voter intimidation
and some said they would not vote again because of this
investigation on the Quitman 10+2.
He says the GBI agent was asked how they were trained before
they were sent to Brooks County, and they had little training
in voting investigations, plus they took ballots home from
the Board of Elections, including some with no addresses
for any of the persons they were investigating.
George also reported WCTV had a camera in the courtroom, after you may recall Continue reading
9 people were arrested just across the Florida line in Madison on charges similar to the Quitman 10, but on trial all charges have been dropped except for 2, as George Rhynes pointed out.
Interviewing one of their lawyers 20 December 2012,
George heard that at least her clients refused to accept plea bargains.
The Madison 9 were arrested in November 2011, and the obvious question came, as Trymaine Lee wrote for Huffpo 18 January 2013, Nine Election-Related Arrests In Florida: A Case Of Voter Fraud Or Voter Suppression?
As soon as Judy Ann Crumitie answered the banging on her door one November morning Continue reading
Trials for the Quitman 10+2 have finally started.
George Boston Rhynes is covering them every day on YouTube.
The only other reporter George has seen there was one from the Valdosta Daily Times. George is waving a copy of the VDT here as he discusses what the case is about: the Quitman 10 registered enough voters that several black people got elected to the school board in Brooks County for the first time ever.
Front Row: Linda Troutman, Lula Smart, April Proctor, Diane Thomas
Back Row: Latashia Head, Sandra Cody, Robert Dennard, Angela Bryant Nancy Dennard, and Kechia Harrison
Front page of the VDT yesterday, Quitman 11 trial gets under way, with no byline and no pictures, Continue reading
George Boston Rhynes notes a trial date of 10 December 2012
has finally been set for the Quitman 10+2.
They were arrested back in 2010 for alleged voter fraud.
Their “speedy trial” has taken so long that one of them has died.
The governor did convene a committee that ejected them from the school board in January. After repeatedly going to Atlanta, after Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials (GABEO) held its general meeting in Quitman, after Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp came to Quitman to hear complaints about the handling of the Quitman 10+2 case and recent irregularities involving the Brooks County Board of Elections, members of the Quitman 10+2 were finally reinstated on the school board 9 October 2012. Yet their “speedy trial” has been delayed for two full years, all the way until after this year’s election.
Here’s the video:
Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
-jsq
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp came to Quitman Thursday to hear about election issues. Here is the first of many videos George Boston Rhynes took of the event. There are more on his YouTube channel, bostongbr,, and I will post some of them here, too.
This local voter pretty much summed it up:
My county commissioners… found nothing wrong with this.They found nothing wrong with this! How much can one community endure to have a right to have our votes cast and counted for who we want to represent us.
Here’s the video:
GA Sec. State hears complaints from voters about Elections,
GA Sec. State Brian Kemp, Brooks County (Brooks),
Video by George Boston Rhynes for bostongbr on YouTube (K.V.C.I.), Quitman, Brooks County, Georgia, 9 August 2012.
-jsq