A Judge’s Secret Communication With The Prosecutor
The judge in the Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald case is one of the big reasons he is still in jail all these years later. In this excerpt from the book Fatal Justice, the judge in 1979 trial, United States federal judge Franklin Taylor Dupree Jr secretly communicated with the prosecution trying to influence the outcome of the trial. This fact was found out years later. Just this revelation alone should free the good Doctor who is currently awaiting on his 4th appeal. In my opinion this is absolute judicial corruption.
JUDGE DUPREE AND CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDA
TO THE PROSECUTORS
After MacDonald’s conviction, nearly ten years passed before the defense
team discovered that Judge Dupree had on at least three different occasions
written to the case prosecutors without sharing that information with written
the defense lawyers.
One of these instances particularly troubled the defense team when
the communications were discovered in FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) material. After Dr. Brussel’s unflattering assessment of MacDonald’s psyche had been put into report form during trial by Brussel’s psychologist, Dr. Silverman, Segal took steps to prevent MacDonald from being further injured by the probability of the Brussel-Silverman report going public.
Upon learning that Dupree wouldn’t allow any psychiatric testimony at all, Segal immediately pre-pared a motion to have the Brussel-Silverman report removed from the record. Segal had, after all, struck an agreement with Brussel and Silverman not to share that report with anyone unless Judge Dupree ruled to allow psychiatric testimony; and that agreement had been ignored when Murtagh gave it to Dupree. Now that report, which Segal considered bogus was going to become a part of the public record which the
prosecution could use at will to point to MacDonald’s “homicidal” nature.
That report, which contained opinions contrary to the reports of
of MacDonald by five other psychiatrists, would be the only official
psychiatric report in the trial record, placed there by Dupree as part of
his response to MacDonald’s plea to be freed on bail pending appeals.
Dupree responded to Segal’s motion to strike the report by writing a
memorandum not to Segal and the prosecutors, but to prosecutor Jim
Blackburn alone. And he marked the memo “CONFIDENTIAL.” He told
Blackburn he had just read Segal’s motion. “I understand you will respond
to this.”
Then the judge wrote, “Just what effect any agreement between
the doctors and Segal would have on you,” Dupree wrote, “l am not
aware…. I would observe that the court did not rule that the defendant
might not offer psychiatric evidence in support of his defense but simply
limited such evidence to that tending to show defendant’s character traits
of peacefulness, etc.
This confidential memorandum, besides incorrectly stating Dupree’s
actual ruling, was a one-sided secret communication with the prosecu-
tor, which offered the judge’s own views, thereby revealing to Blackburn
how he might successfully argue. It is not difficult to understand why
the discovery of this memorandum in the FOIA receipts angered Bernard
Segal when he learned about it years later.
Nor was this memo the first ex-parte communication between Dupree
and the prosecution. Pre-trial, on May 14, 1979, Dupree had written the
prosecution, saying, “Let me know immediately when Segal responds to
your letter of May 11 and I will be prepared to rule on his motion.”
And in an earlier letter from Dupree to then Assistant U.S. Attorney
Jay Stroud February 26, 1975, Dupree had advised Stroud on what he
“should do” to proceed toward the MacDonald trial.
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