Disparaging Muslims is a crime? Would Feigin have been prosecuted for disparaging Christians? Jews? Hindus?
Look how this man was railroaded: the charge that Feigin had threatened the Islamic Center was dropped, but California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra implied that Feigin was convicted for threats, saying “We will not turn a blind eye to violent threats.” Feigin’s attorney Caleb Mason said: “It is disgraceful for a prosecutor to drop a charge, and then issue a press release implying that it got a conviction on that charge. An accurate press release would have read: ‘We dropped the threat charge against Mr. Feigin because we didn’t have a case against him.’”
What’s more, Feigin didn’t even call the Islamic Center. Mason said: “The prosecution started this case with a press conference accusing Mr. Feigin of making a threatening call before anyone had ever looked at the phone records to see who the caller was. The evidence — which we uncovered through the discovery process over the opposition of the prosecution at every stage — showed that Mr. Feigin never called the Islamic Center. … The prosecution refuses to admit that it charged the wrong man, and that it publicly smeared him as a violent threat despite having no evidence against him.”
California is increasingly insane, but this is an outrageous miscarriage of justice, and a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of the freedom of speech. Whatever Feigin pleaded in the face of this railroading, this entire case should be reevaluated and his criminal record expunged.
“Man pleads no contest to disparaging Muslims on Islamic Center’s Facebook page,” by Joseph Serna, Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2018:
An Agoura Hills man who posted anti-Muslim rhetoric on the Islamic Center of Southern California’s Facebook page has pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges, the state attorney general’s office announced Friday.
The statement said that the defendant, Mark Feigin, also made threatening phone calls to the center. But Feigin’s attorney denies that his client ever made any calls and said the threat charge was dropped.
“It is disgraceful for a prosecutor to drop a charge, and then issue a press release implying that it got a conviction on that charge,” attorney Caleb Mason said in a statement to The Times on Saturday. “An accurate press release would have read: ‘We dropped the threat charge against Mr. Feigin because we didn’t have a case against him.’ “…
The Los Angeles Police Department launched an investigation into Feigin, 41, after the Islamic center received telephonic threats, LAPD officials said after they arrested him during a traffic stop. Those threats, however, did not come from Feigin, Mason said.
Police searched Feigin’s Agoura Hills home and found several guns — rifles, shotguns and handguns — and thousands of rounds of ammunition, police Cmdr. Horace Frank said.
One of Feigin’s defense attorneys, Robert Sheahen, said at the time that his client was a collector but never fired the weapons or planned on using them….
“We will not turn a blind eye to violent threats targeted at individuals based on prejudice, whether because of race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation,” Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. The California Department of Justice will vigorously prosecute those who commit crimes motivated by hate. This plea reinforces our commitment.”
Mason, Feigin’s attorney, in his statement to The Times, further criticized the attorney general’s office for issuing false information in its statement on Friday.
“The prosecution started this case with a press conference accusing Mr. Feigin of making a threatening call before anyone had ever looked at the phone records to see who the caller was,” Mason said. “The evidence — which we uncovered through the discovery process over the opposition of the prosecution at every stage — showed that Mr. Feigin never called the Islamic Center. … The prosecution refuses to admit that it charged the wrong man, and that it publicly smeared him as a violent threat despite having no evidence against him.”
Source: Jihad Watch