Sept. 2 Letters to the Editor: Our Readers’ Opinions – Lewiston Morning Tribune

On May 18 from 8:01 p.m. until 9:30 p.m., I was a pretrial detainee protected by any punishment under the 14th Amendments due process clause.

I had invoked my Fifth Amendment and Sixth Amendment constitutional rights on numerous occasions prior to being brought to the Idaho State Police, District 2 office, where I was subjected by a trooper and unknown detective to a ultimatum: Either I speak to detectives who are trying to gather information and incriminate myself or by the officers own threat be placed in the back seat of a police car and sit for however long these unknown detectives chose to investigate.

Without any sign of threat or disturbance, I fearlessly invoked my aforementioned constitutional rights. Instantly after this invocation, handcuffs were placed on me so tightly they nearly broke skin and my arm was yanked up high. I was placed in the back seat of a vehicle for more than an hour.

I begged the officer to loosen the handcuffs three separate times.

I was punished with malicious and sadistic intent for invoking my constitutional rights to remain silent and have counsel present.

The Supreme Court stated that the due process clause protects a pretrial detainee from the use of excessive force that amounts to punishment.

This type of behavior is prohibited by Congress and all agencies involved shall be held accountable in my civil case, CV35-21-1092, by a pretrial detainee at the Nez Perce County Jail,

Agrees with Dugger, Bentz

... I really had to agree with the recent commentary written by Marvin Dugger in which he relied heavily upon remarks by Rusty Bentz. I agree with about 90 percent of what they had to say. I didnt agree with the headline. It read: Breach the lower Snake River dams and we will lose our fish. I believe a more accurate rendering would have been Breach the lower Snake River dams and we might lose our fish, but we will surely lose them if we do not breach.

The wording was probably not theirs but the Lewiston Tribunes. ...

They threw a lot of numbers from a 1984 study that has been largely discredited, even by the agency that originally distributed the study results, the defunct National Marine Fisheries Services. ...

If data is left out of an equation, the results may be misleading. ...

For example the sentence that reads: The fish that were barged came back 11 times greater than those left in the river is an accurate statement that came directly from the study. However, the study also revealed fish did not return to the point of origin. The count was taken at Bonneville Dam on the lower Columbia, not at the Central Ferry Hatchery on the Snake. ...

Dugger and Bentz are good men and wonderful outdoorsmen and conservationists. ...

But ... studies that are outdated and scientifically discredited have to be willowed from the arsenal of defense for the fighting fish to have a fighting chance.

No man is an island

There are two epidemics taking place right now a COVID-19 epidemic and a misinformation epidemic.

Interestingly, from 1901 to 1903 an outbreak of smallpox in Boston claimed the lives of hundreds of citizens. A program of house-to-house vaccination was initiated with physicians authorized to vaccinate all who were not too ill.

Ultimately smallpox was eradicated within the city. But the epidemic led to a landmark legal case on the constitutionality of compulsory vaccination.

In 1905 the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7-to-2 in favor of the state, ruling that it could require vaccination in order to protect the public in case of a dangerous communicable disease. In other words No man is an island. Our choices affect not only ourselves, but our families and the public as well.

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Sept. 2 Letters to the Editor: Our Readers' Opinions - Lewiston Morning Tribune