Paschall exploited that vulnerability when the time came to recruit him as an informant, making use of his victim's fears and anxieties: The prosecutor threatened to send Megress to prison for “60 to 99 years,” and to prosecute members of his family who were innocent of any wrongdoing, if the young parolee didn't cooperate. Paschall had a long history with Megress, and in the following detail of that history we see the unique viciousness that distinguishes Paschall even in the detestable company of Nifong, Thomas, and Baker, the abusive prosecutors mentioned above.Īs a juvenile, Megress was hospitalized for serious mental illness, a fact well known to Paschall, who was the one who had the youngster committed. In late 1999, Paschall hauled in a recently paroled petty criminal – a small-time thief with a recurring drug addiction named Derrick Megress - and blackmailed him into acting as a confidential informant. Paschall reportedly expressed the opinion that it would be better for the community if Columbus Village residents “were removed from Hearne by incarceration or other means,” specifically suggesting that the project should be “bombed” and “burned.” But this wouldn't be as profitable as drawing up rosters of Columbus Village residents to be hauled in during the annual paramilitary sweep, so Paschall didn't pull the trigger on his “Destroy Columbus Village to save the town” strategy. Some of the raids would focus on a housing complex called Columbus Village, a federally subsidized complex housing many black residents. Paschall described the fleeing residents as cockroaches.” Paschall, according to witness accounts cited in the lawsuit, “publicly and openly joked about the sweeps, saying that it was `time to round up the n*****s,' and laughed about watching African-American residents run in fear during the sweeps. Starting in the mid-1980s, the Task Force would conduct an annual raid in Hearne, a Texas town of about 5,000 people. he informant is required to fill a large quota or else he faces lengthy imprisonment.” Paschall is not in charge of drug manufacturing or distribution, but rather what could be called the “fulfillment” department: He heads up the local counter-narcotics task force, which – until quite recently – conducted an annual raid on the local black population in order to produce arrests in sufficient abundance to keep federal Byrne Grant money flowing.Ī class-action suit (.pdf) filed against Paschall and the Task Force by the ACLU (insert standard disclaimer here) plausibly alleged that the DA and his associates “have for many years recruited confidential informants, facing criminal charges, by threatening them with extraordinarily lengthy prison terms unless they will implicate numerous named African-American residents in drug sales.
No, he doesn't synthesize, sell, or consume the contraband, at least as far as is publicly known. Paschall is District Attorney for Robertson County in Texas, in which capacity he has long been the local Narcotics Kingpin. No photograph of John Paschall is available, so I offer this artist's conception of the prosecutor, seen here "drumming up" drug cases in Robertson County, Texas. Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, who insists on prolonging the utterly insane imprisonment of Genarlow Wilson, is another.īut today let's focus on the case of John Paschall, one unfathomably vicious little distaff canine.
ZONE 6 KING PINS PROFESSIONAL
There are plenty of other corrupt and abusive prosecutors – US Attorneys, State Attorneys General, District Attorneys, and the like - who deserve to be bathed in the same disrepute, and subject to the same professional ruin, that Nifong must now endure. He shouldn't be allowed to Bogart that pity pipe. But Nifong the Good – also known as Nifong the Wise, and Nifong the Misunderstood – deserves some company.
Mike Nifong's career as the Torquemada of Raleigh, North Carolina is over, although the self-enraptured prosecutor couldn't resist one final lachrymose moment in the spotlight.
Not a scene from a movie, or from the streets of Baghdad: "Police" - that is, Pentagon-equipped and federally-funded occupation troops - conduct a raid in Detroit.
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