BlackRavenMad
09-30-2006, 02:37 AM
St. Petersburg Times Covers Up to Help Cop-Hating Defense Attorney Get Elected Judge
The St. Petersburg Times, called “the worst newspaper in the country” by Bill O’Reilley, is promoting Chris Helinger, a longstanding cop-hater, for circuit judge and covering up for her to help get her elected.
In the race to replace retiring Circuit Court Judge Crockett Farnell, there were originally 3 candidates, two of them assistant prosecutors, Glenn Martin and Mary Handsel, and one an assistant public defender, Chris Helinger. After the primary, two candidates remained, Martin and Helinger.
Just a couple of weeks before the primary, the Times ran the following commentary about each of the candidates:
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court
A Times Editorial
Published August 19, 2006
________________________________________
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Group 9
Christine Helinger
All the candidates in this race to replace retiring Circuit Judge Crockett Farnell are employed by the state. Mary Handsel and Glenn Martin are longtime prosecutors and Christine Helinger is a veteran public defender.
All three candidates are well regarded professionals who are respected by their peers in the legal community. Voters would not go wrong in choosing any one of them. But since a choice has to be made, we give Helinger the edge.
For the last 25 years, Helinger, 55, has worked for the Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender's Office. She has been working part-time for that office since 1997 and has specialized in particularly complex and challenging cases, including death penalty cases. She is considered a tenacious attorney who goes the extra mile to investigate her cases and represent her clients. In 2000, Helinger was named the best assistant public defender in the state. Helinger says the essential qualities in a judge are patience, integrity, a sense of fair play and hard work. She promises to embody those qualities on the bench.
Handsel, 42, has been a prosecutor in the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office for 16 years. She supervises the West Pasco office, where she manages 15 prosecutors. Martin, 53, has been a prosecutor in the State Attorney's Office for 22 years. Before that, he was a police officer in St. Petersburg. While he has a law enforcement background, Martin is considered eminently fair to defendants and quite a good lawyer. The questions raised about Martin's candidacy have to do with his temperament.
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What the Times did not tell their readers is that Helinger is a passionate cop-hater of low integrity who firmly believes that criminals have more rights than law-abiding citizens, and even more rights than law enforcement officers. Over the years that she has been an assistant public defender she has on more than one occasion remarked openly that “all cops lie,” “cops are liars,” etc., and has developed a solid reputation for general rudeness and underhanded conduct, and has gone out of her way to disparage and humiliate police officers in court and out.
I've been told that she’s got a dirty little secret that she does not want the public to know. A secret that the Times is safeguarding for her. That secret is that her brother, Richard Michael Silkett, DC Number 240128, is a murderer and a thief who since 1985 has been serving a life sentence in Florida’s Martin Correctional Institute. You can look him up on the Florida Department of Corrections website. You can also and read about what he did in St. Petersburg Police Department Report SP85-043485, or Pinellas County Circuit Court Case File CRC85-04937CFANO. This is why she hates the police so passionately.
The Times also did not tell their readers that Helinger flunked the bar exam when she first took it, that she is on her third marriage, and that she has very poor working relationships with the people she comes in contact with on a regular basis. She would be a terrible choice for judge, under any circumstances, but the Times is backing her as part of its liberal agenda.
There are enough cop-haters out there on the streets. We don’t need one on the bench, where she could potentially be called upon to judge other cop-haters – and cop-killers.
Don't let the Times to pimp for a candidate who has no business being a judge. Vote for Glenn Martin
[/b]
The St. Petersburg Times, called “the worst newspaper in the country” by Bill O’Reilley, is promoting Chris Helinger, a longstanding cop-hater, for circuit judge and covering up for her to help get her elected.
In the race to replace retiring Circuit Court Judge Crockett Farnell, there were originally 3 candidates, two of them assistant prosecutors, Glenn Martin and Mary Handsel, and one an assistant public defender, Chris Helinger. After the primary, two candidates remained, Martin and Helinger.
Just a couple of weeks before the primary, the Times ran the following commentary about each of the candidates:
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court
A Times Editorial
Published August 19, 2006
________________________________________
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Group 9
Christine Helinger
All the candidates in this race to replace retiring Circuit Judge Crockett Farnell are employed by the state. Mary Handsel and Glenn Martin are longtime prosecutors and Christine Helinger is a veteran public defender.
All three candidates are well regarded professionals who are respected by their peers in the legal community. Voters would not go wrong in choosing any one of them. But since a choice has to be made, we give Helinger the edge.
For the last 25 years, Helinger, 55, has worked for the Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender's Office. She has been working part-time for that office since 1997 and has specialized in particularly complex and challenging cases, including death penalty cases. She is considered a tenacious attorney who goes the extra mile to investigate her cases and represent her clients. In 2000, Helinger was named the best assistant public defender in the state. Helinger says the essential qualities in a judge are patience, integrity, a sense of fair play and hard work. She promises to embody those qualities on the bench.
Handsel, 42, has been a prosecutor in the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office for 16 years. She supervises the West Pasco office, where she manages 15 prosecutors. Martin, 53, has been a prosecutor in the State Attorney's Office for 22 years. Before that, he was a police officer in St. Petersburg. While he has a law enforcement background, Martin is considered eminently fair to defendants and quite a good lawyer. The questions raised about Martin's candidacy have to do with his temperament.
----------
What the Times did not tell their readers is that Helinger is a passionate cop-hater of low integrity who firmly believes that criminals have more rights than law-abiding citizens, and even more rights than law enforcement officers. Over the years that she has been an assistant public defender she has on more than one occasion remarked openly that “all cops lie,” “cops are liars,” etc., and has developed a solid reputation for general rudeness and underhanded conduct, and has gone out of her way to disparage and humiliate police officers in court and out.
I've been told that she’s got a dirty little secret that she does not want the public to know. A secret that the Times is safeguarding for her. That secret is that her brother, Richard Michael Silkett, DC Number 240128, is a murderer and a thief who since 1985 has been serving a life sentence in Florida’s Martin Correctional Institute. You can look him up on the Florida Department of Corrections website. You can also and read about what he did in St. Petersburg Police Department Report SP85-043485, or Pinellas County Circuit Court Case File CRC85-04937CFANO. This is why she hates the police so passionately.
The Times also did not tell their readers that Helinger flunked the bar exam when she first took it, that she is on her third marriage, and that she has very poor working relationships with the people she comes in contact with on a regular basis. She would be a terrible choice for judge, under any circumstances, but the Times is backing her as part of its liberal agenda.
There are enough cop-haters out there on the streets. We don’t need one on the bench, where she could potentially be called upon to judge other cop-haters – and cop-killers.
Don't let the Times to pimp for a candidate who has no business being a judge. Vote for Glenn Martin
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