Judicial Impropriety in 'Baby Veronica' case?

At left: Baby Veronica with the Capobiancos, graphic from Split Feathers.



We have been regularly covering the "Baby Veronica" case on our radio show, Occupy the Microphone on WOLI (which you should be listening to EVERY SINGLE DAY, LIVE AT FIVE!), so I haven't been covering it here. The legal twists and turns are hard to chronicle properly, and I am not sure I fully understand them myself. But there has been a new, disturbing development, with a blogger (go bloggers!) at the heart of it. I shall try to go back to the beginning and tell the story halfway intelligently. Wish me luck.

NOTE: If you prefer reading the legal minutiae and endless step-by-step court-wranglings, go to the SCOTUS blog about the case. More here.

The story begins with the child called "Baby Veronica"--who was adopted in Charleston without the knowledge or consent of her (unmarried) father, Dusten Brown. This is not, by itself, against the law here in South Carolina (although it is in some states), and this is a major reason such adoptions are popular here. The situation was complicated considerably when it was discovered that Brown is a member of the Cherokee Nation, which is legally regarded as a sovereign nation within US borders. This fact can trump state law, invoking the Indian Child Welfare Act. The adoptive parents, Matt and Melanie Copabianco, fought back hard. They have money and connections, and set up several websites (some asking for money) claiming, for instance, that Veronica is only "1% Cherokee"--which is a weird claim, considering that her father is Cherokee. This appeal to bloodlines eventually turned fairly nasty and racist, not surprisingly. (I won't link to the worst of the nastiness, but will leave it to your imaginations.)

Predictably, adoptees and adoptive parents lined up on both sides of the issue. Native American activists came forward to demonstrate and agitate. One of our shows on Baby Veronica got tons of downloads, which surprised us. That's when we learned just how incendiary this case is.

In the end, Veronica was returned to her adoptive parents. Native American activists regarded this as a dangerous precedent, while the states of Oklahoma and SC both moved to punish Brown for the crime of trying to hold on to his daughter; Governor Haley finally dropped the extradition order against Brown only hours ago.

And now, a blogger comes forward claiming judicial impropriety in the case. JL Hardee deleted his original post (right as we went on the air! doncha love that timing!?! Thanks JL!) claiming he was receiving death threats over it. Scotty Reid, our online producer, summed it up on our radio blog:

Yesterday a blogger and author by the name of J. L. Hardee published a post alleging that the Judge Daniel E Martin, Jr. of Charleston, SC is under investigation for not disclosing a possible prior relationship with Melanie Duncan Capobianco and her father, leading to possible bias in his ruling awarding custody to the Capobiancos over the child’s biological father Dusten Brown who is a member of Cherokee Nation. The post has been removed but another post by J. L Hardee says he has been getting death threats over his reports and he has removed all posts related to the adoption case but stands by his report.

Hardee claims he will follow up, but I am doubtful. (I know the few times *I* have been threatened as a blogger, I am certainly not eager to repeat the experience.)

But if it is indeed true that Judge Martin knew the Capobiancos IN ANY WAY? This is an outrage and requires a full investigation. Will we get one? Do we ever? They don't call this state "Bubbastan" for nothing... Bubba runs the laws, and Bubba gets his way. If Bubba wants an investigation, there will be one. However, in this instance, Bubba doesn't--so I don't see it happening.

Let me also add: I find the timing of Governor Haley's decision to drop the extradition, very interesting in light of this accusation.

I will be following up as best I can. I hope this story doesn't simply die, as so many stories in this state do.

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EDIT 10/5/2013: An astute reader sends me the following link and information:

I know you are a careful researcher, so I suspect you already have run across the story of Jan Hunt a family counselor who wrote a letter in support of the Capobianco's re the adoption of Baby Veronica and later realized that she had been seriously misled. But in case you haven't seen it here's a link.

THANK YOU! I did not have Hunt's name, and since I didn't, all of my searches brought up every other aspect of this case but what I was looking for. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the link!

Greenville-headquartered Nightlight Christian Adoptions (the adoption agency responsible for this particular debacle) has also been under attack lately in connection with a five-part Reuters investigation about the practice of "private re-homing" adoptions. They are also well-known for their so-called "snowflake" adoptions of unused embryos (originally intended for IVF implantation), that would otherwise be destroyed.

Throwing Stones

What a mess. What a total, complete, unadulterated, absolute MESS. It's hard to come up with anything more descriptive to say about the debacle that is the Republican temper-tantrum, i.e. the current government shutdown, which officially began at midnight. (I keep thinking of the Grateful Dead song that is the title of this post.) Of course, we talked about it at length on Occupy the Microphone today.

The puzzling thing, to me, is that Republicans don't seem to mind being perceived as the party that prefers the American people stay unhealthy and uninsured. "Anything to keep people from having health care!" is how most of the GOP congressional representatives sounded, proudly venting on various news shows late last night. It's worth it to STOP OBAMACARE! Do they know how they sound? Or is their own re-election the primary factor in their decision? Robert at Blue Heron Blast sums up a lot of my thinking:

The problem is that the House Republicans have all gerrymandered themselves into safe seats in safe districts. Any flak they will receive will be from their right in the primaries. Although I am sure that many are concerned with the health of the nation, at least I hope so, the overriding motive has to be getting re-elected. So there is really no hope for common ground.

The optics of this debacle are pretty clear. A CNN/ORC poll found that Republicans in Congress would shoulder more of the blame for a shutdown. Forty-six percent of Americans said that Republicans on Capitol Hill would be mostly responsible for a shutdown, versus 36 percent who would blame Obama and 13 percent who would blame both.

So 25% of Americans polled will blame you more than the other guy and you don't care, because it will play so well for the folks in your district and frankly, what else matters? Bravo!

I went to the outfitting store to get some straps to hitch my borrowed monopod to my camera pack this morning. The vacation to the National Parks between Wyoming and Montana that are scheduled to be closed at midnight tonight barring an unforeseen stroke of sanity barreling down on the beltway, which you should certainly not hold your breath for.

I will make do, lots of nice state parks I am looking at in the area, there are worse prison sentences than spending a week on a bar stool in Jackson Hole. But it sucks. And it even sucks worse for the man helping me in the store, who is in the naval reserve and ferries Navy Seals around on missions. He is now on no pay as are many of the private contractors who aid our defense effort. Awful thing we are doing to them, not to mention furloughing 800,000 civil servants and leaving millions without pay. Oh, I forgot, we hate the government and the people who work for them.

Yes. The party that loves war, does not want to pay their soldiers. Irony!

And such a depressing, demoralizing spectacle.

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While waiting for Republicans to come to their wacked-out senses (might be awhile), we can work on getting us some gay marriage rights, and thus, continue to drive (some of them!) crazy.* From the Advocate, here is a great piece by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, whom I was fortunate to meet during our local Campaign for Southern Equality demonstration in January.

Op-ed: How Resistance Will Change the South:

Growing numbers of people across the South are finding the courage to stand up to such laws by taking public action. Since the We Do Campaign launched two years ago, I have stood with more than 80 LGBT couples as they have requested — and been denied — marriage licenses in their hometowns across the South, from small rural towns in Mississippi to cities like Charlotte, N.C. To watch LGBT people stand at the marriage license counter, many with their children at their side, is to witness courage firsthand. In the face of a legal system that denies our humanity and tells us we have no right to even approach this counter, these families are expressing powerful truths: We are human, we are equal, this is our home, and we have a fundamental right to marry.

As we continue to grow the We Do Campaign, we are now actively seeking a public official in the South who will stand up with us and issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple as an act of conscience. Marriage license offices in New Mexico and Pennsylvania have recently started doing this, and in years past it has happened in California and New York as well. In Pennsylvania, Montgomery County Register of Wills Bruce Hanes has said of his choice, “I firmly believe that I’m on the right side of history.”

Can this happen in the South? We have contacted marriage license offices in more than 600 counties to pose this question. There may be a Bruce Hanes somewhere in our region. Or it may well be that the power of these discriminatory laws is so great that even those public officials who support marriage equality — and they exist — feel that the risk of acting on this belief is too great.

It's an interesting strategy, and I will be watching carefully to see how it goes.


*I acknowledge there are SOME Republicans who are in favor of legalizing gay marriage, foremost among them Cindy and Meghan McCain.

Government shutdown, redux

At left: The New Yorker's fascinating and educational map of exactly where the Republican "Suicide Caucus" is located.

As you can see, my congressional district is present and accounted for. (Is that depressing or what?)








In sordid political news: If the Republicans don't get their way, which they won't, they are threatening to shut down the government.

I can still remember the last time they pulled this childish stunt, under the auspices of awful Newt Gingrich, currently fattening himself up on the CNN dime... the very same evilll liberal media he used to make his living by trashing on the GOP-chicken-supper circuit.

How does that work exactly? You trash them and they gratefully respond with a high-profile, cushy, pricey gig? (And has that ever happened to you?) Becoming an elected politician seems to guarantee a lifelong livelihood for these no-talent hacks... and then they want to deny the rest of us the (government-sponsored, taxpayer-provided) health care they have always enjoyed.

Again, how does that work, exactly?

For comedy relief, Gingrich just appeared on CNN's Piers Morgan show, assuring us that this government-shutdown is no big deal. (Tell that to the military personnel, fire-fighters and others who won't get paid for risking their lives.) Newtie actually seems annoyed that anybody would get upset over this pesky little incident. (And if it's no big deal, why did NEWT HIMSELF use it as a weapon in 1995, unless he wanted it to HURT?!)

The blazing, horrific hypocrisy is as stomach-turning as it is brazen. (More here and here.)

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I have been grossly negligent regarding our recent WOLI shows... and to provide a partial remedy, here are some links, with copious apologies for being so preoccupied:

Monday, September 23, 2013
Death of professor shows America values sports more than education

Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Has Dusten Brown given up hope in custody fight for daughter?

Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Senator Lindsey Graham's opponents oppose his stance on Syria

Thursday, September 26, 2013
Senators proposing "real" reforms to NSA

Friday, September 27, 2013
Where does Senator Tim Scott stand on mass incarceration and racial disparities in South Carolina?

Monday, September 30, 2013 (today)
Is US government shutdown imminent?

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Other interesting stuff:

:: Amanda Knox's retrial commences in Italy, without her presence. (CBS News)

:: I've written here a couple of times about Damien Echols, West Memphis Three Death Row inmate. Since his release, he has settled in Salem, Massachusetts (notorious for the historic witch trials) with his wife, Lorri. In a strange turn of events, Michael Blatty, son of famous Exorcist author William Peter Blatty (!), has made Damien's controversial presence in Salem his raison d'être.

It is a patently bizarre tale from Boston Magazine, which just adds to the continuing horror-story elements of Damien's life:

It’s hard to pinpoint when he lost his anonymity—when people started to notice, and talk—but very quickly he became part of Salem legend: Did you hear that Damien Echols moved to town? They whispered it, waiting to buy scratch tickets at 7-Eleven, in the locker room at the Y, over tea at Gulu-Gulu. Some in town were excited, fueled by stories in the local papers with headlines like “From Death Row to Witch City.” Of course, he had not expected to go entirely unnoticed. Not like he had in New York, where he’d first begun the walking as a way of burning through fear. In New York no one paid attention to anyone else, which meant he could walk the streets of Chinatown for hours and hours without interruption or incident, learning to reacclimate to humanity after 18 years in exile.

But in Salem, people took notice. They began coming up to him on the elliptical. Approaching him as he settled in with a pot of tea. Chronicling his every move. They were not always welcoming. At one point, someone etched a message into the side of a women’s bathroom stall in the East India Square Mall: “Murderers Walk Free.”

Read it all.

:: The Foo Fighters song, My Hero, kept running through my head as I read this one -- The Lie of Heroes: How Kerouac Almost Killed Me:

The lone wolf, right? That’s the image we get when we see some of our heroes, forsaking mediocrity or bureaucracy or blatant cowardice and heading off into the unknown, alone and full of purpose.

There aren’t any lone wolves; that’s another fiction, another lie. Wolves are pack animals, like humans, social creatures. The only ones who go off on their own are diseased or ostracized.

Lone wolves tend to die rather quickly.

Patriots Point: A photographic tour

Hey yall, time for your photographic tour of Patriots Point in coastal Mount Pleasant, SC... where my history-buff husband knows more than the plaques on display, and tells me all about war machinery I wish didn't even exist.

I have finally learned, after THIS rather mediocre attempt at historical photography, to take photos of the informational plaques as well... so when it comes time to blog about it, I will at least have some clue of what the photos are.

Admittedly, I am usually rather lukewarm about this kinda stuff, and then I always end up immensely enjoying it and getting into the whole historic vibe, deep in imagination about what it was like to live at sea. My grandfather served on the USS Arkansas (more about which in due course), and he talked about sailing the high seas, although not always in the best of terms.



We last visited Patriots Point in 1993 (as I briefly mentioned here, when I stupidly mixed up the cruiser Yorktown and the USS Yorktown), and I can honestly report that my ability to climb steep, skinny steps has most definitely declined in 20 years. In fact, we didn't even notice how steep/skinny the steps were before, and now we are like... yighhhh! In fact, I declined some of the more narrow passages and exited the USS Clamagore submarine altogether after a few photos, as claustrophobia beckoned. (I can't imagine how Jimmy Carter or anybody else ever lived in one of those things!!!)


As always, you can click all photos to enlarge. Hope you find at least something you enjoy!

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First up, you cross the purty and awesome Ravenel bridge, aka the Cooper River bridge... yes, named after THOSE Ravenels. This includes famous ex-SC treasurer/world-class cokehead Thomas Ravenel, who was arrested over the summer for drunken driving up in the Hamptons. Despite this, Ravenel will be the star of a spanking new reality show called SOUTHERN CHARM.

When you're poor, you go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass GO... but when you're rich, you get to be on BRAVO network. Moral of the story: being rich means never having to say you're sorry and having very cool, big-ass bridges named after your family!

First photos, what it looks like when you are ON it, then from afar.



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Welcome to Charleston Harbor and Patriots Point! Meet the star of our tour, the USS YORKTOWN, the aircraft carrier that kicked all kinds of ass during the WWII Battle of Midway. (She was known as "The Fighting Lady"--also the name of the famous propaganda film about her.)

The smaller ship next to it (last photo) is the USS Laffey, a destroyer. The Laffey was known as "The Ship that Would not Die" at the Battle of Okinawa, where she was hit with 4 bombs and 6 kamikazes and stayed afloat.





The Yorktown is stuffed with antique war machinery and military memorabilia. I tried to match up the machinery with the correct plaque. Yes, that poster really does say (at bottom) "Get em up for your navy!" (I knew you'd never believe me unless I had the photo to prove it.)




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Self-explanatory...that last photo is a kamikaze aircraft, which is surprisingly small. I'd be scared to death to fly in that flimsy plane, but I guess by then, fear wasn't exactly an issue, and well beside the point. (And as tiny as it was, you certainly wouldn't want to see one of those things headed straight for you.)




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I was thrilled to see the FRIENDSHIP 7 on display at the Yorktown!

It's SO itty-bitty... again, you just shake your head: seriously?!? David Bowie's famous lyric, "sitting in a tin can/far above the world" comes to mind. I would be utterly terrified! John Glenn probably didn't even break a sweat. (IMPORTANT CINEMATIC NOTE: I highly recommend the excellent and entertaining movie, THE RIGHT STUFF, to any young folks who have never seen it. It deserved much wider fame, but Tom Wolfe's irony probably kept it from becoming an iconic American film. It's long, but well worth your time.)

The first two photos below are the interior of the Friendship 7, which is way smaller than a porta-potty.




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Assorted photos from the Yorktown... Doolittle Raid map, torpedo room... and see those skinny, steep steps? Helm (Sulu), Captain's deck (Kirk), engineering (Scotty) and operating room (Dr McCoy).



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Living arrangements: a bit close for comfort. I think the latrine (boys only!) is aboard the Laffey. And if you weren't Christian, well, tough shit. No other religious symbols displayed anywhere onboard.



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As stated above, my grandfather served aboard the USS Arkansas. Basically, he wanted to get out of West Virginia and lied about his age (16) to enlist, at a time when lying about one's age was relatively easy to do and virtually impossible to check. By my estimation, this was circa 1925. He became extremely seasick, homesick, claustrophobic and all the rest of it... and the first chance he got, off he went. He stayed gone for awhile--I never did find out how long he was AWOL from the Navy.

Upon his return (he DID like the money, after all), they took him to the brig. Accounts vary, but he was there between 3-6 months. So, I took photos of the brig, that nasty place he never talked about.

Looks pretty unpleasant; speaking of claustrophobia, that last one was taken with my lens inside the cell. Not too much room. :(

My poor granddaddy... no wonder he never talked to us about it.



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Assorted stuff, including enlistment posters... and in the last photo, what do you suppose the airplane-art meant? (LOL)




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Here is where I got MY advanced case of claustrophobia, aboard the USS Clamagore submarine... Second photo: they actually slept right under the torpedoes. (I assume they all died of radiation poisoning if they managed to survive the war.)

The passageways were very narrow, and I took photos of all of them.



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I hope you have enjoyed your tour!