Source: https://www.johntfloyd.com/more-immunity-for-rogue-prosecutors/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 13:58:53+00:00

Document:
Just when you think you’ve heard the worst about rogue prosecutors (here and here), some nastier, seedier episode comes along to remind you back into the reality that some prosecutors are so rogue that it defies adequate definition—even in the South where “justice” has always had a definition different from the rest of the country. Take the case of Charles Rehberg, for example. Between September 2003 and March 2004, Mr. Rehberg, a certified public accountant, became embroiled in a dispute with Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia.
And what was the source of the dispute? “Phoebe Factoids”! To understand this, you must understand the nature of Dougherty County. It is one of the poorest regions in Georgia where 95,000 people live. More than 60 percent of its population is African-American, many of whom are living in abject poverty. Phoebe Putney Memorial is part of the “Phoebe Putney Health System,” one of the largest health-care providers in the State of Georgia.
In 2003, Mr. Rehberg discovered financial documents which became known as the “Phoebe Factoids.” These documents showed that Phoebe Putney Memorial had $2.6 billion in cash and had transferred millions more into offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, according to media sources. Under the headline of the “Top 10 Most Highly Guarded Secrets at Pheobe,” Mr. Rehberg anonymously faxed this information to businesses in Albany while criticizing and parodying the hospital’s executives. More revealing yet, Mr. Rehberg accused the “non-profit” hospital of over-charging “uninsured patients” and harassing them to make payments while its top executives ran up “lavish travel expenses for trips related to a for-profit subsidy.” These executives traveled in a private jet, spending $258 for one meal while staying at the Ritz in London and $538 for beverages during another meal—and through it all they enjoyed the finest Cuban cigars.
District Attorney Hodges jumped on that horse like a Texas Ranger after a desperado wanted for a hanging offense. The DA enlisted the assistance of his chief investigator James Paulk to help track down the “whistleblower” who had embarrassed his campaign contributing friends at Pheobe Putney. Hodges later admitted that “he used a grand jury subpoenas in 2003 to trace the source of the Pheobe Factoids, and then turned that information over to Pheobe Putney Hospital officials.” And what did the Pheobe Putney officials do? They hired private investigators to confront Mr. Rehberg about the Factoids he had distributed—and, worse yet, Pheobe Putney C.F.O. Kerry Loudermilk sent a check to BellSouth to pay for the “phone trace” utilized by DA Hodges to gather investigative information against Mr. Rehberg. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in a March 11, 2010 decision, found that “from October 2003 to February 204, Defendants Hodges and Paulk prepared a series of subpoenas on Hodges’s letterhead and issued the subpoenas to BellSouth and Alltel (later Sprint), requesting Rehberg’s email records, and to Exact Advertising, an internet service provider, requesting Rehberg’s email records. Although no grand jury was impaneled at the time, the subpoenas purported to require appearance before a Dougherty County grand jury.
And, folks, this story ain’t even got good yet!
“Petitioner Charles Rehberg, a certified public accountant, sent anonymous faxes to several recipients, including the management of a hospital in Albany, Georgia, criticizing the hospital’s management and activities. In response, the local district attorney’s office, with the assistance of its chief investigator, respondent James Paulk, launched a criminal investigation of petitioner, allegedly as a favor to the hospital’s leadership.
“Respondent testified before a grand jury, and petitioner was then indicted for aggravated assault, burglary, and six counts of making harassing telephone calls. The indictment charged that petitioner had assaulted a hospital physician, Dr. James Hotz, after unlawfully entering the doctor’s home.
Petitioner challenged the sufficiency of the indictment, and it was dismissed.
“A few months later, respondent returned to the grand jury, and petitioner was indicted again, this time for assaulting Dr. Hotz on August 22, 2004, and for making harassing phone calls. On this occasion, both the doctor and respondent testified. Petitioner challenged the sufficiency of this second indictment, claiming that he was ‘nowhere near Dr. Hotz’ on the date in question and that ‘[t]here was no evidence whatsoever that [he] committed an assault on anybody.’ ,[quoting from the Eleventh Circuit decision]. Again, the indictment was dismissed.
“While the second indictment was still pending, respondent appeared before a grand jury for a third time, and yet another indictment was returned. Petitioner was charged with assault and making harassing phone calls. This final indictment was ultimately dismissed as well.
“Petitioner then brought this action against respondent under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983. Petitioner alleged that respondent conspired to present and did present false testimony to the grand jury. Respondent moved to dismiss, arguing, among other things, that he was entitled to absolute immunity for his grand jury testimony. The United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia denied respondent’s motion to dismiss, but the Court of Appeals reversed, holding, in accordance with Circuit precedent, that respondent was absolutely immune from a §1983 claim based on his grand jury testimony.
“While the Court’s functional approach is tied to the common law’s identification of the functions that merit the protection of absolute immunity, the Court’s precedents have not mechanically duplicated the precise scope of the absolute immunity that the common law provided to protect those functions.
“This approach is illustrated by the Court’s analysis of the absolute immunity enjoyed today by public prosecutors. When §1983’s predecessor was enacted in 1871, it was common for criminal cases to be prosecuted by private parties. And private prosecutors, like private plaintiffs in civil suits, did not enjoy absolute immunity from suit. Instead, ‘the generally accepted rule’ was that a private complainant who procured an arrest or prosecution could be held liable in an action for malicious prosecution if the complainant acted with malice and without probable cause.
“In the decades after the adoption of the 1871 Civil Rights Act, however, the prosecutorial function was increasingly assumed by public officials, and common-law courts held that public prosecutors, unlike their private predecessors, were absolutely immune from the types of tort claims that an aggrieved or vengeful criminal defendant was most likely to assert, namely, claims for malicious prosecution or defamation.
“Thus, when the issue of prosecutorial immunity under §1983 reached this Court, [it] did not simply apply the scope of immunity recognized by common-law courts as of 1871 but instead placed substantial reliance on post-1871 cases extending broad immunity to public prosecutors sued for common-law torts.
“While the Court has looked to the common law in determining the scope of the absolute immunity available under §1983, the Court has not suggested that §1983 is simply a federalized amalgamation of pre-existing common-law claims, an all-in-one federal claim encompassing the torts of assault, trespass, false arrest, defamation, malicious prosecution, and more. The new federal claim created by §1983 differs in important ways from those pre-existing torts.
The Rehberg Court held that such unfettered, absolute immunity must “apply with equal force” to grand jury witnesses. The Court reasoned that if the prospect of criminal prosecution for committing perjury before a grand jury is not a sufficient deterrent, there is no reason to believe that the “possibility of civil liability” would be a more effective deterrent to false testimony.
So Paulk, who was acting at the behest and as a surrogate of District Attorney Hodges when he testified before the grand jury that indicted Rehberg, was granted by the Supreme Court the same immunity as prosecutor Hodges.
So what does all this legalese translate into?
Rehberg was an honest whistleblower who brought to the public’s attention massive financial waste and possible fraud by an institution that was supposed to serve the public good. The Pheobe Putney officials responsible for these shenanigans were infuriated and determined to exact revenge even if it meant violating the law, suborning perjury, and trying to destroy the reputation of a man guilty only of telling the truth. And these officials had access to an unethical and unscrupulous District Attorney who was more than willing to secure their revenge as an expression of his appreciation for the political contributions they had given the DA.
You would think that these Pheobe Putney executives and District Attorney Hodges had far more ethical and legal responsibilities to worry about. For example, preventable medical errors in this country kill an estimated 98,000 people and injure countless others, according to the Centers for Disease Control (other sources place the figure at 195,000 each year). Hospitals are the sixth largest killer in America. They truly are dangerous places where the average patient has little or no control over the way they are treated by these “health care” institutions—just like those “uninsured” and poverty-stricken African Americans in Dougherty County who were harassed and harangued by Pheobe Putney to “pay up” while its top executives wined and dined in the best international restaurants, traveled worldwide in private jets, and steadily puffed away on those elegant Cuban cigars.
And when an honest, law-abiding citizen tried to expose this truth, a rogue prosecutor and his right-hand hatchet man, along with a corrupt clique of corporate executives, tried to destroy him.
But there may be a little justice in the world after all. District Attorney Hodges was replaced by Gregory W. Edwards, an African American, who will hopefully be more receptive to his poor, honest constituency than to corrupt corporate executives.

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