The Gibson Raid

Forbes has an article that claims the Federal raid on Gibson Guitars was in service to a labor union with whom the company was having a dispute. The raid was highly aggressive:
“What is happening?” asks Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz when he arrives at his Nashville factory to question the officers. “We can’t tell you.” “What are you talking about, you can’t tell me, you can’t just come in and …” “We have a warrant!” Well, lemme see the warrant.” “We can’t show that to you because it’s sealed.”

While 30 men in SWAT attire dispatched from Homeland Security and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cart away about half a million dollars of wood and guitars, seven armed agents interrogate an employee without benefit of a lawyer. The next day Juszkiewicz receives a letter warning that he cannot touch any guitar left in the plant, under threat of being charged with a separate federal offense for each “violation,” punishable by a jail term.

Up until that point Gibson had not received so much as a postcard telling the company it might be doing something wrong.
Why would you seal a warrant in a raid of this kind? There's no national security interest. Citizens should ordinarily have a right to see the warrant, for one thing so they can verify that it is lawfully executed and that the police have a right to do what they are doing. (For another, to make sure the cops are at the right address.)

It also helps you construct a defense. What if the warrant remains sealed as you await trial, so you can't really know just why you are under threat of jail?
In the end, formal charges were never filed, but the disruption to Gibson’s business and the mounting legal fees and threat of imprisonment induced Juszkiewicz to settle for $250,000—with an additional $50,000 “donation” piled on to pay off an environmental activist group....

With no clear legal standards, a sealed warrant the company has not been allowed to see too this day, no formal charges filed, and the threat of a prison term hanging over any executive who does not take “due care” to abide by this absurdly vague law, Gibson settled. “You’re fighting a very well organized political machine in the unions,” Juszkiewicz concluded. “And the conservation guys have sort of gone along.” Hey, what’s not to like about $50,000?"
As the article points out, 95% of cases brought by the Feds never go to trial, because the prosecutors set the charges at such a level that a plea deal is the only rational choice. Fifty grand as a payoff to an environmental group, and you can go home and get back to making guitars. Go to trial, and we'll do our best to put you in prison for decades.

13 comments:

Texan99 said...

You wouldn't believe the amount of environmental payoff money that swirled around here in the wake of the BP rig disaster. Now, I'm fairly confident BP was at fault and ought to have reached a settlement--though indeed I may be all mixed up about exactly which company screwed up--but the feeding frenzy didn't improve my faith either in the justice system or the political milieu. In the case of Gibson, I never understood the grounds for guilt at all. Truly a disgusting story.

Grim said...

The ground of guilt was never made clear to Gibson, either. Just that they'd better pony up the bribe if they didn't want to end up in prison.

DL Sly said...

Michelle Malking covered this as it happening. The *alleged* crime was using wood from India that hadn't been inspected by Indian authorities nor American authorities to make sure it wasn't a "protected" variety. Even though the Indian inspectors had signed off of the shipment without inspection because it was coming from the same source company it had been coming from for years. American inspectors' reasons for noninspection were the same. But, due to the sealed nature of the warrant, Gibson was razed and plundered by HHS without compensation for guitars that had been made of different wood a year or longer prior to the arrival of the alleged illegal shipment.
Gotta love our Chicago government - "Nice place you got here......"

Russ said...

Being ignorant of the law, would someone please explain how you can serve a sealed warrant in America that doesn't have to do with national security?

raven said...

The Lacy act regulating trade in endangered species was expanded a few years back to cover plants, trees, lumber, etc. It makes it a US offense if any foreign laws were broken in the harvesting and subsequent use of the lumber.
IIRC, The Feds insisted Gibson had broken Indian law, regarding how much milling must be done on Indian rosewood before it can be exported. This is a provision to keep some jobs in India. Normally, guitar fingerboards are rough cut to around 1/2" thick, and allowed to dry for quite some time before use-then they are cut to size, planed, fret slots cut etc- I know of no guitar manufacturer who would trust this exacting work to a foreign entity. The Indian government itself said these rosewood fingerboard blanks were OK to export. Now Martin, Taylor, and other Democratic donor companies import lots of the same wood, apparently with no ill effects. Draw your own conclusions.

Texan99 said...

I know nothing of federal criminal law, but here's a couple of pretty good summaries. It sounds like it's common to seal a warrant pre-indictment, especially if the person seeking to unseal it is not the target but, for instance, the press. Sealing it permanently is a little smelly. The courts are all over the place on the issue.

http://www.monnat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/unsealing_search_warrent.pdf

http://www.nacdl.org/CHAMPION/ARTICLES/96mar01.htm

Ymar Sakar said...

Woah, it's like the target's a cowboy or a son of a Hunger Games director or something. They pulled out the big guns for this Democrat.... right.

DL Sly said...

Actually, no, Gibson is owned by a conservative. So, there's your explaination. Not that you really needed me to point that out to you, I suspect.
0>;~}

Russ said...

Thanks for the links, Texan99. How would a person or business know that a warrant was legal if it was sealed? Would you not have a right to demand to see the warrant before letting the police in? Sealed = "Trust us" and does not compute.

Texan99 said...

I certainly hope that "sealed" only means that you can't get your hands on the detailed backup, and that you can at least see something on paper giving the police the right to search a particular place for particular things. But I'd be guessing.

It seems fairly common for courts to be blase about allowing the defendant to dig way into the warrant before an indictment is handed down. The assumption is, I guess, that there's relatively little harm in the SWAT coming in and turning all your file drawers inside out, but later on when you're actually facing charges, you'll obviously need enough information with which to challenge the probable cause for the search and seizure. But frankly, a quick read of those two articles makes me think courts aren't even on board for that. I was surprised the law was so shaky and inconsistent on this point.

I certainly understand why some defendants wouldn't want the press to get their hands on all the underlying details in a search warrant, but I'm a bit mystified by a court that would refuse information to the defendant himself.

Russ said...

We do live in interesting times.

Ymar Sakar said...

Soon they'll be raiding for daughters on the African slave market.

Money in, American slaves out. The new Hussein recovery cycle.

The Left at their best.

Democrat eugenics perfected.

Ymar Sakar said...

Actually, no, Gibson is owned by a conservative. So, there's your explaination. Not that you really needed me to point that out to you, I suspect.

Well, it could have gone either way. Either he was a secret con and forgot to pay his jizya, and they recouped it on his property and or wives and or daughters.

Or he was a Democrat that forgot to pay off some of his bosses the "cut", and got spanked for it. Shrugs.