Judge orders Raub freed
JP sends us a link to the latest update on Brandon Raub, the Marine veteran who was taken to the hospital in handcuffs, supposedly for stuff he had posted to his Facebook account. From the Richmond Times Dispatch;
After an hourlong hearing, Circuit Judge W. Allan Sharrett said an involuntary commitment petition issued against Brandon J. Raub was invalid because it contained no allegation or basis to holding him.
“The petition is so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy,” said the release order signed by the judge and sought by lawyers Anthony F. Troy and Brian D. Fowler.
Sharrett said that he was shocked by the failure of a magistrate to not include in the order any grounds for holding Raub, a Chesterfield resident who was transferred from John Randolph Hospital in Hopewell to the Salem Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
This is after a special justice ordered that he be held for 30 days in the hospital, and it doesn’t explain why the police took him into custody in the first place beyond his Facebook entries. I still think there’s more to this than what we’re reading. I guess we just have to be patient. But, by the looks of it, we won’t be getting any answers anytime soon.
Category: Who knows
That seems to answer the question of what did the FBI and Secret Service have…apparently nothing or this kid would not have been freed…
This thing keeps getting sketchier as it progresses.
I’m sure the story making it to the MSM helped. Paulbot or not, once this went down and the story got out I noticed vets coming out of the woodwork to spread the news and ask a collective “WTF”?
1983 and civil rights violations lawsuits all around for all involved, in private and professional capacity.
Who is the magistrate that signed the original order and who is the “special justice” that deemed it necessary to hold him an additional 30 days? What did they have to go on that this circuit judge did not have? It seems to me they had nothing to begin with and just decided to ignore this young man’s civil rights and the law.
“Look, Judge, between you and me, we gotta have this guy on ice for a few weeks. You’re untouchable. You can’t be sued successfully. So, whaddaya say?”
If the SS and police went there in the first place due to the Facebook comments, just to do a sort of health and welfare, and to figure out what the comments which turned out to be lyrics were, there isn’t any problem there. The SS is tasked with looking into stuff, and they did. Now, if they showed up and he was acting erratically etc, they could put him under the med hold they did. Now, it is entirely possible that the info they were dealing with at the time warranted such treatment, and necessitated having him diagnostically checked. Later the medical professionals could say, “He’s not crazy” and that is what the subsequent judge held. But it is a stretch for me to buy the theory that out of all the wacky people in the world, they somehow picked out this guy and just had him locked up without reason. Too many eyes and especially for a guy who isn’t meek about sharing his thoughts.
If I had to guess, since we have virtually no info not spoon fed by Adam Kokesh, a man who stores his piss in the fridge and has admitted to mixing Xanax and Gin while seeing FBI agents stalking him at the metro, I’d guess the kid acted like a crazy asshole, got sent for an eval, and realized he better do a cranial rectal reversal PDQ. But of course, we have nothing to go on, so that’s sheer speculation based on having been around VA LEOs quite a bit.
Bear in mind again that Raub was never charged with anything criminal, but acting like a mental person sometimes calls for verifying that he’s not crazy. I say better safe than sorry. If the LEOs want to pick me up for some crazy thing I’ve said, I’m fairly certain I can prove I’m not crazy pretty quick.
Maybe sending a multi-departmental task force of local and federal agents wasn’t the best people to make an intervention on a conspiracy theorist.
Time for some civil lawsuits all around??
@9, I’m not sure there is a basis, note this from above story:
Mental assessment records of Brandon J. Raub describe his as delusional and paranoid in the days before he was transferred to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Salem.
Mind you, there might very well be a basis, I just haven’t seen it. It looks like the first eval must have been deficient, but just like a person who is later set free (See Simpson, OJ) there has to be some really deviant shit in there in order for such a thing to stick. I can’t imagine that this kid would be well served by appearing before a jury after police talk about some irrational and/or conspiratorial things he said. Could be, but I just don’t see it.
Which is why I’m not an actual attorney, because I am sure dudes are lining up.
I have to agree with TSO. I would imagine they would have to prove by at least a preponderance of the evidence that the doctors either did not act in good conscience or somehow did such a deficient assessment that it rose to the level of malpractice and that that malpractice subsequently became part of the basis for his confinement. I will say that 25 minutes seems a little short to me for an eval but hey, I wasn’t there…
In all fairness, the system did work and he was ultimately released. Its unfortunate it took so many additional steps but the occasional overabundence of caution is still better than what usually happens which is that we let crazy, mentally ill people run around, only getting locked up when they do something overtly criminal. In the last 40 years, we’ve been so concerned about an individual’s civil rights that we’ve put that before their basic human right. The periodic overreach still seems better to me than the alternative.
I’m thinking there was no grounds or no order for him to be detained to begin with. note, he was already sentenced to another 30 days prior to this appeal.
Do I think he should file suit? no, probably not.
Am I concerned about how the govt views those who dissent?
You betcha.
This is one of those rather tough calls that makes some sane people nuts. Or am I missing something here.? The way I see it, a Circuit Court judge concluded not that the evidence or basis for the issuance of the involuntary commitment order was scant, vague, or otherwise deficient but that there was NO FACTUAL basis for the order’s issuance. However odd, strange, or wierd one might regard his FB page entries, he had the Constitutional right to make bizarre comments without the gov’t–through its federal, state, or local police agents’ interference. He wasn’t alleged to have done a damn thing and if friends and others were concerned about him (and I emphasize IF), there is a civil procedure for commitments. This whole thing stinks and the fact that he was ultimately released and is receiving care elsewhere does not a scintilla of difference make. More and more, it seems, once reasonable and freedom-loving people are willing to forego their liberty for increased security. Okay, I’m stepping down from the soapbox now.
Isn’t a psychiatric exam supposed to be protected by HIPPA? So you can be forced by court order to undergone a psychiatric exam, where if you don’t respond you are “not cooperative” and violating a court order, but if you do everthing you say is held against you and even released to the media? This ain’t right.
It shouldn’t have been released to the media, at least not by the medical staff.
“Only a Vigilant Citizenry will remain free…”
While it is refreshing that a higher judge overturned this, based on a lack of anything to prove it was legal or necessary, the number of individuals that participated to make it happen is disconcerting.
I find Raub’s rants troublesome, but I find it more troublesome that the government would so comfortably remove his Constitutional Rights. And yet more troublesome that so many would make assumptions that they must have a reason, despite the lack of evidence.
@#13, it seems there was an order, at least according to the Richmond paper, “The crisis employee saw Raub on Aug. 16 after he was picked up by Chesterfield police and transferred under an emergency custody order to John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell”. That would also seem to preclude a suit against anyone, unless it would be the “crisis employee”. He/she authorized the detention, under color of law.
That said, the thing smells. Nameless people complained about his FB postings, which translates to, if someone doesn’t like what another person posts, it’s perfectly all right to report them.
The guy was a dumbass to post that shit in the first place. Common sense is common sense.
That being said, boys and girls, it proves a point to those that have no situational awareness.
Big brother is watching.
Yeah, Big Brother is watching–and listening–and reading–and taking notes. So what are we to do? Turn to whispering and secret signs and worry that we will be outed as potential beligerents? Thanks but no. I rather relish the idea of speaking one’s mind and letting private individuals exercise their perogative to tell me to STFU or just walk away quietly. I don’t need or want the obamanistas doing it for them in the name of whatever the hell they want to call it.
@20.
You made it political. It is not. It is common sense.
Unless you like the attention, credit or sympathy.
I prefer the low profile although I understand it is not for everyone.
No harm. No foul.
Scream from the mountain top if you wish. It is you right.
@21. I find it very difficult to separate politics from government. Hats off to you if you are able to do so.
Most of us are aware that many Soviet citizens who criticized the Soviet Union were psychiatrically committed and [ahem] “treated” against their will. “Only the mentally ill would criticize the State,” you see.
This time, “too many eyes” inquiring into the case of a guy who hasn’t been meek about sharing his thoughts.” Maybe next time, a more circumspect special forces veteran who fought in Iraq, but who once confided to his closest comrades that that war was “so f—ing illegal,” and was trying to arrange a meeting to discuss it with Noam Chomsky.
Anyone still think “it can’t happen here”?
Check out this 12-minute interview of Dr. Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist who now denounces psychiatry as anti-liberty and a a tool of the over-reaching State.
Has anyone besides me noticed the uptick in people who publicly speak out and vent their anger toward this administration, in ways appropriate or not?
Or is it just the media covering it more because it’s an election year?
Try doing this in front of someone. Get really pissed off about something, express severe anger about it in a very angry way. Then do the same thing in a quiet, calmer way. Ask your friend which one seems more threatening.
With social media, the tone of voice is never part of the structure if it’s in readable format. The tone of voice only figures in when it’s a video.
Just try it.
Ex-PH2,
Interesting points.
Just out of curiosity, do you consider this expression of anger toward the administration to be appropriate or not?
I had no problem with it, myself … and I don’t have a horse in this race. My cousin and her lib’ral friend, however, seem to consider it irresponsibly violent and indicative of the “dangerous racial undercurrent” in America. (And if I denied it, I might be part of the problem.)
ANYhoo …
@21: Apparently it is not “your right”. I agree that it doesn’t do a person any favors to be out front and very open and I like to lay low, too, however, a person shouldn’t be in fear of being locked up for exercising their right to speak out just because “big brother” is watching. We have truly become subjects when we fear our government rather than our government fearing the people.
I hope this whole wretched course can be reversed, but I believe that it cannot, because government loves absolute power. It’s human nature and we have been letting them erode more and more of our liberties in the name of “hate speech”, “political correctness”, security against terrorism, etc. When you have TSA agents patting down people and searching their stuff at a political rally (Paul Ryan event), then I can safely say that we have jumped into the express lane towards a total police state.
EK: Love the billboard link. Despite the fanciful interpretive reading of the message by libs that the words somehow invite violence, the reference to November clearly means that the way to rid America of The Beast is to vote him out of office.
So, if the words posted are/were lyrics to a published song, is the actual writer of them under arrest yet?
If, and it’s a big if, he was detained for just what he posted on facebook we are just a hop, skip, and jump from bringing back the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
two words…law suit…yes intentional as that is probably how this dimwit would spell it but this does not excuse the government for involuntarily committing someone expressing his 1st Amendment rights. This story should scare the hell out of everyone that disagrees with this government.