Atheist gives deposition in Lakeland prayer case

Today Ellenbeth Wachs, legal coordinator for the Atheists of Florida and the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the City of Lakeland was finally able to give her deposition in that case, thus allowing the case to move forward. Her deposition in the case, which had originally been scheduled for March 9th, had been delayed on account of her being arrested by the Polk County Sheriff three different times. The timing of the arrests, in each case days prior to her scheduled depositions, has led her and her attorney to repeatedly allege that her arrests were drummed up attempts to prevent her from giving her deposition.

The lawsuit for which she gave a deposition is against the City of Lakeland where she and the Atheists of Florida are demanding that the City of Lakeland end the practice of holding a religious ritual as part of the city commission meetings. Ellenbeth and the Atheists of Florida have asked that the prayer ritual be replaced by a moment of slience. Their lawsuit was originally filed in July of last year.

Attorneys for the City of Lakeland had attempted to get the lawsuit dismissed, but the US District Judge in the case ruled against them and allowed the lawsuit to move forward. That was in March. Her original deposition, again scheduled for March 9th had to be postponed a few times. The first time because she was arrested on charges that she was impersonating a lawyer. The second time because she was arrested on charges that she simulated a sex act in front of a minor. And finally, she was arrested just a couple of weeks ago on marijuana possession charges after officers searched a safe they had confiscated during her initial arrest.

Current legal trouble score:
1 Lawsuit against the City of Lakeland
2 Felony charges and 1 misdemeanor charge against Ellenbeth

http://www.examiner.com/humanism-freethought-in-tampa-bay/atheist-gives-deposition-lakeland-prayer-case

Somethin' fishy about the actions of those cops...

That must be the misdemeanor charge.

and I can tell you that, when cops confiscate items from alleged criminals, especially items like safes, cars, and other things in which people find creative ways to hide stuff, they don't need to wait long to get that warrant, and certainly not several weeks. If they waited that long to search the safe, then they did it for other reasons than a need to wait on a warrant.

Busted, get out. Busted again, get out. Busted again, and so on. It eats up your bail money and lawyer money quickly.

Although I usually see it in drug cases, not like this one.

Like what? People who piss of the cops?

You might also look up sentence entrapment.

Reading through the subthread, I see you invoke "cases like this" and then write about what happens in "cases like this", but I have yet to see what you mean by "cases like this". Spell it out, if you can. What "cases like this"?

Thanks for playing.

Yeah, it ought to be legal, but it isn't, and if you piss lots of people off, they'll look for ways to take you down

Rule #2: If you have a neurological disease, like multiple sclerosis, you might want to limit your drug use to drugs prescribed by a competent medical practitioner

Rule #3: Pick your battles carefully and fight to win. If you go off about absolutely everything -- you're pissed, say, at the kid next door and the homeowners association and the city &c&c -- people will stop taking you seriously

What's funny is, when a Christian makes the news, you spend post after post in the thread picking apart the news story and demanding that other people talking about it offer corroborating sources, so where is that action for this story? You're not even going to apply your Googly superiority to finding out more about the pot found under shady circumstances? You're just going to accept the assumption that it's hers and that she smoked it?

Hypocrite.