JUST THIS 'MY GOD:Jury rules against Daleiden, pro-lifers who exposed Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts Aborted Baby Body Part

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BREAKING: Jury rules against Daleiden, pro-lifers who exposed Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts

he total amount awarded to Planned Parenthood is $2.2 million, according to the Thomas More Society, which includes punitive and compensatory damages as well as attorneys' fees. Local San Francisco reporter Helen Chistophi tweeted from the courthouse that the punitive damages totaled $870,000.


Helen Christophi
@helenchristophi
· 3h
Replying to @helenchristophi
Planned Parenthood v. CMP VERDICT: jury awards PP total of $870K in punitive damages.


Helen Christophi
@helenchristophi
Punitive damages:
Daleiden: $125K
Merritt: $25K
Biomax: $200K
CMP: $400K
Rhomberg: $70K
Troy Newman $50K
Lopez: $0 (PP dropped punitives againt Lopez)

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3:26 PM - Nov 15, 2019
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Pro-life defense lawyers have already stated they will appeal, telling reporters outside the courtroom the "process was unfair."

Daleiden called the verdict a "dangerous attack" on first amendment rights.


David Daleiden
@daviddaleiden
Justice was not done today in San Francisco. Top @PPFA witnesses swore the videos are true #PPSellsBabyParts but PP-founder Judge Orrick spent 6 weeks influencing jury with arbitrary rulings and suppressed key evidence. Dangerous attack on #1A as CA bans speaking truth to power!

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4:04 PM - Nov 15, 2019
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"Justice was not done today in San Francisco," stated the Center for Medical Progress in a press release.

"While top Planned Parenthood witnesses spent six weeks testifying under oath that the undercover videos are true and Planned Parenthood sold fetal organs on a quid pro quo basis, a biased judge with close Planned Parenthood ties spent six weeks influencing the jury with pre-determined rulings and by suppressing video evidence, all in order to rubber-stamp Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit attack on the First Amendment. This is a dangerous precedent for citizen journalism and First Amendment civil rights across the country, sending a message that speaking truth and facts criticizing the powerful is no longer protected by our institutions," the group added.

The case was heard by San Francisco’s U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick III, who has ties to Planned Parenthood, but refused to disqualify himself when defense requested him to do so.

CMP released videos in 2015 exposing Planned Parenthood’s apparently illegal trade in aborted baby body parts after a 30-month undercover operation.

The groundbreaking videos showed top-level Planned Parenthood executives haggling over prices of aborted baby body parts, and discussing how to change abortion procedures to obtain more intact organs, and sparked public outrage, congressional and senate hearings, and an ongoing Department of Justice criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood.

In the retaliatory lawsuit, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and 10 affiliates accused CMP project lead Daleiden, investigators Sandra Merritt and Adrian Lopez, and founding board members Albin Rhomberg and Troy Newman of Operation Rescue of multiple crimes, including illegal taping, fraud, and violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute in connection with CMP journalists going undercover at Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation conferences in 2014 and 2015.

They were seeking $630,000 in base damages and millions of dollars in punitive damages.

Lawyers for the CMP citizen journalists say they were hampered by Orrick ruling out a First Amendment defense.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t get Judge Orrick to back off from his insistence that the jury be instructed that the First Amendment … does not state any kind of defense to the charges in this case,” said Thomas Brejcha, founder of the Thomas More Society, in an update on the case last week.

“Which, frankly, we think is a terrible misreading of our fundamental constitutional laws about free speech,” he added.

Orrick instructed the jury Tuesday on points of law to consider when reaching their verdict.

The judge “had already found that the defendants trespassed when they attended, undercover, Planned Parenthood conferences in Miami and Orlando and met with Planned Parenthood executives at Planned Parenthood facilities in Colorado and Texas,” according to an Archdiocese of San Francisco report.

Orrick “instructed the jury to only concern themselves with the damages that the defendants are liable for that trespass, both punitive and actual,” it stated.

He also told the jury that the “defendants breached contracts with Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation and the jury should award damages because of those breaches,” the archdiocesan report stated.

In closing arguments by Planned Parenthood’s lawyers “pretty much called David and the other investigators every name in the book,” but principally “liars,” said defense lawyer Peter Breen, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, who referred to the case as “the blockbuster trial of the century.”

In four days on the witness stand, Daleiden testified he undertook the 30-month sting operation after reading testimony of the 2000 congressional hearings into illegal aborted baby body parts harvesting and seeing a 2000 ABC 20/20 exposé of a Planned Parenthood Kansas abortionist selling fetal organs for profit.

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