BARRED JUSTICE
A Memoir of Innocence and Deceit
by John Oliver Green
A vengeful federal agent, a vindictive judge, and suspects wanting a deal — blame the attorney.
In 1982, a young Oklahoma tax lawyer is well on his way to success — a Vietnam veteran, a pilot, and a former IRS Special Agent. He receives a disturbing call from the wife of a friend, a fellow pilot, and a client. To his dismay, he learns of his friend’s secret life as a smuggler. She tells him his friend has crashed in Mississippi while flying drugs from Columbia and pleads for him to go on a rescue mission in the hope that her husband might still be alive. So begins a “no good deed goes unpunished” story.
The lawyer quickly finds himself caught between a vengeful IRS agent with a personal grudge and a cartel leader who wants him dead. With his life in mortal danger, he flees to Texas till things sort themselves out. While there, he is indicted and arrested. Without bail, he is shuffled from jail to jail and denied medical treatment while agents try to get a confession out of him. Although ultimately offered a misdemeanor, he refuses and demands a trial, believing justice will prevail.
The judicial system is setting him up for a fall, but it will be 30 years before he learns the truth.
“I always considered this the best and most interesting case of my thirty-one-year career with characters the best fiction writers could not create.”
— FBI Special Agent Avery Rollins, Jr. (Retired)
My story is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the current state of American Justice. As the Supreme Court held back in 1895:
“The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.” COFFIN v. UNITED STATES, 156 U.S. 432 (1895).