Uppity Wisconsin

The Kentucky News-Enterprise has a piece this week on jailed Wisconsin veteran, Keith Roberts.

Sister takes up brother’s fight for freedom

By JOSHUA COFFMAN

RADCLIFF —Sally Harrod is crunching numbers that stretch beyond her job as an accountant. She oversees a legal fund for her brother in two legal cases regarding benefits he sought as a Navy veteran.

Keith Roberts, 60, is in a Minnesota federal prison, convicted of fraudulently receiving electronic funds from the department of Veterans Affairs. ...

Harrod, her family members and other veterans’ advocates ... fear the VA sought retribution against Roberts for seeking decades of back pay for post-traumatic stress disorder and criticizing the agency’s slow response to approve or deny his medical claims. ...

And, once it is all settled, she hopes her family can help veterans in similar situations.

“It’s unbelievable to all of them,” she said. “If they can do it to my brother, they can do it to anyone at any time.” 

Today is the innocent and jailed Wisconsin Navy veteran Keith Roberts' birthday.

And Roberts (1968-71) is celebrating it back in the general population in a federal prison in Minnesota, as his wife reports that he has been released from solitary confinement, and is working on a supplemental brief, ordered to be filed with the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, while Roberts' parents, who are in their 80s and unable to travel to Minnesota, hope to see their son before they die.

Writes Mrs. Roberts in an e-mail:

[- Accessing oral arguments. [Enter 07-1546 in the Case Number's fields by entering 07 in the "Year," and entering 1546 in the "Year Fragment's" field. Give the file some 45 seconds at least to load.]

Navy veteran Keith Roberts (1968-71) is serving a four-year sentance for wire fraud for trying to help save his buddy, Florida native Airman Gary Holland, from being crushed to death by a C-54 airplane while stationed at a Naval air base in Naples, Italy in 1969. The government says he lied, and that his diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is based on lies.

Roberts is appealing.

Using one’s perceptions of the ideology, judicial integrity and past rulings of a three-judge panel as a means of predicting a ruling on a criminal appeals case is akin to a 16-year-old guy guessing the outcome of a first date with a 16-year-old girl: Conjecture seems a useless enterprise, and surprises and unpredictability are the rule.

The outlandish conviction and imprisonment of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman this year is drawing widespread condemnation as a political prosecution engineered by Karl Rove.

The New York Times is calling for a judicial and political examination that would free the wrongfully imprisoned Siegelman, just as the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh District freed and exonerated Wisconsin’s Georgia Thompson.

Some highlights from today’s Times editorial:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is returning to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

Many Uppity Wisconsin readers know that Airman Keith Roberts (1968-74) is battling political forces allied with VA Sec. Jim Nicholson whose department worked with US Atty Stephen Biskupic to imprison this Vietnam-ear vet for 48 months on a ludicrous charge of wire fraud, now under appeal. (Tammy's #, (202) 225-2906)

by MAL Contends

Madison, Wisconsin—As Airman Keith Roberts (1968-74) sits behind bars, serving a four-year sentence for federal wire fraud for seeking disability benefits; the fight to free him has been launched.

The Gillett, Wisconsin native Roberts filed for disability benefits in 1999 after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to an assault by the Navy Shore Patrol in 1969, and the death of a fellow airman killed in a gruesome aircraft accident, also in 1969, at Naples, Italy where Roberts was stationed.

As Roberts was adjudicating his claim in 2005 with the US Veterans Administration (VA), Stephen Biskupic, US Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, in an extraordinary development, stepped in and secured federal indictments and a conviction of Roberts on charges of wire fraud in fraudulently obtaining over $350,000 for the period of 1992 to 2004.

Critics see Roberts as an innocent victim of an unfeeling VA bureaucracy, rightwing forces allied with VA Secretary Nicholson, and an overzealous prosecutor.