Witness Intimidation?

The quality of witnesses determines guilt or innocense. Prosecutors and defense attorneys both prepare witnesses to help their cases, employing forensic specialists and psychiatric doctors who might influence the outcomes of trials. Philadelphia city prosecutors have struggled with a spate of witness intimidation cases. Many are capital offenses resulting with mistrials or dropped charges because eyewitnesses are threatened.

The following is copied from the “Philadelphia Inquirer,” March 8, 2012.
“The judge did what he could: sentencing Susan Coulter's antagonists, the women who had threatened to kill her and her child because she testified at a double-murder trial.
“What he could not do was restore Coulter's sense of safety in her neighborhood.
‘I'm scared for my life,’ a weeping Coulter told Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner on Thursday. ‘I beg you not to let people like this hurt people.’
Lerner tried to reassure Coulter but said there was a limit to what he could do to former neighbors Theresa Merlo and Tara McDowell.”
From the December 14, 2009 edition of the same newspaper,
“Martin Thomas looked at the flier and blanched.
‘Don't stand next to this man. You might get shot.’
The threat was scribbled on a copy of his signed statement to police, implicating a man in a murder.
Thomas, then 20, had revealed a buried cache of weapons and named one of the gunmen who killed a man at 22d and Somerset on a summer night. Now, there were his words to detectives, posted on the wall of a Chinese restaurant in North Philadelphia for all to see. Panicked, Thomas fled, flagged down a police car, and told the officers he feared for his life. Police and prosecutors, who described Thomas' flight from the restaurant, said he had every reason to be frightened. Another witness in the murder case, a 17-year-old, had been killed 10 days after testifying at a preliminary hearing. They said Thomas worried that he could be next.
Witness intimidation pervades the Philadelphia criminal courts, increasingly extracting a heavy toll in no-show witnesses, recanted testimony - and collapsed cases. ‘It's endemic. People are frightened to death,’ said District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham. ‘We've had witness after witness intimidated, threatened, frightened.’ And the city cannot guarantee their protection.”
Justice cannot be served in an arena of intimidation. The bad guys win when they cannot be brought to account for their crimes.

I was awakened from a sound sleep this morning with two passages ringing in my spirit, one from Hebrews, the second from The Revelation. My soul swelled with a sense of awe and emotions ran deep while still in bed. I tried sleeping, but could not. Seldom have I been more deeply moved. I am writing well before dawn.

The paragraph in Revelation seven begins with, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” (Verses 9-10) Then the key statement, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Verse 14)

The complimentary verses are found in Hebrews twelve, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” (Verses 1-3)

Both the quality and quantity of witnesses are profoundly convincing. The antagonists who would undermine faith and erode the well being of the saints will not intimidate those whose eyes are on Jesus. The “cloud of witnesses” are in place forever. Saints throw off threats and intimidation like runners shed clothes before a race.

There is so much more. Let us expect the Spirit to make life applications and that the sheer power of the passages to which I awakened will live powerfully within us all.