Arrest me once, shame on you--the continuing saga of Timo Miller

Note: for earlier stories on this topic, search on the label 'agents'.

Well, I don't have any further updates on this story, just some comments.

It is clear from reading the FBI's affidavit that the prosecution's main evidence in this trial is going to come from Timothy Miller himself. The Judge will no doubt rule that the evidence admissible, however, due to the fact that Timo voluntarily provided it--in the form of private emails he sent his friends and associates during the time he was helping Lisa Miller and her daughter Isabella move to Nicaragua. This information was, at the time he sent it, liable to interception by the FBI--although it's apparent that they didn't begin tapping his emails until later. If Timo ends up doing time for his crime, it will largely be his own fault, for leaving such a vivid electronic trail from the scene of the crime directly to his own front door.

But, should that come about, the prosecution's victory will be bittersweet. After all, it isn't really Timo they want, but Lisa. And it's not even Lisa, but her daughter, that the FBI was originally tasked with kidnapping. "I am looking forward to having my daughter home safe with me very soon," said Janet Jenkins in a statement released by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, her legal counsel. If she thinks that turning the screws on Timothy Miller will have anything to do with that, she can think again. Her ex-stepdaughter is already home safe--but with her real mother, and intends to keep it that way.

Arresting Timo when they did basically killed the goose that was laying the electronic golden eggs. Timo will sit through a long trial, maybe serve some time, and then go back home, while Isabella marches on toward eventual majority forever outside the clutches of her wicked stepmother. For, thanks to Timo's sudden arrest, it is now obvious to everyone involved that if you want to keep a fugitive hidden, you don't use your regular email account to broadcast the process into cyberspace! Wherever Lisa and Isabella went after fleeing Jinotega, their presence there is under an electronic blackout, and will continue to be so until the statute of limitations has expired.

The Mennonites in Nicaragua were babes in the woods when it came to carrying out their criminal activities undercover. And it is costing them--some more than others. But they're learning from this--and we can be sure that other innocents are learning from their experience.

Finally, I think Timo's lawyer has a definite case that even the black-and-white evidence that will be put before the jury does not sufficiently implicate Timothy David Miller in "Aiding in the removing of a child from the United States, and retaining a child (who has been in the United States) outside of the United States with intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights."

Aiding he did. Retaining he did. But the law is clear that for these actions to be criminal, criminal intent must be shown, and the only intent evident in Timo's many intercepted emails is one of giving shelter to widows and orphans. He must be shown to have been aware of Janet Jenkin's legal rights as a wicked stepmother, and to have had the intent that his actions in keeping Isabella in Nicaragua would deprive her of those legal rights.  As a lifelong resident of Central America, he can hardly be expected to have kept up on the bewildering proliferation of lawful parental rights in the United States of late.

I have one more piece of advice for Timo: I suggest that he demand a Spanish translator for all further court proceedings. It will drive the point home that he was, as it were, snatched from a foreign country for this trial, for deeds done entirely on foreign soil. The FBI agents who arrested him were dispatched while the plane in which he landed was still in international airspace. His American citizenship was purely incidental to the alleged crime. This despite the affadavit's claim that his crime was committed "in the District of Vermont."

Think about it, folks. To the global enforcers of family law, Vermont isn't a state--it's a Federal District.