In 2001, Lydia Wardell failed in the cult's attempt to frame Jesse Prince for possesion of marijuana. Read the latest on this hypocritical assclown for $cientology:

Prosecutor sentenced in DUI case

Lydia Wardell, known for aggressive pursuit of such cases in Pinellas, expressed remorse for her actions.

By VANESSA GEZARI

St. Petersburg Times, Published February 3, 2005

TAMPA - Wearing a dark suit and pearls, Lydia Dempsey Wardell looked every inch the successful lawyer as she stood Wednesday before a judge in a Hillsborough County courtroom.

But on this day, Wardell, a hard-nosed Pinellas prosecutor, was a defendant, about to be sentenced for driving under the influence of alcohol in November with her two young sons in the car.

An attorney spoke on her behalf. Friends and relatives encircled her protectively. Judge Thomas P. Barber asked whether she had read and understood a plea agreement under which she would serve 18 months probation, submit to random urine tests and spend 10 hours talking to schoolchildren about the dangers of drinking and driving. "Yes, I have," Wardell said softly.

Wardell, known for her aggressive pursuit of DUI and other cases as one of two misdemeanor court supervisors for Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe, was arrested Nov. 10 near the intersection of Brevard Avenue and Bayshore Boulevard.

She was driving to pick up her son at a ball field when she turned east onto westbound Bayshore and struck another vehicle, police said. The tires of Wardell's white Nissan SUV ended up on the concrete median. No one was hurt. When police arrived, Wardell told them she was looking for her home but couldn't find it. One officer said he couldn't believe that "because she lives right down the street." A breathalyzer test put her blood-alcohol level at 0.23 percent, nearly three times the level at which Florida law presumes that someone is unable to drive safely.

In a statement read in court Wednesday, Wardell, 37, said: "My conduct that afternoon was selfish, and has impacted many."

She began reading the statement herself, but halfway through the second sentence, tears filled her eyes and she stopped speaking. A woman who said she was "a longtime friend and colleague" of Wardell's picked up where she left off.

In the statement, Wardell said she had immediately checked herself into a residential treatment program "so I could examine what was going on in my life that would lead me to exercise such horrible judgment."

She apologized to her co-workers as well as to members of the judiciary, the police, defense attorneys and "the community as a whole." As a career prosecutor, she said, she of all people should have known better.

"I have been extremely humbled and extremely remorseful," she said in the statement.

Under the terms of her plea agreement, Wardell will serve 12 months probation for driving under the influence and another six months for culpable negligence because her two sons, ages 3 and 6, were in the car when the accident occurred. Both offenses are misdemeanors.

Among those who wrote letters on her behalf were Darryl Rouson, head of the St. Petersburg chapter of the NAACP, and defense lawyer Michael S. Schwartzberg, who praised Wardell's "determination and drive" in his letter to State Attorney Mark Ober.

"We both realize that a felony (charge) would cause Lydia to abruptly end a stellar career for a momentary lapse of judgment," Schwartzberg wrote in a letter dated Jan. 5, the day he died of a heart attack. "Would this be just?"

As part of her sentence, Wardell will do 100 hours of community service, including 16 hours with the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office work detail, wearing an orange vest and picking up trash along the sides of county roads. The trash collection is a standard punishment for drunken driving offenders, said Pam Bondi, spokeswoman for Ober.

Wardell's driver's license will be suspended for six months, and she must attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings once a week. She is not allowed to drink alcohol during her probation. She must attend DUI school, complete a program administered by the Florida Bar Association for lawyers who commit drug- or alcohol-related offenses and pay a $500 fine and court costs.

Wardell was demoted after her arrest, and has been suspended from her job for 30 days without pay, said Bruce Bartlett, chief assistant for State Attorney McCabe. In her new position with the consumer fraud unit, she will still work in the courtroom, but will have no contact with DUI cases, Bartlett said. Wardell knows she made a mistake, he said, and she has been punished just like anyone else.

"I can't tell you how remorseful she is," Bartlett said. "She's terribly embarrassed and ashamed. If she could write a letter of apology to the general public, she would. She's just asking for forgiveness."

(end article)

(for backgroud):

Scientology critic won't face retrial Prosecutors decide to drop a marijuana charge after jurors, concerned about church influence, deadlock. By DEBORAH O'NEIL =A9 St. Petersburg Times, published May 26, 2001

CLEARWATER -- When the two-day misdemeanor trial of Scientology critic Jesse Prince ended Thursday, jurors had little doubt he had possessed marijuana as the state charged.

What bothered some of them, according to two jurors, was the possibility that Prince had been set up by the Church of Scientology.

They heard testimony about how Prince, once a high-ranking church member, was watched, videotaped and trailed for months by private investigators hired by Scientology lawyers.

Private investigator Barry Gaston said he was hired because he is black, like Prince, and befriended Prince using a false name. Gaston said he was paid $14,000 for his work. Ultimately, the private investigators gave police information that led to Prince's arrest.

In his closing arguments Prince's lawyer Denis deVlaming hammered home a point that would stick in some jurors minds. "A real church is a house of God," deVlaming said. "You tell me what house of God hires somebody like Gaston to be able to infiltrate a life?"

The jurors deadlocked after five hours of deliberations and a mistrial was declared. On Friday, the State Attorney's Office dropped the charge against Prince, capping a bizarre case that, in the end, left the church explaining its tactics.

"We've made the decision not to retry Mr. Prince," said prosecutor Lydia Wardell on Friday. "It was just time that we decided we'd spent enough time and energy and money on this particular charge."

Nothing about the state's case was questioned, she noted. Wardell put Prince's own fiancee, Deneen Phillips, on the stand. She testified under a court subpoena that Prince knew there was a marijuana plant on their back porch and that they had smoked pot together.

Still, the jury did not convict.

"I knew I was going to have a very hard time based solely on the fact that Scientology hired the firm that hired the investigators," Wardell said. "We all know it came down to that."

Juror Tiffany Scurlock of Palm Harbor said she and other jurors felt Prince was probably guilty of the charges, but, "I think a lot of it had to do with entrapment. They (other jurors) felt like the Church of Scientology had a lot to do with setting him up."

Mike Rinder, a top Scientology official, said the case became trial by innuendo and deVlaming effectively deflected attention from the critical issue: Prince's drug possession. If the jurors were concerned with Scientology's role, Rinder said, "it's just a matter of prejudice."

The church, he said, investigated Prince because he is being paid to testify against the church in a civil lawsuit and has told outrageous lies about the church under oath. Also, Rinder said, investigators have watched Prince because he has a history of making violent threats against church members.

Rinder argued that the church merely reported Prince's illegal activities to law enforcement. "When it comes to someone who is anti-Scientology it seems there's a double standard," Rinder said. "We have to go around and document every bit of it and put it all together. Then it turns into, "The church did it.' If the allegation were being made about someone in the church, the police would be doing the investigation themselves."

Rinder said he wasn't surprised the charges were dropped, given the expensive defense.

Prince's defense cost an estimated $45,000, said Stacy Brooks, president of the Lisa McPherson Trust, a Scientology watchdog organization in downtown Clearwater where Prince works. The Trust, which is funded mostly with money from millionaire Scientology critic Robert Minton, paid Prince's legal bills, she said.

The case was the third time in a year a member of the Lisa McPherson trust has been on trial for misdemeanor criminal charges in cases that involve the Church of Scientology. DeVlaming represented all three, and none were convicted. In all, the trust has spent close to $150,000 in legal fees, Brooks said.

"The reason Jesse and Bob and I wanted this to go to trial is we wanted the information to be made public that Scientology does this to people," said Brooks.

For his part, Prince said: "The thing that's most important to me that happened in this case is we stood up and fought it."

(end article)

"Psychiatry attacks us because they know our technology works...they are making billions of dollars on drugging people, electroshocking them, and basically maiming and harming them." -Teresa Reger

"In Scientology, we're about reason. We're about understanding. We're about love."- Al Buttnor

(From Buffalo News $ci-series, Jan./Feb. 2005)

Sea Otter=20 Xenu Beach, FL=20

a=2Er.s. is $cientology's Vietnam

<p><hr><p> From: Tilman Hausherr <tilman-usenet@snafu.de>
Subject: Re: Jesse Prince's prosecutor sentenced for DUI
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 08:50:23 +0100
Organization: Old Europe
Message-ID: <57a601pduiotj90hklqtsckog7r030q3n7@4ax.com>

On 3 Feb 2005 21:10:33 -0800, c_otter@webtv.net wrote:

>Prosecutor sentenced in DUI case
>
>Lydia Wardell, known for aggressive pursuit of such cases in Pinellas,
>expressed remorse for her actions.

Is she married? If not, maybe she should start a relationship with Richard Allatorre, the scientology supporting cocaine-snorting LA council man.

--
Tilman Hausherr [KoX, SP5.55] Entheta * Enturbulation * Entertainment
tilman@berlin.snafu.de http://www.xenu.de

Resistance is futile. You will be enturbulated. Xenu always prevails.

Find broken links on your web site: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
The Xenu bookstore: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/bookstore.html

<p><hr><p> From: Tilman Hausherr <tilman-usenet@snafu.de>
Subject: Re: Jesse Prince's prosecutor sentenced for DUI
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 19:42:29 +0100
Organization: Old Europe
Message-ID: <odg701l0p1bl9k1914l9pnh821t8podl4a@4ax.com>

I had a look at other prosecutions of scientology critics.

Bob Minton prosecution in Clearwater:

Bill Tyson alias William Tyson alias William J. Tyson alias William Joseph Tyson has changed sides and is now in private practice: http://www.tampalegal.com I didn't find much on him in the media.

Mark Bunker prosecution in Chicago:

Brandy King and Cheryl Wronkiewicz seems to be nobodies. Maybe they married. Good idea to get new names after this failure!

I did also not find anything on the cops Blase Floria and Ralph Bonifazi, who were on the scientology payroll in Chicago. And having read through some of the transcripts again, it reminds me that it will forever be a mystery who "vanished" the tape, because it could also have been done by the cops who came later, in order to "help" their off-duty buddies. The LAPD was probably not the only inspiration for the series "The Shield".

Tilman

--
Tilman Hausherr [KoX, SP5.55] Entheta * Enturbulation * Entertainment
tilman@berlin.snafu.de http://www.xenu.de

Resistance is futile. You will be enturbulated. Xenu always prevails.

Find broken links on your web site: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
The Xenu bookstore: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/bookstore.html

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