The Co-Knucklehead of the Day award Part Three

Our third winner today is Federal Judge Elizabeth A Kovachevich. She is presently presiding over the trial in Tampa Florida of Joaquin Mario Valencia-Trujillo, a Cali Columbia drug kingpin.

The reason the judge gets a knucklehead is because she will not keep a jury annonymous for the upcoming trial. Mr. Valencia has a history of witness tampering and hiring hit teams to kill jurors. Why isn't this judge protecting juror candidates? This is lunacy, I would go to jail first for contempt before serving on this jury. Kovachevich's warped view of justice doesn't apply to jurors it seems to me, they aren't worth protecting. What are you going to say judge if one disappears or gets killed? You're Sorry. That won't be good enough and you're just one more sorry example of our corrupt and broken judicial system. I'm sure you're getting protected for this trial. So the jurors need the same. For not seeing the obvious, Federal Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich is one of today's Co-Knuckleheads of the day.

Open Post- Don Surber, Political Teen, Bright & Early, TMH's Bacon Bits,

TAMPA, Fla. — A request has been denied to keep a jury anonymous in the trial of an alleged kingpin in the Cali cocaine cartel.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Kovachevich issued the order Monday in the drug and money laundering case of Joaquin Mario Valencia-Trujillo.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph K. Ruddy filed the motion saying Valencia-Trujillo has tampered with the justice system in the past and that he hired "hit teams" to kill possible witnesses.

Four deaths in the United States can be traced to Valencia-Trujillo, and a Colombian prosecutor admitted to accepting a bribe to help his defense, Ruddy said.

Federal prosecutors believe Valencia-Trujillo was a member of the Cali cartel since the early 1990s. The government has accused him of supplying Colombian cocaine to convicted Miami kingpins Salvador "Sal" Magluta and Augusto "Willie" Falcon.

Valencia-Trujillo feared investigations of Magluta and Falcon might lead to him, according to Ruddy's motion.

Witnesses who were killed were to have testified at trials for Magluta, but Valencia-Trujillo's attorney, Matthew P. Farmer, argued in court papers that the federal government presented evidence in those cases that others were behind the killings.

Farmer wrote that the "allegations that Valencia-Trujillo is linked to the Magluta organization, particularly to the extent that Valencia-Trujillo was involved in murdering witnesses against Magluta, are baseless."

Valencia-Trujillo's trial is scheduled for February.