On May 13, 2008, Pastor Hoye was arrested for allegedly violating a newly enacted law (a “bubble zone”) that places burdens and obstacles on abortion protesters who wish to protest this moral atrocity. Interestingly, Hoye was subsequently a party to the legal challenge asking the new law be ruled unconstitutional. As an African American pastor, he feels especially called to this ministry of protest and runs Issues4Life Foundation.
Strangely enough, no “clients” made any complaints. The prosecutor filed charges based solely upon the testimony of the director of Family Planning Specialists (the abortuary in question), Jackie Barbic. The prosecutor also named a couple of escorts as victims.
During the trial in January of this year, defense cross-examination revealed that one escort never mentioned her alleged intimidation to the police or the district attorney until after the district attorney had already filed the charges against Rev. Hoye.
Yes, you read that right. Oakland’s DA first filed charges against Walter Hoye and then suggested to the ‘escort’ that perhaps she was intimidated. Fortunately, the court dismissed this charge because of the misconduct of the prosecution.
You can see Walter Hoye’s peaceful protest here. The prosecution wasn’t aware of this rebuttal evidence that showed Mr. Barbic’s perjured testimony. It also shows a rather tenacious ‘escort’ who was the one doing the intimidating. Still, the jury found Walter Hoye guilty.
Allison Aranda, Staff Counsel for Life Legal Defense Foundation, who is representing Rev. Hoye said regarding the January verdict: “After speaking with several jurors after the verdict was read, it is clear that the court's failure and outright refusal to instruct the jury regarding the key elements of the crime led to the erroneous conviction of Rev. Hoye,”
And so, because he exercised his constitutional rights of free speech and protest on May 13, 2008, and because he followed his conscience before his God, yesterday he found himself on the 5th floor of the Alameda Superior Court building in Oakland where he was sentenced by Judge Stuart Hing with 30 days in jail and a $1,130 fine.
"This is a deliberate attempt to silence the Church and its prophetic role in protecting the innocent lives in our community and especially Black babies," said Pastor Stephen Broden of Dallas, Texas. "Pastor Hoye represents a legacy of resistance by Black preachers to injustices perpetrated on the beloved community. Prenatal murder of Black babies by the abortion industry should be resisted by every black pastor across this country."
Columnist Star Parker writes:
"...beyond the troubling details of this trial and conviction, circumstances surrounding the case convey the realities of our deeply confused and lost nation.
Abortion clinics such as Family Planning Specialists strategically locate to optimize their deadly business. This means in poor black neighborhoods.
A search of the 94607 zip code in Oakland where this facility is located shows that the population is 50 percent black, the median household income is 40 percent that of the median household income in the state of California while 30 percent earn below the poverty line and 58 percent of households with children are single parent households.
The poor black kids from the broken families and communities there go to failing public schools in Oakland where half of them drop out.
In these failing public schools, it is prohibited to teach the most important thing that these children could possibly hear. That there are absolutes in this world -- that there is right and there is wrong.
As religion and tradition have been purged from public life in America, the most immediate victims have been the weakest and most vulnerable.
California deals with this problem by subsidizing it. Every poor girl that goes to Family Planning Specialists gets her abortion paid for by California state insurance, Medi-Cal.
This fiscal year Medi-Cal will spend $52 million dollars of taxpayer funds paying for abortions of poor young women. This while Governor Schwarzenegger has announced an anticipated deficit of over $40 billion and tens of billions from the federal government in the new trillion dollar "stimulus" package will be sent to bail out the state.
The stated purpose of the Oakland ordinance, which may send Walter Hoye to jail, is to protect 'right of privacy." "Right of privacy" of teenage girls not old enough to vote, but who can get a state paid for abortion without informing a parent.
Yet the first amendment of our constitution no longer protects the freedom of a pastor to peaceably stand in front of an abortion clinic and tell these lost young women there is another way.
Something is wrong in America today. Very, very wrong.
Indeed. The wrong moral wrongness of America has been accelerated through this persecution of this brave patriot. Let us pray for Walter Hoye and his family. And let us pray for our drifting nation.
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