By Cheryl Sullenger

San Francisco, CA — The RICO trial against Troy Newman and other pro-life defendants continue with the Center for Medical Progress continues. There is very little we at Operation Rescue are allowed to say about this trial on advice of Troy’s wonderful legal team with the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

However, Harry Mihet of the Liberty Counsel, who represents Sandra Merritt in this case, has posted a very informative report on Facebook that we are reprinting below. Please pray that this case will be ruled on favorably for all the pro-life defendants, which include Troy, Sandra, Albin Rhomberg, and David Daleiden.

Testimony will resume on Tuesday, October 8, 2019.

From Harry Mihet:

CALIFORNIA UPDATE: the first week of trial packed a strong punch, many hours of intense battle, and very little sleep! After selecting the jury on Wednesday (Day 1), we did opening statements on Thursday (Day 2), and then Planned Parenthood called Sandra to the stand on Friday (Day 3).

Sandra did a GREAT job and shredded Planned Parenthood’s case. She detailed the numerous things she learned PRIOR to even making the videos, which gave her a reasonable basis to believe that Planned Parenthood was committing heinous crimes. This gave her a legal excuse to film the undercover videos EVEN if the recorded conversations had been confidential—which they clearly were not. Planned Parenthood had almost NOTHING to say in response. It was POWERFUL!

So the trial is going as well as it can, under VERY difficult circumstances. The Court is handicapping us in some VERY major and significant ways. For instance, the Court has decided that this case is ONLY about the *alleged* illegal conduct of Sandra and her colleagues, and NOT about the *demonstrated* (caught on video) illegal conduct of Planned Parenthood. Thus, the Court is NOT allowing us to play ANY portion of the videos that show how Planned Parenthood broke the law by profiting from the sale of baby parts. To show that the videos were recorded, Planned Parenthood is playing only very carefully edited snippets, of only the most innocuous things (people saying “hello”). And we can’t play the rest of the videos that show Planned Parenthood’s abhorrent crimes and inhuman conduct.

The result, unless things change during the trial, is that the jury will never see the evidence of Planned Parenthood’s crimes. They are being asked to determine whether, BEFORE recording the videos, Sandra had a reasonable belief that Planned Parenthood was committing violent crimes, without being allowed to see that the videos themselves CONFIRMED Sandra’s belief that those crimes were being committed.

How could her belief that crimes were being committed be “unreasonable,” when the videos she recorded demonstrated that crimes WERE in fact being committed? In other words, we are having a SIX WEEK trial about a bunch of videos, without being able to show any meaningful portion of those videos!

There are many other handicaps imposed on us, on which I will report next week. A huge miscarriage of justice MAY be taking place. We are developing a rock-solid record for an appeal, although our hope and prayer remain that we won’t need an appeal. Pray with us that we can expose Truth and prevail despite impossible odds!

We are off on Monday and back in Court for Day 4 on Tuesday. (Please keep all comments respectful). #PPSellsBabyParts