Good afternoon, my name is Tanawah Downing and I am reaching out to you because I have one hell of a story that I am ready to start telling, I am confident that it is one that you would like to hear.
Our Justice system is so corrupt and broken that I’m afraid that if we don’t do something soon, it will destroy our nation. I believe that much of the chaos that we are experiencing today is the direct result of our failure to comply with our Supreme Law of the Land. Legal realism is very much alive and at work here in America, destroying our system of government and infringing on the rights of the people.
In our country, specific demographics are and have always been targeted by unjust laws and practices. Our system is and has always been a reconciliation system for debt that is owed to society. These laws target the poor because they are the most likely to not be able to pay the debt owed to society and therefore more likely to have to sell themselves into slavery in order to settle the debt. The government has long known this and the 13th Amendment supports it.
What we have today is a criminal enslavement system and laws are being created that specifically target the poor. This is the reason behind the mass incarceration solution employed today. It is simply a method of enslaving the poor so that the government can profit off of the involuntary servitude of those who are enslaved in for-profit state-run industries.
Unfortunately, in our society, the majority of those who are economically challenged are minorities, which is why we see such a disparity in the rate of incarceration. So, laws are absolutely created today that target minorities and it is time that the truth be told.
Please, I would like to have this conversation with your organization. I felt because it had to happen. Someone had to show exactly what the minorities are experiencing, so that it is no longer a race debate and we can finally move forward with some clarity knowing that slavery has always been primarily an economic issue. The argument that it is race-based was a lie told by our government as a diversionary tactic in order to get the people fighting among themselves because as long as the people are fighting among themselves and thinking that it is predicated upon the wrong thing, then they will not realize that it is the government who is the real antagonist.
We can do this, we can come together realizing that we didn’t do this, we didn’t cause this, government did and we simply believed their lies. But now, if we can come together in unity, finally realizing that it’s not white versus black or brown versus tan, woman versus man…. it’s simply rich versus poor and as a result, we will no longer be their slaves, we can absolutely put an end to this and I would like to tell you how. Let’s bring our brothers and sisters home… their families need them and their kids miss them please let me explain how we will do this.
There is a lot to the story and unfortunately, to tell it all would take hours; it took 9 hours to complete the last time. So, in consideration for the brevity of this message and the hope that you will read it and respond to me requesting additional information, let me just offer to you what I did, without any detail pertaining to how I did it, please bear in mind that I am very well educated, owned a very successful engineering firm, I was quite wealthy, extremely well respected within my professional community and prior to the start of all this, I had never been arrested in my life.
I know that it may seem very hard to believe that I could accomplish what I accomplished, but if you give me an opportunity, I’ll make you a believer. Now, the most important point that I would like to make is that, I am not doing this to clear my name, I’m not seeking vindication, I don’t care about money and I didn’t actually break any laws.
What I did, I did as a choice because when I saw what the Justice system was doing and how those acts were done, not only completely unjust and contrary to the principles that America is founded upon, but in violation of Constitutional and Criminal law, I knew that I had to do something; it was never a choice for me.
When I pointed these crimes out to the prosecutor and judges, this is when they came down on me and my family with extreme malice and vindictiveness. They had full intent to send me to prison to make an example of me. This judge and prosecutor worked together to persecute me, manipulate my ex-wife, steal from me every single thing that I owned and then, in an openly blatant and overt act during a trial in 2018, in front of 12 friends of mine who were witness in the audience, the two of them worked together to prevent me from cross-examining the state’s witnesses, testifying on my own behalf, calling any witnesses on my behalf and presenting closing arguments. They prevented me from speaking the entire trial.
I warned the judge 4 separate times that what he was doing was illegal and all 4 times he responded by saying that he can do that, that the State of Washington gives him the right to break the law because he is sovereign and absolutely immune. What he failed to understand is that absolute immunity only covers civil liability and not criminal liability. They had me on trial for a No Contact Order violation with my wife at the time of 12 years. Neither of us wanted the Order, but the state put it in place as the mechanism to send me to prison. My ex-wife testified during that trial, “I don’t want this. He didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know why you are doing this. And, I don’t want to be here testifying, but the state is making me.” She wasn’t accusing me of committing any crime, therefore, just as I stated during the trial, “Who is my accuser? My wife isn’t accusing me of anything. The only person in this room that is accusing me of something is the prosecutor and yet you tell me that I can’t confront her. So tell me, who is my accuser, so that I can confront them, I cannot possibly defend myself against nothing.” Neither the judge nor the prosecutor could answer that question.
When I was first arrested on June 3, 2016, I was in a place totally foreign to me. It was scary and I was being treated in a way that so awful and disrespectful that I couldn’t believe that I was still in America. How could a person who didn’t do anything wrong be sitting here in jail, never once questioned pertaining to the event, with no bail, the defense attorney telling me that I cannot win and have to plead guilty and then continuously relaying to me threatening scenarios that came from the prosecutor? These threats always followed the same format, “If you don’t plead guilty, she (Prosecutor) will send you to prison for 3 years.” When I pointed out that is a threat and that I am a protected witness, just like any other, the punishment got more severe.
Ultimately, I plead guilty to numerous offenses that I could have never been found guilty of, such as Residential Burglary (Cannot burglarize your own property), felony escape (required to be arrested outside of the state- I was arrested at the hospital where they dropped me off at after 14 days recovering from surgery), among others. I spent a total of 5 years in jail and prison. However, in early 2017, after seeing their illegal acts and how every single person was treated the same way, that I knew many innocent people were being punished without any remorse or consideration, I made the choice to do something about it. I wasn’t sure at the time exactly what I was going to do, but I knew that what they were doing was wrong and nobody was doing anything about it and I couldn’t allow it to continue to happen.
In the end, I built a rock-solid case against the State using various Constitutional violations, most notably, Clause 1 of Amendment 5 to the United States Constitution, which states, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on the presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” You see, in the history of the State of Washington, they have never convened a grand jury because Article I. Section 26. of the Washington State constitution states, “No grand jury shall be drawn or summoned in any County”, which functions directly to the contrary to the United States Constitution and now we have a supremacy issue.
I built the case against the state and filed the civil action in USDC for eastern Washington on April 10, 2019, and over the course of the next 13 months that I was in prison, I got nearly 4,000 other fellow prisoners to file the same complaint challenging the validity of the arrest for failure to comply with the procedures or processed defined within the US Constitution. I remained in prison even through my good time because I needed to get as many people as possible to petition with me. I allowed myself to fall because as you are I’m sure aware, in order to challenge the constitutionality of a statute, you must have standing, or in other words, you have to have been directly impacted by the statute in question. So, I had to become a felon in order to do something about this. Nobody knew that I was doing this, not even my ex-wife.
My case is ready to be placed into the United States Supreme Court jurisdiction, but the Court is ignoring me because Washington state isn’t the only state that does not provide a grand jury. There are at least 8 other states, including Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Idaho, California, South Carolina, among others. Ultimately what that means is that, regardless of the judgment and sentence, if the arrest was unconstitutional, because the states did not follow the Constitutionally established procedures to perform it, then all of the fruit obtained from that unconstitutional arrest is automatically rendered unconstitutional as well because it is tainted by the illegality of the way in which it was obtained, which includes the investigation, the plea or trial, the judgment, the sentencing, the imprisonment, and any community custody following the imprisonment. This isn’t an appeal process because an appeal assumes that the conviction is valid and the mechanism used to appeal an unconstitutional conviction is different than the device used to challenge the validity of a detainment. Detainments are challenged using a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Therefore, if I can prove that the arrest isn’t valid, then there is nothing to appeal because the judgment would automatically be nullified.
I am asking to please help me get my story into the public domain because I have 1 thing that needs to happen before I move this into the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction and when that happens, I will win without even a fight. You see, if I can just get the people talking about this issue, that will be all that will ultimately be needed in order to overcome this issue.
The Grand Jury is the primary defense for the innocent from arbitrary or malicious prosecution. Without the oversight of a third party, prosecutors and judges operate in a completely unregulated or uncontrolled capacity. They can bring unfounded charges or stack charges or use any number of other tactics in order to threaten and intimidate innocent persons into pleading guilty. I am a perfect example of what can happen to anyone if the system fails to follow the procedures or processes for the adjudication of crimes. I can show all of those who are unaware or unfamiliar with how truly unjust our system is because they have never experienced it, because I did it, I allowed it to happen to me, because that would be the only way that anyone could ever correct the issue and so that no one could argue and say that it’s not true.
The State stole everything from me, they stole my children and my ex-wife. I haven’t seen or spoken to them in almost 4 years. Without even a hearing, the State, through the actions of the very same judge who deprived me of my federally conferred Constitutional rights during the trial, removed all of my parental rights and awarded every single marital asset to my ex-wife leaving me with absolutely nothing out of a multi-million-dollar household. My ex-wife and her attorney, Steve Defoe, conspired for the purpose of depriving me, as a Party in the cause, from participating in any of the divorce proceedings, by providing no notification of the complaint, which of course is Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, Title 18 USC 241 and Title 18 USC 1512 (2)(d)(1) and Title 42 USC 1985 (2) and then the State of Washington assisted the two conspirators through the criminal misconduct of the judge. The last thing that I said to my son, the last time that I spoke to him 4 years ago was, “I am so sorry that our family has to do this, but what they are doing is wrong and someone has to do something about it. They can’t do this to families.”
I’m not interested in suing for monetary damages, I am asking for policy change; I am only asking that we all follow the laws. You cannot break the law in order to enforce the law. I don’t care about clearing my name because I made the decision to fall and I know that I wasn’t sent to prison because I’m a criminal, I was sent there because I am a Christian and that’s where God needed me to be in order to serve Him. I also know that when this is said and done, it will be determined that I didn’t break any laws. Talking to my then-wife at the time and defending my family isn’t a crime and my conscience tells me that my duty as a husband and father is superior to my duty to obey a judge when he tells me that I can no longer perform my duties to my family. I didn’t do this so that all those prisoners will get out of whatever it was that they allegedly did, I did it for all of those who are innocent in prison and that the system doesn’t care are innocent. I did it for anyone who may get caught up in the system sometime in the future who are innocent. I did it so that no other families will ever have to experience what mine did. I did it so that my kids and your kids and his kids will never have to go through this. I did it because I believe in America and American principles, because I love my country and I know that we are better than this. I did it because we cannot violate the very principles here at home that we are fighting for abroad. I did it because the system and those administering it need to see the illegal actions and tactics that they are employing and how destructive they are to our nation and harmful to our people that they are. I did it so that we can come to terms with the fact that it is not acceptable to commit extortion in order to get someone to admit to a theft. One crime does not justify the other.
So that is about as brief as I can get with my story. I apologize for making this such a long message, but I pray that you will read it and follow up with me because I need everyone’s help now presenting this issue to the American people. Gandhi once said, “Power doesn’t need to hear the Truth, it already knows it and is busy concealing it. It’s the oppressed who need to hear it.” I have some very powerful Truth that I want the people to be aware of and that Truth is, the System that we, as a nation have in place today, isn’t Justice at all. It is the opposite because Justice is equally concerned about the accused and the accuser. Justice is an act of forgiveness and not vengeance. The image that America has today about Justice is entirely wrong and it’s time for the people who believe in it, to finally see that what they believe in, isn’t actually real, but it can be, we just need to decide as a nation whether or not our Supreme Law of the land is what it says that it is and actually guarantees what it says that it guarantees. I have faith in it and I have faith in our People, I am certain that they will choose to do the right thing and stand in defense of our nation against those who are acting to destroy it. There is only one thing that makes America, America and that is American laws. It is them and faith in them that bonds our whole nation together therefore, no state can refuse to recognize or enforce any of the laws of our nation without no longer being part of the nation.
Thank you so much for your time and consideration. I can be reached by email at: tanawah@weshallbefree2023.com or my phone at: 202-604-4473. There is also a wealth of information available to you through my personal LinkedIn or Facebook pages.
