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Nashville, Tennessee

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Nashville Scene - Pith in the Wind

The Nashville Scene News Blog

'Chicken Man' Denies FBI Accusation

Posted April 10, 2008 at 09:23:59 AM by Jeff Woods

Not to defend a crooked politician, but you can't blame former Rep. Ronnie Davis for being a little miffed. An FBI agent went public yesterday with an allegation that cockfighters paid Davis $30,000 to help pass a law in 1990 to make their bloody sport a misdemeanor rather than a felony.

The agent, Thomas Farrow, said he learned of the bribes from a cockfighter. It apparently wasn't enough evidence for the FBI to charge Davis with any crime then because nothing was filed. But that didn't stop Farrow from making the accusation before the House Judiciary Committee where under the state constitution he enjoys immunity from slander claims. Farrow was speaking in support of legislation to make cockfighting a felony again.

Cockfighters knew Davis so well they referred to him as "chicken man," Farrow said.

Asked about Farrow's comments, Davis said, "I would tell him to his face that he is a … bald-faced, ignorant liar."

Voters tossed Davis, a nine-term Republican from Newport, out of office in 2002 while he was under indictment in a swindling scheme. He pleaded guilty in 2004 to federal fraud, extortion and drug charges and went to prison for two years.

Category: Immigration, Law and Order, Politics, Woods
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Scene Story Pirated by Nicaraguan Daily Paper

Posted January 23, 2008 at 03:51:31 PM by PJ Tobia

Last week’s cover story about Megan Volz’s stormy relationship with—and subsequent filing of assault charges against—two Uruguayan illegals has gotten an unauthorized boost in circulation. The Nicaraguan daily El Nuevo Diario reprinted the story without our permission in its entirety…well almost. The editors there removed all references in our story to Eric Volz’s trial being a sham or other facts of the case that point to the young man’s innocence. They also deleted all references to the significant movement to free Eric Volz, including the work of his lawyers and the website his family started. In all, the story the paper "reprinted"—titled "La Otra Volz"—is about half the length of the English version that we first published last week.

The paper also added ominous subheds such as “The Volz’s, from victims to executioners,” and “A bad girl” in between sections of the story.

Finally, they spelled my name P.J. Robia.

Mercedes Alvarado, mother of the young woman that Eric was accused of killing, was shown the bootleg version of the story and is quoted in this article, which attempts to make the case that violence runs in the Volz family. “They apparently come from a violent society and from an unstable family emotionally," Alvarado tells the paper in Spanish. She also says that she was surprised to know that Eric had a sister. "Here always he said that he was an only child," she says.

Keep in mind that this is a woman who claims that Volz offered her $1 million for her silence. He claims that he didn’t, and even if he did, it didn’t work. Alvarado testified at his trial, where he was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years before an appellate court finally released him last month.

Category: Immigration, Media
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Tennessean/USA Today Use Hate Group as a Source

Posted January 22, 2008 at 01:09:36 PM by PJ Tobia

This article about the cost of illegal immigrants to the U.S. Health care system in today’s Tennessean—with a byline by a USA Today reporter—cites statistics by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR.) Last month the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) officially named FAIR a hate group because it accepted a $1.2 million gift from what the SPLC calls an “infamous, racist eugenics foundation.” (Eugenics is the Nazi utilized theory of culling inferior races from the gene pool so that a “pure” race of people can be bred.) This long-form investigative piece by an SPLC reporter also cites bigoted statements by FAIR founder John Tanton against Catholics and his comparison of immigrants to an aggressive bacteria that will one day overwhelm the American Petri dish. The group is also a big advocate of the Aztlan theory.

Despite all of that, FAIR has great influence in the American immigration policy debate. Its members have been called to testify before the U.S. Congress, and according to the SPLC were quoted almost 500 times in mainstream media outlets in 2007. FAIR has also hosted press events—such as this one in Iowa this month (last item)—where conservative talkers like Steve Gill do live broadcasts starring major party candidates and FAIR spokespeople. And of course, Phil Valentine quotes their figures and study results dutifully, and has even written this column for FAIR's website about the impact of illegal immigration on Tennessee.

FAIR and other groups founded by Tanton have been credited with starting a grassroots wildfire that ended up killing last year’s bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform package then making its way through Congress.

It’s a good bet that most of the people who were prompted by FAIR’s media push to call or fax their elected officials and advocate for the FAIR agenda had little knowledge that they were acting on behalf of a man with such dark motives. But shouldn’t the Tennessean—or for that matter USA Today—know better?

Category: Immigration, Media
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No Place but MySpace

Posted January 21, 2008 at 02:30:54 PM by PJ Tobia

Juan Carlos and Guillermo Diemarch, the subjects of last week's Scene cover story detailing their relationship and subsequent fallout with Megan Volz, now have a MySpace page, thanks to Juan Carlos' girlfriend Kate Kalil. The site encourages donations to the Uruguayan brothers, who are now facing deportation. The MySpace page also says that the brothers would like to meet “a good lawyer who will help get us home quickly and safely.” Their mood is listed as “bullied.”

Category: Immigration
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The Other Volz

Posted January 18, 2008 at 10:02:37 AM by Liz Garrigan

As this week’s cover story details, while Eric Volz was trapped in a third-world prison, his little sister Megan was involved in a violent relationship with her illegal immigrant boyfriend, a Uruguayan man named Guillermo Diemarch. Megan told Diemarch that if he filed a complaint against her or broke up with her, she would report him and his brother to the police and have them both deported. When Guillermo ended the relationship last month, that’s exactly what happened. She called the police and filed assault charges against Guillermo and his brother Juan Carlos. They were immediately flagged by immigration authorities and are slated for deportation after the assault charges are adjudicated. The day after Christmas, Megan Volz took the stand and told her story in a Metro courtroom. A video recording of her testimony was made that day. Here are excerpts of that video. Others can be found here.

Category: Immigration, Law and Order
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Immigration '08

Posted January 02, 2008 at 11:02:42 AM by PJ Tobia

With the new year also comes a new legislative session in the Tennessee House and Senate with more than two dozen new bills aimed at undocumented immigrants and non-English speakers. This list of the bills—care of TIRRC—comes with a healthy dollop of that organization’s bias, but the legislative links speak for themselves.

Category: Immigration, Politics
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Say Anything

Posted December 11, 2007 at 02:32:18 PM by PJ Tobia

A couple of weeks ago, we reported about a court filing accusing one courthouse translator of neglecting to tell non-English-speaking defendants that they have the right to plead not guilty.

Now a second non-English speaking defendant is making the same charge about a different translator. Julio Jesus Pedro was arrested for possession of cocaine back in 2001. In court with his attorney a few months later, the translator assigned to Pedro's case did not speak his language, which, according to the filing is not Spanish but “an indigenous Guatemalan dialect.”

Pedro’s lawyer pled guilty on his client's behalf without telling him that cocaine possession, though a misdemeanor, is a deportable offense. (Actually, his lawyer couldn’t tell him much of anything, given the language barrier, but that’s beside the point.) So Pedro paid his fine and went on with his life.

Fast-forward to this year when Pedro was arrested yet again, though it is unclear just what for. He retains Nashville immigration attorney Sean Lewis, who tells him for the first time that the coke charge is “an immigration deportable offense,” according to the filing. Lewis claims that his client received “ineffective assistance of counsel,” and that there was a “failure to properly inform him of the crime with which he was charged, and his legal rights.”

Much more after the jump...


Continue reading "Say Anything"...
Category: Breaking News, Immigration, Law and Order
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Schermerhorn Construction Co. Pleads Guilty to Illegal Labor Charges

Posted December 05, 2007 at 03:11:21 PM by PJ Tobia

According to this article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, the owner of the company that helped build the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital has pled guilty to hiring illegal immigrants on a number of construction projects. The company—Spectrum Interiors—will be fined $2 million. Spectrum also worked on a 20-story luxury condominium complex in Covington, Ky. The company’s owner, Jeff Wolnitzek, also happens to be a councilman in a Fort Wright, Ky. It’s unclear from the indictment whether illegal immigrants were employed in the Nashville projects. The indictment stems from a federal raid on the Covington condo construction site that netted 30 illegal immigrants.

According to the article, “The move-in date for the luxury condominiums has since been moved back until early next year, partly because of labor shortages in the construction industry.”

Labor shortage? Hmmm…

Category: Immigration
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