By Michael Kelley
A circuit court judge has dismissed the government’s case against Brandon Raub and ordered that the Marine veteran, detained over anti-government Facebook posts, be released from a state psychiatric hospital because authorities had no grounds to detain him, Catie Beck of CBS6 News reports.
“This is a great victory for the First Amendment and the rule of law,” Rutherford Institute president John W. Whitehead said in a press release.
ORIGINAL: Brandon Raub’s attorneys have filed a motion to suspend the August 20 ruling that ordered Raub to be involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric ward.
On August 20 the 26-year-old Marine veteran was committed to a psych ward for up to 30 days after he was detained on August 16 in connection to Facebook posts that are critical of the official story regarding 9/11 and refer to “starting a revolution.”
Raub’s lead attorney, John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, told BI that the August 20 order was “rubber-stamped” and indicative of the corrupt system in Virginia.
“The special justice is very old,” Whitehead said. “He had trouble hearing Brandon. He brought into the courtroom a personal cassette player – we tried to listen to it and you can hardly hear what’s being said. This is the so-called judge – he’s a lawyer, not a real judge – it’s like what you would see in a bad movie.”
Whitehead said that every year in Virginia more than 20,000 people are committed under similar circumstances and “that means a lot of people are disappearing” under the pretext of mental illness.
“I’m friends with the local police; I could call them right now and probably get you committed if you were in Virginia,” Whitehead said. “They can arrive at your door based on somebody’s testimony or your Facebook page and take you away to a mental hospital… There’s a system here that is corrupt. And this guy is caught in it.”