The Case of Jeffrey Rains Weinhaus: A Controversial Conviction
Call to Action: Free Jeffrey Rains Weinhaus.
On October 10, 2013, Jeffrey Rains Weinhaus was convicted of assaulting former Missouri Highway Patrol Sergeant Henry J. Folsom. This conviction stems from a highly disputed incident that occurred on September 11, 2012.
The narrative provided by supporters of Weinhaus asserts that the conviction was false. They claim that the only person hurt that day was Weinhaus himself, who sustained gunshot wounds—two to the head and two to the chest.
The incident is reportedly connected to Weinhaus's public activities. In August 2012, he was a candidate for Coroner in Crawford County Missouri. His campaign involved investigating a local murder allegedly committed by members of the Sheriff's department.
Sergeant Folsom had been assigned to the case and concluded the killing was justified, a finding that Weinhaus's supporters contest, arguing that "all the evidence indicated that it was a bad shooting."
The interaction that allegedly led to the assault charge occurred shortly before the shooting, on August 22, 2012, when Folsom and Scott Mertens visited Weinhaus. This visit reportedly concerned a video Weinhaus had posted on his YouTube channel on August 17, 2012.
Weinhaus used his political campaign and his independent publication, the Bulletin, to highlight alleged government misconduct. He had been publishing the Bulletin since August 1996 and began uploading videos to the Bulletinman YouTube channel in 2009.
During his campaign, he ran a series of advertisements in local papers, the Cuba Free Press and the Sullivan Independent News, asking for victims of "over zealous so called law enforcement." According to the account, this generated dozens of responses detailing alleged abuses by police and the court system, which Weinhaus then shared in his publication.
Weinhaus's vocal critique of corruption—which "alienated elected and appointed officials from the Governor to the Dog Catcher"—is the reason he remains in the Missouri prison system to this day, a "political prisoner."
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