Give many an American a hat and a badge and he becomes a goon

I have brought up the report below out of the "Comments" facility here

Here is some strange justice for you:

My 15 year old daughter was arrested last night by the Manteca Police Department in Manteca, CA and charged with petty theft. Their evidence, which I have seen, is a tape of her, gasp, putting her finger in her pants pocket. No visible merchandise is on her finger.

The security guard followed her outside where he arrested her for petty theft and took her into a locked room with just herself and two grown men, where she was searched by them repeatedly and they never found any merchandise on her person or in her possession.

Then the Manteca Police, aka The Gestapo, showed up. Again, all 3 officers were male. They also searched my daughter and found nothing. She kept requesting an attorney and they denied her one and continued with their interrogation. At one point these male officers threatened her with a strip search, to be performed by them, they claim that would be perfectly legal since there was no female officer on duty.

Then the officers and the security guard searched the area of the alleged crime, ie putting her finger in her pants, to see if she had ditched the item. They found nothing. Then they searched the area outside where the security officer approached her. Again, nothing.

Yet still they arrested her and charged her with petty theft. Common sense and the California penal code that I looked up last night indeed support the notion that to be charged with petty theft, a person actually has to take something and in the case of shoplifting they have to actually find stolen merchandise in her possession once she has left the building. Which they did not.

Pretty neat trick on the part of the Manteca Police Department. They managed in one evening to do away with the California Penal code and the constitution. I mean why let such pesky little things get in the way of making their quota for the month.




Crooked police undermine justice again

NEARLY 15 years ago, the brutal murder of three Arkansas Cub Scouts in an alleged satanic rite sickened a nation and strengthened the hand of death penalty champions across the United States. Now the same ghastly crime may be the final nail in the coffin of capital punishment in an America that is manifesting a crisis of conscience over the morality of executions.

Over the next few weeks the grim saga of the so-called West Memphis Three, teenagers who were convicted of slaughtering three small boys for kicks, is expected to reach a conclusion as a new suspect is tested and fresh DNA evidence is presented in the highest court in Arkansas. Legal experts predict that the alleged ringleader, Damien Echols, who in other more “efficient” states such as Texas would have been executed years ago, could be freed from death row by spring....

The case dates back to a warm summer night in May 1993 when the bodies of three eight-year-old boys – James Moore, Steven Branch and Christopher Byers – were found in a creek near their home. The quiet city of West Memphis went crazy with grief, with mobs pulling suspicious strangers from cars. Locals started carrying Bibles to declare themselves “normal”.

At the murder scene police asked Jerry Driver, a born-again Christian probation officer, if he had any suspects. He named Echols, a bipolar 18-year-old who, Driver believed, was a satanist because he wore a black leather coat in all weathers and listened to “devil music” such as Pink Floyd and Metallica. With public pressure growing, police questioned Echols’s friend Jessie Misskelley, a retarded 17-year-old. During 14 hours of interrogation, unprotected by parent or lawyer, the boy confessed that he, Echols and a third friend, Jason Baldwin, had met the children in the woods by accident and then stabbed and raped them for satanic purposes.

Lacking DNA evidence, weapons or a deeper motive, this statement was the cornerstone of the prosecution – even as it emerged during the trial that police had coached Misskelley with lurid details and the victims had not been stabbed but beaten and had not been sexually assaulted. The mutilations, which had inspired local newspaper stories of devil worship, were caused by snapping turtles.

The jury, gripped by the “devil curses” found in Echols’s diaries, which had been lifted from the works of the author Stephen King, took an hour to find all three guilty. Echols was sentenced to death and his two friends to life imprisonment.

At first the distraught parents were relieved, but then the case started falling to pieces – Driver was unmasked as a fraudster and a key witness admitted that she had invented everything in a deal with police for a cash reward.

The West Memphis Three case has since become a cause celebre. Two films have been made about it, Tom Waits, the rock star, and other music figures contributed to a fundraising album and Winona Ryder, the Hollywood actress, joined the campaign to free them. Just before Christmas, Natalie Maines, outspoken leader of the Dixie Chicks, the country band, addressed a 500-strong protest meeting in Little Rock, Arkansas, demanding a fresh trial.

This now seems to be on the horizon. Six weeks ago Echols’s lawyer revealed that new and independent DNA tests of the murder scene not only cleared the trio but also pointed to a friend of the parents of one of the victims, who had a brutal history. The man is now being “interviewed” by West Memphis police and new hearings are “under consideration”.

Two sets of bereaved parents recently declared that they feel betrayed by police and lawyers and want an inquest. “We can only thank God that Damien Echols has survived death row,” said John Mark Byers, stepfather of Chris Byers. “Otherwise, not only would we have lost the chance of finding the truth but we, too, would have blood on our hands. And that would have been unbearable.”

Report here



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