The latest police outrage

Pregnant woman held down, tasered. There should be a rule that every time a cop uses a Taser, he should himself be subjected to tasering

FOOTAGE of a pregnant woman being held down on her stomach while being Tasered by a police officer has emerged in the middle of a US federal investigation. Shocking CCTV footage of the incident, which occurred nearly two weeks ago outside of a police station in Trotwood, Ohio, is being distributed online.

According to police, the woman had gone to the station with her one-year-old son in hope of giving up custody of the boy, television station WHIO reported. After a short argument, a struggle broke out between the officer – who moved the boy out of harms way - and the woman. The officer then shoved the woman onto her pregnant stomach and Tasered her in the neck.

Trotwood Public Safety Director Michael Etter told WHIO that an officer was trying to find out information from the woman before the incident. “(He) attempted to obtain information on both the mother and the child, at which time the mother refused to give any information and became very agitated,” Mr Etter said. “She did not disclose, even after she was arrested, that she was pregnant.” Mr Etter said that the woman was wearing a large coat at the time.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigations is investigating the matter. The young boy has reportedly been put into the custody of a relative.


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Australia: No jail for police rapists

An exhibitionist police officer and three friends who raped a man with a sex toy while filming him on a mobile phone have been given suspended sentences. David Kingsley McMahon, Brendan Phillip Hollands, Sian Catherine Whistler and a youth were sentenced in the District Court today for a "drunken prank" that "went too far".

Judge Peter Herriman said the group showed a lack of maturity, courage and honesty by humiliating their friend – and then showing off a video of their actions. "As much as it was fuelled by alcohol, I have concerns about the attitude of some of you to the offending in the cold light of day," he said. "Neither of you young men seems to have viewed your conduct as very serious, even when you sobered up."

McMahon, 22, Hollands, 21, Whistler, 20, and the youth pleaded guilty to raping the man at an Aberfoyle Park party in 2005. "You were all in the habit of drinking to excess... you engaged in exhibitionism, sometimes of a sexual nature," Judge Herriman said. The group used a sex toy and clothes pegs in ways that caused severe damage to the sleeping victim. They also filmed the incident on a mobile phone while making "disgusting remarks". Hollands and McMahon – then a cadet police officer – showed the video to two other people. The victim, meanwhile, was left to piece together what had happened to him through rumour and suspicion. He now requires surgery and counselling.

"None of you later had the courage, honesty, remorse or sense of guilt to approach the victim, tell him what happened or apologise," he said. "The manner in which he slowly found out was traumatic." Judge Herriman said Hollands had since shown "some measure of guilt", but it was "some time" before McMahon accepted the wrongness of his actions. He jailed them both for three years, Whistler for two years and three months and the youth for a minimum of eight months. Their sentences were suspended on condition of three-year, $1000 good behaviour bonds.

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Constant predatory and baseless litigation by politicians makes it impossible for a law-abiding company to do business

No doubt the latest litigation will fail too but there is no doubt that the losses the litigation has inflicted will not be compensated. Article below by By JAMES Q. WILSON

When Hurricane Katrina hit our southern coast, it was the worst natural disaster in American history, killing 1,800 people, forcing more than a million to evacuate the area, and putting four-fifths of New Orleans under water. In the struggle to recover from this event, people turned to their insurance companies for help. Thousands of claims were handled, but for some people there wasn't any coverage. The problem was they were not insured against flooding.

Insurance companies' policies are quite clear on this, and state insurance departments, including the ones in Mississippi and New Orleans, have approved these rules. The homeowners' policy issued by State Farm, for example, says that water damage from a flood, waves, tidal waves, or a tsunami are not covered.

The reason for the exclusion of water damage is quite clear: Hardly any insurance company wants to encourage people to build or occupy structures in places where such damage is likely. If they did allow this, either the company would go bankrupt from losses it could not pay or it would have to charge a premium so high that hardly anyone could afford the insurance. Even without water-damage coverage, insurance companies paid out around $40 billion to Katrina victims. You can buy a hurricane deductible endorsement from insurance companies, but it doesn't protect you against flooding. It simply alters the amount of the deductible you must pay under a regular policy.

You can get flood insurance under a federal National Flood Insurance Policy (NFIP) that will cover up to $250,000 for home damage provided the flood area in which you live has met certain federal standards. These require that buildings have floors that are higher than what a flood is likely to produce. In parts of New Orleans that would mean the floors would have to be put on stilts 15 feet above the ground.

Not content with these policies and rules, trial lawyers and politicians in Mississippi demanded that insurance companies should be required to pay for flood losses even though they were not covered by the policies. Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, a veteran of class-action suits, and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood worked together to create a lawsuit that would retrospectively ban the flood exclusion rule. (Mr. Scruggs was a major source of campaign money for Attorney General Hood.) At the same time, Rep. Gene Taylor from Mississippi urged Congress to require a retroactive payment of flood insurance. Never mind what the homeowners' insurance policies said or what their coverage was, demanding money to which they were not entitled became "good public policy."

Soon thereafter, Sen. Trent Lott, Dickie Scruggs's brother-in-law and the owner of a waterfront home damaged by Katrina, filed suit against State Farm. He had already been paid by NFIP, but he wanted private insurance money as well. The next year both a Mississippi and a federal grand jury subpoenaed State Farm on the basis of allegations that employees of a private adjusting firm had damaging information about State Farm.

This may strike you as routine political and legal maneuvers. But what insurance companies -- not just State Farm, but all of them -- did after Katrina was anything but routine. State Farm sent 4,000 claims adjusters and their support staff into the area. Most of them had nowhere to live and little to eat. Some had to stay in Birmingham, Jackson, Mobile and other towns, and moved in and out of the Katrina area every day. The company built two trailer cities, each with a hundred trailers. GI food, or MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), were shipped in by willing truckers. These emergency homes and MREs lasted, not for a day or two, but for up to 10 weeks.

The claims adjusters worked 12-hour days. They struggled to find the homes of policyholders because street signs were down and even when they were not many had left town for unknown addresses. To get money into the hands of policyholders quickly, the adjusters were authorized to pass out $2,500 as an advance to cover additional living expenses to everyone who had a homeowner's policy, with the full payment to come in days. Hundreds of adjusters were struggling to exercise their judgment about complicated losses in ways that would help people living in what was close to a war zone.

Through his actions, Attorney General Hood sent a message that said these adjusters were not exercising judgment, they were committing a crime. One wonders how any insurance company will recruit and motivate adjusters who will go into the field under these difficult conditions if politicians say they are part of a criminal enterprise.

In time some measure of sanity was restored. A federal district court judge upheld the flood exclusion in insurance policies, a view that was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. More recently, the Fifth Circuit has affirmed that there is no coverage when an excluded peril (such as flooding) and a covered one (such as windstorms) both contribute to the same damage. A Louisiana state judge agreed that policies not written to provide flood insurance did not, in fact, provide it. State Farm reached a settlement with Messrs. Hood and Scruggs and Attorney General Hood concluded his grand jury investigation. Sen. Lott settled his suit with State Farm.

But the return of sanity was of short duration. In June Mr. Scruggs filed a lawsuit against State Farm saying that it engaged in racketeering, and Attorney General Hood filed a new civil lawsuit -- and then followed up with another grand jury investigation contrary to his prior agreement with State Farm. One wonders how its claims adjusters feel when they are told that they are no better than members of the Mafia.

In light of all this, State Farm announced earlier this year that it would no longer sell new homeowners' policies in Mississippi, not to punish people there but because politicians had made it impossible to do business in an orderly way. In response, Attorney General Hood demanded that the governor order State Farm to write new policies. Gov. Haley Barbour replied, quite reasonably, that he does not have the authority to tell a private company that it must do business in his state. There will no doubt be congressional investigations of the insurance business because it did what it told people it was doing.

To be sure, there are things that could be done better. It would be nice if the federal government enforced a flood insurance program based on buildings conforming to flood-resistant standards. (Before Katrina, it had said that these standards did not affect much of New Orleans because it believed the levees would hold.) It might be helpful if an arbitration procedure was created outside the court system to resolve differences between insurance companies and policyholders about all matters, including arguments over whether what an insurance company believes was flood damage (and thus not insurable) was in fact wind damage (and thus insurable). Insurance companies could also do a better job of educating their customers about what they are buying.

Still, most of the problems down in Mississippi would have been resolved if the people of the Magnolia State had elected a new attorney general (instead, they threw out of office the states' insurance commissioner who had disagreed with Mr. Hood). In Mississippi, remarkably, the attorney general has succeeded in making it seem like settling insurance claims is a crime.

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Arrogant British doctor perverted the course of justice

David Southall, the controversial paediatrician, inappropriately accused a grieving mother of killing her son by hanging him, a misconduct hearing ruled yesterday. Professor Southall, 59, was formerly found guilty of serious professional misconduct after his role in the case of Sally Clark, who was wrongly jailed over the death of her two sons. In the latest case, he was said to have acted like a "Crown prosecutor" when he accused the woman of murdering her ten-year-old son by "hanging him up and leaving him to die".

The General Medical Council ruled yesterday that his actions were "inappropriate, added to the distress of a bereaved person and were an abuse of his professional position".

He also removed medical notes to create "special case" files on children and was found guilty of a series of other allegations relating to children in his care during the 1980s and 1990s.

A fitness-to-practise panel will decide later this week whether Professor Southall is guilty of a charge of serious professional misconduct, which he denies, and whether he should be struck off the medical register.

Professor Southall was suspended from child protection work in 2004, having been censured after interfering in the Sally Clark case. He had accused Mrs Clark's husband, Steve, of murdering the two boys on the basis of a TV interview, and suggested that the couple's third child was at risk. Mr Clark was completely exonerated. But the family said that his wife never recovered from the trauma of her ordeal: in March she was found dead.

The latest misconduct hearing began in November 2006. The GMC's fitness-to-practise panel was told that Professor Southall aggressively interviewed the woman, referred to as Mrs M, and asked her to demonstrate the moment that she found her dead son, known as M1, using a pencil and shoestring. A second mother, known as Mrs H, claimed that he had treated her son like a "lab rat" and accused her of abusing her ill child.

This year the Attorney-General ordered a special review of criminal cases in which he had acted. The panel ruled that he "damaged the integrity" of hospital medical records by removing documents and adding them to his own files.

Professor Southall, who worked at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London and then the North Staffordshire Hospital NHS Trust, kept "special case" files on two children, the GMC panel was told.

Mrs M had been interviewed by him in 1998 at the request of a local authority after concerns were raised about the safety of her younger son, who had been taken into care. The boy was 8 when his ten-year-old brother hanged himself in 1996. But Professor Southall barely asked Mrs M about her other son, and instead accused her of having Mnchausen's syndrome by proxy and murdering her eldest boy.

Giving evidence via video link from Adelaide, Mrs M described the interview: "Professor Southall turned to me and said, `I put it to you that you killed your son by injecting him, hanging him up, leaving him there and then ringing an ambulance'," she said.

Jacqueline Mitton, chairman of the panel, said: "It had been found you failed to respect Mrs M's dignity." It was also found that he failed to treat her "politely or considerately", in a way that she could understand, that was inappropriate and caused her distress. Professor Southall's handling of medical records in relation to four other children also came under scrutiny. He was cleared of effectively setting up secret computer medical records.

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Australia: Top cop criticised at murder inquiry

A TOTAL of 14 adverse findings have been recommended against West Australian Assistant Police Commissioner Mal Shervill for his role in a 1994 murder investigation. Counsel assisting the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC), Jeremy Gormly SC, completed his recommendations at the corruption inquiry, which is investigating whether there was any misconduct by public officers in the wrongful conviction of Andrew Mallard in the 1994 murder investigation of Perth jeweller Pamela Lawrence.

Mr Gormly said there had been an early and undue focus on Mr Mallard as a suspect in Mrs Lawrence's murder. But Mr Gormly said it would have been difficult and unlikely the police would have found Simon Rochford, the man who some say was the likely killer. "The only piece of evidence the offender (Rochford) left at the scene was a partial palm print," Mr Gormly said. Mr Gormly said if the murder had remained unsolved the palm print would have been entered into a data base which may have led police to him. Mr Rochford committed suicide in a WA jail after the print was found last year when the case was reviewed.

Mr Shervill, who headed the police investigation into the murder, had failed to disclose statements and test results to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Gormly said. Mr Gormly will soon begin outlining his recommendations to Assistant Commissioner Dave Caporn.

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More on the Utah Taser incident

Most reaction to the tasering of Jared Massey by Utah Highway Patrol Officer John Gardner has been, quite rightly, supportive of Massey. Not just in the United States, but around the world, sensible people realize that Gardner was out of control, and that the officer responded with force to a situation that should have been engaged by conversation, or (if the officer has extremely poor control of his temper) by his leaving the speeding ticket with Massey and just driving away. It's worth pointing out that, only now, with the video of the incident available on the Internet, is UHP taking Massey's complaint seriously and scrambling to investigate the incident.

But a strident minority of voices defend Gardner and insist that Massey had an obligation to tug his forelock and obey every order issued by Gardner, and that his failure to do so justified Gardner's use of force in the incident.

This is ridiculous. At no time did Massey become aggressive toward Gardner. At no time did Massey pose a danger to police or the public. Massey did nothing more threatening than question the grounds for issuing a speeding ticket. Gardner may not like being questioned, but his pride simply doesn't enter into it. If he didn't want to continue discussing the matter with Massey, Gardner could have simply left the already-issued ticket with the driver -- signed or not -- and driven off.

There's no obligation on the part of any person to refrain from questioning police officers about their actions. Let's remember the principles laid down by Sir Robert Peel when he established the modern policing profession. Principle seven states:

7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Remember that: police are only members of the public working full time to keep the peace. None of us -- with or without a badge -- have a right to assault people, even lawbreakers, simply because they vex us with questions or treat us without the respect we believe is our due. That's right, Sir Robert Peel, the father of modern police departments, never intended for police to have special rights to use force in circumstances where it would be inappropriate for the average person to throw a punch or draw a weapon.

If nobody has the right to use force against a man who does nothing more than ask questions and decline to sign a ticket, that raises some interesting thoughts about the Massey incident. Most importantly, it means that Mrs. Massey would have been completely within her rights to respond to Gardner's assault on her husband with whatever force was necessary to disarm or disable the officer and rescue Jared Massey. Under the circumstances, with her husband lying bleeding and stunned by the side of a highway because of the actions of an armed and aggressive man, the pregnant woman might well have been fully within her rights to draw a gun and shoot Officer Gardner.

It's fortunate that didn't happen. A living and intact John Gardner may yet have time to atone for his error and become fit company for the decent members of the human race. More important though, in a world that has become accustomed to treating police officers as a specially entitled aristocracy, the Masseys would have had a difficult time explaining their act of self-defense to a legal system that protects its own. Defensive force would have been justified, but it would have landed the Masseys in a world of hurt.

So it's good to know that Jared Massey has the opportunity to bypass official channels and take his case to the public. Embarrassed and under siege, UHP and Officer Gardner now have to explain a violent assault on a peaceful man.

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Atlanta sued in police killing of 92-year-old

Woman's relatives act after two officers pleaded guilty to manslaughter

The family of a 92-year-old woman fatally shot during a botched drug raid has filed a lawsuit against the city and police on the first anniversary of the killing. The State Court lawsuit was filed Wednesday by a niece of Kathryn Johnston, accusing them of racketeering, civil rights violations, assault, false imprisonment and negligence. The suit targets the city, Police Chief Richard Pennington and five current and former police officers. The family is seeking unspecified damages.

Hezekiah Sistrunk Jr., an attorney for the niece, Sarah Dozier, said they had attempted to talk to the city about a settlement. "That has been unsuccessful. That is why we are here today," he said at a news conference.

Plainclothes narcotics officers burst into Johnston's home Nov. 21, 2006, using a no-knock warrant. Johnston was killed during the raid in a hail of nearly 40 police gunshots. Prosecutors said the officers obtained the warrant by falsely telling a judge that an informant confirmed drug dealing at the home. The informant later told federal investigators he was told by police to concoct the tale.

Prosecutors also said that one of the police officers planted three bags of marijuana in Johnston's home as part of a cover-up after no drugs were found. The suit accuses officers who raided the home of violating Johnston's constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and the use of unreasonable and excessive deadly force. It cites witness tampering in its racketeering accusation.

Prosecutors charged three officers involved in the raid. Two of the officers, Jason R. Smith and Gregg Junnier, pleaded guilty to state manslaughter and federal civil rights charges. They have left the police force. A judge Tuesday ordered the two to turn themselves in by Dec. 3. No sentencing date has been set. A third officer, Arthur Tesler, who is on administrative leave, faces charges of violating the oath of a public officer, making false statements and false imprisonment under color of legal process. His attorney has said Tesler expects to go to trial. All three are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

"I am thankful my aunt's innocence has been proven," Dozier said in a statement read to reporters. "I am also deeply saddened that the city of Atlanta has refused to admit responsibility for unconstitutional practices." Dozier was not present at the news conference.

Beverly Isom, a spokeswoman for Mayor Shirley Franklin, declined to comment on the suit, referring calls to an attorney for the city. The attorney, Jerry De Loach, declined to comment, saying the city had yet to be served with the lawsuit and wanted to review it before responding. Officer Ronald Campbell, a spokesman for Atlanta police, said, "We are unable to comment on anything because of the legalities of it."

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  ¶ 11:37 AM 3 comments links to this post

 

Catch 22 in Massachusetts

Looking back on it now, Irene "Renee" Moffatt realizes her biggest mistake was telling the truth. "I probably should've said my (handicap) placard fell on the seat or something," sighed Renee (she pronounces it REE-nee). "Then I bet none of this would have happened, and I wouldn't be talking to you right now."

Renee Moffat, an exceedingly vibrant 72, is almost certainly right about that. Problem is, she told the Weymouth parking Nazis the truth. And that was her downfall.
Not once, but twice she appealed her $100 ticket for parking in a handicapped space before the Weymouth parking board. On both occasions, Renee explained how she'd been late for a prescribed physical therapy appointment at the Weymouth Health Club and, as she was hobbling into the club, she forgot to pull her driver's visor all the way down, so as to fully display her handicapped placard.

The Weymouth parking Nazis said "Nein" twice. "I found them to be a very snippy and arrogant bunch," Renee said. "When I told them that my placard was in the visor, all they said was, `Well, you can't expect a police officer to go looking for it.'

"I wouldn't mind, but the parking lot for the health club happens to be in an office park. And it was after six in the evening. It wasn't as if I was holding up traffic or anything. And there were 20 other handicapped spaces."

In search of some justice, if not common sense, Renee decided to take her case to court - Norfolk Superior to be precise. "The girl in the clerk's office was very, very nice," Renee said. "She thought I had a pretty good case, too. Then, she hit me with the punch line. If I wanted to go ahead and appeal my $100 parking ticket, the girl in the clerk's office said the court would charge me $275 to file the appeal. "And ma'am, one more thing I have to tell you," she says to me, "even if you win, you won't get the $275 back."

"I couldn't believe it," Renee said.

Thank you, Mitt Romney, Jane Swift and Argeo Paul Cellucci, it was under this trio of Republican "tax-cutters" that all our state fees ballooned into nuttiness. So, court clerks can tell you with a straight face that fighting a $100 parking ticket will cost you at least $275.

Last August, the state Inspector General's Office, which pretty much fell asleep at the switch with the Big Dig, summoned the wherewithal to crack down on perfectly healthy people who were using handicap placards they'd inherited from dead relatives. But you should know that Renee Moffatt qualified for hers, thanks to a benign tumor that placed excruciating pressure on her foot. In advance of surgery, her doctor sent her to Bay State Physical Therapy, which happens to operate out of the Weymouth Health Club.

"When something like this happened once before," Renee said, "I showed the police officer my handicapped tag and he just discarded the ticket." But Renee was to learn that the Weymouth parking board, which ironically held its inquisitions in a senior citizen center, needed to justify its existence.

"My second parking board hearing was held after I had my surgery," Renee recalled. "I walked in there with crutches and a big plastic boot. I figured maybe this time I'll get some sympathy. But nothing doing. They just kept saying my placard wasn't clearly visible and hanging off my rearview mirror. Never mind that it was there sticking out of the visor, if the cop had bothered to look for it.

"I had my handicapped placard," Renee Moffatt said, "and I believe with all my heart that I didn't do anything wrong. But being forced to pay more than two and a half times as much as the parking ticket just to prove my point," she sighed. "Well, it just seemed like I couldn't win, no matter what.

"So, finally, I just sent the ticket in and said, `To hell with it, you win.!' "

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Property right wrongly taken

The story is so absurd, so unfair, so ludicrous, I had a difficult time believing that it could actually happen - even in Boulder. It's about a couple named Don and Susie Kirlin. They moved to the city in 1980. A few years later, the Kirlins purchased a plot of land near their residence, hoping to someday build a "dream home." "We took advantage of the market in the early '80s," says Susie Kirlin, almost apologetic for making a smart investment. Children interfered slightly with the master plan - three of them in the next few years - postponing any development of the property. As the children began to make their own way in life, the couple decided it was time to finally develop the property in late 2006. By then, it was too late.

Despite owning the land, despite living only 200 yards from the property, despite hiking past it every week with their three dogs, despite spraying for weeds and fixing fences, despite paying homeowner association dues and property taxes each year, someone else had taken a shine to it. Someone powerful. Former Boulder District Judge, Boulder Mayor, RTD board member - among other elected positions - Richard McLean and his wife, attorney Edith Stevens, used an arcane common law called "adverse possession" to claim the land for their own. All McLean needed was to develop an "attachment" to it. Undoubtedly, his city connections couldn't have hurt, either.

In the court papers, McLean and his family admit to regularly trespassing on the Kirlins' property. They created paths. They said they put on a political fundraiser and parties on it (though not a single photograph of these events surfaced in court documents). This habit of trespassing developed into an affection.

If we take McLean at his word, he should have been treated appropriately: like a common criminal. Instead, the former judge demanded a chunk of the land for himself - and implausibly he got it.

How did the Kirlins learn this travesty was afoot? Susie Kirlin was warned about it at a Boulder High School football game. Be cautious, her neighbor warned, someone has designs on your property. "I laughed when I first heard it. I really didn't know that anyone had an emotional attachment to our land," Kirlin tells me. "I was quite surprised. I was even more surprised that someone could claim our land. But my neighbor told me this was a well- connected person and I should take it seriously."

When the couple began building a fence on the land - which is within Boulder city limits, not out in the wilderness - McLean was able, according to the Kirlins, to obtain a restraining order in an exceptionally speedy 2 1/2 hours. Boulder District Judge Morris Sandstead, who served with McLean, issued the restraining order quite swiftly. Serendipity, I guess.

All of this adds up to District Judge James Klein ordering the Kirlins to sign over about 34 percent of their 4,750-square-foot lot to McLean and his wife last month. "Now the lot is just about worthless," explains Don Kirlin. "We estimate the land was worth about $800,000 to a million dollars. Now, we can't build anything on it." Surely, that was the goal.

To add insult, the case, which the Kirlins are appealing, has cost the family over $100,000 in legal fees. Property rights, one of the foundational ideas of this nation, mean less and less these days. Abusive eminent domain cases are popping up all over the county. This, a bit different, is probably one of the most absurd cases I've heard.

Boulder has a reputation of being a, um, quirky town. Some of this is indisputably deserved. Judging from the angry reaction up there, however, most citizens are outraged. And that is certainly heartening. Attempts to reach McLean were unsuccessful. His lawyer declined comment. McLean's legacy, we can only hope, is sullied for good. But what lesson can we all learn from this episode? Easy. If you fancy some undeveloped property - and have no scruples - keep walking on it until you create a path. Have a party. Eventually, the land can be yours.

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Australia: Teen bomber evades jail

A TERRIFIED Brisbane family spent $60,000 to flee interstate after seven bombs were thrown at their home in what was yesterday described as an "act of terror". The Brisbane District Court heard Allan Hokit Cheung, 19, of Runcorn, in Brisbane's outer southeast, manufactured homemade chlorine bombs and then threw them at the family homes of two teenagers during an early morning act of revenge.

Coincidentally, neither boys were home at the time of the "sustained" attacks on August 19, 2006, but their frightened families, including a toddler, were woken by the blasts about 2am at houses in Sunnybank Hills and nearby Runcorn.
Seven of the improvised pressure devices were thrown at the Sunnybank Hills house, while two were lobbed at the second address.

Judge Michael Shanahan sentenced Cheung, who pleaded guilty to one count each of wilful damage of an inhabited dwelling and wilful deposition of explosives, to 12 months' imprisonment to be served as an Intensive Corrections Order - or jail in the community. "It was not a prank, it was an act of terror on innocent people for some perceived slight and the only thing stopping you going to jail is your age," Judge Shanahan said.

Speaking outside court an emotional Pam Hall, who sold her Sunnybank Hills home following the attack and moved her family to Western Australia, said the sentence was a "joke".

The court heard the move had sent the Halls $60,000 in debt. Mrs Hall and husband Kevin have since returned to Queensland but her son Jacob, 17, still resides interstate. "We were hoping today for some justice. Society is telling these people it is OK to do these things because they only get a slap on the wrist," she said. "He can go home to his family and him and his mates will have a good old laugh."

Jacob was targeted by Cheung after he attempted to break up a schoolyard fight involving Cheung's younger brother, the court heard.

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Cops are such funny people. A real laugh riot

Cops are funny people -- a real laugh riot. They should be given their own comedy series they are so funny. Police officer Joseph Vega, of the Tinley Park police force, dropped in to order some pizza at Guardi's Pizza. The owner, Alexanader Mendez and his wife, were working the counter. Officer Vega ordered the pizza and Mendez went to the cooler to get it and prepare it.

While he was gone Office Vega asked Mrs. Mendez if she wanted to see him scare her husband. She told him she wasn't interested. But this jokester had a hilarious prank up his sleeve and couldn't wait to show it off.

He pulled out his Taser weapon and pointed it toward Mendez as he was coming out of the cooler. And then for a really funny punchline he pulled the trigger. Wait! It gets even funnier.

Mr. Mendez was hit in the head and the shoulder by the barbs and, of course, shocked by the electric charge. I hope you are sitting down because this prank will have you in stitches -- no doubt it had Mr. Mendez in stitches. After he was hit Mendez falls to the ground and goes into convulsions that causes him to bite off part of his tonque. Now isn't that a slide splitter?

Vega rushes over and pulls out the barbs which causes profuse bleeding. And he calls the local cops to come and provide assistance. They get there and grab the bloody towels, they take Mr. Mendez's glasses which were covered in blood. And they confiscate the restaurants surveillance camera which recorded the entire event.

As funny as that is you should hear the cop's version of the events. According to them the officer didn't stop in to order a pizza he was conduct "a routine check on the business" -- the thoughtful man. And he just happened to notice that his Taser had its safety deactivated. And being a diligent, fine, upstanding servant of the people he took it out in order to put the safety back on since we all know cops are so very reluctant to Taser people. And for some unknown reason the Taser just shot off and hit poor Mr. Mendez entirely accidentally since we are dealing with a diligent, concerned police officer with nothing more than the safety of the public his main concern.

The Tinley Park police department immediately announced that the Taser was obviously defective since defective cops are so very rare. So they sent all their Tasers backs to the factory to be diligently checked. All of them, including the one that shot Mr. Mendez were sent back and certified to be in perfect working order.

The local town officials refuse to speak about the matter on advise of their attorneys. A law suit has been filed against the city by the poor man and his wife.

Speaking of fine, upstanding servants of the people do you remember the story we did about the ticket trap of St. George, Missouri. It was here that office Sgt. James Kuehnlein walked up to a parked car and started threatening the young drive. The officer told him that he could invent charges against the man and have him arrested. He went ballistic acting in what can only be described as a unprofessional manner, if you like understatment. He was unhinged.

Well, the rot in St. George seems rather pervasive. We next discovered that the police chief, Scott Uhrig, was a sexual predator who used his previous job as a police officer in another town to try and force a teenaged girl into having sex with him. He was disciplined for this by the state but that was no barrier to getting hired in St. George.

Of course the top of the chain of command was the mayor, Harold Goodman. Mr. Goodman was arrested for having pot. He said it was for medicinal purposes. The pot was found while police were searching the mayor's home. At the time they wouldn't say why. Apparently the reason for the raid was that the good mayor was somehow involved with child pornography and he was later arrested on those charges as well.

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Brainless female judge causes double murder

No doubt she thought she was being "compassionate"

The father of a Washington woman slaughtered along with her new husband - allegedly at the hands of a convicted Bay State killer - said his daughter’s accused murderer never should have been released from prison here. “It’s because of stupidity in Massachusetts that my daughter is dead,” said Darrel Slater, 55, who is preparing to bury his daughter, Beverly Mauck, 28, and her husband Brian Mauck, 30.

The couple was executed in their home in rural Graham, Wash., Saturday after an alleged argument with Daniel Tavares Jr., 41, who in 1991 pleaded guilty to hacking his mother to death with a carving knife in their Somerset home in served 16 years for that crime.

Tavares finished his sentence on June 14, but was immediately re-arrested on a warrant charging him with two counts of assaulting Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center prison guards during his troubled stint behind bars, Department of Correction officials said. Worcester prosecutors requested $50,000 cash bail for each of those charges, an amount approved by Clinton District Court Judge Martha Brennan, according to court documents.

But Tavares appealed the bail and on July 16, Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman released him on personal recognizance. Tavares was freed and fled the state to marry and live in a Washington trailer with Jennifer Lynn Tavares, who met the convict at Walpole after answering an inmate personal ad. He defaulted on a July 23 court date, prosecutors said.

“How does a guy who killed his mother, get charged with more crimes, get out of jail? How can he leave the state?” an angry Slater said last night. “That judge needs to get her head out of her (expletive). My little girl was only 28. She was a newlywed. They just started their lives. This never should have happened,” Slater said.

Reached last night at her Andover home, Tuttman, who was appointed to the bench by former Gov. Mitt Romney, said, “I’m sorry, I’m not able to comment on this.” When informed what the slain woman’s father had said, she repeated, “I’m sorry, I’m not able to comment about this.”

A spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early said prosecutors had wanted to keep Tavares behind bars last summer and argued for high bail because of the brutality of the alleged attacks on correction officers.

Correction officer Michael Kasprzak was allegedly punched in the head as he removed restraints from Tavares in December 2005. Two months later, the con allegedly spat on correction officer Matthew Atter and screeched, “I’m going to kill you (expletive) . . . I’ll break your (expletive) arms off!” according to court records. “Obviously, we tried to keep him incarcerated,” said Worcester DA spokesman Tim Connolly.

Tavares also was disciplined by the DOC for writing a series of bizarre and threatening letters to his father, Daniel Tavares Sr. The elder Tavares complained about the letters to a DOC victim advocate, but they did not stop, he told the Herald yesterday.

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Trigger-happy cop tasers driver

INVESTIGATIONS into a US state trooper who tasered a motorist for refusing to sign a speeding ticket have widened after a video of the incident was posted on YouTube. The Utah Highway Patrol said the video, taken from Trooper John Gardner's parol car, showed him tasering Jared Massey when he started walking away after refusing to sign the ticket, Associated Press reported. The video was posted on YouTube after it was released to Mr Massey under a public records request.

"We definitely have received a lot of feedback on it - calls and emails," Utah Patrol spokesman Trooper Cameron Roden said. Trooper Roden told Associated Press that he didn't know what was "happening in Trooper Gardner's mind". "We have an internal investigation going on ... with it coming out on YouTube, we have expedited the investigation".

He said signing a speeding ticket was not an admission of guilt. Troopers can use a Taser if someone is a threat to themselves, or others, and other means of control are unreasonable, he said.

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Call to sack Australian jail staff over brutal assault

AT least three prison officers involved in the alleged savage assault of a remand inmate should be sacked, the state watchdog has said. Graphic footage of prison officers allegedly assaulting the inmate was tabled in State Parliament by State Ombudsman George Brouwer today. At least three Melbourne Custody Centre (MCC) staff may be charged over the incident. Victoria Police is investigating what Mr Brouwer described as ``serious mistreatment involving an excessive use of force'' against the prisoner.

Mr Brouwer today took the unusual step of using State Parliament to make public the CCTV footage of the June 13 incident. It shows a seemingly compliant prisoner in the early stages of being strip searched. One MCC staff member lunged at the prisoner and grabbed him around the throat as a second officer helped wrestle him to the ground. Several other officers entered the room seconds later and a female officer allegedly punched the already restrained prisoner. A fellow officer who witnessed the incident was extremely critical of the female officer, who was the partner of one of the two male officers holding the prisoner down. ``She was like a whirlwind,'' the officer said. ``She just flew over the top of the guys and just took over. ``What I saw floored me.'' Another witness said the woman punched or slapped the prisoner in the face and said ``how does that feel'' and ``that's coming from a woman''.

Mr Brouwer's report was also very critical of MCC facilities and its treatment of prisoners. The MCC is run by private contractors, the GEO Group Australia, on behalf of Victoria Police and is in the basement below the Melbourne Magistrates' Court. It is the main reception point for people arrested by police and handles more than 11,000 prisoners a year. Mr Brouwer said unless there were major reforms the custody centre would fail to meet its obligations when Victoria's Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities comes into effect next year.

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Four police face charges over airport Taser death

CANADA'S public safety minister today said four federal police officers face possible criminal charges in the death of a Polish migrant zapped with a stun gun at the Vancouver airport last month. "This is a very serious incident that has taken place, and there are a number of investigations that are going on to get to the bottom of it," Stockwell Day said today.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) "investigation will include the possibility of criminal charges," he said, citing the lead investigator in the case. "If there is culpability to be assessed, it will be done." Robert Dziekanski, 40, died on October 14 after being shocked repeatedly by policemen with a Taser stun gun only 60 seconds after they first approached him at the Vancouver airport in westernmost Canada. A bystander's video released last week showed the four officers then piled on top of the distraught traveller as he lay writhing and screaming in pain on the floor, and within minutes he fell still.

British Columbia province announced a public inquiry into Dziekanski's death. The coroner, the federal police homicide team, Canada's national police complaint's commissioner also launched independent probes of his death. Mr Day said he ordered a review of the use of Tasers in Canada and asked Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to explain how Dziekanski, who spoke only Polish, got through customs, and why he was left alone in a secure area for nearly 10 hours. The CBSA is expected to make its report public by the end of the week, Mr Day told the House of Commons overnight.

Meanwhile, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell publicly apologised yesterday to Dziekanski's mother. "I'm glad to apologise for what took place," said Campbell. "That was something that was devastating to her in more ways than I can even begin to imagine. "I'm glad to apologise on behalf of people in British Columbia for what took place."

Dziekanski had travelled to the Pacific Coast province to live with his mother and start a new life, but a mix-up at the airport forced him to wait for her for almost 10 hours in a secure area, while she waited for him on the other side of a wall in the public arrivals area. According to the family's lawyer, Dziekanski spoke only Polish, and had never before travelled far from his home town of Pieszyce, Poland. Police were called to the Vancouver airport after Dziekanski blocked a security door with chairs and a table, and threw a computer off a counter onto the floor.

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FBI's Forensic Test Full of Holes

Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" has found. The science, known as comparative bullet-lead analysis, was first used after President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The technique used chemistry to link crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects on the theory that each batch of lead had a unique elemental makeup.

In 2004, however, the nation's most prestigious scientific body concluded that variations in the manufacturing process rendered the FBI's testimony about the science "unreliable and potentially misleading." Specifically, the National Academy of Sciences said that decades of FBI statements to jurors linking a particular bullet to those found in a suspect's gun or cartridge box were so overstated that such testimony should be considered "misleading under federal rules of evidence." A year later, the bureau abandoned the analysis.

But the FBI lab has never gone back to determine how many times its scientists misled jurors. Internal memos show that the bureau's managers were aware by 2004 that testimony had been overstated in a large number of trials. In a smaller number of cases, the experts had made false matches based on a faulty statistical analysis of the elements contained in different lead samples, documents show. "We cannot afford to be misleading to a jury," the lab director wrote to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in late summer 2005 in a memo outlining why the bureau was abandoning the science. "We plan to discourage prosecutors from using our previous results in future prosecutions."

Despite those private concerns, the bureau told defense lawyers in a general letter dated Sept. 1, 2005, that although it was ending the technique, it "still firmly supports the scientific foundation of bullet lead analysis." And in at least two cases, the bureau has tried to help state prosecutors defend past convictions by using court filings that experts say are still misleading. The government has fought releasing the list of the estimated 2,500 cases over three decades in which it performed the analysis.

For the majority of affected prisoners, the typical two-to-four-year window to appeal their convictions based on new scientific evidence is closing. Dwight E. Adams, the now-retired FBI lab director who ended the technique, said the government has an obligation to release all the case files, to independently review the expert testimony and to alert courts to any errors that could have affected a conviction. "It troubles me that anyone would be in prison for any reason that wasn't justified. And that's why these reviews should be done in order to determine whether or not our testimony led to the conviction of a wrongly accused individual," Adams said in an interview. "I don't believe there's anything that we should be hiding."

The Post and "60 Minutes" identified at least 250 cases nationwide in which bullet-lead analysis was introduced, including more than a dozen in which courts have either reversed convictions or now face questions about whether innocent people were sent to prison. The cases include a North Carolina drug dealer who has developed significant new evidence to bolster his claim of innocence and a Maryland man who was recently granted a new murder trial. Documents show that the FBI's concerns about the science dated to 1991 and came to light only because a former FBI lab scientist began challenging it.

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Rogue Prosecutors the Rule or the Exception?

Last week by a margin of 53-40 A divided Senate narrowly confirmed former federal judge Michael B. Mukasey as the 81st attorney general of the United States. Mukasey, had outraged many lawmakers and human rights groups by repeatedly refusing to classify waterboarding, a simulated-drowning technique, as torture.

What was not focused on in the hearings or the senate floor debate was the Senators failure to find out what Judge Mukasey intends to do about rogue prosecutors within the Department of Justice he may lead, and how the damage they cause affects public confidence in the department and its mission. While Judge Mukasey’s answer on water boarding may be important to the future of the country and the War on Terror, of at least equal importance is the whether Judge Mukasey would commit to taking strong disciplinary action against overzealous prosecutors by using all the tools at his disposal, including the Office of Professional Responsibility.

A once obscure topic, prosecutorial abuse has gained prominence in the minds of many Americans as a result of the Duke lacrosse case, and the actions of the prosecutor, former-District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong, although a local prosecutor, has become the poster boy of prosecutorial abuse on every government level. With a story line that included sex, racial tensions, and gender and income inequality, the Duke case captured the attention of the media and the nation. We now know that Nifong willfully disregarded evidence of the boys' innocence and thanks in large part to enormous public attention and condemnation, he has been rightly stripped of his badge and the keys to his office.

Similar attention is drawn to cases with strong partisan interest like the obstruction of justice case against Vice President Dick Cheney’s aid Scooter Libby and the corruption case against Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson, where public opinion is sharply divided but nevertheless intense. This pressure too provides a safeguard against prosecutors who overreach or simply trample Constitution rights.

While the media and the people act in these cases as the bulwark of liberty our founders envisioned, the same can not be said for less popular cases. As a result, we are moving toward a system where the safeguards provided by the Constitutional rights of the accused are guaranteed only to those deemed by television executives to be ready for prime-time. In cases where the public interest is negligible and of low intensity prosecutors seem to have almost free reign. Examples from the home district of Judge Mukasey, and Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Charles Schumer, prove instructive.

In USA v. Stein, Assistant United States Attorney Stanley Okula of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) was one of the lead prosecutors in a case against executives from accounting giant KPMG. In three cases against members of the Tollman family, he prosecuted cases against a wealthy family living in Britain and Canada. Rather than a made-for-Hollywood plot line, these cases lacked the sympathetic defendants or partisan interests it seems are now needed to have ones Constitutional rights guaranteed. Predictably, there was little noise from the media and public about these cases, despite AUSA Okula being found by to have effectively stripped defendants of their right to counsel, eviscerated attorney client privilege for the defendants, and having brought down a reign of prosecutorial hell on an entire family.

In the KPMG case, the government prosecution was found to have violated the defendant’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. The judge wrote that the prosecutors “used their life and death power over KPMG to coerce its personnel to bend to the government’s wishes” and described the prosecutors actions as “outrageous and shocking”. In the Tollman cases—Okula has gone after the family in Canada, Britain and the United States—judges have been similarly critical, including a British judge describing Okula’s actions as “reprehensible” and a Canadian judge saying “misconduct of this sort cannot ever be tolerated”.

Despite this extraordinarily harsh criticism by three courts in three different countries, the prosecutor endures, ready to once again run roughshod over Constitutional rights in pursuit of his unique and perverted notions of justice.

Some may not find injustices against the wealthy a reason for concern, but they should. It is a Canadian judge in the case of United States v. Tollman who brings the issue into focus, reminding us why. He pointedly asks, “If the system went awry for [Tollman], what hope is there for the weak, the poor and those less powerful? The answer must be in the vigilance of the justice system itself.” That vigilance needs to begin the day the next US Attorney General is sworn in.

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The expert as judge and jury

After a HOST of miscarriages of justice based on discredited expert witnesses, calls are growing for radical reform of their use in British courts

Yet another woman was sent to prison last week, following expert evidence that she had shaken to death a baby in her care. Keran Henderson, a 42-year-old childminder, was said to have killed 11-month-old Maeve Sheppard, by shaking her so violently she was left blind and brain-damaged. The infant died in hospital a few days later. The case has grim echoes of those of Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Trupti Patel, all of whom were accused of killing their children only to be found innocent later. Clark, a solicitor, who was released from prison after serving three years, died last March as a result of psychological trauma and alcoholism caused by her ordeal.

At the Court of Appeal, two days after the judgment on Henderson, a retrial was ordered in the case of Barry George, the loner convicted of killing the television personality Jill Dando in 1999 with a single shot to the head. Expert testimony as to the significance of a particle of gunshot matter in his pocket is being challenged.

There has also been the recent conviction of the true killer of schoolgirl Lesley Molseed, 32 years after the event – and after Stefan Kiszko had served 16 years for the sexually motivated killing, even though medical evidence could have pointed out his infertility proved his innocence. Once again the review of the evidence threw a spotlight on the role of expert witnesses, whose testimony is often crucial in criminal cases but can be unreliable.

Our blind faith in scientific opinion makes us reluctant to question pronouncements by “experts”, but while the law requires everyone from plumbers to nurses to be trained, registered and checked, there is no such requirement for witnesses who may be pronouncing on matters of life and death in court. A study by senior barrister Penny Cooper of City University in London, has shown that the majority of lawyers and judges do not bother to check the qualifications of experts they approach to bolster an aspect of their case. She also found a substantial number of the expert witnesses had undergone no training to understand their legal duty.

The disquiet this arouses has led to a clamour for legislation to require expert witnesses to be regulated. But how to do that without calling into question thousands of court decisions will not be an easy task. There is already acute unease over the proliferation of parents convicted of causing cot deaths, shaking babies to death, or harming them by creating symptoms of fictitious illness.

Henderson, for instance, a mother of two herself, a long-term childminder and stalwart volunteer of her local Beaver Scout group, was sentenced to three years in prison for shaking baby Maeve so violently that she was left with fatal brain damage, despite the fact there was no evidence of any “grip marks” on the child, which would normally be expected to accompany such an action. Her husband, a former police officer, has said she will appeal and hopes to create a campaign similar to that run by Sally Clark’s family, to try to prove his wife’s innocence. Many character witnesses spoke up for Henderson in court and the family has dozens of supporters in their home village of Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire.

Some even believe her prosecution was only pursued because of the successful appeal by Roy Meadow, the expert paediatrician whose evidence led to the conviction of Sally Clark. Following the Clark case, in which Meadow quoted a completely erroneous statistic suggesting the chances of Clark’s babies having died naturally were one in 73m, he was struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC) for misconduct. The Court of Appeal agreed he had acted in good faith.

In the meantime, Alan Williams, the Home Office pathologist who conducted post-mortems on Clark’s two infant sons, was less lucky. His appeal against a GMC finding of serious professional misconduct was rejected. Williams was accused of tailoring his diagnoses of the nature of the babies’ deaths to fit the police case against Clark.

The GMC is currently hearing a claim of gross professional misconduct against paediatrician Dr David Southall. The council has received evidence alleging that Southall falsified his curriculum vitae. Southall’s evidence has figured highly in at least 50 criminal cases and possibly hundreds of family court cases held in secret, which have led to children being removed from their parents.

Questions of how frequently babies really are shaken to death, and indeed if it is possible to do so, have divided medical opinion for some years. There have, however, been up to 200 convictions annually for related forms of violence against babies and young children.

After Clark, Cannings and Patel, another bizarre case was overturned. Ian and Angela Gay, who had been convicted of poisoning their three-year-old adopted son with salt, were cleared when it was revealed the boy was suffering from a rare, and fatal, congenital abnormality.

Recently, the attorney-general ordered a review of almost 300 criminal convictions and 30,000 family court proceedings where children were taken into care. Only four were referred to the Court of Appeal. This, according to critics, was a function of the way the review was done, with authorities being asked to review their own decisions.

Social workers say the crusade to root out dangerous adults is to some extent a reaction to a previous era of regular criticism of their profession when children were left to die at the hands of their parents. Although some acknowledge the pendulum may now have swung too far, others are furious: “Do people think we spend all our time trying to break up families for no good reason?” said John Coughlan, a joint-president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. “In comparison with the volume of cases, the number of errors is tiny. We never rely on expert witnesses alone.”

Others argue that the opinion of expert witnesses is often the decisive factor. And as we have seen most recently with Barry George, it is not just child murder cases that have turned on such evidence.

Last year the Home Office took the unprecedented step of holding a disciplinary tribunal against Michael Heath, one of its most senior forensic pathologists: 20 charges against him were upheld. One man was subsequently cleared of murder, and numerous other convictions have been called into question.

A spate of other convictions came from evidence supplied by Paula Lannas, another Home Office forensic specialist who was the subject of a long-delayed disciplinary hearing that collapsed because those investigating her said they had a conflict of interest. Not only has Lannas been deprived of an opportunity to clear her name, but dozens of prisoners who claim they were victims of her errors have been unable to get the evidence reviewed.

Police forensic scientist Peter Ablett, who is now chief executive of the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners, points out there are only three ways to prove a crime: a reliable eyewitness, a confession, or forensics. The advent of DNA technology and other advances in recent years has brought increasing reliance on forensics, yet only about 3,000 of the estimated 8,000 expert witnesses operating are members of the council and signed up to its code of practice. He said many of those who are not are unaware that their duty is to give impartial evidence to the court, not to bolster the case of their paymaster.

City University’s Cooper, who is also a governor of the Expert Witness Institute, was concerned to discover during her research that not only have one in five experts undergone no training to understand this duty, but one in 10 was so arrogant they said they saw no need for it. “There should be a requirement for them to be trained, and there should be rules requiring judges and lawyers to consider their credentials before accepting them as expert witnesses,” she said.

Such a provision cannot come soon enough. A review is still going on of 700 cases in which bogus forensic scientist Gene Morrison gave evidence. Morrison, 48, from Manchester who was sentenced to five years for fraud in February, admitted he pretended to be an expert witness and bought his qualifications on the internet because it “seemed easier” than getting real ones.

For many of the genuinely qualified experts, legal work isa lucrative sideline, and if they are perceived to be able to “tailor” their evidence convincingly, the commissions keep flowing in. John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP campaigning about the misuse of medical evidence, says fees for a basic written opinion, based on reading through existing files, start at 4,000 pounds. If the expert concludes there is a case to answer, they attract court attendance fees as well.

“I have known experts get as much as 28,000 for one report,” said Hemming, who is lobbying for experts to be required to produce the scientific publications on which their opinion is based: “Unless we start using evidence-based evidence in court, we will get nowhere.”

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Britain: No jail time for evil bitch

The worst day of Paul Haslam’s life began at 3.30am with a loud knock on the door from the police. They told him he was being arrested on suspicion of rape, and took him to Charles Cross police station in Plymouth. There, he was questioned about what had happened the previous evening, when he had spent the night with a girl he had known for only a short time. He knew he had done nothing wrong, but he did not know how he could prove it. Later that day Mr Haslam was released without charge. Three weeks later he received a letter telling him that no further action was being taken. By then he had lost his job and had to tell his family about the arrest.

Mr Haslam, 30, had hardly thought about that day nine years ago until he read in his local newspaper this week that the woman who made the false allegation against him had since done the same thing to seven other men. Gemma Gregory left a trail of disrupted lives across the city of Plymouth. A judge gave her a 12-month suspended jail sentence for perjury for her latest false accusation and ordered her to undergo psychiatric treatment.

Mr Haslam, then aged 21, had moved to Devon from his home town of Bolton when he encountered Gregory, then in her late teens. He was working as a care assistant in the nursing home where a relative of hers was being looked after. When his employer found out that he had been arrested, he lost his job. The news also ruined a holiday in Florida for his aunt and uncle. Mr Haslam, now the father of three young boys, said: “If it hadn’t been for two other people in the house who knew nothing untoward had happened, I could have gone to prison for a crime I didn’t commit. The thought makes my blood run cold.”

Gregory’s latest victim had no idea that she had a history of claiming rape when he was asked to attend the same police station in September last year. The man had had a relationship with Gregory but ended it because of her heavy drinking. The couple met on a few occasions later on, and one night he stayed at her flat. The next evening, Gregory claimed to police that she had been raped. She was given a medical examination and repeated the claim in a video interview.

The man was saved from a possible charge because of “intimate” text messages sent by Gregory. Detective Constable Paul Weymouth, of Plymouth CID, said: “We have a log of 512 telephone calls from or about her. She wanted to see him in prison.” Detective Constable Weymouth said some other men accused had to have penile swabs, and their genetic fingerprints were put on the national police database.

The danger of Gregory’s lies is that they may deter women who have been genuinely attacked from coming forward. Detective Constable Weymouth said: “It is about encouraging real victims to come forward, while reminding people who are thinking of making a false allegation to think again.”

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There will be no justice at all unless these Canadian cops get a very long prison sentence

ABOUT 650 people attended the funeral today of a Polish man who died at Vancouver airport after police stunned him with a Taser, a disturbing incident that was videotaped by a bystander and shown around the world. "We were quite surprised. People came from everywhere," said Kamloops Funeral Home employee Lawrence Schrader. The funeral home and Zofia Cisowski, the mother of the 40-year-old victim, Robert Dziekanski, had planned for 100 mourners, he said. "We also got emails from as far away as Hawaii from people expressing condolences," Schrader added. Another 1000 Canadians attended vigils around the country for Dziekanski, including one at Vancouver airport, where he died on October 14.

The Polish immigrant's death at the hands of four members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and especially its video first broadcast on Thursday, has shocked Canadians and prompted Poland to ask Ottawa for an explanation. The video shows Dziekanski appearing distraught and frightened after waiting hours for his mother at the airport. At one point he takes a computer off a desk and throws it to the ground, as security guards look on remarking that he did not speak English.

Then four RCMP officers walk toward Dziekanski, surround him and, as he turns away raising his hands, close in on him stunning him repeatedly with a Taser device before piling on top of him pinning him to the floor. Within minutes he falls still.

His family's lawyer said Dziekanski spoke only Polish, and had never before wandered far from his hometown Pieszyce, Poland where he was a construction worker. He came here to live with his mother. Due to a mix-up at the airport, he had waited for his mother for almost 10 hours in a secure customs area, while she waited for him in the arrivals area on the other side of a wall.

After unsuccessfully asking airport and immigration staff for help finding out if her son had arrived, she left, and nobody at the airport seemed to have noticed Dziekanski waiting for hours in the secure area.

Schrader said people responded to the way he died. "I was touched because here's his mother, who worked for seven years at two jobs to help pay to get him over here, then he comes over here, and that's the reception he gets. It's horrible. It's the opposite of what our country is supposed to be," he said. Schrader said Dziekanski's body has been cremated, and his mother plans to return with his ashes to Poland for burial.

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Useless British insurance policies

Insurance policies are designed by lawyers with one thing in mind - to boost the odds in favour of the insurance company so you stand as little chance as possible of having your claim paid.

The lawyers do this by hiding "get-out" clauses, otherwise called policy exclusions, in the small print of the insurance contract. Sometimes, insurers will take pity and pay a claim, despite being legally entitled to deny it. However, this is not always the case. Reading the small print of your policy or enlisting the services of an insurance broker when buying a policy is the only way to stay a step ahead of the lawyers. Here, Times Money has compiled 25 of the more outrageous insurance exclusions to watch out for.

1. Ever thought of cricket as a "hazardous activity"? It is more than likely your travel insurer does. Most policies classify cricket as a dangerous activity and, as such, if you are injured whilst indulging in a few overs on your next holiday, you could learn the hard way that your medical bills aren't covered.

2. The great get-out clause in almost all insurance policies is alcohol. Few people realise that if you have consumed alcohol, your insurance company can void your claim whether it be for theft, damage or personal injury. Worse still, policies do not specify the the amount of alcohol that must be consumed and you could find yourself out of pocket after just one drink.

3. Fantasising about galloping through the mountains on horseback on your next overseas holiday? Unless you have made sure your policy allows for it, don't. Horse riding is another so-called "dangerous activity" as far as most insurers are concerned.

4. Insurance cover for delayed baggage is a useful feature of many travel insurance policies. However, few travellers realise that insurers tend to only compensate for baggage that is delayed on the way to the holiday destination. It may seem infuriating but if your bags disappear on an internal flight or on the way home they can't be claimed for.

5. Storm damage is one act of god that insurers will pay for - but don't expect compensation to extend to fences, gates, and hedges. Essentially, anything that is not nailed down - or considered part of the building - is excluded from cover.

6. Forget bicycle insurance if you haven't locked your pedals. Insurers demand "reasonable care" is taken before they will make a payment for stolen bicycles and non-motorised scooters. This means locking the bike - ensuring it is attached to something permanent - or storing it somewhere safe, such as inside a locked home or garage. The rule counts when claiming against a household insurance policy.

7. Don't bother asking your household insurance to pay for damage to your favourite dress damaged in the wash or by a dry cleaner. Damage caused during the cleaning process is generally excluded under home and contents insurance policies. This also applies to furniture restoration and upholstery. One broker's advice was to try suing the dry cleaner instead.

8. When working from home, be aware that your standard household policy may not cover you for theft or accidents which occur there. If setting up a cottage industry from your garage, make sure you talk to your insurer or broker as it is likely you will need an extension to your household policy.

9. Some insurers may refuse to pay out if you have filled your car with the wrong type of fuel. It may sound odd, but insurers consider so-called misfuelling to be a form of "reckless" behaviour when it comes to car damage. Steve Foulsham, of the British Insurance Broker's Association (BIBA) says drivers who quickly park their car and phone their insurer or breakdown company rather than driving off have a better chance of receiving compensation.

10. Most drivers know they must notify their insurer when they have an accident. But did you know that if you are a named driver on another person's policy, the policyholder needs to also notify their insurer when you have an accident? This applies even if the named drive has an accident in another car. Central claims databases record all claims, and insurers can refuse to pay a claim if one of the named drivers on the policy fails to notify the insurer after an accident.

11. When travel insurance policies ask about pre-existing medical conditions most people tend to think of serious and life-threatening illnesses such as heart attacks or strokes. But take a closer look at the insurance policy small print and you will see that most policies fail to define what is a pre-existing medical condition. In fact, if you have ever been diagnosed with high-blood pressure, or have undertaken major surgery you must tell the insurer or risk voiding your policy.

12. Do you know what kind of window and door locks you have at your home? Take a closer look. Most home insurance polices have a clause to say that you should have window and door locks approved by the British Standards Institute (BSI). Many people unfortunate enough to be burgled have subsequently learned their locks are not to standard and they are ineligible to claim.

13. Many people assume their iPod, wallet and designer sunglasses are covered by insurance when they're out and about. But take a closer look at your policy. It is usually the case that valuables outside the home require a personal possessions extension in order to be covered by regular home and contents insurance policies.

14. Most insurers impose a limit on the value of collections they will insure under regular home and contents insurance. For example, valuable stamp collections can be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and are likely to need separate insurance. One insurer recalls an unsuccessful claim under household contents insurance for the theft of a miniature whisky bottle collection, some of which were valued at o5000 each, that was not separately insured.

15. Insurers will reimburse for the cost of one lost earring, but will not replace the pair. This is because most policies contain a pairs and sets clause which means you are only entitled to replace lost and damaged item and not its pair or set. A more annoying example of this encountered by flood victims occurs where insurance companies agree to compensate for a bottom drawer which has been damaged by water, but then quibble over replacing the entire set.

16. Planning to go away for more than 30 days? Your home and contents insurance may not be valid. Check your policy to make sure you are covered when your home is unoccupied for long periods.

17. Dogs may be man's best friend but they are given short shrift by insurers. Damage caused by pets is excluded under normal home and contents insurance. According to brokers, insurers receive an astounding number of claims relating to hamsters chewing up the carpet.

18. The Y2K threat may be well and truly over now that we are seven years into the new millennium but the insurance companies aren't taking any chances. Date related breakdown - formerly termed the "millennium clause" - remains an exclusion for the cover of electronic equipment including computer hardware and software. But this is not merely an antiquated precaution. Apparently the threat of data related breakdown remains real thanks to palindromic dates (such as 21/11/12) while the year 2010 may yet pose a problem.

19. Insurers usually refuse to cover the theft of vehicle if you have been careless enough to lock your keys in the car.

20. Those who prefer to travel light may find it tempting to store valuables such as cameras in the cargo hold with the bulk of their luggage. But be warned - travel policies may refuse to pay for theft or damage to valuables not kept with you. Be warned: this also applies where valuables are left in a car on a cross Channel ferry.

21. It can be enormously expensive to fix but damage to your home caused by insects and vermin, for example, termites, is historically excluded from buildings insurance.

22. Fancy a sojourn in the Middle East? Thinking of trekking in Afghanistan? Don't expect your travel insurance policy to cover you if war breaks out. Insurers generally steer clear of covering war and terrorism.

23. Insurers will only pay for the cost of removing fallen trees according to home insurance policies if property is damaged when the tree falls.

24. Damage caused to a home after a boisterous party generally won't be reimbursed by your insurer. The same applies to items that are stolen from your home during the party. As a rule of thumb, insurers refuse to pay out if you have had any control whatsoever over the events which lead to the claim.

25. Payment protection is arguably the most exclusion-riddled of all forms of insurance. PPI, which is sold with loans, credit cards and mortgages, covers repayments if people are unable to work due to an accident, illness, or termination of employment. However, most PPI policies do not pay out for the first 30 days. Conditions such as stress and back pain tend not to be included while the self-employed, students and housewives are also not usually covered. The deliberate sale of PPI policies to those unable to claim for them has been the source of outrage from consumer groups due to the wide range of exclusions, and has been the subject of investigation by the Financial Services Authority and the Competition Commission that has resulted in companies being fined for inappropriate selling.

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Cop Talk: What happens when the boys in blue get too close to their keyboards

"I crushed a dude's eye socket from repeatedly punching him in it and then I charged him with menacing and harassment (of me)."

"Seeing someone get Tasered is second only to pulling the trigger. That is money-puts a smile on your face."

Those are two of the statements posted by corrections deputy David B. Thompson of Multnomah County, Oregon to an Internet chat room. The inflammatory rhetoric sparked an ongoing investigation by the county sheriff's office, as well as reporting by the Portland Tribune and other local news outlets. Thompson may also have filed a false police report to hide the eye-socket incident he brags about in his post. Although the sheriff's department can't comment on the investigation while it's still underway, he could be fired and prosecuted if he's found guilty.

Many police departments across the country have experienced similar bulletin board crises over the last few years, putting police officers' freedom of speech in conflict with the public's need to be protected from, well, cops who get off on using Tasers.

This March, the New York Observer reported that commenters on the "NYPD Rant" site were posting pictures of local bicycle activists from the group Transportation Alternatives with comments like, "These lawbreaking cycle pirates must be stopped!!" and "Someone please hammer these 2 turds this weekend" (at a Critical Mass event).

In June, St. George, MO resident Brett Darrow incurred online cop hostility when he posted a video of a disputed traffic stop. According to TheNewspaper.com, one poster at St. Louis CopTalk wrote, "I'm going to his house to check for parking violations." Another, using the pseudonym "STL_finest," went further: "I hope this little POS punk bastard tries his little video stunt with me when I pull him over alone-and I WILL pull him over-because I will see 'his gun' and place a hunk of hot lead right where it belongs."

Those posts were deleted, and discussion of Darrow has been banned from the boards. But these online threats have been accompanied by face-to-face death and arrest threats made at Darrow, including a second videotaped encounter with an officer who screamed at Darrow in a parking lot.

In September, a Columbus, OH officer resigned after the Columbus Dispatch revealed that she and her sister had posted videos on YouTube blaming Jews, blacks, and immigrants for the country's problems. Susan L. Purtee was neither on duty nor in uniform when she said Jews "started to tell us-the gentiles-how to live, because if we did, they'd make a lot of money" and black people use "mangled English, dirty and filthy"; but neither was she entirely anonymous, since the sisters' website revealed that she was a law-enforcement officer. Purtee was reassigned to a desk job, and then resigned.

Unsurprisingly, many of these conflicts have a racial component. In 2006, the Montgomery County, MD police chief got into a highly-publicized battle with the county's branch of the Fraternal Order of Police over postings on the police union's online forums. Some pseudonymous postings referred to Hispanic immigrants as "beaners," insulted another officer and threatened her husband-posting the officer's name, badge number, and station, and, in one case, threatening to attack her husband if he "scream[ed] profiling" after a traffic stop. The county responded by blocking access to the forums from county-owned computers.

"It was basically perceived as an attack from outside," says Walte Bader, who was the Montgomery County FOP president during the controversy. Bader adds that the union was working on civility rules for the forum when the controversy went public, but "when the government, the police department, tried to interfere we saw that as a totally different matter of government interference with First Amendment rights. We would not shut that website down on the basis of [the government] calling for it or the Washington Post calling for it."

Bader has a point. "Courts have said that there are limits on what public employees can say because of the nature of their responsibilities. You could say that the government has more leeway to clamp down on the speech of employees to the extent that it's inconsistent with their duties," explains Paul Alan Levy, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group and a specialist on Internet speech and anonymity. But Levy notes that the Internet offers ways to "separate the position from the identity of the person" in a way that may allow government employees more room to rant.

Levy suggests that the Internet, with its possibilities of total anonymity, is an especially valuable free-speech forum: "People ought to be able to blow off steam. It's the marketplace of ideas-people ought to get it out there."

John Gilmore's classic line about the Internet is that it "interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it." The Montgomery County FOP boards, for example, were shut down during the comments controversy, but a number of other boards maintained by individual cops sprung up to take their place.

Levy adds that the specifics of each case matter a lot: Personal threats can be treated differently from more general ugly comments. "Is it a true threat?" he asks. "The courts distinguish between vague 'this is outrageous, people ought to be up in arms' and 'watch out, I know where you live, this is your address, I'm coming to get you.' There's a continuum."

Levy argues, "If police officers are having these awful thoughts, it's nice to know about it so we can do something about it administratively." He has a list of questions to ask about incidents like these: "Are there morale problems here that need to be addressed? Are there community problems that need to be addressed? Simply by their intemperate speech, they reveal the existence of a problem."

Mary Shelton, the Californian proprietor of the weblog "Five Before Midnight", took a different view after she found herself targeted. In 2005 and 2006, the local activist (she started her blog to monitor how the police department would respond to the end of a court-ordered reform plan) got a spate of threatening and racist blog comments from people claiming to be police officers. "I felt really intimidated," Shelton says. "It makes you look at them differently-is it this police officer, that police officer? ...I think that's one of the most difficult things of all, that you can't put a face on it." The threats escalated: Shelton recalls that one poster gave details of what she was wearing and what she was doing during the day. Finally, a comment-"The reason [cops] beat up the Mexicans is because it's a fiesta, you beat them and candy comes out"-led her to close comments.

Shelton doesn't know exactly what happened after the department investigated the threats. "The official word was discipline was given out," she says, but California confidentiality laws prevented her from learning more.

She acknowledges that the department's investigation raises free speech concerns: "That's a hard one for me, too." But she argues, "They have to operate under the understanding that they have rules to follow. They're police officers. They have a lot of authority. They have arresting power. They have this expectation that when they speak they will be truthful, because they have to testify in court. And they have to deal with different parts of the community."

Shelton is left wondering. "If they're going around saying these statements anywhere, how do you know that's where it's being left, and it's not impacting their job performance? They have a lot of privileges and rights that come with their position, and there are responsibilities that come with that as well."

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Nice to be famous

One law for all? It seems not. Lindsay Lohan serves only 84 minutes jail time

LINDSAY Lohan has turned herself in to prison custody to serve jail time stemming from her August conviction for two DUIs, the New York Post has reported. An insider at the LA sheriff's department told the Post that Lohan walked into the Lynwood correctional facility at 10.30 am (5.30am AEST) accompanied by her attorney, Blair Burke.

Lohan was sentenced to at least 24 hours in prison, but she didn't even make it to a cell. She was kept in a holding area and released less than an hour and a half later just before lunch was due to be served at the facility.

The jail source to the Post said Lohan was "extremely co-operative and professional." The 84-minute lockdown is thought to be enough to fulfill the jail time that was part of Lohan's DUI conviction, but she will still be required to complete community service. Lynwood is the same facility where Paris Hilton served her DUI sentence in June. Calls to Lohan's attorney for comment were not returned.

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  ¶ 6:26 PM 0 comments links to this post

 

I Was Tortured by Government Employees Last Sunday

Last Saturday night, November 3rd, 2007, I was traveling in my automobile. I parked in a restaurant’s private parking lot. A Snohomish County Sheriff was checking license plates against computer records. I am aware that this has become a common practice. He arrested me for an outstanding warrant, issued October 22nd, 2007, for failure to appear on a traffic citation. I was in England on a medical emergency, and had notified the Court that I could not appear that day. As he was getting me out of his car in the basement of the jail he exclaimed "living the dream!", which startled me. I asked "are you serious?" He answered in the affirmative.

The jailers, who style themselves "Corrections Officers," at the Snohomish County Jail (or "Corrections Facility") in Everett, Washington, USA, forced me through a variety of very well-practiced, choreographed, and degrading ordeals – bordering on the sadistic. They were quite clearly enjoying themselves. My clothes were taken and I was issued a thin cloth shirt and thin cloth pants. At around midnight, I was placed in a "holding cell" in the "booking" area. This room was about ten feet by ten feet, with an L-shaped, concrete bench formed along two walls, about 24 inches wide. A weird stainless-steel "toilet-sink" was in one corner. A working, though dysfunctional, phone was on the wall. There was nothing else in the room but a bit of toilet paper.

The outside temperature was less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The holding cell has a ceiling fan or ventilator outlet blowing cold air downwards. It felt colder than the air outside. I began shivering and trying to warm myself up. After about two hours of this, a "corrections officer" called me up to a counter. He presented me with a one-page form to sign. STANDISH was printed on a metal plate attached to his shirt.

The first part of the form was an accurate listing of my confiscated personal property. The second part contained language to the effect of: "I hereby consent to medical testing and treatment" and other. I did not consent to that then or now. I began crossing out the parts of this section that I would not consent to. I had not yet finished and initialed these corrections before STANDISH went ballistic. He jerked the form out from under my hand and said something curt which I do not recall. He placed me back in the holding cell.

I tried to lie down and to sleep on the concrete bench. It was so cold that it sucked the heat right out of my body, while the cold air outlet above blew over the top of me. I have had more than one near-death experience with hypothermia. I know the onset, the symptoms, and the feel of it all too well. My core temperature was dropping.

About 4:00 AM, STANDISH called me back up to the counter for a second go at it. He said "you’ll want to get booked in so you can get moved upstairs. They have beds and blankets there." I told him I do not consent to medical testing and treatment. He became angry and distraught. He immediately escorted me back to the holding cell and stood outside, holding the door. A distressed look came over his face as he stated "this is so we can take care of you in case of emergency" (as if a form had the power to accomplish that). His look then changed to one of rage and he snarled "how dare you mess with my form!" I asked him for a blanket; he said "no" and slammed the door.

It took me awhile to figure this one out – the jailers won’t let you get out of jail until you get "booked" into it, part of which is this form. So I was trapped. STANDISH left me there for the rest of the night, and he later departed along with the rest of the shift at 8:00 AM.

Now I was in fear for my life. Now I was trying to not fall asleep. I could feel the first signs of the uncontrollable-shiver stage coming on. I could feel the results of my core temperature dropping further, which is hard to describe to someone who has not experienced this. If I had lain down on that concrete bench, there was a possibility – however remote – that I would die of exposure. The jailers had made it perfectly clear that they would not be of any help whatsoever.

I tried signaling to the new shift people – banging on the little glass window, shouting, waving as they went by, all to no avail. Sometimes they would look over, and then their eyes would slide away. I had no idea how long I would remain there. Around noon, one of them opens the door and says "are you the one who was crossing out sentences in the consent form? I said "yes." He said "do you want to try again with a fresh copy" I said "yes" He said "you’re not going to try to change it again are you?" I said "no" and so complied. They got their "confession."

I received a copy of the sacred form. The following is the second of the two-part consent form verbatim:
"Medical Services Statement: Regular sick call is held Monday through Friday though emergency care can be requested at any time by contacting a corrections officer. I understand that I am responsible for the costs of my medical care while I am a prisoner here but that necessary care will not be denied due to inability to pay. I hereby consent to medical examinations, tests, and treatment as prescribed by the authorized health care authority and authorize this facility to provide copies of summaries of my jail medical record to attending physicians and/or other institutions to which I may be transferred." (emphasis theirs)

It’s even worse than I remembered.

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Crooked prosecutor in Australia

One of Western Australia's top prosecutors knew that crucial evidence used to convict an innocent man for murder was inconsistent with injuries sustained by the victim. The Corruption and Crime Commission yesterday produced a note by the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Bates, who prosecuted Andrew Mallard for the wilful murder of Perth jeweller Pamela Lawrence, showing that he had been told a wrench could not have caused the injuries sustained by Lawrence in the 1994 murder.

Mr Bates then told a Supreme Court jury that a wrench had, in fact, been used in the killing. Mr Mallard, a psychiatric patient, drew a wrench on a piece of paper and told detectives that it could have been used to murder Lawrence. But tests on a pig's head in 1994 eliminated a wrench as the murder weapon. Those tests were never revealed to Mr Mallard's lawyer, and Mr Mallard was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent almost 12 years in jail before the High Court quashed his conviction in 2005. The CCC is investigating potential misconduct by lawyers and police in Mr Mallard's wrongful conviction.

Explaining his notes to the commission yesterday, Mr Bates said they indicated a detective had informed him about the wrench, also referred to as a spanner, during a meeting before the 1995 trial. "Spanner drawn doesn't match injuries," the note said. Mr Bates could not recall the meeting and said he had been focused on preparing the detective for giving evidence. In a gruelling day in the witness box, Mr Bates said he had agonised over why he never asked whether a wrench was used in testing after being told that another instrument had been discounted by the tests. "I was mortified when I saw it (the mistake)," he said. He added that he had not deliberately refrained from asking whether a wrench had been used in pig's-head testing.

He told the commission that the Crown case was reliant on Mr Mallard's video-recorded confession in which he told police that a wrench could have been used to kill Lawrence. Counsel assisting the commission Jeremy Gormly questioned Mr Bates on relying on the confessions of a delusional psychiatric patient. Mr Bates said that although he had spoken to two mental health experts regarding Mr Mallard, he never asked whether the accused's mental illness would affect the reliability of his confession.

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  ¶ 1:42 PM 0 comments links to this post

 

Prohibition on the comeback trail in America

On a May night in 2005, Debra Bolton, a lawyer and single mom from the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, was leaving the Cafe Milano in Georgetown after socializing with some friends. She had driven her SUV only a few hundred yards before she was pulled over by D.C. police for driving with the headlights off. She told the officer the parking attendant at Cafe Milano probably had turned off her vehicle's automatic light feature. Not mollified, the officer asked Bolton to step out of the car, walk in a straight line, recite the alphabet, stand on one foot, and count to 30. He checked her eyes for suspicious jerkiness and insisted on a breath test for alcohol.

The breath test revealed that Bolton's blood alcohol content (BAC) was 0.03 percent, a level a 120-pound woman could expect after drinking one glass of wine. It was well below the 0.08 percent limit that marks a driver as legally intoxicated in D.C. It was not low enough for the arresting officer, however. This middle-aged mother of two, who hadn't drunk to excess, who hadn't run a red light or run a stop, was arrested, handcuffed, and fingerprinted for an innocent mistake. She sat in a jail cell for hours and was finally released at 4:30 a.m. Bolton spent four court appearances and over $2,000 fighting a $400 ticket. She then spent a month fighting to get her license back after refusing to submit to the 12-week alcohol counseling program.


The arresting officer, inaptly named Dennis Fair, insists: "If you get behind the wheel of a car with any measurable amount of alcohol, you will be dealt with in D.C. We have zero tolerance....Anything above 0.01, we can arrest." Fair recognized that nearly everyone in D.C. was unaware of this zero tolerance policy. Still, he told The Washington Post, if "you don't know about it, then you're a victim of your own ignorance."

Bolton's arrest was not the result of a single cop's overzealousness. In 2004 D.C. police arrested 321 people with BACs below the legal limit of 0.08 percent for driving under the influence. The year before, the number was 409.

After the Bolton incident, James Klaunig, a toxicology expert at the Indiana University School of Medicine, told The Washington Post, "There's no way possible she failed a [sobriety] test from impairment with a .03 blood alcohol level." Fair had claimed that Bolton swayed and lost her balance when taking the sobriety test, triggering the breath test. A BAC test, one of the main tools used by law enforcement to catch drunk drivers, determines how much alcohol is present in the bloodstream. A BAC of 0.08 percent, for instance, means 0.0008 of your blood is alcohol. At that level, though, you're hardly slurring your words or staggering.

In 2000 President Clinton signed a federal law aimed at pressuring states to lower their BAC limits from 0.1 percent to 0.08 percent. States that didn't go along were threatened with the loss of federal highway funds. Karolyn Nunnallee, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), predicted that a nationwide 0.08 percent standard "will save nearly 600 lives every year."

It hasn't worked out that way. In the July 2007 issue of Contemporary Economic Policy, Sam Houston State University economist Donald Freeman examines the most recent data available and concludes "there's no evidence that lowering the BAC limits...reduced fatality rates, either in total or in crashes likely to be alcohol related." This is true, he found, both in states that adopted a 0.08 percent BAC standard on their own and in states that did so under federal pressure.

During the last decade, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), alcohol contributed to between 16,000 and 17,000 traffic-related fatalities a year, about two-fifths of the total such deaths. It used to be a good deal worse. Back in 1982, three-fifths of all traffic related fatalities were attributed to alcohol. Since then, ad campaigns and education have raised public awareness about the dangers of driving smashed. States have instituted stricter punishment for drunk driving, and law enforcement officials are also better prepared to ferret out drunk drivers. A lot of the credit must be given to the hard work MADD did in educating the public about the menace of drinking and driving.

But the decline in alcohol-related deaths persisted only until 1997. Since then the vehicular death toll attributed to alcohol has remained stable at around 40 percent. This stagnation in drunk driving deaths has caused considerable consternation among activists and law enforcement officials. Lately, the fight against drunk driving has shifted from serious alcohol abusers with no regard for the law toward responsible drinkers.

Neoprohibitionists aim to muddle the distinction between drunk diving and driving after drinking any amount of alcohol. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) endorsed the idea at a Senate Environment and Public Committee hearing way back in 1997, contending that we "may wind up in this country going to zero tolerance, period." Former MADD President Katherine Prescott concurred, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, where she stated "there is no safe blood alcohol, and for that reason responsible drinking means no drinking and driving."

Technically she's correct. Driving is never completely safe, and many things drivers commonly do-including speaking on a cell phone, talking to passengers, applying lipstick, eating a sandwich, drinking coffee, adjusting the radio, reprimanding the kids in the back seat, and daydreaming about weekend plans-can make it riskier. As states and cities have begun focusing on zero tolerance (or "driving while distracted" laws, which target the diversions laid out above) they are losing focus on the real threat, namely habitually drunk drivers.

Drinking is under attack these days in ways we haven't seen since the failed experiment with national alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. Indeed, for many neoprohibitionists, that experiment wasn't a failure at all, since it did cut alcohol consumption, which is all that matters. We can see that mentality today in policies that go beyond preventing drunk driving or punishing drunk drivers and aim to discourage drinking per se.....

During the Christmas season of 2003 in Fairfax County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington not far from the site of Debra Bolton's arrest, local police took pre-emptive law enforcement to an absurd extreme, launching a sting operation that targeted 20 local bars and restaurants. The mission: apprehend "drunk" patrons before they try to drive. These drinkers were far from their cars and in some cases did not even own cars. What type of evidence did the police use to measure intoxication? According to one law enforcement official involved in the sting, the determination could be made based on unflicked cigarette ashes, an excessive number of restroom visits, noisy cursing, or a wobbly walk.

The raids involved 10 cops in SWAT-like outfits. In an interview with The Reston Times, the general manager of one targeted establishment said "they tapped one lady on the shoulder-who was on her first drink and had just eaten dinner-to take her out on the sidewalk and give her a sobriety test. They told her she fit the description of a woman they had complaints about, and that they heard she was dancing topless."

In one raid, of the 18 drinkers tested for sobriety, nine were hauled to jail for public intoxication. When asked to explain the rationale for the raids, then-Fairfax County Police Chief J. Thomas Mange declared that you "can't be drunk in a bar." Where can you be drunk? "At home. Or at someone else's home. And stay there until you're not drunk."

Following the logic of such operations, watching television under the influence in your own home may soon be grounds for paramilitary raids. A Super Bowl party, a wedding shower, or a bachelor party can attract dozens of guests, many of whom will be drinking. Why not target those people as well? They have cars.

It's true that "public intoxication" is illegal. So is jaywalking. Police should use common sense, allocating their resources to protect citizens as efficiently as possible. It's hard to believe the most pressing problem in all of Northern Virginia that night was an inebriated and allegedly topless woman. The immediate effect of hauling a few boozy bar patrons down to jail is insignificant. But the alcohol nannies are counting on the long-term impact: Once word gets out, people will be less inclined to get sloshed anywhere, anytime.

Such policies sometimes backfire. After the Fairfax County raids, the entire city council of Herndon, Virginia, criticized the practice of targeting law-abiding businesses and drinkers. "It is the unanimous opinion of the council that police overstepped their bounds and overreacted," one member said.

Yet numerous states and municipalities are experimenting with Fairfax-style intimidation. In 2005 the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission warned that it would be conducting "Sales to Intoxicated Person Stings" in various parts of the Lone Star State. "We believe responsible adults should drink responsibly," said Heather Hodges, a MADD victims advocate involved in planning the operation, in a MADD press release. "A bar is not intended to be a place to get fall-down drunk." In March 2006, one of the first sting operations was conducted in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication.

"It's killed our business," one Dallas bar owner told a local TV station. "People are scared to come out. I don't even drink, and I'm scared to go out, and it's not right. We don't want to put drunks on the road, but we don't want people to be afraid to do something that's legal. If they don't want people drinking, they should outlaw alcohol."

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Paternity Without Process

David Salazar's wife gave birth to a child 14 months after the couple separated. The mother contacted the Division of Child Support Enforcement and informed them Salazar was not the father. Naturally, the State of Missouri declared Salazar the father, ordered him to pay child support, and convicted him of criminal nonsupport.

Most folks associate the Limbaugh name with a ruthlessly-honest framework of conservative thinking. Unfortunately, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Stephen Limbaugh, who is cousin to Rush Limbaugh and well-known conservative writer David Limbaugh, apparently ate too many paint chips as a child. While I have not studied more than a handful of Judge Limbaugh's opinions, I have seen enough of them to conclude that he is unable to interpret cases while observing fundamental constructionist principles of law.

The case of David Salazar is the most recent example of Limbaugh's one-eyed activist judicial liberalism. On October 30, the Missouri Supreme Court handed down a historic reversal of a criminal child non-support conviction in State of Missouri vs. David Salazar. The case involved a husband involved in a divorce, whose wife gave birth to a child that was not his, after 14 months of separation. The state secured the customary default administrative paternity judgment - for which no notice of court hearing was given to Mr. Salazar, and no decision rendered by a court. As is customary in the many cases of state-endorsed paternity fraud, it tried to use criminal procedures against Mr. Salazar to force his submission to highway robbery. The Supreme Court reversed the decisions of both the trial court and appeals court in this case.

My greatest respect goes to Mr. Salazar for sticking to his guns. Without a DNA test, proper notice, and full hearing, the state has no authority to declare anyone the father - and it clearly exceeds its authority incarcerating anyone who refuses to honor an illegitimate child support order. The en-banc decision, written by Justice Richard B. Teitelman, strongly refutes the actions of the Missouri Division of Child Support Enforcement. Judge Teitelman is to be greatly commended for interpreting both civil and criminal procedure properly.

I have known Judge Teitelman for years. In the early 1990's, I had a major disagreement with him over whether Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (which is operated by the Missouri Bar) should provide services to indigent men who have been falsely accused of child or spousal abuse and are unable to defend themselves against the state. At the time, Richard was President of that organization. L.S.E.M. actively helped women, but refused to help men. Apparently our discussions were fruitful over time, and today Justice Teitelman sees men in a different light with respect to reasonable rights under the law than he did a decade ago. I encourage everyone to view Teitelman's opinion in the above case.

Judge Limbaugh wrote the sole dissenting opinion. In Limbaugh's mind, under civil procedure, any process constitutes "due process." The ends justify the means - expediency substituting for due process - so long as it inures to the convenience of the state. Limbaugh's dissenting opinion is a outright rejection of the very foundations of law and due process. In fact, Limbaugh suggests that courts and state actors fulfill their responsibilities at law by merely simulating due process in a complete absence of objective standards - that renegade administrative orders can be created and enforced on their own merits absent any external standard for procedural review:

The author would hold the child was "legitimated by legal process" under section 568.040 by entry of the administrative order establishing paternity under section 454.490. He notes that neither the statute nor Sauer require entry of a formal judgment to establish that "legal process" has been used and would find the administrative order, which has all the force, effect and attributes of a court decree, is no less a legal process than a formal judgment. He further notes the default judgment entered against Salazar establishing paternity in essence was no different than the default judgment entered against the putative father in Sauer.

Mr. Limbaugh, have you ever heard of "best evidence?" Should the state entitle the most egregious possible form of marital adultery by knowingly attacking the wrong man? Should the state not be required to prove a man is the father before taking away several hundred thousand dollars from him?

On what moral or legal principles do you find it permissible for the State to consider estoppel final without hearing - preventing voidance of an illegitimate paternity order or alternately vacating the illegitimate child support order - when in fact the Missouri Supreme Court consistently holds that child support orders are "always modifiable" when the state or petitioner wants to increase a support order, and where the state has at least a ten-year statutory window to establish paternity in a case? Where such large sums of money are involved, does the state not have a duty to set right what it got wrong?

This Christmas, when the Limbaugh family convenes in Cape Girardeau for the holidays, I sincerely hope it puts the heat on Stephen to live up to the Limbaugh name. Perhaps the family will buy him a copy of Judge Robert Dierkers book, The Tyranny of Tolerance, and put a bookmark on chapter one - aptly titled "The Cloud Cuckooland of Radical Feminism."

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  ¶ 1:03 PM 2 comments links to this post

 

Brainless police goons again

COULD THE irony get any deeper? An international human rights activist stops for pizza and ends up under arrest for disorderly conduct. The arrest of Hillel C. Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, is clearly a case of wrong place, wrong time. But it's also a case of something more - a tendency toward hysteria and overkill that appears to be a product of the current mood.

Neuer was visiting the United States at the invitation of Yale University. On Nov. 2, he was meeting with local supporters in Needham. He spent time at the Needham Post Office, where he mailed copies of a report he had just delivered at Yale. Later, he went to a Needham pizza shop. He did not know that police in that town were searching for an armed killer. The overlay of the manhunt explains some, not all, of what happened next.

At the pizza shop, employees found Neuer's behavior troubling, so they called 911 in a panic. On the 911 tape, the police dispatcher reported that, "Employees told me that a male subject, possible olive-skinned . . . came into the store carrying a large gym bag. . . . He kept placing his hand over a fanny pack, which [employees] believed carried a gun." Neuer, 37, "was acting very weird," an employee said on the 911 tape. Apparently, there's a low bar for weirdness in Needham: Neuer repeatedly asked for a cab, changed into a suit in the restroom, and went to a CVS store next door without finishing his pizza. He also talked a lot into his cellphone.

"Oh my God, we need someone here," a pizza store worker wailed on the 911 tape. "There is a guy that was here in Stone Hearth Pizza, and now he is in CVS. He left everything here. And we think he has a gun." Moments later, the woman screams, "Run, run, run!"

Neuer, meanwhile, was unnerved after he returned to the pizza shop and noticed a police officer with a gun. "I thought there was a shootout going on, and I dropped to the floor," he told the Boston Herald. "I called 911 twice while I was on the floor. You'll hear me speaking quietly saying, 'I'm on the floor of this pizza shop and what should I do here?' . . . They said come out with your hands up. . . . It was not until I left the scene that it sort of dawned on me that the entire police action was because someone had called for me."

Needham police surrounded the pizza shop, and took Neuer into custody at gunpoint. No gun was found on him. According to his lawyer, David G. Eisenstadt, Neuer was fingerprinted and booked. His mug shot was taken and he was put in a cell.

At about the same time, some 2 miles away, Needham police arrested William B. Dunn, 41, of Norwood. A contractor installing a lawn sprinkler system, he was charged with bludgeoning Robert Moore Sr., 78, to death. Dunn was placed in the cell next to Neuer.

On Monday, the clerk-magistrate in Dedham District Court refused to issue a criminal complaint against Neuer, finding no probable cause that any crime was committed. A judge agreed. "It's a highly unusual move that the clerk-magistrate and judge would both review police reports after an arrest and not find probable cause, which is a very low standard," said Eisenstadt.

The dramatic chain reaction that started with Moore's tragic death raises several questions. Of course, Needham police had to pursue every lead to find Moore's attacker. But was live television coverage of the manhunt necessary? If it is legitimate, should Boston residents expect the same when a homicide takes place on their city streets?

Once the pizza workers panicked, police had to follow up on their 911 calls. But after police had Neuer and Dunn in custody, why did they pursue a criminal complaint against Neuer once they knew his true identity?

Neuer, now back in Geneva, is reviewing his legal options, his lawyer said. UN Watch, the organization Neuer heads, is an arm of the American Jewish Committee. According to its website, its mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own charter and "provide for a more just world." That's a tough mandate in a world gone mad, or in a suburb gone temporarily hysterical.

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Lazy Australian police

Declaring a death to be suicide saves them a lot of work

POLICE were so sure Adam Cecil had jumped to his death in drunken despair, they declared it suicide before a full autopsy was conducted. Two years on, they are being asked to explain how the 27-year-old excavation expert scaled the third-storey roof of his Cronulla apartment complex without a rope or ladder, leapt more than 20 metres - then apparently text messaged his father. Call records show the SMS was sent 20 minutes after the alleged fall, as Cecil lay unconscious and dying. The message read: "It's all your fault." The phone was returned to his pocket.

His mother, Lyn, whose campaign has led to a coronial inquest, told The Sun-Herald these were not the only things that did not add up. Despite the expected severity of such a fall, none of Cecil's limbs were broken. He was bleeding heavily from the ears, yet he seemed otherwise uninjured. Found by an off-duty doctor, Cecil was initially assessed as an assault victim. Emergency radio recordings reveal ambulance officers describing him as a "male with head injury post-assault".

Police dismissed the inconsistencies, finding Cecil had taken his life after breaking up with his girlfriend, Nicole Timms, on August 3, 2005. Evidence so far presented to Glebe Coroner's Court included the allegation that he had jumped from the balcony of his Ozone Street flat onto the front lawn following an argument between the couple the previous year.

But Ms Cecil - who hired a private detective and gathered freedom of information documents, including the autopsy report - will not accept it. She wonders why her son paid an $800 credit card bill hours before his death and had rung a motorcycle dealership to hassle staff about a bike's delivery. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but these are not the kind of things you do if you're contemplating suicide, are they?" she said.

Crucial to the inquest's outcome will be establishing whether Cecil could have gained access to his rooftop by climbing an elevated bull-nosed eave after balancing on his balcony guardrail. A University of Sydney pharmacologist, Graham Starmer, has testified that Cecil's blood alcohol reading of .228 would have made this "highly unlikely". The presence of painkillers in his system would more probably have led him to "sit in a corner and go to sleep".

"The problem with everything the police have to say is that they simply can't establish how Adam possibly got onto the roof and where he then jumped from," Ms Cecil said.

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Local government Gestapo in Minnesota

Haven't they got anything better to do?

Laura Soelberg's fall garage sale began much as it had for 19 years: Friends parked in the church lot next to her mother's Minnetonka house, greeted her with hugs and gifts, and began browsing. But within half an hour, the authorities arrived to shut her down. A police officer and two city workers ordered a halt to the Oct. 24 event, telling everyone to get out, shoppers said. "It was almost like they were breaking up an underage party," said Laurel Elhart, a Minnetonka resident who had attended the sales for at least a dozen years.

Now Soelberg, 72, could face criminal charges -- and if convicted, up to 90 days in jail, a $1,000 fine and a year of probation. The city considers Soelberg's yard sales a zoning violation, in part because, while the Deephaven resident owns the house, she does not live in it. Soelberg looks upon her twice-a-year sales as a tradition she started with her mother in the 1980s and merely continued at her mother's home after her mother's death in the late '90s. "I don't understand. This is such a minor, little thing," she said. "Everyone likes a garage sale."

Before each sale, which generally runs four days, Soelberg sends out reminder postcards to those who request them and gives the neighbors a heads up. Andy Martin, who lives next door, wrote a letter to the city in support of Soelberg, saying that his family is probably "the most impacted of anyone by her sale." But her events, in contrast to others he's seen in the city, are infrequent. "Before you sanction her, you would need to sanction many others," Martin wrote.

Yvonne Brown, who has known Soelberg for 20 years, arrived two hours after the authorities did on Oct. 24 and found the few people still there "had stunned looks on their faces. It was like the Gestapo had just come and left," she said. "I couldn't believe it. There are garage sales all over all the neighborhoods. Why this one?"

But the city has raised another question: Are Soelberg's events really garage sales? In general, the city draws a legal distinction between a garage sale and a commercial venture, city planner Julie Wischnack said: "The difference is whether someone is utilizing the sale for an income-generating venture. Is it truly trying to get rid of items around the house? Or is it a commercial operation?" Soelberg declined to say how much money her sales take in. "I don't really talk about that," she said. "I make enough to make it worthwhile." But she denies that what she's doing is akin to operating a business. She holds the sales infrequently, sells second-hand goods that come mostly from her family's homes, does no advertising, collects no taxes and has no employees.

Her "friends/customers," as she calls them, have voiced support for her in letters and a petition. Elhart said most of the shoppers are acquaintances -- middle-aged and elderly women who have met at the sales over the years. And most were shocked by "the police invasion."It's odd that it's been going on for so long and now, all of a sudden, it's an issue," Elhart said.

But the Oct. 24 sale wasn't the first to garner the city's attention. At Soelberg's spring sale, which featured $2 perennials, the city issued her a citation and an invitation to Minnetonka's City Court. Often, violations of city ordinances are handled through the City Court, "an alternative to the regular court system ... intended to be more informal and less intimidating to alleged violators," the city says on its website.

But "if that hasn't remedied the problem, the city will consider pressing criminal charges," said Rolf Stonheim, associate city attorney, who said it's a misdemeanor to violate the zoning code. Wischnack, the city planner, confirmed that the city plans to press charges against Soelberg. But she said she could not comment on the case because it's under investigation. Soelberg said after agreeing last spring to go to City Court, she was never called in. That's why, when fall came around, she decided to hold her sale, as usual

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Slap on wrist for crooked British forensic scientist

The forensic pathologist who carried out post-mortem tests on the two babies of Sally Clark has lost his High Court challenge against a ruling that he was guilty of serious professional misconduct.

Mrs Clark, a solicitor from Wilmslow, Cheshire, was wrongly convicted in 1999 of murdering her sons. She was freed on appeal in 2003. She died earlier this year, aged 42.

Alan Williams, 58, who testified against Mrs Clark at her original trial, was found guilty of misconduct by a General Medical Council panel in 2005 after it was revealed that he had not disclosed key test results in court. He was later banned from undertaking court work or coroners’ cases for three years.

His lawyers argued at the High Court that Dr Williams had been “made a scapegoat” for the miscarriage of justice, but Mr Justice Davis rejected the appeal.

Mrs Clark died from accidental acute alcohol intoxication. Her family said she never fully recovered from the miscarriage of justice.

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Schwarzenegger Vetoes Justice

Sides with crooked police

In 2004, the California state senate created the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a panel of current and former judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and police officials.

The legislators were concerned about the recent spate of DNA exonerations and death row releases, including at least six cases in California since 1989 in which someone had been sentenced to death then exonerated or acquitted in a new a trial.

A 2004 report in San Francisco magazine identified 200 cases over 15 years in which someone in California had been unjustly convicted, then freed-more than the number of exonerations in the next two states combined. The magazine estimated somewhere between 150 and 1,500 innocent people may still be sitting in the state's prisons. The state senate charged the commission with recommending reasonable reforms to guard against wrongful convictions.

In 2006, the commission issued its recommendations. Three modest, sensible reforms made their way to the state legislature, and were passed by both the state's house and senate earlier this year. The reforms were backed by politicians from both parties. They were backed by both prosecutors and police officials who served on the commission. The reforms would added some formidable defenses against wrongful convictions in California. Naturally, they were opposed by the state's police organizations. And so last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed all three.

The first recommendation would have required that prosecutors who use jailhouse "snitches" corroborate snitch testimony with other evidence. Jailhouse snitches are themselves convicted felons. They aren't trustworthy people. What's more, they have a greater incentive to lie, and to lie to get someone convicted, than perhaps anyone else a prosecutor could possibly put on the stand: They want to get out of prison. A 2004 study by Northwestern University of 111 death row exonerations since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973 found that the testimony of a jailhouse snitch played a role in 51 of the wrongful convictions.

Jailhouse snitch testimony becomes particularly invidious when paired with mandatory minimum sentences. The only way someone facing a mandatory minimum sentence can get out early is to provide information that helps prosecutors win more convictions. It's an unfortunate structure of incentives that encourages dishonesty from informants, and encourages prosecutors to suborn it. The California commission's recommendation wouldn't have barred the use of jailhouse informants, as some activists have recommended. It would only have required that prosecutors corroborate such testimony with other sources before using it at trial.

Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, arguing that, "When that kind of testimony is necessary, current criminal procedures provide adequate safeguards against misuse."

In just six years of operation, the Northern California Innocence Project has helped exonerate 20 people in Northern California alone who were convicted in whole or in part based on testimony from jailhouse snitches.

The second reform would have required police to videotape interrogations in violent crime investigations. This too is a sensible, modest reform. Law enforcement advocates have opposed taping interrogations in the past by arguing that police officers sometimes use untoward or coercive tactics that while legal, might appear unseemly to jurors. (Suggesting that federal agents videotape interrogations was one reason the Justice Department says U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton was let go in the recent firings scandal).

If that's the case, then let prosecutors put on evidence explaining to jurors why such tactics are necessary, and why they won't lead to false confessions. Then let juries decide if such tactics are acceptable. A tamper-proof, thorough videotaping of all interrogations would not only discourage police misconduct while questioning witnesses, it would also cut down on false accusations of police misconduct.

Some may find it hard to believe, but overly coercive interrogation techniques can and have lead to false confessions over the years, particularly if the suspect is a juvenile or is mentally impaired-although even a normal adult can falsely confess if subjected to enough duress and abuse. In nearly a quarter of the DNA exonerations over the last 15 years, the wrongfully convicted suspect either incorrectly made incriminating statements to police, or out and out confessed to a crime he didn't commit. Schwarzenegger vetoed this recommendation, too, with the cryptic explanation that video recordings would "deny law enforcement the flexibility necessary to interrogate suspects."

No. It would deny them the "flexibility" to extract confessions through improper coercion, at least without an impartial, documented record of the questioning; and it would allow a jury to properly weigh a confession against the environment in which it was given.

The commission's third recommendation was aimed at fixing the problem of false eyewitness testimony, which has contributed in part or in whole to more than three-quarters of known wrongful convictions. This recommendation should have been even less controversial than the other two. It would have established a task force to look into eyewitness testimony, and set up a series of voluntary guidelines for the state's police departments to follow to ensure that police lineups aren't overly suggestive. One recommendation, for example, was that the police officers administering photo or in-person lineups be unaware of the actual identity of the suspect, to prevent them from giving an eyewitness subtle (or not-so-subtle) clues. Schwarzenegger vetoed this one, too, arguing that even voluntary state guidelines would get in the way of police departments setting their own lineup policies based on their own "unique local conditions."

Gov. Schwarzenegger's stubborn refusal to adopt even these modest criminal justice reforms is perplexing, particularly given the spate of conscience-shocking exonerations and wrongful convictions in the news. There's really nothing we can say to someone who spent a decade in prison or was days from execution for a crime he didn't commit. "Sorry" isn't going to cut it. One would think that the least we could do is put in the proper safeguards to prevent it from happening again.

Former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp, who chaired the commission, told the San Francisco Chronicle that all three recommendations were "modest bills which were based on the best science and the best practices available." He added, "once again the power of California's law enforcement agencies to block needed justice reform."

Our criminal justice system is in dire need of repair. The spate of DNA exonerations has at least opened many Americans' eyes to the very real possibility that we're sending innocent people to prison-and even to death row. But the number of cases in which DNA was found at the scene of a crime was properly preserved, and where testing could establish guilt or innocence, is vanishingly small. DNA testing has exposed the flaws in our system, but those flaws don't exist only in cases where DNA was significant-they also exist in the overwhelming majority of cases where it isn't. That's why we need to apply the lessons we've learned from DNA exonerations to other cases. And it's why Gov. Schwarzenegger's refusal to adopt even modest reforms is so regrettable.

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A crooked senior cop in Australia

ASPIRING chief commissioner Noel Ashby was yesterday forced to quit Victoria Police in disgrace. Former assistant commissioner Ashby faces jail for allegedly lying to a corruption inquiry and trying to pervert the course of justice. His ambition for the top job came crashing down after damning evidence against him was aired at an Office of Police Integrity hearing.

A shattered Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said yesterday she felt betrayed by Mr Ashby, a 30-year veteran of the force, and her media director, Steve Linnell, who she said could both face charges. "I want to say to the community how disappointed I am by this whole episode," she said. In another day of stunning evidence, the OPI hearing was told:

POLICE Association secretary Paul Mullett asked Mr Ashby to personally handle a serious disciplinary case against union delegate Jenny McDonald in the hope she would be treated leniently.

BUGGED phone calls revealed Mr Ashby told Sen-Sgt Mullett he would try to get her case reassigned to him.

DEPUTY Commissioner Simon Overland was part of an OPI sting to catch media director Steve Linnell leaking to Mr Ashby.

THE OPI got Mr Overland to ring Mr Linnell and provide him with confidential information to see if he would leak it to Mr Ashby -- he did so 11 seconds later.

MR ASHBY tried to stop Insp Brett Curran being appointed chief of staff to Police Minister Bob Cameron and enlisted Sen-Sgt Mullett's aid.

SEN-SGT MULLETT told Mr Ashby that his (Mr Ashby's) stocks were rising significantly with Premier John Brumby, and Mr Ashby replied "watch this space" in an apparent reference to his being appointed Chief Commissioner.

OPI bugs repeatedly caught Mr Linnell and Mr Ashby being crudely critical of Ms Nixon, Mr Overland and various assistant commissioners, with Mr Ashby calling them "the shiftiest bunch of c---s". Mr Ashby admitted he was jealous Mr Overland was being sent on a study trip to France, and that he and Sen-Sgt Mullett tried to stop it.

Counsel assisting the OPI, Dr Greg Lyon, SC, has accused Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell of leaking confidential information relating to the 2003 murder of gigolo vampire Shane Chartres-Abbott. Dr Lyon said that information was relayed to Sen-Sgt Mullett and Police Association president Brian Rix. He said that one of the targets of the murder investigation, Police Association delegate Det-Sgt Peter Lalor, was tipped off soon afterwards. Mr Linnell was taped telling Mr Ashby it would be difficult to convict Det-Sgt Lalor because "cops get off". Mr Ashby immediately responded, "yeah, yeah, but might get Docket". Docket is the nickname of former Victoria Police detective David Waters.

Mr Waters and Det-Sgt Lalor are both targets of Victoria Police taskforce Operation Briars, which is investigating the Chartres-Abbott murder. Operation Briars is probing allegations that Det-Sgt Lalor passed Chartres-Abbott's address to the hitman hired to kill him. It is also investigating claims Mr Waters was at a meeting where plans to kill Chartres-Abbott were hatched.

Ms Nixon said the OPI told her in September that Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell were being investigated in relation to the Chartres-Abbott matter. "It's been a very difficult time to know people who were close to you were being accused of these matters," she said. "Now, as we have heard, the evidence has confirmed the real concerns (the OPI) had."

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The Corrupting Influence of Drug Prohibition

Front page headlines scream out across America each time a cop gets busted for corruption. The rest proves a tragedy for the officer, the family and The Thin Blue Line. How many? The United States Department of Justice stopped keeping statistics in 1988, but experts agree that the drug trade ensnares half of police officers. Prison guards smuggle in drugs, customs officers waive truckloads of narcotics into the country while money corrupts too many. Even as citizens learn how much the officer took, the reader rarely hears of the most pervasive form of corruption; namely how often officers lie under oath.

In this fourth part of a continuing series, I interviewed my brother, 18 year veteran police officer and detective, Howard Wooldridge (retired), with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, www.leap.cc , now stationed in Washington, DC.

“The United States has been at war with its citizens in earnest since President Nixon declared a war on drugs/war on people in 1971,” Officer Wooldridge said. “Since then my profession has spent one trillion tax dollars to arrest 38 million Americans for drug offenses. Corruption has become pandemic across the US, as drug dealers offer huge amounts of money to conceal their valuable cargo. An ounce of cocaine is worth about 20 ounces of pure gold. Although police officers always start out with a ton of integrity that can go to zero all too quickly.”

The bribe becomes the most dramatic form of corruption to protect a dealer from being arrested, his stash or his shipment of drugs. We read of officers paid $10,000 to protect the dealer and his dope. Often these officers go years before being caught. Cops do not want to even suspect that one of their own ‘brothers’ has gone bad.

“Another type of corruption is caused by the large amounts of cash narcotic officers use for their buy/busts,” Officer Wooldridge said. “A sergeant in Clinton County, Michigan (where I worked) had access to the money and ‘borrowed’ about $2,000. After an audit showed the loss, he ended up confessing and leaving in disgrace. South of Fort Worth, Texas a lieutenant in charge of a narcotics squad took $9,000 a few years ago. The morning the audit was being conducted, he blew his brains out. Death before living in dishonor! He left a wife and children. Two narcotics officers in Dallas paid an illegal alien to hire other illegal aliens to drive vans loaded with cocaine. After the bust was made, the narcs field tested the 20-30 kilos of coke and reported it positive for cocaine. After 80 such busts defense attorneys finally had it tested by the DPS Lab. It was ground up sheet-rock. The two officers had skimmed six figure money off the top of the buy money. They were convicted. The assistant district attorney, who prosecuted the cases and knew that the arrests were bogus, was scheduled to testify before a grand jury. He blew his brains out that morning. In his early 40s, he left a wife and kids.”

In 2006, a case in Atlanta demonstrated the most pervasive form of corruption; lying under oath and falsifying a police report. Three narcs swore to a judge they had positive information about a dope house and obtained a ‘no knock’ warrant. As they pounded on the door, the 92 year old grandmother fired a shot in the air to warn the intruders she was armed. Upon entry, they shot her full of holes. Realizing their mistake, they planted marijuana in the house. Their house of cards came apart. Two have already pled guilty to murder and home invasion. They lied on the search warrant and then used their police report to justify the completely bogus operation.

“Less dramatic but nonetheless common, a sergeant in DeWitt City, Michigan appeared in court to testify on a drug bust,” Officer Wooldridge said. “He was there to establish venue. After providing that information, he went on to testify as to seizing drugs, scales, etc. The narcotics officer told the district attorney that the testimony was false. The district attorney dropped the charges on the spot. The judge ordered everyone into his chambers and learned the truth. The sergeant was forced to resign for lying under oath. NOTE: the officer had worked 20 years in Detroit where officers routinely testify to things they did not do or see on drug cases. This officer did not realize that the rest of the states’ cops took the oath to ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ seriously.”

The most common form of corruption finds the officer lying in order to search a person or car. If a driver does not give permission to search, the officer sniffs the air, declares he smells marijuana and orders the occupants out of the vehicle. If he finds the dope, he lies on his report that he smelled the marijuana which justifies the warrant less search. If he does not find anything, well, no harm done right? Wrong! That officer had no more right to enter the car than he does a person’s home and it is a violation of trespassing. Almost never is an officer caught, let alone prosecuted for such a crime. And they know it.

“As long as the United States continues this New Prohibition, my profession will continue to suffer massive corruption,” Officer Wooldridge said. “Between the glory of the drug bust, the need to lie to search vehicles, the vast sums of money paid to protect the movement of drugs, law enforcement is being torn apart. I am sure many officers fell to their knees in 1933 and thanked God that the nation had ended its Alcohol Prohibition. Many will do the same when this nation becomes as wise as our grandparents by ending the New Prohibition.”

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"Security" goons again. A Japanese tourist attacked for taking photographs from a train!

Taking photos is what Japanese tourists do!

Countries, like people, make friends with others one at a time. This is a story of one failure. In fairness to an unknown visitor to our country, imagine yourself in his place. The scene is on a recent Amtrak trip between New York City and Boston. The conductor collects tickets, requests identification, folds destination stubs into seatbacks, moves on to other cars. An older man across the aisle, traveling alone, shows his passport. It is clear from their conversation he doesn’t know English.

After decades as a frequent traveler, I have thousands of pictures -- scenery, buildings, people, architecture, from around the world. Today the train passes a lovely stretch of Connecticut shore, tidal marshes, nesting ospreys, the Long Island Sound. What little attention I pay as the visitor takes pictures, is that I’m impressed with his equipment. He and I, unknown to each other, are members of a picture-taking culture, fellow citizens of a show-and-tell world. I wonder if his will join the thousands on YouTube. I imagine, after his return home, how many friends he will impress with stories and pictures of this mild, early autumn, Saturday morning journey along the New England shoreline.

The train is a half hour west of New Haven when the conductor, having finished her original rounds, reappears. She moves down the aisle, looks, stops between our seats, faces the person taking pictures. “Sir, in the interest of national security, we do not allow pictures to be taken of or from this train.” He starts, “I…….” but, without English, his response trails off into silence. The conductor, speaking louder, forcefully: “Sir, I will confiscate that camera if you don’t put it away.” Again, little response. “Sir, this is a security matter! We cannot allow pictures.” She turns away abruptly and, as she moves down the aisle, calls over her shoulder, in a very loud voice, “Put. It. Away!” He packs his camera.

Within a minute after our arrival in New Haven, two armed police officers entered the car, approached my neighbor’s seat. “Sir, we're removing you from this train.” “I….;” “I……” “Sir, you have breached security regulations. We must remove you from this train.” “I…,” “I…..” “Sir, we are not going to delay this train because of you. You will get off, or we will remove you physically.” “I…..”

Nearby passengers stir. One says, “It’s obvious he doesn’t speak English. There are people here who speak more than one language. Perhaps we can help.” Different ones ask about the traveler’s language; learn he speaks Japanese. For me, a sudden flash of memory -- a student at International Christian University in Japan, I took countless pictures without arousing suspicion.

The police speak through the interpreter, with the impatience of authority. “The conductor asked this man three times to discontinue. We must remove him from the train.” The traveler hears the translation, is befuddled. Hidden beneath the commotion is a cross-cultural drama. With the appearance of police officers, this quiet visitor is embarrassed to find he is the center of attention. The officers explain, “After we remove him from the train, when we are through our investigation, we will put him on the next train.” The woman translates. The passenger replies, “I’m meeting relatives in Boston. They cannot be reached by phone. They expect me and will be worried when I do not arrive on schedule.” “Our task,” the police repeat, "is to remove you from this train. If necessary, we will do so by force. After we have finished the investigation, we’ll put you on another train.” The woman translates. The traveler gathers his belongings and departs.

My earlier suggestion that you imagine being in his place leaves you free to respond and draw your conclusions. Remember: you’ve been removed from the train, are being interrogated, perhaps having your equipment confiscated; while I continue to do what I take for granted – traveling unimpeded, on to Providence.

The more I replay the scene, the more troublesome it is. It is the stuff of nightmares. Relations between people and countries lie at the heart of the issue. The abstract terms that inform political and social debate appear, as if in person, unexpectedly, near enough to hear, touch, feel. Taking no position is not an option. As an educator, I would prepare and deliver a lecture on how others perceive America in the world community, then seek an audience. I'll spare you. But -- I just watched armed police officers remove a visitor from the train for taking pictures. I don't understand this. I’m disturbed – no, shaken – to bear witness to these events. Other passengers react with surprise and anger. “Since when is it illegal to take pictures?” “Nobody’s ever bothered me about it.” “Is the only photography allowed from the space station and Google Earth? These people take pictures of everything, including my house, without my permission, and they’re instantly available on the internet.” An older traveler reflected, “I witnessed this personally in police states during the war in Europe.”

Watching police escort a visitor off the train, I felt anger, not comfort. This action was beyond irritating. It is intolerable, unacceptable. If it bothered me, it paled in comparison to the way it inconvenienced, and will long trouble, this visitor to our country. We disrupted his travel plans and family reunion. Even greater than the psychological damage we inflicted is the harm we’ve done to ourselves. We missed an opportunity to show kindness, to be ambassadors of goodwill. The visitor will return home. He will indeed impress many people – not with pleasant memories and pictures of a quiet morning trip along the New England coast, but with a story of being removed and detained by American police for taking pictures. Do we imagine we’ve gained anything because a single visitor returns home with stories of mistreatment? We engage in diplomacy whenever we have contact with visitors or travel abroad ourselves. If we conduct ourselves poorly as daily ambassadors, it is no wonder our country suffers a tarnished relationship with the world.

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Protecting America from the Finnish musician threat

America can sleep easy tonight knowing that the Homeland Security brownshirts are fighting well the war against Finnish music! God bless George Bush and God bless America!

Now for the background. Recently the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota invited three of Finland’s most popular musicians to come to the United States to play Finnish music. Minnesota was has a large population of descendants from Finnish immigrants. The university was paying for the trip along with Finnish television which sent a film crew along to record everything.

Prof. Jukka Savolainen was waiting at the airport for the guests he invited. And he waited and waited and waited.

Apparently the border Nazis got something up their butt and decided to interrogate the Finnish musicians along with the filmmaker from Finnish television. The border thugs grabbed the Finns and took them to separate rooms where they were continually screamed at by different “officials” who are America’s welcome mat to the world.

The filmmaker, Erkki Maattanen said: “I kept trying to tell them why we were here, but they’d just yell, ‘Shut up!’” The complaint that was later filed with the U. S. Embassy in Helsinki said: “They threatened us with severe punishments if we talk to each other.” And, “Through the walls, I can hear officers yelling, screaming. They ask about the purpose of our trip -- except we are only allowed to give yes or no answers. I try to talk about our plans to meet with Finnish-American folk musicians. Nobody listens. They interrupt me constantly and they yell, ‘You are a liar!’”

Maattanen said: “They were shouting at me, and people were going in and out of doors. They tried to put you down mentally, to humiliate you.”

Now why are these dear musicians surprised? Surely this is the sort of thing that you expect when you travel behind the Iron Curtain. Welcome to George Bush’s America. Sieg Heil.

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A Federal pestilence

The April 28, 2006 press release from Randy G. Massey, Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, emitted the familiar stench of bureaucratic self-congratulation: It announced the indictment by a federal grand jury of 27-year-old Katie R. Heath for “conspiracy to manufacture, distribute, and possess with intent to distribute over 500 grams of methamphetamine in Saline County and elsewhere in the United States.”

Miss Heath, the announcement explained, was taken into custody by bold and heroic law enforcement officers during a “pre-dawn sweep.” Some measure of the seriousness of the crimes allegedly committed by Heath, we are to understand, can be found in the maximum prescribed penalties: Up to life imprisonment and a $4 million fine.

Katie Heath's case does present one substantial problem: At the time of her arrest she was neither using nor distributing drugs. She had been paroled from prison just three months earlier after serving one year of a four-year sentence for the same acts listed in the federal indictment.

The plain and obvious meaning of the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against double jeopardy dictates that what Massey seeks to do here is impermissible. Then again, the division of labor described by James Madison in Federalist Paper number 45 – with the scope of federal criminal prosecutions limited to “few and defined” matters, none of which deals with narcotics – almost certainly means that Massey shouldn't have his job in the first place.


In the 1922 case US v. Lanza, the Supreme Court devised a way to nullify the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against double jeopardy: It created a perverse variant of the concept of federalism by describing the states and the federal government as different “sovereignties ... deriving power from different sources, capable of dealing with the same subject matter within the same territory.”


Appropriately, the “subject” of the enforcement action leading to this decision was the demented effort to prohibit production and consumption of alcohol, the direct antecedent to our contemporary “war on drugs.”


It might be remembered that this “dual sovereignties” concept was employed in the early 1990s to justify a federal “civil rights” conviction of officers involved in the Rodney King arrest, after they had been acquitted by a local jury.

Once the division of labor described by Madison is understood, it becomes clear that federal laws against narcotics use and distribution are constitutionally unsupportable; this point is buttressed by the fact that the pseudo-puritanical totalitarians behind prohibition understood that it was necessary to amend the Constitution in order to give the federal government power to criminalize the traffic in intoxicants.

Notwithstanding the tortured sophistries offered by people who subsist on unnecessary human misery – that is, servants and employees of Leviathan – it is clear that Katie Heath was facing double jeopardy.

Of that troubled young mother, Federal Judge J. Phil Gilbert has said: “She's no saint. She got caught up in drug addiction and made bad choices that resulted in her spending a year in state prison.” The youngest of her three small children was born in prison. Once she was paroled (the term “parole,” by the way, is a synonym for “acquittal” and close kindred of the verb “to forgive”) Katie went to school, held down a job, and tested clean for drug use. Judge Gilbert points out that after her indictment Katie made a good faith effort to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

Nevertheless, Massey decided to “enhance” the charges against Heath so that she would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. That “enhancement” must be viewed by honest people as the creation, after-the-fact, of a new offense from the raw materials provided by the same acts for which Heath had already been punished. Why did Massey and his comrades in the US Attorney's Office do this? “Because they can,” answers Judge Gilbert.

Judge Gilbert does not have a reputation for leniency. Yet this spectacularly corrupt and abusive decision, typical of what he calls “a culture that has been going on in this district for eight or nine years,” provoked him to resist. When Heath attempted to plead guilty to the manufactured federal conspiracy charge in the forlorn hope of receiving a relatively light sentence, Gilbert simply refused to accept the plea.

Gilbert's apparent hope – as forlorn as Heath's – was that a there was a human being inside the officious, power-intoxicated creature called Randy G. Massey, and that said human being would be susceptible to a sense of decent shame over this act of gratuitous official sadism. But federal prosecutors appear to be drawn from a pool of beings immune to such decent and elevated sentiments. Additionally, federal sentencing guidelines given prosecutors broad and unaccountable discretion in these matters.

So Massey and his comrades applied successfully to the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus, which would compel Judge Gilbert to impose the desired sentence. Gilbert responded by doing something perilously close to the honorable thing: He recused himself from the case, rather than accepting Heath's guilty plea and thereby sealing her fate. The unambiguously honorable thing would be for Gilbert to resign and join the movement to end the “war on drugs.” Perhaps in time the judge will do so.

“Prosecutors are driven by statistics and a desire to prevent judges from exercising any control over the sentencing process without regard for the individual,” observes Gilbert. “Although not rising to the level of mean-spiritedness, the words `arbitrary' and `capricious' come to mind.”

Well ... no. This assessment is too mild by a couple orders of magnitude. “Mean-spiritedness” is a term used to describe criticism, not the theft of two decades of a woman's life on a patently dishonest pretext. And there's nothing commendable about Gilbert's restraint in criticizing Massey's little clique. Katie Heath wasn't able to utter a syllable to criticism, lest she be accused of “non-cooperation” with the Feds; Gilbert – as far as I know – is under no similar restraints. He ought to rummage around in his rhetorical nap-sack in search of more potent imprecations and hurl a few of them in Massey's direction.

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Ready for the Next Wave of Sex Abuse Hysteria?

In 1994 a Child Protective Services official instructed his employees to dig up child sex abuse cases to justify the agency's budget. Before long 43 parents and Sunday school teachers in Wenatchee, Wash. had been arrested and charged with nearly 30,000 cases of sex abuse involving 60 children. It wasn't until four years and many ruined lives later that the Wenatchee witch hunt was exposed as a fraud.

A decade later, we seem to be on the verge of another moral panic involving sex abuse, but this time with a new wrinkle: its perpetrators are as young as four years old. Last year a pre-schooler in Waco, Tex. hugged a female aide as he boarded the school bus. The four-year-old's embrace lingered a bit long, and soon the boy was required to defend himself from a charge of sexual harassment. The scarlet letter of "inappropriate physical contact" is now stamped on the child's school records.

In December a kindergartener in Hagerstown, Maryland pinched a classmate's bottom. For that he, too, was branded a sexual harasser. To those who asked how a little boy could understand, much less commit such an action, spokeswoman Carol Mowen came up with this loopy explanation: "It's important to understand a child may not realize that what he or she is doing may be considered sexual harassment, but if it fits under the definition, then it is, under the state's guidelines."

Middle school students in McMinnville, Ore. designated Fridays as Slap Butt Day. Those days "pretty much we would just go around slapping people's butts," recounted Megan Looney. But one day the local police got wind of the racy activities. They came in and arrested 12-year-old Ryan Cornelison and 13-year-old Cory Mashburn, charging each with five counts of felony sex abuse. Six times the teenage boys were subjected to a strip search. Six days later they were released from jail. Then it took the judge six months to hear a motion to dismiss the case, even though the "victims" had signed affidavits saying they wanted the charges to be dropped.

Even respected media organizations are beginning to jump on the sex abuse bandwagon. This past weekend the Associated Press released a report with the five-alarm headline, "Sexual Misconduct Plagues U.S. Schools." The word "plague" suggests a pestilence descending upon schoolhouses in every hill and dale throughout the land. But a closer reading of the article reveals that among 3 million public school teachers nationwide, 500 have their teaching credentials restricted each year due to a sex abuse charge. So cause for concern, yes -- a plague, definitely not.

Lest you accuse me of going wobbly on the horrific crime of child sex abuse, I will remind you that when the Congress held hearings on the problem in the early 1970s, similar white-hot rhetoric was bandied about in a calculated effort to convince the federal government to invest millions to halt the abuse "epidemic."

The bigger problem with the AP study is that was run by journalists, not trained researchers. They only looked at teachers whose credentials had been revoked or restricted, and then concluded "in nearly nine out of 10 cases, they're male." Indeed, every one of the teachers highlighted in the AP article are men. There they go again, those beastly men, this time ravishing young innocents. But hold on a minute.

What about Debra Lafave, the reading teacher in Tampa who admitted to deflowering a 14-year-old boy in her classroom, car, and at home? Have we already forgotten about Mary Kay Letourneau of Washington who had an affair with a sixth-grade boy? Just last week, Meredith Vincent, a home school teacher in Van Nuys, Calif. was arrested for allegedly molesting a 14-year-old boy. And on Friday, Kay Sorg, a science teacher at Albany Middle School, Calif. appeared in court following an accusation of having sex with a high school girl.

According to a 2004 Department of Education report, "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of the Literature," student surveys reveal that only 57% of sex offenders are male. That's a far cry from the nine-in-10 statistic reported by the AP. So how do we explain the discrepancy? A few years ago Myriam S. Denov wrote a book, Perspectives on Female Sex Offending: A Culture of Denial. Denov reveals that when it comes to female-perpetrated sex abuse, we live in a state of selective amnesia. Thanks to chivalrous school administrators, female abusers are often given a second chance and their record stays clean. So before we stick men with the sex offender moniker and ban them from the schools, let's be sure to look at both sides of the sex abuse equation.

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Britain: Paedophile 'being a danger isn't an offence'

A judge has been accused of putting children at risk for refusing to jail a predatory paedophile because "being a danger isn't an offence". Anthony Davies, 19, broke a Sexual Offences Prevention Order — imposed when he was caught with 1,200 indecent images of children — after he persuaded four children, aged 11 and 12, to go with him on a fishing trip without their parents' knowledge. Sentencing, Judge Francis Gilbert QC, who had the power to jail him for five years for breaching the order, ruled that it would be better for Davies to get help rather than go to prison, despite warnings from experts.

It is the second time this year that the judge has courted controversy with lenient sentencing. In April, he refused to jail four women who forced two sobbing toddlers to fight so they could video them.

An MP warned that Judge Gilbert's latest ruling was "putting children at risk". Dan Norris, Labour MP for Wansdyke and a prominent child welfare campaigner, said: "The public should be outraged and dismayed that a man with these convictions is sentenced with this upside down thinking. "The purpose of the courts is to protect the public. The judge's logic is completely outrageous —he is taking a chance and children are being put at risk."

In March, Davies, from Plymouth, admitted possessing 1,200 indecent images of children, including some in the most serious category five, featuring toddlers as young as two. He was jailed for 18 months but freed immediately because he had already spent half the sentence on remand. At the same time, a charge that he abducted a five-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl was dropped while a charge that he indecently assaulted the girl was allowed to remain on file by the Crown.

On his release Davies was made the subject of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, banning contact with children. Within a month he breached it, persuading four children to go on a fishing trip, which landed him back in court. As well as being jailed for breaking the order, he could also have been ordered to serve the outstanding nine months of his previous sentence. The court heard that Davies groomed young children on a self-made internet forum he created in 2004, where he encouraged youngsters to talk about their sex lives.

Several experts' reports described him as being a danger to children, but Judge Francis Gilbert QC told Plymouth Crown Court: "Being a danger isn't an offence, and I have to sentence him for what he has done, not what he may do. "When he breached his SOPO by taking young children fishing, there is no allegation that he attempted to commit an offence against them."

Davies was remanded in custody for his own safety at his mother's request, but is expected to be freed at a hearing in two weeks time. Judge Gilbert adjourned the case for treatment to be arranged and said he hoped to impose a suspended sentence or community order. Michelle Collins, 24, who has two children and lives next door to Davies, said: "I am horrified at the judge's comments and decision. He is a danger and I don't want him anywhere near my children."

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The FBI's right to threaten torture

A federal appeals court has concluded that an FBI agent must go to trial on charges he coerced a false confession out of a prime suspect in the 9/11 attacks. But the FBI still insists that its agent did nothing wrong. And the feds swayed the court to suppress that portion of a recent decision detailing how the FBI agent used the threat of torture to break an innocent man.

Abdallah Higazy, a 30-year-old Egyptian student, arrived in New York City to study engineering at the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn on August 27, 2001. A U.S. foreign-aid program reserved and paid for his room at the Millennium Hilton Hotel, next to the World Trade Center. After the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, Higazy hot-footed it out of the hotel. After the terrorist attack, the hotel was sealed.

Three months later, guests were allowed to retrieve their belongings. When Higazy went to the hotel on December 17, he was arrested and accused of possessing an aviation radio. (A hotel security guard reported finding the radio in a safe in his room.) Higazy denied owning the radio. He was arrested as a material witness and locked up in solitary confinement.

Higazy wanted to clear his name so he agreed to take a polygraph test. FBI agent Michael Templeton wired him up for the test but then proceeded to browbeat him for three hours until he finally admitted to owning the radio. Higazy said the FBI agent warned him, “If you don’t cooperate with us, the FBI will ... make sure Egyptian security gives your family hell.” The FBI refused to permit Higazy’s attorney, Robert Dunn, to be in the room while he was given the polygraph. After the interrogation, Higazy was “trembling and sobbing uncontrollably,” according to Dunn.

On January 11, 2002, Higazy was indicted for lying to a federal agent. U.S. Attorney Dan Himmelfarb declaimed that “the crime that was being investigated when the false statements [about the radio] were made is perhaps the most serious in the country’s history. A radio that can be used for air-to-air and air-to-ground communication is a significant part of that investigation.” The Washington Post noted that “federal officials paraded [Higazy] before the media as a terrorist.” The feds never bothered checking with the U.S. foreign-aid program to find out whether Higazy’s story about why he was staying at the hotel next to the World Trade Center was true.

The prosecutorial celebration flopped three days later when an American pilot showed up at the Millennium Hilton Hotel and asked for the aviation radio he had left in his room when the hotel was evacuated on 9/11. It soon became apparent that the hotel security guard (a former cop who had been fired by the Newark Police Department) had lied about finding the radio in Higazy’s room. The case collapsed and, a few days later, Higazy was awarded $3 for subway fare and released from jail. The FBI conducted an internal investigation and absolved Templeton of any wrongdoing.

In late 2002 Higazy sued, asserting that the FBI’s coercive interrogation violated his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Federal judge Naomi Buchwald dismissed his case, declaring, “[Agent] Templeton’s conduct and threats as a matter of law cannot be classified as conscience-shocking or constitutionally oppressive.” Perhaps Buchwald believed that as long as Higazy’s mother and sister were not brutalized in front of him during the interrogation, the FBI had done nothing wrong.

A federal appeals court overturned this decision on October 19, declaring that Higazy’s case deserved to go to trial. The original version of the decision detailed the tactics Templeton purportedly used to get Higazy’s confession. Two hours later, the court removed that portion of the decision from the Internet. The redacted portion of the decision (captured by bloggers before it was taken down) noted that the FBI agent admitted to knowing that Egyptian “laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country ... yeah, probably about torture, sure.” Thus, Templeton was aware that his threat would terrify Higazy.

The revised court decision replaced such key details with the following mundane notice: “For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy’s statements were coerced.”

The FBI has long taught its agents that subjects of their investigation have “forfeited their right to the truth,” according to the ethics study guide at the FBI Academy. Perhaps, according to federal lawmen, it is a small step from lying to suspects to threatening to have their kinfolk tortured. The agency has done nothing in the nearly six years since this case began to indicate that the methods used in the Higazy case did not receive the full approval of FBI headquarters.

The initial Higazy arrest and release were landmarks showing how far feds would go to gin up evidence and headlines for the war on terror. The fact that the FBI approved of its agent’s methods — and the fact that a federal judge saw no problem with the interrogation — are further warning signs of constitutional decay. Keep your eyes on this case, because it could help determine how far feds can go to destroy innocent people.

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A corrupt British police force

A chief constable is being investigated over his force’s dismissal of child abuse allegations against a judge. The police watchdog stepped in after claims that the officer allowed his professional relationship with the circuit judge to prejudice the force’s actions. The complainant, the judge’s estranged wife, alleged that he gave a child a sexually transmitted disease, viewed child pornography websites and misused transcripts from child abuse cases that he had presided over. There were also allegations of mortgage fraud and domestic violence.

Documents sent to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and seen by The Times said that the force concluded that there was insufficent evidence to even interview the judge and decided not to analyse his computer. The force refused to accept a further complaint from the accuser that the working relationship between the judge and the officer, who worked on a criminal justice panel together, had biased its approach.

The IPCC has now ordered an investigation into the alleged bias. The Times also understands that the case is being investigated by the Judicial Appointments and Conduct Ombudsman, Sir John Brigstocke, who became involved after the allegations about the judge were reported to the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA). The accuser expected it to bar the judge from presiding over child abuse cases. When it did not, the ombudsman was brought in.

A letter to Sir John, also seen by The Times, claims that the DCA also failed to “address an allegation against [the judge] of unhealthy misuse of transcripts relating to child sexual abuse cases”. The complainant alleged that the judge had taken the transcripts home for his own sexual gratification and that police were given a video that showed the judge masturbating.

The case has raised questions about the IPCC’s complaints procedure. When the complainant first contacted the watchdog with her complaints about the police investigation, it told her to submit the complaint in two parts: one about the alleged bias, and one about the perceived failure to follow proper investigatory procedures, such as seizing computers. She did not resubmit the second part, relating to the police investigation, until 28 days after the police force rejected her complaints. The IPCC ruled it to be out of time and therefore could not investigate it.

Its ruling says that the “allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards children, domestic violence and mortgage fraud” did not constitute “special circumstances” allowing it to extend the 28-day period. The force will not be required to reinvestigate the claims against the judge.

The chief executive of the police force authority said: “The IPCC has instructed us to record the complaint but in doing so we need to obtain further information." Asked about the allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards children, the judge said: “It is not a subject I would wish to comment upon in any circumstances.”

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Crooked prosecutors again

A former federal prosecutor and an ex-State Department investigator wanted so badly to win convictions in the nation’s first major terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks that they broke the law themselves, a government attorney said Tuesday. “They crossed over the line from upholding the law to violating it,” Eileen Gleason told jurors in closing arguments in the case against Richard Convertino and Harry Smith III. The two have pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction of justice, making false declarations before a court and conspiracy.

William Sullivan, Convertino’s lawyer, described his client as a hardworking prosecutor who was trying to bust up a terrorist cell and shouldn’t be on trial. “The only motive or intent Mr. Convertino had in this case ... was that he wanted to preserve your safety,” Sullivan told jurors during his closing argument. Convertino and Smith had no reason to conspire to hide evidence because it would have supported the prosecution’s case, Sullivan said. “This case at its fundamental core makes no sense,” Smith’s lawyer, Thomas Cranmer, said during his closing argument.

For two years, Convertino led the government’s case against four North African men accused of operating a “sleeper” terrorist cell. Two of the four, Karim Koubriti and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, were convicted in 2003 of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists, and Convertino won praise from the Bush administration for his successful convictions. Smith helped in the investigation and testified for the government at the trial.

However, a federal judge overturned the verdicts at the Justice Department’s request after prosecutors discovered that some documents that could have aided the defense during the trial were not turned over by the government as required. Convertino was indicted last year on allegations that he conspired to obstruct justice and lied to a federal judge in connection with case. The indictment said Convertino and Smith conspired to keep from defense lawyers photographs of a Jordanian hospital that would have undermined the government’s argument that the alleged Detroit cell made surveillance sketches of the place. Convertino also elicited testimony from Smith and an FBI agent that the sketch matched the hospital and its surrounding area, even though the photographs contradicted that description, the indictment said.

Cranmer, Smith’s lawyer, said the sketch of the hospital turned out to be a minor piece of evidence in the overall case. Defense lawyers also said the government hasn’t proven that Convertino intentionally withheld the photos. The criminal trial before U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow began three weeks ago.

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