Were 401 children seized on a fake phone call?



[Some of the mothers above. See here]

There is an intriguing feature of the raid on the FLDS in Texas that I have not yet seen discussed. The local sheriff, by his account, had left the group alone on the reasonable enough grounds that, whatever might be believed about their marital practices, there had been no actual evidence they were doing anything illegal. As he put it: "But there again, this is the United States," he said. "We are going to respect them. We're not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry."

There was then a phone call to a "family violence center" by a caller who said she was a sixteen year old who had been forced into marriage at fifteen to a fifty year old man who had raped and abused her. She gave her name and the name of the man. Law enforcement authorities moved in, searched the property, and seized 401 children and turned them over to Child Protective Services.

So far, however, they seem to have been unable to identify the girl who made the phone call. They did identify the man she accused--who turned out to be in Arizona, said he hadn't been in Texas since 1977, and has not been arrested, which I assume means that the evidence supports his claim.


Which suggests an obvious conjecture—that the phone call was a fake, possibly by someone in law enforcement who wanted an excuse to raid the ranch, possibly by someone else in the area who disapproved of the FLDS and wanted to set off such a raid. I find it surprising that none of the news stories, at least that I have seen, have even mentioned that possibility.


It is also interesting that of the two people who have actually been arrested so far, one was arrested for "tampering with physical evidence" and the other for "interfering with duties of a public servant." Pretty clearly, both arrests had to do with what happened during the raid, not with any evidence that anyone had been doing anything illegal before the raid.


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Special license plates shield officials from traffic tickets

Jennifer Muir of The Orange County Register reports on the California Department of Motor Vehicles' "Confidential Records Program," which was created 30 years ago to keep DMV records of police officers private from criminals. The program has since expanded to cover "hundreds of thousands of public employees - from police dispatchers to museum guards - who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too."

Muir discovered that drivers covered under the Confidential Records Program abuse the system by evading toll road charges, running red lights at intersections with red light cameras, parking illegally, and breaking other traffic laws with impunity. Excerpts:

Some patrol officers let drivers with protected plates off with a warning because the plates signal that the drivers are "one of their own" or related to someone who is.

The Register used public records laws to obtain OCTA computer logs for the 91 Express Lanes and found 14,535 unpaid trips by motorists with confidential plates in the past five years. A Register analysis showed that was 3,722 separate vehicles, some running the toll road hundreds of times.

Among the top violators on OCTA's list were Dwight and Michell Storay (he's a parole agent with the Department of Corrections), with 622 violations and Lenai and Arnold Carraway (she's an Orange County social worker), with 239 violations.

Some police officers confess that when they pull over someone with a confidential license plate they're more likely to let them off with a warning. In most cases, one said, if an officer realizes a motorist has a confidential plate, the car won't be pulled over at all. "It's an unwritten rule that we would extend professional courtesy," said Ron Smith, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer who worked patrol for 23 years. "Nine out of 10 times I would."

Many police departments that run red light camera programs systematically dismiss citations issued to confidential plates.

"It's a courtesy, law enforcement to law enforcement," San Francisco Police Sgt. Tom Lee said. "We let it go."

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Atrocious treatment of "rescued" mothers and children

The mothers of children removed from a West Texas polygamist sect's ranch after an abuse allegation are appealing to Gov. Rick Perry for help. In a letter sect members say was mailed to Perry on Saturday, the mothers from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints claim some of their children have become sick and even required hospitalization. They also say children have been questioned about things they know nothing about since they were placed in the legal custody of the state. Perry's spokesman Robert Black said Sunday that he has not seen the letter and couldn't comment.

Some 416 children were rounded up and placed in temporary custody in a raid that began 11 days ago, after a domestic violence hot line recorded a complaint from a 16-year-old girl. She said she was suffering physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her 50-year-old husband. The one-page letter, signed by three women who claim they represent others, says about 15 mothers were away from the property when their children were removed. "We were contacted and told our homes had been raided, our children taken away with no explanation, and because of law enforcement blockade preventing entering or leaving the ranch, we were unable to get to our homes and had no-where to go," it said. "As of Wednesday, April 9, 2008, we have been permitted to return to our empty, ransacked homes, heartsick and lonely."

The mothers said they want Perry to examine the conditions in which the removed children have been placed. "You would be appalled," the letter said. "Many of our children have become sick as a result of the conditions they have been placed in. Some have even had to be taken to the hospital. Our innocent children are continually being questioned on things they know nothing about. The physical examinations were horrifying to the children. The exposure to these conditions is traumatizing them."

Asked about claims that children were hospitalized, state Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marissa Gonzalez said she had not seen the letter and would have to review it before commenting.

On Sunday, state officials enforced a judge's order to confiscate the cell phones of the women and children removed from the polygamous sect's private ranch. [The North Korean and Cuban regimes would understand. What harm can a phone do??] The emergency order was sought by attorneys ad litem for 18 girls from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who are now in the legal custody of the state, Gonzalez said. The order carries an April 13 date and was signed at 9:20 a.m. by state District Judge Barbara J. Walther. It calls for the removal of all electronic communication devices including phones, PDAs and smart phones. In a copy of the order provided to the AP, lawyers said the phones should be confiscated "to prevent improper communication [Nothing worse than improper communication!], tampering with witnesses and to ensure no outside inhibitors to the attorney-client relationship." Gonazalez estimated that at least 50 phones were taken.

The children are currently being housed in San Angelo's historic Fort Concho and at the nearby Wells Fargo pavilion. About 140 women from the ranch are also with the children, although they are not in state custody.

In their telephone calls, women and children had been calling relatives to report they are living in cramped conditions — cots cribs and playpens are lined up side-by-side — and that many of the children are afraid. [The truth must not get out!] An FLDS man who told the AP that his family members are among those inside the fort called the removal of phones a punishment. "This was nothing more than retaliation of CPS to punish those who were disclosing whiat is really happening behind that wall of this concentration camp," said Don, who asked that only his first name be used.

Affidavits filed by child protection workers said that upon investigating, they found a pattern of abuse existed at the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, about 45 miles south of San Angelo. The 1,700-acre fenced ranch, a former game preserve, was bought by the FLDS in 2003. A number of large dormitory-style homes have been built, along with a small medical facility, a cheese factory, a rock quarry, water treatment plant and a towering, white limestone temple.

Authorities said they have not yet located the teenage mother whose call for help triggered the raid at the ranch. Texas authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the alleged husband, a man identified as Dale Barlow of Colorado City, Ariz., one of two communities on the Utah-Arizona border that have been the traditional home-base of the secretive church. Texas Rangers met with Barlow and his probation officer in St. George, Utah on Saturday, but did not arrest him. Barlow is serving three years probation after pleading no contest to sexual misconduct with a minor — a teenager to whom he was spiritually married.

"As for Mr. Barlow, we are continuing to look into whether we have a warrant on the correct person," said Tela Mange, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety. "Until we are able to locate and talk with the complainant it will be difficult for us to know for certain the correct identity of the alleged suspect." The sect practices polygamy in arranged marriage that often pair underage girls with older men. The faith believes the practice will brings glorification in heaven. A judge will decide this week if the children will remain in state custody or return to their families [How wonderful to have such power over the mother-child relationship!]. Hearings are scheduled for Monday and Thursday.

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British Lawyer who killed wife may inherit $4 million

A lawyer who killed his unfaithful wife has been freed after serving less than half of his jail sentence and could now inherit her 2 million pound fortune. Christopher Lumsden, 55, was released on licence after serving only two years of a five-year sentence for stabbing his wife Alison to death after she admitted having an affair.

He was acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter after claiming he was suffering from an abnormality of the mind at the time of the killing. Lumsden, who served his time in Sudbury Open Prison in Derbyshire, could now inherit the 1.4 million home in Bowdon, near Altrincham, Cheshire, where he carried out the attack. That would be in addition to the 1 million his 53-year-old wife left him in her will

Sheila Hannam-Andrews, of Support After Murder and Manslaughter, a group for the relatives of people who have been killed, said: "The sentence is ridiculous and now it looks like he will benefit from everything."

Lumsden, formerly a managing partner in the international law firm Pinsent Masons, stabbed the mother of his two children more than 30 times with a kitchen knife after she returned from a dinner date with her lover. He launched the "ferocious" attack in their Cheshire home five days after finding out that she wanted to leave him for the family friend. Afterwards he claimed to have virtually no recollection of the assault.

In addressing the court during his trial, Lumsden said he wanted to offer "a crumb of comfort" to his relatives and his wife's family. Watched by his children, Thomas, 20, and Kate, 17, in the public gallery, he went on: "If there was anything I could do to atone for this appalling tragedy, or even reduce by the smallest amount the anguish, pain and suffering I have caused, I would do it. If there was anything I could say that expressed the depth of my shame, sorrow and remorse, I would say it."

He served only two years of his sentence because the 11 months he had spent in jail before the trial was taken into account. The court heard that, before the killing, Lumsden had been diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy and doctors suggested that he might have only three years to live.

The couple moved into separate bedrooms and Lumsden began to shut himself off from their social life. Mrs Lumsden continued to socialise alone and embarked on an affair with a family friend, Roger Flint, in the month before the killing.

Lumsden will remain "on licence" until March 2010, which means he is liable to be recalled to prison if he commits any other offence. He is not free to return to work as a lawyer because he was struck off while he was in jail.

Usually a person convicted of manslaughter cannot inherit from the person they have killed. In this case, it is likely the money will be placed in trust for Lumsden's two children. Lumsden would have to apply to a court which has the power to make an exception and allow the inheritance depending on the circumstances of the case, for example if the killer suffered from a mental disorder at the time of the death. [Which is what this guy has claimed]

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Sri Lankan man freed after 55 years without charge

And we think we have it bad! Though there was a similar case in England some time back where there was a 70-year period involved! Mental patients are always at severe risk of being detained unjustly, the Mallard case in Australia, for instance

A Sri Lankan court has released a man who was held in custody for 55 years without charge, a report said. Thantriye Emis Singho, 83, was arrested by police in 1953 for carrying a sword in a Colombo suburb. A court sent him to a state-run mental hospital for treatment, the Daily Mirror newspaper said. "Although he had been transferred to the cured persons' unit at the hospital, no authority had inquired after him or produced him in court," the newspaper said.

Singho's plight was discovered by a human rights lawyer and a social worker who were doing a study on mental patients. They traced the man's relatives and won a court order to secure his release last Thursday. Earlier this year, another 80-year-old man who spent 50 years in custody at the same state-run mental hospital without facing charges was freed.

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Children of polygamy cult torn from mothers

Social workers punishing the innocent. So what else is new? What social worker cares about traumatizing children? Instead, the social creeps await DNA results to reunite family members

OUTSIDE the walls of Fort Concho, a former US cavalry station deep in the heart of Texas, a flock of slight young women were wailing and tearing at their long, pink and blue gingham dresses. Inside the fort 400 children, removed last weekend from the nearby compound of a polygamy cult amid allegations of rape and child abuse, heard the commotion and cried out for the parents they had not seen for days.

Even for casehardened social workers flown in from Arizona and Utah to help soothe distraught children, ranging from infants to 17-year-olds, the scale of the distress was heartrending. “We want to reunite the girls and boys with their mothers, but right now we don’t know who belongs with whom [How about asking?] , so we’re asking for mothers to wait until we match up DNA samples,” said a spokesman for child protection services in San Angelo. “We understand how awful this is for everyone, but we’ll arrange supervised visits over the next few days.” Many of the teenage girls are pregnant after being forcibly married to strangers who treated them as servants. Cut off from the world, they have been brainwashed into believing they must obey husbands far older than them or face a beating as punishment.

Toys donated by the local Wal-Mart supermarket last week were dazzling to children for whom entertainment had previously revolved around needle-point sessions between grinding daily chores. These tasks consisted largely of sweeping desert dust out of the polygamists’ imposing limestone temple, the massive centrepiece of the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch 40 miles from San Angelo.

The 1,700-acre ranch was purchased in 2004 by followers of Warren Jeffs, a self-proclaimed prophet and leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. The group split from mainstream Mormons in the 1890s after they outlawed polygamy. Jeffs and his followers believe men must “seal” as many wives as possible in “celestial marriages” so they can go to heaven and the women can be closer to God’s wife Gonhorra, who lives on a faraway planet.

Fundamentalist polygamy favours middle-aged men who chase away younger rivals with accusations of heresy and marry girls as young as 13. Their brides must be white, as Jeffs proclaimed that “the devil always brings evil unto earth through the black people”.

A few months after he appeared on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, Jeffs was stopped during a routine traffic check in 2006. In his car police found $55,000, 16 mobile phones and disguises, including three wigs and 12 pairs of sunglasses. The 52-year-old preacher was jailed on two counts of being an accomplice to rape, with more charges pending, but is said to be running the cult from his prison cell.

Texas police, who were criticised last week for being slow to investigate the ranch, admitted they had been wary about provoking a siege like the one at Waco in 1993, when a routine search for guns escalated into a 51-day standoff between the FBI and another cult, the Branch Davidian. It ended in a pitched battle that cost 80 lives. The Texas Rangers finally took action on the Yearning for Zion ranch after a desperate call from a young woman two weeks ago. She claimed she was 16, had been impregnated and beaten by a cult elder, and was in fear for her life. The police obtained warrants based on her testimony, which included the suggestion that the elders had up to 20 wives each, mostly of whom had been married under the minimum legal age.

Police arrived at the ranch at 5.30pm on April 3 and pushed their way through a cordon of men in order to force open the doors of the temple, where they found safes stuffed with cash and a tousled bed, which they suspect was used for the consummation of “celestial” marriages.

Last week a total of more than 500 women and children were taken from the compound, but police have yet to find the distraught teenager who tipped them off. They fear that her 50-year-old “husband”, named as Dale Evans Barlow, may have absconded with her. A man of the same name is said to be living across the border in Arizona, where he once served 45 days in jail for having sex with a 16-year-old minor. He admits having three wives and 22 children but claims not to know the girl the police are seeking. Arnold Jessop, who says he is a friend of Barlow’s, said his teenage marriages “seemed to me to be very natural and proper, in the tradition of Abraham who also had multiple wives”.

Some who have escaped from polygamist communities hope the police will now stop turning a blind eye to a dozen other fundamentalist compounds in Utah, Arizona and Nevada, where up to 40,000 polygamists live.

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Man freed after wrongful conviction forgives witness who lied

Police "coaching" again

LOS ANGELES—Willie Earl Green, caged for a quarter-century for a murder he didn't commit, has every reason to be bitter after the lies of a drug-addled witness put him behind bars for nearly half his life. But moments after his release Thursday, the 56-year-old Green basked in sunshine outside the downtown courthouse and graciously said he forgave prosecutors and the witness who recanted. "You know, that's why they put erasers on pencils, because we all make mistakes," he said as he walked free for the first time since 1983. "Today is a glorious day."

Green was convicted of murdering 25-year-old Denise "Dee Dee" Walker in a South Los Angeles crack house and sentenced to 33 years to life in prison. Four years ago, witness Willie Finley—a convicted killer and drug dealer—told Green's attorneys he was high on crack when the woman was murdered and didn't get a good look at the shooter because he had been pistol-whipped and couldn't see well. Finley also said a detective coached him to identify Green in a photo lineup.

"I was wrongly accused," Green said. "I'm out now, I'm not bitter, I'm happy. This is the best thing that ever happened to me right here." It appeared Green would need some time to adjust to life outside prison. When a reporter's cell phone rang, the astonished Green said he had never used or touched such a gadget. Someone gave him a phone, and he began to tremble when he held it in his hands . "Take it back before I drop it," he said.

Green boasted of his accomplishments while in San Quentin: He earned a degree, taught math to other inmates and fell in love with his penpal Mary. They married in 1991 and intend to live in her Chowchilla home. "I'm a better man today," Green said. "I teach men that a whole lot of people gave up on."

Green had sought a new trial for years, contending the witness had lied. Green eventually won the support of the forewoman of the jury and the legal backing of Centurion Ministries, a nonprofit group that advocates for the release of wrongfully convicted prisoners.

Superior Court Judge Stephen A. Marcus overturned the conviction last week, saying Green did not receive a fair trial because jurors never heard enough of Finley's story to evaluate his credibility. Prosecutors said they would not oppose his release, and Green was freed by an order from Marcus. Asked if the criminal justice system failed him, Green replied: "The same system that put me in jail is the same system that got me out."

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$1.25m compensation for 24 years in prison

He did not get a fair trial in the first place but, even if he had, mistaken eyewitness identification would probably have convicted him. Mistaken identification of blacks is common. There is clearly some degree of "They all look the same"

Florida state has paid $US1.25m to a man who spent 24 years in jail before DNA evidence in 2006 cleared him of all wrongdoing. "No dollar amount can replace the time Alan lost in prison,'' Governor Charlie Crist said after signing a state law compensating Jerome Alan Crotzer, 46, for the time he lost. Mr Crotzer was sentenced to 130 years for attempted armed robbery and two rapes in 1982, when DNA evidence was unavailable at trials. DNA tests conducted in 2006 exonerated him from the crimes and he was set free. During his imprisonment, Mr Crotzer earned a university degree in education and worked as a gardener, gaining a licence in pest control".

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BACKGROUND

On July 8, 1981, three men forced their way into a Tampa, Florida, home. One of the assailants was armed with a shotgun. The five people inside the home were threatened with the gun and robbed. Two of the victims, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old girl were taken from the home and forced to get into the trunk of the assailants’ car. They were driven to a dark, wooded area.

The victims were removed from the trunk. One of the assailants forced the adult female victim to the front of the car, where she was raped orally and vaginally. According to her testimony, this assailant did not ejaculate. A second assailant took the 12-year-old victim to the back of the car and raped her. This second assailant then raped the adult victim as well. She testified that this assailant did ejaculate. According to both victims, the third assailant remained in the car the entire time and did not participate in the rapes. Both victims were left tied to trees. They were able to free themselves, went to a nearby house, and contacted the police. Both rape victims were taken to a hospital, where rape kits were collected.

The robbery victims left in the home managed to untie themselves. Two of them were able to record the license plate number of the Buick that the assailants were driving. They attempted to follow the car but lost sight of it. They then contacted the police.

The Investigation

Police ran the license plate number that they were given. The car used in the crime was registered to a St. Petersburg resident. The St. Petersburg police were contacted and a group of photographs was assembled that included a picture of the car’s owner. The photographs were shown to the rape victims while they were in the hospital. Neither victim was able to make an identification from the photographs. Two of the robbery victims made tentative identifications of the car’s owner, but they were not positive about their identifications.

On July 9, 1981, another photographic array was assembled. This array included a photograph of the car’s owner and also photographs of Douglas James and Alan Crotzer. Police also discovered that the car’s owner had been incarcerated on the day of the crime and that Douglas James had borrowed the car. The photographic arrays were shown to the victims. The adult rape victim made a positive of Douglas James and Alan Crotzer. One of the robbery victims also identified Douglas James.

The next day, the victims were shown more photographs. This time, the array also included the picture of Douglas James’ brother, Corlenzo. Three of the victims, including both rape victims, identified Corlenzo James as the third assailant.

Alan Crotzer was identified as the assailant that carried the shotgun, the same assailant that raped both victims.

The Biological Evidence

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) tested samples from the rape kits collected. Semen was identified on the adult rape victim’s vaginal swabs, underwear, and clothing. Blood typing included both Crotzer and the victim. FDLE did not identify semen on any of the samples from the other rape kit.

Two hairs were subjected to microscopic examination. An FDLE analyst testified that two hairs recovered from the adult victim’s rape kit could have come from Alan Crotzer and Corlenzo James, respectively.

The Trial

Corlenzo James pled guilty to robbery and burglary charges. Douglas James and Alan Crotzer were tried together. Crotzer tried to have his trial severed from that of Douglas James, who was representing himself, but was unsuccessful. Douglas James pursued a consent defense with regard to the adult rape victim while Crotzer continued to claim that he was never there, never participated in any of the crimes, and had no knowledge of the crimes. All five victims made in-court identifications of Crotzer. He was specifically identified as the perpetrator who wielded the shotgun and raped both victims. Crotzer testified that he had been with his girlfriend on the night of the crime. They were with a friend and then with various members of his girlfriend’s family that night.

Based on identifications made by the victims and serological evidence, Crotzer was convicted of sexual battery, kidnapping, aggravated assault, burglary, robbery, and attempted robbery. On April 22, 1982, Crotzer was convicted of all charges. He was sentenced to 130 years in prison.


Post-Conviction

Crotzer continued to proclaim his innocence. It was not until 2003, however, that he was able to secure access to the evidence from his trial, which was being preserved at an FDLE laboratory. The spermatozoa found on the evidence, consisting of six slides, was subjected to three rounds of DNA testing at three different laboratories. Prosecutors agreed that the evidence should be tested.

The last round of testing, performed at Forensic Science Associates, confirmed what Crotzer had claimed since his arrest: he could not have been the man that raped the victims. Specifically, the spermatozoa found on a slide recovered from the rape kit of the adult female rape victim came from an unknown male. It could not have come from Crotzer, either of the James brothers, or the victim’s husband.

Further, Douglas James has confirmed that he and his brother committed the crime with a childhood friend, not with Crotzer. James and Crotzer did not even know each other prior to the 1982 trial.


On January 23, 2006, Alan J. Crotzer’s conviction was overturned and he was released. He walked out of the courthouse with members of his family and legal team, David Menschel, Sam Roberts, Martin McClain, and Jenny Greenberg of the Florida Innocence Initiative. Crotzer had spent 24 years in prison for a crime he did not commit


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Bigotry on the Prairie

Hundreds of people are taken into custody on the complaint of one girl who was apparently not even there

The assumptions underlying secularism's embrace of promiscuity are essentially polygamous. Who cares, secularists say, if people aren't monogamous over the course of their lives? After all, the principle upon which monogamy rests -- that sexual love possesses by nature an exclusive, permanent, and procreative character -- is annoyingly antiquated and was long ago discarded, clearing the path for a glorious lifetime of multiple partners, easy divorce, maybe a detour or two into homosexuality, and if all else fails a Clintonian open marriage.

Polygamy is just a more organized and immediate form of promiscuity, lining the women up all at once instead of pacing them out over time. But the illuminati -- most of whom have an assortment of spouses, just not simultaneously, through habitual divorce -- still recoil at the sight of the polygamous "Yearning for Zion ranch" in Eldorado, Texas. Very troubling indeed. While they chuckle at HBO's Big Love, they blanche at polygamy on the prairie.

Perhaps if the polygamous Texas patriarchs looked more like Bill Paxton and less like Charles Ingalls, perhaps if they opened up a bathhouse instead of a compound, they would win the approval of the elite and privacy advocates. Apparently Lawrence v. Texas -- which progressive guardians praised for establishing a constitutional right to define morality anyway one likes without interference from "the community" -- won't be kicking in for the Yearning for Zion ranch.

How quickly the Texas authorities have forgotten Anthony Kennedy's important musings on the "mystery of human life" and the sanctity of personal autonomy against intrusive moralists and statists.

A GOVERNMENT RAID on a neighborhood in San Francisco -- to pluck adopted children from the arms of gay couples lest their orgies corrupt them -- would cause days of disquiet amongst reporters. But this raid feels right to them. "Our hearts go out to the children," groaned an anguished FOX anchor, as she watched the women and children trooped off to state services. Since these children and women are in obvious need of enlightenment from the state -- they wear 19th-century prairie attire and spend part of their days quilting -- its rounding up of hundreds of them needn't provoke close media scrutiny or calls for circumspection from social libertarians.

I liked this headline on an Associated Press story: "Life on Texas polygamist compound old-fashioned, but far from pleasant, authorities say." Far from pleasant? Well, that doesn't sound very good. While the state is at it, concerned that minors are marrying older men, why doesn't it also raid NEA-run public schools? They don't seem too terribly troubled that underage girls might be having sex with older men and even outfit them with contraceptives to contain the consequences of such statutory rape.

IN A SOCIETY that has normalized the corruption of children and teens, whether by crazy sects or by secularist craziness, the work of "Children's protective services" always looks comically arbitrary. Nothing really qualifies as the "corruption" of teens at this point, except maybe smoking (nicotine, not pot), which is why Bill Paxton's Big Love caused delight amongst elite critics (it is "gracefully odd," one said) and blase acceptance by the public.

As if to emphasize the point that promiscuous America was ready for polygamy to assume its place at the table of the sexual revolution, if only to munch on its crumbs, Paxton disclosed that he used Bill Clinton as a model for his character. HBO worried at first about the "yuck factor," but that concern quickly passed, since most shows are predicated on sexual free-wheeling and the tricky juggling of multiple affairs.

Since marriage is man-made anyways, elite reasoning goes, what's the big deal if humans unmake it and squeeze polygamy into newer and more elastic models of it? Open marriage, plural marriage -- does it matter? It is not as if children need one father and one mother, as homosexualists repeatedly argue, and married couples certainly shouldn't be expected to stay together for the welfare of children. Maybe the literature down at Children's Protective Services will need to be changed -- Heather Now Has Seven Mommies -- but that's a quick fix.

After the launch of Big Love, nobody in the mainstream media, as far as I could tell, even raised a moral objection in defense of children. If they raised an objection at all, it reflected concern not for minors but for women exploited by dirty dog patriarchs who have benefited from the confusions of the sexual revolution. The handcuffed patriarchs at the Yearning for Zion ranch must be muttering to themselves: How come we don't get to join this parade?

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California Punishes Wrongfully Convicted Man a Second Time

Good Lord! A "sassy" judge!

Last month, I mentioned the case of James Ochoa, an Orange County, California man wrongly convicted and imprisoned for 16 months for carjacking. The state of California is now refusing to compensate Ochoa for his wrongful conviction because, they say, by accepting a plea bargain, Ochoa contributed to his own railroading. A glimpse at the facts of this case shows why that decision is absurd. The OC Weekly reports:

Robert Fitzgerald, a sassy Superior Court judge with an embarrassing track record of being rebuked by appellate courts for judicial improprieties, confronted Ochoa outside the presence of the jury with this offer: Plead guilty and get a two-year-prison sentence, or face the possibility of life in prison if you continue the trial and the jury finds you guilty.

Here's what Ochoa was thinking:

The threat frightened Ochoa. Later, he described to me the factors in his decision: how the Buena Park police detectives had raided his parents’ house and arrested him for a crime he didn’t commit; how prosecutors had refused to consider the weakness of their case; and, finally, of the white, suburban-dominated Orange County jury members, whom, he believed, would accept law enforcement’s word as gospel.

Two years versus life. Taking the plea wasn't part of some elaborate scheme to defraud the state out of wrongful conviction compensation. It was an act of self-preservation. I probably would have done the same thing. And his suspicions about the system that was prosecuting him were probably more justified than even Ochoa knew at the time.

Remember, this is the case where DNA testing showed that the hair left at the crime scene did not match Ochoa. According to the crime lab technician who conducted the testing, that result was met with fierce resistance from the prosecutors' office, who on two occasions asked her to change her results. Talk about adding insult to injury. Neither the judge nor the prosecutors have suffered any repercussions for their behavior. Indeed, post-exoneration, the only person being punished for his role in the railroading of James Ochoa . . . is James Ochoa.

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AUSTRALIAN POLICE AT WORK

In two Australian States

Qld. police union backs police fraud

And no attempt is being made to find the offenders

THE police union has openly encouraged its members to keep faking random breath tests to meet "impossible" targets. At the same time efforts to track down police faking the tests have been scrapped because the police service does not have the resources despite an official investigation into the practice. The Courier-Mail last year revealed officers had been manipulating RBT machines to generate fake tests as they struggled with impossibly high targets.

The practice has probably skewed drink-driving statistics for years, hiding the size of the problem, and led police and the Crime and Misconduct Commission to set up an investigation. However, after uncovering "deficiencies" in police records and questioning some data, the investigation was wrapped up due to lack of resources even as some regions upped their targets.

Writing in the March Police Union Journal, northern region representative Mick Barnes suggested increases of up to "tens of thousands" of tests would further strain operational police, possibly leading to more "rubbery" figures. "Ask a traffic officer that's (sic) been around for a while and you'll find the best way to reduce the likelihood of drink-driving in our community is to sit off the pubs again," he wrote. "This was the tried and tested method when operational police had the time to proactively police instead of running between jobs. In the meantime keep exercising those thumbs," he said, referring to the method of placing a thumb over the machine's air intake to generate a false reading.

Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson recently offered regional assistant commissioners "flexibility" to adjust targets as police grappled to find the most effective testing strategy. "We need to find what the right amount of random breath testing is," Mr Atkinson said. "We haven't got that right yet and it may be that that varies from place to place." He admitted police did not have the resources to fully investigate the fake tests but denied the practice was widespread. "No one to my knowledge has put up their hand and admitted they fudged the tests," he said. "To conduct an extensive investigation into each RBT return . . . would tie up a huge amount of resources for a long period of time."

A police source said the internal investigation was destined to fail because of a lack of resources, but officers had stopped faking tests for a while after being exposed. Mr Atkinson said some regional assistant commissioners were reducing test quotas because the previous target of one breath test per licensed driver was "too onerous". The South Eastern Region cut its target to 85 per cent of licensed drivers, while Metropolitan South and parts of the Southern Region cut the target to 90 per cent.

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Another Australian police force with high ethical standards (NOT)

There are so many crooks that they are "too many" to prosecute, apparently. So they all get off scot-free!

HUNDREDS of police officers across South Australia caught using their work computers to illegally copy movie DVDs will escape prosecution. The activity - strictly banned under federal copyright laws - was detected during an audit conducted by the information technology branch of SA Police. Senior police, including Commissioner Mal Hyde, have been briefed on the extent of the problem.

An internal email to police management said the audit had "identified a number of instances where commercial DVD movies have been copied to the hard-drives of police computers which potentially had been burnt to blank DVDs". "This practice is potentially a breach of copyright and misuse of SAPOL equipment," it said. "Branch managers are requested to take measures to ensure this practice must not occur and to remind members (officers) of the policies relating to the use of SAPOL computer equipment."

Police sources have told The Advertiser an official investigation, which could lead to criminal charges, will not be conducted because of the large number of police officers involved in copying DVDs. Mr Hyde's spokeswoman, Roberta Heather, confirmed his senior executive group had been briefed on the results of the computer audit. "A recommendation was made that identified work areas should remind members of the need to comply with SAPOL's policy in regard to the appropriate use of work systems and legislative requirements," she said. Ms Heather said police computer systems regularly were audited "and appropriate action is taken where any breach of legislation or policy is detected".

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft said it would write to Mr Hyde to seek an explanation. Under federal laws, severe penalties can be imposed on video piracy. Penalties include fines of up to $60,500 for individuals and up to $302,500 for corporations for each individual infringement, and up to five years' imprisonment.

Report here. (Via Australian Politics)




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State and local housing councils act as prosecutor, judge and jury against perceived discrimination

A few little words could cost Dan Bader a fortune. In 2006, Bader advertised an apartment for rent on Craigslist. He wanted $1,950 a month for the adjoining 480-square foot unit in back of his Newport Beach home. As an afterthought, he added, "Well suited for professional adults" and "Perfect for 1 or 2 professionals."

Bad move. That fall, the state notified Bader that the Fair Housing Council of Orange County had filed a complaint against him for "possible discrimination" against people with children. That was a surprise because he says previous tenants had children. Bader eventually agreed to a meeting. But when Bader arrived at the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing office in Los Angeles, he says he found a surprise: The council wasn't represented. Only bureaucrats were there.

Bader says two state employees told him the state had determined he does not discriminate, but the ads were still a problem. He says they told him the complaint would be dropped if he paid the council $4,000 for expenses and agreed to take five years of the council's landlord classes at an additional cost. Bader thought that sounded like extortion, so he refused to settle. In November, the state slapped him with a housing discrimination lawsuit seeking "unlimited" damages on behalf of the council. The case is still pending. "I'm so upset, I can't believe it," said Bader, 56.

Welcome to the weird world of fair housing enforcement. While the above proceedings might appear unfair, my research indicates they actually illustrate how the process is supposed to work. The law provides special rights for groups like the fair housing council. The Fair Housing Council of Orange County and others insist they act ethically. Critics disagree. "There's an imbalance of power," said Los Angeles attorney Stephen C. Johnson, who's been involved in several cases similar to Bader's.

Fair housing groups are charged with enforcing the law, but they can also seek money from the people they bust. Johnson said there's nothing to stop them from abusing their power. Time after time, he said, he's seen these groups use their legal privileges to squeeze landlords. "They're not regulated," he said, adding that government isn't likely to pull their funding.

You read that right: Fair housing councils are funded primarily by your tax dollars. So, in Bader's case, his money not only pays for the state's lawsuit against him, it also funds for the agency accusing him. Nice, huh?

For more information on this bizarre world, I turned to Shanna Smith, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based National Fair Housing Alliance, the umbrella organization for nonprofit enforcement groups. Smith told me the first of these organizations were founded in the 1960s during the civil rights movement, but many more were added in the 1980s when the federal government began offering grants for fair housing enforcement. Today, she said, there are roughly 75 such nonprofits nationwide.

On my own, I found that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development gave $6.5 million to eight California organizations from 2004 to 2007. Orange County's group received three grants for a total of $443,800. "Most of the fair housing groups are in California, Chicago and Ohio," Smith said.

As you'd expect, Smith said these organizations are vital to a healthy society. The national alliance estimates nearly 4 million cases of housing discrimination occur in the United States each year. Government doesn't have the time or the training to fight it, but nonprofits do, Smith said. Besides filing complaints and monitoring Craigslist, one their biggest activities is undercover testing. That's where nonprofits will send, say, a white person and a black person to a landlord to see if they're treated differently. "Most fair housing centers don't wait for consumers to walk through the door because most consumers don't recognize discrimination because it's very, very subtle," Smith said. The only way to find it is through research.

For this trouble, the courts have granted nonprofits a special perk, Smith said. Courts allow them to seek money from accused landlords to cover the cost of their investigations and to re-educate people about the law. That explains why Bader was asked for $4,000. But Smith actually seemed to understand Bader's frustration. She indicated the state made a mistake by not having the council represented at the meeting in Los Angeles. "I don't think it's a good process," Smith said. "I think people need to have a face to face."

I tried asking the state Fair Employment and Housing department about Bader's case, but spokesman Bill Branch told me he couldn't talk because the matter was pending in court. Apparently, however, it's standard practice for the department to keep parties separate during negotiations in order to cool things down and find middle ground.

Bader, for his part, appears madder at the council and said recent legal actions suggest the nonprofit was trying to shake him down. The council's board is suing its CEO, D. Elizabeth Pierson, for allegedly interfering with a misuse of funds probe. And that probe, among other things, is looking into allegations that grant money was directed to fill other financial gaps in the agency. "My conjecture is they needed money, so let's just start filing complaints," Bader said.

I asked Pierson to comment on Bader's case, but she said she couldn't go into specifics because the case was pending. In an e-mail, however, she wrote that Bader's accusations "lack any basis in fact. Certainly DFEH would not participate in that sort of unethical conduct and I would never condone it." Strong words – but even weak ones can cost you.

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Court says you must not know in advance whom you will live with

Living with another person always requires intimacy -- even if the other person is just a friend. It is almost the equivalent of a marriage but normally without the sexual/romantic element. Now the government says that when you are looking to share a home with someone you have no right to ask their sexual orientation.

Roommates.com was a service to help individuals find others with whom they could share a home. But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says asking the sexual orientation of the potential roommate violates anti-discrimination laws.

Apparently a gay individual wishing to share with another gay person is violating the law. Apparently they would be violating the "rights" of any straight person who inquires about the premises. This is politicians overriding the private, voluntary wishes of millions of people.

Many gay individuals have had bad experiences of harassment yet, if they wish to make sure they are living in an atmosphere where they feel safe and comfortable, they are not allowed to ask the potential roommate if they too are gay. In fact they would not be allowed to advertise for gay roommates. In the name of some vaunted theory of "equality" the politicians force millions of people into wasting hours of their time.

How do they do this? First, people will do their best to only share living quarters when they feel comfortable with the other person. So the ad may not mention sexual orientation but people will find other ways of asking. Some will just ask and most will get away with violating the law. Some will look for hints. If a gay landlord is looking for a gay tenant he can advertise for roommates in a gay publication where it is unlikely to be read by straights. But people will spend time going to interviews where they will be rejected. If the two individuals could have clarified things right at the start they would save lots of time and money.

Government regulations in this area only forces inefficiencies on millions of people. And it doesn't do anything to make people better off. Don't blame the courts here. They are enforcing the law but the law is an ass. The asses in question here are the misnamed "Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley" and the "Fair Housing Council of San Diego." What is fair about trying to force people to live together who will be unhappy doing so?

Even if we accept the logic of most "fair housing" laws those laws tend to apply to selling housing to others--not living with them. If you can't discriminate about who it is that you live with you have lost a large measure of control over your life. There is no fairness in coercing people to share homes who don't want to. It is tyranny instead.

The people most likely to suffer from this will be sexual minorities. Straights wanting to share with straights will find it easy. Most their applicants will be straight and they can play the odds. But gay roommates will be the ones who have the hardest time finding others and they will be forbidden from asking. There is a reason you won't hear of roommate services for heterosexuals only while services such as this one exist for gays only. These laws harm some of the very people that the government says they are trying to protect.

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Only 4 years?

Another British travesty of justice

Two teenagers were sentenced to four years’ detention yesterday for killing a gifted IT expert after he objected to them throwing a chocolate bar into his car. Evren Anil, 23, was sitting with his sister at traffic lights in her car in Gipsy Hill, southeast London, when Patrick Rowe, 17, threw a half-chewed Lion bar through the vehicle’s open window. Mr Anil, a first-class honours graduate in IT, who had just started his dream job as a programme developer, made the fatal mistake of remonstrating with Rowe and his friend Dejon Thompson, 16. Mr Anil got out of the vehicle and threw the chocolate bar back at them, only for one of the boys to produce a 4in knife from his trousers.

As Elif Anil screamed, a knife was held to her brother’s throat and he was then punched in the face so hard that his skull was fractured and he suffered a haemorrhage. Mr Anil, who helped schoolchildren with maths in his spare time, died of severe head injuries eight days after the attack in August of last year.

An elderly passerby, Derek Porter, bravely tried to intervene after seeing one of the youths pull out a knife and threaten Mr Anil “as if challenging him like a gunfighter from a western film”, the Old Bailey was told. Another witness, Susan Hunt, said: “He fell straight to the floor, his body limp like a doll, hitting his head heavily against the kerb.”

Judge Ann Goddard lifted restrictions banning the teenagers from being identified and condemned their actions. She said: “Your yobbish and stupid behaviour escalated into you drawing a knife and then punching Evren Anil with such force that he fell and struck his head on the ground and died. He was a decent, good young man with a first-class degree with everything before him. “The loss to his family is impossible to describe. Their grief is unspeakable and I am very conscious that no sentence can bring him back or ever measure up to their loss. The tragedy is that it need not have happened, if you hadn’t started it or had had the courage to walk away.”

Ms Anil, 26, said it was a “vicious and callous attack” and branded the killers “heartless cowards”. In a victim statement she said she had contemplated suicide “to ease my pain” and that her older brother was still having psychiatric and medical treatment. “I have been unable to sleep at nights as the recollections give me nightmares,” she said. “I am no longer able to trust people and constantly feel afraid in the streets. I am scared of driving and being alone in my car. I always lock the doors, close my windows and get scared when I approach red lights – something that I never was worried about previously. I can’t even drive past the location where the incident happened as the area and recollection freak me out. I have to take an alternative route just to avoid passing it.”

She added: “I cannot describe the day-to-day agony and the sting of Evren’s untimely death. My mother still to this day looks in his bedroom and thinks she is going to find him there and believes that he is going to walk in any day through our front door. She misses him so much.”

Thompson and Rowe admitted manslaughter and knife possession at a hearing last month. Detective Inspector Justin Davies, of the investigating team, said: “Evren Anil was a decent, hard-working, public-spirited and well-loved young man with a bright future ahead of him. He decided on the day in question to challenge a random and pointless act of antisocial behaviour. That decision, tragically, cost him his life.”

Rowe, of Tottenham, North London, admitted throwing the chocolate bar and delivering the fatal blow to Mr Anil. It was he who carried the knife to the scene and gave it to Thompson, of Thornton Heath, southeast London, who threatened the victim and Mr Porter.

Mr Anil, who worked for the computer company Logica, was a keen footballer with Croydon City as well as an amateur actor. He was born in Turkey and moved to London at the age of three with his family, settling in Upper Norwood, southeast London.

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South Australian report reveals decades of State care sex abuse

Another catastrophic "child welfare" system. Wards of the State -- made wards for their own "protection" -- found that the State was a gross child-abuser. And it went on for 40 years!

The horrific extent of sex abuse against children in state care over four decades has been revealed in the 600-page report of the Mullighan inquiry to State Parliament. Retired Supreme Court judge Ted Mullighan, QC, yesterday issued a stark warning that children in state care would remain vulnerable to sex abuse unless urgent action was taken to overhaul a system in crisis. His $13.5 million inquiry considered hundreds of allegations of widespread child abuse within government and non-government institutions, spanning 40 years. The report contained 54 recommendations, which Premier Mike Rann yesterday said would be comprehensively examined before a detailed response in early June.

Victims who provided evidence to Mr Mullighan during his three-year inquiry yesterday packed the public gallery of the House of Assembly as Mr Rann described how the contents of the report had "sickened him". "Decade after decade, the perpetrators of this abuse not only robbed children of their innocence but also stole both their past and their future," Mr Rann said. "But the victims, fearful and forced into silence for so long, deserve our compassion and, most importantly, our resolve in dealing with issues past and present. "I congratulate Ted Mullighan not only for lifting the veil on the depth of child abuse over decades but also in the way he has given victims a voice at last."

Mr Mullighan said he had been totally unprepared for the "foul undercurrent of society" which had perpetrated child sex abuse against wards of the state between the 1940s and 1980s. He had personally interviewed 792 people who alleged they were victims, with many, including an 81-year-old woman, revealing their stories for the first time. Further investigations had determined 242 alleged victims were wards of the state when they were sexually abused, with allegations involving 922 perpetrators. Mr Mullighan said he had referred 170 people with information about 434 alleged pedophiles to police, who arrested two suspects and reported 13 others. "I was appalled and horrified at the way in which children were exploited, abused and threatened and how they have lived in that situation for years without being able to do anything about it," he said

Mr Mullighan said he had decided to detail all the evidence he had received to highlight the extent of child sex abuse - and how it could be avoided in the future. "We need to educate the public about this scourge of child sex abuse so the public know how bad it is and how extensive it is," he said. "We need to be vigilant, not only with our own children but also with other children."

In his report, Mr Mullighan said he had received evidence the state's child protection system was in "crisis", with inadequate resources and funding. "The number of children being placed in care has increased; there is a shortage of foster carers and social workers; there is an inability to place children according to suitability rather than availability; and children are being placed in serviced apartments, bed and breakfast accommodation and motels because there is no other accommodation," he said. "Such a state of affairs cannot properly care for an already vulnerable group of children, let alone protect them from perpetrators of sexual abuse. "The evidence to the inquiry demonstrates that more resources must be made available to deal with the crisis created by the past as well as implement necessary reforms for the present and future." ...

Mr Mullighan said extra resources also had to be injected into the criminal justice system to prosecute child sex offenders regardless - and fast-track their trials. "Unfortunately, the process from investigation to trial now takes many years," he said. "It is important these allegations are not seen as a lesser priority in the criminal justice system because they are `historical'. The Pedophile Task Force, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Legal Services Commission and the courts need to receive sufficient resources to investigate, prosecute, defend and conduct trials concerning the allegations of child sexual abuse arising from this inquiry in a timely manner."

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Britain's lazy cops

About time some of them were fired but I doubt that it will happen

Two Metropolitan Police officers face the sack after a young woman murdered in an honour killing was “let down” by police who showed a lack of understanding and insensitivity, the police watchdog said yesterday. Banaz Mahmod, 20, asked police for help four times and even gave them a list of five people she suspected would harm her and her lover but was not taken seriously.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission found that an initial investigation was flawed, subsequent lines of inquiry were not followed and there was poor supervision. It recommended that a further six detectives - four from the Metropolitan Police and three from West Midlands Police - should receive written warnings.

Ms Mahmod, 20, disappeared from her home in Mitcham, south London, in January 2006. Her body was found 100 miles away buried in a suitcase in a garden in Birmingham three months later. An Old Bailey trial heard that her Iraqi Kurd father and uncle ordered her death after her affair with fellow Kurd Rahmat Sulemani was discovered.

The IPCC examined five separate matters, three of which it ruled were handled “appropriately” and with compassion by officers. But it found police failings in dealing with complaints Ms Mahmod made in September 2005 and an incident three months later where she was found in a distressed state in a cafe. Ms Mahmod made allegations of historic physical sexual abuse to the Metropolitan Police on September 14, 2005. The case was passed to West Midlands Police because the alleged incidents took place there, but she was only interviewed on October 10 and did not sign her statement until January 10, 2006, just days before her murder.

The IPCC ruled that the Metropolitan Police could have done more in its dealings with Ms Mahmod. It also found that the initial West Midlands Police investigation was “flawed, not done in a timely fashion and poorly supervised”.

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You Can't Always Believe Your Eyes

How police lineups go wrong

In September 1985, Dennis Brown heard the words that sent him to prison for rape. The victim took the stand and had no doubt who had attacked her. "I had his face this close for at least 20 minutes," she said, holding her hand inches from her face, "and he's the man." Brown was convicted of aggravated rape and sentenced to life without parole.

But in October 2004, the 36-year-old Brown walked out of the Louisiana State Prison in Angola, having been exonerated by DNA evidence. Prosecutors dropped the charges. After being locked up for 19 years, more than half his life, an innocent man was free.

Like many people in his ill-starred position, Brown was snared by a mistaken identification. The victim picked him out of a police lineup, and her testimony provided the bulk of the evidence against him.

His case illustrates the dangers of relying on what used to be seen as the best kind of evidence—a person who was present at the scene of the crime who can attest, "I saw him do it." Time and again, thanks to DNA evidence, we've seen that a victim can be absolutely sure in identifying her attacker—and be absolutely wrong. Amy Klobuchar, prosecutor for Hennepin County, Minn., which includes Minneapolis, says faulty identifications are "the single most common error" generating bad convictions. [Ed—Klobuchar vacated this position in 2006 when she was elected to the U.S. Senate.]

What is most disturbing is that the mistakes we know about represent only a tiny share of the total. Most of the exonerations involve rapes—where DNA can definitively establish the perpetrator. But police rarely find bodily fluids in robberies, muggings, burglaries and other far more common crimes. So if someone tabs an innocent person, the innocent person probably won't ever be cleared.

Many of the mistakes occur during police lineups, where witnesses try to pick out the perpetrator from a group of people or pictures. Experiments have shown that when confronted with several possible suspects at once (a "simultaneous" lineup), the witness is prone to choose whoever most resembles the actual criminal - even if the actual criminal is absent. Presenting the choices one at a time (a "sequential" lineup) is more likely to yield a correct identification.

In 2001, the New Jersey attorney general required all police departments to change the way they handle lineups to prevent errors. The change that got the most attention was the adoption of sequential lineups. But Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University who has been the chief pioneer in studying eyewitness identification, says that was not the most important reform. Even more critical was the use of "double-blind" testing—where the police officer conducting the lineup doesn't know which of the people is thought to be the guilty party.

Why does it matter? Because an officer can consciously or unconsciously steer a witness. In 2005, Wells, speaking at a Minneapolis conference on wrongful convictions, said that when a witness chooses the "wrong" suspect, the lineup administrator may say, "Are you sure?" or "Take another look at No. 3." But when the witness chooses the right suspect, the response may be, "Tell me about him."

Sometimes the police buttress the witness's memory by saying something like, "You got the right one." In an armed robbery in Iowa, Wells recalls, the victim was asked in the trial how detectives responded when she chose the defendant's photo. "They clapped," she said.

Normally, the cops aren't trying to manipulate the witness; they're just being human. But occasionally, the tilt is intentional. In 2002, the city of Chicago was ordered to pay $15 million to James Newsome because two detectives had rigged the lineup in which he was identified, leading to his mistaken conviction for murder. One witness said he was repeatedly told to look at Newsome. Newsome said he saw one detective point him out to another witness.

Problems like these can be avoided—by turning the lineup over to someone who knows nothing about the case, or by presenting the photos so the administrator can't see them, perhaps on a computer. Such changes have worked well in New Jersey, where 91 percent of respondents to a statewide survey of law enforcement agencies said the new methods created no major problems.

Eyewitness testimony can be extremely useful in catching criminals, but it needs safeguards to make sure it doesn't nab the innocent. After all the wrongful convictions in recent years, no one should have trouble seeing that.

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Canada: Miscarriage of justice feared

Ivan Henry has spent 25 years in prison for notorious series of Vancouver rapes

New evidence gathered by police casts doubt on the 1983 conviction of Ivan Henry -- who has spent the past 25 years in prison for a series of rapes in the city. Independent special prosecutor Len Doust has told the province it should not oppose re-opening his case. Henry, 62, has always denied committing the attacks.

The new evidence -- along with evidence used by the Crown to convict Henry, now 62, for raping three young women, attempting to rape two others and five indecent assaults -- was examined by Doust to see if a miscarriage of justice occurred.

On Friday, the Criminal Justice Branch issued a press release saying Doust recommends the Crown not oppose re-opening an appeal by Henry against his conviction. Doust ruled the new evidence was “relevant and potentially exculpatory” and said it should be made available to Henry and his lawyer Cameron Ward, the release said

Unless his appeal is successful, Henry could spend the rest of his life in prison. After his conviction, the Crown successfully applied for a dangerous offender designation, with the judge describing Henry as lacking “any redeeming qualities.” Under the designation, Henry received an indeterminate prison sentence.

Doust was asked by the attorney-general’s ministry in November to review the new evidence and the conviction. Just what this evidence is or how it would potentially clear Henry was not spelled out in the press release. Neither were details given of “Project Smallman” -- the Vancouver police investigation that apparently unearthed evidence that might prove Henry was not the rapist who caused such panic in the city between May, 1981 and June, 1982.

The attacks were carried out against women living in ground floor or basement suites in the Mount Pleasant, Marpole and Kitsilano areas. At the time of his arrest, Henry was out on mandatory release after serving most of a five-year sentence for an attempted rape in Winnipeg.

Ward said Friday that he would be meeting with Henry within the next week to lay the groundwork for an appeal to the B.C. Court of Appeal. Ward said he had no idea what the new evidence might be. “As far as I can see it’s something that came from the police to the Crown. So we will have to wait and see what they intend to disclose,” said Ward, who was on holiday in the United States when reached by The Vancouver Sun. “I haven’t spoken to Mr. Henry yet but I have spoken to his family and they are greatly encouraged by what has happened. “He always maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest until the present,” Ward said.

Henry was tried in March, 1983, by a B.C. Supreme Court jury and Justice John Bouck. Henry represented himself at the trial. It took the jury only six hours to convict him of three counts of rape, five of indecent assault and two of attempted rape. “He’s been in jail ever since and he’s never really had an appeal on the merits of the case against him,” said Ward. He said Henry filed an appeal against his convictions and the sentences but they were dismissed “for want of prosecution.” “What happened was he missed the deadline for filing transcripts. So the appeal court has never had a chance to review the evidence against him,” said Ward.

He has reviewed the trial transcript and said the Crown’s case was built on Henry being identified as the attacker by some of the victims: “There wasn’t any physical evidence linking him to the crimes. As far as I can see the Crown now has come into possession of evidence suggesting his conviction may have been a miscarriage of justice and someone else may have been responsible.”

Vancouver lawyer David Crossin has been appointed by the Criminal Justice Branch as independent special prosecutor to deal with the case. Ward said if the evidence shows Henry was wrongfully convicted, his client would have “lost a quarter of a century” of freedom. “It’s a serious matter and, as we know from the David Milgaard and Thomas Sophonow cases, compensation might become an issue,” said Ward. Milgaard and Sophonow both served lengthy jail terms for murders they didn’t commit. Milgaard received $10 million in compensation while Sophonow received $2.6 million.

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Corrupt NY justice again: DNA frees wrongly convicted mother

She is now suing for compensation. And because of their error, the authorities cannot try the likely real murderer. This case was last mentioned on this blog on Sept., 25, 2007

In 1994, Lynn DeJac was found guilty of strangling her 13-year-old daughter during a night of drinking and bar hopping. On Wednesday, Ms. DeJac walked out of the Erie County courthouse free, and the first woman in the United States to have her conviction for killing someone overturned based on DNA evidence. The 44-year-old Ms. DeJac — whose husband and twin sons were seated behind her in the courtroom — began weeping after Judge John L. Michalski ordered her released on her own recognizance.

After her release, Ms. DeJac left the courthouse with her husband, Chuck Peters, whom she married while in prison, and their sons, who were born during her first year in prison. She did not speak to reporters. “The first thing she wanted to do was go to my sister’s grave, then reunite with everybody — it’s been so long,” said Ms. DeJac’s 22-year-old son, Edward Girard, an Army sergeant stationed in Fort Bragg, N.C. “She hasn’t met my wife yet; she hasn’t met her grandkids.”

Yet despite Ms. DeJac’s legal victory, she faces another legal hurdle. Frank Clark, the Erie County district attorney, said he planned to retry her on a charge of second-degree manslaughter because, since her conviction, the legal definition of murder due to depraved indifference had changed. As a result, Mr. Clark said, even if Ms. DeJac was found guilty at a second trial, she would probably not return to prison because she had already served nearly the maximum sentence possible for the lesser charge. Explaining why he planned to proceed with the case, Mr. Clark said: “The question of guilt or innocence still has not been determined. That’s why we have every trial.”

Earlier in the day, Judge Michael L. D’Amico, who presided over her trial and sentenced her to 25 years to life, set aside Ms. DeJac’s murder conviction. He ruled that new tests showing that bloodstains in the room where the body of her 13-year-old daughter, Crystallynn Girard, was found on the afternoon of Feb. 14, 1993, contained DNA belonging to a former boyfriend of Ms. DeJac’s, Dennis P. Donahue.

But Mr. Donahue will never be tried for Crystallynn’s murder, even though members of the Buffalo Police Department’s cold case squad suspect him of committing the crime. Mr. Donahue, a 55-year-old former bartender, who was charged in September with the 1993 murder of another Buffalo woman he had dated, cannot be charged in Crystallynn’s death because prosecutors granted him immunity in exchange for his testimony before a grand jury and at Ms. DeJac’s trial.

Ms. DeJac’s lawyer, Andrew C. LoTempio, urged the police to re-examine evidence found at the crime scene after Mr. Donahue’s arrest. Later, tests not available at the time of the trial indicated that a man’s DNA was present in skin cells found in a smear of blood on a wall, on bedding and in the vaginal cavity of Crystallynn, who was menstruating at the time.

Eric Ferrero, a spokesman for the Innocence Project, a legal clinic based at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, said Ms. DeJac was the first woman to be exonerated of murdering someone among the 209 people cleared through DNA evidence since 1989. An Illinois woman, Paula Gray, was exonerated along with four men in 2002 after DNA testing cleared them in a 1978 double murder, but she had been charged as an accomplice, rather than someone who played a direct role in the crime. “More often than not, DNA cases involve sexual assaults, so the defendants are most often men,” Mr. Ferrero said.

At Ms. DeJac’s trial, prosecutors said she had strangled her daughter during an all-night drinking binge that took her and Mr. Donahue to a wedding, back to her home, and to several local taverns. At the trial, Mr. Donahue admitted having confronted Ms. DeJac and another man that night, and that at one point he put a knife to the man’s throat.

Although prosecutors said there was no physical evidence connecting Ms. DeJac to her daughter’s murder, they relied on the testimony of a man convicted of forging checks, who said she confessed to the killing in a bar several months later. [And one wonders what "incentives" the police gave him to testify]

The circumstantial case also hinged on Ms. DeJac’s behavior on the night of her daughter’s death: she made a 911 call shortly before midnight, then did not answer the door when the police responded about 15 minutes later. Several witnesses from the working-class neighborhood of Buffalo where Ms. DeJac lived and her mother owned a tavern described her as a troubled woman, a heavy drinker and erratic mother. They said she frequently left the girl and her 8-year-old brother alone while she stayed out all night. Crystallynn’s stepfather was convicted of sexually abusing her before she was 10 years old. “I think about 80 percent of the jury’s verdict was based on innuendo created by neighbors who didn’t like her,” said Mr. LoTempio, a former Buffalo city court judge.

Mr. LoTempio said the new DNA tests provided more evidence implicating Mr. Donahue than prosecutors had presented in the case against Ms. DeJac. “Throughout the night, he had the opportunity to be in the house, and throughout the night, he had the motive,” Mr. LoTempio said at a hearing last week on the motion to dismiss the verdict, suggesting that Mr. Donahue killed Crystallynn because he was angry at her mother. “He’s not only in her room, he’s in her blood.”

For now, he said he hoped that the attention did not hamper her in rebuilding her life. “She’s got no money, she’s got no clothes, she’s never seen the house where her husband and children live,” Mr. LoTempio said. “Think about being taken away from the world for 13 years and then being dropped back in. Hopefully, she won’t slip back into that neighborhood and the things that caused the problems in the first place.”

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

Quick as a link, you're in the clink!

I hate it when I click on links and don't find what I want. Plenty of times I click on the wrong link. Or a dead link. Or I'll get those infuriating popups which sometimes hang my machine. But imagine if they made clicking on the wrong link a crime! Well, they have, or at least, the FBI has taken it upon itself to arrest people in pre-dawn raids for what they say is the crime of clicking the wrong link:

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them. Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

A CNET News.com review of legal documents shows that courts have approved of this technique, even though it raises questions about entrapment, the problems of identifying who's using an open wireless connection--and whether anyone who clicks on a FBI link that contains no child pornography should be automatically subject to a dawn raid by federal police.

They could post these links, or send them out (or they could be resent to everyone on someone's mailing list), and innocent or clueless idiots might click on them without any idea that their IP numbers were being sent straight into an FBI computer, and that a search warrant would be issued. The scariest part is that the FBI does not even care where the link-clickers got the links. Anyone might have emailed or posted them:

When anyone visited the upload.sytes.net site, the FBI recorded the Internet Protocol address of the remote computer. There's no evidence the referring site was recorded as well, meaning the FBI couldn't tell if the visitor found the links through Ranchi or another source such as an e-mail message.

With the logs revealing those allegedly incriminating IP addresses in hand, the FBI sent administrative subpoenas to the relevant Internet service provider to learn the identity of the person whose name was on the account--and then obtained search warrants for dawn raids.

And of course, once they've forced their way into your home, anything you've got becomes fair game:

The search warrants authorized FBI agents to seize and remove any "computer-related" equipment, utility bills, telephone bills, any "addressed correspondence" sent through the U.S. mail, video gear, camera equipment, checkbooks, bank statements, and credit card statements.

Can this be legal? Would any American court dare actually say that a mere click on a link justifies such a raid on someone's home? Oh yes they would! Read and weep:

While it might seem that merely clicking on a link wouldn't be enough to justify a search warrant, courts have ruled otherwise. On March 6, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Nevada agreed with a magistrate judge that the hyperlink-sting operation constituted sufficient probable cause to justify giving the FBI its search warrant.

The defendant in that case, Travis Carter, suggested that any of the neighbors could be using his wireless network. (The public defender's office even sent out an investigator who confirmed that dozens of homes were within Wi-Fi range.)

But the magistrate judge ruled that even the possibilities of spoofing or other users of an open Wi-Fi connection "would not have negated a substantial basis for concluding that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of child pornography would be found on the premises to be searched." Translated, that means the search warrant was valid.

In other words, not only does it not matter where or how you got the link you clicked, you don't even have to have clicked it! Some asshole drive-by stranger could have done it! The possibilities of abuse are enormous, to say the least.

When link clicking is criminalized, we are all at risk. I don't care whether they manage to entrap the worst child molester in the world this way; that does not justify the risk of harm to a totally clueless person.

In fact, those who imagine they have nothing to fear because they're "not into that stuff" might be more at risk than actual pedophiles, as they're less likely to be cautious. If someone dared me to click a link, I'd probably click it. (Frankly, I don't think it should ever be a crime to click on a link, because of the possibility of abuse alone.)

What kind of person would set up a hyperlink system that could trap the unwary into clicking links? These scumbuckets are worse than Nigerian spammers, and if it isn't nipped in the bud, they'll probably resort to mass spammings in order to trap more people, and increase their damned budgets. What kind of government would allow this to go on? They call this law enforcement? These people are behaving like Soviet apparatchiks. I'm not on the left, and I abhor socialism, but things like this make me want to write out a check right away and send it to the ACLU. Some of what passes for law enforcement in this country is sickening. ....

The irony is that predators who go out and commit actual crimes against real children can feel a bit safer, because the more time the police devote to seekers of fake Internet kiddie porn, the less time they'll have to go after the predators in real time. This is not to defend kiddie porn, but are there any stats on how many kiddie porn violators have ever actually touched a child? What are the priorities? I'd hate to think that the cops are devoting most of their time to going after the easier cases, but the fact is that cases based on possession are a lot easier case to make.

More here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)