Crooked Chicago: Man freed 8 years after wrongful conviction
The information that would have cleared him was in the files all the time. Note also bad eyerwiness ID yet again
Before he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder, Maurice Patterson told the judge he was innocent -- and then asked, if he eventually was cleared of the crime, "Are you going to be here to apologize to me?"
On Friday, eight years later, Patterson was back in court -- and ordered released after DNA evidence indeed cleared him in the murder. But he got no apology.
The DNA evidence was taken from a knife that the prosecution originally claimed had no connection to the crime, said Rob Warden of the Northwestern University Center on Wrongful Convictions. But years later, it turns out the knife had the victim's blood on it with the blood of another man, a convicted offender.
After that came to light, Judge David Linn ordered a new trial last November. Friday, the Cook County state's attorney's office dropped all charges and Linn ordered Patterson, 44, released.
Patterson walked out of Cook County Jail Friday evening into the arms of his joyful family. "I thought you'd be way taller than this," said his teenage brother, Samuel.
Patterson held up two paperback books he said inspired him: John Grisham's The Innocent Man and Courtroom 302, a non-fiction book on the Cook County court system by Steve Bogira.
Patterson never gave up believing he would be cleared. "I always [believed] through the grace of God. I spoke all this into existence. I proved my innocence."
Indeed, it was Patterson himself who set in motion the process that ultimately freed him. While imprisoned, he filed a Freedom of Information request for the lab report on the knife. Later, after the Center on Wrongful Convictions had taken his case, the request came through.
The Cook County state's attorney's office said it prosecuted the case "in good faith based on eyewitness accounts and forensic evidence that was believed to be the totality of the evidence."
Of the police and prosecutors, he said Friday, "They're evil, but I forgive them through the grace of God."
Original report here
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Truth is harsher than fiction
A popular television drama, CSI, features attractive, intelligent, scientific crime fighters who solve complex cases from their laboratories. No matter how clever the criminal, these CSI techies are even more clever, and they always get their man.
There is something to forensic science. The Innocence Project has won release of people wrongly convicted of crimes by demonstrating that DNA samples taken at the crime scenes did not match the DNA of the wrongly convicted people. (We see this often in murder and rape cases in which there is a lot of public pressure for police to solve the crimes.)
Yet such methods are not confined to the defense. Prosecutors for years have enlisted DNA and other forensic devices to help gain convictions. For example, prosecutors used analysis of wood slivers to help convict Bruno Hauptmann more than 70 years ago in the kidnapping death of Charles Lindbergh’s son. Prosecutors supposedly solved the Atlanta child-murders case in 1980 using microscopic analysis of carpet fibers.
Police and prosecutors supposedly have the latest scientific tools to solve crimes, and the CSI people show how it works. However, we are dealing with government and – to the surprise of no one – government has managed to corrupt forensic science, creating tragic results.
For example, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation lab currently is mired in a scandal in which lab workers often withheld evidence unfavorable to the prosecution or botched investigations but never let the defense know what had happened. The results: People who had not committed crimes went to prison, wrongly convicted because of the lab workers corruption and incompetence.
Tainted Testimony
Even worse, Radley Balko of Reason uncovered huge swaths of fraud in Mississippi in which a forensic pathologist and a dentist gave expert prosecution testimony so tainted that most of it never should have been in a court of law. Yet even though the claims of the two witnesses were so bad that even the Mississippi courts ultimately revoked their status as “experts,” Mississippi prosecutors are demanding that they be readmitted to testify. Why? The “experts” would tell jurors what prosecutors wanted to hear, and most jurors simply can’t believe that government-approved witnesses might lie.
This all raises the simple question: Why are prosecutors so ready to embrace fraud? Is not “doing justice” part of their official job description? The answer is found in the nature of government itself.
As we all know, there is a huge gap between government statements and reality. Ever since the Progressive Era a century ago, Americans have come to believe that a government comprised of “experts” provides the best governance, a claim rebroadcast to them repeatedly in schools and the media. Thus the notion that we can trust the experts is ingrained in our body politic.
The reality is different. The Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury are staffed by “economic experts” running the U.S. economy into the ground, yet when someone publicly questions the “let’s-provide-lots- of-liquidity” actions Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has taken in the past three years, that person is portrayed by the media as an idiot.
Unfortunately, the problem is more than simple incompetence. Government players are as self-interested as everyone else, and people in power often make decisions benefiting themselves. In the expert-witness scandals we see that prosecutors want convictions, period; they usually don’t care if the person on trial is guilty or innocent. If fraudulent testimony can win a conviction, then bring it on and let a jury decide.
Those attractive, incorruptible lab technicians on CSI might make good television, but they are a poor substitute for reality. For all the Progressive rhetoric one might hear about the greatness of experts in government, reality bites, and it bites hard. Those who have sat and currently sit in prison cells because of wrongful convictions can tell us something about the real nature of government experts.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
A popular television drama, CSI, features attractive, intelligent, scientific crime fighters who solve complex cases from their laboratories. No matter how clever the criminal, these CSI techies are even more clever, and they always get their man.
There is something to forensic science. The Innocence Project has won release of people wrongly convicted of crimes by demonstrating that DNA samples taken at the crime scenes did not match the DNA of the wrongly convicted people. (We see this often in murder and rape cases in which there is a lot of public pressure for police to solve the crimes.)
Yet such methods are not confined to the defense. Prosecutors for years have enlisted DNA and other forensic devices to help gain convictions. For example, prosecutors used analysis of wood slivers to help convict Bruno Hauptmann more than 70 years ago in the kidnapping death of Charles Lindbergh’s son. Prosecutors supposedly solved the Atlanta child-murders case in 1980 using microscopic analysis of carpet fibers.
Police and prosecutors supposedly have the latest scientific tools to solve crimes, and the CSI people show how it works. However, we are dealing with government and – to the surprise of no one – government has managed to corrupt forensic science, creating tragic results.
For example, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation lab currently is mired in a scandal in which lab workers often withheld evidence unfavorable to the prosecution or botched investigations but never let the defense know what had happened. The results: People who had not committed crimes went to prison, wrongly convicted because of the lab workers corruption and incompetence.
Tainted Testimony
Even worse, Radley Balko of Reason uncovered huge swaths of fraud in Mississippi in which a forensic pathologist and a dentist gave expert prosecution testimony so tainted that most of it never should have been in a court of law. Yet even though the claims of the two witnesses were so bad that even the Mississippi courts ultimately revoked their status as “experts,” Mississippi prosecutors are demanding that they be readmitted to testify. Why? The “experts” would tell jurors what prosecutors wanted to hear, and most jurors simply can’t believe that government-approved witnesses might lie.
This all raises the simple question: Why are prosecutors so ready to embrace fraud? Is not “doing justice” part of their official job description? The answer is found in the nature of government itself.
As we all know, there is a huge gap between government statements and reality. Ever since the Progressive Era a century ago, Americans have come to believe that a government comprised of “experts” provides the best governance, a claim rebroadcast to them repeatedly in schools and the media. Thus the notion that we can trust the experts is ingrained in our body politic.
The reality is different. The Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury are staffed by “economic experts” running the U.S. economy into the ground, yet when someone publicly questions the “let’s-provide-lots- of-liquidity” actions Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has taken in the past three years, that person is portrayed by the media as an idiot.
Unfortunately, the problem is more than simple incompetence. Government players are as self-interested as everyone else, and people in power often make decisions benefiting themselves. In the expert-witness scandals we see that prosecutors want convictions, period; they usually don’t care if the person on trial is guilty or innocent. If fraudulent testimony can win a conviction, then bring it on and let a jury decide.
Those attractive, incorruptible lab technicians on CSI might make good television, but they are a poor substitute for reality. For all the Progressive rhetoric one might hear about the greatness of experts in government, reality bites, and it bites hard. Those who have sat and currently sit in prison cells because of wrongful convictions can tell us something about the real nature of government experts.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Trial lawyer who was dragged from court in handcuffs wins £100k (c. $150,000) from the British political police
A barrister has received £100,000 and an apology from the Metropolitan Police after he was dragged away in handcuffs while defending a client at the High Court.
Colin Challenger later fell into a diabetic coma in a police cell because the arresting officer confiscated his insulin medicine.
The respected barrister, who sued the Met for wrongful arrest, had to be taken from Belgravia Police Station for emergency treatment at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in July last year.
Mr Challenger, 65, was arrested following a fracas at the Royal Courts of Justice after a bankruptcy case against his client, lawyer Jamil Tehrani, was adjourned. Onlookers who claimed they had been mistreated by Mr Tehrani turned on Mr Challenger and accused him of delaying tactics.
Witnesses described how Mr Challenger was confronted by one of the protesters, Ardeshir Oraki, who approached him pointing his finger and hurling abuse.
Mr Challenger is alleged to have pushed Mr Oraki out of a door, locking it behind him. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of common assault, handcuffed and bundled into a police van.
Last night Mr Challenger said he was relieved the Metropolitan Police had settled the case for ‘completely outrageous behaviour’. He declined to reveal the compensation figure but sources close to the case said it was £100,000.
Mr Challenger, who has 26 years’ courtroom experience in contract, commercial and property law, said: ‘I was arrested even though it was me who was being attacked. [But his attackers appear to have been Muslims so they can do no wrong]
‘Scotland Yard had six months to bring any charges against me and only dropped the case in January – five months and three weeks after the incident.
‘My wrongful arrest has lost me a considerable amount of business, because as soon as potential clients look me up on the internet they see I have been arrested in handcuffs. My treatment by the Metropolitan Police was completely outrageous.’
Scotland Yard has apologised in advertisements in the Law Society Gazette, Barrister Online and The Daily Calls List. A Scotland Yard spokesman said last night: ‘We can confirm that the Metropolitan Police Service has reached a settlement and offered a full apology to Mr Challenger.’
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
A barrister has received £100,000 and an apology from the Metropolitan Police after he was dragged away in handcuffs while defending a client at the High Court.
Colin Challenger later fell into a diabetic coma in a police cell because the arresting officer confiscated his insulin medicine.
The respected barrister, who sued the Met for wrongful arrest, had to be taken from Belgravia Police Station for emergency treatment at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in July last year.
Mr Challenger, 65, was arrested following a fracas at the Royal Courts of Justice after a bankruptcy case against his client, lawyer Jamil Tehrani, was adjourned. Onlookers who claimed they had been mistreated by Mr Tehrani turned on Mr Challenger and accused him of delaying tactics.
Witnesses described how Mr Challenger was confronted by one of the protesters, Ardeshir Oraki, who approached him pointing his finger and hurling abuse.
Mr Challenger is alleged to have pushed Mr Oraki out of a door, locking it behind him. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of common assault, handcuffed and bundled into a police van.
Last night Mr Challenger said he was relieved the Metropolitan Police had settled the case for ‘completely outrageous behaviour’. He declined to reveal the compensation figure but sources close to the case said it was £100,000.
Mr Challenger, who has 26 years’ courtroom experience in contract, commercial and property law, said: ‘I was arrested even though it was me who was being attacked. [But his attackers appear to have been Muslims so they can do no wrong]
‘Scotland Yard had six months to bring any charges against me and only dropped the case in January – five months and three weeks after the incident.
‘My wrongful arrest has lost me a considerable amount of business, because as soon as potential clients look me up on the internet they see I have been arrested in handcuffs. My treatment by the Metropolitan Police was completely outrageous.’
Scotland Yard has apologised in advertisements in the Law Society Gazette, Barrister Online and The Daily Calls List. A Scotland Yard spokesman said last night: ‘We can confirm that the Metropolitan Police Service has reached a settlement and offered a full apology to Mr Challenger.’
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Bungling British cops refuse to compensate murdered woman's son
A little kid's loss of his mother is surely one of the greatest losses of all
The son of Rachel Nickell will not receive a penny in compensation from the police force which failed to prevent his mother’s murder, the Mail can reveal. Scotland Yard chiefs say the force has ‘no legal liability’ to make a payout to Alex Hanscombe, who as a toddler witnessed his mother’s horrific stabbing on Wimbledon Common.
Following legal advice, they have also ruled out the idea of making a ‘goodwill gesture’ payment. This is despite the fact that former prime suspect Colin Stagg has received £706,000 compensation from the Home Office for being wrongly accused of 23-year-old Miss Nickell’s murder.
In addition, the Metropolitan Police paid £150,000 compensation to the undercover policewoman at the centre of the bungled investigation into Miss Nickell’s murder, for the stress caused by the case. The payout to the officer, known as Lizzie James, who was used in a honey-trap operation against Mr Stagg, was approved by senior officers in 2001.
Last year Alex, now 21, and his father Andre Hanscombe, 47, issued a writ against the Met seeking compensation over Miss Nickell’s murder in July 1992. The move came ahead of a police watchdog report which lambasted the force’s handling of the case.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission said errors by Met officers had left Robert Napper free to kill Miss Nickell, who was stabbed 49 times and sexually assaulted as she walked with Alex and their dog.
It added in its report published in June that the lives of another young mother, Samantha Bisset, and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine would also have been saved if police had acted on tip-offs that psychopath Napper was a serial rapist.
But despite the IPCC’s conclusions, senior Met officers have decided that no compensation should be awarded to Alex and his father. Arguing they are ‘answerable to the taxpayer’, they say they will not pay their five-figure legal costs either.
Mr Hanscombe could not be reached for comment last night, but a close friend told the Mail that the Met was ‘morally obliged’ to make a payout to him and Alex. ‘It is mind-blowing that the Met is not even prepared to pay their legal costs, which were necessary to get the IPCC to investigate the case,’ the friend said.
‘It is outrageous that the Met talks about accountability in its letter to Alex and Andre, when no officers have been disciplined, let alone sacked, over the fatal errors that cost Rachel her life.’
The compensation snub was condemned by former Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Jeff McCann, a critic of how the Nickell investigation was handled by the CPS and the Met. Mr McCann, who prosecuted Napper over the Bisset killings, said: ‘The Met is obviously worried about opening the floodgates to other potential claims.
‘However, given the precedent it has set in other cases it would have made sense for it to make a goodwill payment to Alex and Mr Hanscombe. They had a terrible ordeal as a result of the appalling errors by the police and CPS.’
In June, the Met belatedly made a public apology to Alex and Mr Hanscombe for bungling the probe into Miss Nickell’s murder. The investigation is widely regarded as one of the most shameful episodes in Scotland Yard history.
The statement of regret came minutes after the IPCC’s withering report was published. Rachel Cerfontyne, of the IPCC, said that before Napper murdered Miss Nickell in 1992 he could have been arrested over the ‘Green Chain’ rapes on South London parkland.
‘It is clear that throughout the investigations into the Green Chain rapes and Rachel Nickell’s death there was a catalogue of bad decisions and errors made by the Metropolitan Police,’ she said.
‘The police failed to sufficiently investigate after Napper’s mother called police to report that he had confessed to her that he had raped a woman and, inconceivably, they eliminated Napper from inquiries into the Green Chain rapes because he was over 6ft.
‘Without these errors, Robert Napper could have been off the streets before he killed Rachel Nickell and the Bissets, and before numerous women suffered violent sexual attacks at his hands.’
Napper, 44, pleaded guilty to Miss Nickell’s manslaughter in 2008 after a DNA breakthrough. He had been detained at Broadmoor since 1995 for the Bisset killings and the rapes.
For two years, Scotland Yard pursued Colin Stagg for Miss Nickell’s murder but the case was thrown out at the Old Bailey in 1994 after a furious judge slammed police tactics. By then, Napper had also killed Samantha and Jazmine Bisset in Plumstead, South-East London.
Speaking in June this year, Mr Hanscombe, a tennis coach who now lives by the coast on the Mediterranean, said the IPCC shared his ‘sense of shock and disbelief’ at the police blunders. In a statement, he said: ‘Nothing is going to bring Rachel, Samantha or Jazmine back. ‘But having had some time to come to terms with this new reality, I now believe the best way to serve those who paid most heavily is to make sure all the lessons have been learned, to make sure that this could never happen again.’
Following a seven-year legal battle, Alex has previously received around £90,000 criminal injuries compensation for loss of services of the mother and for his own trauma.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
A little kid's loss of his mother is surely one of the greatest losses of all
The son of Rachel Nickell will not receive a penny in compensation from the police force which failed to prevent his mother’s murder, the Mail can reveal. Scotland Yard chiefs say the force has ‘no legal liability’ to make a payout to Alex Hanscombe, who as a toddler witnessed his mother’s horrific stabbing on Wimbledon Common.
Following legal advice, they have also ruled out the idea of making a ‘goodwill gesture’ payment. This is despite the fact that former prime suspect Colin Stagg has received £706,000 compensation from the Home Office for being wrongly accused of 23-year-old Miss Nickell’s murder.
In addition, the Metropolitan Police paid £150,000 compensation to the undercover policewoman at the centre of the bungled investigation into Miss Nickell’s murder, for the stress caused by the case. The payout to the officer, known as Lizzie James, who was used in a honey-trap operation against Mr Stagg, was approved by senior officers in 2001.
Last year Alex, now 21, and his father Andre Hanscombe, 47, issued a writ against the Met seeking compensation over Miss Nickell’s murder in July 1992. The move came ahead of a police watchdog report which lambasted the force’s handling of the case.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission said errors by Met officers had left Robert Napper free to kill Miss Nickell, who was stabbed 49 times and sexually assaulted as she walked with Alex and their dog.
It added in its report published in June that the lives of another young mother, Samantha Bisset, and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine would also have been saved if police had acted on tip-offs that psychopath Napper was a serial rapist.
But despite the IPCC’s conclusions, senior Met officers have decided that no compensation should be awarded to Alex and his father. Arguing they are ‘answerable to the taxpayer’, they say they will not pay their five-figure legal costs either.
Mr Hanscombe could not be reached for comment last night, but a close friend told the Mail that the Met was ‘morally obliged’ to make a payout to him and Alex. ‘It is mind-blowing that the Met is not even prepared to pay their legal costs, which were necessary to get the IPCC to investigate the case,’ the friend said.
‘It is outrageous that the Met talks about accountability in its letter to Alex and Andre, when no officers have been disciplined, let alone sacked, over the fatal errors that cost Rachel her life.’
The compensation snub was condemned by former Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Jeff McCann, a critic of how the Nickell investigation was handled by the CPS and the Met. Mr McCann, who prosecuted Napper over the Bisset killings, said: ‘The Met is obviously worried about opening the floodgates to other potential claims.
‘However, given the precedent it has set in other cases it would have made sense for it to make a goodwill payment to Alex and Mr Hanscombe. They had a terrible ordeal as a result of the appalling errors by the police and CPS.’
In June, the Met belatedly made a public apology to Alex and Mr Hanscombe for bungling the probe into Miss Nickell’s murder. The investigation is widely regarded as one of the most shameful episodes in Scotland Yard history.
The statement of regret came minutes after the IPCC’s withering report was published. Rachel Cerfontyne, of the IPCC, said that before Napper murdered Miss Nickell in 1992 he could have been arrested over the ‘Green Chain’ rapes on South London parkland.
‘It is clear that throughout the investigations into the Green Chain rapes and Rachel Nickell’s death there was a catalogue of bad decisions and errors made by the Metropolitan Police,’ she said.
‘The police failed to sufficiently investigate after Napper’s mother called police to report that he had confessed to her that he had raped a woman and, inconceivably, they eliminated Napper from inquiries into the Green Chain rapes because he was over 6ft.
‘Without these errors, Robert Napper could have been off the streets before he killed Rachel Nickell and the Bissets, and before numerous women suffered violent sexual attacks at his hands.’
Napper, 44, pleaded guilty to Miss Nickell’s manslaughter in 2008 after a DNA breakthrough. He had been detained at Broadmoor since 1995 for the Bisset killings and the rapes.
For two years, Scotland Yard pursued Colin Stagg for Miss Nickell’s murder but the case was thrown out at the Old Bailey in 1994 after a furious judge slammed police tactics. By then, Napper had also killed Samantha and Jazmine Bisset in Plumstead, South-East London.
Speaking in June this year, Mr Hanscombe, a tennis coach who now lives by the coast on the Mediterranean, said the IPCC shared his ‘sense of shock and disbelief’ at the police blunders. In a statement, he said: ‘Nothing is going to bring Rachel, Samantha or Jazmine back. ‘But having had some time to come to terms with this new reality, I now believe the best way to serve those who paid most heavily is to make sure all the lessons have been learned, to make sure that this could never happen again.’
Following a seven-year legal battle, Alex has previously received around £90,000 criminal injuries compensation for loss of services of the mother and for his own trauma.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Friday, October 08, 2010
Mother of former East Henderson football star says son's name cleared: Family, Florida police reach settlement
In 44 days, the family of the late Vernon Jones, a former East Henderson High football standout who graduated in 2002, will receive a monetary settlement of $500,000 stemming from a wrongful death lawsuit against the police officer who shot Jones in 2007.
For the family, it provides some closure to a case that's been ongoing for more than three years.
What happened
In the spring of 2007, Jones was shot and killed by West Palm Beach, Fla., police officer Shawn Phillips after a disturbance call. Jones was 23 years old. Phillips claimed he used self-defense, fearing for his life.
According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a state attorney's office ruling and an internal police probe cleared Phillips.
Jones' mother, Lenora, was outraged. “Because I knew the type of person my son was, I already knew it was unjustified,” she said Tuesday. “I think the police knew what they did was wrong, but they still won't admit it.”
What happened
According to police records, at 10:40 p.m. on April 14, 2007, Phillips was called to the Briar Bay neighborhood in West Palm Beach to investigate reports of a barefoot Jones going door to door, looking for a place to sleep and begging for food.
Phillips confronted Jones and a fist-fight ensued, according to witnesses cited in a Sun Sentinel story in 2007. Phillips told his fellow officers that Jones hit him in the face with a glass bottle during the fight. He also told investigators the fight went on for about two minutes and spilled out onto the street. He said in fear of his life, he drew his gun and shot Jones, killing him.
Two other eyewitnesses told a different story, the paper reported. They said Phillips subdued Jones and bent him over the hood of the patrol car. They said Phillips then pushed Jones to the ground and shot him four times as he tried to get back up. Medical examiner reports supported these claims.
The lawsuit
After Phillips was cleared, Lenora filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against him, the city of West Palm Beach, Police Chief Delsa Bush, the Palm Beach County Police Benevolent Association and two union representatives, alleging wrongful death, assault and battery and fraud and seven other counts.
“It was pretty egregious what happened, and I think the follow-up investigation was a travesty,” attorney Catherine Rodriguez, who represented Lenora, told the Sun Sentinel. “I would call it a cover-up.”
The lawsuit also stated that after Jones died, city police union representatives rushed Phillips from the scene to the hospital, coaching him on the way before he talked to investigators.
Another strong point for the lawsuit was Phillips' past behavior. The officer had been disciplined five times during his tenure for poor “conduct toward the public” since 2002, according to police records.
Partial justice
On Sept. 29, the half-million dollar settlement was reached, said assistant Hendersonville High football coach Chuck Roper.
“They settled out of court,” said Roper, a longtime friend of the family. “That shows you right there they knew they were wrong. Vernon needs to have his name cleared. He didn't deserve to die the way he did.”
Lenora said that just a few weeks ago, she and her lawyer were preparing for the trial. “The police kept saying they were preparing for the trial, too, then they reached the settlement,” she said. “They still deny they did anything wrong.” She said the main reason she agreed to the lawsuit was to clear her son's name.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
In 44 days, the family of the late Vernon Jones, a former East Henderson High football standout who graduated in 2002, will receive a monetary settlement of $500,000 stemming from a wrongful death lawsuit against the police officer who shot Jones in 2007.
For the family, it provides some closure to a case that's been ongoing for more than three years.
What happened
In the spring of 2007, Jones was shot and killed by West Palm Beach, Fla., police officer Shawn Phillips after a disturbance call. Jones was 23 years old. Phillips claimed he used self-defense, fearing for his life.
According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a state attorney's office ruling and an internal police probe cleared Phillips.
Jones' mother, Lenora, was outraged. “Because I knew the type of person my son was, I already knew it was unjustified,” she said Tuesday. “I think the police knew what they did was wrong, but they still won't admit it.”
What happened
According to police records, at 10:40 p.m. on April 14, 2007, Phillips was called to the Briar Bay neighborhood in West Palm Beach to investigate reports of a barefoot Jones going door to door, looking for a place to sleep and begging for food.
Phillips confronted Jones and a fist-fight ensued, according to witnesses cited in a Sun Sentinel story in 2007. Phillips told his fellow officers that Jones hit him in the face with a glass bottle during the fight. He also told investigators the fight went on for about two minutes and spilled out onto the street. He said in fear of his life, he drew his gun and shot Jones, killing him.
Two other eyewitnesses told a different story, the paper reported. They said Phillips subdued Jones and bent him over the hood of the patrol car. They said Phillips then pushed Jones to the ground and shot him four times as he tried to get back up. Medical examiner reports supported these claims.
The lawsuit
After Phillips was cleared, Lenora filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against him, the city of West Palm Beach, Police Chief Delsa Bush, the Palm Beach County Police Benevolent Association and two union representatives, alleging wrongful death, assault and battery and fraud and seven other counts.
“It was pretty egregious what happened, and I think the follow-up investigation was a travesty,” attorney Catherine Rodriguez, who represented Lenora, told the Sun Sentinel. “I would call it a cover-up.”
The lawsuit also stated that after Jones died, city police union representatives rushed Phillips from the scene to the hospital, coaching him on the way before he talked to investigators.
Another strong point for the lawsuit was Phillips' past behavior. The officer had been disciplined five times during his tenure for poor “conduct toward the public” since 2002, according to police records.
Partial justice
On Sept. 29, the half-million dollar settlement was reached, said assistant Hendersonville High football coach Chuck Roper.
“They settled out of court,” said Roper, a longtime friend of the family. “That shows you right there they knew they were wrong. Vernon needs to have his name cleared. He didn't deserve to die the way he did.”
Lenora said that just a few weeks ago, she and her lawyer were preparing for the trial. “The police kept saying they were preparing for the trial, too, then they reached the settlement,” she said. “They still deny they did anything wrong.” She said the main reason she agreed to the lawsuit was to clear her son's name.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Australian transit cop charged with assaulting unaggressive passenger
A TRANSIT officer has been charged with assault after a football fan was pepper-sprayed and left with a bloodied face at Subiaco train station in March.
Police say Liam Barry McCalmont, 22 of Maylands, assaulted James Hagerstrom, 46 of Bassendean, after the March 28 AFL game between Fremantle and Adelaide at Subiaco Oval. It will be alleged the assault occurred while transit guards tried to apprehend Mr Hagerstrom and charge him with obstruction.
The victim received facial injuries after his head was slammed into a platform during the altercation.
A Perth magistrate withdrew the obstruction charge against Mr Hagerstrom in July after viewing CCTV footage of the incident.
The Public Transport Authority conducted an internal inquiry into the incident in July and handed its findings to the Corruption and Crime Commission. Mr McCalmont has been charged with assault occasioning bodily harm and will face the Perth Magistrates Court on October 19. The PTA has placed him on "alternative and non-operational duties in the immediate term".
Original report here. Earlier report here. (Via Australian Politics)
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
A TRANSIT officer has been charged with assault after a football fan was pepper-sprayed and left with a bloodied face at Subiaco train station in March.
Police say Liam Barry McCalmont, 22 of Maylands, assaulted James Hagerstrom, 46 of Bassendean, after the March 28 AFL game between Fremantle and Adelaide at Subiaco Oval. It will be alleged the assault occurred while transit guards tried to apprehend Mr Hagerstrom and charge him with obstruction.
The victim received facial injuries after his head was slammed into a platform during the altercation.
A Perth magistrate withdrew the obstruction charge against Mr Hagerstrom in July after viewing CCTV footage of the incident.
The Public Transport Authority conducted an internal inquiry into the incident in July and handed its findings to the Corruption and Crime Commission. Mr McCalmont has been charged with assault occasioning bodily harm and will face the Perth Magistrates Court on October 19. The PTA has placed him on "alternative and non-operational duties in the immediate term".
Original report here. Earlier report here. (Via Australian Politics)
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Unarmed black Tasered 13 times by Australian cop as 9 police stand and watch
Nine police who surrounded an unarmed man at the East Perth watch house used a Taser on him 13 times even though he wasn't threatening them, the WA corruption watchdog has found.
The Corruption and Crime Commission investigation was part of a wider examination of WA Police's use of Tasers since their introduction in 2007, the majority of which were found to be reasonable.
The watchdog looked into the watch house incident after the Deputy Police Commissioner Chris Dawson brought it to their attention. It found the 39-year-old man could have been suffering from a mental illness or substance abuse when he was Tasered in August 2008.
Police said they tried to arrest the man on a Bayswater street after complaints of a trespasser sniffing petrol from cars, but he fled. They later arrested him after he ran into a stationary car on Guildford Road. He allegedly collapsed and became violent, kicking two officers when he woke.
He was taken to the watch house, where police attempted to strip search him. Police said he had previously been convicted of a number of offences including assaulting police officers, resisting arrest and common assault.
"The man had been compliant, removing his belt and earring when requested by police officers. However, the man refused to comply with a strip search and held onto the armrest of the bench. One police officer kicked out at the man in an attempt to 'startle' him into letting go of the bench," the report said.
"Another officer drew his Taser weapon and said 'let go or be Tasered'. The man did not let go and a Taser weapon was deployed on him. The man fell to the ground and was restrained by other police officers." While he was struggling on the ground a police officer said "do you want to go again?" before discharging the Taser again.
CCC director of corruption prevention Roger Watson said the incident was subject to an internal police investigation and the two officers who fired the stun-gun faced disciplinary charges and were fined $1200 and $750 respectively for using undue and excessive force. Two senior officers were found to have provided inadequate supervision.
Mr Dawson said the inmate, who was later jailed on assault charges, did not elect to press charges against the two officers after consultations with the Aboriginal Legal Service and advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions. He conceded the officers were fortunate not to be sacked, though one had been promoted to a sergeant's position since the incident.
"This is an example which is not a good example to use in isolation, it is an example from which we have learnt, but it should not represent the way in which police deal with people all the time," Mr Dawson said.
"We're dealing with violent persons regularly, in this particular instance, this person had an extensive criminal record, and clearly in my view the officers overreacted. They didn't do it in accordance with the policy and the training. For that we very much regret what happened."
Mr Dawson said since the incident, stun guns had been raised against some of the 25,000 inmates brought through the watch house, but not fired by prison officers. He said Corrective Services officers had used Tasers in the watch house but they had their own policies on Tasers.
WA Premier Colin Barnett said he was disturbed by what he saw in the footage. "It was excessive use of a Taser that could not be justified," Mr Barnett said. "I think anyone seeing that footage would find it totally unacceptable." Mr Barnett admitted the incident was a major breach of procedure by the officers involved, and their actions could not be "swept under the carpet".
WA Attorney-General Christian Porter said the incident was completely indefensible and a breach of police guidelines that stipulate Tasers should not be used to get people to comply with orders. He said the officers' behaviour could "properly described as outrageous" and that the fines against them were insufficient.
Mr Porter said police guidelines setting out when Tasers could be used needed to be reviewed. "The government accepts that those guidelines need to be reviewed, we accept the CCC's recommendation in that respect and they will be reviewed," Mr Porter said.
"As a second point of priority this government will be looking into the police force regulations and ways in which we can ensure that the use of Tasers is put to a higher standard in terms of disciplinary proceedings, than just any old run-of-the-mill excessive use of force."
A second case highlighted in the CCC report concerned a man who was Tasered while running from police officers, causing him to fall and break a tooth. He was Tasered twice again while on the ground and seemingly not posing a risk to the male and female officer trying to apprehend him.
Tasers are meant to be used in violent situations, to stop officers having to resort to guns or use lethal force. The weapons deliver a 50,000-volt electric shock to the target, disrupting their muscles. They can also be used in stun-mode, where the shock causes pain but not incapacitation.
But the CCC also found the high-voltage weapon had become the favoured option for police over capsicum spray, batons and handcuffs, with officers reaching for their Tasers in 65 per cent of cases where force was used.
The CCC said Tasers were increasingly used to impose compliance by alleged offenders rather than as an alternative to firearms to reduce injury, as originally intended.
Tasers were used in 49 per cent of incidents where force was necessary in 2007. That figure increased to 74 per cent in 2008 and settled at 65 per cent in 2009. The use of guns had doubled in the same time-frame, rising from 6 per cent to 12 per cent.
The investigation found the weapons were being used disproportionately against Aboriginal people. The CCC was also concerned about the frequency of Taser use against people with mental illness and drug users.
An analysis of the weapons revealed police usually used them between 9pm and 3am from Friday through to Sunday. "There were common situations in which a Taser weapon was deployed, including domestic violence incidents, disturbances, fights and brawls, traffic stops, vehicle pursuits, and reports of weapons and/or assaults," the report said.
Injuries to police had not decreased since the introduction of the weapons, while a study of incidents over a three-month period in 2009 showed those involved in altercations were a Taser was used were 54 per cent less likely to be injured.
The CCC gave 10 recommendations surrounding Taser use, asking for the policy to be changed so that officers could only use them in situations where a safe resolution could not be reached in any other way.
It recommended the weapons should not be used when there was a risk of the person falling and sustaining a serious injury, if they were near water or at risk of drowning, against pregnant women, on those with pre-existing medical conditions, or near flammable liquid or gas.
Mr Watson said the recommendations would bring Taser use in WA into line with other parts of Australia and the world.
Original report here. (Via Australian Politics)
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Nine police who surrounded an unarmed man at the East Perth watch house used a Taser on him 13 times even though he wasn't threatening them, the WA corruption watchdog has found.
The Corruption and Crime Commission investigation was part of a wider examination of WA Police's use of Tasers since their introduction in 2007, the majority of which were found to be reasonable.
The watchdog looked into the watch house incident after the Deputy Police Commissioner Chris Dawson brought it to their attention. It found the 39-year-old man could have been suffering from a mental illness or substance abuse when he was Tasered in August 2008.
Police said they tried to arrest the man on a Bayswater street after complaints of a trespasser sniffing petrol from cars, but he fled. They later arrested him after he ran into a stationary car on Guildford Road. He allegedly collapsed and became violent, kicking two officers when he woke.
He was taken to the watch house, where police attempted to strip search him. Police said he had previously been convicted of a number of offences including assaulting police officers, resisting arrest and common assault.
"The man had been compliant, removing his belt and earring when requested by police officers. However, the man refused to comply with a strip search and held onto the armrest of the bench. One police officer kicked out at the man in an attempt to 'startle' him into letting go of the bench," the report said.
"Another officer drew his Taser weapon and said 'let go or be Tasered'. The man did not let go and a Taser weapon was deployed on him. The man fell to the ground and was restrained by other police officers." While he was struggling on the ground a police officer said "do you want to go again?" before discharging the Taser again.
CCC director of corruption prevention Roger Watson said the incident was subject to an internal police investigation and the two officers who fired the stun-gun faced disciplinary charges and were fined $1200 and $750 respectively for using undue and excessive force. Two senior officers were found to have provided inadequate supervision.
Mr Dawson said the inmate, who was later jailed on assault charges, did not elect to press charges against the two officers after consultations with the Aboriginal Legal Service and advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions. He conceded the officers were fortunate not to be sacked, though one had been promoted to a sergeant's position since the incident.
"This is an example which is not a good example to use in isolation, it is an example from which we have learnt, but it should not represent the way in which police deal with people all the time," Mr Dawson said.
"We're dealing with violent persons regularly, in this particular instance, this person had an extensive criminal record, and clearly in my view the officers overreacted. They didn't do it in accordance with the policy and the training. For that we very much regret what happened."
Mr Dawson said since the incident, stun guns had been raised against some of the 25,000 inmates brought through the watch house, but not fired by prison officers. He said Corrective Services officers had used Tasers in the watch house but they had their own policies on Tasers.
WA Premier Colin Barnett said he was disturbed by what he saw in the footage. "It was excessive use of a Taser that could not be justified," Mr Barnett said. "I think anyone seeing that footage would find it totally unacceptable." Mr Barnett admitted the incident was a major breach of procedure by the officers involved, and their actions could not be "swept under the carpet".
WA Attorney-General Christian Porter said the incident was completely indefensible and a breach of police guidelines that stipulate Tasers should not be used to get people to comply with orders. He said the officers' behaviour could "properly described as outrageous" and that the fines against them were insufficient.
Mr Porter said police guidelines setting out when Tasers could be used needed to be reviewed. "The government accepts that those guidelines need to be reviewed, we accept the CCC's recommendation in that respect and they will be reviewed," Mr Porter said.
"As a second point of priority this government will be looking into the police force regulations and ways in which we can ensure that the use of Tasers is put to a higher standard in terms of disciplinary proceedings, than just any old run-of-the-mill excessive use of force."
A second case highlighted in the CCC report concerned a man who was Tasered while running from police officers, causing him to fall and break a tooth. He was Tasered twice again while on the ground and seemingly not posing a risk to the male and female officer trying to apprehend him.
Tasers are meant to be used in violent situations, to stop officers having to resort to guns or use lethal force. The weapons deliver a 50,000-volt electric shock to the target, disrupting their muscles. They can also be used in stun-mode, where the shock causes pain but not incapacitation.
But the CCC also found the high-voltage weapon had become the favoured option for police over capsicum spray, batons and handcuffs, with officers reaching for their Tasers in 65 per cent of cases where force was used.
The CCC said Tasers were increasingly used to impose compliance by alleged offenders rather than as an alternative to firearms to reduce injury, as originally intended.
Tasers were used in 49 per cent of incidents where force was necessary in 2007. That figure increased to 74 per cent in 2008 and settled at 65 per cent in 2009. The use of guns had doubled in the same time-frame, rising from 6 per cent to 12 per cent.
The investigation found the weapons were being used disproportionately against Aboriginal people. The CCC was also concerned about the frequency of Taser use against people with mental illness and drug users.
An analysis of the weapons revealed police usually used them between 9pm and 3am from Friday through to Sunday. "There were common situations in which a Taser weapon was deployed, including domestic violence incidents, disturbances, fights and brawls, traffic stops, vehicle pursuits, and reports of weapons and/or assaults," the report said.
Injuries to police had not decreased since the introduction of the weapons, while a study of incidents over a three-month period in 2009 showed those involved in altercations were a Taser was used were 54 per cent less likely to be injured.
The CCC gave 10 recommendations surrounding Taser use, asking for the policy to be changed so that officers could only use them in situations where a safe resolution could not be reached in any other way.
It recommended the weapons should not be used when there was a risk of the person falling and sustaining a serious injury, if they were near water or at risk of drowning, against pregnant women, on those with pre-existing medical conditions, or near flammable liquid or gas.
Mr Watson said the recommendations would bring Taser use in WA into line with other parts of Australia and the world.
Original report here. (Via Australian Politics)
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
CA: Crap-headed sheriff's deputy mistakenly fires eight shots at robbery victim, misses
A sheriff's deputy fired eight shots at a man he believed to have just robbed a West Hollywood liquor store early Sunday, but his target turned out to be the just-robbed clerk, and the actual suspects got away.
The deputy-involved shooting occurred around 2 a.m. near Havenhurst Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard, said Deputy Lillian Peck of the Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau.
“Deputies responded to a robbery call of a liquor store in the 8200 block of Santa Monica Boulevard," Peck said. “The call indicated the suspects were armed with a handgun."
Peck said one of the deputies “saw a man matching one of the suspects' description run from the area of the liquor store, holding what he believed to be a gun, and a deputy-involved shooting occurred." The man was not hit. “The man was detained by deputies and was determined not to be a suspect," Peck said.
Lt. Alicia Ault told the WeHo News website a single deputy fired eight rounds at the man, who turned out to be the store clerk. “The deputy fired eight rounds and missed him," Ault told WeHo News.
“Ultimately, deputies determined that the man the deputy fired upon was the store's clerk who was pointing to them trying to get their attention."
The two suspects were described only as a black man armed with a handgun and a black woman. Both suspects were last seen running southbound on Havenhurst Drive.
Windows at a store across the street from the robbery site were blown out by the gunfire.
Original report here
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A sheriff's deputy fired eight shots at a man he believed to have just robbed a West Hollywood liquor store early Sunday, but his target turned out to be the just-robbed clerk, and the actual suspects got away.
The deputy-involved shooting occurred around 2 a.m. near Havenhurst Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard, said Deputy Lillian Peck of the Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau.
“Deputies responded to a robbery call of a liquor store in the 8200 block of Santa Monica Boulevard," Peck said. “The call indicated the suspects were armed with a handgun."
Peck said one of the deputies “saw a man matching one of the suspects' description run from the area of the liquor store, holding what he believed to be a gun, and a deputy-involved shooting occurred." The man was not hit. “The man was detained by deputies and was determined not to be a suspect," Peck said.
Lt. Alicia Ault told the WeHo News website a single deputy fired eight rounds at the man, who turned out to be the store clerk. “The deputy fired eight rounds and missed him," Ault told WeHo News.
“Ultimately, deputies determined that the man the deputy fired upon was the store's clerk who was pointing to them trying to get their attention."
The two suspects were described only as a black man armed with a handgun and a black woman. Both suspects were last seen running southbound on Havenhurst Drive.
Windows at a store across the street from the robbery site were blown out by the gunfire.
Original report here
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Monday, October 04, 2010
Innocent Texan released after almost 20 years in prison
A man who spent almost 20 years in a Texas prison for a wrongful conviction of having kidnapped and raped a 5-year-old girl has been released, local media reported Wednesday. Stephen Matthew Brodie, 39, who is deaf, left a Dallas jail Tuesday a free man, after a new investigation showed he was innocent.
Brodie had to wait an extra day for the release, until the relevant paperwork was completed. 'I was not worrying about it,' the Dallas Morning News quoted him as saying through a sign language interpreter.
In 1993, Brodie pleaded guilty to having abducted and raped the girl three years earlier. However, his plea came after 18 hours of interrogation over eight days, mostly without a sign language interpreter, the newspaper reported.
Earlier, investigators had become aware of Brodie because he had broken into a vending machine near the girl's home.
Brodie's father had never doubted his son's innocence and wrote scores of letters to civil rights groups and authorities to demand his release. Eventually, the conviction integrity unit at the Dallas County District took on the case and found many things wrong with it.
According to the newspaper, Brodie is the third man in Dallas County cleared without DNA evidence, and the second to have previously pleaded guilty to the crime. The county has reportedly recorded 20 DNA exonerations since 2001, more than any other county in the United States.
Original report here
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A man who spent almost 20 years in a Texas prison for a wrongful conviction of having kidnapped and raped a 5-year-old girl has been released, local media reported Wednesday. Stephen Matthew Brodie, 39, who is deaf, left a Dallas jail Tuesday a free man, after a new investigation showed he was innocent.
Brodie had to wait an extra day for the release, until the relevant paperwork was completed. 'I was not worrying about it,' the Dallas Morning News quoted him as saying through a sign language interpreter.
In 1993, Brodie pleaded guilty to having abducted and raped the girl three years earlier. However, his plea came after 18 hours of interrogation over eight days, mostly without a sign language interpreter, the newspaper reported.
Earlier, investigators had become aware of Brodie because he had broken into a vending machine near the girl's home.
Brodie's father had never doubted his son's innocence and wrote scores of letters to civil rights groups and authorities to demand his release. Eventually, the conviction integrity unit at the Dallas County District took on the case and found many things wrong with it.
According to the newspaper, Brodie is the third man in Dallas County cleared without DNA evidence, and the second to have previously pleaded guilty to the crime. The county has reportedly recorded 20 DNA exonerations since 2001, more than any other county in the United States.
Original report here
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Sunday, October 03, 2010
Australia: Crooked policing costs a life -- but the crooks escape any penalty
Police misconduct that led to the wrong man being jailed for nearly 12 years on a murder charge may have allowed the real murderer to kill again.
West Australian Andrew Mallard was convicted in 1995 of killing Pamela Lawrence, who was bludgeoned to death at her central Perth jewellery shop.
In 2006, Mr Mallard was released from jail after the Australian High Court quashed his conviction after it deemed the only evidence linking him to the crime were his "bizarre and fanciful statements" to police.
The court noted that only one of the police interviews was recorded and another was conducted while Mr Mallard was a patient at a mental hospital.
A cold case review of Ms Lawrence's murder found a previously unidentified bloodied palm print at the crime scene belonged to Simon Rochford. Rochford killed his girlfriend nearly six weeks after Ms Lawrence's murder.
He committed suicide in jail in 2006 within days of being questioned over Ms Lawrence's death, after the new evidence emerged. He is now the chief suspect.
WA's Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) recommended disciplinary action against WA Police Assistant Commissioners Mal Shervill and Dave Caporn, who investigated the case as detectives in 1995.
The CCC also recommended disciplinary action against senior Director of Public Prosecutions lawyer Ken Bates. But all three officers resigned and so avoided the public service disciplinary process.
Mr Mallard has told ABC's Australian Story program that the officers need to be made accountable for their actions and he believed there was a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. "Had the police done their job properly from the beginning, I would have been eliminated as a suspect. "They would probably or likely have arrested Rochford before he killed his girlfriend. So they're responsible for another death," Mr Mallard said.
WA's shadow attorney-general John Quigley, who as a lawyer helped expose Mr Mallard's wrongful conviction along with journalist and author Colleen Egan, agrees a second murder could have been prevented. "Another woman's life in all likelihood would have been saved."
Mr Quigley said the prosecutor, Mr Bates, had repeatedly said that Mr Mallard murdered Ms Lawrence by beating her about the head with a wrench. But at the same time he had a report which said a test done on a pig's head had convinced the pathologist that a wrench could not have inflicted Ms Lawrence's injuries, Mr Quigley said. He said this was crucial evidence Mr Bates wrongly kept from the court.
WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said it was frustrating there had been no outcome for Mr Mallard. "There was no positive outcome for the WA Police either because we were never able to bring it to a resolution in a way that would have boosted the community's confidence in what we do."
Mr Mallard was awarded $3.25 million in compensation by the WA government and is moving to London to start a Masters degree in Fine Art.
Original report here
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Saturday, October 02, 2010
TX: Three Dallas cops indicted over beating
Three former Dallas police officers were indicted Thursday on charges related to a videotaped chase and beating of a motorcyclist, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said.
Patrol car dashboard camera video, released by Chief David Brown earlier, showed officers hitting the suspect. "We want to reiterate to the public that we have a world class police department here in Dallas," Watkins said. "These three officers are the exception and not the rule."
Watkins said that Paul Bauer, Kevin Randolph and Henry Duetsch, who have since been fired, were indicted by a Dallas County grand jury. In a statement Thursday, Brown said the indictments are "another step in the process of bringing this incident to a conclusion."
Randolph and Bauer are accused of striking 28-year-old Andrew Collins after a chase, while Duetsch is accused of turning the in-car video away from Collins and the officers.
Bauer was indicted on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by a public servant, assault and official oppression. He faces up to 99 years in prison.
Randolph was indicted on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by a public servant, official oppression and tampering with a governmental record. He also faces up to 99 years in prison.
Duetsch was indicted on a charge of tampering with physical evidence and faces up to 10 years in prison.
Watkins also said Thursday that police have dropped all charges against Collins, who suffered bruising and blood clots following the Sept. 5 beating. Watkins said Collins had initially been charged with evading arrest, resisting arrest and possession of marijuana.
The incident began when Randolph and Bauer saw Collins, who has an extensive criminal record, riding a motorcycle on a sidewalk. Police tried to pull him over, but the video shows Collins repeatedly allowed police to close in before he sped away. On the video, an officer can be heard saying he planned to "beat the (expletive)" out of Collins when they pulled him over.
After Bauer was told by the sergeant-on-duty not to get into a high-speed chase, Bauer continued to follow Collins and even went the wrong way down a street at a high rate of speed, the district attorney's office said.
The district attorney's office said that after Bauer and Randolph spotted Collins sitting on his motorcycle, Bauer struck the motorcycle with his patrol car and Collins went onto the ground on all-fours.
The DA's office said that while Collins was on the ground, Randolph struck him with a baton and Bauer struck Collins with his hands and knee. It said Randolph also struck Collins while Bauer put hand restraints on him. The district attorney's office said that Duetsch, while whistling, turned the in-car video away from Collins and the other officers.
Police have said that 22 officers responded to the scene, but the incident became known only after an officer left an anonymous note for a supervisor suggesting someone look at the recordings.
Collins' criminal record includes convictions on drug, weapons and drunken driving charges, according to Texas Department of Public Safety records. Five of his previous eight arrests were by Dallas police.
FBI spokesman Mark White said that Dallas police notified them when the incident occurred, but the FBI would not comment on whether they are investigating.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Three former Dallas police officers were indicted Thursday on charges related to a videotaped chase and beating of a motorcyclist, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said.
Patrol car dashboard camera video, released by Chief David Brown earlier, showed officers hitting the suspect. "We want to reiterate to the public that we have a world class police department here in Dallas," Watkins said. "These three officers are the exception and not the rule."
Watkins said that Paul Bauer, Kevin Randolph and Henry Duetsch, who have since been fired, were indicted by a Dallas County grand jury. In a statement Thursday, Brown said the indictments are "another step in the process of bringing this incident to a conclusion."
Randolph and Bauer are accused of striking 28-year-old Andrew Collins after a chase, while Duetsch is accused of turning the in-car video away from Collins and the officers.
Bauer was indicted on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by a public servant, assault and official oppression. He faces up to 99 years in prison.
Randolph was indicted on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by a public servant, official oppression and tampering with a governmental record. He also faces up to 99 years in prison.
Duetsch was indicted on a charge of tampering with physical evidence and faces up to 10 years in prison.
Watkins also said Thursday that police have dropped all charges against Collins, who suffered bruising and blood clots following the Sept. 5 beating. Watkins said Collins had initially been charged with evading arrest, resisting arrest and possession of marijuana.
The incident began when Randolph and Bauer saw Collins, who has an extensive criminal record, riding a motorcycle on a sidewalk. Police tried to pull him over, but the video shows Collins repeatedly allowed police to close in before he sped away. On the video, an officer can be heard saying he planned to "beat the (expletive)" out of Collins when they pulled him over.
After Bauer was told by the sergeant-on-duty not to get into a high-speed chase, Bauer continued to follow Collins and even went the wrong way down a street at a high rate of speed, the district attorney's office said.
The district attorney's office said that after Bauer and Randolph spotted Collins sitting on his motorcycle, Bauer struck the motorcycle with his patrol car and Collins went onto the ground on all-fours.
The DA's office said that while Collins was on the ground, Randolph struck him with a baton and Bauer struck Collins with his hands and knee. It said Randolph also struck Collins while Bauer put hand restraints on him. The district attorney's office said that Duetsch, while whistling, turned the in-car video away from Collins and the other officers.
Police have said that 22 officers responded to the scene, but the incident became known only after an officer left an anonymous note for a supervisor suggesting someone look at the recordings.
Collins' criminal record includes convictions on drug, weapons and drunken driving charges, according to Texas Department of Public Safety records. Five of his previous eight arrests were by Dallas police.
FBI spokesman Mark White said that Dallas police notified them when the incident occurred, but the FBI would not comment on whether they are investigating.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Friday, October 01, 2010
A police state by default: An illustrative episode
I’ll say right out that Paul Karl Lukacs has bigger stones than me. When I’m going through Customs — or airport security in general — I may venture into testiness on my own behalf or run interference if my young son is getting the third degree (yes, it’s happened), but I’m generally focused on getting past the Gestapo, not on asserting my rights.
So I applaud Lukacs for answering “none of your business” to a nosy Customs official when questioned about his overseas trip. His experience went like this:
Ultimately, Lukacs was allowed to go on his way because Americans really don’t have to do anything but show a customs declaration and proof of citizenship in order to re-enter the country. Of course he had to cool his heels first because … well, just because. He hadn’t respected their authoritah, after all.
It makes you think …
There are a lot of protections against official nosiness and pushiness on the books or in our legal traditions that go relatively unused. They go unused, of course, because officialdom makes it increasingly unpleasant to assert those rights. If the cost of telling a police officer to mind his manners is a strip search and a night in the lock-up, followed only months later by a lukewarm apology and an off-hand acknowledgment that you were in the right, many people simply stop telling cops where to get off.
Even the occasional cash settlement isn’t going to be worth it for the average person. As time goes on, we forget what our rights are, and officials are trained in procedures rather than the legal scope of their authority. Eventually, the rights in question may still exist on the books, but largely as quaint museum-quality exhibits.
And then you run across the occasional Paul Karl Lukacs, willing to take a figurative bullet in the hopes that one of the gray-haired supervisors remembers a few vestigial legalisms.
So the question is … Is it a tactic on the part of officialdom to expand their power? Or is it more of a case of institutional mission-creep, fueled by our own timidity and laziness?
Either way, our rights become meaningless if we abandon them because it becomes a hassle to assert them.
And note that not a single statute is altered along the way to changing the balance of power between the folks wielding the power of the state and the rest of us.
Original report here
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I’ll say right out that Paul Karl Lukacs has bigger stones than me. When I’m going through Customs — or airport security in general — I may venture into testiness on my own behalf or run interference if my young son is getting the third degree (yes, it’s happened), but I’m generally focused on getting past the Gestapo, not on asserting my rights.
So I applaud Lukacs for answering “none of your business” to a nosy Customs official when questioned about his overseas trip. His experience went like this:
“Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron.
“None of your business,” I said.
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“I’m not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country,” I said.
This did not go over well. She asked a series of questions, such as how long I had been in China, whether I was there on personal business or commercial business, etc. I stood silently. She said that her questions were mandated by Congress and that I should complain to Congress instead of refusing to cooperate with her.
She asked me to take one of my small bags off her counter. I complied.
She picked up the phone and told someone I “was refusing to cooperate at all.” This was incorrect. I had presented her with proof of citizenship (a U.S. passport) and had moved the bag when she asked. What I was refusing to do was answer her questions.
Ultimately, Lukacs was allowed to go on his way because Americans really don’t have to do anything but show a customs declaration and proof of citizenship in order to re-enter the country. Of course he had to cool his heels first because … well, just because. He hadn’t respected their authoritah, after all.
It makes you think …
There are a lot of protections against official nosiness and pushiness on the books or in our legal traditions that go relatively unused. They go unused, of course, because officialdom makes it increasingly unpleasant to assert those rights. If the cost of telling a police officer to mind his manners is a strip search and a night in the lock-up, followed only months later by a lukewarm apology and an off-hand acknowledgment that you were in the right, many people simply stop telling cops where to get off.
Even the occasional cash settlement isn’t going to be worth it for the average person. As time goes on, we forget what our rights are, and officials are trained in procedures rather than the legal scope of their authority. Eventually, the rights in question may still exist on the books, but largely as quaint museum-quality exhibits.
And then you run across the occasional Paul Karl Lukacs, willing to take a figurative bullet in the hopes that one of the gray-haired supervisors remembers a few vestigial legalisms.
So the question is … Is it a tactic on the part of officialdom to expand their power? Or is it more of a case of institutional mission-creep, fueled by our own timidity and laziness?
Either way, our rights become meaningless if we abandon them because it becomes a hassle to assert them.
And note that not a single statute is altered along the way to changing the balance of power between the folks wielding the power of the state and the rest of us.
Original report here
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Thursday, September 30, 2010
GPS and the police state we inhabit: Living in Oceania
Voicing his discontent with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in United States v. Pineda-Moreno, which declared the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device to be constitutional, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski warned, "We are taking a giant leap into the unknown, and the consequences for ourselves and our children may be dire and irreversible. Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania."
Indeed, we are already living in George Orwell’s totalitarian state known as Oceania, where the all-seeing government sees and tracks everything we do. By asserting that the police can constitutionally sneak onto a private driveway without a warrant and stick a GPS tag on your car so that they can remotely track you, the Ninth Circuit didn’t necessarily break any new ground. Rather, they merely confirmed what we have suspected all along: that the concept of private property is dead and along with it, the right against unreasonable searches and seizures once protected by the Fourth Amendment.
Having outstripped our ability as humans to control it, technology has become our Frankenstein’s monster. Delighted with technology’s conveniences, its ability to make our lives easier by doing an endless array of tasks faster and more efficiently, we have given it free rein in our lives, with little thought to the legal or moral ramifications of doing so. Thus, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the fact that technology now operates virtually autonomously according to its own invasive code, respecting no one’s intimate moments or privacy and impervious to the foibles of human beings and human relationships.
For example, consider how enthusiastically we welcomed Global Positioning System (GPS) devices into our lives. We’ve installed this satellite-based technology in everything from our phones to our cars to our pets. Yet by ensuring that we never get lost, never lose our loved ones and never lose our wireless signals, we are also making it possible for the government to never lose sight of us, as well.
GPS, originally known as Navstar, is funded and operated by none other than the U.S. Department of Defense. The U.S. military controls the satellites used by GPS devices and transmits signals to ground GPS receivers. The U.S. Air Force, by means of ground stations, sustains 24 operational GPS satellites at all times. These synchronized satellites emit signals at the same time. A GPS receiver located on earth collects the signals that travel at the speed of light. The receiver calculates the distance to the satellites by determining the time it takes for the emitted signal to reach the GPS receiver. Once a time is determined for at least four of the GPS satellites, the receiver can pinpoint your location in three dimensions, including latitude, longitude, and altitude.
While many Americans are literally lost without their GPS devices, it has also become a ubiquitous convenience for law enforcement agencies. For example, in 2009, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) introduced a prototype "smart" police car. This smart cruiser is the most advanced of its kind, equipped with license plate cameras, computers, a GPS projectile launcher, and even a heat detector in the front grill to differentiate between people and animals. The license plate reader can scan and download five to eight thousand license plates per shift. It saves the information it collects and can access the information instantaneously through the computer system installed in the car. If a stolen or wanted vehicle comes up in the scan, the license plate reader will automatically label the vehicle as a threat and a camera will take a colored picture of the vehicle and send the GPS coordinates of the vehicle to the police station.
In addition to the high-tech license plate readers and cameras, the smart car is equipped with GPS-enabled projectiles. The device is similar to a dart launcher and is near the front bumper of the vehicle. The projectile is three inches in diameter. When engaged, the device shoots the GPS projectile at the target vehicle. The law enforcement agent inside the car arms and fires the projectile. With the aid of a military grade laser, the law enforcement agent can aim with tremendous precision. Once attached to the target, the projectiles have the capability of tracking the target in real time for days. The LAPD is currently shopping for a manufacturer willing to mass produce these cars in order to make them available to law enforcement agencies across the country.
Frankly, given how attached Americans have become to their cell phones – and how easily trackable, as a result, it’s a wonder the government even bothers with any other technologies. Currently, cell phone service providers have the ability to pinpoint a phone’s location to an area as small as a city block. (It should come as no surprise that government agents have wasted little time in adding this technology to their bag of tricks, employing GPS on multiple occasions to track individuals without establishing probable cause or obtaining a search warrant.) Most corporate cell phone providers can also store vast amounts of data containing the location of the cell phone and its specific uses (such as the contents of text messages and websites visited), sometimes even in real time.
In an effort to handle the massive amount of requests from federal agents for access to the GPS data, several cell phone providers now offer automated services for obtaining internal cell phone data. Sprint Nextel, for example, has an entire website devoted to cell phone records that law enforcement officers can access. Called the Mobile Locator, the system allows law enforcement to access information, such as call history, without a search warrant, thus completely bypassing the protections afforded us by the Fourth Amendment. It also enables government agents to monitor an individual in real-time on a zoomable, online map.
A recent study by Indiana University reveals the extent to which government agents are making use of this resource. According to the study, over a period of 13 months, Sprint responded to eight million requests from law enforcement for GPS data. In addition to GPS data, Sprint also stores IP data and URL web history for a two-year period, which it also makes available to law enforcement upon request.
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies insist that a search warrant is not required to access the information because cell phone users, having disclosed their information to a third party, have no reasonable expectation of privacy anyhow. All the while, the American people remain clueless about the existence of these databases, the ease with which law enforcement agents can access them, and their overall loss of privacy.
The bottom line: there really is no place to hide in the American Oceania. As Judge Kozinski concludes:
"You can preserve your anonymity from prying eyes, even in public, by traveling at night, through heavy traffic, in crowds, by using a circuitous route, disguising your appearance, passing in and out of buildings and being careful not to be followed. But there’s no hiding from the all-seeing network of GPS satellites that hover overhead, which never sleep, never blink, never get confused and never lose attention. Nor is there respite from the dense network of cell towers that honeycomb the inhabited United States. Acting together these two technologies alone can provide law enforcement with a swift, efficient, silent, invisible and cheap way of tracking the movements of virtually anyone and everyone they choose. Most targets won’t know they need to disguise their movements or turn off their cell phones because they’ll have no reason to suspect that Big Brother is watching them."
Original report here
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Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Charges dismissed against Md. man who taped traffic stop
This was a much watched case, with several comments about it on this blog alone. The verdict should help curb some very arrogant behavior from Md. cops. They now have to run the risk of being legally recorded
A Harford County Circuit Court judge Monday dismissed wiretapping charges against Anthony Graber, a motorcyclist who was jailed briefly after he taped a Maryland state trooper who stopped him for speeding on I-95. Graber used a camera mounted on his helmet, then posted the video on YouTube.
In April, a few weeks after the traffic stop, Harford County state's attorney Joseph I. Cassilly charged Graber, a staff sergeant in the Maryland Air National Guard and a computer systems engineer, with violating the state's wiretapping law. That law dates back to the 1970s and was originally intended to protect citizens from government intrusions into their privacy. If convicted on all charges, Graber faced up to 16 years in prison.
Judge Emory A. Pitt Jr. had to decide whether police performing their duties have an expectation of privacy in public space. Pitt ruled that police can have no such expectation in their public, on-the-job communications.
Pitt wrote: "Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. 'Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes' ("Who watches the watchmen?”)."
Graber was also charged with possessing a “device primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of oral communications" -- referring to the video camera on his helmet. The judge disagreed with the prosecutor that the helmet cam was illegal, and concluded the state's argument would render illegal “almost every cell phone, Blackberry, and every similar device, not to mention dictation equipment and other types of recording devices."
Pitt's decision is the first ruling in Maryland to address the legality of citizens taping police in the course of their duties. Because it is a circuit court ruling, it is not binding on other judges. However, unless it is appealed, said Graber's attorney, David Rocah of the ACLU of Maryland, "it is likely to be the last word" on the matter and to be regarded as precedent by police.
No word yet on whether the state's attorney will try to appeal the decision. Graber still faces traffic charges stemming from the incident.
Original report here
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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
How to record the cops
A guide to the technology for keeping government accountable
This summer the issue of recording on-duty police officers has received a great deal of media attention. Camera-wielding citizens were arrested in Maryland, Illinois, and Massachusetts under interpretations of state wiretapping laws, while others were arrested in New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Florida, and elsewhere based on vaguer charges related to obstructing or interfering with a police officer.
So far Massachusetts is the only state to explicitly uphold a conviction for recording on-duty cops, and Illinois and Massachusetts are the only states where it is clearly illegal. The Illinois law has yet to be considered by the state's Supreme Court, while the Massachusetts law has yet to be upheld by a federal appeals court. Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler recently issued an opinion concluding that arrests for recording cops are based on a misreading of the state's wiretapping statute, but that opinion isn't binding on local prosecutors.
In the remaining 47 states, the law is clearer: It is generally legal to record the police, as long as you don't physically interfere with them. You may be unfairly harassed, questioned, or even arrested, but it's unlikely you will be charged, much less convicted. (These are general observations and should not be treated as legal advice.)
One reason this issue has heated up recently is that the democratization of technology has made it easier than ever for just about anyone to pull out a camera and quickly document an encounter with police. So what's the best way to record cops? Here is a quick rundown of the technology that's out there.
Cameras without wireless networking capabilities are the least attractive option. If they are destroyed or confiscated, you have probably lost the damning video you just recorded, including the video documenting how your camera was confiscated or destroyed. But provided you can hold on to your camera, digital video recorders today are inexpensive, small, and wonderfully practical. The best-known everyday, easy-to-use brand right now is probably the Flip Video line, which start at $149. Even the cheapest Flips fit in your pocket, power up in about three seconds, and feature one-button recording. They are also easy to use. They include a built-in USB port and instant formatting for sites such as LiveLeak and YouTube.
Kodak has a pocket video camera for $100, and Amazon list a couple dozen different flash-memory cameras for under $50. Still too expensive? For $20, this camera sold at USBGeek is shorter than a stick of gum and shoots 640×480 video at 30 frames per second. It has a memory slot to hold up to 32GB of memory and a two-hour battery life. Or try this keychain camera. It's tiny, has the advantage of not looking much like a camera, shoots 720x480 video at 30 frames per second, and sells for all of $12 (with free shipping) at Meritline.com.
Last year's demonstrations in Iran and the 2009 police shooting of Oscar Grant on a subway platfom in Oakland, California were very public incidents, with dozens of cell phones taking photos and video as they happened. Authorities could not possibly have confiscated every phone camera (although in both cases they tried). But in other cases, police confiscate cameras, and when they are returned the potentially incriminating video or photos are gone. But technology is helping there too.
If you find your files or videos have been deleted once your camera has been returned, your best option is to look into recovery software, which in many cases can bring the deleted files back. Don't use the phone or camera until you've tried the software.
The better option, though, is to use a camera with networking capabilities. We're increasingly seeing spy movies-come-to-life cameras like this Bluetooth device from Looxcie, which you wear over your ear and lets you instantly email video, but the same technology is also standard now in most smart phones. The ability to store audio or video off site—to email it to friends (or yourself), or to upload it to social networking sites—is becoming more and more accessible. And it's a pretty powerful check on government, as shown by the Iran demonstrations, the Grant shooting, and the alleged police abuses shown in hundreds of videos uploaded to video sharing sites.
Qik and UStream, two services available for both the iPhone and Android phones, allow instant online video streaming and archiving. Once you stop recording, the video is instantly saved online. Both services also allow you to send out a mass email or notice to your Twitter followers when you have posted a new video from your phone. Not only will your video of police misconduct be preserved, but so will the video of the police officer illegally confiscating your phone (assuming you continue recording until that point).
Neither Qik nor UStream market themselves for this purpose, and it probably would not make good business sense for them to do so, given the risk of angering law enforcement agencies and attracting attention from regulators. But it's hard to overstate the power of streaming and off-site archiving. Prior to this technology, prosecutors and the courts nearly always deferred to the police narrative; now that narrative has to be consistent with independently recorded evidence. And as examples of police reports contradicted by video become increasingly common, a couple of things are likely to happen: Prosecutors and courts will be less inclined to uncritically accept police testimony, even in cases where there is no video, and bad cops will be deterred by the knowledge that their misconduct is apt to be recorded.
But there is still room for improvement. With both Qik and UStream, you can delete your uploaded videos from your phone, which means that if your phone is confiscated before you can turn it off (or if you keep your phone unlocked), whoever took it can get into your account and erase your evidence. One not terribly reliable way around this problem would be to encourage any of your friends or Twitter followers who happen to be online at the time to download your video the moment they get notice of it. But it would be far better if you had the option to make your videos deletable only once you've logged in from a computer. Another improvement would be the ability to "black out" the phone while it's taking video, so it isn't so obvious that you're recording.
UStream and Qik are not likely to add either function, since both are beneficial only for people who want to make surreptitious recordings. But how about an ACLU or NAACP app designed specifically for recording police? The NAACP's "All Alert" project encourages people to report incidents of police abuse through a toll-free phone number, text messages, or Twitter. But the process for registering a complaint is pretty cumbersome, and the program doesn't allow instant streaming and archiving.
Scott Morgan of Flex Your Rights, which educates people about their rights during police encounters, says his organization has been exploring the possibility of offering such a service. "I think it's a great idea," Morgan says. "We've talked to a couple developers about it. I think the problem for a small group like us is getting server space for videos and working out the networking issues." Globally, it would make great sense for an organization like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch to develop a similar easy-to-use application, allowing people all over the world to emulate the instant documentation we saw during the protests in Iran.
The dizzying advancements in personal technology during the last decade have slipped a powerful government accountability tool into our pockets. But it happened mostly by accident. The technology was intended for other uses, and it still needs some fine tuning to work better as a protection against abuses of state power. It's hard to think of a more worthy project for a civil liberties group.
Original report here. See the original for links
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Monday, September 27, 2010
TX: Dallas police charge three officers in alleged beating
Dallas police have filed criminal charges against three white officers accused of beating a black suspect in an incident caught on squad car dashboard cameras.
At a news conference Wednesday, Chief David Brown said he has fired one of the officers involved in the Sept. 5 beating of a 28-year-old man. Two others have been suspended and face an internal affairs investigation that could result in their firings.
Another three officers have been placed on desk duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation.
Two of the officers face misdemeanor assault and official oppression charges. All three each face a felony charge of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.
Brown says one of the officers is suspected of moving the camera to conceal the beating.
Original report here
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Sunday, September 26, 2010
One police crook down -- maybe
A former New Orleans police detective who admitted he helped cover up deadly shootings of unarmed residents on a bridge after Hurricane Katrina has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Jeffrey Lehrmann, one of five former officers who have pleaded guilty in the Justice Department's probe of the Danziger Bridge shootings, was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.
Africk refused a prosecution request to postpone Lehrman's sentencing until after six current or former officers are tried. Africk also went above the sentencing guidelines, which called for up to six months behind bars.
Lehrmann remains free on $25,000 bond until the trial is held.
Police killed two people and wounded four others on the bridge less than a week after the August 2005 storm.
Original report here
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A former New Orleans police detective who admitted he helped cover up deadly shootings of unarmed residents on a bridge after Hurricane Katrina has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Jeffrey Lehrmann, one of five former officers who have pleaded guilty in the Justice Department's probe of the Danziger Bridge shootings, was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.
Africk refused a prosecution request to postpone Lehrman's sentencing until after six current or former officers are tried. Africk also went above the sentencing guidelines, which called for up to six months behind bars.
Lehrmann remains free on $25,000 bond until the trial is held.
Police killed two people and wounded four others on the bridge less than a week after the August 2005 storm.
Original report here
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Saturday, September 25, 2010
Scalp hunting U.S. Federal prosecutors
The jurors who helped put Nino Lyons in jail for three years had every reason to think that he was a drug trafficker, and, until July, no reason to doubt that justice had been done.
For more than a week in 2001, the jurors listened to one witness after another, almost all of them prison inmates, describe how Lyons had sold them packages of cocaine. One said that Lyons, who ran clothing shops and nightclubs around Orlando, even tried to hire him to kill two drug suppliers.
But the federal prosecutors handling the case did not let the jury hear all the facts.
Instead, the prosecutors covered up evidence that could have discredited many of Lyons' accusers. They never revealed that a convict who claimed to have purchased hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Lyons struggled even to identify his photograph. And they hid the fact that prosecutors had promised to let others out of prison early in exchange for their cooperation.
Federal prosecutors are supposed to seek justice, not merely score convictions. But a USA TODAY investigation found that prosecutors repeatedly have violated that duty in courtrooms across the nation. The abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions.
Judges have warned for decades that misconduct by prosecutors threatens the Constitution's promise of a fair trial. Congress in 1997 enacted a law aimed at ending such abuses.
Yet USA TODAY documented 201 criminal cases in the years that followed in which judges determined that Justice Department prosecutors — the nation's most elite and powerful law enforcement officials — themselves violated laws or ethics rules.
In case after case during that time, judges blasted prosecutors for "flagrant" or "outrageous" misconduct. They caught some prosecutors hiding evidence, found others lying to judges and juries, and said others had broken plea bargains.
Such abuses, intentional or not, doubtless infect no more than a small fraction of the tens of thousands of criminal cases filed in the nation's federal courts each year. But the transgressions USA TODAY identified were so serious that, in each case, judges threw out charges, overturned convictions or rebuked prosecutors for misconduct. And each has the potential to tarnish the reputation of the prosecutors who do their jobs honorably.
In July, U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell did more than overturn Lyons' conviction: He declared that Lyons was innocent.
Neither the Justice Department nor the lead prosecutor in the Lyons case, Bruce Hinshelwood, would explain the events that cost Lyons his home, his businesses and nearly three years of freedom. The department investigated Hinshelwood but refused to say whether he was punished; records obtained by USA TODAY show that the agency regulating Florida lawyers ordered him to attend a one-day ethics workshop, scheduled for Friday.
Asked about Presnell's ruling exonerating Lyons, Hinshelwood said only, "It is of no concern to me."
The circumstances of Lyons' conviction did trouble Presnell, who oversaw his trial nine years ago. Presnell savaged the Justice Department in a written order for "a concerted campaign of prosecutorial abuse" by attorneys who, he wrote, covered up evidence and let felons lie to the jury.
Records from the Justice Department's internal ethics watchdogs show the agency has investigated a growing number of complaints by judges about misconduct they observed. In 2001, the department investigated 42 such complaints; last year, 61.
The department will not reveal how many of those prosecutors were punished because, it said, doing so would violate their privacy rights. USA TODAY, drawing on state bar records, identified only one federal prosecutor who was barred even temporarily from practicing law for misconduct during the past 12 years.
Even high-profile cases have been affected. Last year, a judge in Washington, D.C. — saying the department could not be trusted to investigate its own prosecutors — launched his own probe of the attorneys who handled the corruption trial of former Alaska senator Ted Stevens. After a jury found Stevens guilty, the department admitted that prosecutors had hidden evidence, then dropped the charges. (Stevens died in an August plane crash.)
Stevens' lawyers question how misconduct could have tainted such a closely watched case — and what that might mean for routine prosecutions. "It's a frightening thought and calls into question the generally accepted belief that our system of justice performs at a high level and yields just results," said Brendan Sullivan, Stevens' attorney.
Pattern of 'glaring misconduct'
Unlike local prosecutors, who often toil daily in crowded courts to untangle routine burglaries and homicides, Justice Department attorneys handle many of the nation's most complex and consequential crimes.
With help from legal experts and former prosecutors, USA TODAY spent six months examining federal prosecutors' work, reviewing legal databases, department records and tens of thousands of pages of court filings. Although the true extent of misconduct by prosecutors will likely never be known, the assessment is the most complete yet of the scope and impact of those violations.
USA TODAY found a pattern of "serious, glaring misconduct," said Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman, an expert on misconduct by prosecutors. "It's systemic now, and … the system is not able to control this type of behavior. There is no accountability."
He and Alexander Bunin, the chief federal public defender in Albany, N.Y., called the newspaper's findings "the tip of the iceberg" because many more cases are tainted by misconduct than are found. In many cases, misconduct is exposed only because of vigilant scrutiny by defense attorneys and judges.
However frequently it happens, the consequences go to the heart of the justice system's promise of fairness:
• Innocent people are punished. In Arizona, a woman spent eight years in prison for her conviction in a 2000 bank robbery because the prosecution never told her that another woman —who matched her description almost exactly — had been charged with robbing banks in the area. In Washington, D.C., a court in 2005 threw out murder charges against two men who had spent two decades in prison for a murder they didn't commit, in part because prosecutors hid evidence that two others could have committed the crime.
They were among 47 cases USA TODAY documented in which defendants were either exonerated or set free after the violations surfaced.
Among the consequences of misconduct, wrongful convictions are the most serious, said former U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh. He said, "No civilized society should countenance such conduct or systems that failed to prevent it."
Even people who never spent a day in jail faced ruinous consequences: lost careers, lost savings and lost reputations. Last year, a federal appeals court wiped out Illinois businessman Charles Farinella's 2007 conviction for changing "best when purchased by" dates on bottles of salad dressing he sold to discount stores. The judges ruled that what he had done wasn't illegal and blasted lead prosecutor Juliet Sorensen for violations that robbed Farinella of a fair trial. Exoneration came too late to salvage his business or to help the 20 or so employees he had laid off.
"It's the United States government against one person," Farinella said in his first public comment on the case. "They beat you down because they are so powerful. They have trillions of dollars behind them. Even someone who's innocent doesn't have much of a chance."
• Guilty people go free or face less punishment. In Puerto Rico, a federal court blocked prosecutors from seeking the death penalty for a fatal robbery because they failed to turn over evidence; the defendant was sentenced to life in prison instead. In California, a double agent accused of sharing defense secrets with China was sentenced to probation instead of prison because prosecutors refused to let her lawyer talk to her FBI handler, a key witness. Dozens of other defendants — including drug dealers and bank robbers — left prison early because their trials were tainted.
• Taxpayers foot the bill. The Justice Department has paid nearly $5.3 million to reimburse the legal bills of defendants who were wrongly accused. It has spent far more to repeat trials for people whose convictions were thrown out because of misconduct, a process that can take years, although the full price tag is impossible to tally.
In one California case, for example, it took prosecutors four years and three trials to convict a man of tax fraud. Then an appeals court set aside his conviction because it said a prosecutor "sat silently as his witness lied."
The violations happened in almost every part of the nation, though USA TODAY found the most cases in federal courts in San Diego; Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico. That pattern means misconduct is "not an isolated problem," said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor and former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles....
'Real sloppy and lazy'
Before Bruce Hinshelwood became a federal prosecutor, he tried murder cases and those involving other high-profile crimes as a state attorney. He headed the Justice Department's Jacksonville office, and was briefly second-in-command of the middle district surrounding Tampa. Later, he tried drug cases in Orlando. In all that time, there is no indication Hinshelwood was faulted for misconduct. The Lyons case changed that.
Hinshelwood's former boss, Paul Perez, became U.S. attorney in Tampa in 2002, shortly after Lyons' trial ended. When the case against Lyons fell apart, it was his job to figure out why.
Perez said in an interview that he personally never doubted that Lyons was guilty. He said the problems came down to inattention: Hinshelwood was "an experienced but very lazy prosecutor," but didn't break the rules on purpose. He was, Perez said, "real sloppy and lazy."
Judge Presnell drew harsher conclusions. In a 2004 order, he said the Justice Department's failures in the case could be explained, "at best, by its agents' sloppy investigative work or, at worst, by their knowing failure to meet constitutional duties." He later faulted prosecutors not just for failing to turn over evidence but for "brazenly" defying court orders and presenting witnesses who were "allowed, if not encouraged, to lie under oath."
Records from the Florida Bar, which regulates the state's lawyers, show that the Justice Department investigated Hinshelwood's handling of the Lyons case, a fact the department refused to confirm for fear of invading his privacy. The department completed its report in 2007 and referred its findings to the bar in 2009, a step Justice Department policies say it takes when it finds misconduct.
Despite Presnell's rebuke and its own investigation, there is no evidence that the Justice Department ever punished Hinshelwood. He continued prosecuting cases until he retired in February 2008 to open his own law practice in Orlando.
The Florida Bar investigated Hinshelwood last year — seven years after Presnell accused him of misconduct by name in a court order — but concluded that too much time had passed to take action for what happened at the trial. It let Hinshelwood resolve the complaint by paying $1,111.80 in costs and attending Friday's ethics workshop.
"That's the extent of it?" Lyons said.
The bar opened a second investigation of Hinshelwood in July after Presnell declared Lyons innocent, an uncommon step that officials would not explain publicly.
To Lyons, nothing the bar can do would be strong enough. Hinshelwood "should suffer or go to jail," Lyons said. "The justice system not only didn't work initially in my case, it's still not working. Bruce Hinshelwood has his pension. He still works every single day. His life is not miserable. I'm not saying mine is, but it's nothing like it was before."
More here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
The jurors who helped put Nino Lyons in jail for three years had every reason to think that he was a drug trafficker, and, until July, no reason to doubt that justice had been done.
For more than a week in 2001, the jurors listened to one witness after another, almost all of them prison inmates, describe how Lyons had sold them packages of cocaine. One said that Lyons, who ran clothing shops and nightclubs around Orlando, even tried to hire him to kill two drug suppliers.
But the federal prosecutors handling the case did not let the jury hear all the facts.
Instead, the prosecutors covered up evidence that could have discredited many of Lyons' accusers. They never revealed that a convict who claimed to have purchased hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Lyons struggled even to identify his photograph. And they hid the fact that prosecutors had promised to let others out of prison early in exchange for their cooperation.
Federal prosecutors are supposed to seek justice, not merely score convictions. But a USA TODAY investigation found that prosecutors repeatedly have violated that duty in courtrooms across the nation. The abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions.
Judges have warned for decades that misconduct by prosecutors threatens the Constitution's promise of a fair trial. Congress in 1997 enacted a law aimed at ending such abuses.
Yet USA TODAY documented 201 criminal cases in the years that followed in which judges determined that Justice Department prosecutors — the nation's most elite and powerful law enforcement officials — themselves violated laws or ethics rules.
In case after case during that time, judges blasted prosecutors for "flagrant" or "outrageous" misconduct. They caught some prosecutors hiding evidence, found others lying to judges and juries, and said others had broken plea bargains.
Such abuses, intentional or not, doubtless infect no more than a small fraction of the tens of thousands of criminal cases filed in the nation's federal courts each year. But the transgressions USA TODAY identified were so serious that, in each case, judges threw out charges, overturned convictions or rebuked prosecutors for misconduct. And each has the potential to tarnish the reputation of the prosecutors who do their jobs honorably.
In July, U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell did more than overturn Lyons' conviction: He declared that Lyons was innocent.
Neither the Justice Department nor the lead prosecutor in the Lyons case, Bruce Hinshelwood, would explain the events that cost Lyons his home, his businesses and nearly three years of freedom. The department investigated Hinshelwood but refused to say whether he was punished; records obtained by USA TODAY show that the agency regulating Florida lawyers ordered him to attend a one-day ethics workshop, scheduled for Friday.
Asked about Presnell's ruling exonerating Lyons, Hinshelwood said only, "It is of no concern to me."
The circumstances of Lyons' conviction did trouble Presnell, who oversaw his trial nine years ago. Presnell savaged the Justice Department in a written order for "a concerted campaign of prosecutorial abuse" by attorneys who, he wrote, covered up evidence and let felons lie to the jury.
Records from the Justice Department's internal ethics watchdogs show the agency has investigated a growing number of complaints by judges about misconduct they observed. In 2001, the department investigated 42 such complaints; last year, 61.
The department will not reveal how many of those prosecutors were punished because, it said, doing so would violate their privacy rights. USA TODAY, drawing on state bar records, identified only one federal prosecutor who was barred even temporarily from practicing law for misconduct during the past 12 years.
Even high-profile cases have been affected. Last year, a judge in Washington, D.C. — saying the department could not be trusted to investigate its own prosecutors — launched his own probe of the attorneys who handled the corruption trial of former Alaska senator Ted Stevens. After a jury found Stevens guilty, the department admitted that prosecutors had hidden evidence, then dropped the charges. (Stevens died in an August plane crash.)
Stevens' lawyers question how misconduct could have tainted such a closely watched case — and what that might mean for routine prosecutions. "It's a frightening thought and calls into question the generally accepted belief that our system of justice performs at a high level and yields just results," said Brendan Sullivan, Stevens' attorney.
Pattern of 'glaring misconduct'
Unlike local prosecutors, who often toil daily in crowded courts to untangle routine burglaries and homicides, Justice Department attorneys handle many of the nation's most complex and consequential crimes.
With help from legal experts and former prosecutors, USA TODAY spent six months examining federal prosecutors' work, reviewing legal databases, department records and tens of thousands of pages of court filings. Although the true extent of misconduct by prosecutors will likely never be known, the assessment is the most complete yet of the scope and impact of those violations.
USA TODAY found a pattern of "serious, glaring misconduct," said Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman, an expert on misconduct by prosecutors. "It's systemic now, and … the system is not able to control this type of behavior. There is no accountability."
He and Alexander Bunin, the chief federal public defender in Albany, N.Y., called the newspaper's findings "the tip of the iceberg" because many more cases are tainted by misconduct than are found. In many cases, misconduct is exposed only because of vigilant scrutiny by defense attorneys and judges.
However frequently it happens, the consequences go to the heart of the justice system's promise of fairness:
• Innocent people are punished. In Arizona, a woman spent eight years in prison for her conviction in a 2000 bank robbery because the prosecution never told her that another woman —who matched her description almost exactly — had been charged with robbing banks in the area. In Washington, D.C., a court in 2005 threw out murder charges against two men who had spent two decades in prison for a murder they didn't commit, in part because prosecutors hid evidence that two others could have committed the crime.
They were among 47 cases USA TODAY documented in which defendants were either exonerated or set free after the violations surfaced.
Among the consequences of misconduct, wrongful convictions are the most serious, said former U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh. He said, "No civilized society should countenance such conduct or systems that failed to prevent it."
Even people who never spent a day in jail faced ruinous consequences: lost careers, lost savings and lost reputations. Last year, a federal appeals court wiped out Illinois businessman Charles Farinella's 2007 conviction for changing "best when purchased by" dates on bottles of salad dressing he sold to discount stores. The judges ruled that what he had done wasn't illegal and blasted lead prosecutor Juliet Sorensen for violations that robbed Farinella of a fair trial. Exoneration came too late to salvage his business or to help the 20 or so employees he had laid off.
"It's the United States government against one person," Farinella said in his first public comment on the case. "They beat you down because they are so powerful. They have trillions of dollars behind them. Even someone who's innocent doesn't have much of a chance."
• Guilty people go free or face less punishment. In Puerto Rico, a federal court blocked prosecutors from seeking the death penalty for a fatal robbery because they failed to turn over evidence; the defendant was sentenced to life in prison instead. In California, a double agent accused of sharing defense secrets with China was sentenced to probation instead of prison because prosecutors refused to let her lawyer talk to her FBI handler, a key witness. Dozens of other defendants — including drug dealers and bank robbers — left prison early because their trials were tainted.
• Taxpayers foot the bill. The Justice Department has paid nearly $5.3 million to reimburse the legal bills of defendants who were wrongly accused. It has spent far more to repeat trials for people whose convictions were thrown out because of misconduct, a process that can take years, although the full price tag is impossible to tally.
In one California case, for example, it took prosecutors four years and three trials to convict a man of tax fraud. Then an appeals court set aside his conviction because it said a prosecutor "sat silently as his witness lied."
The violations happened in almost every part of the nation, though USA TODAY found the most cases in federal courts in San Diego; Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico. That pattern means misconduct is "not an isolated problem," said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor and former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles....
'Real sloppy and lazy'
Before Bruce Hinshelwood became a federal prosecutor, he tried murder cases and those involving other high-profile crimes as a state attorney. He headed the Justice Department's Jacksonville office, and was briefly second-in-command of the middle district surrounding Tampa. Later, he tried drug cases in Orlando. In all that time, there is no indication Hinshelwood was faulted for misconduct. The Lyons case changed that.
Hinshelwood's former boss, Paul Perez, became U.S. attorney in Tampa in 2002, shortly after Lyons' trial ended. When the case against Lyons fell apart, it was his job to figure out why.
Perez said in an interview that he personally never doubted that Lyons was guilty. He said the problems came down to inattention: Hinshelwood was "an experienced but very lazy prosecutor," but didn't break the rules on purpose. He was, Perez said, "real sloppy and lazy."
Judge Presnell drew harsher conclusions. In a 2004 order, he said the Justice Department's failures in the case could be explained, "at best, by its agents' sloppy investigative work or, at worst, by their knowing failure to meet constitutional duties." He later faulted prosecutors not just for failing to turn over evidence but for "brazenly" defying court orders and presenting witnesses who were "allowed, if not encouraged, to lie under oath."
Records from the Florida Bar, which regulates the state's lawyers, show that the Justice Department investigated Hinshelwood's handling of the Lyons case, a fact the department refused to confirm for fear of invading his privacy. The department completed its report in 2007 and referred its findings to the bar in 2009, a step Justice Department policies say it takes when it finds misconduct.
Despite Presnell's rebuke and its own investigation, there is no evidence that the Justice Department ever punished Hinshelwood. He continued prosecuting cases until he retired in February 2008 to open his own law practice in Orlando.
The Florida Bar investigated Hinshelwood last year — seven years after Presnell accused him of misconduct by name in a court order — but concluded that too much time had passed to take action for what happened at the trial. It let Hinshelwood resolve the complaint by paying $1,111.80 in costs and attending Friday's ethics workshop.
"That's the extent of it?" Lyons said.
The bar opened a second investigation of Hinshelwood in July after Presnell declared Lyons innocent, an uncommon step that officials would not explain publicly.
To Lyons, nothing the bar can do would be strong enough. Hinshelwood "should suffer or go to jail," Lyons said. "The justice system not only didn't work initially in my case, it's still not working. Bruce Hinshelwood has his pension. He still works every single day. His life is not miserable. I'm not saying mine is, but it's nothing like it was before."
More here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Friday, September 24, 2010
The system’s not rigged enough for cops and prosecutors
Rupert Myers, at The Guardian (“Tricks and cheats are the price of cutting legal aid,” September 5), recently did a bit of hand-wringing about the role of crowdsourced law (i.e. free legal advice websites) in providing those accused of traffic and child support offenses, among other things, with handy tips for beating the system.
“… [W]ith the capacity to share approaches to defence has come the temptation in forums to share advice which, if followed, would result in a miscarriage of justice. … Every case in which a defendant employs a sharp tactic to win a trial, or exploits a loophole discussed online, is one that costs the taxpayer.”
Why, gasps Myers, these things might “undermine the very legitimacy and effectiveness of the justice system!” Heaven forfend! Because it was, you know, so much more legitimate when it was easier for cops and prosecutors to railroad people into jail.
I don’t know how things are in the UK, but here in the US the very idea of someone whining that online sharing of “tricks and cheats” is unfair to the poor downtrodden cops and prosecutors is enough to make me puke.
The whole system is rigged so that about the only way a cop can get fired or prosecuted is when they’re actually recorded shooting an unarmed person in the back and planting a gun on them, or go around bragging and waving the feces-smeared broom handle they raped a prisoner with. Even when a cop’s caught on video using excessive force, they’ll most likely be put on paid suspension until the police commission finds “no evidence of wrongdoing” and that “all procedures were followed.”
What’s more, cops have their own form of “crowdsourced” lawyering up. Police forces, just as much as prisons, are “colleges of crime.” The lore of police work is full of helpful hints on manufacturing probable cause for invading the homes of people cops “know” are guilty despite the lack of any real evidence, perjuring themselves to obtain warrants, obtaining warrants based on coerced testimony from jailhouse snitches, training police dogs to “alert” on command, tricking or bullying people into giving confessions without a lawyer present in violation of the spirit of Miranda, and using every shred of power they possess under the letter — and punctuation marks — of the law to harrass people who fall afoul of them. Any time a cop finds another trick or cheat, another loophole for evading the spirit of a thousand years of common law due process rights and turning the Fourth Amendment into toilet paper, it will circulate among the Brotherhood faster than crib notes in a frat house.
If you publicize police misconduct, your troubles have only begun. Never mind what the law says — if you’re spotted recording a beating with your cell phone camera, you’ll probably be arrested for it. And if you post footage online of unruly cops (terrorizing people in a bar while off-duty, staggering around publicly urinating during Law Enforcement Day festivities, etc.), you can count on anonymous death threats from the Brotherhood.
As for prosecutors: In every single story I’ve ever seen where subsequent evidence exonerated a convict, the prosecutor in the case fought tooth and nail to prevent the case being reopened. Compared to the “injustice” of tarnishing the prosecutor’s conviction ratio in the face of an upcoming election, the prospect of an innocent person rotting away in hell is small potatoes.
There’s also the venerable prosecutorial practice of suppressing evidence during the original trial. Take Nancy Grace, the shrill harpy of law-n-order and “victims’ rights” whose philosophy is “They must be guilty, or they wouldn’t have been arrested.” (I wish she’d get whacked on the head with a shovel like Gracie Jane on Boston Legal.)
Nancy had one conviction declared a mistrial and another overturned on appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, the latter on grounds of “inappropriate and illegal conduct in the course of the trial.” Among other things she made an opening statement in which she promised the jury inflammatory evidence she obviously knew would be inadmissible, withheld evidence from the defense, and personally conducted an illegal search accompanied by a CNN camera crew.
The equally despicable Wendy Murphy, who like Grace parleyed her prosecutorial background and her personal hysteria and dishonesty into a career in cheap cable punditry, made endless TV appearances during the Duke lacrosse team case in which just about every assertion of fact she made proved to be a verifiable lie. I doubt this sociopath, who has absolutely no qualms about just making (stuff) up, was any more scrupulous as a prosecutor.
The game is already rigged in favor of cops and prosecutors. Whining about ordinary people using crowdsourced law to even things up strikes me as more than a little perverse.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Rupert Myers, at The Guardian (“Tricks and cheats are the price of cutting legal aid,” September 5), recently did a bit of hand-wringing about the role of crowdsourced law (i.e. free legal advice websites) in providing those accused of traffic and child support offenses, among other things, with handy tips for beating the system.
“… [W]ith the capacity to share approaches to defence has come the temptation in forums to share advice which, if followed, would result in a miscarriage of justice. … Every case in which a defendant employs a sharp tactic to win a trial, or exploits a loophole discussed online, is one that costs the taxpayer.”
Why, gasps Myers, these things might “undermine the very legitimacy and effectiveness of the justice system!” Heaven forfend! Because it was, you know, so much more legitimate when it was easier for cops and prosecutors to railroad people into jail.
I don’t know how things are in the UK, but here in the US the very idea of someone whining that online sharing of “tricks and cheats” is unfair to the poor downtrodden cops and prosecutors is enough to make me puke.
The whole system is rigged so that about the only way a cop can get fired or prosecuted is when they’re actually recorded shooting an unarmed person in the back and planting a gun on them, or go around bragging and waving the feces-smeared broom handle they raped a prisoner with. Even when a cop’s caught on video using excessive force, they’ll most likely be put on paid suspension until the police commission finds “no evidence of wrongdoing” and that “all procedures were followed.”
What’s more, cops have their own form of “crowdsourced” lawyering up. Police forces, just as much as prisons, are “colleges of crime.” The lore of police work is full of helpful hints on manufacturing probable cause for invading the homes of people cops “know” are guilty despite the lack of any real evidence, perjuring themselves to obtain warrants, obtaining warrants based on coerced testimony from jailhouse snitches, training police dogs to “alert” on command, tricking or bullying people into giving confessions without a lawyer present in violation of the spirit of Miranda, and using every shred of power they possess under the letter — and punctuation marks — of the law to harrass people who fall afoul of them. Any time a cop finds another trick or cheat, another loophole for evading the spirit of a thousand years of common law due process rights and turning the Fourth Amendment into toilet paper, it will circulate among the Brotherhood faster than crib notes in a frat house.
If you publicize police misconduct, your troubles have only begun. Never mind what the law says — if you’re spotted recording a beating with your cell phone camera, you’ll probably be arrested for it. And if you post footage online of unruly cops (terrorizing people in a bar while off-duty, staggering around publicly urinating during Law Enforcement Day festivities, etc.), you can count on anonymous death threats from the Brotherhood.
As for prosecutors: In every single story I’ve ever seen where subsequent evidence exonerated a convict, the prosecutor in the case fought tooth and nail to prevent the case being reopened. Compared to the “injustice” of tarnishing the prosecutor’s conviction ratio in the face of an upcoming election, the prospect of an innocent person rotting away in hell is small potatoes.
There’s also the venerable prosecutorial practice of suppressing evidence during the original trial. Take Nancy Grace, the shrill harpy of law-n-order and “victims’ rights” whose philosophy is “They must be guilty, or they wouldn’t have been arrested.” (I wish she’d get whacked on the head with a shovel like Gracie Jane on Boston Legal.)
Nancy had one conviction declared a mistrial and another overturned on appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, the latter on grounds of “inappropriate and illegal conduct in the course of the trial.” Among other things she made an opening statement in which she promised the jury inflammatory evidence she obviously knew would be inadmissible, withheld evidence from the defense, and personally conducted an illegal search accompanied by a CNN camera crew.
The equally despicable Wendy Murphy, who like Grace parleyed her prosecutorial background and her personal hysteria and dishonesty into a career in cheap cable punditry, made endless TV appearances during the Duke lacrosse team case in which just about every assertion of fact she made proved to be a verifiable lie. I doubt this sociopath, who has absolutely no qualms about just making (stuff) up, was any more scrupulous as a prosecutor.
The game is already rigged in favor of cops and prosecutors. Whining about ordinary people using crowdsourced law to even things up strikes me as more than a little perverse.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Thursday, September 23, 2010
No law? No warrant? No problem
Sal Agro, a 67-year-old man from Lake Orion, Michigan, died of a heart attack on September 2. Although those responsible for Agro's untimely death will never admit as much, he was the victim of an act of state terrorism carried out a week earlier by the Oakland County Sheriff's Office
Agro, along with his son, helped operate a treatment center in nearby Ferndale called Clinical Relief that provided medical marijuana to physician-approved clients under a 2008 Michigan state law. Sal, who had recently undergone hip surgery, was authorized to grow and use marijuana himself. His wife was authorized both to use marijuana and provide it to others as a caregiver. They had invited local officials to inspect the Clinical Relief facility.
Last June, with at least eight applications pending to open facilities like Clinical Relief, the Ferndale City Council imposed a temporary moratorium on dispensing medical marijuana while it explored new ways to harass the facilities through zoning restrictions. This prompted an objection from Mayor Craig Covey, who pointed out that the medical marijuana clinics would already be covered by existing ordinances. Nor were they likely to be profitable, given the detailed and often self-contradictory regulations inflicted on them under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act (MMMA), which voters approved by referendum in 2008.
On August 25, the Ferndale City Council lifted the moratorium. On the very next day, the local counter-narcotics Gestapo staged a paramilitary raid against several locations in Oakland County, arresting 15 people, confiscating cash and crops, illegally seizing medical records, and terrorizing unarmed, helpless people who suffer from cancer and other painful afflictions. Most importantly, of course, the raiders got a potent fix of their preferred narcotic -- the depraved thrill that comes from making powerless people submit to their whims.
It's hardly an exaggeration to characterize the Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team (NET) as the local "Gestapo." Agro used that term to describe the ski mask-clad marauders who laid waste to his home, ripping apart furniture, throwing potting soil into the carpets and -- of course -- helping themselves to whatever cash they could find.
A similar home invasion robbery was carried out at the Lake Orion home of Agro's daughter-in-law. "She's approximately five-foot, weighs about eighty-nine pounds, and the masked officers put a shotgun in her face and told her to freeze," a wearily disgusted Agro recalled to a local reporter.
After learning about the raid, Agro went back to his house, which was swarming with armed tax-feeders.
"I asked what was going on, and they said, `Your house is being searched,'" Agro related. "I said, `Do you have a search warrant?' They said, `Yes.' I said, `Can I see it?' They said, `When we get ready to show it to you.'" Despite the fact that the invaders had a note from a judge supposedly authorizing them to trash Agro's home, the raid was, as the victim pointed out, an act of "illegal search and seizure," since the money and property that were stolen had nothing to do with a criminal act.
The same lawless behavior was on display at another facility called Everyone’s Café, where police threw cancer patients to the ground and held them at gunpoint.
"What took place in Oakland is nothing short of armed robbery," protests Gersh Avery, a local medical marijuana activist. "Patients in those locations had nothing to do with the day-to-day operations, yet their medicine was forcibly taken from them." The NET, Avery concludes, "deliberately targeted sick innocent people."
The official sadism continued after the case was split into two groups of defendants. Judge Richard Kuhn of Michigan's 51st District Court in Waterford refused to waive a bond condition permitting the use of medical marijuana by defendants who had received medical authorization to do so. Astoundingly, 43rd District Judge Joe Longo, who is presiding over the case in Ferndale, permitted defendants with medical marijuana cards to continue using the palliative while out on bail. This, of course, begs the question of why those people are criminal defendants in the first place.
Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard claims that the raid followed "undercover" investigations of Clinical Relief and Everyone's Cafe. William Joseph Teichman, co-owner of Everyone's Cafe, insists that "We check the identification of every patient we deal with, and those undercover cops had either proper ID and paperwork or forgeries so good we couldn't tell the difference."
In a post-raid press conference, Sheriff Bouchard -- grasping for a suitable soundbite -- described the local medical marijuana market as "something out of a bad Cheech and Chong Movie," without elaborating as to whether he considers "Up in Smoke" or "Nice Dreams" to be the gold standard of the stoner duo's cinematic output.
Bouchard himself essays a pretty decent impression of Sgt. Stedenko, the bullying, authoritarian narcotics officer who was a recurring nemesis in the comedy team's films.
Ryan Richmond, co-owner of Clinical Relief and one of the defendants in the Ferndale case, asserts that Bouchard "simply doesn't like the [Michigan state medical marijuana] law because it's too broad. If Bouchard has his way, we, you, have no rights even within the law."
Bouchard's critics are not limited to those he has arrested on marijuana-related charges.
"I personally don't understand why the county would use such a large amount of precious law enforcement resources on something like this," objects Ferndale Mayor Craig Covey. "This was obviously a political move by the sheriff to flex his muscles and send a message that he does not want medical marijuana clinics in Oakland County."
Covey also criticized "the use of SWAT teams with masked and armed officers ordering sick, elderly patients to the ground.... Now it's going to cost the taxpayers and the business owners hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees to sort through this mess."
Bouchard's admitted purpose in staging the raids was not to enforce the existing law, but rather to create a "test case" intended to change it, either in substance or in application. By strict definition, this was an exercise of violence against the helpless intended to bring about political change -- that is, an act of official terrorism.
Although Bouchard accuses medical marijuana advocates and providers of engaging in "organized crime," that description makes a much better fit when applied to the NET, which is a federally designated multi-agency task force. Thanks to an indulgence granted by the so-called Department of Justice, the NET has a license to steal in the name of "asset forfeiture."
According to the Madison Heights Police Department's 2009 Annual Report, last year the NET seized a little more than a ton of marijuana and pilfered nearly $2 million through asset forfeiture. The August 26 raids pulled down tens of thousands of dollars in cash, including money the late Sal Agro and his wife Barbara had put aside toward the purchase of a new car.
Original report here
(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here
Sal Agro, a 67-year-old man from Lake Orion, Michigan, died of a heart attack on September 2. Although those responsible for Agro's untimely death will never admit as much, he was the victim of an act of state terrorism carried out a week earlier by the Oakland County Sheriff's Office
Agro, along with his son, helped operate a treatment center in nearby Ferndale called Clinical Relief that provided medical marijuana to physician-approved clients under a 2008 Michigan state law. Sal, who had recently undergone hip surgery, was authorized to grow and use marijuana himself. His wife was authorized both to use marijuana and provide it to others as a caregiver. They had invited local officials to inspect the Clinical Relief facility.
Last June, with at least eight applications pending to open facilities like Clinical Relief, the Ferndale City Council imposed a temporary moratorium on dispensing medical marijuana while it explored new ways to harass the facilities through zoning restrictions. This prompted an objection from Mayor Craig Covey, who pointed out that the medical marijuana clinics would already be covered by existing ordinances. Nor were they likely to be profitable, given the detailed and often self-contradictory regulations inflicted on them under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act (MMMA), which voters approved by referendum in 2008.
On August 25, the Ferndale City Council lifted the moratorium. On the very next day, the local counter-narcotics Gestapo staged a paramilitary raid against several locations in Oakland County, arresting 15 people, confiscating cash and crops, illegally seizing medical records, and terrorizing unarmed, helpless people who suffer from cancer and other painful afflictions. Most importantly, of course, the raiders got a potent fix of their preferred narcotic -- the depraved thrill that comes from making powerless people submit to their whims.
It's hardly an exaggeration to characterize the Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team (NET) as the local "Gestapo." Agro used that term to describe the ski mask-clad marauders who laid waste to his home, ripping apart furniture, throwing potting soil into the carpets and -- of course -- helping themselves to whatever cash they could find.
A similar home invasion robbery was carried out at the Lake Orion home of Agro's daughter-in-law. "She's approximately five-foot, weighs about eighty-nine pounds, and the masked officers put a shotgun in her face and told her to freeze," a wearily disgusted Agro recalled to a local reporter.
After learning about the raid, Agro went back to his house, which was swarming with armed tax-feeders.
"I asked what was going on, and they said, `Your house is being searched,'" Agro related. "I said, `Do you have a search warrant?' They said, `Yes.' I said, `Can I see it?' They said, `When we get ready to show it to you.'" Despite the fact that the invaders had a note from a judge supposedly authorizing them to trash Agro's home, the raid was, as the victim pointed out, an act of "illegal search and seizure," since the money and property that were stolen had nothing to do with a criminal act.
The same lawless behavior was on display at another facility called Everyone’s Café, where police threw cancer patients to the ground and held them at gunpoint.
"What took place in Oakland is nothing short of armed robbery," protests Gersh Avery, a local medical marijuana activist. "Patients in those locations had nothing to do with the day-to-day operations, yet their medicine was forcibly taken from them." The NET, Avery concludes, "deliberately targeted sick innocent people."
The official sadism continued after the case was split into two groups of defendants. Judge Richard Kuhn of Michigan's 51st District Court in Waterford refused to waive a bond condition permitting the use of medical marijuana by defendants who had received medical authorization to do so. Astoundingly, 43rd District Judge Joe Longo, who is presiding over the case in Ferndale, permitted defendants with medical marijuana cards to continue using the palliative while out on bail. This, of course, begs the question of why those people are criminal defendants in the first place.
Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard claims that the raid followed "undercover" investigations of Clinical Relief and Everyone's Cafe. William Joseph Teichman, co-owner of Everyone's Cafe, insists that "We check the identification of every patient we deal with, and those undercover cops had either proper ID and paperwork or forgeries so good we couldn't tell the difference."
In a post-raid press conference, Sheriff Bouchard -- grasping for a suitable soundbite -- described the local medical marijuana market as "something out of a bad Cheech and Chong Movie," without elaborating as to whether he considers "Up in Smoke" or "Nice Dreams" to be the gold standard of the stoner duo's cinematic output.
Bouchard himself essays a pretty decent impression of Sgt. Stedenko, the bullying, authoritarian narcotics officer who was a recurring nemesis in the comedy team's films.
Ryan Richmond, co-owner of Clinical Relief and one of the defendants in the Ferndale case, asserts that Bouchard "simply doesn't like the [Michigan state medical marijuana] law because it's too broad. If Bouchard has his way, we, you, have no rights even within the law."
Bouchard's critics are not limited to those he has arrested on marijuana-related charges.
"I personally don't understand why the county would use such a large amount of precious law enforcement resources on something like this," objects Ferndale Mayor Craig Covey. "This was obviously a political move by the sheriff to flex his muscles and send a message that he does not want medical marijuana clinics in Oakland County."
Covey also criticized "the use of SWAT teams with masked and armed officers ordering sick, elderly patients to the ground.... Now it's going to cost the taxpayers and the business owners hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees to sort through this mess."
Bouchard's admitted purpose in staging the raids was not to enforce the existing law, but rather to create a "test case" intended to change it, either in substance or in application. By strict definition, this was an exercise of violence against the helpless intended to bring about political change -- that is, an act of official terrorism.
Although Bouchard accuses medical marijuana advocates and providers of engaging in "organized crime," that description makes a much better fit when applied to the NET, which is a federally designated multi-agency task force. Thanks to an indulgence granted by the so-called Department of Justice, the NET has a license to steal in the name of "asset forfeiture."
According to the Madison Heights Police Department's 2009 Annual Report, last year the NET seized a little more than a ton of marijuana and pilfered nearly $2 million through asset forfeiture. The August 26 raids pulled down tens of thousands of dollars in cash, including money the late Sal Agro and his wife Barbara had put aside toward the purchase of a new car.
Original report here
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