More than 100 British Keystone Kops in 19-hour siege against man armed with…..a bottle of Cillit Bang [household cleaning product]

Richard Jablonski was charged with possession of an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear and violence. But a judge threw the case out after prosecutors failed to offer any evidence. Police predictably unapologetic, however. They're just drama queens

More than 100 armed police officers swooped on a home and engaged in a tense 19-hour stand off with a man armed to the teeth - with a bottle of Cillit Bang.

But despite his kitchen arsenal of bleach-based products, Richard Jablonski was unable to make a clean getaway. Instead, the crack tactical operations squad arrested him for possession of an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear and violence. Incredibly, Jablonski, 38, was later charged and hauled before a court.

But the bizarre case was finally dropped at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court on Tuesday after prosecutors failed to offer any evidence.

Jablonski, from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs., had been due to stand trial early next month but Judge Paul Glenn returned a not guilty verdict.

Staffordshire Police refused to reveal the cost of the case - despite coming under pressure from their own police authority members. But estimates based on officers’ overtime and the cost of an armed response team have priced the siege at around £30,000. A similar siege involving 50 officers surrounding a house for 20 hours in Gloucester cost taxpayers £15,000.

If the case had gone to trial at crown court, the final bill would have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Paul Spratt, prosecuting, told the court: 'When officers got to the address the defendant was alleged to have produced a gun, before retiring into the property and holding them at bay.

'The defendant asserted what he was holding was a bottle of Cillit Bang. 'There is an unresolvable conflict between the evidence from the police and the evidence of the defendant. 'Therefore the prosecution offers no evidence in this case.'

Armed police had cordoned off part of an estate as they tried to coax Jablonski out of the house during the siege on January 6.

After the incident, officers recovered a BB gun from Jablonski’s kitchen - although it is now accepted he was not holding the firearm during the siege.

Staffordshire Police today defended the costly operation. In a joint statement with Staffordshire Crown Prosecution Service, the force said: 'The CPS, after consulting with Staffordshire Police, has decided to offer no evidence, for legal and evidential reasons.

'For the duration of the incident the police response was overseen by highly-trained and skilled officers who managed the situation in a measured manner and ultimately brought it to a safe and peaceful conclusion. 'Despite the outcome of the court case the police response was entirely necessary and proportionate.

'We recognise the disruption this incident caused to the local community at the time and wish to thank people for their support and understanding. 'Staffordshire Police take reports of incidents where firearms are believed to be involved very seriously. 'Our absolute priority is to ensure the safety of the public, our officers and those individuals involved.'

Original report




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Wedding day was ruined: Couple arrested in front of 50 guests and held for FIVE hours after 'sham marriage' probe blunder by British police

A couple wrongly suspected of a ‘sham marriage’ had their wedding day ruined when police arrested them in front of 50 guests moments before the ceremony was about to begin. Neil McElwee and his pregnant Chinese fiancée Yanan Sun were held for five hours despite officers allegedly realising they had made a mistake within 40 minutes of the swoop.

Miss Sun, 20, was left in tears as she was forced to remove her prized wedding gown and put on a special forensic outfit instead.

Chef Mr McElwee, 25, and his fiancée were kept for an hour and a half in separate vehicles outside the Guildhall in Londonderry before being taken to cells.

They were finally released without charge when their solicitor, Karina Breslin-Carlin, got involved. They were married the next day in Castlederg in July last year.

Yesterday, the three officers who led the swoop were disciplined after the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland upheld a complaint that they had ‘unlawfully arrested and detained’

But Mr McElwee, from Strabane, said the findings of the report and actions against the officers involved in his case did not go far enough. ‘We could only have that day once in our lives, yet it was taken away from us,’ he told the Derry Journal. ‘The police could have done their jobs right and saved us a lot of trouble.’

Their solicitor will continue to fight for the ombudsman to uphold the allegation that there was an ‘unecessary delay’ in police releasing the couple.

Revealing how their wedding was ruined, Mr McElwee, who became a father six months ago, told BBC News: ‘We were excited and looking forward to getting married. ‘We were so happy when we saw each other at the Guildhall.

‘Then everything just changed. Our day crumbled in front of us, it was awful. ‘We had no reason to think anything sinister would take place. ‘The room was full of plain clothes police officers.

‘In front of all our guests they came in and said they had reason to believe it was a 'sham marriage'. ‘They based the operation in an anonymous tip-off letter. ‘They held us for five hours. Within 40 minutes they knew they had made a mistake.

‘The officers have been disciplined but I'm not satisfied. We went through such a bad time, it was torment. ‘We try to forget what happened on our wedding day. We never ever talk about our wedding. ‘My wife has not been the same since,’ he added.

Ms Breslin-Carlin, the McElwee family’s solicitor, said: ‘The police had time to redeem this situation so the couple could have carried on with their day, but they did not. ‘This was a farce. A bridal couple were kept in a car park for an hour and a half in separate vehicles. ‘They were then detained in separate cells for two hours. ‘This is not good enough under any circumstances.’

A PSNI spokesperson confirmed that as a result of the ombudsman’s investigation three police officers were disciplined.

Original report




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British builder, 42, wins five-figure payout from the police after being dragged from shower by 19 officers after row with lover (who happened to be an officer's ex-wife)

Because they couldn't afford to be known what a civil trial might reveal. But still no apology or admission of guilt. The scum concerned are thus free to carry on as before

A man who was dragged naked, bloodied and bruised into the street by a team of 19 police officers who stormed his house has been awarded a five-figure payout.

Stephen Whenary, 42, was pulled from the shower, beaten around the head with a baton, sprayed with CS gas and arrested after police received a report he had been arguing with his partner, the ex wife of an officer, in 2005.

Outraged by his extensive injuries Mr Whenary embarked on a bitter six-year campaign for justice and sued Cleveland Police for assault, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.

The self-employed builder was unable to return to work for 13 weeks due to the the extent of his injures as well as the psychological trauma.

At the time of the attack Mr Whenary was living with Lynne, who has been married to a police officer.

He was originally charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

However, the case was thrown out by a judge after ruling that police evidence presented during the four-day trial was riddled with discrepancies.

After the force agreed to settle out of court Mr Whenary said: 'I’m glad it is all over now. 'It was never about the money it was always going to be about getting them to apologise for what they did to me. Sadly, I am still waiting for them to actually say sorry. 'It is still with me every single day but hopefully I will get my life back on track.

'For six years I have struggled to work because of the psychological damage that I have suffered as a result of the attack. 'I just try not to think about it too much and try to live my life as best I can.'

The incident happened at about 5.30pm on Sunday, August 21 2005 when police were called by a neighbour after hearing the defendant and his partner arguing. It is unclear why the couple were arguing.

Mr Whenary suffered a cut to the back of his head, lacerations to his shoulders, a large bruise on his arm, deep cuts on his feet and minor cuts and abrasions on his wrists.

Despite the trauma of the injuries he received, his relationship with Lynne survived and the pair married five years ago. Mr Whenary added: 'There was no way that I was going to let them beat me. 'It all put a lot of stress and strain on our relationship but we got through it and we are now happily married.

'We had to move out of the house where it all took place because there were just too many bad memories, but now we are in a new house, we are able to put it behind us.'

In December 2007, following an 18-month investigation carried out by the same force, the Independent Police Complaints Commission ruled the officers had no case to answer and would not face criminal or misconduct charges.

It was revealed that the only officer to face a reprimand was PC Shaun Mahaffey, who received a superintendent’s warning after he went on holiday instead of giving evidence at the trial. It was PC Mahaffey who was alleged in court to have smashed the shower door and hit Mr Whenary over the head with his baton.

At Mr Whenary’s trial in May 2006, the court was told that at one point, there were 19 officers in the house in Pine Street, Norton, near Stockton, Stockton-on-Tees, three of whom have never been traced. The court heard that nearly every officer in Stockton responded when a police constable put out a call for help.

District Judge Roger Elsey was told that Mr Whenary was pulled from the shower and beaten about the head with a baton after he acted with alleged ‘superhuman’ strength. He was then dragged outside, naked and bleeding.

Mr Whenary’s solicitor, Scott Taylor, of Taylor Goodchild, said: 'This has been a long protracted process but our client was determined to get the force to take responsibility for what happened and apologise for the injuries and mental trauma that it cause to him and his wife.'

Following the collapse of the trial, an investigation was launched by the force’s Chief Constable Sean Price, who is currently suspended after he was arrested last August and held on suspicion of misconduct in a public office, fraud by abuse of position and corrupt practice. He has always denied the claims and is planning to take civil action, claiming unlawful arrest, false imprisonment and trespass.

A spokesman for Cleveland Police said: 'An out of court settlement was agreed between both parties before any mediation process took place. 'Cleveland Police believe that the arrest and initial use of CS spray were lawful and proportionate to the circumstances.

'The claim was settled as we acknowledged that there had been a misunderstanding during the incident as to whether Mr Whenary was in possession of a CS canister which an officer believed had been taken from him.

'Following a complaint made by Mr Whenary, our Professional Standards Department found the complaint to be unsubstantiated. 'This was upheld by the IPCC and therefore there were no disciplinary or criminal matters against any officer arising out of this complaint.

'We hope that following this settlement all parties can now move on from this unfortunate incident.'

Original report




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MD: Just another police murder

When an architect crashed his car while suffering a diabetic reaction on the way home from Bible study class, state and county police pepper sprayed him in the face and clubbed and Tasered him to death, his wife claims in court.

Linda Johnson sued the Maryland State Police, Baltimore County Police, their top commanders and six officers who allegedly beat and Tasered to death Carl D. Johnson on May 27, 2010.

Johnson suffered a diabetic attack sometime after 8:15 p.m. that night, after calling a friend to tell him he was leaving his Bible class, according to the complaint in Baltimore County Court.

He suffered a diabetic attack, crashed on the I-795, and his car came to rest against the guardrail in the median near the merger with I-695.

According to the complaint, when State Trooper Davon Parker arrived and tapped on the window, and Johnson managed to lower the window, Parker pepper sprayed him in the face.

Johnson then got out of his car and Parker clubbed him at least once in the knee. Defendant Officer Loss (fnu) then arrived and whacked Johnson at least twice with his club, the complaint states.

Baltimore County Police Officer Nicholas Wolferman then arrived, whacked Johnson "at least three times" with his own baton, then he and Officer Loss "grabbed Mr. Johnson and threw him over the guardrail," Johnson's widow says.

She claims the very first officer on the scene knew or should have known that her husband was suffering from a medical problem.

Nonetheless, after throwing him over the guardrail, the cops applied pressure points to his ears and armpits, she says. Three more cops arrived, including Baltimore County Officer Andrew O'Neill, who Tasered Johnson twice. Officer Loss then punched him in the face and the six officers managed to handcuff him, the widow says.

Eight more cops arrived, and someone took his wallet, which included a medical alert card about his diabetes. Nonetheless, the cops forcibly held him down, though he was not resisting, and was handcuffed, his wife says.

"Upon information and belief, there were approximately 52 individuals that responded to the scene," according to the complaint.

The widow claims Johnson was Tasered at least three times, while he was lying on his back, helpless, surrounded by police. He became "motionless and speechless" and was pronounced dead within an hour of cardiac arrest.

He was the 10th person to die since 2004 after being subjected to police electroshock in Maryland, the Baltimore Sun reported in a story about Johnson's death.

Linda Johnson seeks more than $10 million in punitive damages for wrongful death, loss of consortium, false imprisonment, false arrest, battery, gross negligence and other charges. She is represented by Mark Millstein and David Silbiger, both of Baltimore.

Original report




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DC Police drunk with power and grab any excuse to use it

SWAT rampage destroys Iraq vet's home over guns

While Army Sgt. Matthew Corrigan was sound asleep inside his Northwest D.C. home, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of his home. SWAT and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams spent four hours readying the assault on the English basement apartment in the middle of the snowstorm of the century.

The police arrested the veteran of the Iraq war and searched his house without a warrant, not to protect the public from a terrorist or stop a crime in progress, but to rouse a sleeping man the police thought might have an unregistered gun in his home.

It all started a few hours earlier on Feb. 2, 2010, when Sgt. Corrigan called the National Veterans Crisis Hotline for advice on sleeping because of nightmares from his year training Iraqi soldiers to look for IEDs in Fallujah. Without his permission, the operator, Beth, called 911 and reported Sgt. Corrigan “has a gun and wants to kill himself.”

According to a transcript of the 911 recording, Beth told the cops that, “The gun’s actually on his lap.” The drill sergeant told me he said nothing of the kind, and his two pistols and rifle were hidden under clothes and in closets, to avoid theft.

So around midnight, the police arrived at the row house at 2408 N. Capitol Street. Over the next two hours, several emergency response team units were called to the scene, calling in many cops from home.

Police memos from that night describe the situation as involving a man who is, “threatening to shoot himself,” but “doesn’t want to hurt anybody.”

None of the cops’ documents indicate a threat that warranted a “barricade” and the closure of several streets to create “an outer perimeter that prohibited both traffic and pedestrian access.” With dozens of cops on the scene, they created a “staging area” two blocks away.

Around 1 a.m., the police knocked on the door of Tammie Sommons, the upstairs neighbor in the row house. Ms. Sommons had lived there since 2008 with her three roommates and, in that time, had become a close friend of Sgt. Corrigan. She had a key to his apartment and often walked his dog Matrix.

“I opened the door to this scene with three cops with guns pointed at Matt’s door,” she recalled in an interview this week. “One officer told me that Matt called a suicide hotline and was about to kill himself. I said that was impossible, he wasn’t that kind of guy. I told the police I see him every day and would know if he was suicidal.”

Over the next hour, Ms. Sommons repeatedly told the police she was sure that Sgt. Corrigan was merely sleeping. She knew he took prescription sleeping pills because of repeated nightmares from his year in Iraq. The cops wouldn’t listen to her.

“I said to the police, ‘You guys are making a big mistake. He’s not what you think,’” recalled Ms. Sommons. She offered to go downstairs and clear up the situation, but the police would not let her.

The officers asked her whether Sgt. Corrigan owned any guns. “I said, of course he has guns, he’s in the military,” she replied. Ms. Sommons had never seen the sergeant’s guns, but she is from a military family, in which gun ownership was the norm. She was truthful with the police because she was not aware the District requires registration of every gun.

This month, the U.S. House passed a nonbinding amendment, sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey, that said active military living in or stationed in D.C. should not be bound by the stringent firearm laws. Were such a law in place two years ago, Sgt. Corrigan would not have been targeted by the police.

MPD told Ms. Sommons that someone had reported that there was the smell of gas coming from Sgt. Corrigan’s apartment. “I told them that there was no gas in his apartment -- it was all electric,” she recalled. “I said if they smelled something, it’s just my roommate who was cooking chicken parmesan.”

Still, the police refused to accept the simpler explanation. “The cops said we needed to leave our house because Matt was going to shoot through the ceiling,” Ms. Sommons said. “They painted this picture like Rambo was downstairs and ready to blow up the place.”

At 3 a.m., the police called in an EOD unit -- the bomb squad. They brought in negotiators. They had the gas company turn off the gas line to the house. A few minutes before 4 a.m., they started calling Sgt. Corrigan’s cell phone, but they got no answer because he turned it off before going to bed. They woke him up by calling his name on a bullhorn. He then turned on the phone and was told to surrender outside.

Arrested Without Cause

When the police wouldn’t accept Sgt. Corrigan’s word that he was fine, he was forced to leave his home and surrender. When he stepped outside, he faced assault teams with rifles pointed at his chest. He immediately dropped to his knees, with his hands over his head.

Officers in full protective gear zip-tied Sgt. Corrigan's hands behind his back and pulled him up from his knees, forcing him into a large tactical command center called the “BEAR” which was parked at the staging area.

Although police did not read Sgt. Corrigan his Miranda rights, they questioned him inside the tactical truck. They asked the Iraq veteran basic questions about his life from various angles to get him to admit to owning guns. He remained silent about his two handguns and one rifle, which he had not registered after moving into the city.

Suddenly a police commander jumped in the truck and demanded to know where Sgt. Corrigan put his house key. He refused.

“I’m not giving you the key. I’m not giving consent to enter my house,” Sgt. Corrigan recalled saying in an interview with me last week at D.C. Superior Court after the city dropped all 10 charges against him.

“Then the cop said to me, ‘I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit with you. We’re going to break your door in, and you’re going to have to pay for a new door.’” “‘Looks like I’m buying a new door,’” Sgt. Corrigan responded. “He was riffed”

Realizing quickly that his house would get raided without his permission, he asked for one thing from the police. “I said, ‘Please don’t hurt my dog. He’s friendly. He’s a good dog. Please don’t hurt him.’ They said they wouldn’t.”

The police then took Sgt. Corrigan to the VA hospital, still with his hands restrained. He didn’t want to be put in the hospital against his will, so he was okay with being left there temporarily. He signed himself in for help.

“After having all those guns at me, I was broken,” he said, pointing again at his chest, where he’d seen the rifle red laser dots. “I hadn’t slept in days, I just wanted to sleep.”

The reservist spent three nights in the hospital. When he got out, the police were waiting to arrest him for the unregistered guns found when they raided his home, without a warrant.

Search, Seizure, but no Warrant

Since Since Sgt. Corrigan refused to permit a search of his house, the police had to break down his door. The cops, however, didn’t bother to wait for a search warrant before doing so. “They were all keyed up because they had been there and ready to go all night,” surmised Sgt. Corrgian’s attorney Richard Gardiner.

The first to enter the apartment with the supposedly dangerous apartment was the Emergency Response Team, which secured the dog Matrix and gave him over to animal control, according to police reports. Only then did the EOD personnel enter to search using portable x-ray equipment.

During the “explosive threat clearing efforts,” police reported finding the sergeant’s “hazardous materials,” which included two pistols and a rifle, binoculars and ammunition. The report also details how it took the combined efforts of the police, EOD and the D.C. Fire Department to seize the “military ammunition can that contained numerous fireworks type devices.” These were fireworks left over from the Fourth of July.

Also taken into evidence was what the police described as a “military smoke grenade” and “military whistler device.” This smoke-screen canister and trip wire were put in Sgt. Corrigan’s rucksack in 1996 by his squad leader and had long been forgotten over the years. EOD took custody of the smoke grenade and whistle. The rest of the the materials were handed over to the crime scene search department at 7:30 a.m.

Police Lt. R.T. Glover was pleased with the seven hour operation that resulted in finding three unregistered guns in D.C. In his report to Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, he concluded that, “as a result of this barricade incident, there are no recommendations for improvement with respect to overall tactical operations.”

Police Destruction

The dry after-action notes from the police following the operation give no clue to the property damage done to Sgt. Corrigan’s home. They tore apart the 900 square foot place.

Instead of unzipping luggage, the police used knives to cut through and destroy the bags. They dumped over the bookshelves, emptied closets, threw the clothes on the floor.

In the process, they knocked over the feeding mechanism for the tropical fish in the sergeant’s six-foot long aquarium. When he was finally released from jail two weeks later, all of his expensive pet fish were dead in the tank.

The guns were seized, along with the locked cases, leaving only broken latches behind. The ammunition, hidden under a sleeping bag in the utility closet, was taken. They broke Sgt. Corrigan’s eyeglasses and left them on the floor. The police turned on the electric stove and never turned it off and left without securing the broken door.

When Ms. Sommons came back to her home the next day, she looked into Sgt. Corrigan’s apartment. “I was really upset because it was ransacked. It made me lose respect for the police officers involved,” she said, the stepdaughter of a correctional officer.

“Here was Matt, who spent a year fighting for our country in Iraq -- where these police would never set foot in -- and they treat him like trash off the street.”

In February, Sgt. Corrigan filed a civil suit against the District asking for a minimum of $500,000 in damages for violating his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. His attorney, Mr. Gardiner, intends to add some of the individual officers to the suit when they are identified in discovery.

Original report




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Florida Gov. Rick Scott has saved Florida taxpayers a whopping $200,000 . . . by eliminating the state’s two-year-old Innocence Commission

This would be the state that has seen 12 DNA exonerations since the onset of DNA testing, and 23 exonerations of death row inmates since 1973. The Innocence Commission was set up in response to those cases, as well as the particularly outrageous exoneration cases in which four men were convicted of rape based on the junk science testimony of quack police dog handler John Preston.

I suppose everyone thinks his own pet issues deserve government funding. So let’s set aside the human costs, and put this in purely monetary terms. The average wrongful conviction costs taxpayers about $2 million. (I don’t know of any national studies, but several state studies of the total cost of DNA exonerations in those states arrive at about $2 million.) That figure only covers the average costs of trying, imprisoning, exonerating, and compensating the person who was wrongly convicted. It doesn’t include the costs associated with any additional crimes the real perpetrator may go on to commit, or the costs of resuming the investigation to find him, and then to arrest, try, and convict him.

So at minimum, if this commission’s recommendations prevent a single wrongful conviction, the commission funds itself for 10 years.

And lest you think Scott defunding the Innocence Commission is all about his economic principles and not just misguided tough-on-crime idiocy, consider Florida HB 177. The bill would have allowed for early release of non-violent drug offenders who successfully complete a prison treatment program. It would have saved the state millions in incarceration costs. It passed the Florida legislature by a combined vote of 152-4.

Scott vetoed it.

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Private court case succeeds after useless British police refuse to act

A mother who was sent death threats by so-called internet ‘trolls’ has won a landmark legal case against Facebook.

Nicola Brookes was tormented for months by anonymous internet bullies after she left an innocent message of support for an X Factor contestant on the social networking site.

She went to police to make a complaint but claimed officers told her to go home.

Now she has won a legal order forcing Facebook to disclose the identities of the trolls. It is the first time an individual has won such an order and Miss Brookes, 45, hopes to pursue private prosecutions against those responsible for her months of ‘vicious and depraved’ abuse.

Charities said the High Court ruling sent a message to the cyber bullies that their anonymity can be stripped away, leaving them open to prosecution.

Campaigners warned that online bullying has become the ‘weapon of choice’ among children and teenagers, with police and prosecutors failing to keep pace with the changes in technology.

Miss Brookes’s ordeal began last November when her daughter told her that an X Factor contestant, Frankie Cocozza, had received hate mail on Facebook. Stung by the cruelty, the mother left a message on his Facebook page, saying simply: ‘Keep your chin up, Frankie, they’ll move on to someone else soon.’

Within minutes bullies on the site turned on her, writing vile abuse including ‘Your [sic] a desperate pedo b****’ and ‘Ur [sic] a ****ing dog’. More than 100 cruel messages were left in just 24 hours. Miss Brookes said: ‘Facebook users began deliberately targeting me, writing under my comment that I was a paedophile and hoping that I would die.’

Worse followed when an online bully set up a fake Facebook profile in Miss Brookes’ name, with her photo and personal email address, and used it to send explicit messages to thousands of children, some as young as nine.

Some messages falsely described her as a drug dealer, a prostitute and a paedophile and known child abuser, and others attempted to ‘befriend’ young girls.

On Mother’s Day this year, trolls published the single mother’s home address in Brighton. Horrified, she reported the abuse to Facebook and the police, but said officers did nothing to help her. She said one officer told her she could leave a dossier of evidence ‘but we won’t read it’.

Frustrated by their response Miss Brookes contacted lawyers and began legal action to force Facebook to reveal details about her anonymous tormentors.

Last week the High Court granted an order compelling the site to disclose the bullies’ names, email addresses and their computers’ internet protocol (IP) addresses, which can be used to determine a computer’s location.

Miss Brookes said: ‘These abusers are not just random people who have nothing better to do with their time. ‘These are organised people who have been operating on Facebook for years. ‘I’m going for the strongest possible prosecution against these people. I want them exposed.’

Last month, a survey found that just over half of all internet users have received abuse online or by text message. Only a minority report the abuse to police as many believe it will not be taken seriously.

Prosecutions under the Malicious Communications Act, which makes it illegal to send grossly offensive messages, have increased three-fold since 2004. There were almost 900 such prosecutions last year but prosecutors accept that only a minority of trolls are brought to justice.

Miss Brookes has remained on Facebook despite the abuse and said she was determined not to be bullied into quitting the site.

Her legal action would have cost her up to £5,000 but her solicitors Bains Cohen agreed to take the case for free because of her horrific treatment. Lawyer Rupinder Bains said Facebook had not contested the action and had agreed to hand over the information within six weeks.

Four individuals were believed to have led the abuse against Miss Brookes and her lawyers will consider private prosecutions against them. If their Facebook accounts were set up using fake names and email addresses, lawyers will have to return to court and win similar orders against the trolls’ internet service providers, to get the bill-payers’ addresses.

Original report




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Man cleared of killing his wife and two daughters in house fire after 26 YEARS in prison... and he's finally able to visit their graves

David Lee Gavitt, from Ionia, Michigan, was freed from prison on Wednesday after prosecutors agreed he had been found guilty based on faulty evidence and outdated science.

The 54-year-old, who had languished behind bars for nearly three decades even though he had tried to save his family from the deadly fire, immediately went to a cemetery to visit them.

'It was a very emotional scene,' David Moran, a law professor and co-founder of the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan, which fought for Gavitt's release, told the Detroit Free Press.

As many as 20 of Gavitt's family members met him outside Carson City Correctional Facility as he pushed along a white bin full of his belongings.

He was freed with the help of the Innocence Clinic, which sent evidence from the case to an independent clinics to be reviewed and found that initial tests had been botched.

The clinic found that a Michigan State Police crime lab technician, who has since died, wrongly concluded carpet in the home showed traces of gasoline, the Free Press reported.

On Tuesday, Ionia County Prosecutor Ronald Schafer agreed the evidence against him was flawed. He added that, today, investigators would not have ruled the fire a crime.

Moran praised Schafer: 'He did what a prosecutor should do, which is to approach a case with an open mind and make a skeptical but honest assessment after consulting with experts.'

It comes 27 years after Gavitt and his wife Angela went to bed - to be woken by their dog scratching at their bedroom door. The 26-year-old factory worker opened the door to see flames in the living room and yelled at his wife to save the children, three-year-old Katrina and 11-month-old Tracy.

He made his way to a bedroom where he smashed a window, cutting his arm in the process. When he tried to run back to the children, he could not reach them. Instead, he jumped from the broken window and tried to reach their bedroom from outside - but their window was too high.

As neighbours held him back so he didn't run inside, his wife and the two girls were overcome by the smoke and later found dead.

Investigators believed arson had been committed due to burn patterns inside the house - now explained as flashover, where a room fills with toxic gases and explodes into flames.

They also ignored the fact Gavitt had no motive for the killings and had smashed the window to help them escape, before trying to re-enter the house.

Investigators also did not find a gas can at the scene - despite claiming there were traces of gasoline in the carpet - and overlooked how Gavitt had run into the snow in his bare feet without a shirt.

A year later, in 1986, he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

The Innocence Clinic, which has helped release six innocent prisoners since 2009, took on the case due to Gavitt's protestations of innocence and the lack of evidence.

The clinic sent the carpet test results to be reviewed in an independent lab, while a fire expert looked at the other evidence.

'In light of modern fire science, there is simply not one shred of credible evidence that the fire at the Gavitt residence was intentionally set,' the fire expert said in the affidavit last September.

Prosecutor Schafer asked experts from the State Police, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a private laboratory to re-examine the evidence. 'We now know that the evidence introduced at trial was not good,' he said.

Original report




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British photophobia again

Police agree £10,000 compensation payout to builder 'arrested and pushed face down into a puddle' for taking a photograph of a bank doorway

A police force has agreed to pay £10,000 in compensation to an amateur photographer who was injured while being wrongfully arrested for taking a picture of a bank doorway, his law firm said today.

Anthony Finnegan, 49, is also expected to receive a written apology from the chief constable of West Mercia Police, David Shaw, after he claimed to have been pushed face down into a puddle by the officers who arrested him.

Neither of the officers involved has been disciplined, but Mr Finnegan's solicitors said the force had indicated it will admit liability for the incident and agree to pay him £10,000 plus his legal costs. The force will also delete all records of Mr Finnegan's arrest, said London law firm Bhatt Murphy, which specialises in civil rights cases.

A spokesman for the police force said litigation in the case remained ongoing.

Mr Finnegan, a construction worker, was arrested in July 2009 while using an SLR camera to take pictures in the centre of Shrewsbury, Shropshire. One of the photographs was of the front lobby of a high street bank in a period building.

He was approached by a police constable and a police community support officer (PCSO) who, Mr Finnegan said, asked why he was taking 'discreet photographs' of a bank. 'I said: "There's nothing discreet about this, it's an SLR camera. If I was being discreet I'd use a phone",' Mr Finnegan told the Guardian.

Mr Finnegan said that the constable then began searching his pockets, so he suggested they go to a police station, partly because he was not carrying any identification but also because he was embarrassed to be searched publicly in his home town.

As they walked to the station, Mr Finnegan claims he was shoved, had his thumb pulled back sharply by the constable, and was eventually pushed to the ground.

Mr Finnegan said: 'He grabbed me in a thumb lock and I pulled away from him, going: "What are you doing?" I got taken to the ground, face down into a puddle, and the PCSO, who's about 18 stone, his knee went into my ribs, which cracked or broke the back of my ribs.' A doctor's examination later found other injuries, including abrasions and bruising.

Mr Finnegan was handcuffed and driven to another police station, where he was told he had been arrested for a public order offence and placed in a cell. He was released at about 9pm, seven hours after he was stopped. He learned two months later that he would face no further action.

Mr Finnegan's solicitor Fiona Murphy said: 'We welcome the chief constable's decision to admit liability, to apologise and to destroy the records of Mr Finnegan's detention.

'We hope that this complete resolution of the claim will enable the force to learn lessons from this regrettable abuse of police powers.'

A spokesman for West Mercia Police said: 'This is a live matter subject to ongoing litigation and it would therefore be inappropriate to comment further at this time.'

Original report




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Pennsylvania Supreme Court keeps innocent man in prison on a techicality

On June 9, 2004 an appellate judge in Pennsylvania ordered a new trial for ex-Philadelphia lightweight and death row inmate Anthony Fletcher. The judge noticed that an artfully suppressed autopsy report proved Fletcher was wrongfully convicted and almost certainly innocent. At that point he’d already done 12 years.

Judge John Milton Younge’s discovery created a problem for sworn officials in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. They could conceivably get their reputations smudged for framing Fletcher back in 1992. That’s when the state Supreme Court moved in. The justices on the court operated within a depressingly familiar old boy network (girls too, these days), a network whose members take care of their own. And Fletcher, a kid who at least for awhile had climbed out of the ghetto by joining the Army and learning to box, wasn’t one of their own.

The “justices,” reacting to an appeal from the D.A.’s office, took their time, finally issuing a ruling four years after Younge had ordered the retrial. There was no hurry. They weren’t sitting in stir. Amazingly, when their ruling came down it never actually dealt with the facts spelled out in the autopsy report. The report proved Fletcher shot small-time crook Vaughn Christopher in self-defense while struggling for Christopher’s gun, just as Fletcher said, and that the prosecutor’s key witness, hooker-thief Natalie Renee Grant, who owned a rap sheet the length of a furlong, was lying. But the justices, just like the District Attorney’s Office that framed Fletcher, weren’t interested in guilt or innocence. The question never came up in their ruling.

The “higher” court agreed with the D.A.’s office that Fletcher was “not entitled to relief because he waived his claims by failing to raise them” when he’d filed an earlier petition without a lawyer. In other words, they kept him inside on a technicality and refused to look at whether his conviction and punishment was a reasonable outcome. And, building an even higher wall around the horrific atrocities police and prosecutors had perpetrated against Fletcher, the Pennsylvania Supremes wrote their ruling in such a way as to make it just about impossible to file any more appeals based on the facts. In a brilliant stroke of savagery, they ruled against the facts without considering them. He stayed entombed alive and the “justices” went home to dinner. Can they really get away with this? I don’t know. Let’s find out.

The earlier briefs that, according to the justices, neglected to raise the autopsy issue, had been filed by Fletcher because after losing his trial with a blundering court-appointed attorney he figured he’d be better off handling his own appeal and filing his own briefs. It was a tragic error because when a defendant represents himself he technically can’t file appeals based on his own mistakes. So his appeal could technically be “waived.”

The justices “also ruled that even if the claim had not been waived, no relief was due” because Fletcher “failed to establish prejudice.” Prejudice is traditionally very difficult to prove to the satisfaction of a court. But in a system that concerned itself with justice no one would sit on death row for committing legal errors when evidence proves his innocence.

The brilliant Franz Kafka devoted his life to writing about banal functionaries who committed pitiless crimes against poor souls under their sociopathic thumbs. And he’d never seen Pennsylvania, which makes him even more of a visionary. Some of these justices, who had to twist the statutes into pretzels to come up with a legal decision devoid of justice, still sit on the highest court in the state. Others moved on. All claim the grandiose description of “honorable” before their names, but I’ll skip that, thank you.

They were Jane Cutler Greenspan, who wrote the ruling, and Ronald D. Castille, chief of the court; J. Michael Eakin; Max Baer; Debra McCloskey Todd, and Seamus P. McCaffery, all of whom joined the opinion. Thomas G. Saylor “concurred.”

For additional details about the case and information on Fletcher’s career as a soldier and lightweight contender, do a site search, above left, on Anthony Fletcher and retrieve our previous article. A future article will show how the details of the official autopsy report were suppressed all these years by prosecutors acting in behalf of the people of Pennsylvania. Also, the cops conveniently “lost” physical evidence that would have ruined their case.

Original report




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Dallas cops shoot man running away "in self-defense"???

People running away from you sure are threatening, I guess

The family of a Dallas man gunned down by an officer, wants answers. Police say the officer shot the suspect in self defense, but witnesses tell a different story.

The last time his family saw John Robert Husband, who was also known as J. J, alive, was around dinner time Saturday evening.

About an hour later, Husband was dead---shot down by a Dallas police officer.

His mother, brother, sister and grandfather are still unclear about the circumstances surrounding his death.

"They're not doing well at all they just like me they want some answers." Said the Grandfather, chocking back tears. "That's my oldest grandson, I raised him and they shot him in the back and they said it was justified?"

Dallas police say Husband was driving and had two other men in the car with him. The officer claims he noticed a gun in the vehicle, and pulled them over. The young men were handcuffed when witnesses say Husband tried to run away from the officer.

Police say the officer shot him in self defense. Was Husband in handcuffs when he was shot by the officer? Did police find the gun on him? All questions Dallas police are not ready to answer just yet.

Husband's Grandfather is calling on Chief David Brown to get involved. "I don't want hatred, I can't go around hating nobody, all police are not bad. I would like to see Chief David Brown come forward and promise to do something about the police officer because what he did was not justified." Said the Grandfather

Original report




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Uncle Sam and state governments: Looting like pirates in the name of fighting crimes

There is no excuse for civil asset forfeiture whenever the owner of any property (“asset”) seized and set for forfeiture by the state is within the personal jurisdiction of the state. None. And yet most instances of civil asset forfeiture in today’s America occur when the owners of the property are within the government’s in personam jurisdiction.

The too-convenient legal fiction that the property, rather than the property’s owner or possessor, is the wrongdoer is used by the state to circumvent many, perhaps most, of the procedural restrictions (such as trial by jury) designed to protect innocent people from overreaching government officials. (I do not here address the question of whether or not civil asset forfeiture is justified when the owner of the asset is outside of the state’s jurisdiction.)

Back in the mid-1990s, Adam Pritchard and I wrote a few articles on civil asset forfeiture (such as this one), as well as this op-ed that was originally published in the Washington Times. I will try soon to make available Adam’s and my longer law-review essays on this matter.

Civil asset forfeiture, certainly as used today in the United States, is a crime. A rather vile crime, at that. Read, for example, George Will’s column in today’s Washington Post. Or this 2010 study by the Institute for Justice (which Will links to in his column.) And yet governments practice civil asset forfeiture routinely, mostly in the name of fighting the misnamed “war on drugs.”

Any agency that engages in such activities is uncivilized. To trust such an agency with money and power is folly.

Original report




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The death of Gonzalo Guizan

I’ve posted on the Guizan case a number of times before. In May 2008, Guizan was visiting his friend Ronald Terebesi in Easton, Connnecticut—Guizan’s family says it was to discuss a new business. He was killed later that night during a SWAT-like police raid. (In this part of Connecticut, it’s called the SWERT.)

Terebesi doesn’t seem like the sort of guy you’d necessarily want living next to you. Neighbors reported frequent visits from prostitutes, drug use, and that Terebesi would watch porn in his living room. One jealous boyfriend apparently fired a shotgun into Terebesi’s house. But I don’t know why any of things would justify a SWERT raid.

And in fact, the raid came after a prostitute who had previously visited Terebesi reported he had been using—not dealing—cocaine the night of the raid. Guizan, who had no prior criminal record, was shot and killed by police shortly after they entered Terebesi’s home.

Four years later, the Connecticut Post looks at what we’ve learned since then.

On the morning of May 18, 2008, the Easton Police Department got a telephone call from “Chandra Parker.”

It turns out that wasn’t her real name, but that didn’t matter. Solomon now had a reason to take action against Terebesi.

He called in members of the Southwest Regional Emergency Response Team, a SWAT force made up of police officers from Easton and four surrounding towns. Nine heavily armed officers charged into the home based on a search warrant that a miniscule amount of drugs had been seen there by Parker.

When the operation was over, Guizan, who was visiting Terebesi, had been shot dead . . .

Two officers expressed misgivings about the operation prior to its launch. The team’s commander urged it be delayed; another officer suggested the SWAT-style raid wasn’t even necessary. But Solomon insisted the raid had to be conducted that day.

A member of the team with the most critical role in the May 18 raid had received most of his training for a far different role in such an operation. He arrived an hour late to the pre-raid briefing.

And the woman whose complaint led to the search warrant and the raid had a criminal record and gave a false name to officers preparing the warrant — all of which was never conveyed to the judge who authorized the search.

The lawsuit charges that the raid by the Southwest Regional Emergency Response Team should never have been ordered.

“The decision to call out SWERT to execute the warrant was unjustified, unreasonable, an arbitrary abuse of police power and not based on a legitimate law enforcement objective,” the suit states. “It was intended to frighten, intimidate, harass and/or punish Terebisi and Guizan and, on information and belief, to further Solomon’s interests.”

Solomon, who had been chief since 1995, recently retired from the police department. His lawyer did not return calls and emails for comment. In his deposition testimony he states that based on the information he has now he would not have done anything differently in ordering the SWAT team to raid Terebesi’s home. He claimed he wanted the raid done as soon as possible to ensure that evidence of criminal activity was not destroyed before they could seize it. He continued the raid was necessary to “obtain the evidence that the crime — obviously a crime was occurring, and to obtain that evidence.”

That alleged crime requiring such urgent, overpowering police action, once again, was a man using cocaine in his living room.

Police would learn later Parker’s real name was Pankov and she had a criminal record, including convictions for interfering with police, assault of a police officer, threatening and harrassment — all things they later acknowledged might have made a difference to the judge who reviewed and signed the search warrant. But that information was not provided to the judge . . .

Cirillo told [the SWERT officers] assembled that Terebesi was known to have guns in his house, had fought with officers before and that there was a good chance he was going to shoot at officers during the raid, according to court records.

Terebesi did have a handgun, which he owned legally. There was no history of him fighting with police officers. In fact, he had been served with an arrest warrant a month earlier after an EMT found glass pipes in his bed. (EMTs had been called after a report someone was having a seizure in Terebesi’s home.) He agreed to turn himself in, and was described by police as “‘congenial,’ and even ‘friendly’” while he was booked. So telling the SWERT team Terebesi has previously been violent with police was a lie.

They began to count down. Ten, nine, eight. …

At one there was the sound of breaking glass and the explosions of flashbangs at the other side of the house.

The back door was smashed open and the stack went in, Weir yelling, “Police, warrant.”

Another explosion as a flashbang went off.

Sweeney yelled, “I’m hit, I’m hit,” and then a volley of gunfire ensued.

It was over in about 15 seconds.

A lifeless Guizan lay on the floor with six gunshot wounds, one through his left hand that penetrated his chest, two shots to the abdomen, a gunshot in his left groin, one to the right knee and one to the right upper arm. Terebesi, who had been pinned by Sweeney, was handcuffed and dragged out of the house.

Team members searched the room and found two crack pipes and a tin containing a small amount of cocaine. No guns.

He had been “hit,” lightly, with the effects of one of his own flash grenades.

As Sweeney had entered Terebesi’s home the third flashbang had gone off. Debris from the explosion had hit him in the chest and foot and he mistakenly thought someone in the house was shooting at him. When Sweeney yelled that he had been hit, Weir, believing his comrade was under attack, fired one shot but didn’t hit anyone.

Sweeney said later that he had taken three or four steps into the room and then looked to his right where he saw Terebesi and Guizan in a corner of the room. Sweeney said he took two or three shuffle steps towards them.

At that point, he said, Terebesi and Guizan came toward him. Terebesi pushed and pulled on Sweeney’s shield while Guizan grabbed at Sweeney’s gun hand, pulling it downward. Sweeney said he began to lose his grip on his pistol and began firing until he felt Guizan let go of his gun. According to the video, this whole confrontation would have occurred in about a second.

Weir said later he saw no struggle between Sweeney and the two men.

During a deposition a frustrated Sweeney asked: “Why didn’t we just knock on the door?”

Of course, even if Guizan had fought with Sweeney, the most likely explanation is that he thought Terebesi’s home was being invaded. It’s much less likely that a guy with no criminal record or history of violence would knowingly take on a SWAT team . . . while unarmed.

Here’s the coda, now almost obligatory in these stories:

Sweeney received his department’s Officer of the Year award for his part in the raid.

For mistakenly believing he had been shot, then opening fire on an unarmed man, all because a prostitute had told police that the dead man’s friend was using cocaine in the privacy of his own home . . . for this, Officer Sweeney was declared “Officer of the Year.”

Original report




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The torture of Marian Price

Marian Price has been imprisoned in Northern Ireland for more than a year on the basis of secret evidence neither she nor her lawyers have been allowed to see. She is effectively interned without a trial, sentence, or release date. Unless the courts intervene, she will only be released by order of a British Cabinet Minister, Owen Paterson, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Overruling the Courts

Twice she has been arrested and brought before a non-jury Diplock Court. Twice a judge ordered her released on bail.

Each time Owen Paterson overruled the judge and ordered her back to prison. He said that he was revoking her license (parole in American terms) because he had “confidential information” against her. This “information” could only have come from MI5.

In May 2011, she was charged with “encouraging support for an illegal organization” after she held up a piece of paper from which a masked man read a statement. Northern Ireland must be one of the very few places where holding up a piece of paper can constitute a crime.

On May 11, 2012, almost exactly a year after these charges were filed, they were dismissed because the British government hadn’t produced any evidence. But Marian Price remains in prison.

In July 2011she was charged with “providing property for the purposes of terrorism”. She was accused of giving a cell phone to someone who participated in the killing of two British soldiers. She had been questioned about this and released 18 months before being charged. Her solicitor, Peter Corrigan, told the BBC that there was no new evidence against her.

Once again she was released on bail, and, again, Owen Paterson said he was revoking her license and ordered her back to prison.

The Vanishing Pardon

But Marian Price and her legal team insist that she was never actually on license. They say that after being convicted of IRA bombings in Britain, she received a full royal pardon (the “Royal Prerogative of Mercy”) when she was freed in 1980 after she appeared to be on the brink of death from severe anorexia nervosa.

The British Government now says the pardon “cannot be located” – that it has been lost or shredded and that no copy exists. Peter Corrigan told a public meeting in Belfast that this is the only time in the entire history of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy that a pardon has gone missing. The veteran Irish human rights campaigner Mgr. Raymond Murray said that “You can draw your own conclusions.”

There is good reason to be concerned about Marian Price’s health and well being. She was unable to appear in court on May11th, even by video link. Prison doctors have said that she should either be in a hospital or home with her family.

She was held in solitary confinement for more than a year. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has called for a ban solitary confinement of more than 15 days.

Marian Price’s Health

Marian Price’s health was permanently damaged when she was force fed over 400 times while on hunger strike in a British prison. She described the force feeding in an interview with the Dublin magazine The Village. “Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can’t struggle. You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open. They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can’t speak or move. You’re frightened you’ll choke to death.”

Marian Price’s husband, Jerry McGlinchey, said in an interview with “Radio Free Eireann” on WBAI, the New York Pacifica station, that he is “very, very worried” about her health. He says she never recovered from the force feeding which caused tuberculosis that had to be treated as recently as 2010. The anorexia has returned and she suffers from such severe arthritis that she can’t even open her hand.

McGlinchey believes that her health will get steadily worse as long as she is in prison. He said that “My fear is that Marian will slip into a deep depression that it would take her years to come out of. I believe that is what the government intends.”

Her prison conditions have contributed to the decline in Marian Price’s health. Male prison guards shine a flashlight in her eyes throughout the night. Protestant prisoners in nearby cells sing anti-Catholic songs at the top of their lungs all night long, making it impossible for her to sleep.

Support for Marian Price

Very few people agree with Marian Price’s politics. She is a “dissident” Irish republican who believes in the necessity of an armed struggle to end British rule. Nevertheless the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the two major nationalist parties in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labor Party, have all called for her release.

But what is at stake is more than Marian Price or her politics. The Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin McAliskey has said that her treatmenrt, “Is a clear signal to everybody who is not “on board” and who is not of the same mind as the government: that no dissent will be tolerated. No dissent will be tolerated and you challenge the status quo at your peril.”

Original report here


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How Many Innocent People Have our "Protectors" Sent To Prison?
 
When Beverly Monroe met her new neighbors in the free world after spending seven years in a Virginia prison for a crime she didn’t commit, she spoke candidly about her past. “I said I’d been through a crisis,” she says. “People immediately think a divorce or you lost your husband or something like that, which is all terrible enough.”

Monroe did lose her longtime boyfriend, Roger de la Burde, who was found shot to death with his own handgun in 1992. An overzealous state police agent suspected foul play, even though officials initially believed that de la Burde had shot himself. Monroe’s statements to police, which were deemed to be self-incriminating, coupled with an informant who received a deal from the prosecution in exchange for her testimony, formed the basis for the case against her.

At 54, the mother of three was charged and convicted of murdering de la Burde and sentenced to twenty-two years at the Pocahontas Correctional Center. Monroe might have served the whole sentence had her attorneys not discovered a collection of concealed exculpatory documents, including a crucial medical examiner’s report from 1999 that strongly suggested that de la Burde had indeed committed suicide. In 2002 a US District Court judge vacated the conviction.

Now in her 70s, Monroe works as an administrative assistant. The lost income and lack of savings from her years behind bars have made retirement a distant dream. “I’ll have to work until I’m 105,” she says. Virginia has not compensated her for the years lost to prison or for her legal expenses. (Her trial cost nearly $200,000.)

“Being innocent in prison is real torture,” Monroe says. “It’s a lasting kind of trauma…. You’re released, and you realize that it didn’t just happen to you—it’s happened to other people who have had it so much worse.”

How many other people? No one knows. The Bureau of Justice Statistics doesn’t track exonerations, so for years that task has fallen to lawyers, academics and activists relying on news reports and legal filings. While the Innocence Project and the Death Penalty Information Center track exonerations, neither group’s database is complete. No single resource has amassed all of the known exoneration cases.

Until now. On May 21, the University of Michigan Law School, in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, released the first-ever National Registry of Exonerations. The searchable online database is the most credible and comprehensive resource on wrongful convictions in the United States. Peter Neufeld, the co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, has called it the “Wikipedia of Innocence.” The registry, which can be viewed at exonerationregistry.org, currently counts 891 cases since 1989, the year of the first exoneration achieved using DNA.

The scope is significant: reliable data on false convictions had been limited to DNA exonerations and death row exonerations. Beverly Monroe doesn’t fit either category, and neither would the vast majority of exonerated prisoners: less than 1 percent of the nation’s prison population is on death row, and DNA evidence applies only to a small fraction of all criminal cases—those with biological evidence like semen, blood, hair and saliva.

In addition to examining “a much broader group of exonerations,” according to University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett, the registry shows “that there are a lot of exonerations that don’t get a lot of press attention.” It also alters the conventional wisdom about how innocent people get convicted. For his 2011 book, Convicting the Innocent, Garrett scoured the first 250 DNA exonerations and identified eyewitness misidentification as the leading cause of those wrongful convictions (as have others). But the larger pool of cases reflected in the registry reveals other trends. According to University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, “perjury or false accusation” is the leading cause of wrongful conviction.

Although the majority of the registry’s cases involve violent crimes such as murder, rape and sexual assault, exonerations for nonviolent crimes are better represented than ever before. The exonerated spent an average of eleven years in prison; ten people were exonerated posthumously or died in prison. Roughly 50 percent of the cases involved African-American defendants.

Gross believes that the cases in the database are just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, his total tally of exoneration cases actually exceeds 2,000, out of which more than 1,100 were “mass exonerations,” omitted from the registry for fear of skewing the statistics. Mass exonerations are often the result of police misconduct. Gross estimates a wrongful conviction rate among violent felonies of up to 4 percent. “Would I venture a guess about other types of crimes—drug crimes or white-collar crimes? Not at all,” he says. “Misdemeanors? Who knows?”

Recent evidence suggests that the error rate could be even higher. After a series of exonerations in Virginia, then-Governor Mark Warner ordered a review of thousands of cases over a fifteen-year span before DNA testing was available. The massive endeavor was recently completed, revealing an error rate that hovered at 6 percent, which Gross considers “horrifying.” Extrapolating to the whole US prison population, this could mean that more than 136,000 people are unjustly incarcerated.

Many wrongful convictions cannot even justly be called ”errors.” Beverly Monroe’s post-conviction attorneys discovered that prosecutors had concealed their promise of a reward to the informant, Zelma Smith—she received a sentence reduction in exchange for her testimony—as well as information about Smith’s pattern of offering information in other, unrelated cases with the expectation of a reward.

“When someone testifies falsely under oath, that’s not a mistake,” Monroe says. Her case entry in the National Registry lists the following contributing factors: “false confessions, false or misleading forensic evidence, perjury or false accusation, and official misconduct”—an unpalatable sampling of the many flavors of wrongful conviction.

The running tally of exonerations in the registry is important, but of greater significance is the analysis and categorization of cases, which will make new research possible and help curb misconduct. For exonerees who received little media attention or recognition from the state, the registry may assist in their efforts to clear their name and receive compensation. If nothing else, the public acknowledgment of their wrongful conviction lends legitimacy to their struggle.

Original report




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Fire is not the only danger for British firemen. Avoiding the police is the tricky bit

'Treated like common criminals': Fire chief slams decision to charge colleagues after pair are cleared of manslaughter following warehouse blaze roof collapse.

Should firefighters just stand aside and watch buildings burn? That seems the only safe way to avoid prosecution by safety-mad British police

When they couldn't find the arsonist, the cops turned on the firemen instead! Only in Britain

Police have been accused of wasting £5million prosecuting senior firemen over the deaths of four colleagues in a warehouse blaze – while failing to catch the arsonists who set the building alight.

A jury yesterday threw out the case against Timothy Woodward and Adrian Ashley, who were accused of manslaughter through gross negligence in their handling of the fire in 2007. In the worst loss of life for the fire service in 35 years, part-time firemen Ashley Stephens, Darren Yates-Badley, John Averis and Ian Reid died trying to put out the fire.

But while police never found the criminals who started the fire in Atherstone-on-Stour, Warwickshire, £4.7million has been spent over five years trying to pin blame for the losses on the managers who let the firemen enter the building even though all employees had already been accounted for.

A third defendant, Paul Simmons, was acquitted on the direction of the judge earlier in the trial at Stafford Crown Court.

After the verdicts, critics said firemen may now hesitate before trying to save lives for fear they could be arrested. Andy Dark, of the Fire Brigades Union, said: ‘Firefighters are furious at the police and prosecutors.

We believe that the Crown’s case, which was essentially that firefighters should stand aside and watch buildings burn, must be challenged by the Secretary of State, if not the Prime Minister himself.’

The police officer in charge of the inquiry, Detective Superintendent Ken Lawrence, insisted the investigation was justified and said he hoped the fire service had learned lessons from the tragedy.

Station Manager Timothy Woodward, 51, and Watch Manager Adrian Ashley, 45, who acted as incident commanders, were charged with gross negligence manslaughter in February last year following a criminal inquiry which cost taxpayers £4.6 million.

But after hearing six weeks of evidence jurors decided Mr Woodward and Mr Ashley had not acted illegally during their command of the incident on the evening of November 2 2007.

Speaking outside the court, Warwickshire’s Chief Fire Officer condemned the decision to press criminal charges against three members of his brigade in the first place.

Graeme Smith claimed the defendants had been treated like 'common criminals' and is now calling for the Home Office and Ministry of Justice to investigate how and why the prosecution was allowed to proceed.

Mr Smith, who was present in court during much of the six-week trial, said: 'It is crystal clear that these cases should never have been brought to court in the first place. 'But today neither I nor any of my colleagues in the Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service feel any sense of relief.

'Rather we feel a sense of sorrow and remembrance for the four brave firefighters who died at Atherstone-on-Stour in 2007.'

Both Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service and the Chief Fire Officers Association have serious concerns about the case.

Mr Smith and both bodies will be writing to the Home Secretary and to the Justice Secretary to seek a formal investigation into the prosecution.

Mr Smith was also critical of 'undue aggression' shown towards the firefighters charged with manslaughter during their time in police custody. During two days in the custody of Warwickshire Police, Mr Simmons, Mr Ashley, and Mr Woodward had their belts and shoelaces taken away and were also held at a police station overnight between interviews.

Mr Smith said: 'I am seriously concerned - and the public should be seriously concerned - that today, up and down the country, fire officers will be asking themselves... why on earth would I ever want to be an incident commander and face an unjustified legal attack in the way these three men have?'

There were two independent reports into the blaze, one commissioned by the police and another commissioned by the Warwickshire Fire Service, which was seized by the police before Warwickshire Fire Service had a chance to consider it.

Mr Smith said the investigation had been handled poorly and had put firefighters’ safety behind the needs of the police. He said: 'The police investigation into this fire took a wrong turn very early on.

'The police treated decent fire officers like common criminals. The court heard they were locked up in the cells overnight and even had their shoelaces taken away from them.

'It has taken almost five years and five million pounds of public money to construct a flimsy case against these three men and when it was presented in court it simply fell apart.'

He added: 'Both of these reports contained safety critical information of vital importance to the safety of firefighters up and down the country. 'Neither of them was released to the fire service until May 2011 - an incredible three-and-a-half years after the fire.

'I am outraged that the secrecy surrounding these reports meant that firefighters remained at risk for so long.'

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) hit out at police and prosecutors after the two remaining firefighters were cleared.

The union said it was absurd that the arsonists who started the blaze had never faced trial, while those who struggled to put it out were 'relentlessly pursued' by police and the CPS.

FBU assistant general secretary Andy Dark said: 'This was the first time firefighters at an incident were accused of the manslaughter of their colleagues. 'This prosecution cast a shadow across the whole fire service and caused anger and concern. 'We are relieved at the not-guilty verdicts but firefighters are furious at the police and prosecutors.

'The criminals who started the fire are still free, but those who tried to put the fire out were arrested, charged and brought to trial.'

Original report




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Study: 2000 convicted then exonerated

More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.

There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.

The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.

They found that those 873 exonerated defendants spent a combined total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an average of more than 11 years each. Nine out of 10 of them are men and half are African-American.

Nearly half of the 873 exonerations were homicide cases, including 101 death sentences. Over one-third of the cases were sexual assaults.

DNA evidence led to exoneration in nearly one-third of the 416 homicides and in nearly two-thirds of the 305 sexual assaults.

Researchers estimate the total number of felony convictions in the United States is nearly a million a year.

The overall registry/list begins at the start of 1989. It gives an unprecedented view of the scope of the problem of wrongful convictions in the United States and the figure of more than 2,000 exonerations "is a good start," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

"We know there are many more that we haven't found," added University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, the editor of the newly opened National Registry of Exonerations.

Counties such as San Bernardino in California and Bexar County in Texas are heavily populated, yet seemingly have no exonerations, a circumstance that the academics say cannot possibly be correct.

The registry excludes at least 1,170 additional defendants. Their convictions were thrown out starting in 1995 amid the periodic exposures of 13 major police scandals around the country. In all the cases, police officers fabricated crimes, usually by planting drugs or guns on innocent defendants.

Regarding the 1,170 additional defendants who were left out of the registry, "we have only sketchy information about most of these cases," the report said. "Some of these group exonerations are well known; most are comparatively obscure. We began to notice them by accident, as a byproduct of searches for individual cases."

In half of the 873 exonerations studied in detail, the most common factor leading to false convictions was perjured testimony or false accusations. Forty-three percent of the cases involved mistaken eyewitness identification, and 24 percent of the cases involved false or misleading forensic evidence.

In two out of three homicides, perjury or false accusation was the most common factor leading to false conviction. In four out of five sexual assaults, mistaken eyewitness identification was the leading cause of false conviction.

Seven percent of the exonerations were drug, white-collar and other nonviolent crimes, 5 percent were robberies and 5 percent were other types of violent crimes.

"It used to be that almost all the exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We're finally beginning to see beyond that. This is a sea change," said Gross.

Exonerations often take place with no public fanfare and the 106-page report that coincides with the opening of the registry explains why.

On TV, an exoneration looks like a singular victory for a criminal defense attorney, "but there's usually someone to blame for the underlying tragedy, often more than one person, and the common culprits include defense lawyers as well as police officers, prosecutors and judges. In many cases, everybody involved has egg on their face," according to the report.

Despite a claim of wrongful conviction that was widely publicized last week, a Texas convict executed two decades ago is not in the database because he has not been officially exonerated. Carlos deLuna was executed for the fatal stabbing of a Corpus Christi convenience store clerk. A team headed by a Columbia University law professor just published a 400-page report that contends DeLuna didn't kill the clerk, Wanda Jean Lopez.

Original report




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The Vegas sting: A cunning FBI trap set by a cocaine-addicted stool pigeon ensnared this British businessman and destroyed his life. The only problem? He was innocent

In the chill of a Nevada morning, David Painter left his Las Vegas hotel. Wearing a Hugo Boss suit and a blue Brooks Brothers shirt, a Rolex on his wrist, he bore the anonymous affluence of business travel. For a defence industry executive his first diary appointment was routine: a weapons demonstration at a training range just outside the city limits.

It was as his 4x4 arrived at the range that the FBI SWAT team appeared to take him down. Four hulking police commandos in body armour, jackboots, helmets and goggles thrust their semi-automatic rifles through his car door. ‘Shut up and get out,’ they ordered, the array of close combat weapons on their waist belts brooking no refusal.

The middle-aged Briton was handcuffed and led at gunpoint into a pastel two-storey classroom building. There on a desk he found a large cardboard box awaiting his briefcase and laptop, his telephone and wallet. On it was stapled his mug shot and a charge sheet. Across the top were the typewritten words ‘Armed and Dangerous’.

Painter was neither. He was the Surrey-based chief executive of 3S (Security Support Solutions Ltd), a company licensed and audited by the British Government to supply civilian armoured vehicles for use in conflict zones including Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan. He was also, it was to emerge that day in Vegas, the victim of a huge, sleazy and ultimately doomed FBI operation known as The Africa Sting.

The project had been set up as a fake $15 million deal to arm the presidential guard of the Omar Bongo regime in the West African nation of Gabon. It had been created by the American Department of Justice (DoJ) and run by the FBI (unbeknown to Bongo). They designed it to be a deadly weapon in their arsenal against corruption but the biggest investigation of its type in DoJ-FBI history brought only humiliation, controversy and complete legal defeat.

David Painter’s liberty, home and business were the collateral damage. After his arrest in January 2010 he was jailed for five weeks.

Once bailed, he had to sell his much-loved £1.5 million Surrey home and liquidate shares and pensions to pay legal fees and costs amounting to £1 million. 3S has ceased trading.

In February this year the DoJ asked a judge to dismiss all charges made against him with prejudice, which means they can never be revisited. The same was true of his 21 co-accused. In the end, nobody ensnared by the fictitious Gabon deal was convicted.

Presiding Judge Richard Leon of Washington Federal District Court called the fiasco ‘the end of a long and sad chapter in the annals of white-collar criminal law enforcement’. He accused the DoJ of promulgating a ‘very, very aggressive conspiracy theory that was pushing its already generous elasticity to its outer limits’, adding ‘the elastic snapped in the absence of the necessary evidence to sustain it’. He was also obliged to chastise prosecutors for ‘sharp practices which have no place in a federal court room’.

All of which means The Africa Sting case raises troubling questions about the integrity of the American judicial system and the likely fortunes of British nationals extradited to face it.

Today Painter, 58, sits at a borrowed desk in a borrowed office, starting his career afresh. Home is a modest house in Surrey bought by his wife Judy.

It was, he says, ‘like having a bomb dropped on your life. There is a dark side to our world, a place beyond our control where governments and their agents can do what they want.

‘My life is the flotsam left in the wake of America’s obsession with policing the world. I have never contravened the rigorous controls and laws in my line of business,’ he states firmly.

‘The Gabon deal was drip-fed to me by someone who had worked for a blue-chip defence company and whose then wife was a former American Ambassador to the UN.

There was nothing to make a decent man walk away from the table. West Africa is a notoriously difficult area to do business with; bribery exists but over and over, with the complicity of the DoJ and FBI, I was told this deal had been approved by the US State Department.’

Ruefully he adds: ‘I was sceptical – but only because I was concerned it might not be big enough to be worth my while . . .’

Meeting him now, dapper and proper in an old-fashioned English way, it is hard to imagine his immersion into the American prison system.

There he slept on a concrete floor; was stripped naked, bent over and searched in public; shared an open latrine in a cell with two dozen inmates and was handcuffed, shackled and chained at the waist when he was moved.

He learned to block out the howling madness of 24-hour-a-day electric light and television with DIY ear plugs made from toilet roll and cling-film.

At home, he had enjoyed executive lunches and flew on British Airways. In America, he survived on stale baloney sandwiches and long-life milk and was transported on ‘Con Air’, the infamous aviation network that relocates inmates from one prison to another.

Cuffed to his own seat and shackled to the one in front, he remembers one flight where a fellow prisoner – an obvious informant – plied him for information to pass on to the guards. On another flight, his neighbour had a skeleton tattooed across his bald head.

Five weeks after his arrest when he was finally arraigned and bailed by a court in Washington DC, he was spat out of the prison system a stone-and-a-half lighter and with its standard welfare package: a twin pack of condoms, a list of homeless shelters and a bus ticket. He emerged late at night during a snow storm in XXXL jogging bottoms and canvas prison shoes.

‘That was a highlight,’ he grimaces. ‘I’d rank it alongside the morning I was transported from Las Vegas to San Bernadino in California chained into the back of a prison wagon with two noisy Mexican hookers and a man in a spit mask, a plastic hood that covered his whole head from the neck up [to prevent him spitting at the guards].

‘Or the time when I was being strip-searched in Washington and the huge bloke next to me turned out to be in possession of breasts and a penis.

‘There were moments of humour, but it was mostly a matter of survival. I was locked in cells with up to 90 other men, from Mafia types and Hispanic drug barons to fathers who’d committed mortgage fraud.

‘I learned not to ask to watch the news, not to snore, not to be embarrassed about my body and to zone out.

‘It was rough. I saw men being pepper-sprayed. I went hungry and thirsty and was perpetually cold. The whole experience is designed to make you feel precisely what you are: crushable.’

The question must be why did the DoJ and FBI wish to crush David Painter? And the answer lies in the recent history of its prosecutions under America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which makes it illegal for any individual or corporation with business in America to bribe a foreign official.

Investigations into household-name companies such as Siemens and BAE Systems had resulted in multiple non-prosecution agreements in which multi-million- dollar fines had been paid to the US government but no guilty executives put in the dock. It was starting to look unjust. Added to which, the department had suffered several well-publicised defeats in its prosecution of FCPA cases and was determined to reverse its fortunes.

In 2009 it concocted The Africa Sting which, according to the FBI’s PR machine, was designed to ‘play out with all the intrigue of a spy novel’. A Confidential Human Source – a stool pigeon – was to front a deal to arm the Gabonese presidential guard.

But the contracts, for everything from body armour to armoured cars, would be subject to a 20 per cent commission, half of which would go to the Gabonese Minister of Defence, Ali Bongo, son of the then president – and now president himself – and the other half to a sales agent. At least, that is what the FBI later claimed.

Anyone transacting the proposed contract would be in violation of the FCPA. However, the words bribe or kickback were never employed by the sting’s players. The payment was simply listed as a ‘commission’, its true nature concealed from the executives to whom it was offered. It led the foreman of the jury, which eventually tried six of David Painter’s co-accused, to reveal the underlying view of the jurors was that ‘the defendants had acted in good faith and the DoJ-FBI in bad faith’.

The sting was pitched to Painter by a man called Richard Bistrong whom he once considered a trusted associate and family friend. They first met in 2006, when Bistrong was the international vice-president of a major US defence company called Armor Holdings. Tall, tanned and urbane, he was then married to diplomat Nancy Soderberg, an American ambassador to the UN and a key aide to Bill Clinton.

But despite his polished appearance, Bistrong was in deep legal trouble having been caught violating the FCPA and other statutes while working for Armor Holdings. He had conspired to pay bribes to win a UN contract to supply body armour. In February 2009, the DoJ offered him a plea bargain whereby he would receive a maximum five-year jail term in return for an admission of guilt. (It is expected to be handed down to him by Judge Richard Leon on July 31.)

The DoJ insisted that, as part of the deal, he re-entered the defence industry on the FBI payroll as an informant. Bistrong indiscriminately targeted 22 people who were immediately nicknamed the ‘Catch 22’. Among them was David Painter. The victims included a former deputy director of the US Secret Service who had retired after a distinguished career.

Bistrong dangled a deal to supply $10,000 worth of night-vision goggles to Gabon. Painter passed the invitation to his American parent company, pointing out he was not licensed or qualified to sell them. Bistrong told him phase two of the tender could include armoured cars, his speciality. Painter was interested and, although he had signed nothing and funded nothing, Bistrong had done enough to put him in the FBI’s sights.

Next, the Bureau needed to choreograph a meeting of all The Africa Sting suspects to create a core charge of conspiracy. To coincide with a big Washington trade fair, which Painter was attending, Bistrong invited him and others to a ‘reception’ to meet the Gabonese agent brokering the deal – in reality an FBI man with a French accent likened in court to Peter Sellers playing Inspector Clouseau.

At a restaurant in downtown Washington DC, Painter and the other victims ate canapes and drank beer. FBI agents mingled covertly among them reading from prepared scripts designed to entrap. Satisfied it had nailed the conspiracy, the FBI then moved to carry out its stunning military-style take down in Las Vegas.

‘After I was arrested I felt as if I’d just dropped off the radar of my real life, as though I’d disappeared into the American prison system and would never be discovered,’ says Painter now.

‘I had no access to an international telephone or money, no lawyer, no useful communication from my own government. I got one visit from a British consular official in Las Vegas who had come to check up on my medical welfare. He looked like Mr Bean.’

He was moved from Vegas to San Bernadino and from there on ‘Con Air’ to Oklahoma. From Oklahoma he was shuttled to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, from where he was driven to his arraignment and bail hearing in Washington DC on February 17.

Freed, but required to stay within a 25-mile radius of Washington city centre, his first thought was to be reunited with Judy, who immediately flew to his side.

‘I don’t think,’ he says allowing himself a smile, ‘the taxi driver who dropped her off quite knew where to put himself. It meant everything to be back together.’

In May 2010, with The Africa Sting case already generating legal controversy in America, a court permitted Painter to come home. Judy and the children, a son now 25 and a daughter now 22, met him at Heathrow. Painter then worked on his defence as he would a job. He had been fired by his parent company and faced a potential 25-year jail term. He declined to plea bargain.

‘After I was arrested I felt as if I’d just dropped off the radar of my real life, as though I’d disappeared into the American prison system and would never be discovered,' said David Painter

‘My dramatic arrest and the way I was treated in prison was to soften me up for a plea bargain. Ninety per cent of people in my situation accept one because of the almost insurmountable odds against fighting the limitless resources of the DoJ.

‘But I am not the kind of man to perjure myself in court. I could not confess to something I had not done. We sold our home and cashed up the fruits of a lifetime of work to fund the fight.’

Back in America, three Africa Sting defendants did accept the offer of a lesser sentence in return for a guilty plea. The subsequent dismissal of all charges against all defendants included their plea bargains. Their confessions were overturned by Judge Richard Leon.

The first four accused went to trial in May 2011. That hearing ended with a combination of dismissed charges and a mistrial being declared.

The second six defendants went to trial the following September and it was then that their nemesis Bistrong was unveiled as the FBI’s star witness.

Under cross-examination, Bistrong’s appetites for cocaine and alcohol and his predilection for prostitutes were exposed, as was his own history as a law breaker.

He admitted he had lied to the defendants and misled them. There was also the revelation of strings of seedy text messages about sex, cigars and sport between Bistrong and his FBI handlers, which fatally damaged what was left of his – and their – credibility.

That case ended in January 2012 without a single conviction but with a legally confused picture of dismissed charges (including the conspiracy charge at the heart of the DoJ’s case), three acquittals, and another mistrial.

Two weeks later, the DoJ admitted that ‘continued prosecution of this case is not warranted’ and requested the motion to dismiss, which was granted. David Painter was shopping in Waitrose at the time.

The DoJ won’t relent. ‘Our FCPA enforcement efforts are broader than one case,’ said a government spokeswoman.

‘We will continue to vigorously investigate and prosecute acts of foreign bribery covered by this important law and to hold accountable those businesses and individuals who seek to illegally obtain business through bribery of foreign officials.’

David and Judy Painter are, as they say, slowly ‘righting the ship’ but they were holed beneath their safe, English middle-class water line by the self-righteous cannons of American justice.

‘I tell the story of the Gabon deal and think, “You couldn’t make it up ......’ Painter says. ‘But, of course, they did.’

Original report




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