The United Police States of America

[BoSoxGal]

This thread is where I'll be posting - and I invite you to as well - news stories, articles, etc. that document the militarization of our local police, Sheriff's departments, and other law enforcement agencies. eta: It will also include stories of wrongful convictions, exonerations, and prosecutorial misconduct.

I've placed it in Politics because I think that's a logical choice - it's certainly a political choice that our elected representatives have made to turn a blind eye for years to this kind of outrageous behavior engaged in by what appears, alarmingly, to be not a small minority of law enforcement officers - who are sworn to uphold the law and to 'protect and serve' their fellow citizens.

eta: I'm concerned about this issue because going into prosecution a few years ago I naively believed that mistakes made by the State were the exception to the rule, and that most prosecutors and law enforcement officers were basically decent people who strived to do the right thing. (You may recall that at the time Andrew D accused me of 'selling out', an accusation that hurt me deeply, because if I am nothing else, I am scrupulously ethical in my practice of law, and the first to own any mistake I might make and to give all benefit of doubt on any issue to the defense.)

As I started practicing as a prosecutor, I was shocked to see the prevalence of distrust for police and the State that is expressed by potential jurors in voir dire; I thought maybe it was some kind of Montana Libertarian thing, but at my recent nationwide conference I learned, it ain't. Many, many people don't trust the State anymore, and I am one of them. I know that I have never committed anything remotely close to misconduct - in fact, I 'play' so fairly with defense counsel that I have made enemies of some LEOs with whom I've worked - and THAT is something that shocked me, too.

It shocked me into the realization that FAR too many of the people in law enforcement are motivated by the desire to WIN, not by the desire to seek JUSTICE, wherever it leads. Far too many are, indeed, jack-booted thugs who 'get off' on their power and control over fellow citizens. Far too many - police and prosecutors alike - believe that they have 'magic vision' that enables them to see the guilt in people even when the evidence leaves room for reasonable doubt; and far too many prosecutors are willing to fix the deck when they believe in guilt and evidence exists that doesn't support that belief.

Anyway, here's a gut-wrencher to start off with:

Baltimore police officer charged with slitting throat of dog that had already been contained

BY JUSTIN GEORGE June 18 - Washington Post

A Baltimore police officer slit the throat of a dog that officers had already detained and now faces felony animal cruelty charges, the department said Wednesday.

The department’s Internal Affairs division is investigating the incident, which police Deputy Commissioner Dean Palmere called “outrageous and unacceptable” at a news conference. Officials say they learned of the dog’s killing Monday, two days after it occurred.

Other officers who witnessed the incident have been forthcoming with details, police say, but investigators are trying to determine whether any of them should have disclosed the incident immediately.

The killing of the 7-year-old Shar-Pei named Nala came a day after a Baltimore police officer shot to death a steer in Mount Vernon after it had escaped a slaughterhouse and evaded capture for about 2 miles. That incident is also under department investigation, but officials have defended the officer’s use of force in that case.

In the case of the dog’s death, Baltimore police Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said there was no “viable” way to justify the veteran officer’s actions, which took place in the 700 block of Grundy Street in Brewers Hill.

“We have no words to describe this,” he said.

On June 14, police said, Nala got loose and bit the hand of a woman who tried to catch the dog. Palmere said the wound was superficial. Officers from the Baltimore police’s Southeastern District detained the dog and summoned emergency services officers to the scene.

The emergency services unit handles many duties including assessing barricade situations and providing police crime-scene lighting.


They also carry the long dog-control poles, which can lasso stray dogs safely, Lt. Eric Kowalczyk, a Baltimore police spokesman, said.

The Shar-Pei was detained with one of these poles, police said.

At some point, one of the emergency services officers then pulled out a knife and slit its throat, Palmere said. The dog died from its injuries.

“Officers were appalled by what they saw, as were other citizens,” Palmere said.

Rodriguez said no motive or provocation could justify the act. The dog poles are meant to keep animals safely at bay for detainment and the department had “gone through great lengths” to train officers on how to handle almost any situation involving dogs.

“There is no procedure or training that justifies this behavior,” Rodriguez said.

[BoSoxGal]

And another just as sickening:

A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son


Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh(Credit: The Phonesavanh Family)

After our house burned down in Wisconsin a few months ago, my husband and I packed our four young kids and all our belongings into a gold minivan and drove to my sister-in-law’s place, just outside of Atlanta. On the back windshield, we pasted six stick figures: a dad, a mom, three young girls, and one baby boy.

That minivan was sitting in the front driveway of my sister-in-law’s place the night a SWAT team broke in, looking for a small amount of drugs they thought my husband’s nephew had. Some of my kids’ toys were in the front yard, but the officers claimed they had no way of knowing children might be present. Our whole family was sleeping in the same room, one bed for us, one for the girls, and a crib.

After the SWAT team broke down the door, they threw a flashbang grenade inside. It landed in my son’s crib.

Flashbang grenades were created for soldiers to use during battle. When they explode, the noise is so loud and the flash is so bright that anyone close by is temporarily blinded and deafened. It’s been three weeks since the flashbang exploded next to my sleeping baby, and he’s still covered in burns.

There’s still a hole in his chest that exposes his ribs. At least that’s what I’ve been told; I’m afraid to look.

My husband’s nephew, the one they were looking for, wasn’t there. He doesn’t even live in that house. After breaking down the door, throwing my husband to the ground, and screaming at my children, the officers – armed with M16s – filed through the house like they were playing war. They searched for drugs and never found any.

I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him. He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view, so I couldn’t see my son. I could see a singed crib. And I could see a pool of blood. The officers yelled at me to calm down and told me my son was fine, that he’d just lost a tooth. It was only hours later when they finally let us drive to the hospital that we found out Bou Bou was in the intensive burn unit and that he’d been placed into a medically induced coma.

For the last three weeks, my husband and I have been sleeping at the hospital. We tell our son that we love him and we’ll never leave him behind. His car seat is still in the minivan, right where it’s always been, and we whisper to him that soon we’ll be taking him home with us.

Every morning, I have to face the reality that my son is fighting for his life. It’s not clear whether he’ll live or die. All of this to find a small amount of drugs?

The only silver lining I can possibly see is that my baby Bou Bou’s story might make us angry enough that we stop accepting brutal SWAT raids as a normal way to fight the “war on drugs.” I know that this has happened to other families, here in Georgia and across the country. I know that SWAT teams are breaking into homes in the middle of the night, more often than not just to serve search warrants in drug cases. I know that too many local cops have stockpiled weapons that were made for soldiers to take to war. And as is usually the case with aggressive policing, I know that people of color and poor people are more likely to be targeted. I know these things because of the American Civil Liberties Union’s new report, and because I’m working with them to push for restraints on the use of SWAT.

A few nights ago, my 8-year-old woke up in the middle of the night screaming, “No, don’t kill him! You’re hurting my brother! Don’t kill him.” How can I ever make that go away? I used to tell my kids that if they were ever in trouble, they should go to the police for help. Now my kids don’t want to go to sleep at night because they’re afraid the cops will kill them or their family. It’s time to remind the cops that they should be serving and protecting our neighborhoods, not waging war on the people in them.

I pray every minute that I’ll get to hear my son’s laugh again, that I’ll get to watch him eat French fries or hear him sing his favorite song from “Frozen.” I’d give anything to watch him chase after his sisters again. I want justice for my baby, and that means making sure no other family ever has to feel this horrible pain.

Update: As of the afternoon of 6/24/2014, Baby Bou Bou has been taken out of the medically induced coma and transferred to a new hospital to begin rehabilitation. The hole in his chest has yet to heal, and doctors are still not able to fully assess lasting brain damage.

Alecia Phonesavanh is the mother of Bounkham Phonesavanh, nicknamed "Baby Bou Bou." She and her family live in Atlanta. For more information about Bou Bou, go to http://www.justiceforbabyboubou.com.

[Grim Reaper]

Police generally don't have a good record with interacting with dogs. Here is another article about a man in Salt Lake City, Utah who wants a police officer fired for killing his dog.

[Guinevere]

So, what you're saying is that Andrew D was precisely correct when he wrote this (almost exactly three years ago):

I don't know how bigskygal conducts herself as a prosecutor. Her identity may be an open book, but if so, it is a book I have not read. Maybe I could find out about her by rummaging around here and elsewhere. I have seen no reason to do that.

All I know about her being a prosecutor is that she is new at it. If I recall correctly, she told us before that she began her career as a defense attorney with an idealistic view. Over time, that idealism faded, and she became disillusioned with that line of work.

That is a very common progression. Common on both sides of the criminal-law fence. What will she think five years from now about what prosecutors do? Only time will tell.

It bears noting that prosecutors rarely need to fabricate evidence. Most of the time, the police have done that for them. All they need to do is assume the truth of what the police say and present it as true.

But over time, most prosecutors become more and more jaded about the veracity of police testimony. That does not mean that they are actually suborning perjury; after all, they are not percipient witnesses to the underlying facts. It means that they have doubts about the truth of what the police claim, but nonetheless, they ask the court or the jury to believe that testimony.

"The court" is an important point. Most police perjury is not directed at juries. Most of it is directed at courts. The police are aware of the exclusionary rule, and they hate it. So they lie, not necessarily about the evidence itself, but about how they obtained it. They know perfectly well what their affidavits have to say to survive Fourth-Amendment challenges, so that is what they say. True? False? A consideration relevant only to tactics.

It is still true that in those instances where subornation of perjury is necessary to obtain a conviction, most prosecutors will do it. And they won't think of themselves as "lying scumbags." They are convinced that the defendant is guilty -- and they are often quite right about that -- and they conclude that a little subornation of perjury is worth it to get some creep of the streets before he rapes and murders another victim.

Not all of them. I know a (former) prosecutor who, in my judgment, never did suborn perjury and probably never even seriously considered suborning perjury. He is devoutly -- and I mean way, way devoutly -- religious. He would not have suborned perjury both because he believes, on a very deep level, that such a thing would be inexcusably wrong and because he would not imperil his immortal soul.

Several years from now, perhaps we will see what bigskygal thinks of the veracity of police testimony. Or maybe we will not. Maybe she will not be inclined to tell us; maybe she won't be posting here at all. Who knows?

But one thing we do know is that she has been a prosecutor for a very short time. It seems to me that what people who have been prosecutors for a long time have opinions that are grounded in a much greater wealth of experience.

People will believe whatever they want to believe. There is an abundance of readily accessible information about prosecutorial misconduct. I think that people should read it so that they can come to informed conclusions. But whether they do so or not is not up to me. It is up to them.

[dgs49]

One must (timidly) ask the question, in today's domestic world, what sort of person chooses to be a police officer?

Although cliche's like "civic duty" and "want to make the world a better place," come to mind, the word, "Bully" cannot be entirely eliminated. A lot of police are just bullies with a badge.

Also, among boys primarily, in our culture we promote the idea of "winning a all costs."

In the sports arena this may (or may not) be a good thing, but in the rest of life it's usually a recipe for grossly unethical behavior. In the criminal justice system, it manifests itself in the form of defense attorneys who are willing to make the most outrageous lies, acusations, and misrepresentations in defense of a client, and they are RARELY called to account for it. It would not be surprising if over time, police officers come to feel that doing the same sort of thing on the prosecution's side is also acceptable.

Obviously, one hopes never to get caught up in this System, in any capacity.

[Lord Jim]

Police generally don't have a good record with interacting with dogs

Yeah I've seen some pretty awful stories along those lines too, but here's the problem with that; it's a matter of perspective, context and media focus...

How many times a day do you figure that cops enter a private residence for whatever reason, and there's a non-threatening dog on the premises, and the dog doesn't get shot? Hundreds? Thousands?

But of course those day in day out encounters don't make it in to the media, because they're not news...

What we see in the news are the exceptional situations, which gives a grossly skewed impression of the overall reality...

And this is true in virtually every category of police conduct...

Thousands and thousands of times every day all across the country, cops interact with the public doing their job in a completely professional way and none of this is newsworthy... (A cop practically has to engage in a Congressional Medal Of Honor worthy act of heroism for you to see a positive news story about a police officer.)

And frankly I'm glad this is the case; I'd hate to live in a country where "Cop Enters Home; Doesn't Shoot Any Innocent Toddlers" was worthy of a news headline...

But it's important to bear in mind that because the exception rather than the rule is what gets reported, if you rely on news reports to form your conclusions about overall police conduct, (Bullying, lying, being on the take, being trigger happy, what ever) you're going to come to grossly distorted conclusions.

In pointing this out, it's not my intent to trivialize police misconduct; I've posted a number of times that incompetent police officers should be gotten rid of quickly, and any that engage in misconduct should have the book thrown at them. As a society we entrust these folks with powers relative to the rest of us that give us the right to demand high standards of conduct, and to make examples of those who violate that trust.

But it's important to remember that the vast majority of police officers, the vast majority of the time meet those standards, something that certainly wouldn't be apparent from what appears in the press.

[BoSoxGal]

It's nice that you took the time to look that up, Guin. (I hope you weren't hoping it would be a 'neener, neener' moment - it's not. Sorry.)

No, I don't agree that Andrew D was 'precisely' correct, because you have failed to include the several nasty posts that also took place in that conversation in which he falsely alleged that I'd 'sold out' my ethics, principles, values, etc. He was arrogant and very nasty in the course of that conversation, something to which he later readily admitted in our private communications on the subject.

(As it happens, I'd be more than happy - in fact, I'd very much like to - talk with him about my current feelings on the subject, but it appears he's no longer posting here. In fact, my desire to communicate with Andrew D was one of my primary motivations for coming back to Plan B. I very much admire Andrew, while still recognizing that for whatever reason, he can be very ugly and inappropriate at times when engaging in debates.)

I will say that something he very much misstates in the post you've quoted is this:

If I recall correctly, she told us before that she began her career as a defense attorney with an idealistic view. Over time, that idealism faded, and she became disillusioned with that line of work.

I did not become disillusioned with defense representation, rather I maintain to this day my idealistic vision and commitment to the preservation of the individual's civil liberties and to the nobility of that work in defense of our Constitution. So much so, that my Facebook post for today was a very enthusiastic cheering of the SCOTUS's unanimous decision in Riley v. California, preserving the privacy of cell phone content by protecting those devices from warrantless searches pursuant to arrest. (In my email inbox this late morning was one from a national association of prosecuting attorneys lamenting the decision; therein lies a great example of my problem with the typical attitude of prosecutors/LEOs in our country today.)

What in fact occurred to prompt my move to the State's side of the courtroom is that I became convinced that I would have more power to do right by defendants as a prosecutor than as a defense attorney. (This is a view shared by several of the very esteemed, decades-experienced mentor criminal attorneys who schooled me in criminal law at Georgetown.)

However, what I've learned is that you can only do as much as your elected allows you to do, and unfortunately, dogmatic and aggressive prosecution is the normative office policy in most DA, CA, AG, etc. offices nationwide. The past two years as the elected here, I've had the luxury of always seeking justice, and I have very much enjoyed having that ability - but for other reasons (the civil/political crap), I am unwilling to spend any more of my legal career in this position, and in looking elsewhere I am focusing on defense rather than prosecution positions because I have a great deal of doubt that I could ever find an elected DA/CA/AG/USA whose prosecutorial policy/philosophy was tolerable to me.

Additionally, at the time I was working for our newly formed, vastly underfunded and under-resourced public defender office, I felt that I was always one small step away from malpractice - and given the stakes, I felt sickened by that reality on a daily basis. I believed at that time that some time working for the State and honing my litigation and trial skills in the criminal realm, while having much better resources at my disposal (i.e., having some clerical assistance with caseload, v. having none whatsoever) would allow me to be a much better criminal defense attorney in the future.

As I said before, I maintain 100% confidence in my own conduct as a prosecutor, and I very much maintain my prior disputations of Andrew's assertions that I'd 'sold out' my ethics - that remains an outrageous assertion with zero evidence to support it. I believe in the nobility of the prosecutor's role as much as the defender's - surely nobody here would assert that we shouldn't hold people accountable for violating the laws by which we've all agreed to abide? Again, what troubles me is the current trend of overzealous prosecution, failure to adhere to the prosecutor's ethical mandates that require us to conduct ourselves on a higher plane than any other attorneys at the Bar, and the outright misconduct which is apparently far more widespread than I'd ever realized.

What I believe, and why I'm disillusioned, is that all prosecutors should bring the attitude that I bring to their work - strictly following the ethical mandates to seek justice, not merely convictions, and to promote fairness in the process and to protect the rights of the defendants at all times. I have made 'frenemies' of LEOs and other prosecutors because of my willingness to throw out evidence that I believe is unsound, and to dismiss cases in which the defendant may very well have been guilty, but the process was not followed properly. I've been the kind of prosecutor who looks at evidence from the perspective of the defense and sees immediately the legitimate challenges to evidence that exist, and in several cases, I have tossed that evidence myself without waiting for defense counsel to make motions (which many, sadly, never make - either because they are overworked, or because they no longer care about the work and oftentimes, especially as PDs, they know their clients will never bring a complaint about their representation).

So no, I haven't ever 'sold out' my ethics, and I'm not disillusioned about criminal defense work, other than having the usual objections to the abysmal state of funding for representing Gideon defendants, and for providing the kind of services necessary for true rehabilitation, etc.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Officers killed in the line of duty, year 2014

Line of Duty Deaths: 58
Assault: 1
Automobile accident: 13
Fire: 1
Gunfire: 23
Gunfire (Accidental): 1
Heart attack: 6
Motorcycle accident: 2
Struck by vehicle: 3
Vehicle pursuit: 2
Vehicular assault: 6

Read more: http://www.odmp.org/search/year#ixzz35gJXA6GU

[Gob]

One must (timidly) ask the question, in today's domestic world, what sort of person chooses to be a police officer?

.

My godson just joined the force. He's one of the brightest, fittest, most moral and kind young men of his age you could ever hope to meet. (I'm sure he'll get better with time though...)

[BoSoxGal]

Supreme Court requires warrants for cell phone searches on arrest

BY ORIN KERR June 25 at 10:37 AM - WashPo

The Supreme Court has decided the cell phone search cases together in Riley v. California, and the result is a big win for digital privacy: In a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court holds that searching a cell phone incident to arrest requires a warrant. In 1973, the Supreme Court had held in United States v. Robinson that the government can conduct a complete search of the person incident to arrest. But cell phones present a different situation, the Court rules. From the conclusion:

Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans “the privacies of life,” Boyd, supra, at 630. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple— get a warrant.

What about the Robinson rule?

[W]hile Robinson’s categorical rule strikes the appropriate balance in the context of physical objects, neither of its rationales has much force with respect to digital content on cell phones. On the government interest side, Robinson concluded that the two risks identified in Chimel—harm to officers and destruction of evidence—are present in all custodial arrests. There are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data. In addition, Robinson regarded any privacy interests retained by an individual after arrest as significantly diminished by the fact of the arrest itself. Cell phones, however, place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals. A search of the information on a cell phone bears little resemblance to the type of brief physical search considered in Robinson.

We therefore decline to extend Robinson to searches of data on cell phones, and hold instead that officers must generally secure a warrant before conducting such a search.

The Court concludes that you can’t apply the physical search rule of Robinson to cell phones:

The United States asserts that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is “materially indistinguishable” from searches of these sorts of physical items. Brief for United States in No. 13–212, p. 26. That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon. Both are ways of getting from point A to point B, but little else justifies lumping them together. Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse. A conclusion that inspecting the contents of an arrestee’s pockets works no substantial additional intrusion on privacy beyond the arrest itself may make sense as applied to physical items, but any extension of that reasoning to digital data has to rest on its own bottom.

Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be kept on an arrestee’s person. The term “cell phone” is itself misleading shorthand; many of these devices are in fact minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone. They could just as easily be called cameras,video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers.

One of the most notable distinguishing features of modern cell phones is their immense storage capacity. Before cell phones, a search of a person was limited by physical realities and tended as a general matter to constitute only a narrow intrusion on privacy. See Kerr, Foreword: Accounting for Technological Change, 36 Harv. J. L. & Pub.Pol’y 403, 404–405 (2013). Most people cannot lug around every piece of mail they have received for the past several months, every picture they have taken, or every book or article they have read—nor would they have any reason to attempt to do so. And if they did, they would have to drag behind them a trunk of the sort held to require a search warrant in Chadwick, supra, rather than a container the size of the cigarette package in Robinson.

But the possible intrusion on privacy is not physically limited in the same way when it comes to cell phones. The current top-selling smart phone has a standard capacity of 16 gigabytes (and is available with up to 64 gigabytes). Sixteen gigabytes translates to millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures, or hundreds of videos. See Kerr, supra, at 404; Brief for Center for Democracy & Technology et al. as Amici Curiae 7–8. Cell phones couple that capacity with the ability to store many different types of information: Even the most basic phones that sell for less than $20 might hold photographs, picture messages, text messages, Internet browsing history, a calendar, a thousand entry phone book, and so on. See id., at 30; United States v. Flores-Lopez, 670 F. 3d 803, 806 (CA7 2012). We expect that the gulf between physical practicability and digital capacity will only continue to widen in the future.

The storage capacity of cell phones has several interrelated consequences for privacy. First, a cell phone collects in one place many distinct types of information—an address, a note, a prescription, a bank statement, a video—that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record. Second, a cell phone’s capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more than previously possible. The sum of an individual’s private life can be reconstructed through a thousand photographs labeled with dates, locations, and descriptions; the same cannot be said of a photograph or two of loved ones tucked into a wallet. Third, the data on a phone can date back to the purchase of the phone, or even earlier. A person might carry in his pocket a slip of paper reminding him to call Mr. Jones; he would not carry a record of all his communications with Mr. Jones for the past several months, as would routinely be kept on a phone.

The realities of privacy are different in the “digital age”:

Prior to the digital age, people did not typically carry a cache of sensitive personal information with them as they went about their day. Now it is the person who is not carrying a cellphone, with all that it contains, who is the exception.According to one poll, nearly three-quarters of smartphone users report being within five feet of their phones most of the time, with 12% admitting that they even use their phones in the shower. See Harris Interactive, 2013 Mobile Consumer Habits Study (June 2013). A decade ago police officers searching an arrestee might have occasionally stumbled across a highly personal item such as a diary. See, e.g., United States v. Frankenberry, 387 F. 2d 337 (CA2 1967) (per curiam). But those discoveries were likely to be few and far between. Today, by contrast, it is no exaggeration to say that many of the more than 90% of American adults who own a cell phone keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives—from the mundane to the intimate. See Ontario v. Quon, 560 U. S. 746, 760 (2010). Allowing the police to scrutinize such records on a routine basis is quite different from allowing them to search a personal item or two in the occasional case.

The Court rejects the government’s argument that such searches should be permitted because a cell phone could be remotely wiped or encrypted. First, the Court says that this doesn’t seem to be a major problem. Second, the Court says that there are practical ways of minimizing the risk.


Orin Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 2001. He teaches and writes in the area of criminal procedure and computer crime law. Kerr is a former law clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy at the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1998 to 2001, he was a Trial Attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2013, Chief Justice Roberts appointed Kerr to a 3-year term on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. You can follow him on Twitter @orinkerr.

[BoSoxGal]

From today's Association of Prosecuting Attorneys email newsletter:

In The News
Posted on: Monday, June 9, 2014
Prosecutors Revisiting Nearly 5,000 Convictions
When three half brothers' decades-old murder convictions were thrown out last month, they became a dramatic example of an idea spreading among prosecutors nationwide: "integrity units" dedicated to double-checking convictions to determine whether justice was served. Over the last seven years, more than a dozen prosecutors' offices across the country have created such staff teams or expert panels to review wrongful-conviction claims. The groups have agreed to revisit more than 4,900 cases, resulting in at least 61 convictions tossed so far, according to a tally compiled from interviews, prosecutors' reports and news accounts. The initiatives are underway from New York City to Santa Clara County, California, and from Chicago to Dallas, fueled by growing concern about false convictions in a country that has averaged 68 exonerations a year since 1999.

I think we should have conviction review/integrity units in every jurisdiction - the ethical mandates applicable to prosecutors should compel us to be the first ones willing to accept that we may have made a mistake and to be willing to rectify said mistake if proven so.

[Grim Reaper]

How many times a day do you figure that cops enter a private residence for whatever reason, and there's a non-threatening dog on the premises, and the dog doesn't get shot? Hundreds? Thousands?

I'd argue that the problem with animals is that they're far more likely to be put down if things do go wrong. A person who has a bad experience with the police is more likely to survive the encounter, while dogs and other animals are viewed more as property.

The ASPCA did a review of public records of firearms discharges by police and found that 50% or more of all shootings involved an officer shooting a dog.

Sure, some of those incidents were probably justified, but it seems cops don't really get much training on how to handle animals.

[Gob]

Five days ago, in Canberra.

A Canberra police officer caught on CCTV attacking a chained dog with pepper spray is the subject of an internal investigation.





The CCTV footage, taken during a raid on a Canberra home last month, shows three officers standing around a dog chained to a pole in the backyard.

One officer is seen taunting the animal before pepper spraying it.

He then stands back and throws things at the dog.

Other officers are seen laughing at the incident, with one man appearing to film it on his phone.

The dog's owner, who was not home at the time, made a formal complaint to police.

"It is cowardly for anybody to treat an animal in this way," a lawyer for the dog's owner, Peter Woodhouse, said.

"The fact that it is a police officer supposedly executing his duty is appalling.

"We are concerned that the AFP (Australian Federal Police) may not take this matter seriously. The behaviour of the police in this instance is atrocious."


Mr Woodhouse said AFP Professional Standards originally classified the complaint as a level 1 public relations issue.

[BoSoxGal]

Awful, awful, awful . . . and I've seen several cases similar to this wherein LEOs had no justification whatsoever for harming a dog, and in fact killed it with impunity. It's disgusting.

LJ, you wrote:

In pointing this out, it's not my intent to trivialize police misconduct; I've posted a number of times that incompetent police officers should be gotten rid of quickly, and any that engage in misconduct should have the book thrown at them. As a society we entrust these folks with powers relative to the rest of us that give us the right to demand high standards of conduct, and to make examples of those who violate that trust.

But it's important to remember that the vast majority of police officers, the vast majority of the time meet those standards, something that certainly wouldn't be apparent from what appears in the press.

Based on my experience in the criminal injustice system on both sides of the aisle, involving not only the hundreds of cases I've seen in practice myself, but also my extensive engagement in following criminal justice issues across the country - not in the lamestream media, but as collated and presented by criminal lawyers through the many 'blawgs' out there - I'm not sure that I'd agree with the characterization that a vast majority of LEOs meet those high standards of conduct to which the public should be confident in holding them accountable.

Please don't get me wrong; there ARE good LEOs out there, without a doubt. But I've come to the sad conclusion that they may actually be the minority. Whether it's because many jurisdictions pay so little and have such a low bar in terms of education required to qualify as a deputy, patrol officer, etc. - or whether it's because the job attracts bullies (it definitely does), I don't know the answer to the problem.

But I do know it's a problem that needs solving, because what matters most is that EVEN IF the 'vast majority' of LEOs were meeting those high standards of conduct, the public largely no longer believes this, and that is a truth that prosecutors all over the country are coming to realize. The public no longer believes in us, either; too many Mike Nifongs, too many exonerations - including many where actual innocence is proven - and I would assert that one of the worst things to happen to the image of the State's attorney in recent years is the advent of legal analysis from the likes of Nancy Grace (a disgusting stain on the image of the prosecutor) and all the attorneys who stoop to the level of appearing on her show.

[BoSoxGal]

Mayor Defends Expected Central Park Five Settlement
Bill de Blasio Called The Five Men's Convictions an "Injustice"

By SEAN GARDINER and MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL CONNECT - WSJ
Updated June 23, 2014 10:15 p.m. ET


Raymond Santana, right, Kevin Richardson, and Yusef Salaam, left, react to supporters. Associated Press

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday defended his administration's decision to settle the "Central Park Five's" federal lawsuit against the city for an expected $40 million.

"An injustice was done and we have a moral obligation to respond to that injustice," Mr. de Blasio said after a news conference on traffic safety in Queens.

Because the settlement hasn't been completed, Mr. de Blasio said he had to speak broadly about discussions with lawyers for Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson and Kharey Wise.

They were convicted as teenagers in the 1989 beating and rape of a then-28-year-old investment banker named Patricia Meili, who was attacked as she jogged in Central Park. Each man served between 6 ¾ and 13 years in prison.

Their convictions were overturned in 2002 after a convicted rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, confessed that he alone attacked Ms. Meili. DNA tests confirmed he'd raped her. For about 10 years, city lawyers under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg litigated a $250 million lawsuit filed by the five men accusing detectives and prosecutors of coercing their statements that were later used to convict them.

During the 2013 election, Mr. de Blasio pledged he would settle the lawsuit. On Monday, he said he arrived at his decision over the past year after talking to "a number of people I thought had real perspective on it."

"And I think the moral issue is quite clear and obviously was made clear by the court decisions in recent years," he said.

Michael Armstrong, who was chosen in 2003 by former New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to head a panel examining the Central Park investigation, said there has been one court ruling in the case. That ruling, he said, was Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Tejada's Dec. 19, 2002, decision to grant then-Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's recommendation to vacate the men's convictions. Mr. de Blasio's office didn't return a message seeking clarification.

That recommendation was based on Mr. Reyes's claim he acted alone. The judge ordered new trials for the men but Mr. Morgenthau, who declined to comment, dismissed the cases instead of retrying them.

Mr. Armstrong said in 1990, before the trial, the judge held a hearing to determine if the five men's statements were coerced. Appellate judges upheld his ruling that they weren't. He added that there hasn't been a court finding of wrongdoing among law-enforcement officials.

Mr. Armstrong's panel and the district attorney's office both subsequently investigated the case and "all agreed that there was no police misconduct," he said.

On Monday, Mr. de Blasio said the "history is quite plain" about what happened to the men, adding: "They spent a lot of their lives in jail, in prison, wrongly."

He added: "And we have an obligation to do something fair for them [and] for the whole city to turn the page and move forward."

Mr. de Blasio was asked if, before deciding the case, he spoke to law-enforcement officials or medical professionals, like the two doctors who treated Ms. Meili and recently told The Wall Street Journal that some of her injuries didn't match Mr. Reyes's account of the attack.

"It's not my place to try to go into every detail of a case or talk to everyone involved," the mayor said. "It's my place to talk to people I think give a bigger perspective."

Write to Sean Gardiner at sean.gardiner@wsj.com and Michael Howard Saul at michael.saul@wsj.com

God Bless Bill de Blasio! $1 million/yr. for wrongful imprisonment during the prime of one's life? I'd say that's a bargain for the People.

eta: God Bless Robert Morgenthau as well, for rising above the too-common tendency of prosecutors to re-file and re-try cases that clearly were brought wrongly to begin with.

[Guinevere]

I didn't "dig anything up," this thread and your comments in multiple other posts reminded me of this discussion and specifically Andrew's post. You will note that Andrew says absolutely nothing about your ethics or "selling out" in this post, and I didn't link the thread because I *specifically* didn't want to get dragged down into that spiral again. But thanks much for going there anyway.

Regardless, the point and the question are valid. Has your view of prosecutors and law enforcement changed as a result of your experience on that side of the street? It seems to me, reading your comments, that it has.

LJ, with respect to your the "only the really bad guys get in the news and that's a small minority" theme above, I absolutely disagree. There are all levels of mal and misfeasance, much of which no one ever knows about. I see it almost every day, in my practice. Yet again, I'm dealing with an officer who is less than truthful, and once again, his failure to be absolutely forthcoming will cost my client a whole lot of money. It is almost impossible to prove untruthfulness, especially in the setting in which I am now litigating this matter (a less formal "administrative" forum).

I recently closed a case where an officer was accused of pretty serious misconduct, but the complaining witness would not step forward after her initial interviews with the department, and would not talk to the DA. We forwarded over the evidence we had collected, and there was evidence of one crime (a felony, but a minor felony), and the DA refused to prosecute. I understand their resources are limited, and they need to focus on what they can win, but sometimes that is just not enough.

I've got another officer out on admin leave, about to be tried for several felonies. It is contested, of course, but the DA is going forward with that one, and we are taking appropriate action as well. In this case, the complaining witness is cooperation, but everyone including the DA and witness advocate are holding their collective breaths. It could change in a heartbeat and the case(s) would die on the vine.

And then there is the bargaining, the complaints over every little issue, the hand wanting money for everything, and the lack of leadership. I can't even get into the despair at the most recent promotion lists.

And before you think otherwise, this is a very affluent municipality, with very well-paid employees. The cream of the crop. And yet there are many many many struggles. I shudder to think about other departments, who can't be as picky as this client.

[BoSoxGal]

Guin, please note that I thanked you for finding that old thread. I do, however, believe that it is necessary to keep that one post in context with the entire exchange, in which Andrew D said some very nasty things to me - things for which he apologized in PM and invited me to share that PM if I felt so compelled (I just got around to reading that PM last week, as I'd left it unopened).

Yes, of course one's perspective of a thing changes the closer one gets in proximity to the thing - usually, anyway, unless one's mind is closed to the possibility of being open. I believe my prior posts in this thread already established pretty clearly that I have an altered perspective on being a prosecutor from what I had 3.5 years ago.



On a side note: I would really like to participate here, agree to disagree at times, and not get into 'fights' with people who don't necessarily 'like' me all that much (whether or not that feeling is shared); I hope you feel the same. If not, I hope you'd consider putting me on ignore instead of letting my posts raise you to an angry place; you say you didn't want to

get dragged down into that spiral again.

yet you quoted only one selected post - one of the few in which Andrew D refrained from being nasty - and ignored the many which more than justified my upset with Andrew's false allegations. Let's play fair, and please don't accuse me of being nasty

But thanks much for going there anyway.

when I'm only asking that I be given the benefit of the doubt. I think we ALL deserve that.

[Guinevere]

I quoted one post, on point to the entire thread and your comments over the last month. Can't you wrap your head around the fact that I was only interested in that one post. I don't care about old battles, that was definitively not the point. If you agree with me, and it appears that you do, then please stop bringing it up.

[BoSoxGal]

I recently closed a case where an officer was accused of pretty serious misconduct, but the complaining witness would not step forward after her initial interviews with the department, and would not talk to the DA. We forwarded over the evidence we had collected, and there was evidence of one crime (a felony, but a minor felony), and the DA refused to prosecute. I understand their resources are limited, and they need to focus on what they can win, but sometimes that is just not enough.

Sadly, beyond assessing the strength of the evidence of a particular complaint against an LEO before determining whether to prosecute, it's my experience that another factor some prosecutors will consider - which they should not - is how many cases might be compromised by prosecuting an LEO, because the LEO's conviction then becomes a basis for impeachment of his/her credibility at future trials, if not a basis for defense counsel to consider revisiting past cases.

[BoSoxGal]

I quoted one post, on point to the entire thread and your comments over the last month. Can't you wrap your head around the fact that I was only interested in that one post. I don't care about old battles, that was definitively not the point. You're the one that keeps going there, not me.

Again, it's my perspective that you are trying to instigate something; perhaps I'm wrong. However, it seems a fairly logical assumption when you reply to a thread in which I've just posted a long recitation of how my perspective on the State has changed with a reply that basically says 'didn't Andrew D say just that??' and then again by saying "again, have you changed your perspective, or not?? it seems you have", etc.

Honestly Guin, that seems every bit like a 'neener, neener', and I think I'm not the only person who would read it that way.

But in any case, I'm not going to rise to the bait with you. Given our past interactions, your (in my perspective) overreaction to my response to you in one thread in summer of 2009 in which you accused me basically of racism, your subsequent de-friending of me on Facebook, etc., I 'get' that you don't like me and that anything I say here that you can construe in a way that makes me look bad, you likely will.

That's fine, I can't care about that because life is too short and if you are that willing to take what I say in a negative fashion and give me no benefit of the doubt, then I can't really be worried about the fact that you don't like me because you're not somebody I'd really want to be 'friends' with. WAY too high maintenance.

But please, leave it alone. If you don't like me, just stay out of the threads I start - or, don't try to engage me directly in this way because I will point out, every time, when you are clearly attempting to throw my past words in my face by pointing out that I might have held a different position at a previous point in time.

I'm very proud of the fact that I have an open mind that is willing to consider all evidence, acknowledge when I didn't know something and now I do and it has caused me to change my position. I think it's entirely unproductive when the response to that is, "SEE! YOU WERE WRONG BEFORE!".

It doesn't make any sense that I would just swallow everything Andrew D has to say about something hook, line, sinker without expecting to form my own opinions based on my own experiences. If I was that kind of person, I'd be an idiot. ESPECIALLY given that at the time, he was saying what I consider to be really terrible things, such as questioning my ETHICS and accusing me of 'selling out', etc. - the things you left out of your 'confrontation'.

That's my last word on the subject; I'm far more interested in in getting back to the overall topic of the criminal injustice system.