Absolutely despicable behaviour by cops

[Scooter]

One of the inital write-ups of this story out of Florida:

A Broward Sheriff’s Office arrest report indicates that Daniel Hay Lewis, arrested on Monday for shoplifting and charged with the criminal transmission of HIV, physically resisted being placed in a sheriff’s car and attempted to bite a deputy.

According to the report, Lewis is charged with HIV transmission because he knew he was HIV-positive when he attempted to bite the deputy. Broward Sheriff’s Office media relations office told The Florida Independent.

And the follow-up:

According to the public defender representing him, Daniel Hay Lewis — arrested last week by the Broward Sheriff’s Office and charged with the criminal transmission of HIV — is not even HIV-positive.

Jason Blank, the assistant public defender representing Lewis, writes to The Florida Independent:

Daniel is innocent of these charges. We have obtained reliable evidence that Daniel is not, nor has ever been infected with HIV. It is clear that the officer’s sworn allegations of Daniel’s infection with HIV is not only a lie and highly illegal, but is being used to cover-up the excessive use of force during his arrest. In the end, it will not be Daniel, but rather the officers that will be found Guilty in a court of law.

Blank tells the Independent that while in custody Lewis was tested for HIV and that Broward County jail medical records show the results were negative.

I've heard of plenty of cases where police have charged people for attempting to transmit HIV for things that posed no real risk (like spitting on a cop or a bite through clothing).

I've heard of plenty of cases where police will trump up charges against someone they have brutalized in order to obfuscate their own criminal behaviour.

But I have NEVER heard of a case where a cop would descend so deeply into the gutter, as to falsely accuse someone of being HIV+, so as to accuse him of criminal transmission of HIV as a smokescreen to justify their own excessive use of force.

There have been stories about this running for DAYS. Do you think, when this guy is released (because I suspect the police and the state attorney will drop all pending charges so this will go away quietly) that everyone out in the community who read the initial reports will have seen this latest one, or that everyone who has read it will believe it? The guy will be walking around town with a target on his back.

I hope every cop involved in this disgusting episode has to hand over their houses as some measure of compensation for how they attempted toi railroad this poor sap, and for what they have now done to his life.

Actually, being forcibly injected with HIV-infected blood would be justice.

[BoSoxGal]

All cops lie. All defendants are unjustly accused, and defense attorneys never engage in hyperbole.

Until the record is fleshed out, I can't agree with your rush to infect the cops with HIV as a just resolution to this situation.

[rubato]

If he did, or tried to, bite them he deserved a nightstick or three across the head.

Biting is mayhem and causes serious infections and permanent injuries no matter if he is HIV positive or not.

And did he SAY he was HIV-positive? Is that how they got that idea?

yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

“Lewis never made any statement that he was HIV-positive,” Blank says.

[dgs49]

There is simply not enough information here to make a rational assessment of whether the police acted inappropriately.

If the man being apprehended looked like a dirtbag and was conspicuously trying to bite one or more of the arresting officers, they might reasonably have concluded that he was HIV-positive, and trying to infect them. This behavior is common and well-documented. Under such circumstances, the police would be justified in doing whatever is necessary to prevent the bastard from biting them (or clawing them, or otherwise exposing them to his bodily fluids).

The results of a later HIV test are irrelevant to the Police' actions at the scene of the arrest. Why else would an arrestee be trying to bite them?

[Scooter]

The "logic" escapes me. "He tried to bite me, therefore he must have been HIV+ and trying to infect me." Sure, that's obviously the most direct and obvious conclusion to have drawn.

Since it's so "common", perhaps Dave can enlighten us as to how many people have been infected with HIV through a bite.

How about applying Occam's razor to this one - the cops made shit up in order to justify beating the guy up so badly it was visible in photographs.

Obviously they found at least one sucker who is willing to swallow it hook. line and sinker.

[Lord Jim]

It looks to me like all we have at the moment is the story from the defense attorney, (not exactly the most unbiased source) Not a word about the police or the prosecutors response. No representative from the lab is quoted. I tried doing a search on this and every link I found goes to this one article from this one source. There are plenty of other media in south Florida; why don't any of them have this story?

I agree with BSG; more information is needed before any conclusions can be reached.

[Scooter]

Hmmm, yeah, the defense attorney is really going to put himself out on a limb, when his client is being charged with criminal transmission of HIV, and say that his client has tested negative for HIV when it isn't so. That makes all kinds of sense.

[BoSoxGal]

Just to clarify: cops write tickets; prosecutors later utilize discretion to determine what charges to pursue.

Biting a law enforcement officer regardless of HIV status is an assault & at least in my jurisdiction, assaulting a peace officer is a felony offense. LE is justified in using reasonable force to detain individuals resisting lawful arrest, and yes, that sometimes results in bruises.

If I had a dollar for every lie told me by defense clients or defense counsel, I'd have visited Oz already & wouldn't still be saving for the trip.

Again, not enough info publically available to judge the situation yet. It wouldn't be the first time a perp lied about HIV status while attempting to assault a peace officer.

I note no comment from defense counsel on the issue of probable cause for the arrest on the underlying crime cited.

Again; this jury's out until further evidence comes in. I've seen pretty outrageous interpretations of the record provided to the press by defense counsel; it's not an uncommon tactic.

[Scooter]

Biting a law enforcement officer regardless of HIV status is an assault & at least in my jurisdiction

IF he bit anyone, and it wasn't another lie made up to provide a pretext for the beat down they gave him.

It wouldn't be the first time a perp lied about HIV status while attempting to assault a peace officer.

Except that not even the police are claiming he TOLD them he was HIV+. Saying "he knew he was HIV+ when he bit the deputy" is a very different statement than "he told the deputy he was HIV+ before/after he bit him."

I note no comment from defense counsel on the issue of probable cause for the arrest on the underlying crime cited.

Completely irrelevant. Guilty or innocent of the underlying charge wouldn't give the cops licence to lie about his HIV status and charge him with a crime he was physically incapable of committing.

I've seen pretty outrageous interpretations of the record provided to the press by defense counsel; it's not an uncommon tactic.

It would be an incredibly stupid tactic in this case. If the defense is pinning its case on the fact that the client is not HIV+, the gig would be up rather quickly if he actually is.

There is no conceivable reason to be making something like that up, what advantage could possibly be gained that would not evaporate and completely backfire once the truth is discovered?

[Andrew D]

If I had a dollar for every lie told me by defense clients or defense counsel, I'd have visited Oz already & wouldn't still be saving for the trip.

And if defendants and defense counsel had a dollar for every lie told them by the prosecution, you'd be renting your space in Oz from them. They'd have got there long before you, and they'd own the place.

All cops lie. All defendants are unjustly accused ....

We call that "the presumption of innocence".

Have you ever heard the word "testilying"? The police invented it to describe their own routine conduct.

[Guinevere]

I'm not sure the police invented the term "testilying" Andrew (That wasn't how I heard it in Boston), but I'm sure they invented the regular and practiced behavior of testifying untruthfully in civil and criminal matters. I know, I've deposed many of them and 80% of them lied through their teeth. Then they had the gall to submit sworn affidavits consistent with those lies. Thank goodness the court saw through their crap, in one instance. But didn't, in another, costing my client tens of thousands of dollars.

And don't even get me started on the representations they like to make in contract negotiations.

[Lord Jim]

Have you ever heard the word "testilying"? The police invented it to describe their own routine conduct.

I recall Alan Dershowitz making that accusation at the time of the OJ Simpson trial, and I know that a lot of TV lawyers have since referred to that as though it were an established fact, but I have never seen any evidence (beyond Dershowitz's say so) that the term originated from or is commonly used by police officers.

Evidence of course, being something like present or former members of law enforcement coming forward and saying, "Yeah that's the term we coined to describe the perjury we commit on a routine basis"

Do you have a source like that which you can cite?

[Guinevere]

From wiki, citing the Boston Globe:

A 2003 Boston Globe editorial noted:

In the early 1990s, the Mollen Commission peeled away layers of falsehood in the New York City Police Department, including false statements on warrant applications, creation of confidential informants out of whole cloth, and lies told to establish probable cause for stopping and searching vehicles. So-called "testilying," however, is not limited to any one area or police department. The problem has become so acute that juries nationwide routinely express skepticism about law enforcement testimony, such as drugs found "in plain view".

And from the LA Times:

In a 1996 article in the Los Angeles Times, "Has the Drug War Created an Officer Liars' Club?," Joseph D. McNamara, then chief of police of San Jose, said "Not many people took defense attorney Alan M. Dershowitz seriously when he charged that Los Angeles cops are taught to lie at the birth of their careers at the Police Academy. But as someone who spent 35 years wearing a police uniform, I've come to believe that hundreds of thousands of law-enforcement officers commit felony perjury every year testifying about drug arrests." He noted that "Within the last few years, police departments in Los Angeles, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Denver, New York and in other large cities have suffered scandals involving police personnel lying under oath about drug evidence."

Edited to add link to a 1996 law review article that discusses the practice:

http://www.soc.umn.edu/~samaha/cases/sl ... ilying.htm From the article:

O.J. Simpson's trial for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman provided the nation with at least two pristine examples of police perjury. First, there was the exposure of Detective Marc Fuhrman as a liar. While under oath at trial the detective firmly asserted, in response to F. Lee Bailey's questions, that he had not used the word "nigger" in the past decade. The McKinny tapes and assorted other witnesses made clear this statement was an untruth. That proof of perjury, together with the defense's innuendo that Fuhrman had planted a glove smeared with Nicole's blood on Simpson's property, severely damaged the prosecution's case. [FN1]

Second, and less well known, is Judge Lance Ito's finding that Detective Philip Vannatter had demonstrated a "reckless disregard for the truth" in the warrant application for the search of Simpson's house. Among other misrepresentations, [FN2] Vannatter insinuated that Simpson had suddenly taken flight to Chicago when in fact police knew the trip had been planned for months, and unequivocally asserted that the substance found on Simpson's Bronco was blood when in fact it had not yet been tested. [FN3]

A third possible series of perjurious incidents occurred at the suppression hearing, when both Fuhrman and Vannatter stated that police investigating Simpson's compound had not considered O.J. a suspect, but rather had entered the premises solely out of concern for the athlete's welfare (and therefore had not needed probable cause or a warrant). Although both Judge Ito and *1038 Magistrate Kathleen Kennedy‑Powell accepted these assertions, [FN4] most who have considered the matter believe otherwise, [FN5] on the common sense ground that police who knew that O.J. had beaten Nicole on past occasions, found what appeared to be blood on his car, and were unable to locate him after the murders would zero in on him as a possible culprit.

[Lord Jim]

I don't think anyone would deny that there are police officers that lie on the stand. This is a proven fact.

But as far as I know there is also no evidence that they came up with the term "testilying" to describe lying on a routine basis. (Nor am I aware of any evidence that cops lie on the stand on a routine basis either)

Absent any such evidence it seems likely to me that the term probably originated in the criminal defense attorney community, and somewhere along the way was falsely attributed to the cops themselves. I don't know if Dershowitz originated this false attribution, (he certainly popularized it; to the point there are now a lot of folks who accept it as a fact) or if he was just repeating second hand something that another defense attorney had told him. But either way the charge that the police came up with this term looks like an "urban legend" to me....

[Andrew D]

Is that:

But as someone who spent 35 years wearing a police uniform, I've come to believe that hundreds of thousands of law-enforcement officers commit felony perjury every year testifying about drug arrests."

good enough for you, Lord Jim?

Or will you believe it only if police officers come out in public and sentence themselves to prison for perjury?

[Lord Jim]

I'm sorry, maybe I'm just a little dense, but it's not immediately apparent to me how this:

But as someone who spent 35 years wearing a police uniform, I've come to believe that hundreds of thousands of law-enforcement officers commit felony perjury every year testifying about drug arrests

In any way shape or form provides evidence for this:

Have you ever heard the word "testilying"? The police invented it to describe their own routine conduct.

I also have to say that that must be one remarkable cop if he's claiming to have knowledge of what "hundreds of thousands" of his fellow law enforcement officers were doing.

He sure must have bounced around to a lot of different departments....

His claim would have had considerably more credibility if he had said something like, "From my 35 years in law enforcement, I would estimate that X percentage of the officers who's practices I had first hand knowledge of committed felony perjury about drug arrests."

As it is, his comments sound like empty hyperbole....

[Guinevere]

You cannot ignore the civil element as well. Depositions are sworn statements, subject to the pains and penalties of perjury. So are affidavits. And I was able to show that the majority of certain testimony was, how shall we say, materially inaccurate. Enough that a judge chose not to give it any weight. 21 police officers in a single department. One, who was later made the Chief. And the one who told the absolute truth -- I'm not making this up -- removed from his leadership position (but maintained his rank) and assigned to the night shift by that new Chief.

All that in one lousy case, you can see how the numbers add up quickly to get to thousands.

[BoSoxGal]

Of course I have heard of these things, Andrew D.

And I don't for a minute dispute that prosecutorial misconduct occurs. I have read about cases that simply sicken me, where the State has ignored or withheld exculpatory evidence and doggedly prosecuted individuals without regard to a significant possibility of innocence. An example of that which comes to mind is the case of the West Memphis Three, with which you are undoubtedly familiar.

When the awesome power to prosecute is mixed with ideological, small-minded egoism a recipe for disaster exists. We should root that out wherever we can.

I just don't think that kind of prosecutorial misconduct is anywhere near as rampant as you suggest, but then I only have my own first-hand experience to rely upon in making that assessment. Here in Montana we essentially have an open-file policy; we don't just hand over exculpatory evidence, we hand over EVERYTHING to the defense.

Cops definitely have a bias - they see the facts through a particular prism, but they are no different in that than anyone else who is part of the process - defendants, witnesses, counsel, jurors. Around here, I haven't seen much that constitutes 'testilying' - and that was my perspective when I was on the other side of the street (literally) before coming on with the prosecution.

I'm lucky, however - I live in one of the last best places, where civility is the norm and character still seems to count for something. That doesn't mean I'm not daily reminded how many idiots and liars are among us; however, I am generally reminded of that through the steady stream of clearly guilty persons who parade through our court system - clearly guilty by their own and defense counsel's admissions.

[Andrew D]

Police officers that I know have told me that the police invented the term.

But maybe they were just bragging.