Another weird story of the day: An ethics investigation into Mobile, AL judge Herman Thomas includes these allegations:

Authorities are investigating allegations that now-suspended Mobile County Circuit Judge Herman Thomas periodically removed prisoners from Mobile County Metro Jail and spanked them in a room at the courthouse, according to courthouse sources involved in the inquiry.

Once inside the room, according to the sources, the judge would ask the young men to drop their pants and prepare to be spanked with what they described as a wooden or fraternity-like paddle.

Judge Thomas refused to comment on the allegations. The NAACP may hold a press conference this afternoon. Some of the details of the accusations appear to be corroborated:

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After deliberating for 30 hours, a federal jury in Milwaukee found three former police officers guilty of beating Frank Jude Jr. and of conspiring to violate his civil rights. A suspended officer was acquitted.

Jude's beating led to the largest single-day purge in Police Department history. In May 2005, Chief Nannette Hegerty fired nine officers, suspended three and demoted one. It also prompted new hiring and training practices.

Two of the former officers will continue to be paid their salaries until they are sentenced, pursuant to a law "that requires fired officers be paid until their appeals of termination are exhausted with the Fire and Police Commission, or they are sentenced on a felony." The third former officer is already serving a sentence for making a bomb threat.

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Prosecutorial misconduct is so often ignored or winked at by judges that it's refreshing to find a judge who is willing to take the problem seriously. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Boston, Mark Wolf, wrote to Alberto Gonzales (for all the good it will do) complaining that the Justice Department's private reprimand of AUSA Jeffrey Auerhahn was an unduly lenient response to Auerhahn's decision to withhold exculpatory evidence from the defense. That misconduct, in the words of Judge Wolf, “required the release from prison of a capo in the Patriarca family of La Cosa Nostra.”

“A mere secret, written reprimand,” Chief Judge Wolf wrote on Friday, “would not ordinarily be a sufficient sanction for the serious, intentional, repeated and consequential misconduct by Mr. Auerhahn.”

Oddly, although the Justice Department's internal Office of Professional Responsibility concluded in 2005 that the evidence was exculpatory and that Auerhahn had a duty to disclose it, the Department argued in a 2006 brief that the evidence wasn't material and that disclosure wasn't required. The author of that brief apparently didn't receive the OPR memo.

In his letter to Mr. Gonzales, Judge Wolf expressed dismay over the department’s conflicting positions. “It is disturbing,” Judge Wolf wrote, “that the Department of Justice continued to advocate positions which O.P.R. had flatly rejected.”

Disturbing but not surprising. We can expect the response from Gonzales to be a barely stifled yawn. Judge Wolf asked state disciplinary authorities in Massachusetts to take their own look at Auerhahn's misconduct. Disciplinary complaints about proseuctors are rarely lodged by judges, so there's some hope that the state will take it seriously.

Erica Hejnar and another woman were arrested for "suspicion of drug possession." That's strike one against the Philadelphia Police Department, because neither woman had any drugs.

Hejnar and her friend were eventually released without charges, but not before Officer Norberto Cappas ordered them "to kiss and touch each other and expose their breasts."

Hejnar and her friend told Internal Affairs that Cappas dangled the keys and taunted them as he escalated his sexual demands, telling them they would do as he asked if they wanted to go home that night.

That's strike two. Strike three: Henjar collected $17,500 from the city, "in part because city lawyers concluded that she never should have been detained in the first place." No kidding. It's difficult to imagine that there was probable cause to arrest two women for drug possession who weren't in possession of drugs.

Strike two was enough to get Cappas fired, at least for now. A police tribunal found him guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and of lying during a departmental investigation. The police commissioner canned him, effective at the conclusion of a 30 day suspension. But Cappas may still convince an arbitrator to overturn the commissioner's decision.

As Dan Froomkin points out, the White House has been casual in its approach to law breaking. As practiced in the White House, the Unitary Executive theory means that the executive branch of government need not obey laws passed by the legislative branch or decisions rendered by the judicial branch. Hence the casual approach to complying with, say, the Presidential Records Act, and the apparent lack of concern that at least 88 White House officials used email accounts with the Republican National Committee to conduct the nation's business, or that the email records of 51 of those officials have gone missing.

The argument that officials used RNC accounts so that they wouldn't violate the Hatch Act is difficult to understand, because the Hatch Act prevents federal employees from engaging in political activity while on duty. Whether the officials used a White House account or an RNC account is less significant than whether they were using the accounts for a forbidden political purpose while they were supposed to be earning their federal salaries. Of course, whether they engaged in improper activities is difficult to judge when the emails that may answer that question can't be found.

Did officials use RNC accounts to conduct public business to avoid making the public record that the Presidential Records Act requires? Or did they use RNC accounts solely to engage in political activities while they were on duty in their government jobs? Either way, as Froomkin suggests, they've managed to avoid scrutiny by using email accounts that have conveniently failed to keep a record of their emails.

This should come as no surprise:

And as the new House Oversight Committee report points out, the White House counsel's office -- then headed by current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- was aware of these violations of e-mail policy, but chose to do nothing about it.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, even if the police know that an arrestee's family has hired a lawyer for the arrestee, and know that the lawyer doesn't want the arrestee to be interrogated without counsel, the police may interrogate the arrestee if the arrestee agrees to answer questions without a lawyer. The arrestee must knowingly waive the right to counsel, but the police aren't required to tell the arrestee that a lawyer has been hired for him; it's up to the arrestee to ask for a lawyer even if the arrestee doesn't know that he already has one. (Many state appellate courts have concluded that their state constitutions are more respectful of the right to counsel.)

A prosecutor's ability to question a suspect under the same circumstances is a different story. At least in most places, a prosecutor (like other lawyers) is ethically prohibited from speaking to an adverse party who is represented by a lawyer about matters that fall within the scope of the lawyer's representation. A violation of that rule led to the suppression of Darren Mack's admission that he shot his wife.

Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick failed in his duties as a prosecutor by not telling Darren Mack during conversations they had while he was on the run in Mexico that he was represented by lawyers, a judge ruled Friday.

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Who do you believe in a case like this? Where one cop is on trial and a former cop testifies against him, expecting a reduced sentence for his own misdeeds?

A former Chicago police officer testifying against an officer on trial for robbing drug dealers as part of a corrupt ring of Englewood cops was challenged in federal court Tuesday about his own history of crimes.

Corey Flagg testified that he shook down dealers for narcotics and cash while he was on a team of tactical cops, just as defendant Eural Black is accused of doing.

Black's lawyers went for blood as they cross-examined Flagg:

Flagg, who also has pleaded guilty to his role in the conspiracy, was quickly attacked by defense lawyers and accused of having no credibility. Instead of a potential life term, Flagg could serve just 10 years in prison or even less for helping the government, they pointed out.

Flagg admitted that he expects to get a deal even though he acknowledges taking part in armed robberies, home invasions, falsifying police reports and lying to judges and grand juries while he was with the department.

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More "dehumanizing and degrading" behavior by prison guards, this time in Florida:

Prosecutors issued arrest warrants Tuesday for eight former prison employees accused of abusing inmates, including forcing some to clean toilets with their tongues.

The eight were among 13 prison employees who had already been fired from the 605-inmate medium and minimum security at the Hendry Correctional Institution in the Everglades. The previous warden and an assistant warden resigned, and three others were reassigned after an inmates was beaten and choked by guards in March.

Cleaning toilets with your tongue? If true, what scum these guards are.

Former Westchester County D.A. and unsuccessful N.Y. Attorney General Candidate Jeanine Pirro is in the news again.

It seems Ms. Pirro used to tape-record some of her calls. And before leaving office, she asked an investigator to destroy some of the tapes.

One of the reasons this is of interest is that that Ms. Pirro's successor now is in possession of a tape suggesting Ms. Pirro failed to disclose evidence that could have helped a man whom Ms. Pirro subsequently charged with murder. But the existence of any tapes immediately raises the question of whom Ms. Pirro was talking to over her years in office and what conversations, whether of a political or legal nature, might be recorded in the surviving tapes.

"The fact that the then District Attorney secretly recorded certain conversations in her office and on her telephone came to light during a still continuing federal grand jury investigation conducted jointly by the United States Attorney and this Office," Mr. Hecht wrote.

[Hat tip Crooks and Liars.]

The Atlanta police officers who killed Kathryn Johnston failed to learn from the department's earlier mistakes.

Two months and a day before Kathryn Johnston, there was Frances Thompson. The 80-year-old Thompson was in her bedroom the afternoon of Sept. 20, when she heard a terrible crash and shouting. Startled and confused, she grabbed a pistol and was immediately confronted by three Atlanta narcotics officers.

"They had masks covering their face. I thought I was being robbed," she recalled. "They pointed those big guns at me." ... No drugs were found. And her pistol was a toy cap gun. ...

The two incidents share striking similarities: Two elderly women living alone with guns; police battering in a door; faulty reports from street-level dealers helping narcotics officers; and police parsing the truth, if not outright lying.

It may be that the officers had no incentive to learn. In their corrupt department, truth and public safety were less important than arrest quotas.

[F]ederal investigators say Atlanta narcotics officers hoped to satisfy goals for making arrests and serving warrants set by police commanders. "They believed that these ends justified their illegal 'Fluffing' or falsifying of search warrants," according to those plea documents.

Here's a sensible take on the use of force against protesters (and the media) in Los Angeles on May 1:

The police action was reportedly in response to a handful of protesters who threw plastic bottles and other small objects in the direction of police. But none of that explains what happened. Even LAPD Chief William J. Bratton, currently being considered for a second term as chief, was moved to call the response “inappropriate” and said “I was disturbed at what I saw.” Which would certainly be obvious to anyone watching the footage, but hearing it from the current chief of police is a comforting change in attitude from previous generations of LAPD leadership. Two investigations have already been launched into the incident.

The response from apologists whenever a scene like this one unfolds (i.e., Rodney King) is that police work is tough and dangerous and requires split-second decisions: What would you do in that situation? That is all true, except that police are also trained, paid, and fully expected to operate at a different level from an average citizen caught in chaotic situations. What reason could there be to beat unarmed protesters or media personnel carrying professional video equipment?

Last Night in Little Rock wrote earlier about the two cops in Atlanta who pleaded guilty to manslaughter and civil rights violations for killing a 92 year old woman in her home during a botched drug raid.

The cops have agreed to cooperate in an investigation into corruption at the Atlanta Police Department's drug unit.

Sentencing in both courts has been deferred until later to allow the men to cooperate with a federal investigation into the Atlanta police department's narcotics unit. The men are expected to serve at least 10 years in prison on the federal charges alone.

The New York Times has more on the "culture of corruption" inside the Atlanta Police Department.

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