The Inspector General's summary report on FBI translater Sibel Edmonds is out. It finds she was fired for reporting misconduct. The ACLU, which represented Edmonds, says (in press release to be online soon):

According to today’s summary, the Inspector General’s investigation found that many of Edmonds’ claims “were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services.....the Inspector General states, “By terminating Edmonds’ services, in large part because of her allegations of misconduct, the FBI’s actions also may have the effect of discouraging others from raising concerns.”

There's more discredit to the FBI contained in the report summary:

The prosecution rested today in the perjury trial of discredited Texas drug undercover cop Tom Coleman, who is charged with stealing gasoline from the county and lied about it.

The hearing in which Coleman is accused of making false statements dealt with the Tulia drug busts, in which he was the key witness, but the charges against him do not relate to those now-discredited convictions. Coleman was accused of taking upwards of 100 gallons of gas from a pump used by county vehicles in Morton while driving a pickup truck that was not a county vehicle.

"The significance of the cost of the gas isn't what's important," special prosecutor Rod Hobson said. "It's that he stole the gas and lied under oath and then made a second lie about when he knew charges were filed."

Grits for Breakfast has the latest live-blogging installment of the trial here.

If you're going to get charged with a crime, maybe you better hope it's not in Nevada.

Police and prosecutors in the Las Vegas Valley routinely try to keep essential information from defense lawyers, violating the constitutional rights of those accused of crimes, defense attorneys and the county public defender say.

Besides violating the U.S. and Nevada constitutions and potentially putting innocent people behind bars, the actions of the district attorney's office and Metro Police waste large amounts of time and money, as defenders must go to court over and over to obtain evidence to which they are legally entitled, the attorneys say.

Defense lawyers plan to file a "major lawsuit" in the next few months over the issue.

Bump and Update: Jury selection begins Monday.

Coleman's trial on the perjury charges, which centers on whether he lied about his own arrest record during the evidentiary hearings for four defendants in 2003, was to begin with jury selection Monday. It was expected to last about a week.

Don't forget to check Grits for Breakfast where guestblogger Rev. Alan Bean is live-blogging the trial.

*************
Original Post 1/8/05

Tom Coleman is the undercover drug cop responsible for the convictions of 38 mostly black defendants in Tulia, Texas. He was found to be non-credible, the convictions were overturned and the defendants were pardoned. They even received a $5 million settlement. He is about to go on trial for perjury.

A U.S. Border Patrol Agent appeared in federal court yesterday charged with smuggling 750 pounds of marijuana across the border. The cops caught the agent after a high-speed chase. Pretty ballsy, he was even using an official Border Patrol vehicle. He also had a non-documented immigrant with him.

FBI agents began watching Higareda after learning of a supposed plan to move a giant drug stash over the border from Mexico to a house in Calexico, California using a marked U.S. Border Patrol car, the complaint said. Agents said they watched Higareda meet with another driver at a customs checkpoint, then chased him "at high speeds" about 20 miles to Holtville, California.

by TChris

The Broward County Sheriff's Office Professional Review Board recommended the suspension of detectives who falsified reports "to make it appear they were solving more crimes than they really were." The suspension were never implemented. Instead, the detectives were transferred to road patrol.

The Broward State Attorney's Office also is conducting an investigation into whether other BSO deputies falsified confessions on official documents.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Raleigh Barnett, the only police detective in Dayton, Kentucky, "resigned after being charged with failing to investigate an allegation of sexual abuse against a child." Barnett failed to investigate the allegations when conducting a background check on a police officer who applied for a position in the Dayton police department. Allen Peace was hired for that position, then fired after officials learned of his arrest for the sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl.

Less serious allegations contributed to the firing of police sergeant Glenn Pearson in Whitman, Massachusetts: he showed poor judgment by "bringing a stripper to a class he taught at Massasoit Community College."

It was alleged the stripper performed lap dances in the class and students were allowed to touch her, claims that Pearson has repeatedly denied.

by TChris

Former District Attorney Joseph Paulus is in prison after swapping cash for dismissals of drunk driving charges (TalkLeft background here and here). But officials have been less willing to investigate the prosecutor's other -- and more serious -- misdeeds.

Bill Lennon, elected to replace Paulus, doesn't understand why the Wisconsin Department of Justice has been slow to investigate reports that Paulus' ethical lapses may have resulted in convictions of innocent defendants. Among other matters, Lennon wants to investigate:

allegations of recently missing evidence from the Oshkosh Police Department in the 1990 Mark Price murder conviction; and allegations that a transcript in the 1999 John Maloney murder case prosecuted by Paulus was altered to exclude "exculpatory statements" by the defendant. ... [T]he probe will look at allegations against Paulus, including "getting people convicted who may not have been guilty of crimes, taking bribes, manufacturing evidence, hiding evidence."

Lennon deserves credit for pursuing these matters, but why isn't the state's Department of Justice taking the lead?

"I understood that the attorney general's office was going to keep us informed and allow us to be minimally involved, and to date that just hasn't happened," the Republican district attorney said. "I don't know what the state of the attorney general's investigation is. They haven't shared anything with us. They haven't kept us up to date -- they have basically put a block on everything."

Perhaps the state's attorney general should spend less time grandstanding and more time trying to recitify the damage caused by this corrupt public official.

A federal judge in California has thrown out the criminal charges against Republican activist and fundraiser Katrina Leung, accused of being a double agent for the U.S. and China.

District Judge Florence Marie Cooper dismissed the case for prosecutorial misconduct, finding that the government had purposely made sure that Katrina Leung, a socialite with extensive China contacts, would not have access to her former lover, James J. Smith, for information regarding her case.

Smith, Leung's FBI "handler" for many years, has pleaded guilty to a single count of making a false statement about the affair and agreed to cooperate with the government. He had been accused of mishandling classified material and allowing it to fall into Leung's hands.

Leung, of the Los Angeles suburb of San Marino, allegedly took the documents from his briefcase. She was not accused of transmitting them to China.

The Judge found the Government engaged in a "pattern of stonewalling entirely unbecoming to a prosecuting agency." Congratulations to Janet Levine and John Vandevelde, who did an outstanding job representing Ms. Leung.

Background on the case is here and here.

by TChris

Sheriff Tim Hutchison of Knox County, Tennessee, has been involved in a series of lawsuits regarding his use of "taxpayer money to maintain things like helicopters and horses and construct buildings without [county] commission approval." A county commissioner asked the Sheriff to produce public records pertaining to one of the lawsuits. Hutchinson responded with 22 pages, then advised the court that those were all the documents he had. It turns out that he had another 15 boxes.

The court held the Sheriff in contempt, and the state supreme court upheld that finding. Hutchinson complains that the contempt finding isn't fair because he was only doing what he was told to do by the County Law Director. He claims that he objected at the time -- but the fact remains that he made a false statement, knowing it to be false.

"He told me to do it" isn't much of a defense under those circumstances, but Hutchinson is sticking to his guns -- presumably because his appeal, at least to this point, has been paid by county taxpayers. The contempt order required Hutchinson to pay $300. So far, Knox County taxpayers have paid more than $93,000 to Hutchinson's lawyers for their unsuccessful efforts to overturn the order.

by TChris

Richard Convertino, the federal prosecutor who withheld evidence in the Detroit terror trial, eventually causing the government to acknowledge that the convictions it obtained needed to be overturned (TalkLeft background collected here), is under investigation for misconduct in earlier prosecutions.

The two drug cases now under review involve 31 convicted defendants and were based in part on the testimony of numerous defendants who agreed to testify for the government. ... Several defendants filed sworn statements saying that prosecutors intimidated them into lying.

Laywers say that Convertino misled the jury in one of the cases by failing to disclose that a key prosecution witness had been given "a sharply reduced sentence" in exchange for his testimony. The witness, Hans Lee Thomas, killed a man in a drug deal after his release from prison.

In a second case, government officials "are reviewing whether Convertino improperly got leniency for a government informant accused of drug dealing."

by TChris

Concluding that the indictment of four police officers who arrested more than 20 people on bogus drug charges resulted from "a failure of management supervision," the Dallas Police Department decided to demote two highly ranked managers.

This all had to do with the city's fake-drugs scandal of 2001, in which police and prosecutors were found sending innocent people to prison on counterfeit drug evidence. Assistant police Chief Dora Saucedo-Falls, who was the department's highest-ranking Hispanic, had responsibility for narcotics as well as other divisions during the time of the fake-drugs scandal. Chief David Kunkle demoted her last week to lieutenant and moved her to communications.

Deputy Chief John Martinez, who reported to Saucedo-Falls, had immediate responsibility for narcotics. Martinez came to that post after the fake-drugs scandal was already under way. He retired last week rather than accept a demotion.

This is what happened:

Cellmark is the world's largest private DNA testing firm. It has analzyed data in some of the country's most high profile cases, including the murder investigation of JonBenet Ramsey and the OJ Simpson case, as well as more routine crime cases. This week, Cellmark fired one of its analysts, Sarah Blair, charging that she electronically manipulated data during DNA analysis in 20 cases. Blair denies the allegations.

The ex-Orchid Cellmark employee electronically manipulated the analysis in 20 tests, the company says. Though she did not alter the outcome of the tests, she overrode procedures designed to ensure the accuracy of the tests by substituting data in the known specimen, or control samples, according to Cellmark.

This is shocking to the forensic community which has always believed that raw data cannot electronically be manipulated.

"I have not heard of anything like this before," said Lawrence Kobilinsky, an associate provost at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Here's what Blair is alleged to have done wrong: