Law Prof Eric Muller of Is that Legal? picks up on an important glitch in the FBI's computer files, one we mentioned too briefly last March. Eric provides some crucial follow-up and this issue needs to get more attention.

First, the problem as Eric describes it:

...the FBI's computer system has a drive onto which agents dump their raw reports, and from which supervisors upload and review them, and quite possibly edit them, before saving them as the official reports on a different drive. The "official" reports are made available, as required by law, to defendants, but the raw reports on the so-called "I" drive have never been. Indeed, the very existence of the "I" drive has been hidden until very recently.

Now the effect:

...this computer infrastructure is a flagrant violation of the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. sec. 3500, which requires that the government turn over to defendants all "recorded statements" of witnesses who testify at trial. Specifically, it requires disclosure of any "stenographic, mechanical, electrical, or other recording, or a transcription thereof, which is a substantially verbatim recital of an oral statement made by" a government trial witness and "recorded contemporaneously with the making of such oral statement."

Eric asks,

Why have we not heard more about this large-scale statutory (and, as to material exculpatory evidence, possibly also constitutional) violation by the FBI?

Maybe now we will.

Oregon prosecutor Al French who has admitted lying about John Kerry in the swift boat ad was placed on leave today--and it has nothing to do with the Swifty issue.

Sanction him for lying about something that affects the public, fine. But for a private matter like this, that occurred 10 years ago, that's a cheap shot.

How often does this happen--over a cooperation deal, no less? Houston lawyer Michael Minns did a great job.

The law licenses of two former Internal Revenue Service lawyers have been suspended for two years after a federal court ruling last year that they defrauded the courts so that the I.R.S. could win 1,300 tax shelter cases. W. Kenneth McWade was suspended by the Oregon Supreme Court in an order dated Aug. 10 and released yesterday by the Oregon State Bar.

Four months ago Arkansas officials suspended the license of William A. Sims. The United States Tax Court has also suspended both lawyers for two years, and the I.R.S. director of practice has suspended them indefinitely.

Here's how it went down:

Houston's crime lab has been reeling for some time from the discovery of numerous convictions tainted by false lab reports. It's about to get worse:

Six independent forensic scientists, in a report to be filed in a Houston state court today, said that a crime laboratory official - because he either lacked basic knowledge of blood typing or gave false testimony - helped convict an innocent man of rape in 1987. The panel concluded that crime laboratory officials might have offered "similarly false and scientifically unsound" reports and testimony in other cases, and it called for a comprehensive audit spanning decades to re-examine the results of a broad array of rudimentary tests on blood, semen and other bodily fluids.

How many cases are affected in this new probe?

Elizabeth A. Johnson, a former director of the DNA laboratory at the Harris County medical examiner's office in Houston, said the task would be daunting. "A conservative number would probably be 5,000 to 10,000 cases," Dr. Johnson said. "If you add in hair, it's off the board."

Barry Scheck, one of Mr. Rodriguez's lawyers, said that Harris County was the worst place in America for a crime laboratory scandal. "We know already that they couldn't do DNA testing properly," Mr. Scheck said. "Now we have a scandal that calls into question many thousands more cases. And this jurisdiction has produced more executions than any other county in America." Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, Texas has executed 323 people, 73 for crimes in Harris County.

The first scandal was bad enough:

A state audit of the crime laboratory, completed in December 2002, has found that DNA technicians there misinterpreted data, were poorly trained and kept shoddy records. In many cases, the technicians used up all available evidence, making it impossible for defense experts to refute or verify their results. Even the laboratory's building was a mess, with a leaky roof contaminating evidence. The DNA unit was shut down soon afterward, and it remains closed.

by TChris

It's good to see the Bush administration abandoning its "tough on crime, lock 'em up forever" philosophy in favor of an approach that gives criminals the opportunity to reform. Only that apparent change in thinking can explain the decision to make W. Stephen Thayer III the deputy chief of the Transportation Security Administration's Office of National Risk Assessment -- one of the top management positions in the TSA.

Thayer's fast-moving career — U.S. attorney at 35, state supreme court justice at 40 — came to an abrupt halt March 31, 2000, when he resigned from the state's highest court in a deal with New Hampshire Attorney General Philip McLaughlin.

In return for Thayer's resignation, McLaughlin agreed to drop plans to indict him. In a public report, McLaughlin criticized Thayer for participating in deliberations on a case he had disqualified himself from. He also said he would have sought felony or misdemeanor charges against Thayer for allegedly trying to influence the choice of a judge to hear his wife's appeal of their divorce and threatening fellow justices if they allowed his conduct to be reported to judicial oversight groups.

Thayer's qualifications for the TSA job? He helped the American Conservative Union organize a task force to lobby the government regarding CAPPS II, the disastrous program over which he now presides.

Until now, the Bush administration hasn't been keen on job programs to rehabilitate offenders. It's nice to know the administration has had a change of heart.

A judge in California has been accused of conspiring with the prosecution to keep Jewish people off the jury in a death penalty case.

The California Supreme Court is asking the attorney general’s office to explain why a convicted murderer’s death sentence shouldn’t be reversed based on allegations that a now-deceased Alameda County judge colluded with prosecutors to ensure a capi-tal conviction by keeping Jews off the jury.

The court on Wednesday issued an order to show cause based on defense lawyers’ claims that convicted murderer Fred Freeman’s 1987 trial was tainted when then-Superior Court Judge Stanley Golde allegedly told prosecutors to keep Jews off the jury because they would never vote to send someone to the gas chamber.

This is just another reason why politicians like Mass. Governor Mitt Romney who try to assure us that it is possible to create an error-free death penalty law are dead wrong. There will always be the chance of human error. There will always be misconduct.

Praise is due the Democrats who deleted the endorsement of the death penalty from this year's platform. Why isn't the mainstream media covering this more?

One more thing about the California Judge:

At the time of Golde’s death, in 1998, he was believed to have handed down more death sentences than any other judge in Alameda County, and possibly the state, since the punishment was reinstated in 1978.

by TChris

The shooting of Paul Childs, a disabled 15-year-old, is probably the most controversial of the five deaths caused by the Denver police this year.

Nine days ago, on a Saturday afternoon, Childs was standing in the living room of his mother's house holding a kitchen knife. His 16-year-old sister called 911 and told the dispatcher, "He's trying to stab my mother with it." (The family has since denied they felt threatened.)

Police responded. According to a family account, four officers pulled their guns. One of them, James Turney, shot and killed the youth after Childs failed to respond to repeated orders to drop the knife. It was the second time Mr. Turney has killed a citizen in the line of duty in the past 18 months.

A 2001 study ranked Denver "among the top 10 in fatal shootings per capita." Do some Denver officers have a tendency to "shoot first and ask questions later," as charged by Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado?

"The Denver Police Department historically has a disturbingly high number of these kinds of shootings of people without guns," says US Rep. Diana Degette (D) of Colorado, who is keeping an eye on the case. "It's cause for concern."

Critics of the Denver police are calling for a change in state law, which gives police "considerable discretion in using deadly force when they feel threatened."

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton told the City Council in a 2 hour briefing that the officers involved in the videotaped beating of Stanley Miller, who had surrendered to police before the hits began, did not follow departmental policy:

"It is a mess. It is not what we teach at the academy," Bratton told the Los Angeles City Council during a two-hour briefing Wednesday.....He said a series of tactical errors were made during the arrest, beginning with an officer who holstered his gun before tackling Miller when he should have kept it trained on the suspect while other officers handcuffed him. Officer John Hatfield's kicking of Miller also was not departmental policy, he said. "We don't teach kicks," Bratton said.

Background on the incident by TChris is here.

by TChris

Mark Faljean, an 18-year veteran of the NYPD, "faces possible disciplinary action by the Police Department" after being convicted of "fondling, sexually abusing and harassing a 27-year-old woman."

During the trial, Faljean denied ever touching the woman, opening the door for prosecutors to question him about more than a dozen past misconduct cases and multiple corruption cases that have been lodged against him.

Possible disciplinary action? They need to think about it?

by TChris

John J. Hatfield, the LAPD officer who beat Stanley Miller with a flashlight as another officer was placing Miller in handcuffs, claims the beating was justified because he was warned by the two officers who already had Miller under control that Miller had a gun in his pocket. The object in Miller's pocket turned out to be wire cutters -- a tool that bears not the slightest resemblance to a gun -- but the explanation, even if mistaken, doesn't justify kicking and hitting Miller. The most effective protection against a gun is to take the gun, not to beat a man who has already given up and who is being handcuffed by other officers.

Meet former LAPD officer Brian Bentley. He was fired from the LAPD for using excessive force and has written a book about it.

One Time is a candid and brutal look at the life of a Black cop with the LAPD. Bentley says he became a police officer because he wanted to make a difference and to change even one life. Unfortunately, he found that the only life he changed was his own. He lost hope, gave in to episodes of violence and abuse while relishing the power given to him by his badge and his gun.

One Time pulls no punches! The author recreates the joy, pain and frustrations he felt as he tried to do what was right. One Time brings great, dramatic stories of South Central Los Angeles to life. It is a story about the inner workings of America's most powerful institutions, the LAPD!

You can buy the book at Amazon.

by TChris

In an incident that calls to mind Rodney King, cameras have again captured an instance of Los Angeles police interaction with a crime suspect that appears to be abusive. News footage from a helicopter shows a man driving a car (apparently stolen) to the end of a dead-end street, then running down a path.

After [running] about 30 yards, the man appears to surrender by putting his hands in the air and dropping to the ground. Then as two officers have him on the ground, the third officer arrives and is seen apparently trying to kick the suspect in the head and striking his upper back and neck at least 11 times with a flashlight.

The officers involved were from the Southeast Division of the LAPD.