A Kentucky proseuctor has been suspended following a tape showing him having sex with a defendant in a drug case.

Erica L. French's lawyer, Kenneth Daniels, said they had a camera installed in her bedroom closet last week and taped her having sex with Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Robert W. Stevens.

Daniels said they decided to record her encounter because French, 29, had complained that Stevens had made inappropriate advances toward her during talks involving her cooperation with the prosecution of other defendants. According to Daniels, French said that Stevens told her that if she would have sex with him he would use his influence to withdraw her guilty plea and drop charges prior to her sentencing.

[link via How Appealing]

by TChris

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has reinstated a lawsuit against the federal government brought by the family of John McIntyre, alleging that "the FBI contributed to McIntyre's death by giving ... two gangsters free rein to commit crimes because they were also federal informants who provided the FBI with information on the Mafia." McIntyre disappeared in 1984. His body was found in 2000.

During 1984 interviews with agents of the FBI, DEA, and Customs Service, McIntyre provided information implicating James Bulger in arms and drug smuggling operations. McIntyre disappeared six weeks later. His family suspected that Bulger played a role in the disappearance but didn't know how Bulger had learned about McIntyre's cooperation with the government. The family also wondered whether the IRA -- the recipient of Bulger's arms shipments -- had been involved with McIntyre's death.

Eventually, the Boston Globe reported that Bulger was an FBI informant and suggested that FBI agents leaked information to Bulger about informants within his criminal organization. The FBI responded that its "leadership remains outraged at the suggestion that any of its own would engage in that type of treachery." When the Globe ran stories in the mid-1990's about McIntyre's disappearance and his connection to Bulger, the government claimed it was "ludicrous" to speculate that a government agent negligently allowed McIntyre to be killed.

In fact, FBI Agent John Connolly was later convicted of revealing the identities of informants to Bulger in order to protect Bulger's ongoing criminal activities and status as a high-level FBI informant.

Some justice at last at the Department of Justice. It announced today it will reopen the investigation into the death of Emmett Till, a black teenager brutally killed in Mississippi.

Till was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss., on Aug. 28, 1955. The mutilated body of the 14-year-old from Chicago was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River. Pictures of the slaying shocked the world. Two white men charged with murder - Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam - were acquitted by an all-white jury. Both men have since died.

Bob Dylan wrote a song about Emmett's death.

by TChris

Last month, TalkLeft reported that former Wisconsin district attorney (and unsuccessful Republican candidate for state attorney general) Joseph Paulus is being prosecuted for accepting bribes in drunk driving cases from a former prosecutor turned defense attorney. New information reveals that Paulus was the kind of prosecutor who, blinded by his own ambition and sense of righteousness, would do anything to secure a conviction, even if it meant sending the innocent to prison.

The prosecutor who replaced Paulus has asked the state's Department of Justice to review twenty cases in which Paulus withheld evidence from the defense. In one case, Paulus withheld DNA evidence that proved a rape suspect hadn't committed the crime. In a murder case, he withheld evidence that the victim's death may have been accidental. When his employees questioned his integrity, he fired them; when they tried to reveal his wrongdoing, he publicly attacked them.

Paulus apparently made records disappear that would reveal his wrongdoing.

[The new prosecutor] said his office also has asked the state to look into why numerous court, police and prosecutors' records in questionable cases are now missing. Among the lost records: Sheriff's department reports from the early 1990s in which Paulus was accused by his former wife of stalking her.

Questions about Paulus' integrity had surfaced repeatedly over the years, but nothing happened until he was caught accepting bribes. Yet the bribery caused far less harm than the pattern of disregarding rules and rights in order to secure convictions. The larger implications of this story shouldn't be ignored.

The allegations surrounding Paulus should prompt state policymakers to "seize the moment" to determine what additional checks and balances need to be placed on district attorneys in Wisconsin, said Walter Dickey, a UW-Madison law professor and former state corrections secretary. "The fact of the matter is," Dickey said, "we have too much power in the hands of the prosecutor."

One reform is obvious: prosecutors shouldn't be allowed to keep any scrap of information secret. Everything should be turned over to the defense, in every case.

by TChris

It's bad enough when prosecutors break the rules to secure a conviction. When an accused's own lawyer turns against him, there's no hope of a fair trial.

Both ends of the criminal justice system worked against Patrick Rugiero, who is serving a 30 year sentence after being convicted of drug crimes in federal court. Fortunately, federal Magistrate Steven Pepe has recommended that Rugiero receive a new trial.

Rugiero's trial lawyer, Deday LaRene, was under investigation for tax evasion when he decided to represent Rugiero. Magistrate Pepe found that government lawyers were willing to offer Rugiero a deal that would limit Rugiero's sentence to 15 years in exchange for Rugiero's cooperation, but that LaRene never pursued the offer because didn't want Rugiero to reveal that he paid LaRene $80,000 in cash.

Magistrate Pepe also criticized federal prosecutor Keith Corbett, head of the Organized Crime Strike force, for failing to give key documents to Rugiero’s appellate lawyers for more than four years.

This isn’t the first time that Corbett has been accused of withholding documents. Corbett was co-counsel in the 2003 Detroit terrorism trial and has been under fire for failing to turn over a letter that raised questions about a key government witness.

Rugerio asked for the file on LaRene's tax fraud investigation in 1997, leading to more than 20 court hearings, during which the Corbett claimed the file was "missing." Magistrate Pepe didn't buy it.

Eventually, much of the file was found down the hall from Corbett’s office, in a file cabinet in the office of IRS Special Agent Frank Scartozzi — a fact disclosed when Rugiero’s lawyer, David Schoen, was allowed to question Scartozzi under oath. Corbett, Pepe wrote, “must have known of its existence.”

U.S. District Judge Paul Gadola will now decide whether to accept Magistrate Pepe's recommendation.

Carol Marin, writing in the Chicago Tribune, reminds us that mistreatment of prisoners extends beyond Iraq to those in the U.S.. She addresses specifically the torture of suspects by South Side Chicago cops, inflicted to obtain confessions.

From Iraq to Chicago, appalling acts regarding the mistreatment of prisoners are unfolding. This is about the torture of suspects by police officers on the South Side of Chicago to make the suspects confess to a crime. It's a story we should be sick about and one we should have dealt with long ago. We haven't.

That's why Wednesday morning there will be yet another hearing at the Dirksen Federal Building as four pardoned Death Row inmates, Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange, continue to wage their long battle for justice. They have filed civil lawsuits against Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors who, to this day, dispute there was ever a pattern and practice of torture at Area 2 by Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and his men.

The difference between the abuses in Iraq in Chicago? No one took pictures between 1973 and 1991 at the Chicago police station.

Why is the city fighting these cases? Just as in the torture cases in Iraq, isn't there a moral argument here? A crying need for those in command to stand up and take responsibility for what happened under their watch? Until then, everyone keeps paying the price. Those who were tortured, certainly. And a majority of honorable men and women in the Police Department who don't deserve to bear the shame or carry the burden of the Burge years.

by TChris

Those who attend the Tribeca film festival in New York City will have a chance to see "Every Mother's Son" this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. or Saturday at 6:00 p.m. The film focuses on the mothers of three men who were killed by police officers.

For this task the film makers chose Kadiatou Diallo [mother of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed man who was gunned down by the police in 1999 in the Bronx], Iris Baez (her son, Anthony, was killed when a cop applied an illegal chokehold), and Doris Busch Boskey. Her son, Gideon Busch, a Hasidic Jew, was shot outside his home in Brooklyn.

Director Tami Gold wanted her film to address a large problem through the lens of three very personal experiences.

"It’s not about dealing with a few bad cops," Gold said. "The problem of police brutality is a systemic one...we both felt that it was not enough to make a documentary about police brutality alone. We wanted it to deal with the critical issues surrounding policing, but also to have a human component and an aspect of hope."

Those who can't catch the film this week will be able watch it on PBS’s P.O.V. series. The documentary is scheduled to air on August 17.

by TChris

When a driver has a blood alcohol content of .24, the driver should expect to be arrested for driving under the influence. James Michael Farris was arrested in Lawrence County, Alabama, but wasn't jailed. Nor was he prosecuted for DUI. Some wonder whether Farris was treated differently because his father is the chief jailer in Lawrence County.

As a responsible governmental official, James Michael Farris' father, James Farris, provided a complete explanation.

James Farris declined to say if he took his son home instead of booking him. "It's a city matter and I suggest you take it up with the city, and that's all I have to say," James Farris said.

Okay, so it wasn't all that complete.

The chief of police acknowledges that he directed the officer who arrested James Michael to write him a second ticket for reckless driving. James Michael entered a guilty plea to that ticket and the DUI was dismissed because ... well, nobody can explain why.

Moral of the story: it's good to have a dad who can check you out of jail.

by TChris

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Bush Administration violated federal law by ordering Richard Foster to withhold from Congress his estimates of the cost of legislation to add a drug benefit to Medicare.

In a report on Monday, the research service said that Congress's "right to receive truthful information from federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions is clear and unassailable." Since 1912, it said, federal laws have protected the rights of federal employees to communicate with Congress, and recent laws have "reaffirmed and strengthened" those protections.

Had the true cost of the controversial law been known, it is doubtful that Congress would have given the administration the legislation it wanted. The administration solved that problem, like so many others, with a lie, in violation of its duty to "make professional and reliable cost estimates, unfettered by any particular partisan agenda."

by TChris

A deputy sheriff in Milwaukee, assigned to court duty as a bailiff, has been charged with sexually assaulting a 21-year-old woman who was in his custody.

According to the complaint, Terrell took her and a group of other inmates to a court holding cell, then took the woman alone into the bathroom of a jury room, locked the door and told the woman, "I would fall in love with you, but I'm too old." The complaint says Terrell then removed the woman's handcuffs, took off her prison clothes and assaulted her before re-cuffing her and saying she should not tell anyone about the incident.

This is the second time the deputy has been criminally charged. He was acquitted in 2000 when he was accused of "kissing an inmate and removing her shirt, then exposing himself, on a courthouse elevator."

A narcotics officer in New York City pleaded guilty today in federal court to stealing more than $100k from a drug dealer. He is the 8th officer to be implicated in the scandal. He faces up to five years in prison.

So many of our clients tell us the cops took more money than they reported on the evidence form. Usually, it's too hard to prove and the client has no recourse. Who's going to believe a drug dealer over a cop?

But sometimes, the cops get undone over something else and it comes to light. That happened to one of our clients in a Ft. Lauderdale drug case some years back...by the end of the case, a Customs agent and three members of the Hallendale police department went to jail for several years, and our client, who they had tricked into buying (not selling) drugs, taking $200k from him, got freed from jail....after serving a year in the county jail while awaiting trial.

Cops are like everyone else. There are good ones and bad ones. And sometimes, just like other people, good cops do bad things. It's why we never understand why juries seem so ready to believe the word of a police officer over other witnesses.

From the Miami Herald, 10/29/97 (available on Lexis.com):

BeatBushBlog reports:

The city of Portland, Oregon agreed to pay $145,000 to settle an excessive force lawsuit brought by a blind, partially deaf 71-year-old woman whom the Portland police pepper-sprayed and shot with a Taser, after police went to her home to complain about shrubs and appliances in the woman's front yard.

Here's more from the article:

Police said they pepper-sprayed Crowder after she refused to stop kicking them. They admit that Crowder's prosthetic eye fell out at some point, and that Zajac stunned Crowder with a Taser, an electric stun gun, twice in the lower back and once in the upper back after ordering her to stop fighting and resisting.
Warren said the city's argument is bogus. He said, "To kick the crap out of old folks seems a little bit much to me in the name of law enforcement."