by TChris

Louisiana seems to be having a difficult time keeping judges on the bench. First the Louisiana Supreme Court removed Criminal District Judge Sharon Hunter for "administrative incompetence" (among other problems, she misplaced the trial transcripts of a murder case). Then, as TalkLeft recently reported, the supreme court tossed Civil District Judge C. Hunter King for trying to extort campaign contributions from court employees.

Now the supreme court has shown the door to Judge Yvonne Hughes, who ran for judge a dozen times before being elected in 2001. The judicial commission concluded that Judge Hughes abandoned her private practice clients (without refunding their retainers) when she assumed the bench and was equally inattentive to her duties as a judge. The supreme court was also disturbed that Judge Hughes hired felons to work in the courtroom (which the AP says is a violation of Louisiana's Constitution) and gave some of them access to confidential juvenile records.

Discredited Oklahoma chemist Joyce Gilchrist is back in the news. We last wrote about her here, reporting that 11 people have been executed based on her work.

The news today: the Associated Press has obtained a confidential police memo that shows:

Gilchrist doctored trial evidence and may have destroyed hair samples that could have exonerated a man now on death row....The memo said Gilchrist not only altered her own case notes, but "there is compelling circumstantial evidence" that she "either intentionally lost or destroyed" crime-scene hairs used to convict Curtis Edward McCarty of murder so the evidence could not be retested.The Oklahoma City Police Department memo, written by then-Deputy Chief Bill Citty to then-Chief M.T. Berry, is dated Sept. 21, 2001, and details 14 days of deliberations and testimony heard by a department review board.

You can read more news reports about Gilchrist in the Hall of Shame.

Anti-polygraph.org reports:

AntiPolygraph.org has received anonymous, but seemingly credible reports that the head of the LAPD's polygraph unit, a Mr. Roy Ortiz, falsified polygraph test results of both LAPD applicants and currently serving officers seeking assignment to elite units such as counternarcotics and the anti-terrorist division, and that LAPD commanders swept the matter under the rug.

You can read the actual communications here.

by TChris

Joseph Paulus, once known as an aggressive, "law and order" prosecutor in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, has been charged in federal court with taking almost two dozen bribes during his days as a district attorney. Paulus allegedly made a deal with a local defense attorney to split the attorney's fees in exchange for lenient treatment of the attorney's clients. The defense attorney worked for Paulus as an assistant DA before entering private practice.

Paulus is also charged with tax evasion. But his wrongdoing didn't end with accepting bribes and failing to report them on his 1040.

Paulus' successor, fellow Republican Bill Lennon, said he was "extremely disappointed" the federal case focused on bribery, which he said was the "tip of the iceberg" when it came to Paulus's 14 years as district attorney from 1988 to 2002.

Lennon wants the state to investigate reports that "Paulus lied to police, judges, victims and other attorneys in his zeal to win cases and generate headlines." Paulus aspired to an appointment as U.S. attorney in 2001, and apparently believed that winning the favorable headlines that come from winning convictions was more important than justice or the constitutional right to a fair trial.

by TChris

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has affirmed the convictions (pdf) of four Chicago Police Department officers “who devoted a considerable amount of effort to making money from local drug dealers (and undercover agents whom they mistook for drug dealers) through robbery and acts of public extortion at the expense of their public duties.” The Internal Affairs Division, assisted by the FBI, used informants and an undercover officer masquerading as a drug dealer “to lure the suspect officers into a trap.” Reacting to the informants' tips, the officers would search drug dealers (including an IAD sergeant posing as a dealer), find drugs and cash, and give the dealers a choice: “We get all the money, or you go to jail.”

The undercover cop recruited officers to act as armed escorts when he went on his fake “drug runs.” The officers also robbed drug houses, confiscating “drugs and drug paraphernalia, money, and jewelry, none of which was reported or inventoried according to CPD protocol.” The officers were convicted of "various racketeering, extortion, robbery, drug, and weapons violations."

by TChris

In 1995, Miami police officers shot two fleeing suspects in the back and then planted guns near their bodies. After years of investigation, a partially successful federal prosecution that charged a pattern of planting guns during four police shootings from 1995 to 1997, a four week trial and three days of deliberations, three officers were convicted for their roles in covering up the truth.

Lt. Israel Gonzalez and Officer Jorge Garcia face up to 10 years in prison for committing perjury to a grand jury and obstructing justice by lying in sworn depositions and conspiracy. Sgt. Jose Quintero faces up to five years for conspiracy for planting one of the guns.

Suspicions were raised when the guns were examined: they had no fingerprints, and one was loaded with the wrong ammunition. The outcry that followed led to important changes.

All the officers belonged to elite plainclothes units when the department was under international pressure to halt a string of deadly tourist robberies. The scandal over the shootings rocked the department and scarred its image, ushering in a new police chief, new shooting policies and a civilian review board.

by TChris

The facts surrounding the arrest of two daughters of Minnesota's attorney general are murky, but the Chicago police Office of Professional Standards announced that it will investigate whether officers used excessive force during the arrest.

Elizabeth Hatch's father says Elizabeth and her sister Anne were kicked out of Crobar, a Chicago nightclub where they had been celebrating Anne's birthday, after Elizabeth complained about a man groping her. A police spokeswoman says that the sisters created a disturbance after their ejection from the club, and ignored a police request to leave the area. The spokeswoman says that Anne resisted arrest, knocking an officer's glasses off and scratching him under his eye, while Elizabeth struggled with another officer. Once in the squad car, officers say that Anne kicked out the back window.

Father Mike Hatch says the police knocked Elizabeth's legs out from under her and held her on the ground with a knee on her back. He says that Anne was just trying to pull the officer off of her sister, who was screaming in pain.

After several hours in lockup, the sisters were taken to a hospital. Elizabeth "had a black eye, a sprained wrist and bruises on her back and forearm," while Anne had some scratches. Their father wonders whether the police "were needlessly heavy-handed" and is concerned about the delay in providing them with medical care.

The State bar of Texas has commenced an investigation of Swisher County DA Terry McEachern who was in charge of the bogus Tulia, Texas drug busts. From an Austin Statesman editorial today:

The bar initiated an investigation of Terry McEachern, the Swisher County district attorney who relentlessly pursued felony convictions of dozens of Tulia residents on trumped-up drug charges in 1999 -- despite a lack of evidence. In investigating McEachern, the bar is sending a message that it won't look the other way when prosecutors hide evidence from defense lawyers or permit key witnesses to make false statements under oath. This isn't the only case in which a prosecutor has bent or violated ethics rules to win cases. Nonetheless, this is a rare and significant occurrence in Texas justice, signaling that prosecutors who conduct themselves unethically will answer to the state bar.

Prosecutors who cheat to win convictions rarely face consequences because their wrongs are uncovered years after the misconduct occurred. That's what happened last month, when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the death sentence of inmate Delma Banks after finding that Bowie County prosecutors had violated Banks' constitutional rights by withholding evidence for nearly two decades and permitting key witnesses to lie about the 1980 slaying of a Texarkana teenager. It is refreshing to know that the state bar is awake and doing its job in holding cheating prosecutors accountable. Such prosecutors undermine public confidence in the judicial system. Now the bar should look into the Banks case.

Taking an in-depth look at cases in New York, the New York Times reports that awareness of prosecutorial misconduct is on the rise.

Misconduct by prosecutors has become a national concern in recent years, highlighted last month in a United States Supreme Court decision to throw out a Texas inmate's death sentence because prosecutors had deliberately withheld critical evidence. In a study last year, the Center for Public Integrity, a group that monitors government ethics issues, reported that since 1970, there have been more than 2,000 cases of prosecutorial misconduct in the United States that resulted in dismissed charges, reversed convictions or reduced sentences.

....The greatest crime of all is an unjust conviction," Judge John P. Collins said. "It is truly a scandal which reflects unfavorably on all participants in the criminal justice system."

[hat tip to Ted in Chicago]

1,200 pounds of marijuana and 2 pounds of cocaine are missing from the evidence room of the Volusia County Sheriff's Department in Florida.

Timothy W. Wallace, 47, the former evidence manager, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to traffic in cocaine and marijuana. He was released on $300,000 bail and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Here's how it was discovered:

The Daytona Beach News Journal reports: Volusia County sheriff's investigators seized bricks of marijuana during several drug busts. Then they seized the marijuana again. It's the first time Florida law enforcement officials have investigated a case where seized drugs were put back on the street, they say. Sheriff's officials learned during the criminal investigation into the theft of half a million dollars' worth of drugs from their evidence compound that they seized the same narcotics more than once.

They sit in prison but their crime lab tests are flawed.

A year ago, the State Patrol conducted an internal audit of Arnold Melnikoff's work in 100 felony drug cases and found troubling flaws in 30. There were convictions in 17 cases for crimes ranging from simple possession to making meth. But none of those 22 defendants has been notified that the crime lab evidence used against them had been called into question, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has found.

The scathing April 2003 audit report described Melnikoff's drug-analysis work as "sloppy" and "built around speed and shortcuts." It also concluded that 14 of the 30 flawed drug cases needed to be retested because his data was "insufficient" to identify substances. But the lab was able to retest only four of the 14 cases because law enforcement agencies had discarded the evidence, Logan said.

It's not just Melnikoff's testing that is at issue. So is his court testimony:

A review of a dozen cases in which Melnikoff testified revealed "small misstatements" and "a tendency for conclusions to become stronger as the case developed, from notes to written report to testimony," according to the audit report.

It's inexusable to us that the state did not notify defense attorneys of the problems with Melnikoff's work.

by TChris

Firing 50,000 volts of electricity into a person's body is an extreme measure, but at least it's better than a bullet. That may be the ultimate lesson to draw from the experiences of police departments that have issued Taser guns to their officers.

The number of people killed by police in Seattle, Miami, Phoenix, and other cities has fallen dramatically, in part, it seems, because officers in those cities have been relying on Taser guns when, in the past, they might have used deadly force.

But as the Taser spreads rapidly, it is raising questions about whether the weapon, which can also be applied directly to the skin as a stun gun, could be abused by the police. The Taser zaps suspects with 50,000 volts of electricity, disabling them for five seconds at a time. Critics say the weapon is ripe for abuse because the shock leaves no obvious mark, other than what looks like a small bee sting. Human rights groups in the United States and abroad have called Tasers potential instruments of torture.

Incidents of abuse are not unknown. A man in Las Vegas died last month after being shot with a Taser four or five times. Here's what his cousin saw:

"He was on the ground," Ms. Bell said in a telephone interview. "He had two pairs of handcuffs on him, and I didn't know the Taser was being used until I heard him screaming. He kept screaming and screaming, saying, `Oh God, Jesus, please no.' He was screaming in pain, he was hurt and he didn't resist."

The long term effects of being zapped with 50,000 volts are unknown, and the possible lethality of the weapon is open to debate. Still, if the alternative is the use of a gun that will almost certainly cause serious injury or death, police departments should seriously consider training officers in the use of a Taser.

Police departments should vigilantly guard against the abusive use of Taser guns, just as they should guard against abuse of any kind. Policies limiting the use of Taser guns should be strictly enforced, so that officers are held accountable if they resort to a Taser gun when safer and less painful methods can safely be used to obtain an offender's compliance.