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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152447
11/23/2011 02:50 AM
11/23/2011 02:50 AM
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Lisa Riniker, District Attorney for Grant County in Wisconsin, is the latest addition to AWRM's Prosecutor's Hall of Shame. She charged a six-year-old boy with first degree sexual assault after playing "doctor" with two five-year-old friends. You just can\'t make this stuff up. A 6-year-old Grant County boy has been accused of first-degree sexual assault after playing "doctor" with two 5-year-old friends.
Now, a federal lawsuit has been filed against the prosecutor, who attorneys said is trying to force the boy to admit guilt.
The boy's parents had planned to speak with WISC-TV on Monday to discuss the emotional toll the prosecution has taken on their son. But the prosecutor, Grant County District Attorney Lisa Riniker, on Monday morning asked a judge for a gag order in the case and was granted it. The gag order prohibits the boy's parents from talking about the case.
But the attorneys for the parents in the federal suit, which names Riniker as a defendant, can aren't included in the gag order, and they spoke with WISC-TV from Chicago.
Attorneys for the parents of the 6-year-old, who is being referred to as "D," said that Riniker has gone too far by bringing a felony sex charge against a first-grader for touching a 5-year-old girl inappropriately while playing doctor last fall.
"That behavior by a prosecutor is outrageous," said Christopher Cooper, an attorney for the boy's parents.
Cooper and attorney David Sigale filed the federal suit last week, alleging that Riniker wants D to sign a consent decree admitting some level of guilt.
"We're certainly hoping to vindicate D in the eyes of the law," Sigale said.
"He (the boy) says he didn't do it, and the little girl says he didn't do it. The little girl says he touched the back of one of her buttocks," Cooper said.
The attorneys are also asking for about $12 million in damages from Riniker and two co-defendants.
Cooper and Sigale said they are prepared to present evidence that D has been psychologically harmed by the court proceedings and is terrified of going to jail.
"She (Riniker) bypassed the parents and sent a 6-year-old boy a summons, on which is a threat that the 6-year-old will go to jail for failure to appear," Cooper said.
The attorneys said they have sought the opinion of many experts who said that children "playing doctor" is not a sex crime.
"(The experts say) a 6-year-old child is unable to intellectually and emotionally associate sexual gratification with the act that D has been accused of committing," Cooper said.
In justification for the charge, Riniker is quoted in the lawsuit saying "the Legislature could have put an age restriction in the statute ... the legislature did no such thing."
The lawsuit also alleges the charges were brought because the 5-year-old is the daughter of a high-ranking official in Grant County.
Repeated calls to Riniker and an attorney for she and two co-defendants have gone unanswered since Friday, WISC-TV reported.
Riniker went to Judge Bill Dyke, who is handling the case from Iowa County, and he issued a gag order for the parents Monday morning. WISC-TV has not received a copy of the order nor a reason for its issue. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152448
11/23/2011 04:39 AM
11/23/2011 04:39 AM
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Trapped in Rhode Island
Lord Vader
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I would call Riniker a bitch, except that would be very insulting to one of Gods most noble creatures, dogs which I love, so I will just say that she is total scum and is worse then what a hog leaves behind.
After we are victorious and win the soon coming Civil War or Revolution, this pile of hog excrement will join the rest of the scum that will be found guilty of Crimes against the People and will meet her end slowly and painfully on Pay per View, so that the People will see true justice.
In the meantime I hope that the boys parents win their suit and receive every single cent that they are suing for. It is just a shame that the judgment will not have to come out of that female scum's wallet.
VINCE AUT MORIRE (Conquer or Die)
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152449
11/23/2011 06:32 AM
11/23/2011 06:32 AM
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WI Northwoods
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As is typical in our distorted society and criminal justice system, the male is classified as a criminal at birth. Just waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate who will excercise power and control over whom.
Everything is backasswards and upside down
The tail wags the dog
These are the death throes of deranged society
The War for America
Fight Everywhere
III
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152450
11/23/2011 01:18 PM
11/23/2011 01:18 PM
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Under seven years of age indeed an infant cannot be guilty of felony; for then a felonious discretion is almost an impossibility in nature: but at eight years old he may be guilty of felony. --William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England. Just what the heck do they teach in law school these days? Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152451
11/25/2011 12:51 PM
11/25/2011 12:51 PM
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Tyranny and the Rule of Prosecutors , by William Anderson. Maybe this is starting to gain some attention. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152452
12/01/2011 12:40 PM
12/01/2011 12:40 PM
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The New York Times, not exactly a bastion of liberty and justice, has a profile of Lake County, Illinois, District Attorney Mike Mermel . it's too long to post here in its entirety, but here's some highlights: While some of Mermel’s tactics have drawn the ire of defense lawyers, others give him grudging respect for his skill in the courtroom. “He’s a very effective trial lawyer,” Stone said. “But his view of the world is very narrow.” In the case of Juan Rivera, Lake County prosecutors have been able to convince juries, not once but three times, that he was the murderer, despite DNA evidence in the last trial that powerfully suggested otherwise. (Mermel was the lead lawyer on the third trial and assisted in the second.)
“We don’t fold our tents and run,” Mermel told me when we spoke this spring. “We don’t quaver because somebody holds up three letters: DNA.”
When I asked him specifically about the Rivera case, Mermel said that sometimes post-conviction evidence is irrelevant. “The example I like to give people is next time you go to a motel room, bring a plastic bag, because the dirtiest thing in that room is the remote control. Everybody has sex and then rolls over and goes, ‘I wonder what’s on?’ ” he said. “O.K., so you can find DNA in the form of sperm from 10 different people in that room from that remote control or even on a person who has touched it. And that woman gets murdered in that room tonight, and you are going to have a lot of DNA. Is it all going to be forensically significant?”
His theory for why there was sperm that did not come from Juan Rivera inside 11-year-old Holly Staker on the day she was murdered is, to his mind, simple and straightforward. She and her twin sister, Heather, were sexually active, Mermel argues, and Holly must have had sex with someone else before Rivera came along and raped (but didn’t ejaculate) and murdered her. There was scant evidence to support this sexual-activity theory, but Mermel dismissed that objection. “Nobody is going to admit to having sex with an 11-year-old girl, even if the statute of limitations has run out,” he told me. “But there was a lot of evidence that came to our office that these two girls were sexually active.” Actually, there wasn't. There was no evidence at all they were sexually active. But that's how Mike Mermel operates. In another case: When a DNA test in 2003 showed that the semen in the underwear of a 68-year-old woman didn’t belong to Bernie Starks, a man convicted in 1986 of raping and murdering her, Mermel dismissed the results because the semen came from the victim’s clothing. Had it come from the woman’s vagina, Mermel said, “I would be standing over there advocating the side that the defense has in the case.”
Three years later, defense attorneys found the rape kit and tested semen recovered from the woman’s vagina. Again, there was no match. Mermel again wouldn’t budge, this time arguing that the woman must have had sex with someone else just before the rape.
Mermel’s biggest blunder was Jerry Hobbs, who was arrested in 2005 on charges of raping and stabbing to death his 8-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old friend. Hobbs confessed to the killings, but only after 16 straight hours of questioning that began after he’d spent the previous night looking for the girls….
When Hobbs’ attorneys revealed in court in 2008 that DNA tests showed the semen found in the mouth, rectum, and vagina of Hobbs’ daughter didn’t belong to Hobbs, Mermel postulated that the foreign semen must have found its way into the girl’s body while she was playing in a patch of woods where teenagers were known to have sex. The girl had been found fully clothed. But back to the Rivera case. Just how was his "confession" obtained? When Lou Tessmann retired from the Waukegan police in 2005, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a resolution praising his two decades of service. The resolution noted that Tessmann, a former Marine, is “well known for his interrogation techniques on suspects of crimes.”
Since then, Tessmann has traveled the country offering seminars to police officers on how to investigate homicides and interrogate potential suspects. “Mr. Tessmann has obtained over 80 homicide confessions during his career with only three instances where he was unable to obtain a confession from a homicide suspect” — a 96 percent success rate — according to the Web site of his employer, Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates.
It was Tessmann who was sent in to interrogate Rivera around 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 30, along with Sgt. Michael Maley of the Illinois State Police. In the hour or two before the interview began, Rivera was hitting his head against a glass window and was then on the floor with his wrists and ankles cuffed behind him. Tessmann, however, described Rivera as “very comfortable, very relaxed” during the interview.
Though Tessmann arrived at the police station roughly seven hours before the interview, he testified that he wasn’t aware of Rivera’s previous confession. (One of his colleagues testified that he gave Tessmann the statement that morning.) He said that Rivera willingly recounted the crime, which then cleared up many of the issues that prosecutors considered problematic. Yeah, right. And how did Mermel use Tessmann at the trial? In his closing argument in the third trial, Mermel told jurors that the case basically came down to whom they believed: the police or the DNA evidence? “Is there anything in the makeup of any of those men that would lead you to believe that they were the kind of people who had dedicated their lives to this profession, yet just decided to just frame this poor innocent Juan Rivera because they were tired of investigating and wanted to go home?” he said.
What the jury didn’t know was that Mermel had already successfully argued against the admissibility of any evidence that might cast doubt on Tessmann’s credibility. For instance, Tessmann said in a 1990 deposition and in an official biography that he earned an English degree from the University of Wisconsin. But the school’s 13 four-year colleges have no record of him ever attending. (In fact, he graduated from Northeastern Illinois University.) In 1989, Tessmann and four other police officers were sued for allegedly breaking into the wrong home during a police raid and injuring a woman who was seven months pregnant. The woman’s lawyer accused the police of writing reports to cover up their conduct and charged that Tessmann “took the lead in creative drama.”
According to documents provided by defense lawyers, a judgment was entered against Tessmann and the other officers for $48,500 in that case, and two years later, another judgment of $71,500 was entered against Tessmann in a case brought against him by a man who was wrongfully arrested for robbery.
A decade later, in 2001, a woman named Colleen Blue was charged with murder after she confessed to killing her newborn. Tessmann, then a commander, said to a reporter for The Chicago Daily Herald, “She told us she had six kids already and just did not want to deal with another one.” He added: “She said she gave birth to the baby when she was all alone, put him in the bag and walked off. She told us she could hear the baby crying until she got close enough to the street that the passing cars drowned out the sound.”
Charges against Blue were dropped when DNA testing revealed it wasn’t her baby. So Mermel tells the jury if they acquit because of the DNA evidence, they would be insulting the reputation of an honorable officer--right after he has successfully argued to prevent the jury from learning of the officer's less-than-honorable past. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152453
12/02/2011 02:13 PM
12/02/2011 02:13 PM
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Regarding the post above, the Sheriff of Lake County is now calling for Mike Merman to resign . I'd agree, except I think Merman should resign for what he's done, rather than what he's said to the press, but I'm not one to quibble. Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran is calling for longtime county prosecutor Michael Mermel to be fired for making “inappropriate statements” to the media that Curran said reflect poorly on Lake County’s criminal justice system.
Curran said Thursday he voiced his concerns about Mermel during a closed-door meeting with State’s Attorney Michael Waller Thursday morning.
Though it’s unusual for an elected sheriff to call publicly for a prosecutor’s dismissal, Curran said he did so because of his “disgust” with Mermel’s comments to the media and because of Curran’s respect for the constitutional process.
He cited comments Mermel reportedly made in a recent New York Times story about murder suspects in Lake County who’ve been targeted for prosecution even after DNA evidence pointed to other possible perpetrators…
The sheriff said it’s important for the public to recognize that “Mr. Mermel’s comments are not reflective of the overall majority of law enforcement officials that have made numerous sacrifices and dedicated themselves to seeking justice.” If that's the case, The sheriff should have called for Merman's resignation years ago. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152454
12/04/2011 09:42 AM
12/04/2011 09:42 AM
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Well, this is a step in the right direction. Judge A. Howard Matz, a federal judge in the Central District of California, has dismissed a case due to misconduct on the part of prosecutors . So it is with deep regret that this Court is compelled to find that the Government team allowed a key FBI agent to testify untruthfully before the grand jury, inserted material falsehoods into affidavits submitted to magistrate judges in support of applications for search warrants and seizure warrants, improperly reviewed e-mail communications between one Defendant and her lawyer, recklessly failed to comply with its discovery obligations, posed questions to certain witnesses in violation of the Court’s rulings, engaged in questionable behavior during closing argument and even made misrepresentations to the Court....
...The Government has acknowledged making many “mistakes,” as it characterizes them. “Many” indeed. So many in fact, and so varied, and occurring over so lengthy a period (between 2008 and 2011) that they add up to an unusual and extreme picture of a prosecution gone badly awry. To paraphrase what former Senator Everett Dirksen supposedly said, “a few mistakes here and a few mistakes there and pretty soon you’re talking misconduct.” (...) Is it true that federal prosecutors would have to murder babies before any judge will hold them accountable? Not quite, and maybe the tide is finally turning. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152455
12/04/2011 11:49 AM
12/04/2011 11:49 AM
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Western States
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Everyone wants to hate the California legal system, but as states go, the sheer size of the state and its legal system is such that it becomes nearly impossible for any single group to totally control every court and every judge all of the time, so no single "club" has a handle on the entire court system there and if one club steps on the turf of another club in the wrong way, this sort of thing happens. Even among the judges, there are so many judges in California that if they start banding together on something, they are a force of their own.
What they tend not to like is getting lied to, but they tolerate it much more from the government side since that is considered "part of the club" until it reaches the point that it is so blatant and so obvious that the judges decisions will obviously not outlast their time on the bench and no judge like to be the one whose rulings and convictions are constantly overturned then get embroiled in some controversy over lying cops and witnesses. We don't even know the names of the judges involved, but among the judges in the cases that arose out of the LAPD Rampart Division cases where hundreds of prisoners were let go, there were several judges involved with those cases whose credibility was shot to hell when they continued to try and maintain the credibility of the system, and eventually they had no choice (it was self preservation0 but to throw it back on the police.
Lawyers in federal practice are always looking for reasons to disqualify a judge and toss a judge off the bench, so if a federal judge sees that coming, he or she will toss an FBI agent and prosecutor under the bus of illegitimacy any day of the week rather than face not just a hearing on removal from the bench but the disbarrment that can go along with it.
As much as a lot of people want to cry about Jewish conspiracies in the court systems, one element of it is true, Jewish people are overrepresented in the courts as lawyers and judges, but that also puts traditionally conservative Jewish religious law standards as an implied standard in the courts so there is a backdoor standard of religious legitimacy that goes hand in hand with legal actions that Jews participate in if they want to have any standing in the Jewish legal community. A judge habitually allowing that sort of thing and with a name like Matz would likely see not just him, but his entire family shunned from the local Jewish community if some lawyers started complaining loudly to the Rabbis about how the judge was allowing Nazi style court proceedings.
I have met people where that sort of thing started happening, they were seen at some pro-Palestinian rally in the SF bay area, and whammo, the lady's kids were denied visas to enter Israel, which meant they got booted from some special school for being unable to complete one of the programs that required part of the study to be done there, which meant that the entire family suffered a level of shunning from the Jewish community.
In that court case, it looks to me like a situation of skilled corporate lawyers getting things done for their client, while a group of shifty feds were trying to squeeze some rich folks running a corporation on some nuances of foreign trade law which few people are fully versed in or make sense of.
I hate to sound racist about it, but I am seeing that sort of thing with the socially promoted shall we say, affirmative action appointment, types who got into the legal profession and were given positions in the government where they think any prosecution can be run "ghetto style" in order to "get the bad guys" but there is a difference between enforcing some fairly plain and clear rape, robbery, and dope dealing laws on ghetto thugs and corporate law on people who are trying to get things done legally but run into government red tape and political reality which blocks progress unless effectively dealt with.
Only some fairly wealthy people are going to be able to press the level of defense that happened in that case, but the level of government thuggery in using the prison system to financially squeeze folks and still cheat the game is telling on how the FBI and their cohorts expect to be allowed to act when it is just a financial matter. That's why I pretty much refuse to believe it when they claim they "can't do anything" on those terrorism cases without new laws and powers. There is very little not already being done in regular cases.
Life liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them.
Trump: not the president America needs, but the president America deserves.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152456
12/08/2011 12:17 PM
12/08/2011 12:17 PM
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Well, I won't have Mike Mermel to kick around anymore. Under fire from freedom lovers everywhere, he\'s decided to retire. Longtime Lake County prosecutor Michael Mermel, under fire for "inappropriate" comments he made to news media about the prosecution of cases in which DNA evidence did not match the defendant, will retire in January.
Wednesday's announcement by State's Attorney Michael Waller came days after Sheriff Mark Curran called for Mermel's dismissal over statements dating to 1995 that Curran said reflect poorly on the county's criminal justice system.
In his statement, Waller sought to distance himself from Mermel, whom he praised in a 2009 newsletter as a "prosecutor's prosecutor."
"The comments attributed to Mike Mermel do not reflect my views on the role of the Lake County State's Attorney's Office," the statement said, "nor do they reflect the manner in which my staff has conducted themselves over the last 21 years. The sole duty of my office is to seek justice. That duty will continue to be the exclusive mission of the Lake County State's Attorney's Office."
Waukegan defense attorney Jed Stone questioned Waller's sincerity and timing, since Mermel has made controversial statements for years under Waller's watch.
In October 2010, Mermel was quoted in the Tribune as saying: "The taxpayers don't pay us for intellectual curiosity. They pay us to get convictions."
The job of a prosecutor is not to obtain a conviction, but to do the right thing, Stone argued.... I would rather that he spend his retirement in federal prison, but this will do. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152457
12/13/2011 02:18 PM
12/13/2011 02:18 PM
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An Illinois appellate court has just reversed the conviction of Juan Rivera , who was actually the subject of the original article that led to Mike Mermel's resignation. After 19 years in prison, he's finally free. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152458
12/26/2011 02:32 PM
12/26/2011 02:32 PM
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Harris County, Texas, Assistant District Attorney Rachel Palmer joins our not-so-coveted Hall of Shame today. She just pleaded the Fifth, saying that testifying before the grand jury could implicate her in a crime. What was the crime, presumably involving misconduct in the District Attorney's office? We don't know, because no one's talking. An assistant district attorney is still on the job despite admitting she may have committed a crime. Last week, Harris County Asst. DA Rachel Palmer pleaded the Fifth, claiming that testifying before a grand jury could incriminate her. And on Tuesday, a judge agreed.
It's all part of a grand jury investigation into possible misconduct within the DA's Office.
The Fifth Amendment is absolutely Rachel Palmer's constitutional right and it applies to her no matter what job she has in all of America. But by pleading the Fifth, it means grand jurors won't get answers from one of their last witnesses.
It's unclear exactly what this means to the grand jury investigation, but maybe more importantly, what does it do to the image and public trust in the Harris County District Attorney?
Palmer said the fix was in, that the system was stacked against her, and that she was scared of a judge who might make her testify in front of a grand jury.
When we tried to ask Palmer why she was or continued to be scared of the judge, Palmer's attorney said, "She's not answering questions. Please get out of my way."
But on Tuesday, Palmer won. That judge she is so scared of ruled Palmer won't be forced to talk to a grand jury investigating possible criminal activity inside the DA's Office.
"We're just gratified that the court ruled our way," said Palmer's attorney, Clay Rawlings.
But she only keeps her silence by pleading the Fifth, insisting that her answers to the grand jury may implicate her in a crime. Think about that -- a prosecutor fighting for three days in two courts to avoid the possibility of implicating herself in a crime.
"I didn't ever think I would ever live to see this day... that a DA feels like they have to take the Fifth on an investigation by their office. It's kind of disturbing," said Jim Mount, special prosecutor to the grand jury.
"All this has been tough to deal with for everybody," said Jim Leitner, 1st Asst. District Attorney.
For the third day, the elected District Attorney Pat Lykos has refused to even respond in writing to the situation. She was at work on Tuesday, but instead we heard from her top assistant Leitner, who in a lengthy interview, insisted nothing has been done wrong inside the DA's Office, and even defended keeping Palmer on the job.
When we asked him if he saw a cloud over Rachel Palmer at all, Leitner told us, "That's not for me to even talk about at this point. My issue right now is I want to get before the grand jury, answer their questions and get this over with."
But allowing Palmer to prosecute before her possible criminal activity is cleared up is a move our legal analyst says could lead to trouble.
"You want to put the politics aside and say I am looking into this matter and the people that are involved, if they're not prosecuted, they will be disciplined," said KTRK Legal Analyst Joel Androphy.
Jim Leitner will testify on Thursday in front of the grand jury. He is expected to be the last witness, unless the special prosecutors are willing to give Rachel Palmer immunity to testify. They've said she's not the target of this investigation and they may just consider giving her immunity to get her answers. We'll should find out on Thursday morning. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152459
12/27/2011 12:34 AM
12/27/2011 12:34 AM
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A 127 Btn 10 FF
Leo
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You know the rules. Nobody talks, everybody walks! Thats a two way street.
Leo out
Fight the fight, Endure to win!
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152460
12/27/2011 04:56 PM
12/27/2011 04:56 PM
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Western States
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Thing is, when they rudely plea the fifth and brush the inquiries aside, they go back to their government paychecks and still maintain various police powers to retaliate. Even regular patrol officers who screwed up somehow are almost always immediately terminated upon any refusal to submit to questioning about anything they did. In fact in most of their employment contracts, a refusal to answer questions is considered a defacto notice of resignation. Apparently not so with prosecutors who consider themselves even several steps above those laws.
An ordinary citizen even asks for a lawyer to be present during questioning usually involves a trip to jail, strip searching, restricted food and water for a few days, then maybe a beating or two, a meeting with a disinterested public defender, and then a couple of nice detectives show up to "discuss your options".
Yeah, save the names for a revolutionary tribunal. Mr blowtorch will be able to extract the truth, guaranteed.
Life liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them.
Trump: not the president America needs, but the president America deserves.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152461
12/28/2011 07:32 AM
12/28/2011 07:32 AM
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Joined: Feb 2007
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somewhere-where am I?
J. Croft
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Someone showed me this from a local rag. Apparently this same department provoked a elderly man on medication into a standoff and then shot him. The elderly man had never been in trouble with the law. The shooter involved got a medal in a big ceremony. His widow basically got shafted by the District Court. Now they're targeting homeless people who leave luggage about: Mentor Police Release Name Of Man Who Caused Bomb Scare At Mall (Updated)
Kevin Striley is charged with inducing panic, obstructing official business and littering
* By Jason Lea
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Kevin Striley Courtesy of Mentor Police
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Updated at 10:45 a.m.
Mentor Police have released the name of the person whose suitcase triggered a 3-hour long bomb scare outside of Barnes & Noble Saturday morning.
Kevin Striley, 43, was arrested Saturday and charged with inducing panic, obstructing official business and littering. Judge John Trebets arraigned him Tuesday morning in Mentor Municipal Court.
Trebets set Striley's bond at $102,000, which was not posted. His next court hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Striley used to live in Mason, OH, but he is now homeless, Mentor Police Lt. Ken Zbiegien said.
He left his suitcase outside of the bookstore Friday night. When asked why he left the suitcase, he told police, "(I) was tired of carrying it," Zbiegien said.
A passerby saw the suitcase, thought it was suspicious and called the police.
When police asked Striley what was inside of the suitcase, he refused to tell them. Consequently, police called in the Lake County Bomb Squad in case the suitcase contained explosives.
For three hours, authorities cordoned the area around Barnes & Noble and Max & Erma's while they assessed the situation. The bomb squad ultimately decided to have its bomb robot fire two shotgun shells into the suitcase while everyone was a safe distance away from it.
After ascertaining it wasn't a bomb, authorities found the suitcase only contained personal affects, including a silk tie, a few rare coins, a Kodak camera and some other trinkets.
Striley was charged with inducing panic once before in 2009. However, Zbiegien did not know the circumstances surrounding that previous arrest.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152462
12/28/2011 10:03 AM
12/28/2011 10:03 AM
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You can't fault that. Crazy person leaves piece of luggage with personal junk in it in a public place like that and well, you can't guarantee what it is one way or another.
If I remember correctly, Eric Rudolf did a similar act when emplacing the Olympic Park bomb. A security guard spotted it, saw something off kilter about the act (I think the backpack was newer and cleaner than what a homeless person would have) and saved lives by acting before it blew.
Bunch of well worn but higher quality backpacks at the curb with a raggedy pit bull tied up near them = homeless people are shopping nearby.
Newer piece of cheap luggage set in a spot with maximum human traffic nearby, heck, I would call that one in and start clearing people from the area myself.
Sometimes a dose of reality cures people who want to be stupid and crazy and push other peoples limits of tolerance, sometimes they just plain decided to violate a whole lot of common sense and still push other people's buttons. It seems that Mr Striley found someone elses buttons he decided to screw around with by profiling a bombing attack, did not get reasonable and take a few honest steps to prove the suitcase did not contain any bombs and is going to spend some time in jail. His own fault entirely.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152463
12/28/2011 11:02 AM
12/28/2011 11:02 AM
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God I'm going to sound like a copjocker but on the surface your argument makes sense. With that out of the way, you have to figure who the individual is, where it happened, what kind of police department responded, here's another report: http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2011/12/28/news/doc4ef9eeb6ae471830321507.txt?viewmode=fullstory Homeless man whose suitcase raised concerns of a bomb threat fails to post bond (video) Published: Wednesday, December 28, 2011 0diggsdigg ShareThis79By Rachel Jackson RJackson@News-Herald.com @nh_rachel A Mason man had his first court appearance Monday in connection with Saturday’s bomb scare in Mentor. Kevin Striley, 43, is charged in Mentor Municipal Court with inducing panic, obstructing official business and littering. Striley is accused of leaving behind a suitcase containing personal items near the entrance of the Mentor Barnes & Noble on Saturday morning. Judge John Trebets set bond at $102,000 cash and $1,000 personal, which was not posted. Striley did not have an attorney at the time of his hearing. According to a Mentor Police report, at 8:06 a.m. Saturday, someone approached a patrolling officer to report a suspicious package that was left unattended near the store. The Lake County Bomb Unit used a robot to remove the suitcase to a safe location, Mentor Police said at the time. The robot then fired two shots into the package, at which point officials were able to determine its contents, police said. Officials then located a man, later identified as Striley, near the west side of Great Lakes Mall on Saturday morning. The previous night, mall security had reported the man as suspicious and noted he was carrying a blue suitcase similar to the one found outside the bookstore Saturday. Continued... 12See Full Story Officials said Striley, who is homeless, left his suitcase there because he was tired of carrying it. The store and a nearby restaurant were evacuated for about three hours during the incident. -------------------------------------------- Maybe he did want to but what I've seen so far doesn't fly with that. I don't know Striley, I don't know what Striley's motives were beyond being homeless in that town, but perhaps the most logical conclusion is whoever worked at that bookstore overreacted and certainly the cops did, but overreaction seems to be standard operating procedure these days. At any rate, I'd never give 'public servants' the benefit of the doubt.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152464
12/28/2011 02:12 PM
12/28/2011 02:12 PM
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Originally posted by J. Croft:
The bomb squad ultimately decided to have its bomb robot fire two shotgun shells into the suitcase while everyone was a safe distance away from it. Um, I'm no expert on EOD, but that sounds pretty retarded to me. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152465
12/28/2011 02:48 PM
12/28/2011 02:48 PM
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The shotgun on a robot thing is a bit dated, but is valid EOD practice. I dabbled in EOD duties as a Combat Engineer in the NG, the modern methods which we did not get to play with involve an explosive formed water projectile that blasts the item with such a volume of water that it will usually neutralize the explosive.
Life liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152466
01/30/2012 11:17 AM
01/30/2012 11:17 AM
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If you drink and drive... we'll lock you in solitary confinement for 2 years! No court date, no doctor. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ecame-two-years-in-solitary-6295937.html Night in the cells accidentally became two years in solitary Suspected drunk driver wins $22m after he was forgotten, isolated – and terribly neglected Guy Adams Author Biography Los Angeles Saturday 28 January 2012 ![[Linked Image]](http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article6295818.ece/ALTERNATES/w380/28-solitary.jpg) Stephen Slevin at the time of his arrest for drink driving in August 2005, left, and when he was released in May 2007, right Stephen Slevin was driving along a rural highway in southern New Mexico in August 2005 when traffic police pulled him over and arrested him on suspicion of drink-driving, along with a string of other motoring offences. By the time all of the charges against him were dismissed and Mr Slevin was released from custody, it was 2007. For reasons that remain unclear, officials had forced him to spend the intervening two years in solitary confinement. During the ordeal, he claims to have been denied access to basic washing facilities for months at a time. He'd lost a third of his body weight, grown a beard down to his chest and was suffering from bed sores. Prison officials had also ignored his pleas to see a dentist, forcing him to pull out his own tooth. They declined other requests for attention, including an audience with a mental health professional. He duly became delirious and says that by the time of his release he'd "been driven mad". This week, a jury in Albuquerque ordered Dona Ana County, which was responsible for incarcerating Slevin without trial, to pay $22m (£14m) in compensation. It was the largest award ever granted to a US prisoner whose civil rights have been violated. "Prison officials were walking by me every day, watching me deteriorate," Mr Slevin, who still from suffers post traumatic stress disorder, told reporters. The court heard how he was originally arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and "receiving a stolen vehicle". He was thrown into solitary confinement after officers learned that he suffered from depression and decided he might be suicidal. Matthew Coyte, a civil-rights lawyer who represented Mr Slevin, now 58, during the six-day trial, said he was then "forgotten" and left to "decay". In letters to staff at Dona Ana County Jail, Mr Slevin claimed to be depressed and unable to sleep in the solitary "pod" there. As time went on, he told them he'd begun hallucinating. No doctor was called, but at the behest of a prison nurse, who had a bachelor's degree in psychology but no medical qualifications, he was given some sedatives. It wasn't until June 2007 that Mr Slevin went before a judge, at which point he was immediately released into the mental health system on the grounds that he was by then incapable of participating in his own defence. The case throws an uncomfortable light on the use of solitary confinement in the US justice system. At present, an estimated 50,000 inmates are housed in such circumstances, sometimes for years at a time. Dona Ana County had previously offered Mr Slevin $2m to drop his compensation case. It pledged to appeal the $22m award, saying: "we believe we have strong legal issues to raise."
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152468
02/14/2012 12:02 PM
02/14/2012 12:02 PM
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The courts are beginning to take notice of prosecutorial misconduct. And chinks are beginning to appear in their armor of immunity. From the opinion: On the second day of trial in this drug trafficking prosecution, during the cross-examination of Defendant–Appellant Aurora Lopez–Avila, the prosecutor read back supposed testimony of Lopez–Avila from her earlier change of plea hearing. What he read back seemed to contradict Lopez–Avila’s earlier statements on direct examination. Using this supposed prior testimony, the prosecutor—Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Jerry R. Albert, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona—accused Lopez–Avila of having lied to the federal magistrate presiding at an earlier hearing.
But the prosecutor’s quotation was only part of what he represented was a question asked the defendant under oath by the magistrate judge. It was a half-truth. Without telling the court or defense counsel, the prosecutor presented to court and counsel an altered version of the prior hearing’s question and answer, and the altered version of such dialogue made it appear as though Lopez–Avila had contradicted herself on a material point, when she plainly had not. The district court naturally assumed the prosecutor had read the question and answer whole, and allowed the questioning to proceed. When the prosecutor’s misrepresentation was discovered by defense counsel, he moved for a mistrial, which the court swiftly granted. The defense then moved to dismiss the indictment with prejudice, on double jeopardy grounds, but the district court denied that motion. Lopez–Avila’s appeal from the denial of that motion is the legal issue before us.
We affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to dismiss the indictment on double jeopardy grounds. In addition, we take several steps to ensure that AUSA Jerry Albert’s actions are properly investigated, and that he is disciplined if the relevant authorities deem it proper. In so doing, we bear in mind that AUSA Albert’s conduct is not directly before us, and we express no judgment as to what sanctions, if any, are proper. And from an addendum issued today: Upon initial release of this opinion, the government filed a motion requesting that we remove Albert’s name and replace it with references to “the prosecutor.” The motion contended that naming Albert publicly is inappropriate given that we do not yet know the outcome of any potential investigations or disciplinary proceedings. We declined to adopt the government’s suggestion and denied its motion. We have noticed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona regularly makes public the names of prosecutors who do good work and win important victories. E.g., Press Release, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, “Northern Arizona Man Sentenced to Federal Prison for Arson,” (January 31, 2012) (“The prosecution was handled by Christina J. Reid-Moore, Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of Arizona, Phoenix”), available at http://www.justice.gov/usao/az/press_releases/2012/PR_01312012_Nez.html. If federal prosecutors receive public credit for their good works — as they should — they should not be able to hide behind the shield of anonymity when they make serious mistakes. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Jerry Albright. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152469
02/14/2012 05:52 PM
02/14/2012 05:52 PM
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Originally posted by airforce:
your pipe and smoke it, Jerry Albright.
Onward and upward,
airforce [/QB] I think that is Jerry Albert AF 
Life liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152470
02/15/2012 12:15 AM
02/15/2012 12:15 AM
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I think you're right. That's what happens when you try to do three things at once. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152471
02/23/2012 12:44 PM
02/23/2012 12:44 PM
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Who would have thunk it? The Jerry Albert case didn't get much media coverage, but the government's effort to cover it up has. Don't believe me? Do a Google search for "U.S. Attorney Jerry Albert." It\'s nice that a rotten prosecutor is finally getting some attention. It's why I started this topic in the first place. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152472
03/09/2012 03:16 AM
03/09/2012 03:16 AM
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Prosecutor disbarred for "egregious misconduct" in a murder case. Believe it or not, this is the first time in at least ten years this has happened. Former assistant U.S. attorney G. Paul Howes was disbarred today by the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals.
It is the first time in at least 10 years that a lawyer anywhere in the country has been disbarred by judges over conduct as a federal prosecutor, USA Today reports.
Howes misused $42,000 in vouchers he was supposed to give to witnesses for expenses related to their testimony in court, instead providing them as payments to informants' relatives and girlfriends in high-profile murder and gang cases. Once this came to light, sentences were substantially reduced in at least nine cases, says a three-judge panel in the court's written opinion.
In addition to giving vouchers to individuals who weren't supposed to receive them, Howes "compounded this initial misconduct by failing to disclose the voucher payments to either the court or opposing counsel, pursuant to District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 3.8 (e), Brady v. Maryland, and Giglio v. United States, even though such payments were relevant to the jurors’ credibility determinations of key government witnesses’ testimony," the opinion continues. "Finally, respondent intentionally misrepresented to the court that such disclosures had been made."
The Board on Professional Responsibility recommended, by a 5-4 vote, that Howes be suspended rather than disbarred, and Howes, who sought a one-year suspension, pointed to his lack of prior discipline, lack of any financial gain, cooperation with bar authorities and what the court described as his "altruistic motivation."
However, calling Howes' misconduct "decidedly egregious" and saying that it was "significantly compounded by the protracted and extensive nature of the dishonesty involved," the court decided to disbar him.
"Respondent exhibited a consistent, aggressive disdain for statutes, rules and procedures as a prosecutor, which resulted in his use of the voucher system as a discretionary fund to be distributed at his will. Respondent’s steadfast determination to achieve convictions led him to circumvent federal laws and ethical rules, displaying 'a continuing and pervasive indifference to the obligations of honesty in the judicial system,' " the opinion states, quoting from an earlier case.
"The severity of this conduct is amplified when misconduct as subtle and undetectable as voucher distribution is actively concealed from both the courts and criminal defense counsel," the panel continues. "Additionally, failure to sanction respondent with our most extreme sanction would endorse respondent’s reasoning that honorable ends justify unlawful means, failing to deter others from adopting similar attitudes. Not only does this type of conduct impugn a prosecutor’s moral fitness to practice law, but prosecutorial actions such as these can place another’s liberty interests in the balance. The appropriate sanction should reflect this gravity." For those interested, the court's 48-page opinion is here . Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152473
03/13/2012 12:24 PM
03/13/2012 12:24 PM
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Another prosecutor resigns after his trial misconduct comes to light. Has Hell really frozen over? Radley Balko theorizes that its citizens are being fitted for ice skates. Culpeper County Commonwealth's Attorney Gary Close hand-delivered a letter to the Star-Exponent Monday afternoon announcing his resignation effective Tuesday.
"It is not an easy decision," the letter says. "My inclination is to fight back. But in the final analysis, I do not think a protracted battle is good for the office of commonwealth's attorney or for Culpeper County."
Close's resignation comes about a week after a federal judge overturned his 2001 capital murder conviction of Michael Wayne Hash. The judge in his lengthy opinion cited extreme prosecutorial and police misconduct in how the case was handled.
Lead investigator on the case was Scott Jenkins, current Culpeper County Sheriff.
U.S. District Judge James C. Turk gave local authorities six months to retry Hash or set him free.
On Friday, Hash was transferred to the regional jail in Albemarle so he could be closer to his family in Crozet. His attorneys are requesting he be let out of jail while a special prosecutor decides whether to release him for good.
A bond hearing for Hash will be held Wednesday at 1:30 in Culpeper County Circuit Court. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152475
03/20/2012 01:21 PM
03/20/2012 01:21 PM
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Criminal defendant identifies anonymous news site commenter as one of his prosecutors. Encouragingly, the DOJ is investigating Sal Parricone for "possible violations of Department policy." A federal investigation involving New Orleans landfill magnate Fred Heebe took a surprising turn this week. Heebe filed a court petition (PDF) claiming a frequent commenter on local-news site NOLA.com was in fact Sal Parricone, one of the prosecutors assigned to his case. Heebe turned out to be right. The commenter took regular shots at Heebe and his family, seeming to know more about the case than an average reader of the site might.... So Heebe hired a former FBI forensic linguist, James R. Fitzgerald, to analyze 598 comments made over the course of 6 months by a commenter using the handle “Henry L. Mencken1951″. Fitzgerald, who also worked on the arrest and prosecution of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, compared the comments made by “Mencken1951″ to the language in a 9-page proceeding filed by three Assistant U.S. Attorneys, including Parricone, against the CEO of Heebe’s company, River Birch Landfill. The language was strikingly similar. Given that Parricone was born in 1951, Heebe singled him out in the court petition. On Thursday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten confirmed Perricone had used the “Henry L. Mencken1951″ handle.... Now if the DOJ would go after all of its employees who violate "Department policy" or, ahem, the law, we might be getting somewhere. (Are you reading this, Eric Holder?) Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152476
05/25/2012 04:03 AM
05/25/2012 04:03 AM
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District atorney is indicted for running his office as a criminal RICO enterprise. The 34-page indictment outlines how he took in more that $100,000 in bribes. A sitting district attorney in South Texas has been federally indicted, accused of working with his former law partner and others to operate the local justice system as a criminal racketeering enterprise.
Cameron County District Attorney Armando R. Villalobos, who is currently running for election to a seat in the U.S. Congress, is accused with his former law partner, Eduardo "Eddie" Lucio, and others of participating in a criminal scheme to deprive the public of the honest services of their public officials and derive a profit from the operations of the judicial system, according to the Brownsville Herald.
The indictment (PDF) says the DA took more than $100,000 in bribes to minimize and settle criminal cases, the Associated Press reports. Among other claimed misconduct, he is accused of obtaining an $80,000 payoff in exchange for arranging for a convicted murderer to be given 60 days to get his affairs in order before reporting to prison, during which time he fled.
The judge who granted the 60-day delay, state District Judge Abel Limas, has already taken a plea in a federal racketeering case and admitted taking bribes in exchange for favorable treatment of defendants. At last report, he was awaiting sentencing.
Villalobos acknowledged in a press conference earlier Monday that he is under federal investigation in connection with an alleged state-court judicial bribery scheme in which the judge and several lawyers have already been charged, according to another Brownsville Herald article.
He said he will neither step down from his job as DA nor give up his run for Congress. “I have never used this office for financial gain,” Villalobos said.
The DA also urged attendees at the press conference to "have faith in the system and have faith in me. I have served this community for 14 years, and I believe I've earned the people's trust and I've earned the legal community's trust, and I don't think that's going to be erased in one day."
He and Lucio pleaded not guilty Monday afternoon and were each released on $50,000 unsecured bond. Before that, the DA's counsel filed an emergency motion with the federal court in Brownsville. It sought a plan to allow the DA to turn himself in, and thus prevent his safety from being jeopardized by his potential arrest and incarceration in the same county in which he serves.
The indictment states that "the office of the District and County Attorney of Cameron County, Texas, constituted an enterprise as the term is defined by Title 18, United States Code, Section 1961(4), which was engaged in and the activities of which affected interstate and foreign commerce." The cited statutory provision is part of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152477
05/26/2012 03:00 PM
05/26/2012 03:00 PM
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To me that is relatively standard corruption, but not in any way true police state abuse.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152479
05/28/2012 07:26 AM
05/28/2012 07:26 AM
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Atlanta prosecutor Randy Csehy has been caught in a drug sting operation . You may remember him as one of the attorneys who defended the police after they shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston several years ago. Atlanta attorney Rand Csehy made his mark prosecuting drug dealers; somewhere along the way, police say, he joined the enemy.
Channel 2 Action News, Channel 2 Action News Rand Csehy, 40, was charged Thursday with possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and ecstasy.
Before he was arrested on drug charges Thursday, Csehy specialized in high-profile cases. Working for the county, he helped put members of the drug cartel Black Mafia Family behind bars. On the defense side he represented an Atlanta cop charged in the drug raid death of 92-year-old Atlanta resident Kathryn Johnston....
On Thursday Csehy, caught in a sting operation, was arrested and charged with drug and firearms violations, including possession with intent to distribute Ecstasy and methamphetamine.
It was rock bottom for a trajectory that started out strong.
Working for Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, Csehy once prosecuted drug dealers. Now his arrest could call into question the validity of drug cases that he brought when he was senior assistant district attorney from 2002 until 2006.
Questioned whether Fulton County plans any review of cases brought by Csehy, a spokesperson said, “We have no reason to conduct an internal review … However, should circumstances warrant a different course of action, we will respond appropriately.”
But Lester Tate, immediate past president of the State Bar of Georgia, and a trial attorney, said “there should be some kind of review.” In the past, said Tate, when prosecutors fell from grace, their crimes triggered a re-examination of several cases. Tate said the Fulton prosecutor’s office should look to see if someone was wrongfully incarcerated, if evidence was suppressed that could have led to a not-guilty verdict or might have pointed at another person.
Yet there are many admirers of Csehy’s abilities. “I have never been in a courtroom with anyone who had a better skill set than him,” said Cumming defense attorney James Hardy II.
Ash Joshi, a former Fulton County prosecutor, worked with Csehy during his years in Fulton County. As a county prosecutor, Csehy was among a handful of attorneys in the narcotics unit who handled higher level drug trafficking offenses, meaning the sale of more than an ounce of cocaine or methamphetamine.
“He was very hard-working, very committed,” Joshi said.
Joshi worked closely with Abramson during the rape prosecution of Nichols, before the defendant went on a shooting spree. He believes he and Abramson were also targets of the shooter.
He also watched Abramson and Csehy fall in love and later marry. Abramson and Joshi left the Fulton office in 2005, shortly after the shootings. Joshi is now in private practice, and he has drifted apart from Csehy.
In recent years, Joshi said he has seen signs that have worried him about Csehy. When he’s seen him in court, Csehy didn’t have the neat sharp appearance of the past.
“He acted a little erratic,” Joshi said. “He would have a 5 o’clock shadow. He had a lot of earrings. He didn’t look sharp.”
He added, “I had a suspicion that something negative was occurring in his life.”
The upheaval in Csehy’s life and career began as far back as 2004. A wiretap he was operating during an undercover investigation caught a person alleging Abramson used drugs. The accusation later disrupted the high-profile Nichols trial and was a black eye for the Fulton County prosecutor’s office. Lawyers defending Nichols in his murder case accused Abramson of criminal misconduct, and asked that certain evidence in the case against Nichols be discounted.
Nichols was convicted on every count, and sentenced to multiple life sentences.
Abramson resigned from the district attorney’s office in 2005 to take a job in private practice. Csehy left the following year.
Csehy has also experienced money problems. Fulton County filed a $1,938 lien against Csehy and his then-wife Abramson for taxes unpaid in the 2007 calendar year, a lien that was still outstanding as of last September, records show.
On Friday Csehy was granted a $5,000 signature bond on each of five charges, including two firearms charges, and two charges of possession with intent to distribute.
Attempts to reach Csehy on Friday were unsuccessful. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152480
10/04/2012 09:18 AM
10/04/2012 09:18 AM
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New Orleans police make easiest drug arrest in the history of law enforcement. New Orleans prosecutor Jason Cantrell was arrested after a joint fell out of his pocket in open court, in front of two police officers. ...Flot said Cantrell was talking to an officer when the joint flew.
Sources painted a comical picture of the incident, saying a pair of cops glanced at the joint on the ground, then at each other before making arguably the easiest collar in the annals of policework.
Officers were seen chuckling as their colleagues led Cantrell out of the courtroom about 4:15 p.m. to write him up.... Cantrell is on the record as favoring mandatory Drug Court for all first-time drug offenders. I wonder if he'll choose that for himself, or just pay the $500 fine. I suspect the latter. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152481
11/17/2012 04:32 PM
11/17/2012 04:32 PM
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Have I ever told you that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is a jerk? No? Well, he\'s a jerk . Jonathan Montgomery has been exonerated of a rape for whech he was convicted and sent to prison, after the "victim" admitted she had lied. But Ken Cuccinelli is keeping the man in prison, because the judge didn't have the proper jurisdiction to free him. A man exonerated last week but kept imprisoned per the Virginia attorney general's orders spoke exclusively to 10 On Your Side.
Jonathan Montgomery was sentenced by Hampton judge Randolph West to 7.5 years in prison in 2008 for the 2000 sexual assault of Elizabeth Coast. Last week, West tossed Montgomery's conviction on the grounds that Coast had fabricated the assault story.
It was learned that Coast, who worked with the Hampton Police Division, confessed to a detective 'that she lied about a sexual assault... lied at the trial... and sent an innocent man to jail."
Coast has been charged with perjury.
"I am not angry," Montgomery told WAVY.com. "I am disappointed that she didn't come out with this sooner."
Montgomery was asked by WAVY.com if he resents West for originally finding him guilty of a crime he did not commit.
"After hearing him apologize openly in court Friday, and on the record, I can't hold him personally responsible," Montgomery said. "We screamed it out every day that someone was lying, and something was going on."
Although Montgomery's conviction was thrown out, he was not freed because Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli blocked the decision, saying the Hampton judge did not have proper jurisdiction to make the decision that falls under the Virginia Court of Appeals.
"Virginia law will not allow the immediate release of Mr. Montgomery, and the attorney general is obligated to follow the law," said Brian Gottstein, the attorney general's director of communication. "Our research shows that the order from the trial court to vacate the three and a half year-old conviction appears void on its face, as the trial court does not have jurisdiction to enter the order according to Virginia's 21-day rule. Authority to get around the rule -- to pardon or commute the sentence -- does not rest with the attorney general."
Montgomery told WAVY.com he is disappointed with Cuccinelli's approach and hopes Cuccinelli will do everything he can to expedite his release.
"I actually have in my hand a Department of Corrections legal update that I am not serving time and says I should be released as of Nov. 9, 2012," Montgomery said. "I am upset that they wanted to take this to the next level of long form imprisonment and it is very disheartening that they would stoop to this level."
WAVY.com visited Coast's home in Newport News to ask her about the incident, but no one answered the door.
"I haven't had a paying job for four and half years because of this," Montgomery said. "She's taken away the Christmases, the Thanksgivings, the visits with family, my liberty, going fishing... it's the simple things that you don't have anymore."
In the four years of imprisonment, Montgomery lost 134 pounds. He has learned how to be a plumber.
During the trial that put him in prison, Montgomery tried to not look at Coast because of the anger he had. He kept his composure as tough as that was.
"I can't tell you how tough it is to get letters of events you have not been to because you are stuck in jail," Montgomery said.
The Montgomery family has not put up regular Christmas decorations for the length of the time their son has been in jail but instead have hung a star of hope.
"In the worst of times... times you always have with family you can count on. That's what the star in the tree at home means to me. Doing father-son activities means everything to me," Montgomery said.
In an email Tuesday, Cuccinelli said he is dedicated to expediting a Court of Appeals process. Remember, following proper procedure is only required when you're trying to exonerate someone. If you're trying to convict him, straying from the rules is just a "harmless error." Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152483
11/18/2012 03:34 PM
11/18/2012 03:34 PM
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 6,705
Western States
Breacher
Moderator
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Moderator
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 6,705
Western States
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They can totally vacate and delete a criminal record if they really want to and enter a notation in the NCIC the same way is done on someone's credit bureau reports.
A court order entered into NCIC vacting prior convictions is functionally a cleared record because that's what will pop up whenever a background check is done, even if the person had a ton of articles about the arrest and incarceration in local newspapers and on the Internet.
Resistance to any removal of the negative consequences of an arrest or wrongful prosecution when the person is found to be innocent is an attack on everyone's freedom and it should be taken seriously and seriously retaliated against.
It's like that Dyer case. No polygraph examination, no cross examination. Nothing, we have to wait several years for the kid to come clean about how the big bald guy came and told momma how to tell the story right so the police would believe it and Charles would have to go stay at another place.
The trick is to make sure someone somewhere is keeping track of these cases.
Life liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them.
Trump: not the president America needs, but the president America deserves.
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152484
11/19/2012 03:57 AM
11/19/2012 03:57 AM
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Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 1,535
somewhere-where am I?
J. Croft
Member
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Member
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 1,535
somewhere-where am I?
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These types are satanic, I'm convinced of it. Outright fucking evil. I watched a Nightline broadcast several years ago on DNA evidence acquitting prisoners, the spokes'person' for the South Carolina bureau of prisons blanket disputed the evidence; asked if that meant that even innocent people are incarcerated he looked into the camera with cold snake eyes and said "yes".
These subhuman creatures got into those positions in this system because they want to. They obviously want the maximum amount of people incarcerated and suffering because they get paid, it's power, and it fulfills them. The courts, cops, and prison staff and admininstration are of this type. They only understand one form of persuasion and we all know what that is.
I'm going to make a statement about the Dyer case since Breacher mercifully closed that thread: I have never seen such a clusterfuck of infighting, pettiness, intrigue, incompetence-the ball didn't get dropped, it got took and smacked on our collective head like we were the 90lb weakling on the playground. Which we collectively pretty much are. COINTELPRO, a cunt ex-wife... I was thinking the primary thrust was to free Charles Dyer, not the epic FUCKING ridiculousness the drooling, plate spinning shit starters has turned the Dyer defense into.
The feds LTFAO. I would.
So, what do you do with a system whose closest comparison is when Calvin and Hobbes play 'Calvinball'? Hold them personally responsible because these types own the system. They only understand power.
Be your own leader
freedomguide.blogspot.com
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youtube.com/user/freedomguide
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152485
11/30/2012 11:38 PM
11/30/2012 11:38 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 23,922
Tulsa
airforce
OP
Administrator
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OP
Administrator
Senior Member
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 23,922
Tulsa
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Well, this is a first for this topic. Usually I just cite a single prosecutor in this topic. But this time, the U.S. District Court from the Eastern District of Louisiana has named Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann and the entire federal prosecutor\'s office in Louisiana , accusing them of running amok, posting anonymous comments at the website of a local newspaper in advance of a high-profile trial - and then lying to a federal district judge about it. As a result, the convictions of several police officers for crimes committed during Hurricane Katrina are now in jeopardy. And just where was the Washington D.C. Office of Professional Responsibility during all of this? It is difficult to imagine how this could have possibly been missed by OPR. . . The judge is saying that Attorney general Eric Holder's ethics office is incompetent. But I have another theory - they're just corrupt. I know that reading legal papers is not considered fun by anyone, but pass this one along. Eric Holder should be held accountable for this, and a number of other things as well. Onward and upward, airforce
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Re: The Prosecutor's Hall of Shame
#152486
12/01/2012 11:31 AM
12/01/2012 11:31 AM
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 6,705
Western States
Breacher
Moderator
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Moderator
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 6,705
Western States
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This is related to the Danziger Bride incident and they all want to be pointing the finger at each other.
I have from an extremely reliable source that BATF SWAT from Oregon, Washington and Nevada deployed to Katrina also, 100% on that one but I don't think it hit the news. Their main SWAT is apparently out of Reno, and my source got it directly from one of their team leaders as they were packing up and getting on the busses to go to the airport; next stop: Louisiana to "help out". Yeah, BATF SWAT, handing out MREs and bottled water...
Don't forget, one of our founders was a New Orleans cop. Far as I know he quit AW and AWRM years ago, but not before most of the rest of us got the inside scoop on NOPD corruption.
Let them bitch and cry at each other. The feds went to get a conviction because they rightly saw that if NOPD got rightfully labeled with "uniform of the enemy status" by just about anyone in this country with any sense of right and wrong, the virus of rebellion would spread, so they decided to sacrifice some NOPD cops over this.
They can't even cry racism foul on it because the dickheads who started shooting were all black, the people throwing the sympathetic fire downrange were white, but there was some incidents of up close and personal execution of the wounded.
The thing to look out carefully on this for is whether or not any of this sophisticated legal wrangling results in those cops getting off on some sort of appeals. Notice how we are seeing a pretty carefully laid out appeals plan on this, and what did our guy get? A hell of a lot less than that.
Life liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them.
Trump: not the president America needs, but the president America deserves.
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