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I haven't posted in a while, but this thread got me motivated. I've been with the PD (Public Defender) a few years now in a mid-sized city. I don't have as much direct experience with police as many other criminal defense attorneys, because I only take felony cases, so I primarily deal with prosecutors. (Cops will not talk to me or my office's investigators on cases brought by prosecutors.) I do take the occasional misdemeanor case, though, and I do deal with detectives with greater regularity than beat cops. That said, I have seen cops lie on the stand. I absolutely have. I had a cop change the moment at which he smelled marijuana when approaching and searching a man's car, eliminating a valid suppression motion by changing his testimony between the preliminary hearing (a General District Court level evidentiary hearing) and the Circuit Court suppression hearing. I knew he was lying. He knew he was lying. We had a moment's recognition, looking each other in the eye. We both knew. He got his little bust, and that client was ultimately an rear end in a top hat, but that cop lied in court. Needless to say, I take my digital recorder to all General District Court hearings now. I've actually had prosecutors and cops try to prevent me doing this, so I also take a printout of the state statute that provides me the unqualified right to do so. That said, I have to admit, and I am no fan at all of cops, that the vast majority of the time they do tell the truth. But then they don't, sometimes. They're people, and people lie. The real blame that I cast is with trial court judges, who are given to accept even the most outlandish and self-serving story from law enforcement as gospel. They do this because they don't recognize the motivation to lie that inheres to the cop -- they want their conviction. But the judges treat them as morally pristine, perfect little people with no skin in the game. And I think that gets to the crux of the problem. Cops, in my experience, are usually more interested in processing an assembly line of orderly convictions than they are in really assessing and securing the public safety. That's what they're trained to do nowadays, and that's what their efforts and procedures are aligned to provide. This is great when you're dealing with really bad people. But really bad people are a tiny fraction of the multitudes we wheel through the criminal justice conveyor belt. I get my robbery cases and the occasional rapist, and I get my monsters. But the overwhelming majority of my caseload are sad sack addicts and crazy people who have no proper access to mental health treatment. And treating them as objects to secure convictions upon is a gross disservice to both those poor people and the public at large. The judges delude themselves to believing they serve a rehabilitative end with jail and prison sentences in cases where there is no moral or punitive call to action -- they delude themselves. A lot of the problem with judges goes back to the ratcheting effect someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, where the fire and brimstone politicians control the agenda by which judges are chosen and re-appointed or elected. There is absolutely no countervailing political agency against harsher and harsher nonsense. But a lot of it, too, goes to the culture of the judgeship. It's a position that breeds a mordant cynicism -- every defendant is a lying shithead, every addict will use again, every thief won't stop thieving, and etc. Most of that's just confirmation bias, as we in the criminal justice system don't ever get to see success stories return. But a lot of it's just willful blindness. I've seen judges who are former defense attorneys, who know that wrongful convictions happen, who know that cops lie, who know these these truths as well as I do -- I've seen them just suddenly not know it anymore once they get a robe on them. And their unwillingness to enforce actual guilt beyond reasonable doubt, their perfect credulity for anything said by a guy with a uniform, those allowances feed the very culture of imperviousness that leads cops to believe they can kill our dogs and bust up in our homes without issue or accountability. But, to be a bit less whiny and more productive -- We need dashboard cameras. We need officer button cameras. We need these things, and anyone who for any reason suggests we should not have these things or that their operability should ever be limited or optional, that person is loving suspect. Nothing makes everyone's life easier than a simple video showing whether the cop is lying or my guy is lying. Honestly, in my experience, 90% of the time it will be my guy. But 10% isn't nothing. And why on earth, in this day and age, should there ever be any question on that count? Further, why on earth are non-video recorded confessions admissable? Why can't we just tie that poo poo down so I can watch it? Why can a cop paraphrase a man's confession, and present his loving notes like they're statements? I don't know if a cop is lying or misremembering or if my guy is lying or misremembering, but there's a world of difference, a difference measured in years, between a guy saying, "I bought those pills for $3 each," and, "I sold those pills for $3 each." And the fact that in the year 2014 I have to litigate that distinction in memory and phrasing, from a drunken man, with years of his life on the line between those two little words, is loving baffling. Ultimately, there are a lot of broad, hugely complex sociological and political issues to resolve to rein in and make decent the criminal justice system, and to rehabilitate cops from an occupying force back to Officer Friendly. But I really do think that it all starts with proper video recording. There is absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever that any encounter with law enforcement should go unrecorded. And until that recording is universal, I'm honestly not optimistic as to the prospect for any other meaningful top-down reform. That said, if anyone has any questions about a criminal defense attorney or a public defender's experiences with cops, in court, I'm game.
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Jul 17, 2014 23:58
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E-Tank posted:Have you been threatened by any cops for letting their guy get free on a 'technicality' or some poo poo? Nah. There are a few criminal defense attorneys and often a few prosecutors in any jurisdiction who everyone hates. But, at least in this jurisdiction, everything stays civil and professional between attorneys and cops. At least where I am, actually, the cops are often more reasonable than the prosecutors. In large part, that's just buck-passing, where the cop tries to play him or herself off as the reasonable guy and puts the unreasonably long sentence or asinine drug bust on the shoulders of the prosecuting lawyer. But, no, I've never had a cop do anything even remotely retaliatory against me. A cynical mind could argue that's because the cops know that, unlike my clients, I have tremendous personal credibility and goodwill with the judges. Going after someone with a reputation for honesty stronger than a policeman's magical badge is a pretty serious mistake. There's a broader context there, though, where as a respected member of the bar, I'm one of the Good People, and as a Good Person, I can reasonably expect a chance to talk my way out of speeding tickets or public intoxication charges or whatever minor bullshit they throw at the un-elect. Honestly, if anything, in this jurisdiction, cops will treat me better than most folks, even if I attack their cases and convictions. It's really more a matter of race and class than anything else.
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Jul 18, 2014 00:20
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hobotrashcanfires posted:I would be interested to hear about your experiences with prosecutors and judges. When such a focus is on cops (understandably since that's the majority of peoples' experiences), it's pretty easy to forget the other potential flaws in the facets of the justice system. Have you experienced motivations that are more about prestige, political careers, and moving on to being high-priced and high profile, than justice? That is a huge problem. Depending on jurisdiction or state, judges will either be appointed or elected. In either case, the pressure on them is always to be "tough on crime." There is simply no political will or voting agency to pressure judges (whether directly or through the delegates who appoint them) to be "soft on crime." There is no political will to make judges reasonable towards the mentally ill, or lenient to defendants who are merely addicts. So you have a system whereby there is enormous pressure to be harsh towards shoplifters, people who drive on suspended licenses, the mentally, ill, and so on, but no countervailing force to push them to anything better or saner. Prosecutors...they're a weird breed of people. A lot of them are just politicos in their larval stage, who are only slightly and tangentially interested in criminal justice. Many are just doing this gig so they can leverage it out into political office. That's in part why you see the overwhelming majority of legislators who have actual criminal justice backgrounds are just former prosecutors. That, too, leads to an unfortunate echo chamber mentality. I have had tremendously mixed experiences with prosecutors. I have worked cases with many who are genuinely good and civic-hearted people. I have worked cases with many who are profoundly sheltered, useless little trust fund brats. And I have worked cases with many who were just there until they could become judges or state legislators and genuinely couldn't give two fucks. It's a very mixed bag. When I was driving to work today, I heard a really interesting story on NPR from the former chief of police from Seattle. He presided over the police during a sort of anniversary of the 1999 WTO riots. And he sent his cops out in regular uniforms, no helmets, no gas masks, just sent them out to be people at the demonstrations. And everything was fine. A couple people got drunk and got carted off to the drunk tank, but there was no vandalism or rioting or any of that bad stuff. But after the fact, the police union or guild or whatever bitched him out for sending their officers out unprotected, so the next time there was a big public scene, a Mardis Gras celebration, he sent everyone out in full riot kit. And it was a clusterfuck. A man died, a woman was raped, there was damage and death everywhere. What I really liked about his interview was how candid he was that he hosed up, that he should have stuck to his guns. He allowed that if he had, then maybe poo poo would not have gone south. Because a man wearing a gas mask with a riot baton at the ready can't just casually tell a dude he's too drunk to remain on scene. He can just bash heads. You can't talk to folks behind a mask and a riot helmet face shield. At some point, more people need to realize that riot gear is a profound incentive to riot -- that the presence of stormtroopers inspires a response to the presence of stormtroopers. Randbrick fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Jul 19, 2014 |
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Jul 19, 2014 00:18
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I recall in the jurisdition where I practice.. The District Attorney's race was against a guy who has held the following positions: cop, district attorney, defense attorney, and some rear end in a top hat who's never been anything but a prosecutor. And yes, there were attack ads against that first guy based on defending bad people. It was disturbing. Every time a defense attorney is questioned on those grounds, the local bar association steps up and says that's not cool. And we ignore them, because the local bar association is meaningless.
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Jul 21, 2014 04:01
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Based on my experience in the courtroom, I'm strongly inclined to believe that any meaningful solution to the broader problems of police overreach needs to be legislative in nature, and needs to include in its ambit both the trial court judiciary and the prosecutors. There is certainly a broader issue of prosecutors and police unions influencing public policy. The New York City stop and frisk litigation took an interesting and deeply questionable turn when police unions tried to insert themselves as a defendant, as though they had some kind of cognizable standing in deciding the policies by which they police. They essentially argued they had standing and injury when their capacity to stop and search random people was violated. It was frankly bizarre. It is interesting to see examples of prosecutors and police disagreeing. The DA in Brooklyn recently decided to just stop prosecuting the simple possession of small amounts of marijuana. The NYPD chief announced that his officers would keep on arresting people on charges that no one would prosecute. (To the best of my knowledge, New York is not a jurisdiction where police officers can prosecute jailable offenses under their own power. Correct me if I'm wrong.). There is clearly some measure here where it's not just the legislatures or the trial court judges or even the prosecutors determining police conduct. There is definitely a certain strain of influence, whereby police organizations directly influence and advocate for legislation or practices that expand their capacity to stop, search, arrest, and charge people. That's fundamentally wrong. It's very similar to the influence prison guard organizations have over legislatures. That influence is readily apparent in California. I'm always deeply leery of the entire concept of prosecutors lobbying to have sentencing ranges be harsher. I'm equally disturbed by the notion that police and prison guard organizations lobbying to have harsher sentences or broader powers. You inevitably wind up in a situation where police actors do not merely enforce the law, but actively influence the law they are charged to enforce. I'm not going to ever go so far to advocate against public unions for any public employees. But it should, at the least, be regarded with tremendous skepticism and cultural or social opposition when a law enforcement agency takes it upon itself to attempt to shape the very laws it is charged to enforce. One has to wonder what interests that actually serves.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:28
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One time I attended a lecture given by a Court of Appeals judge and former prosecutor. He allowed that the entire Court of Appeals grew suspicious of all the sufficiency of the evidence appeals they were receiving that involved some suspiciously convenient unrecorded confessions from one particular detective. They (the Court of Appeals) never did anything about this of course, and by the time their interest had really piqued, the problem had solved itself. Because that detective had been promoted to a command position. His logic was that this now former detective would no longer be in an investigatory position. So, there wouldn't be any more suspicious unrecorded confessions from him. He genuinely told a room full of defense attorneys and prosecutors, without a trace of irony or self-awareness, that this was somehow a proper solution. And it seemed to him to be an absolute fait accompli that the Court of Appeals had no other role in any solution to that problem. I sat with the defense attorneys and we all shared incredulous looks.
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Aug 2, 2014 19:46
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justsharkbait posted:The news does not tell you that and instead focuses on the IA or law enforcement side. It does not matter if IA clears the officer or not, it still gets presented to a Grand Jury. I found this story the other day that seems apropos. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/08/01/houston-grand-juries-too-white-too-law-and-order-and-too-cozy-with-cops/ Needless to say, no former cop or law enforcement official would ever survive voir dire in an actual jury trial. That's literally defense voir dire question #1. Anyone who said they had or did work in that capacity would be struck for cause at the outset. If the judge declined to allow the strike, then that's a new trial on appeal, without exception. I don't have a whole lot of confidence in grand juries.
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Aug 4, 2014 08:16
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Obdicut posted:A grand jury decides if there's enough evidence to proceed to an actual trial. It is not a finding of guilt but a finding there is evidence to warrant a trial. It is where 'indictments' come from: you are indicted by the grand jury. They meet in secret so as to not tip off the person being investigated, to protect that person in the even they are accused by not indicted, to protect the witnesses until trial, and to allow full and frank testimony without worrying that, if he doesn't get indicted, your neighbor will know you suspected him of being a cocaine mule. There are arguments for and against grand jury secrecy, I don't have any particular feelings on it. However, no defense attorney has any input into who can and cannot sit on the grand jury. This happens entirely at the discretion of the judge and prosecutor. So, a prosecutor could strike people with criminal records, people in a line of work he or she finds disquieting, i.e. a defense attorney or a left-leaning non-profit worker, or minorities. There is no analog to the "Batson Challenge" in grand jury selection, so a prosecutor could legitimately strike all the black and brown people, assuming the presiding judge is cool with it. Once the grand jury convenes, they hear only what evidence the prosecutor decides to hear. There are no ethical ramifications for presenting a lop-sided recitation of evidence. So, a prosecutor could present the fact that the defendant's fingerprints were found inside the house, but decline to present the fact that the defendant was a long-time friend of the alleged victim. In most jurisdictions, the grand jury presentation (the prosecutor's case to the grand jury) occurs after a preliminary hearing on warrant. Both are probable cause hearings. Probable cause, of course, is lower standard of evidence than proof beyond reasonable doubt. Many prosecutors and judges are very liberal with just how much lower probable cause really is. Note, though, that many jurisdictions invest in prosecutors the power of direct indictment, by which a case can be brought directly to a grand jury without a preliminary hearing. This is very bad for defendants -- in many jurisdictions the preliminary hearing is the only statutorily provided proceeding where a defense attorney can cross-examine and review evidence prior to trial. For a grand jury to decline to indict is remarkably rare in my experience -- with the notable exception of grand juries involving police officers. It is very difficult to assess how or why that is. Few people with direct input or experience being in front of grand juries are inclined to talk about it. That's why that WaPo story is so interesting to me, at least. One fun quirk, at least in this jurisdiction, of prosecutorial direct indictment is where a prosecutor nolle prosses (a voluntary dismissal of a charge or charges by a prosecutor, which permits the prosecutor to revive the charge within one year as a direct indictment) then immediately revives the charge before a grand jury. This has the dual effect of depriving the accused of a preliminary hearing, and of voiding any bond or time served the defendant has posted or accrued. The new charge is effectively an entirely "new" charge. Depending on the prosecutor and the judge, I've seen this used quite openly to accomplish just that. Although by statute nolle prosses require "good cause" to be shown, many judges will just roll over and let the defendant's bond get yanked or time served be lost, along with the preliminary hearing. It is also difficult to explain this to my clients at times. It is naturally very counter-intuitive that a prosecutor could do something so overtly sleazy. One thing they often try to do, at least in my jurisdiction, is to initially charge offenses xyz, then threaten the defendant with a new direct indictment or a nolle prosse and direct indictment of a pre-existing charge. They realize that few defendants can afford to fork over another 500 or 1000 or however many dollars to a bondsman. It's an effective threat. We need to get rid of grand juries and direct indictment. They serve no purpose except to create procedural opportunities for prosecutors to play lovely games. Maybe 200+ years ago, you needed a grand jury to shield fact-finders from local retribution. Nowadays, we have judges and attorneys who can hear evidence at a preliminary hearing. The grand jury is antiquated at best and injurious to due process at worst.
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Aug 4, 2014 11:38
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Re: Betsy Hodges, just for reference, here is a youtube video published by Neighborhoods for Change, the organization Hodges was working with. They work with convicted felons and disenfranchised minority communities trying to engage in civic and community involvement involvement. The guy talking to the camera is the man she took a picture with. It's pretty disgusting as attack jobs go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V1-aUEXBu0&app=desktop Edit -- also, for reference, people I know who live in the greater Minneapolis area trace the apparent feud between the city cops and Mayor Hodges to Hodges' attempts to make good on a campaign promise to outfit Minneapolis officers with body cameras. Randbrick fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Nov 8, 2014 |
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Nov 8, 2014 00:34
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It's also important to bear in mind that "gang specialists" and the like are extremely liberal in what they do and do not consider "gang activity." For example, the "gang sign" here seems to be one person pointing at another person. This from the same criminal justice system that calls fans of the Insane Clown Posse gang members with a straight face.
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Nov 8, 2014 01:01
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Vahakyla posted:I was not kidding though when I asked that I really wonder what those people did at work. If you avoid all work for literally years, doesn't it seem funny? Do they just go to work and twiddle with thumbs until they go home? No doubt the department wants to case this as a few bad apples bad applin', but for such a thing to be possible requires an inexcusable level of managerial and administrative neglect.
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Nov 14, 2014 21:12
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Cole posted:Its really not that hard to putz off in any career field and get away with it dude. Really?
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Nov 14, 2014 22:40
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Cole posted:No, filing paperwork incorrectly, as I read the situation before someone corrected me without being a shithead, isn't a big deal and you're being nitpicky. If you follow the conversation youll see where I said I was wrong. But as I think you've seen, this is a lot worse than just loose cannon cops not getting their timesheets in before close of business. Hell, I've had my proverbial timesheets in late, too. But to use an analogy, it's one thing to not have a file properly documented and it's quite another to do gently caress-all nothing for years on end as a violent crimes or sex crimes detective. An awful lot of things have to go completely sidewise in sequence for that to be possible. This is a very disturbing organizational problem that extends at least up to the lieutenant or captain level of the NOPD's organization, and which persisted for an incredibly long time. I think we're in agreement on that, though. Not looking to pile on you.
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Nov 15, 2014 00:06
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If you're curious, here is the entire grand jury transcript from the Wilson hearing. It covers what looks to be at least a week of testimony, and is very long. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/11/24/ferguson-assets/grand-jury-testimony.pdf
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Nov 25, 2014 10:45
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Trabisnikof posted:So now the arguement is that parents shouldn't report when their kids commit petty crime because good parents don't snitch on their kids? The majority of parents I deal with are shocked at the way their children are treated by the police and the criminal justice system, and ultimately come to regret having to rely on them to get basic mental health and substance abuse treatment for their children. Parents are in the business of helping their children. The criminal justice system is not.
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Feb 11, 2015 00:45
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I like that he had to be "innocent" for it to be wrong to shoot him. It clearly is not enough that he was a man.
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Feb 11, 2015 02:27
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So being a cop in New York is actually less scary than Doom 3.
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Feb 11, 2015 04:31
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It's a reasonable outcome, but I have a suspicion that if a non-cop inflicted that level of injury, they'd be looking at felony assault charges.
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Feb 13, 2015 04:30
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This is why we need cops making goofy precision trick shots.
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Feb 13, 2015 19:04
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