Georgia Criminal Law Blog

CHICAGO - For nearly 26 years, the affidavit was sealed in an envelope and stored in a locked box, tucked away with the lawyer’s passport and will. Sometimes he stashed the box in his bedroom closet, other times under his bed.

It stayed there — year after year, decade after decade.

Then, about two years ago, Dale Coventry, the box’s owner, got a call from his former colleague, W. Jamie Kunz. Both were once public defenders. They hadn’t talked in a decade.

“We’re both getting on in years,” Kunz said. “We ought to do something with that affidavit to make sure it’s not wasted in case we both leave this good Earth.”

Coventry assured him it was in a safe place. He found it in the fireproof metal box, but didn’t read it. He didn’t need to. He was reminded of the case every time he heard that a wronged prisoner had been freed.

In January, Kunz called again. This time, he had news: A man both lawyers had represented long ago in the murder of two police officers, Andrew Wilson, had died in prison.

Kunz asked Coventry to get the affidavit.

“It’s in a sealed envelope,” Coventry said.

“Open it,” Kunz said, impatiently.

And so, Coventry began reading aloud the five-line declaration the lawyers had written more than a quarter-century before:

An innocent man was behind bars. His name was Alton Logan. He did not kill a security guard in a McDonald’s restaurant in January 1982.

“In fact,” the document said, “another person was responsible.”

___

They knew, because Andrew Wilson told them: He did it.

But that was the catch.

Lawyer-client privilege is not complete; most states allow attorneys to reveal confidences to prevent a death, serious bodily harm or criminal fraud. But this case didn’t offer that kind of exception.

So when Andrew Wilson told his lawyers that he, and not Alton Logan, had killed the guard, they felt powerless — aware of information that could free a man they believed to be innocent, but unable to do anything with that knowledge. And for decades, they said nothing.

As they recall, Wilson — who was facing charges in the February 1982 murders of police officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien — was even a bit gleeful about the McDonald’s shooting. To Kunz, he seemed like a child who had been caught doing something naughty.

“I was surprised at how unabashed he was in telling us,” he says. “There was no sense of unease or embarrassment. … He smiled and kind of giggled. He hugged himself, and said, ‘Yeah, it was me.’”

Alton Logan already had been charged with the McDonald’s shooting that left one guard dead and another injured. Another man, Edgar Hope, also was arrested, and assigned a public defender, Marc Miller.

Miller says he was stunned when his client announced he didn’t know Alton Logan and had never seen him before their arrests. According to Miller, Hope was persistent: “You need to tell his attorney he represents an innocent man.”

Hope went a step further, Miller says: He told him Andrew Wilson was his right-hand man — “the guy who guards my back” — and urged the lawyer to confirm that with his street friends. He did.

Miller says he eventually did tell Logan’s lawyer his client was innocent, but offered no details.

First, though, he approached Kunz, his fellow public defender and former partner.

“You think your life’s difficult now?” Miller recalls telling Kunz. “My understanding is that your client Andrew Wilson is the shooter in the McDonald’s murder.”

Coventry and Kunz brought Wilson to the jail law library and this, they say, was when they confronted him and he made his unapologetic confession. They didn’t press for details. “None of us had any doubt,” Coventry says.

And, he adds, it wasn’t just Wilson’s word. Firearms tests, according to court records, linked a shotgun shell found at McDonald’s with a weapon that police found at the beauty parlor where Andrew Wilson lived. The slain police officers’ guns also were discovered there.

Now the lawyers had two big worries: Another killing might be tied to their client, and “an innocent man had been charged with his murder and was very likely … to get the death penalty,” Kunz says.

But bound by legal ethics, they kept quiet.

Instead, they wrote down what they’d been told. If the situation ever arose where they could help Logan, there would be a record — no one could say they had just made it up. They say they didn’t name Wilson, fearing someone would hear about the document and subpoena it. They didn’t even make a copy.

But on March 17, 1982, Kunz, Coventry and Miller signed the notarized affidavit: “I have obtained information through privileged sources that a man named Alton Logan … who was charged with the fatal shooting of Lloyd Wickliffe … is in fact not responsible for that shooting … ”

Knowing the affidavit had to be secret, Wilson’s lawyers looked for ways to help Logan without hurting their client. They consulted with legal scholars, ethics commissions, the bar association.

Kunz says he mentioned the case dozens of times over the years to lawyers, never divulging names but explaining that he knew a guy serving a life sentence for a crime committed by one of his clients.

There’s nothing you can do, he was told.

Coventry had another idea. He figured Wilson probably would be executed for the police killings, so he visited him in prison and posed a question: Can I reveal what you told me, the lawyer asked, after your death?

“I managed to say it without being obnoxious,” Coventry says. “He wasn’t stupid. He understood exactly what I was asking. He knew he was going to get the death penalty and he agreed.”

Coventry says he asked Wilson the same question years later — and got the same answer.

But ultimately, Wilson was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

His death penalty was reversed after he claimed Chicago police had electrically shocked, beaten and burned him with a radiator to secure his confession. (Decades later, a special prosecutor’s report concluded police had tortured dozens of suspects over two decades.)

Logan’s case was working its way through the courts, too. During the first of two trials in which he was convicted, Coventry walked in to hear part of the death penalty phase. “It’s pretty creepy watching people deciding if they’re going to kill an innocent man,” he says.

The lawyers had a plan if it came to that: They would appeal to the governor to stop the execution. But with a life sentence, they remained silent.

Still, there were whispers. When Logan changed lawyers before his second trial, Miller says the new lawyer approached him. He had heard that Miller knew something more.

Please, he asked, can you help?

Miller says he told him he could do nothing for him. But he says he repeated the words he had uttered to Logan’s first lawyer, more than a decade earlier:

“You represent an innocent man.”

___

In prison, Alton Logan heard the news: First, Andrew Wilson had died. Second, there was an affidavit in his case.

“I said finally, somebody has come (forward) and told the truth,” Logan says. “I’ve been saying this for the past 26 years: It WASN’T me.”

In January, the two lawyers, with a judge’s permission, revealed their secret in court.

Two months later, Marc Miller testified about his client’s declaration of Logan’s innocence.

But an affidavit and sworn testimony do not guarantee freedom — or prove innocence.

And Alton Logan knows that. After spending almost half his 54 years as an inmate, this slight man with a fringe of gray beard, stooped shoulders and weary eyes seems resigned to the reality that his fate is beyond his control.

“I have to accept whatever comes down,” he says, sitting in a visitor’s room at the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.

He insists he’s not angry with Edgar Hope — the man who first said he was innocent — or even Andrew Wilson. He says he once approached Wilson in prison and asked him to “come clean. Tell the truth.” Wilson just smiled and kept walking.

Nor is Logan angry with the lawyers who kept the secret. But he wonders if there wasn’t some way they could have done more.

“What I can’t understand is you know the truth, you held the truth and you know the consequences of that not coming forward?” he says of the lawyers. “Is (a) job more important than an individual’s life?”

The lawyers say it was about their client — Wilson — not about their jobs, and they maintain that the prosecutors and police are at fault.

Kunz says he knows some people might find his actions outrageous. His obligation, though, was to Andrew Wilson.

“If I had ratted him out … then I could feel guilty, then I could not live with myself,” he says. “I’m anguished and always have been over the sad injustice of Alton Logan’s conviction. Should I do the right thing by Alton Logan and put my client’s neck in the noose or not? It’s clear where my responsibility lies and my responsibility lies with my client.”

On April 18, Logan will be in court as his lawyer, Harold Winston, pushes for a new trial. Along with the affidavit, Winston has accumulated new evidence, including an eyewitness who says Logan wasn’t at McDonald’s and a letter from an inmate who claims Wilson signed a statement while in prison implicating himself in the murder — and clearing Logan.

But obstacles remain.

Logan can’t depend on Edgar Hope. According to his attorney, Hope probably will exercise his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

And he’ll have to deal with eyewitnesses. His lawyer says one person changed her story in the two trials, but a second, the security guard injured in the shooting, did not. (A third, who has since died, had acknowledged that Wilson and Logan looked alike.)

Logan prefers not to look too far ahead or think too far back. He refuses to dwell on missed opportunities — marriage, children, job. “You cannot live with the situation I’m in and say, ‘What if?’”

He says if he is released, he’ll move to Oregon to be with his brother. “After spending 26 years in this hellhole, I want to get as far away from here as I possibly can,” he says.

Last month, the Chicago Sun-Times, in an editorial, urged the attorney general or governor to release Logan, noting his claims of innocence “ring achingly true.” (The state has declined comment on the case.)

Logan keeps a copy of the 26-year-old affidavit in his cell. Every now and then, he reads the single paragraph, trying to divine what the lawyers were thinking and if this piece of paper will help unlock the prison doors.

He’s not banking on it.

“I’m not sold on it,” he says. “The only time I’ll be sold is when they tell me I can go.”

For now, though, Alton Logan waits. The heavy prison doors clank behind him as he walks down the corridor to his cell. He does not look back.

A judge known for creative sentencing has ordered three Spanish-speaking men to learn English or go to jail.

The men, who faced prison for criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, can remain on parole if they learn to read and write English, earn their GEDs and get full-time jobs, Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said.

The men, Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez and Rafael Guzman-Mateo, plus a fourth defendant, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario, all needed translators when they pleaded guilty Tuesday.

“Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?” the judge asked them.

The four, ranging in age from 17 to 22, were in a group that police said accosted two men on a street in May. The two said they were asked if they had marijuana, told to empty their pockets, struck on the head, threatened with a gun and told to stay off the block.

Attorneys for the men said they were studying the legality of the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal. One of the attorneys, Ferris Webby, suggested that the ruling was good for his client, Guzman-Mateo.

“My client is happy,” Webby said. “I think it’s going to help him.”

The judge sentenced the four men to jail terms of four to 24 months. But he gave the three men, who already had served at least four months, immediate parole. Reyes-Rosario remains imprisoned on an unrelated drug charge.

Olszewski ordered the three to return with their parole officers in a year and take an English test. “If they don’t pass, they’re going in for the 24 (months),” he said.

Olszewski is known for outside-the-box sentencing.

He has ordered young defendants who are school dropouts to finish school. He often orders defendants to get full-time employment. But he also has his staff coordinate with an employment agency to help them find the jobs.

See Opinion here.

Mason et. al. v. Home Depot et. al;  S07A1486

The issue is that the standard for experts in a criminal case is governed by a Georgia case called Harper.  The standard in civil cases is governed by Daubert, a federal case.

The court holds that it is not an equal protection violation because all criminal defendants are treated the same and all civil litigants are treated the same.

Read the Yahoo.com article here.

ATLANTA (AP) _ Georgia’s crowded prison population is expected to swell even larger over the next few years under new parole guidelines designed to keep the state’s worst violent offenders behind bars longer.

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Thursday gave tentative approval to new rules that would use a formula aimed at calculating a prisoner’s chance of re-offending in determining when he or she would be granted parole. The rules also seek to bring parole guidelines in line with sentences handed down by the judges in each case.

The change would mean that high-risk violent offenders would spend more time in prison, while those behind bars for minor crimes who are unlikely to offend again would get out sooner.

“We’re making room for violent offenders,” board chairman Garland Hunt said on Thursday.

Hunt said that by creating better uniformity throughout the system it will give the board’s decisions more credibility.

Georgia’s prison population — the fifth largest in the nation — is expected to rise in coming years, fueled by tough mandatory sentences and a steady stream of new admissions.

Officials said the parole rule change would initially cause the state’s prison population to soar above what it would be if the system was left alone. But by 2010 the growth would slow. By December 2012 there, would be 1,730 fewer prisoners in the system than there would have been if the system had not changed, officials said.

Georgia’s prisons are already bursting at the seams.

The system is at 104 percent of capacity with just under 59,000 inmates and probation violators, Department of Corrections spokesman Paul Czachowski said. Meanwhile, hundreds of prisoners in county jails are waiting for space to open up in the state’s prisons.

The state recently opened up 192 new beds at an existing facility, Czachowski said. There are no plans to build additional prisons. Instead, the state is adding new wings onto existing prisons.

Hunt said he’s well aware that the state has “finite resources.”

“But we’re committed to public safety,” he said.

The new guidelines follow a three-year study that looked at 33,456 prisoners released from Georgia prisoners from 2002 to 2003. The study found that 27 percent of those released were convicted of a new felony.

The board will accept public comment on the rule for 30 days before giving it final approval.

This is from WSB.

DeKalb County police and many others want to see exactly what recording artist Kid Rock was doing at a local Waffle House restaurant.Police say musician Kid Rock was arrested after a brawl at the restaurant and spent about 12 hours in jail before being released on bond.Authorities say the musician stopped at the Waffle House restaurant shortly after 5 a.m. Sunday after his performance at The Tabernacle in Atlanta.Police said Rock and his entourage were finishing a meal when a male customer began exchanging words with a woman sitting with Rock. DeKalb County Police Department, Mekka Parish said it escalated to a physical fight between Kid Rock and the customer that moved outside to the parking lot. Police said 39-year-old Harlen Akins shattered a restaurant window during the fight. He was treated at the hospital.The fight was possibly caught on video tape. The restaurant manager’s girlfriend, Jennifer Carol, said, “Yes, I want to see it. New York Times already wants it.” Parish says Kid Rock left in his tour bus and was stopped by police about a mile from the restaurant. The musician and five members of his entourage were taken into custody on a misdemeanor charge of simple battery. The other customer was charged with criminal damage to property, a felony. Kid Rock was released from the county jail on bond about 5 p.m.Akins is also facing charges.

A U.S. Marine from the metropolitan Atlanta Area has been in our local news lately because he has been charged by the military with the murder in connection with a military operation in Iraq in which he was involved. He is currently at a Marine base in Hawaii where his court martial and related proceedings are being held. One recent news story related to what is called an “Article 32 Hearing.” As it’s name suggests, Article 32 hearings are held pursuant to Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and are a rough corollary to the Grand Jury process in state systems and the civilian federal system.

As a former U.S. Navy Judge Advocate and former Assistant District Attorney in Georgia, I have real world experience with both processes and felt like an article comparing and contrasting each would be appropriate and timely here.

Both the Article 32 hearing and the Grand Jury inquire are designed, in theory, to serve as a pre-trial determination of probable cause. Without getting too deep, the concept of “probable cause” is a term-of-art for legal professionals and cannot be easily described. Nonetheless, as I used to teach my students, “probable cause” is a level of proof or evidence that may lead a reasonable person to conclude that a crime probably has been committed and the accused probably committed it.

The 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

UCMJ Article 32(a) states as follows:
No charge or specification may be referred to a general court-martial for trial until a through and impartial investigation of all the matters set forth therein has been made. This investigation shall include inquiry as to the truth of the matter set forth in the charges, consideration of the form of charges, and recommendation as to the disposition which should be made of the case in the interest of justice and discipline.

Very different from each other, huh? On it’s face the 5th Amendment makes the right to grand jury review inapplicable to the military. So congress stepped in and filled that due process void with UCMJ Article 32.

I can say from my own personal experience that, in practice the two processes are very different from one another in real life as well. The Grand Jury hearing (in state practice) may last for less than 5 minutes in routine cases and the defendant is typically NOT present. In fact, the proceedings are secret and it is a crime to disclose anything said behind those closed doors. An Article 32 Hearing, however, can last for days and is wide open to the public and even the media in many instances. The accused participates with his or her attorney and gets to cross examine witnesses and is given access to documents and other items of evidence. A grand jury is not presided over by anyone (except the forperson who’s authority is quite limited). There is no judge present and the prosecutor and the police witnesses run the show. To the contrary, an Article 32 Hearing is conducted by a fiercely neutral commissioned military officer (frequently a JAG Officer) who follows limited rules of evidence and permits wide latitude on cross-examination of witnesses against the accused.

I like the Article 32 process much better than the Grand Jury. It just feels better to me to keep everything out in the open with an accused having the right to counsel and to participate. Grand Jury indictments handed down in secret have always bothered me because doing business that way can lead to abuse. To illustrate this point, one need look no further than to the prosecutor who got a grand jury to indict those innocent Duke lacrosse players.

For more detail on the Article 32 Hearing, check out:
www.jag.navy.mil/html/NLSOGlakesArticle_32_investigations.htm

Story from the AJC here.

Maria Rivera sits in the Cobb County Jail, facing deportation after a traffic stop.

If the Mableton mother of three, who is here illegally from Mexico, had been pulled over in any other county in Georgia, she likely would have bailed out and gone on with her life.

But Cobb County’s jail is at the forefront of local enforcement of immigration laws, going a step further than many states and further than a new Georgia law requires.

Cobb has trained some sheriff’s deputies to determine the legal status of all foreign born inmates at the jail, no matter how minor the charge. Cobb jailers now can start deportation proceedings under what’s known as a “287-G” agreement with federal immigration authorities.

“The computers are up and running,” Cobb County Chief Deputy Sheriff Lynda Coker said. “They can run inquiries on a federal database.”

A new state law effective July 1 requires jailers statewide to determine the legal status of inmates charged with felonies or DUI and report illegal immigrants to federal immigration officials, but they can leave it at that.

In Cobb, jailers have been trained by federal immigration officials on how to inspect immigration documents.

“They can initiate the removal proceedings themselves,” said Richard Rocha, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement, known as ICE. “Any time we can share resources with local law enforcement, it’s a plus for public safety,” Rocha said.

Proceedings against 42

In the four weeks since the program began, Cobb jailers and ICE have interviewed 86 inmates, placed immigration holds on 68 and started deportation proceedings against 42, Coker said. Deportation paperwork done by sheriff’s deputies must be reviewed by an immigration officer before it goes to a judge.

Although it’s sheriff’s deputies, and not Cobb County Police Department officers, who are now processing deportation paperwork, the program is sending a shiver through the immigrant community.

Fear destroys any rapport the community had with police, said Jerry Gonzalez, head of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.

“This is having a very negative effect on overall public safety,” Gonzalez said.

Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University Law School, agrees. The institute is a nonprofit Washington think tank that studies global migration patterns.

“People are reluctant to report crimes to the police, or be witnesses in criminal proceedings,” Chishti said.

As for the agreement’s effect on immigration patterns, it’s hard to say. Since 2001, there’s been an annual net increase of 500,000 illegal immigrants entering the country, Muzaffar said.

“There’s no evidence these agreements have led to a decrease in illegal immigration,” he said.

Coker stresses that Cobb jailers have had a cooperative relationship with immigration authorities for about 10 years and have reported illegal immigrants to them. What is happening in Cobb now, Coker said, is not much different, except sheriff’s deputies can now pitch in on the paperwork.

Some Cobb inmates who have been flagged for immigration holds are charged with child molestation or drugs, weapons and alcohol-related offenses, Rocha said.

“With the success of the program, we’ve been able to identify people who may otherwise not have been flagged,” he said.

Nationwide since 2006, local jailers have identified more than 20,000 illegal immigrants through cooperative agreements with the federal government like Cobb’s, Rocha said.

Whether and how an inmate is flagged as illegal may differ in each case as it goes through the system. Some jails have dedicated ICE officers to identify illegal immigrants as they are booked. At others, ICE relies on local jailers to notify them if an inmate may be here illegally, Rocha said.

Inmates collected by ICE right away are usually those facing lesser charges, Coker said. Those with more serious charges usually go to trial and serve time if convicted, she said. It’s up to ICE to deport them after they serve their time.

Traffic violations

Rivera was flagged because she had been deported before, in March 2006, after crossing the Mexican border illegally, Rocha said.

Rivera crossed again last year and went to Chicago with her husband and three children, said Enrique Farias, her roommate. About six months ago she came to Mableton with her children, Farias said.

His sister cared for the three children a few weeks while their mother was in jail, he said, until an uncle from Chicago came last week took the children home with him.

Rivera was stopped by a Cobb County police officer July 11 on her way to work as a house cleaner, Farias said. She is charged with driving without a license, having no proof of insurance and an expired tag, according to jail records.

Cobb County police Chief George Hatfield said his officer had no choice but to enforce the law with Rivera.

“It’s sad if she’s got the three children and everything, but she should have thought about that before she got behind the wheel of a car,” he said.

Below is a story from the Associated Press.

David McDade has handed out some 35 copies of a video of teenagers having sex at a party.

McDade is no porno kingpin, but a district attorney. And he says Georgia’s open-records law leaves him no choice but to release the footage because it was evidence in one of the state’s most turbulent cases — that of Genarlow Wilson, a young man serving 10 years in prison for having oral sex with a girl when they were teenagers.

McDade’s actions have opened him up to accusations that he is vindictively misusing his authority to keep Wilson behind bars — and worse, distributing child pornography.

“This has been a ferocious, vindictive prosecution of Genarlow Wilson,” said state Sen. Vincent Fort, an Atlanta Democrat. “What is going on is a vendetta.”

McDade, who is district attorney in Douglas County, in suburban Atlanta, did not immediately return calls Thursday.

He has said that while the law required him to release the video, he also believes the footage helps his case — by showing that Wilson is not the squeaky-clean football star and honor student portrayed by his supporters.

“Most of those who do not want people to see the tape know that it’s damning to their position,” McDade told The Associated Press.

He released the video after receiving an open records request from the AP, and said he has given it to about three dozen people, including reporters, lawmakers and several members of the public who requested it.

It shows Wilson, then 17, receiving oral sex from a 15-year-old girl and having intercourse with another 17-year-old girl. It was shot at a 2003 New Year’s Eve Party at a hotel room by another partygoer.

Earlier this week, Georgia’s chief federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney David Nahmias, said the video “constitutes child pornography under federal law,” and he called on McDade’s office to stop releasing copies.

“These laws are intended to protect the children depicted in such images from the ongoing victimization of having their sexual activity viewed by others,” Nahmias said.

Nahmias’ office refused to say whether he would bring criminal charges against the D.A.

Critics say that at the very least, McDade should have obscured the faces of the underage girls to conceal their identity, or sought a protective order to keep the material under seal.

Such steps are common in sex abuses cases, especially those involving underage victims, said Diane Moyer, legal director for the Pennsylvania-based National Sexual Violence Research Center.

“The bottom line is we need to have respect for the victims in these kinds of cases,” Moyer said. “To release this kind of thing, to me it’s prurient and it takes the open records law too far.”

Several Wilson supporters likened McDade to disgraced Duke lacrosse prosecutor Mike Nifong and called on Georgia’s attorney general to investigate.

“Mike Nifong lost his license, and if he lost his license, then certainly a district attorney that distributes child pornography ought to be investigated,” the Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said Thursday.

State Sen. Emanuel Jones said he would introduce legislation to block district attorneys from handing over photographic images in sex cases.

“I’m going to call it the David McDade Act,” Jones said. “Sometimes we have to protect our kids from district attorneys.”

Wilson was convicted of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with the 15-year-old girl. He has served more than two years of a mandatory 10-year sentence.

The law Wilson was convicted of breaking made consensual oral sex between teens a felony. It has since been changed by the Georgia Legislature. But the state’s courts have held that the new law cannot be applied retroactively.

A judge last month called Wilson’s sentence “a grave miscarriage of justice” and ordered him set free. But prosecutors are trying to block his release. The Georgia Supreme Court is set to hear the case next week.

McDade fought a bill in the Legislature earlier this year that would have helped Wilson. Some lawmakers who were on the fence changed their mind after seeing the tape.

Story from MSNBC here.

DNA evidence has exonerated its 205th American that has served time for a crime that they did not convict.  He confessed after 30 hours of interrogation.  We need to take a hard look at police interview tactics in this country.

A simple battery wouldn’t normally be news around here, but the media is still fascinated by John Mark Karr.  He is the man that falsely confessed to the killing of Jon Benet Ramsey.  Read the story here from Yahoo.

http://www.mdjonline.com/articles/2007/06/06/268/10261150.prt

You can’t really have a blog dedicated to criminal defense work and not mention the Duke “rape” case today.  As everyone with a radio or television knows, the charges against these young men were dismissed today.  There lives however have been changed forever.  So has the life of the District Attorney that rode this case to his re-election.  He now has the Bar Association to deal with and may get disbarred.  The Attorney General would not rule out criminal charges against Nifong.

For those of you that would like a very thorough discussion of this case, check out this blog.

I hope this case helps the public understand how easy it is to get charged with a crime in this day and age.  I hope the criminal defense bar will let this case inspire them to keep up the good fight.

I love this quote from one of the young men, Reade Seligmann,

“This entire experience has opened my eyes up to a tragic world of injustice I never knew existed. If it is possible for law enforcement officials to systematically railroad us with no evidence whatsoever, it is frightening to think what they could do to those who do not to have the resources to defend themselves. So rather than relying on disparaging stereotypes, or creating political and racial conflicts, we must all take a step back from this case and learn from it. This tragedy has revealed that our society has lost site of the core principle of our legal system, the presumption of innocence.”

Bond Reduced For Accused ‘Barbie Bandit’ - News

Heather Johnston’s bond was reduced to $10,000.00 for the theft in which she was involved. She was also ordered to live with her parents and obey a strict cerfew.  Apparantly, after the high-profile theft, they gave some money to the homeless.

House Bill 185 introduced by Rep. Barry Fleming is an attempt to re-write Georgia’s long standing and deeply-rooted law of requiring unanimous verdicts.  Interestingly, it seeks to rewrite the law where unanimous verdicts are needed the most, Death Penalty cases.  How in the world is in that we would require a unanimous verdict to convict someone of a minor misdemeanor, but 9 out of 12 would be OK to sentence a defendant to death?

This news comes on the heels of Willie Williams release from prison last week after being exonerated by DNA evidence.  He spent the last 21 years of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.  It was the sixth time in seven years that DNA has cleared an inmate in Georgia.  This is an issue not limited to Georgia, it is happening all over the country, prompting many states to modify the procedures used in police line-ups and raising awareness on the fallability of eyewitness evidence.

For more, read these two articles here and here in the Marietta Daily Journal.

The shooting of an elderly lady in Atlanta takes a disgusting turn. This from the AJC.
An Atlanta police narcotics officer has told federal investigators at least one member of his unit lied about making a drug buy at the home of an elderly woman killed in a subsequent raid, according to a person close to the investigation.

In an affidavit to get a search warrant at the home Nov. 21, narcotics officer Jason R. Smith told a magistrate he and Officer Arthur Tesler had a confidential informant buy $50 worth of crack at 933 Neal St. from a man named “Sam.”

But narcotics officer Gregg Junnier, who was wounded in the shootout, has since told federal investigators that did not happen, according to the person close to the investigation. Police got a no-knock warrant after claiming that “Sam” had surveillance cameras outside the Neal Street residence and they needed the element of surprise to capture him and the drugs.

The resident at the home, Kathryn Johnston, who is reported to be either 88 or 92, was startled by the sound of her burglar-bar door being battered in, and she fired her revolver at the officers. She was killed and three officers were wounded by gunfire or shrapnel.

Buddy Parker, a former federal prosecutor, said that officers who lied to the magistrate could face serious charges in addition to making false statements to a judge.

“If that was the case, you have a conspiracy,” said Parker. “If you have a warrantless entry, you have no legal investigation. It can be either conscious disregard for the law and all conduct flowing from that is criminal — the entry, the homicide. It’s no different from people going in to rob a bank and kill someone in a shooting.”

U.S Attorney David Nahmias declined to comment on whether Junnier was cooperating in the investigation.

Rand Csehy, attorney for Junnier, an 18-year police veteran who retired last week, would only say his client has cooperated.

Tesler’s attorney, Bill McKenney, would only say, “My guy has told the truth.” But the attorney would not say whom Tesler has spoken with or what he said.

Smith’s attorney, Ed Garland, did not return phone calls.

All eight officers on the narcotics team were placed on paid leave pending the investigation by federal, state and Fulton County authorities.

Junnier has told investigators the arrest of a suspected small-time dealer named Fabian Sheats that afternoon set the fatal set of circumstances in motion. According to police reports, Sheats, who was arrested for the third time in four months, told police that he had seen a kilogram of cocaine at the Neal Street home earlier that day.

A relative of Sheats said Wednesday he is being held in jail as a government witness,

The narcotics team tried to contact Alex White, who has worked as a confidential informant, to buy drugs at the house but was unable to get him to come quickly, the person told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But they rushed it” and went to the magistrate, telling the judge the story about an informant buying the drugs, said the person close to the investigation.

Alex White came forward to authorities a day after the shooting, saying narcotics officers were trying to tell him to lie and say he bought drugs at the house. White came to light after he jumped out of an Atlanta squad car Nov. 22 and called 911.

On a 911 tape, an insistent and anxious-sounding man identifying himself as White told an operator, “I have two cops chasing me. They’re on the dirty side, two undercover officers.”

Later, White, who acknowledged having worked as a confidential informant, told WAGA the cops told him “you need to cover our [rear]. . . . It’s all on you man. . . . You need to tell them about this Sam dude.” According to the WAGA report, the informant said Sam didn’t exist and he never went to the house. Speaking Wednesday night at a town hall meeting where dozens of speakers railed against the police action in the Johnston shooting, State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) said he plans to introduce legislation to stiffen the requirements for no-knock warrants.

“I’m outraged,” Fort said, “about how things went down on Nov. 21.”

Staff writer Jeffry Scott contributed to this article.

Now this is funny!

http://www.glumbert.com/media/badrobber

Juries are ‘unsympathetic’ to women who claim rape after drunken binge - Law - Times Online

Check out this interesting article.

Man ordered to wear “sex offender” T-shirt | Oddly Enough | Reuters.com

It was only a matter of time!  $100.00 says within 2 years a bill gets introduced in our legislature requiring this as a punishment for sex offenders.

I have recently run across a new device that is being employed in the war on drugs.  The ION SCANNER.  This device has grown popular in the prison systems to screen visitors at the prison gates.  Many false positives are being reported.

One study confirms that false “positives can occur with baker’s poppy seeds, herbal products, natural body enzymes (i.e., melanin, the natural skin pigment which causes the skin to turn dark can cause false positive for marijuana), and from common medications.” In other words, Afro-Americans and some Hispanics and American natives may test positive simply because they are dark!

Ion scanners detect chemicals that are derived from the building blocks of many substances other than controlled substances.  In particular, the Department of Justice reported that the technology cannot distinguish between two different substances that are composed of ions with similar size and mass.  This means that even an innocuous substance can be identified as illegal contraband.

Additionally, I have seen studies that suggest that as much as 75% to 95% of U.S. currency has drug residue on it.