How prosecutors came to dominate the criminal-justice system

[SoonerP226]

I'm actually in favor of the death penalty .. just that better checks and balances needs to be enacted to take away some of the power District Attorneys are empowered with. for instance if/when DA blatantly break the law by hiding evidence that could clear defendant. there should be criminal consequences that's applied to everyone else.

We agree on that. We also agree that mistakes (be they intentional or unintentional) have been made that have put men on death row for crimes they did not commit. My sole issue is with the repeated unsupported assertion that innocent people have been put to death, and that it happens frequently (as was made in the post, not by you, to which I originally replied). If you're saying that you're not making that assertion, then I guess we aren't really in disagreement.

 

[cmhbob]

Does the frequency matter if the number of innocent people executed is greater than one?

Does it matter if some states have never made capital mistakes while other states have made more?

It's impossible to guarantee error-free capital punishment, and there's no way to fix those mistakes when they're made, and we've definitely at least come close, so why risk it? Why risk killing an innocent person in the name of justice?

You said the CP bar should be set very high. Give examples. What should it take in your mind for the state to be able to execute someone?

 

[_CY_]

here's a reverse twist for DA's .. folks demanding that City DA NOT handle police involved capital cases.

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Some Want City DAs to Give Up Handling of Police Cases
http://brooklyn.ny1.com/content/new...city-das-to-give-up-handling-of-police-cases/.

Some are saying city district attorneys are not capable of prosecuting police cases in light of the no indictment vote in Eric Garner's death and other high-profile cases. As protests grow, so does the chorus of people calling for district attorneys to give up handling police cases.

"I think it's important that the governor of the state of New York appoint a special prosecutor in the case of any death as a result of NYPD and/or serious injury," said Public Advocate Letitia James.

When police tried to arrest Eric Garner, it wasn't his first run-in with police over allegedly selling cigarettes illegally. The Legal Aid Society, which represented him in those cases, says Garner argued the charges were bogus. Legal Aid says prosecutors work too closely with police to fairly investigate them.

"The recent failure to indict police officers in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, we believe that special prosecutors should be appointed to handle police involved deaths of civilians," Seymour James Jr., attorney-in-chief of the Legal Aid Society, said in a statement.

Governor Andrew Cuomo isn't going that far yet, but does say there should be a review of the justice system because too many perceive it as unjust.

"And it's been Eric Garner. It's Ferguson. It was Amadou Diallo here in New York, It was the Bell case here in New York. It was Trayvon Martin. These long series of cases where people have seen the same type of repeat problem," Cuomo said on NBC's "Today."

Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson is fuming at the notion of being overstepped.

"I don't believe that the local prosecutors should have these cases taken away from us and given to a special prosecutor," Thompson said. "I think that people are upset, and I understand that they're upset, but I think that I should be able to fairly and thoroughly investigate these matters on behalf of the people of Brooklyn. That's what I was elected to do."

In terms of the decision on Staten Island not to indict officers, the Legal Aid Society has already filed court papers to get all of the grand jury information. The public advocate is expected to do the same next week.

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http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/11/ferguson-verdict-0

Given this standard, and the fact that prosecutors have enormous discretion over the proceedings, one would think that indictments are fairly easy to secure whenever the state has a reasonable amount of evidence. And indeed, as Reason's Anthony Fisher writes, a grand jury refusing to hand down an indictment is "an incredibly rare thing". In federal (rather than state) courts, grand juries in 2010 failed to indict in just 11 out of 162,000 cases. If anything, conservative legal scholars in recent years have worried that grand juries are too susceptible to indicting based on flimsy cases.

At the same time, we shouldn't be at all surprised by the grand jury's verdict. While it is generally easy to get an indictment, it is extremely difficult to indict a police officer. This is especially true for homicide, as Jamelle Bouie writes. While 410 "justifiable homicides" were reported by the FBI in 2012, there were virtually no indictments of police for killing people. FiveThirtyEight's Ben Casselman wonders whether the difference is based on jurors being more inclined to trust police; prosecutors being less inclined to make cases aggressively against police; or prosecutors being forced to bring weak cases against police, due to political pressure.

 

[dennishoddy]

here's a reverse twist for DA's .. folks demanding that City DA NOT handle police involved capital cases.

============
Some Want City DAs to Give Up Handling of Police Cases
http://brooklyn.ny1.com/content/new...city-das-to-give-up-handling-of-police-cases/.

Some are saying city district attorneys are not capable of prosecuting police cases in light of the no indictment vote in Eric Garner's death and other high-profile cases. As protests grow, so does the chorus of people calling for district attorneys to give up handling police cases.

"I think it's important that the governor of the state of New York appoint a special prosecutor in the case of any death as a result of NYPD and/or serious injury," said Public Advocate Letitia James.

When police tried to arrest Eric Garner, it wasn't his first run-in with police over allegedly selling cigarettes illegally. The Legal Aid Society, which represented him in those cases, says Garner argued the charges were bogus. Legal Aid says prosecutors work too closely with police to fairly investigate them.

"The recent failure to indict police officers in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, we believe that special prosecutors should be appointed to handle police involved deaths of civilians," Seymour James Jr., attorney-in-chief of the Legal Aid Society, said in a statement.

Governor Andrew Cuomo isn't going that far yet, but does say there should be a review of the justice system because too many perceive it as unjust.

"And it's been Eric Garner. It's Ferguson. It was Amadou Diallo here in New York, It was the Bell case here in New York. It was Trayvon Martin. These long series of cases where people have seen the same type of repeat problem," Cuomo said on NBC's "Today."

Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson is fuming at the notion of being overstepped.

"I don't believe that the local prosecutors should have these cases taken away from us and given to a special prosecutor," Thompson said. "I think that people are upset, and I understand that they're upset, but I think that I should be able to fairly and thoroughly investigate these matters on behalf of the people of Brooklyn. That's what I was elected to do."

In terms of the decision on Staten Island not to indict officers, the Legal Aid Society has already filed court papers to get all of the grand jury information. The public advocate is expected to do the same next week.

-------------
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/11/ferguson-verdict-0

Given this standard, and the fact that prosecutors have enormous discretion over the proceedings, one would think that indictments are fairly easy to secure whenever the state has a reasonable amount of evidence. And indeed, as Reason's Anthony Fisher writes, a grand jury refusing to hand down an indictment is "an incredibly rare thing". In federal (rather than state) courts, grand juries in 2010 failed to indict in just 11 out of 162,000 cases. If anything, conservative legal scholars in recent years have worried that grand juries are too susceptible to indicting based on flimsy cases.

At the same time, we shouldn't be at all surprised by the grand jury's verdict. While it is generally easy to get an indictment, it is extremely difficult to indict a police officer. This is especially true for homicide, as Jamelle Bouie writes. While 410 "justifiable homicides" were reported by the FBI in 2012, there were virtually no indictments of police for killing people. FiveThirtyEight's Ben Casselman wonders whether the difference is based on jurors being more inclined to trust police; prosecutors being less inclined to make cases aggressively against police; or prosecutors being forced to bring weak cases against police, due to political pressure.

What a joke.
The law says you can't sell loosies. The guy violates the law. A local prosecutor can't prosecute the guy?
It doesn't matter if the prosecutor is in Antarctica, he/she prosecutes according to the law in the perfect scenerio.
Its not like a national crime where there might be some jury bias. Its a freeking cigarette tax law that I happen to disagree with, but its the law.

 

[_CY_]

What a joke.
The law says you can't sell loosies. The guy violates the law. A local prosecutor can't prosecute the guy?
It doesn't matter if the prosecutor is in Antarctica, he/she prosecutes according to the law in the perfect scenerio.
Its not like a national crime where there might be some jury bias. Its a freeking cigarette tax law that I happen to disagree with, but its the law.

must have done a really crappy job with my last post if that's what you got out of it?
the tremendous effect prosecutors has on the outcome of any case can go both directions.

for federal courts, grand juries in 2010 failed to indict in just 11 out of 162,000 cases.

410 "justifiable homicides" were reported by the FBI in 2012 with virtually no indictments of police for killing civilians. one cannot help but wonder if the difference is based on jurors being more inclined to trust police ... and/or prosecutors being less inclined to make cases aggressively against police .. and/or prosecutors being forced to bring weak cases against police, due to political pressure.

 

[_CY_]

Ohio man exonerated after spending 27 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...hpModule_9d3add6c-8a79-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e
December 9

Kwame Ajamu was just 17 when he was convicted of murder in the killing of a Cleveland money-order salesman. On Tuesday, Ajamu, now 57 and out on parole since 2003, wept after a judge cleared all charges against him.

The case against Amaju, formerly known as Ronnie Bridgeman, began to fall apart after a key witness recanted his testimony decades after the conviction.

In 1975, two people had attacked Harold Franks with acid, and one of the people shot him. A third person drove a getaway car. A 12-year-old boy, Eddie Vernon, served as the state’s main witness in the case, and a jury convicted Bridgeman (as he was known at the time), along with his brother Wiley Bridgeman, then 20, and Ricky Jackson, 19.

The three were sentenced to death, but their sentences were later commuted. Ajamu was released on parole in 2003 after serving 27 years.

A 2011 magazine story delving into what happened on that day in 1975 prompted a new look at the case. Ohio Innocence Project lawyers came to represent the defendants.

Last month, Vernon recanted his testimony, saying he was just a boy who wanted to help police and that he didn’t actually see the crime. Instead, he revealed, he was on a bus. In the 1970s, Vernon said, he had provided the names and authorities fed him the other details.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m doing the right thing,’ ” Vernon testified last month. “I told the officer, ‘I know who did it.’ ”

In November, a judge freed Jackson, who cried out, “I can’t believe this is over,” the Plain Dealer reported. Jackson served 39 years in prison, the longest sentence served by any defendant who has been exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Two hours after Jackson was freed, another judge cleared Wiley Bridgeman of charges.

Ajamu, Bridgeman and Jackson could seek a total of $4.1 million in compensation, a move that Cuyahoga County prosecutors say they will not fight. People who were found to be wrongfully imprisoned can receive more than $40,000 for each year they were imprisoned per Ohio state law.

“They have been the victims of a terrible injustice,” county prosecutor Mary McGrath said in documents filed with the county court, the Plan Dealer reported.

“We were robbed,” Ajamu said Tuesday. “There will be no offspring when I die. When my brother passes away, that is it. We don’t have children. There will never be another Ronnie Bridgeman.

“The important part is that we have been united while we are standing forward and upward and that we are not looking at each other in the graveyard.”

Ajamu also thanked Scene magazine writer Kyle Swenson, who wrote about the case, the AP reported.

He also said he’d like to meet the now-52-year-old Vernon. “I would say, ‘I’m not angry with you,’ ” Ajamu said, the Plain Dealer reported. “I didn’t believe Edward had any malice. He was a kid who got caught up in the wrong thing.”

Vernon’s pastor, the Rev. Anthony Singleton, had noticed that something was plaguing the man. After the 2011 Scene story published, he tried to get Vernon to talk about what happened that day in 1975. Then, in 2013, with Vernon’s health deteriorating, Singleton broached the subject again, and Vernon, lying in a hospital bed, confessed. “The words tumbled out,” the Scene reported. He later repeated the confession in an affidavit.

On Tuesday, Ajamu said: “It’s my hope going forward that we don’t have to wait another 40 years for the next Kwame Ajamu, Wiley Bridgeman, Ricky Jackson. It’s my hope from this day on we can stop ignoring what is obvious in the criminal justice system and move forward with peace and love.”

 

[_CY_]

a rare exoneration after an execution ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...rder-conviction-70-years-after-his-execution/

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Judge throws out teen’s murder conviction 70 years after his execution
December 17

George Stinney Jr. appears in an undated police booking photo. (South Carolina Department of Archives and History)

When George Stinney Jr. was executed for the killings of two white girls in 1944, he was so small that the straps of South Carolina’s electric chair didn’t fit him properly, and he had to sit on a book for his electrocution.

Stinney was just 14 years old at the time and became the youngest person put to death in the United States in the 20th century. But this week, 70 years after the fact, Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen tossed out his conviction, which was reached after a trial that didn’t even last a full day and was never appealed. As the Associated Press noted, it took Mullen “nearly four times as long to issue her ruling as it took in 1944 to go from arrest to execution.”

“I can think of no greater injustice,” Mullen wrote in her 29-page order, the AP reported.

Stinney, who was black, was arrested for the beating deaths of two young girls in the segregated town of Alcolu. There wasn’t any physical evidence linking him the crimes, and he wasn’t allowed to see his parents after he was apprehended.

“Given the particularized circumstances of Stinney’s case, I find by a preponderance of the evidence standard, that a violation of the Defendant’s procedural due process rights tainted his prosecution,” Mullen wrote in her decision, according to CNN.

From the AP:

Stinney’s case has long been whispered in civil rights circles in South Carolina as an example of how a black person could be railroaded by a justice system during the Jim Crow era where the investigators, prosecutors and juries were all white.

The case received renewed attention because of a crusade by textile inspector and school board member George Frierson. Armed with a binder full of newspaper articles and other evidence, he and a law firm believed the teen represented everything that was wrong with South Carolina during the era of segregation.

“It was obviously a long shot but one we thought was worth taking,” said attorney Matt Burgess, whose firm argued that Stinney should get a new trial.


Aime Ruffner receives support from family and friends after testifying at the hearing to reopen the case for her brother George Stinney Jr. (Randall Hill/Reuters)

Earlier this year, Stinney’s sister, Amie Ruffner told the Guardian: “I never went back [to Alcolu]. I curse that place. It was the destruction of my family and the killing of my brother.”

According to the paper:

She will never forget the last time she saw George alive. She was eight at the time, hunkering in the chicken coop, scared half to death, when two black cars drove up to their house. Neither her mother, also Aime, a cook, nor her father, George senior, were home when white law enforcement officers came and took away George and her stepbrother, Johnny, in handcuffs. Johnny was later let go. She idolised George and followed him everywhere. He called her his shadow.

Though she left the south long ago, Aime’s rich, deep voice resonates with the vowels of her birthplace. But recalling her last words to George, it alters as if she’s gone back in time, to the high-pitched voice of a girl. “I said: ‘Oh George, are you leaving me? Where you going?’ He told me to find Charles and Katherine and tell them he was taken away.

“I never saw him again until he was in his casket,” said Aime. “That is something I will always see in my memories. His face was burned.”

 

[_CY_]

here's a rare prosecution of a cop

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Bayonne cop beat man with flashlight and lied on reports, feds say
lillo.JPG
Bayonne Police Officer Domenico Lillo has been charged with beating a city man during an arrest and then falsifying reports to conceal it, authorities said.

January 23, 2015 http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2015/01/bayonne_cop_beat_man_with_flashlight_and_lied_on_r.html

[Broken External Image]
BAYONNE -- Police officer Domenico Lillo was charged today with beating a city man during an arrest and then falsifying records to conceal the beating, federal authorities said.

Lillo, 44, was arrested at his home this morning in connection with the arrest of Brandon Walsh, who later sued Lillo and the Bayonne Police Department. Lillo was arraigned earlier this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge James B. Clark III in Newark federal court and released on a $100,000 unsecured bond, authorities said.

Officially, Lillo was charged with the deprivation of civil rights under color of law and falsification of records. The use of excessive force count carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, while the charge of falsifying records carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis, a former police officer, said Lillo was immediately suspended without pay as soon as city officials were notified that he had been charged.

Davis said Lillo's arrest didn't come as a surprise.

"This was something that you knew sooner or later was coming. And when you're going to do something like that, this is what gives all police officers a black eye," he said.

City spokesman Jeff Meyer said the city would be fully cooperating with the FBI "in every way possible to assist in their efforts."

Walsh was arrested on Dec. 27, 2013 by Lillo and other Bayonne police officers on a warrant out of Sussex County.

Police said that Walsh resisted arrest and struggled with officers. In his lawsuit, Walsh said that Lillo repeatedly struck him in the face with his flashlight while he was handcuffed, causing permanent disfigurement. Walsh also said in the lawsuit that other Bayonne police officers at the scene did nothing to stop the beating.

 

[_CY_]

compensation for the wrongfully convicted varies from $80k per year in some states to nothing is examined ...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/north-carolina-man-exonerated-nearly-four-decades-prison/

 

[_CY_]

evidently Judges have unlimited immunity from all liabilities, even if they commit blatant errors.

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in 1971, a woman petitioned a Judge for permission to sterilize her "somewhat retarded" daughter. Without a hearing, evidence, or representation for the daughter, the judge granted permission. The daughter later tried to sue the judge, but the Supreme Court voted 5-3 to grant the judge immunity.