Government Tells Police to Lie to Judges and Defendants!

[rangerrebew]

Government Tells Police to Lie to Judges and Defendants!

By Onan Coca   / 26 June 2014   / 0 Comments   



 

 
Justice is supposed to blind.

Sometimes it seems that our police forces and our legal system have their hands tied as they try to mete out justice. It seems that way because they do. We’ve done that on purpose. Our founders in their wisdom realized that the government could easily abuse their power if certain rights were not guaranteed to our citizens.

So we have the right to stay silent and not incriminate ourselves, we have the right to an attorney, we have the right to face our accusers, and we have the right to know what we are being charged with. We have other rights as well, rights that handcuff the government while they investigate us. The government must get a warrant to search our property or to listen to our private conversations. The government must show probable cause to get those warrants, and the government must prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Sometimes the government oversteps its boundaries in their zeal to prosecute criminals.

Like in a recent case in Florida that should have EVERYONE worried.

trust-the-government-tshirtPolice in Florida have, at the request of the U.S. Marshals Service, been deliberately deceiving judges and defendants about their use of a controversial surveillance tool to track suspects, according to newly obtained emails.

At the request of the Marshals Service, the officers using so-called stingrays have been routinely telling judges, in applications for warrants, that they obtained knowledge of a suspect’s location from a “confidential source” rather than disclosing that the information was gleaned using a stingray.

A series of five emails (.pdf) written in April, 2009, were obtained today by the American Civil Liberties Union showing police officials discussing the deception. The organization has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with police departments throughout Florida seeking information about their use of stingrays.

“Concealing the use of stingrays deprives defendants of their right to challenge unconstitutional surveillance and keeps the public in the dark about invasive monitoring by local police,” the ACLU writes in a blog post about the emails. “And local and federal law enforcement should certainly not be colluding to hide basic and accurate information about their practices from the public and the courts.”

 

 
…

ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed Wessler called the move “truly extraordinary and beyond the worst transparency violations” the group has seen regarding documents detailing police use of the technology.

While we want to support those who work to protect us from criminals – we must remind them that the checks on their power are in place to protect us, the innocent, from them. It may make prosecuting criminals harder – but it makes protecting the rights of the innocent easier. As we are learning with each new Obama Administration scandal the government is not made up of angels and our Constitutional rights are the only thing protecting us, the masses, from the unwieldy power of the government. We must demand that the government abide by the law, no matter how good their reason for breaking the rules.

Read more at http://eaglerising.com/6982/government-tells-police-lie-judges-defendants/#769v6S2FVAJUH8Sj.99

[Oceander]

The 5 emails are here:  http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ACLU-Florida-Stingray-Police-Emails.pdf

[Oceander]

From the wikipedia article on stingrays:

A stingray is a controversial electronic surveillance device for remotely capturing data from mobile telephones.  It is designed to mimic a cell tower so all the mobile phones in the area communicate with it and provide information, including location data.  This can be done even when the phone is not being used to make a call.

[GourmetDan]

Police have been lying to judges and defendants for years and it's just now become a problem?

[Oceander]

Police have been lying to judges and defendants for years and it's just now become a problem?

good point

[rangerrebew]

Police have been lying to judges and defendants for years and it's just now become a problem?

I suspect that are also a good many judges who ignore the truth to rule in favor of the cause de jour.

[Oceander]

I suspect that are also a good many judges who ignore the truth to rule in favor of the cause de jour.

at the state trial level this is God's own truth (regrettably); although it's not always a cause de jour, frequently it's some personal bias or prejudice of the judge which, in criminal cases, most often tends to be a pro-police, anti-accused, bias.

[EC]

Can you expand on that please?

It's always interesting to take a peek under the hood of systems and institutions.

[Oceander]

Can you expand on that please?

It's always interesting to take a peek under the hood of systems and institutions.

expand on what?

[EC]

Dammit - I missed the quote again! 

frequently it's some personal bias or prejudice of the judge which, in criminal cases, most often tends to be a pro-police, anti-accused, bias.

I don't doubt it's the case, just curious as to your more personal observations of that happening (and why) since you work within the system.

[Oceander]

Dammit - I missed the quote again! 

I don't doubt it's the case, just curious as to your more personal observations of that happening (and why) since you work within the system.

simple situation that crops up in misdemeanor criminal cases all the time in NY:  the accused files her omnibus motion which includes a request that the court dismiss the charges because the prosecutor blew the speedy trial time limit - for these purposes assume that it's a rock-solid valid argument.  the arraignment/pretrial judge doesn't read the motion and summarily denies it, a decision that is blatantly wrong under the controlling statute and all of the case law.  the accused now has two choices, both unpalatable:

(1) accept the prosecution's plea offer of a plea to a lesser charge (NY prosecutors like to use disorderly conduct, which is a "violation" and thus not a "crime" under the NY Penal Law), but forfeit the right to appeal the judge's denial of the motion, or

(2) go through the time, expense, stress, risk, and publicity of a trial just so that, if she is convicted, she can get to an appellate court to have the pretrial/arraignment judge's blatantly wrong decision reversed and her conviction reversed.  Keep in mind that if she wins, which is great, she's still gone through all of the rigors, has probably almost bankrupted herself, and there is probably a publicly available account of the charges and the trial even though the entire case is automatically sealed because she was acquitted.  It's even worse if she's convicted and then wins on appeal as not only will she be financially and emotionally broken, the publicly available information - e.g., a blurb in some local newspaper or a comment on the case on some blog - will contain the fact of the conviction, which will always haunt her so long as someone can find that information even though, again, the case has been sealed.

NY misdemeanor pretrial/arraignment judges do that all the time; they are often retired cops or have other law enforcement experience and frequently tend to be anti-accused - along the lines of "if you weren't guilty the police wouldn't have arrested you" - and so they tend to rule against the accused even when doing so is flagrantly wrong.

The same thing happens at trial with, for example, rulings on evidentiary issues that are clearly wrong but which will never be corrected unless the accused has the intestinal fortitude to get to an appellate court to have the ruling reversed.

And this all assumes the accused has the financial wherewithal to pay for an attorney to do the case through to an appeals court.  If the accused is a person of limited means, they will almost never get that opportunity in a misdemeanor case and even in many felony cases - pro bono sounds kewl but it's really only the "sexy" cases that get a lot of useful pro bono work; generally, an accused person of limited means is either Sh*t Out of Luck because they have just too much money to get a public defender appointed, or they get an overworked, overstressed public defender appointed who will do a workmanly job on the case but is not going to be there to take on an appeal.