Tag Archives: criminal justice

Our criminal justice system is no “system” at all

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Law and JusticeWhen we think of the Salem witch trials or Sacco and Vanzetti, our impulse is to discount that anything like that could ever happen now.

Yet it does.

We have all sorts of things going wrong in our judicial “system.”

Nor has it gotten any better in the Trump-Sessions notion of “criminal justice.”

We have too many cases because “stats” drive funding rather than policy driving order and peace.

The more sensational the case, the more winning the case “trumps” doing justice.

The more sensational the case, the more likely that the accused doesn’t have the resources to fight back.

We flood our courts with “drug” cases but not like the ones I handled as a federal prosecutor in New York against large heroin suppliers.

We spend our tax dollars chasing mostly kids and adults who possess to use, in such small quantities, mostly for personal use, and they are arrested on ruses – faux probable cause to toss cars with dogs – a kind of catch and release if they find nothing after the “search” – all so they can affix a stigma to the apprehended for pot or prescription drugs that, by the fact of arrest, may haunt their quality of life, foreclosing opportunities life-long. Continue reading →

Justice in Virginia – worse than imperfect!

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loudouncourtThere is this wrong-headed notion in Virginia that, if we could just get better paid criminal defense lawyers with more administrative and investigative resources, that we would have criminal justice in Virginia.

That’s just not the case.

Assuring the Accused of a decent defense in Virginia is but a small part of the failure of our so-called criminal justice system.

We are convicting innocent people in Virginia because of false eye-witness testimony, false confessions, over-eager snitches, faulty forensics, true, some bad defense lawyers, but also, and this is the worst of all, because of prosecutorial misconduct and police misconduct.

In this last category, what we often mean by misconduct is that the government is concealing or destroying evidence that is exclusively within its possession that demonstrates, or tends to demonstrate, that the Accused is innocent, or his accusers are not reliable, or the sentence excessive. Continue reading →

The “black flower” of civilized society

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A row of cells at the model penitentiary in Philadelphia (photo by John P. Flannery)

A row of cells at the model penitentiary in Philadelphia (photo by John P. Flannery)

Prisons are factories of crime where the convicted, with little hope of returning to “civilized” society, decide to make their way outside the law when they’re released.

The prison conditions don’t help – the cliques, mob tanks and gang corridors prompt violence and abuse between inmates. There are “correction” officers ignoring and even facilitating illegal drugs, consensual sex, rape, torture, and escape; these “law” officers are “instructing” the inmates how the world “really” works. When a prisoner is ill, the institution often fails to provide critical medical attention. Cruel, yes, but not unusual. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, we have some 40 doctors and 14 psychiatrists to care for about 30,000 prisoners.

When I was a NY federal prosecutor, we investigated and prosecuted prison corruption, wiring inmates and guards we “turned,” but there’s hardly a prison or jail in America to this day that could come up “clean” if carefully scrutinized.

Perhaps what’s worse is that we openly allow and encourage prison wardens to confine prisoners to solitary for indefinite periods. Continue reading →

Law and disorder

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lawDisorder

We have law and disorder in Loudoun County because of our Loudoun County Commonwealth Attorney and our Sheriff.

Our county slogan is, “We byde our time.”  Well, we’re finished “byding” our time.

A popular long-running criminal justice show, “Law and Order,” begins every episode, saying, that: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate and equally important groups, the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders,” and then the intro concludes, “these are their stories.”

Well, we’ve got a sad story to tell in Loudoun County.

Our Commonwealth Attorney, Jim Plowman, prosecuted a black man for felonies when three Deputy Sheriffs violated the Ashburn resident’s constitutional right to be left alone.

More than that, this crack law enforcement duo, of Jim and Sheriff Mike Chapman, still can’t figure out, after 1 ½ years, who and how one or more Deputies allegedly embezzled more than $200,000 from the Sheriff’s Office.  At the least, that was awkward!

Only days ago, the Commonwealth Attorney, Jim Plowman, dissed his law enforcement “partner,” Sheriff Mike Chapman. Continue reading →

Jail House Snitches Lie

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jailCellWe all know jail house snitches are of a lowly character that can’t be trusted.  When I was a NY federal prosecutor, I would never think of using one in the grand jury or on the witness stand in a criminal case.

However convincing the rat, however seemingly useful the testimony to make your prosecution, you had to worry that you were being had – so that the snitch could get what he wanted, some consideration on his sentence, favors to ease his custody, or funds and rewards for his commissary or outside bank account for “cooperating.”

Often the jail house snitch seemingly offers “inside information” on what the target of your investigation said about an offense while the target was in jail, in the yard, at the sally port, by his cell, “admitting” to some aspect of the case you’re pursuing that helps you “make” your case.

These mimetic monsters absorb small and large details from an unwary or reckless prosecutor’s questions and weave a story that “fits,” that helps make a conviction possible in a difficult case where the prosecutor may feel he’s suffering an evidential shortfall.

Our criminal justice system is hardly perfect to begin with but taking one of these snitches and adding them to the mix of a jury trial is to infect an already challenged process with an ingredient you almost certainly know is flawed.  Yet it happens all too often that prosecutors use these snitches at trial in capital or murder cases.

Another challenging aspect of any criminal prosecution is how you use accomplice testimony, meaning someone who was involved in the crime, who “flips,” and agrees to testify for the government in exchange for some consideration on the charges he’ll face or the time he’ll spend in custody, from probation to fewer years than if he took his chances at trial.  You can appreciate how risky it is to shore up an accomplice’s testimony with a jail house snitch.

We will likely be having court arguments, even evidentiary hearings with prosecutors and investigators testifying, so that the court may decide whether a jail house snitch lied at a first degree murder trial in Loudoun County that resulted in a conviction on June 16, 2014, and a jury recommendation that the Accused be imprisoned for life.  Continue reading →

It’s not perfect but it’s the best judicial system in the world? Really?

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When we think of the Salem witch trials or Sacco and Vanzetti, our impulse is to discount that anything like that could ever happen now.

Yet it does.

We have all sorts of things going wrong in our judicial “system.”

We have too many cases because “stats” drive funding rather than policy driving order and peace.

The more sensational the case, the more winning the case trumps doing justice.

The more sensational the case, the more likely that the accused doesn’t have the resources to fight back.

We flood our courts with “drug” cases but not like the ones I handled as a federal prosecutor in New York against large heroin suppliers. Continue reading →