Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘crime and punishment’

When police officers drive drunk

When police officers are caught driving drunk, they naturally incur especially severe consequences, since it’s vital that they set an example of respect for the laws, and since recklessness is an especially dangerous trait to tolerate in persons who are issued public guns and given arbitrary authority over the lives and liberty of others.

Just kidding! For what really happens to police officers caught driving drunk, at least in one big metropolitan area, see this investigative series (week of Aug. 6) in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (via Ed Brayton). And for reminders of the law’s attitude toward ordinary citizens caught in the same circumstances, see, for example, Aug. 13, 2004, Apr. 19, 2005, and Dec. 2, 2005 (& welcome Instapundit readers).

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Nifong/Lacrosse update

Former Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong, railroader of the Duke Lacrosse 3, was found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to one day in jail; this punishment is for lying to the trial court about the existence of DNA evidence. He reported to jail today to serve his sentence. He has already been disbarred, of course.

Next to come is the players’ civil suit, though that money is unfortunately going to come from the taxpayers of Durham rather than from Nifong. The players are attempting to negotiate a settlement before filing their suit; they’re reportedly seeking $30 million, plus changes to the legal process to allegedly prevent the district attorney from hijacking a police investigation the way Nifong did. They intend to file suit within a month if the city doesn’t settle. (AP, Herald-Sun)

And then there’s this little tidbit:

Durham’s Police Department, which helped Nifong secure the indictments, has also come under criticism. A special committee probing police handling of the case stopped working last month, however, because the city’s liability insurance provider warned that the committee’s conclusions could provide material for lawsuits.

At this point, if we were Bizarro-Overlawyered I’d be rambling about “Profits over People” or something, but since we’re not, I’ll just point out that it simply demonstrates the perverse incentives of the legal system and its unbounded discovery rules. As long as everything you put on paper can be used against you — even in hindsight — then the incentive is not to put it on paper. (Of course, I’m not suggesting that the specific wrongdoing in Durham was only obvious in hindsight; people like K.C. Johnson figured it out right away. But the incentives are the same in every case.)

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Excessive fines

Too bad the courts have decided to leave the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause on the shelf, it might otherwise be helpful to everyone from Virginia motorists to sexual harassment defendants (Ralph Reiland, “The ignored amendment”, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Aug. 27). More resources here, here, and here (noting Supreme Court’s ruling in Browning-Ferris that the clause restrains excessive fines only when payable to the government, not private parties).

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“The Politics of Bananas”

Alvaro Vargos Llosa writes on the $25 million fine paid by Chiquita for funding the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia:

Ultimately, this is a story about double standards—those applied by Colombia’s institutions, which encouraged the AUC for many years by sanctifying the very rules of the game they now decry, and those applied by U.S. authorities, who did not hold Colombia to the same legal standards to which they held their own country.

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“Airman Who Alleged Rape Faces Court-Martial”

Amber Taylor points us to this AP article:

A female airman says she faces a court-martial next month because she refused to testify against three male airmen she accused of rape.

The woman is charged with one count of committing indecent acts and one count of consuming alcohol as a minor. The defense says the charges involve the same men she accused of raping her.

The woman dropped the charges after feeling “pressured”; the men agreed to nonjudicial punishments in exchange for immunity and their testimony against the woman. If the story is true (and that’s a big if: the only substantive comment in the coverage is from the defense attorneys, as the prosecutors are forbidden from commenting in detail while the case is pending), it is certainly something shocking: you’d expect that sort of thing in remote parts of Pakistan, not in the armed forces. Of course, as the Duke Lacrosse case showed, there are many other scenarios where a woman could allege rape, back down from her allegation, and legitimately be charged with wrongdoing. Court-martial is scheduled for September 24.

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Prosecutorial abuse “rarer than human rabies”?

So claims Joshua Marquis, vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, commenting on the Nifong-Duke lacrosse case. (Adam Liptak, “Prosecutor Becomes Prosecuted”, New York Times, Jun. 24). The reaction of Washington-based writer Carey Roberts: “Not by a long shot,” as witness a list with familiar names on it like Wenatchee, Wash. and the Scheck/Neufeld Innocence Project, as well as investigations by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Chicago Tribune, and more. (“The Nifong case – how rare?”, Washington Times, Jul. 29).

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A second bite at the apple

Minutes after being shot several times, Ibrahim Sidibe and Nicholas Watson identified 16-year old Francesco Kelly as the shooter. Kelly was arrested for the Silver Spring bus stop attack and convicted of first-degree attempted murder in 2003. Maryland’s high state court threw out the conviction on the grounds that Kelly’s inability to call two witnesses after the judge ruled (without a state objection) that their testimony was inadmissible hearsay violated Kelly’s rights. On retrial, a jury acquitted Kelly, to the dismay of Sidibe (who is paralyzed from the shooting) and Watson, who, perhaps implausibly, blames the shooting for his later criminal career. Kelly did not call the two witnesses whose testimony his attorneys previously claimed materially affected his ability to get a fair trial. The lawyers who made that argument to the Maryland Court of Appeals will suffer no consequences. (Ernesto Londoño, “As Suspect Is Acquitted, Shooting Victims Protest”, Washington Post, Aug. 2).

Read On…

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Helicopter chases and felony murder, cont’d

Arizona’s East Valley Tribune looks at the question (considered here Jul. 28 first and second post) of whether the fugitive being chased by Phoenix police could be held legally responsible for the crash of two news copters observing the scene. An unrelated local case puts a twist on an otherwise familiar “felony murder” fact pattern:

In an ongoing case, a Phoenix woman faces murder charges in a 2004 robbery attempt at a Mesa check-cashing store following the death of her accomplice. The accomplice was shot and killed by the store’s clerk, who also shot Rhonda Wright multiple times.

Prosecutors reasoned that the clerk would not have pulled his weapon if the assailants had not entered his store.

(Dennis Welch, “Homicide charges in helicopter crash a tough call”, East Valley Tribune, Jul. 29). More on felony murder and the Phoenix crash: Michelle Tsai, “News chopper down”, Slate, Jul. 30.

More: Mike Cernovich identifies another culprit in the chopper crash (Jul. 30).

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Fugitives responsible for risks of pursuit, cont’d

On Thursday we posted a story about a jury’s holding a Missouri fugitive responsible for the crash of a police car which was headed (at a great distance) toward his manhunt. Now similar issues might come up following a more spectacular catastrophe, yesterday’s crash of two news helicopters over central Phoenix while covering a live police pursuit, with the death of all four persons aboard. Phoenix police chief Jack Harris, per the coverage, “said he believes the man [fleeing police] will be held responsible for the deaths of the four TV station employees.” (“2 News Helicopters Collide; 4 Dead”, KPHO News 5, Jul. 27).

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