HeiBlog

You might remember my friend who was accused of running through a stop sign. He had words with an officer that initially didn’t seem like general, all around dick. Then you might also remember the hearing last February where the officer never said he saw us not stop at the sign and the district magistrate sided with him instead of the two citizens who said the cop was wrong. My friend appealed that farce of a decision and we had our day in Lancaster County Court on August 21, 2007. The result of the hearing had added to my fear that the tendency to prosecute the accused as much as possible in this country is steadily increasing.

My friend and I came into the trial with a common general outlook, hopeful but not too optimistic. My wish was that the cop didn’t show and this would all be done with since a dismissal was more likely. This was not the case and our “public servant” showed up in full colors. Since I had to leave that afternoon to return to Washington we requested to be put early in the schedule.

Our request was fulfilled. On entering the court room our lawyer turned around and commented that we should “be very polite to this judge.” I didn’t appreciate why she said that until after the trial was over. The officer was the first to give his statement with questions being asked by an assistant DA. This is where things started to look up. The officer clearly stated in his testimony that when he came to the intersection he saw us stop at the stop sign. The reason he pulled us over, he said, was for almost colliding with his vehicle (I forget the actually law we could have violated in that version of the story). After this statement our lawyer looked over her shoulder to me (I was in the audience) and give a quick wink. This was the seal for the case, the rest was going to be double checking and formality. The officer continued with his version of the argument between him and my friend concluding with that he threatened to hold charge us with disorderly conduct if we continued to argue with him. Actually, his exact words were “leave now or the cuffs come on.”

Now it was our turn to question. Our lawyer confirmed the charge on the citation, failing to stop at the stop sign. She also checked that he actually did see us stop. My friend had taken photos of the intersection that she used to establish the scene. Everything seemed to be going fine. As we got into my testimony as a witness and my friend’s it was clear that this hearing, like the other, was two opinions/memories against one. We held hard to the fact that the officer was not in the intersection at all when we started to make our left turn. My friend even went to the point of stating on the record that the officer was lying.

It was my impression that closing statements were standard in a hearing of this nature. Both parties made one in the initial hearing with the district magistrate back in February. It was pretty obvious what our lawyer was going to say, the citation says X and the officer just stated Y and they don’t match up. She might have brought up reasonable doubt as well. But, nobody got a chance to say anything. After the cross examination of my friend was complete and the re-direct option was waved, the judge just handed down his decision based on credibility and sided with the officer. As the sentencing was passed my friend looked around the room at some of the courtroom staff and there was a clear look of amazement on their face.

We were all floored by the decision. Our lawyer apologized, but really she did the best that she could. Since she had another case that morning she stuck around and listened in on some of the other cases. All of the ones she viewed ended in guilty decisions. The presiding judge is a hard ass, everybody is guilty of something. She was of the opinion that with any other judge in the court we would have faired much better.

All this time and resource spend on one officer that was pissed that we almost hit him and how biased the courts were toward the police started to get me steamed. I would ask myself how they handled more serious infractions. All my friend was going to get was a fine and some points on his license, not that big of a deal in the broader picture. What if there was real money (not $40), jail time, or a felony charge in the cards? Do they fuck that up as well?

There have been a several events the last few years that have caught my attention. After 9/11 many of the mail and biohazard laws switched around. In 1993, Thomas C. Butler, MD found some plague samples missing and reported this to the Texas Tech University safety folks. The Feds soon get involved and soon he is charged with a whole raft of very, very serious charges including bioterrorism. Many of the other charges involved violating federal transportation and shipping rules for biohazards materials. Adding in some fraud and money being moved around in questionable fashions, the Feds found 69 things to charge him with. In December of 2003 he was found guilty on 47 of those counts. In the end he was given was cleared of the most serious charges, but still spend 2 years in prison and had to pay about $54,000 in fines and restitution. You do have to wonder though if it was worth it, destroying the life of a well respected scientist and physician over a mistake that less than 10 years ago would have not made new outside of the university safety office. The New York Times has some good write-ups on the whole travesty.

In a related case the performance artist and Buffalo University art professor Steve Kurtz is being charged with mail fraud. In May 2004 he awoke to find that his wife had stopped breathing. Like any American with telephone he called 911. EMTs and police arrived to see that Kurtz was preparing for an art exhibit at MassMoCA highlighting the identification of genetically modified produce. He had the basic biological laboratory equipment that you would need to grow bacterial cell cultures and extract DNA along with some harmless bacteria that he had obtained from a friend at the University of Pittsburgh. This triggered the FBI coming in, the block around his house being cordoned off (full Hazmat treatment), him being detained for 22 hours, and many of his processions being impounded (all of the equipment for the exhibit, a book he was working on etc.) along with his wife’s body. In the end the New York State Department of Health confirmed the bacteria was harmless. Kurtz had also made similar exhibits at other art museums with no incident. In the end the terrorism charges were dropped. But, the Department of Justice has found issue with how he obtained the bacteria. It appears that the friend he obtained the bacteria from violated the material transfer agreement with the source company. This could be interpreted as mail fraud, but by the Justice Department prosecution guide lines this type of case would not normally be pressed. The CAE Defense fund has a very good (but still slanted) analysis of the post-insident prosecution. Pre-911 Kurtz might have faced a felony charge and a maximum of 5 years in prison. Thought I wonder if it would have gone that far. After the Patriot Act changed the penalty for mail fraud he could face up to 25 years.

The list continues. Michael Righi was arrested in Brooklyn, Ohio when he refused to let a clerk check his bag and further refused to how his ID to the local police officer that was called in. He detailed the full event on his blog. Finally his recorded was cleared with come compromise on his part after spending around $8,000 spent in legal fees. A 70 year old women was arrested in Utah for not giving her name to an officer when he was giving her a ticket for not watering her lawn, a violation of a local zoning ordinance. During the arrest she struggled and injured her nose. And yes, by “arrest” I mean cuffed, booked, and detained (i.e. jailed). Did I mention she was 70? Charges are not being pressed. More personally I know another fellow who was pulled over by the police for drunk driving. After testing negative in 5 breathalyzer tests and the cops refusal to preform a more accurate blood test, they released him, only to press charges of reckless driving because he didn’t use his signal when changing lanes to let the offices pass (when they actually wanted to pull him over). It is cheaper for him to plead guilty than to fight the charge.

Let’s not forget the outspoken student Andrew Meyer at John Kerry’s last University of Florida town hall meeting. Meyer went over his time limit and was asked to leave the microphone. He did not comply and ended up being forced down and arrested when he resisted the police after he finished up and walked away from the mic. Events escalated to the polices needing to use A Taser to subdue him. There is some debate as to whether Mr. Meyer is a victim of police violence or an opportunistic prankster. In this age of camera phones you can find live footage of this insident and other people, being subdued by law enforcement offices with Tasers, (at UCLA for example).

I’ve just listed the examples that I have come across in my reading. In our current information-driven culture newsevents spreads much more quickly than any other time in human history. At the same time you have freer expression of opinion at many levels of reporting quality. That said, the end consumer needs to be even more mindful of the source of their information. For myself I do not know for a fact if the various law enforcement a justice institutions in our country are “out to get” more people than they were in the past. But, it you look in the news and look at the increases in rates of incarceration over last two decades and you hear more cases where the government is clearly trying to get somebody for anything they can find (even if it is not related to the original charge), you really do have to wonder if our society’s dedication to the Rule of Law has been perverted over the last 20-30 years.

I don’t purport to have a full view of this trend. But, I do know that as an aware member of our society I have been hearing more about more incidents and there is more discussion about this topic than there was 10 years ago. It is encouraging that people can still hold discourse on things that concern them. As Americans this is our right. But, should be be forced in to obedience by fear of unknown accusations by the State? Are the cases people I listed above really of danger to the over all welfare of our society? I don’t think there is a conspiracy here, but I do seriously wonder if the State has gotten away from the people it is supposed to serve. We as a nation could be suffering from mission creep. Keep your eyes open and me might make it out of this.