He has now been completely exonerated. He was released in 2005 after it became clear another man was responsible. In 2011, a judge affirmatively ruled that New York State Police troopers had coerced his confession. Furthermore, he has now been awarded $5.5 million for suffering nine years of false imprisonment.
]]> It’s clear that coerced confessions do happen in the U.S. According to the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Innocence Project, a full 25 percent of those the project has exonerated were coerced into confessing.Gristwood tried to explain it to his jury, but it was hard for them to believe. “They've never been in my shoes,” he says. It's easy for them to sit there and say, 'Why would somebody do that?' Well, (the troopers) used special police tactics to get me to confess.”
He was interrogated non-stop for 16 hours in a hot, claustrophobic room. It was not videotaped, per State Police policy. He came to the station to help the police find the person who assaulted his wife, but he had actually been arrested without being told.
A 2-1/2 pack-a-day smoker, he wasn’t allowed even one cigarette in 16 hours. He had a cold and runny nose, but he wasn’t allowed even a tissue. He was so sleep-deprived he kept nodding off. One officer yelled at him so vituperatively that his spit hit Gristwood in the face. Gristwood began to feel “wicked pain” in his chest and thought he was having a heart attack.
Gristwood says he asked for a lawyer; the troopers testified he did not. Although he had begged them for a smoke break and was denied, the troopers also testified he had been free to leave the entire time.
Finally, the troopers threatened Gristwood with the loss of his children if he didn’t sign a confession. He signed.
That confession would itself separate him from his kids for 9 years. Nearly a decade of false imprisonment cost him and his children precious year and the family bond. His $5.5 million award, which he won’t get until New York finishes appealing the case, amounts to $1,600 per day spent in prison.
Is it enough?
Source: syracuse.com, “Dan Gristwood: Troopers did little things to coerce a 'confession',” John O'Brien, May 13, 2013; syracuse.com, “Wrongly imprisoned nearly a decade, father plays catch-up with his five kids,” John O'Brien, May 12, 2013
]]>The importance of the CCRB depends largely on how much independent authority it has -- and is perceived by the public to have -- to hold NYPD officers accountable for police misconduct without going through department officials. Unfortunately, the memorandum of understanding didn't completely eliminate disputes about the board's prosecution rights.
]]> According to the New York Daily News, the NYPD recently shut down the CCRB’s attempt to bring administrative charges against two officers accused of performing an illegal stop-and-frisk search in clear violation of the person’s rights. The reason? One of the accused officers did not have a “significant” history of disciplinary problems, which NYPD officials claimed was required before the board could proceed.When the Daily News asked the CCRB’s commissioner whether a past history of misconduct was required before the board could act, however, he stated that the memorandum of understanding is “unambiguous” and does not require any such thing.
Reporters followed up with the NYPD, which backed down. The administrative cases against the two officers will now be allowed to proceed.
When cases of police misconduct have already been substantiated, the NYPD clearly has no legitimate interest in suppressing disciplinary actions. The only thing accomplished by doing so is to hush up evidence of misconduct to protect the officers or to avoid a public outcry.
Citizens of New York, however, have a right to know how commonly substantiated police misconduct occurs in our city, and we cannot tolerate law enforcement attempts to keep such facts from the public.
Source: New York Daily News, "NYPD allows complaint board to prosecute cops for misconduct," Rocco Parascandola, May 9, 2013
]]>Even before the grand jury’s decision, many observers, including the Herald News editorial board, were shocked by the prosecution’s failure to quickly announce an excessive force investigation. Why, they asked, did two trained policemen need to use deadly force to subdue a teenager armed with no firearms? How did things go from the teen turning himself in to being cornered in a garage and brandishing whatever weapon-like objects at hand?
]]> “Six months later, what happened inside that Garfield garage is less of a mystery, but the why remains elusive,” reads the Herald News editorial. “Something went wrong. It may not have been criminal, but it was deadly, just the same.”That six-month delay in the investigation is the background for how one local man got embroiled in a 13-month-long criminal case of his own.
The 53-year-old man, a social worker and longtime coach, demanded answers about the young man’s death. Last March, he repeatedly called the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, and he urged others to do so.
He was arrested and charged with harassment. That case has been going on for more than a year, and its resolution was recently postponed again.
The so-called harassment appears to have been effective, as the prosecutor’s office announced the day after the flood of phone calls that an excessive force case would indeed be presented to a grand jury. Instead of prosecuting the officers, however, the county focused on the activist who refused to stop calling to demand answers the office wasn’t prepared to provide.
"If they don't want to deal with the public, then they shouldn't work for the public," says the president of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government. "This is a misuse of prosecutorial resources. They should be going after real criminals, not concerned citizens."
The activist was offered a chance to plead guilty to the lesser charge of being a public nuisance, but he flatly turned that down.
“I’m a public nuisance for advocating or questioning? I’m not going with that,” he said.
Source: NorthJersey.com, "Garfield harassment ruling expected," Kim Lueddeke, April 29, 2013
NorthJersey.com, "Verdict postponed in harassment case related to Garfield police shooting," Kim Lueddeke, April 30, 2013
NorthJersey.com, "Herald News: No arrests in Malik Williams' death," June 28, 2012
Even if it were true that the policy could be proven to have reduced the murder rate, there would still be serious constitutional problems. Our constitution has long been interpreted as prohibiting law enforcement from stopping and frisking people without reasonable suspicion that they are engaging in or about to attempt crimes, or that they are armed and dangerous. Without reasonable suspicion, a stop and frisk violates our Fourth Amendment rights, and the NYPD's policy easily demonstrates why.
]]> Statistics compiled directly from NYPD reports by the New York Civil Liberties Union demonstrate that the NYPD stops and frisks far more minorities than whites. Between 2003 and 2012, less than 10 percent of those stopped were white. Also, the vast majority of those stopped -- an average of 88 percent between 2002 and 2012 -- were completely innocent.Those statistics make it very hard for the NYPD to claim that every single stop and frisk was based on reasonable suspicion.
We don't have to decide whether to choose between the stop-and-frisk policy and our safety, however, because the New York Post's argument that the policy saves lives is, in fact, completely unsupported by the evidence. The murder rate is indeed dropping -- and has been since the mid-90s. Its fluctuations simply don't track with fluctuations in use of stop and frisk.
For example, in 2002 the NYPD increased its rate of stop-and-frisks by 600 percent over the previous year, but there were only 10 percent fewer murders that year. More important, only 1.9 percent of NYPD stops in 2011 found weapons, which suggests that very few if any murders were actually diverted by the policy.
The truth is, we don't have to accept police misconduct, racial profiling and intrusions on our privacy as the price of safety.
Source: The Huffington Post, "The New York Post Misleads, Again, This Time on Stop and Frisk," New York Editor Christopher Mathias, April 22, 2013
]]>As early as 1990, the Chicago Reader began reporting that the Chicago PD was actively using torture to obtain confessions in criminal cases. As late as 2002, according to the Reader, neither the State's Attorney nor the Chicago PD's Office of Professional Standards even kept records of police brutality complaints, or of the outcomes of such investigations.
It seems to observers that the Chicago PD and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office have actively resisted investigating the examples of shocking torture that kept coming and coming. Even when Burge was convicted of lying under oath in 2010, the city sat on its hands.
]]> Burge couldn't be convicted of his role in encouraging officers to use torture because the statute of limitations had passed. There seems to be no question now, however, that the torture was real and widespread. The Illinois Torture Relief and Inquiry Commission has performed extensive investigations which resulted in a number of people being granted hearings on their police brutality claims.After decades in which no significant action was taken, a class-action petition was filed last September to force the naming of a new special prosecutor. On Thursday, a judge granted that petition, acknowledging that the Cook County State's Attorney's Office has an inherent conflict of interest going back to the time when former Mayor Richard Daley was the county's top prosecutor.
The current state's attorney for Cook County claimed she had no conflict, but the judge ruled that she was tainted by her former position as a top deputy under her predecessor, who had represented Burge as his private lawyer.
Meanwhile, there are certainly people in Illinois prisons today whom police tortured into false confessions. The most the State of Illinois has offered them is the chance to prove they were victimized -- if they have any evidence. If they aren't able to prove they were tortured, they will remain in prison. That is a completely unacceptable way to resolve criminal cases in which the prosecution's evidence may actually be false. It's far from enough for victims of torture.
Sources:
The man's wrongful imprisonment lawsuit claims that the department was negligent. It does not yet specify damages, although he is seeking a jury trial. Aspokesperson for the Department of Corrections commented only that the agency plans to "let the legal process work and see what becomes of it."
According to the lawsuit, the man was convicted in three cases between 1996 and 2004. The convictions were for robbery, felon in possession of a firearm, eluding police and operating a vehicle without owner consent. The sentences were to have been served concurrently, meaning at the same time. Instead, prison officials apparently thought that one of them was to be served consecutively, or after the other sentences were complete. If his sentences were properly calculated, he would have been released on June 18, 2011.
]]> The man, who says his crimes were fueled by a cocaine addiction for which he has now received treatment, told reporters that he didn't find out he was being held too long until prison officials suddenly called him and explained he would be released the following day -- 417 days after he should have been set free."I kind of broke down," he told reporters.
The department apparently discovered the error when an employee was evaluating to the man's application for early release. Part of that process includes calculating a prisoner's mandatory release date, when the state has no further right to hold him. The employee immediately reported the problem to a supervisor, which led to his release on Aug. 7, 2012.
A sympathetic judge credited his extra prison time against his post-release supervision, but that's not enough.
"It's real, real lonely," he said, describing his prison experience. "You put a plant in a dark room, what happens to it?"
He now makes around $100 a day for a fiberglass fabrication company, and he believes he should receive at least that amount for each day of his wrongful imprisonment. Depending on how that was calculated that would amount to between $30,000 and $41,700. Is that in any way enough for a year of his life?
Source: Daily Union, "Inmate held 417 days too long," Associated Press, March 28, 2013
]]>According to the lawsuit the family, with the two-year-old in a stroller, was headed for Manhattan from the Atlantic Avenue station on Aug. 9. Because of the stroller, they were entering through a service entrance when the two officers confronted them forcefully for allegedly skipping out on the subway fare.
Keep in mind that fare skipping is less than a misdemeanor and is typically enforced by Transit Authority officers, not the NYPD. Even if the woman was criminally charged with five counts, the maximum penalty she could have received for each was a $25 fine and/or 10 days in jail. More likely, she would have been assessed a $100 fine.
]]> "The aggressiveness of the officers' demeanors," reads the lawsuit, "had upset the four-year-old daughter, and her mother bent down to console her and tell her, 'everything will be OK.'"It wasn't. Her movement apparently prompted the officers to pepper-spray her so harshly that the cloud of noxious gas not only struck her and her daughter nearly full in the face but also engulfed her husband, the two-year-old girl and the baby.
The lawsuit says that all of the children screamed in pain. The mother plunged to her knees and nearly fell from the platform, and the two-year-old went into "fits of vomiting." Both parents suffered eye injuries, and all three of the children required medical attention from the spray.
Unsatisfied, the two officers then apparently arrested and handcuffed the mother in front of her terrorized children, leaving her husband to make his way home with an infant in his arms, a two-year-old in a stroller and a four-year-old in hand -- all of them injured and screaming. Then, the woman says, the officers shoved her, handcuffed, down the stairs.
When the mother appeared in City Court, her charges were essentially dismissed, as long as she doesn't get arrested again.
"After the attack," the lawsuit states, "all three children...are now afraid to ride the subways and become afraid when they see police officers. The four year-old cried herself to sleep for weeks, and after the incident the two-year-old began waking up in the night crying for her mother."
To top it off, the mother says the two officers have continued to harass her and her family to the extent that they are forced to avoid the Atlantic Avenue station.
The lawsuit claims the family's civil rights were violated under both New York's and the federal constitutions, and the family claims assault and battery by the officers. They are seeking punitive damages.
Source: Courthouse News Service, "Mom Says NYPD Pepper-Sprayed Baby," Adam Klasfeld, April 1, 2013
]]>After an exhaustive review of evidence on appeal, the man and his attorneys concluded that he had been a victim of malicious prosecution. According to the federal lawsuit, Los Angeles County Sheriff's detectives knowingly hid evidence that would have freed him -- from both the defense and the county attorney.
Although the innocent man had a number of reliable alibi witnesses, the key evidence leading to his conviction was apparently eyewitness testimony by two men who said they had seen the driver of the car that peeled off after the shooting. According to the complaint, it wasn't just the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses that resulted in the wrongful conviction, however -- Los Angeles County Sheriff's detectives ran bogus, coercive photo lineups to get the identifications they wanted. When they didn't get the right results, the man claims, they hid the problem and may even have lied on the stand.
]]> The key witness, who testified at trial that the exonerated man was the shooter, admitted later that he didn't have his glasses with him when detectives presented him with the photo lineup. When he couldn't pick out the suspect, the officers "coerced" and "intimidated" him into picking the defendant.Another man was presented to the county attorney, judge and jury as having been certain of his photo identification. However, the exonerated man later found notes in the detectives' own handwriting saying that the second man couldn't immediately identify the defendant, either.
When a third man told the Sheriff's department that he could not identify the shooter, he was not called to testify. Instead, the complaint states, one of the detectives told the jury that the third man had, in fact, identified him.
Even though the U.S. Constitution requires police and prosecutors to disclose any potentially exculpatory evidence to the defendant, the Sheriff's detectives did not tell anyone about these issues.
Perhaps most shocking, prosecutors introduced the murdered man's dying words into evidence without understanding their full context. The dying words included such statements as "that fucker in the yellow Pinto shot me' and that ' it had to do with something with Jeanne [the ex-wife], it looked like somebody she hangs around with or somebody she hung around with.'"
Prosecutors used those statements against the now exonerated man, but the Sheriff's deputies did not tell the prosecution that there had been an earlier attempt on the maintenance man's life -- a motorcyclist had tried to run him over -- and numerous witnesses say the ex-wife had admitted hiring a contract killer.
For this apparently deliberate plan to hide evidence of his innocence from prosecutors and the court, the exonerated man is seeking only punitive damages against the county and reimbursement of his court costs.
Source: Courthouse News Service, "Free After 27 Years, Man Sues L.A. County," Matt Reynolds, March 20, 2013
]]>The study, titled "Qualitative Findings on the Use and Outcomes of Segregation in IL DOC," was quietly published on the Vera Institute's website in Sept. 2011. It existence remained secret until this month, when Courthouse News Service obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The study wasn't precisely intended to protect prisoners' rights but, basically, to find out whether solitary confinement -- which costs as much as 50 percent more than standard incarceration methods -- was effective at preventing recidivism among inmates.
]]> The report found definitively that it is not.The researchers followed more than 10,000 Illinois inmates as they were released from solitary back into the general prison population and for a year after that transition. On average, those inmates spent two months in solitary confinement, 99 percent of the time for minor offenses the Illinois Bureau of Corrections calls "class-300" and "class-400" violations, such as disobeying a direct order, insolence, and having contraband property.
After following those people who had experienced solitary confinement, the study concluded that time spent in solitary does not have any impact on the inmates' recidivism within the first year. Furthermore, even among those sent to solitary for more serious violations "were not more likely to commit new violations during the first 12 months of release into general population."
The Illinois Bureau of Corrections never released these results to the public, even though the study was asked about during a public meeting in 2012. The John Howard Association, an Illinois-based prisoners' rights organization, said that the 2010 controversy over a program called "MGT Push," which revoked a previous requirement that felons spend at least two months in prison, had marginalized reformers and created a "toxic" environment for attempts at prison reform.
Instead of acting on the report, Illinois instead focused its efforts on shutting down its supermax prison, its most secure women's prison, and two halfway houses. The John Howard Association opposed the plan because they believe it will worsen overcrowding in Illinois prisons. Currently, the state has an estimated 49,255 people in its prisons, which were designed to hold only 34,000.
"The answer to this can't be to pack up more people into less space," said its director.
Source: Courthouse News Service, "Scathing Study on Solitary Buried by Politics," Adam Klasfeld, March 13, 2013
]]>They left him there for nearly two years. More than that, they ignored and neglected him for nearly two years without ever bringing him to trial.
After his eventual release and treatment for the substantially more serious mental health problems caused by his hellish experience, the man sued the county for false imprisonment and a jury awarded him $22 million. After the county appealed that verdict, the county and the man they had locked away for nearly two years have agreed to a $15.5 million settlement.
]]> According to reports, he tried again and again to get someone to realize he was trapped in this modern-day oubliette. His medications were refilled by a doctor who never saw him in person, which violates the commonly accepted standards for medical treatment. The ordinarily healthy man began to deteriorate, both physically and mentally. At one point, he was forced to pull his own tooth out by hand because he was denied dental care.Finally, his mental state deteriorated to the point where he was ruled incompetent to participate in his own defense. Only then were his pleas and those of his family acknowledged.
Pre-trial detention isn't always illegal. When the defendant is charged with a serious offense and is the court determines that he or she is either a flight risk or poses a serious risk to public safety, the judge may order the defendant to be held before trial, or set bail as a guarantee the defendant will show up for trial. Drunk driving, however, is typically charged as a misdemeanor offense, and DWI charges rarely result in pre-trial detention.
What Doña Ana County did to this man was monstrous. False imprisonment is always unjust, but this was grotesque.
On top of his preexisting clinical depression, he now has PTSD. It has also been reported that he is suffering from cancer. Doña Ana County has initiated a staff training improvement program.
Source: NPR, The Two-Way Blog, "County Will Pay $15.5 Million To Man Who Spent 22 Months In Solitary Confinement," Bill Chappell, March 7, 2013
]]>With a sudden bang, eight Chicago police officers in military fatigues burst through the door, invaded their home and held the entire family at gunpoint. "Get on the ground!" they roared, and repeatedly referred to the group -- including the children and baby -- as "m--f--ers" even as they invaded their home.
The wife threw herself to the floor and the four older children fled to a back bedroom. One of the officers ordered the woman to "put the baby down" and shrieked at her to open the baby's hands presumably so they could verify that the 11-month-old wasn't holding a weapon or contraband in her tiny fingers.
]]> The woman asked the officers what this was about, but they told her to "shut the f--- up." The man called the local police station and asked for a supervisor to come out, but no supervisor ever came.As it turned out, the police had a warrant to arrest a man who was in some way connected to the second floor apartment. It clearly listed the second-floor apartment as the only place the police were authorized to search.
Once it was established that the officers were in the wrong place, some of the officers went upstairs, where the 13-year-old boy was alone. They burst into the apartment, turned off the lights, held the terrified boy at gunpoint, called him a "m--f--er" and aimed red lights in his eyes. One officer said, "'I started to Tase your grandmother and cousins," and another said "This is what happens when your grandma sells crack."
Did they find the suspect they had a warrant for? Well, yes. He was outside in the police cruiser the entire time.
The man tried to file a complaint at the police station the next day but was told it was too late to complain. Since only one of the officers ever identified himself, the family's federal police misconduct lawsuit had to name the others as "officers John Doe 1-8."
The family is suing the police for conspiracy to commit assault and battery, excessive use of force, unlawful detention, conspiracy, unlawful search, unreasonable seizure, and emotional distress. They are seeking punitive damages to punish the department's behavior.
Source: Courthouse News Service, "'Your Grandma Sells Crack,'" Jack Bouboushian, March 5, 2013
]]>Paternalistic decisions like this one may be meant well, but the U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled that they are an abuse of authority and violate defendants' rights.
In fact, the Supreme Court had unanimously ruled in a 2011 case called Tapia v. United States that it was unlawful for federal courts to lengthen a criminal sentence merely to promote a criminal defendant's rehabilitation.
]]> The Louisiana man appealed his sentence to the Fifth Circuit after the Supreme Court's ruling in Tapia had gone into effect, so it was now clear that the extended sentence had been unlawful. Unfortunately, the appellate court upheld it anyway.This was basically because the man's criminal defense lawyer hadn't objected to the sentence extension at the time, meaning that he essentially waived the defendant's ordinary right to appeal the sentence. With that waiver, in order to win he would now have to prove that the extended sentence was "clear error."
Since the trial judge didn't know at the time of sentencing that depriving someone of his liberty in order to encourage him to accept drug treatment was unlawful. Therefore, The Fifth Circuit said, the judge's decision was not clear error.
The Fifth Circuit was quite mistaken, according to the Supreme Court. Once it had ruled that such sentencing practices were illegal, no such sentence could legally be imposed.
"Plain error," the high court explained in essence, has little to do with whether the judge knew it was a mistake at the time. It is clear error whenever a court steps outside its legal sentencing authority in violation of a defendant's rights.
So, what will happen to the Louisiana man? The high court sent the case back to the lower courts to determine -- in light of this new ruling -- a lawful and appropriate sentence.
Sources:
The man, a former Manhattan restaurant manager, was charged with second-degree kidnapping in 1989 after he allegedly held an employee against his will because he suspected that person of pilfering money. He never admitted guilt, and in fact denied a plea offer from prosecutors. In 1990, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment for first-degree kidnapping -- a move the man says was in retaliation for his rejection of that plea offer.
]]> In 1990, when the first-degree indictment was filed, the defense had moved to dismiss it because New York's speedy trial law only allows prosecutors six months to bring felony charges. In this case, shockingly, the man had been forced to wait more than six months simply for prosecutors to turn over the grand jury minutes.The trial judge had allowed that 196-day delay to be subtracted from the six months allowed for the charges to be filed. He was convicted, sentenced to 15 years to life, and was released on parole in 2007 after serving 14-1/2 years.
The judge's exclusion of the 196-day delay was a mistake. Just before he was convicted, the New York State Court of Appeals had ruled in a case called People v. McKenna that such delays violate the defendant's right to a speedy trial, a right that prevents our government from keeping people incarcerated for long periods of time without trial.
The prosecutors should have known about that court decision. They should have alerted the trial judge that there was no question, considering the ruling in McKenna, that the 196-day delay could not be excluded from the six months they had before bringing him to trial. Their failure to do so was inexcusable, and if the trial judge had been told of the McKenna decision, the man could not have been tried.
Having established that the prosecutors had illegally tried him in violation of his speedy trial rights, the man argues that the prosecutors' failure to alert the judge to the McKenna ruling was a violation of his due process rights.
In 2010, three years after his release, the New York Appellate Division, First Judicial Department, reversed his conviction and dismissed the indictment. That court ruled that he had received ineffective assistance of counsel because his attorneys had failed to raise the speedy trial issue.
He is now seeing $28 million in compensation from the city and the prosecutors and $15 million in additional, punitive damages for his nearly 15 years of false imprisonment. His former attorneys asked a court to dismiss his $26 million case against them but were denied.
Source: Thomson Reuters News & Insight, "Former inmate seeks $43 mln over kidnapping case," Jessica Dye, Feb. 21, 2013
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