CA: save the endangered malinois!

A news story for The Menagerie - from the L.A. Times:

Santa Ana Officer Files Suit Over Police Dog Bite

A one-eyed police dog that sank his teeth into a cop instead of a crook is at the center of a lawsuit filed by the wounded officer.

Santa Ana Police Sgt. Bruce Leamer has sued the city and his own department, saying their investigation into the incident was rigged in favor of Ygor, a 7-year-old Belgian malinois...

If the suit goes to trial, (dog trainer David) Reaver said, he intends to call Ygor as a witness. "If you saw this dog, he'd come sit in your lap," he said. "This is a very well trained, very social dog..."

Hang in there, Ygor. I'll bet you had your reasons.

ID: disillusioned

So this guy in my hometown (and alumnus of my high school) decides to flex his First Amendment rights by flipping off the cops, then is "pissed and disgusted" to find himself subjected to testi-lying and other ministrations of the criminal justice system:

These over zealous Boise P.D. cops, after they were so disrespected by the length of my middle digit, acted like juveniles and hopped out of there patrol car huffing and puffing...

But what has me so disgrunted that I am ranting about it on Myspace is the fact that these so called pillars of our communtiy, these protectors of the peace, these f***ing guys lied... under oath... plain as f***ing day, but only to me because I was the only honest m*****f***er in that whole place...

I used to tell the alternative high school kids that your end goal in any contact with the police is to leave: don't give them an excuse to arrest you, but a "yes, sir" and a "no, ma'am," a polite "no, you may not search my car - am I free to go?" and no belligerent or aggressive attitude. Or instead, I guess you could flip them off.

Cops also exercise bad MySpace judgment

Ken Lammers of CrimLaw has a point:

for every minute I look for police trolling MySpace for the baddies' self-incriminating posts, I should spend two minutes looking for police who write their own posts on MySpace and get themselves in trouble.

MySpace, their space

Our friend SanchoVilla the Public Defender Investigator has scooped Salon. Here's Sancho:

Myspace As An Investigation Tool

Excellent post, with visual aids showing how you can harness the power of the Internets to dig up all kinds of useful dirt.

And here's today's Salon:

MySpace or OurSpace? - School administrators and even cops are policing the social networking site. For teens used to living their lives online, that isn't fair.

"We patrol the Internet like we patrol the streets," officer James McNamee, a member of the Barrington, Ill., police department's Special Crimes Unit, says. "We'll go in on a MySpace or a Xanga, we'll pick out our area and we'll just start surfing it, checking it, seeing what's going on."

McNamee says the fact that police have only recently realized what a powerful tool social networking sites can be for investigative purposes may be what makes MySpace users feel the site is their own private realm...

Cops snooping on evidence of drug dealing and grafitti tagging - dude, that is so totally unfair!

Who you calling flyspeck?

From a peculiar people, an odd flyspeck of a case:

Today's U.S. Supreme Court Brigham City v. Stuart, No. 05-502 (S. Ct. May 22, 2006) (pdf file), as seen by

- The State of the Beehive

- Sentencing Law and Policy

- Crim Law ("The Witnessing a Fight Exception to the 4th Amendment")

Brigham City, Utah is lovely this time of year... but remember, when it comes to deputies on the front porch, "it would serve no purpose to require them to stand dumbly at the door awaiting a response while those within brawled on, oblivious to their presence." (oh, if I only had a nickel for every time I've said that!)

Bonus link goes to Brigham City - The Movie.

WA: not so bad boys, bad boys

As much attention as we criminal defense people have paid to goings-on in Grant County, things are comparatively low-key in the northern-most corner of the county (including a sliver of Douglas County), by the Grand Coulee Dam. Here's a recent crime report from the Star of Grand Coulee:

Coulee Cops

- A 19-year-old man, who had been arrested in Grand Coulee a week earlier for not having a driver's license, was arrested in Coulee Dam on the same charge. He told officers that he had been driving a lot since his first arrest. He was charged, released and his vehicle impounded...

- Police tried to stop a car that had a faulty brake light but had to follow it all the way down the Coulee Dam hill and across the bridge before it pulled over. As the officer approached the vehicle another car pulled into the area and a woman got out and yelled "my daughter didn't do anything to get pulled over." Police advised the woman to get back in her car, and she left the scene. The officer recognized the driver..., gave her a verbal warning on the brake light, and cited her for the insurance and registration violations. She refused to sign the ticket... At that time the other woman re-appeared, shouting "discrimination and harassment" at passing cars. The subject finally signed the infraction and she was released...

- Police responded to a complaint that two dogs, one a pit bull, were trying to get into a woman's yard on Grand Coulee Ave. She told police that the dogs bared their teeth and appeared dangerous. When police responded they found the two dogs wandering loose and both seemed to be friendly...

- A woman was stopped for going 35 mph in a 20 mph zone and explained that she was in a hurry to get to work. She was issued a ticket and advised to stop at the stop sign next time. She replied, "well slap my hand this morning." Then she said, "Thank you and have a good morning..."

ID & WA: Cowboy Mike on trial

Notorious inmate's attempted murder trial begins

The long-anticipated attempted murder trial of "Cowboy Mike," one of the most notorious inmates in the history of Yakima County, finally got under way today.

Michael John Braae, 46, a drifter and aspiring country-and-western singer known as Cowboy Mike, is accused of shooting girlfriend Marchelle Morgan in the head and leaving her for dead on Parker Bridge Road in 2001...

He is serving more than nine years in prison for trying to evade a manhunt in connection with Morgan's shooting, firing at Idaho police during a wild chase and leaping 40 feet off an interstate bridge into the Snake River.

In addition to the Yakima case, he faces a murder charge in Thurston County in connection with the death of a Lacey woman.

Yakima County, Thurston County, Idaho...shudder to imagine crossing paths with this guy.

Bonus link goes to the retirement party this month for the Malinois K-9 cop who caught Cowboy Mike:

WA: attacked officer speaks

Officer Teresa Benefield, who fought off an inmate for 20 minutes while trapped in the Thurston County Courthouse, has given an interview to the Olympian:

‘I thought I’d be dead’ -
Jail officer breaks silence on life-or-death fight in elevator

CA: from cop to p.d.

Ex-cop, now public defender, draws ire

By most measures, Deputy Public Defender Ed Obayashi has had an unusual career path. For more than 15 years he was a beat cop with the San Diego Police Department. Then he went to law school, earned his degree and entered practice.

What's unusual is the type of law he chose, and for whom he works. Obayashi is a criminal defense lawyer with the county Public Defender's Office...

That career path has drawn the ire of some of his former colleagues, and those feelings surfaced in December when a lawyer who represents the San Diego Police Officers Association... wrote a barbed commentary in “The Informant,” the union's monthly publication...

WA: charges vs. lawyer to be dismissed

Tri-Cities criminal defense lawyer Jim Egan was charged with obstructing a police officer for his actions inside the Kennewick, WA jail on August 4, 2005.

This week a judge accepted a prosecutor's promise to dismiss the charge with prejudice in six months, on the condition that Egan not commit any new related crime, with the judge, not the prosecutor, deciding if a new crime has been committed. The one condition placed upon Egan was that he apologize:

"I apologize to everyone to whom I was obnoxious on August 4, 2005, at the Kennewick police station. I do not apologize for attempting to let my client know that he had help in the lobby. I was hired by my client's parents to represent their 18-year-old who was being questioned about a double homicide of which he was innocent. I knew that if he ended up being charged he could face the death penalty, so I felt I had to be a zealous as possible to let him know that he was not alone. However, as a lawyer I pride myself on professional behavior and it is never professional to be obnoxious, no matter what the situation."

Eagan was represented by attorneys Todd Harms, Jeff Robinson and Sheryl Gordon McCloud.

Cops to the left, cops to the right

Over-vigorous law enforcement: at last, one issue to unite people who go to raves and people who go to gun shows.

Scary stuff.

(Tell John Law and his ATF friends, the day when they combine raves and gun shows is still a long ways off.)

WA: lawyer charged for trying to reach client

Kennewick, WA authorities have filed a misdemeanor charge against defense attorney Jim Egan for his attempts to contact a client during a double homicide investigation.

Egan, a longtime Tri-Cities attorney, is charged with obstructing a police officer. He has pleaded not guilty in Benton County District Court.

"I don't think I'm guilty of anything," Egan said. Attorney Todd Harms is representing Egan.

NYPD - RNC: interview with a wrongfully-arrested bystander

Never mind the Chomskyites; Democracy Now had an interesting set of interviews today featuring Alexander Dunlop, arrested during the Republican national convention, whose charges were dropped when videotape was produced that contradicted the police:

I was trying to go to my favorite sushi place... And I could see that I was blocked in. So, I asked a police officer, I said, “How do he get out of here?” And he pointed south toward 9th Street. And he said, “Well, you walk over there.” So I started walking over there, and I got up there, and I realized there was no exit point. And I turned around to find him again, and he said, “Well, I just asked you to go up here so I could arrest you.”

Here is Eileen Clancy, a member of I-Witness video, a project that assembled hundreds of videotapes shot during the RNC:

So I called his attorney right away, Michael Conroy, and said, “I have your guy on tape in a couple of places, including the arrest...” I said, “Well, let's take a look at your tape.” And I said, “Gee, it looks an awful lot like my tape. Well, I wonder what the problem is.” So we kept looking. I thought, “Maybe there's two cameras that are nearby. It just looks the same.” But he said, “But what you are describing is not on my tape.”

And defense attorney Michael Conroy:

This was a police tape that was... represented to me to be the complete unedited tape of the incident... That tape showed the demonstration....Then, the tape pans to the ground... Unfortunately, ...that's the point which Alex should be on the tape. It’s the point in which he is on the official tape that I was never given, and it shows that Alex is actually approaching a police officer to ask for directions, ...and it shows Alex being arrested very calmly, very quietly and not resisting arrest, and obviously, those are two key pieces that had I had earlier, I would have had a much better fight with the District Attorney's office to get this dismissed in the fall as opposed to eight months later.

You can read and listen to the interviews, plus a response by Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information here.

You can read more blawg commentary on Crime and Federalism, Discourse.net, and Objective Justice.

Mistrial

Second trial in the new jurisdiction today. Again, a disagreement over a client of mine and somebody else's property. In my clients' eyes and mine, the State would have a time of it getting past reasonable doubt, and we could show the jury a decent guy made into an unwitting trafficker in goods that he didn't know were stolen.

Things were going pleasantly, with an above-board prosecutor. He and I had a few laughs with the jury panel, and then a helpful in-court clerk guided me through the color code for the local three-highlighter method of peremptory challenges. My client was in a good mood, and I was looking forward to putting on his testimony. The first two civilian witnesses were fine, inflicting no devastating blows.

Then came the turn of the Overly Helpful Detective, ten year veteran of the force, who volunteered a bit of information that was so important that he just had to share it with the jury. Strangely, the same information had not been important enough to include in any police report or any page of discovery. I'd done several interviews with my client, and it was news to me. To be fair, perhaps the detective didn't consider the info unusual enough to burden the prosecutor with it until today, and only comprehended what a shame it would be not to speak up until he was on re-direct:

Pros Q: "What was the relationship between Mr. Client and Mr. Other-Guy?" (who sold him the goods)

Cop A: "Mr. Other-Guy was a drug dealer who sold methamphetamine to Mr. Client..." (approximately: I didn't write down the exact quote because I was too busy picking up my jaw from where it dropped)

Bless her heart, Her Honor granted a mistrial. Thanks for playing the game, Mr. Detective! See you at the re-trial! Enjoy your conversation with the prosecutor on the way out the door!

Bonus link:
(review)

Death Penalty for Mickel

Tonight the jury which took a half-hour finding former Evergreen State College student Andre Mickel guilty of murdering a California police officer took a full hour to find that he should be executed.

“Killing is no beautiful thing — it’s disgusting, it’s abhorrent. But when liberty is on the line, it’s necessary,” said the 26-year-old from Olympia, Wash.

“I think it’s very clear my son was murdered by an incoherent psychopath,” said the victim’s father, Richard Mobilio, after the jury returned its recommendation.

“He didn’t give any pity to Mobilio, and we didn’t give him any,” said jury foreman Chantelle Estess.

Raskolnikov

Thanks to Jon DKLN for this link from the Washington Post about Andy Mickel, a young cop killer who passed this way.

In November 2002, Officer David Mobilio was shot outside Red Bluff, CA. Six days later, this post appeared on various indy-media sites:

"Hello Everyone, my name's Andy. I killed a Police Officer in Red Bluff, California in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country. Now I'm coming forward, to explain that this killing was also an action against corporate irresponsibility."

Now he's in a death penalty trial, representing himself with the same mixture of delusion and conceit:

In his opening statement to the jury, the Associated Press reported that Mickel said, "I want to tell you that I did ambush and kill David Mobilio." The police officer's widow was weeping in the courtroom. Mickel did not express remorse. He has pled not guilty. He promised to provide his side during the trial. Mickel is scheduled to begin his defense on Tuesday. "I'm going to have to tell you that stuff later," he told the jury. "I don't have a sound-bite defense."

Whatever he thought his defense might have been - maybe the necessity defense of "I had to shoot the father of a toddler three times, twice in the back and once in the head, in order to prevent a greater evil" or the general defense of "Just let me tell you my side of the story," it appears that the judge shut him down on Friday. Now he will present no defense at all.

Closing arguments are today. Those in my line of work will be interested in reading about the laissez-faire job Mickel's "advisory counsel" is doing. Remember, this is a cop-killer case, death penalty eligible.

On his way to becoming a murderous little creep, Mickel went to The Evergreen State College, here in the South Sound. My neighbors have been following his case in The Olympian since it started. It was good to see the WaPo article giving a little snapshot of Oly and TESC life as background, while not taking the easy "Evergreen made him a killer" route. That boy wasn't right long before he came out West. It's an intriguing article, capped by an interview with Mickel. The author ventures:

It is as if Mickel, in his thinking, had gone so far to the fringe left that he started to look a lot like the fringe right.

Fine as far as that goes, but I don't think these high-level threateners of lawful authority are on the "fringe" of the right. Man, these are sad days for fans of the rule of law, left, right, or center.

Update: Prosecutor closes with dramatic re-enactment of ambush

Update: Mickel guilty.
After deliberating the charges against defendant Andrew Mickel for 30 minutes a jury of six men and six woman returned Tuesday afternoon with a verdict of guilty and found a special allegation of murdering a police officer to be true.

Update 4/6/05:
Convicted cop-killer Andrew Mickel told a jury in the penalty phase of his trial today that he killed Red Bluff Police Officer David Mobilio out of “patriotism” and said the action was necessary and justified.

Bonus equal-opportunity (non-DeLay) scoundrel links: Seattle Independent Media Center posts and comments about Mickel here and here, and coincidentally, here's the latest from seattle.indymedia.org:

Kristian Williams, author of the book "Our Enemies in Blue" and a member of Rose City Cop Watch in Portland, will be speaking at Western Washington University Monday, April 11th...
“Well-concieved , well-researched, and well-written,
Our Enemies in Blue deserves a truly wide
and deep readership.” - Mumia Abu-Jamal

(Yes, the same Mumia whose taped voice was featured in that graduation happening / publicity stunt at Evergreen a few years back.)

Cop shop talk, p.d. PTSD

Even if I don't always like cops, I like a good cop story, and if the teller is New York Irish like my mother-in-law, so much the better.

Friday I'm driving home on Pacific Ave. in the commuter pick-up, listening to Fresh Air on KPLU, and the guest is Edward Conlon, author of the memoir Blue Blood, which begins with his first days on the street as an NYPD and goes back three generations.

If you like this sort of thing, you can listen to him here.

After a few blocks, Conlon gets to "just about the most terrible thing that I've seen" and I pull over:

"There was this old woman who was on a bed. She was emaciated. There was what you recognize as a DOA smell. A couple of the paramedics were crying... They were lifting her off that plastic sheet and then she started to moan. There were maggots all over her. Maggots only eat dead tissue, so she was dying bit by bit. The really terrible thing was that she didn't live alone."

There was this old woman in Twin Falls, Idaho. She was dying bit by bit. There were maggots. Her son who shared the house with her was charged with felony abandonment of a vulnerable adult. The brilliant young associate to whom I assigned the appellate brief quit, and later blogged about how the case horrified him, and was part of the reason that he left criminal law.

I was trial counsel. We waived the jury and lost anyway. He went to prison. She died. The Idaho Court of Appeals opinion is here (PDF file).

Who knows how our jobs corrode us, or the ways we might pay for the roles we play. In the morning, I'm going to hug my wife and kid and go with them to Mass.

Throw rocks at a cop, go to jail

One seems to follow the other, huh? Then why does new blogger colleague Steanso's client have to have it spelled out for him?

"Throwing rocks at a cop. Let that just roll around in your head for a minute and try to imagine how young and stupid you have to be to think that throwing rocks at a cop is a good idea."

Sadly, Steanso has fallen prey to an eternal foe of the criminal defense lawyer - The Other Dude Who Got A Better Deal:

Oh yeah, and client thinks the case should be dismissed b/c he knows some kids who were juveniles who threw rocks at cops and their cases got dismissed (this is one of those recurring themes of criminal defense work- no matter what you do for your clients, they've always heard of some dude who got a better deal. "Well, there's one guy I knew from when I was in the county [jail], and he cut some guy's head off, and he got probation, man.").

Go meet Steanso.

Unleash the hounds

Illinois v. Caballes, the drug dog case, has been decided. "(A) police officer does not need reasonable suspicion to have a drug-detection dog circle a vehicle properly stopped for a routine traffic stop." Orrin Kerr has analysis.

PDF slip opinion here.

Remember, don't blame the drug dogs; they're natural libertarians.

(lv CrimProf Blog)

Update: there's a full-throated howl of protest over at Grits for Breakfast. Check it out.

An A1 tribute to a K9 officer

The Twin Falls paper has a glowing obituary for Ukas, a truly exemplary police dog.

Ukas was a German Shepherd, and really a creampuff at heart. His handler, Matt Eden, said, "I think his biggest claim to fame was the number of bites he did not give." He was the first pointy-eared dog my son ever met, way back when he was a stroller baby, and he helped my wife overcome her unease with the breed, both paving the way for adoption of a pointy-eared shepherd cross pound puppy of our own, Antenna.

Eden said, "He wasn't vicious by any means." Good-bye, Ukas.