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fletchermarple · 7 years

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Quick Review of the True Crime Books I read in 2017 (Part 1)

Review of books in 2016 Part 1 and Part 2

Review of books in 2015

One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway -- An its Aftermath by Asne Seierstad: You can tell that this well researched book has the signature of an experienced investigative journalist like Asne Seierstad. The novel offers a very clear and engaging account of the 2011 Norway massacre, in which Anders Breivik killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, as a misguided stance against multiculturalism, which he felt was ruining his country. Using Breivik’s own writings, police records and witness’ interviews, Seierstad builds a fascinating and deep profile of a perpetual loser with delusions of grandeur. At the same time offers, without judgment of her own, an interesting look into the mind of a mass murderer. Breivik might not be a school shooter, but you can certainly make some connections to them. The author alternates Breivik’s life story with that of two of his victims, which helps put a clear face to that horrendous death toll. I can only assume she chose those two because their families were willing to talk to her, but to be honest, their stories are very ordinary and she makes them look like perfect kids, so the chapters focused on them are not as compelling. But this is definitely a must read for anyone interested in true crime and especially in mass shootings.

JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation by Steve Thomas: This book was frustrating, both because of what’s happening in the story and also because the obvious bias of the author makes it difficult to look at the case with any perspective but his own. Thomas was one of the main investigators in the early years of the JonBenet Ramsey case, and is very clear about his belief that her parents, John and Patsy, are responsible for her death and staged the crime scene, and he has some decent arguments to support that staging. The problem comes when he has to explain how and why the murder happened, then his theory falls short. This has always been my issue with the Ramsey case: there’s just not one theory that fully makes sense. Thomas’ opinion (he’s very fond of the “In my opinion” phrase) is that Patsy accidentally killed her during a fit of rage because she had wet the bed, but I just don’t see it. And while pushing that forward, he ignores other variables and suspects (Burke just doesn’t exist in his vision). He’s very adamant about the Ramseys avoiding police and getting special treatment (which in itself is no evidence of guilt), but he’s very vague about, for example, whether JonBenet had a history of sexual abuse. He mentions clearing “hundreds of suspects” for the intruder theory, but doesn’t say who or how. Thomas details the way that the DA’s office kept meddling in favor of the Ramseys, to the point that they are likely the main reason why this case went unsolved (along with some mediocre police work, no matter how Thomas tries to embellish it), but the problem is that his frustration with that --that eventually led him to quit not just the case, but the whole police force-- colors pretty much everything he has to say. He comes across as so angry and bitter, that when I finished I felt that I was missing a big part of the story he just didn’t seem willing to tell us. Bottomline, this is a fundamental read in the JonBenet saga but it would be a mistake to consider it an absolute truth and must be read with a healthy touch of skepticism.

Bitter Remains by Diane Fanning: I like reading books about crimes I have absolutely no prior knowledge about, and that was the case here. The novel, written by one of the big american names in the true crime genre, tells the story of Laura Ackerson, murdered by her ex, Grant Hayes, and his wife Amanda. The story is extremely tragic and gruesome, with the book focusing on the victim’s troubled life and how she was managing to overcome her problems and make a better life for herself and her two sons when she was killed at only 27. Fanning does her best to present us with all the context about the case, but she doesn’t pretend to be understanding or sympathetic with the two killers, especially Grant who seems to be one of the most despicable people you’ll ever read about. This book really lays down in all its horror how human life holds so little value to some people.

For Laci by Sharon Rocha: I thought a book couldn’t get more heartbreaking than Sue Klebold’s A Mother’s Reckoning, but I was wrong. Sharon Rocha’s grief over the loss of her daughter Laci --who disappeared while heavily pregnant on Christmas’ Eve of 2002, only to be found five months later, her body decapitated-- grips you through the pages and squeezes your heart. In Sharon’s words, Laci comes alive as a likeable, cheerful woman who made the world a better place. On the other hand, her husband Scott Peterson, currently in death row for murdering her and their unborn son, is portrayed as a callous, cold and narcissitic individual who would rather end his wife’s life than deal with a messy divorce or be tied down by a kid. As you can imagine, Sharon’s presentation of the case is the same as the police’s and prosecution’s, and it’s the version I believe. The circumstancial evidence against Peterson is too overwhelming, and tied together builds a stronger case than any DNA sample without context could ever make. Sharon describes Laci and Scott’s relationship and his growing distaste of the idea of becoming a father, and also her own struggle when she started to realize that the son in law she was publicly supporting was guilty (on a side note, Scott’s parents are particularly terrible, at least in Sharon’s eyes). Unless you somehow believe that Peterson is innocent, this is a very poignant and touching read.

Illusion of Justice by Jerome F. Buting: This book was written by one of Steven Avery’s defense lawyers, who also happens to be my favorite character in Making a Murderer. Here, he explores not only the behind the scenes of the Avery trial, but also other cases of his stellar career and why he believes the justice system is broken. And he succeeds in making you understand why there can't be real justice if the process to convict someone isn't clean. The author talks a lot about his own life, which I found quite interesting, particularly the cancer that almost killed him. He’s a man of strong convictions who’s worked hard to improve a flawed system. I was expecting more revelations about the Avery case, and he does sheds some light on what was going on that we didn’t see in the documentary (I especially love his jabs at unethical prosecutor Ken Kratz), but nothing truly shocking. He clearly believes in Avery's innocence, although he doesn’t say it outright. Instead, he focuses on explaining why his arrest and trial was a miscarriage of justice. And he has a point. There’s also a segment in the last part in which he addresses frequently asked questions and misconceptions that people have about the case (for example this confusion about “sweat DNA”). He also devotes plenty of time to talk about another big case of his, the one of Ralph Armstrong, who spent almost 30 years in jail for a horrible crime he didn't commit. If you enjoyed Making a Murderer and are interested in the judicial aspects of true crime, this book is for you. It's very informative, told in an easy, fluid narrative.

The Innocent Man by John Grisham: As a big fan of courtroom dramas, I love most of John Grisham’s stories (A Time to Kill is among my favorite novels, period). I was excited to check out this, his first non fiction story, which focuses on Ron Williamson, a mentally ill man and drug addict who, along with his friend Dennis Fritz, was sent to death row for the horrific 1988 rape and murder of Debbie Carter. DNA testing cleared them both 11 years later. All the elements are there: a fascinating case of wrongful conviction, the mystery of who the real killer was (although the book makes it pretty obvious from the start), the fight to make justice. But I have to admit I was underwhelmed by it. There was something very tedious about the way Grisham decided to write it, and I think part of it isn’t really his fault, it’s just that Ron Williamson is not an interesting character, aside from being wrongfully accused, and the big chunk of his story that makes up for the first half of the book really made me lose interest.

Similar Transactions by S. R. Reynolds: Ever heard of Larry Lee Smith? I hadn’t before I read this book. He’s a serial rapist who most likely also murdered 15 year old Michelle Anderson in 1987, although that case is still officially unsolved. This book is the effort a woman called Sasha Reynolds to shed some light to Michelle’s case and to tell the story of Smith, an unrepentant predator who went back to attacking women every time he was released from jail. Halfway through the book, Reynolds inserts herself in the story but in the third person. She explains she did it so she wouldn’t mess with the narrative, but it felt a little weird to me. She, however, doesn’t put herself at the center of the story and makes the victims the protagonists. Because of the nature of the crime, in the wrong hands this book could be too graphic or sensationalist, but Reynolds is very careful and respectful without hiding the horrors all these women went through. In times when sexual abuse is on the frontline news, this books really shows the way such stories should be covered.

Overkill by Lyn Riddle: Despite that ghastly cover, that makes this novel look like a cheap thriller, the book is a serious attempt to cover in excruciating detail the senseless murder of Laurie Show. In 1991, the 16 year old was beaten and stabbed by Lisa Michelle Lambert, who had started harassing her because Laurie briefly dated her boyfriend Lawrence Yunkin while the two were separated. Yunkin and a friend of Lambert, Tabitha Buck, also actively participated in the crime and the three of them were convicted for it. Lambert, a master manipulator that would put Jodi Arias to shame, said that the police framed her with the murder to hide the fact they had gang-raped, and managed to convince a judge to overturn her conviction. He even went as far as to forbid the state from re-trying her. That was eventually scratched, and Lambert went back to jail where she’s staying for good. It’s a long and complicated legal process, and the main problem of this book is that it goes so deep into it, it becomes incredibly boring. Even for someone like me, that likes the trial part of any case, it was almost impossible to go through. The book has good elements, like a nuanced portrayal of all the characters involved, but it’s so repetitive and exhausting that I just can’t bring myself to recommend it.

#true crime #tcoriginal #anders breivik #jonbenet ramsey #steven avery #laci peterson #john grisham #ron williamson #larry lee smith #laurie show #review #book review

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constantviewings · 5 years

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The TV Show Trials - Law & Order

Set and filmed in New York City, Law & Order follows a two-part approach: the first is the investigation of a crime (usually murder) and apprehension of a suspect by New York City Police Department detectives; the second is the prosecution of the defendant by the Manhattan District Attourney’s Office. Plots are often based on real cases that recently made headlines, although the motivation for the crime and perpetrator may be different.

The episodes that I chose for this month’s TV Show Trials are specifically ‘Ripped From The Headlines’ episodes from this list.

Reality Bites

The father of several adopted special needs children is accused of killing his wife over her reluctance to sign off on a reality show based on their family, and the subsequent trials threatens to turn into a media circus.

While it is not based on a specific crime and more so the reality stars/show Jon and Kate Plus Eight, this is an entertaining episode and was a great introduction to Law & Order and its characters. My only issue is that the ending line references a character that I didn’t know about from previous seasons, which made the ending more than a little confusing.

In Vino Veritas

A washed up, anti-Semitic actor is arrested with blood on his clothes. Detectives later discover that a Jewish television producer he has connection to has been murdered. But what role, if any, did he play in it?

The main character of this episode, Mitch Carroll is a stand-in for Mel Gibson who was arrested with a DUI and was also witnessed making anti-Semitic remarks. As for similarities to the real-life case, what has been previously mentioned is all there is. This episode features highly entertaining court procedures as a young boy confesses to killing a woman on his father’s behalf.

The Serpent’s Tooth

A businessman and his wife are killed. The couple’s two sons emerge as the most likely suspects, but detectives later find business ties to the Russian mob.

This episode leaves no ambiguity towards its connection to the Menendez brothers case, all the way down to one of the brothers calling 911 after ‘coming home from a night out’. It seems to be that the episodes with mob related plot lines are my least favourite; as a later episode will prove. This episode spends too much time investigating, for my taste, over showing the court proceedings, which are easily my favourite part.

Baby, It’s You

Baltimore Homicide detectives Munch and Falsone help Briscoe and Curtis with a murder investigation. However, the victim’s family attorney interferes with the investigation by leaking information and offering rewards.

Though it’s not clear by the synopsis, this episode is heavily influenced by the infamous JonBenet Ramsay case. While the real-life case has gone cold, with no conclusion as to who killed the young girl, this episode heavily insinuates that it was the father that killed his daughter. I really enjoyed this episode, especially the cameo from Richard Belzer as Detective Munch, who is easily one of my favourite character from Special Victims Unit.

Smoke

The child of a popular comic dies after he is reportedly thrown out of a window during a fire. However, the investigation also uncovers allegations that the comic molested an 11-year-old by years earlier.

This episode clearly references two cases, both surrounding Michael Jackson. The first is when he held his 9-month-old child over the edge of a balcony back in 2002, and the second being the multiple allegations of child grooming and sexual abuse against his name; both topics I won’t be expressing my opinions on here. My main issue with this episode is that, with both cases being covered, the episode changes course halfway through the episode and we aren’t provided with a conclusion to the first case.

Excalibur

While preparing a murder case, the DA’s office stumbles upon a potential scandal involving a prostitution business and the governor of New York, and it could have serious implications on Jack McCoy’s future as District Attorney.

My main issue with this episode, which is based on former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, is that it’s very reliant on plot elements from previous episodes. This makes it hard to watch as a stand-alone due to my unfamiliarity with the parties in play. Other than that, it is a fairly average episode.

The Reaper’s Helper

A gay man with AIDS is accused of murdering another gay man. However, he claims that the victim also had AIDS, and that it was a mercy killing.

This episode brings up the interesting topic of assisted suicide in the medical industry as the episode is based on Dr Jack Kevorkian, who assisted the terminally ill in committing suicide by euthanasia. The acts of suicide are enlarged in terms of violence and drama, as the victims are shot in the head by the perpetrator. I didn’t really enjoy this episode, apart from the last five minutes.

Indifference

A child’s collapse in school from mortal injuries leads to an investigation that uncovers a family steeped in horrific abuse.

Uniquely, this episode has an end card and voiceover explaining the similarities between this episode and the Joel Steinberg/Hedda Nussbaum case; which it is based on. I am torn between this episode and another one further on, as to which one was my favourite out of all fifteen that I watched. This episode has extremely interesting and satisfying court proceedings, as well as some amazing synth cop music.

Remand

A convicted rapist in a high-profile trial from 30 years earlier receives a new trial because of legal technicalities. In addition, prosecutors must try to convict this time without a confession.

I would say that this episode is perfectly average in terms of quality. To be completely honest, I don’t remember much about this episode, and not in a good way, so I don’t have much to comment on.

Gunshow

After Jack is forced to settle with a man who committed a mass murder in Central Park, he decides to go after the gun manufacturer.

I’m not going to talk too much about gun control, nor the crime (real or fictionalised) due to the recent events in Christchurch. This is the other episode that ties for my favourite, it features entertaining investigation and court proceedings as well as genuine uncertainty about how the trail will end.

Fools For Love

A man is accused of raping and killing his girlfriend’s sister and another victim. Prosecutors make a deal with the girlfriend for her testimony against the accused, but they also suspect that she was a willing participant in the murders.

This episode is memorable to me mostly because it features a crossover with Special Victims Unit as we get to see Detectives Benson and Stabler assist in the investigation. This episode is a somewhat entertaining interpretation of the crimes of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka or ‘The Ken and Barbie Killers’.

Born Again

A therapist is charged with murder after an 11-year-old girl dies during a “rebirthing” procedure.

This episode is clearly inspired by the horrific murder of Candace Newmaker, with a slight twist. Instead of it being somewhat of an accident on the mothers half, this episode paints the mother as the killer as she purposely causes her daughter to have an allergic reaction and suffocate. This episode even goes as far as to use direct quotes from the real-life crime in its script. It is an episode that had me hating both the mother and the therapist both in the fictionalised version and the real perpetrators of this crime.

Hubris

A charming conman acts as his own defence during his murder trial. During the trial, he deliberately tries to taint the jury by flirting with the forewoman.

This episode was pretty boring, as it consisted of a lot dialogue and speculation compared to solid evidence. I also don’t remember much about this episode other than thinking that the forewoman of the jury was an absolute idiot.

Myth of Fingerprints

A fingerprint analyst’s error put an innocent man in prison. Detectives discover that this may not have been the only error she has made in favour of prosecutors.

Similar to a previous episode I had watched, this episode derails from its original crime to focus on another but, unlike Smoke, this time it’s for the better. I didn’t really enjoy this episode, mainly because the crime didn’t appeal to me and I didn’t feel much sympathy for the criminals that were trying to gain justice due to lack of characterisation.

The Torrents of Greed

Stone makes a deal with a group of low-level mobsters when they offer to testify that a crime box murdered a missing union leader. However, the prosecution’s case unravels at trial, causing all parties involved to walk.

After a crime boss Frank Masucci’s murder case gets thrown out, Stone turns up the heat on the witnesses who played him in order to find charges against Masucci that will stick.

This is the only two-part episode that I watched over both series, and god was it boring. Subjectively, I think these episodes sucked, I couldn’t keep up with all the connections and thus the entire plot was lost on me.

Overall, Law and Order was a good experience to watch. But, if I had to pick one series or the other, I would pick Special Victims Unit. Am I likely to watch this again, probably not, but I wouldn’t turn it off if it was on.

#TV Show Trials #Law and Order

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newstfionline · 8 years

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Door-Busting Drug Raids Leave a Trail of Blood

By Kevin Sack, NY Times, March 18, 2017

CORNELIA, Ga.--This town on the edge of the Appalachians has fewer than 5,000 residents, but the SWAT team was outfitted for war.

At 2:15 a.m. on a moonless night in May 2014, 10 officers rolled up a driveway in an armored Humvee, three of them poised to leap off the running boards. They carried Colt submachine guns, light-mounted AR-15 rifles and Glock .40-caliber sidearms. Many wore green body armor and Kevlar helmets. They had a door-breaching shotgun, a battering ram, sledgehammers, Halligan bars for smashing windows, a ballistic shield and a potent flash-bang grenade.

The target was a single-story ranch-style house about 50 yards off Lakeview Heights Circle. Not even four hours earlier, three informants had bought $50 worth of methamphetamine in the front yard. That was enough to persuade the county’s chief magistrate to approve a no-knock search warrant authorizing the SWAT operators to storm the house without warning.

The point man on the entry team found the side door locked, and nodded to Deputy Jason Stribling, who took two swings with the metal battering ram. As the door splintered near the deadbolt, he yelled, “Sheriff’s department, search warrant!” Another deputy, Charles Long, had already pulled the pin on the flash-bang. He placed his left hand on Deputy Stribling’s back for stability, peered quickly into the dark and tossed the armed explosive about three feet inside the door.

It landed in a portable playpen.

As policing has militarized to fight a faltering war on drugs, few tactics have proved as dangerous as the use of forcible-entry raids to serve narcotics search warrants, which regularly introduce staggering levels of violence into missions that might be accomplished through patient stakeouts or simple knocks at the door.

Thousands of times a year, these “dynamic entry” raids exploit the element of surprise to effect seizures and arrests of neighborhood drug dealers. But they have also led time and again to avoidable deaths, gruesome injuries, demolished property, enduring trauma, blackened reputations and multimillion-dollar legal settlements at taxpayer expense, an investigation by The New York Times found.

For the most part, governments at all levels have chosen not to quantify the toll by requiring reporting on SWAT operations. But The Times’s investigation, which relied on dozens of open-record requests and thousands of pages from police and court files, found that at least 81 civilians and 13 law enforcement officers died in such raids from 2010 through 2016. Scores of others were maimed or wounded.

The casualties have occurred in the execution of no-knock warrants, which give the police prior judicial authority to force entry without notice, as well as warrants that require the police to knock and announce themselves before breaking down doors. Often, there is little difference.

Innocents have died in attacks on wrong addresses, including a 7-year-old girl in Detroit, and collaterally as the police pursued other residents, among them a 68-year-old grandfather in Framingham, Mass. Stray bullets have whizzed through neighboring homes, and in dozens of instances the victims of police gunfire have included the family dog.

Search warrant raids account for a small share of the nearly 1,000 fatalities each year in officer-involved shootings. But what distinguishes them from other risky interactions between the police and citizens, like domestic disputes, hostage-takings and confrontations with mentally ill people, is that they are initiated by law enforcement.

In a country where four in 10 adults have guns in their homes, the raids incite predictable collisions between forces that hurtle toward each other like speeding cars in a passing lane--officers with a license to invade private homes and residents convinced of their right to self-defense.

After being awakened by the shattering of doors and the detonation of stun grenades, bleary suspects reach for nearby weapons--at times realizing it is the police, at others mistaking them for intruders--and the shooting begins. In some cases, victims like Todd Blair, a Utah man who grabbed a golf club on the way out of his bedroom, have been slain by officers who perceived a greater threat than existed.

As the police broke down his door in 2010, Todd Blair emerged from his bedroom with a golf club. He was shot to death five seconds after the first ram at his front door.

To be sure, police officers and judges must find probable cause of criminal activity to justify a search warrant. Absent resources for endless stakeouts, police tacticians argue that dynamic entry provides the safest means to clear out heavily fortified drug houses and to catch suspects with the contraband needed for felony prosecutions.

But critics of the forced-entry raids question whether the benefits outweigh the risks. The drug crimes used to justify so many raids, they point out, are not capital offenses. And even if they were, that would not rationalize the killing or wounding of suspects without due process. Nor would it forgive the propensity of the police to err in the planning or execution of raids that are inherently chaotic and place bystanders in harm’s way.

Forcible-entry methods have become common practice over the last quarter century through a confluence of the war on drugs, the rise of special weapons and tactics squads, and Supreme Court rulings that have eroded Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. Support for their continued use has been bolstered by an epidemic of opioid abuse and the threat of domestic terrorism.

Because many raids occur in low-income neighborhoods, shooting deaths like one in November of a 22-year-old black man in Salisbury, N.C., have exacerbated racial tensions already raw from a spate of high-profile police killings. The American Civil Liberties Union concluded in a recent study of 20 cities that 42 percent of those subjected to SWAT search warrant raids were black and 12 percent Hispanic. Of the 81 civilian deaths tallied by The Times, half were members of minority groups.

The no-knock process often begins with unreliable informants and cursory investigations that produce affidavits signed by unquestioning low-level judges. It is not uncommon for the searches to yield only misdemeanor-level stashes, or to come up empty.

In some instances when officers have been killed, suspects with no history of violence, found with small quantities of drugs, have wound up facing capital murder charges, and possible death sentences.

In December, a jury in Corpus Christi, Tex., acquitted a 48-year-old man who spent 664 days in jail after being charged with attempted capital murder for wounding three SWAT officers during a no-knock raid that targeted his nephew. The jury concluded that the man, Ray Rosas, did not know whom he was firing at through a blinded window.

While the raiders are typically seeking narcotics, there also have been deaths and serious injuries when warrants were served on people suspected of running illegal poker games, brewing moonshine and neglecting pets. In 2011, officers in Marine City, Mich., conducted a dynamic-entry raid to serve a search warrant for “any and all evidence pertaining to graffiti including but not limited to, spray paint containers, markers, notebooks, and photographs.” After forcing residents to the floor at gunpoint, they found nothing, according to depositions by the residents.

The Times found that from 2010 to 2015, an average of least 30 federal civil rights lawsuits were filed a year to protest residential search warrants executed with dynamic entries. Many of the complaints depict terrifying scenes in which children, elderly residents and people with disabilities are manhandled at gunpoint, unclothed adults are rousted from bed and houses are ransacked without recompense or apology. Louise Milan, 68, of Evansville, Ind., alleged in her filing that she and her 18-year-old daughter were handcuffed in front of neighbors during a door-busting 2012 raid prompted by threats against the police made by someone who had pirated her wireless connection.

“There’s a real misimpression by the public that aggressive police actions are only used against hardened criminals,” said Cary J. Hansel, a Baltimore lawyer who has represented plaintiffs in such lawsuits. “But there are dozens and dozens of cases where a no-knock warrant is used against somebody who’s totally innocent.”

At least seven of the federal lawsuits have been settled for more than $1 million in the last five years. They include a $3.75 million payment in 2016 to the family of Eurie Stamps, the unarmed Framingham grandfather who was accidentally shot, while compliant and on his stomach; and $3.4 million in 2013 to the family of Jose Guereña, a 26-year-old former Marine shot more than 20 times as agents broke into his house in Tucson. No drugs were found.

In each of those cases, as in almost all botched raids, prosecutors declined to press charges against the officers involved.

Perhaps no fiasco illustrates the perils of no-knock searches as graphically as the 2014 raid here in Georgia’s northeast corner. On May 22, an eager young Habersham County sheriff’s deputy named Nikki Autry, who was attached to a narcotics task force, turned a small-time methamphetamine user into a confidential informant. Intent on avoiding jail, the informant, James Alton Fry Jr., set about the task of baiting bigger fish.

According to trial testimony and investigative documents, the agents sent Mr. Fry out on the night of May 27 to make drug buys. He scored two Lortab pain pills on his first approach, struck out with a second source and then was connected to a meth dealer named Wanis Thonetheva. At around 10:30 p.m., Mr. Fry, his wife, Devon, and their housemate, Larry Wood--all persistent meth users--drove to the address provided by the dealer.

“It didn’t look like a drug house,” Ms. Fry later testified. “This was a nice house. It’s usually a shack or trailer.” The police did not follow them to provide protection or surveil the property.

Mr. Wood conducted his business out front with Mr. Thonetheva, a 30-year-old American-born son of Laotian immigrants, as the Frys waited in their red pickup. All three appeared shaken when they met up with their handlers in a church parking lot. They had spotted two men at the house whom they took to be guards for the drug operation, and a third who might have been a supplier.

The agents sent the informants home, but about half an hour later Deputy Autry texted Ms. Fry with an afterthought. “Did y’all see any signs of kids at wanis’ house,” she asked.

“Nothing except a mini van,” came the response.

Thinking she was on to a big score, Deputy Autry, who was 28, did not wait for daylight or further investigation. She returned to the Sheriff’s Office, where she pulled Mr. Thonetheva’s criminal history and mug shot. With the approval of the sheriff, Joey Terrell, she alerted the county’s Special Response Team to prepare for a raid. She and her drug unit commander, Murray J. Kogod, began drafting the application for the no-knock warrant.

The affidavit included inaccuracies and hyperbole. It asserted incorrectly that Mr. Fry--the only informant formally certified by the police--had bought the drugs, rather than Mr. Wood. Deputy Autry described Mr. Fry as “a true and reliable informant,” even though he had not made a buy before that night. Despite the lack of surveillance, she wrote that she had “confirmed that there is heavy traffic in and out of the residence.”

Shortly after midnight, Deputy Autry and another agent awakened the county magistrate, James N. Butterworth, with a house call. He read the affidavit and placed her under oath.

She told him that Mr. Thonetheva had been arrested several times for drug possession, that there might be armed lookouts at the house and that an assault involving an AK-47 had been reported there the previous year. The judge, who had never denied Deputy Autry a warrant, found no reason to dispute probable cause and signed at 12:15 a.m.

“If you had drugs and you had weapons, that was constitutional purpose to go on in there, not to knock on the door,” he later testified.

The Special Response Team, formed three years earlier, consisted of a dozen men plucked from the Sheriff’s Office and the Cornelia Police Department. They trained on their own time for four hours each Thursday. The Humvee had been procured through a Pentagon program that made surplus military equipment available to even the most rural departments.

There had been few chances to quell riots and subdue active shooters in the hamlets of Habersham County, population 43,000. Instead, the unit had been used primarily to serve narcotics search warrants, 32 times in all.

During their pre-raid briefing, team members circulated a photograph of Mr. Thonetheva, a Google Earth image of the brick house with dark shutters and a sketch of the three-bedroom interior. Deputy Autry mistakenly told the team’s commander that the drug deal had gone down near a side door to an enclosed garage, so he plotted his entry from there. She told him there were no signs of children or animals, failing to mention the minivan.

When the flash-bang detonated with a concussive boom, a blinding white light filled the room. The entry team rumbled in, screaming for the occupants to get to the ground. Deputy Stribling peered into the playpen with a flashlight and found 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavanh.

Deputy Stribling waved off Deputy Long, who had lobbed the grenade. “Charlie, go away, you don’t need to see this,” he said.

The child, known affectionately as Bou Bou, had a long laceration and burns across his chest, exposing his ribs, and another gash between his upper lip and nose. His round, cherubic face was bloodied and blistered, spackled with shrapnel and soot. The heat had singed away much of his pillow and dissolved the mesh side of the playpen.

At first the child was silent. But as Deputy Stribling picked him up, rubbed his feet and shook his arms, he began to wail. Even the drug agents stationed outside the other end of the house could hear the screams.

“You don’t think that baby got hurt, do you?” one asked another.

Some mistakes might be laughable were they not so consequential.

In May 2010, the police in Hempstead, N.Y., shot and wounded 22-year-old Iyanna Davis during a no-knock raid at a two-family residence where she lived in an upstairs unit with a separate entrance. The warrant was for downstairs.

Ms. Davis was awakened at about 7 a.m. by the sound of a door’s being smashed and hid in a closet, she recounted in a deposition. A Nassau County police officer, armed with an assault rifle, opened the door, found her crouching and screamed at her to raise her hands.

“That’s when I heard the shot,” she recounted. “The force actually knocked me back on my backside.” The bullet had entered her right breast and exited her abdomen.

In his own deposition, the officer, Michael Capobianco, said that he “tripped and didn’t mean to fire.” He was cleared of any policy violations; Ms. Davis, who spent a week in the hospital and another three months recuperating, won $650,000 in a legal settlement from the county.

Some SWAT veterans find it confounding that many police agencies remain so devoted to dynamic entry. The tactic is far from universally embraced, and a number of departments have retired or restricted its use over the years, often after a bad experience.

The National Tactical Officers Association, which might be expected to mount the most ardent defense, has long called for using dynamic entry sparingly. Robert Chabali, the group’s chairman from 2012 to 2015, goes so far as to recommend that it never be used to serve narcotics warrants.

“It just makes no sense,” said Mr. Chabali, a SWAT veteran who retired as assistant chief of the Dayton, Ohio, Police Department in 2015. “Why would you run into a gunfight? If we are going to risk our lives, we risk them for a hostage, for a citizen, for a fellow officer. You definitely don’t go in and risk your life for drugs.”

Another former chairman of the association, Phil Hansen, said SWAT teams tended to use dynamic entry as “a one-size-fits-all solution to tactical problems.” As commander of the Police Department in Santa Maria, Calif., and before that a longtime SWAT leader for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, he said it seemed foolhardy to move so aggressively in a state that voted in November to legalize recreational marijuana.

“Why am I risking people’s lives to save an ounce of something that they’re bringing in by the freighter every year?” he asked.

Clearly there are factors that contribute to the tactic’s staying power. Some of it, according to long-term observers, derives from the adrenalized, hypermasculine, militaristic ethos of SWAT.

“It’s culturally intoxicating, a rush,” said Dr. Kraska, the criminologist. “It involves dressing up in body armor and provocative face coverings and enhanced-hearing sets, a cyborg 21st-century kind of appeal. And instead of sitting around and waiting for something to happen twice or three times a year, you can go out and generate it.”

That culture is reinforced by a cottage industry of tactical training contractors, many of them veterans of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, who are hired by police departments to keep SWAT teams up to date.

“For them, collateral damage is something you try to avoid but it’s not a deal breaker,” Commander Hansen said. “That doesn’t translate well for police work. If you’re in the military and told to clear a block of houses in a half-hour, you’re going to do it quickly by kicking in doors and throwing grenades. It’s a whole different theater of operations.”

Another potential factor is the incentive sometimes provided by asset forfeiture laws when contraband or drug proceeds are found in a residence. Revenue generated by those seizures typically reverts back to law enforcement agencies.

Connor Boyack, president of the Libertas Institute in Utah, said that was one of the rationales behind his state’s recent ban on forcible entry in drug possession cases. In 2015 when the new law passed, search warrant executions accounted for 29 percent of all forfeitures, according to a state report.

“We feel strongly that a lot of this is financial motive, not to keep the community safe,” said Mr. Boyack, whose libertarian-leaning group advocated for the restriction.

Further inducement has come from the Defense Department’s excess property program, which has distributed more than $6 billion in military vehicles, weapons and other equipment to law enforcement agencies since 1997. Until last May, the Pentagon required that any transferred equipment be “placed into use within one year of receipt.”

The Obama administration ended that requirement after a larger review of the so-called 1033 program, which was prompted by the police response to the 2014 civil unrest in Ferguson, Mo. President Trump has yet to act on a campaign pledge to rescind an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 that limited the kinds of equipment offered by the government. It is unclear whether he would reinstate the one-year rule.

As SWAT officers administered first aid to Bou Bou Phonesavanh, other agents detained his parents--Bounkham and Alecia Phonesavanh--and their three other children, ages 3 to 7.

“You know why we’re here,” an officer barked at Mr. Phonesavanh.

He didn’t. “Why didn’t you knock on the door?” he asked.

Elsewhere in the house, the agents came upon Mr. Phonesavanh’s sister, Amanda Thonetheva, who owned the place, as well as her boyfriend, her grandson and one of her sons. They did not find her other son, 30-year-old Wanis, who no longer lived there but dropped by at times. Nor did they find guns or drugs beyond some meth residue in a glass pipe. Later that night, deputies arrested Wanis at another address.

The Phonesavanhs had already suffered their share of misfortune. Earlier that year, the family’s house in Janesville, Wis., had burned down. They stayed in a motel as long as they could afford it, then lived for two weeks in their 11-year-old Chrysler Town & Country minivan.

They drove to Georgia when Mr. Phonesavanh’s sister offered the room in her garage. Seven weeks later, after struggling to find work, they were preparing to drive back to Wisconsin.

Remarkably, Bou Bou survived the explosion after being sped to a hospital in Atlanta. Now 4, he underwent his 15th surgery late last year, with more to come, his mother said. “The nightmares are still there,” she said, “several times a week. When he wakes up he’s usually sweating and holding his face.” She said all of her children became scared when they saw a police officer or security guard.

The Phonsevanhs, who have returned to Janesville, received $3.6 million in settlements to the federal lawsuit they filed against the traumatized members of the drug and SWAT teams. The payments were made through government insurance policies purchased with taxpayer funds. All but $200,000, Ms. Phonesavanh said, has been spent on medical and legal bills.

“Things are still quite the struggle,” she said. “They didn’t mean to hurt my son, but they could’ve done a lot more to prevent this.”

A Habersham County grand jury issued a stinging report, but found no criminal negligence and declined to indict any of the participants. Federal prosecutors then won an indictment of Deputy Autry for violating Bou Bou’s civil rights, but she was acquitted after a weeklong trial. The jury accepted the defense’s assertion that the mistakes made by the former deputy, who had resigned, were unintentional.

In their closing arguments, opposing lawyers found common ground in their criticism of no-knock searches.

The prosecutor, Assistant United States Attorney William L. McKinnon Jr., called the tactic “probably the most intrusive contact that any citizen could have with the government.” He got no dispute from one of Deputy Autry’s lawyers, Michael J. Trost. “There’s a pattern of excess in the ways search warrants are executed,” he told the jury. “That’s what led to the injuries to this child.”

#SWAT teams #forced-entry raids #no-knock raids

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itsiotrecords-blog · 7 years

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No matter how an individual feels about the death penalty, there’s one thing we can all agree on: courts better be damn sure the person sentenced to execution is guilty before sending them to the proverbial gallows. Unfortunately, records indicate that more than 150 people in the United States alone have been sent to death row for crimes they didn’t commit, and no one started counting until the 1970s. Thankfully, many of these innocent people were later freed, but this hardly justifies the decades they spent in jail before getting exonerated. There are many ways the wrong person can get sent to jail for a crime they didn’t commit. In America especially, race can play a huge role in how juries feel about a potential suspect, with countless minorities getting judged because of their skin tone over any actual facts of the case. On top of that, a shocking number of people have been sent to death row on circumstantial evidence alone, and others still have been convicted when third parties perjured themselves to pass the blame or to simply put the case behind them. Ultimately, there’s no proper restitution when a person is taken off death row for a crime they didn’t commit. Some states do offer money or other forms of compensation, yet nine times out of ten, an exonerated death row inmate will nonetheless feel extremely bitter about the process, and understandably so. Because of this, many have become anti-death row activists to prevent such travesties of justice from ever happening again. For the whole story, keep reading to discover 15 people who were sent to death row for crimes they didn’t commit.

#1 Gary Gauger – The Lying Officers Waking up and discovering the murdered bodies of your parents has got to be one of the most shocking experiences a human being can experience. Just ask Illinois man Gary Gauger, who went through this horror in 1993. Naturally, Gauger’s first instinct was to call the police, who instantly named him as the first and only suspect, interrogating him for 21 consecutive hours. After the officers lied to Gauger and claimed they had evidence supporting the theory he killed his parents, he confessed to the crime, assuming he must have blacked out the night before and couldn’t remember it. As though that confession weren’t dubious enough, there’s also the fact officers arrested Gauger without any actual evidence, meaning any confession he made was illegal. In 1996, an appeals court recognized this information, allowing Gauger a retrial and leading to his release. Gauger has since been interviewed by countless media outlets and wrote a book about his story, titled In Spite of the System.

#2 Walter McMillian – Convicted Despite Witnesses Saying He Was In Church Were someone to ask what the opposite of committing murder is, “attending a church event” would be a pretty good answer. Believe it or not, the fact that dozens of witnesses claimed that’s what Walter McMillian was doing during the 1986 murder of Rhonda Morrison didn’t stop police from suspecting he committed the crime. McMillian’s witnesses were ignored in favor of a police informant who had lied and placed him on the scene, leading to a very hasty trial that saw him sentenced to death. During a retrial, attorneys discovered that the very same tape on which an eyewitness claimed he saw McMillian at the scene contained further recordings on the flip side, on which the witness complained about police forcing him to implicate a man he didn’t know in some random crime. Before long, two other witnesses admitted they had been lying under oath, confessing to perjury. Once all of this information came to light, McMillian was granted a retrial and easily achieved exoneration.

#3 Damon Thibodeaux – When Cops Lie When a young girl goes missing, it affects more than just her parents and her immediate family. Entire towns can feel the sting of a lost child, and this is how so many people in Jefferson Parish blamed Damon Thibodeaux for the 1996 rape and murder of Crystal, his 14-year-old cousin. Discounting that Thibodeaux was with Crystal’s parents when she disappeared, authorities soon named him as the sole suspect. After a three-hour interrogation where police repeatedly lied about the nonexistent evidence they had against him, Thibodeaux confessed to the crime, feeling he would be further tortured until he did so. It didn’t matter that his confession had little in common with what actually took place, as police accepted it anyway, and soon, Thibodeaux was sentenced to die. Feeling like he still had no options, Thibodeaux largely accepted his fate until an outside lawyer took pity on him and convinced him to try and set things right. After numerous appeals, DNA evidence proved that Thibodeaux was in no way connected to the crime and that an abusive stepfather accounted for his easy confession when faced with punishment. Finally, in 2012, an appellate court set him free.

#4 Sakae Menda – The Buddhist Priest America is far from the only country guilty of imprisoning the wrong people, and some of them make it even harder for prisoners to get exonerated should they somehow make their innocence clear. In Japan, for instance, Sakae Menda was, in fact, the first man ever to get released from death row, and it took him nearly 40 years to clear his name. Menda had been incarcerated for the 1948 murders of a Buddhist priest and his wife, largely because he was caught stealing rice in that same general time frame. Though he had no actual connection to the murders, Japanese police tortured Menda into confessing, never once letting him speak to an actual lawyer. Placed in solitary confinement, Menda submitted petitions for a retrial no less than six times, finally gaining one in 1979. At the new trial, Menda provided his true alibi, and a former witness admitted she had lied during the initial trial, leading to his full release. In the three-plus decades since, Menda has spent his life working to abolish the death penalty.

#5 Earl Washington, Jr. – The Intellectually Disabled Man This list covers a mere 15 people because the truth is our world may never know how many people have wrongly been sent to die. The good news is the trend is heavily on the down slope, with almost all of these crimes taking place well before DNA testing was possible. With this new form of technology, guilty people are being freed left and right, including Earl Washington, Jr. In Washington, Jr.’s case, though, DNA wasn’t the only story—there was also the issue that he’s intellectually disabled, making him strongly prone to suggestion. What does this mean? Well, when police questioned Washington, Jr. about the 1982 rape and murder of a young woman, although he had never met her, he quickly confessed. Of course, during that same interview, he also confessed to four other crimes he had never committed and had to be walked through his written statement for it to make sense. Amazingly, none of this information was enough to set Washington, Jr. free. Thankfully, DNA evidence would finally get introduced in the year 2000, leading to his full pardon and exoneration.

#6 Debra Milke – The Roommate Rational minds have trouble understanding how a woman could ever possibly murder her own child, and for her entire life, Debra Milke has been wondering the same thing. Tragically, Milke’s roommates murdered her 4-year-old son in 1989, one of the roommates implicating her as the mastermind behind the crime. On top of that, a rogue police officer named Armando Saldate, Jr. lied under oath and claimed Milke had confessed to him, an incident that most likely never happened. It took nearly 25 years, but in 2013, Saldate’s lies would ultimately be what saved Milke, as an appeals court reviewed his entire career as an officer and found a pattern of misconduct that proved he was probably lying about the whole thing. Milke was freed after a retrial, and though prosecutors appealed for a third trial in an attempt to send her back to prison, a judge dismissed all charges with prejudice.

#7 Timothy Evans – At The Mercy Of A Serial Killer Not every story of wrongful conviction ends with a happy ending seeing the guilty party set free. The stories on this list don’t start until the late 1940s because anyone convicted of a crime before then had little chance of getting the sentence overturned. Timothy Evans, executed in 1950, was one of the many people unable to prove his innocence before his death, though in his case, the facts were genuinely stacked against him. Initially, Evans claimed he had “accidentally killed” his wife in an attempt at performing an illegal abortion, later changing his story to claim that his downstairs neighbor, John Christie, had actually committed the crime. Between Evans telling police his wife had died and his arrest, Christie also murdered Evans’ daughter, and presented with the information of her death, Timothy strangely confessed despite still believing Christie was responsible. Though he recanted his confession, courts executed Evans in 1950, hanging him for his alleged crimes. Three years later, police discovered Christie was, in fact, a serial killer who had killed the Evans family and at least six other women, posthumously exonerating Evans of the act. Of course, this hardly brought him back from the dead.

#8 Darby J. Tillis – A Message From God It would be reasonable to assume the men and women on this list all walk away from their wrongful convictions feeling pretty damn bitter about the situation. The longer the time spent behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit, the angrier they’re entitled to become, and yet, Darby J. Tills reportedly never resented the ordeal he was put through. A likely part of the issue is that Tills was a strongly religious man of faith, who took his 9 years on death row and subsequent release as a message from God. Tills was convicted of murdering two men in 1979 and sentenced to death on spurious evidence. Several years later, a man came forward with testimony that a third party had confessed the crime to him, a story courts found factual enough to exonerate Tills, releasing him with a free pardon. From then on, Tills dedicated his life to campaigning for peace and the abolition of the death penalty, driving a limo emblazoned with the words “thou shalt not kill” around his native Chicago until his death in 2014.

#9 Delbert Tibbs – The Hitchhiker Most people are aware of the dangers of picking up a hitchhiker. One can never be sure of the type of person who begs for rides on the street, and helping them out could easily go south, fast. Case in point: a man and woman offered a ride to another man in Fort Meyers, Florida. Almost immediately, the hitchhiker murdered the man and raped the woman, leaving her for dead. Some 200 miles away, Delbert Tibbs was also hitchhiking, though his intentions were merely to get from one place to another. On top of that, Tibbs looked absolutely nothing like police photos of the perp. Despite this, he was named as a suspect anyway, and for some reason, the surviving victim thought he looked close enough to the man who attacked her to say it was him. Making matters worse, a prison informant falsely claimed Tibbs had confessed to him, and testifying to such sealed Tibbs’s fate. However, once that informant recanted, Tibbs was released and would spend the rest of his life campaigning against the death penalty.

#10 Randall Dale Adams – The Hitchhiker Did It It could be argued every story on this list deserves a documentary or two so the wrongfully convicted parties can finally tell the truth about what happened to them. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t given the option, so the film about Randall Dale Adams may have to suffice for them all. One night in late 1978, Adams was hitchhiking and picked up by a strange teenager named David Ray Harris. After the two parted ways, Harris murdered a police officer, bragged about it to his friends, and then blamed Adams for the crime when authorities were alerted. For whatever reason, courts sided with Harris’s story and sentenced Adams to death, but the public at large wasn’t satisfied. Also unhappy was director Errol Morris, who knew for a fact Harris had committed the crime. To bring things to light, Morris wrote and directed the documentary The Thin Blue Line, released in 1988. The very next year, courts retried Adams’s case and released him, allowing him to spend the rest of his life campaigning against the death penalty’s continued existence.

#11 Anthony Porter – Gang Member With Low IQ When a gang member is spotted running away from a crime scene, it’s hard to blame witnesses from assuming there may be a correlation. That said, this alone is known as “circumstantial evidence,” and is a far cry from actually proving said gang member committed any crimes. Unfortunately, in the case of Anthony Porter, throw in the fact he had an IQ of 51, and that gang member may well voluntarily walk into a police station upon hearing he’s wanted. As if things weren’t questionable enough already, Porter’s lawyer allegedly fell asleep during the trial, leading to a quick trial that ended in him getting sentenced to death. Porter’s mental capacity meant he never understood his own punishment, which saved him from the gallows no less than 50 hours before he was scheduled to die. From there, the Medill Innocence Project caught wind of his story, conducted their own investigation, and poked holes in everything the police had done up until then. After securing a retrial, Porter was released in 1999, but the story doesn’t end there—a second suspect named Alstoy Simon would go through pretty much the whole thing immediately afterward, getting arrested, sentenced to a long prison term, and exonerated, albeit in slightly faster fashion.

#12 Levon “Bo” Jones – Betrayed By His Girlfriend Three years is a long time for a murder to go unsolved, but this doesn’t, in any way, excuse police cutting corners and finding an explanation. In 1987, Leamon Grady was murdered, and by late 1990, police were still fairly clueless about who had committed the crime. It wasn’t until Lovey Lorden told the sheriff’s department that her boyfriend Levon Jones had committed the crimes that the police even named him as a suspect. Of course, Jones wasn’t, in fact, guilty, and the world may never know why Lorden, his former girlfriend, turned him in. The entire pretense of a fair trial was more or less thrown out when a family member of Grady was appointed as Jones’s council, and he was swiftly convicted of murder and sentenced to die. In 2006, Lorden admitted she had been lying the whole time and had even accepted a $4,000 reward for her prior testimony. With this information coming to light, Jones was released almost immediately, completely exonerated.

#13 Glenn Ford – The Guy Who Did NOT Murder His Boss For over 40 years, Ford sat in a jail cell due to the 1984 murder of his boss, Isadore Rozeman. Although Ford was near the scene of the crime, which shouldn’t be a surprise since he worked there, he had absolutely no other connection to Rozeman’s death; nor was there any evidence directly linking him to it. Unfortunately, Ford also couldn’t afford a lawyer, and the ones appointed to him were vastly inexperienced, almost to the point of incompetence. Opposing counsel managed to successfully bar African Americans from the jury, and the all-white crowd of 12 selected were quick in deciding Ford’s guilt. Nearly four full decades later, that same team of prosecutors was informed that a second man named Jake Robinson had confessed to the crime. Ford was ultimately released in 2014, but the stress of jail had paid its toll, and he was released a frail and ill man, dying two years later.

#14 Riley Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman – 12-Year-Old Boy Sets The Record Straight 40 Years Later Given the stories on this list, it sometimes feels like police will do absolutely anything to coerce a confession out of innocent parties, and that may be true. For suspects Riley Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman, police didn’t even bother asking them for their side of the story before tricking a third party to testify against them. That this third party happened to be an easily influenced 12-year-old in no way stopped the police from using this testimony to send Jackson and Bridgeman to jail. According to young Eddie Vernon, the two had been spotted fleeing from the scene of Harold Frank’s 1975 murder, aided by Bridgeman’s brother, Ronnie. Years later, however, Vernon revealed that police had used his fragile 12-year-old mind to basically force him into fingering Jackson and Bridgeman, despite the fact that he couldn’t even identify the two in a lineup. Nearly 40 years later and now an adult, Vernon no longer feared the police and decided to set the record straight, soon leading to Jackson and Bridgeman’s release and full exoneration. Given Vernon’s age at the time, neither wrongfully convicted men blamed him, instead feeling it was the police and justice system that had made a mistake.

#15 Anthony Ray Hinton – Screwed By His Own Lawyer While it may not be common knowledge that multiple types of bullets exist, one might hope the criminal justice system is aware of this fact. Anthony Ray Hinton was aware of this fact, but it somehow wasn’t enough to save him during a 1985 trial for a string of murder-robberies through Alabama. The only evidence connecting Hinton to the spree is that his mother owned a gun containing the same type of bullets as used in the crime, and even calling this “circumstantial” feels like a huge stretch. Nonetheless, the court was able to convict Hinton of two murders and decided the only just punishment would be to kill him for these crimes. Hinton soon contacted the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), who then discovered his original defense lawyer had made some serious mistakes in pleading the innocent man’s case. Most important was the fact that the defense ballistics expert was the cheapest available and probably didn’t do the best job. With the EJI’s help, a second trial was granted in 2014, leading to Hinton’s full exoneration.

Source: TheRichest

#IoTRecords

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cassandradodds · 7 years

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Forcible Entry Raids Often Lead to Dangerous Outcomes

Forcible Entry Raids, A Background

In a culture in which the police are outfitted with weaponry to fight an apparent losing war on drugs, one of the most dangerous tactics has been the use of forcible-entry raids—also known as “dynamic entry raids” to serve narcotics search warrants. These have led to a stunning level of violence in missions that may have been resolved by stakeouts and basic door knocking.

Thousands of times annually, “dynamic entry” raids have used the element of surprise to conduct seizures and arrests of neighborhood drug dealers; however, the raids have also led to numerous avoidable deaths, horrendous injuries, destroyed property, ongoing trauma, ruined reputations, and multimillion-dollar legal settlements at taxpayer expense, a The New York Times investigation found.

Generally, all government entities have opted against quantifying exact numbers by reporting on SWAT operations. According to The New York Time’s investigation, which used dozens of open-record requests and thousands of pages from police and court files, discovered at least 81 civilians and 13 law enforcement officers had died in these raids from 2010 through 2016. Scores of other individuals were either maimed or wounded. The New York Times reports that the casualties took place in the carrying out of the so-called “no-knock warrants,” enabling police prior judicial authority to force entry with no notice or warrants that mandate police to knock and announce themselves before breaking down doors.

Although the search warrant raids comprise a small percentage of the nearly 1,000 deaths annually in officer-involved shootings, they are distinguished from other dangerous interactions between the police and citizens, including domestic disputes, hostage-takings, and confrontations with mentally ill people, in that the raids are initiated by law enforcement.

In the United States, four in 10 adults keep guns in their homes, making these raids the start of predictable clashes between both sides, with officers having a license to invade private homes and the residents certain of their right to self-defense. Residents, after being awakened by doors shattering and stun grenades being detonated, often reach for nearby weapons—regardless of if the residents realize the police are or are not involved. Inevitably, shooting begins. Of course, “police officers and judges must find probable cause of criminal activity to justify a search warrant,” The New York Times points out, but with no resources for the never-ending needed stakeouts, police tacticians say that dynamic entry raids provide the safest means under which to clean out “heavily fortified drug houses,” catching “suspects with the contraband needed for felony prosecutions.”

Critics worry that the risks outweigh the benefits. The drug crimes that are used to justify dynamic entry raids are not capital offenses, and if they were, that still would not justify killing or injuring suspects without due process. The strategies would not justify the inclination of the police to err in the way in which the raids are planned or executed with much chaos and placing bystanders in dangerous situations, The New York Times pointed out.

Over the past two and a-half decades, forcible-entry methods have become more popular due to a combination of the war on drugs, an increase in special weapons and tactics squads, a rise in opioid abuse, an increase in domestic terrorism threats, and Supreme Court rulings that, according to The New York Times have worn away Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from illegal searches and seizures.

The personal injury attorneys at Parker Waichman LLP have decades of experience representing clients with personal injury allegations and continues to offer free legal consultations to individuals with questions about filing a personal injury lawsuits.

What May Go Wrong in a Forcible Entry Raid

The New York Times learned that, from 2010 to 2015, approximately 30 federal civil rights lawsuits were filed annually over residential search warrants executed with dynamic entries. Many complaints alleged horrifying scenes in which children, elderly residents, and individuals with disabilities were manhandled at gunpoint; unclothed adults were awakened from sleep; and homes were ransacked without remuneration or apology. In one case, a 68-year-old Indiana woman alleged that she and her 18-year-old daughter were handcuffed in front of their neighbors during a 2012 raid that originated with threats made against the police by an individual who had pirated her wireless connection.

Some seven federal lawsuits have been settled for more than $1 million in the last five years, according to The New York Times, including a $3.75 million payment in 2016 to the family of an unarmed Framingham grandfather who was accidentally shot while being compliant and prone on his stomach and a $3.4 million payment in 2013 to the family of a 26-year-old former Marine who was shot more than 20 times as agents broke into his house in Arizona. No drugs were found. As is typical, prosecutors declined to press charges against the officers involved in the botched raids.

In some cases, notes The New York Times, the process is initiated with unreliable informants, hasty investigations, and affidavits signed by “unquestioning low-level judges” for raids that lead to misdemeanor-level stashes or nothing at all. In some cases, when officers are killed, the deaths have involved suspects without a history of violence and with small drug quantities who end up facing murder charges and potential death sentences.

SWAT began in Los Angeles and other big cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s following civil unrest and significant firefights, The New York Times explained. Currently, nearly every police agency with at least 100 officers, and approximately one-third of all smaller agencies, either has a full-time unit or participates in a part-time or multi-jurisdictional team, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Justification for these teams was made by pointing to a need for drug searches. According to Dr. Peter B. Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University, SWAT deployments have grown some fifteen-fold between 1980 and 2000. There is no way to know the true number of forcible entries as there is no federal mandate for police agencies to report on SWAT operations and only two states have such requirements.

When these raids are successful, they may interrupt the supply chain, but often only temporarily. In many cases, the show of force is unbalanced; the errors are catastrophic; and an array of factors may lead to failure, including inadequate judicial scrutiny, wrong addresses, failure to knock, and a lack of monitoring.

Filing a Personal Injury Lawsuit

If you or someone you know was injured by in a forcible entry raid, you may have valuable legal rights. Our personal injury attorneys offer free, no-obligation case evaluations. For more information, fill out our online form or call 1-800-YOURLAWYER (1-800-968-7529).

from Parker Waichman http://www.yourlawyer.com/blog/forcible-entry-raids-often-lead-dangerous-outcomes/

from WordPress https://parkerwaichman.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/forcible-entry-raids-often-lead-to-dangerous-outcomes/

#Forcible Entry Raids Often Lead to Dangerous Outcomes

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parkerwaichmanlaw · 7 years

Text

Forcible Entry Raids Often Lead to Dangerous Outcomes

Forcible Entry Raids, A Background

What May Go Wrong in a Forcible Entry Raid

Filing a Personal Injury Lawsuit

from Parker Waichman http://www.yourlawyer.com/blog/forcible-entry-raids-often-lead-dangerous-outcomes/

#Forcible Entry Raids Often Lead to Dangerous Outcomes

0 notes