The Ninth Circuit has upheld a jury’s $15 million award to three Los Angeles Police Department officers who said they were wrongly arrested and made scapegoats in the notorious Rampart evidence-faking scandal. Two of the three officers who will share in the award were in fact convicted by a jury of obstruction of justice in an earlier case arising from the scandal, but the judge later concluded that she had committed an error at trial and set aside the verdict; the case was not reprosecuted. Which jury erred: the first, the second, or are there theories on which both might be accounted right? (Maura Dolan, “Federal appeals court upholds $15-million civil award for Rampart police officers”, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 15; Metropolitan News-Enterprise).
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