Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘crime and punishment’

Michael Jackson trial

The Michael Jackson defense is relying heavily on discrediting his accuser with his previous foray into civil litigation, a lawsuit against J.C. Penney that we covered in 2003. According to The Smoking Gun:

In a broadside on the accuser’s mother, Mesereau described the woman as a shakedown artist who used her sick son as bait, a woman who coached her kids to lie in connection with an assault lawsuit the family once brought against J.C. Penney. Mesereau referred to a newly surfaced witness–who worked as a paralegal for the lawyer representing the family in the Penney case–who claims that the mother fabricated her allegations in that civil case. The paralegal contends that she hesitated to come forward because the mother once told her she had relatives in the Mexican Mafia.

The unnamed paralegal was deposed over the weekend; ABC News is reporting that the mother will deny the allegations. (Damien McElroy, “Mystery Jackson witness emerges”, Telegraph, Feb. 27; Tim Molloy, AP, Feb. 25). Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson is protesting the absence of black jurors on the panel.

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Drypen v. Oakland County, Michigan

On June 22, 2003, the Drypen family asked their sixteen-year-old son, Christopher, to turn his rap music down; instead, he pulled a nine-inch serrated steak knife. They called 911, and asked for assistance subduing him. They told dispatchers that he had psychiatric problems and was not taking his medication, and told arriving police that he was “violent,” having a “psychotic episode,” and armed with a serrated steak knife. Moreover, the Drypens said, last time Christopher was like this, it took four people to subdue him.

For over an hour, several deputies tried to talk Christopher out of the basement, surrounding him at the stairs to the basement and at the outside walk-out doors. At one point, Drypen came towards deputies with the knife raised; they responded by retreating, and holding the door closed until the inside door-handle broke off in Christopher’s hand. Christopher was yelling “Die” with an obscenity. Deputies say (and the family disputes that) Drypen charged deputies up the stairs with the knife raised; he was shot from a mere twelve feet away in self-defense, and killed. Prosecutors called the killing justified self-defense and did not press charges after a three-month investigation, but the Drypen family sued–and now Oakland County taxpayers are out $4 million ($1.42 million to attorney Jules Olsman) because the County settled without admitting wrongdoing. (Mike Martindale, “$4 million won’t end grief for family”, Detroit News, Feb. 18; Marsha Low, “Family struggles to move on after son killed by deputies”, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 19; Korie Wilkins, “County to pay $4M in death of 16-year-old”, Daily Oakland Press, Feb. 18; Kate Phillips, “Drypen suit settled”, Milford Times, Feb. 17; Oakland County press release, Sep. 12, 2003; Marsha Low, “Grieving family blames police”, Detroit Free Press, Sep. 13, 2003; Bill Laitner, “Family sues over police shooting of ill teenager”, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 16, 2003; Drypen v. Oakland County, Case No. 2:03-cv-74151-AC (E.D. Mich.)).

Update, Feb. 27: The press finally gets around to reporting the defense side of the story. Often the press repeats the fact that officers fired many times as evidence that excessive force was used, when, in fact, officers are trained to keep firing until a threat is stopped. (Korie Wilkins, “Son’s death remains mystery”, Daily Oakland Press, Feb. 27; Kate Phillips, “Sides still dispute shooting details”, Milford Times, Feb. 24).

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Corrected post: Washington police can’t search dumped trash

(Apologies to readers. On occasion, I run across a news story, save the link on Movable Type, and then finish writing a post later after I’ve proofed it. On February 17, I accidentally published a draft squib instead of a finished post. The published draft (1) failed to reference relevant federal precedent as I had intended; (2) incorrectly identified the Washington Supreme Court as the authors of the opinion in the news story; (3) incorrectly stated that a conviction was reversed; and (4) had a subject-verb disagreement. Fortunately, Overlawyered has a full-time proofreader, an anonymous law student at the Appellate Law & Practice blog, who prefers fact-checking Overlawyered to his/her own posts. He/she caught two out of the four errors, and defends the appellate court’s decision.)

A Washington court holds that police can’t arrange to search dumped garbage without a warrant, and invalidates a meth-dealer’s indictment. (Michael Ko, “Court: Meth maker’s privacy was invaded”, Seattle Times, Feb. 16).

This seemed to be straight out of a “Law and Order” episode I would scoff at, but the hair-splitting judges are forced to engage in to determine the stage at which trash becomes searchable is phenomenal. See, e.g., the seven separate opinions in the 8-5 en banc decision United States v. Redmon, 138 F.3d 1109 (7th Cir. 1998) (garbage can in shared driveway searchable without warrant); Clinton administration brief. The landmark Supreme Court opinion on garbage is the 6-2 decision in California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988) (trash bag at curb searchable without warrant).

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“Inmate’s Rising I.Q. Score Could Mean His Death”

Atkins v. Virginia held that governments could not execute the mentally retarded (Sep. 29, 2003), and now activists who would protest the idea that testing could be used to track educational results because they give results too low for racial minorities are objecting that the same tests are resulting in scores too high for death row inmates. Daryl Atkins was intelligent enough to abduct Air Force man Eric Nesbitt, force him to withdraw money from an ATM, take Nesbitt to a remote area and then shoot him eight times, killing him, but his lawyers protest he’s too retarded to be executed. (Adam Liptak, New York Times, Feb. 6). Last week, the California Supreme Court has established rules guaranteeing that any decision in that state will require a great deal of litigation. (Bob Egelko, “Judging if a killer is retarded”, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 11; Claire Cooper, “Rules set for death row claims”, Sacramento Bee, Feb. 11).

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If the government wants to save money, it could start here

Logan Young loves Alabama football. He loves it so much that he paid a Memphis-area high school coach $150,000 in exchange for the coach steering a top recruit to Alabama. This act was certainly immoral and violated about twenty NCAA violations. But because the coach works for a public school, the act was also bribery of a state official. And so the federal government prosecuted Young under RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), and convicted him for conspiracy, bribery and money laundering. (AP, “Shady boosters can now fear federal prosecutors,” (Feb. 5); “The real outrage was Young’s conduct,” Birmingham News, Feb. 6). Was this really the best use of government resources? RICO, a statute originally targeted at organized crime, has been extended far beyond this purpose and is now used to go after abortion protestors and immoral boosters. I do not agree with what Logan did, but I would argue that the detriment to society is not so great to warrant such an expenditure of tax dollars and judicial resources.

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Is $8M enough for being accused of sexual assault?

In December, Kevin Lindsey, a public school teacher and principal for thirty years, was arrested and “charged with two counts of child abuse, two counts of second-degree sex offense and one count of third-degree sex offense.” His name, and the allegations that he had abused two students in the late 1970s, made headlines in his community. Three weeks later, the charges were dropped because of a lack of evidence about the girls’ “recovered memories” and everything went back to normal for Mr. Lindsey. Right?

Not quite. Though he has been reinstated as the principal of his school after briefly being reassigned to the district office, one can only imagine the long-term damage done to his reputation. Now he has filed suit against the women, asking for $8 million for “malicious prosecution, defamation and invasion of privacy.” (Sara Neufeld, “Principal files lawsuit against accusers,” Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2).

Read On…

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