Oklahoma Criminal Defense Blog

Angel “Fat Boy” Ortiz had a meeting near the North Philadelphia Amtrak station.  He met with James Venziale to discuss some business. The idea was to steal some heroin from Miguel Santiago with the help of Philadelphia police officers and then sell the heroin to drug dealer.  The problem was that the intended purchaser, the drug dealer, was an undercover DEA special agent.

Now three Philadelphia police officers are facing federal charges of planning the theft of 300 grams of heroin and selling it to a drug dealer.   Robert Snyder, Mark Williams, and James Venziale are Philadelphia police officers. ‘They are charged with four other people, including three reputed drug dealers and Snyder’s wife, Christal.

The Police Commissioner was aghast. He was planning to terminate the three police officers.

The police officers met with “Fat Boy” over several weeks and another apparent drug dealer, Zachary Young.  Their plan was for the police officers to stop a vehicle to make it appear to Santiago that the drugs were being lawfully seized by law enforcement.

Officers Venziale and Williams, on duty and in uniform, stopped a car occupied by Ortiz and the undercover agent.  Ortiz had just received the heroin from a courier.  Venziale and Williams handcuffed Ortiz and permitted the undercover agent to drive with the 300 grams of heroin.  Venziale and Willams then drove Ortiz away and later released him. Venziale and Williams later met with Ortiz, who paid the two officers $6,000.  Ortiz also met with Christal Snyder and paid her an unknown amount of cash.

The reaction to the indictment from many sectors of the community was disappointment.  Majeedah Rashid, director of the Nicetown Community Development Corporation, said the indictment diminished the community’s trust in the police.  “We work very closely with the community relations people there. It’s a long running relationship.  It’s unfortunate that this happens because you’re going to end up losing the trust of the community and we worked so hard to established.,” he said.

Ralph Wynder, an activist in the Allegheny West section and chairman of the Residents Coalition, a coalition of community groups in the Allegheny West and East Falls, said the indictment was troubling.  Wynder stated, “If the charges prove to be true, this will become a very disturbing series of events.”  He said his community has worked closely with the 39th District, the Police District to which the indictees belong, over the past 10 years.

Venziale, Williams, Robert and Christal Snyder, Ortiz, Young, and Santiago are all charged with conspiracy to distribute 100 grams of more of heroin and related counts, which include the charge against Christal Snyder of passing information between Ortiz and the three officers.  Santiago is in parts unknown.  The F.B.I. and the D.E.A. are looking for him.

After much publicized repeated failures at probation, Lindsay Lohan is finally seeing the inside of a jail cell.  Some welcomed the judge finally dropping the hammer as long overdue.  They believed she had gotten away with too much too long.  It gnawed at a lot of people to think they would never receive so many chances, that her celebrity status gave her special privileges.    They tired of watching her on television partying late and then missing her court date the next day.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marsha Revel sentenced Lohan to 3 months in jail.  She is expected to serve about one-quarter of that sentence, about two weeks.  The discount in time is credited to jail overcrowding.  After reporting to the jail in Beverly Hills, she was taken to the Century Regional Detention Facility a women’s facility in Lynwood, where she will serve her sentence in an isolation unit that previously hosted Paris Hilton in 2007.   She will be separated from the general population for the same reason, the sheriff claims: her own safety.  She was sentenced to 3 additional months rehab on probation after she finishes her time behind bars.

In sentencing Lohan, the judge found Lohan had repeatedly lied to authorities and to the court, failed to attend weekly alcohol education classes required by the terms of probation on her driving under the influence charge.  Shawn Chapman Holley was her lawyer at the sentencing, somewhat grim as the television cameras watched.  After the sentence, Robert Shapiro, famed for being a member of the O.J. Simpson dream team, announced he was representing Ms. Lohan, only to be replaced again by Ms. Holley again after a week.  Ms. Lohan had stayed the weekend before she was sentenced at Pickford Lofts, a sober-living rehabilitation center founded by Mr. Shapiro after his son died of a drug overdose.

After listening to a tearful Lohan promise to do better this time and alibi for her repeated failures, the judge recited item for item the broken promises, missed appointments, and lies.  The judge noted Lohan had lied about being driving at her first arrest in 2007 and again in her second arrest two months later, both arrests for driving under the influence, and again lied about to whom the pants belonged in which a white substance was found, yet tested positive for cocaine in her system.

The judge declined Lohan’s lawyer’s request for more out-of-custody ankle monitoring.  Ms. Lohan told the judge  she respected the court process.  While addressing the judge, observers could see an expletive written on the fingernail of Lohan’s middle finger, but no one knows whether the judge ever saw it.  Lohan claimed she believed she was in compliance with the requirements of the program, yet she missed 9 classes.  The judge’s 90-day sentence was harsher than the penalty sought by the prosecution.

The judge initiated the revocation of Lohan’s probation by issuing an arrest warrant because the alarm activated from the monitoring ankle bracelet on Lohan’s ankle, the SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor).  The ankle bracelet announces the person’s consumption of alcohol or tempering with the bracelet.  However, the judge made clear her sentence was based on missed meetings, not the SCRAM violation.

Most people suspect Ms. Lohan will be going to a country club type of facility to serve her sentence, but that is not how former inmates describe it.  They say it is not a nice place.

Federal authorities have documented many links between most of the major U.S. prison gangs and Mexican drug trafficking organizations.      The most recent National Drug Threat Assessment from the Justice Department reported prison gangs were operating in all 50 U.S. states are increasing their influence over drug trafficking along the U.S.-Mexican b order.

Federal prosecutors in San Diego charged 36 defendants of racketeering for their activities between the Arellano Felix drug trafficking network and California’s Mexican Mafia prison gang, the gang members allegedly working in drug trafficking, kidnapping, and murder attempts for the Mexican cartel.

Baldemar Rivera for years ran a Texas prison gang named Raza Unida while he was in isolation. Reportedly, this is common for gang members for the organization to be run from someone in solitary confinement.  Rivera says he used sign language to discuss gang business with one of his minions who visited him.  Rivera communicated with gang members in other Texas prisons through his captains in prison, who wrote to the soldiers, also in prison.  Within 3 or 4 days, the word had been passed, the word was out.  Rivera, now 50, and now serving a 60-year sentence for murder, says he left the gang life 10 years ago after completing the state’s gang-renouncement program.

Rivera was running Raza Unida in the 1990s, when prisoners used mail to communicate with each other and the outside world.  Now they use cell phones.  Texas prisons seized 1200 cell phones from prisoners last year.  And Texas prisons do not allow prisoners to mail letters to other inmates, so they mail to third parties, who then pass on their letters to the prisoner intended.

Prisoners also hold conference calls provided by friends on the outside.  Mail censors watch their mail, so some prisoners communicate in Nahuatl, language of the Aztecs.  It is an ancient language, but it’s still spoken by about a million and a half people in Mexico.  The gang members learn Nahuatl from books, and some of them adopt Aztec names.  They claim they are honoring their heritage, but they are just concealing their communications.

The gangs sometimes get their hooks into prison employees or even court employees.  One woman who worked in the federal defender’s office in El Paso was convicted of acting as liaison between gang members behind the walls and their confederates outside.

Gang members have testified in at least two federal cases about how money from the gang’s outside businesses of extortion, drug sales, and other illegal undertakings, ultimately found its way into the gang members’ commissary accounts in prison.

An FBI agent testified last year in a prosecution against Texas’ Mexican Mafia prison gang that the gang collected at least $8,000 a week, sometimes $40,000 a week, in San Antonio alone.  The proceeds were sent to gang members in prison, where they spent the money on food, personal items, or they could send money to their family members on the outside. Drugs were available to gang members and visitations from girls.

Contraband is smuggled in by guards, lawyers, and visitors.  Revenue from drug sales on the street pays for it.      A cell phone cost $2,000. Contraband is dropped off at pre-arranged locations accessible to prisoners on work detail.  Sixty phones were discovered on one occasion in an air compressor delivered to a prison workshop.

When gang members are released from prison, they are expected to report to gang leaders on the outside, attend gang meetings and make their contribution to making money for the gang. That usually means selling drugs or enforcing on the street dealers.

The number of active gang members nationally is estimated at about 1 million.  Prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia, the Texas Syndicate, Hermandad de Pistoleros Latinos (the Brotherhood of Latino Gunmen), Raza Unida, and Mexikanemi comprise only about 45,000 members.  However, they control most of the local street gangs as well, especially in southern California and south Texas.

The prosecution of baseball home run record-holder Barry Bonds has been on hold while the government appealed a district court ruling that excluded evidence that the government must have considered important.  Urine samples that was collected by Bonds’ personal trainer, Greg Anderson, tested positive for drugs, and the government wanted to use it as evidence that Barry Bonds knowingly used steroids.  Now the district court’s ruling of exclusion has been affirmed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Presumably, the government wouldn’t have delayed this case for a year and a half unless they thought it was very important,” Bonds’ lead attorney, Allen Ruby stated.  He will wait for the government’s next move toward trial, if the government still wants to take the case to trial.

The trial court in San Francisco ruled the urine samples were inadmissible.  Anderson reportedly had told BALCO vice president James Valente that the samples belonged to Bonds. The government intended to call Anderson as a witness, at least to identify the samples.   But Anderson told the district court that he was not going to testify against Bonds, that he would rather go to jail. Without Anderson to identify the samples, the courts ruled, the samples were not admissible.

The excluded evidence constitutes three of four samples from Bonds.  The fourth sample came from a Major League Baseball test.  This was supposed to be confidential and was collected from all players only to assist baseball determine whether it had a drug problem with its players.  The lab analyzed that sample and concluded Bond’s sample was negative for steroids, but federal agents seized the sample, had it retested, and the designer steroid THG was discovered.

Also ruled admissible by the trial judge a recording Bonds’ former personal assistant, Steve Hoskins, secretly made of a conversation with Greg Anderson in 2003, standing in front of Bonds’ locker.  In that conversation, Anderson discusses how he was helping Bonds avoid infection by injecting him in, rather than on just one spot, on different places on his buttocks.  Bonds testified to a grand jury that he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs and also testified no one but a doctor ever injected him.  The Department of Justice is prosecuting Bonds for perjury from that grand jury testimony.

The exclusion of the three urine samples is based on the hearsay rule.  Greg Anderson must testify where the samples came from.  He is not going to testify; therefore, they cannot be identified.  But Anderson’s statements to Valente are obviously an avenue the government would seek to adopt Anderson’s statements.

Hearsay evidence is the out of court statement of a witness when the statement is offered for the purpose of proving the truth of the statement.  The general rule is to exclude hearsay evidence.  However, the Federal Rules of Evidence, as well as the Oklahoma Evidence Code and probably every jurisdiction in the United States, lists a number of exceptions.  Federal Rule 804 lists hearsay exceptions in which the availability of the declarant is immaterial, Rule 805, in which the declarant is unavailable.  There is even a “Residual Exception,” in Rule 807, which allows admissibility for otherwise not described hearsay for statements “having equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness,” with some conditions “if the interests of justice will best be served.”  Talk about leaning over backwards.

But the urine samples were excluded on the basis of lack of identification of the samples.  The appellate court found there was no indication Bonds exercised any control over Anderson in determining when the samples were obtained or to whom they were delivered or even what tests were performed on them.

Evidence of other crimes introduced at a trial is so clearly poisonous that the rules of evidence generally prohibit such evidence.  Intuitively, an observer knows the impact such evidence would make on a jury – regardless of the strength of the evidence of guilt offered for the charges being faced.  Such evidence would have a fatal impact upon a verdict.

Evidence of “other crimes evidence” is not admissible to prove a person’s character in order to prove the person acted in conformity with such behavior under the Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 404(b).  It is similarly prohibited under the Oklahoma Rules of Evidence, Rule ??-ck this rule online.

However, evidence of other crimes may be admissible for other purposes, such as proof of guilty knowledge.  The United States Supreme Court found such a circumstance in Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, taking the case on certiori from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Huddleston was charged in federal court with one count of selling stolen property in interstate commerce and one count of possessing stolen property in interstate commerce.  Both counts related to portions of a shipment of stolen Memorex videocassette.

The evidence presented at trial was that a trailer containing over 32,000 blank videocassette tapes was stolen from an Overnight Express yard in South Holland, Illinois.  The manufacture cost of each videocassette tape was $4.53.  Soon after the theft, between 2 and 6 days after the theft, Huddleston contacted a manager in Ypsilanti, Michigan, seeking to sell at least 500 blank Memorex videocassettes for a price between $2.75 to $3.00 per tape.  He ultimately sold 5,000 tapes, which he delivered to various customers.

Undisputed at trial was whether the tapes were stolen. The only material issue at trial was whether Huddleston knew the tapes were stolen.  To do so, the government introduced evidence of “similar acts, ” and the trial court ruled that the evidence had “clear relevance” as to Huddleston’s knowledge.  The first piece of such evidence was the testimony of a store record owner, who testified Huddleston offered, just two months before the offer to the Ypsilanti manager, to sell him new 12″ black and white television sets for $28.00 a piece.  Huddleston indicated he could obtain several thousand of the television sets. The store owner purchased 38 of the sets.

The second piece of evidence of “similar acts” was the testimony of an undercover FBI agent posing as a buyer for an appliance store.  He testified that Huddleston, one month after the Memorex tape offer, offered to sell him a large quantity of Amana appliances, 20 refrigerators, 2 ranges and 40 icemakers, for $8,000.  The appliances were delivered, part of a shipment that was stolen.  They had a value of about $20,000.

Huddleston testified he did not know any of the items were stolen.  At the close of the trial, the prosecutor argued that Huddleston was not on trial for the other appliances, and the trial court instructed the jury that they were to consider the evidence of the similar acts only in reference to Huddleston’s guilty knowledge that the Memorex tapes were stolen, not to prove Huddleston’s bad character.  The jury convicted Huddleston, and you can bet it was because of the evidence of the “similar acts.”  Understandably, Huddleston’s lawyers argued on appeal that he had been subjected to improper prejudice, to no avail.  The Court cited Federal Rule of Evidence, Rule 403, which provides relevant evidence may be excluded if the trial judge finds “its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.”

The government did not prove at trial the television sets were stolen.  Huddleston’s lawyers urged that was critical.  The Supreme Court considered different levels of certainty the trial court, before admitting such evidence, ought to make by way of preliminary finding before admitting the evidence of similar acts.  Instead of the “clear and convincing” standard urged by one panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals or the “preponderance” standard by another panel of the same Court.

The Supreme Court decided that the evidence had been introduced at trial for a proper purpose, it fit the requirements as stated in the text of of Rule 404(b), and that was enough to make it admissible.  The television sets need not have been proven stolen to be admitted.  No preliminary finding was necessary by the trial judge.  It was up to the jury to make its own conclusions about whether the television sets were stolen in its verdict.

Since Oklahoma banned the unregulated sale of pseudoephedrine in 2004, the availability of methamphetamine declined for a while. Now it’s coming back.  Last year, 743 meth labs were discovered, and this year is on track to exceed that at 300 labs seized to date.  Most of the labs were of the one-pot lab variety, also called “shake-and-bake” process of cooking or concocting meth.  Most of them have been located in Northeast part of the state or around the Tulsa area.

Last May, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control found one one-pot lab in Oklahoma City, while 23 were discovered in Tulsa.  The ingredients are cheap: one 20-ounce bottle of water, pseudoephedrine, camp fuel, chemical ice packs and some other easily-obtained materials are all it takes to make some meth with this method.  Recipes can be found online, along with step-by-step videos explaining how to do it.

So far this year, the state’s Medical Examiner has identified 26 deaths associated with meth, from overdoses of meth to burns from accidents in the cooking process.  Nathan Knapp of Luther was one of those, burned with third-degree burns from an accidental fire and later died.  No chemists are needed to try this process, no laboratory, and they usually yield only enough for the cook’s own addiction.  But sometimes several people will contribute pseudoephedrine to share in the product.

In the year before the regulation of pseudoephedrine went into effect, the number of labs exceeded 1200.  The number shrank by 90% until the one-pot labs started springing up in 2008.  Mexican cartels brought their product to Oklahoma to meet the demand with ice, a crystallized, smokable meth.  Last month, agents arrested one Albert Gomez-Gomez, whom they claim is a member of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, here to establish an operation to rival the established Juarez Cartel.

The OBNDD claims 20% of the meth consumed in Oklahoma comes from Mexico, brought overland on the highways.  The agency also claims to have b locked 54,349 sales of pseudoephedrine since enactment of the law last November that requires a would-be purchaser to provide his date of birth and Oklahoma driver’s license.  They claim that prevents those previously convicted of meth-related crimes from purchasing pseudoephedrine for up to 10 years.  They are still pushing to make pseudoephedrine a prescription drug.

Ingestion of meth triggers release of dopamine, a neurochemical in the brain.  Meth causes high amounts of dopamine to collect in the brain, causing a rush of euphoria.  It makes the user wanting more.  Too much dopamine in the brain causes schizophrenia, a condition characterized by delusions, hallucinations and bizarre behavior.  Too little pseudoephedrine causes Parkinson’s disease and affects motor areas of the brain.

A meth addict will do whatever he can to get more.  Well known is the addictive aspect of meth, psychologically, of course, but also physiologically and neurologically, such that, once use of meth is stopped, the user should have medical supervision.  That’s for those lucky enough to quit.

Suzanne Wooten was sworn in as judge of the Texas 380th District Court in January, 2009. She defeated Charles Sandoval in the 2008 Republican primary. Sandoval had held the judgeship for the 12 previous years and had never previously had an opponent.  The 380th District Court is in McKinney, Texas, in Collin County, the county immediately north of Dallas County.

Collin County District Attorney John Roach has been investigating now-Judge Wooten, apparently for election fraud.  This investigation has been going on for a year, and Peter Schulte, a lawyer representing Judge Wooten says that is too long to keep her under a cloud of suspicion.  Roach’s office has presented evidence to several grand juries, but has never asked the grand jury for an indictment.

In Texas, as in United States District Court, all criminal charges must come for the indictment of a grand jury.  Oklahoma law permits, in addition to proceeding by indictment, the signing of an Information by the prosecuting attorney to initiate such charges.  Without an indictment, there are no criminal charges. Grand juries are in session for only so long, to be replaced by a grand jury with different members.  The grand jury that hears the evidence must act on that evidence to decide whether to indict.

Now Judge Wooten, through her lawyers, has filed an objection to this continuing saga in a 12-page document.  She claims Roach is seeking her resignation, saying this latest grand jury, possibly the fifth grand jury to be used to invade her private, personal and professional life for purely political, harassment and/or intimidation purposes.  She claims the judge she defeated, Charles Sandoval, met with district attorney supervisors the day after the election and said Sandoval believed the only reason he lost was that Wooten “must have cheated.”  She offered to talk to prosecutors several times but was not accommodated.  According to Peter Shulte, Assistant District Attorney Chris Milner, chief of the special crimes unit, mentioned election fraud but refused to give any specific allegations that were being investigated.  Milner allegedly encouraged Wooten to resign, and Schulte claimed, even urged Wooten to resign immediately before authorities took “her law license, her family, her home, her liberty and her reputation.”  If those words were indeed used, that is the most gross of threats. It is so strong, it sounds like a bluff.

Roach asked the Texas attorney general’s office a year ago to assign a prosecutor to the investigation.  Assistant Attorney General Harry White wanted Judge Wooten to appear before the grand jury a week ago, but a judge ruled that the grand jury’s term ended and evidence would have to be presented to a future grand jury.  District Attorney Roach says he is not directing White’s investigation.  Another grand jury begins this month.

Now three former prosecutors who served under District Attorney John Roach have criticized the lingering investigation.  Sharon Curtis, Mitch Nolte, and Hunter Biederman, have spoken out publicly against the length of time it has taken to investigate without bringing charges. One said even the most complex of cases should not take more than two or three months to go to the grand jury.

Roach’s response is to essentially a stone-wall and to criticize his criticizers.  He responded that the case against Wooten is taking so long because it is complicated but would not elaborate.   He said Wooten could have ended things if she had agreed to appear before the grand jury last week.  Wooten’s lawyer, Peter Shulte, however, said Wooten said she received only 48 hours notice after a year-long wait.  He said a sitting district judge was entitled to more notice than that.

Roach has been district attorney since 2002 and has not filed for re-election in this year’s Republican primary.  His term of office will end December 31st.

The Supreme Court of South Dakota ruled a violation of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a police search when they conducted a routine inventory search of an automobile lawfully impounded by police for violations of municipal parking violations.

After incurring two overtime parking citations in the same morning, a car was towed by police and impounded.   At the impound lot, a police officer observed a watch and some other personal property inside the car and ordered the car unlocked to perform an inventory of its contents.  Using a “standard” form to list the property found, a police officer performed an inventory of the contents of the car according to police procedures.  Inside the unlocked glove compartment, police found some marijuana in a plastic bag.  All property, including the marijuana, was sent to the police department for safekeeping.

Respondent Opperman was later arrested and charged with possession of marijuana.  His motion to suppress was denied, and he was convicted by a jury.    He was sentenced to 14 days in jail and a fine of $100.  That conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court of South Dakota in a ruling that found an illegal search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.  That ruling was appealed to the United States Constitution and was decided in South Dakota v. Opperman.

The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized for years the distinction between the search of a building versus the search of an automobile.  According to the Court’s decision in Carroll v. United States in 1925, the “inherent mobility of automobiles creates circumstances of exigency that, as a practical necessity, rigorous enforcement of the warrant requirement is impossible.”  The Court stated the expectation of privacy was less in an automobile than in a home because its function is transportation and “seldom serves as one’s residence or as the repository of one’s personal effects…”

The Court found state courts have “overwhelmingly” concluded that, even if an inventory is characterized as a search, the intrusion is constitutionally permissible.  The Court noted that the majority of Appeals Courts have approved inventory procedures as reasonable police intrusions, citing decisions from the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth circuits.

The Court cited its prior decision in Cady v. Dumbrowski, which had approved a warrantless search of an automobile which had been towed to a private garage even though no probable cause existed to believe the vehicle contained fruits of a crime.  In Dumbrowski, “the sole justification for the warrantless incursion was that it was incident to the caretaking function of the local police to protect the community ‘s safety.”

The Court distinguished its holding in Preston v. United States in 1964, in which the Court had invalidated a car search after a vagrancy arrest, saying Preston stood for the proposition that “the search challenged there could not be justified as one incident to an arrest.”  The Court said Preston did not raise the issue of the constitutionally of a protective inventory of a car lawfully within police custody.  Preston was not, therefore, at odds with the Court’s decision in Opperman, the Court ruled.

Violent crime in East Orange, New Jersey, has fallen by two-thirds since 2003.  Why? Officials in East Orange believe it is because of the high-tech gizmos they have installed around the city, including gunshot detection systems and software that analyzes crime data
instantaneously.

Jose Cardero has been the police director since 2004.  Before that he was in charge of New York City Police Departments anti-gang program.  For East Orange, he developed a database in his spare time.  That database enabled the police department to follow and analyze
crime data without waiting for paper reports to be collated.  The network cost $1.4 million.  Of that, $1.1 million has come from grants and forfeiture funds.

Then the city added upgrades, including a wireless computer system for all police patrol cars, video surveillance in high-crime areas, community patrol system for residents to report crimes via text messages, a grid system showing the location of patrol cars, and a gunshot detection system that tracks the source of shootings.  East Orange police claim the response time will be measured in seconds.

The sensors that are to be installed work in a system with surveillance cameras which are to designed to see find crimes and potential crimes by recognizing certain behavior as it is viewed: someone raises a fist at another person; a car slowing down as it approaches a person
walking on a deserted street at night.   The system is designed to record and digest into its database actions observed by the sensors, be analyzed, and then instructed that certain behavior is a crime.  When the surveillance cameras observe those actions again, the system alerts that the designated crime is in progress.

Digisensory Technologies, an Australian company that makes the sensors, says the sensors will always recognize the behavior it has been told is a crime.  Once the camera sees and the sensors recognize the behavior, an alert is sent to the police department’s nerve center, where a police officer can take a closer look at the pictures to verify whether a crime is actually in progress and a computer program sends the information to a laptop in a patrol car near the scene of the observed behavior.

Cardero wants criminals to know they are being watched.  He believes publicity about his technological program is good for that reason, as well as making residents feel safer.  He believes that the real value to the technological program is its impact on those who are deterred from
committing a crime from fear of detection.

The program is not without its critics.  Dennis Kenney is a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who is skeptical about the program because the sensors can pick up so many innocent actions, like lining up at an ATM, that the system could be overloaded.
He suggests monitors would be constantly watching every ATM because there would be so many false positives they would have to screen out so many false positives, and then, to make up for it,
monitors would have to screen out so many things it would defeat the purpose.

Peter Scharf, a professor of public health at Tulane University, is another sceptic.  He suggests there is no evidence that increasing the rate of information going to patrol cars will make significant difference unless the cars are driving faster.  He co-authored a study of gunshot
detection systems used in Hampton and Newport News, Virginia.   However, Scharf points to the case of snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo as an example of how sensors could have taken existing pieces of data, such as car description, pattern of behavior, type of weapon, and alerted police to imminent shootings.

East Orange offers a recent case to tout their system.  When a car was reported stolen, the pursuing officer of a stolen vehicle automatically activated a virtual perimeter of cameras in the area, providing other patrol cars the information they used to make a prompt arrest of the suspect.

Jon Burge, former Commander in the Chicago Police Department, is on trial in Chicago federal court, prosecuted for perjury by the U.S. Justice Department.  The charge is perjury, but the bulk of the evidence pertains to Burge’s torturing suspects, the prosecution attempting to prove Burge lied to cover up his tortures.

Prosecution witness Gregory Banks served more than seven years in prison before he was released when his conviction was overturned because his confession was coerced.  He described how Burge and two other detectives obtained that confession.  First, they left him alone in a room, handcuffed to a wall.   Burge came in with Sgt. John Byrne and detectives Peter Dignan and Charles Grunhard.  Byrne put the barrel of a handgun in Banks’ mouth and demanded a confession. When Banks refused, Byrne hit him with a flashlight, knocking him down, and the police beat and kicked Banks, still handcuffed behind his back.  Then Dignan put a bag over Banks’ head for a couple of minutes.  When they took the bag off, Banks offered to say anything.  But after Banks confessed orally, an assistant states’s attorney was called in to take his statement.  When Banks refused to give the statement, a detective took him to another room and threatened to repeat the torture if he refused to give a statement.  Banks gave the statement.

On cross-examination, Banks admitted being convicted of burglary and of being a member of the Black Gangster Disciple street gang for 20 years and of being addicted to heroin until four years ago.  Burge’s criminal defense lawyer, William Gamboney made predictable hay with Banks’ statement, challenging it item by item, to which Banks responded either that he did not remember or that statement was a lie.  Gamboney closed his cross-examination with the sarcastic proposition, of course, Banks was framed.

Banks was followed by fellow torture victims Melvin Jones and Anthony Holmes, who detailed their own experiences at the hands of Burge and his detectives.  The prosecution presented five victims of torture at the hands of Borge or the detectives under him at Area Two police headquarters during the 1970’s and 1980s.  The testimony of one of the victims, Andrew Wilson, was read to the jury in lieu of his live testimony, taking up much of two days.  Wilson died in prison in 2007, serving a life sentence for killing two Chicago police officers.  All five witnesses were gang members or convicted felons.  All but one confessed to mainly murder charges, claiming they were in fear of death or continued torture if they did not confess.

Burge rose to the rank of Commander before he was fired by the Chicago Police Department in 1993.  He is on trial for perjury in his testimony in a civil trial brought by one of the torture victims, in which Burge denied torturing and knowing about the torture of the victims.

Shadeed Mu’min was the last major prosecution witness to testify.  He described how he was interrogated 25 years ago by then-Lt. Jon Burge about an armed robbery, for which Mu’min was under arrest.  Burge pulled out a .44 Magnum pistol and emptied all but one round.  He then pointed it at the middle of Mu’min’s forehead.  After Burge carefully pulled the trigger three times, Mu’min still refused to talk, so Burge tried to put a plastic cover over Burge’s head.  When Mu’min passed out, Burge revived him and smothered Mu’min’s again, causing him to lose consciousness again.  On Burge’s third try, Mu’min offered to tell him what ever he wanted to hear.

On cross-examination, Mu’min admitted that weeks after his arrest he called Burge for help in getting his impounded car.  He also admitted he waited a year before he told his own lawyer about this alleged torture.  Mu’min admitted committing the armed robbery for which he was arrested and that his confession was true.  He admitted he discussed his claims of torture with other inmates in the Cook County Jail, where the other alleged victims of Burge’s torture were housed.  But Mu’min refused to meet with an investigator from the Office of Professional Standards, which investigated complaints against police, to identify a police officer who laughed at him when he was being tortured.  He said he wanted to put the past behind him.

Dana Panos, a family lawyer, was called to the witness stand by the government. She testified about a conversation she had with the defendant, Jon Burge, in the late 1980s.  She was a law student at the time and was introduced to Burge by a date in a South Side Chicago bar.  They talked for about 45 minutes, during which time Burge ridiculed her belief that criminals had any rights and admitted he had beaten an accused cop killer to get a confession.  Burge told her he was involved in the Wilson investigation.  She claimed Burge told her that if a suspect confessed to a crime which he did not commit, it was not an injustice because it would balance out; since the subject had probably committed some other crime for which he was not convicted but should have been convicted.  He told her criminal defense lawyers were useless and they interfered with the administration of justice.  Obviously that would mean a system in which the police act as judge, jury and executioner-so simple that way.  That way police get to inflict their own personal beliefs which some of them believe are more important than anyone else’s.

Before and during the prosecution’s case, the defense lawyers complained to U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow that a number of witnesses the defense wanted to call were clamming up.  The defense claimed that the government’s case was having a chilling effect on Burge’s former colleagues, that they were afraid their testifying positively for Burge might buy them federal charges of their own. Ultimately, the judge ruled eight potential defense witnesses would be allowed to take the Fifth Amendment if called to the witness stand by the defense.

A much anticipated government witness proved to be letdown for the prosecution.  A 30-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, former detective Michael McDermott testified under a grant of immunity.  In his testimony before the grand jury two years ago, he had incriminated Burge, but most of his testimony before the trial jury (the petit jury)- after he had “more time to reflect” – consisted of backpedaling, qualifying and denying his grand jury testimony.  He witnessed the interrogation of Shadeed Mu’min, he admitted.  When the prosecutor confronted McDermott with the grand jury transcript of his testimony, McDermott had to admit Burge put a plastic bag over Mu’min’s head.  McDermitt told the grand jury he saw Burge point a gun at Mu’min and was abusive, but at trial he wasn’t sure Burge held a gun and said his behavior was not abusive but only “inappropriate.”  McDermitt testified under immunity, but Burge’s defense attorney painted McDermitt as inclined to give the government what they wanted in fear of losing his police pension or his salary from the Cook County state attorney’s office as an investigator, where he is now employed.

Dr. John Raba was a prosecution witness who testified to his findings after examining Andrew Wilson after Wilson’s police interrogation.  It was Wilson, who died in 2007, whose testimony was read to the jury describing his torture at the hands of Burge, including pressing his chest, face and right leg against a radiator.  Raba was the medical director of the Cook County jail in 1982, when he saw Wilson’s wounds after his encounter with defendant Burge.  Dr. Raba was so shocked by his observations that he wrote a letter to Chicago Police Superintendent Richard Bizcezek, telling him Wilson had been beaten and electrocuted by Area Two detectives, noting Wilson had blistered burns on his chest, face and right leg, open wounds on his forehead, a split lip and gash in the back of the head that required stitches.  Bizcezek never answered the letter.

But there was a response.  Dr. Raba got a telephone call from Cook County Board President George Dunne, a powerful politician.  Dunne asked why Raba was getting involved in such matters.  Raba’s testimony furthered the government’s theory that many people knew or suspected that torture was being used by Burge and detectives under his command.  Although Burge’s lawyers claimed Wilson’s injuries did not match his descriptions of torture, Raba testified that after meeting twice with Wilson, he concluded the injuries he found on Wilson did match Wilson’s description of his torture.  Raba said the injuries were extremely unlikely to have been self-inflicted, as Burge’s lawyers suggested.

After the prosecution rested its case of about two weeks of evidence, Jon Burge took the witness stand in his own defense.  He denied torturing Anthony Holmes and denied he backhanded Melvin Jones in the face, shocked his genitals, struck him with a stapler or pointed a gun at him.  Burge admitted only going into the interview room and telling Jones, who was accused of murdering a state’s witness, how little Burge thought of him. Burge said he assigned two detectives to question Wilson and never saw half a dozen police in the room, as Wilson had claimed, nor did he hear any unusual screams.  Of course he denied pressing Wilson against a radiator.  Burge also denied telling Holmes’ attorney, a government witness, Sandra Watson, that a black box in detective Area Two “leaves no marks,” referring to a device to shock suspects.

The trial continues, and the result, as always with a jury, is uncertain.  One thing that is certain is that Jon Burge does not believe criminal defense lawyers are useless in the criminal justice system, as he puts his life in their hands every day he goes to court.