Oklahoma Criminal Defense Blog

“Don’t taze my granny,” Lonnie Tinsley cried.  He was yelling at the police he had called to help his 86-year-old grandmother in his home in El Reno.  Actually, he had called for help for his grandmother, thinking medical personnel would arrive.  The police arrived.  But the police didn’t listen to him.  When the grandmother, Lona Vernon, ordered the police out of her home, they decided she was being aggressive-as she lay in her bed-and used their tasers on her.

Tinsley had called for help, expecting he would get help from medical technicians.  But he got the police who had their own agenda, a dozen of them.  Police used their tasers on Mrs.  Vernon because she had taken an aggressive posture lying in her hospital bed.  One taser wasn’t enough, however, so another police officer shot her.  But the tasers followed a special move that was based on “officer safety.”  Officer safety required stepping on Mrs. Vernon’s oxygen hose until she suffered oxygen deprivation.

Meanwhile, the police saw what they thought was obstructive behavior from the grandson, so the police took him from the room, threw him to the floor, handcuffed him, and took him out to a police car.

Aggressive hospital bed posture is not a crime familiar to most citizens, but when police need to excuse their excesses, they must get creative.  When they’re in a hurry, however, their creativity gets transparent.  Suffocating grandmothers in their beds is a little hard to sell, except to the hard-core “police-are-right-no-matter-what” crowd.  No facts will sway this crowd.  They will find some cover to excuse the police no matter, no matter, no matter what the police do.  To them, everything the police do that is ethically questionable or even illegal has some way to justify it.

The police finished up on Leona Vernon by handcuffing her, roughly, of course, and taking her away, proud, no doubt, of nipping the aggressive hospital bed behavior that so threatened the peace and dignity of the commonwealth.

Some people just cannot imagine the police would do anything illegal.  Some people cannot imagine the police would lie under oath.  They’re just doing their job, they posit, so why would commit perjury?  Do they ever get caught?  No, so there is no risk to their perjury.  Whey would they abuse a citizen?   Because some police officers think the citizen had it coming.  Police deal in the blame business every day.  That judgmental attitude can make an impact on some police officers, those who come to have contempt for those whom they believe are criminals.  For those police officers, the legal system is an obstacle to their brand of justice, an obstacle they can circumvent on a daily basis.

When a police officer testifies he observed a traffic violation or a driver moving excessively in the front seat on a car, what judge will doubt him?  The police officer knows that.  It is futile for an arrested party to dispute it.  Only when external evidence challenges the statement of the police officer can some doubt be raised, never when it is a police officer’s word against the accused.  When this goes on for long enough, the result is all the wrongly-accused prisoner’s on death row in Texas.   It took irrefutable DNA evidence after years and years of questioning to prove these people did not commit the crimes of which they were convicted. What those reversed convictions show, however, is an underlying question about the truth in which convictions in all criminal cases rest.

As criminal defense attorneys will tell you, an attorney is expected to defend someone suspected of a crime.  That was not the case in New Mexico earlier this month.  The lawyer called the police, but she did so when a man apparently told her to do so.

Lauren Oliveros called the police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to report a man walked into her law office and told her had killed two people the day before and wanted to turn himself in.  The man told her where the bodies could be found.

Ralph Montoya wanted to give himself up.  He was already on bail for attacking these very two victims weeks before.  Police found the bodies of Stefanie Gray and her boyfirend, Hector Torres at Torres’ home.  Ms. Gray was a high school teacher, and Torres was a professor of English at the University of New Mexico.  Gray was also a graduate student at the University of New Mexico due to defend her thesis this month.

Following the tip from Montoya, police went to Torres’ home, kicked in the back door and found their bodies in the house.  Police reported they found a handgun was in Torres’ left hand, pointing at his head.  One officer said the handgun appeared to have been placed there, but that could be one of those “police opinions” that creep into the courtroom and are claimed to rest on some sort of expertise, but which are really based on nothing more than “hunch”.  In other words, police routinely claim to know things that they really do not know.  But none of that apparently matters to solving this case.

At the time of these deaths, Montoya was on bail for attacking Ms. Gary and Mr. Torres. In that earlier incident, Montoya reportedly forced his way into the front door, chased Gray into a back bedroom, jumped on her and kicked her, all while Torres was fighting him.  Gray broke free, Montoya pulled a knife, and Torres started talking.  Torres must have been a pretty good English professor because he talked Torres into dropping the knife.

Gray then obtained from the court in Sandoval County a restraining order against Montoya, who was then released on bail on the charges of kidnapping, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault on a household member  and aggravated burglary.  It was while on bail for this incident that Montoya allegedly confessed to going to Torres’ home and killing Gray and Torres.

This was not Montoya’s first rodeo.   In 1995, Montoya pleaded guilty to charges of stalking, assault, attempted arson and attempted breaking and entering after a complaint from a student at New Mexico State University in Las Cruses.  For that, he received probation for a year.      But that was not enough, so in 1998, another woman from Las Cruses obtained a restraining order against Montoya.  She claimed that Montoya had made 15 to 20 threatening telephone calls a day for two months and that she had seen him near apartment window several times.

With a belly still not full, Montoya had an incident in 2005 with a different woman, this one from Rio Rancho.  She complained that Montoya had harassed her for a month after they had dated briefly.  She said he would show up at her home at her new boyfriend’s home, but no charges were ever filed.

Nadine Hamby, spokeswoman for the Albuquerque Police Department, summed up Montoya’s attitude pretty well.  “Obviously ‘no’ was not something he wanted to hear,” Hamby said.   As to the subjects of Montoya’s serial attention, she said: “It appears he wouldn’t leave them alone until he found someone new.”

A very big Mexican drug kingpin was sentenced in Houston to a 25-year sentence.  The sentencing hearing was done in a closed courtroom.  Osiel Cardenas Guillen was the head of the “Gulf Cartel” until his arrest by Mexican authorities in 2007.  He pled guilty to five counts of a lengthy indictment, which included drug trafficking, money laundering and the attempted murder and assault of federal agents.  He also forfeited $50 million in assets to the U.S. Government.

The Gulf Cartel controls much of the cocaine traffic across the Mexican-American border in South Texas.  Cardenas was responsible for “kidnapings, extortion, gun battles in the streets,” according to U.S. District Judge Hilda Tagle, who sentenced Cardenas.

Nevertheless, Judge Tagle followed the recommendation of the U.S. Attorney in giving the sentence because Cardenas was cooperating with the government in pursuing other drug traffickers.

Before he was arrested by Mexican authorities in 2003, Cardenas ran an empire of drug smugglers and gunmen in Tamaulipas, Mexico.  They moved tons of cocaine every year into the United States.  He was famous to law enforcement on both sides of the border for the vicious violence he employed against his enemies. He recruited former military commandoes as his gunmen, known as Zetas.
Even after his arrest, he continued to direct the operations of his cartel from his Mexican jail cell.  Then Mexican President Felipe Calderon broke with previous policy and extradited Cardenas along with 14 other major figures from the Mexican underworld.  Cardenas began cooperating with the U.S. Government immediately when he arrived here.  Meanwhile, his former organization has been weakened by arrests and lack of leadership.

The Zetas have now broken off from the Gulf Cartel. They have become a separate criminal enterprise that controls the crossing at Laredo, Texas, and recently there has been a series of gun battles between the Zetas and what is left of the Gulf Cartel in the towns along the Texas border in a contest for turf.

Cardenas has been in the United States for two years, cooperating with law enforcement all the time, perhaps especially cooperating on the Zetas, since they have split with his Gulf Cartel.  Finally, his sentence was handed down in a courtroom, closed to the public.  Judge Tagle also sealed dozens of documents related to Cardenas’ plea agreement and descriptions of his assets, all at the request of government prosecutors.  It is not unusual to seal documents in a case, but it is very unusual to lock a courtroom for a hearing in a United States Courthouse.

The sentencing hearing was attended by two members of Cardenas family and some law enforcement officers, along with armed guards.  The hearing was not even on the court’s published docket until hours after it was over.   The transcript taken of the hearing reflects that the judge explained the United States Marshal’s Service had asked to keep the public from witnessing the hearing because it would jeopardize Cardenas’ safety.  The affidavit detailing that request was sealed.  Judge Tagle stated that if she opened the hearing, the “defendant, court personnel, United States marshal personnel, other courthouse personnel and the general public will be placed in imminent danger.”