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.

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.

Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito were convicted three years before of acting as assassins for the Mafia while they were employed by New York Police Department.    Finally, [in March, 2009] they were sentenced in Brooklyn by U.S. District Court by Judge Jack Weinstein, Eppolito to life plus 100 years with a fine of $4.75 million, Caracappa to life plus 80 years and a fine of $4.25 million.

The judge said the two defendants likely had hidden assets to pay the fines.  One asset that will not be seized, however, is their police pensions.  Both men have been drawing tax-free disability pensions from the City of New York since they left the police department.  Caracappa retired in 1992 as a first-grade detective.  He receives $5,313 a month.  Eppolito retired in 1990 as a second-grade detective and receives a $3,896 per month in pension.

Both detectives, who joined the police force in 1969, retired before they were charged with anything, so their convictions do not interrupt their pensions from the city.  Although first reports of the detective’s corruption surfaced in 1979, they continued to receive promotions in the police department.  Implicated a  number of times, they were never charged until in this prosecution.  The pensions are not subject to seizure for the fines due the federal government.

Under New York law, pensions due former public employees are treated as property in trust for the employee. Efforts to exact forfeiture of such pensions as penalty for those convicted of corruption have failed in the past.  In 2009, 450 corrupt former officials, judges and police officers were reportedly still receiving pensions despite their convictions.

Caracappa, now 68 years old, is gaunt, with little color in his face.  Eppolito is 61 and doing better but still a wreck.   They will have little opportunity to spend their pensions in prison, but their families can.  The testimony of the families of some of their victims at the sentencing hearing did not prompt either of the men to give up their pensions.

Caracappa’s and Eppolito’s trial [in 2006?] lasted 3 weeks.  It was built around the testimony of Burton Kaplan, a wholesale garment dealer who was involved in a number of schemes with people in organized crime.  Jimmy Breslin wrote a book about Kaplan, entitled “The Good Rat, ” which describes how Caracappa, using a police computer, helped track down a man named Nicholas Guido for the Mafia.  Caracappa made a mistake, however, and gave a wrong address with the same name, who was soon shot to death.

Caracappa’s and Eppolito were charged with accepting $4,000 a month payments from the mob for spying, plus tens of thousands extra for the occasional kidnapping or murder.  They disclosed the identities of witnesses and leaked information, compromising investigations.  In their first mob killing in 1986, they used the siren on their unmarked car to pull over a jeweler on a Long Island road.  They told Israel Greenwald they needed him to stand in a lineup to investigate a traffic accident.  Then they drove him to a garage, where he was shot to death.

At their trial, the detectives were convicted of murdering a capo in the Gambino family capo in his Mercedes-Benz on the Belt Parkway in New York.  The jury also found them guilty of kidnaping a man, putting him in the trunk of their car, and delivering him to a mobster, who then tortured the man for hours before killing him.

Following the trial in which they were convicted of racketeering conspiracy, the trial judge issued but did not impose a life sentence for each detective.  The judge stated he believed the five-year statute of limitations had run on the crimes the defendants had committed and therefore overturned the convictions.  The most serious crimes of which the two detectives were accused occurred in Brooklyn, including murders, in the 1980s and 1990s, prosecutors used more recent and less serious crimes, such as money-laundering and dope distribution in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2004-2005, to bring the earlier acts into the conspiracy net as an ongoing criminal enterprise.  The judge did not believe the conspiracy could include the earlier acts, but the United States Court of Appeals differed and reinstated the convictions.

One of the ghosts of Hurricane Katrina has surfaced – again.  A fifth former police officer has been charged in federal court for covering up the killings of unarmed civilians in the days after Hurricane Katrina.  Ignatius Hills was charged in New Orleans federal court with obstructing justice and misprison of a felony.  Hills resigned from the police force less than a week ago, obviously in anticipation of this filing.

A week after Hurricane Katrina, police were called to the Danziger Bridge on a report that shots had been filed.  Lance Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, and James Brissette, who was 17, were both shot to death by the police.  Police arrested Madison’s older brother, Ronald, on eight counts of attempted murder of a police officer.  All those charges were later dropped, obviously charges trumped-up by the police to cover their wrongdoing.

Four other former police officers and one civilian have pled guilty to covering up the shootings.  They all plead guilty to plea agreements.  Hills has been charged by Information rather than Indictment, indicating he is going to plead guilty with a plea agreement.  The reason this is indicated by the filing of an Information is that a person has a right under the fifth amendment to the constitution to be charged only by indictment by a grand jury.  The government would not bother to file the Information unless Hills’ attorney, Robert Jenkins, had agreed to plead to it.   Hills is facing a maximum sentence of eight years.

The government Information claims Hills and others shot at unarmed people and then covered up to make the shootings appear justified.  Hills allegedly wrote a police report which accused Lance Madison of eight counts of attempted murder, even though Hills had no firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing by Madison.  The Information claims another officer dictated the report to Hills, who signed it, even though Hills believed Madison was being framed.

Hills is accused of getting together with other officers to develop false stories about the incident.  Those get-togethers included one particular secret meeting in January, 2006.  The government also accuses Hills him of giving false testimony when he testified to a state grand jury in October, 2006.

Bernard Kerik was on top of the world.  He had served gloriously as police commissioner of New York City for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.  Bernie was famous in his own right, often on television screens, sporting his trademark mustache and shaved head.  He was sent by President George Bush to reorganize the police force in Iraq.  Finally, he was nominated to head the Department of Homeland Security.   After that, things went downhill.

Kerik was indicted in federal court with corruption for allegedly accepting unreported gifts of construction work on his home.   Kerik failed to report as income more than $200,000 in rent paid on his behalf to use a luxury apartment where he lived with his family when he left his city post, paid for by Steve Witkoff, a commercial real estate developer. Also, a construction company with alleged mob ties paid for the $165,000 in renovations on Kerik’s home in Riverdale, the Bronx, apparently in hopes of obtaining a city license. In 2006, Kerik plead guilty in the Bronx to state misdemeanor charges stemming from those renovations.

In 2004, after nomination by Rudy Giuliani, President George W. Bush nominated Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security.  Seven days later, Kerik withdrew his name from consideration.  Then fell the avalanche of questions about Kerik.

Had Kerik inappropriately lobbied New York City on behalf of Interstate Industrial, a construction company with alleged links to organized crime?  At first, Giuliani denied he knew about Kerik’s ties to Interstate Industrial when he appointed Kerik as police commissioner. Then in 2006, Guiliani acknowledged that city investigations commissioner, Edward Kuriansky, said Kuriansky has stated he told Giuliani in at least one briefing about Kerik’s problems, but Giuliani said he did not remember any such briefing.

Kuriansky’s diaries confirm that one of those briefings did take place.  Additionally, Kuriansky stated, based on his recollections and his diaries, he also briefed Dennison Young, Jr., one of Mayor Giuliani’s closest aides, about Kerik’s ties to the construction company only days before Mayor Giuliani appointed Kerik police commissioner.  Giuliani is well-known for the premium he places on loyalty and his own loyalty to others.  Giuliani Partners, his consulting firm did employ Kerik and continues to employ Alan Placa, a high school friend, in spite of allegations he molested young men years ago.

By the time Giuliani recommended Kerik for the Homeland Security job, his administration knew Kerik had acted on behalf of Interstate Industrial and knew about other criticisms of Kerik, including sending detectives to look for his lover’s cell phone and using police officers to research his autobiography.

In 2000, more than half the mayor’s cabinet opposed Bernie Kerik’s appointment to police commissioner.  They had concerns that included the fact that Kerik did not have a college degree, a police department requirement at the time for captains and above.

Giuliani met Kerik in 1990 at a fund raiser in New Jersey honoring a slain new York City police officer. Kerik was a decorated undercover detective with a ponytail and earrings, big biceps. Kerik cultivated political connections, such as the sheriff of Passaic County, N.J., who had made Kerik five years earlier the youngest jail chief in the county’s history.   When Giuliani ran for mayor in 1993, Kerik organized Giuliani’s security detail of off-duty officers to reserve the weekend shift for Kerik himself.

A year after Giuliani became mayor, he appointed Kerik first deputy correction commissioner to include supervision of Riker’s Island.   One year after that, Kerik was appointed  correction commissioner, where he showed up for spot inspections at 2:00 a.m.  When violence in the jails dropped, public praise climbed.  Now reported are some of his questionable activities then, such as his dating a woman who was a correction officer and his getting close to the department’s inspector general, whose responsibilities required him to avoid such closeness with other city personnel.  Later, one of his top deputies was convicted of taking $142,000 from a Correction Department that Kerik headed.  Another deputy was convicted of forcing staff members to do political campaign work and dispatching officers to renovate his home.

Lawrence Ray was a friend of Kerik and served as best man at Kerik’s wedding.  Ray even paid for much of the wedding, and Kerik in turn recommended Ray for a $100,000 job at Interstate Industrials, a New Jersey construction company with tens of million dollars in contracts with New York City.

Interstate Industrials hoped that Lawrence Ray could change relations with the City because, two years before, city investigators had found the company employed mob figures and denied the company an operating license. After hiring Ray, Interstate hired Kerik’s brother, and from then on, the then-correction commissioner began lobbying unofficially for Interstate. Kerik defended Interstate to the chief of enforcement for the city commission, a cousin of Giuliani who was reviewing Interstate’s license application.  Kerik telephoned an assistant commissioner at the Department of Investigation to say Interstate’s owners were clean of mob ties, so far as he knew.  He even had city detectives who were investigating Interstate meet Lawrence Ray in Kerik’s own city office, sending a strong signal to the detectives.  But the lobbying stopped in March, 2000, when Lawrence Ray and Edward Garafola, a mob soldier associated with Interstate, were indicted on a federal stock scheme not related to Interstate’s business.  New York City suspended Interstate’s $85 million in city contracts.

Three weeks later, Bernie Kerik interviewed for two hours with the Department of Investigation and talked about his relationship with Lawrence Ray, Interstate and its owners and his brother.  However, Kerik never mentioned that Interstate was paying for $165,000 worth of renovations on his new apartment in the Bronx.

That is when the police commissioner job came open.  Bernie Kerik was one of the candidates with his eight years experience as a police officer.  Edward Kuriansky, the city investigations commissioner, was assigned to oversee background investigations of Kerik and the other candidate, Joseph Dunne.    Kuriansky’s agency was supposed to be semi-independent, but Kerik had coopted it to some extent, appointing friends like Kuriansky to the commission and having them attend his morning meetings.  Kuriansky was a former prosecutor, and he knew Kerik had intervened on behalf of the company suspected of mob ties and that Kerik’s best friend and brother worked for that company.  Kuriansky, however, did not know Interstate was renovating Kerik’s apartment.

Giuliani selected Kurik as his police commissioner, and he served in that capacity for 16 months.  Crime fell, and Kerik enjoyed not only public approval during his tenure but celebrity.   Bernie Kerik adopted the persona of a steady figure after the World Trade Center attack on 911.  He continued to receive good press.  Three years later, after he had withdrawn his nomination as head of Homeland Security, it came to light that Kerik had used an apartment dedicated for weary rescue workers at ground zero for an extramarital affair with his book publisher, Judith Regan.

After Kerik’s three months in Iraq, he spoke at the Republican National Convention. But his candidacy to head Homeland Security lasted only a week.  He withdrew himself, saying he discovered his nanny was in the country illegally and he had not paid taxes on her.

Kerik couldn’t even stay out of trouble after he was indicted in federal court.  U.S. District Judge Stephen Robinson revoked Kerik’s bail when the judge found Bernie had, in apparent hopes of generating sympathy in his trial, leaked information the judge had ordered sealed.  Kerik ultimately pled guilty to eight counts in hopes of receiving a  two or three years sentence, as indicated by the Sentencing Guidelines and the expectations of the prosecutors.      Whoops. The judge gave him four years and said Kerik had violated the public trust immeasurably.   While waiting for his sentencing, Kerik complained that he had not heard from Rudy Giuliani.  Small wonder why.  The wonder is that he overlooked Kerik’s fleas so long.