Oklahoma Criminal Defense Blog

A retired Oklahoma City Police Department detective who worked as a contract employee of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has plenty of bad stuff to say about the Bureau.  Kyle Eastridge worked for the Bureau for  months on a federal contract.  He retired from Oklahoma City Police in 2009 after about 25 years on the force, the last 3 years of which were on assignment to the cold case squad?

Eastridge claims the field agents are at loggerheads with the forensic science division.  He also claims agents are lazy and have not followed up on DNA results linking suspects to murders. He gives examples.  Melissa Ann Moore was found dead in 1984 near Tulsa.  DNA was identified for a known suspect who was driving a car matching the description of a car seen where her body was found.  O.S.B.I. agents left information about the case with the local district attorney in 1984, 2002 and 2005.  Eastridge called the case agent, offering to obtain DNA testing on any other items, which Eastridge could do on an expedited basis because federal funds pay for Eastridge’s cold case investigation.  The agent declined, saying he did not have enough evidence to file a charge.

Eastridge said the case agent did not want others looking into the case.  Eastridge also said:  “The bottom line is they’ve known who killed this girl for years, and he’s never been arrested for it.  But do they know who killed this girl?  Eastridge takes evidence that proves this suspect was driving a car that matched the description of one seen at the place Ms. Moore’s body and car were discovered.  As any criminal defense lawyer will tell you, this is circumstantial evidence that, without more, would not result in a conviction.  It might lead investigators to more evidence, but Eastridge says this suspect ought to be arrested now.  Why?

Georgette Pless disappeared from Tulsa in 1992 and her body later found.  In March, 2009, semen from her body was matched by DNA to a Missouri prisoner.  Eastridge says the O.S.B.I. agent did nothing further after that, so he worked on the file for a month, obtained an arrest warrant, and the district attorney filed a murder charge.  It appears Eastridge did the right thing in this case.

O.S.B.I. has no original jurisdiction to investigate cases.   When a rural sheriff, police chief or district attorney has a criminal case that is too much for the local agency to investigate, often a homicide or other serious case, they ask the O.S.B.I.  to investigate and give their findings to the district attorney.  Only the district attorney can file an Information or seek a grand jury indictment to initiate a criminal charge.

That’s not good enough for Eastridge.  He criticizes O.S.B.I. agents for letting decide when, and if suspects should be arrested.  He says there is no legal prohibition from law enforcement making an arrest without the approval of the prosecuting attorney, and he thinks operating on his own is just fine.  He says sometimes investigators need to make arrests even if prosecutors do not want to file charges. “Let the D.A. decide to release a murder suspect that you have evidence on. That’s not going to happen, I guarantee you,” he said.

You can see Eastridge’s point.  Maybe the authority elected to do the job is not acting to Eastridge’s liking, so just go around him.  Instead of filing to be elected to that office, he will try to manipulate the elected official to pressure him into doing Eastridge’s bidding.  Eastridge claims he has evidence amounting to probable cause to justify an arrest, and assuming he has made correct judgements on what is admissible evidence and what is probable cause, judgements about which he has no legal expertise, he makes no reference to proof to satisfy a jury.  That is what the district attorney is responsible for, what he has to consider, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and because the district attorney is responsible for taking any case all the way from filing  to presenting it to the jury, the district attorney is responsible for the case to the voters.  Eastridge wants to highjack this process and inject his own feelings, although he has received no such power from the citizen-voters.

There are some police officers and law enforcement agencies, not many, who love to dump a half-baked case in the lap of the district attorney.  That way they don’t have to do much work, just get the case filed by the D.A., even though with all the loose ends, the case in not ready to be presented to a jury.  Then, once filed, it is the D.A.’s problem alone, and those police officers, certainly not all of them, those police officers will perform no further work to help the district attorney get the case ready for trial.

When a murderer is sought, the public can forget sufficiency of evidence, issues relating to quality of evidence.  Eastridge is counting on that.  He doesn’t have to answer to the voters with too many adverse jury verdicts.  He sounds like the kind of guy who claims he can talk to someone he suspects of a crime, and then, based on a few minutes of conversation, tell a jury with confidence that he can sense the suspect is guilty.  And that should be enough for the jury- in his opinion.  He is someone who thinks he is entitled to steer the legal system by himself, but he needs to be elected to do that.

He should present himself and his ideas to the voters for their approval.  It’s easy to lecture others on public policy when one has no one to account to except one’s own local police union.  The American way provides that policy is decided by the public through the officials whom they elect.  The public can vote out those officials of whose actions they disapprove.

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.