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.

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.

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.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed U.S. District Court Judge Ronald A. White’s dismissal in September, 2007, of a pitiful lawsuit brought by former Ada District Attorney Bill Peterson against author John Gresham and others.  The lawsuit was filed in the Muskogee in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma by Richardson.  Richardson is certainly a capable lawyer, but the journalists noted that he had called a news conference when he filed the lawsuit and “could not be reached” to comment on the affirmance of the dismissal.

Former Pontotoc County District Attorney Bill Peterson filed the lawsuit over John Gresham’s book, “The Innocent Man,” which described Peterson’s conviction of two innocent men based in reliance upon the testimony of one Glen Gore and the evidence of jailhouse “snitches.”  Dennis Fritz, then a schoolteacher, and his friend, Ronald Williamson, a former minor-league baseball player, were the two convicted in Pontotoc County District Court in 1982.
Fritz received a life sentence and Williamson received the death penalty.  Both men were later exonerated by DNA tests in 1999.  Not only were the accused men proven to be innocent, but the prosecution’s star witness, Glen Gore, was proven by DNA evidence to have been the perpetrator of the murder.  He is now serving a sentence of life without parole, tried for murder after the release of Fritz and Williamson.

Gresham’s book details the faulty police and prosecution work that never investigated Glen Gore, that relied on “confessions” that resulted form questionable interrogation of the suspects as well as the reliance on jailhouse informers, known as “snitches.”   Snitches, as every criminal defense lawyer knows, are motivated by presenting as much damaging evidence as possible against whoever is being prosecuted.  Their situation requires them to help the prosecution as much as possible, and they have a motive to lie, have a motive to create false evidence.  Whether they do create false evidence in a given case is difficult for a jury to judge.  A reader of “The Innocent Man” wondered just how much instigation there was from the police and prosecution to obtain the snitch testimony, but it was clear that the prosecution never hesitated in taking it at face value to help their case.

Joining Bill Peterson as co-plaintiffs were former state criminologist Melvin Hett and former Shawnee police officer Gary Rogers.  Defendants in the case were John Gresham, well-known attorney Barr Scheck, Gresham’s publisher, Doubleday Dell Publishing Group and Robert Mayer, author of “The Dreams of Ada,” a nonfiction book about the 1984 murder in Ada, Oklahoma, and the conviction for that murder of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot.  Ward and Fontenoy, who are still in prison, were convicted by jailhouse snitch testimony, similar to that used to convict Fritz and Williamson.

This lawsuit never did not appear to have any legs when it was filed because it was based on a claim of libel brought by public officials. This is First Amendment territory, the “free speech” area that courts have repeatedly ruled should remain hands-off to the courts, and a complaint brought by public officials, who have been held to be less deserving of court protection.  The Tenth Circuit Court opinion pointed to an Oklahoma Statute that provides “criticism upon the official acts of any and all public officers” cannot be considered libelous unless a defendant makes a false allegation that official engaged in criminal behavior.

When the lawsuit was filed, Ron Fritz was quoted as saying, “ The only reason [Peterson’s] filing this is he’s trying to wipe the egg off his face because he convicted two innocent men.”  It certainly looks that way.

Two off-duty Oklahoma City Police department sergeants have been charged with “Drive-by Shooting.”  Sgt. Diron Carter and Sgt. Michael McKethan  were arrested, posted $25,000 bond each and were released.  Carter is a eight-year veteran and McKethan is a seven-year veteran of the police force.

The law against “drive-by” shootings was the result of gang shootings and was enacted to punish them.  From the facts made public about these charges, it doesn’t look a “drive-by” shooting took place at all.  It looks like the police officers are overcharged here, but that is par for the course for state prosecutions.  Criminal defense lawyers face this every day.  Unlike federal prosecutors, Oklahoma at least, state prosecutors routinely file charges that stretch to the absolute maximum penalty any charge possibly supportable under the law.  It is called “overcharging” because the charge does not fairly describe the nature of the offense.  The police are very much aware of this and usually involved in it.  So these police officers, who have participated for years in this  practice of over-charging and have no doubt enjoyed thus using this leverage to squeeze bad guys, to intimidate them to plead guilty, are now facing its wrath.

What happened in this ?  The facts alleged are that Carter and McKethan, off-duty at the time, went to Night Trips, a local strip club.  McKethan reportedly spoke to one of the strippers, whose child may be the child of McKethan. Police received a call that shots had been fired outside the bar, and witnesses reported that a man in a white sport utility vehicle was throwing  bottles as he drove through the stip club parking lot.  When the witnesses confronted the two men in the sport vehicle about their conduct, an argument ensued.  Eventually, the passenger, allegedly Sgt. Carter, is reported to have leaned out of the sport vehicle with a handgun, saying  “You want to see my baby Glock?”  He then fired a single shot.

Investigators later recovered a .40 caliber shell casing in the street, which allegedly came from a “baby Glock,” which is firearm carried by off-duty policeman.  Further verification of the event was obtained when investigators also recovered a slug they dug out of a metal wall at a nearby laundry supply business.  The prosecution alleges the shot was fired “in the direction of several bystanders.”  This will be the critical fact that will fuel the charge, the essential factoid that takes the charge beyond a mere technical violation and lights a fire under the jury.  True, no one was hurt, but someone could have been killed!  That will be the prosecutor’s argument.

Later Sgt. Carter admitted to being at the club that night but denied being involved in anything relating to a shot being fired.  Still later, Carter is reported to have told a fellow officer that “it was an accidental shooting.”

Both Carter and McKethan are on administrative leave while facing the charges, paid at all times by the faithful tax-payers of Oklahoma City.   Of course, they are presumed innocent of the charges until a jury finds them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.   But many other people are charged with a crime and are immediately fired.  No one pays them to make their way through the legal system.  Any criminal defense lawyer would want that for his client.  No doubt this status of being on administrative leave with pay while awaiting disposition of the criminal charges comes from the police contract with the City of Oklahoma City.  The Fraternal Order of Police negotiates the police contract every few years, and the contract always contains provisions like this.