From our hinterlands correspondent, Kathleen Casey, comes this remarkable story of how Niagara Falls cops and a county prosecutor, Doreen Hoffmann, came up with a great way to have some fun with a defendant.
Ryan S. Smith refused a judge’s order last fall to give a DNA sample, insisting to police that he didn’t care what court papers said.
“You are gonna have to Taser me if you want my DNA,” an officer reported Smith saying.
So police did just that, jolting Smith with electricity before swabbing the inside of his mouth.
Can’t you just see the smile on their face when Smith refused to comply. After all, how much better does it get, a DNA sample and a Taser all rolled into one!
According to police records obtained by The Buffalo News, officers involved had been told by superiors to “use any means necessary” to collect the sample.
The judge could have ordered Smith jailed until he gave the sample, the lawyers said, but police and prosecutors had no legal authority to force him to provide one.
“If someone refuses to give their DNA, then they can be held in contempt and be held in jail until they comply,” said Patrick Balkin of Lockport, Smith’s defense lawyer.
The judge who ordered the DNA sample, to replace a DNA sample that the cops lost (oops) isn’t pleased, and has ordered a hearing to determine how this happened. But the best line in the case, where Smith supposedly tells Police Officer Ryan G. Warme that if he wants another sample, he’s going to have to taser him, may present a bit of a problem.
Balkin plans to call all of the officers involved to testify except Warme, who has been jailed and suspended from his job since FBI agents charged him in October with wire fraud, conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and other charges.
Don’t you just hate it when that happens? But what about the role the county prosecutor play in this mess. After Smith refused to cooperate by providing another DNA:
[P.O.] Galie then contacted Detective Lt. William Thomson and Assistant District Attorney Doreen M. Hoffmann, McDonell reported.
“It was relayed the officers could use any means necessary to secure the sample,” he wrote
Any means necessary? And that was okay with ADA Hoffmann? Defense counsel Patrick Balkin plans to have Hoffmann decide for herself what to say about it.
Balkin said he also plans to call Hoffmann to the witness stand.
“I’d like to give [Hoffmann] some credit in this case. I sure can’t picture any district attorney thinking that they would use a Taser,” Balkin said.
Hoffmann told The News that she will offer a very different version of what happened that day than Smith did.
My guess is we can bet on that one. No doubt it was all a big misunderstanding, when Hoffmann told them to show Smith the love and they misunderstood that to mean taser the sucker. It can happen like that, you know.
Our hinterlands correspondent will follow up on the hearing, provided they don’t taser her for showing up in court.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
On the other hand, if instead of being a robbery, burglary, kidnapping, assault, and gun case it had been a DUI, I’m told that in some states the cops can forcibly draw blood to get a BAC (or have a doctor do it). I believe the usual refrain then goes “why should kidnappers have more rights than mere drunk drivers?” I’m sure it’s all for the children, too.
If officer’s are enforcing a search warrant they can use force to draw blood on a dunk driver, how else are they supposed to get it.
Albert, the point Windy tried to make is that the cops, with minimal training and certainly overwhelmed by feelings of sympathy for the suspect, can play doctor and draw blood themselves, because, you know, it’s too much trouble for them to take their catch to a hospital. It also discourages from insisting on the right to have good evindence gathered rather than vanished breath samples, analysed by unreliable machines.
The Taser/DNA Decision: When Cops Put Their Heads Together
As previously promised, our hinterlands correspondent Kathleen Casey snuck into the Ryan Smith hearing to find out why police chose to taser Smith in order to collect a DNA sample to make up for the one he had previously given but they lost.