Courtesy of Nicole Black at Sui Generis and her weekly survey of New York legal news, another story about police messing around and getting caught. In case you don’t know, Nicole does a survey of New York legal news stories every week, as well as a survey of the top posts in New York law blogs. She used to include Simple Justice in the weekly survey, but hasn’t found anything worth mentioning in a while now.
The linked Newsday AP story talks about the New York State Police screwing around with discovery, by redacting names of witnesses, withholding information and tapes, and the other little niceties that can make the difference between the truth and the conviction. No reason to repost here what has already been written.
I can envision a few State Police officers having a beer and laughing as they take a black magic marker to cross out stuff in their reports that would provide responsive information to the defense. Maybe playing garbage can basketball with the videotape showing that some other guy was the perp. “Two points,” laughs cop one. “And another mutt bites the dust,” chuckles cop two.
But here’s the question. Over the past 20 years, we’ve had some great police scandals. Serpico, the Dirty 30, DEA Group 33, Abner Louima. Yet they have had negligible impact on the public psyche. They are viewed as isolated incidents rather than systemic flaws. They are compartmentalized, not only by regular folk but by judges and prosecutors, who persist in their blind faith that they would rather err on the side of the cops than find out the truth.
The real story in Supreme Court Justice Thomas McNamara’s decision is that he ruled against the State Police. How overt must that case have been to force a judge to openly smack the cops? Judges will do cartwheels to let lying cops get away with it. Sure, they know that they are lying, but it somehow still falls into the category of “cops will be cops.” As if this makes it okay.
No, I am not advocating for a blanket presumption that all cops are bad, or that a cop that may “modify” his testimony to nail one perp won’t risk his life to save a person from a burning building. But I am stumping for a healthy cynicism. When we put cops on a pedestal and make them immune from real scrutiny, we invite abuse. They don’t fear false testimony; it’s just part of the job. It’s their responsibility to put the bad guy in jail. And all of our efforts, and our platitudes, about justice and truth are a big joke. It’s only defense lawyers who seem to think that there’s supposed to be some element of honesty when someone testifies under oath. Does that make us the fools?
A while back, I posted about a series of appellate decisions that showed how cops are treated differently by the courts. Was it wrong, or is there a secret handshake that defense lawyers don’t know about that let’s them into a back door at the courthouse where honesty is neither expected nor required?
Murray Kempton, who wrote a column for the New York Post, used to have a saying: “There they go again, lying to convict the guilty.” He got it. It wasn’t about guilt or innocence, but about telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may. Yet jurors will accept the testimony of a police officer over anyone else almost every time. Yes, there are rare exceptions, but even when they admit that the cops testimony smelled, or it was clear that the cop was making stuff up to cover the gaps in the case, they will assume that the cop is on the side of the angels and that the defendant wouldn’t be sitting there unless he had done something worthy of conviction. Forget the process, it’s the end that counts.
So instead of this story being another nail in the coffin of dishonest police work, or a process that encourages lies and deception to make sure that the bad guy goes down, it’s nothing more than a mere footnote in a minor story. I’m waiting for the day that they change the slogan above the courthouse from “Equal Justice For All” to “The Ends Justify The Means.” At least that would be honest.
The linked Newsday AP story talks about the New York State Police screwing around with discovery, by redacting names of witnesses, withholding information and tapes, and the other little niceties that can make the difference between the truth and the conviction. No reason to repost here what has already been written.
I can envision a few State Police officers having a beer and laughing as they take a black magic marker to cross out stuff in their reports that would provide responsive information to the defense. Maybe playing garbage can basketball with the videotape showing that some other guy was the perp. “Two points,” laughs cop one. “And another mutt bites the dust,” chuckles cop two.
But here’s the question. Over the past 20 years, we’ve had some great police scandals. Serpico, the Dirty 30, DEA Group 33, Abner Louima. Yet they have had negligible impact on the public psyche. They are viewed as isolated incidents rather than systemic flaws. They are compartmentalized, not only by regular folk but by judges and prosecutors, who persist in their blind faith that they would rather err on the side of the cops than find out the truth.
The real story in Supreme Court Justice Thomas McNamara’s decision is that he ruled against the State Police. How overt must that case have been to force a judge to openly smack the cops? Judges will do cartwheels to let lying cops get away with it. Sure, they know that they are lying, but it somehow still falls into the category of “cops will be cops.” As if this makes it okay.
No, I am not advocating for a blanket presumption that all cops are bad, or that a cop that may “modify” his testimony to nail one perp won’t risk his life to save a person from a burning building. But I am stumping for a healthy cynicism. When we put cops on a pedestal and make them immune from real scrutiny, we invite abuse. They don’t fear false testimony; it’s just part of the job. It’s their responsibility to put the bad guy in jail. And all of our efforts, and our platitudes, about justice and truth are a big joke. It’s only defense lawyers who seem to think that there’s supposed to be some element of honesty when someone testifies under oath. Does that make us the fools?
A while back, I posted about a series of appellate decisions that showed how cops are treated differently by the courts. Was it wrong, or is there a secret handshake that defense lawyers don’t know about that let’s them into a back door at the courthouse where honesty is neither expected nor required?
Murray Kempton, who wrote a column for the New York Post, used to have a saying: “There they go again, lying to convict the guilty.” He got it. It wasn’t about guilt or innocence, but about telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may. Yet jurors will accept the testimony of a police officer over anyone else almost every time. Yes, there are rare exceptions, but even when they admit that the cops testimony smelled, or it was clear that the cop was making stuff up to cover the gaps in the case, they will assume that the cop is on the side of the angels and that the defendant wouldn’t be sitting there unless he had done something worthy of conviction. Forget the process, it’s the end that counts.
So instead of this story being another nail in the coffin of dishonest police work, or a process that encourages lies and deception to make sure that the bad guy goes down, it’s nothing more than a mere footnote in a minor story. I’m waiting for the day that they change the slogan above the courthouse from “Equal Justice For All” to “The Ends Justify The Means.” At least that would be honest.