The Sixth Circuit, like every court, every judge, likes dogs. And so begins its decision in United States v. Perkins.

Many good Fourth Amendment stories begin with dogs. See, e.g., Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237 (2013) (featuring Aldo the dog). And so it is here. This story began when a dog’s sniff alerted law enforcement to a suspicious-smelling package. The dog’s sniff was accurate. The package contained methamphetamine. The intended recipient was “B. PERKINS,” with the address “5831 Rowe Gap RD Belvidere, TN 37306.”

But they went from Aldo the dog to Warren and Brewer, two mutts. Continue reading →

His case gave rise to Joe Goldstein doing the new round of “testlying is still a problem” articles in the New York Times.

The Times examined Mr. Desormeau’s career in an article in October. More recently The Times investigated the phenomenon of “testilying” within the New York Police Department in a series of articles.

Testilying was a hot topic a generation ago as well, and after everybody got done with their “tsking” over it, life went back to normal in the courtroom, with every cop embellishing his testimony, filling in the details, glossing over the gaps, to make sure the bad dude got convicted. As the late Murray Kempton liked to say, “there they go again, framing the guilty.”

But what made 34-year-old former Detective Kevin Desormeau different is that there was no video in the good old days, so it was just the defendant’s word against the cops. Guess who won that pissing match? Continue reading →

The police description of why three plainclothes and two uniform cops* took him out is both “perfect” and makes no sense.

“The suspect then took a two-handed shooting stance and pointed an object at the approaching officers,” the chief said, holding up a surveillance photo of a blurry figure standing next to a bodega ice machine with his arms outstretched.

Why would a person holding a piece of pipe with a knob on the end, described by some as a shower head, do such a thing unless he was trying to commit suicide by cop? You can’t shoot someone with a pipe and a knob. It’s crazy.

But then, 34-year-old Saheed Vassell was bipolar, refused his meds and was well-known in the neighborhood for being disturbed. Harmless, but disturbed. Continue reading →

I’ve never found John Oliver to be funny or particularly enlightening, and his recent low-rent attack on Dustin Hoffman reeked of self-righteousness and ignorance about the criminal justice system. But there is a clip from his show about Immigration Courts that merits discussion.

Oliver, and the people (some of whom are former Immigration Judges) in his clip, make the following points about Immigration Court, in the following order:

• Immigration Courts in essence handle “death penalty cases” in a traffic court setting;
• There is a gargantuan backlog of cases, with some courts taking up to 5 years to process cases. This is sometimes detrimental to defendants respondents

Continue reading →

There’s some room for variation on a police officer’s belt. Their service weapon. Maybe OS spray or a Taser. Cuffs, ammo, a flashlight. What else should they carry? Cato’s Clark Neily says liability insurance.

The total payout for injuries caused by NYPD officers in 2017 was an unprecedented $308.2 million (up from a “mere” $92.4 million in 2007, and $152 million in 2012). That money didn’t come out of the pockets of the officers responsible for the misconduct; the bills were covered by you, the taxpayer.

That’s because police departments nearly always pick up the tab for damages caused by the officers they employ.

Clark looks to the intersection of law and economics for a solution. Continue reading →

A summary reversal ordinarily would capture no interest, but for the dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, with whom the Notorious RBG joined, calling out the obvious to the oblivious.

Its decision is not just wrong on the law; it also sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.

And that’s the message sent by the majority in its per curiam opinion in Kisela v. Hughes. From a distance, this may look terribly misguided, but close up one realizes that it’s the message the Court meant to send to police, and has been consistently sending to cops since they decided Graham v. Connor, the Reasonably Scared Cop Rule. Continue reading →

For those unaware, the law has many masters, one of which is finality. It’s not that the issues raised, and their consequences, aren’t extremely serious, but that there must ultimately be conclusions, ends to the debate, the fight, the doubt. One such line happens when a defendant pleads guilty to a crime.

The process varies. In some courts, the defendant is put under oath to admit his guilt. In some, he engages in an allocution, where he is asked to state, in his own words, what he did. The judge may ask a litany of questions to be sure the defendant is pleading of his own free will, not due to coercion or promises about which the court is unaware.

But once done, once the guilty plea has been entered, guilt admitted, that aspect of the case is over. As far as the law is concerned, there is no turning back, no denying that the defendant committed the crime, once he’s pleaded guilty. Continue reading →

When the argument was grounded in mass produced statues of confederate generals that were erected just as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum as a reminder to blacks in the south to stay in their place, there was no reason not to tear them down. They were offensive and meant to be. They weren’t artifacts of history, but tin soldiers.

Even those whose heritage was at issue conceded that the statues were crap and had to go.

The concern that remained, however, wasn’t about the statues per se, but about whether this would be a slippery slope. “Presentism,” the viewing of history through the prism of current values, was already taking its toll. Christopher Columbus was a rapist colonizer. Washington and Jefferson were slaveowners. And our first Chief Justice, John Marshall, was, ahem, problematic. Continue reading →

As the retrial of Bill Cosby heats up, a challenge has been raised to the judge handling the case. It’s not so much that the judge has done anything wrong, although one could well argue that his latest decision to allow the testimony of five additional women at the trial of the alleged rape of Barbara Constand, is very wrong.

But even if the ruling, that this evidence is sufficiently valuable to show Cosby’s unique pattern of sexual assault rather than his propensity, is questionable, the challenge is to what might be going on in the judge’s head. It’s referred to as “the appearance of impropriety,” because it sounds less offensive an accusation than the reality of impropriety.

Judge Steven T. O’Neill of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas grew emotional and paused twice to compose himself as he read a statement defending his wife, Deborah V. O’Neill, a therapist at a University of Pennsylvania center where she counsels students who have been sexually assaulted. He described her as an independent woman with her own views that have no relevance to his views as a judge or the retrial of the veteran entertainer. Continue reading →

Bobby Berreta’s office was on 161st Street in the Bronx, between the Supreme Court and Criminal Court just below the Grand Concourse. It was a crappy little storefront, with a pull-down gate and a sign that guaranteed that the guy inside had no aesthetic at all. It read, “Berreta Bail Bonds.”

Bobby was short and fat, but he usually had a smile on his face. When he didn’t, he made Sam Gompers look handsome. He sat in his crappy little office with a picture of a yacht behind him. There was a lot of money to be made on 161st Street. Cash money.

Phil worked for Bobby. He was part errand boy, part skip-tracer. Phil was the guy who would meet up in court with the paperwork, take the fee and security and file the bond with the court. He met me for a graveyard arraignment. When I called, he came. If I told him that it was a good bond, that the guy wouldn’t run, there was never any problem. My clients didn’t run, and they never lost a dime on me. Continue reading →