All the good people think the Sex Offender Registry is fabulous.  The good people are defined as those who aren’t on the sex offender registry.  We know that they think it’s fabulous because legislators across the country keep expanding it to include people who are neither sex offenders nor threats to anyone anywhere ever.  Why?  Because every expansion brings them more adoring good people.  That means votes, campaign contributions and smiles. 

But just like laws named after children, it becomes increasingly difficult to find virgin territory for politicians to exploit in their zeal to protect us from the next threat that will destroy life as we know it.  One direction is the attack on “digital drugs,” given that cartoons of pornography worked out so well.  Hey, if people are stupid enough to buy into it, why not?

There’s another direction to consider, however, and it follows along the line of SORA.  Consider the National Sexual Harassment Registry.  From the Proactive Employer :

There’s been a lot of discussion this week about the launch of the eBossWatch ”National Sexual Harassment Registry”. This registry, modeled after the FBI’s National Sex Offender Registry, allegedly provides information to help people avoid sexual harassers. According to Asher Adelman, founder of eBossWatch:

“The eBossWatch National Sexual Harassment Registry will send a strong message to those intending to sexually harass their employees or coworkers that they will be publicly held accountable and will suffer serious consequences for their abusive actions. Now anyone will be able to search our national database and will instantly know if their potential boss or job candidate has been the subject of a sexual harassment complaint.”

There are a variety of problems with this. So many, in fact, it’s difficult to know where to start. First, the people listed in the registry are deemed “harassers” by eBossWatch, even though the site’s disclaimer states that this might not be the case.

As one might anticipate, it’s another website California, where any allegation of harassment is enough to taint a person as a sexual harasser and get one on the list, but there’s no assurance of getting off if it turns out to be utterly frivolous, a lie, whatever.  The disclaimer, naturally, makes all the requisite excuses to avoid libel while doing as much harm to people who are merely accused, malevolent, erroneous, improper motives aside. 

But you’re no sex offender.  You’re no sexual harasser.  What do you care.  Of course, some Slackoisie employee may get miffed if you refuse to let them leave when they need work/life balance, and put you on the list anyway, but what are the chances of that happening?

Given experience recently with the workplace bullying crowd, some of whom may be a wee bit overly emotional and sensitive about their grievances, it’s a natural for a new registry.  Every wrong, whether real or imagined, can land a new name on the list.

How long before legislators come to appreciate how ripe this Registry idea is for their re-election campaigns?  Already, drug offender registries are gaining popularity. creating yet another underclass of unemployable, hated individuals.  For every crime, there can be a registry.  For every perceived wrong, there can be a registry.  The potential is endless.

And until one’s name pops up on one, the good people cheer.  Hooray, we’re safe from the evil people!  Our children are safe. Society is safe. 

Whether one frames this concern as a slippery slope, initiated with the most despised in society, sex offenders, and then spreading throughout as a means to attack any putative group against whom somebody has a beef, or as the freedom of the internet to smear at will, the potential for abuse is patent,   That there’s mileage to be had is without question.  It seems like everybody hates somebody, so why not create a Registry to make them a public enemy, inform their neighbors.  If you’re really lucky, get them murdered for their wrongs.

Whether these smear websites are run privately or become part of the institutional retribution of government in a legislative effort to pander for votes, the harm they do is enormous.   Just as the sex offender registries have already grossly exceeded their initial purpose, rounding up people whose offense isn’t even sex-related and pose no threat and destroying any chance of leading a law-abiding life, each of these offers the opportunity for absurdly wrong accusations, incredible and permanent destruction of lives and the creation of classes of people who will live in perpetual internet taint.

But hey, as long as you’re one of the good people, why should you care?  It’s not like anybody would put you on a registry, right?

Update:  Rick Horowitz raises yet another ripe opportunity, the Gang Registry.  I wonder if the Boy Scouts count?  After all, they’ve got their colors.

My bad.  When I first read the story, I never went beyond the first paragraph.  It was the ABA Journal, and the headline at the time was that Lindsay Lohan wanted a pro bono lawyer.  It was too funny for me, and apparently too funny for the ABA Journal as well, as the headline is gone.  It was more about a funny story than something to be taken seriously, so I never read the rest of the story. 

Fortunately, Eric Turkewitz did, leading him to find at the end some curious statements by Chicago criminal defense lawyer Stuart Goldberg, who appears to have been in the running for LiLo’s new mouthpiece, met with her and some family members, but ultimately didn’t get the gig.

Meanwhile, another counsel candidate who says he refused the representation has already dished to People magazine.

His would-be client is “a fragile lost child” who “just doesn’t get it” concerning the seriousness of the case she is involved in, says Stuart Goldberg, a criminal defense attorney based in Chicago. When he met with the actress and two relatives, “they didn’t seem to understand the urgency and gravity of the situation.”

As the Turk properly asks,

Why the hell is this Stuart Goldberg, apparently a Chicago criminal defense lawyer, talking about what he heard or saw in the confidence of his practice?

Taking a quick look at Goldberg’s website , one thing is immediately clear.  He’s not shy.  This is a guy who craves attention.  From his self-published novel (with video intro!) to his opening website video.  No, this is not a shy. self-deprecating lawyer.  This is a lawyer who wants recognition.

Lawyers don’t tend to become household names.  At least not for good things.  So when a lawyer is touched by celebrity, there’s a strong compulsion to seize the opportunity to enjoy the 15 minutes of fame.  Stuart Goldberg appears to succumb.  As the Turk points out, Goldberg’s meeting with LiLo about assuming her representation is confidential.  What he learns, what his impressions may be, what he thinks of her and her case, are not his to discuss.  They belong to the potential client, even when that client is LiLo.

Is it possible that Lohan told Goldberg that he’s free to discuss her confidences with the media?  It is, though it’s hardly likely.  Is it possible that Goldberg is a set-up, offering impressions to the media as part of a campaign to humanize LiLo and explain her inappropriate reaction to the court.  It is, and that’s more likely, but still not very likely.

We live in an age of celebrity, where people want desperately to become someone that others know exist. Some will do anything, from mind-numbingly stupid tricks on Youtube that risk their life, to crimes for the notoriety, to feigning a child in a blow-up flying saucer.  Anything to get in the media.  Anything.

Was that why Stuart Goldberg talked?  He got his name in in People Magazine and TMZ .  He’s all over the internet.  His beauty shot on his website now appears to have legs.  Is he now the best known, most prominent criminal defense lawyer in Chicago, for having been LiLo’s transitory choice for counsel?  After all, he must be something special if LiLo gave him a look.

For a lawyer to disclose confidences to promote himself, for sheer self-aggrandizement, is a disgrace.  Will Stuart Goldberg be remembered as a disgrace for this episode?  The ABA Journal doesn’t seem to notice any problem when reporting on his facial breach of confidence, but then it never seems to concern itself much with such trivial issues. 

Given the efforts that so many lawyers, criminal defense included, make to promote themselves and join the ranks of solvency, if not celebrity, on the internet, I wonder how many others would have given their overly-coiffed hair to have a promotional opportunity like this, and would have seized upon it without hesitation to toss their ethics in a ditch for their moment in the limelight?  What have we become? What are we willing to do, to ourselves, our clients, our dignity, to be prominent?

Stuart Goldberg is old enough to remember that loose lips sink ships.  Does he care at all about sinking ships?  Does he care at all that his moment in the sun doesn’t merely put his name on the lips of Lohan lovers and haters everywhere, but also reveals that he will sell his clients’ privilege for his name, spelled correctly, in a gossip magazine?

It’s possible that Stuart Goldberg hasn’t breached confidence in his quest for celebrity.  It’s possible that he’s the greatest lawyer in the world, as well as quite the showman.  It’s possible that Stuart Goldberg is who many readers secretly wish they could be, a criminal defense lawyer called by Lindsay Lohan who has a very shiny website that makes him out to be a star, and their name on the lips of every teenybopper who cares deeply about LiLo’s future.

The need for recognition has become pervasive on the internet.  Formerly sound thinkers have shamed themselves by flagrantly pandering online, concealing their warts and pretending to be whatever they think will sell them, kissing babies they secretly despise to make themselves popular.  It’s disgusting and embarrassing.

But as bad as the self-promotion has become, breaching confidence goes a step beyond the pale.  Dignity and professionalism may be an old man’s folly, but there is never an excuse to violate the attorney/client privilege.  And anyone who does so in the name of celebrity no longer deserves to be entrusted with the lives and welfare of others. 

How many of you will laugh at my old school views?  How many of you would do the same thing as Stuart Goldberg if you had the opportunity?

Houston criminal defense lawyer Jackie Carpenter learned the hard way and tells her story.  It’s rough and poignant at the same time.  She handled herself admirably, in the face of a reality that never manages to find its way into the sanitized story that is told in a courtroom. 

Read what happened to Jackie  when she was seized by mistake.  And judges, read it twice.  Don’t waste this opportunity.

When Elizabeth Wurtzel argued that the bar exam should be abolished, I took it as the typical post-exam angst coupled with just a bit of sour grapes over her first-attempt failure to pass.  Then Ilya Somin took up the call at Volokh Conspiracy, and the issue turned into a real debate.  Richard Epstein jumped in to support the bar exam. John Yoo against it.

Up to this point, the various voices offered legitimate complaints about the bar exam, that it’s a failed predictor of success as a lawyer and little more than an exercise in memorization and test taking tricks.  It was argued that it remained as a rite of passage whose purpose was to exclude people from admission, to limit the number of lawyers and a manifestation of guild protectionism.

Underlying Ilya Somin’s view that the bar exam should be abolished was his belief that we need more lawyers, not fewer, to reduce the cost of legal services.  He similarly asserted that ABA control over accreditation of law schools be abolished as another guild control mechanism.

One glaring gap in Somin’s view stood out.  Does this mean that anybody who wants to be a lawyer gets to be a lawyer?  Does this mean that we leave it to law schools, run by lawprofs, to decide who becomes a lawyer, and how many lawyers society should endure? 

Maybe this debate has a chance of being re-connected with reality, as much of it bears little relation to the nuts and bolts.

The bar exam is not a good predictor of success as a lawyer.  But is that really its purpose?  The bar exam is merely a test of the absolute minimum scope of knowledge that someone entitled to hold themselves out to the public as a lawyer is required to possess.  And it’s an awfully low bar.  Sorry, Liz, but it’s just not that hard to pass.

Lawyers are licensed as generalists.  Once a lawyer, a person can take on any client, whether for litigation, civil or criminal, or transactional, or anything in between.  Despite the complaints that the bar exam tests lawyers in areas of law that they will never practice, the point remains that they are entitled to practice in any area of law, and hence should possess the barest minimum amount of knowledge about it.  The public assumes that the lawyer must have at least a bit of a clue, and rightfully so.  Why is it that lawyers and lawprofs find this too burdensome?

Then there’s the affectation of the elitists, that lawyers make too much money, reflecting a dearth of lawyers to serve society.  Very few get the Biglaw bonus check, while most toil pretty darn hard to make ends meet.  Maybe that can’t be seen from the Ivory Tower, but it’s clear from the trench view.  I strongly (vehemently, perhaps) believe that we have an absurd excess of lawyers in this country and need desperately to cull the herd.  Somin thinks the opposite.  While I understand the supply/demand point he makes, I cannot comprehend how dilution of competency serves the interest of society.

So in the absence of a bar exam, what would qualify a person to be a lawyer?  Graduation from law school would appear to be Somin’s answer. Great.  This would be completion of the very same legal education that practitioners have been arguing does little to nothing to prepare a person to practice law.  Does a course in “Due Process and the Ministry of Magic” equip a lawyer to represent a client? Does the overt coddling, grade-inflation and concern for the emotional well-being of the next generation of lawyers safeguard clients from the death penalty?  A heartfelt “sorry” as they push the plunger isn’t quite what Strickland had in mind.

Enter fellow New York criminal defense lawyer, Nathaniel Burney to the argument. 

Nobody in their right mind believes that the bar exam is a reliable indicator of who is going to make a good lawyer.  It doesn’t test judgment, reasoning or understanding.  More importantly, it doesn’t test actual skills that lawyers need to know — it doesn’t test to see if a transactional lawyer can put together a contract that does the job, or to see if a trial lawyer knows how to get his evidence admitted, or to see if an estate lawyer can craft a plan that will carry out the client’s wishes with a minimum of fuss.

Absolutely true.  Nathaniel urges an alternative:

Instead, the bar exam should be replaced with a series of exams for something along the lines of board certification in medicine.  You want to practice criminal law?  Someone’s life and liberty is going to be on the line.  You’d better prove you know what you’re doing, and get bar-certified to stand up in a criminal courtroom.  Or you say you want to be a transactional lawyer?  People’s assets and livelihoods will be at stake.  You’d better be able to prove you know how to put together a deal that does what the client needs, and get bar-certified.

It’s a sound idea, but doesn’t quite cover the situation.  First of all, outside of urban areas, lawyers tend to be general practitioners of necessity.  They simply don’t have the clientele demands that give rise to the degree of specialization that is the urban norm.  This leaves the handful of lawyers in a rural county in a pickle, and the handful of clients they serve unrepresented.

Moreover, there’s a gap between law school and specialized competency that remains.  Lawyers don’t spring from law school capable of trying a case.  They need to learn.  They need to gain experience.  This plan offers no opportunity for that to happen.  If the idea is that law school graduates have to apprentice until they can pass a competency exam, they are then at the mercy of getting jobs, competent masters to serve,  Would lawyers be required to serve as teachers of these newbies?  Where would the money come from to pay for these apprentices, since they wouldn’t be capable of earning their own keep, even assuming the lawyer had the business to sustain them.

It’s not that I disagree that the bar exam serves its function poorly at best, but abolishing it would make a bad situation worse.  To the extent that it serves as an incredibly low barrier to entry, at least it affords the public the most minimal protection against complete ignorance.  Adding to it certification in a speciality would go a long way toward providing the public with a more meaningful demonstration of qualifications.  Competence is a good thing.

Finally, Somin argues that certification, left in the hands of lawyers, will produce more of the guild protectionism that he finds objectionable.  So which fine group of non-lawyers should be tasked to judge competence?  That’s unclear.  Hard as I try, I can’t imagine any way to judge competence that doesn’t begin with a decision-maker who already possesses competence. 

To a large extent, the argument is normative, a relative weighing of priorities.  My priority is professionalism and competence in the practice of law, as opposed to easy and cheap access to people of dubious competence.  If there’s way to ascertain minimum knowledge before siccing the new lawyer on society, I’m all ears.  Just don’t tell me to trust the lawprofs.  That’s a non-starter.

It seemed as if things couldn’t get any worse for Police Officer Patrick Pogan, when his arrest of Christopher Long, a cyclist in the Critical Mass rally, for attacking him was covertly videotaped.  Only 10 days on the job and he was shown to be a violent attacker and liar.  He had a great future ahead of him on the NYPD.  Except for that video.

Finally prosecuted.  Finally convicted, though not of the vicious assault on Long, because cops have to be allowed some latitude in viciously harming people, but convicted of filing a false instrument.  And yesterday, Patrick Pogan was sentenced to life.  No, not life in prison.  Not life on probation, Not life in community service.  He was given a conditional discharge by Justice Maxwell Wiley, which is a non-sentence sentence that says, go back to your life and have a nice day.  You’ve suffered enough.

Not even Pogan’s lawyer, Stuart London, had the chutzpah to ask for a CD.  He asked for community service. The prosecutor asked for jail and probation.  The judge disagreed with both.

From the New York Times :

The decision by Justice Maxwell Wiley to give the former officer, Patrick Pogan, a conditional discharge, which means he will not receive any sanctions like jail time or probation, was a lighter sentence than even Mr. Pogan’s lawyer had requested. The lawyer, Stuart London, had pleaded for his client to receive a conditional discharge and community service. Prosecutors had asked for jail time and probation.

“The court is convinced that incarceration is not appropriate in this case,” Justice Wiley said.

No, there’s no follow-up sentence explaining why.  It ends there.

An appropriate sentence addresses a number of issues, some relating to the particularized situation of the defendant and others the broader interest of society.  Amongst the latter is general deterrence, the message to others that certain conduct will not be tolerated and will have consequences.  We see that in high-profile cases all the time, ranging from Bernie Madoff to Lindsay Lohan.  The media covers the case and the message is spread across the land.

Was Patrick Pogan the worst cop on the street?  Hardly.  But what he did was bad.  He was caught, and caught hard, breaking a basic condition of the social compact.  He wore a badge, carrying the imprimatur of governmental authority, and then used it to lie, to falsely claim that a person engaged in criminal conduct that never happened.

It happens all the time, right?  But it’s rarely caught so clearly, so obviously, so flagrantly.  He lied and got caught.  He is precisely what the integrity of the legal system cannot tolerate.  He undermines the faith that the legal system absolutely requires to exist.  The Big Shove hurt one man, Christopher Long.  The lie that went with it hurt all people of New York.

Pogan submitted 180-something letters in support to the judge, typical in federal cases but quite unusual in state court cases.  Federal judges discount this to a large extent.  London suggests that it had an impact on Justice Wiley, the theme being that Pogan was just a good kid who wanted to help people.  He probably was.  And lying on behalf of the police is certainly a fine way to help people.  So is viciously attacking a cyclist who the cops are told are evil.  Helping people is a relative concept, with a different meaning to a rookie NYPD officer than to, say, a non-cop.

This sentence sends a message.  Cops are above the law.  We already learned from the verdict that cops can viciously harm people and we will forgive them their excesses, since they have a very hard job to do and they can’t be expected to restrain their impulses to be violent.  We now learn that cops can lie to courts without consequences. 

In the old days, I would have thought that judges would be angered, maybe even infuriated, by an assault on their integrity by a lying cop.  I would have thought that judges would recognize this as a breach of the most basic principle of systemic integrity, one that destroys the faith needed if people are to see the legal system as anything other than a self-serving joke by the omnipotent government with its armed minions.  And I would be wrong.

Justice Wiley is a good judge, calm, deliberative and usually fair to the defendant at sentence.  But the message sent by this sentence is a clear one, and a bad one.  It’s not to say that Pogan needed lengthy imprisonment to protect the public or change his life.  He resigned from the police department and the publicity of this case must have been hard for him to bear.  Bummer, right?

Yet there must be a consequence when a police officer is caught, irrefutably, lying.  There must be a message that lying cops will not be tolerated.  Give him 30 days.  Give him probation.  Give him something.  The message must be that a cop cannot lie without consequences.

Instead, Patrick Pogan got life.  His own life, to live whatever way he chooses, as he’s now free to move on without consequence.  The message has been sent. 

No, not that rush.  The rush of being a drug-arrest stud, , Andrew Hawkes can make you the envy of your department, hauling in the “Mother Load!”*

Oh, baby, baby.  Just reading this stuff gets the juices flowing, Andy.  Tell me more, blue brother, tell me more.

Tip #3:   “If you really want to be successful at highway drug interdiction then turn OFF your radar.  DRUG HAULERS DON’T SPEED!”

 

 

 

Many rookie police officers often ask me:

 

Q: “Should I really turn off my radar?”

 

A:  “Yes! By looking down at your radar you are missing 

       indicators that are passing you by on the highway.”

Oh no, this guy knows all the tricks.  He can turn the lamest brown-bagger into Super Drug Interdiction Cop.  But what’s in it for me?

So what’s in it for me?

 

• Make huge drug busts like clockwork

• Stop wasting time on small time offenders

• Get recognized by your peers

• Do your part to protect our children

• Make a REAL impact in the war on drugs

• Earn the reputation as a top interdiction officer

• Get promoted up the ranks fast

• Help your department get media exposure

• Seize cash and vehicles

• Become a hard-core interdiction officer

• Feel the rush of finding the Mother Load!

Of course, another easy way to get media exposure is to shoot some mutt on the ground in the back when the cameras are on me.  Oh, you meant good exposure.  Never mind.

Just in case you thought only lawyers had to put up with the barrage of marketers trying to make a quick buck off your backs, I thought you should know that cops are now open game.  So if you’ve got anything you think you can sell to a cop who wants a quick promotion, a reputation as a top interdiction officer or just wants to feel the rush, the time looks ripe to move forward.

The good news is that drug-arrest studs won’t be wasting their time on “small time offenders,” which I believe is code for fellow cops.

* My wonderful editor, Marilou, can’t stand that I’m repeating Andrew Hawkes’ mistaken spelling of “mother lode” as “load”, and so she’s forcing me to write something so no one thinks she failed to correct it.  Don’t blame me.  It’s Hawkes’ spelling.

H/T Jeremy Richey

Nancy O’Malley, district attorney of Alameda County who prosecuted former BART cop Johanes Mehserle for the death of Oscar Grant, told reporters that the jury didn’t buy the weapons confusion defense.

She noted that the jury rejected Mehserle’s claim that he’d been reaching for his Taser, not his gun. Instead, the jury found Mehserle discharged his gun in a negligent and criminally reckless manner.

No explanation was offered as to what she meant.  Was she claiming he pulled the trigger accidentally?  Did he mean to point the Sig Sauer at himself rather than Grant?  Is she just rationalizing a verdict after the fact?   Who knows, but there’s nothing to suggest that there’s merit to her claim.

In the interim, Karl Mansoor sent over this fascinating post at Police One by retired Capt. Greg Meyer, who was the hired “use-of-force” expert on behalf of Mehserle at trial.  Meyer explains the scenario:

Mehserle loudly announced to the other officer, “Tony, get back, I’m going to tase him. I’m going to tase him.” Multiple witnesses (including at least one of Oscar Grant’s nearby handcuffed buddies) heard Mehserle’s “I’m going to tase him” announcement, and so testified.

At the time, BART did not issue TASERs and holsters individually to officers. They are rotated, shift to shift. Sometimes you get one, sometimes you don’t. When you get one, there are three different holster configurations at BART. Weak-side/weak-hand; strong-side/weak-hand crossdraw; and (the one Mehserle happened to have that particular night) strong-hand/cross-draw.

Mehserle’s (strong) right hand moved to his right side (instead of to his left-front, where his TASER was located in a cross-draw holster), and he partially gripped his handgun with his fingers. His right thumb moved back and forth in the air, in and out toward his own ribcage, inches above where the handgun holster safety was, consistent with the motion needed to undo the TASER holster safety strap if a TASER holster were there (which it was not); and totally inconsistent with undoing the Level-3 handgun holster — these motions are clearly seen on video.

For about four seconds, Mehserle unsuccessfully tugged at his handgun, then it came out.

From this description, two things are learned: First, that the Tasers used by BART officers were potentially holstered differently every shift, impairing a reflexive reaction to grab the right weapon.  Second, that Mehserle’s Taser was on the opposite side of his body from his gun.  The “Tony”, referred to in the quote, was BART cop Tony Pirone who punched Oscar Grant in the head beforehand and then “took a knee” on Grant’s head before Mehserle’s “struggle” occurred.

For those who haven’t viewed the video of the shooting lately, here’s another go at it for context.

Meyer also addresses the issue of an officer confusing his gun with a taser.  In my prior post on this, I argue that such stupidity “never” happens.  Commenters pointed to four instances where it did.  Meyer documented a total of six instances over nine years where officers claimed that they intended to use a taser but pulled their gun instead.  Note that Meyer says that there were seven instances, but the seventh is this one, which obviously can’t be included and undermines his point that weapons confusion was in fact the cause.  Clearly, Meyer simply accepts that officers’ claims with critical analysis.

While my “never” language was obviously hyperbolic, and assuming arguendo the claims documented by Meyer to be true, the incidence of “weapons confusion” occurring is ridiculously rare.  Consider that a meteorite is estimated to strike the earth every 30 seconds.  Add to that the fact that Mehserle’s taser was on the opposite side of his body from his gun, whereas every other alleged incident involved the Taser and weapon being on the same side of the body.

Meyer goes on to argue that BART officers aren’t trained to draw their Taser under high stress situations.  Whether this constitutes a high stress situation, however, is subject to dispute, given that Grant was face down on the ground, with Tony’s knee on his head, and Mehserle on his back.  That there was wiggle room for Grant’s arm may be argued to suggest that there was some theoretical basis for concern, but high stress?

But omitted from Meyer’s analysis is that officers are trained in drawing their gun in high stress situations.  Drawing a Taser under stressful conditions appears to be false distinction, as the training for one applies to the other, and the training for drawing his weapon should have been more than sufficient for Mehserle to have been cognizant of what he was doing.  The same rapid, under pressure, decision making that applies to his gun should have been sufficient to guide his use of a Taser, even if this is deemed a high stress situation. 

Moreover, Meyer makes no mention of the feel of the grip of his Sig Sauer as opposed to a Taser.  Remember that Mehserle struggled to get his gun out of the holster?  The same four second claimed in the struggle were the four seconds during which he should have realized that his hand was on the grip of a gun rather than a taser.

While Capt. Meyer’s “expert” arguments are well-crafted for the cause of exculpating Mehserle from the murder charge, they fall short of a well-founded argument that this was the one in ten million incidence of weapons confusion.  Clearly, it’s absurd to argue, as some commenters did, that this happens all the time.  I was wrong, however, to argue that it never happens.  Never say never.

It’s hard to imagine that Mehserle made the intentional decision to execute Oscar Grant in front of so many witnesses, though this imputes a certain degree of forethought to him, as well as an absence of arrogance that experience has shown too often comes with the shield.  However, the best I can make of this is that Mehserle was so utterly incompetent, so pathologically stupid, that it was fundamentally reckless to give him a weapon under any circumstances, and it was reckless of him to strap on a gun if he couldn’t tell that his fingers were around its grip.  As his fingers wrapped themselves around the grip of the gun, struggled to pull it out of its holster, lifted and aimed it at Oscar Grant, then pulled the trigger, Mehserle’s conduct demonstrated a conscious disregard for human life. 

Nothing in Meyer’s explanation serves to reduce this to a mere accident.

Via Turley, a Toronto police officer demonstrates how a deprived childhood impairs one’s adult sensibilities when it comes to threat perception.

Is that a camo scarf she’s wearing? Just asking. 

Jeanne Mundango Manunga was a woman scorned.  That should have been the first clue, but apparently no one bothered to give it much thought.  Instead, the police focused on her complaint.

Deputy District Attorney Mena Guirguis said that after Manunga and her former boyfriend stopped dating in 2008, she took out a pre-paid cell phone in his sister-in-law’s name, and started sending the threatening text messages to her regular cell phone.

Manunga then went to three different police departments on at least 19 occasions and claimed that the ex-boyfriend and the sister-in-law were behind the threats.

Manunga apparently sent hundreds of threatening and harassing text messages.  To herself.  And it worked.

They were arrested on false charges of making criminal threats and required to post thousands of dollars in bail. The sister-in-law was arrested three times, and spent some time in custody before she could gather enough funds to pay the bail on her third arrest.

Consider the scenario.  The ex-boyfriend and sister-in-law, obviously aware that they weren’t sending text messages, complain that they are being falsely accused.  The whole courtroom erupts into laughter as the judge sets bail.  What could possibly go wrong here?

Her scheme was uncovered when the victims went to the phone store, talked with the salesman and learned that Manunga had bought the pre-paid phone under the sister-in-law’s name, Guirguis said.

They reported that information to a Costa Mesa police detective, but by then a third arrest warrant had been issued for the sister-in-law.

During a follow-up investigation, the detective discovered that most of the threatening text messages were sent when the pre-paid cell phone was in close proximity to Manunga’s home or work, Guirguis said.

Notice that it was left to the defendants to investigate?  That’s because the police already had their perps in custody.  They were high-fiving, munching stale donuts and praising each other’s brilliant detective work.  Woo hoo, nailed them text message harassers.  Time to hand out the medals.  Even after the defendants’ investigation panned out, they were taken in on the open warrant, forced to await the “follow-up investigation.”  Of course, there can’t be a follow-up until there’s an initial investigation.  Details. 

The only problem, apparently, is that their victim was the criminal.  That doesn’t mean they won’t get medals, fortunately.

Not everybody is Mel Gibson.  Not every woman who claims to be the victim of threats and harassment is telling the truth.  Not every male is a manipulative nutjob.  After years of neglecting domestic violence, the pendulum has swung too far the other way.  Yes, it happens.  No, not always.  And no, the woman isn’t always right.

The most painful part of this story is how a scheme by a woman scorned was subject to no scrutiny whatsoever, and resulted in a man and woman being detained to sate the “victim’s” need for vengeance.  Crazy stuff happens.  It wouldn’t kill anybody in the system to do that little bit of legwork that would reveal the purported victim to be the criminal. 

It really can’t be this easy for someone to hatch a scheme and use the machinery of the legal system to her own advantage. 

H/TJustin Wilder