A Kansas prosecutor's misconduct--specifically, suborning perjury from a jailhouse informant--put Pete Coones in jail for 12 years for murder before a judge freed him last fall.
From November: "The prosecutor in the case, Ed Brancart, is not only still practicing and still prosecuting, but is now the senior deputy attorney general for the state of Kansas under Attorney General Derek Schmidt." kansascity.com/opinion/opn-co…
“Even the judge cried as he talked about all of the wrongs done [] by the [KCK] detectives who missed crucial evidence, by the Wyandotte County medical examiner who blew the autopsy, and by the prosecutors who coerced testimony from a mentally ill inmate.” kansascity.com/opinion/opn-co…
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11th Circuit rejected qualified immunity for a drug detective who used an years-old uncorroborated claim he didn't bother verifying to get a drug warrant, which ended with a man being shot to death in his home, where no drugs were found. 13wmaz.com/article/news/l…
In same case, Sheriff (whose QI was upheld in this lawsuit), had previously admitted to lying about there being DNA evidence connecting man to drug theft 13wmaz.com/article/news/l…
Also in qualified immunity news: District judge in Kansas rejects QI & allows suit to proceed against officer who shot Andrew Finch outside his home in swatting case brought by Tyler Barriss' hoax call. Barriss is doing 20 years for his part in the crime. kansas.com/news/local/cri…
A Pennsylvania jury acquitted a man charged with resisting arrest.
Then the judge absolutely lit into the police, slamming their violent arrest, their ugliness to his neighbors, and their demeanor at the trial, and straight accused them of perjury. mcall.com/news/police/mc…
Not to mention some very choice words for the DA’s office for deciding to prosecute. This whole thing is just outstanding. mcall.com/news/police/mc…
Twitter’s 280 character limit is great because you can fit some of judge Dantos’ most brutal slams of the Allentown police and their arrest/conduct at trial in a single tweet. 👉🏻
This is just staggeringly awful. A basic traffic stop ended with a police officer tasing a man 11 times, the 11th by pulling down his shorts and tasing him in the testicles. His children saw the entire thing. Wanton, sadistic stuff. And there's more. kshb.com/news/national/… /1
Here's how that scene played out according to the lawsuit the man just filed. Just one of the many circumstances of being pinned to the asphalt while being tased: it was 108 degrees in Glendale that day. /2 ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/46/69/b3293a18…
More: Police arrested the man for resisting arrest and assault. (They also arrested his wife.) He was in jail for months because he couldn't afford bail. And it seems that once the DA's office finally saw the video, they couldn't drop the charges quickly enough. /3
The issues brought to the fore by the California chief prison psychiatrist's incredibly damning report on prisoners' mental health treatment, for which the state has been accountable to a federal court since the 1990s, is really, really something. (1) wgal.com/article/horrif…
To oversimplify Golding's report, he makes at least three major accusations against CA corrections department.
First: A lot of deceptive methods that add up to the department grossly overstating its data on things like timely patient care. E.g., (3) rbgg.sharefile.com/share/view/s88…
I haven't thought of this in ages, but I remembered, reading the reporting on the #Parkland survivors' meeting with Trump that I have been a fly on the wall in a meeting of this nature, and it is one of the singular experiences of my life. /1
First, some background. From roughly 2005-2011, I wrote and developed a play based on the experiences of attorney Kenneth Feinberg as the special master of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund. As research, we had several hours of on-record conversation. /2
That fund, briefly, was designed to provide financial compensation to the families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks, as well as those injured, in exchange for forgoing litigation against United and American Airlines. In the end, Feinberg disbursed roughly $7 billion. /3