March 29, 2012
Today’s Stories
— FBI Recants Suggestion That Agents Can ‘Bend or Suspend the Law’
— Police Footage Shows No Obvious Wounds to Trayvon Martin’s Shooter
— Facing Retrial, Some on TX Death Row Plea Bargain for Life in Prison
— State Trooper Shortage Pushes PA to ‘Verge of a Public Safety Crisis’
— Despite Perception, Many Big CA Court Awards Feature Biz v. Biz Cases
— Times Columnist: In Shooting Discussion, Pols Avoid the Topic of Guns
— Experts See Broader Ramifications in Acquittals of Hutaree Militia
— Post’s Dionne: Health Care Arguments Showcased Judicial Activism
— Judge Orders UC Davis Report Released, Though Without Most Names
— Officials, Citizens Puzzled by Murder of Muslim Mother Near San Diego
— EU Plans Center in Netherlands to Combat Growing Cybercrime Problem
— Meth Lab in a OH Nursing Home Linked to ‘Shake and Bake’ Method
On every business day, Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ) provides a summary of the nation’s top crime and justice news stories with Internet links, if any. Crime & Justice News is being provided by CJJ with the support of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, its Center on Media, Crime and Justice, the Ford Foundation, and the National Criminal Justice Association. The news digest is edited by Ted Gest and David Krajicek.
You may go to TheCrimeReport.org to search all archived CJN stories. Please e-mail Ted Gest at CJJ with concerns about the editorial content of our news items, to suggest news stories, or with general comments.
FBI Recants Suggestion That Agents Can ‘Bend or Suspend the Law’
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The FBI once taught its agents that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they wiretap suspects, reports Wired in its Danger Room national security blog. But the bureau says it didn’t really mean it, and has now removed the document from its counterterrorism training curriculum, calling it an “imprecise” instruction. That is good, national security attorneys say, because the FBI’s contention that it can twist the law in pursuit of suspected terrorists is just wrong. The passage was included in 876 pages of training materials about Muslims and Arab-Americans.
The reference to law-bending was noted in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller from Sen. Richard Durbin obtained by Wired. A spokesman provided a copy of the document this week but refused to say who prepared it, how long it was in circulation, and how many FBI agents, analysts and officials received its instruction. The document notes that “under certain circumstances, the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” Those circumstances include “the ability to gather information on individuals which would normally be protected under the U.S. Constitution through the use of FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], Title 3 monitoring [general law enforcement surveillance], NSL [National Security Letter] reports, etc.”
Police Footage Shows No Obvious Wounds to Trayvon Martin’s Shooter
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Police station surveillance video from the night Trayvon Martin was shot dead in Sanford, Fla., shows no blood or bruises on George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who says he shot Martin after he was punched in the nose, knocked down and had his head slammed into the ground, reports ABC News. The video gives the first public images of Zimmerman since the shooting last month. His face and head are cleanly shaven.
The initial police report noted that Zimmerman was bleeding from the back of the head and nose, and after medical attention it was decided that he was in good enough condition to travel to the police station for questioning. His lawyer later insisted that Zimmerman’s nose had been broken in his fight with 17-year-old Martin. In the video an officer is seen pausing to look at the back of Zimmerman’s head, but no abrasions or blood can be seen in the video and he did not check into the emergency room following the police questioning.
Facing Retrial, Some on TX Death Row Plea Bargain for Life in Prison
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Facing costly, time-consuming retrials of death row inmates, prosecutors in Houston have spared the lives of three defendants in the past several years by accepting plea deals for life sentences, reports the city’s Chronicle. Officials says it is a pragmatic approach after more than a dozen death row cases from 20 years ago have been overturned in recent years for flawed jury instructions. Three other men whose capital murder cases were reversed have gone through a second grueling trial and are back on death row.
The death penalty cases tied to flawed jury instructions continue to come back to Harris County as they exhaust their other appeals. Last week, Roger Wayne McGowen’s case was sent back for a retrial. The 48-year-old, on death row for 25 years, was convicted of killing a 67-year-old woman during a bar robbery in 1986. McGowen’s case is typical of what the District Attorney’s Office has to review before deciding whether to again seek the death penalty. The office has to balance the time and energy of redoing an old case against finite resources, which may mean a death row inmate can get a deal by pleading guilty to stacked life sentences.
State Trooper Shortage Pushes PA to ‘Verge of a Public Safety Crisis’
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The number of Pennsylvania state police troopers continues to decline and will soon reach a dangerously low level, spurred by increased retirements and the state’s failure to pay for training more new police cadets, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That was the conclusion of both state police management and its troopers union, expressed to joint Senate and House judiciary committee members Wednesday. “If we do not proactively address our reduced ranks now,” said Pennsylvania State Troopers Association President Joseph Kovel, “it will reach a point of financial impossibility to do so, and we will all pay a terrible price for that lack of foresight. Pennsylvania, without question, is on the verge of a public safety crisis.”
He said 350 new troopers should be added over the next year, but that is something everyone agreed won’t happen because it would cost too much. But state police Commissioner Frank Noonan did agree that action is needed quickly to boost the ranks, which “continue to shrink.” He said retirements from the state police ranks are increasing — 180 announced so far this year, with more than 220 likely by June 30, compared to an average year of 150. That leaves the ranks at 4,282 officers now, compared to the 4,677 that are authorized.
Despite Perception, Many Big CA Court Awards Feature Biz v. Biz Cases
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Complaints about anti-business lawsuits and astronomical jury verdicts are common, notes California Watch. But data compiled by the National Law Journal – and highlighted by the Consumer Attorneys of California, which fights restrictions on lawsuits – shows a different dynamic was in play in the state’s courts last year. The biggest verdicts in California in 2011, including a $2.32 billion award made by a jury in Los Angeles, came in lawsuits in which one big corporation sued another. That trend undercuts the complaint that abuse of the legal system is creating a poor business climate, argued J.G. Preston, spokesman for the lawyers group.
“The big money in California lawsuits isn’t going to people suing businesses, or even people suing other individuals,” he wrote in a summary of the California verdicts. “It’s going to businesses suing other businesses, typically in intellectual property or breach of contract suits.” The top three California verdicts involved complex business disputes in which hundreds of millions in profits were at stake. In the biggest verdict, St. Jude Medical Inc., which manufactures pacemakers, sued a Chinese medical manufacturer called Nervicon, claiming theft of trade secrets. The jury awarded $2.32 billion in damages.
Times Columnist: In Shooting Discussion, Pols Avoid the Topic of Guns
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The controversial shooting death of Trayvon Martin near Orlando last month has devolved into a political debate over tangents, like hoodie sweatshirts, writes Gail Collins in the New York Times. “This is pretty much par for the course,” she writes. “Whenever there is a terrible shooting incident somewhere in America, our politicians talk about everything except whether the tragedy could have been avoided if the gunman had not been allowed to carry a firearm. You would think that this would be a great time to address the question of handgun proliferation, but it has hardly come up in Washington at all. This is because most politicians are terrified of the National Rifle Association.”
Collins continues, “The Violence Policy Center has a list of 11 police officers and 391 private citizens who have been killed over the last five years by people carrying concealed weapons for which they had a permit. That includes a man in Florida who killed four women, including his estranged wife, in a restaurant in 2010 and another Floridian who opened fire at Thanksgiving, killing four relatives. You would think all of this would cause states to stop and rethink. But no. And, personally, I’m worn down from arguing. Florida, follow your own star. Arizona, arm your kindergarteners. Just stop trying to impose your values on places where the thinking is dramatically different. Really, just leave us alone. If you don’t like our rules, don’t come here.”
Experts See Broader Ramifications in Acquittals of Hutaree Militia
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The acquittal of seven Michigan militia members charged with conspiring to go to war against the government could make federal agents reluctant to pursue certain investigations at a time when the number of so-called patriot groups is increasing nationwide, reports the Associated Press. “It’s an embarrassment to the government to lose this case,” said Mark Potok, who tracks extremist groups at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama. “I very much worry this could discourage officials from moving forward on the most open-and-shut cases in the future. I’m not trying to criticize the judge at all, but it might have ramifications.”
Potok’s center counted more than 1,200 anti-government groups last year and lists them on its website. The FBI recently said it is focusing on “sovereign citizen” extremists who don’t recognize government authority. The FBI ran an 18-month probe of the Hutaree militia and placed an informant and undercover agent inside the group. After six weeks of trial, however, a judge this week said the case didn’t even deserve to go to the jury and declared all seven not guilty. Prosecutors this week acknowledged there was no specific plan – an admission that clearly irritated the judge. “What the government has shown, instead of a concrete agreement and plan to forcibly oppose the authority of the government, is that most – if not all – of these defendants held strong anti-government sentiments,” Roberts said in a 28-page decision. “But the court must not guess about what defendants intended to do with their animosity.”
Post’s Dionne: Health Care Arguments Showcased Judicial Activism
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Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. says the Supreme Court arguments over the health care law “demonstrated for all to see that conservative justices are prepared to act as an alternative legislature, diving deeply into policy details as if they were members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.” Dionne says it was difficult to discern at times whether it was a courtroom or a lobbyist’s office. He writes, “It fell to the court’s liberals – the so-called ‘judicial activists,’ remember? – to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.”
He continues, “The conservative justices were obsessed with weird hypotheticals. If the federal government could make you buy health insurance, might it require you to buy broccoli, health club memberships, cellphones, burial services and cars? All of which have nothing to do with an uninsured person getting expensive treatment that others – often taxpayers – have to pay for. Liberals should learn from this display that there is no point in catering to today’s hard-line conservatives. The individual mandate was a conservative idea that President Obama adopted to preserve the private market in health insurance rather than move toward a government-financed, single-payer system. What he got back from conservatives was not gratitude but charges of socialism – for adopting their own proposal.”
Judge Orders UC Davis Report Released, Though Without Most Names
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A judge rejected nearly all attempts by a campus police union to block release of portions of a report on the Nov. 18 pepper-spraying of UC Davis students by university officers, reports the Los Angeles Times. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo disagreed with assertions that large chunks of the report – designed to scrutinize the day’s events and craft new policy – should be sealed because they contain the same kind of information as in officer personnel files compiled for disciplinary purposes. He also rejected union arguments that officers named in the report have a constitutional right to privacy.
Grillo sided with the union only in granting a preliminary injunction to withhold the names of all but two officers. He excluded Lt. John Pike because images of him casually dousing seated protesters had already gone viral on the Internet, and UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza, whose identity is widely known. The much anticipated full report – commissioned by UC officials in the interest of transparency – won’t be available to the public until at least April 23, pending possible appeal. Although Grillo has allowed UC to immediately release uncontested portions, officials said Wednesday they are unsure whether they will do so because the extent of the redacted material could slant the report’s overall tone.
Officials, Citizens Puzzled by Murder of Muslim Mother Near San Diego
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Officials and residents in El Cajon, Calif., have more questions than answers after an Iraqi-born mother of five was fatally beaten last week, a threatening note said to be found at the scene, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Shaima al-Awadi, a 20-year resident of the San Diego area, had moved with her husband and children into a rental home in El Cajon two months ago. She was found beaten and unconscious by a daughter on their dining room floor. A note nearby said, “This is my country. Go back to yours, terrorist,” according to the daughter, Fatima al-Himidi.
A similar note, Fatima says, had been found on the front door earlier this month. Fatima says her mother had dismissed it, considering it a prank. El Cajon has one of the largest Iraqi immigrant communities in the United States. Federal authorities were participating in the investigation. The family is sending Awadi’s body back to Iraq for burial. Her father is a well-known cleric there.
EU Plans Center in Netherlands to Combat Growing Cybercrime Problem
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The European Union will open a new cybercrime center in the Netherlands next year to combat online fraudsters who are skimming millions of euros a day from a growing number of its half billion citizens, reports the International Herald Tribune. In addition, an EU committee proposed mandatory jail time across all 27 member states for some online offenses. The EU Commission said cybercrime was a global and cross-border phenomenon that now brought more profits for organized crime – $388 billion a year worldwide – than the global trade in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined.
In Europe, detection and prosecution of cybercrime has been hampered by inadequate information sharing between national jurisdictions. The new center, set to open early next year, will focus on organized crime gangs engaged in online fraud, online predators who sexually exploit children, and hackers who attack critical infrastructure and IT systems. It will be located at the headquarters of Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency in The Hague. The Commission estimated that more than a third of EU citizens now bank online and the incidence of fraud is growing.
Meth Lab in a OH Nursing Home Linked to ‘Shake and Bake’ Method
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Three weeks ago, an explosion in a room at a nursing home near Cleveland fatally burned a man who lived there. It turned out he was operating a meth lab. The Cleveland Plain Dealer asked how the operation could have gone undetected in a nursing home. The answer: As odd as it might seem to those unfamiliar with the meth trade, law enforcement officials say it is entirely possible that someone could have used a room at the home as a makeshift lab without attracting the attention of residents or employees.
In fact, they say the case illustrates a new and very dangerous evolution in the methods used to make the drug. Meth makers once needed a room full of apparatus, including cookers. But today they often shun the cooking process in favor of a “one pot” method in which a toxic stew is prepared in a 2-liter bottle and then shaken to create a reaction. The latest “meth labs” can fit inside a shopping bag. The one-pot phenomenon, also referred to as “shake and bake,” has caused a surge in traumatic burn injuries across the country.
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