Framed For Selling Crack, Surveillance Video Helps Him Sue Police

This is frighteningly <i>normal</i>.<p>$500,000 won&#x27;t make prosecutors suddenly interested in veering away from extinguishing people to win. I doubt $500 billion-with-a-B would scratch beyond the surface of flawed architecture.<p>The United States&#x27; criminal justice system, as a particular hodgepodge of incentives, disincentives, esoteric proceedings, privileged access, violent sentencing, plea pressure, and power-tripping careerism -- irrespective of cruel laws -- is a deeply failed model in the context of ethics. It&#x27;s a very &#x27;successful&#x27; model in other contexts. Before anyone replies with comparative excuses or appeals to historical precedence, see this. I, too, agree that US &quot;justice&quot; is far more ethical than the &quot;justice&quot; of North Korea and several other fundamentalist countries. Great. I, too, agree that nearly every other nation&#x27;s justice system is similarly ethically primitive. Rejoice for a second in shared misery.

He thankfully had independent evidence to corroborate his assertion that the charge was false.<p>In Scotland, prosecutors only require to provide the evidence they intend to use against you; any other evidence, including exculpatory evidence can (and is) withheld - it&#x27;s up to you to find that by yourself.<p>Your only safeguard is the requirement for corroboration - a second piece of evidence to confirm what is suggested by another; in this case the informant&#x27;s pictures would be considered corroboration of his claim.<p>The Scottish Government is currently trying to remove the requirement for corroboration completely so a single allegation (without any supporting evidence) is sufficient for a conviction.<p>What could possibly go wrong ?

&quot;The crime of obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, refers to the crime of interfering with the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other (usually government) officials. Common law jurisdictions other than the United States tend to use the wider offense of perverting the course of justice.&quot;(1)<p>Fortunately (heh), we&#x27;ve carefully defined obstruction of justice in the USA so that it <i>doesn&#x27;t</i> seem to apply to prosecutors who stare right at exculpatory evidence and then try to hide it to pervert justice anyway. I&#x27;m inclined to stop calling them &quot;prosecutors&quot; and take the advice of my spellcheck when I mistyped it and call them &quot;persecutors&quot;.<p>(1)<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruction_of_justice" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Obstruction_of_justice</a>

No doubt they will pin all this on the informant despite the fact that the prosecutors are complete scum that thought they could get away with hiding evidence. I&#x27;m sure they knew what it showed.

In France and Belgium the investigation is done by a neutral judge (known as <i>juge d&#x27;instruction</i>).<p>It usually prevents these kinds of misgivings.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitorial_system" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Inquisitorial_system</a>

Thank God in Germany the prosecution is <i>required</i> to make <i>all</i> evidence available to the defense lawyers, including material which can counter the prosecutor&#x27;s claims.

Before recording a police officer, make sure you don&#x27;t live in a &quot;two - party consent&quot; state, in which recording someone without his or her knowledge can be a crime.<p>One of my good friends, who is a civil rights attorney in Boston, represented a client who secretly used his phone to record himself getting pulled over for a speeding ticket.<p>He was subsequently charged with a felony for the recording.

&gt;&gt; his lawyer will file a wrongful arrest suit against the city, seeking $500,000 from the police department, county and the village.<p>And how much of the $500k will be actually be paid by the guilty parties, and how much will be paid for by innocent citizenry?

I suppose that there is an incentive for each of the bad actors in this scenario. What do the informant and the prosecutor get out of a successful conviction? Money? Reputation?

I know a lot of people are understandably concerned about surveillance video, but this is a case where if the guy did not have it, he would have been going to jail, probably for a long time.

I read stories like this, and I believe the line between China and the US blurs more and more. This is truly a crazy system.

And to think that Americans make such a big fuss about corruption in Ukraine, Russia, China, etc. They should shut up and pay attention to the extensive and systemic corruption in the USA. At least countries like Russia and China are making attempts to clean up their local corruption problems. But what is America doing to clean up its own house?<p>Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother&#x27;s eye.

The careers of the police and prosecutor involved should be ended, for a start. They should also be criminally prosecuted, themselves.<p>If we can&#x27;t place reasonable trust in law enforcement... well, then, we are no longer a nation of law (imperfect as that is).<p>The compensation should also be at least an order of magnitude larger, as only painful (both in publicity and in resulting operating constraints) amounts of money seem to have any real effect on the larger system.

I&#x27;ve heard stories of Detectives ignoring someone&#x27;s pleas to check some evidence that would prove their innocence. What incentive would a detective have in NOT checking out the person&#x27;s claim? Do they just assume the person is lying and that their intel on this person is solid? In a case like this, it seem plausible from the beginning that the CI could be lying, (at least as the story is told) perhaps there are just no consequences for these detectives when getting it wrong.<p>It just seems like it&#x27;s worth checking this guy&#x27;s Surveillance Camera Footage sooner rather than later.

This is why every video surveillance system needs a secure internet connection and automatic upload offsite.<p>It&#x27;s all about chain of custody. You don&#x27;t want to be begging for access to evidence that you know exists, you want to have it, introduce it yourself and make prosecutors look stupid.<p>And if your connection is physically cut, then you can introduce an element of doubt.

&gt; &quot;The cops said there was no need for that -- that they had me on video, and they had audio. ...&quot;<p>So the cops were flat-out lying?

The biggest problem (and there are many) is the use of informants and arrest based on information they provide. Anyone can make up a story or evidence this way. There is absolutely no way that crack could be identified in a photo. This is, of course, how the &quot;justice&quot; system works in the US.

Another reason to have video+audio inside and out of a brick &amp; mortar.<p>The other thing is to live stream a backup to somewhere out-of-reach of local &amp; country jurisdictions. Because if you don&#x27;t provide your own reliable evidence, you&#x27;re going to get fucked.

It would be wonderful if all law enforcement officers were required to wear uniforms or identify themselves when in the course of their duties.<p>Obviously the use of compensated informants would be prohibited as well.

Im surprised hes suing them only for 500k..arent there any other criminal charges that he should file for this?

&gt;My lawyer had to beg for those tapes.<p>Why didn&#x27;t his lawyer bring up the Brady rule?

Based on the story, this did not happen in Scotland.

What is so interesting about this? It&#x27;s not like the NSA helped to man to clean his name. The cameras were his private surveillance of his private property, I understand. That&#x27;s what the surveillance is for, to provide proofs.