Kory McFarren gets Probation and Jail

Kory McFarren, 37, became famous when he called the police for help in removing his 35-year-old girlfriend, Pam Babcock, from their toilet seat. She had spent the past two years in the bathroom and had become so firmly attached to the toilet seat that she had to be taken to the hospital with the seat stuck to her buttocks. See the entire story here.

Kory McFarren of Ness City, Kansas was eventually charged with the mistreatment of a dependent adult. Kory pleaded no contest to the charge and was found guilty by the Ness County district magistrate. He was sentenced to six months in jail but after a plea for leniency by his girlfriend, Pam Babcock, the judge granted him six months probation instead.

According to Ness County Attorney Craig Crosswhite Pam Babcock petitioned the judge on behalf of her boyfriend because “She didn’t believe that her circumstances were his fault.” She is now under the protection of a guardian who was appointed through the legal department at the hospital where she received treatment.

However, Kory McFarren does get jail time for another unrelated incident. Shortly after the incident with his girlfriend and the toilet seat, Kory was arrested on charges of lewd and lascivious behavior.

Kory McFarren was arrested after allegedly exposing himself to a minor. He spent the night in jail before being bonded out, said Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple. It was a neighbor who filed the complaint after calling the police, saying that McFarren exposed himself to her teenage daughter and some friends.

“This has been going on for a long period of time,” the neighbor said. “While we were using our pool or hot tub, he would stand in his window and watch and play with himself. It has become much worse lately.”

According to the woman, this was not the first time that she had called the police. Her family even had built up a pile of firewood to obstruct McFarren’s view of the pool area. However, this time when the police showed up, they caught McFarren exposing himself. He was arrested but made bail and returned home the next day.

The neighbor was frustrated when she saw that McFarren had been released so quickly.“I have a daughter who is home after school,” she said. “We don’t know what is going to happen.” She said her children long have had after-school instructions to come inside, lock the doors and call the police if McFarren comes on their property.

In this matter, which was heard at the same time as the “Toilet Case”, the judge did give Kory McFarren jail time. He was sentenced to six months.

Couple Have Their 18th Child

Alexandru Ionce, 51, and his wife Livia, 44, did not set out to be the center of attention but 18 kids later, lots of media attention was focused on the family. Baby Abigail weighed 7lb 12oz at birth. She is the 10th girl born into the family. See the video here.

“We never planned how many children to have. We just let God guide our lives, you know, because we strongly believe life comes from God and that’s the reason we did not stop the life,” said Mr Ionce, who works in construction.

The Ionce’s immigrated from Romania to Abbotsford, B.C., in 1990 with five children. Their 17 other children range in age from 20 months to 23-year-old Ioana. None are twins and all were born naturally, except four-year-old Filip, who was born by Caesarean section. They live in a 7 bedroom house with only 2 bathrooms to share. “It’s tough sometimes,” says Ioana. “Sometimes there’s lineups but we’re used to it.”

“We’re a lot of people but my parents taught us organization and discipline,” she says. “I like it, it’s good.”

“I’ve been to my friend’s house – an only child,” says 15-year-old Alex. “It’s different. Quiet around his house all the time. Not fun. It’s not quiet here.”

Alexandru works in construction, and admits it’s not cheap to have a family so large. “Yeah, it is expensive,” he says. But while money’s in short supply, love is not. And even though she’s 44-years-old, Livia’s not sure she’s done. “I don’t know what’s happen in the future,” she says. “There might be more.”

Even with 18 kids the Ionce’s are not in the Guinness Book of Records:

• A Russian woman, known only as “the wife of Feodor Vassilyev“, who gave birth to 69 children in the 18th century from 27 pregnancies.
• The book also cites Leontina Albina, from Chile, as the most prolific living mother. She reportedly gave birth to her 55th child in 1981.

Giving Pot to Kids – Teen gets 8 Years

Demetrius McCoy, 18 of Watauga, Texas was sentenced to 8 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to two charges of injury to a child causing bodily injury. He also pleaded guilty to two charges of burglary of a habitation. He received 8 years on each of the 4 counts all of which to be served concurrently. It was however the charges related to causing bodily injury to a child that were the most shocking.

McCoy and his cousin Vanswan Polty, were arrested in February 2007 after police found a video while executing a search warrant at the Watauga home of McCoy’s grandmother. Police were investigating burglaries that McCoy and Polty are suspected of committing. On the video McCoy was seen giving his two nephews 2 and 5-years-old marijuana to smoke. Below is the video found by the police.

McCoy who reportedly has a 3-month-old daughter, was seen giving his nephews pot, blowing smoke in their faces, calling them “potheads” and joking about them having the “munchies”. When asked about the incident in an interview from jail, McCoy apologized for causing such a firestorm but indicated that he didn’t consider what he did to be a serious crime.

“Some people give their kids alcohol, let them smoke ice, methamphetamines. Weed ain’t going to kill them,” he said.

Watauga Department of Public Safety Director Bruce Ure took the incident very seriously and said the teens encouraged the two young boys to smoke a marijuana cigar. Investigators were appalled as they watched the tape.

“You’re watching a crime in progress,” Mr. Ure said. “This is their uncle, and he’s encouraging them. They were so willing to go along, to please their uncle. Encouraging a 2-year-old who is clearly a baby – it’s a baby, and they think it’s funny watching him impaired.”

In an attempt to minimize his own actions, he said he doesn’t believe he is the first to expose the boys to the illegal drug and besides “They wasn’t even high,” Mr. McCoy said. “They didn’t even inhale it right.” He said that even if he hadn’t giving his nephews the pot to smoke “the youngsters would have eventually smoked the drug anyway.”

In exchange for the eight-year sentence, McCoy must also testify against his co-defendant, Vanswan Polty, officials said. If McCoy had been convicted at trial, he would have faced up to 10 years in prison. Vanswan Polty, 19, remains in the Tarrant County Jail awaiting trial. He faces two charges of injury to a child, three charges of burglary of a habitation and one charge of failing to identify himself to a peace officer.

“I think Mr. McCoy recognized that a Tarrant County jury was not going to stand for his behavior, and he did the proper thing by taking responsibility for his actions,” said prosecutor Darrell Davila, who handled the case with Leticia Martinez.

McCoy was represented by defense lawyer Ruben Gonzalez Jr.:

“My client accepted his responsibility,” Gonzalez said. “His family has suffered terribly, and it is something he will have to live with.”

Shatorria Russell, the children’s mother, has said she was asleep in another room in the home, which she shared with her children, grandmother and McCoy when the children smoked marijuana. Child Protective Services removed the children from the home shortly after McCoy’s arrest, and  Russell relinquished her parental rights to the state. The children are living with a foster family and are awaiting adoption, CPS spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales said.

John and Anne Darwin Sentenced

John Darwin, 57, and his wife Anne Darwin, 55, will be spending the next 6 years of their lives in the same place, but they won’t be together. Judge Alan Wilkie imposed a sentence of six years and three months on John Darwin after he plead guilty to seven charges of obtaining money by deception and a passport offense. His wife Anne took her case to trial…..and lost. She was sentenced to six-and-a-half years after being convicted of all 15 counts of fraud against her.

They were both sentenced for their separate roles in faking the death of John Darwin in a canoeing accident in March 2002. The couple swindled £250,000 from pensions and insurance companies after Mr Darwin went missing. They succeeded in fooling everyone: The police, their friends and neighbors, the pension and insurance companies and even their own two sons Anthony, 29, and Mark, 32. In fact the two sons gave testimony at the trial against their own mother.

John Darwin apparently hatched the scheme to fake his own death because of his financial problems. He got his wife to play along. After his “death” John lived for sometime at the couple’s home hiding from everyone. He eventually obtained a passport under a false name and went to live in Panama, where his wife joined him. For unknown reasons the couple decided to return to Britain where John reported to his local police station, claiming that he had amnesia and did not know where he had been for the past 5 years. Under police questioning the truth came out and they were both arrested. Here is John Darwin’s statement to the police and here is what his wife told the police.

Judge Alan Wilkie ruled that even though Mr Darwin had admitted his guilt he should serve a similar sentence to his wife because he had been the orchestrator of the plot. He said the severe sentences were handed down because of the “cruelty and grief” inflicted on the Darwin children in a “virtually unique” fraud.

“I accept you, John, were the driving force behind this deceit,” he said. “You, Anne Darwin, perhaps initially unconvinced, played an instrumental rather than organising role. Nevertheless, you contributed to its success and played your part efficiently. In my judgment, you operated as a team, each contributing to the joint venture.

“You would in all likelihood have got away with it if you, John Darwin, had not decided to return to the UK and try to brazen it out with a further false story of amnesia.”

The “betrayed” sons of back-from-the-dead canoeist John Darwin described how their shock turned to rage when they learned their parents faked the entire ordeal. Mark and Anthony Darwin told a British court they could not believe they had been deceived for five years and only realized they had been fooled when they saw an internet photo of their smiling father posing next to their mother Anne in Panama.

Mark, 32, told the Teeside Local Court jury he was stunned by his mother’s lies. “I couldn’t believe the fact she knew he was alive all this time and I had been lied to for god knows how long,” he said.

Anthony, 29, said he thought the image was faked and had been doctored by an internet prankster. It was only when he read a newspaper confession by his mother in which she apparently confirmed it was genuine that he realized he had been so badly duped. The court heard how he cut short a trip to Canada in March 2002 during which he intended to propose to his girlfriend when he was told that his father was missing.

“She flung her arms around me, she said ‘He’s gone I think. I have lost him’,” he said at hearing the news from his mother five years ago. “She wouldn’t stop crying for ages. We just stood in the drawing room doorway.”

The following document shows the significant events this case from the time the Darwins hatched their scheme to their final sentencing of six years in jail.

Doctor Charged with Molesting Patients

Dr. Kevin Antario Brown, 37, was charged with a total of 19 counts, including rape, performing a lewd act on a 15-year-old child, sexual battery by fraud and sexual exploitation. All his victims were former patients including an undercover officer who was investigating the case. If convicted he could spend more than 25 years behind bars. See TV news coverage here.

Dr. Brown is a general practitioner medical doctor formerly practicing medicine at the Crenshaw Expo Medical Center, 3631 Crenshaw Boulevard, Los Angeles.

His problems all began when an unidentified 18-year-old girl complained to the police, in June 2007, that Dr. Brown had touched her inappropriately during a medical examination. The police launched a year-long investigation, using an undercover officer to pose as one of his patients. She was also molested.

Dr Kevin Antario Brown was arrested July 8 at his Los Angeles home and was initially charged with sexually molesting a female patient and a female undercover police officer. He was subsequently freed on $50,000 bail.

However, after his arrest more people came forward, claiming he also sexually molested them. Dr Brown was arrested again, this time on 19 felony counts including: performing a lewd act on a 15-year-old child, rape, sexual battery by fraud and sexual exploitation. The alleged crimes occurred between Nov. 6, 2006, and this May 31 2008. Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Ann Marie Wise, of the sex crimes division, said:

“Since we filed the charges, we have been flooded with phone calls, both from other alleged victims and from other agencies, saying: ‘By the way, we are looking at him for this.'”

Ann Marie Wise also said that there were more people involved than anticipated and that the investigation was not yet over and more charges were likely.

“We were certainly expecting additional women to come forward, but the number has been probably higher than we would usually expect in this sort of investigation. We didn’t want to rush and file all of them [alleged victims] all at once. We have finished interviewing some of the women, and others have come forward in the past two days and we haven’t spoken to them yet.”

Bail was set at $4 million as requested by the prosecution. They considered Dr Brown to be a flight risk. His father, Ewart Brown, is the premier of the island of Bermuda and they feared that he might try to flee there to avoid prosecution.

According to reports, an affidavit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court says that Dr. Brown is being investigated for allegedly over-prescribing the opiate painkiller Oxycontin. No charges have yet been filed in that case. Investigators are also probing Dr. Brown’s alleged role in a multi-million dollar medical fraud, the affidavit says. In recent years, doctors have been convicted of making fraudulent claims to Medi-Cal and Medi-Care – two bodies set up to provide medical aid to the poor.

Special Agent J. Timothy Fives, of the Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse unit in the California Attorney General’s Office, said that during a raid on another doctor’s home in October, investigators obtained a list of those allegedly involved in the fraud. Dr. Brown’s name was on the list, Mr. Fives said. He says that doctors already convicted of fraud have told him that Dr. Brown recruited them into the scheme adding:

“Physicians have stated during interviews that they paid Dr. Brown a percentage of their income from fraudulent Medi-Cal and Medi-Care claims in payment for him setting them up in business.”

On top of his work as a doctor, Dr. Brown runs the Urban Health Institute, a charity set up to provide disaster relief in the U.S., Africa and elsewhere. The charity attracted controversy earlier this year when it was revealed Premier Ewart Brown used taxpayers’ funds to help sponsor a party thrown to benefit the charity. The Premier was a guest of his son at the charity poker event, held at the Playboy Mansion in L.A.

Premier Ewart Brown of Bermuda continues to have faith in his son saying: “I have been in touch with him and he denies the charges and we trust that he will be exonerated.”

The Nudists and the “Black List”

The René Oltra camp at Cap D’Adge in the Hérault is a resort for nudists. Located just a few miles from Montpellier in France. It is billed as  “One of the worlds best clothing-optional and naturism, naturist villages and resorts.”

Cap d’Agde naturism resort is an enclosed self-contained village, where anyone who enjoys this lifestyle can enjoy vacations or holidays and everything including going to the bank, post office, restaurants, launderette or for a walk along the 3.5 mile beach, as nature intended.

This may sound like the closest thing to heaven on earth for nudists. There is however trouble in paradise. It appears that the nudist camp has been keeping a black list of undesirables, people who will be refused entry to its facilities. This was discovered when a client was refused entry to the camp and went to the authorities to complain about being discriminated against. The unidentified person contacted the Commission nationale de l’informatique et de la liberté (CNIL) which is France’s data protection authority.

The CNIL sent inspectors to investigate the allegations and discovered that resort did in fact keep a list of people who were banned from their facilities. The list contained names of people who had been banned for various offenses including: non-payment of bills, making too much noise, lack of personal hygiene and the wearing of clothes etc…

Keeping a black list is not illegal but organizations who wish to exclude certain people from their facilities need the authorization of the CNIL. After concluding its investigation the CNIL gave the resort permission to keep its black list with the caveat that it informed potential and existing clients of the black list’s existence. Also, anyone charged with an “objective” offence could be banned from the resort for up to three years.

Cap D’Adge has rules that it expects all of its patrons to abide by. Violations can lead to expulsion from the resort (and of course being placed on their black list). Some of the rules include:

• Access to the quarter is reserved for naturists or those working there.
• Total nudity is obligatory within the quarter and on the beach, as soon as climatic conditions permit.
• Photo shots and filming are strictly limited to members of the family.
• There are also several laws banning any sort of lewd or crude behavior in the naturist quarter.
• Teenagers are allowed to wear clothes, if they feel uncomfortable with the environment.

To find out more about Cap D’Agde, visit their website at: http://www.capdagdefrance.co.uk

Baron “Scooter” Pikes – Tasered to Death

Baron “Scooter” Pikes, 21, died horribly on Jan 17th 2008. Handcuffed in police custody and pleading for mercy he was tasered 9 times by officer Scott Nugent who is white. Pikes is Black. The incident occurred between 1:28pm and 2:07pm. The official police report of what happened in those 39 minutes is starkly refuted by eyewitnesses and physical evidence.

The Police Report:

Nugent spotted Pikes walking along the street and attempted to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for drug possession, according to Police Chief Johnny Ray Carpenter. Pikes took off running, but another officer cornered him outside a nearby grocery store. Pikes resisted arrest and Nugent subdued him with a shock from a Taser.

Then on the way to the police station, Pikes fell ill and told the officers he suffered from asthma and was high on crack cocaine and PCP. The officers called for an ambulance, but Pikes later died at the hospital.

Six months later, the Winnfield police are standing by that story. Meanwhile, the Louisiana State Police are investigating the case, and no charges have been filed against Nugent or two other Winnfield police officers who assisted him in arresting Pikes, although the City Council did decide to fire Nugent from the force in May.

Contradictory Evidence:

There is plenty of contradictory evidence, including officer Nugent’s own report of the incident, the autopsy results and eyewitness accounts.

An autopsy determined there were no drugs in Pikes’ system and that he did not have asthma, according to Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner. After consulting about the case with Dr. Michael Baden, a nationally prominent forensic pathologist, Williams ruled last month that Pikes’ death was a homicide. On the death certificate, he listed the cause of death as “cardiac arrest following nine 50,000-volt electroshock applications from a conductive electrical weapon.”

Moreover, Pikes did not resist arrest, and he was handcuffed while lying on the ground, according to Nugent’s police report of the incident. It was only after Pikes refused Nugent’s command to stand up that the officer applied the first Taser shock in the middle of his back, Nugent wrote.

Several more Taser shocks followed quickly, Nugent stated, because Pikes kept falling down and refusing to get back up. Grocery shoppers who witnessed the incident later told Pikes’ family that he had pleaded with Nugent: “Please, you all got me. Please don’t Tase me again.”

Williams said police records showed Nugent administered nine Taser shocks to Pikes over a 14-minute period. The last two jolts, delivered as police pulled Pikes from a patrol car at the police station, elicited no physical reaction because the suspect was unconscious, Williams said.

Only after Pikes was carried into the police station and slumped into a chair did police call for an ambulance. He was pronounced dead soon afterward at the local hospital.

“God did not just call this young man home,” said Williams, who has served as parish coroner for the past 33 years. “Fourteen minutes elapsed between the first shock and the last. If somebody can tell me anything else that killed this otherwise perfectly healthy young man in 14 minutes, I’d like to know it.”

“This case may be the most unnecessary death I have ever had to investigate,” Williams said. “[Pikes] put up no fuss, no fighting, no physical aggression. The Taser was not used to take him into custody. He just didn’t respond quickly enough to the officer’s commands.”

Winn Parish District Atty. Chris Nevils says he expects to present the case to a grand jury after he receives the results of the state police investigation.

Colorful History of Winnfield:

Winnfield is just 40 miles from Jena, La. the site of the racially explosive prosecution of six black teenagers charged with beating a white youth that last year triggered one of the largest American civil rights demonstrations in decades. In a bizarre twist of fate it turns out that Baron Pikes is the first cousin of Mychal Bell, the lead defendant in the Jena 6 case.

Winnfield is also the birthplace of two of Louisiana’s most colorful and notorious governors, Huey and Earl Long.

The police chief of Winnfield committed suicide three years ago after losing a close election marred by allegations of fraud and vote-buying. Just four months later, the district attorney killed himself after allegedly skimming $200,000 from his office budget and extorting payments from criminal defendants to make their cases go away.

The current police chief is a convicted drug offender who got a pardon from Edwin Edwards, the former Louisiana governor who is serving time in federal prison for corruption convictions.

All of that tangled history is now wrapped up in the Pikes case, because Scott Nugent, the officer who Tasered him, is the well-connected son of the former police chief who killed himself and the protégé of the current chief, who hired him onto the force.

In less than two years on Winnfield’s 20-officer police force, police records show, Nugent ranked as the department’s most aggressive Taser user. Among the recipients were a 15-year-old African-American runaway who was not charged with any crime and Pikes’ father, currently serving a prison sentence for a drug offense, who was Tasered by Nugent last year, according to Kayshon Collins.

Joe Heard said his 15-year-old son was Tasered twice by Nugent last August, after Heard reported the youth as a runaway and asked the police to help find him.

“He snuck out of the house to be with a girl,” Heard said. “I asked the police to bring him home, and they did, but in pieces–he was all scraped up and bruised. They told me the next time he runs, ‘You know we’re going to shoot him.’ “

Officer Scott Nugent, 21, declined to be interviewed for this story. But his attorney, Phillip Terrell, said that Nugent “acted within the ambit of his training and Winnfield Police Department policies”, an opinion seconded by police spokesman Lt. Charles Curry.

Taser Safety Guidelines:

The official Winnfield Police Department Taser policy appears to prohibit the weapon’s use against a nonviolent suspect who has already been handcuffed:

“The Taser shall only be deployed in circumstances where it is deemed reasonably necessary to control a dangerous or violent subject,” the policy states. It also requires that a suspect who has been Tasered should immediately be checked out at a hospital, which did not happen in Pikes’ case.

Safety guidelines issued by Taser International Inc., the manufacturer of the device that is now used by more than 12,700 law enforcement and military agencies worldwide, warn officers to “minimize repeated, continuous, and/or simultaneous exposures.”

Company officials, citing dozens of medical studies, insist Tasers are safe when used properly. But few of those studies examined the effect of multiple Taser applications over a short period of time. The U.S. Department of Justice, in a study released in June, concluded that “the medical risks of repeated or continuous [Taser] exposure are unknown.”

“We want the police officer to be prosecuted for what he done,” Pikes’ stepmother, Kayshon Collins. We got the death certificate from the funeral home in June, and it said the death was a homicide.”

The Louisiana ACLU said that police officers should be handled just as other citizens.

“Police must be accountable for their actions just as others are, and if excessive police force caused Mr. Pikes’ death, the officers must be held accountable,” Marjorie Esman, executive director, said in a prepared statement. “The Louisiana State Police are reviewing this unfortunate death and, if their review indicates that Mr. Pikes died as a result of police misconduct, we expect the District Attorney to prosecute as it would any other death that occurs in Winn Parish.”

“I cannot and will not judge a case before I have all the facts,” Nevils said in a statement provided to BlackAmericaWeb.com. “But I will assure you that if any persons are found to have committed a crime, they will be prosecuted without regard to who they are. On the other hand, if no crime has been committed, I’m not going to bring charges because it might be a popular thing to do.”

Marijuana Scent is not Enough

In what is seen as a victory for the right-to-privacy, the Washington State Supreme Court decided that the scent of marijuana coming from a vehicle is not sufficient reason to arrest all the occupants of that vehicle. The decision was unanimous. They did however uphold the right of the police to stop and search a vehicle that smelled of marijuana but without further evidence they could not arrest nor search all the occupants.

…..we have concluded that where officers do not have anything to independently connect an individual to illegal activity, no probable cause exists and an arrest or search of that person is invalid….the arrest of one or more vehicle occupants does not, without more, provide “‘authority of law’ under article I, section 7 of our state constitution to search other, non-arrested vehicle passengers, including personal belongings.”

This ruling resulted from a case that had been brought up through the lower courts with split decisions. It involved two people, Jeremy Grande and Lacee Hurley, who were in a car which was stopped by the police in April 2006 in Skagit County. The car was driven by Lacee Hurley when they were pulled over by State Patrol Trooper Brent Hanger. Trooper Hanger said he stopped the car because the windows were too darkly tinted. He said he smelled pot in the car, so he arrested and handcuffed Grande and Hurley.

A search of Grande revealed a glass pipe with marijuana in his pocket. Hanger searched the car and found a joint in an ashtray, which Hurley said belonged to her. Both were charged with marijuana possession and Grande was also charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.

The case initially came before the Skagit County District Court, which found there was no probable cause for Grande’s arrest. But the state appealed the ruling and the county’s Superior Court reversed the order. The case was then appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Summing up the state Supreme Court’s decision, Justice Charles W. Johnson wrote:

“Our state constitution protects our individual privacy, meaning that we are free from unnecessary police intrusion into our private affairs unless a police officer can clearly associate the crime with the individual.” In the case of the Skagit County traffic stop, the court found the mere presence of the odor of marijuana was not enough probable cause to warrant the arrest of Grande.

Attorney David Zuckerman, who brought the case before the state Supreme Court, said the problem is that arresting someone based solely on the odor of marijuana can affect innocents.

“The smell of marijuana smoke can linger for weeks,” Zuckerman said. “You could have a perfectly innocent citizen get into a car where somebody smoked marijuana at some point … and an officer can just pull you out of a car and book you based on that.”

The decision doesn’t mean an officer must walk away from a vehicle that smells of pot. Trooper Hanger did have probable cause to search the car, the state Supreme Court decision said, just not to arrest Grande. Law-enforcement officers say it won’t greatly affect the way they make arrests.

“What this means is officers are going to have to be a little more keen in their investigative skills,” said Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

“Normally, if you come across the odor of marijuana … there’s something else going on that helps you identify who the responsible person or persons is.”

Advocates for drug-law reform cheered the ruling as a long overdue step in the right direction.

“As a general statement, it’s a step back from the direction that our government has been going as we’re veering into a sort of surveillance society,” said Alison Holcomb of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington chapter. “It strikes me as refreshing that the court has reaffirmed the values that our constitution calls for.”

When it comes to passengers, though, the scent of pot alone doesn’t give probable cause to arrest everyone in the car. Officers need additional evidence that each individual broke the law.

“Our cases have strongly and rightfully protected our constitution’s protection of individual privacy,” Justice Charles Johnson wrote for the court. “The protections … do not fade away or disappear within the confines of an automobile.”

In a pretrial hearing for Grande, the district judge found there was not specific probable cause to justify his arrest, and suppressed the evidence. But the Skagit County Superior Court overturned that ruling, pointing to a 1979 appellate ruling that said the smell of pot coming from a car was probable cause to arrest the passengers and driver. The State Supreme Court said subsequent federal case law has wiped away the legal footing of that 1979 decision.

I guess it goes without saying but Attorney David Zuckerman said Jeremy Grande was delighted with the decision.

Godinez Gets 5 Years

Edson Godinez, 17, of the city of Newburgh, NY went before Orange County Court Judge Robert Freehill to be sentenced for assaulting police officer, Richard Hammer on Feb. 16, 2008. He had been charged with 3 felonies: Two counts of second-degree assault and a single count of attempted aggravated assault on a police officer. He also faced misdemeanor charges of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and resisting arrest.

It all began about 1:45 a.m. on Feb. 16th on Mill Street, Newburgh when police officer Richard Hammer saw a gang of at least twelve Hispanic males chasing another unidentified 23-year-old Hispanic male. They caught up with the fleeing man and began a vicious assault. That was when officer Hammer attempted to intervene. While trying to arrest the two ringleaders who led the attack, he was also assaulted by 5 or 6 others in the gang. During the altercation Hammer was stabbed by one of the two men (Godinez) he was trying to arrest. The other one and the rest of the gang escaped. The fight was believed to have stemmed from a dispute between two street gangs in Newburgh, the Barrio Benkard Kings (BBKs) and La Eme. In his defense Godinez claimed he didn’t know that a police officer was the one who was trying to break up the brawl.

In court Godinez pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of attempted aggravated assault on a police office. The prosecution recommended 9 years in prison but Godinez’ lawyer, Gary Abramson of the Orange County Legal Aid Society, argued for a lesser sentence.The maximum sentence was 15 years. In the end Judge Robert Freehill sentenced Godinez to five years in state prison. The judge also denied Godinez youthful offender treatment, which would have sealed his record. Godinez apologized for his actions in a barely audible voice, wiping his eyes as he spoke.

School Apologizes to Student Janitor

It never fails to amaze me how asinine and full of bigotry some people can be. The following racially-charged story is set in an institution of higher learning……yes, a university!! It involves a student, Keith John Sampson, working as a janitor; a co-worker, Nakea William; a book: Todd Tucker’s “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan”; the school’s affirmative-action officer, Lillian Charleston, and the school’s administration. Before the situation is resolved the ACLU, FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and the Wall Street Journal all got involved.

It all began at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI), when Keith Sampson, a white man, brought a history book to read in the break room of the university where he studies and works as a janitor. The book was about the defeat of the Ku Klux Klan by Notre Dame students in a 1924 street brawl. Sampson, who is part Irish explains it this way:

The book was Todd Tucker’s “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan”; I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library.

Tucker recounts events of 1924, when the loathsome Klan was a dominant force in Indiana – until it went to South Bend to taunt the Irish Catholic students at the University of Notre Dame.

When the KKK tried to rally, the students confronted them. They stole Klan robes and destroyed their crosses, driving the KKK out of town in a downpour.

I read the historic encounter and imagined myself with these brave Irish Catholics, as they street-fought the Klan. (I’m part-Irish, and was raised Catholic.)

One of his co-workers, Nakea William, complained about his reading material which started the following ridiculous chain of events in motion:

• Mr. Sampson was in short order visited by his union representative, who informed him he must not bring this book to the break room, and that he could be fired. Taking the book to the campus, Mr. Sampson says he was told, was “like bringing pornography to work.” That it was a history of the battle students waged against the Klan in the 1920s in no way impressed the union rep.
• The assistant affirmative action officer who next summoned the student was similarly unimpressed. Indeed she was, Mr. Sampson says, irate at his explanation that he was, after all, reading a scholarly book. “The Klan still rules Indiana,” Marguerite Watkins told him – didn’t he know that? Mr. Sampson, by now dazed, pointed out that this book was carried in the university library. Yes, she retorted, you can get Klan propaganda in the library.

The matter was brought to the attention of Lillian Charleston, the school’s affirmative-action officer who responded to the incident by writing Sampson the following letter:

Upon review of this matter, we conclude that your conduct constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers who repeatedly requested that you refrain from reading the book which has such an inflammatory and offensive topic in their presence. You contend that you weren’t aware of the offensive nature of the topic and were reading the book about the KKK to better understand discrimination. However you used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black co-workers. Furthermore, employing the legal “reasonable person standard,” a majority of adults are aware of and understand how repugnant the KKK is to African Americans, their reactions to the Klan, and the reasonableness of the request that you not read the book in their presence.

During your meeting with Marguerite Watkins, Assistant Affirmative Action Officer [sic] you were instructed to stop reading the book in the immediate presence of your co-workers and when reading the book to sit apart from the immediate proximity of these co-workers. Please be advised, any future substantiated conduct of a similar nature could result in serious disciplinary action.

After the official judgment against him, Mr. Sampson turned to the Indiana state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose office contacted university attorneys. The case also got some sharp local press coverage that threatened to get wider……it was a great story:  A university had brought a case against a student on grounds of a book he had been reading.

Bowing to the pressure of the publicity surrounding the case, Lillian Charleston decided to revise her comments and wrote another letter to Simpson to clarify the first one:

And so the new letter to Mr. Sampson by affirmative action officer Charleston brought word that she wished to clarify her previous letter, and to say it was “permissible for him to read scholarly books or other materials on break time.” About the essential and only theme of the first letter – the “racially abhorrent” subject of the book – or the warnings that any “future substantiated conduct of a similar nature could mean serious disciplinary action” – there was not a word. She had meant in that first letter, she said, only to address “conduct” that caused concern among his co-workers.

What that conduct was, the affirmative action officer did not reveal – but she had delivered the message rewriting the history of the case. Absolutely and for certain there had been no problem about any book he had been reading.

What, then, was the offense? “Harassing behavior.” While reading the book? What the behavior was, one learned, could never be revealed. There was, of course, no other offensive behavior.

University Chancellor Charles R. Bantz, after being pressured by FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) as well as the ACLU, finally sent them a letter expressing regret over this affair, and testifying to his profound commitment to freedom of expression. After it was pointed out that the Chancellor “forgot” to express his regrets to the person most affected by the entire incident……Keith John Sampson, he also sent the following letter address to Sampson:

I want to offer you my apology for the problems associated with the letter you received from the Affirmative Action Office………A recent column in the Wall Street Journal reminded me that while I had expressed my regrets to……the Indiana Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education…..I had not done so to you personally.

I can candidly say we regret this situation took place….