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Blog and Media Roundup - Sunday, March 14, 2010; News Roundup
Topic Started: Mar 14 2010, 07:03 AM (431 Views)
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http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2010/03/anatomy_of_the_new_orleans_pol.html

Anatomy of the New Orleans police cover up in Danziger Bridge shootings: An editorial
By Editorial page staff, The Times-Picayune
March 14, 2010, 6:18AM

Jeffrey Lehrmann pleaded guilty to helping cover up shootings by police on the Danziger Bridge because he wants justice for the victims, the former New Orleans police officer's lawyer said.

Former New Orleans police officer Jeffrey Lehrmann admitted to being a part of a cover-up of unjustified police shootings at the Danziger Bridge. "He really does feel for these victims,'' Davidson Ehle III said. "It took enormous courage for him to do what he did.''

Mr. Lehrmann's account of the cover-up, and that of retired Lt. Michael Lohman, has revealed monstrous corruption in the New Orleans Police Department. And certainly the victims deserve justice. Ronald Madison, a mentally disabled man, was gunned down, and his brother, Lance, was wrongfully jailed. Susan Bartholomew's arm was blown off, her husband, daughter and nephew were wounded, and a friend of her nephew was slain.

But Mr. Lehrmann showed neither compassion for these innocent victims nor the courage to stand up for them when it counted: when he and fellow officers were conspiring to make the deaths of two people and the shootings of four others appear to be justified actions on the part of police.

Then-Officer Lehrmann arrived on the bridge Sept. 4, 2005, shortly after the shootings had taken place. According to the factual basis for his guilty plea, he noticed that there were no guns on or near the civilians he found. He helped treat some of the wounded and escorted ambulances carrying four shooting victims to a hospital.

But while he was still at the hospital, the court document says, other officers were already hatching a story to justify the shootings.

Mr. Lehrmann said that Sgt. Arthur Kaufman, the lead investigator for the case, had told him that same day that an officer had killed an innocent man. But Mr. Lehrmann still assisted in the cover-up.

"In all my years, I have neither imagined nor heard of more despicable conduct by law enforcement officers than that which was described today,'' U.S. District Court Judge Lance Africk said during Mr. Lehrmann's appearance in court Thursday.

michael lohman.JPGFormer New Orleans police Lt. Michael Lohman also confessed to being part of the cover-up.Indeed, the story that has emerged from the guilty pleas of Mr. Lehrmann and Mr. Lohman is sickening. Officers concealed evidence, fabricated witnesses, falsified statements and planted a gun, they said. And the conspirators plotted and planned to use Hurricane Katrina as an excuse for any perceived shortcomings in the investigation.

Mr. Lehrmann admits that he helped two officers who shot civilians and the investigator come up with a false story. He said, for example, that the conspirators decided it wouldn't be credible to claim that two separate groups of civilians, one on the eastern side of the bridge and the other on the western side, had separately opened fire on officers. So, police accounts claimed instead that the Madisons were traveling with the Bartholomew family.

Mr. Lehrmann says that he and Sgt. Kaufman falsified statements made by Susan and Leonard Bartholomew III, quoting them as saying their nephew, Jose Holmes, had fired on officers. In fact, the couple said just the opposite: no one in their group fired on anyone. No one even had a weapon.

The plot even included manufacturing witnesses. Mr. Lehrmann described Sgt. Kaufman calling out, "Hey, somebody give me a name!'' And Mr. Lehrmann obliged, offering the name "Lakeisha,'' which became Lakeisha Smith, a black female who supposedly gave an eyewitness account of events on the bridge, along with another fictional witness, James Youngman.

The police report quoted Lakeisha Smith as saying she witnessed the shooting of Ronald Madison and had seen him reach into his waistband and turn toward officers. The report also quoted her as saying that Ronald and Lance Madison had been looting and robbing people since the storm.

Mr. Lehrmann also revealed how police hid and planted evidence. He watched an officer kick spent shell casings off the bridge weeks after the incident, he said. And he described going to Sgt. Kaufman's house, where the investigator retrieved a plastic bag from a storage unit. When Mr. Lehrmann asked what was in the bag, he said, the sergeant replied that it was a ham sandwich. But the bag contained a gun that Mr. Lehrmann said was subsequently entered into police evidence with a citation that it had been recovered from the scene.

Sgt. Kaufman has not been charged in the case, and his attorney, Stephen London, said that it would make no sense for his client to bring other people along while he retrieved a gun. "There was no need,'' he said. "You don't need to cover up something that didn't occur,'' he said.

But continued assertions that there was no cover-up are simply not believable. Two former officers now admit that they lied and schemed to conceal wrongful shootings.

Mr. London also cited post-storm conditions. "We were at near anarchy. There was virtually no civil government.'' But that cannot justify anarchy in the ranks of police. According to the court document, those involved "discussed how they could use Hurricane Katrina as an excuse for failures in the investigation of the Danziger Bridge shootings and thereby use the storm to help make the entire situation 'go away.' ''

Now, more than four years later, it is the fabrication that is going away, replaced by a harsh reality: that innocent people died and police officers lied, protecting themselves rather than the public.

"It is during times of crisis that we must ... be most cognizant of our obligations to our integrity, to the citizens we serve, to the duties we have,'' U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said. He's right, and those who failed to do so must face the consequences.
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http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/03/algiers_police_shooting_report_1.html

Algiers police shooting report altered, sources say
By Times-Picayune Staff
March 13, 2010, 11:17PM

Nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina, questions persist about the manner of death of a man whose burnt body was found in a car parked along the Algiers Point levee shortly after the storm.

This report was written by Laura Maggi and Brendan McCarthy of The Times-Picayune, with A.C. Thompson of ProPublica.

A police report about the shooting of a man whose burned corpse was later discovered in a car on the Algiers levee after Hurricane Katrina apparently differs from the report originally written by the sergeant whose name appears on the document's cover page, sources close to a federal investigation into the matter say.

The report attempts to explain why an officer fired his rifle at a man he thought was looting an Algiers strip mall on Sept. 2, 2005, four days after Katrina.

Though the officer, David Warren, did not think his shot struck anyone, details of the incident described in the report square with the shooting of Henry Glover, who perished in police custody later that day and whose corpse was later incinerated in a car on the levee.

The report offers a few more details about what may have happened to Glover, the subject of an intensive federal civil rights probe expected to result in police indictments.

That probe is occurring against the backdrop of another sprawling probe into the shootings by New Orleans police of six people on the Danziger Bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, which have led to two guilty pleas by officers who say they participated in a wide-ranging cover-up. All told, the FBI has confirmed at least seven civil rights probes into the New Orleans Police Department.

The report about the Sept. 2 shooting incident raises as many questions as it answers.

For instance, the initial incident report purports to have been written by Sgt. Nina Simmons. But sources close to the case say she did not write it, at least not in its present form.

While Simmons, then a supervisor in the Algiers-based 4th District, filled out and signed the NOPD's standard cover page for a police report and submitted a report to superiors, a source said she did not write the following two typewritten pages.

The report is vague about whether the man who was shot at posed a threat to Warren, saying the officer saw something in the man's right hand "which he perceived was a weapon," causing him to fear for his safety and fire. In general, officers aren't supposed to fire their weapons unless they are facing a person posing a physical threat to themselves or others.

Although protocol requires all weapons discharges to be reported to the Public Integrity Bureau, in this case, the report says, Warren's superiors simply reviewed the shooting and deemed it justified. That course was followed, the report suggests, because Katrina made following normal practices impossible. Experts who examined the report said there isn't enough information in the report to determine whether the shooting was proper.

City 'plagued by looters'

And while police incident reports are generally dry recitations of the relevant circumstances, the Warren incident report pauses at several points to make reference to the conditions around the city.

"It should be noted that at this time the entire City of New Orleans was plagued by looters at almost every section of the city," it says, after describing the alleged looter's truck. "It is also a fact that Police Officer Kevin Thomas had been severely wounded by being shot to the head by a looter. These brazen criminal acts had all police officers on high alert."

The NOPD declined to answer questions about the report, citing the ongoing federal investigation. NOPD spokesman Bob Young provided this statement: "The information that you are requesting is part of the federal investigation currently in progress. The NOPD will not comment on any part of the ongoing federal investigation. The NOPD has cooperated with the federal investigators and will continue to cooperate throughout their investigation."

Simmons' attorney, Townsend Myers, declined to comment, while Warren's attorney did not return a request for comment.

Shooting reported promptly

Warren's attorney, Joseph Albe, has previously acknowledged that federal investigators think his client shot Glover, although he has disputed that the known facts definitively connect Warren to that shooting. Warren left the force in 2008.
david-warren.JPGFormer N.O. police officer David Warren is under investigation on the shooting.

In an interview last month, Albe explained Warren's situation like this: Warren was guarding a building at the time, and because two men were "charging" toward the building, Warren felt he was in danger. He fired his rifle once, not knowing where the bullet landed, then called ranking officers and reported the shooting.

"He did exactly what he was supposed to have done," Albe said.

A newcomer to the NOPD at the time of Katrina, Warren was actually stationed in the 7th District in eastern New Orleans, Albe said. But Warren lives on the West Bank and wasn't able to get to that flooded area of the city, so after the storm he reported to duty at the 4th District.

On Sept. 2, supervisors paired Warren with Officer Linda Howard, a more experienced officer, assigning them to protect the 4th district's detective bureau, on the second floor of a shopping complex that included a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. Both Warren and Howard were on the second-story balcony outside the bureau, according to the report.

The shooting actually took place behind the complex, according to the report. The officers heard a car approaching. As they moved to the part of the balcony facing a narrow parking lot bordering Seine Street, referred to as a "back service alley," Howard saw a white pick-up truck with a "Firestone" logo, according to the report.

Two men got out of the truck, heading quickly toward the rear gate of the building, she said.

The report states that Warren, who was in uniform, identified himself as a police officer, yelling, "Police -- get out!" One of the men looked at him and continued toward the building, the report states. Warren then saw "an object" that he "perceived was a weapon."

A handwritten "resisting arrest report" also obtained by The Times-Picayune is less specific about what Warren saw. This document, also signed by Simmons, as well as then-Lt. Gary Gremillion, says Warren spotted an "unknown type object" in the alleged looter's right hand.

Officer thought his shot missed

In both reports, Warren, who won a precision shooting award in the NOPD's academy, says he feared for his safety. He fired his gun in the direction of the suspect below him. Both men then took off down Seine Street.

After the shooting, Warren believed "he missed the suspect," the report states.

Howard could not see Warren fire his weapon from her position, according to the report. She did not return a call for comment.

In the last three paragraphs, the report states that after the shooting Warren notified Simmons, although it doesn't say when. Other officers looked for a shooting victim, but couldn't find one, the report states.

The report notes that knowledge of the incident went up the NOPD command structure to 4th District Capt. David Kirsch and Lt. Robert Italiano, head of the district investigative unit. The required notifications to the Public Integrity Bureau and other units could not be made because of the storm, the report says.

Kirsch and Italiano, along with the on-scene supervisor, eventually concluded the use of force by Warren was justified, the report states. The NOPD's operations manual notes that state law defines the justifiable use of deadly force as when an officer is in "imminent danger of losing his life or receiving great bodily harm" or must protect another person from the same level of threat.

Kirsch did not respond to a request for comment; Italiano, who has since retired from the force, declined to comment.

Key facts absent from report

Click to open graphic in new window.

Experts who reviewed the report at the request of reporters said the document left many questions unanswered -- including whether Warren acted properly in pulling the trigger.

"It's impossible to tell from the report whether you had a good shoot or you didn't," said Ron McCarthy, a former Los Angeles police officer who has consulted for the U.S. Justice Department on shooting incidents.

In his view, key facts are absent from the report, including Warren's distance from the citizen he fired at, and how long he waited before notifying his superiors of the incident. McCarthy also wondered what became of the white pick-up described in the document. "What about the truck?" he asked. "That's missing from the report."

However, he tempered his criticism by saying the department couldn't do a thorough investigation until the crisis had abated. "It's unreasonable" to expect officers to do full-blown investigations under catastrophic conditions, said McCarthy, who has trained police in multiple countries.

McCarthy also found some positive signs in the document, starting with the fact that Warren chose to alert his bosses to the incident. Officers, he said, have "a tendency not report to shootings in circumstances that are chaotic or out of control, like Katrina."

David Klinger, an associate criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St.Louis and senior research scientist with the Police Foundation in Washington, wasn't ready to draw firm conclusions from the report.

"Given the thinness of the document, it's very hard to assess" whether the shooting was appropriate, said Klinger.

Klinger said he thinks NOPD brass should have gotten a more complete picture by conducting interviews with Warren and Howard when the situation in New Orleans stabilized. Such an approach would have generated "a fine-grained statement" from Warren.

In Klinger's view, "The officer's been done a disservice because we cannot know what officer Warren was thinking when he pulled the trigger."

Klinger, who wrote a book titled "Into the Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force," said it's crucial for police departments to investigate all police shootings -- including those with no apparent victims. It's not uncommon, he said, for officers to believe their bullets have missed when they've actually wounded or even killed citizens.

It doesn't appear that any investigative team was called in to examine the shooting, although the report concludes with the revelation that civilians in the 3400 block of Seine Street -- one block from the strip mall -- told officers a man had been shot nearby and was taken to the hospital by "an unknown person."

The report notes that the homicide squad was not called, although department policy requires homicide detectives to evaluate any police shooting that results in injury or death. Although the report was written in December, after the immediate chaos caused by the storm had subsided, the report said the unit was not available in "the wake and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

If Warren had missed the man he shot at, NOPD policy would call for the incident to be reviewed by a Public Integrity Bureau investigator and, eventually, a team of supervisors to determine whether the shooting was an indication that more training or discipline was warranted.

But it doesn't appear that review happened. These reviews are triggered by the assignment of an "ASI number," which is assigned to each officer-involved shooting, said Felix Loicano, former commander of the Public Integrity Bureau. "That is what generates the next step," he said.

The NOPD declined to comment on whether such a review took place.

Algiers man is flagged down to help

Given Glover's location, it's difficult to understand how Warren would not have realized it if he had been shot.

Rusty Costanza / The Times-Picayune archiveWilliam Tanner poses for a photo where his burned out car was found after Hurricane Katrina with a dead body inside.

William Tanner, an Algiers man, has said he was driving by and encountered Glover, his brother and a friend near the intersection of Texas Drive and Seine Street. That is about a half-block from the balcony perch where Warren said he was stationed -- a spot in clear view of the shopping center.

Tanner was flagged down by Glover's brother, Edward King, who said a man had been shot and needed assistance.

After getting the injured man in the car, Tanner said he decided the hospital was too far away and instead opted to drive to a nearby elementary school, where the NOPD's SWAT team had set up camp.

But at the SWAT encampment, Tanner and King have said, they were handcuffed, beaten and yelled at. Officers indicated they believed Glover was a looter and offered him no assistance.

Eventually, one of the officers took Tanner's keys and drove off with his car. Glover's body was still inside, Tanner said. It's not clear when he died.

While the police let the other men go, Tanner did not learn for weeks what had happened to his car. Eventually, a federal agent alerted him that its burned remains were on the Algiers levee, not far from the 4th District station. Glover's charred body was pulled out of that vehicle, according to the Orleans Parish coroner's office.

Laura Maggi can be reached at lmaggi@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3316. Brendan McCarthy can be reached at bmccarthy@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3301.
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http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story_news_durham/6709278/article-Duke-police-kill-man-near-hospital?instance=main_article


Duke police kill man near hospital
03.13.10 - 09:33 pm
By Mark Donovan and Cliff Bellamy

mdonovan@heraldsun.com; 419-6655 cbellamy@heraldsun.com; 419-6744

DURHAM -- Two Duke University police officers were involved in a shooting outside the front entrance of Duke University Hospital at Erwin Road and Fulton Street shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday that left an unidentified man dead, Duke Police Chief John Dailey said Saturday.

Dailey said there was "no immediate indication" that the victim was "an employee, patient or patient family member."

Daily said the name of the dead man would not be released until his next of kin was notified.

Details about shooting were unclear, but Dailey said the two officers had an altercation with a person on the hospital grounds leading to the shooting. He said one of the police officers suffered minor injuries and was treated for them.

"This is a tragic event for everybody involved," Dailey said.

Campus police officials said just before 5 p.m. Saturday that they were providing counseling and support for the two officers involved in the shooting, Larry Carter and Jeffrey Liberto.

Carter has been on the Duke force for 23 years and Liberto two.

"Incidents like this are very difficult emotionally for the officers involved," said Dailey. "We're working with these two members of our team to provide support through Duke's employee assistance program."

Dailey said the victim had been taken to the Office of the State Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill and had not been positively identified.

The university and health system leadership were informed immediately after the incident occurred and a number of Duke officials worked at the scene throughout the early morning, Dailey said.

Police would not comment further, standard procedures in police-involved shootings in North Carolina which immediately compel an investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation as well as the police department involved.

Duke police said early Saturday that the incident had caused no interruption of patient care services or hospital operations.

Because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, access to the primary entrance to Duke University Hospital was restricted until mid-morning Saturday and employees and visitors were temporarily routed to an alternate entrance to the facility. Durham police were on the scene as well, setting up a mobile command center on site.

The police statement called the event an "isolated incident" that occurred outside the hospital itself and therefore posed no ongoing safety or security issue at the hospital.

"Our first priority is the safety and security of our patients, visitors, students, staff and others," Dailey said. "We plan to review the results of the investigation carefully to ensure our procedures are appropriate and solid."

According to its Web site, www.duke.edu/police, the Duke University Police Department provides round-the-clock security and responds to calls for assistance from staff, faculty, students, patients and visitors, stationing police and security officers at Duke Hospital as well as other Duke Health System facilities..

Duke police operate satellite offices at Duke North and Duke South hospitals.

Campus police at Duke are university employees, commissioned by the state of North Carolina who have the authority to carry weapons, issue citations and make arrests just like municipal officers.

Security officers, according to the campus police Web site, are not typically armed and do not have authority to issue citations or make arrests. Duke has its own security personnel but hires outside private security as well.

Dailey is a Durham native who began his law enforcement career at Duke in 1993 as an officer and worked his way up to captain, moved to N.C. State University as assistant chief from 2001-2009 and returned to Duke as chief last April.
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http://williamlanderson.blogspot.com/

Saturday, March 13, 2010
Working on a Case that is a Huge Travesty
I'm putting together material in order to write about a case near Chattanooga that I consider to be as big a travesty as was the Duke Lacrosse Case. A woman is accused of sexual molestation, and from what I can see, the charges are as legitimate as were the sexual molestation charges of nearly 20 years ago in the mass of "witch hunts" that polluted our legal landscape.

This means that I am going to give the authorities in this particular jurisdiction the same treatment I gave Michael Nifong and his minions in Durham, North Carolina. If there is one thing that I hate, it is authorities pursing and destroying innocent people, and because I have multiple forums, I am going to use them.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/14/388250/man-dies-in-scuffle-with-duke.html


Published Sun, Mar 14, 2010 04:53 AM
Modified Sat, Mar 13, 2010 10:50 PM
Man dies in scuffle with Duke police

DURHAM A man was killed in a shooting involving two Duke University police officers early Saturday outside the front entrance of Duke University Hospital.

Duke Police Chief John Dailey said one officer was treated for a minor injury. The incident happened just after 1 a.m.

Police would not release the identity of the dead man until the next of kin were notified, Dailey said. There was no indication that the shooting involved a Duke employee, patient or patient family member, according to a statement released by Duke spokesman David Jarmul.

"I can't release any more details at this point," Dailey said Saturday.

The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the incident, which is standard procedure whenever a police officer is involved in a shooting.

There was no interruption of patient care services or hospital operations. But access to the hospital's main entrance was restricted Saturday morning, and employees and visitors were routed to an alternate entrance.

"There is no ongoing safety or security issue at Duke University Hospital, as this was an isolated incident that occurred outside of the facility," the statement said.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/14/388294/privacy-fence-shields-state-workers.html


Published Sun, Mar 14, 2010 01:00 AM
Modified Sun, Mar 14, 2010 07:22 AM
Privacy fence shields state workers' files

First of three parts

Former state Trooper Michael Steele is serving at least six years in prison for a crime that abused the public's trust.

In August 2008, Steele cruised Orange County in his patrol car, looking for Latina women who he suspected were here illegally and therefore unlikely to report his attempts to coerce them into having sex with him. Steele forced three women from their vehicles and into his patrol car before he was caught.

The public will probably never know whether there were warning signs about Steele's character during his training and time on the job, because state officials won't make that information public. They cite the same reason that has time and again barred the public from learning more than the most basic details about the employees whose salaries they pay:

"The information contained in the file is protected by state personnel laws," said state Highway Patrol spokesman Everett Clendenin.

North Carolina has one of the nation's most highly regarded public records laws. It states that unless otherwise specified by law, all records are considered public, to be produced upon request. But the state's personnel law turns that stance around.

The personnel law makes a secret of all but the most basic information about public employees. You can find out when they were hired, their current compensation, their current position, their most recent pay increase or decrease, and the most recent change in their job status.

Everything else is considered private. Those in government who attempt to make it public can be charged with a crime.

Few if any states have such a restrictive personnel law, according to public records experts and a News & Observer review of states' personnel laws. North Carolina, for example, is the only state where salary information is limited to what's current.

"It certainly limits the amount of information that we have about the job that public servants are doing for us," said Dale Harrison, assistant director of Elon University's Sunshine Center, which promotes open government. "One of the spirits behind the public records law is that we can look at what public servants are doing and hold them accountable. When the information that you can get is this limited, you can't draw much of a picture."

Employee groups and advocates for local governments say the law protects employees falsely accused of misconduct or shoddy performance. Making disciplinary actions public could prompt more false claims, and lead to more litigation as those publicly accused of misconduct file lawsuits. If a fired employee wants his job back, the process is public in an administrative court.

"I do think that employees have some expectations for privacy in their dealings with their employer, and that includes in the public sector," said Ellis Hankins, executive director for the N.C. League of Municipalities. "There are just sound personnel administration reasons for keeping some of those disciplinary actions and the reasons for the disciplinary actions confidential."

A barrier to employers

But the law has become such a barrier that even governmental agencies - and those they hire to examine personnel problems - are being shut out.

School districts cite the law in failing to share information about teachers who behave badly then quietly move to other districts, said Katie Cornetto, a lawyer with the State Board of Education. She said the result is known as "passing the trash."

An example: In 2008, Jessica Wishnask, a middle school teacher in New Hanover County, resigned after twice being suspended for inappropriate contact with a student. Wishnask's employment history wasn't shared with the Pitt County schools until Wilmington police caught her "in intimate contact" with the same 15-year-old student, The Star-News of Wilmington reported. She is now serving a prison sentence for taking indecent liberties with a minor.

The incident left Pitt County school board members embarrassed and upset. But they said they were limited in talking about the case because of the state's personnel law.

"If it was made public, certainly you wouldn't hire her," school board member Roy Peaden told The N&O.

Investigating police

The state Highway Patrol has had more than two dozen cases of trooper misconduct since 1997, many of them sex-related. Two years ago, the patrol spent nearly $100,000 for an independent consultant to evaluate the patrol's hiring, training and supervision of troopers. But the consultant, Kroll, never looked at misconduct cases, because the personnel law prohibited an examination of those files. The patrol continues to keep a tight rein on information involving misbehaving troopers.

Last month, the patrol dismissed Trooper Anthony Scott, who has acknowledged being at the home of a Pittsboro woman with whom he had an affair when her estranged husband showed up. Scott, in appealing his dismissal, said he was unfairly disciplined and is not guilty of failing to intervene when Jennifer Andrews' husband allegedly threatened and assaulted her. The patrol, citing personnel law, has never explained why Scott was fired.

In Greensboro, federal Justice Department investigators struggled to gather information into long-standing complaints of racial discrimination within the city's police department. City employees were advised not to talk for fear of violating the personnel law, city officials told the News & Record of Greensboro.

There are many other cases where employees get into trouble, and public agencies won't share details. Marcus Jackson, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer, is accused of sexually assaulting six women during traffic stops while on duty, but the department will not make public his personnel file to show whether he had been disciplined in the past.

'Shocking' incident

In Greenville, East Carolina University authorities declined to identify police officers who knocked down and roughed up fans celebrating the football team's 2008 upset victory against West Virginia, despite ECU Chancellor Steve Ballard's description of the incident: "the most disappointing and shocking I've witnessed in my more than four years here."

Pitt County District Attorney Clark Everett said the investigation into the incident has ended and that he declined to press charges, citing a lack of evidence, in part because some witnesses refused to be interviewed.

It's not just cops and teachers. After an audit found that the UNC-Chapel Hill Citizen Soldier Support Program had spent $7.3 million in federal money with little to show for it, university officials redacted information that would have identified who was responsible for the program's failures. They said under the law, that wasn't public.

Much of the secrecy stems from the passage of the State Personnel Act in 1975 and amendments two years later that shut down all but the most basic information about public employees. State departments immediately began closing up about employees who had gotten into trouble. The change was so restrictive that even one of the legislative sponsors, Rep. Joseph E. Johnson, a Wake Democrat, admitted that he had gone too far.

But the fix lawmakers passed the following legislative session has done little to make government accountable. The legislation created what is known as the "integrity exemption," which gives an agency head the authority to release nonpublic personnel information when the agency's reputation is at stake. It has been used rarely, usually under extreme pressure from the news media.

Rufus Edmisten was state attorney general when the law was changed to restrict public information. He warned then that it "could inadvertently contribute to cover-ups." Today, he says that has happened. "I think the mischief that I might have mentioned back then might have come to pass," he said.

State Attorney General Roy Cooper tried to make public information about fired, demoted or suspended employees 13 years ago as Senate majority leader. Employee groups and government associations - powerful constituencies - fought it vigorously. The bill died in the House Committee on Public Employees.

"I still think serious discipline of governmental employees should be public record," Cooper said. "Taxpayers should be allowed to know if and why a public employee has been suspended, demoted or fired."

Case for more access

Roughly 35 states, including Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, give citizens more access.

In Georgia, for example, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters reviewed school principals' personnel files to help uncover a cheating scandal that led to criminal charges. Officials are examining test scores at roughly 10 percent of the state's public schools to see how widespread the problem may be.

In interviews and in a survey, North Carolina lawmakers generally favored releasing more information when employees get into trouble. Some said more disclosure would result in a harsher, more distrustful work environment. Others say opening personnel files in disciplinary matters might deter bad behavior.

But no one interviewed said the Highway Patrol should protect a former trooper who used his badge and gun to abduct women to try to have sex with them. Some suggested the purpose in withholding the records was to protect the patrol.

"It's being used not to protect the employee's privacy but to protect the public officials from scrutiny of the decisions they've made over time," said Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican. "And when it's used that way, it strikes me that that's the opposite of what we ought to have."

News researcher Teresa Leonard contributed to this report.
dan.kane@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4861
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http://justice4nifong.blogspot.com/2010/03/thank-goodness-da-willoughby-ignored-my.html

Friday, March 12, 2010
Thank goodness D.A. Willoughby ignored my pleas
After the unanimous September 2009 decision of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission to recommend the case of Gregory F. Taylor be taken before a three judge panel for adjudication, Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby had the perfect opportunity to work to free the man who had spent 17 years wrongly incarcerated for a murder which the state failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt. Instead, he chose to fight the release of Taylor by first requesting a lengthy delay in the hearing. The judge refused to acquiesce and the February 2010 date of the hearing remained firm.

Because Greg Taylor had already lost 17 years of his life behind bars, I felt that each day was especially precious, and I wrote two letters to the Wake district attorney imploring him to work to have Mr. Taylor released as soon as possible and forego the scheduled hearing before the three judge panel. D.A. Willoughby never responded to my correspondence and refused to do so. Instead, with the assistance of Tom Ford – the prosecutor responsible for Taylor’s initial conviction in 1993, Willoughby proceeded to argue before the three judge panel to have Greg Taylor remain imprisoned for the rest of his life.

There was never a question in my mind about the outcome of the three judge panel’s decision, as Tom Ford’s “rush to judgment without credible evidence” case in 1993 was fraught with problems: no forensic evidence linking the victim to Taylor or Taylor to the victim; prosecutor testimony of two witnesses who fingered Taylor in exchange for the promise of a reduced sentence; blood evidence on Taylor’s vehicle which the State SBI lab knew was not of human origin; and the motive for the murder did not hold water. The state’s case against Greg Taylor was so weak that I believe that first year Campbell University law students representing Taylor would have prevailed before the panel of jurists… despite the burden of proof being shifted to the defense.

Now, had Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby followed my advice and taken the initiative to release Mr. Taylor prior to the February hearing, then the testimony from prosecution witness Duane Deaver about SBI lab’s uneven reporting practices in 1993 might never have come to light. According to Mr. Deaver, protocol in place at that time prevented him from putting in his report the results of confirmatory tests which favored Taylor’s innocence and countered the presumptive test which tended to be damaging to Taylor. This revelation is of immense importance because other convictions won while this biased and flawed lab policy was in place could now possibly earn a second look. So even though Greg Taylor’s liberty was delayed for several weeks, in the big picture his sacrifice will enable many wrongly incarcerated innocents to have another shot at freedom.

I do not expect the state to welcome review of the cases and work hard to identify the wrongly accused. This was made apparent when North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper first stated that an internal review would be conducted. He later succumbed to the intense prodding by defense attorney Joseph Cheshire V to permit an external review of the cases. As Joseph Cheshire stated… to paraphrase, the people do not trust the state to conduct a fair and objective audit of its own past practices. Nor should they.

This hearing is not the first time that prosecutorial egos and the desire to protect the misconduct of a prosecutor overtook common sense. Not long ago the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office decided to retry Alan Gell despite the presence of irrefutable exculpatory evidence of his innocence. This trial was undertaken for the purpose of mitigating David Hoke’s obvious misconduct in the initial Gell trial in which he won a death penalty conviction. However, with the exculpatory evidence in play at the re-trial, the jury was quick to find Alan Gell not guilty. In a more recent case, Forsyth County prosecutor Belinda Foster was forced by D.A. Tom Keith to file an “accessory after the fact” charge against James Arthur Johnson while she dropped charges of murder, rape, kidnapping and armed robbery. Special prosecutor W. David McFadyen then stepped in to prosecute the case, which resulted in an Alford plea by Johnson to a charge of misprision of felony (not reporting knowledge of a crime to authorities). Now, although James Arthur Johnson did report to the Wilson Police three days after his knowledge of the crime (which resulted in the case being solved), he evidently did not report it quick enough.

So, thanks to the hubris and desire of Willoughby to shield Tom Ford from criticism of his prosecution of the innocent Greg Taylor, he did not take my advice and instead proceeded with fighting against the release of a man wrongfully convicted. And, as a result, other innocents may hopefully find another avenue by which they can obtain a justice that has been denied.
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http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2010/03/flashback-first-case-of-marital-rape.html

Saturday, March 13, 2010
Flashback: First case of marital rape involving co-habitating spouses: she was treated as a pioneer even though he was acquitted
Here's a story from the archives that made a big national splash back in 1979, the glory days of feminism. Time Magazine and newspapers around the country wrote about it. It was the first marital rape case against a husband who was living with the wife.

Even if you don't remember the case, regular readers of this blog can imagine how the case was regarded by feminists. The wife was regarded as a pioneer, and the case was treated as a breakthrough.

Unfortunately, as is common in this area where ideology matters more than facts, the evidence didn't quite match the "wife-as-rape-victim" metanarrative.

Spoiler alert: he was acquitted. They got back together for a short time, then divorced on amicable terms. She got custody of their child, of course, and he was saddled with a support payment. They disputed whether his $18,000 defense costs for his rape trial should be classified as a family debt. (That was a lot of money in 1979, especially for an out-of-work 21-year-old cook.) See here.

Some enterprising producer even made a film about the case (which the wife didn't much care for).

Even acclaimed satirist Art Buchwald had his say about the case. (Trigger alert: feminists won't like what Mr. Buchwald wrote -- got to read to the end.)

The ex-husband eventually got in trouble with the law because he couldn't keep away from the ex-wife.

The most infuriating aspect of the matter, of course, was the reaction of the feminists. The story as reported by Time Magazine presented a classic "he said/she said" allegation of rape by a wife against her husband. Certainty about what happened was not possible, just as it is not possible in most such cases. Why the case was brought is anyone's guess, but I suspect ideology had something to do with it -- after all, a woman's crisis center urged the wife to bring rape charges, and for a lot of people, this case was bigger than these particular facts. Like Duke lacrosse, it symbolized something "more important" than whether a crime was committed and whether a man barely out of his teen years would spend the best years of his life behind bars. Those, you see, were insignificant trifles. What really mattered was the symbolism of a wife sending her husband to prison for rape.

Now read this next part carefully: after the husband's acquittal, the director of the crisis center whose representatives had urged the wife to bring the charges in the first place, had this to say: "I feel terrifically saddened by the verdict and concerned about the future of women who have to live with marital violence daily."

Read it again. Think about the insanity of that prompted that statement -- given that no one, except the two people in that bedroom, could possibly know what really happened.

Another crisis center worker said this: "Most of us are just in shock. It is a terrible setback for women, all women."

Did you get that? A terrible setback for women -- that a man who was found not guilty of rape on disputed evidence was not being sent to prison for many years.

Sigh.

I wonder, did it matter to either of these women, even a little bit, whether the accused young man was innocent or guilty? I mean, did they care even a little?

This case spurred feminist reformers to get the law changed everywhere to allow husbands to be convicted of raping their wives. Examples of the debate are found here and here and here.
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http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-03-13/sports/bal-loyolalax0313_1_ned-crotty-loyola-defense-loyola-coach-charlie-toomey

Duke deflates Loyola in 'Hounds' new arena
March 13, 2010|By Kevin Van Valkenburg | Baltimore Sun reporter

For a brief moment Saturday, the No. 10 Loyola Greyhound lacrosse program felt like the king of the world.

Despite miserable weather, a huge crowd showed up to celebrate the opening of the Ridley Athletic Complex, the university's $62 million athletic facility. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Archbishop Edwin O'Brien were on hand for the stadium's dedication, and students and alums bellowed with excitement through the wind and rain as Loyola won the opening faceoff against No. 8 Duke. The Loyola players admitted later the moment gave them goosebumps.
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Less than three minutes into the game, senior attackman Collin Finnerty fired a shot low and hard past Duke goalie Dan Wigrizer, and when the ball found the back of the net, it was punctuated by three things: a tiny explosion of raindrops, a fist-pump by Finnerty, and a roar from the sold-out crowd. It was exactly the opening act the Greyhounds were looking for to christen their new digs.


It was also the last highlight the Greyhounds would have for quite some time.

Duke scored the next six goals, and never really let No. 9 Loyola recover from a sloppy second quarter as the Blue Devils put a bit of a damper on the debut of the Greyhounds new facility with an 8-5 victory.

Loyola didn't play particularly sharp -- especially on offense or when it came to clearing the ball, but they also don't have any players quite as talented as Duke all-American attackman Max Quinzani and Ned Crotty, and it showed.

Quinzani scored four times and Crotty had a goal and four assists, and a number of their points simply came on broken plays where the duo scooped up Loyola's mistakes and turned them into goals.

"When you hold a team like that to eight goals, you feel like you in part did your job," said Loyola coach Charlie Toomey. "But we didn't do a very good job of taking care of the ball and getting to our offensive end."

The game was actually tied 1-1 after the first period, but in the second period, Duke's pressure started to overwhelms the Greyhounds. The Blue Devils -- who were coming off consecutive losses to Maryland and North Carolina -- got their sticks into passing lanes, knocked the ball down, and then pushed their advantage. Steve Schoeffel scored in the second period to push Duke's advantage to 2-1, but it was the Crotty and Quinzani who essentially delivered the knockout blow.
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