Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Add Reply
Is a perp walk defamatory?; interesting lawsuit in Chicago
Topic Started: Nov 5 2010, 09:19 AM (265 Views)
Quasimodo

Quote:
 
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/10/2-cops-hit-weis-with-libel-suit.html

2 officers hit top cop with libel suit

October 27, 2010

Two Chicago police officers filed a libel lawsuit today against police Superintendent Jody Weis, alleging that they were falsely accused of brutality this month.

Lynn Meuris and Jason Vanna were among six officers and a sergeant who were implicated by Weis in the Columbus Day beating of a handcuffed teenager. But just days later, the two were cleared of wrongdoing after GPS proved they weren't at the scene.

The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, alleged that Weis held a news conference about the beating on Oct. 15, after which Meuris and Vanna were taken to police headquarters, where they were "escorted past a group of reporters and news cameras through the front entrance."

(snip)

Herbert complained that by the time the two were given their police powers back, their coveted assignments to a tactical team had already been filled. "But more importantly they had had their names tarnished by these allegations," he said.

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

So what does calling an entire team down to police headquarters for DNA tests, and then alerting the press,
and then locking the doors so they will be exposed to media coverage, constitute?

Even under the best of circumstances (which these weren't), the police must have known that not all of the players
could be guilty.

And what were Nifong's press conferences (including those in which he demonstrated a choke hold which never happened, and which by his own claims he could not have known about, since he had never spoken to the accuser about the crime)?

And what does the publication of booking mug shots on the front cover of a national magazine amount to?
(That's a prima facie example of defamation if there ever was one. And I find it impossible to believe that
anyone other than rookie journalists at a high school paper could commit such an obvious "lapse of judgment",
let alone one of the two top news magazines in the country, which must have a staff of lawyers handy
to render advice on just such topics. IE, was the Newsweek cover deliberate?)

(MOO)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

POSTER COMMENT on another site about the story :

Quote:
 
I don't blame them. You can not convince me that them being escorted infront of New Cameras and reports was not planned to show that the Superintendent and the Police Department act swiftly when dealing with Officers who brutalize the fine citizens of Chicago.


And you don't have to convince me--it's a proven fact--that the DPD planned the lacrosse team perp walk
to create the impression of guilty players. IE, it was deliberate. And that's actionable.

The more so, in that the DPD IMHO knew at the time that the charges were bogus and that the team was innocent.

At the very least, it knew that at least some of those being subjected to media exposure were innocent (and hadn't even been in town).

Ditto for the release of the wanted poster, which had no other purpose other than to inflame public sentiment against the players and pressure them. (The police needed no help from the public in finding those portrayed.)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

PART I:
Quote:
 

http://openjurist.org/219/f3d/202/john-lauro-jr-v-michael-charles

Docket No. 99-7239
August Term, 1999

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

Argued: February 10, 2000
July 28, 2000

May the police constitutionally force an arrested person to undergo a staged "perp walk" for the benefit of the press, when the walk serves no other law enforcement purpose? We hold that such a staged perp walk exacerbates the seizure of the arrestee unreasonably and therefore violates the Fourth Amendment

(snip)

Although a perp walk commonly occurs before any judicial determination that a suspect has actually committed the crime for which he was arrested, or even that there is enough evidence to justify a trial, a suspect in handcuffs being led into a station house is a powerful image of guilt. Indeed, the perp walk has been described as "a ritual degradation that publicly signals [the arrestee's] change in status from an ordinary citizen." John Tierney, The Big City: Even Perps May Prefer Walk of Fame, N.Y. Times, Mar. 1, 1999, at B1 (quoting Prof. David Kertzer) (internal quotation marks omitted).

(snip)

About two hours after Lauro was brought to the precinct squad room by Detective Charles, Charles received a telephone call from the Police Department's Office of the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information ("DCPI") telling him that the media were interested in Lauro's case and that Lauro should be taken on a perp walk. Charles handcuffed Lauro and walked him out the front door and outside the station house. He then placed Lauro in an unmarked police car, drove around the block, removed Lauro from the car, and walked him back into the station house. The perp walk was filmed by a television crew from Fox 5 News, and footage of the walk, along with excerpts from the videotape made by Eberhart, was subsequently broadcast by Fox 5 News.

The district court granted defendants' motion in part 3 and granted Lauro's motion in part. It held that Lauro was entitled to partial summary judgment on liability because "the perp walk conducted with plaintiff was a seizure that intruded on plaintiff's privacy interests and personal rights, and was conducted in a manner designed to cause humiliation to plaintiff with no legitimate law enforcement objective or justification," and therefore was unreasonable as a matter of law under the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment was implicated, the court found, for two reasons. "First, plaintiff's control over his own body was curtailed significantly as he was handcuffed and paraded outside of the precinct." Id. Second, "intangibles such as plaintiff's own image and the sound of his voice were also seized... in a manner that implicates the Fourth Amendment." Moreover, the court held that these actions were unreasonable, since the defendants had not advanced any legitimate law enforcement justification for the perp walk, which "had the effect only of humiliating plaintiff, assisting the media in sensationalizing the facts of his case, and allowing Det. Charles to appear on television." Id. at 364. Accordingly, the court concluded, the Fourth Amendment had been violated.

(snip)

We do know, however, that the Fourth Amendment's proscription of unreasonable searches and seizures "not only... prevent(s) searches and seizures that would be unreasonable if conducted at all, but also... ensure(s) reasonableness in the manner and scope of searches and seizures that are carried out." Ayeni, 35 F.3d at 684; see also Graham, 490 U.S. at 395

[Any search and seizure--including of persons--when the police know that no crime has been committed and are deliberately attempting to defame persons before the public or to convict them of a crime which never happened--are clearly "unreasonable" and violations of the Fourth Amendment, and much else besides.]

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

PART II

In Ayeni, the Secret Service obtained a search warrant for the Ayenis' house based on information that Babatunde Ayeni had engaged in credit card fraud. See id. at 683. When Secret Service agents arrived to search the house, together with a CBS television crew, only Ayeni's wife and young son were home. The CBS crew videotaped Mrs. Ayeni and her son without their consent while they were being questioned about the accusations of fraud. They also videotaped the Secret Service agents searching the Ayenis' home and their personal effects. The Ayenis brought suit against the agents, claiming, inter alia, (1) that their "privacy was invaded by the presence of unauthorized persons in their home," and (2) that "the conduct of the search was excessively intrusive."

30
With respect to the Ayenis' first claim, we held that, as a matter of law, the agents' actions violated the Fourth Amendment, because the presence of the television crew both exceeded the scope of the search warrant given to the Secret Service and lacked any legitimate law enforcement justification. With respect to the Ayenis' second allegation - that "the search was conducted in an unreasonably intrusive manner" - we ruled that the Ayenis were entitled to have that claim considered by a jury. Id. at 689. We explained:

31
The video and sound recordings were unnecessary to the purposes of the search - to discover material related to an alleged credit card fraud scheme. The Government makes no claim that the search was being videotaped for legitimate law enforcement purposes.... Instead, the purpose of the TV crew's intrusion into the Ayeni home was to seize images and sounds of the Ayeni home, and of the Ayenis themselves, that were intended for public viewing by television audiences across the country. We agree with the District Court that the video and sound recordings were "seizures" under the Fourth Amendment, and rendered the search far more intrusive than it needed to be.

(snip)

35
Charles contends that there was no invasion of Fourth Amendment interests in this case because Lauro's perp walk, unlike the searches in Ayeni and Wilson, each of which involved a search of a private home, occurred in a situation in which Lauro had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Accordingly, he claims that there is no need to analyze whether the perp walk was reasonable.

[But hadn't the DPD promised that there would be no press at the DNA testing site? Didn't this create an expectation that they would not be photographed?]

36
Charles is correct that both [cases] Ayeni and Wilson emphasized the sanctity of the private home, and the particular gravity the Fourth Amendment accords to government intrusions on that privacy. It is not the case, however, that the holdings in Ayeni and Wilson turned solely on the special status of the home, or that the Fourth Amendment's privacy protections end at the door of one's house. Our court recognized, rather, that the privacy interests threatened in Ayeni went beyond those that attach to the inviolability of the home, and concluded that obtaining and broadcasting images of the Ayenis in a humiliating situation itself infringed on their Fourth Amendment privacy rights. In doing so, Ayeni was consistent with long-standing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, which has declined to set spatial boundaries on the rights protected by that amendment. For, as the Supreme Court has famously stated, "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places."

(snip)

39
In the instant case, Lauro was physically restrained, by handcuffs and by the grip of Detective Charles on his arm. In that humiliating position, he was made to walk outside the precinct house, was driven around the block, and was then forced to walk back into the precinct house, in front of television cameras. The fact that Lauro was lawfully under arrest when these events occurred does not mean that no Fourth Amendment interest of Lauro's was implicated.

[How were the accused in the lax case brought to court? In handcuffs? Were they deliberately paraded before the media?]


Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

PART III

44

The same is true here. The interests of the press, and of the public who might want to view perp walks, are far from negligible. In this case, however, the press and the public were not viewing the actual event of Lauro being brought to the police station, but rather, were offered a staged recreation of that event. Even assuming that there is a legitimate state interest in accurate reporting of police activity, that interest is not well served by an inherently fictional dramatization of an event that transpired hours earlier. We conclude that, like the police actions in Wilson and Ayeni, the perp walk that occurred in the case before us not only intruded upon the privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment, but also lacked any legitimate law enforcement purpose, and hence was unreasonable.

[What was the 'legitimate law enforcement purpose' in having the lax players detained outside the DNA collection site so they could be photographed by the media? What was the 'legitimate law enforcement purpose' in releasing wanted posters of them?]

(snip)

46
It is important, however, to understand the limitations of our holding. First, we do not hold that all, or even most, perp walks are violations of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, we are not talking about cases in which there is a legitimate law enforcement justification for transporting a suspect.

(snip)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
ZetaBoards gives you all the tools to create a successful discussion community.
« Previous Topic · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers · Next Topic »
Add Reply