Arthur Tesler is the only officer involved in the Atlanta drug raid that killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston to fight the charges against him. The testimony to so far come out of his trial really only confirms what we knew about the narcotics division at Atlanta PD from the federal investigation into Johnston’s death, but it’s still pretty striking stuff:

A former Atlanta police officer testified Thursday that narcotics officers routinely lied under oath when seeking search warrants, a practice that led to police killing a 92-year-old woman.

Former Detective Gregg Junnier told a Fulton County jury that detectives would tell judges that they had verified their informants had bought cocaine from dealers by searching them for drugs before the buy took place.

"I have never seen anyone searched before they go into the house, I’ve never seen that done, even though officers always swear to it," Junnier said. "It’s done that way in 90 percent of the warrants that are written."

But it wasn’t just lies to get the warrant to search Kathryn Johnston’s home that made Junnier uneasy, he said. He had an inkling something was wrong when he and Officer Jason R. Smith were leading the narcotics team to the front door. He said the northwest Atlanta house differed from the informant’s description.

"I said, ‘Man, this doesn’t look right,’ and he said, ‘I know,’ " Junnier testified. " ‘I said what do you want to do.’ He said, ‘Hit it.’"

A minute later, Johnston was lying on her floor, dying.

[...]

He said the chance to seize a kilo (2.2 pounds) of cocaine also drove the officers, who normally made arrests for much smaller amounts.

In the raid, police fired 39 shots. Junnier was shot in the face, chest and leg. Two other officers were also wounded. Investigators determined Johnston had fired one round from a revolver; the officers were shot in their own crossfire.

Junnier described entering Johnston’s house: "She was still alive. She was gasping for air. I heard … the order to cuff her."

Later that day, he said, the cover-up began.

It would be pretty näive to think these kinds of shortcuts only happen in Atlanta.

The leave-us-alone anthem “Shelter Me,” by Cinderella. It’s off the vastly underrated 1994 LP “Heartbreak Station.” Hey, you got your sax solo in my hair rock! Well, you got your hair rock in my sax solo!

Here’s the interview I did for reason.tv hashing out some of the broader issues of the case.

Tracy Ingle’s sister has set up a website with information about his case, including information on how to donate to his legal defense.

Tracy’s story here.

So this is the project I teased yesterday–and the reason I was in Mississippi last December.

It’s the latest Drew Carey video, and it’s on Cory Maye. I think it’s really well-done. Warm congratulations to Paul Feine, Roger Richards, and the gang at reason.tv for putting it all together. I know it was a lot of work. It’s the longest Carey video to date, and the one in which the reason.tv staff has invested the most time producing. I think it paid off. It gets quite emotional in places. The scenes with Cory’s mother, and where Melissa Longino reads from Cory’s Thanksgiving card to his daughter still choke me up. It’s beautifully shot, too. I’d recommend watching in full-screen mode.

There’s also a video interview with your humble Agitator about the issues involved in Cory’s story.

Finally, if you want more information on the case, the reason.tv site has a rundown of related articles and links. Or, if you’re really motivated, here’s my archive of posts on Cory’s case.

People frequently ask me how they can help Cory out. Here’s an easy way: Spread this video far and wide. Vote it up on sites like Digg and Reddit (though I’d recommend voting up the reason.tv link, not this one). Email it to people who might be interested in the case. Embed it on your own blog. I think this is the most compelling presentation of Cory’s story yet. It can only help if lots of people see it.

UPDATE: Here’s the Digg entry. Here’s the entry for Reddit.

Be sure to check this page tomorrow morning.

Something very cool on the way.

Via the comments section, here’s an troubling notice posted at the website of the Arkansas Tactical Officers Association:

“Warrior Mindset” is a class being offered by the North Little Rock Police Department. Taught by Dr. Jason Winkle, It is an opportunity to train with one of the most sought after tactical trainers in the country. Class includes topics (but is not limited to topics) on fear management, decision making, emotional survival, physical fitness as they pertain to law enforcement officers. Class is designed for all officers from patrol to investigations to SWAT. This class is limited to law enforcement and military only.

I’m afraid this intermingling of domestic police and military is well beyond the point of no return. This looks to be a class that’s taught to police departments all over the country, though the notice in North Little Rock is timely, given today’s news.

We need a hell of a lot less of the “warrior mindset” in our police departments. In far too many communities, this “us versus them stuff” has poisoned the relationship between police and the people the serve. And it fosters the kind of mentality that leads to cases like Tracy Ingle’s.

Jason Castro apparently told Entertainment Weekly last week that he’s “ready to go home.” That seemed pretty apparent last night. I kinda’ respect him for that. He’s probably got a record deal at this point if he wants it. Or some endorsements. Maybe a small role in a couple of movies. In any case, he was pretty awful last night, half-singing his way through both performances, and forgetting the words to “Mr. Tambourine Man.” He should go home. He wants to go home. Whether he does go home, I guess we’ll find out tonight.

I thought Syesha Mercado won the night for the second week in a row, though browsing other reviews of the show it looks like I’m the only one who thinks so. Her “Proud Mary” wasn’t Tina Turner, but then, Mercado didn’t try to be. Her voice is higher than Turner’s. It was lively, sultry, and soulful. I thought her “A Change Is Gonna Come” was phenomenal, though I’ll confess, it’s one of my all-time favorite songs. I think Mercado had the first and third best performances of the night.

David Cook did well, too. Again, I’m not a huge fan of his style of music, but he’s very good at what he does. I actually thought his “Hungry Like the Wolf” was pretty good. His version of Baba O’Riley was also very good, but was hindered by the need to compress the song down to 90 seconds. That’s just too difficult to do when you have a song with a couple of different parts. Still, Cook was very good.

Unfortunately, the judges’ and critics’ darling last night was David Archuleta. Yes, he can hit all the right notes. And he has that innocent Mormon charm. I’m sure he’ll sell lots of records. But he’s incredibly boring. His “Stand By Me” had no soul at all. He oversang “Love Me Tender,” filling it with needless runs and changes in the melody.

My ordering would be Mercado, Cook, Archuleta, and Castro. What’ll actually happen tonight? Cook and Archuleta are shoe-ins. Castro should absolutely go after the last couple of weeks he’s had. And Mercado should absolutely stay, after the couple of weeks she’s had. But given the way the votes have come down thus far, I’d say it’s a toss-up.

I don’t know which is worse, that the city of Cleveland requires a “music permit” and a “pool table permit,” or that failing to obtain one is a criminal offense.

About a month ago I got a call from a reporter for the Arkansas Times inquiring about my research into paramilitary drug raids. He’d been reporting on a raid in North Little Rock involving a 40-year-old man named Tracy Ingle. When he told me the story over the phone, I was floored, even given all the abuses and mistakes I’ve reported and read about over the last few years. What makes the case especially egregious is not that the police may have gotten the wrong home, that they shot a man, or that they were covering it up or going silent. We’ve seen all that before. What’s mind-blowing about this one is that they’ve continued abusing the poor guy, even after it should have been clear for some time now that they made a mistake.

From the outset, it should be noted that Tracy Ingle has had some trouble with the law in the past, though nothing violent, and nothing drug-related. He has had a couple of DWI’s, and a citation for failing to appear in court. He apparently also agreed to do some repair work on a friend’s car that later turned out to be stolen.

That said, what’s happened to him over the last few months is pretty outrageous.

Here’s the Arkansas Times piece, which I’d encourage you to read in full. And here’s a follow-up interview with North Little Rock Police Chief Danny Bradley about SWAT tactics.

I’ve since spoken again to the reporter and to Tracy Ingle’s sister, Tiffney Forrester, who herself is a former sheriff’s deputy. I’ve also had a chance to review the warrants and return sheets (pdf).

The North Little Rock Police Department wouldn’t discuss the case with me.

Here’s a quick rundown:

• On January 7, 2008 a paramilitary police unit in North Little Rock, Arkansas conducted a drug raid on Tracy Ingle’s home. Ingle says he had fallen asleep for several hours, and was asleep when the raid happened. He awoke when the police took a battering ram to his door. Another team of officers approached form the outside of the house, and shattered the window to his bedroom.

• When he awoke, Ingle says he thought his home was being invaded by armed robbers. He reached for a broken gun, a pretty clear indication that he had no intention of killing anyone, but rather was trying to scare away the intruders. When he grabbed the gun, an officer inside the house fired his weapon. The bullet hit Ingle just above the knee, shattered his thigh bone, and nearly severed his lower leg. When the outside officers heard the shot, they opened up on Ingle, hitting him four more times. According to Ingle’s sister, one bullet still rests just above Ingle’s heart, and can’t be removed.

• Ingle was taken to the hospital, and spent a week-and-a-half in intensive care. He was then removed from intensive care—still in his hospital pajamas—and taken to the North Little Rock police department, where he was questioned for five hours. He was not told he was suspected of a crime, and his family wasn’t allowed to speak with him. After the interrogation, he was arrested and transferred to the county jail.

• Ingle spent the next four days in jail. He says he was never given his pain medication or his antibiotics. Though hospital nurses told him to change his bandages and clean his wounds every 4-6 hours, Ingle told the Arkansas Times that jail officials changed them only twice in four days. Ingle’s wounds became infected during the time he was in jail.

• Police found no illegal drugs in Ingle’s home. They did find a scale, which Ingle’s sister tells me she was an extra she was given when she worked at a medical testing facility for use in her jewelry-making hobby. They also found a bunch of small plastic bags. Again, Ingle’s sister says these were part of her business. "I was leaving the country for a while, and I stored a lot of my stuff at his house," she told me. "The scales and bags were mine, and are both common things to have for anyone who makes jewelry." Police also found the broken gun and a broken police scanner.

• From those items, the police charged Ingle with running a drug enterprise. They also charged him with assault, for pointing his broken gun at the police officers who had just barged into his home. The judge set Ingle’s bail at $250,000, explaining that it had to be set high because Ingle had engaged in a shootout with police—never mind that Ingle didn’t fire a shot. Ingle was able to sell his car to pay a bail bondsman. But with no car, his injuries render him basically immobile.  He had to walk two miles on crutches and an infected leg to his hearing last week.

• The police obtained a no-knock warrant for Ingle’s home about three weeks prior to the raid. The warrant itself (pdf) reads like boilerplate, with no specific references to Ingle (other than his address), or why he specifically posed a risk to police safety, or of disposing of drugs before coming to answer the door. It mentions no controlled buys. It doesn’t even mention an informant. In fact, someone scratched out "crack cocaine" and hand-wrote in "methamphetamine" on the type-written warrant, suggesting a cut, plug, and paste job. The Supreme Court has ruled that police must show case-specific evidence of exigent circumstances in order to be issued a no-knock warrant. The mere fact that it’s a drug case isn’t enough. The warrant for Ingle’s home contains no such specific information.

Many times, information specific to the investigation is contained in the affidavit the investigating officer files for the search warrant, not in the warrant itself. Forrester says she has called the North Little Rock Police Department more than 20 times in an effort to obtain a copy of the affidavits. She says they at first refused to return her phone calls. When she was finally able to speak with a lieutenant, he became angry when she told she had contacted the media. She then says he told her to "dream on" when she asked for copies of the affidavits.

• According to Forrester, Ingle’s neighbor had a direct line of sight into the bedroom, and saw the entire raid. His account initially matched Ingle’s. But that changed. "We have a witness, a next door neighbor that saw the entire incident," Forrester told me. "He came forward on his own to give a statement to the family. Police never questioned him until a month or so after the shooting, at my insistence. They kept this neighbor in his home, and questioned him for at least four hours, refusing to let the man’s wife come home, of for other people to see him. When the police finished intimidating the man, they told him specifically that ‘he did not see what he thought he saw.’ The neighbor is now afraid to talk to the media." I have not yet been able to speak with the neighbor.

• Ingle’s family was able to put up $1,000 to retain an attorney, but can’t afford the extra $6,000 the attorney has asked to represent Ingle. Ingle is therefore still looking for representation. He has no health insurance, and no money to pay for medication, or to continue treatment of his injuries.

• Last week, after the Arkansas Times article appeared, the judge in the case issued a gag order, preventing Ingle and any future attorney he may have from talking to the media about what happened to him. This is puzzling. Before today there had been exactly two articles about this case—not exactly a media circus. It’s hard to understand why a gag order was necessary. It’s only real purpose is to prevent more people from learning about what’s increasingly looking like a railroading. And it’s only effect is to lend more support to the possibility that it is, in fact, a cover-up and railroading.

As noted, the police aren’t talking. And the prosecutor is now bound by the gag order. Perhaps there’s some piece of information damning to Ingle I’m not yet aware of—though it’s hard to imagine what that might be.

Barring that, what’s happening to Tracy Ingle is pretty outrageous.

UPDATE: The Arkansas Times reports that the gag order in Ingle’s case was withdrawn late yesterday. I don’t know that this will make the police or prosecutors any more likely to talk about the case, but if I have time this afternoon, I’ll try again to give them a call.

More fawning over Hillary Clinton from the Weekly Standard.

John McCain is promising more John Roberts and Sam Alitos on the Supreme Court if he’s elected president. Cato’s Ilya Shapiro weirdly thinks this is a reason for libertarians to vote for McCain.

Here’s George Washington University con law Professor Johnathan Turley on Alito:

Despite my agreement with Alito on many issues, I believe that he would be a dangerous addition to the court in already dangerous times for our constitutional system. Alito’s cases reveal an almost reflexive vote in favor of government…

…In my years as an academic and a litigator, I have rarely seen the equal of Alito’s bias in favor of the government. To put it bluntly, when it comes to reviewing government abuse, Samuel Alito is an empty robe.

[...]

As an assistant solicitor general, Alito strongly opposed the ruling of a court of appeals in the seminal case of Garner v. Tennessee. In that case, a police officer shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old boy when he fled with $10 from a home. Alito supported the right of the officer to kill the boy for failing to stop when ordered, a position ultimately rejected by six members of the Supreme Court and decades of later decisions.

Likewise, Alito authored another memo that argued strongly in favor of giving immunity to officials who violate the rights of citizens — a position long rejected by the federal courts.

As he did as a Reagan administration attorney, Judge Alito often adopts standards so low that any government excuse can overcome any government abuse.

[...]

An independent judiciary means little if our judges are not independently minded. In criminal, immigration and other cases, Alito is one of the government’s most predictable votes on the federal bench. Though his supporters have attempted to portray this as merely a principle of judicial deference, it is a raw form of judicial bias.

The Alito vote might prove to be the single most important decision on the future of our constitutional system for decades to come. While I generally defer to presidents in their choices for the court, Samuel Alito is the wrong nominee at the wrong time for this country.

As for Roberts, in his book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage devotes seven pages to Roberts’ career of defending government power (particularly presidential power).

Roberts, from the beginning of his legal career and straight through to the Hamdan decision, had demonstrated his unwavering commitment to expand presidential power.

These aren’t libertarian judges. They’re judges who defer to police and prosecutors on criminal justice issues, who would put broad restrictions on your ability to sue government agents who have wronged you, and who embrace the Unitary Executive, essentially the belief that when it comes to foreign policy and national security (and a number of other issues), the president’s powers are unlimited, absolute, and unchecked by either Congress or the courts. That isn’t an exaggeration.

Roberts and Alito also both voted the wrong way in Hudson vs. Michigan, the no-knock raid case. Not only that, but Alito’s vote proved to be the tiebreaker. Had Sandra Day O’Connor not retired, it’s likely that Hudson would have gone the other way.

Bush (or more likely Cheney) chose Roberts and Alito for one very specific reason: Both have proven throughout their careers to be reliable defenders of presidential power.

More judges like Alito and Roberts is the last reason a libertarian should vote for John McCain.

California wants to ban driving with a dog in your lap. If this were causing people to drive recklessly, you’d think it would be covered by laws against . . . reckless driving.

Last fall I wrote about Arizona anti-war activist Dan Frazier’s tacky "Bush Lied/They Died" t-shirts, and about even tacker attempts by Congress and several state legislatures to ban them. The front of the shirts say "Bush Lied." The backs of the shirts say, "They Died," feature the names of some 3,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq.

Now comes a lawsuit (pdf) from the family of one of the late soldiers whose name appears on the shirt. The family’s attorneys are seeking to make the suit a class action on behalf of the families of every solider listed on the shirt. One can sympathize with the family and still believe that (a) their suit is ridiculous, and (b) it looks as if they’ve hired a third-grader to represent them. For example, after arguing that Frazier’s enterprise isn’t protected by the First Amendment, and that even it is, Frazier should be forced to share his profits with the soldiers’ families, the suit then states:

Most respectfully, this is a concept that even a mentally-challenged monkey could grasp, but, apparently, defendants cannot—or, more likely, refuse–to do so, for as defendant, Fraser [sic], stated recently to the Associated Press, he is “not worried” about the outcome of this litigation.

"Most respectfully?" Also, the attorney is asking for $40 billion in damages.

(Hat tip: Howard Wasserman)

…today is a qualified defense of Barack Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Sharpen your knives, and have it in the comments section.

Via the comments to this Eugene Volokh post, it looks like the Ninth Circuit has just thrown out (pdf) a guilty verdict over precisely the problems with predicting odds when doing cold DNA database searches that we discussed earlier this week. Excerpt from the opinion:

Here, [DNA expert Renee] Romero initially testified that [defendant Troy Don Brown]’s DNA matched the DNA found in [rape victim Jane Doe]’s underwear, and that 1 in 3,000,000 people randomly selected from the population would also match the DNA found in Jane’s underwear (random match probability). After the prosecutor pressed her to put this another way, Romero testified that there was a 99.99967 percent chance that the DNA found in Jane’s underwear was from Troy’s blood (source probability). This testimony was misleading, as it improperly conflated random match probability with source probability. In fact, the former testimony (1 in 3,000,000) is the probability of a match between an innocent person selected randomly from the population; this is not the same as the probability that Troy’s DNA was the same as the DNA found in Jane’s underwear, which would prove his guilt. Statistically, the probability of guilt given a DNA match is based on a complicated formula known as Bayes’s Theorem, see id. at 170-71 n.2, and the 1 in 3,000,000 probability described by Romero is but one of the factors in this formula.

Once again, it’s worth noting that if other evidence points to a suspect, and you then get a match to your suspect after running the crime scene DNA against a database, you can be reasonably certain of guilt. I’m just wary of using cold matches as the starting point of an investigation. Precisely because many people misunderstand the fairly high odds of false matches with large databases, you run the risk of the investigation becoming more about finding proof that the match committed the crime than about investigating who committed the crime. The problem grows when you’re talking about decades-old cases where evidence has degenerated, witnesses have died, and records may or may not still be around.

According to USA Today governments at all levels in the U.S. added 78,600 jobs in the first three months of 2008. The private sector lost 286,000 jobs over the same period.

Make of that what you will.

There’s some weird technical stuff going on with the site.

Sorry. I’m looking into it.

UPDATE: Looks like we’re back.

Cato’s Juan Carlos-Hidalgo explains a possible nefarious motive behind Raoul Castro’s recent reforms in Cuba.

A few new items on the Dr. Steven Hayne debacle in Mississippi.