TheAgitator.com
Super-Powered Police Dog Proves a Paltry Pooch; People It Imprisoned Exculpated
Monday, June 15th, 2009Incredible story from Orlando, where police and prosecutors were apparently convicting people of violent crimes based almost exclusively on the “testimony” of a police dog whose handler claimed has extraordinary powers.
Last weekend, we looked at the case of Bill Dillon, the Brevard County resident imprisoned for 27 years before DNA tests set him free…
At least two other men suffered the same fate — and another shared link: a dog.
Not just any dog. A wonder dog helped convict all three men: a German shepherd named Harass II, who wowed juries with his amazing ability to place suspects at the scenes of crimes.
Harass could supposedly do things no other dog could: tracking scents months later and even across water, according to his handler, John Preston.
Judges and juries apparently bought this crap for years. It finally came to an end when Judge Gilbert Goshorn ordered the dog to perform a basic tracking test after Preston claimed the dog had alerted to a suspect’s scent at a crime scene six months after the murder. The dog failed.
So far, three people have been cleared after collectively spending more than 50 years in prison, all of whom were convicted primarily due to the dog’s alerts, despite other evidence exculpating them. Florida criminal justice activists say there may be as 60 more people wrongly convicted thanks to Preston and his dog.
Yet Florida officials don’t seem to care, and have no plans to proactively look for other people who may have been wrongly imprisoned.
In a statement, [Florida State's Attorney] Wolfinger’s office said it didn’t have a list of the cases in which Preston testified — nor even the records that would allow the office to compile such a list.
Essentially, Wolfinger contends it’s up to defendants to raise questions about these decades-old cases.
“Defendants have had rights in Florida to challenge their convictions through a well established post-conviction process,” the statement said.
A similar response came from Crist’s office, which said: “We believe this is a judicial issue and should be handled on a case-by-case analysis through the judicial system.”
A spokeswoman for the state’s top cop, Attorney General Bill McCollum, simply declared the matter beyond her boss’s “jurisdiction.”
Ok this is a joke, right? This cant actually be a legitimate story in the USA, can it? Seriously?
this has nothing to do with the dog- it’s another lying cop and results oriented prosecutors. acting with immunity, of course.
almost unbelievable.
What does the State Attorney’s office care? They’re working on getting innocent people convicted in current cases.
Basically, if they could have gotten away with having a guy with a dousing rod point guilt to someone… they would have done that, too.
“Is the guilty person in this room? Let it be shown before this court and almighty god that the dousing rod has identified the guilty!”
There isn’t any way possible someone didn’t realize this handler was full of shit a lot earlier than this judge. Anyone who has even owned a dog should have known this was crap.
And now you see why nobody wants to take my advice about actual scientific testing in the court room – the prosecution wouldn’t like the results…
This, by the way, may not have even been a valid scientific test (using standard scientific method), but it’s far closer than “Wow, your dog has psychic powers? Let’s send people to prison based on what you say without verifying it!”
To paraphrase the state’s position:
“Yeah, yeah, so we probably threw a bunch of people in the slammer based on evidence that was conjured up out of out of thin air and sanctioned under the authority of the state as being legitimate. The fact that we were ultimately found out proves that the system works and will continue to work. It’s not up to us to go back through old case files and identify who got toasted. That’s what defense attorneys are for. The justice system is intentionally adversarial and the best team wins. We’re supposed to use all the means at our disposal to convict people. You people are under the misguided assumption that just because we had to cook up some evidence to get a conviction, that means the defendants are innocent, which is simply not true. They’re guilty or they wouldn’t be in prison. All our dog did was streamline the process and save a lot of time and taxpayer dollars. All you people are just a bunch of ungrateful, soft-on-crime pussies.”
Got that? You poor shmucks have got the right to prove your innocence, at your own expense, and relying heavily on the people who put you in the cage in the first place to not discard their evidence, which they have every incentive to do so, because after a conviction, discarding evidence magically transforms it from mere evidence to word-of-God truth.
Note, of course, that actually getting released from prison doesn’t follow from successfully proving your innocence. You’ve got the right to prove your innocence, but you’ll stay in that cage as long as we feel like keeping you there.
“At the time, Ramos’ defense attorney called the case “the weakest murder case I’ve ever seen,” also saying, “Absolutely no attempt was made from Day One to pin the murder on anyone but the sap, the Cuban.”
That defense attorney was Norm Wolfinger — the man who is now the state attorney for Brevard and Seminole and who has refused to investigate whether others were improperly convicted.”
Amazing how fast some people’s conscience will melt away when their livelihood depends on deceit and injustice. Or when threatened with professional embarrassment.
This is an important story, but without a video, not many people will ever hear about it.
Why are stupid people allowed in government? Oh, I seem to have answered my own question.
Fucking ridiculous and that’s pretty much all I have to say on the matter.
3 people spent a cumulative 50 years? Averaging just under 17 years apiece, how is this dog alive, let alone still working? Most police dogs seem to retire after 7-10 years. Something is not right about the numbers here.
Well, they didn’t say how long the dog’s career was, only that more than 60 people were sent down the river by him. We can infer, then… that some of the cases were at least 17 years ago. That dog has probably long since stopped being a prop for Preston’s false testimony racket.
Aw hell, what are you people whining about? Maybe not this particular crime, but they were certainly guilty of something. Lick the badge, bitches.
I guess its a win-win for them though. What are they gonna do? Charge the dog with perjury?
It sickens me that the state perverts such wonderful animals for their own vile agenda.
Judge Gilbert Goshorn is the one who ordered the basic tracking test the dog failed. I’m not sure when he did that, but he retired a decade ago (google’d it). So after you add 10 years to each person for time spent in a cage after proof had come out that the central link in their cases was bogus, 50 years between them seems perfectly reasonable.
I’d bet the juries knew the whole dog testifying thing was a load of crap, but a jury is generally going to find somebody guilty if the police say he is, so they probably didn’t care.
I thought the exact same thing (the Bill Dillon case quoted by Balko mentioned 27 years of inprisonment), but then I remembered that we are talking about some freaking super dog, this dog probably walked next to Moses and was the true hero that lead the Isrealites out of the desert and was in the presence of JHV when He gave Moses the three stone tablets.
#13 | HaciendaMike-
the numbers don’t have to add up. they’ll just use another dog- the lie works no matter what dog’s used.
The fact that they named the dog Harass was also charming. Why not just name the dog Fuzzy Dunlop and name it a CI?
You wonder how many identical-looking dogs they bought/bred over the years to keep this charade going.
The next time someone says that our Justice (Legal) System is not fundamentally flawed, that it’s few and far between that innocent people go to prison, I’m going to use this as an example of how absolutely retarded our courts have become.
The very idea that a judge would allow this so called evidence to be introduced should result in immediate disbarment.
WTF is wrong with Florida? Too much sun baking their brains?
It goes to my pet theory, ‘THEY’(our Dear Leaders) are making it up as they go along.
More insanity in FL – don’t know how many other people have seen this but apparently they’re prosecuting this guy for pasting pictures of little girls to adult pornography (no actual exploitation of children involved). He sounds like a creep but child porno it ain’t.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/jun/12/121720/ex-polk-principal-guilty-child-porn-case/news-breaking/
Well, Radley, it’s good to know that if this whole journalism thing doesn’t work out for you, you could always write headlines for Variety…
This is why I’ll never move to the South.
[...] People are rotting in prison in Florida because of a dog with superpowers. What do you even say in the face of that? How did juries buy this [...]
From what I remember of Bill McCollum, seeing him on TV during the 90s, he never met an infringement on the rights of the accused he didn’t want to do away with. He’s one of those hardcore “law and order” Cons.
Whoops!
“he never met an infringement on the rights of the accused he didn’t want to do away with”
I meant “implement”, not “do away with”.
Ah, Florida.
“The state was short on credible witnesses. (Two would later recant their testimony. One had sex with an investigator.)”
I’m just grateful to be living in a new era of professionalism.
It sounds like the defendants had little or no money for expert witnesses to rebut the testimony of the dog handler and Harass II – The Wonder Dog.
These defendants may have been reliant on the studiously underfunded indigent defense programs which especially in the South, had virtually nothing for independent forensic testing or expert testimony.
Reasons that for many years, Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma led the nation in executions. Most of the convicted were poor people with inexperienced and/or incompetent defense attorneys appointed by the courts, who also had virtually nothing in the way of funding for expert witnesses or independent forensic testing.
I’m sorry, Radley, but I’m calling BS on this story. It cannot be true. It’s gotta be from the Onion or Balko’s version of April Fools.
And I thought my dog was awesome because he takes the blame for my farts.
By the way, just one more reason to love juries.
ChrisD
Excellent Wire reference.
Anything I could say about just how absurd this story is has been said already, so I’ll just stick to adding karma points.
Floriduh strikes again.
This crap isn’t going to stop until crooked cops and prosecutors start going to jail for their deliberate lies.
WTF is wrong with Florida? Too much sun baking their brains?
There’s a reason that Florida has it’s own tag over at Fark.
I am shocked and appalled that you would badmouth a wonderful German Shepard. You obviously are not a Dog Whisperer, and have simply not studied the complex dog-sounds, movements, and positions in order to understand their English language.
Okay, I jest.
And in other happenings, we’re only minutes away from Trooper Martin’s press conference concerning the EMT strangling / Roadragin’ / General nut that takes his wife on code 3 calls!
It should be good! It’s supposed to start at 2 CST.
I bet 50 Quatloos that says Martin resigns, and blames his conduct on the stress from his recent stint in Iraq.
You see, in Florida police are not just police–they
are Stormtroopers for Jesus.
Hence the superdog mythology.
Anything goes if you got a badge.
The jury probably thought this guy is a creep and the pictures are of a child so let’s hang him. The fact that he had been a principal and worked around children probably didn’t do much to help his standing with the jury.
It will be interesting to see if it’s upheld. Personally, I don’t like that they even tried such an iffy case. There certainly is good reason to believe it won’t be upheld and there are probably better ways to spend the taxpayer’s money. Child porn laws are meant to prevent the abuse of children in the making of porn so this prosecution isn’t within the intent of the law.
Also, the article doesn’t go into any detail about whether he was showing other people or how they discovered the pictures. If they were for his own private use, then I doubt it will matter if the girls are recognizable. Even obscenity is hard to prosecute if there’s no intent to distribute. If no one is ever likely to see the pictures, there would be no harm to the girls. Of course, now that they’ve prosecuted him for it, there’s no telling how many people have or will see the pictures.
Geeze, there’s a poll on WJLA news channel 7’s website that asks:
Do you think the federal prosecutors should seek the death penalty against James von Brunn?
Possible answers are yes and no. The answer must always be no. I don’t care if this the the Holocaust Museum White Supremacist that killed a guard…
Oh, it is.
I still vote no.
Others, not so much… the tally at 3397 votes is 82% yes, 18% no.
Bill Dillon…
Would that be the same Bill Dillon that was told by the state of Florida that he would not be reimbursed for the time he spent in prison based on that wrongful conviction… just because he had a previous non-violent drug conviction?
http://floridainnocence.org/content/?p=726
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/06/troopers-lawyer-says-emt-escalated-situation.html
Well, lookit that. Trooper Martin’s lawyer, Gary James, is defending Martin’s god given right to harass shit near anyone he thinks is dissing him.
Yeah, that strategy is not going to backfire.
Hang the Prosecutor. Hang the dog …JUST HOW OLD IS THAT DOG? Hang the Dog’s HANDLER … after giving ALL his worldly possessions to those he FRAMED, same with the Prosecutor’s worldly possessions.>
Dude. You can have the handler and the prosecutor, but if you touch that dog you and me are going to have words.
-fred
Obviously the K9 Cop doesn’t even know what the hell he’s talking about. Can track “even across water” *gasp* WOW!
…You’d think the K9 trained cop would know that all dogs can track over water.
[...] more: Super-Powered Police Dog Proves a Paltry Pooch; People It Imprisoned Exculpated Share and [...]
[...] dozens of people have been wrongly convicted of crimes in Florida because of a magical dog who could smell things that no other dog could smell. Well, I mean, not really: Judges and juries [...]
[...] people have been convicted and imprisoned for decades because of the “testimony” of a supposedly superpowered (in other words, very well-trained) police dog. Last weekend, we looked at the case of Bill Dillon, the Brevard County resident imprisoned for 27 [...]
[...] This story is absolutely unbelievable. At least a judge finally put an end to it, but how many years have people convicted by such blatantly false evidence had to serve? If these people were convicted by overwhelmingly obvious sham evidence, why weren’t all of the jury verdicts overturned? I’m assuming it was the bulk of the State’s evidence in each of the cases, which I think it is a fair assumption. Tracking over water? Picking up a scent six months later? [...]
As an avid dog lover, I just wanted to say thank you.
[...] has some funny on a dog who put people in jail, such a genius said dog is. Beware The Man. Radley is an Official Beware The Man National Treasure award [...]
the dog was believed because the courts wanted to believe him/her. you also have to understand how public defenders are picked here in fl. cause i’m betting none of the defendants had the money for a half assed lawyer.
I call for a righteous euthanization…of the cop, prosecutors, and judges who perpetrated and went along with these 19th-century-style voodoo dog parlor tricks.
These are people’s lives they were so cavalierly and prejudiciously screwing with.
Euthanasia now!
Yet another reason to prohibit the use of police attack dogs.
John Preston testified nationwide in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, but probably most often in Brevard County, Florida.
Preston’s testimony convicted Dale Sutton in Cleveland, Ohio @ 1981. Sutton served two years for robbing a US postal station before actual perpetrators cleared him. Stephen Epperly was convicted by Preston’s testimony in Virginia, he doesn’t seem aware that Preston’s been discredited; an appeal on the internet addresses handling of the “scent evidence,” not how bogus John Preston was. In Orange County, FL, hapless Linroy Bottoson was executed based on Preston’s testimony although a legitimate dog handler, Deputy Greer, said Preston’s claims weren’t credible. Bottoson, a schizophrenic, didn’t know if he’d killed anyone, but he was certain that if someone had died, he could fix everything by raising them from the dead. Wish I were mistaken or kidding.
You can watch Preston attempt to defend his “investigations” on a 1984 segment of ABC’s “20/20″ that the Innocence Project of Florida posted on YouTube. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwF94oXsnvc]
The more hits this video gets, the more Gov. Crist will get the message that eyes are on him everywhere to step up and do the right thing. He has the statutory authority to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate.
Crist appointed the majority of Judges who sit on Florida’s Supreme Court. Dedge and Dillon had to move mountains to get out from under Preston; it won’t be any easier for the scores of others that are still behind bars unless total strangers stand up for them.
Dedge and Dillon’s stories are on the Innocence Project of Florida’s website. [http://www.floridainnocence.org/]