Off-duty cop unwittingly drives into middle of D.C. snowball fight. Snowballs pelt his Hummer. So he does what any reasonable person would do. He draws his gun and starts making threats.
Good on the snowballers for not backing down, and sticking around to tell him what a douche he is.
The D.C. area is supposed to get something called thundersnow today, which sounds pretty spectacular. We’re also looking at up to 20 inches of the white stuff. Fun!
Your snowbound links:
I’ll be home for a few days over Christmas, so I thought I’d see if there’s any interest in an Indianapolis-area meetup of Agitatortots (easily my favorite term for readers of this site). Saturday, December 26 seems to make the most sense. If you think you’d attend, just give a yea in the comments section so I can get a sense of the level of interest. We can discuss time and venue if it looks like we’ll get a decent showing.
This week, New York State’s inspector general issued a blistering critique of the state’s crime lab. The report came after a private accrediting organization found significant problems with one particular lab worker who had so little training that he couldn’t operate the microscope he was supposed to be using for hair and fiber analysis. Armed with a cheat sheet from a former supervisor, Gary Veeder managed to fake lab reports in criminal cases for 15 years. He killed himself last year.
A wayward crime lab worker who fakes his way into the job is one thing. A fraud who manages to stay on the job for 15 years is a symptom of mass institutional failure. And that’s the most disturbing part of the story. The institutional failure continued even after the embarrasing episode was exposed. From the New York Times:
…when the State Police became aware of the analyst’s misconduct, an internal review by superiors in the Albany lab deliberately omitted information implicating other analysts and suggesting systemic problems with the way evidence was handled, the report said. Instead, the review focused blame mostly on…Veeder…
Mr. Veeder’s allegations involving other lab workers were never part of the final report to the State Police’s internal affairs division. State Police investigators and the lab’s management “minimized and precipitously discarded the seriousness and extent of problems” at the lab, the inspector general’s report said.
It said that one State Police investigator, Keith Coonrod, mischaracterized Mr. Veeder’s responses implicating other lab scientists and skewed Mr. Veeder’s statements to give the impression that it was his incompetence — not widespread misconduct — that led to the problems.
The IG’s report, on the other hand, took direct aim at Veeder’s superiors, noting, “There exists no doubt that laboratory management possessed sufficient information that Veeder’s individual misconduct implicated potentially broader systemic issues, but failed to take appropriate action.” The lab’s director, George Zeosky, is still on the job. Assistant Director Richard Nuzzo—whom the report also accuses of intimidating another lab technician—was promoted to a position in the New York State Police Department’s internal affairs office. Which means the guy in part responsible for turning a blind eye to incompetence and misconduct in the state’s crime lab is now investigating other misconduct and incompetence within the department.
New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield predicts the report will have no effect at all on the way New York judges treat crime lab reports.
Once the prosecution gets its results from the crime lab, everything after that is all a big joke. The defense testing is viewed as a desperate grasping at straws, making life difficult for the cops and prosecution, and just another waste of time for the court. Sure, judges will acknowledge that state crime labs have their issues, but the “real” problem is always in some other case, before some other judge. Every judge believes that the lab results before him or her are routine. There’s no problem here, counselor. Move along.
What makes scientific results different, however, is their conclusive affect on a judge and jury. If the lab report says so, then so it is. As much as judges and lawyers aren’t scientists, neither are most jurors. We all bow to the god of science, even when we know that it’s not omnipotent.
So the state, at least the Inspector General, acknowledges that the State Police Lab, sucks. Do you think there will be a single judge across the State of New York who refuses to admit a lab report into evidence as a result? I don’t. Not one. Even if it was written in crayon.
The scandal in New York is yet another argument for several of the forensic reforms Roger Koppl suggested in a 2007 report for the Reason Foundation (publisher of Reason magazine and Reason.com). One is to send forensic evidence to private labs for testing and verification of the state crime lab’s results. Even if it’s only on every fourth or fifth or tenth case, as long as state lab technicians don’t know when they’re being checked, you eliminate the bias toward pleasing bosses and prosecutors. You also strengthen the incentive for accuracy.
And that’s the other incentive problem, here. The state crime lab is run by the state police. That isn’t a recipe for objective science. If you’re going to have a state forensics laboratory, it ought to be wholly independent of police agencies and prosecutors.
This episode is also further evidence of the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, which established that the Constitution’s Confrontation Clause gives defendants the right to cross examine the authors of crime lab reports. That decision had prosecutors across the country raging, complaining about the costs and burdens they now face in making forensic experts available for court. The ruling may already be in jeopardy; the Court will hear arguments next year in a Virginia case that could limit its reach.
Somewhat related: The woman who took Melendez-Diaz all the way to the Supreme Court, where she unsuccessfully argued against a right to cross-examine forensic specialists, was Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Coakley is the Democratic nominee and heavy favorite in next month’s special election to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate.
I have a piece up at Slate asking that very question.
It also asks why, at the same time, Barbour hasn’t batted an eyelash at names like Cory Maye, Kennedy Brewer, Steven Hayne, Forrest Allgood, or Cedric Willis.
I have an update over at Hit & Run on the continuing saga of the corrupt Cujdik family of cops, and the Philly brass’s unwillingness to do anything to rein them in.
Caught the documentary Witch Hunt last night, in part as research for my crime column next week. It’s a look at a string of at least 34 wrongful child molestation convictions in the 1980s in Bakersfield, California. It’s one of the more affecting and moving documentaries I’ve ever seen. If you ever want to show someone just how terrifyingly random and unfair the criminal justice system can be, sit them down and show them this movie. It’s available on iTunes. Trailers and a promo for the Documentary Channel below.
From Reason‘s Brickbats feature:
In New York City, the Bowery Mission tossed away a batch of fried chicken brought by a local church to help feed the homeless. The chicken contained trans fat, and city law bans all licensed food vendors, including emergency food providers, from serving food with trans fat.
Been re-watching the entire series the last few weeks. Just caught the episode with Bunny Colvin’s brilliant paper bag speech below. This is my third time watching the entire series. If I were running a university, I’d institute a class that did nothing but watch, study, and discuss the show. And passing it would be required to get a degree.
Well, at least the first four seasons.
Below, the last year’s 20 most-read posts from your favorite blog. Lessons for traffic building: more rants, more stories about grandmothers, use the word “genitalia” in more headlines. Probably not a good idea to work all three themes into the same post, though.
1. What Michael Phelps should have said.
2. Whole Foods
5. Grandmothers and Pregnant Women Beware.
6. Maryland State Police Raid Parents’ Home for Teen’s Misdemeanor Pot Charge
9. Mother Tased, Arrested in Front of Kids After Traffic Stop
10. When Hairless Genitalia Is Banned, Only Criminals Will Have Hairless Genitalia
11. Grandma Arrested for Child Porn
12. Hoosier Grandmother Arrested for Purchasing Cold Medication
13. Second Amendment-Loathing Mayor Attacked With Lead Pipe
14. Ballsy Agitator Reader Stands Up to Bully Cop
15. Super-Powered Police Dog Proves a Paltry Pooch; People It Imprisoned Exculpated
17. Georgia Pastor Killed in Botched Drug Bust
18. Milwaukee Police Chief Says to Hell With the Rule of Law
Oh my, Bob.
I think I’ll weep, now.
A favorite year-end tradition: The list of unanswered questions sent to Slate‘s “Explainer” feature.
My favorites:
• How many human female eggs would it take to make an omelette?
• Please give me dimensions for a wooden box for a body whose ashes weigh 6 lbs.
• In our culture when dealing with babies and little kids it’s always funny to put something on your head as a pretend hat. Is this the case in every culture? What about where they always wear turbans?
• I have a little goatee. Why do people in Arab countries—I’ve not noticed this in Paris or L.A., for example—insist on touching my beard, then taking the same hand and kissing their fingers in a sort of “Italian, it’s delicious!” gesture? When I ask, they just laugh. This has happened to me literally dozens of times.
A roundup of innocence stories from the last few weeks:
According to the news site AnnArbor.com, 23-year-old Matthew Freeman is facing a year in jail for violating Michigan’s laws for convicted sex offenders. He was caught by a police officer playing basketball within 400 feet of a school. He also happened to be in front of his own home. Michigan law requires him to remain more than 1,000 feet away from places where children congregate. Freeman’s mother says she checked with Pittsfield Township police before moving to the home to be sure it complied with Freeman’s status. She says they told her it did. They now say it’s Freeman’s responsibility to make sure he doesn’t violate the sex offender law.
Freeman was convicted of fourth-degree sexual assault in 2003 for having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend. He was 17 at the time. The conviction required him to spend 10 years on the state’s sex offender list. After seeing the girl again and later getting caught stealing a video game, he was sentenced to 90 days in jail, and ordered to remain on the list until 2028. At that point he dropped out of high school, and hasn’t gone back.
But let’s not be too harsh on Michigan’s law. I’m sure that because of the continuing harassment of people like Freeman, 17-year-boys and 15-year-old girls are no longer having sex in Michigan.
Just type “bulldog puppy” into the YouTube search engine. Therapy kicks in almost immediately.
My crime column for Reason this week look at the Chicago Police Department, which despite accumulating misconduct scandals continues to push for policies that make its officers less accountable to the public.
Over at Hit & Run, the heartbreaking Hope Witsell story.
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