Outcome of Abusive Officer Emphasizes the Importance of Videotaping and Reporting Police Activity

TechDirt

from the filming-police-is-a-good-thing dept

In the last couple years we've had a bunch of stories about people arrested for filming police. While it seems that more and more courts are recognizing that such filming is protected activity, there have been a few bizarre moments, including famed appeals court judge Richard Posner complaining about how allowing such filming would mean that it would actually happen.

But, as we've seen over and over again, filming police is one of the few ways to prove abuse of police power. Back in the summer of 2007, a police officer named Salvatore Rivieri in Baltimore decided to use his position to harass some skateboarding kids in Baltimore's Inner Harbor area. As part of his harassment, he took one kid's skateboard after throwing him to the ground and screaming at him. The whole thing was videotaped by another kid... and it was uploaded to YouTube a few months later:




At the very end, you hear the officer starting to ask if he's being filmed -- and notes "if I find myself on...." Given his earlier harangue, it sure sounds like he's about to warn the other kids about putting the video online, though we don't know exactly what was said. Either way, the video went online (eventually, months after the incident) and it got quite a lot of attention.

As a result of the massive publicity storm from the video going up online, Rivieri was suspended (with pay) a few days after the video went up in early 2008. More than two years later, a disciplinary panel cleared Rivieri of the most serious charges ("using excessive and unnecessary force" and "uttering discourtesies") but guilty of failing to file a report about the incident or provide the kid with a "contact receipt." The board recommended a short suspension. Instead, the police commissioner fired Rivieri, arguing that "his ability to interact effectively with the citizens of Baltimore has been seriously compromised."

More records indicate that inmate was in jail when 1992 double murder occurred

Chicago Tribune
Steve Mills

State attorney general begins inquiry into conduct of Cook County prosecutors in case

The Illinois attorney general's office has opened an in-depth examination of how Cook County prosecutors have handled the trial and nearly two decades of appeals in a controversial 1992 double murder case that sent a teenager to prison for life, even though records showed he was in a Chicago police lockup when the crime occurred, according to court documents and interviews.
 
At issue is whether prosecutors failed to turn over key information to defense lawyers that would have helped the case of Daniel Taylor, whose defense at trial seemed ironclad: that he had been arrested on unrelated charges before the murders occurred and was not released until after.

Taylor's case, in turn, casts doubt on the entire criminal investigation, since eight suspects in all confessed and implicated each other.

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that included Judge Richard Posner recently found Taylor's claims were worth pursuing and took the unusual step of granting his request to file a second appeal in federal court — a move that could lead to a new trial. And that was before the attorney general's office began digging deep into the case and uncovered additional documents it said were not turned over to Taylor.

"When combined with the testimony of (a) newly revealed witness and the newly disclosed police reports," the judges wrote in an order late last year, "this is strong proof that Taylor's participation in the crime was physically impossible. In contrast, the circumstances surrounding the non-videotaped confession are suspect."

The case against Taylor and the seven other defendants was the focus of the Tribune's 2001 investigation "Cops and Confessions." Five of the eight defendants were convicted and sent to prison, and Taylor was sentenced to life without possibility of parole. The Tribune has continued to investigate the case. Among the subsequent revelations: A Taylor co-defendant said he and several other men committed the murders and that Taylor and the others who were arrested are innocent.

In some cases, crucial documents or witnesses that can turn a prosecution upside down do not surface for years. That it is happening in a case that has received such scrutiny may raise questions about who in the prosecutors' office had knowledge of the documents and why they were allegedly withheld.
The failure to turn over material that can help a defendant's case at trial is among the most serious violations a prosecutor can commit.

The current inquiry began as the attorney general's office took over the federal appeal from Cook County prosecutors, a routine job for litigators in the office of Attorney General Lisa Madigan.