Framed for Murder? Would the Cops Really do That????

OFF THE WIRE
Hello all,
This New York Times article describes a lengthy dissenting 9th Circuit opinion, joined by four other Circuit Court Judges, which describes the evidence of police falsification of evidence in a successful effort to frame a man for the murder of a family, a crime for which he now awaits execution in California. One example of falsification of evidence was that a shirt which was supposedly "found" at the scene of the murder with the defendants blood on it was later determined to have his blood mixed with preservative, the type of preservative cops use to contain blood samples.

The article was followed by a comment from another journalist suggesting that the police practice of fudging evidence is commonplace -- something that will not surprise many here, but something that we rarely see in the press -- let alone in US Circuit Court opinions.

Ray
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/opinion/09kristof.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=framed%20for%20murder&st=cse
Framed for Murder?
That’s the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police.
Mr. Cooper’s impending execution is so outrageous that it has produced a mutiny among these federal circuit court judges, distinguished jurists just one notch below the United States Supreme Court. But the judicial process has run out for Mr. Cooper. Now it’s up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to decide whether to commute Mr. Cooper’s sentence before leaving office.
This case, an illuminating window into the pitfalls of capital punishment, dates to a horrific quadruple-murder in June 1983. Doug and Peggy Ryen were stabbed to death in their house, along with their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old houseguest. The Ryens’ 8-year-old son, Josh, was left for dead but survived. They were all white.
Josh initially told investigators that the crime had been committed by three people, all white, although by the trial he suggested that he had seen just one person with an Afro. The first version made sense because the weapons included a hatchet, an ice pick and one or two knives. Could one intruder juggling several weapons overpower five victims, including a 200-pound former Marine like Doug Ryen, who also had a loaded rifle nearby?
But the police learned that Mr. Cooper had walked away from the minimum security prison where he was serving a burglary sentence and had hidden in an empty home 125 yards away from the crime scene. The police decided that he had committed the crime alone.
William A. Fletcher, a federal circuit judge, explained his view of what happens in such cases in a law school lecture at Gonzaga University, in which he added that Mr. Cooper is “probably” innocent: “The police are under heavy pressure to solve a high-profile crime. They know, or think they know, who did the crime. And they plant evidence to help their case along.”
Judge Fletcher wrote an extraordinary judicial opinion — more than 100 pages when it was released — dissenting from the refusal of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case. The opinion is a 21st-century version of Émile Zola’s famous “J’Accuse.”
Mr. Fletcher, a well-respected judge and former law professor, was joined in his “J’Accuse” by four other circuit judges. Six more wrote their own dissents calling for the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case. But they fell just short of the votes needed for rehearing.
Judge Fletcher laid out countless anomalies in the case. Mr. Cooper’s blood showed up on a beige T-shirt apparently left by a murderer near the scene, but that blood turned out to have a preservative in it — the kind of preservative used by police when they keep blood in test tubes.
Then a forensic scientist found that a sample from the test tube of Mr. Cooper’s blood held by police actually contained blood from more than one person. That leads Mr. Cooper’s defense team and Judge Fletcher to believe that someone removed blood and then filled the tube back to the top with someone else’s blood.
The police also ignored other suspects. A woman and her sister told police that a housemate, a convicted murderer who had completed his sentence, had shown up with several other people late on the night of the murders, wearing blood-spattered overalls and driving a station wagon similar to the one stolen from the murdered family.
They said that the man was no longer wearing the beige T-shirt he had on earlier in the evening — the same kind as the one found near the scene. And his hatchet, which resembled the one found near the bodies, was missing from his tool area. The account was supported by a prison confession and by witnesses who said they saw a similar group in blood-spattered clothes in a nearby bar that night. The women gave the bloody overalls to the police for testing, but the police, by now focused on Mr. Cooper, threw the overalls in the trash.
This case is a travesty. It underscores the central pitfall of capital punishment: no system is fail-safe. How can we be about to execute a man when even some of America’s leading judges believe he has been framed?
Lanny Davis, who was the White House counsel for President Bill Clinton, is representing Mr. Cooper pro bono. He laments: “The media and the bar have gone deaf and silent on Kevin Cooper. My simple theory: heinous brutal murder of white family and black convict. Simple as that.”
That’s a disgrace that threatens not only the life of one man, but the honor of our judicial system. Governor Schwarzenegger, are you listening?
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What if we knew police officers routinely plant evidence in order to win convictions? What if we knew they lie, making up common stories to tell in court and do "whatever is necessary" to get convictions?

Of course, this would be very difficult to prove, perhaps impossible. I do know this: I have spent many hours with police officers as a reporter and the stories they tell behind the scenes would curl the toes of the average, unaware listener. The District Attorney in Dallas, Texas, has taken a courageous stand of reviewing convictions obtained in the past by his office and the result is that many innocent people have been set free.

After decades of reading, observing and thinking about these issues, I have, for one, concluded that if it is not rampant, the planting of evidence is certainly widespread. One of the reasons was alluded to in the article: the police think they know, beyond a doubt, who did it. They know it is difficult to get convictions and they are willing to help the process along. The problem is that if an officer will lie to obtain a small result, he will also find himself lying in many matters, larger and small. In my own direct experience, I once had an officer lie about a parking ticket (of all things), because a security guard had gotten angry at me and wanted to get whatever minor revenge he could. The police officer, not present when the supposed parking infraction occurred, signed the ticket, which was a form of perjury.

Most us, with little or no encounter with the legal system outside of watching a faked up television program, simply assume that matters are being handled properly. Wouldn't we know, somehow, if things were seriously wrong? Wouldn't it be reported in the media? The answer is no, emphatically.

To my own satisfaction, I have concluded that police officers add "evidence" or phony statements all the time. I have not concluded, however, that all police officers are corrupt or that the whole system is completely untrustworthy. I think if we all knew exact figures for planting evidence, etc., we would be shocked to the core and demand change.

The way the legal system is structured, with harsh rules about the presentation of new evidence, etc., makes it very hard to turn any case around. The attitude is that the jury has spoken and, barring something really radical, that's the final word. The goal is to preserve the myth of a fully functioning system, justice, over actual results. It is also a self preservation, procedural matter: if the courts granted new trials in thousands of cases, the whole system would grind to a stop.

In the matter of simple fairness, the highest ideals of our country and Constitution meet the lowest realities of life. The accused might be presumed innocent, but all the cards are stacked against him. The greatest threat to the accused is paying for the defense effort to counter the resources of the state.

Even in the best of conditions, there is no system, operated by human beings, that is infallible enough to warrant the state taking someone's life. As we stand now, we are condemning people to death, life terms and near life terms with a deeply flawed and often corrupt process that brings shame to civilization and to our democracy. As people who respect life and believe in our values and freedoms, we must do much better.