The Worst Kept Secret: Cops Lie
It will come as a shock to no one to learn that cops lie sometimes. It's
the sort of thing that everyone seems to know, from the New York Times when it
published its "testilying"
series back in 1994 to anyone who's seen the Patrick
Pogan video of cyclist Christian Long getting knocked off his bike onto his
critical mass.
Everyone, it seems, except judges. Whether to maintain their pristine impartiality, or to make their job easier by going with the odds, judges have managed to ignore what's long been obvious to everyone else, within and without the system. Cops lies. Not all the time, but a lot. Not about everything, but about enough.
Detectives Henry Tavarez and Stephen Anderson lied when they claimed that Maximo and Joe Colon sold them cocaine at Club Delicias de Mi Terra. There was a video camera that told the truth. How did we ever survive without video? You see, cops never lied before there was video. We know because there was no evidence to prove that every word out of police officer's mouth wasn't true. Hence, they never lied. Now they do.
The Colon brothers sued the New York City, and the City moved to dismiss. Unfortunately for the City, the case went to Judge Jack Weinstein, who's been on the bench forever and knows that he's never going to be appointed to the Supreme Court. That leaves him free to make rulings that younger judges might not want to make. He's the Bobby McGhee of the Eastern District.
Judge Weinstein denied the motion, but took it a step further. From the New York Daily News:
Everyone, it seems, except judges. Whether to maintain their pristine impartiality, or to make their job easier by going with the odds, judges have managed to ignore what's long been obvious to everyone else, within and without the system. Cops lies. Not all the time, but a lot. Not about everything, but about enough.
Detectives Henry Tavarez and Stephen Anderson lied when they claimed that Maximo and Joe Colon sold them cocaine at Club Delicias de Mi Terra. There was a video camera that told the truth. How did we ever survive without video? You see, cops never lied before there was video. We know because there was no evidence to prove that every word out of police officer's mouth wasn't true. Hence, they never lied. Now they do.
The Colon brothers sued the New York City, and the City moved to dismiss. Unfortunately for the City, the case went to Judge Jack Weinstein, who's been on the bench forever and knows that he's never going to be appointed to the Supreme Court. That leaves him free to make rulings that younger judges might not want to make. He's the Bobby McGhee of the Eastern District.
Judge Weinstein denied the motion, but took it a step further. From the New York Daily News:
Informal inquiry by [myself] and among the judges of this court, as well as knowledge of cases in other federal and state courts ... has revealed anecdotal evidence of repeated, widespread falsification by arresting officers of the New York City Police Department,
It's as if the judges were all whispering to each other in the judges'
lounge about it. But Judge Weinstein let the cat out of the bag.
It's unlikely that we will ever have a judge opine that there has never been a single trial where a law enforcement officer didn't give false testimony, to some greater or lesser extent. Whether to fill in the gaps, exaggerate a detail or present an accusation made of whole cloth, testimony that is 100% truthful and accurate is the zebra in the courtroom. I'm sure it happens, but very, very rarely. That doesn't mean the defendant didn't do it, but as Murray Kempton liked to say, "there they go again, framing the guilty."
This decision is the product of the confluence of two things, the existence of a videotape proving that the detectives were lying and a judge who is old and bold enough to not care whether anybody likes his decisions or not. There are bold young judges too, but a ruling like this is a career killer. Most young judges aspire to higher position, and don't love our defendants as much as they love their families and themselves.
Had there been no video conclusively proving the lie, a conclusion like this would be taken as proof that Judge Weinstein is just utterly biased against cops. Without video, there can be no lie. Just like without DNA, there can be no innocence. The cops need only have their testimony; we need hard proof. A credibility tie always goes to the cops. Actually, any testimonial pissing match always goes to the cops. Unless there is video. At least that's how the odds have always played out in court up to now.
This is a step forward in the battle against testilying, though not one that will inure to any particular defendant's benefit. It will cause a few right-minded judges to come to grips in their own minds with the fact that it's now out in the open that cops lie. Other judges won't care at all. But every journey begins with a single step, and Judge Weinstein has taken that step here.
H/T Packratt at Injustice Everywhere
The judge said that despite better training for recruits and tough disciplinary action for bad cops, "there is some evidence of an attitude among officers that is sufficiently widespread to constitute a custom or policy by the city approving illegal conduct."For those of us working in the trenches, or chronicling the cases of false testimony, this makes it sound almost trivial. But the fact that Judge Weinstein wrote the words "widespread falsification" in his four page decision is huge. It's not the first time a judge has found that a cop lied, and it's unlikely to cause a seismic shift in judges rejecting the testimony of police officers wholesale. The odds still favor the cops, and judges know it. But still, he went beyond the "isolated incident" language that has long marked the judiciary's adventures in fantasy.
It's unlikely that we will ever have a judge opine that there has never been a single trial where a law enforcement officer didn't give false testimony, to some greater or lesser extent. Whether to fill in the gaps, exaggerate a detail or present an accusation made of whole cloth, testimony that is 100% truthful and accurate is the zebra in the courtroom. I'm sure it happens, but very, very rarely. That doesn't mean the defendant didn't do it, but as Murray Kempton liked to say, "there they go again, framing the guilty."
This decision is the product of the confluence of two things, the existence of a videotape proving that the detectives were lying and a judge who is old and bold enough to not care whether anybody likes his decisions or not. There are bold young judges too, but a ruling like this is a career killer. Most young judges aspire to higher position, and don't love our defendants as much as they love their families and themselves.
Had there been no video conclusively proving the lie, a conclusion like this would be taken as proof that Judge Weinstein is just utterly biased against cops. Without video, there can be no lie. Just like without DNA, there can be no innocence. The cops need only have their testimony; we need hard proof. A credibility tie always goes to the cops. Actually, any testimonial pissing match always goes to the cops. Unless there is video. At least that's how the odds have always played out in court up to now.
This is a step forward in the battle against testilying, though not one that will inure to any particular defendant's benefit. It will cause a few right-minded judges to come to grips in their own minds with the fact that it's now out in the open that cops lie. Other judges won't care at all. But every journey begins with a single step, and Judge Weinstein has taken that step here.
H/T Packratt at Injustice Everywhere
