probable cause

The Tamir Rice Fiasco: A Step Toward Embracing Mob Justice In Police Shootings

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Oh, yeah, THIS is going to work...

Oh, yeah, THIS is going to work…

Because they believe that law enforcement officials did not move fast enough to indict (or not) the officers involved in the tragic, mistaken shooting of Tamir Rice, community activists are going  to seek the indictment and arrest of the Cleveland police officers involved by using a little-known and eccentric Ohio law that permits citizens to go directly to a judge with affidavits to seek murder charges. We can only hope that the judge chosen for this end-around has the courage and integrity to reject the petition as the attack on due process that it is.  I would not want to bet the farm on that happening.

Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice’s death is one of the most horrible among the spate of police shootings that have caused local and national outrage in the past year. On November 22, 2014 two police officers, 26-year-old Timothy Loehmann and 46-year-old Frank Garmback, responded to a city park after receiving a police dispatch call about “a male sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people.” A 911 caller had reported that an African American male was pointing “a pistol” at random people in the Cudell Recreation Center and that “he is probably” a juvenile .The caller also said the gun was “probably fake,” but was unable to tell whether the weapon was real or not because the orange barrel markings used to identify toy weapons had been removed. This information was never relayed to the officers. Continue reading →

Trayvon Ethics Train Wreck, Next Stop: Is George Zimmerman A Ham Sandwich?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

It now appears likely that Angela Corey, the special prosecutor appointed by Florida Governor Rick Scott, will bring the Trayvon Martin shooting matter before a grand jury this week. Under Florida law, she doesn’t have to do that: she could issue an indictment or clear shooter George Zimmerman of a crime on her own authority. It is likely, however, that a grand jury will get the job of deciding whether there is probable cause that a crime was committed, and whether Zimmerman was guilty of it.

[UPDATE: CNN just announced that there will be NO grand jury. Corey will make the decision herself. The post now applies solely to her, and her alone.]

In Florida, a grand jury consists of between 15 and 21  jurors, who have been appointed for five to six months of intermittent service. For the grand jury to indict Zimmerman, 12 jurors must decide that an indictment can be supported by the evidence. The grand jury’s final decision may take any amount of time, though seldom more than a week.

New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler famously said that if a prosecutor wants it to happen, a grand jury can be made to indict a ham sandwich. Corey will be the only official who interacts with the jury, and she is already in a nearly impossible ethical dilemma. What if, having reviewed the evidence, she sincerely believes that Zimmerman did not commit a crime? Continue reading →

The Strange, Unethical Saga of Junius Puke

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Junius Puke

This week seems to mark the end of a perfect storm of ethical misconduct that almost drowned a young student in legal persecution for the non-crime of exercising his First Amendment rights. An insufferable and humorless bully with a professorship collided with an irresponsible prosecutor wielding an unconstitutional law, and it has taken eight years to undo the carnage.

A man named Junius Peake was an economics professor at the University of Northern Colorado,  who due to his parody-inviting name and undoubtedly also the character traits that he was soon to display so prominently, found himself being lampooned in a student satire blog called “The Howling Pig.”  The editor-in-chief of the blog was facetiously identified in the newsletter as the obviously fictional “Junius Puke,” who was portrayed with an outrageous photograph of Professor Peake altered to include sunglasses, a different nose,  a Hitler-esque mustache, and, on occasion, Kiss make-up and a Gene Simmons tongue.  Junius Puke, with tongue. “Junius Puke” wrote prose like this:

“This will be a regular bitch sheet that will speak truth to power, obscenities to clergy, and advice to all the stoners sitting around watching Scooby Doo. This will be a forum for the pissed off and disenfranchised in Northern Colorado, basically everybody. I made it to where I am through hard work, luck, and connections, all without a college degree. Dissatisfaction with a cushy do-nothing ornamental position led me to form this subversive little paper. I don’t normally care much about the question of daycare since my kids are grown and other people’s children give me the willies.” Continue reading →