catullus
2009-10-04 11:16:02 UTC
Witnesses often don't tell the police what they know about a crime. But
it's not because of some "code of silence."
It's because they know that police often try to make them lie, harrass them,
and force them to exaggerate what they know.
It's because police often threaten to charge the witness himself with the
crime if he doesn't "co-operate." At the very least the winess will have to
spend hours or days under (often harsh) police questioning.
It's because the police threaten the witness's family if he doesn't tesity
the way they tell him.
And it doen't happen to just poor minorities. A retired college professor
volunteered to tell police that he had seen a suspicius car in the
neignborhood at the time a crime was committed. The next day the cops
showed up at his house, told him his story "didn't add up," and threatenened
him with all sorts of unpleasantries if he didn't come down to the station
and say more. And once they start questioning a "witness" it rapidly
becomes harrassment for hours at a time.
http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/683419.html
Witnesses say federal investigator pressured them to lie
By MIKE MCGRAW
(c)2008 The Kansas City Star
Carie Neighbors said they threatened to take away her son. Jerry Rooks said
they warned him he'd get a stiffer jail sentence. Alan Bethard said they
charged him with a more serious crime.
Now, those witnesses and up to 12 others - many speaking publicly for the
first time - have told The Kansas City Star that a federal investigator in
the firefighters' explosion case pressured them to lie.
Five who testified in the case admit they lied to the federal grand jury
that indicted the defendants or later at their trial. The other witnesses
said they refused to change their stories.
"You want me to fabricate some lies, and I don't want any part of it," Dave
Dawson said he told federal investigators in the case. "That's when they
told me to have a good life in the penitentiary."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=321991
Ex-Brown's worker accuses police of pressuring false confession
By Christy Gutowski | Daily Herald Staff
For years, Casey Haefs struggled with survivor's guilt for not being there
that fateful night in 1993 when her two bosses and five co-workers were
slain at the Palatine Brown's Chicken where she was a cashier.
Haefs even told police about a frequent nightmare that haunted her sleep in
which she is among the victims, but awakes just as the faceless assailant
points the gun at her.
But, Haefs testified Wednesday, police grew increasingly aggressive toward
her in the next six years as they questioned her some two dozen times.
Finally, during an eight-hour April 28, 1999, interrogation, Haefs said she
broke and was pressured into concocting a false confession, admitting she
was there as her boyfriend opened fire.
"It was terrible," said Haefs, a 33-year-old Crystal Lake medical assistant.
"They're screaming at you. They're in your face. They get you to question
yourself. I've never experienced anything like that and hope never to again.
Words can't ever describe what it was like."
.
Haefs is the second defense witness to testify that overzealous police
coerced a false confession. Earlier this week, John Simonek recalled how he,
then 22, was pressured into turning his "vision" of the crime into a reality
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://reason.com/archives/2008/04/14/guilty-before-proven-innocent
Reason.com
Guilty Before Proven Innocent
How police harassment, jailhouse snitches, and a runaway war on drugs
imprisoned an innocent family
Radley Balko from the May 2008 issue
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/asian/mumia.html
On Monday, March 10th, attorneys for Mumia Abu Jamal filed new legal papers
centered on testimony from a former Philadelphia police informant by the
name of Pamela Jenkins that gave further proof that police manipulated and
pressured witnesses to give false testimony against Mumia Abu Jamal.
Mumia Case Another 39th Precinct Frame up?
Pamela Jenkins was the central government witness in the federal
investigation in the corrupt 39th precinct scandal which saw hundreds of
convictions overturned and people released due to revelation that police in
the 39th District (precinct) in Philadelphia' had been guilty of gross
corruption which included the framing of innocent people. Her testimony led
to the conviction of six 39th District officers.
In a signed statement to Mumia's attorneys in January, Pamela stated that
police officer Tom Ryan, one of the convicted police, had pressured her to
give false testimony against Mumia in the shooting of police officer Daniel
Faulkner. In her affidavit Pamela, who is a former prostitute and girlfriend
of Tom Ryan, states: " Tom Ryan, Richard Ryan and other police officers
pressured me and asked me if I had seen the shooting of the police officer
and whether I had been in the area of the shooting that night. When I said
'no' they pressured (me) some more and asked me was I really sure that I
hadn't been on the street that night and seen the shooting. It was clear to
me that Tom Ryan and Richard Ryan wanted me to perjure myself and say that I
had seen Jamal shoot the police officer."
In her affidavit, Pamela Jenkins also stated that the state's star witness
against Mumia Abu Jamal during his trial in 1982, Cynthia White, was also
subject to police coercion to make her give false testimony against Mumia.
She states,
I know that Cynthia White worked as a prostitute in the Center City area,
specifically at Locust and 13th Street, during 1980 and 1981 and that she
was a prostitute, police informant and turned tricks for police officers in
the district.... During the same period of time, Cynthia White told me that
she was afraid of the police and that the police were trying to get her to
say something about the shooting. Lucky [Cynthia White] also told me that
she had been threatened with her life by a police officer because of the
Jamal case.
In the legal papers filed by Mumia's attorneys with the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court it states, "in the days after the shooting, [White] was arrested at
least twice for prostitution. Her picture was posted in the 6th District
with instructions for arresting officers to 'Contact Homicide'. Each time
police picked White up and took her statement, she revised her story [on
Faulkner's shooting]. Without explanation, bench warrants against her were
not prosecuted."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/3/224650/970
" Some police officers grabbed me and threw me down on the hood of the
police car and handcuffed me. They treated me like a criminal, like I was
the one who killed the officer... They just locked me in the back of the
police car for the next hour or so. I kept yelling that I needed to be
treated but they didn't pay me no mind.
They then took me to the police station and interrogated me for three
hours. I kept asking them to treat my head, but they wouldn't. They kept
asking me what had happened... and I kept telling them that I didn't know.
Everything happened so fast down there. I couldn't honestly remember what
anyone looked like... The cops didn't want to hear that and kept pressing me
to give them answers. They made it clear that we weren't leaving until I
told them what they wanted to hear.
They suggested answers and I would give them what they wanted. They put
typed papers in my face and told me to sign them. I did sign them without
reading them."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:2DoM5FQclvoJ:www.texasdefender.org/state%2520of%2520denial/Chap2.pdf+witness+harassment+by+police+false+testimony&cd=118&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Caught in the vise of political pressure, police and prosecutors have left a
record that no
one should be proud of. In one case, for example, an innocent man was
repeatedly tried on
flimsy evidence and fabricated testimony. In another, a police officer
obtained a dubious
confession through threats of torture to the defendant's family, then lied
about his knowledge of
this scheme at trial. In yet another, police and prosecutors pursued an
innocent African
American, despite evidence that showed that one of the defendant's white
co-workers was the
killer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Police and prosecutors ignored safeguards to convict in Dallas
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6053177.html
Faulty eyewitnesses doomed Dallas County suspects
Associated Press
Oct. 11, 2008, 3:41PM
DALLAS - Faulty eyewitness testimony that helped secure wrongful convictions
in Dallas County, which leads the nation in DNA exonerations with 19, sent
the innocent to prison as police and prosecutors ignored safeguards and
built cases with flimsy corroboration, according to a newspaper
investigation.
Victims pressured to pick suspects, the use of suggestive lineup procedures
and evidence withheld to preserve shaky identifications are former practices
discovered by The Dallas Morning News in an eight-month review of previously
closed Dallas County case files.
The almost slavish reliance on witness accounts has resulted in victims who
only sought justice sending innocent men to prison, and taxpayers spending
more than $3 million in compensation and incarceration in Dallas County on
wrongfully convicted suspects.
...
Among the findings by the newspaper, which were to be published in a story
Sunday:
...
-Judges, governed by case law that has not kept pace with developments in
DNA testing or research on eyewitness testimony, routinely approved even
tainted pretrial identifications as long as an eyewitness expressed
certainty in court.
In all but one of the 19 convictions, the newspaper reported, police and
prosecutors built their case on eyewitness accounts, even though they knew
such testimony can be fatally flawed.
No one has been charged with lying or disciplined for incompetence or
negligence in connection with the DNA exonerations. All but five occurred
under the late District Attorney Henry Wade, who served from 1951 to 1986
and ran an office marked by take-no-prisoner trial tactics, conviction rates
that topped 90 percent and record-length punishments.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An extensive study published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found hundreds
of instances of police and prosecutors lying, hiding evidence, distorting
facts, engaging in cover-ups, paying for perjury, and setting up innocent
people in order to win indictments and convictions. One former U.S.
attorney, Robert Merkle, remarked, "It's a results-oriented process today;
fairness be damned. The philosophy of the past 10 to 15 years [is] that
whatever works is what's right."
it's not because of some "code of silence."
It's because they know that police often try to make them lie, harrass them,
and force them to exaggerate what they know.
It's because police often threaten to charge the witness himself with the
crime if he doesn't "co-operate." At the very least the winess will have to
spend hours or days under (often harsh) police questioning.
It's because the police threaten the witness's family if he doesn't tesity
the way they tell him.
And it doen't happen to just poor minorities. A retired college professor
volunteered to tell police that he had seen a suspicius car in the
neignborhood at the time a crime was committed. The next day the cops
showed up at his house, told him his story "didn't add up," and threatenened
him with all sorts of unpleasantries if he didn't come down to the station
and say more. And once they start questioning a "witness" it rapidly
becomes harrassment for hours at a time.
http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/683419.html
Witnesses say federal investigator pressured them to lie
By MIKE MCGRAW
(c)2008 The Kansas City Star
Carie Neighbors said they threatened to take away her son. Jerry Rooks said
they warned him he'd get a stiffer jail sentence. Alan Bethard said they
charged him with a more serious crime.
Now, those witnesses and up to 12 others - many speaking publicly for the
first time - have told The Kansas City Star that a federal investigator in
the firefighters' explosion case pressured them to lie.
Five who testified in the case admit they lied to the federal grand jury
that indicted the defendants or later at their trial. The other witnesses
said they refused to change their stories.
"You want me to fabricate some lies, and I don't want any part of it," Dave
Dawson said he told federal investigators in the case. "That's when they
told me to have a good life in the penitentiary."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=321991
Ex-Brown's worker accuses police of pressuring false confession
By Christy Gutowski | Daily Herald Staff
For years, Casey Haefs struggled with survivor's guilt for not being there
that fateful night in 1993 when her two bosses and five co-workers were
slain at the Palatine Brown's Chicken where she was a cashier.
Haefs even told police about a frequent nightmare that haunted her sleep in
which she is among the victims, but awakes just as the faceless assailant
points the gun at her.
But, Haefs testified Wednesday, police grew increasingly aggressive toward
her in the next six years as they questioned her some two dozen times.
Finally, during an eight-hour April 28, 1999, interrogation, Haefs said she
broke and was pressured into concocting a false confession, admitting she
was there as her boyfriend opened fire.
"It was terrible," said Haefs, a 33-year-old Crystal Lake medical assistant.
"They're screaming at you. They're in your face. They get you to question
yourself. I've never experienced anything like that and hope never to again.
Words can't ever describe what it was like."
.
Haefs is the second defense witness to testify that overzealous police
coerced a false confession. Earlier this week, John Simonek recalled how he,
then 22, was pressured into turning his "vision" of the crime into a reality
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://reason.com/archives/2008/04/14/guilty-before-proven-innocent
Reason.com
Guilty Before Proven Innocent
How police harassment, jailhouse snitches, and a runaway war on drugs
imprisoned an innocent family
Radley Balko from the May 2008 issue
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/asian/mumia.html
On Monday, March 10th, attorneys for Mumia Abu Jamal filed new legal papers
centered on testimony from a former Philadelphia police informant by the
name of Pamela Jenkins that gave further proof that police manipulated and
pressured witnesses to give false testimony against Mumia Abu Jamal.
Mumia Case Another 39th Precinct Frame up?
Pamela Jenkins was the central government witness in the federal
investigation in the corrupt 39th precinct scandal which saw hundreds of
convictions overturned and people released due to revelation that police in
the 39th District (precinct) in Philadelphia' had been guilty of gross
corruption which included the framing of innocent people. Her testimony led
to the conviction of six 39th District officers.
In a signed statement to Mumia's attorneys in January, Pamela stated that
police officer Tom Ryan, one of the convicted police, had pressured her to
give false testimony against Mumia in the shooting of police officer Daniel
Faulkner. In her affidavit Pamela, who is a former prostitute and girlfriend
of Tom Ryan, states: " Tom Ryan, Richard Ryan and other police officers
pressured me and asked me if I had seen the shooting of the police officer
and whether I had been in the area of the shooting that night. When I said
'no' they pressured (me) some more and asked me was I really sure that I
hadn't been on the street that night and seen the shooting. It was clear to
me that Tom Ryan and Richard Ryan wanted me to perjure myself and say that I
had seen Jamal shoot the police officer."
In her affidavit, Pamela Jenkins also stated that the state's star witness
against Mumia Abu Jamal during his trial in 1982, Cynthia White, was also
subject to police coercion to make her give false testimony against Mumia.
She states,
I know that Cynthia White worked as a prostitute in the Center City area,
specifically at Locust and 13th Street, during 1980 and 1981 and that she
was a prostitute, police informant and turned tricks for police officers in
the district.... During the same period of time, Cynthia White told me that
she was afraid of the police and that the police were trying to get her to
say something about the shooting. Lucky [Cynthia White] also told me that
she had been threatened with her life by a police officer because of the
Jamal case.
In the legal papers filed by Mumia's attorneys with the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court it states, "in the days after the shooting, [White] was arrested at
least twice for prostitution. Her picture was posted in the 6th District
with instructions for arresting officers to 'Contact Homicide'. Each time
police picked White up and took her statement, she revised her story [on
Faulkner's shooting]. Without explanation, bench warrants against her were
not prosecuted."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/3/224650/970
" Some police officers grabbed me and threw me down on the hood of the
police car and handcuffed me. They treated me like a criminal, like I was
the one who killed the officer... They just locked me in the back of the
police car for the next hour or so. I kept yelling that I needed to be
treated but they didn't pay me no mind.
They then took me to the police station and interrogated me for three
hours. I kept asking them to treat my head, but they wouldn't. They kept
asking me what had happened... and I kept telling them that I didn't know.
Everything happened so fast down there. I couldn't honestly remember what
anyone looked like... The cops didn't want to hear that and kept pressing me
to give them answers. They made it clear that we weren't leaving until I
told them what they wanted to hear.
They suggested answers and I would give them what they wanted. They put
typed papers in my face and told me to sign them. I did sign them without
reading them."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:2DoM5FQclvoJ:www.texasdefender.org/state%2520of%2520denial/Chap2.pdf+witness+harassment+by+police+false+testimony&cd=118&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Caught in the vise of political pressure, police and prosecutors have left a
record that no
one should be proud of. In one case, for example, an innocent man was
repeatedly tried on
flimsy evidence and fabricated testimony. In another, a police officer
obtained a dubious
confession through threats of torture to the defendant's family, then lied
about his knowledge of
this scheme at trial. In yet another, police and prosecutors pursued an
innocent African
American, despite evidence that showed that one of the defendant's white
co-workers was the
killer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Police and prosecutors ignored safeguards to convict in Dallas
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6053177.html
Faulty eyewitnesses doomed Dallas County suspects
Associated Press
Oct. 11, 2008, 3:41PM
DALLAS - Faulty eyewitness testimony that helped secure wrongful convictions
in Dallas County, which leads the nation in DNA exonerations with 19, sent
the innocent to prison as police and prosecutors ignored safeguards and
built cases with flimsy corroboration, according to a newspaper
investigation.
Victims pressured to pick suspects, the use of suggestive lineup procedures
and evidence withheld to preserve shaky identifications are former practices
discovered by The Dallas Morning News in an eight-month review of previously
closed Dallas County case files.
The almost slavish reliance on witness accounts has resulted in victims who
only sought justice sending innocent men to prison, and taxpayers spending
more than $3 million in compensation and incarceration in Dallas County on
wrongfully convicted suspects.
...
Among the findings by the newspaper, which were to be published in a story
Sunday:
...
-Judges, governed by case law that has not kept pace with developments in
DNA testing or research on eyewitness testimony, routinely approved even
tainted pretrial identifications as long as an eyewitness expressed
certainty in court.
In all but one of the 19 convictions, the newspaper reported, police and
prosecutors built their case on eyewitness accounts, even though they knew
such testimony can be fatally flawed.
No one has been charged with lying or disciplined for incompetence or
negligence in connection with the DNA exonerations. All but five occurred
under the late District Attorney Henry Wade, who served from 1951 to 1986
and ran an office marked by take-no-prisoner trial tactics, conviction rates
that topped 90 percent and record-length punishments.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An extensive study published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found hundreds
of instances of police and prosecutors lying, hiding evidence, distorting
facts, engaging in cover-ups, paying for perjury, and setting up innocent
people in order to win indictments and convictions. One former U.S.
attorney, Robert Merkle, remarked, "It's a results-oriented process today;
fairness be damned. The philosophy of the past 10 to 15 years [is] that
whatever works is what's right."