CHAUVIN TRIAL - Week's Roundup

"George Floyd’s brother remembers him as a caring ‘leader’ in Chauvin trial testimony" PBS NewsHour 4/12/2021

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SUMMARY:  In the Derek Chauvin trial Monday, prosecutors wrapped up their case, with jurors hearing testimony from George Floyd's brother about Floyd's character, and his role as a "leader" in the family.  Special correspondent Fred De Sam Lazaro reports.

 

 

"George Floyd’s brother: ‘People want to see change, they want to see justice’" PBS NewsHour 4/13/2021

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SUMMARY:  The killings of Daunte Wright and George Floyd continue to reverberate, not only in Minnesota but around the U.S., on policing, use of force and race.  Philonise Floyd, George Floyd's younger brother who took the stand Monday in former police officer Derek Chauvin's trial, and Ben Crump, an attorney representing the Floyd family and Daunte Wright's mother, join Yamiche Alcindor to discuss.

 

 

"Medical witness for defense in Chauvin trial says Floyd’s manner of death ‘undetermined’" PBS NewsHour 4/14/2021

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SUMMARY:  The defense team for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been making the case that George Floyd died for other reasons, and that Chauvin's kneeling on Floyd's neck was not the crucial factor.  Today, the defense focused on that question with its own expert testimony stating that instead of "homicide," Floyd's manner of death was "undetermined."  Yamiche Alcindor has our report.

 

 

"Derek Chauvin refuses to testify as murder trial heads into closing arguments" PBS NewsHour 4/15/2021

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SUMMARY:  The trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with murder in the death of George Floyd last May, is nearing its conclusion.  The trial is being watched closely all around the country and internationally.  The defense finished calling its witnesses Thursday, and Chauvin opted not to testify.  Special correspondent Fred De Sam Lazaro has our latest update on the case.

 

 

CLOSING COMMENT:  Our entire justice system is on trail here.  The question being, is law enforcement allowed to harm, even kill, citizens without being held to account.  Is any person's (especially LEOs) allowed to use deadly force just because they 'fear for their lives' without documented evidence that there was actual danger (i.e. can an unarmed person be a threat).  This is specially true when in involves non-white citizens (as historical evidence testifies) are always seen as a threat even while just walking down a street.

COHEN TRIAL - Sentencing

"‘Real drama’ in the courtroom as Cohen gets 3-year sentence" PBS NewsHour 12/12/2018

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SUMMARY:  President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday.  He admitted to arranging hush money payments to women claiming affairs with Mr. Trump, as well as lying about Trump’s business dealings in Russia.  Judy Woodruff talks to Andrea Bernstein of WNYC, who was in the courtroom, about how both sides emphasized the case's significance for American democracy.

CLOSER LOOK - Manafort and Cohen

My answer to headline, arrogance.

"Why Manafort and Cohen Thought They’d Get Away With It" by Jesse Eisinge, ProPublica 8/24/2018

It takes a special counsel to actually catch white-collar criminals.

This article was co-published with The New York Times.

Oh, the audacity of dopes.  The crimes of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are notable not just for how blatant they were but also for their lack of sophistication.  The two men did little to hide their lying to banks and the Internal Revenue Service.  One can almost sympathize with them: If it wasn’t for their decision to attach themselves to the most unlikely President in modern history, there’s every reason to think they might be still working their frauds today.

But how anomalous are Mssrs. Manafort and Cohen?  Are there legions of K Street big shots working for foreign despots and parking their riches in Cypriot bank accounts to avoid the IRS?  Are many political campaigns walking felonies waiting to be exposed?  What about the world of luxury residential building in which Cohen plied his trade with the Trump Organization?

The answer is more disturbing than the questions: We don’t know.  We don’t know because the cops aren’t on the beat.  Resources have been stripped from white-collar enforcement.  The FBI shifted agents to work on international terror in the wake of 9/11.  White-collar cases made up about one-tenth of the Justice Department’s cases in recent years, compared with one-fifth in the early 1990s.  The IRS’ criminal enforcement capabilities have been decimated by years of budget cuts and attrition.  The Federal Election Commission is a toothless organization that is widely flouted.

No wonder Cohen and Manafort were so brazen.  They must have felt they had impunity.

How could they not?  Any person in any bar in America can tell you who was held accountable for the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, which peaked 10 years ago next month: No one.  No top officer from any major bank went to prison.

But the problem goes beyond big banks.  The Department of Justice — in both Democratic and Republican administrations — has lost the will and ability to prosecute top executives across corporate America, at large industrial firms, tech giants, retailers, drug makers and so on.  Instead the Department of Justice reaches settlements with corporations, which pay in dollars instead of the liberty of their top officers and directors.

Beginning with a charge to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, special counsel Robert Mueller has fallen upon a rash of other crimes.  In doing so, he has exposed how widespread and serious our white-collar fraud problem really is, and how lax enforcement has been for years.

At least he is also showing a way out of the problem.  He and his team are demonstrating that the proper attention, resources, technique and experience can go a long way to rectify the white-collar prosecution crisis.

What’s Mueller’s secret?  For one thing, he has a focus.  He and his team have sufficient resources to go after a discrete set of investigations.  In the early 2000s, the Justice Department had similar success setting up the Enron Task Force, a special SWAT team of government lawyers that prosecuted top executives of the failed Texas energy trader.  That contrasts with the financial crisis, when the Justice Department never created a similar task force.  No single department official was responsible for the prosecutions of bankers after the global meltdown.

The investigation’s techniques are also instructive.  The Southern District of New York, which was referred the Cohen case by Mueller, raided President Trump’s former attorney’s offices and fought for access to the materials, even as Cohen asserted attorney-client privilege.  When federal prosecutors investigate large companies, out of custom and deference they rarely use such aggressive tactics.  They place few wiretaps, conduct almost no undercover operations and do almost no raids.  Instead government attorneys reach carefully negotiated agreements about which documents they can review, the product of many hours of discussion with high-powered law firms on behalf of their clients.  All the battles over privileged materials happen behind closed doors and without the benefit of a disinterested special master, as the Cohen case had.

Indeed it’s worse than that.  The government has essentially privatized corporate law enforcement.  The government effectively outsources the investigations to the companies themselves.  The companies, typically trying to appear cooperative or to forestall government action, hire law firms to do internal investigations.  Imagine if Mueller relied on Trump to investigate whether he colluded with the Russians or violated any other laws, and Trump hired Rudy Giuliani’s firm to do the probe.

The aggressive Mueller techniques have yielded the most crucial element for white-collar cases: flippers; i.e., wrongdoers who agree to testify against their co-conspirators.  Rick Gates, the Manafort protégé, helped tighten his mentor’s noose.  We are going to see in the next few months how many people flip and what they will say.  No wonder President Trump mused that flipping “almost ought to be illegal.”

Mueller’s experience has given him the courage to take cases to trial, where juries are mercurial and the federal bench has turned hostile.  Mueller’s prosecutors tried a “thin case” against Manafort, as the expression goes, boiling their evidence down to a few elements that the jury could absorb easily.  They even managed to overcome the open hostility of U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis.  Good prosecutors are used to that in white-collar cases.  Judges and justices have not looked favorably upon white-collar prosecutions for more than a decade now, overturning verdicts and narrowing statutes.  But with well-marshaled evidence and clear presentation, prosecutors can surmount the difficulties.

Moreover, Mueller isn’t looking to go soft in order to preserve his professional viability.  I’m assuming that at age 74, he’s not going to go through the revolving door after this.  That hasn’t been true for most top Justice Department officials in recent years.  Many of them come from the defense bar and when they leave government they go back to defending large corporations.  The same goes with the younger prosecutors who negotiate those corporate settlements.  Almost all go on to become corporate defense attorneys.  In those negotiations, they are auditioning for their next jobs, wanting to display their dazzling smarts but also eventually needing to appear like reasonable people and avoid being depicted by the white-collar bar as cowboys unworthy of a prestigious partnership.

Of course, we don’t know whether Mueller can go all the way to the top.  The big issue in white-collar crime is whether the Justice Department can prosecute CEOs.  Sure, it occasionally brings charges against lower-level executives of major corporations, but hasn’t held the chief of a Fortune 500 company accountable in more than a decade.  While most observers believe Mueller will adhere to policy and not indict the President, will his report to Congress implicate the chief executive of the United States, if the evidence warrants it?

One man cannot fix the large problem on his own, however.  “For these individual episodic financial crimes, the government can muster the capacity and courage to investigate and prosecute,” says Paul Pelletier, a former federal prosecutor who recently ran for Congress in a Democratic primary.  “The real question is whether, in the context of a national economic crisis, the Department of Justice has sufficient experience, resources and leadership to effectively tackle it.  I’d argue that it’s pretty obvious it does not.”

For that, the Justice Department requires more resources and bodies than the government devotes to white-collar crime today, and probably some changes in the law.

Nevertheless, this should be a moment of reflection for white-collar prosecutors.  It should not take a special counsel to uncover millions in bank fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.  Using proper techniques, prioritizing crimes that can harm millions of people and stiffening their obsequious posture toward corporate executives will go a ways to remedying the situation.

Here’s the bad news, which will be the least surprising thing you’ll read today: the Trump administration is moving in the opposite direction.  Its law enforcement agencies are engaged in something of a regulatory strike, especially when it comes to white-collar enforcement.  Regulators are not policing companies or industries and are not referring cases to the Justice Department.  The number of white-collar cases filed against individuals is lower than at any time in more than 20 years, according to research done by Syracuse University.  The Justice Department’s fines against companies fell 90 percent during Trump’s first year in office, compared with in Obama’s last year in office, according to Public Citizen.

That must be sweet music to not just to other Manaforts and Cohens but also any corporate malefactors out there.

THE MANAFORT TRIAL - Star Witness

"As Rick Gates details Manafort’s alleged financial crimes, defense tries to erode his credibility" PBS NewsHour 8/7/2018

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SUMMARY:  Rick Gates, the key witness in the trial of President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, took the stand again Tuesday to face tough questions from Manafort’s legal team.  As Gates offered detailed testimony about Manafort's alleged financial crimes, the defense sought to portray him as an unreliable witness.  William Brangham learns more from former federal prosecutor Seth B. Waxman.

TRIALS - Power of Confessions

"True or False, the Power of Confessions is Great" by Joe Sexton, ProPublica 1/29/2015

Over the next several months, defense lawyers for Pedro Hernandez will seek to undercut the central evidence against him, his videotaped confession to having killed 6-year-old Etan Patz.

They will depict the confession as inaccurate when set against the known facts of the infamous 1979 missing child case.  They will portray Hernandez, a onetime bodega clerk in the Manhattan neighborhood where Patz lived, as mentally ill.  They will paint the detectives who gained the confession as manipulative and coercive.

It's a daunting assignment, but here's what may well be scaring the lawyers the most:  They could succeed in every aspect of their attack on the reliability of the confession and still not win an acquittal.

Such is the power of confessions, true or false, for American juries.  A nascent body of scholarship, driven in part by an escalating number of wrongful convictions in cases with false confessions, has begun to document just how persuasive confessions can be.

Of course, the power of confessions owes in part to the fact that they very often are true.  Certainly, that is the argument Manhattan prosecutors will make as they seek to hold Hernandez responsible for a case that has haunted the city, and parents nationwide, for decades.  Prosecutors say Hernandez's claims that he strangled the young boy after luring him from his school bus stop are credible, and that any mental health issues he suffers from are not serious.  They also argue that the confession is supported by the accounts of others who maintain Hernandez told similar stories of killing a child over the years.

But false confessions – including those questioned at trial by effective defense lawyers – also have proven to carry extraordinary weight with juries.  Several studies, using mock jurors and sophisticated analysis, have demonstrated that confessions outweigh the value of eyewitness and character testimony.  And in at least one case, according to a 2010 study, prosecutors chose to believe a confession even when the accused seemed categorically cleared by DNA evidence.

That 2010 study, which appeared in Cornell Law School's Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, produced and reflected on some fascinating insights into the otherwise under-examined universe of juror belief and behavior.

• Jurors believe they can better judge a confession's truthfulness if it has been videotaped, as opposed to audiotaped or written out (Hernandez's confession was videotaped.)  Still, barely 40 percent of jurors interviewed were confident they could determine whether a videotaped confession was truthful.  The study also remarked that jurors were more likely to regard a videotaped confession as truthful if the tape involved only the accused.  They were less inclined to accept the confession when the tapes included the accused's interrogators.

• Jurors tended to believe that police officials were better equipped to evaluate confessions than ordinary citizens, even though a 2005 study showed police actually performed less well than college students in a lie detection experiment.  In the 2010 study, non-white jurors were less inclined to regard police as better suited to assessing the truthfulness of confessions.

• The 461 mock jurors used in the study said there was a better than 50-50 chance that a jury "would convict a suspect who falsely confessed to a murder, even when there was no other evidence that he or she was guilty."

On Thursday, the judge in the Patz case was still working to seat a jury.  To date, Judge Maxwell Wiley has kept aspects of the case out of public view.  The questioning of some jurors has taken place in secret, and the content of those interrogations kept under seal.  The actual videotaped confession, while having been played in open court, has also been kept from the public and news organizations.  And at least two hearings on what evidence will be admitted during trial have also been kept under seal, including one on Thursday.

Not surprisingly, then, the lists of witnesses to be called by both sides have not been made available.  And thus whether Hernandez's defense team plans to call expert witnesses to testify on the phenomenon of false confessions is unclear.  The value of such testimony, however, was endorsed by the state's highest court in 2012.

"That the phenomenon of false confessions is genuine has moved from the realm of startling hypothesis into that of common knowledge, if not conventional wisdom," ruled Judge Susan P. Read of the New York State Court of Appeals.

Hernandez's confession, again, might well be accurate.  If so, and he is convicted, it will be a significant accomplishment for prosecutors who have kept an open file on the case since Patz went missing on his first day of going to school alone.

But in the nearly three years since Hernandez's highly publicized arrest, some experts and law enforcement officials have expressed doubts about the confession's reliability.  Hernandez, as well as the circumstances of his confession, raise the array of red flags looked for when assessing potentially false confessions:  a history of mental illness; a long interrogation (it lasted over the course of 36 hours, much of it not recorded); the crime having been recently the subject of widespread media attention (weeks before Hernandez confessed, a development in the Patz case had been front page news in New York).

Hernandez's trial is expected to last two to three months.  The confession will be played, maybe played repeatedly.  And the jury will have to decide what to make of it.  And when they do, there will be more material for experts on confessions to study.  On how juries regard them, on how judge's handle them, on how expert testimony can help the process or not.

"In the area of interrogations and false confessions" the 2010 study said, "there has been relatively little research exploring the beliefs and abilities of key actors in the legal system such as judges, police and jurors."

EGYPT - Morsi Trial and U.S. Diplomacy

"Ousted Egyptian president Morsi strikes defiant tone on first day in court" (Part-1) PBS Newshour 11/4/2013

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GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  Egypt's first democratically elected president, now on trial for inciting murder, was defiant during his brief first day in court.

NewsHour correspondent Kwame Holman begins our coverage.

KWAME HOLMAN (Newshour):  Mohammed Morsi's arrival for his trial shown on state television marks the first time he has been seen publicly since the military forced him from power in July.  The trial is being held at this highly fortified police academy compound.

Broadcasters could not air statements from inside the courtroom, but one of Morsi's lawyers said he took a defiant stance.

HASSAN KORAYIM, attorney for Mohammed Morsi (through interpreter):  When he came into the hall, the lawyers began chanting in support of him and in support of his legitimacy.  The president said when he came in that he rejects the military coup, the court, and the legitimacy of the prosecutor general.  And he demanded that the judges put on trial the leaders of the military coup.

KWAME HOLMAN:  The 62-year-old Morsi was kept in a courtroom holding cell, along with 14 co-defendants, top members of his Muslim Brotherhood.

They're accused of inciting this violence in Cairo last December against opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Ten people died in the clashes.  Morsi supporters say the case is trumped up. Hundreds of them rallied outside the trial site today.

MAGED MOHAMED, Morsi supporter (through interpreter):  Of course this is a sham trial.  They have tricked people and told them it is a real trial.  We want a public trial so we can know the truth.

KWAME HOLMAN:  Riot police later fired tear gas to disperse the crowds.  The trial opened a day after Secretary of State John Kerry was in Cairo.  The U.S. has suspended some aid to Egypt over Morsi's ouster, but Kerry sounded conciliatory.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY:  We want to help.  We're prepared to do so.  And the way it will unfold is the democracy is rekindled in its strength.  And as the people of Egypt make their choices in the future, I'm confident the United States of America will be able to stand with you and do even more.

KWAME HOLMAN:  The Morsi trial now has adjourned until January 8 to give lawyers time to review documents.  The deposed president could face the death penalty if he's convicted.

"How Effective was Kerry's Mending Mission to Egypt and Saudi Arabia?" (Part-2) PBS Newshour 11/4/2013

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SUMMARY:  It was a dramatic day in court for former Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi.  Gwen Ifill speaks to McClatchy's Nancy Youssef who was on the scene inside the courtroom.  Then Margaret Warner offers analysis on the Secretary of State John Kerry's attempt to mend strained relations with longtime allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

BOSTON - Mobster's Trial, Prosecution's Closing Arguments

"Prosecution Presents 'Mountain of Evidence' Against Bulger in Three-Hour Closing" PBS Newshour 8/5/2013

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SUMMARY:  The case against James "Whitey" Bulger drew to a close as both defense and prosecution gave their final statements.  Margaret Warner talks to Kevin Cullen, who has been following the trial for the Boston Globe and was in the courtroom for the more than three-hour summation by the prosecution of all of the evidence against Bulger.

OPINION - Remarkable Courage in Atypical Case of Ariel Castro Kidnappings

The Rachel Maddow Show
MSNBC 8/1/2013

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

MOB BOSS TRIAL - Updated Testimony by Hitman

"Will "Whitey" Bulger's "private code" prompt him to take stand?" by Amanda Cochran, CBS News 7/23/2013

Convicted killer Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, a former confidante of the reputed mobster, is back on the witness stand in the trial of James "Whitey" Bulger on Wednesday.

On his third day on the stand on Monday, Flemmi said Bulger brutally choked a 26-year-old woman in 1986.  During his testimony, Flemmi said Bulger "stepped out from behind the top of the basement stairs, grabbed her by the throat, started to strangle her.  They lost their balance and fell on the floor."

The woman was Deborah Hussey, the daughter of Flemmi's longtime girlfriend.  According to Flemmi, Bulger was concerned over her drug problems and her tendency to drop their names when she got into trouble.  "It didn't take long.  She's a fragile woman," Flemmi said.  "I was there, I didn't do anything."

Flemmi, who admitted to having a sexual relationship with Hussey, as well as her mother, added that Bulger took a nap after he killed her.  Flemmi was Bulger's longtime friend and former right-hand man.

Earlier, Flemmi testified he witnessed Bulger strangle another woman with his own hands.  Debra Davis, who was then Flemmi's girlfriend.  She was murdered, Flemmi said, after she learned both men were FBI informants.

Legal analyst Gerry Leone said:  "(Flemmi) is the person who can talk in very direct terms about what Bulger did, not just what he ordered, and not just what he conspired and agreed to, but what he did."

The issue at the center of this case is Bulger's own private code, CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman pointed out on "CBS this Morning."  Bulger, she said, doesn't want it known that he may have killed women.

"I still maintain that Whitey Bulger has to testify because this is his show," she said.  "This isn't a normal trial.  This is a story of Gangsterland in Boston.  And only Whitey can tell his story, and expose the government corruption and say 'Stevie killed those women.  I didn't.'

"What Stephen Flemmi is trying to show, is that he is, is in essence, a clean, cold-blooded killer," Klieman said.  "That is, 'I killed them, I popped them, I cleaned them up, this is what I do for a living.  And why do I do it?  Because Whitey insisted.  Someone else insisted.  I never had any of these ideas of my own.'  It's why it's a cross examiner's dream."

Flemmi has admitted to lying on the stand before and has apologized.

"These are the things that I think when you're in the courtroom just make your blood boil," Klieman said.  "He apologized because he had once committed perjury in the courtroom.  I am sorry, this is the time, where no matter whether or not Whitey Bulger is convicted of all of these crimes, Stephen Flemmi needs to be exposed for who he is."

"Flemmi, to me, not only is not credible...but he is someone that is far more repulsive to me as a human being than the stone-cold killer Whitey Bulger.  And I think they both need to be kept away from society for the rest of (their) days."

FLORIDA - State-Sanctioned-Murder Zimmerman Verdict

My post title says how I feel.

"Justice Department Reviews Possibility of Civil Rights Case Against Zimmerman" (Part-1) PBS Newshour 7/15/2013

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SUMMARY:  Attorney General Eric Holder called the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin "tragic," but he did not comment on whether the federal government would file civil rights charges against George Zimmerman.  Gwen Ifill reports on how Americans -- who turned out for vigils and protests this weekend -- are reacting to the verdict.

"Was Justice Served in Murder Acquittal of George Zimmerman?" (Part-2) PBS Newshour 7/15/2013

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SUMMARY:  The George Zimmerman verdict has provoked passionate debate about legal justice and race in the U.S.  Judy Woodruff gets reaction from Christina Swarns of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, New Yorker contributor Jelani Cobb, Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School, and Carol Swain of Vanderbilt Law School.

ABORTION - Murder Trial of Doctor Kermit Gosnell

"Macabre Details Emerge in Murder Trial of Abortion Doctor Kermit Gosnell" PBS Newshour 4/22/2013

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JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  A judge and jury in Philadelphia began hearing testimony in the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell more than a month ago.  But over the past two weeks, the trial has received more coverage from national news organizations after both sides of the abortion debate began fighting over its significance.

Gosnell is being tried on eight counts of murder, seven of them for allegedly killing babies that prosecutors say were born alive and viable.  The eighth count is for his role in the death of an immigrant from Bhutan.  Attorneys say she died of an overdose from a sedative she was given.  The case stems from an FBI raid on his Philadelphia clinic in 2010.

Investigators found horrific conditions and say he performed some abortions after the 24-week legal limit in Pennsylvania.  Gosnell's defense is scheduled to begin this week, and observers are waiting to see if he will testify.

Reporter Maryclaire Dale of the Associated Press has covered the trial since it began.  And she joins us tonight from Philadelphia.