After 23 years in prison, murder conviction vacated

From Reuters:

David Ranta, 58, spent 23 years in prison until the conviction integrity unit of the Brooklyn district attorney’s office concluded after a year-long investigation that the case against him was fatally flawed.

The whole case reeks of sleazy self-serving police work wherein an innocent man was convicted in 1991 and the real killer went free.  Police coached a 13 year old witness who to pick out of a police line-up.   A jail house snitch testified against Ranta in exchange for a lighter sentence.   One of the investigating cops claimed to have elicited a confession, but provided no corroborating evidence.  The actual target of the robbery testified that Ranta was “100 percent not” the killer.

When the case started to fall apart, prosecutors aggressively maintained the validity of the conviction.  In 1996 a woman testified that her deceased husband confessed to the murder and, in fact, an anonymous tipster actually identified the same man shortly after the murder.

It’s not about catching the bad guys.  It’s about getting a conviction, sometimes at any cost.

The case is the latest in a string of wrongful convictions that have gained media attention in recent months, creating a headache for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, who faces a rare primary challenge in September as he runs for a seventh four-year term.

On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked Hynes’ office from retrying a man, William Lopez, whose 1989 murder conviction was overturned earlier this year after questions arose about witness accounts.

In 2010, a federal judge freed another man, Jabbar Collins, after he spent 16 years in prison for allegedly shooting his landlord. U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry concluded that Brooklyn prosecutors had relied on false testimony and threatened a witness and faulted Hynes’ office for continuing to deny any wrongdoing.

You can be sure that none of the cops or prosecutors responsible for these corrupt life-destroying convictions will ever face any consequences, which is precisely why these abuses of power are repeated constantly everywhere in the country.  Ranta’s lawyer plans to sue New York, but any judgement will be paid, not by the government employees who destroyed Ranta’s life, but by New York taxpayers.  The U.S. justice system takes care of its own.

Afternoon Links

  • Fifth Circuit rules that Benedictine monks can make and sell low cost caskets in Louisiana referring to the regulation as “nonsensical”.  Up to now, state law forbade anyone except state license funeral homes from selling caskets.  You know, to protect the people.  Such a law would instantly be recognized as sleazy political corruption by anywhere except in “the land of the free”.
  • No charges will be filed against a New Jersey man who posted a picture on Facebook of his son holding “what appeared to be a military-style rifle”.  From what I’ve heard through various news sources, it’s pretty obvious the cops, acting on an anonymous tip called into a child abuse hotline, used intimidation tactics to try and get permission to search the house and record the serial numbers of his weapons.  Well, you know, anything to protect the children…
  • Kill Anything that Moves is the name of a new book about Vietnam that I just added to my Amazon wish list.  The reason you have to read numerous books about war is no other governmental activity generates so much official and mainstream media bullshit.  We will never hear the story of what the U.S. really did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Egypt, Mali, or Syria until everyone who played a role in it is dead.  By then  most of us will also be dead.
  • The “Rise of the naked female warriors“.  I wish two things.  First that they had a position I believed in and second that they weren’t always protesting in places so far from where I live.  They clearly favor using nudity and sex as a means to get attention.  But, they oppose women using nudity and sex to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.  The same story in U.S. media outlets would, of course, be edited to satisfy those who vociferously claim to be offended by nudity in order to make sure no one else can see it.
  • Obama declares that the oxymoron, Mideast Peace, is not an oxymoron just as every U.S. president since WWII has done.  Peace will remain perpetually unlikely as long as neither the Palestinian nor Israeli (or U.S.) governments would benefit from it.  Obama supports a two-state solution which is exactly one state beyond what the Israeli government is willing to agree to.

Want to know the latest tactics used by marcs to keep your lawyer in the dark?

Well, maybe you should have been at this course offered by the California Narcotics Officers’ Association:

narc-darkWith the growing use of informants, wiretaps and sealed search warrants, it is imperative that law enforcement can conduct investigations and prosecutions without having to disclose sensitive information to the defendant and his attorney.

Because if government, at all levels, has learned anything over the last decade or so, it’s the importance of secrecy.  After all, it’s not about justice.  It’s about getting convictions and pumping fresh warm bodies into the prison industrial complex.  It’s about law enforcement versus ordinary peasants and it’s about winning.

Morning Links

Obama is worse for press freedom than Nixon says Pentagon Papers lawyer James Goodale.

The next country on the NATO target list is apparently Syria.  Pretty soon it will be easier to count the middle east countries that the west hasn’t attacked than the ones they have.

And if Syria weren’t enough to keep the war industry going, Obama is also going to be discussing the fate of Iran on his visit to Israel, where some officials in the U.S protectorate believe Obama has been dragging his feet on attacking Iran.  While Obama has clearly been pursuing a strategy to justify a war with Iran nearly identical to the Bush administration’s lead-up to the Iraq invasion, it has not yet culminated in an actual war as powerful Israeli political powers have wanted.

Mainstream press outlet, UPI, reports that  : The Iraq War killed 190,000 people, 70 percent civilians and 4,488 U.S. service members and will cost the U.S. taxpayer $2.2 trillion, U.S. researchers say.  But, a respectable 2006 study claimed death toll of 650,000 and there have been many more since then.  And this article says the dollar cost could total $6T.

Maryland Senate votes to decriminalize small amounts of pot and the House is also expected to pass it.  The federal government, corrupt as ever, remains under the control of the beneficiaries of the drug war.

Fifteen benefits of the drug war.  Not for you.  For the government.

Transportation Security Administration inspectors forced a wounded [active duty] Marine who lost both of his legs in an IED blast and who was in a wheelchair to remove his prosthetic legs at one point, and at another point to stand painfully on his legs while his wheelchair was examined, according to a complaint a congressman has registered with the TSA.  Nice work, TSA.

Know your rights at increasingly common U.S. police state checkpoints.

Tell your dog, Rover, to start saving more for his health care.  Obama care is expected to hit veterinarians by forcing them to pay an excise tax on any equipment that can also be used for human care.

Why politicians should make what soldiers are paid and vice versa

I’m behind on my reading, so I’m only up to the March issue of Reason.  Matt Welch, always superb in his ability to expose political reality, outdid himself when he wrote Spending Denialists and the Fiscal Illusion.  In it he quotes the position of the late economist James Buchanan on the topic of deficit spending.

“The attractiveness of financing spending by debt issue to the elected politicians should be obvious. Borrowing allows spending to be made that will yield immediate political payoffs without the incurring of any immediate political cost.”

This is concise and to the point.  Politicians willingly fuck over future generations for their own political gain.  And they do this openly and with great enthusiasm.

What’s more, Buchanan warned, “the replacement of current tax financing by government borrowing has the effect of reducing the ‘perceived price’ of government goods and services,” with the result that taxpayers “increase their demands for such goods and services.”

Which, of course, is why the same wicked politicians keep getting reelected and why this behavior will continue until it culminates in disaster.   This impending doom will never be averted by the likes of Barrack Obama, or John Boehner, or Mitch McConnell, or Nancy Pelosi, or Paul Ryan, or Harry Reid.  They don’t begin to have the necessary integrity.  In their capacity to rationalize their destructive irresponsibility, they are no different from every other  dime-a-dozen corrupt politician.

By what perversion of logic do we honor these “national leaders”, who spew forth lofty declarations of the heroism of soldiers who “risk their lives for their country” (in a perpetual manufactured war), while they themselves don’t even have the minimal courage it would take to risk losing an election in order to do what they know is decent?  There has to be something deeply wrong with a country that rewards soldiers who risk their lives with anonymity and a pittance while showering wealth and fame upon the cowardly scoundrels who pillage the livelihood of its children to enrich themselves.

Henderson, NV cop not drunk, just incredibly stupid

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Henderson police officer, Justin Simo, has been suspended pending an investigation into a report that he drove a $50,000 unmarked SWAT vehicle that was obviously damaged and unsafe.  Another motorist noticed the smoking SUV and followed it as it eventually started spewing sparks.

“My first thought was a drunk driver or something. It was evident the tire was completely gone on the car. I said, ‘What the hell is this guy doing?’ ” said the man, who asked that his name not be used.

Not knowing it was a SWAT vehicle, the motorist called 911.  By the time the SUV stopped, it was on fire.

“The dude came out (of the car) and said, ‘Can you believe this? My car’s on fire,’ ” the caller said. “I said, ‘Dude, you just drove a mile and a half on a blown tire.’ ”

At this point the motorist was trying to warn Simo to move away from the burning SUV while simultaneously conversing with the 911 dispatcher, saying “I’m sorry. I’m trying to talk to him. I think he’s drunk.”  Simo was suspended with pay after a story was published about the incident five days later.  The Review-Journal says it is uncertain if any sobriety test was conducted even though the Las Vegas police were aware of the 911 caller’s suspicions.

Las Vegas police, which investigated the fire, determined nothing criminal had taken place and did not take an incident report, spokeswoman Laura Meltzer said.

Henderson police declared there was no evidence that he’d been drinking.  Of course, if there was no test, there would be no evidence.

The contents of the vehicle, including tactical gear and a computer were lost.  Simo managed to rescue at least some of the firearms.

The motorist who called 911 was never questioned by police and didn’t know the SUV driver was a cop until he was contacted by a reporter.

“He told me there was ammo inside,” he said. “I thought, ‘Why don’t you get a little closer, you moron.’ ”

It didn’t matter to him whether Simo had been drinking, he said.

“For anyone to drive a mile with your tire blown out is kind of an idiot in itself.”

LAPD audacity knows no bounds

Last month, when LAPD was conducting a manhunt for ex-cop, Christopher Dorner, they let loose a barrage of bullets on a pickup truck similar to the one Dorner was driving.  Unfortunately, there were only two women in the truck delivering newspapers.  The two women survived the shooting, but their truck was riddled with over a hundred bullet holes.

LAPD offered to replace the truck, but the women rejected the offer when it turned out they would have to pay income tax on the truck (valued at $32,560) as if it were a gift.  And, to top it off, according to Glen Jonas, the attorney for the women, the LAPD and the Ford dealer wanted the women to pose with the new truck for a photo op.

Then there’s this little comment that will almost certainly make you blow coffee out your nose:

“It’s really sad for us because we want to help these women move on with their lives, and help them move forward with that, we just can’t get past the 1099 issue,” LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said.

Those poor cops.  It’s always all about them.

After the shooting, Jonas said he was shocked by the officers’ actions. He said neither the size of the women nor the blue Toyota Tundra truck they were in matched the description of Dorner’s Nissan Titan.

Eight officers were involved in the shooting. They were assigned to non-field assignments “until the (police) chief decides otherwise.”

Typical strategy for these kinds of events is for the cops to string out the “investigation” until the public outrage dissipates and then quietly clear the officers of any wrong-doing.

As I wrote a few days ago, not all the bullets went into the truck.  They apparently sprayed the entire neighborhood with lead.

Domestic drone surveillance receives enthusiastic welcome

The Federal Aviation Administration is planning to establish six drone test sites within the U.S. and Huntsville, Alabama is actively engaged in competing to attract one of those sites to the “Rocket City” area.  According to local TV station, WAFF:

Redstone Arsenal is already the hub for development and management of unmanned aerial vehicles for the army, so if you add testing into the mix, it puts Redstone and the Huntsville area on the map for everything behind drones.

And the competition is going to be tough.

Because more jobs come with the testing of drones, Huntsville is not the only city vying for the opportunity. There is already interest from cities in more than 30 states to be one of six testing sites that the FAA will designate.

Drones have, of course, been in the news because the U.S. routinely uses them to to carry out targeted attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, killing thousands, many of whom were innocent.  It was recently revealed that the U.S. has built a new drone base in northern Africa presumably to support American operations in Libya, Egypt, and Mali.  In terms of domestic use, the White House has been criticized for assuming the power to use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil ignoring  due process requirements of the Constitution.    In this context, the comments of Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle regarding the intended purpose of domestic drones seem stunningly naive:

“It looks at the landfill and makes sure it has the right compaction there and uses a sensor to tell you. It may follow a pipeline and makes sure there is no leakage out of that pipeline,” he said. “That’s the kind of technology you are looking at and the commercial applications that you are looking, which means jobs, money to the area. There is really not enough money in watching people.”

Actually, the largest share of the $75B (by 2025) drone market is expected to be in the agriculture industry.  Law enforcement is expected to account for $3.2B and “all other applications” (including the environmental uses mentioned by Battle) account for another $3.2B.   By Battle’s compass, the militarization of law enforcement and the growing surveillance state are inconsequential to the discussion because that’s not where the big money is.

 

Lunch time links

  • New York Mayor Bloomgerg’s ban on large soft drinks was shot down by the New York Supreme Court, calling it “arbitrary and capricious”.  There was no explanation for what makes this particularly more “arbitrary and capricious” than about ten gazillion other nanny-state laws.
  • Which Presidents presided over the largest increases in government spending?spending