Police Corruption Has Costs

In Alabama, a Grand Jury -- famously an institution that will indict a ham sandwich -- just no-billed 58 felony cases over police corruption. The District Attorney is not upset.

Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker on Wednesday said the grand jury made the decision in April following an Alabama State Bureau of Investigation audit into the Hanceville Police Department. Crocker said the grand jury was left with no choice to dismiss dozens of cases that the Hanceville Police Department previously investigated due to “illegal actions” taken by former officers with the department.

“The Grand Jury that unanimously indicted the former Hanceville police officers determined that those officers’ cases, and other cases from the Hanceville Police Department, were unprosecutable,” Crocker said.

“The same Grand Jury reconvened in April and voted to no-bill, or dismiss, 58 felony cases due to the illegal actions of those former Hanceville officers. “Most of these cases involved drugs, and only a few were personal crimes with victims. One dismissal is too many, but the Grand Jury had no other recourse.”

One dismissal may be too many for a District Attorney, but it strikes me as a fair price to pay to make sure that the police obey constitutional protections of the rights of citizens. Although some dismissals are more expensive than others: in New York, it may be the most famous murderer of the hour.

Latest motion states patrolwoman searched Luigi’s backpack at McDonald’s without a warrant, then repacked the items and left the restaurant with the backpack, with no body cam footage for the next 11 minutes during her drive to the precinct. Upon arriving at the precinct, she resumed the warrantless search and “found a handgun in the front compartment.”

There's reasonable doubt that this handgun was in the backpack when she took it, given that she moved it out of sight of everyone to another location and then (still without a warrant) re-searched it and "found" a handgun. A jury might reasonably wonder if the handgun wasn't actually found at the site of the murder, and then placed in the backpack later. 

Of course there are other issues at stake in that case, like his alleged confession; a lawyer would have to get that suppressed, though that is frequently done on grounds of coercion. The fact that basic Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections weren't respected by a 'professional modern police service' -- indeed, the primus inter pares of such services is in America -- is a striking issue. I think I would grant the defense motion to suppress all the backpack evidence if I were the judge, including the handgun. You probably wouldn't go as far as no-billing the case, but the prosecution would find itself in a much harder spot. The risk to the public of turning Luigi loose on the world is less, however, than the risk of running a gigantic and well-armed police force that doesn't respect the Constitution.