Update on the San Francisco 8 case

From: NYC Jericho Movement
Date: 8/24/2007 2:08:19 AM
To: pickupthework@fifthhorseman.net
Subject: [Pickupthework] Wednesday 8/22 SF8 Court Report: bail, discovery, DNA

Bail Reduced!

Addressing a tense courtroom packed with both supporters and police, Judge Philip Moscone electrified supporters when he announced major bail reductions for the six bailable defendants in the SF 8 case.

Ray Boudreaux: $ 385,000
Richard Brown: $ 420,000
Hank Jones: $ 600,000
Richard O'Neal: $ 200,000
Harold Taylor: $ 350,000
Francisco Torres: $ 660,000

Moscone noted that "danger to public safety" was not an issue in his decision, and arrived at the varying amounts based on 1) the seriousness of allegations against each individual in the Ingleside charge and the overt acts of the conspiracy charge, and 2) likelihood of appearance, noting that all the men have had stable residences for a long time and have strong family and community ties.

Moscone preceded his announcement with the statement that "not everyone" would be happy with what he was going to do. Following the bail announcement, scores of police, including Detective Erdelatz (the SFDP zealot who has pursued the men for three decades) left the
courtroom.

Family members and supporters stated that they expected to be able to raise the reduced bails. Supporters who wish to discuss offering their property as collateral towards bail should call for an explanation of the process: (415) 226-1120.

Problems with discovery compliance

The rest of the morning addressed discovery issues.

Stuart Hanlon, attorney for Herman Bell, summarized a major problem: Although the prosecution has turned over the equivalent of more than 200,000 pages, the documents are so disorganized it is as if those pages were strewn on the floor randomly. After months of effort by 20 workers over hundreds of hours, the defense still cannot locate the documents it needs. In addition, countless portions of the documents, including contact information for every single witness, have been blacked out.

Hanlon also argued that the basis of the current prosecution was supposed to be "new" evidence relating to DNA and ballistics. But where was the evidence?

DNA

Michael Burt, attorney for Ray Boudreaux, added that the prosecution denied having DNA reports for over a year, but when reports were provided a few days ago, it was clear the government had had them since 2006 - and they were still incomplete. "We need every test that they have done," Burt said. The defense noted that the partial DNA reports released by the state recently not only show no matches to any of the eight, one of them matches the profile of one of the state's experts, indicating contamination of evidence.

Hanlon added that instead of ballistics reports the prosecution has given them statements by police. "Declarations don't mean a thing," Hanlon asserted. "After 25 years of seeing police lie outright in the case of Geronimo Pratt, I want to see evidence, not declarations."

Next court date

Moscone ordered the discovery issues to continue on Tuesday, August 28. He will meet with the attorneys alone at 9:30, and the official court hearing will begin at 1:30. Motions about timeliness and prosecutorial delay will be filed after discovery is resolved.

--
Free All Political Prisoners!
nycjericho@riseup.net • www.jerichony.org

Prosecutor tapped to fix crime lab

Big Dig investigator is hired by governor
By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff July 28, 2007

A senior prosecutor working on the attorney general's investigation into a fatal ceiling collapse in a Big Dig tunnel has been hired by the Patrick administration to fix the troubled state medical examiner's office and the State Police crime lab.

John Grossman, 40, deputy chief of Attorney General Martha Coakley's Criminal Division, will become the state's top forensics official, replacing LaDonna Hatton, who resigned as undersecretary of public safety last month after a series of problems surfaced at the crime lab and the medical examiner's office.

Grossman, who also prosecuted two men accused of mounting the guerrilla marketing campaign that disrupted the city in January, said he is not sure when he will start his new job, but expects the Big Dig investigation to wrap up soon. Coakley is considering whether to bring manslaughter charges against any of the companies who built the tunnel or oversaw construction.

"The opportunity came up, and it's an opportunity I'm honored and humbled to be given," said Grossman, who has been working on the Big Dig case full time for the past year. "I'm confident that whatever happens here, I'm part of a great team working on the Big Dig. Whether I'm here or not is not going to really affect anything."

Grossman, of Newton, was hired 12 years ago by Attorney General Scott Harshbarger and previously served as chief of the Corruption, Fraud, and Computer Crime Division. He has prosecuted a range of defendants, including six men who distributed child pornography over the Internet and two California women who bought $120,000 worth of diamonds and fancy clothes with a stolen credit card.

In his new job, Grossman will implement changes called for in a recently released consultant's report that found significant management problems at the crime lab and identified 16,000 cases in which evidence, some dating as far back as the 1980s, was never tested.

The study by Vance, a consulting firm with offices in Braintree, was ordered after problems surfaced with the processing of DNA test results at the lab. Other investigations by the FBI and the state inspector general's office followed and are still pending. Coakley, a former district attorney, and several of her former colleagues have challenged the study's findings.

The medical examiner's office came under scrutiny in March, when unclaimed bodies began to pile up at its overcrowded South End headquarters and in a refrigerated truck parked behind the facility.

In March, Carl Selavka, the director of the crime lab since 1998, was forced to resign; in May the chief medical examiner, Dr. Mark Flomenbaum, was placed on administrative leave after the body of a Cape Cod man was buried in the wrong grave after an autopsy. Findings of a separate Vance report on the medical examiners' office has not yet been released.

Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke said choosing Grossman for the $125,000-a-year position was very simple.

"We have a couple of agencies in crisis," said Burke. "When you go about looking for people with experience in law enforcement and an understanding of the agencies that fall under forensic services and have experience managing people, that's a small universe. . . . John stood out."

Burke also cited Grossman's expertise in cybercrime and computer forensics, which he said "will bring a very needed asset to this agency."

"A lot of what will drive our future will be technology-based," Burke said.

Grossman's first assignment, Burke said, will be to examine the agencies in immediate crisis and craft a restructuring plan.

He will not begin until the Big Dig probe is over, Burke said. "The investigation would naturally take precedence over anything we're involved in at the moment," said Burke. "At such time as he and the attorney general agree his work is complete, we'll gladly welcome him into the fold."

Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr., who supervised Grossman in the attorney general's office, said he is well-qualified to correct "problems that have unfortunately persisted for some time."

"He's well known and respected amongst State Police and prosecutors and is a very intelligent guy," said Leone, former chief of the attorney general's Criminal Division. "If they get a plan and fund it and commit to it, this is something that can be turned around."

"As DA's we've done the best we could with what we've had," Leone said. "This is an outstanding opportunity to move both the lab and the medical examiner's office forward."

Backlog at crime lab is in dispute

Prosecutors say it's 2,000 cases
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
July 26, 2007

Top prosecutors accused the Patrick administration yesterday of overstating the backlog of untested crime scene samples at the State Police crime lab in a way that is undermining public confidence in the justice system.

In a joint interview with the Globe, Attorney General Martha Coakley and the Essex, Middlesex, Berkshire, and Cape and Islands district attorneys said the backlog is only 2,000 active cases, not 16,000 as the administration and a consultant have said.

"We are shocked in the sense that they said there is a 16,000-case backlog because we know it isn't there," said Coakley, who was Middlesex prosecutor for eight years before being elected attorney general in November.

"It is our obligation to say [the consultant] is not 100 percent correct, and on this particular point it gets a big headline -- and it is particularly misleading."

Earlier this month, the Executive Office of Public Safety unveiled a $267,000 study it commissioned on the crime lab after problems emerged with the processing of DNA test results. The study found major problems with management and also identified 16,000 biological samples dating to the 1980s that had gone untested.

Officials at the Office of Public Safety said that the cases included about 1,000 deaths and more than 6,600 sexual assaults and said that 10,000 of the samples were found in cold storage, though they stressed at the time that there was "only the remotest of possibilities" that slaying suspects or rapists were walking free.

Told of the prosecutors' criticisms yesterday, Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke insisted that the study found 16,000 untested biological samples that must be processed. He said there is only a difference in semantics between his numbers and the lower estimate preferred by prosecutors.

"I think we are on the same book and page about it," Burke said by telephone. "Everyone is looking at these cases to determine their status, and there will be cases where no action needs to be taken."

Prosecutors said thousands of the untested samples are from suicides, drug overdoses, and criminal cases where other evidence or guilty pleas made the biological evidence unnecessary at trials. Or the material is biological evidence simply being stored at the lab.

They said Burke should have limited his public comments about the lab to the 2,000 active investigations awaiting DNA testing. To say otherwise wrongly creates the impression among the public that prosecutors are hiding exculpatory evidence in cold storage at the lab, the prosecutors said.

"We are all disturbed that there would be some implication that somehow we are covering up or hiding something, because that's just not true," said Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett.

"You'd be talking about a global conspiracy and that's just not going to happen," he added.

"Eleven DAs trying to protect cases they'd already adjudicated because they knew there was a warehouse with exculpatory evidence -- that's nonsense."

Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said he has reviewed 50 deaths dating to the 1980s in which biological samples were sent to the crime lab. In only a handful of those criminal cases was DNA testing not completed, and the forensic evidence wasn't needed, he said.

"Just the fact that they could produce that information shows that this isn't some situation where there is a closet there with 16,000 or 10,000 or even 3,000 cases sitting around that nobody knows anything about or had paid any attention to," O'Keefe said.

The state's public defender agency, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, is seeking data on all 16,000 cases to see whether it can identify any wrongfully convicted prisoners.

Burke said the administration will dedicate the money to fix the management and staffing problems identified by the consultant. An estimated $6 million is needed to test the samples where the statute of limitations has not expired, officials have said.

"The governor is committed to fixing the lab and that will be done," Burke said.

While critical of some findings, the prosecutors emphasized that the Vance report found no problems with the science performed at the lab.

"We have never had any reason to have anything other than the utmost confidence in the results we get from the crime lab," said David F. Capeless, the Berkshire prosecutor. "The lab isn't in any way connected to a case involving a wrongful conviction. It's only been to prove that, in fact, the person was innocent."

Victims Slammed with Jail Time

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 23, 2007

CONTACT:
Lydia Lowe
Zenobia Lai
Lisette Le

COMMUNITY STUNNED BY QUINCY 4 VERDICTS

A six-person jury delivered its verdict yesterday evening in the case of the "Quincy 4," four Asian Americans charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in an incident involving the Quincy police.

One defendant, Howard Ng, was found innocent of disorderly conduct, while defendants Karen Chen, Quan Thin, and Tat Yuen were found guilty on either or both charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The four were adamant that they were falsely charged after being victims of police brutality in the early hours of April 30, 2006 in front of the Super 88 market on Hancock Street.

The case had attracted local attention when defendant Karen Chen, a former Community Organizer at the Chinese Progressive Association, and eyewitness Joanna Ng filed a complaint of police misconduct with the Quincy Police Department last year. The four defendants continued to attract strong support from the Chinese community throughout a year of pre-trial proceedings and court postponements. During this week's five-day trial, supporters had to sit outside the courtroom for hours because the courtroom was over-packed and the judge would not allow people to stand.

The jury heard from seven witnesses over the course of the five-day trial, including six law enforcement officers and one eyewitness who was a friend of the defendants. The prosecution painted a picture of a drunk and unruly mob which surged against the officers and made them fear for their lives, calling forth several police witnesses to say that the group had yelled profanities and some had swung punches. The defense pointed out inconsistencies in the officers' testimony and between their court testimony and written reports. Most had been asked to write reports after the complaint of police misconduct had been filed. A civilian eyewitness described an unprovoked attack and use of pepper spray by a Quincy police officer, followed by a brutal series of arrests which left Chen with a black eye and bruises and Yuen with a concussion. The prosecution questioned the witness' account as both biased and involving more details than her original complaint.

The racial composition of the jury was five whites and one black, but no Asian Americans, despite the rapidly expanding Asian American population in Quincy. While the four defendants never filed a civil rights complaint, most perceived the situation in racial terms. Supporters of the defendants noted that, upon entering the courtroom one day, a white audience member friendly with police officers commented about the American flag, "At least there's something American in the room."

Following the verdicts, the prosecution requested sentences of 18 months' probation for Chen and two years' probation for Thin and Yuen. Judge Mary Orfanello, instead, slapped Thin and Yuen each with a six month suspended sentence with 10 days of incarceration and two years' probation. Because witnesses had testified that Thin was drunk on the evening of the incident, she further sentenced him to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three days per week for the entire two-year probation period. All three must pay one-time fees as well as $21 per month into the probation system. Thin and Yuen were immediately handcuffed and taken into custody, without even allowing them to say goodbye to family members present. No visitors are allowed during the 10 days. The community audience in the closely packed courtroom was visibly stunned as the judge announced the verdicts and unusually harsh sentences for what are normally considered minor offenses.

All four defendants had earlier been offered a plea bargain agreement known as pre-trial probation, in which they could have voluntarily entered probation to avoid incarceration by writing a letter of apology to the Quincy Police Department and signing an agreement not to sue the department.

"We didn't take it, because we did nothing wrong. Why should we have to apologize to the police for what they did to us?" said Karen Chen.

The defendants expressed gratitude for the community support they received during the trial. Supporters came from within the Asian American community as well as from white, African American, and other immigrant communities. Community supporters will hold a post-trial discussion today and commemorate the 25th anniversary of the death of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American who was beaten to death in Detroit by two white auto workers amid rising anti-Japanese sentiment. Chin's two killers were convicted but never served a day in jail.

Unfinished justice

Unfinished justice
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist February 23, 2007

What goes on in the corridors of government that our leaders so rarely, too rarely, own up to their mistakes?

No, not Deval Patrick and his car again. He admitted fault. Well, he tried. The topic today is the city of Boston and what it did to a young man named Shawn Drumgold by sending him to prison for 15 years on ridiculously flawed evidence and by refusing to make good to him ever since.

Drumgold, people may recall, was convicted of the 1988 slaying of Darlene Tiffany Moore, the 12-year-old girl felled by a stray bullet as she sat on a mailbox in the middle of a gang-infested section of Roxbury. Her death came to represent the lawlessness that existed on the streets at the time, marked by shootouts between rival gangs of drug dealers.

Some 14 years after Drumgold's conviction, the Globe's Dick Lehr wrote a 5,000-word story that made a veritable mockery of the police and prosecutors' case. One key eyewitness was suffering from a brain tumor that caused severe memory loss, a fact never reported to the defense. Another witness said she was pressured by police to place Drumgold at the scene of the crime.

A crucial eyewitness, a homeless teenager, told Lehr that police gave him months of free housing, food, and walking-around money, and wiped clean his criminal record, to testify against Drumgold. He told the Globe and a judge that his testimony was a bunch of lies.

Local residents told Lehr that they could confirm Drumgold's alibi that he was a couple of blocks away at the time of the shooting, but were afraid to tell police at the time.

Six months after the 2003 Globe story, the Suffolk district attorney issued a report saying that in the interests of justice, the conviction should be overturned. The DA said he had no plans to retry Drumgold, who was set free.

The only issue remaining is what the city owes a man for taking away 15 years of his life. Drumgold filed a federal civil rights suit in 2004, so it's up to the city to make a nice offer and make the whole thing go away. Right?

Wrong again. Here's what the city has done instead: It has gone out and hired a battery of law firms that have rung up legal bills that officials said totaled $250,000, but that Drumgold's appellate lawyer, Rosemary Scapicchio, estimated at closer to $1.5 million. In defending the city against Drumgold's suit, the city's lawyers are insisting that Drumgold was guilty of a crime that the district attorney himself won't touch. Very cute.

The city has deposed virtually everybody involved in the old case, packing conference rooms with high-priced private sector lawyers getting paid by you and me. It gets worse. The city is trying to depose Scapicchio on some seemingly Hail Mary argument that she personally persuaded witnesses to change their stories and is withholding documents. The obvious goal: Force her off the case and gut Drumgold's suit.

In the city's eyes, his conviction was everybody's fault but its own, never mind the fact that a few rogue cops paid off one witness and bullied others. No settlement offer has been made.

"I took Shawn's case on for nothing," Scapicchio said yesterday. "I worked on it forever. I thought what happened to him was outrageous. They're saying that I did something wrong, which is so incredibly obnoxious they shouldn't be able to get away with it. I didn't do anything but work as hard as I possibly could to get this guy out from a conviction of a crime I didn't think he did."

Drumgold's life is spiraling. He was laid off from his foreman's job with a construction company. He has a wife and a couple of children, and they've gone from a two-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom to a homeless shelter. He faced a recent drug charge.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino declined to comment, though his spokeswoman said he has asked his Law Department to "expedite" the case.

It's a little late for that. The city has dragged its feet. It rings up huge legal bills. And a man's life gets further trampled by the day.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mailto:mcgrory%40globe.com.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/02/23/