Newsbites and Updates
Bear Lincoln lawsuit:
At a hearing in Ukiah on April 23, four years and a week after the tragic deaths in Round Valley (see the Fall '97 newsletter for details), the State Attorney General's office declined outgoing Mendocino County DA Susan Massini's invitation to drag out the agony still further by retrying Lincoln on the manslaughter charges which his first jury voted 10-2 to acquit him of. So it's finally over.
Round Valley class action lawsuit:
A federal civil class action suit by members of the Round Valley community against Mendocino County resulted from the behavior of law enforcement agents during the manhunt for Bear Lincoln in the weeks after the April '95 shootings. It was filed three years ago by attorney Dennis Cunningham, assigned to Judge Fern Smith, and has withstood the customary police motions for dismissal. Work is resuming on the case this spring with depositions of several sheriff's deputies set for the middle of May. Last fall, the defendants' motions for summary judgment and qualified immunity were held in abeyance by the court until the plaintiffs' discovery could be completed. Once that is done we can expect a decision by which some claims will most likely be dismissed and others approved for trial. We hope Mendocino County will agree to settle the approved claims, and we are exploring the basis for a possible general settlement based on the change in county administration. Hopefully the case will be wrapped up by this fall.
Oakland Bombing:
The civil suit filed by Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney against the FBI and Oakland PD survived the usual delaying motions by the police. At the last possible moment, the OPD appealed a decision to Judge Claudia Wilkin which declined to excuse the OPD from the case - then the OPD's attorney went to Europe to play golf, causing a considerable delay in further action on the appeal. When it was finally heard on April 15, nothing new came up, and the Redwood Summer Justice Project is confident of a favorable ruling from the appeals panel (although that could take a few months). They then expect a trial date to be set for sometime next year.
November 15 lawsuit:
Another class action suit, Cavanagh et al. v. County of Humboldt, resulted from police conduct at the Fisher Road demonstration of November 15, 1996. San Francisco Federal Judge Charles Breyer (brother of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer) dismissed the suit in 1998 with a comment to the effect that the police had acted with "great restraint." More specifically, the Judge ruled that no 1st Amendment rights had been violated because the demonstrators should have had a permit, and that the cops had qualified immunity. The suit is pending appeal.
For a contrasting view, consider this: members of the relatively staid Taxpayers for Headwaters who were present at the demonstration and unaccustomed to seeing police in the actual act of exercising great restraint were so jolted by what they witnessed that they felt impelled to petition the Humboldt County Supervisors for a citizens' police review board and for mandatory non-violence training for the Sheriff's Department.
Pepper Torture:
This federal suit was brought against the Eureka PD and Humboldt County Sheriff's Department for using pepper agent (OC) in a non-standard and unapproved fashion in three separate instances in order to obtain compliance from passively resistant demonstrators through infliction of extreme pain. A San Francisco jury hung evenly when the case went to trial last summer. When it was announced that defense attorney Tony Serra would take the case to a second trial, Judge Vaughn Walker made a ruling which preempted that trial, stating that based on the evidence, no responsible juror could find in the victim's favor.
Critical Mass Bike Ride:
Robert Cramer's case against the CHP and the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department, for false imprisonment and other wrongs arising from his arrest while trying to photograph the Critical Mass Bike Ride from Arcata to Eureka during the summer of 1996, has ended with a disappointing loss after a jury trial in Eureka.
Tree-Sit Support case:
Trespass charges against Sue Maloney were dropped after she would not agree to pay a fine and plead out of the charges. She had been charged with trespass for visiting forest activist Nate Madson, who is occupying a redwood tree on PL property next to Freshwater Road, east of Eureka. The charges came after an incident in December 1998, when Ms. Maloney's vehicle was attacked with baseball bats and then rolled off the road by young vandals angry about the nearby tree sit.
HR 1443:
This bill was Congressman John Conyers' (D-MI) attempt to compel state highway police agencies to keep statistical records which would establish whether minority-group members are being targeted for stops and searches. It passed (as H.R. 118) in the House last year, but stalled in committee in the Senate by Orrin Hatch (R-UT). It was reintroduced under the new number on April 15. (see Winter '98 issue for elaboration.)
SB 78:
California State Senator Kevin Murray's version of Conyers' federal bill would accomplish the same end, but apply to all police agencies in California. A weaker version of it passed the full legislature last year, but was vetoed by outgoing Governor Pete Wilson.
Prospects for passage this year are promising; it was approved 4-2 by the Senate Public Safety Committee on April 20, and has been forwarded to Appropriations. Some more progressive police agencies are getting behind it as a necessary tool for dissipating suspicions that they are targeting minorities improperly (San Diego and San Jose have already announced their intention to start keeping these statistics immediately, in anticipation of passage).
But major police organizations are still dragging their heels. Oakland's outgoing police chief, for example, was reported in the SF Chronicle in late April as opposing the collection of such data because "the practice would be too costly and would jeopardize officer safety." (Honest; we're not making that up.)
Your comments to State legislators might be influential in the fate of this one. (Summer '98)
HR 518:
After more than a quarter of a million Americans told the Clinton Administration what we thought of its proposed "Know Your Customer" banking regulations - which would have required banks to profile their customers, monitor their transactions, and report unusual transactions as "suspicious" to FinCEN (the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) - Congress is beginning to take note of the abusive potential of the misnamed Bank Secrecy Act (passed quietly about 30 years ago).
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has introduced HR 518 which would roll back that Act and prevent regulators from pulling stuff like "Know Your Customer" in the future. And the Administration is showing signs of concern over the backlash which they've provoked by their recent overreaching.
SJLL:
The infamous "Smoke-a-Joint, Lose-Your-License" law inflicted on California at considerable expense by Pete Wilson will "sunset" on July 1, 1999 - placing California among the majority of states which have "opt-out" resolutions in effect (permitting them to receive federal highway funds in the absence of a "SJLL" law). Non-auto related drug convictions recorded after that date will no longer trigger the automatic six-month driver's license suspension which has been in effect (off and on) since 1994. (See Spring '97 Issue of The Civil Libertarian)
Video:
A couple of months ago, PBS Frontline broadcast a 90-minute documentary titled "Snitch." When networks do a serious report specifically on US drug policy, even the more penetrating programs avoid allowing the host to be too straightforward about the state of the emperor's clothes - they leave it to talking heads to duke it out while the director pretends not to have any opinion. The subject of policy reform is still too hot to jump into, no matter what the facts on the table may be.
"Snitch," though, simply addresses the massive, ubiquitous corruptions of justice which current drug policy legislation so successfully invites, so the program can afford to be unusually hard-hitting without violating broadcast taboos. And it is. Call (800) 424-7963 to order a copy.
Newspaper series:
A far broader investigation of police and prosecutorial abuses (which overlaps the subject of "Snitch") is the 10-part series "Win At All Costs: Government misconduct in the name of expedient justice" by Bill Moushey, which appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette between November 22 and December 13, 1998.
It can be accessed at www.post-gazette.com/ or can be ordered (all 93 pages of it in letter-size format) from the Post Gazette at (412) 263-1741.
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