DOJ Appalling Misconduct against NOLA police officers

[JALLEN]

Into this setting drops an explosive ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. It has upheld the reversal of civil-rights convictions against five New Orleans police officers. The court’s painstaking opinion concludes that, despite the severity of the charges, the district judge properly threw out the convictions because of Justice Department corruption so shocking that “words like ‘incredible’ and ‘novel’ and ‘unprecedented’ were no longer enough” to describe it. The case arose a decade ago, from what the court describes as “the anarchy following Hurricane Katrina.” After a report of shots being fired at New Orleans police on the Danziger Bridge, additional cops were rushed to the scene. In the chaos, police shot and killed two men who turned out to be unarmed (one, developmentally disabled). Four other civilians were wounded. All of the victims were black. Though four of the seven officers eventually charged are black or Hispanic (the other three are white), Sharpton’s “National Action Network” quickly labeled the incident “a racial tragedy.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... c-mccarthy

The district court order is 129 pages. The Circuit Court of Appeals is ~48. Both are eye popping accounts of appalling misconduct by prosecutors.

[baldeagle]

I can't comment on this. I just can't. Everybody in America should be forced to read it, all the way to the end, like I did.

[Eric Lamberson]

The official's computer hard drive crashed and all of the back-ups (including those from other offices/locations) were "routinely" erased so none of the e-mails from the officials in question are available.

I kept a personal server and used it for all of my official and personal business. My served never contained "classified" information even though I was a senior US Government official and handled classified information every day. No IT tech in my agency noticed that my official e-mail correspondence was not traversing department servers and the department has no back up of these e-mails.

Appalling misconduct seems to be a common practice.

[JALLEN]

I can't comment on this. I just can't. Everybody in America should be forced to read it, all the way to the end, like I did.

Are you referring to the District Court decision, the circuit court opinion affirming it, or just the article I quoted from?

This is extremely disgusting. I'm drafting a letter to Sen. Cruz, who knows a thing or two about these things, to beseech him to do everything he can think of to "fundamentally transform" the DOJ, if this is how they conduct themselves.

[baldeagle]

I was referring to the despicable conduct of the DOJ. Anything I wrote about them would be a gross violation of the forum rules.

[baldeagle]

Appalling misconduct seems to be a common practice.

Truer words were never spoken. Ethics have died in government.

[VMI77]

I'm still trying to figure out why I can't access the National Review site with either Firefox or Explorer. It's virtually the only website site I'm unable to access. With most every other computer problem I've had I've found a fix through an internet search....but not this one.

[gthaustex]

Absolutely disgusting....

Unfortunately, I'm not surprised.

[JALLEN]

My relatively few contacts with the AUSAs have been somewhat unnerving, but as the magistrate always took my side of it, I chalked it up to ignorance and inexperience rather than inherent evil or malice. I'm not silly enough to think that DOJ professionals are inevitably pure as the driven snow, but I am shocked to think it is as pervasive as this seems to imply.

This illustrates the absolute imperative to make sure defendants have competent experienced counsel with the resources to adequately protect accusers from this appalling conduct, if Justice is actually the desired product of the courts.