Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey announced yesterday there will be no criminal charges brought against the four deputy sheriffs who tased jail inmate Marvin Booker, put him face down in a cell, and sat on his back for 90 seconds, after which Booker died.

Booker, a homeless minister, was in the booking process on a petty offense charge of drug paraphernalia possession when he disobeyed a deputy's order to go to his cell, leaving his shoes behind. He wanted to take his shoes with him.

Morrissey said he viewed the video camera footage four times, the deputies were justified in their actions and Booker was responsible for his death:[More...]

Denver recently got a new spiffy courthouse and jail. The jail opened in April and is called the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Facility. Our old county jail was deplorable. But I don't recall any inmates there being tased to death by guards.

In July, Marvin Booker, 56, a homeless ordained minister who helped the poor and who had a history of petty offenses that occurred a long time ago, was arrested on drug paraphernalia charges and brought to the new jail. He never made it out alive. The coroner's report released today labels the death a homicide.

Booker was asleep on a chair in the holding tank when a guard told him to go to processing desk and sit down. He was wearing his socks and wanted to get his shoes which were nearby. The guard told him not to and directed him to go to an isolation cell. He began walking back to the holding tank, and the guard went to physically restrain him. He tried to shake her off and she and three other guards jumped him. Here's what witnesses say happened after that. According to the autopsy report released today (available here) the coroner finds: [More...]

One would hope that FBI agents are familiar with guidelines for conducting surveillance and opening files on people without evidence they have committed a crime. Apparently, that's in doubt. The Inspector General is investigating whether hundreds of FBI agents cheated on a test about the guidelines.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that he does not know how many of his agents cheated on an important exam on the bureau's policies, an embarrassing revelation that raises questions about whether the FBI knows its own rules for conducting surveillance on Americans.

Even Mueller got tripped up on the rules today. [More...]

It's over. After 22 months, the Justice Department has sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee stating no criminal charges will be brought as a result of the firing of 9 U.S. Attorneys during the Bush Administration.

Special counsel Nora Dannehy, who conducted the DOJ investigation (not to be confused with the earlier Inspector General and OPR investigation) recommended no charges, and Attorney General Eric Holder has accepted it. In the letter (available here, it takes a few minutes to load):

Associate Attorney General Ronald Weich said Gonzales made "inaccurate and misleading" statements about the firings. The report also said Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, also made misleading statements. But the report by Dannehy concluded there was "insufficient evidence to establish that persons knowingly made material false statements" or tried to obstruct justice.

As Committee Chair Rep. John Conyers points out, this is not an exoneration. The investigation found both Gonzales and Kyle Sampson made misleading and inaccurate statements. [More...]

The Obama Adminisration may be serious about ramping up the civil rights division.

Six New Orleans police officers have been charged in the post-Kaatrina deaths of unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005.

The 27 count Indictment alleges some ugly facts. Five other former police officers have pleaded guilty and admitted that they participated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice and cover up what happened that date.

The four officers charged with killing civilians face maximum penalties of life in prison or the death penalty. The officers face additional penalties for the remaining counts, which include charges related to a conspiracy to cover up what had happened on the bridge, and conspiracies to file charges against two of the victims, Lance Madison and Jose Holmes, on the basis of false evidence.

The other two face 70 and 120 years.

The New York Times reports eight other incidents of alleged police misconduct are still under investigation.

Tim Masters was wrongfully convicted of first degree murder in 1999 and sentenced to life in prison. The murder occurred when he was 15. He was charged in 1998. He was freed in 2008, after serving 10 years in prison, when DNA evidence was tested that excluded him and pointed to another suspect.

Today, the grand jury in Larimer County Colorado indicted the lead detective on his case, James Broderick, on eight counts of perjury. The Indictment is here. Broderick focused on Masters since 1987 when he first interviewed him, and never changed his mind. Prosecutors initially cleared him of misconduct (the current prosecutor said he was guilty of malfeasance, not misfeasance) but new evidence came to light suggesting Broderick lied about his involvement in the investigation, both in affidavits and on the witness stand.

DNA finally showed Masters was not guilty. At trial, there was no physical evidence linking Masters to the crime, and other evidence was withheld or destroyed. [More...]

Former Chicago police Commander Jon Bruge has been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about torturing suspects in jail.

A retired Chicago police commander suspected of using electric shocks, suffocation and mock executions to force suspects to confess was found guilty on Monday of lying about the brutality.

....Five of the dozens of African-American inmates who alleged they were tortured by Burge or his men testified they were subjected to being "bagged" with plastic typewriter covers placed over their faces, had guns stuck in their mouths, were held against hot radiators, or were given painful shocks from a homemade device.

The torture occurred so long ago that he wasn't tried for it. Still, he faces up to 45 years in prison. More details here. Our coverage of Bruge's indictment and the torture allegations is here, here and here.

There are a lot of articles this weekend on the enhancement of a 1970 Kent State shooting audio recording, reporting new analysis provides evidence the Guards were ordered to shoot.

"Guard!" says a male voice on the recording, which two forensic audio experts enhanced and evaluated at the request of The Plain Dealer. Several seconds pass. Then, "All right, prepare to fire!"

"Get down!" someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, "Guard! . . . " followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds.

The tape was discovered in the library in 2007. Here's the recording released that year. Further analysis was performed this year by two experts. [More...]

Charles Graner, the prison guard from hell, convicted and serving 10 years, is having his appeal of his conviction heard today by the top military appeals court in the U.S.

If there is anyone I won't lose sleep over being incarcerated 10 years, it's him. He's still claiming he acted at the behest of higher ups.

Spc. Charles Graner, of Uniontown, Pa., is serving a 10-year sentence for stacking naked prisoners into a pyramid, knocking one of them out with a punch and ordering prisoners to masturbate while other soldiers took pictures.

Thomas A. Drake, a high level official with the National Security Agency, had been indicted in Maryland for making false statements and obstruction of justice into the investigation of who leaked details of Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance program to a newspaper in 2006 and 2007.

A federal grand jury in Maryland indicted Drake on five counts of retaining classified information without authorization, including four e-mails and one document copying classified information. He also was charged on one count of obstructing justice and four counts of making false statements to the FBI. The maximum prison terms for those charges range from five to 20 years.

From the DOJ press release: [More...]

As we wrote last month, the San Francisco crime lab is a mess, hundreds of prosecutions have been ditched and the lab itself shut down. Today, Crime Lab Tech Deborah Madden who is at the center of the scandal, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of possession of cocaine. Police found 1/10 of a gram of coke in her bedroom during a search. (1/10 of a gram of cocaine is a felony in California. Under federal law, possession for personal use is a misdemeanor.)

Thanks to CACJ (California Attorneys for Criminal Justice) the materials, including pleadings, related to the crime lab scandal are available here.

There's also this report, False Positives Equal False Justice. [More...]

If you're going to be a police crime lab technician whose drug-testing work can put people in jail, it's probably not a good idea to be stealing and sampling the merchandise, i.e., the seized drugs.

Deborah Madden, age 60, a San Francisco crime lab tech for 29 years, has not been charged with a crime. But suspicions she stole and used cocaine from drug evidence have caused
San Francisco to dismiss 25 drug cases.

Madden abruptly retired Dec. 8 after 29 years on the job and has been in treatment recently for drug and alcohol use, officials said. She left the crime lab shortly after an audit discovered that drug evidence was missing, officials said.

[More...]