The plaintiff was one of two men arrested at a Pittsburgh car wash in July 2010. The arresting officers later claimed they observed the men exchange drugs before arresting them, but footage from a security video at the car wash proved that the so-called drug deal did not happen.
]]> The officers later admitted falsifying information on the arrest affidavits they filled out for the case. One of the officers said he simply copied the information contained in his partner's affidavit, which included several factual errors. The officers were criminally charged in connection with the incident, but were not convicted. Still, one of the officers retired from the force and the other was reassigned to the Warrant Office.The lawsuit, which names the officers and the city of Pittsburgh as defendants, alleges false arrest, malicious prosecution and other charges. The city solicitor declined comment on the suit, which joins a similar suit by the other arrested man.
After the video surfaced, the Allegheny County District Attorney reviewed the officers' prior arrests and dropped charges in several cases which relied on their affidavits.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "2nd lawsuit filed against Pittsburgh for false drug arrest," Rich Lord, May 15, 2012
]]>An accused person's defense attorney can argue against travel restrictions and freezing of assets, but once imposed, generally the most you can do is comply with the rules and ask the court's permission to do things that would otherwise violate the order. For example, a couple who have been indicted on federal tax fraud and conspiracy charges are scheduled to ask permission of the judge presiding over their case to travel out of state to attend their granddaughter's birthday the weekend of May 19-20.
]]> Both partners are free on $25,000 bond. The accused man is awaiting trial, while his partner has pleaded guilty to conspiracy but has yet to be sentenced.Prosecutors oppose the visit, but there is a decent chance the judge will allow it following a hearing on the matter scheduled for May 17. The judge previously allowed the couple to make the same trip over Easter, according to court documents. Given that accused couple completed the earlier trip without incident, it is not clear what the government's argument against allow this new proposed visit would be.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Indicted pair may be allowed to travel," Len Boselovic, May 16, 2012
]]>At one point the individual arrested allegedly picked up a guitar and ordered the police officers to shoot him. He also supposedly threatened to take the police officer's pistol away from him.
]]> Whether all that is alleged in this case is true will be a determination for the court to make. Unspoken in the reporting of this story was the individual's mental state.Just reading the synopsis of what has occurred seems to suggest that this man suffered from some sort of mental or emotional disorder. The man has no known address and is asked that police officers take his life.
Such a case does bring up a particular problem in our legal system and that is certain suspects do suffer from various mental ailments that likely contribute to some rather erratic behavior. In such instances, attorneys representing such clients do have the right to ask the courts to take into account their client's mental state. Attorneys that do have experience in dealing with mentally ill clients can often get such individuals the help they need instead of seeing them locked up in jail.
It is too easy to judge an individual's circumstances on their behavior alone without delving into what caused the individual to do what he did. Few of us truly understand the torture that some individuals go through due to emotional and mental disorders.
Source: The Sentinel, "Transient Man Threatened Pa. Officers During Arrest," May 8, 2012
]]>Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's office accused Mellow of using state employees to work on his campaign and those of other politicians in 2006 and 2010 and cover up the work on campaign paperwork. They said they had information from former senate staff members detailing the scheme, and said that Mellow may have cost taxpayers in Pennsylvania more than $100,000.
]]> The U.S. Attorney's office charged Mellow in March. He and his attorneys worked out a plea agreement that will require Mellow to become a felon and could lead to a prison sentence. The felony status will prevent him from running for political office again under the law.It is not clear what concessions prosecutors made in the plea bargain, if any. It may include a suggestion for the judge as far as sentencing, but ultimately that will be up to the judge. Mellow's attorneys said that they accepted the deal because their client is in poor health.
Mellow, a Democrat, served in the Pennsylvania State Senate from 1971 to 2010, representing the state's 22nd Senatorial District. He led the Democratic caucus in the senate for more than 20 years before retiring in 2010.
Source: WNEP-TV, "Mellow Enters Guilty Plea in Federal Court," Stacy Lange, May 9, 2012
]]>The defendant suffers from reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a condition brought on by a work injury sustained when he was a firefighter. According to his defense attorney, the defendant, 51, has constant leg pain and his ability to walk is sometimes affected. He takes enough pain medication "to kill a cow," his physician said in a video message played at the sentencing hearing. The doctor said it would be "cruel" to put the defendant in prison due to his condition.
]]> The defendant was convicted of possession and distribution of child pornography. Prosecutors also said he asked an undercover FBI agent who he thought was the mother of a 9-year-old girl to commit sex acts on the girl.At the hearing, the defendant promised never to use the Internet again. His attorney argued that, if he is barred from using a computer, his client would not be able to commit any more crimes. He asked the judge to deviate downward from the federal mandatory minimum sentence of 10 to 12 years and hand down a five-year sentence instead.
The judge acknowledged that the mandatory minimum is excessive in some cases, but said that the defendant "is not in that category" because of the encounter with the FBI agent, as well as the fact that he traded child pornography, as opposed to just viewing it. Still, he went below the mandatory minimum by two years.
Besides the prison sentence, the judge ordered that the defendant be on federal probation for 10 years and be permanently barred from unsupervised interaction with children and from using a computer.
This case shows how difficult it can be for a prison sentence for child pornography to be reduced from federal mandatory minimums, which tend to reduce judges' powers to consider individual circumstances.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Child-porn conviction nets man 8 years in prison," Rich Lord, May 1, 2012
]]>Northern Regional police went to the home early on April 28 after receiving a call about suspected underage drinking at the house, which is in Pine. According to the search warrant later obtained by the officers, a search of the house uncovered the marijuana and several chemicals stored in a basement closet, such as ethyl ether, dicholoromethane and hydrogen peroxide.
]]> Each of these chemicals has a domestic use, but police have ordered a professional cleanup of the home and said that the residents cannot go back inside until that is finished. They claim there is evidence of that someone was growing hallucinogenic mushrooms. The officers also searched for bomb-making materials or instructions after finding powder chemicals, but found no evidence of bombs.No charges have been filed. The Northern Regional police chief said that an investigation is ongoing and did not rule out charges. It could be several days before the family is allowed to move back in.
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, "Family barred from Pine home," Margaret Harding, April 30, 2012
]]>Western Pennsylvania residents will no doubt recall the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil right and the subsequent massive oil spill into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It took BP, the oil giant that owned the rig, months to seal the oil leak, which sent millions of barrels of oil into the environment. The company has said that it would do what it can to make up for the disaster, and recently reached a multibillion-dollar settlement with those who suffered economic damage and health problems resulting from the spill.
]]> But for the first time, federal officials are accusing a BP employee of committing a crime in connection with the spill. The defendant worked for the company as a drilling and completions project engineer. After the explosion, he frequently communicated with other employees about trying to stop the leak, prosecutors said, including via text message.In October 2010, BP told employees not to delete any communications related to the spill. Prosecutors claim that the defendant violated this instruction and deleted hundreds of text messages from his phone, including after he learned that the texts would be copied from the phone for legal examination.
Authorities say those texts included discussions about how an early effort to stop the oil spill was not working due to the size of the leak.
Since the defendant is no longer a BP employee, it is likely he will have to provide for his own legal defense. In a statement, BP declined to comment on the charges, but said the company "has undertaken substantial and ongoing efforts to preserve evidence."
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Engineer charged in BP oil spill case," Clifford Krauss, April 25, 2012
]]>Pennsylvania's rules of criminal procedure interpret this Sixth Amendment clause in Rule 600. Rule 600 holds that trial must begin within 180 days if the defendant is being held in jail or 365 days if the defendant is out on bond. The Washington County District Attorney's Office is learning the consequences of letting that deadline lapse after a judge granted a woman's motion to dismiss the white collar charges against her after her case dragged on for two and a half years.
]]> The woman was accused of embezzling about $530,000 from her former employer, a local car dealership, over four years. Prosecutors filed charges against her on Oct. 30, 2009, but did not file criminal information regarding the case until April 29, 2010, after more than a third of the Rule 600 time limit had passed. That was the last step prosecutors ever took toward trial.The assistant district attorney assigned to the case blamed the judge for the long delay, but the judge said that "this court would have obliged" if the prosecutor had ever called for a trial date within the one-year limit.
The case formerly belonged to the current Washington County district attorney, who was an assistant district attorney in the same office before being elected to the top job. In August 2010, the court found that his predecessor had fallen well behind getting about 650 cases onto the docket in a timely manner. A team of assistant district attorneys worked with paralegals to catch up on the criminal information filings, which are necessary for the case to move on to the next step.
Source: Observer-Reporter, "Charges against $534K theft suspect dropped," Linda Metz, April 19, 2012
]]>Perhaps the most "high-level target" was a 66-year-old man who was convicted of felony drug distribution in 1976. A police commander said the man was back at it and that his son, who also has been charged, was part of the scheme. Another man who was arrested is 52 and accused of possessing $19,000 worth of heroin.
]]> Officers said they seized drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin with street value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The operation involved undercover officers allegedly purchasing drugs from residents while the exchange was captured on video. One video shown to reporters on April 16 appears to depict officers exchanging something with three people. Based on WPXI's description of the video, prosecutors may have to rely on the officers' testimony as they attempt to establish that the exchanged object was drugs.Pittsburgh police said they would be installing cameras in the area to monitor the public for possible drug dealing. Many people consider cameras on the street to be a government intrusion on privacy, but courts generally have found that we do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy when we are in public. Law enforcement relies upon this legal principle when conducting this sort of public observation.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Hill drug sweep nets 60," Sadie Gurman, April 17, 2012
]]>During the raid, the workers seized equipment and other evidence that Microsoft plans to use in civil lawsuits against the alleged Internet criminals, who are called bot-herders. The company sues the defendants and obtains orders to take over ownership of websites and computers -- without the defendants' knowledge.
]]> Microsoft says it is pursuing the civil suits instead of waiting for law enforcement agents to bring charges against those it accuses of bot-herding. Doing so may be difficult, since many operators appear to live in other countries. A senior attorney in Microsoft's digital crimes unit acknowledged that likely the case for the botnet they are currently investigating, and that the owners of the raided offices were not part of a criminal scheme.As a private corporation, Microsoft does not have the power to level criminal punishments. But the company is using tools of the government's prosecutorial power, such as search warrants, in its civil suit. Also, any evidence gathered during the suit might be used in any parallel criminal prosecutions.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Microsoft Raids Tackle Internet Crime," Nick Wingfield and Nicole Perlroth, March 27, 2012
]]>The man was involved in a bar fight that led to charges that he used a stun gun on someone. On Feb. 6, he pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors, including simple assault, possessing an offensive weapon and using an electronic incapacitation device.
]]> He was given 18 months of probation in exchange for the guilty plea. Both sides agree that the defendant's probation officer told him that among the terms of his probation is a prohibition against having guns in his home, but the date that information was passed along is in dispute. Prosecutors claim that the probation officer told the defendant on Feb. 17. But the defendant says he did not learn about the gun ban until March 1, when the probation officer visited his home.He also said the defendant had seven days to get rid of his collection, which included 165 guns kept in a locked cabinet in the basement, the defendant's attorney said. The man planned to get in touch with gun dealers to sell them off, but just an hour later Allegheny County police entered the house, confiscated the guns and arrested the man.
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, "Penn Hills gun owner fights new charges," Margaret Harding, March 27, 2012
]]>Prosecutors in New Castle, Pennsylvania, have dropped forgery, receiving stolen property and theft by deception charges against the man, 33, but only after he spent seven days in jail due to his inability to post bail. The charges came after the man cashed two checks that turned out to be fraudulent, but which he had not forged and did not have any reasons to suspect at first, the man's attorney said.
]]> The man had been looking for a roommate and posted an ad on the Internet. An email from a person named "Jessica" responded to the ad and sent him a check to cover the security deposit. The check was for more than what she owed, so "Jessica" asked the man to return the difference.The New Castle man took the check to the bank and deposited it. The prospective roommate sent him a second check, but at that point the man became suspicious. He noticed that the checks were on an account from a New Jersey organization but were mailed from West Virginia.
Acting on his suspicions, the man took the check to his bank and showed it to officials there. He gave them his contact info so that the bank could let him know if the check was good. Two weeks later, the police officer, apparently believing the man was behind the check fraud, arrested him.
With the charges dropped, it appears that authorities have realized that the man should not have been arrested. Now the man is suing the police officer behind that decision for wrongful arrest.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Scam victim sues for false arrest," Rich Lord, April 5, 2012
]]>New indictments include charges for supposedly concealing and destroying evidence, including a bag of hair and the scissors used to cut the hair. One defendant has been accused of making false statements during the course of the investigation.
]]> The charges come after an alleged incident in September 2011, when a group of nine sect members was said to have hired a driver to take them to a home in Trumbull County. When they arrived at the home, they held down a married couple while they allegedly cut the man's beard and the hair on both people's heads. The group also supposedly made off with the woman's bonnet.Among the new defendants was a woman who provided the satchel used to carry the hair and bonnet, according to official documents. Prosecutors claim that those items were later destroyed per orders issued by the leader of the renegade group.
The group of defendants claims that the alleged crimes have such a small impact on interstate commerce that they should not be federally prosecuted and a state investigation would be more prudent. They also are arguing that they should not be prosecuted under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act because it was designed to protect people from external discrimination, not crimes within the same religion. The defendants assert that the First Amendment allows these actions because they are doctrine-based punishments.
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, "New indictment adds four women to Amish beard-cutting case," Brian Bowling, March 30, 2012
]]>The defendant faced drug charges related to what prosecutors claimed was a scheme to sell oxycodone to people with no medical need for the painkiller. He made up to $200,000 some months and hired security guards at his clinics. He had offices in two Southern states but the charges were based on alleged sales in Ohio and West Virginia.
]]> The gynecologist, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, died on March 20. The cause of death appears to be a heart attack. The federal prosecutors pursuing the case formally dropped the charges soon after, but claimed they would have gotten a conviction at trial.But the defendant's attorney disputed that. He said that his client only prescribed oxycodone when appropriate and never for profit. The attorney suggested that some of his patients may have turned around and sold prescribed medicine without his knowledge. When the doctor did suspect that a patient was "doctor shopping" for someone to feed a pill addiction, he would refuse to treat them and report them to the authorities, the attorney said.
He described the gynecologist as a "professional, compassionate physician" and said that he would have liked the chance to establish his client's innocence at trial.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Prosecutors insist on guilt of doctor in pill case," Torsten Ove, April 4, 2012
]]>As readers in Pittsburgh learned in our previous blog post, the six men and one woman were accused of conspiracy to commit sedition, or rebellion against the federal government. The defendants, who are members of a rural militia called Hutaree, were also accused of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction.
]]> Based on news reports, it appears the bulk of the government's case was based on audio and video recordings made by an FBI informant and agent who infiltrated the group in 2008. The FBI agent gained the militia leader's trust and even stood as best man at his wedding. Hutaree's leader had extensive knowledge of explosives and weaponry, the agent claimed.He and the informant recorded hours of conversations between the leader and his followers, who included his wife. In the tapes, the defendant discussed his beliefs that all federal agents were part of a "brotherhood" with United Nations troops to protect a global conspiracy. He claimed that the U.S. government put computer chips in flu vaccine and that Canada was planning to invade Michigan. The group is heard discussing their willingness to kill police officers and their families.
After prosecutors played these and other tapes for the jury, defense attorneys moved to dismiss. They said that nothing on the tapes indicated the defendants actually embarked on a plan to attack police officers.
The judge dismissed the jury for the day on March 26 and listened to arguments from both sides. The next day, she dismissed most of the major charges against the defendants. While a criminal conspiracy can be proven through "mere words," under federal law, she said, the defendants' statements "do not rise to that level."
Source: Associated Press, "Michigan militia members cleared of conspiracy," Ed White, March 27, 2012
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