The First Thing We Do, We Kill All The Witnesses

State v. Bentley, no, 06-1000, (Iowa September 28, 2007).

This is another sorry chapter in the case of the pathetic, repulsive Bentley brothers and what they did to Jetseta Gage. As you know, James and Roger Bentley sexually abused the child, and Roger Bentley killed her and was convicted of murder.

James Bentley (already serving a 100 year federal sentence for using the girl to manufacture child pornography) is presently in the preliminary stages of a trial for sexually abusing this tiny child, and he succeeded in not only stifling her cries for help, he did it with the cooperation of the judiciary.

It's important to get the timeline right here.

Jetseta was interviewed on videotape by a St. Luke's counselor about sex abuse and the interview was watched by a police officer on November 16, 2004. Jetseta gave damning statements about what James had done to her. Two days later James Bentley was charged with sex abuse. Jetseta was raped and murdered by Roger Bentley in late March 2005, and her body was dumped in an abandoned trailer like a sack of trash.

James Bentley sought and received an order prohibiting the introduction of the videotape of the interview on the basis that he did not have the opportunity to confront the witness against him.
His argument was that the interview was testimonial in nature and thus the opportunity to cross examine arose and was denied to him, because of the untimely demise of the victim.

The key question is, how can the interview of a child sexual assault victim be structured so as to avoid implicating the confrontation clause. Several methods suggest themselves, not the least of which is sending the officers out for a coffee break. Another is to depose the child witness promptly via a video hookup. I have not completely digested this opinion and I shall have more to say about it.

The court here sends a powerful message to child sex abusers: get rid of the evidence and the witnesses, lest you should be subject to prosecution for your crimes.

Well, duh, as they say. Hold up your hand if you think it's coincidence.

Tony Hillerman's fictional detective Joe Leaphorn, has this to say: if you believe in coincidence you aren't looking hard enough.

Dumb As A Bag of Dirt Awards: And The Winnah Is...

We here at the Reporter have decided that as a public service to our adoring fans in the law enforcement community we are going to start the Iowa Law Enforcement Reporter Phineas T. Barnum "Dumb As A Bag of Dirt" awards.

This one goes to John David Roy Atchison, an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Florida who was arrested after he flew to Detroit to, as he thought, have sex with a five year old girl.

Of course, no such thing was going to happen, it was a sting, and as usual, MySpace figured large in this as something of a happy hunting ground for wannabe pedophiles.

You can read about it here.

I rather think that MySpace, Facebook and the rest ought to be off limits unless the intent is to expose the dumbest pedophiles around.

DNA Gold Standard Beats Hearsay

State v. Wells, no. 05-1798 (Iowa Sept. 7, 2007)

Wells was convicted of two counts of sexual abuse. He had been having a sexual relationship with a 14 year old girl whose mother took her to the hospital where a rape kit was taken. At that time she admitted the relationship to a sexual assault nurse examiner which confirmed the abuse. Three years later, Wells' DNA samples were taken from Wells for unknown reasons, a comparison was made and he was charged.

At trial, over Wells' strenuous objection, the evidence of the sexual assault nurse examiner concerning what the victim told her was admitted. Wells appealed.

The Supreme Court found that admission of hearsay in violation of the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment does not mandate reversal if the state establishes that the error was harmless beyond reasonable doubt. The correct inquiry is whether the guilty verdict actually rendered was surely unattributable to the error, because the DNA evidence was overwhelming.

In this case, the DNA evidence trumped the erroneous admission of hearsay by a country mile.

Dead Men Eating

I've come across a curious blog called Dead Men Eating which is, as you'd expect, a chronology of executions and what the soon to be decedent had for his last meal. Nothing hugely interesting there.

What hit me between the eyes was this story, and I reprint it here with some emphasis.

INDIANA LAST MEALMICHAEL LAMBERT

June 15, 2007

Lambert had no final request.

Lambert, 36, was executed for shooting a police officer.

Muncie police officers were dispatched to a traffic accident and observed an abandoned utility truck. The truck was towed and Lambert was found nearby crawling under a vehicle. Lambert had spent most of the night getting drunk and after telling officers he was trying to sleep, was arrested for public intoxication.

He was patted down and placed into the back of a police car driven by an officer for transport to jail. A few minutes later, the police vehicle was observed sliding off the road into a ditch.

Lambert was still handcuffed in the backseat and the officer had been shot 5 times in the back of the head and neck.

A .25 handgun was found laying on the floorboard. It was later learned that Lambert had stolen the .25 pistol from his employer. The officer died 11 days later.

Vehicle stops are damned dangerous. But in this case, a search of one of the town drunks not carefully enough done cost the Muncie officer his life.

It's dangerous enough out there without getting casual about the job.

Dade County Confidential UPDATE 2

UPDATE 2 Sept. 16 It seems as if the story of Shawn LaBeet, his brother Shane LaBeet, the family of Renee Deangelo, and his shirttail relative Ishmael Ali LaBeet is a convoluted one indeed.

It seems that LaBeet had been on the lam for five years, along with 219,000 other scofflaws in south Florida. In a contretemps over drugs, he inadvertently shot his girlfriend Renee, he was charged, a warrant was issued and he absconded.

One wonders how Ishmael Ali is liking things in Havana these days. One positive thing that may come from the impending demise of the Castro regime is that some overdue justice may be levied against the scofflaws and thugs that the regime has seen fit to adopt-it is fervently hoped that Joanne Chesimard's time is drawing near.

UPDATE Sept. 14 These fine looking folks are in custody today because they not only sheltered the cop slayer Shawn LaBeet( who assumed room temperature today after a hot lead injection), the one on the right gave a phony name and thus confused the issue of who LaBeet was for several critical hours yesterday.


Certainly he was a desperado, but I wonder what the larger connection was between LaBeet and this family beyond the romantic interest....photo courtesy the Herald of course.


The Miami Herald informs us this day that a Miami-Dade officer was killed and three others were wounded in broad daylight this morning in a firefight that erupted during the activities of a burglary detail.

A white car was seen driving erratically. Officers stopped the car, and the occupant got out and opened fire on officers working the detail with a high powered assault rifle, perhaps the ubiquitous AK47.

The occupant fled and the white Honda he had been driving was recovered, its windshield shattered-indicating that fire was perhaps returned.

Police were searching for one Shawn LaBeet, who was reported to have purchased assault weapons and a pistol in March of this year.

The takehome's simple.

A vehicle stop is the single most dangerous thing an officer can undertake

-even when the numbers suggest that the situation is well under control.

What's Up In Bouton?

Believe me, I don't know and I don't want to know. While doing a little bit of snooping, about which more anon, we found the following on the Iowa sex offender registry. Remind me to strike the Red Carpet Inn off my list of places to stay when seeing the sights in Bouton.

BEARD, JONATHON
22980 141ST,RM30 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
BERRY, CHARLES
22980 141ST,RM32 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
BUTTS, LELAND
22980 141ST,RM21 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
DAVIS, JOSHUA
22980 141ST,RM30 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
DEO, TRIEU
22980 141ST,RM34 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
HALL, RAYMOND
22980 141ST,RM24 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
HENDRICKSON, CHET
22980 141ST,RM23 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
HOOK, ANTHONY
22980 141ST,RM25 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
JONES, ROSETTA
22980 141ST,RM35 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
NGUYEN, HEIN
22980 141ST,RM27 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
TRIEU, LIEM
22980 141ST,RM33 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
VU, TUYEN
22980 141ST,RM33 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA
WALZER, RICHARD
22980 141ST,RM31 RED CARPET INN , BOUTON IA

Search, Seizure and Reasonable Cause Up North: Reg. v. L.B.

There's been an interesting development in Canada recently that involves some of the same issues we deal with every day here in the context of investigatory stops and reasonable cause.

It involves some things at the heart of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which you can read about here. In particular, Articles 7 through 14 are pertinent, and the case made it all the way to the Ontario Court of Appeal on September 5 of this year

The story goes back to 2002 when two Toronto policemen noticed two youths seated near the stairway leading to a high school. The officers observed that although the two were physically separated they were obviously communicating, and one was holding a black bag. The officers thought this a little strange and proceeded to investigate, although under Canadian law the youths were entitled to not speak to them or to walk away without hindrance.

L.B., the youth on the upper part of the stairway came down to talk to police and one officer noticed that he was not holding the black bag he'd been seen with. A short search found the bag concealed in some litter, and L.B. denied it was his.

Inside the bag was some of L.B.'s schoolwork and a loaded handgun-very illegal in Canada.

At trial, L.B. was able to invoke the exclusionary rule of section 24(2) of the Charter to have the fruits of the search suppressed and the case dismissed by the trial court by arguing that he'd been psychologically detained.

On discretionary appeal by the Crown, the Ontario Court of Appeals found that the trial court had erred in suppressing the evidence and dismissing the case. L.B.'s conduct was not that of someone who felt compelled to speak to police against his will, but that he'd sized up the situation and walked down the stairs and initiated a conversation with officers. When that tactic backfired he began to panic.

There was nothing to support the idea that L.B. had been psychologically detained, and the case was sent back for trial.

The Court opined that L.B.'s conduct showed disdain for the rights and freedoms in the Charter and that it struck at the core values the Charter is meant to protect. Canadians therefore would find it egregious if such conduct was allowed to pass without a trial on the merits.

Of course, as you might expect, Canada's answer to the A.C.L.U. is up in arms about this alleged diminution of the right of armed thugs to wander around school property. It appears that in cases where dangerous weapons are involved the courts at Canada may be moving away from the idea of automatic exclusion.

The takehome for those of us south of the line who have to deal with these issues is that policemen face the same set of issues every day whether they wear Old Glory or the Maple Leaf. It's an idea worthy of consideration, if only because the Charter's provisions and the law built up around our Bill of Rights are not so very different.

Some Now, More Later in the City of Brotherly Love

The Seattle Times informs us this day that murder charges against William Barnes were filed by the district attorney in the death of Officer Walter Barclay.

What makes this case interesting is that Officer Barclay, a 23 year old rookie cop in Philadelphia, was shot twice by Barnes during the course of a burglary on November 27, 1966.

From that date until his death on August 19 of this year, Officer Barclay was wheelchair bound and endured a life of constant pain and medical problems related to the bullets he'd taken in the line of duty. Ultimately, an infection proved fatal to him and he died. The Bucks County coroner declared the death a homicide.

Barnes was convicted for the shooting and served 15 years for the crime. In total Barnes, a career felon, has spent 48 of his 71 worthless years behind bars at the taxpayers' expense.

The old common law rule of a year and a day was rejected in Pennsylvania back in 1960 in Commonwealth v. Ladd.

It remains to be seen whether the chain of causation can stretch back 40 years or not. We know here in Iowa that the chain of causation reached back six years and more in the tragic case of Jonathan Waller but how elastic that chain is may be decided by the courts of Pennsylvania.

Photo credit Philadelphia P.D.