What's Up in the 8th
State v. McGuire is an aggravated murder case out of East Cleveland, and like just about all East Cleveland cases, it comes with more baggage than the cargo hold of a 737. The department's reputation is substantially short of sterling; the second and fourth hits for the Google search "east cleveland cops" are "Rogue East Cleveland cops framed dozens of drug suspects" and "Ex-East Cleveland cop gets 6 months in prison for assaulting women," respectfully.
One of the cops involved here is the same one as in Hit #4, and the complaint is that the State was tardy in turning over his file, so that the full nature of his conduct could be explored on cross-examination. Even assuming the relevancy of the file, however, the defense knew about it months in advance, and the cop never testified at trial.
The other claim is a bit more troubling. Officer Number 2 was the only one wearing a body cam, and had it turned on at the time. From there, well... the footage subsequently disappeared. Destruction of evidence can be a due process violation if the defendant can show that the evidence was exculpatory. If it's only potentially useful, though - basically, we don't know if it's exculpatory because we haven't seen it - then you have to prove the police acted in bad faith in destroying it. Taking judicial notice of the systemic bad faith of the East Cleveland police department isn't apparently an option.
McGuire doesn't get across the bad-faith bridge, but the defendant in State v. Newton does. Newton, a girls' softball coach, was accused of sexually assaulting one of his players, a 13-year-old girl. She gave two interviews to Shaker Heights Detective Jessica Page, and drew diagrams in both interviews of the equipment room, where the incident supposedly took place. Her descriptions in the interviews were somewhat at odds, and when it came time at trial to clarify things by looking at the diagrams, a problem emerged: the second diagram no longer existed.
Maintaining objectivity in an adversarial system is sometimes difficult: you get too caught up in your case to see its flaws. I think the same thing happens to cops, and it certainly did to Page: besides acknowledging her role to be the victim's advocate, to the extent of agreeing that the girl's suggestion that Newton should be killed was "an appropriate response," Page lied to the prosecutor about what happened to the second diagram, then lied to the judge. After hearing the full testimony of the detectives and concluding that the destruction of the second diagram prevented the defense from effective cross-examination, the judge dismissed the case with prejudice, and the panel affirms.
The State may have learned a lesson from State v. Kafantaris about the worth of taking a strategic approach to appeals. A couple years ago I had a case where the defendant had been indicted on a 20-year-old cold case, accused of raping a 13-year-old when he was 17. He was identified at the time - according to the girl, he was a friend who'd come over to see her that morning at 7:00 AM, they'd started watching cartoons, and the next thing you know, he'd raped her. There were lots of holes in her story, and the defendant told the police that she'd called him twice that morning, once at 1:30 and again at 6:00, to make sure he was coming over. Of course after twenty years, those records were long gone. The judge, not known for his beneficence toward defendants, dismissed the case.
The floor prosecutor was fine with that result, but the State appealed, apparently in keeping with their policy of appealing every dismissal. Bad choice. In State v. Crymes, the court came down with a strong decision affirming dismissal, explaining in detail why the missing phone records were essential to Crymes' defense, not only in suggesting a consent defense, but providing ample impeachment for the girl's claim that she didn't know why Crymes was there.
And so now we have precedent. The judge initially denied Kafantaris' motion to dismiss, but reconsidered and granted it after Crymes came down, specifically citing it. And the judge who wrote Crymes is also the author of Kafantaris. He relies extensively on Crymes, and goes even farther. Here, the victim claimed that Kafanataris repeatedly called and threatened her after the incident; the loss of the records and Kafantaris' resultant inability to impeach her by showing that no phone calls were made, coupled with the loss of the original case file and the documents the complainant filed with the AG's office seeking victim compensation, are sufficient to establish actual prejudice, and the panel finds the delay unjustifiable, despite the complainant signing a "no-prosecution" form.
If you've got a pre-indictment delay case in Cuyahoga County, Crymes and Kafantaris are must-reads.
State v. Bradford results in the rare grant of a reversal for manifest weight of the evidence, although it's couched in terms of sufficiency; Bradford's conviction is vacated, and he's discharged. He's caught up with a bunch of other people in a three-week trial on charges of engaging in gang activity and shooting at someone, involving a dispute between the Broadway Gang and the Fleet Boys. It's pretty apparent that Bradford isn't involved in any of that; the 852 pages of social media relating to him show only pictures of his family, including his brother, a paraplegic. Balanced against that, the court finds that a single witness' claim to have seen Bradford point a gun out of a car from 900 feet away at night doesn't cut it.
The attorney for the defendant in State v. Thompson mutters, "Damned if I'm filing an Anders brief!" and plods grimly ahead, arguing that Thompson's seven-month sentence for domestic violence is unwarranted. Given the hurdles posed for appellate review of sentencing, that's not going anywhere, but especially so given Thompson's lengthy criminal record and the fact that during altercation, Thompson threatened the victim's 10-year-old daughter that he'd shoot her if she didn't shut up. (Whatever happened to time-outs?) Hell, I need a bucket for my bleeding heart, and I probably would've given the guy ten months.
Comments