tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87521922468732820092024-03-21T03:46:59.516-07:00Police Captain Turned Criminal Defense AttorneyPolice Captain Turned Criminal Defense AttorneyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-77930676908869497762018-05-25T13:42:00.001-07:002018-05-25T13:47:30.574-07:00 Elderly Man with Terminally Ill Wife Saved From False Charges of Sexual Assault<span style="font-size: large;">The Law Offices of Robert E. Brown prides itself in defending our clients from unfortunate situations and false charges of misconduct. One recent case we handled stemmed from a verbal altercation in which the complainant, an NYU student, did not pay rent to their landlord and was threatened with eviction. Following a disagreement between the two parties, our client was accused of grabbing the woman's buttocks. Police arrested our client, a 61 year old man with no prior history of sexual assault and no criminal record, and charged him with one count of forcible touching, one count of sexual abuse in the 3rd degree, and one count of harassment in the 2nd degree for physical contact. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He was subsequently served with an order of protection, which meant the tenant could remain in his house while he was forced to vacate the premise and leave behind his wife, who was suffering from Stage IV cancer. After hours of hard work from our legal team, and with the help of our Private Investigator John Doherty, we found video proof that these charges were false because our client was not even in his house at the time he was said to have assaulted the tenant. The District Attorney confronted the complainant, who then folded. The case was eventually dismissed.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Since then, our client has continued his peaceful, law-abiding ways and has stayed out of trouble.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Charges of criminal activity could be imposed on anybody, don't let somebody ruin your life because of a meaningless conflict. Instead, let us at the Law Offices of Robert E. Brown defend you.</span> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-53533214249926547202018-05-25T13:31:00.000-07:002018-05-25T13:50:19.191-07:00Let the Law Offices of Robert E. Brown Defend Your Bar from Summonses<span style="font-size: large;">Do you run a restaurant or bar and get harassed by law enforcement on a regular basis for behavior from patrons that is out of your control? Are you tired of paying out ridiculous fees for summonses that seem unfair? Let the Law Offices of Robert E. Brown defend you and you could say goodbye to ludicrous criminal summonses and hello again to your hard earned cash. A client we represented was accused of running a disorderly premise, stemming from a fight outside of their bar involving patrons that had been escorted out of the establishment by trained bouncers. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Nevertheless, police gave this violation to the bar, which could damper business and eventually shut the place down. With our help, the case against our client was dismissed, and they could continue running their business without facing legal trouble. Do not fall victim to unfair summonses, pick up the phone and call (718)-979-9779 today and help us help you and your business.</span> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-11558649385325518402018-05-25T13:19:00.003-07:002018-05-25T13:51:32.330-07:00Don't Let Scammers Derail Your Life<span style="font-size: large;">Have you ever seen one of those social media posts with a stack of money that asks if you want to make cash quick? A client of ours at the Law Offices of Robert E. Brown saw a page just like this, followed the steps outlined by the scammer, and before they knew it was arrested by the police for grand larceny in the third degree, as well as criminal possession of stolen property in the third degree. These charges equaled a D felony, which carries up to 7 years in jail.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">You're probably wondering, how can something as innocent as following a page that'll help you pay your bills end up so badly. Well, allegedly an individual lost $226,000 out of their Citibank account, and under the guidance of a friend who also fell for the scheme, our client received a wire worth $15,739.49. They withdrew $4,000 out of a Staten Island bank, and ultimately the police arrested them. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">With our expert legal counsel, our client was able to escape a long term jail sentence and received only 5 years probation and the status of a youthful offender, meaning that the record is eventually sealed, does not have to be reported to colleges or work, and does not prohibit our client from holding public office. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If you or a loved one are faced with a similar scenario, let us at the Law Offices of Robert E. Brown work on your behalf to reach a similar outcome!</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/05/22/14/28FA1DE600000578-0-image-a-26_1432300634979.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/05/22/14/28FA1DE600000578-0-image-a-26_1432300634979.jpg" data-original-height="639" data-original-width="634" height="320" width="317"></a></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-5507080507526432882017-08-15T11:40:00.003-07:002017-08-15T11:41:51.388-07:00RB Law Saves the Day Again<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Our client was charged with assaulting her neighbor, which
she claims was a complete fabrication. As a Mexican-American, she faced
deportation. The prosecutor was steadfast on pushing our client to plead guilty
to a violation, which requires up to 15 days in jail and anger management classes.
We prepared to go to trial on short notice, since she had originally hired
another well-respected Staten Island lawyer. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Eventually, the District Attorney
agreed to an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, also known as an ACD,
which normally requires a 6 month period of no trouble before the case is
dismissed and sealed. Fortunately we convinced both the judge and prosecutor to
approve of on an ACD with immediate sealing, and our client was able to return
back to her normal life. </b><o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-6107884215884388722017-07-21T10:18:00.000-07:002017-07-21T10:18:52.945-07:00"Raving" Client Freed From the Jaws of Prison<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial Black","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our client, then 16 years old, was at a “rave” at
Citifield when he was approached by a plainclothes officer who claims he
observed our client in possession of MDMA also known as ecstasy and LSD.
Our client fled. The officer recovered the drugs and our client’s wallet
with his real identification and fake identification showing he was 21 years
old. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial Black","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Detective from Queens Narcotics originally wrote the
paperwork charging Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the third
degree (Possession with Intent to Sell) which is a class B-Felony as well as
resisting arrest and criminal possession of a forged instrument (for the fake
ID). On the top count alone, he faced up to 25 years in jail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial Black","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">We were able to arrange a surrender and convince the
officer that our client fled because he thought he was being robbed. The
detective agreed to reduce the initial arrest charges to Criminal Possession of
a Controlled Substance in the seventh degree. He even agreed to
give our client a Desk Appearance Ticket, which means that they did not even
have to go through Central Booking. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial Black","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ultimately, he received a</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Black","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">n Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal,
which adjourns the case for 6 months. Upon staying out of trouble for the
adjournment period of six months, the case will then be dismissed and sealed
automatically.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-8042426639812165602017-07-19T11:25:00.002-07:002017-07-19T11:25:51.468-07:00RB Law Helps Addict Get Help While Avoiding Criminal Conviction<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Our client was arrested and charged
with a Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in Kings County for
allegedly possessing 20 glassines of heroin. He faced up to 25 years in jail.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">We were able to get our client the
help he needed through a private drug counseling program. In addition, the charge
against him was lowered to a violation as well as a conditional discharge– a great
outcome that’ll allow him to recover and leave addiction in the past. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-10402466704377067622017-07-18T11:03:00.001-07:002017-07-18T11:03:18.328-07:00A win for Robert E. Brown, PC - From Obstructing Firefighting Operations to Dismissal.<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">Our client was arrested and charged with a class A Misdemeanor-
Obstructing Firefighting Operations in Richmond County for allegedly
unreasonably obstructing a firefighter. He faced up to 1 year in jail.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Our client ran a pot-bellied stove in his home, where he lived
with an elderly aunt. When a neighbor mistakenly called the fire department to
the scene, our client tried to diffuse the situation in order to not alarm his
relative. He told the firefighters that nothing was on fire and that it
was just the smoke from the stove. A firefighter struck our client in the
head with a crowbar causing a large laceration , which required several </span><span style="font-size: 21.3333px;">stitches</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">. He was then arrested and charged with Obstructing Firefighting
Operations. Through our hard work, the case against him was dismissed and
sealed – the best possible outcome for this most unfortunate
circumstance. </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-39464333039071341472017-07-17T11:24:00.001-07:002017-07-17T11:24:38.765-07:00What do plea bargains and tattoos have in common?<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
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Question: What do plea bargains and tattoos have in common?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Answer: Both are drawn in permanent ink. And they may not age well.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; vertical-align: baseline;">
According to <span style="color: #467984; font-family: inherit;"><span style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Chief Judge Edward Carnes</span></span><a href="http://www.dailyreportonline.com/id=1202785902104"><span style="color: #467984; font-family: inherit;"><span style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;"> </span></span></a>in an opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit who reversed Chief Judge Kristi DuBose of the Southern District of Alabama in her ruling that a sentence ordered under a plea bargain could be reduced later. Carnes directed the judge to re-impose the original sentence for drug trafficking and weapons charges.</div>
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Judge Robin Rosenbaum and Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the Fifth Circuit, sitting by designation, concurred.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; vertical-align: baseline;">
"In negotiating a plea bargain both sides aim for the best terms they can get, placing bets on what the future will hold," Carnes wrote in his opening. "The problem is that the future and certainty are strangers and not everyone wins a wager. Sometimes a deal, like a tattoo, does not age well and what appeared to be attractive in the past seems unattractive in the future. But plea agreements, like most tattoos, are written in permanent ink and cannot be redrawn just because one party suffers from the plea bargain form of buyer's remorse."</div>
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"Generally speaking, a defendant who was sentenced to the mandatory minimum penalty established by statute is not entitled to any relief," Carnes said, "even if a retroactive amendment to the guidelines would otherwise reduce his sentencing range below what it was before the amendment."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Carnes acknowledged the deal did not turn out so well for the defendants, but said it's "too late now."</div>
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"Plea agreements are interpreted by what they say, not what they might have said if the defendants or the government could have foreseen the future," Carnes wrote. "Courts are not authorized to ink in revisions to ensure that the defendants continue to receive the same value regardless of future changes in the law."</div>
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The prosecutors included: Adam Overstreet, Kenyen Ray Brown and Steven Butler of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Alabama.</div>
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Melton and Flores were represented by Peter Madden, Kristen Gartman Rogers and Carlos Alfredo Williams of the federal Public Defender's Office.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The case is <i style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">U.S.A. v. Kendrick Melton</i>, No. 15-15738.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-19165510172678593002017-07-13T09:20:00.005-07:002017-07-13T09:24:32.804-07:00NYC Complex in High-Profile Suit Regarding Pitbull<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #333333; padding: 0in;">In a complaint filed last week</span><span style="color: #333333;"> in Manhattan Supreme Court against Michelle
Kelban-Carteron, the board of the <span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Chelsea Modern condominium</span> alleges
that the co-chair of Latham & Watkins’ real estate practice committed
breach of contract by owning and harboring an aggressive pit bull in her unit. Kelban-Carteron
has retained high-profile local real estate lawyer <span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Adam
Leitman Bailey</span>. The latter claims this case is one of discrimination,
plain and simple.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333;">“I call this dog racism,”
Bailey said. “Because of [the dog’s] breed, they’re going after it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
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<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333;">Luna, the five-year-old
pit bull mix in question, has lived in Kelban-Carteron’s unit along with the
Latham lawyer’s husband, <span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Gregory</span>, since they
bought into the condo in 2012. In June, Luna allegedly attacked a small dog in
front of the condo. Shortly after this incident, Kelban-Carteron secured
certification deeming Luna a service dog for her husband. A doctor’s note
claims the dog provides emotional support following a cycling injury. Bailey
confirmed that Carteron was allegedly being hit by a postal service truck
while riding in Manhattan and sued the Federal Government. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333;">In response to suspicions
about Luna’s last minute service dog certification, Bailey said that his
client’s dog has not been aggressive in the past, so there had been no reason
to officially certify Luna in order to protect her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333;">Herbert Cohen, a name
partner at New York’s Stiefel Cohen & Foote, is representing the Chelsea
Modern condo. Cohen called Luna vicious and claimed he has accumulated evidence
suggesting that the canine has been unruly for at least a year. He also said
that Luna’s alleged aggression is not the problem at hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333;">“The dog issue is a
subplot,” Cohen said. “The main issue is that there is a byline that empowers
the condo board to exclude the dog.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333;">The condo board claims in
court documents that according to the contract that Kelban-Carteron signed when
moving into her unit, the owners of the building may order that any pit bull be
evicted from the premises.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">Bailey
believes that the complaint against Kelban-Carteron over Luna is a classic case
of discrimination worthy of more press. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333;">“I’m confident that the
New York City Human Rights Commission will take this case and prosecute,”
Bailey said. Cohen, the condo board’s lawyer representing the Chelsea Modern,
believes this will be an open-and-shut case, with none of the drama that Bailey
predicts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333;">“It should be a simple
case,” he said. “The board in its discretion decided to exclude the dog and
there’s no reason the dog shouldn’t be excluded.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333;"><b>THE FULL ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND AT http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/home/id=1202792152424/Latham-Partners-Lawyer-Cites-Dog-Racism-in-Condo-Dispute?mcode=1202615068447&curindex=2</b></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-20913105591245305952017-07-13T09:07:00.000-07:002017-07-13T09:25:17.417-07:00Staten Island Man Arrested for Torturing Cat<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">A South Beach man was busted for brutally
beating his neighbor's defenseless cat and broadcasting the cowardly act
on social media, according to police and multiple law enforcement sources.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Tyrike Richardson, 21, was arrested Thursday morning at the 121st
Precinct stationhouse in Graniteville and charged with aggravated cruelty to an
animal and torturing and not feeding an animal, according to an NYPD spokesman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Richardson allegedly tormented the animal inside his apartment on June
29, police said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Someone living with the defendant made the complaint, the spokesman
said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">The NYPD's Gang Squad came across a disturbing Facebook Live video of
what appears to be a man torturing a white cat, according to a law enforcement
source.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Authorities went to the home and found the animal on June 29.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">The cat -- a 2-year-old male named Chester who belongs to Richardson's
neighbor -- suffered multiple blunt force trauma injuries including rib
fractures, liver and kidney injuries and injuries to its lungs, sources said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">The animal is still alive and in the care of the ASPCA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">In the video, a man appears to drop a wooden chair on the animal.
He then appears to jam a long wooden stick into the stomach and face of the
motionless feline. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">In another clip, the man is seen teasing
the cat with a large knife, while it bats it away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Richardson, police said, has multiple arrests dating back to when he was
14. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.2px;"><b>THE FULL ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND AT http://www.silive.com/news/2017/07/nypd_gang_members_busted_for_b.html#incart_breaking</b></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-38336156298471759372016-11-14T09:52:00.000-08:002016-11-14T09:52:08.091-08:00Staten Island Gets Veterans Court<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Officials gathered Wednesday to mark the opening of the Richmond County Veterans Court. The special part hears cases of defendants who are veterans and who may have problems with addiction, mental illness or other disorders, and links eligible offenders to treatment and services as an alternative to incarceration. There are now 29 Veterans Courts in New York state, including all five boroughs.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From left, Richmond County Bar Association president Christopher Caputo; Staten Island borough president James Oddo; Staten Island district attorney Michael McMahon; Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Judith McMahon, administrative judge for civil matters; Veterans Court mentor coordinator Robert Mulhall; John Fusco, counsel to the borough president; Richmond County Bar president-elect Allyn Crawford; Sherry Klein Heitler, chief of policy and planning for the court system; Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks; and Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Stephen Rooney, administrative judge for criminal matters who will preside over the Veterans Court.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>The Full NYLJ Article can be found <a href="http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/home/id=1202772004164/Staten-Island-Gets-Veterans-Court?mcode=1202617075062&curindex=5&slreturn=20161014124608">HERE.</a></b></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-41053508263736047192016-11-10T09:15:00.000-08:002016-11-10T09:15:13.181-08:00Undercover sting nabs California mother selling ceviche through Facebook group<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mariza Ruelas never expected a plate of ceviche would lead her to the courthouse and maybe even a possible jail sentence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For more than a year, undercover investigators in San Joaquin County, Calif., tracked the sales of food — such as homemade tamales, tortillas and cakes — through a community Facebook group, a sting that Ruelas called a “waste of time and resources and taxpayers’ money.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ruelas, a single mother of six, first came across the Facebook group about two years ago when she needed a last-minute cake for her daughter’s quinceañera, the Hispanic coming-of-age celebration on a young woman’s 15th birthday.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The community forum, 209 Food Spot, allowed Stockton, Calif., residents to share recipes, organize potlucks and occasionally sell or exchange food items.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As a hobby, about once a month, Ruelas began offering up her own dishes — a tray of rice and beans in exchange for a birthday cake, her chicken-stuffed avocados to those who requested them, she said in a phone interview with The Washington Post.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then, in July, she received a letter in the mail: She was being summoned to court. Ruelas, along with several other group members, faced citations on two misdemeanors — operating a food facility and engaging in business without a permit. An undercover investigator had ordered ceviche from her through the Facebook group in October 2015 as part of a sting.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At least a half-dozen other members accepted a plea deal of one year of probation, a $235 fine and 40 hours of community service. Ruelas was offered a deal with twice the community service, three years of probation and the $235 fine, so she refused to accept it, she said.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She is headed to trial and faces up to a year in jail.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>The full Washington Post article can be found <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/07/undercover-sting-nabs-california-mother-selling-ceviche-through-facebook-group/">HERE</a></b></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-19540580117880038762016-11-08T06:49:00.003-08:002016-11-08T06:49:58.915-08:00Court-appointed attorneys do little work, records show<b><br /></b>
<iframe title="DETROIT FREE PRESS - Embed Player" width="540" height="304" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="true" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src=http://www.freep.com/videos/embed/93189420/?fullsite=true></iframe>
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<b>The Full Story Can be Found<a href="http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/11/03/court-appointed-attorneys-ingham-michigan/93228990/"> HERE</a></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-51627133523933758992016-11-08T06:47:00.000-08:002016-11-08T06:47:01.142-08:00Facing Death, Brooklyn District Attorney Spoke of Doing What ‘Is Right’<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A NYT TIMES ARTICLE WRITTEN BY YAMICHE ALCINDOR:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I asked Mr. Thompson about the case of Peter Liang, a police officer who fatally shot a black man, Akai Gurley, in the stairway of a public housing building. Mr. Liang was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to probation and community service. Some officers were angry at Mr. Thompson for pursuing the case; Mr. Gurley’s family was angry at him for recommending no jail time for Mr. Liang.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mr. Thompson’s spokeswoman, listening to the call, interjected, trying to steer him away from the subject, but he rebuffed her.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“No, no, I know it’s on the table,” he said. “I approached that case with a determination to get justice. The problem is, these cops often are not prosecuted. And people forget also, in all the criticism of me, that I did the Abner Louima trial with Loretta Lynch. I did the opening statement for the United States government, and helped convict Justin Volpe, who got 30 years and is still in prison now. And so when it comes to police brutality, I’m adamant.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He had made his name as a federal prosecutor in the case of Mr. Louima, a Haitian immigrant tortured with a broomstick while in custody at a Brooklyn police station in 1997.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nearly two decades later, as district attorney, he sought the convictions of two officers who knocked out a teenager’s teeth and were captured on video doing it. And he recommended a three-month sentence for an officer who stomped on the head of a man being arrested, he said, “because that was a blatant act of police brutality.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we talked, Mr. Thompson listed his proudest accomplishments: his decision not to prosecute most low-level marijuana arrests in Brooklyn, even as the police continued to make them; the establishment of a juvenile court, in partnership with the city courts and the police, to help young people charged with minor offenses avoid criminal records; and a program that invited city residents to clear open arrest warrants for petty crimes without going to court.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet nothing evidently gave him more pleasure than the unit he had set up to reverse miscarriages of justice.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“In two years and eight months, we have vacated 21 wrongful convictions,” Mr. Thompson said. “Twenty-one.” All of the defendants were black or Hispanic, he added. “Now, I don’t know any D.A. who is doing it like that.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He stressed that the exoneration cases had been carefully chosen. “We are not flipping a coin,” he said. “It is still a rigorous, fair, thorough investigation that we take. But I am not going to be a coward, in any way, from doing what I think is right. And I think that one of the biggest things that represents my determination to make a difference is my work with wrongful convictions.”</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The full NYT article can be found <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/us/politics/ken-thompson-brooklyn-district-attorney.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=1">HERE</a></b></li>
</ul>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-77296437122500305672016-08-15T07:42:00.002-07:002016-08-15T07:42:41.856-07:00DEFENDANT REQUESTED COUNSEL BEFORE REFUSING CHEMICAL TEST; REFUSAL SUPRESSION GRANTED<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nieves
was charged with, among other things, driving while under the influence of
alcohol. He was pulled over after an officer observed that Nieves' vehicle did
not have any lights lit anywhere, and was overtaking other, slower cars from
the left side. The officer noticed Nieves had bloodshot, blurry eyes and
slurred speech. A portable breath test indicated a 0.1 BAC. When Nieves was
asked at the precinct if he would consent to a breath test, he indicated not
until he spoke to a lawyer. The court found the stop of the vehicle was
justified for Nieves' violation of not having car lights on after dark, and the
officer had probable cause, based on observations, to arrest Nieves for DWI.
The court opined if suppression of the refusal to take a blood alcohol test was
warranted if Nieves was denied his right to counsel. It ruled Nieves was never
afforded the opportunity to provide the officer with complete sentences, as the
officer consistently cut-off Nieves nearly after every question posed. The
court found Nieves specifically and unequivocally requested counsel before
refusing to the chemical test, finding the officer never took steps to enable
Nieves to attempt to promptly reach an attorney. Thus, suppression of the
refusal was granted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
full story can be found here: <a href="http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202763336095">http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202763336095</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-14407331397526907622016-08-05T07:14:00.000-07:002016-08-05T07:14:14.633-07:00Judge Declines to Dismiss Criminal Charge Against MTA Driver<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
A Queens judge has refused to dismiss a criminal charge against a bus driver accused of striking and killing a pedestrian, adding that he disagreed with a fellow Queens judge's recent ruling that the law creating the penalty is unconstitutional.</div>
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According to court papers, in November 2014, Curtis Green was driving a bus for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and, while turning right on Northern Boulevard in Queens, allegedly struck Edward Cohen as he crossed the street. Cohen later died of his injuries.</div>
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Green was charged with violating Administrative Code §19-190, or the Right of Way Law, enacted as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio's Vision Zero initiative to eliminate pedestrian deaths.</div>
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The law made the failure to exercise due care by motorists who strike pedestrians or cyclists and cause injury— previously a traffic violation—into the equivalent of a class B misdemeanor.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
In a July 27 ruling in <a href="http://newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202764336656" rel="nofollow" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #467984; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><em>People v. Green</em></a>, 2015QN000650, Queens Criminal Court <a href="http://judges.newyorklawjournal.com/profile/New_York_City_Criminal_Court,_Queens_County/Ernest_Hart/Ernest_Hart-50000070.xml" rel="nofollow" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #467984; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Judge Ernest Hart</a>rejected Green's arguments that the law violates his due process rights and that the term "due care" is unconstitutionally vague, finding that failure of due care is a culpable mental state that would violate Vehicle and Traffic Law §1146.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
Hart's ruling clashes with Queens Criminal Court Judge Gia Morris' June 24 finding in <em>People v. Sanson</em>, 2015QN008701, that the law's application of a civil tort negligence standard—rather than a culpable mens rea, which is typically required in criminal cases—is unconstitutional on its face.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
Hart also rejected Green's arguments that the Right of Way Law is preempted by the state's Public Authorities Law, which governs MTA conduct.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
Assistant District Attorney Amy Markel appeared for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown's Office.</div>
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Harriet Wong, an associate with Armienti, DeBellis, Guglielmo & Rhoden, represented Green.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Droid Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 12.6563px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK <a href="http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202764277436/Judge-Declines-to-Dismiss-Criminal-Charge-Against-MTA-Driver?kw=Judge%20Declines%20to%20Dismiss%20Criminal%20Charge%20Against%20MTA%20Driver">HERE</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-14021820581760832042016-07-14T11:32:00.000-07:002016-07-14T11:32:45.659-07:00Mixing diet drink with alcohol can backfire<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; direction: ltr; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 0.875em; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 1.25em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<b>People who mix alcohol and diet drinks end up with more alcohol on their breath, according to a new study.</b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; direction: ltr; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 0.875em; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 1.25em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<b>People who drank vodka mixed with diet soda had higher alcohol concentrations on their breath than those who drank the same amount of vodka mixed with regular soda, researchers wrote in <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Drug and Alcohol Dependence</em>.</b></div>
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<b>Crime-prevention materials should include this information so that people know that by trying to avoid some extra calories in a mixed drink, they risk having higher breath-alcohol concentrations, wrote the researchers, led by Amy Stamates of Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, near Cincinnati.</b></div>
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<b>For the new study, researchers had 10 men and 10 women ages 21 to 30 drink five different mixed-beverage combinations over five sessions. The drinks contained varying amounts of vodka and either diet or regular sweetened soda. One drink was just regular soda alone.</b></div>
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<b>The researchers then measured the alcohol concentrations in the participants’ breaths for three hours.</b></div>
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<b>They found higher concentrations of alcohol — as much as 25 percent greater — on the breaths of the participants when they drank the mixed beverages containing diet soda.</b></div>
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<b>Researchers say the findings may be particularly relevant to young women, who are most likely to use diet beverages in their mixed drinks.</b></div>
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<b>Dr. Chris Rayner, a gastroenterologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said that so-called gastric emptying is likely the reason for higher alcohol concentrations in the participants’ breaths.</b></div>
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<b>In a previous study, Rayner found alcohol left the stomach and entered the bloodstream faster when people used diet drinks in their mixed beverages, compared with regularly sweetened drinks.</b></div>
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<b>Rayner, who was not involved in the new study, said the effects of alcohol are mitigated if consumed with nutrients such as sugar, because it slows the entry of alcohol into the small intestine, where it is absorbed by the body.</b></div>
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<b>The full article can be found here: </b><b style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 19.6px;"><a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2015/11/27/mixing-diet-drink-with-alcohol-can-backfire.html">http://www.dispatch.com</a></b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-3530516073306354312016-06-30T12:32:00.003-07:002016-06-30T12:32:36.089-07:00Judge Shows Skill in Flicking Gravity Knife During Bench Trial<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's not every day you see a federal judge flick open a gravity knife from behind the bench.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Southern District Judge Katherine Forrest wasn't menacing anyone Thursday, nor was she trying to win acceptance from a street gang. She was just trying her hand at opening a knife that is currently illegal under a New York law that sellers and purchasers say should be ruled unconstitutional.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forrest is presiding over a bench trial where the plaintiffs are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief blocking enforcement of state laws §265.0(5) and §265.01(1)—laws they say expose people who use everyday folding knives for their jobs or simple tasks, and not as weapons, to criminal liability.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gravity knives are defined as any knife which has a blade that is released from the handle or sheath "by the force of gravity or the application of centrifugal force" and when released is locked in place "by means of a button, spring, lever, or other device."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Police and prosecutors have long arrested and charged people with possession of a gravity knife if the knife passes the so-called "wrist flick" test that Forrest employed in court Thursday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The named plaintiff in the case is John Copeland, an artist who said he uses knives for his work and is well aware of the law. Copeland bought the knife at a store in 2009 and immediately asked two police officers to apply the "wrist flick" test.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While neither officer could open the knife that way, in October 2010, Copeland was stopped by two officers who were able to open the knife using what he said were exceptionally forceful wrist flicks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"A person has no way to know that's a gravity knife or whether they will be prosecuted," plaintiffs' lawyer Daniel Schmutter told the court Thursday in Copeland v. Vance, 11-cv-03918.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forrest dismissed the case, which includes a second individual plaintiff and a knife seller, Native Leather, for lack of standing in 2013 but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated it in 2015 (NYLJ, Sept. 23, 2015).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Native Leather was charged in 2010 as part of an initiative by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in which he pursued seven retailers who ultimately paid almost $1.8 million in fines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Native Leather entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with Vance's office.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The law has been criticized by civil liberties advocates as vague because it has been enforced against people possessing simple folding knives—and because they say it has been disproportionately enforced against minorities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the suit before Forrest may be short-lived. On Wednesday, the state Legislature passed a bill (A09042/S06483) to reform the law and exclude simple folding knives. The measure now awaits the signature of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Schmutter, of Hartman & Winnicki in Ridgewood, New Jersey, did his own demonstration on a series of knives Thursday and the District Attorney's Office submitted its own video demonstration. The demonstrations were also recorded for the Second Circuit's benefit should there be an appeal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The full article can be found <a href="http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202760275039?keywords=judge+shows+skill+in+flicking+gravity&publication=New+York+Law+Journal">here.</a></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-60026815154042338922016-02-12T10:18:00.000-08:002016-02-16T06:33:18.597-08:00SUPPORT PETER LIANG - SAMPLE SUPPORT LETTER TO JUDGE DANNY CHUN<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you would like to support Peter Liang, please write a letter to the Judge expressing your feelings about the trial and verdict. I have included a SAMPLE letter below, but you don't have to use it. If you have the time, you can choose to write a letter in your own words.</span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Send the letter to me (and not the Judge directly) so I can include it in a court filing.</span></b></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can email it to: Rbrown@robertbrownlaw.com or fax it to 718-979-9784 or mail it to:</span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Robert E. Brown, PC </span></b></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">44 Wall Street, 12th Floor</span></b></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></b></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">New York, NY 10005</span></b></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span>
<span style="line-height: 15.3333px;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[Name & Address]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">____________________________________________</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> ____________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">____________________________________________</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> ____________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">_________________, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Chambers of the Honorable Danny Chun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Supreme Court of the State of New
York<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">County of Kings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">320 Jay Street, 19<sup>th</sup>
Floor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Brooklyn, New York 11201<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <b>RE: <i>People v. Peter Liang<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Indictment No. 9988/2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dear
Honorable Chun,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> I am
writing to you in support of Police Officer Peter Liang. I believe that his
conviction was unjust and I do not believe that the charge of reckless
manslaughter is supported by any reasonable view of the evidence submitted at
trial. Likewise, the conviction of official misconduct is unsupported by the
evidence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I respectfully ask that you set aside the illogical verdict
handed down by the jury. If you will not set aside the verdict, I respectfully
ask that you sentence Police Officer Peter Liang to probation. Institutional confinement
of Police Officer Peter Liang is not necessary for the protection of the
public. A prison sentence would be inconsistent with the ends of justice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Respectfully
submitted,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">______________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com116tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-90510778438809785282016-02-11T07:55:00.002-08:002016-02-11T07:55:31.462-08:00Brooklyn Jury Deliberates Fate of NYPD Officer, Peter Liang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz8_Ja2JYAAkwyzu-71FGFws_qD_wG7GdoOnUxm8z_yzJ1dh27J1R8gCAh9ZneOY8sNmfQBqlGkb93ftnF7gQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-12356078202452831352016-02-11T07:33:00.001-08:002016-02-11T07:33:29.050-08:00Jury Deliberations Begin in the Trial of Officer Liang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-76789676757382176242016-02-11T07:27:00.004-08:002016-02-11T07:27:47.312-08:00Ex-Police Capt. Runs A Damning Interrogation<div style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); float: none !important; font-stretch: normal; margin-top: 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px; line-height: 24px;">Robert Brown, an ex-NYPD Captain who is one of the attorneys for Police Officer Peter Liang, performed the equivalent of a station-house grilling on his client’s former partner, Shaun Landau, pointing out inconsistencies between his witness-stand testimony and what he had previously told police investigators and prosecutors, as well as the grand jury that indicted Mr. Liang on charges of manslaughter, criminally-negligent homicide and official misconduct in the accidental shooting of Akai Gurley. He also elicited testimony that showed neither cop had been required to learn first-aid and CPR because they were ‘fed the answers’ to test questions in the Police Academy.</span></span></b></div>
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The trial of Police Officer Peter Liang for the accidental death of Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn housing project 15 months ago had as one of its key subplots his partner, Shaun Landau, testifying for the prosecution.</div>
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It is a work relationship unlike most others, since the partners depend upon each other for protection not only from criminals but from their own errant impulses under stress. Trust in the partner can be the difference between a cop feeling compelled to use his weapon precipitously or waiting an extra beat to better assess the situation because of the confidence that if the situation is as bad as his initial impression tells him, he’s got someone close by to help him get through it.</div>
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When one of the pair does something improper, the question for the second one is a double-edged sword: is his duty to see that no adverse consequences rain down on the partner, or is it to the public that pays his or her salary and depends on the kind of honesty that often has nothing to do with money?</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>Conflicting Loyalties’ Collateral Damage</u></span></div>
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Officer Landau, judging by his testimony under artfully tough cross-examination Feb. 2 and 4 by one of Officer Liang’s attorneys, Robert Brown, got himself caught between those conflicting loyalties, and the prosecution case by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office may have taken the worst of the crash.</div>
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Mr. Brown is a former NYPD Captain, and his familiarity with police procedure had been on display earlier in the day as he cross-examined Det. Joseph Agosto, a department firearms instructor based at its outdoor range in Rodman’s Neck up in The Bronx, last Tuesday.</div>
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Assistant District Attorney Marc Fliedner took the Detective through the protocol for handling a gun on the street and the training that officers like Mr. Liang get in the Police Academy before beginning patrol duty: five days of basic firearms training and eight days dealing with tactics. Mr. Fliedner elicited from Mr. Agosto the fact that the kind of Glock that Officer Liang used as his service weapon had a safety trigger “to make sure that the gun if dropped would not go off,” and that if the gun were held properly, with the trigger finger on the side of the gun, it could not be inadvertently fired. Before putting a finger on the trigger, Detective Agosto said, cops “have to identify the threat and identify the target.”</div>
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That is also the basis for cops resorting to deadly force, Detective Agosto testified: “when a police officer has reason to believe that deadly physical force is being used against him, her or somebody else.” But Mr. Brown sought to establish that this protocol covered intentional shots, not accidental ones.</div>
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The training manual states, the Detective testified, “Before entering a room, attempt to open a door fully.”</div>
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Officer Liang is on trial under suspicion he improperly had his finger on the trigger as he tried to open the door to the eighth-floor stairwell of the Louis Pink Houses in East New York with the same hand in which he held the gun. When he was startled by a sound, his finger reflexively squeezed the trigger as he tried to compose himself, and the bullet he fired struck the wall of the stairwell one landing below and ricocheted into the chest of Akai Gurley, who was heading down the stairs with his girlfriend.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>‘Startled-Response’ Cases</u></span></div>
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Mr. Brown elicited from Detective Agosto that there were roughly 20 accidental discharges a year in the NYPD, based on the number actually reported by officers, and that there were cases of “startled-response reaction” in which the gun hand “clenches up…with the gun you’re not gonna drop it; you’re probably gonna hold it tighter.”</div>
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The lawyer tried to establish that there was nothing in the NYPD Patrol Guide that specifically set criteria for when a cop can put his finger on the trigger; during the first week of the trial one of the officers summoned to the scene after Mr. Gurley was shot testified that his inclination upon arriving at the building was not to have his gun out when he entered the lobby so as to avoid creating a sense of alarm among residents.</div>
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Mr. Brown attempted to use the cross-examination to buttress an argument that he and co-counsel Rae Downes Koshetz have made that the Brooklyn DA’s Office has treated the case more severely than is warranted because of the public outcry in the wake of the Nov. 20, 2014 shooting, just four months after the death of Eric Garner, in which a contributing factor was a Staten Island cop’s apparent use of an NYPD-banned chokehold.</div>
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“In your experience,” the attorney asked Detective Agosto, “are you aware of any police officer being charged with manslaughter for an accidental discharge?”</div>
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Mr. Fliedner objected, and Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun sustained it, barring the Detective from making Mr. Brown’s point for him.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>A Defining Face-Off?</u></span></div>
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That set the stage for his confrontation with Officer Landau, who was the next and last witness of the day. It didn’t have the emotional impact of the testimony that began the day from Melissa Butler, Mr. Gurley’s girlfriend who had desperately tried to use chest compressions to revive him amid her tears and what she described as a pool of his urine and blood on the floor of the stairwell. But while less dramatic, it may have at least as significant an impact on the outcome of the case when jurors ultimately reach their conclusions.</div>
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Officer Landau entered the Police Academy, in a class that included Officer Liang, in July 2013, graduating five months later. He was assigned to Public Service Area 2 of the NYPD’s Housing Bureau, covering Brooklyn’s roughest area, Brownsville and East New York. The two of them had already worked together with some frequency by the time they officially became partners in March 2014.</div>
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They were working an overtime tour that began at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 20, 2014, he testified. There had been a shooting inside the Pink Houses a week earlier, and their Sergeant informed them during roll call that they would be doing vertical patrols in the long-troubled development, checking stairwells and the roof of one of the buildings in the complex. At about 9 that evening, the Sergeant picked them up for a meal run, and then they returned and took the building’s elevator to the eighth floor, from which they could reach the roof and then work their way downward.</div>
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It was fairly common to find illicit activity in the vicinity of the roof, much less so to encounter people on the stairwells, Officer Landau testified. There was a window on the door leading to the eighth-floor stairwell, and through it he could see it was “pitch black” in the stairwell. He didn’t know whether the bulb had burned out or had simply been unscrewed.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>A Shot, Then Footsteps</u></span></div>
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Officer Liang took out his flashlight and his service weapon and “pushed off with his right shoulder” to go through the door. “I just hear a shot,” Officer Landau testified under questioning by Mr. Fliedner.</div>
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Abruptly, Officer Liang returned to the hallway. “I heard footsteps,” Officer Landau told the jury. “It sounded like running.”</div>
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So he said to his partner, he recounted ‘What the f---- happened’—excuse my French—and he said ‘it went off by accident.’</div>
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“I was in shock,” Officer Landau continued. “Because the gun just fired out of nowhere.”</div>
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He testified Officer Liang, who at that point had no idea that the bullet had struck anyone, “just said, ‘I’m fired.’ I said, ‘No you’re not—it was just an accidental discharge.’”</div>
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That didn’t mollify Officer Liang, and so Officer Landau testified that he then urged him to call their Sergeant and let him know what happened. His partner responded, he said, by urging him to make the call, but Officer Landau refused, explaining, “He was the one who had the discharge—I felt he should call.”</div>
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One of the changes Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said he sought to institute when he returned to the NYPD 11 months earlier was to end the practice that had developed under Operation Impact of pairing young officers in high-crime neighborhoods rather than putting inexperienced cops with veteran officers. One reason had been that the younger officers, feeling pressure to meet goals for arrests and summonses and often lacking the street smarts to differentiate between the bad guys in a neighborhood and those merely dressing the part to avoid becoming targets themselves, had blown up the department’s stop-and-frisk numbers until the high percentage of bad stops spurred a public outcry that heavily influenced the 2013 mayoral race.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>Inexperience Surfaced</u></span></div>
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But what Mr. Bratton subsequently called a lack of experienced officers who could be paired with the rookies had led to Officers Landau and Liang working together in precisely the kind of high-stress assignment where a cooler, older head could be invaluable. Now their inexperience was showing itself in embarrassing ways, as they argued over who should make the call while three floors below them the tragedy set in motion by Officer Liang’s loss of balance, nervous reaction or some combination of the two was playing out.</div>
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Officer Liang took his cell-phone from him and punched the Sergeant’s phone number into his own phone; Officer Landau took back his phone and nothing happened for what he testified was approximately four minutes.</div>
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“I had to decompress—just the initial shock of everything,” he testified. They still didn’t know, by his account, that someone had been on the receiving end of the errant bullet squeezed off by Officer Liang, yet were too consumed by their anxiety to check immediately whether any damage had actually been done.</div>
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When they finally walked into the stairwell, Officer Landau shined his flashlight against the wall to see if there was a bullet-hole to be found. He said he heard some noise coming from several floors below that he thought might be “crying, something like that.”</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>A Man on His Back</u></span></div>
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The seventh-floor stairwell was also “pitch-black,” he testified, but they made their way down toward the fifth floor, where “we saw someone laying down…on his back…His eyes were open…there was a woman there. She was crying.”</div>
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At that point a young woman sitting on a front-row bench reserved for Mr. Gurley’s family and friends hurriedly left the courtroom. All he did, Officer Landau said, was to instruct his partner “that he had to put it over the radio that someone was shot.”</div>
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He said Officer Liang had exclaimed, “Oh my God, someone’s shot!” Neither of them did anything to assist Ms. Butler, who was frantically trying to perform chest compressions to revive Mr. Gurley. Mr. Landau said that he went into a hallway so that other officers responding to the scene would see him right away, and that eventually Officer Liang followed him, but they didn’t speak. A supervisor arrived and took his partner’s gun, he testified, and then “Officer Liang just fell to the floor and started crying…EMS came and they took us to the hospital,” where they were treated for trauma.</div>
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His narrative served the prosecution’s purpose of showing that Officer Liang after the accidental discharge had been too overcome by the possible impact on his career to follow any of his training for dealing with what confronted them, and so neglected his duty to try to render aid to the man who was dying due to his carelessness.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>NYPD Future Up in Air</u></span></div>
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Mr. Fliedner tried to inoculate Officer Landau against the cross-examination that would come from Mr. Liang’s side, telling the jury that he had been placed on modified assignment, minus his shield and his gun, right after the shooting and remained there. Hanging over him are NYPD administrative charges and a lawsuit brought by Mr. Gurley’s family in which he is a defendant, along with Officer Liang, the NYPD and the city.</div>
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As a result of his agreement with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to cooperate in its investigation and testify at trial, Officer Landau said, “I cannot be criminally prosecuted” but got no promises regarding his job status or the civil suit. “I was just told that anything I said would not be used against me” in a criminal prosecution.</div>
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Getting that information out there didn’t help much once Mr. Brown began his cross-examination. He only needed 15 minutes before the case adjourned until two days later to dirty up Officer Landau enough to damage his value as a witness and stir the waters of reasonable doubt regarding two of the charges against Officer Liang.</div>
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The attorney asked Officer Landau about statements he made to police investigators the morning after the shooting, one of two internal interviews he submitted to in a six-day period. Back then, he had stated, “Officer Liang put over the radio that there was an accidental discharge. MOS (member of the service) involved, male shot. We need a bus,” referring to an ambulance.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>Not in His Testimony</u></span></div>
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Mr. Brown said, “You never mentioned any of this in your direct testimony, did you?”</div>
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During an NYPD administrative interrogation on Nov. 26, 2014, he continued, Officer Landau stated, “Liang put it over the radio… he tried to put it over a few times.”</div>
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“You realize,” Mr. Brown asked Mr. Landau with some heat in his voice, “your partner’s being charged with a crime for failing to call it in…official misconduct? But he did in fact call for an ambulance. He did in fact notify that there was a male shot.”</div>
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Mr. Brown asked the cop whether he understood the parameters of his immunity agreement with the DA’s Office.</div>
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“It couldn’t be used against me,” Officer Landau said of the evidence he offered.</div>
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“But it could be used against your partner,” the lawyer retorted.</div>
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The cop denied that he was testifying against his partner. Former U.S. Sen. Al D’Amato took the same position during the trial three months ago of former State Sen. Majority Leader Dean Skelos, an old friend and political ally, and sounded no more convincing.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>What’s the Difference?</u></span></div>
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Mr. Brown noted that Officer Liang was being charged with not calling in the incident and not attempting to perform CPR. “You did the exact same thing,” he told Officer Landau. “But you’re not being charged criminally. And you don’t have any idea why that is?”</div>
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The answer, aside from the immunity deal, was obvious: Officer Landau hadn’t fired the shot that left an innocent man bleeding to death in a project stairwell. When Mr. Brown told Justice Chun he was about to move into a new area of his cross-examination, the judge cited the lateness of the day and adjourned the proceedings. But even with a break in the trial the following day at the request of several jurors, this gave Officer Landau just a temporary reprieve.</div>
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When the case resumed last Thursday morning, Mr. Brown established that on the night of the killing, it was roughly 11:14 when Officer Liang sought to enter the stairwell and things began to go wrong. He then asked Officer Landau, “Are you aware that Officer Liang’s voice was captured on the 911 tape at approximately 11:17?”</div>
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“No,” the cop replied.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>A Much-Shorter Lapse?</u></span></div>
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Since that three-minute period was partly consumed by the two cops making their way down the darkened stairwell, this raised serious questions about Officer Landau’s claim that he and Officer Liang had quarreled for four minutes before they even entered the stairwell to see what damage the misfire might have caused.</div>
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Reminding Officer Landau of his question—”What the f----- happened” and noting that the cop had testified that the shot had left his ears ringing, Mr. Brown asked whether it was possible Officer Liang had actually said “I fired”—a logical response—rather than “I’m fired,” which hinted that his primary concern was his job status rather than whether he had hurt someone.</div>
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The attorney pointed out that in his initial departmental interview, Officer Landau “couldn’t recall exactly what [Officer Liang] said. Now, a year and change later, you recall exactly what he said.”</div>
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Officer Landau responded that at the time of that G.O. 15 interview, “I was exhausted, I was pulled out of the hospital, I was still stressed out.”</div>
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“So you’re saying your memory got better over time,” Mr. Brown said with a touch of mockery. He then moved to an interview the cop had with Mr. Fliedner and co-counsel Joe Alexis on Dec. 10, 2014, in which he said the dispute about who would call in the incident took between 30 and 40 seconds. And two months later, he added, “You told a grand jury a different story, didn’t you?”</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>Admits Inconsistencies</u></span></div>
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Officer Landau admitted that he hadn’t mentioned the “you call/no, you call” quarrel in his first NYPD interview, and acknowledged that by snatching his own cell-phone from his partner’s hand, he had prevented Officer Liang from calling their Sergeant while they were still in the hallway. He also acknowledged that he had told Mr. Fliedner and Mr. Alexis during their interview 20 days after the shooting that he heard Mr. Liang call in the incident from the stairwell.</div>
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Having implicitly raised questions in that exchange about why prosecutors had opted to charge Officer Liang with official misconduct, Mr. Brown moved to an area that suggested some culpability rested with the NYPD for reasons that went beyond pairing two such inexperienced cops in such a dangerous assignment. He got Officer Landau to state that he remembered “very little” about his first-aid and CPR training, even though at the time of the incident he was only 11 months removed from the Police Academy.</div>
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Asked whether he had read the books officers are given in the academy about those two subjects “cover to cover,” Officer Landau replied, “No.”</div>
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“You were trained in the Police Academy not to do something that would make matters worse?” Mr. Brown asked, implying that this was why he might have hesitated to take over the chest-compression work from Ms. Butler.</div>
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“Yes,” the cop replied.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>Sneak Preview of Tests</u></span></div>
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And then the lawyer’s past life as an NYPD Captain really kicked in: he asked Officer Landau whether he had been told during his academy classes what questions would be on the CPR and first-aid exams that all candidates had to pass in order to graduate. “You were fed the questions and you were fed the answers, correct?” he asked Officer Landau.</div>
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“Yes.”</div>
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In a bit less than 75 minutes over two days, he had managed to blow large holes in Officer Landau’s credibility while doing similar damage to the institution for which he worked. The potential impact this had on the case seemed to leave Mr. Fliedner flustered as well: the prosecutor’s tone was angry as he confronted the man who was supposed to be the most-powerful witness against Officer Liang because of their close professional relationship.</div>
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Over the course of the seven minutes in which he tried to recoup some of what had been lost, Mr. Fliedner several times had Justice Chun uphold defense objections based on questions he was asking being either leading or improper for a re-direct examination. More than once, Mr. Brown protested, “Objection, he’s cross-examining his own witness” and the judge concurred.</div>
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Mr. Fliedner reacted with incredulity when Officer Landau told him he didn’t know what to do in administering aid to the stricken Mr. Gurley, as if he hadn’t heard him say as much during the earlier cross-examination by Mr. Brown.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><u>‘Not Going Into Darkness’</u></span></div>
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Given a second shot at cross-examination, Mr. Liang’s attorney was brief. Speaking to Officer Landau about where he was standing in relation to his partner just before the fateful, bungled attempt to open the stairwell door, he said to the cop, “You aren’t the one going into the darkness, are you? You’re the one standing in the light.”</div>
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“Correct,” Officer Landau replied.</div>
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The case was expected, as this newspaper went to press Feb. 8, to go to the jury the following day. Despite the points Mr. Brown had scored at the expense of the cop and the prosecutors, Officer Liang still had hanging over him that accidentally fired bullet, and the maddening bad luck for him and, especially, Mr. Gurley, that the ricochet off the cinderblock wall had such devastating consequences. It still seemed more likely than not that he would be convicted of criminally-negligent homicide.</div>
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But the point Mr. Brown seemed to have made with his methodical dissection of the inconsistencies in Officer Landau’s statements was that not only wasn’t Officer Liang a feckless villain, but in their reaction to the pressures created by his clumsiness, the partners weren’t all that different in their lack of readiness to protect and serve.</div>
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Full Article <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px;">By RICHARD STEIER</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.0017px; font-weight: 700;"> </span>can be found here: <a href="http://thechiefleader.com/news/open_articles/ex-police-capt-runs-a-damning-interrogation/article_f5ab6422-be1e-11e5-9fff-cf9e7ca7d887.html?mode=print">http://thechiefleader.com/</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-64085880830107167662016-01-18T10:46:00.002-08:002016-01-18T10:46:58.681-08:00On Trial for Second-Degree Manslaughter, NYPD Cop to Testify<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #232323; font-family: ProximaNovaRegular, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 1.125em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; word-wrap: break-word;">
Peter Liang, the New York Police Department (NYPD) officer accused of fatally shooting an unarmed black man in a Brooklyn housing project in 2014, will testify in his own defense, his attorney told NBC News. A pretrial hearing is expected to begin Tuesday.</div>
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Liang, an NYPD officer for less than two years, was patrolling a darkened stairwell at the Louis H. Pink Houses with his partner, Shaun Landau, that Akai Gurley and his girlfriend had entered on Nov. 20, 2014, around 11 p.m. when Liang's gun went off, police said. The single bullet was said to have ricocheted off the wall, striking and killing 28-year-old Gurley.</div>
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<a href="http://robertbrownlaw.com/" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">Robert E. Brown</a>, a former NYPD captain who took over as one of Liang's attorneys in November, declined to comment on what Liang might say on the witness stand.</div>
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For Tuesday's pretrial hearing, Brown said he anticipates a police lieutenant who heard Liang say he shot Gurley by accident and who recovered Liang's gun will be called by prosecutors to testify. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Thursday and will likely take at least two days to complete, Brown said. Opening statements could begin as early as Jan. 25 or Jan. 26, he said.</div>
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Liang, who <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nypd-officer-pleads-not-guilty-stairwell-shooting-n304596" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">pleaded not guilty </a>to second-degree manslaughter and other charges last February, has opted to be tried by a jury instead of a judge, Brown said. Liang does still have the right to switch to a bench trial if he chooses, he added.</div>
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Liang's attorneys will also consider whether to file a change of venue to have the case tried elsewhere, Brown said. That decision will depend on whether they believe they can select an impartial jury, he said.</div>
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In addition to Liang, Brown said they plan to call a firearms expert to the witness stand. Brown told NBC News in December that the trigger spring on Liang's gun may have been "defectively installed." He said that a Glock 9-mm handgun requires 12 pounds of pressure to activate the trigger, but that according to a ballistics report, Liang's weapon needed only 11.5 pounds.</div>
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At the time, Brown also described as inaccurate claims that, according to prosecution <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2110003/people-v-liang-memorandum.pdf" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">court documents</a>, Liang and his partner argued for two minutes over who should report the shooting to their superiors, and that the officers waited almost 20 minutes before radioing in to report an "accidental fire."</div>
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In response to Brown's statements, a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office told NBC News in December that "we intend to present the evidence in this case at trial."</div>
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Since the <a href="http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/akai-gurley-nypd-officer-indicted-police-shooting-stairwell-unarmed-man-291429301.html" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">indictment</a> last February, the case has <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/chinese-community-divided-over-nypd-officers-indictment-n306946" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">stirred a maelstrom of emotion</a>within the Chinese-American community, with <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/race-doesnt-matter-reactions-officer-liangs-indictment-n304431" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">some saying</a> Liang must be held accountable for Gurley's death. Others argue that Liang is being made a<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/thousands-support-officer-liang-rally-n320621" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">scapegoat</a> to compensate for a lack of indictments in other fatal incidents involving police officers, including the 2014 chokehold death of <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-city-reaches-settlement-family-eric-garner-n391486" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">Eric Garner</a> in Staten Island.</div>
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Members of <a href="http://caaav.org/" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities</a>, a group that addresses police and hate violence toward Asian immigrants, have attended hearings at the Brooklyn courthouse and have staged and <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/march-planned-mark-anniversary-death-akai-gurley-n466071" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">participated in rallies</a> in support of Gurley. Chinese Americans have done the same for Liang, including <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/thousands-support-officer-liang-rally-n320621" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">holding a demonstration</a> outside City Hall last March that organizers said attracted between 1,800 and 2,000 participants.</div>
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Last November, Brown and <a href="https://ecmail.inbcu.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=krC9azP73kK4Ok5vgRBNWaGSACNS9tIIzZRR0ReGUqwAcffI05x3jj7t0GE5dojRqrNFjGNK_gw.&URL=http%253a%252f%252fwww.raekoshetz.com%252fabout.php" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">Rae Downes Koshetz</a> <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/march-planned-mark-anniversary-death-akai-gurley-n466071" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">replaced</a> Liang's former attorney Stephen C. Worth, whose <a href="http://www.wll-law.com/about-the-firm/" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">primary client</a> is the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the union for NYPD officers. Koshetz served for 14 years as a deputy commissioner with the NYPD, supervising and presiding over disciplinary trials of civilian and uniformed members of the police department on everything from rules violations to homicides.</div>
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Gurley's family <a href="http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Akai-Gurley-Family-Daughter-Lawsuit-Shooting-Peter-Liang-Pink-Houses-Garner-304571801.html" style="background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #4372b8; text-decoration: none;">filed</a> a civil lawsuit last May against Liang, Landau, and the New York City Housing Authority on behalf of Gurley's daughter and mother.</div>
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While Brown called Gurley's death tragic, he said Liang's actions were not criminal.</div>
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"Whether or not it's civil negligence, that's a completely different determination," Brown said. "Whether or not there was a training issue in the police department, whether or not there's an issue of his gun being defective, those are all questions for a civil jury to determine."</div>
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<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/trial-second-degree-manslaughter-nypd-cop-testify-n497941">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-153689683561569512016-01-06T10:17:00.002-08:002016-01-06T10:17:44.614-08:00Autobrewery' Defense Wins Dismissal of Drunken Driving Charge<div class="title-div" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-style: inherit;">Charges of driving with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the percent legal limit against an upstate New York woman have been dismissed based on an unusual defense: </span><i>Her body is a brewery, converting ordinary food into alcohol.</i></span></span></h1>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752192246873282009.post-87035335924529600202016-01-06T09:19:00.002-08:002016-01-06T09:19:52.651-08:00Officer Peter Liang Opts for Jury Trial in Killing of Akai Gurley<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: justify;">
BROOKLYN — Officer Peter Liang,who is accused of fatally shooting unarmed Akai Gurley in a housing project staircase, will have his fate decided by a Brooklyn jury instead of a Supreme Court judge, DNAinfo New York has learned.</div>
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Liang's lawyers <b><a href="http://www.robertbrownlaw.com/">Robert Brown</a></b> and Rae Downes Koshetz informed the Brooklyn District Attorney's office of the decision to forego a bench trial decided by a judge, which is historically the choice of a police officer facing serious charges.</div>
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“We have great confidence in 12 jurors and are unshaken in our belief that this case was a terrible accident that never fit the definition of manslaughter and should never have led to an indictment,” Koshetz told “On the Inside.”</div>
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<span style="color: black;">Liang, 27, was on a vertical patrol with his partner in the Pink Houses in East New York in November when he entered a dark stairwell with his gun drawn.</span></div>
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The weapon fired as he opened the metal stairwell door, sending a bullet ricocheting off a wall and downward, striking Gurley, 28, who had just entered the stairway one floor below with his girlfriend.</div>
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Gurley’s death further ignited the firestorm already surrounding the NYPD since the political aftershocks of the fatal chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island.</div>
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In announcing Liang's indictment last February, Brooklyn DA Kenneth Thompson and his prosecutors portrayed Liang as reckless and callous in the way he handled his weapon, and by failing to help Gurley and even arguing with his partner about what they should tell their NYPD bosses.</div>
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But Koshetz insists those assertions are completely false, and that jurors will acquit Liang when they hear his testimony and the entire story at trial, which is scheduled to begin Jan. 21.</div>
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“This was a terrible, terrible tragic accident,” she added. “There was absolutely no criminal intent here whatsoever.”</div>
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She insisted there were inaccurate reports about the case, including one claiming Liang radioed his union delegates rather than help Gurley.</div>
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"He is not a callous man,” she continued, claiming that Liang was shocked and "could barely breathe" when he learned someone had been hit.</div>
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Liang did not testify before the grand jury at his then-union lawyers' urging. They believed the anti-police sentiment might make the panel overlook his appearance.</div>
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But since then, Liang hired private attorneys — <a href="http://www.robertbrownlaw.com/">Brown</a> is also a former NYPD commander in Chinatown who is well known in the Asian community, and Koshetz is a former NYPD deputy commissioner for trials.</div>
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His decision to opt for a juror trial is unusual. Police officers generally believe that a judge can remain dispassionate about the case, and that they have a better understanding of an officer's job and the subtleties of their regulations.</div>
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Koshetz said jurors take their "awesome" responsibility seriously despite their feelings when judging another person's life.</div>
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"If we can get a jury that is willing to listen and consider this, I believe we can prevail," she said.</div>
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Liang remains on the force pending the outcome of the trial.</div>
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