If I showed You the Evidence, I'd Be Guilty of Distributing Child Porn

The Rapid City Journal has this remarkable report relating to a prosecutor's refusal to turn over images to the defense counsel in a child porn case because as this post header says, the Prosecutor claims it would be an illegal distribution of child pornography.:

"Releasing evidence to a defendant's attorney would make her guilty of distributing child pornography, prosecutor Laura Roetzel said Wednesday.

Pennington County's chief deputy state's attorney has refused to hand over copies of photo evidence in the case against John Rolfe to his attorney.  Rolfe, 59, is accused of three counts of first-degree rape and 12 counts of the manufacture, distribution and possession of child pornography. He is being held in the Pennington County Jail on $1 million bond.

Both state and federal statutes prevent her from releasing the information, Roetzel said. 'I would be guilty of disseminating child pornography,' Roetzel said.

Rolfe's attorney is free to examine the evidence in the Pennington County State's Attorney's Office, which is a common practice in these cases, Roetzel said.

During Wednesday's hearing, Roetzel announced that she plans to ask the court to permanently suspend Rolfe's telephone privileges. Roetzel said later that Rolfe is making harassing telephone calls to people who are peripherally involved in the case.  Roetzel and Rolfe's attorney will present their arguments at a motions hearing at 9:15 a.m. on Nov. 1."
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Seems to me that an argument exists that the defendant has a de facto deprivation of due process claim.  For one thing, without knowing more about the specific facts of this case, we can point to at least one situation over the last year where a defendant, facing 20-years, was able to prove that the alleged "child" in alleged child pornography video was an adult.   One could conceive of the situation where absence some prolonged access to such material would deprive the defense counsel of the ability in a similar fashion to explore this defense.  Furthermore, there is the question of chain of custody, possession of the "evidence" might permit testing or other forms of examination to establish manipulation of the images, or a source or custody other than the defendant.

I know that I previously related the case involving my client, a 17-year old male high school special ed student and star athlete, who was sexually exploited by his female substitute teacher.  In fact my client fathered a child with this educator; although his lawsuit brought after his 21st birthday was tossed by the civil courts because of the restrictive OurState statute of limitations

Unfortunately, the parents of my client turned over numerous photographs on CD-ROM constituting evidence of the crimes against their son.  These were rank sex images of this teacher having sex with my client and other teenage boys.  In turn I provided these images to the prosecutor who convened a Grand Jury.  Who got indicted?  My clients.  Yes, my clients: the parents, (as an aside I should have realized that my career was swirling down the drain),--why?  The prosecutor accused my clients of possession of child pornography!  The charges were subsequently dismissed, but not before these poor folks were humiliated in the press, had to hire a criminal defense counsel and all the other horrors you might imagine. 

It sounds to me like the same sort of thinking (?) is going on here. 

Stop Ignoring Evidence of Crimes Against Women and Children

Yesterday, I talked about several situations where the evidence suggested that something wasn't right, too often that evidence, the evidence of something wrong, something fishy--is ignored.   I was talking to my friend Charlie the other morning and he thinks it's because the evidence of something wrong, often very wrong is not understood and he recounts the apocryphal story of the aboriginal peoples who upon first encountering Christopher Columbus did not see the ships--because as Charlie says they had no neuro pathways for what their eyes were registering, or to put it another way, the native witnesses had no context for the ships that loomed on the horizon.  While this may have been true for the aboriginal islanders who first encountered Columbus--I think this is bullshit on a lot of levels.  We don't see the evidence in front of us because we are lazy--and, evidence of wrong doing means we have a duty to do something that takes us out of our comfort zone.

Once again a town learns that the trusted teacher, volunteer police officer, beloved soccer coach,  is a serial rapist see, http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/15/city-wrestles-its-silence/  The Las Vegas Sun reports that the suburban town of Boulder City Nevada is dealing with revelation that many, many of its children were molested, raped, and filmed in explicit sex acts with Charles "Rick" Rogers.  Rogers who was arrested last April may have been actively molesting boys for 15 years.  Some victims found on explicit films seized by police at the time of Roger's arrest were as young as 10 years of age.

Hundreds of victims?  Undoubtedly.

How does this happen?  Why?

Why?  Goddamnit, why?

I don't mean, Rick Rogers, he is one more pedophile that fell off the pervert tree--how is it that the parents, the aunts and uncles, the teachers, the doctors, the adults in this town ignored what had to have been overwhelming evidence of these crimes being committed against their children?  I want to know where the screw is loose.

I saw it with the priests, but with the priests you could say well, these parishioners were all in Father's thrall.   Or Father was inadvertent, or misunderstood, or the poor man.  And it was so much easier to cover up for Father, move him around when people began talking.

But this guy!  A single man, with a passion for being with young boys!  The physical evidence was in your children's clothing.  What aren't you getting, Boulder City?

Elsewhere there is a great deal of agony and outpouring of anger in Cleveland, Ohio right now with the discovery of the serial killing of, at last count, 11 women.    These women were lured from the streets, raped and strangled and left to rot, the stench filling the streets--no response from the adults, the building inspectors, the police.  See:  http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/11/cleveland_woman_says_police_fa.html

Are we not neighbors, are we not brothers and sisters?  Don't we owe something to one another, to our students, our families, to our children.  Are we all so selfish that we can't spare a moment to ask ourselves are my children safe?  Are my children in a safe place?

We need to stop ignoring the evidence of crimes against women and our children.  We need to get out of our comfort zone on so many levels--that abandoned house two doors down, why aren't we recognizing that it presents an obligation to be vigilant that it not be used for criminal activity.  Gee, what would it take to cut its grass, to pick up the circulars, the trash, to report the comings and goings of non-residents? There are so many little things that we can do in the compass of twenty-four hours to make a difference not only in our individual world, but in the larger community without doing a whole lot.

Sometimes Something Smells Fishy

As I've said before, I love bicycling and bicycles.  The pictured bicycle is a a very expensive carbon professional road racing bike made by the Pinarello Company of Treviso, Italy.  As equipped, this bicycle and bicycles like it will set you back a least a cool $10,000-plus.  Racing bicycles have special pedals called "clipless" that work with special shoes that ironically clip into the pedals.

So it's surprising to the shop owners when a customer rolls this bicycle into Revo Cycles of Dana Point, wanting the mechanic to install "flat" pedals.  The customer, dressed in shorts, no shirt, and flip flops was not exactly rockin' the "roadie" look either.  The mechanic Mike Mayefske installed the pedals and wrote down the bicycle serial number, suspicious that the purported owner was perhaps pedaling a purloined Pinarello.

A few calls later, bingo!  See:  http://www.bicycleretailer.com/news/newsDetail/3395.html  One other thing about expensive road bicycles, your tires are inflated through a "presta" valve versus the type of valve on most bikes (and cars) called shrader valves.  So the customer unsuccessfully tried to pump air into the tires at a gas station (a bad idea for many reasons) but was unable to, when he returned to the bike shop for an "air job" the stolen bicycle was recovered by the police who were alerted by the Bike Shop.  Get this, the mechanic stalled the hippy dippy customer with the ol'--this type of air compressor needs to warm up routine.

Similarly, the Las Vegas Sun  http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/16/5-arrested-in-attempted-nevada-bank-robbery/ is reporting that 5 men showed up at a Vegas area bank with a search warrant that entitled them to seize all the cash in the local Wells Fargo bank vault.  The dubious bank manager refused to honor the warrant despite being handcuffed--and there are now 5 thwarted would-be bank robbers in custody.

Shortly after I became a lawyer, a distraught family, all adult children, came to the office because their father, a NASA engineer had died in a swimming pool while on his second honeymoon with his new wife who was half his age.  Funny thing was Dad never swam a day in his life.  Dad had never taken a swimming lesson, and except for the shower, Dad had an aversion to water.  Our office was the fifth law office they visited seeking some help, no one listened to them.  Hell I wasn't exactly burning up the legal profession at that point in my life, (or for that matter at this point in my life) so I listened to them.  Turns out, new wife didn't kill Dad as my clients suspected but when we got the records from Florida as part of our investigation, the ambulance report reflected something of tremendous interest. The EMTs reported standing at poolside, unable to make out the body of this African American just below the surface.  Dad who must have been secretly taking swim lessons, or, more likely, emboldened by a sudden shot of testosterone--drowned disoriented in the hotel pool.  The autopsy showed no drugs, no alcohol, no trauma, no evidence of foul play.

Being the sharp-witted intake associate, I received a $1,000 bonus out of the multi-million dollar wrongful death settlement shared between the family, new mom, and the attorneys.

Forensic Evidence, not in Texas

The secessionist bastard to the right is the Govenor of Texas and one of the people who bears direct responsibility for the murder of Cameron Todd Willingham. A commission looking into the execution of Willingham was set to hear from the forensic expert who was highly critical of the "forensic" evidence relied on to prosecute Willingham in the so-called arson murder of his three children. The Govenor who actually had the evidence of Willingham's innocence but ordered the execution anyway--fired the comission chair and two commission members two days before the hearing on the bogus scientific evidence used against Willingham. Perry's new chairman canceled the hearing, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/us/01brfs-GOVERNORFIRE_BRF.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=gov%20perry&st=cse

Govenor Rick Perry is an immoral pig.