South Carolina Spends $7.4 Million Annually to Keep Sexual Predators Locked Up After Their Sentences Are Concluded

The Bad Lawyer feels like he's earned his bona fides as no friend of the sexual predators, but I have some real problems with the idea that a person can complete their criminal sentence and continue to be Constitutionally imprisoned.  The State.com is reporting that South Carolinians are spending $7.4 million annually to continue to incarcerate persons sentenced under their "sexual predator" statute.  The money is nothing, but something seems out of balance.

No one should ever be at risk of being sexually abused.  But something is wrong, uh...due process(?) when we choose to fix a punishment for a crime, then we continue the punishment after the completion of the sentence.  Let's fix this mechanism, it's broken.

The Clerk Says There's Probable Cause to Throw Yo Ass In Jail, That's Good Enough for Ohio

According to a report at the Cincinnati Enquirer website you can get your ass arrested in Ohio, and hundreds in Hamilton County, Ohio, have--on the mere signature of a clerk of courts.  Apparently some places in Ohio have disposed of that "leetle detail" of an arrest warrant issued by a Judge of competent jurisdiction!  The shocking expose by Dan Horn follows: 

Police in Hamilton County have arrested hundreds of people in the past year because of a criminal complaint system that the county's top prosecutor says is bad public policy and some judges say violates Ohio law.  The system has allowed court clerks - rather than prosecutors or judges - to approve and issue arrest warrants based on complaints from private citizens. Those complaints have sent people to jail for domestic violence, theft and other misdemeanor offenses despite a 2006 Ohio law that requires a judge or prosecutor to review complaints before someone is arrested.

Some law enforcement officials say the lack of a review led to weak criminal cases that are more likely to be thrown out of court and to abuses by people looking to settle personal scores. In some cases, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said, people could end up in jail and be forced to defend themselves in court against 'baseless charges.'

'You don't know if they have an ax to grind or if it's a neighborhood squabble, and then somebody gets arrested for it,' Deters said. 'My feeling is, before someone is subjected to a physical arrest, someone in law enforcement should look at it and sign off on it.'  Officials at the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts office, which issues the arrest warrants, say they changed their policy on the complaints Jan. 14, a move they say came after months of discussion and about one week after The Enquirer requested public records about the system.  They say the previous warrant policy, which had been in place for at least a decade, was legal. But they now will require a judge or prosecutor to sign off on the complaints before a warrant is issued.

'This is just better procedure,' said John Williams, the county's deputy clerk. 'We want cases that are appropriately investigated to be filed with this office. It all relates back to having some level of investigation before it comes to us.'

An Enquirer review of the clerk's records shows that hundreds of cases were filed under the old system in the past six months, and that dozens of them are still pending in Hamilton County Municipal Court. Several municipal court judges have thrown out charges based on citizen complaints after concluding they violate the 2006 law that requires a prosecutor, judge or magistrate to review them. The purpose of the law is to ensure 'probable cause' exists to justify an arrest and there is enough evidence to go ahead with criminal prosecution.

'The law was changed so private citizens couldn't cause a person to be arrested without a proper review,' said Municipal Court Judge Brad Greenberg. 'Absolutely, it concerns me. Your concern is that someone has been charged or arrested with a crime and there is no basis for it.'

Christo Lassiter, a University of Cincinnati law professor, said that happened to him in 2008 when he spent several hours on Thanksgiving Day in jail because his ex-girlfriend, Devon Dullaghan, filed a citizen complaint that accused him of violating their child-custody agreement.Dullaghan said she filed the complaint because Lassiter violated the agreement many times and she felt she had no other choice. Lassiter blamed Dullaghan for the dispute and said the 'interference with custody' charge should never have been filed because he has custody of their 3-year-old daughter. But because there was no review by a judge or a magistrate, he said, none of that information came out until he faced a criminal trial that threatened his reputation and career. 'In this system, until you get to trial, you have no way to get anyone to say, 'Let's take a look at this.' It's ridiculous,' said Lassiter, who last month sued the clerk's office and other county officials over the citizen complaint system. 'Any citizen who has a personal gripe could get an arrest warrant.' Greenberg, the judge in Lassiter's case, dismissed the charge last year after concluding it was without merit. 'I find absolutely no shred of evidence of any criminal behavior here,' Greenberg said at the time. 'In fact, I think it's outrageous that the criminal justice system would be used as a weapon between parents in a custody dispute.'

'Not a lot of evidence' As in Lassiter's case, most citizen complaints filed with the clerk's office start with a 'citizen referral'  from a police officer.

Referrals, once widely used throughout the county, gave police another option when dealing with a citizen who complained about being the victim of a misdemeanor crime. If the officer did not witness the alleged crime and didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest, he or she could refer the person to the clerk's office to fill out a complaint. Cases typically involved feuding neighbors or couples accusing each other of harassment, petty theft, custody violations or vandalism.  'Officers get called to a lot of this stuff,' said Steve Barnett, spokesman for Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis, whose deputies stopped handing out citizen referrals last year. 'It's he said/she said. There's not a lot of evidence'"
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Wow, talk about practicing law without a license, court clerks are NOT LAWYERS!  How in God's name is the authority to issue arrest warrants being issued on the legal determination of "probable cause by court clerks?"  Has Ohio lost it's collective mind?  Once again we are at that intersection of personal liberty and "small law," that seems so trivial but underlies the respect that citizens in their local communities have for the jsutice system and police. 

Uh, Supreme Court of Ohio, here's one for you.

78 Year Old Woman Jailed for 2-Weeks for Suspended Drivers' License

Let me preface this post, this is a very impoortant story.  This story is not, just, a curiosity;  it illustrates a very important point that if you at all care about the law--you should be thinking about and caring about, in my opinion.

From the Miami Herald, 78 year old Gertrude Shaink Trudeau of Hallandale Beach, Florida was jailed for 2 weeks over the Thanksgiving holiday for driving with a suspended license, get this--that was not suspended, well, it's suspended now beacause while she was in jail she could not get the required physical examination necessary for older drivers.  According to the story by Dan Christensen, despite the presence of lawyers, and a magistrate-judege, noone took note of this poor lady, who was arraigned in a video cattle call, then ignored for 15 days; this is from Mr. Christensen's report:

 "A 78-year-old Hallandale Beach grandmother ticketed for driving with a suspended driver's license spent 15 days in jail before authorities announced her license wasn't suspended and an outraged judge set her free.  County Court Judge Lee J. Seidman ordered Gabrielle Shaink Trudeau's release in December at her arraignment.`She's handcuffed like Houdini, for the record. She's got chains around her waist, and she's got handcuffs in front around her hands as if she was some kind of a violent criminal,' the judge said, according to a transcript. `I want her released. I think she's suffered enough at our system's mistakes.'

Court records show the officer ticketed Shaink Trudeau not for driving too slowly, but for driving on a suspended or revoked driver's license -- a criminal charge that carries up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. The ticket required her to appear at the South Satellite Courthouse on Oct. 8. When she did not show, a judge issued a bench warrant for her arrest and set a $2,000 bond.


[Mrs.]Shaink Trudeau's license was revoked Aug. 27 by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles for failing to respond to earlier correspondence regarding certain undisclosed medical issues, said Assistant State Attorney Hillary Gulden. The first letter was sent in March, a few weeks after Shaink Trudeau was convicted in Miami-Dade of improper backing following an accident there, Gulden said.

On Sept. 17, 10 days after her ticket in Hallandale Beach, the state received a response and restored Shaink Trudeau's driving privileges pending further review, Gulden said.  [Mrs.] Shaink Trudeau told a reporter she understood the notice she received from the state to mean she no longer had to appear in court. But she misunderstood. And six weeks after the warrant was issued, three brawny Broward Sheriff's deputies arrested Shaink Trudeau in her kitchen.

'They came on real strong, like I had killed somebody or something,'' she said.

Deputies took Shaink Trudeau to the Broward County Jail, where she was photographed, booked, fingerprinted and issued a standard khaki jumpsuit, jail records show. The next morning, Nov. 19, Shaink Trudeau made her first appearance before Magistrate Judge John ``Jay'' Hurley. A video of the proceedings, in which the judge and inmates can see each other on TV monitors, shows Hurley telling Shaink Trudeau that her bond had been set at $2,000.

No court personnel called to the judge's attention the presence of an elderly wisp of a woman who needed special handling. Two experienced assistant public defenders were standing nearby, but said nothing, according to Finkelstein.

`They let a judge give this person the bum's rush,' Finkelstein said.

Pretrial services division employees, who earlier that morning had found [Mrs.] Shaink Trudeau eligible for pretrial release on her own recognizance, also shot up no flare to alert the judge.  Guards took [Ms.]Shaink Trudeau back to jail for the next two weeks, including Thanksgiving.

Finally, at her arraignment on Dec. 2, prosecutor Gulden announced the state was dropping the charge because Shaink Trudeau's license was not suspended.

'On behalf of the system of so-called justice, I apologize,'  Judge Seidman said. `I accept that,' replied [Mrs.] Shaink Trudeau."
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I've talked about the importance of small law, in the past on Bad Lawyer, and here is a perfect example of why this subject matter is so important.  The community's continued consent to be governed depends on respect for the law, which begins with respect for the people by the people at the lowest end of jurisprudence. 

Years ago I knew, and came to highly respect a local municipal court Judge, now deceased, as one of the shining exemplars of REAL law and genuine respect for the law, as well as respect for those he served.  That respect was reciprocated by his community and this Judge was easily re-elected again and again despite a "difficult" last name.  One of the most notable things about this Judge was his willingness to rule against the local police and when the situation called for it, to take on the OurState Supreme Court as when the Supreme's issued "I-Am-A-Judge-IDs" to carry with the drivers' licenses of Judges in the state presumably to get out of receiving a ticket.

When the courts of OurState instituted the closed circuit video system of arraignments, the Judge objected and said that in his view it was violative of the OurState Consitution which guarantees open and public judicial proceedings and the US Constitution "due process" guarantees.  I must say, I did not get his objection until this very moment.  He told me at the time, that while there certainly were security concerns--(explainer:  small municipal courts handle all arraignments of criminals arrested in their jurisdictions no mattr how violent or dangerous)--the Judge and the people have a constiutional obligation to see the accused in open court.  He told me then, but I didn't see it--that the mere fact of the accused, the citizen being in front of him, publically and in open court permitted the court in the first instance to live up to its constitutional obligations.   Closed circuit tv, is a poor substitute for appraising whether someone should be jailed for the next 15 days.  Mrs. Shaink Trudeau's situation provides us with a damning example of why we should all care about due process.

Some People Get Extra Due Process while Others Get None

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125544222770882429.html The US Supremes will hear Jeffrey Skilling's appeal from his criminal conviction. Skilling, one of Enron's "smartest men in the room" was convicted of 19 counts of financial fraud. He's represented by the great civil lawyer Daniel Petrocelli, best remembered for obtaining something lie a trillion dollar verdict from OJ Simpson in a civil wrongful death action.

While I don't begrudge Skilling his various days in court, compare and contrast with the young woman, Jamie Leigh Jones from KBR who spent 4 years trying to get the merits of her civil claim heard in court http://badlawyernyc.blogspot.com/2009/10/al-franken-gets-to-heart-of-it.html. Or the thousands of rape and child molestation victims here in Our Home State who can't get to court because of a 1 or 2 year statute of limitation that bars their claims agasint the Church. Some people get all the due process, some get none.