Yesterday I reported on the mixed verdict (as such verdicts are called) handed down by a NYC jury in the case of former NYPD rookie cop, Patrick Pogan's assault and battery upon hippie-dippy Christopher Long (pic). The jury convicted Officer Pogan on two counts of felony fraud in the reporting on a non-existent assault and battery by Long on the police, but acquitted Pogan on the charges stemming from the assault and battery on the cyclist Long, which is preserved for posterity on YouTube video.
There are so many reasons I find this stroy compelling, not the least of which is that so little real injury was involved, and it's a perfect morality tale. The victim is sort of a dick, the cop a choir boy. And yet it was the choir boy cop who committed the crime and then tried to cover it up. We all see what the cop did by looking at the video, but a jury seeing what we see, refuses to convict the cop! In talking about the jury nullification, one of the most light is cast on the mindsets by reading the coments at both the NY Daily News and the NY Post websites. Laura Italiano, the reporter at the Post caught some interesting comments:
"But Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, complained, 'This will have a chilling effect on every new, young officer when they realize that mistakes now become crimes.'
At the center of the case was the shove seen round the world -- garnering 5 million YouTube hits after another cyclist's video recording of the confrontation was posted. The video clearly showed Pogan striding over to Long and pushing him down with his arm and shoulder."
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Patrick Lynch's "complaint" sounds like me whining about my tax nightmares.
In reality I do think we want young officers to be "chilled" against assaulting cyclists and/or framing victims of crime.
Here on Bad Lawyer I've been telling you about the assault and battery by the NYC cop, Patrick Pogan who was caught on video shoving a cyclist off a bike and onto the pavement during an organized protest by the group Critical Mass. I embedded the video courtesy of the New York Post for you to see for yourself.
Amazingly, the Post is reporting that a NYC jury acquitted Pogan of assault and battery. You want to know what jury nullification is, go watch the video at the first link (above.)
Fortunately, Pogan was convicted of two counts of falsification relating to preposterous made up assault and battery charges filed against cyclist Christopher Long. Pogan still faces jail time. It's a good thing the jury convicted Pogan on at least a couple of counts because this bad cop was telling the press that he was planning on seeking reinstatement with the NYPD upon his projected acquittal.
The defense of former NYPD rookie, Patrick Pogan is torn from the pages of every bad rape defense--the victim, had it coming because the victim is a bad person. Oh, and even though the video shows Pogan clearly attacking the victim Christopher Long--Pogan and his lawyer are claiming that the jurors can't believe their "lying eyes (you know, the eyes that look at a video of a cop walking across the street to shove a cyclist off his bike onto the pavement.)" This is because, according to Pogan's attorney Stuart London, Christopher Long is a dirtbag, pot-smoking, anit-government piece of shit. In other words, he had it coming. This is from the New York Postcoverage of the story:
" The cyclist came at me -- and I had to stop him from hurting me,' ex-NYPD rookie officer Patrick Pogan insisted to a Manhattan jury today, giving his own, eyebrow-raising account of a notorious, 2008 cop-on-biker take down for the first time publicly. 'I thought he ran through a red light. He had his hands in the air...He had up what I perceived to be a middle finger. I told him to stop,' the baby-faced Pogan remembered to jurors. But Christopher Long -- a kooky Critical Mass activist who told jurors earlier this week that he gets stoned every day, believes bikes have more right to the roads than cars, and finds the NYPD 'beyond reform' -- did not stop, Pogan testified.
The collision of bodies and egos that came next would be caught on a snippet of video that became an instant YouTube classic -- and some of the prime evidence against Pogan in his ongoing trial on charges of misdemeanor assault and felony false filing of a police report against Long. Today on the stand, the 24-year-old former altar boy sat on the witness stand as the video played on a screen to his side, giving the footage his own novel -- bike activists called it "dumbfounding" -- personal narration. 'I saw him going toward the sidewalk,' Pogan remembered of Long.
'He's either going there to go around me or he's going there to stop. Iok a walk to the side,' Pogan remembered. 'I see him rise up on his bike. I see him crouch down his shoulder as he's coming toward me... at this point I know he's going to try to use that shoulder against me.' Long, in his own testimony, had told jurors that he'd turned his shoulder toward Pogan at the last minute, to brace himself and put something 'not steel' between him and the cop so as to minimize the inevitable impact for both of them.
But to Pogan, Long raised his shoulder, 'maybe to scare me or use that shoulder to come through me,' the ex-cop testified. Pogan insisted that in the split second between seeing Long's shoulder come up and the moment of impact, he performed in his head a complicated, by-the-book computation of his "force' options...'I could have used my mace but that would have cost the city more than $65,000,' the cost of settling Long's federal lawsuit, Pogan told jurors. 'Maybe I'll use my baton,' Pogan said he then wondered. 'But the baton was useless at that point. There was no way I could have used any of the tools at my disposal.'
Finally, 'I prepared myself for a hit. He was coming toward me. I braced for impact. I lowered my shoulder. There was a collision. I used my arms to get that bicycle away from me.'
Pogan conceded to the defense lawyer examining him, Stuart London, that the account in Long's arrest report and criminal complaint -- in which Pogan claimed Long had knocked him to the ground in the impact -- was less than spot on. 'It's not true -- I did not go down at that moment. I went down two later times in that incident,' Pogan averred. The ex-cop's testimony continues this afternoon.
'I was dumbfounded,' Barbara Ross, a spokeswoman for Times Up, the environmental group that promotes the Critical Mass ride, said at the lunch break of watching Pogan testify. 'It's clear on the video that Christopher Long is avoiding [Pogan], not coming toward him. He's flipping reality upside down.'"
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It's amazing how Pogan can perjure himself from the witness stand in the face of this video.
In another forum, I offered the opinion that the defense on this case is built on the old--good offense=good defense theory as demonstrated recently by the acquittal in february of this year of a group of NYPD cops who were alleged to have shoved a flashlight into the backside of suspect. Despite testimony of at least one other NYPD officer who witnessed the assault the defense attorneys in that case aggressively went after the victim for being a punk and these officers "walked." There was no video evidence.
Let's hope the jurors in this case can keep their "lying" eyes open.
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