This CNN story aired last night on Anderson Cooper’s 360 and is now the most frequently viewed item on their website. The story pasted below is largely a re-reporting of Howard Witt’s story but new details are emerging all the time. The Coroner in Winn Parish was certainly right to rule Baron Pikes’ death a homicide. A poorly trained but well-connected police officer used his new toy to torture a helpless defendant to death. Not surprisingly, Winnfield law enforcement is claiming that officer Scott Nugent followed accepted procedures. That is the sort of thing people say when they are facing a lawsuit.

I am still not sure if CNN learned about the Pikes story independently or if they were alerted by Howard Witt’s reporting. CNN contacted me yesterday looking for a picture of Baron Pikes and I sent them to Howard. One thing is certain, both the Chicago Tribune and CNN picked up on this story because the Jena 6 saga sensitized them to the plight of poor people in central Louisiana.

Is this a story about race, or could a big white guy have suffered the same fate as Baron Pikes? I will leave you to ponder that question, but there can be no doubt that officer Nugent had no intention of either protecting or serving Mr. Pikes. The defendant in Nugent’s custody was not seen as a citizen or even, in any meaningful sense, a human being.

You will be hearing more on this story in the near future.

Ex-cop may be charged in case of man Tasered to death

* Story Highlights
* Suspect died after police officer Tasered him nine times; investigation launched
* Coroner rules death homicide, says man might’ve been dead after seventh shock
* Family outraged it has taken months for any action: “The family wants justice”
* Prosecutor is expected to decide soon whether to file charges

From Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
CNN

WINNFIELD, Louisiana (CNN) - A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron “Scooter” Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him on a cocaine charge.

He stopped twitching after seven, according to a coroner’s report. Soon afterward, Pikes was dead.

Now the officer, since fired, could end up facing criminal charges in Pikes’ January death after medical examiners ruled it a homicide.

Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner, told CNN the 21-year-old sawmill worker was jolted so many times by the 50,000-volt Taser that he might have been dead before the last two shocks were delivered.

Williams ruled Pikes’ death a homicide in June after extensive study.

Winn Parish District Attorney Christopher Nevils said he will decide on any charges against the ex-officer, Scott Nugent, once a Louisiana State Police report on the case is complete. VideoWatch coroner describe how cop might’ve Tasered a dead man »

“It’s taken several months for this case to even be properly addressed, so one has to wonder, why did it take so long?” said Carol Powell Lexing, a lawyer for the Pikes family. “Obviously, a wrongful death occurred.”

Nugent’s lawyer, Phillip Terrell, said his client followed proper procedure to subdue a man who outweighed him by 100 pounds. But Williams said Pikes was already handcuffed and on the ground when first hit with the Taser, after the 247-pound suspect was slow to follow police orders to get up.

Winnfield, a sleepy lumber town about 100 miles southeast of Shreveport, Louisiana, is best known as the birthplace of legendary Louisiana governors Huey and Earl Long. It’s also about 45 miles northwest of Jena, Louisiana, where a racially charged assault case sparked a September 2007 demonstration by an estimated 15,000 people.

One of the teenage defendants in that case, Mychal Bell, is Pikes’ first cousin - and his lawyer was Powell Lexing.

Nugent is white; Pikes was black. His death led to demonstrations that drew several dozen people in Winnfield, where the population of about 15,000 is roughly half African-American.

“The family wants justice,” Lexing said. “This is just another example of why it’s very important to stay vigilant with these types of cases, on the injustice that’s been perpetrated on the disadvantaged.”

But Winnfield police Lt. Chuck Curry said race “isn’t an issue at all” in the matter.

“This has come down to a police officer that was trying to apprehend a suspect that they had warrants for,” he said. “He done what he thought he was trained to do to bring that subject into custody. At some point, something happened with his body that caused him to go into cardiac arrest or whatever.”

According to police, Pikes was wanted on a charge of possession of cocaine when police tried to arrest him outside a shopping center January 12.

“He would not stop for the officer,” Curry said. “At some point in there, he was Tased to bring him under control, and several hours later, died at the emergency room.”

Terrell said Pikes was fighting Nugent “on uneven ground” amid obstructions such as concrete blocks and barbed wire.

“He’s fighting, wrestling with an individual who weighs 100 pounds more than him,” he said. “His partner had just come back to the police department from triple bypass surgery and could not assist Officer Nugent.”

Terrell said his client “used every means possible” to take Pikes into custody before pulling out his Taser, a weapon Winnfield police purchased in 2007.

“The only thing he could have done other than to say, ‘OK, we’re going to let you go’ is to beat him or Tase him. He did the right thing,” Terrell said.

Williams, who ruled Pikes’ death a homicide in June after extensive study, said Nugent fired his Taser at Pikes six times in less than three minutes - shots recorded by a computer chip in the weapon’s handle. Then officers put Pikes in the back of a cruiser and drove him to their police station - where Nugent fired a seventh shot, directly against Pikes’ chest.

“After he was given that drive stun to the chest, he was pulled out of the car onto the concrete, ” Williams told CNN. “He was electroshocked two more times, which two officers noted that he had no neuromuscular response to those last two 50,000-volt electroshocks.”

Williams said he had two nationally known forensic pathologists, including former New York city medical examiner Michael Baden, review the case before issuing his conclusions. He said it’s possible Nugent was shocking a dead man the last two times he pulled the trigger.

“This fellow was talking in the back seat of the car prior to shot number seven,” he said. “From that point on, it becomes questionable [if Pikes was still alive].”

Curry said Pikes told officers he suffered from asthma and had been using PCP and crack cocaine. But Williams said he found no sign of drug use in the autopsy, and no record of asthma in Pikes’ medical history.

In the year since Winnfield police received Tasers, officers have used them 14 times, according to police records - with 12 of the instances involving black suspects. Ten of the 14 incidents involved Nugent, who has no public disciplinary record.

Nugent was suspended after Pikes’ death, and Winnfield’s City Council voted 3-2 to fire him in May. He is appealing his dismissal, and his lawyer says he followed proper procedures in Pikes’ case. He was trained in the use of the Taser by a senior police officer who was present during the incident that led to Pikes’ death, Terrell said.

Curry said Taser International, the device’s manufacturer, indicates that “multiple Tasings do not affect a person.” But he said he could not explain why Pikes was shocked so many times, and said whether Nugent followed proper procedure was “yet to be determined.”

But a copy of the Winnfield Police Department’s Taser training manual, obtained by CNN, says the device “shall only be deployed in circumstances where it is deemed reasonably necessary to control a dangerous or violent subject.” And Williams said regulations regarding the use of Tasers were not followed.

“It violated every aspect - every single aspect - of the department’s policy about its use,” the coroner said.

Winnfield has seen a spate of high-profile corruption cases in recent years. One of Nevils’ predecessors as district attorney, Terry Reeves, killed himself amid allegations of embezzlement and extortion. The town’s current police chief, Johnny Ray Carpenter, is a convicted drug offender who received a pardon from former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards who himself is now serving a federal prison term for racketeering.

And Carpenter’s predecessor, Gleason Nugent - the father of Pikes’ arresting officer - committed suicide in 2005, after allegations of fraud and vote buying in the race for police chief, an elected position in Winnfield.

Now Nevils is awaiting the state police report on Pikes’ death, which will be presented to a grand jury for possible charges against Nugent - a possibility Curry said would be a blow to the department.

“It’s one of these no-win situations,” he said. “No matter the outcome, nobody’s going to win in this case.”

The Taser attack on Baron Pikes in Winfield Louisiana has horrified readers across the nation.  CNN tells me they will doing a story this evening (10 Eastern) as part of the Anderson Cooper show.  We will be posting a link to the program as soon as it is available.

There will always be people who are attracted to law enforcement because they like having power over helpless people.  Scott Nugent of Winnfield, La. appears to have been that kind of person.

I first learned about this story from Alexandria, La. radio personality Tony Brown, the first person to give serious attention to the noose incident in Jena, Louisiana.  I told Brown to contact Howard Witt, the Chicago Tribune reporter who understands the complicated racial dynamics in small southern towns.  Baron “Scooter” Pikes, the victim of an unauthorized taser attack, is related to Mychal Bell of Jena 6 fame.

As Witt notes, there is a strong suggestion that local officials initially attempted to cover-up the true facts of the case.  If there is any indication that justice isn’t being served, there needs to be an organized response.  Thanks to Howard Witt for bringing outside scrutiny to a tragic story.

chicagotribune.com
TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT
Taser death ignites racial tensions
Not far from Jena, La., suspicions rise of a cover-up mount
By Howard Witt

Tribune correspondent

7:52 PM CDT, July 19, 2008

WINNFIELD, La. - At 1:28 p.m. last Jan. 17, Baron “Scooter” Pikes was a healthy 21-year-old man. By 2:07 p.m., he was dead.

What happened in the 39 minutes in between - during which Pikes was handcuffed by local police and shocked nine times with a Taser, while reportedly pleading for mercy -is now spawning fears of a political coverup in this backwoods Louisiana lumber town infamous for backroom dealings.

Even more ominously, because Pikes was black and the officer who repeatedly Tasered him is white, racial tensions over the case are mounting in a place that’s just 40 miles from Jena, La.—site of the racially explosive prosecution of six black teenagers charged with beating a white youth that last year triggered one of the largest American civil rights demonstrations in decades. And in a bizarre coincidence, Pikes turns out to have been a first cousin of Mychal Bell, the lead defendant in the Jena 6 case.
No novelist could have invented Winnfield, a place so steeped in corruption that they built a local museum to try to sanitize it all.

Here in the birthplace of two of Louisiana’s most colorful and notorious governors - Huey and Earl Long-the police chief committed suicide three years ago after losing a close election marred by allegations of fraud and vote-buying.

Four months later, the district attorney killed himself after allegedly skimming $200,000 from his office budget and extorting payments from criminal defendants to make their cases go away.

The current police chief is a convicted drug offender who got a pardon from Edwin Edwards, the former Louisiana governor who is serving time in federal prison for corruption convictions.

All of that tangled history is now wrapped up in the Pikes case, because Scott Nugent, the officer who Tasered him, is the well-connected son of the former police chief who killed himself-and the protege of the current chief, who hired him onto the force.

“A lot happens in this town, and it just gets swept under the rug,” said Kayshon Collins, Pikes’ stepmother, who has participated in several local protests over the case. “What the police did to Scooter just isn’t right. They would never have Tasered a white kid like that.”

The official police version of what happened to Pikes on that brisk January afternoon reads like a sad but familiar story in Winnfield’s local newspaper.

Nugent spotted Pikes walking along the street and attempted to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for drug possession, according to Police Chief Johnny Ray Carpenter. Pikes took off running, but another officer cornered him outside a nearby grocery store. Pikes resisted arrest and Nugent subdued him with a shock from a Taser.

Then on the way to the police station, Carpenter told the newspaper, Pikes fell ill and told the officers he suffered from asthma and was high on crack cocaine and PCP. The officers called for an ambulance, but Pikes later died at the hospital.

Six months later, the Winnfield police are standing by that story. Meanwhile, the Louisiana State Police are investigating the case, and no charges have been filed against Nugent or two other Winnfield police officers who assisted him in arresting Pikes, although the City Council did decide to fire Nugent from the force in May.

Winn Parish District Atty. Chris Nevils says he expects to present the case to a grand jury after he receives the results of the state police investigation.

Evidence contradicts report
But there is already abundant evidence contradicting the official police version of the incident.

An autopsy determined there were no drugs in Pikes’ system and that he did not have asthma, according to Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner.

Moreover, Pikes did not resist arrest, and he was handcuffed while lying on the ground, according to Nugent’s police report of the incident. It was only after Pikes refused Nugent’s command to stand up that the officer applied the first Taser shock in the middle of his back, Nugent wrote.

Several more Taser shocks followed quickly, Nugent stated, because Pikes kept falling down and refusing to get back up. Grocery shoppers who witnessed the incident later told Pikes’ family that he had pleaded with Nugent: “Please, you all got me. Please don’t Tase me again.”

Williams said police records showed Nugent administered nine Taser shocks to Pikes over a 14-minute period. The last two jolts, delivered as police pulled Pikes from a patrol car at the police station, elicited no reaction because the suspect was unconscious, Williams said.

After consulting about the case with Dr. Michael Baden, a nationally prominent forensic pathologist, Williams ruled last month that Pikes’ death was a homicide. On the death certificate, he listed the cause of death as “cardiac arrest following nine 50,000-volt electroshock applications from a conductive electrical weapon.”

“God did not just call this young man home,” said Williams, who has served as parish coroner for the past 33 years. “If somebody can tell me anything else that killed this otherwise perfectly healthy young man … I’d like to know it.”

Williams is no stranger to controversy in Winnfield. Back in 2004, his garage was firebombed, and he says he’s been shot at 19 times by people upset with the independence of his investigations. He wears a gun holstered at his waist.

“This case may be the most unnecessary death I have ever had to investigate,” Williams said. “[Pikes] put up no fuss, no fighting, no physical aggression. … He just didn’t respond quickly enough to the officer’s commands.”

Nugent, 21, declined to be interviewed for this story. But his attorney, Phillip Terrell, said that Nugent acted according to his training-an opinion seconded by police spokesman Lt. Charles Curry.

Taser safety guidelines
Yet the official Winnfield Police Department Taser policy appears to prohibit the weapon’s use against a non-violent, handcuffed suspect.

“The Taser shall only be deployed in circumstances where it is deemed reasonably necessary to control a dangerous or violent subject,” the policy states. It also requires that a suspect who has been Tasered should immediately be checked out at a hospital.

What’s more, safety guidelines issued by Taser International Inc., the manufacturer of the device that is now used by more than 12,700 law-enforcement and military agencies worldwide, warn officers to “minimize repeated, continuous, and/or simultaneous exposures.”

Company officials, citing dozens of medical studies, insist Tasers are safe when used properly. But few of those studies examined the effect of multiple Taser applications over a short period of time. The U.S. Department of Justice, in a study released in June, concluded that “the medical risks of repeated or continuous [Taser] exposure are unknown.”

In less than two years on Winnfield’s 20-officer police force, police records show, Nugent ranked as the department’s most aggressive Taser user. Among the recipients were a 15-year-old African-American runaway who was not charged with any crime and Pikes’ father, currently serving a prison sentence for a drug offense, who was Tasered by Nugent last year, according to Kayshon Collins.

hwitt@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast comments on the results of a recent investigation into the Houston crime lab.  “Forensic labs should be more like referees than team players,” Henson says, ”neutral arbiters on which both sides can rely - but that’s not how things operate in the real world.”

According to researcher William Thompson, the errors at the Houston lab almost always favored law enforcement and the prosecution.  “It’s like team spirit. They see the defense counsel as their enemy and tend to be kind of secretive and not want to disclose things outside of the family.”

This message of concern was forwarded to Friends of Justice by Organizing in the Trenches, a Jena-based advocacy group led by Robert Bailey’s mother, Caseptla Bailey, and his half-sister, Catrina wallace.  In Jena, Robert was considered a bad apple; in Georgia Robert is considered a model student.

Hello, my name is Brandon Wood, I am the Defensive Coordinator at Shaw High School in Columbus, Georgia where Robert Bailey Jr now attends high School.  First and foremost let me tell all who read this letter what a privilege it has been to have the opportunity to get to know Robert. Since I have known him he has been the model student athlete. Everything he has done has been done the right way.
 
With that said, it would be an injustice to Robert for the GHSA to declare him ineligble to play football this year. Robert has the oportunity and the ability to sign a major college football scholarship. However, if he is
declared ineligble that will not be the case! What we need is as many friends, family, celebrities, media, etc. as we can have present at his hardship hearing.
I am asking you to please help get this information out to as many people as possible. If anyone needs further information about the event they can call or email me and I will be glad to help in any way possible. My number is 706.575.5400 and my email is bwood@mcsdga.net.
 
We will meet the full 33 members of the State Executive Committee on Monday, August 25, 2008 at the Holiday Inn located in Forsyth Georgia. We have not been informed as of yet what time the meeting will begin but as soon as I get that information I will be sure to let everyone know.
 
Let me thank all of you in advance for your hard work pertaining to this matter. Please remember that Robert needs all of our help in this matter.
Please let me know if I can be of any assistance to you!
 
Brandon Wood
bwood@mcsdga.net
Shaw High School
7579 Raider Way
Columbus, Georgia
706.575.5400
http://shaw.mcsdga.net/

There will be more publicity concerning this important ruling in the next few days, but this AP article will give you the particulars.  The state of Louisiana may decide to re-try Albert Woodfox or he may be a free man in a matter of weeks.  We will keep you posted as developments develop.

La. judge overturns ex-Black Panther’s conviction

By DOUG SIMPSON - 18 hours ago

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A federal judge on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a former Black Panther in the 1972 stabbing death of a Louisiana prison guard.

Albert Woodfox, who was held in solitary confinement for over 30 years, is one of three former Panthers known as the “Angola Three.” He and two other black prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola were convicted in the killing of guard Brent Miller on April 17, 1972.

U.S. District Judge James Brady issued a ruling late Tuesday approving a federal magistrate’s June recommendation that Woodfox’s conviction be overturned because one of his former lawyers failed to object to a prosecutor’s testimony about a witness’ credibility. Brady also found that Woodfox’s trial lawyer failed to object to testimony from a witness who had died after the trial.

Woodfox’s decades in solitary confinement attracted worldwide attention from activists who called him a political prisoner.

Nick Trenticosta, the New Orleans-based defense lawyer who handled the appeal, said Woodfox’s immediate future lies in the hands of prosecutors, who could request a new trial. Trenticosta said he hoped Woodfox to be released without another trial.

“The man was convicted on false evidence, and he’s been held in solitary for almost 40 years. Let’s release him,” Trenticosta said.

A message left for prosecutors late Tuesday was not immediately returned.

Trenticosta said Woodfox had probably not yet heard about the ruling.

“I don’t believe he knows,” Trenticosta said. “But I’ll talk to him in the morning and he’ll probably find out about it in the newspaper.”

Woodfox and Herman Wallace were kept in solitary confinement from 1972 until March, when they were moved to a maximum-security dormitory with other prisoners. Woodfox was serving 50 years for armed robbery when the 1972 killing occurred.

Wallace has been appealing his conviction based on arguments similar to Woodfox’s.

The third member of the “Angola Three” spent 29 years in isolation before his conviction was overturned in 2001. Robert King, known as Robert King Wilkerson in the 1970s, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was freed.

Patrick Waller wasn’t just convicted of a heinous crime he didn’t commit; prior to sentencing he pled guilty to two other crimes he didn’t do.  He thought it was the only way he could escape a life sentence. 

Click on the video link near the top of this Dallas Morning News article to listen to an innocent man describe the sixteen years he lost to prison.   “I’m no angel,” he says.  True that.  He was a mixed up kid on probation for cocaine possession.  That made him an easy guy to pin a crime on–he fit the thug profile.  So long as they had a good suspect (young, poor, black and on paper), the officers investigating these cases were satisfied. 

Patrick Waller has been exonerated on DNA evidence.  In addition, two of the real perpetrators of the rape and abduction Waller was doing time for have since confessed. 

Nonetheless, one of the victims of the 1992 crime thinks Waller might still be guilty.

Listen to the video clip and you will hear Mr. Waller talk about the other prisoners he has met over the years who cannot prove their innocence due to a lack of DNA evidence.  For every DNA exoneration there are . . .

That’s the trouble, we don’t know how many innocent inmates languish behind bars.  But we are becoming all to familiar with the mechanics of wrongful conviction and the guessing game that create such horrors.

This in-depth article from the Dallas Observer slipped past me when it first appeared in mid-June.  At the time, the NAACP had just decided to de-select Dallas pastor Freddy Haynes as the new president of their illustrious organization.  The article suggests that Haynes’ decision to welcome the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into his pulpit might have had something to do with it.  I suspect it’s true.

Freddy Haynes is the kind of preacher you rarely find in White America.  One minute he will be denouncing racist politicians; the next minute he will ask you to turn to your neighbor and ask, “Are you saved?”

White preachers might do one or the other; never both.  The culture wars have driven a wedge straight down the middle of the white Protestant world; if you are politically and socially progressive you don’t talk about “getting saved”; if you are evangelistic you are almost certainly politically conservative. 

I first met Freddie Haynes just over a year ago when he addressed Call to Renewal’s Pentecost 2007 conference in Washington DC.  A few hours earlier, three members of Friends of Justice had led a workshop on faith-based criminal justice reform and the travails of Jena, Louisiana had been front and center.  When we talked to Rev. Haynes after his sermon he told us he had never heard of Jena but he was interested in hearing more.

The next week, Lydia Bean (our Outreach and Development director) and I had a half-hour conversation with Rev. Haynes and his Minister of Justice about Jena and our criminal justice refrom work.  As the article indicates, Friendship Baptist Church, Haynes’ congregation, eventually sent ten buses to the march on Jena.  I was asked to address an organizing meeting at the church a few weeks before the buses rolled.  My wife Nancy and I were the only white people in a packed room (that happens a lot in our line of work).

Although I have chatted with the Baptist minister on three or four occasions, we have never had anything resembling a real conversation.  The Dallas Observer article provides a whirlwind tour of Haynes’ life history (most of it news to me) and highlights his interest in criminal justice reform.  Dallas DA Craig Watkins is a prominent member of Friendship West and I have always wondered if the congregation made it possible for the maverick prosecutor to launch an all-out (and highly controversial) quest to bring justice to the victims of wrongful conviction.  The article confirms my hunch.

Please give this seven-page exploration of a complicated man your careful attention.  Thanks to preachers like Freddy Haynes the civil rights movement is finally arriving in Dallas, Texas.

The fuzzy line separating truth, lies and guesses shapes the plot of most television dramas and has sustained the mystery genre from the moment Sherlock Holmes picked up his pipe. 

We love a good mystery so long as, in the end, there is resolution.  You know the spinster aunt weilded the knife because, in a good mystery story, she breaks down in self righteous rage and admits the whole sordid truth.  She even tells us why she did it and why she’d gladly do it again. 

That happens in real life too, but not very often.  Criminal cases that go to trial are ambiguous by definition.  The alleged villain claims innocence; a prosecutor says he’s guilty as sin.  Witnesses take the stand, documents are entered into the record, closing arguments are presented and the question is handed to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

Don’t let Law and Order fool you, real trials can be excruciatingly dull.  Witnesses rarely break down on the stand and pour out their souls.  Juries are forced to sift through an ungainly assortment of contradictions, evasions and mind-numbing detail.

Most jurors find resolution by siding with the prosecution.  That way they have the satisfaction of taking a rapist, a murderer, an assailant or a drug dealer off the street.  That feels good.  Putting a guy who may be guilty back on the street is bad for the digestion.  If prosecutors really had to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt we would see far more acquitals.

A man from Lubbock, Texas recently died after spending the last fourteen years of his life in prison for a series of rapes he did not commit.  According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Timothy Brian Cole professed his innocence from the outset, refusing an attractive plea agreement because it was contingent on a full confession.  Those curious about Mr. Coles’ ethnicity can find a picture of his family here. 

DNA evidence shows that the actual rapist was a man in prison for another crime of sexual violence at the time Mr. Cole was convicted.  The actual rapist confessed to the crime on several occasions but nobody wanted to listen to him.  They had their man.

The jurors who sent Mr. Cole to prison were guessing.  They guessed wrong.  They guessed wrong because a prosecutor guessed wrong.  They guessed wrong because a victim guessed wrong after being shown a photo array designed to emphasize Mr. Coles’ picture.  Investigators rigged the photo array because they too were guessing Cole was the rapist.

Why all this guessing?

People need closure; we crave resolution.  We hate movies that leave us guessing.  Guessing is only fun when you know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth will be revealed in the end. 

Police investigators and prosecutors are no exception to this rule.  They will make the pieces fit even if they have to shave off a corner here and plaster in a gaping crack there.  Once they have their suspect a false concreteness takes hold.  A fuzzy picture snaps into high definition.  To win at trial, a prosecutor has to appear convinced.  The best way to appear convinced is to actually be convinced.

Prosecutors should be the ultimate skeptics.  Too often, they are playing the guessing game along with everyone else.

Most of us aren’t very good at distinguishing the truth from a lie.  Studies have shown that police interrogators are no better than randomly selected college sophomores at distinguishing between honest and dishonest testimony.  The difference is that professional interrogators say they know who is lying and who is telling the truth; the sophomores admit freely admit that they’re guessing.

Prosecutors guess because law enforcement guesses.  The issue is settled when two or more authorities agree.  Once the official story takes shape it rapidly hardens into fact.  That’s why Tomothy Brian Cole died in prison.

Once law enforcement agrees on the orthodoxy story, it is blindly accepted by prosecutors and jurors.  Most people look to the proper authorities for the answers because they have little confidence in their own empirical skills. The desire for resolution is so intense that innocent suspects will often confess to a crime because they can’t maintain an independent version of the facts in the face of intense interrogation.

A healthy dose of skepticism would have saved Brian Cole, Ann Colomb, Alvin Clay and Freddie Brookins Jr from wrongful conviction.

Our almost religious veneration for authority figures was recently on display in Gerald Missouri when a Tom Coleman style zealot calling himself “Sergeant Bill” came to town claiming to be a federal agent from a “multijurisdictional task force”.   The New York Times story ran this morning under the headline, “Drug arrests were real; the badge was fake.”  Sergeant Bill led local police on a series of no-knock drug raids.  “I don’t need no warrant, I’m a federal officer,” Sergeant Bill would tell suspects as he dragged them out of their beds.

The Times article suggests that most of these unconstitutional atrocities were based on terrorized suspects “naming names” to Sergeant Bill.  Monica Davey, the author of this intriguing piece, scours the midwestern states looking for natural disasters and human interest stories.  For all I know, she could be a trained attorneys.  But her grasp of due process protections seems a bit weak.  These arrests were not real.

Notice how an appeal to federal authority produced instant compliance from a long list of alleged perps, police officers and public officials.  Then a local newspaper editor made a simple phone call and Sergeant Bill’s reign of error was over. 

The lack of independent thinking in Gerald, Missouri is an egregious case of normal.  At every stage of the criminal justice process an uncritical groupthink often substitutes for real evidence.  Uneducated guesses come to the judicial party disguised as unassailable facts. 

You can’t understand how the process works unless you have watched it unfold in real time.  I can imagine how Timothy Brian Coles’ family felt as they watched an innocent man slowly succumb to the guessing game.  

This doesn’t just happen in a few isolated rape cases; it happens whenever the human appetite for resolution trumps independent thought.  The narrative campaigns Friends of Justice undertakes for people like Freddie Brookins Jr., Ann Colomb, Mychal Bell and Alvin Clay reveal the mechanics of wrongful conviction.  When jurors are forced to participate in a guessing game bad things happen to innocent defendants.

Two months ago, a half dozen federal officials traveled to Bunkie, Louisiana to meet with law enforcement and two local citizen organizations.  One meeting emphasized “problem youth” and sagging pants; the second focused on warrantless searches, racial profiling, and of evidence of evidence planting.  

US Attorney Donald Washington told a meeting of the Coalition for Justice that the “sagging pants” people had no complaints about local law enforcement.  Bunkie Police Chief Mary Fanara was claiming that the malcontents were just a bunch of drug dealers and their family members who thought they should be free to peddle their poison in her town.

Who was Mr. Washington supposed to believe?

Then, a day before another scheduled meeting of the Coalition for Justice, 100 police officers from a variety of federal and state agencies swept into Bunkie in the early morning hours, arresting twenty suspected drug dealers.

Score one for the sagging pants people.

Just in case anyone was counting, a middle-aged white couple was arrested along with the usual (black) suspects. 

If any illegal substances were seized during the raid local authorities didn’t publicize the fact.

The Bunkie raid was reminiscent of the infamous Tulia drug sting.  Only half the number of suspects were arrested, twice as many law enforcement personnel were involved, and (unlike Tulia) the federal government (FBI, federal marshalls) were involved.  But the employment of a multijurisdictional task force is standard operating procedure in the war on drugs.

Several parents of defendants spoke at the well-attended meeting of the Coalition for Justice in Bunkie last night; their experiences with law enforcement varied considerably.  Some officers were respectful and professional, producing search warrants and answering questions in a patient and courteous manner.  Other families were not so fortunate.

Several parents reported that law enforcement refused to produce search warrants on the pretext that they weren’t required to.  Some officers, according to reports, refused to identify themselves by name or badge number.

One mother reported that her thirteen year-old daughter had been dragged from her bed and thrown on the floor with a gun pointed at her head.  The officers conducting that raid got the wrong house.  No apologies were offered when the mistake came to light.

Some defendants were allowed to dress; others were hauled off in their boxers with their teeth and hair unbrushed.

Several speakers told the affected families that this is a time for patience.  If the Bunkie Police Department really had conducted a year-long investigation (as newspaper reports claim), and if they have solid evidence to back up their charges, we will respond accordingly.  If, however, no real evidence is produced and everything devolves into the all-too-common swearing match between an undercover cop and a defendant, that will be another matter altogether.

There can be no doubt that Monday’s raid was timed to make the point that the Bunkie Police Department is serious about the drug war and has the full support of state and federal officials.

Friends of Justice was represented at the meeting by Executive Director Alan Bean, Outreach Director Lydia Bean and Dwight Pope and Vanessa Hernandez, our valiant summer interns.  This afternoon we will be visiting with Ann Colomb in Church Point before heading on to Jena to visit with Jena 6 families.

Bunkie has been a slow-simmering story since Friends of Justice was first contacted by local resident Denise Atkins in February of 2007.  After interviewing dozens of concerned people it was clear that an adversarial relationship had developed between the Bunkie Police Department and the poor sector of the African American community.  I talked to four former members of the Bunkie Police Deparment who told me it had not always been thus. 

Two participants in the Tuesday night meeting were former Bunkie residents currently working in law enforcement in Dallas and Los Angeles.  While admitting that every law enforcement agency has its share of problems, the officers in our midst assured us that warrantless searches are not standard procedure in their jurisdictions. 

Another speaker told the group that we have not gathered to express out anger with the Bunkie Police Department.  Anger, he said, is not effective; organizing is.  Law enforcement has a proper and honorable role and we need to honor that; but when police officers behave as if the protections and rights of citizenship do not extend to all members of the community we have a problem. 

And so we wait.  How things will shake out in Bunkie, Louisiana is anyone’s guess.  Repeated efforts to file official complaints with the FBI have thus far proven unsuccessful.  The Alexandria office has made it clear that they will not be investigating in Bunkie.  When complaints are addressed to other FBI offices in Louisiana, complainants are directed to Alexandria. 

Liza Grote of the Louisiana ACLU has written a pointed letter to US Attorney Donald Washington addressing these concerns.  One thing is certain, tensions will continue to simmer in this little town until the right questions are addressed by the appropriate people.  This is an issue of democratice accountability.  Are we a nation that provides liberty and justice for all, or are we not?