Captian Amazing, your link does make the witness/victim’s credibility seem lower than the article I linked. The problem is that given the evidence mentioned in my link it’s hard to believe the former cop’s story, either. Even if she did give him the hand job at her suggestion, it’s still deplorable behavior. I believe it still meets criminal conduct for him to accept sexual favors to avoid arresting her.
I am making the assumption that her testimony seems more reliable than his, but I’m also of the opinion that there’s enough irrgularity in the officer’s documented behavior to leave me inclined to wonder just what he thought he was doing if he wasn’t looking to assault the woman.
Olive, IANAL, but my understanding is barring odd legal gymnastics, that the principle of double jeopardy means that there’s nothing the woman can do, or have done, to get justice done. Having said that, there are Federal laws that could be applied to the situation, if there were enough public pressure, or need in the eyes of law-enforcement, to try to prosecute him for the event. Consider the officers who were acquited of the Rodney King beating.
IANAL, but I do recall discussion concerning “consent” when one party is in obvious power over another, and one party has a reasonable belief they will come to harm if they don’t cooperate (I believe seeing a gun, baton, or tazer would suggest such.) Certainly the inequity in the power of the two parties should be considered.
Perhaps a lawyer type can shed some light.
Oh yeah, it’s the pit- that jury is a bunch of fucktards.
There’s no doubt that it’s deplorable behavior, and it might even be criminal conduct, but that’s not the question. The question is, is it one of the crimes he was charged with. He was charged with. He was charged with felony sexual battery, sexual battery by restraint, and sexual penetration with a foreign object.
Sexual battery is defined by 243.4 of the California penal code. Here’s subpart a
Subparts b, c, and d deal with the sexual battery of those institutionalized and those who don’t realize they’re being sexually battered, so they don’t apply. Here’s the relevant parts of e
So, see, if he touched her and she was “unlawfully restrained”, he’s guilty of felony sexual battery, but if she wasn’t, he would be guilty of misdemeanor sexual battery, which he wasn’t charged with.
The question of whether one party’s belief that they will come to harm if they do not submit is a question of fact for the jury to resolve. The jury could certainly conclude that the presence of a gun, baton, or taser created such fear. OR – they could conclude that there was no intimidation, even though there was a gun present.
The problem seems to be, at least in part, that the woman’s testimony made the jury believe that she was a liar. She lied about getting money; she lied about working at the club. In order to convict him, they had to believe the part of her story where she was forced or coerced. In fact, they didn’t just have to believe it; they had to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. They may have felt that since she was demonstrated to be a liar under oath, on the stand, they couldn’t trust her story enough to convict him.
Readers of the first article seem to have no problem believing her guilt, because the author failed to mention her repeated lies on the stand. I wonder why the first article’s author neglected to mention anything about that?
That’s one question to ask, sure. There’s another question to ask: why did the authors of the second and third articles fail to corroborate the defense lawyer’s claim that the witness lied repeatedly on the stand? They apparently didn’t bother to dig out the trial transcripts to see whether the defense lawyer was accurately representing her testimony. Reread those articles: their only source for the claim that she lied repeatedly on the stand is the defense lawyer.
Bricker, and the other two articles don’t mention the former officer’s lies on the stand. I don’t think either primary party sounds like they’d done very well in the stand. Certainly the article I’d linked seems to have more reference to testimony during the trial, than the two other articles linked by Captain Amazing. The author of the first article does obviously believe that Parks is a liar, but he’s also provided certain cites from the trial to support that interpretation.
Similarly he claimed in the stand to have no idea that the woman was in a shaky legal position, but:
This is not the sort of testimony that leaves me in the position to believe Parks account of things.
There’s also a difference in character between the two shorter stories, and the one from the OC Weekly. I am inclined at this time to give more credence to the Weekly’s reporting. It has more cites and references to the trial, that could be checked against the trial transcript.
Let me add to that, the first time that a defense lawyer trots out “coincidence” to explain something unusual, I’m perfectly willing to give the client the benefit of the doubt. The second time that happens, I’m going to be less generous. By the third time it were to happen, I’d be very skeptical. The number of procedural irregularities that seem to be accepted by both sides of the cases in how Parks handled this stop leave me actively suspicious of anything he might say.
So, if the defendant’s and the motorist’s stories contradict, as in this case, it’s a question of fact as to who is more credible, and it’s the jury that has to decide that, and they did so when they found him not guilty of what he’s been charged with.
All of this is true. The OP is asserting that the jury decided this because of unfair slams against the character of the victim (and from the article, she was at the very least the victim of a stalker). Slams against her character would be true if, for example, she lied multiple times on the stand. That appeared to be the argument Bricker was making. I was pointing out that his only evidence for this argument seemed to be the description of the trial as given by the defense attorney who was attacking her character in the first place, and that this is inadequate evidence.
Unless you’re positing that juries don’t make mistakes, a description of the jury process is not especially helpful.
Edit: Also, when the defendant and the victim’s testimony contradict one another, that’s a good time to look at other evidence. The evidence pointing to this cop’s stalking of the defendant tends to cast his account into doubt, don’tcha think?
First off, as a criminal prosecution, there is no plaintiff: There’s the State and the Defendant.
Secondly, appeals are made based on errors in law during the trial, not based on the jury’s decision. Unless a member of the jury is on record for having made some kind of statement during the trial, like “I hate strippers and wish they all got used like they deserve,” there’s no legal reason to grant a new trial, just because you, or I, don’t like the jury’s decision.
As I said upthread to Olive, it’s possible that other charges could be shoehorned in to fit the situation to try to get around the double jeopardy protections. I really don’t like that, however. I think it’s at least as dangerous a precedent as anything this case might leave. That it’s been done in the past in response to the LA Riots doesn’t make it right. Even in the case that I seem to recall having heard about where an officer by the name of (phonetic spelling, but I can’t seem to get it to work on any search engine) Gualtney murdered a female he’d stopped and sexually assaulted, and had gotten through one murder trial with an acquittal, then was tried in Federal court for violating her civil rights (by raping and killing her.) I have a hard time feeling that it was a good idea.
Wouldn’t it be telling though, besides the admonishment to “stay away from the strippers,” that he disconnected his GPS? I mean, I’m assuming even civilians don’t do that, unless there’s a really good reason.
And then there’s the call under a dead man’s name, running plates on several other dancers and following Lucy for 8 minutes before stopping her (again) outside his jurisdiction. I’m sure I’m missing more coincidences, at least according to his attorney…
Read my link: I don’t think your “unless” is a real “unless.” As I understand it, afterward a juror could say, “That crazy Mr. Park gave me ten thousand bucks and a handjob to vote for his acquittal, so I threatened all the other jurors with death if they didn’t vote for acquittal too!” and the government still couldn’t retry the case (they could, of course, charge Parks with jury tampering). The no-double-jeopardy guarantee doesn’t have exceptions, I think.
Edit: dammit, you already agreed with me! Well, I’ll go ahead and leave this here anyway.
A jury verdict does not set precedent. It’s a determination of fact that applies only to the case in which it is rendered. This jury found that the cop was not guilty of the offense charged. There is nothing here to prevent a different jury from convicting another cop in a future case.
The jurors in this case must have been a bunch of total morons to ignore all those coincidences … or their morals are no better than the rapist-cop’s morals.
That doesn’t suprise me all that much. Back in the 1980s, in Monterey County, there was a place that did a pretty good business selling Confederate memorabilia. Some of us who lived in that area at the time referred to it as the 3K-Mart. Not, because of its stock, but because of its clientele.
I agree that this seems to be at least a ** partial ** basis for the jury verdict on the 3 felony charges that the articles mention, a conclusion that is corroberated by one of the reader comments (the one by the apparent alternate juror) that follow the second article. And if the prosecution was required to prove cumpulsion or duress as an element of each of the felony charges, I suppose I can see where the jury may have found reasonable doubt (because the only prosecution witness who could establish those elements lied).
But on the whole, I suspect that this is a jury verdict tainted by pro-police or anti-stripper bias. I would be very interested in learning more about the 7 lesser charges that the articles mention, but fail to describe. I’d bet at least one of them doesn’t require the prosecution to prove compulsion. The defense case seemed to be “Yeah, he accepted a handjob to let her off without a ticket, but it was her idea.”
Okay, fine. If the jury believed that, it acquits on the 3 felonies mentioned. No compulsion. I can buy that. But what about accepting a bribe? Public indecency? Those lesser charges had to include something like this.
So what happened here? If we believe the person who claims he was an alternate juror (and read between the lines a little bit), it appears that the jury refused to convict a cop, even though it believed he had engaged in illegal act, because (a)it didn’t like the stripper or the prosecutor; (b) thought that the cop had been punished enough; and/or (c) thought that the stripper’s civil settlement was excessive.
In other words, the jury engaged in jury nullification.
