This is a remarkably one-sided summary. You are assuming that every fact the dissent says is a possibility is true. If Nash’s attorney didn’t call the booking officer to testify, that is not the prosecution’s fault. And I find it implausible that Nash didn’t know that cellphones weren’t permitted in the jail when he had a previous history of criminal convictions.
According to the story, Nash was convicted of a crime in '01 and sentenced to 7 years, but his record was clean up to this arrest. Since the relevant statute appears to be six years old, he very well may not have been aware of the change in booking/holding procedures and restrictions (cell phones were a fair bit less ubiquitous 19 years ago).
Of course it’s a one-sided summary. This is the forum for outrage. And what I find most appalling is the 12 year sentence, which is excessive* even if he was aware that he wasn’t allowed a cell phone.
You find it implausible that he wasn’t aware; I find it implausible that if he was aware he’d voluntarily show the phone to the guard and ask for it to be charged. I guess it comes down to who we each find more believable. Increasingly, my presumption is that law enforcement has to prove they’re to be trusted.
*To get ahead of the inevitable: I’m sure it was well within the law to send the guy to jail for 12 years for this. I’m sure it was perfectly, scrupulously applied case law. I don’t care. The prosecution and judge could have chosen to be more lenient.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Nash did know cell phones are illegal (which is an astounding assumption - you’d have to believe he asked the guard to charge his phone knowing it was contraband). Let’s even assume someone smuggled the phone to him.
Do you think 12 years is a reasonable sentence even assuming those facts, given he was arrested for some unknown misdemeanor?
I don’t. 12 friggin’ years for having a cell phone?
I don’t think his awareness plays into it. Check me if I am wrong, but I believe all prisoners\detainees are searched when arrested\booked\placed in holding. This is for officer safety.
So, either he was not searched, or he was badly searched, or he had his cell smuggled in. It happens.
I cannot say which is which.
This is not obvious, as he initially denied that the phone was his.
I will say that the 12 years is a staggering overreaction to the crime. Unless he was trying harass someone or broker a deal for drugs or weapons or plan an escape, he should have received the minimum.
OK, perhaps not obvious, bit still where my money is. My WAG is that he denied it was his in a panicked attempt to avoid punishment once one of the jailers made it clear he was in deep shit.
“Wait?! He can’t have that in here!! Prisoner, is this yours?!”
“Uh… No! Never say it before!”
That’s some rather amusing fiction some of you are writing about this particular prisoner. If he knew he wasn’t supposed to have it, why, then, did he approach a guard to have the thing charged up?
I wonder why Nash’s counsel (PD, I would guess) did not call the booking officer to testify. I mean, we know that LEO types are always 100% honest when testifying in trials – at least, as long as they or no other officer might be harmed by the actual truth.
One analogy should be considered here, though. If someone manages to make it onto the concourse with a gun, that person will be charged with the infraction of being on the concourse with a gun. Someone in security (or several in security) are likely to be seeking a job once they have been identified, but airport security is a job, not a fraternal profession career like police work. Yes, a phone is not a gun, but those things make the police skittish because they have been used to malign officers by recording, for mass distribution, what those officers actually do, so it really could be a weapon. Of sorts.
Seeing that they knew the phone was his because it had pictures of him and his family and texts along the lines of “where are you?” “I’m in jail.” I don’t think it’s much of a leap to guess that he brought the phone in with him and it was found fairly shortly after he was placed in jail. If he smuggled it, that still implicates a corrections officer as one either gave a prisoner back confiscated items or didn’t confiscate them in the first place. It also makes him smart enough to get a phone smuggled to him and stupid enough to not ask for a burner.
And even if he does walk that smart/stupid line, 12 years is far too excessive.
He was in jail because he’d been charged, not convicted of anything. Presumably he’d been there less than a day, maybe only a few hours–less than a phone charge. I don’t think there’d been time to get anything smuggled in or plan drug deals.
It would still be appalling if he WERE serving time, but it’s even worse that he wasn’t. He was just being held.
What defense attorney? Oh, you mean the public defender.
I read about a public defender whose client was charged with murder, had alibi witness(es) proving he wasn’t at the murder scene; his alibis didn’t testify; the man was convicted of murder… Why weren’t the alibi witnesses even interviewed?
The p.d. had a $200 “private detective budget” but the witnesses lived out of town and the mileage alone would have used up most of that budget just for an interview. I guess the p.d. saved the State of New York $200. (Or did he spend his “private detective budget” on dinner with the girlfriend?)
Decades ago we were horrified to read about the “justice” system in banana republics. The stories here are worse than any of those.
Do you have a cite for this?
Regards,
Shodan
It also appears that whatever he was being held on, he wasn’t convicted of. If so, I feel like it would have been mentioned.
All I can find is that he was arrested for a misdemeanor, not what the misdemeanor was. It appears they didn’t bother charging him with any misdemeanor - just the felony of having a cell phone in a cell. Then he got 12 years because of his priors for burglary.
Regards,
Shodan
Do you feel outraged or anything, or does it seem okay to you that being stupid has these sorts of consequences?
I honestly don’t even know if I think he was that stupid–if they put him in a holding cell and no one ever asked him for his phone or told him not to have one, I can see myself assuming it was okay to have one. I’ve done things at least that stupid. Never got 15 years in jail for them.
Gonna have to stop you here. We are misusing the term prove\proof.
Testimony from an alibi witness is evidence, perhaps even compelling evidence. But it is not proof.
Alibi witnesses can be truthful or perjurious. They can also be mistaken, unreliable, or downright unbelievable.
There are several reasons why an alibi witness would not be called to the stand. These reasons can be anywhere from incompetence to refusal to suborn perjury.
If a defense attorney knew of alibi witness(es) and did not interview them, I believe that would grounds for a new trial due to ineffective counsel. We would need a cite for that.
I agree. I believe the cell phone was missed when was searched or he was not searched at all. The booking officer should have been called to testify, if for no other reason than to make him seem incompetent.
Being stupid is going to have these sorts of consequences whether I am outraged or not. That’s how the universe works. And I am not even sure if the answer to “should we protect people from the consequences of being stupid” is Yes or No. Because we can’t, always, and we shouldn’t, often. Doing stupid things has bad consequences, usually - that’s how we know they are stupid things. Most people learn from the bad consequences not to do the stupid things. Not Mr. Nash, apparently.
I’ve certainly done stupid things. Not necessarily that stupid, nor so many stupid things.
[ul]
[li]I have never been convicted of multiple burglaries.[/li][li]I have never been in prison.[/li][li]If I had been in prison, I would like to think I would have taken the opportunity to learn what the rules are, like “no cell phones”.[/li][li]If I had learned the rules, I would know, I hope, not to ask a guard to let me charge my cell phone, because having a cell phone is a felony and I wouldn’t want the guard to know that I was committing a felony.[/li][li]I have never been arrested for anything, let alone a misdemeanor. It is not necessarily easy to get arrested for a misdemeanor, but apparently Mr. Nash had what it takes.[/li][/ul]Maybe 15 years for having a cell phone in jail is excessive. But if someone fucks up long enough, and repeatedly enough, eventually karma is going to make you her bitch.
Sure, it’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. But a single candle isn’t going to do much to brighten Mr. Nash. Even if the delightful Mr. Nash were able to get the people of his state to change the law so he only got 12 years, or 5, or only 1, or maybe overturn the law against cell phones in prison altogether and then prisoners can while away the hours sexting their girlfriends or chatting with their buddies or arranging drug deals or whatever, he will still fuck something else up. So my outrage is tempered by that.
TL;DR - sux to be him, but not only because he got 15 years, but for a myriad of other reasons as well, most of which are not addressable by changes to the jail house rules.
Regards,
Shodan
L.A.'s Finest
Former LAPD officer charged after accusations of sex assault and blackmail made by fellow detective
Her husband…
Mr. Nash is a convicted criminal. Criminals frequently do stupid things (as do members of the general public). I can assure you the jail has gigantic signs everywhere that list prohibited items. Anyone who’s seen the inside of a jail will find it implausible for a detainee to be unaware that cellphones are prohibited.
I don’t trust law enforcement very much either, but I see no reason to disbelieve them in this case after a trial and two appeals.
I don’t find it hard to believe. People talk about problems with funding public defenders’ salaries, but PDs are typically paid as well as if not better than prosecutors. The real problem with public defender funding is that they typically have minimal budgets for investigation, whereas the state effectively has unlimited prosecution budgets.