This guy has several press conferences on YouTube. What. The. Hell.
Okay, these people in custody that he’s talking about in the link are probably not candidates for any good citizen medals, especially the guy with over two hundred felony charges, fifteen convictions. But my point is, their trial hadn’t happened at the time of this video’s posting. And here’s Sheriff Judd, voice dripping with contempt and righteous anger, waving around a picture of the main alleged bad guy, shirtless and tattooed, talking about how evil the guy is. The sheriff goes on and on and on, and goes into a detailed account of multiple murders that were supposedly committed by this guy and and a couple of his friends.
How is this not compromising the upcoming trials of these people? How can any of them get a presumption of innocence or anything resembling a fair trail while this asshole sheriff is parading around grandstanding about how great his law enforcement team is? How can he be allowed to do this?
You’ve obviously never been to Polk County Florida. He’s “allowed to” by a local culture that encourages such things and a hands-off policy by the state governor for anything that leans even a smidgen to the right.
Judd no doubt has hopes of being the Gauleiter of Florida some day.
I could be wrong but I had thought these guidelines applied to prosecutors and not to anyone else.
Certainly there are all sorts of accused people who get enormous negative publicity before conviction, and while it sometimes gets brought up in requesting change of venue, that seems to rarely be successful (e.g. Cosby, Weinstein et al).
I believe in Europe the justice system is much more strict about pre-conviction publicity, but in the US free speech prevails in such matters.
Weren’t there questions about Nixon prejudicing the trial of Charley Manson, because he didn’t call him an “alleged” murder? I don’t remember anyone at the time saying the rules didn’t apply to him. I remember newspaper headlines about it.
There are people who pay no attention to the news. While this reckless sheriff may have shrunk the potential jury pool, there will still be enough citizens who didn’t see the grandstanding lawman to fill a jury box. Besides, there are limits to how many prospective jurors a defense lawyer may eliminate.
These two sentences of yours point to opposite conclusions.
The first sentence says his acts are harmless; unaware jurors are easy to find in sufficient number.
The second sentence says his acts are harmful. The defense cannot necessarily challenge off everyone who’s seen or heard about the inflammatory pre-trial publicity. So at least some inflamed jurors will necessarily be empaneled. Or at least they will if enough people in this close-knit, culturally homogenous, mostly rural county have heard about it.
A mistrial doesn’t have to be the result of any legal violations (though it could be). If as a practical matter the judge decides that the defendant cannot get a fair trial as a result of these statements, then he would declare a mistrial regardless of whether the statements themselves were legal or not. The same would also be true if the judge determined that the defendant can’t get a fair trial due to the statements of lay citizens.
Separately from that, a judge can also dismiss charges as a sanction to the prosecution for legal violations. But I don’t know if that’s what was contemplated here (I doubt it, since Nixon was unconnected to the prosecution which was a state matter).
I believe this is a peculiarity of Florida law. It allows crimes and arrests to be accessible as public records. This why you’re always reading stories about people in Florida being arrested for some stupid crime; reporters can just read arrest reports and write stories about the funny ones.
IANAL, but as I understand it, defendants can be smeared as much as the smearers want (well, to a certain extent), and the jurors are supposed to pretend they are still unbiased and neutral anyway. There is pretty much no such thing as a truly unbiased juror anyway, it is just about an attempt to act professional despite one’s impulses (which many juries successfully do do.)
I wasn’t exactly saying the Sheriff’s antics were harmless. He certainly made the defense lawyer’s job more difficult, even if 12 jurors who claim to be unaware of what he said can be empaneled. Every trial walks a narrow edge between fair and unfair.
It’s one thing for regular people or even reporters to smear someone who hasn’t had a trial yet, but it’s far more disgusting for a member of, or even worse the head of law enforcement to publicly spew poison all over someone who deserves a fair chance at defense.
Just think about the two people caught up along with Mr Fifteen Convictions. The sheriff states that one of them had one minor arrest, and the other had no police record at all. Oh, but who cares right? They probably deserve whatever is coming to them, right? As long as Sheriff Preening Shitbag can profit politically, and law and order reigns supreme, nothing matters.
I know at least one case in Florida (rest area murders) where the prosecutor ran all over Florida with three hung juries and changes of venues, until they finally got a conviction in an all-white jury.
Correction to my post – he was convicted at his third venue. Name was John Crumitie, story always behind pawalls. Florida has a lot of counties, aka venues, if they really want to get you…