kangaroo fucking court

[jimbeam]

goddamnit I hate this fucking state’s one horse fucking towns… talk about getting railroaded
profiling motherfuckers…crooked assed lawyers, corrupt fucking judges and chickenshit juries
sorry assed cock sucking cops and laws that mean whatever the fuck the day requires…
you might say I’m just a little bit pissed off about gettin a DUI and having a steeep fucking fine and the rest of the book thrown at me.
I was going to a BBQ for the weekend and was passing through CROCKETT fucking TEXAS. It was 5AM and I was in a convertible Z28 w/ the top down, smoking a cigar and drinking a coke.
BUT according to the prick ass cop… he saw the “blunt” I was smoking, I was wearing a Nascar windbreaker and cap, had a beard and long hair. The car had plates from McAllen Tx. (on the Tx/Mex border) and he immediately thought dope runner.
He pulled me over, ran the plates, insurance driver license and everything was clean. Like I said, it was 5AM and the top was down so my eyes were watery. BUT I swear to GOD I was not drunk.
He did a breath test, I passed. I did field sobriety tests and passed. He searched the vehicle without permission or a warrant. He called in backup and arrested me for suspicion of DUI. There were no open or unopen containers in the car. He claimed to smell alcohol. I was NOT drinking!
They took me down to the jail and interrogated me without miranda. They videotaped the sobriety tests which I passed again. We had an extensive “conversation” which I was very obviously sober. Then I took a “breathalyzer” which the fucking idiot rookie cop fucked up the results and had me take it again, until he finally decided the results were positive. He said that he couldn’t swear I was intoxicated but was according to the machine I was “under the influence”. I asked him what the results were and he hesitatingly said, “point 25”
WHAT?
yeah you heard me… .25 I was legally UNCONSCIOUS

I said this to him and he kinda shrugged and said, well, that’s what the machine says.
Meanwhile… my car had been taken to the local cop shop where it was taken apart piece by piece to find the nonexistant drugs. Goddamnit people I DON’T FUCKING DO DRUGS. I don’t take’em, I don’t sell em, I don’t have anything to do with em.

So… I finally get out and get a lawyer and go to court.

The fucking prosecuting attorney has “lost” the tapes. No tapes nowhere… not from the roadsite or from the jail… nothing, nada, ZIP… they existed in pretrial but not now.

They WERE my defense! The corrupt fucking judge says the trial can proceed without them because the prick prosecutor says he can “prove” his case without the tapes.
No fucking shit! I thought. What about my defense?
The cocksukers cops couldn’t recall anything but “well, I thought I smelled alcohol and he failed the intoxilyzer”.

The pecilnecked geek who works on the intoxilyzer5000 admits the machine had been fucking up but these results were valid according to the test. WTF?
The fact that IT5000 has a history of errors when acetone is present on the subject was disallowed. I had rebuilt a carb and did a complete tuneup and worked all evening on an old car the night before and hadn’t showered since then.
This evidence was NOT admitted by the fucking judge.
BTW for those that don’t know. Carb cleaner is basically a mix of acetone and MEK or tolulene. We couldn’t even bring up the study. The geek actually testified the machine COULD NOT make a mistake.

So based on testimony that “I smelled like alcohol” even though the cops admitted my driving was not erratic, I wasn’t slurring my speech or staggering in the least. Evidence was that I passed the field sobriety tests and “filed” the breath test. However he screwed up the breathalyzer was never mentioned because when the results came back to court they “miraculously” had been reduced to .14
That and the tapes disappeared! The jury was not allowed to know about the tapes or the screwup on the breath test. So, they came back with guilty and now it’s gonna cost me over three grand, 80 hours of community service plus two years probation and I’ve got AA 3 nights a week.
No good motherfuckers!

I should appeal this case but now I’m afraid they’d put me on death row. Seriously, the prick prosecutor said, “we need to make an example out of this man, he needs to do some time. I want to send a message to people.”
Folks I’ve had a pretty damned bad time lately, since I lost my wife and kids in the car wreck, but GODDAMNIT enough is enough.
This is too fucking much already.

[Apos]

Texas is well known as one of the most corrupt justice systems in the country, especially when it comes to drug cases. It seems like every other week some Texas officer gets arrested for planting evidence or some case thrown out on appeal because of gross misconduct.

But who are the names of the folks involved? Did you file civilian complaints against them for misconduct? Counter-sue?

They can’t do anything more on the charges they already convicted you of.

[jimbeam]

Shit man, I’m just fucking scared now. They got me on their probation good for shit list and say if I do anything to violate the “rules” they’ll throw me in jail for who knows how long. I just wanna get the fuck away from here and disappear. I swear if I could afford a sailboat nobody’d ever see my ass again. I really tired of this shit. The finacial burdens have left me bankrupt, I’m broken hearted and NOW this has broken my spirit. I really can’t take this shit anymore.

[Mince]

@Apos

Texas is well known as one of the most corrupt justice systems in the country, especially when it comes to drug cases. It seems like every other week some Texas officer gets arrested for planting evidence or some case thrown out on appeal because of gross misconduct.

But who are the names of the folks involved? Did you file civilian complaints against them for misconduct? Counter-sue?

They can’t do anything more on the charges they already convicted you of.

Cite? Evidence please?

[Seven]

America: Land of the free.

Yup, I’d say get the hell out of dodge while you still can.

[Mince]

@Seven

America: Land of the free.

Yup, I’d say get the hell out of dodge while you still can.

Help youself. It’s way too crowded here anyway. But where will you go? Choices, choices.

[mhendo]

@Mince

Cite? Evidence please?

Well, Apos’s “every other week” comment was, i’m sure, intentional hyperbole, and as such requires no cite.

But if you want evidence of fucked-up small-town justice, Texas style, you could do worse than start with the Tulia case.

[jimbeam]

I was looking at a 35 foot ketch the other day. It needed a motor but the boat was in pretty good shape and had new sails. I could fuckoff in the Carribean for a long fucking time and then just cruise. Up the east coast and across to Greenland UK and Europe. Take a few more months or longer in the Med and cruise some more. Around the Cape and across to Sri Lanka, down Indonesia and Oz. Eventually winding up in the South Pacific. That could take years.
Where to go? Shit, where NOT to go? I just gotta come up with the boat.

BTW this being the pit, cites aren’t really required and I guarantee there’s plenty of cases. I don’t need more evidence. I just need to fucking vent a little. Better than using a shotgun. They’ll lock you ass up here and throw away the keys for being drunk in a bar. I’m not talking about shitfaced drunk either. Just whatever the cop thinks IS intoxicated. No tests required. No complaints necessary.
WTF do ya think about that?

[Darth_Nader]

Originally Posted by Apos
Texas is well known as one of the most corrupt justice systems in the country, especially when it comes to drug cases. It seems like every other week some Texas officer gets arrested for planting evidence or some case thrown out on appeal because of gross misconduct.

@Mince

Cite? Evidence please?

But this week’s winner is the nearby Donna, TX, Police Department, where old habits apparently die hard. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Donna Police Chief Abel Partida and former officer Gerardo Vigil were indicted and arrested on federal drug trafficking and bribery charges. The indictment accuses the two men of taking payoffs to allow vehicles transporting marijuana to proceed unimpeded. Four counts of the indictment accuse Partida and Vigil of taking bribes ranging from $500 to $2200 to provide protection to drug trafficking vehicles, while a fifth count accused them of conspiring to transport 300 pounds of pot in November 2001. If convicted, Partida and Vigil could face 40 years in federal prison and a $2 million fine.

Partida and Vigil were following in some familiar footsteps. Five years ago, the feds arrested and convicted five former Donna police officers, including two police chiefs, of both stealing from and providing assistance to drug dealers. All of those men went to prison. Donna, located 15 miles from the Mexican border, bills itself as “the heart of the Rio Grande Valley,” but a better slogan might be: “Where the drug war makes corruption a way of life.”

Yep.

[Mince]

@Darth Nader

Yep.

It seems like **every other week ** some Texas officer gets arrested for planting evidence or some case thrown out on appeal because of gross misconduct.

Every other?

Keep going.

**emphasis added.

[LouisB]

“If I owned Hell and Texas, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell.”—General William Sherman said it, I believe.

I believe the best thing I ever did in life was to leave Texas and never look back.

[dalej42]

I"m afraid it is actually worse. You’re also going to have to pay a $1000 surcharge every year for the next three years.

[Elenfair]

Honestly? Appeal. Find yourself a pitbull lawyer (so to speak) and fight it with all your might. The record itself is worth fighting. Make an example out of THEM. Go to the media if you have to. If you’re 100% confident in your position, fight it, man.

They couldn’t pay me to live in Tex-Ass.

[yBeayf]

Every other?

Keep going.

It seems like every other week some Texas officer gets arrested for planting evidence or some case thrown out on appeal because of gross misconduct.

Bolding mine.

[Eonwe]

@Elenfair

Honestly? Appeal. Find yourself a pitbull lawyer (so to speak) and fight it with all your might. The record itself is worth fighting. Make an example out of THEM. Go to the media if you have to. If you’re 100% confident in your position, fight it, man.

They couldn’t pay me to live in Tex-Ass.

Yeah. I agree with Elly. Frankly, this can either break your spirit, or you can use it as a ‘cause worth fighting for,’ find a good lawyer, and turn it around on them. Make it a goal and a purpose. In life we have to accept when circumstance deals us a shitty hand, but there’s no way we have to sit back when other people clearly and unjustly beat us down.

Honestly. Fight this. Not only will you possibly (a lawyer would tell you how likely) recoup your record, your money and then some, but it will put you in the driver’s seat of your life, so to speak.

[What_Exit]

Shitty thing all the way around. You should appeal. It sounds like you got railroaded.
This won’t help you but South Dakota’s is trying to pass an amendment to hold Judges in better accountability. See this thread if you are interested. *Warning, very long. *

Good Luck,
Jim

[Ike_Witt]

@Mince

Keep going.

It isn’t just small towns in BFT either. Dallas police frame and deport Hispanics.

The Dallas Police Department arrested 39 Hispanic people for possession and distribution of a white, chalky substance that field-tested positive for cocaine. Two undercover cops and a paid informant reported that drugs had been sold or shown to them, which led to the arrests. But in lab tests that police hoped would not be conducted, it was determined the “drugs” were powdered wallboard gypsum.

[Trunk]

A little while back there was a series of articles in the Times about small town courts. You need Times Select (btw, the best money I’ve ever spent) to access it but I’ll include a snippet.

It’s the kind of thing that makes you realize just how little justive can be found in some places.

Stories like the OPs are one of the most upsetting in America, and even if it’s not happening every other week in Texas (and it probably is), it’s happening somewhere all the time.

NYT story:

Some of the courtrooms are not even courtrooms: tiny offices or basement rooms without a judge’s bench or jury box. Sometimes the public is not admitted, witnesses are not sworn to tell the truth, and there is no word-for-word record of the proceedings.

Nearly three-quarters of the judges are not lawyers, and many – truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers – have scant grasp of the most basic legal principles. Some never got through high school, and at least one went no further than grade school.

But serious things happen in these little rooms all over New York State. People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine. Frightened women have been denied protection from abuse.

These are New York’s town and village courts, or justice courts, as the 1,250 of them are widely known. In the public imagination, they are quaint holdovers from a bygone era, handling nothing weightier than traffic tickets and small claims. They get a roll of the eyes from lawyers who amuse one another with tales of incompetent small-town justices.

A woman in Malone, N.Y., was not amused. A mother of four, she went to court in that North Country village seeking an order of protection against her husband, who the police said had choked her, kicked her in the stomach and threatened to kill her. The justice, Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper with a high school diploma, not only refused, according to state officials, but later told the court clerk, ‘‘Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then.’’

Here’s a link if anyone has Times Select.

In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power (Published 2006)

[Daithi_Lacha]

Shoot, with what was recently signed into law, they might as well of called you an illegal enemy combatant and not even bothered with the farcical trial, jimbeam! At least you were told what you were getting railroaded for …

I’m with the others who say “fight it,” for what it’s worth. We have the power to make our own hell; don’t let these morons make it for you.

[Mince]

@yBeayf

by Apos

**It seems ** like every other week some Texas officer gets arrested for planting evidence or some case thrown out on appeal because of gross misconduct.

Bolding mine.

As mhendo indicated above, this a bit of hyperbole. I get that. However, for it to merely seem like it happens every other week, it still must happen quite frequently.