How Long Before WMATA Updates Its Schedules?

Remember the years it took for them to change their reference to Reagan Airport?

New Name for BWI Selected Decision Made to Honor First Black Supreme Court Justice

By John Wagner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 10, 2005; 2:36 PM

Maryland's largest airport will be renamed in honor of the late Thurgood Marshall, the nation's first black Supreme Court justice, under legislation signed into law this afternoon by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R).

Brave Seattle Police Officer Donald Jones Uses Lethal Force Against Pregnant Speeder

What was this guy thinking? Did he really think there was probable cause to believe that Ms. Brooks was dangerous to either him, his fellow officers, or the public?

What a big strong macho man able to subdue a pregnant woman!

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER


Police used Taser on pregnant driver

Woman convicted of refusing to obey Seattle officers

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

By HECTOR CASTRO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

She was rushing her son to school. She was eight months pregnant. And she was about to get a speeding ticket she didn't think she deserved.

So when a Seattle police officer presented the ticket to Malaika Brooks, she refused to sign it. In the ensuing confrontation, she suffered burns from a police Taser, an electric stun device that delivers 50,000 volts.

"Probably the worst thing that ever happened to me," Brooks said, in describing that morning during her criminal trial last week on charges of refusing to obey an officer and resisting arrest.

She was found guilty of the first charge because she never signed the ticket, but the Seattle Municipal Court jury could not decide whether she resisted arrest, the reason the Taser was applied.

To her attorneys and critics of police use of Tasers, Brooks' case is an example of police overreaction.

"It's pretty extraordinary that they should have used a Taser in this case," said Lisa Daugaard, a public defender familiar with the case.

Law enforcement officers have said they see Tasers as a tool that can benefit the public by reducing injuries to police and the citizens they arrest.

Seattle police officials declined to comment on this case, citing concerns that Brooks might file a civil lawsuit.

But King County sheriff's Sgt. Donald Davis, who works on the county's Taser policy, said the use of force is a balancing act for law enforcement.

"It just doesn't look good to the public," he said.

Brooks' run-in with police Nov. 23 came six months before Seattle adopted a new policy on Taser use that guides officers on how to deal with pregnant women, the very young, the very old and the infirm. When used on such subjects, the policy states, "the need to stop the behavior should clearly justify the potential for additional risks."

"Obviously, (law enforcement agencies) don't want to use a Taser on young children, pregnant woman or elderly people," Davis said. "But if in your policy you deliberately exclude a segment of the population, then you have potentially closed off a tool that could have ended a confrontation."

Brooks was stopped in the 8300 block of Beacon Avenue South, just outside the African American Academy, while dropping her son off for school.

In a two-day trial that ended Friday, the officer involved, Officer Juan Ornelas, testified he clocked Brooks' Dodge Intrepid doing 32 mph in a 20-mph school zone.

He motioned her over and tried to write her a ticket, but she wouldn't sign it, even when he explained that signing it didn't mean she was admitting guilt.

Brooks, in her testimony, said she believed she could accept a ticket without signing for it, which she had done once before.

"I said, 'Well, I'll take the ticket, but I won't sign it,' " Brooks testified.

Officer Donald Jones joined Ornelas in trying to persuade Brooks to sign the ticket. They then called on their supervisor, Sgt. Steve Daman.

He authorized them to arrest her when she continued to refuse.

The officers testified they struggled to get Brooks out of her car but could not because she kept a grip on her steering wheel.

And that's when Jones brought out the Taser.

Brooks testified she didn't even know what it was when Jones showed it to her and pulled the trigger, allowing her to hear the crackle of 50,000 volts of electricity.

The officers testified that was meant as a final warning, as a way to demonstrate the device was painful and that Brooks should comply with their orders.

When she still did not exit her car, Jones applied the Taser.

In his testimony, the Taser officer said he pressed the prongs of the muzzle against Brooks' thigh to no effect. So he applied it twice to her exposed neck.

Afterward, he and the others testified, Ornelas pushed Brooks out of the car while Jones pulled.

She was taken to the ground, handcuffed and placed in a patrol car, the officers testified.

She told jurors the officer also used the device on her arm, and showed them a dark, brown burn to her thigh, a large, red welt on her arm and a lump on her neck, all marks she said came from the Taser application.

At the South Precinct, Seattle fire medics examined Brooks, confirmed she was pregnant and recommended she be evaluated at Harborview Medical Center.

Brooks said she was worried about the effect the trauma and the Taser might have on her baby, but she delivered a healthy girl Jan. 31.

Still, she said, she remains shocked that a simple traffic stop could result in her arrest.

"As police officers, they could have hurt me seriously. They could have hurt my unborn fetus," she said.

"All because of a traffic ticket. Is this what it's come down to?"

Davis said Tasers remain a valuable tool, and that situations like Brooks' are avoidable.

"I know the Taser is controversial in all these situations where it seems so egregious," he said. "Why use a Taser in a simple traffic stop? Well, the citizen has made it more of a problem. It's no longer a traffic stop. This is now a confrontation."

Thanks to Mr. Drudge for the link.

Not Much Love or Reverence for the Mothers of the Commonwealth

Today, I have seen many flagpoles, even at state facilities, with only the federal flag.

§ 2.2-3304. Display of flags on Mother's Day.

The Governor may issue annually a proclamation calling upon state officials to display the flag of the United States and of the Commonwealth on all public buildings, and the people of the Commonwealth to display such flags at their homes and other suitable places on the second Sunday in May, known as "Mother's Day," as a public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of the Commonwealth.

Here Comes A Slew of Motions

Audit: Crime lab erred in exonerated death row inmate's case


By KRISTEN GELINEAU
Associated Press Writer

Published May 6, 2005

RICHMOND, Va. -- The state crime lab made several errors when retesting evidence in the case of a former death row inmate wrongfully convicted of a 1982 rape and murder, according to an independent audit released Friday.

Although retesting of the evidence in 2000 led to the absolute pardon of Earl Washington Jr., the lab's leading DNA analyst made several mistakes, including prematurely excluding suspects when he should have ruled the DNA sample inconclusive, the audit report concluded.

As a result, Jeffrey Ban has been temporarily suspended from certain cases involving "low level" DNA samples, where the evidence contains amounts of DNA at or below normal detection limits.

Such samples were used in the case of Washington, who spent more than nine years on death row and came within nine days of being executed. He was pardoned by then-Gov. Jim Gilmore in 2000, 17 years after he was imprisoned for the killing of 19-year-old Rebecca Williams of Culpeper.

In 2004, a California scientist concluded that semen found on the victim's body was left by a serial rapist, Kenneth Tinsley. Tinsley is serving life in prison for the 1984 rape of an Albemarle County woman and was twice convicted of rape in Chicago, according to court and prison records. He has not been charged in the Williams slaying.

The audit, requested by Gov. Mark R. Warner, places some of the blame for the errors on pressure from Gilmore's office to definitively answer whether Washington was the killer. It quoted Ban as saying "inconclusive results were not an option."

"The added daily pressures to produce a result ... laid the groundwork for mistakes to be made and procedures to be modified in attempts to gather some useful information," according to the report prepared by the American Society of Crime Lab Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board, the national accrediting entity for forensic labs.

DNA testing in 1993 cast doubt on Washington's guilt, but did not absolutely eliminate him as a suspect. As a result, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted Washington's sentence to life in prison.

The audit pointed out errors Ban made during the 1993 retesting.

"If he had correctly reported the 1993 DNA results, Earl Washington would have been exonerated seven years before he actually was released," said Debi Cornwall, one of Washington's attorneys. "He's had seven years in prison because of (Ban's) mistakes."

In 2000, the crime lab used more sophisticated DNA tests on the evidence. The results excluded Washington as the depositor of the semen and as a result, Gilmore granted him an absolute pardon. Ban then concluded that DNA appearing on a vaginal swab came from an unknown male--not from Washington, the victim or Tinsley.

But the audit found the results of those tests should have been deemed inconclusive.

"The DNA typing results offered in this case should have, at best, been reported as inconclusive, rather than attempting to make an interpretation from poor quality information," the report said.

In a statement, Virginia Division of Forensic Science director Paul Ferrara agreed that Ban should have declared the sample inconclusive instead of eliminating Washington, Williams and Tinsley. But he also characterized the audit's focus as narrow.

"The audit report criticizes the work performed on one sub-sample five years ago based upon current technologies and standards," Ferrara said. "It also belies the major body of other work performed by this examiner in this case wherein he successfully eliminated Earl Washington and identified a new suspect, Kenneth Tinsley, on evidence found at the crime scene."

The audit included several recommendations, many of which the lab has already adopted. Among them, the audit recommends defining a process that would insulate lab workers from outside pressures in high-profile cases. Ferrara said in the event a similar case arises again, a panel of senior scientists will review any deviations from normal protocols and help with formatting the results of the analysis and conclusions.

The report also recommends a thorough examination of Ban's casework over the past five years, which Ferrara agreed to in his response.

No one at the forensics division would have any further comment on the audit, according to a secretary who answered the phone. A telephone message left at Ban's home was not immediately returned.

The implications of the audit's findings are grave, said one of Washington's attorneys, Peter Neufeld, founder of the Innocence Project.

"It casts a shadow over many of the capital prosecutions and convictions in Virginia with this laboratory and, in particular, this analyst," he said.

Thanks to Mr. Drudge for the link.

Semper Laborans; Numquam Cogitans

My neverending project at work has been interfering with my ability to post. But I shall return.