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| NEWS > 02 March 2008 |
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Japan: Police overlooked offic
An apparent murder-suicide involving a police officer on Tuesday has raised concerns that the police failed to notice problematic signs in the officer's behavior.
Senior Police Officer Hidekazu Tomono, 40, of the Metropolitan Police Department's Tachikawa Police Station, disappeared while on duty Monday night and apparently shot a woman to death with his police-issued weapon that night.
It also took hours for the police to track down the location where Tomono's body was found.
A series of suicides by police officers using their sidearms have been reported ac... Read more
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Marin Independent-Journal - Sa
02 March 2008
This article appeared in the above title/site.
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Misconduct claims opened rift
In most cases, police and prosecutors work together toward the common goal of enforcing clear-cut laws.
But the matter of Sarah Rawlins and Deputy Tyrone Williams raised conflicting legal issues that drove a wedge between the Marin sheriff's department and the district attorney's office.
Beginning with a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brady vs. Maryland, the courts have said that prosecutors cannot withhold from defendants any potentially favorable information that could be "material to guilt or punishment."
This so-called "Brady material" includes personnel information that might cast doubt on a testifying police officer's credibility or moral conduct. Therefore, in cases where Williams was a key officer, defendants might be entitled to information about the Rawlins matter, including the internal investigation.
But there are also laws protecting the employee confidentiality rights of police, and internal investigations are considered confidential personnel records, Sheriff Robert Doyle said. In the Rawlins case, not even the district attorney's office was allowed to see the internal inquiry on Williams.
Defense attorneys have a mechanism to gain access to internal police records - a "Pitchess" motion, which asks a judge to release the information so a defendant can challenge the officer's credibility. Before turning over material, however, the judge has a closed hearing to evaluate its relevance to the case.
If the judge determines the material is not relevant or credible, it remains confidential, escaping public scrutiny.
As word of the Rawlins case rippled through the legal community, the district attorney's office began to send letters to defense attorneys representing suspects in cases involving Williams. The letters included copies of an April 27 internal memo by Inspector Michael McBride, a DA's investigator, describing his interview with Rawlins.
Prosecutors described the McBride memorandum as "Brady" material they were required to disclose to defense lawyers - but dissemination of the memo has infuriated Sheriff Doyle.
In Doyle's view, prosecutors should not have disclosed allegations by a drug suspect - allegations that, as far as prosecutors knew, were not substantiated by the internal investigation - without the due process of a Pitchess motion and a closed judicial hearing.
"Those Pitchess motions are based on allegations, not on fact," Doyle said. "The district attorney didn't investigate those allegations. The information contained in the McBride memo are allegations. It's awfully unfair that gets released to any criminal defendant and those can be presented in open court."
Yet Doyle would not comment on the findings of the internal investigation himself, or how extensively it was conducted. He said employee confidentiality laws barred him from discussing the inquiry - even if it showed Rawlins to be a liar.
District Attorney Ed Berberian defended the actions of his office in the Tyrone Williams matter, saying his office has a duty to balance the due process rights of criminal suspects as well as police officers.
"It's a hard decision to come to. You've got to be fair to both sides here. We've got to be fair to the defendant and the officer," Berberian said. "(Doyle) has to recognize that I have duties and responsibilities that my job calls for."
Berberian's decision to release the McBride memo comes as he is being scrutinized in the federal courts for supposedly withholding key information in an old homicide case. Last month, a federal judge ordered the release of Crossan Hoover, a murder suspect prosecuted by Berberian some 25 years ago, after ruling that Berberian kept information from a psychiatric witness during the trial.
Berberian has denied the judge's claim, and the matter is on appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
The release of McBride's memo does raise a question about timing: If the district attorney's office knew about Rawlins' allegations in April 2007, and if Rawlins' allegations were arguably Brady material, why wasn't McBride's memo disseminated to defense attorneys until the past several months?
Berberian said the memo did not reach the right prosecutors earlier because of "a mistake within our own office."
"It's my responsibility," he said. "I've made sure there are procedures in place that that won't happen again."
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