Susan Page: USA TODAY - How your cell phone spies on you.....with your consent!

A Prison Culture | School of Arts & Sciences

A Prison Culture | School of Arts & Sciences 

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A good read. "Civil death" concept. The numbers are staggering from more than a fiscal standpoint.

Postmus Still Politically Active & Arrogant -- Wasn't he Awaiting a Sentencing?? Colonies II Coming?

I was in restaurant today with my wife after church and happened to overhear a former San Bernardino County 1st District Supervisor and Assessor (Bill Postmus, Jr) plan fund raisers (one fund raiser was to retire someone's campaign debt)--some of the names heard-- "Josie" and "Robert" (the first names of two of our county supervisors--but neither as I recall had a campaign debt). I even heard about someone being moved into a house to be in an area to run (for what was not clear except that the "Gus" voice -- the person identified himself as "Gus" and spoke of Hesperia being a well run City) said that "he and his wife wanted to look at the house first" (does the Republican party pay for moves--wow, some perk--wonder if it shows up on the FPPC??). Postmus, "Gus" and "Jeremiah" obviously didn't see me sitting across a divider trying to enjoy a late breakfast lunch with my wife--with my visibility over the past 2 decades in political races, council meetings, etc, I am sure they would have been a little less loud. I also heard how supervisors were anxious to meet someone ["Gus"?]--could this have anything to do with the "Tapestry" Project coming up with the Hesperia City Council on Thursday? [which could lead to 10,000 to 20,000 homes being built onto top of an already over pumped aquifers]. What makes this crazy is that Postmus is awaiting sentencing on political corruption related charges of CONSPIRACY to COMMIT CRIME, LEGISLATOR RECEIVE, BRIBE PUBLIC OFFICIAL, CONFLICT OF INTEREST : CONTRACTS/SALES/PURCHASES & EMBEZZLE/FALSIFY BY PUBLIC OFFICER (by the way ALL felonies)--obviously the DA thinks in this County it's ok to let convicted felons continue to influence electeds and or the process. This is the same DA that wants to replace Kamala Harris as State AG. When Postmus sees me he says "you and your wife should retire from politics"--wow, a crook telling an honest man to quit.  Something to think about--if the Hesperia City Council and the County Board of Supervisors approve the "Tapestry" project (which will draw enormous amounts of water from the Mojave system before it drains into Victorville, Apple Valley and out to Barstow) and by that further overdraft, lead to violations of the Mojave Adjudication, won't that create Colonies II type litigation--where the City and County get sued for taking water resources from a thirsty High Desert? Is the County being set up for another piece of litigation?

Decent Piece on Prosecutorial Misconduct

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/prosecutorial-misconduct-new-orleans-louisiana_n_3529891.html

An excerpt from the article of local note:
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"A CULTURE OF CONVICTION

....In fact, there's a growing body of empirical data showing that the legal profession isn't really addressing prosecutorial misconduct at all.

• In 2003, the Center for Public Integrity looked at more than 11,000 cases involving misconduct since 1970. Among those, the center found a little over 2,012 instances in which an appeals court found the misconduct material to the conviction and overturned it. Less than 50 cases resulted in any professional sanction for the prosecutor.
• In 2010, USA Today published a six-month investigation of 201 cases involving misconduct by federal prosecutors. Of those, only one prosecutor "was barred even temporarily from practicing law for misconduct." The Justice Department wouldn't even tell the paper which case it was, citing concern for the prosecutor's privacy.
• A 2006 review in the Yale Law Journal concluded that "[a] prosecutor's violation of the obligation to disclose favorable evidence accounts for more miscarriages of justice than any other type of malpractice, but is rarely sanctioned by courts, and almost never by disciplinary bodies."
• An Innocence Project study of 75 DNA exonerations -- that is, cases where the defendant was later found to be unquestionably innocent -- found that prosecutorial misconduct factored into just under half of those wrongful convictions. According to a spokesman for the organization, none of the prosecutors in those cases faced any serious professional sanction.
• A 2009 study (PDF) by the Northern California Innocence Project found 707 cases in which appeals courts had found prosecutor misconduct in the state between 1997 and 2009. But of the 4,741 attorneys the state bar disciplined over that period, just 10 were prosecutors. The study also found 67 prosecutors whom appeals courts had cited for multiple infractions. Only six were ever disciplined.
• Most recently, in April, ProPublica published an investigation of 30 cases in New York City in which prosecutor misconduct had caused a conviction to be overturned. Only one prosecutor was significantly disciplined.

The 2011 Yale Law Journal survey of state disciplinary systems also found a host of problems with the way misconduct complaints against prosecutors are handled. In many states, for example, the entire disciplinary process occurs in secret, ostensibly to protect the reputation of the accused attorneys. (Nevermind that the people who were harmed by the misconduct weren't afforded the same courtesy.)
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In 2007, a California Court of Appeals found that a Tulare County deputy district attorney, Phil Cline, had improperly withheld an exculpatory audiotape of a witness interview in the murder trial of Mark Soderston. The tape was so damning to the prosecution's case, the court wrote, that "[t]his case raises the one issue that is the most feared aspect of our system -- that an innocent man might be convicted.” Unfortunately, Sodersten had had already died in prison. The court was so troubled by the case that it took the unusual step of evaluating his claim even though he was dead.
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Not only was Cline never disciplined by the state bar, he was elected district attorney in 1992 and continued to win reelection, even after the court opinion chastising him. The other prosecutor in the case, Ronald Couillard, went on to become a judge. ..."
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FBI catches their mistakes eventually......wish we did in San Bernardino County.....

The FBI's front and center problems:

Washington Post piece on FBI evidence handling: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/us/politics/fbi-evidence-keeping-criticized.html?_r=0
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Washington Post piece on unwound convictions from agent mishandling of evidence: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-agent-in-misconduct-case-may-have-tampered-with-drugs-guns-documents-say/2014/11/05/b77fd50e-6440-11e4-bb14-4cfea1e742d5_story.html
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60 minutes did a Report on this very topic some years ago. http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/crime_labs_under_the_microscope_after_a_string_of_shoddy_suspect_and_fraudu/
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IG Report on Crime Lab Abuse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwBaEvXpTw0
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Sentinel software [a Lockheed Martin company]problems at the FBI: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/us/19fbi.html
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Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Standards and Guidelines: Recommendations & Guidelines for the Use of Digital Image Processing in the Criminal Justice System [Scientific Working Group on Imaging Technologies (SWGIT) Version 1.2, June 2002 http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/lab/forensic-science-communications/fsc/jan2003/index.htm/swgitdigital.htm]
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Windows(c) XP still used by law enforcement, despite:
                                       
PoliticoPro article “Microsoft XP’s Massive Cybersecurity Problem”by Shaun Waterman http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/microsoft-xp-cybersecurity-problem-105451.html]  
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Microsoft Support Document for Windows XP [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324720]
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Microsoft’s Support Document MS03-024 entitled “Buffer Overrun in Windows could
lead to data corruption” [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817606] 
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Data Integrity Problems being researched:                
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Authentication of Digital Video Evidence” by Nicholas, et al [internet posted study] alwww.jhuapl.edu/ott/technologies/featuredtech/DVA/DVA.pdf]                     
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“Evaluating Software Degradation through Entropy” by Alessandro Bianchi,
at al [Dipartimento di Informatica – Università di Bari Via Orabona, 4, 70126
Bari – Italy [http://www.di.uniba.it/~lanubile/papers/metrics2001b.pdf]
{Bianchi, Caivano, Lanubile, Visaggio}@di.uniba.it 

“Digital Tape Preservation Strategy: Preserving Data or Video?” by David Rice etal
(Dec 2, 2009)[http://www.avpreserve.com/dvanalyzer/dv-preservation-data-or-video]                       

Groundbreaking Study Documents How Courts Are Impeding Fair Disclosure in Criminal Cases [like this is a big surprise in San Beat&Hangem County]

From a press release from nacdl.org via mailmanager.net



On November 17, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, NACDL officially released its latest report, Material Indifference: How Courts Are Impeding Fair Disclosure in Criminal Cases, a major study produced jointly with the VERITAS Initiative at Santa Clara Law School. The event featured comments by NACDL President Theodore Simon, NACDL Executive Director Norman L. Reimer (who also moderated the event), and special guests David W. Ogden, former Deputy Attorney General who is now a partner at the WilmerHale firm, and the Hon. Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The report's co-authors – VERITAS Initiative Director and Professor Kathleen "Cookie" Ridolfi, NACDL White Collar Crime Policy Counsel Tiffany M. Joslyn, and VERITAS Initiative Pro Bono Research Attorney Todd H. Fries – also discussed their findings and recommendations. The event was broadcast live by C-SPAN and video is now available on demand.
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In courtrooms across the nation, accused persons are convicted without ever having seen information that was favorable to their defense. The frequency with which this occurs and the role it plays in wrongful convictions prompted NACDL and the VERITAS Initiative to undertake an unprecedented study of Brady claims litigated in federal courts over a five-year period. The study asked: What role does judicial review play in the disclosure of favorable information to accused? The results revealed a troubling answer – the judiciary is impeding fair disclosure in criminal cases and, in doing so, encouraging prosecutors to disclose as little favorable information as possible. The report exposes in stark detail the depth and breadth of the problem and offers three reform proposals that would serve as mechanisms for increasing fair disclosure in criminal cases.
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Following the report’s release, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) announced plans to re-introduce the bipartisan Fairness in Disclosure of Evidence Act and affirmed the need for reform: “We can no longer allow the government to have a finger on the scales of justice, tipping it in its favor.”
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Complete copies of the report, executive summary, and fact sheet are available at www.nacdl.org/discoveryreform/materialindifference. Learn more about NACDL's work in the area of discovery reform, including links to model legislation and more, at www.nacdl.org/discoveryreform.\.
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Who is policing this?
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www.nacdl.org/discoveryreform/materialindifference.

District Attorney Mike Ramos is trying to create a 3rd Assistant DA slot for his girlfriend- time for some more whistle blowing and maybe a discriminatory promotion complaint??

See for breaking story: http://sbsentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Sentinel-11-14-141.pdf-
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Bob's 2 cents worth?
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The total culture of fear and domination created by this DA has been emboldened by support from the recently re-elected Kamala Harris to State Attorney General, despite Ramo's record of retaliatory firings & prosecutions, sexually-influenced promotional decision-making, harassment and over-reaching. Kamala Harris will either wake up and realize that Ramos is someone she should be looking professionally at or go down with him in the public eye.
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The real crime is not in the selection of a pillow talk buddy for a newer and better paying job, but in victims' failure to file appropriate charges with governmental agencies for the preferential hired BASED upon sex and or age. How many qualified men and women have to be offended  and economically damaged by this before someone takes the step to make formal complaints.
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Heh, living in unsubsidized world of private practice ain't so bad. At least you will be doing something that is righteous (for yourselves).