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An alleged drug dealer’s five-year prison sentence was overturned last week and charges dismissed after Los Angeles County prosecutors conceded that police included false information in an arrest report to protect the identity of a confidential informant. The Los Angeles Daily News reports the District Attorney’s office told a judge that while the evidence overwelmingly supported Michael Edward Baker’s drug conviction, the conviction should be overturned because in an attempt to protect a confidential informant, there “were certain statements made in a police report that weren’t accurate.”

The inaccuracies were discovered after Baker’s defense attorney found a sworn declaration by a federal agent that contradicted the version of Baker’s arrest given by Torrance law enforcement. Torrance officers contend that they fell upon Baker last year when they were patrolling near a 7-Eleven store and noticed that he matched the description of a suspect in a robbery at the store earlier in the day. They say they stopped him, found PCP in his car and arrested him on drug charges.

But according to the federal agent, the Torrance police set Baker up. The agent — who was part of a task force investigating Baker — said that Torrance police used one of their informants to call Baker and arrange a drug deal near the 7-Eleven. When it became clear that the CI’s identity was in danger of being uncovered, Torrance police concocted a story to protect the informant.

It is entirely legal for police to use an informant to set up a drug deal with a targeted criminal, however officers lying to protect the informant’s identity is illegal. The Los Angeles D.A.’s office is considering whether they will file criminal charges against the lying cops.

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The Los Angeles Times reports that California’s Proposition 5—aka the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act (NORA)–was defeated by a margin of roughly 60 percent to 40 percent. As I discussed in an earlier post, the measure, which drew the attention of drug policy advocates nationwide, was regarded by some as “the biggest sentencing and prison reform in United States history” but was condemned by national drug-court advocates and California law-enforcement groups.

NORA called for more funding for addiction treatment and less imprisonment of drug offenders. Those supporting NORA stressed that it would increase funding for drug courts, but critics complained that NORA would have limited the ability of drug-court judges to jail drug offenders.

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That’s the question the U.S. Supreme Court was considering when they heard oral arguments in Oregon v. Ice— a case adressing whether under Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000), a sentencing judge violates the Sixth Amendment by imposing consecutive sentences based on a fact not found by the jury or admitted by the defendant. Do I think that the Supreme Court will find that consecutive sentences amount to more severe punishment, so the jury must find the facts necessary to justify them?

For some context, in 2000, the Apprendi decision changed the face of Sixth Amendment implications of criminal sentencing when the U.S. Supreme Court mandated that any facts that lead to a higher sentence–if they go beyond the facts that justified a guilty verdict–cannot be decided by a judge, but must be determined by a jury. Essentially, the Court held that this is a critical aspect of the right to be tried by a jury and since that ruling, the jury’s role in determining punishment have been significantly increased by sentencing schemes and legal precedent from lower courts.

The case before the High Court this term (Oregon v. Ice) involves Thomas Eugene Ice, an Oregon man convicted of two counts of first-degree burglary, and four counts of first-degree sexual abuse. Oregon Prosecutors claimed that, on two separate occasions, he entered the apartment of a family in the complex, went into an 11-year-old girl’s bedroom, and each time touched her breast and vagina.

As a result, Ice faced trial on six separate offenses–the burglary offenses and the molestation counts–and he was convicted on all six. (Under Oregon law, sentences imposed for multiple crimes must be concurrently served, unless the judge finds that the offenses did not occur as part of the same course of conduct). In Ice’s case, the judge found that the convictions for the two burglaries and four sex crimes arose out of separate incidents, and thus ordered consecutive sentences, totaling over 28 years, which was the result of requiring that three of the sentences be served back-to-back.

From what legal analysts are saying and the types of questions the Justices were asking the parties at the oral argument, it appears that the Court will continue to require juries to make the factual determinations to justify a consecutive sentence. It is likely though, that California Judges will maintain that this ruling doesn’t apply to California sentences because of our sentencing structure and the District Courts will be the ultimate enforcers of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling.

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The L.A. Daily News is reporting that a Thousand Oaks man who targeted immigrant women and children plead guilty yesterday to crimes against four women. The Ventura County District Attorneys Office says that 79-year-old man entered pleas to five charges sexual battery to lewd acts with a child.

Allegedly, the man posted ads in local stores seeking house cleaning services or health care for his ailing wife and then would demand sex from the women and threaten them with death or deportation if they didn’t submit to him. A 27-year-old woman testified the man began fondling her when she was 9.

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A Riverside man who was jailed for two years as a suspect in 40 arson fires has sued Riverside Fire Department officials and a dog handler who linked him to the crimes by using a controversial device intended to pick up human scent at crime scenes. Michael Espalin is now asking for damages in a federal lawsuit he filed in Santa Ana.

The only evidence brought against him at his criminal trial was a bloodhound named Dakota–whose handler said the dog found Espalin’s scent at the fires days and weeks after they were set in 2004. According to the lawsuit, there was no physical evidence or eyewitness linking Espalin to any of the fires.

According to the LA Times, Espalin is at least the sixth person in Southern California cleared since 1996 after being linked to a crime by the “scent transfer unit STU-100”– a machine that supposedly transfers human scent from an object at a crime scene to a 5- by 9-inch gauze pad. The pad is then put to a bloodhound’s nose, and the dog theoretically follows the scent to the suspect. The machine and the dogs used with it have led to false arrests in several high-profile cases including an Irvine man whose murder conviction was thrown out by a judge who said the machine was scientifically unreliable. In addition, a Long Beach man arrested as a serial rapist was cleared by DNA tests. And a Buena Park man sent to prison for a carjacking was freed when DNA from the crime scene was matched to a man already in custody for another carjacking.

Unable to post $500,000 bail, Espalin spent two years in county jail awaiting trial.

More than $2.3 million has been paid out in lawsuits stemming from some of the cases.

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Richard Winton of The Los Angles Times reports today that nearly 200 potential sexual assault cases have gone without prosecution because Los Angeles Police officials failed to test them within the 10-year statute of limitations period required to identify and charge a suspect in a sexual crime. These claims come on top of last week’s allegations that the LAPD’s fingerprint experts have been inconsistent in their work– to the point where innocent people were falsely implicated in crimes.

According to law enforcement officials, each kit contains a potential genetic road map to the perpetrator of a crime. In Los Angeles County, the backlog has occasionally caused trial dates to be canceled. And in one case, an evidence kit that went untested for months left a suspected rapist free to allegedly assault another victim.

A City Controller audit showed that the LAPD has a backlog of 7,000 sexual assault test kits that have not been examined. Of those cases, 217 are beyond the 10-year statute in which to prosecute the crimes. As an excuse, Police say that they don’t have enough funding to run these labs efficiently and that more forensic techs were authorized–but budgeting for their salaries weren’t.

Victim advocates think that it is unconscionable to make rape victims go through the trauma of the examination for the rape kit and then wait years for police to investigate and prosecute their cases because their kits aren’t tested. Our office thinks that if there is DNA evidence that can exonerate or implicate a person, it should be tested before pleas are entered or charges filed. The criminal justice system is supposed to seek the truth- the current backlog of processing such probative evidence flies in the face of those notions.

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In May, the former director of UCLA’s Willed Body Program, Henry Reid, was indicted by a grand jury for selling body parts to businessman Ernest Nelson who resold them to medical research companies. The LA Times reports that today, Mr. Reid plead guilty to felony charges that he damaged or destroyed property worth more than $1 million and conspiracy to commit grand theft in a “body-parts-for-profit” scheme.

The Times reports that from 1999 to 2004, Reid and businessman Ernest Nelson conspired to defraud the program of its donor bodies for personal financial gain. Reid allegedly sold human body parts from UCLA’s program to Nelson and then deposited thousands of dollars of proceeds of those sales into his personal bank account.

Reid, an Anaheim native, will be sentenced to four years, four months in state prison under a plea crafted by the District Attorney’s Office. In exchange, Reid agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in their case against Nelson. Reid will also be required to pay restitution to UCLA’s Willed Body Program of between $100,000 to $1 million. He will be sentenced in January.

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The weak economy has forced people to find creative ways to supplement their income. The Los Angeles Times reports that a surge in the price of copper has produced an outbreak of theft of copper wires from light poles. And, according to reports, there have been at least eight thefts in the Hollenbeck area since August– jeopardizing the lighting and safety in the community.

Copper prices peaked at $4.06 a pound earlier this summer but have dropped to $2.53 a pound. According to a representative from The L.A. Department of Power and Water, interference with power distribution and transmission systems not only destroys city lights, thieves also risk their own lives.

Anyone with information can call Hollenbeck detectives at (323) 526-3000. Callers can also use a 24-hour toll-free number, (877) LAWFULL (529-3855), send an anonymous text message with a cell phone to “CRIMES” or visit www.lapdonline.org.

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According to a recent study, immigrants—including immigrants living in Orange County—are far less likely than the average U.S.-born citizen to commit crime in California. The Public Policy Institute of California report, that can be found here, said that while people born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of California’s adult population they only account for about 17 percent of the adult prison population.

The findings suggest that long-standing fears that immigration jeopardizes public safety are unjustified. The report also noted that U.S.-born adult men are incarcerated at a rate more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of foreign-born men.

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Sponsors of the Proposition 5 are asking voters in November to increase treatment and eliminate incarceration for those convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, funded in part by billionaire George Soros, would be “the most ambitious sentencing and prison reform in U.S. history,” according to the Drug Policy Alliance Network, a primary sponsor.

Opponents contend that the drug treatment offered in lieu of incarceration would be a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for addicts. And they say the Drug Policy Alliance Network — a spinoff of Soros’ New York-based Open Society Institute, which fights against punitive drug laws — is using the initiative to chip away at its true agenda: legalizing drugs.

Of course the benefits of Proposition 5—if passed—remains to be seen. On one side, the new system would expand the pool of criminals who could take part, creating three “tracks” for offenders to receive treatment, including, at the discretion of judges, those who commit nonviolent crimes such as theft to feed their habits. Depending on their crimes, their records and their number of treatment failures, they would gradually move from the least intensive programs to the most intensive — drug courts — and the possibility of jail or prison. And by 2010, the measure would commit the state to spending at least $460 million a year, mostly to increase treatment — and eliminate incarceration — for those who commit nonviolent crimes involving drugs or fueled by them. The measure could eventually cost Californians up to $1 billion, but also could ultimately save that much by reducing incarceration, according to the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst.

The Times reports that on the other side are judges who complain that they will rarely be able to threaten incarceration under the Act, which they believe is most effective at coercing offenders to cooperate. And even when drugs aren’t involved, the state could no longer seek to send ex-convicts to prison for low-level parole violations, or revoke parole for actions that would qualify as misdemeanors. Law enforcement groups object to a provision that would allow the expunging of some records. For example the Act would allow a methamphetamine addict who steals cars to avoid prison, to have their record sealed after completing treatment.

Would this act be one step closer to the legalization of drugs? Under the Act. possession an ounce or less of marijuana would be an infraction, instead of a misdemeanor.

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