Tag Archives: Detective

New York Times ;reporters Michael
Powell and Sharon Otterman tell the eye-opening ;story
of how an innocent man was convicted of murdering a ;Brooklyn
rabbi in 1990. Chaskel Werzberger, an adviser to the Satmar rebbe,
was fatally shot by a would-be robber who stole his car while
fleeing the scene of a bungled diamond heist. David Ranta, now 58,
has been in prison since 1991 for the crime, based mainly on
testimony from self-interested witnesses who later admitted they
had lied and a detective’s uncorroborated report of a confession
that Ranta has always denied making. Powell and Otterman report
that “four of the five witnesses in the first lineup did not
identify Mr. Ranta.” Furthermore, the eyewitness who should have
gotten the clearest look at Werzberger’s killer, the diamond
courier he tried to rob, testified at the trial that Ranta was “100
percent not” the right man. The jury evidently gave more weight to
other witnesses, including one who was 13 at the time and now says
a detective told him to pick Ranta out of a lineup.
In 1996, five years after Ranta began serving his sentence, a
woman testified that her husband, an armed robber who was
identified by an anonymous tipster as Werzberger’s killer shortly
after the crime but died in a car crash a few months later, had
confessed to her. But that was not enough to win Ranta a new trial.
“I figured I was going to die in prison,” he told the
Times. Since then, Powell and Otterman write, “nearly
every piece of evidence in this case has fallen
away,” ;including the testimony of a criminal who avoided a
potential life sentence by claiming to have been Ranta’s
accomplice. This week Kings County District Attorney Charles J.
Hynes, who was elected to his first term the year before
Werzberger’s murder, announced that he was recommending Ranta’s
release based on an investigation by a unit that Hynes created to
uncover wrongful convictions. Powell and Otterman’s story shows how
the pressure to solve a high-profile murder, a criminal’s incentive
to lie in exchange for more lenient treatment, and a cop’s
determination to convict someone he’s sure is guilty can combine to
create a terrible injustice.
The weight given to undocumented confessions is further
illustrated by the case of Debra Milke, who has been on Arizona’s
death row since 1990, when she was convicted of conspiring to
murder her 4-year-old son. Like Ranta, she was convicted based on
the testimony of a detective who said she had confessed. As the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit explains in a
recent ;decision
overturning her conviction, “The trial was, essentially, a swearing
contest between Milke and Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate,
Jr.” Although “the judge and jury believed Saldate,” they did not
know about his “long history of lying under oath and other
misconduct.” That history included “a five-day suspension for
taking ‘liberties’ with a female motorist and then lying about it
to his supervisors; four court cases where judges tossed out
confessions or indictments because Saldate lied under oath; and
four cases where judges suppressed confessions or vacated
convictions because Saldate had violated the Fifth Amendment or the
Fourth Amendment in the course of interrogations.” The prosecution
“knew about this misconduct but didn’t disclose it,” in violation
of its obligations under Brady v. Maryland, the 1963 case
in which the Supreme Court ruled that due process requires
prosecutors to share potentially exculpatory evidence with the
defense. ;
Writing for a three-judge appeals court panel, Alex Kozinski
highlights the trial judge’s failure to comprehend the significance
of this prosecutorial misconduct:

In reviewing the exhibits attached to Milke’s postconviction
petition, [Maricopa County Superior Court] Judge Cheryl K. Hendrix,
who was also the trial judge, was “unable to find a reference to
the type of evidence that is allowed under Rule 608 to impeach the
credibility of a witness.” That is no doubt because she grossly
misapprehended the nature and content of the documents that Milke
presented. Even though the judge claimed to have reviewed the
exhibits, she referred to the collection of court documents as
containing mere “motions and testimony from other cases in which
Det. Saldate was the interrogating officer. It establishes nothing.
The filing of a motion to suppress does not mean the police officer
engaged in improprieties.”
Had these been merely motions and testimony, that would be true;
anyone can make unsubstantiated allegations of misconduct. But
seven of the cases included court orders finding that Saldate had
lied under oath or violated the Fifth or the Fourth Amendments
during interrogations. Multiple judicial determinations that
Saldate lied in performing his official functions and violated
suspects’ constitutional rights would have been highly relevant
where the state’s case rested on his testimony.

In a separate concurring opinion addressing the issue of whether
Milke knowingly waived her right to counsel and her right to remain
silent, Kozinski emphasizes that “the only evidence
linking Milke to the murder of her son is the word of Detective
Armando Saldate, Jr.—a police officer with a long history of
misconduct that includes lying under oath as well as accepting
sexual favors in exchange for leniency and lying about it.”
Kozinski blasted “Saldate’s unorthodox interrogation methods,”
which included questioning suspects who were intoxicated or who had
asserted their right to remain silent. During Milke’s trial,
Saldate testified that it would be “ridiculous” to stop
interrogating someone just “because they asked for an attorney.”
Kozinski comments:

What I find ridiculous is that this man—with his track record of
trampling basic constitutional rights—is sent to interrogate a
suspect without a tape recorder, a video recorder, a witness or any
other objective means of documenting the interrogation….
In effect, Saldate turned the interrogation room into a black
box, leaving us no objectively verifiable proof as to what happened
inside. All we have are the conflicting accounts of a defendant
with an obvious reason to lie and a detective whose disdain for
lawful process is documented by one instance after another of lying
under oath and other misconduct.
No civilized system of justice should have to depend on such
flimsy evidence, quite possibly tainted by dishonesty or
overzealousness, to decide whether to take someone’s life or
liberty. The Phoenix Police Department and Saldate’s supervisors
there should be ashamed of having given free rein to a lawless cop
to misbehave again and again, undermining the integrity of the
system of justice they were sworn to uphold. As should the Maricopa
County Attorney’s Office, which continued to prosecute Saldate’s
cases without bothering to disclose his pattern of
misconduct. ;

The other two judges on the panel seemed to share Kozinski’s
dismay, agreeing that their opinion should be sent to the U.S.
Attorney’s Office in Arizona and the Justice Department’s Civil
Rights Division “for possible investigation into whether Saldate’s
conduct, and that of his supervisors and other state and local
officials, amounts to a pattern of violating the federally
protected rights of Arizona residents.” You can read the whole
decision
here.
[Via
Above the Law. Thanks to Jonathan Bard for the tip.] … Read More