Daily Archives: August 14, 2007

Cover your ass-ery

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Update 2: For those who don’t want to read the comments (shame on you!), here’s my follow up post.

Is the only thing that can explain the following comment to the press by a lawyer about his client:

Reyes’ attorney, William Gerace, said that the private company’s results were also a match. Gerace said that Reyes’ decision to not accept a plea deal of 15 years is a bad one.

“He’s being very foolish in my view. He was given a plea bargain that’s not a lenient plea bargain, but under the circumstance, if he goes to trial, he will get a lot more,” Gerace said.

Gerace said the evidence against his client is too strong and that if there is a trial, Reyes could go to prison for more than 20 years.

Update: The news story linked to above leads one to believe that these statements were said to the press, but it is not explicit in that regard. However, the video that accompanies the story has a clip of Attorney Gerace speaking to the media and this Courant story also clarifies that these comments were indeed to the press.

Miranda, in the comments below, raises an interesting question: Is it useful, or shall we say not despicable, for an attorney to make a limited statement on the record reflecting that after being advised by counsel, the client has decided to reject the offer?

Looking at this from a future habeas perspective, Attorney Gerace will certainly be safe from claims that he did not adequately convey the state’s offer to him, but what of a general ineffectiveness claim? Do these comments hurt his client? Would they not support a claim that he was pressured into taking a plea agreement or that his attorney failed to adequately represent him and conduct an investigation into his defense, supported by his comments to the press acknowledging his client’s guilt and his desire to have him plead guilty?

Scott weighs in on this topic as well

Hartford PD launches internal affairs investigation

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Oh boy. I’m never going to hear the end of this from clients :D

But seriously, the Hartford PD is being tight-lipped about an internal affairs investigation into two incidents of mishandling evidence.

[A]ccording to sources inside the department, detectives in the major crimes division got a search warrant to look for a gun at a home on Wadsworth Street. Inside the home, police found drugs and money, according to the source. When officers returned to headquarters, some of the money was missing, the source said.

Sources told Eyewitness News that the following day, one detective was told not to come to work. Two days later, the source said, he was reassigned within major crimes.

Chief Daryl K. Roberts said that another unrelated case of alleged evidence mishandling is under investigation within the booking department.

An attorney for the police union told Eyewitness News that the missing money was never recovered and that the union has not been officially contacted about either investigation.

I’m not sure Hartford needs this. What with the mysterious death of Carlos Alvarado and the scrutiny given the New Haven Police Department after the Billy White arrest, people aren’t very confident in the abilities of the police forces in cities.

Deconstructing an ID jury instruction

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EyeID does a terrific job (as always) with this post about the Telfaire instruction and the problems associated with it. The post then goes on to suggest what an appropriate instruction should contain:

These tailored instructions should include, where applicable, instructions on the cross-race effect, the detrimental effects of stress on eyewitness memory, the weapon-focus effect, the absence of a reliable correlation between confidence and accuracy, and lineup procedures that have been shown to make an identification more or less reliable.

But scientifically accurate jury instructions are not enough. To properly sensitize jurors to the problems with eyewitness testimony and to begin to curb the nationwide wrongful conviction problem due to over-reliance on bad eyewitness evidence, expert testimony is critical. In fact, according to the recent Copeland ruling by the Supreme Court of Tennessee, expert testimony is the only reliable method to ensure that jurors have the necessary tools to assess eyewitness evidence accurately. State v. Copeland, 2007 WL 1498396, *11 (“Research over the past 30 years has shown that expert testimony on memory and eyewitness identification is the only legal safeguard that is effective in sensitizing jurors to eyewitness errors.”).

Make sure you read the entire post.