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The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, unanimously approved a $12.5 million settlement Thursday night with Lamonte McIntyre, who was wrongfully imprisoned for more than 24 years for a double slaying he didn't commit.

McIntyre, 45, had sought $93 million and his mother, Rose, had asked for $30 million in their civil lawsuit against the UG and various Kansas City, Kansas, police officers, including former Detective Roger Golubski, who allegedly framed the then-17-year-old McIntyre for the double homicide in 1994.

The Wyandotte County Commission voted 9-0 to settle the case and to issue bonds to fund the payout. Commissioner Gayle Townsend said she reluctantly and sadly voted to approve it.

This would not mean the Unified Government is admitting to any wrongdoing. It brings final resolution, Townsend said. Its an expensive choice."

The settlement came after a mediation session Wednesday led by former Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Sly James, who is a lawyer.

Cheryl Pilate, one of McIntyre's lawyers, said in an email that McIntyre "now hopes to put this painful chapter behind him and move forward with his life."

"He is grateful for those who have supported him and for those who brought forward the truth," Pilate said. "Lamonte remains deeply committed to the cause of justice, particularly in Wyandotte County, and will continue to be a voice for those who have suffered wrongful convictions or other injustices."

Mike Abrams, another attorney representing McIntyre, said, "There's no amount of currency in the world that can make amends for the 24-plus years that Lamont McIntyre spent in prison for crimes that he didn't commit. But we hope that this settlement will allow him to continue to lead his life and that he'll continue to fight for justice in our community and around the country."

The settlement brings an end to the lawsuit, which was scheduled to go to trial in October. U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Vratil, at the end of a two-day pre-trial hearing in May, predicted the verdict could be huge if the case were to go to trial. The same day, KCUR reported that the UG had warned bond investors that the McIntyre case could result in significant financial problems for the UG.

Id be concerned about the public interest and good government if you lose this case, Vratil told the UG's attorneys.

Still ongoing is a federal grand jury investigation. Federal subpoenas KCUR obtained through a public records request suggest that authorities are conducting a sweeping investigation of the KCKPD during the more than three decades Golubski served on the force, including demands for more than two decades of homicide cases, internal affairs reports and informant files.

McIntyres lawyers say Golubski abused Black women for years, exploiting them for sex, then using them as anonymous informants to clear cases or to protect drug dealers. Including Rose McIntyre, 73 women were listed in court documents as women Golubski allegedly victimized.

Golubski, whom the McIntyres said framed Lamonte McIntyre after previously sexually assaulting his mother, has denied the allegations and asked that his alleged bad character not be allowed as evidence in the case. He said he was good at the job he held from 1975 through 2010, when he retired.

But Golubski has otherwise been mum. During a deposition by McIntyre's lawyers, he refused to answer any questions about the case, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 500 times.

McIntyre, who now lives in Arizona, was exposed to stark and horrific conditions during his years in prison, and failed to get the life experience adults need to make a successful life, his lawyers said. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as depression and anxiety. Rose McIntyre has been in and out of psychological treatment for 17 years and was diagnosed with complex PTSD.

In their lawsuit, the McIntyres alleged the Unified Government shared blame for their pain and suffering because police department leaders knew about but turned a blind eye to Golubskis activities.

Originally posted here:
Unified Government to pay $12.5 million to wrongfully imprisoned Kansas City, Kansas, man - KCUR

OPINION ANALYSIS ByLenese Herbert on Jun 27, 2022 at 11:57 am

On Thursday, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Vega v. Tekoh, in which a 6-3 court held that a violation of Miranda v. Arizona does not provide a basis for civil damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The majoritys decision both hobbles Mirandas enforceability and unceremoniously strips the Constitutions Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination of Mirandas prophylactic protection, heretofore regarded as criminal procedure canon in American law. Specifically, the Vegamajority held that governmental violation of Miranda an undisputed constitutional decision that adopted a constitutional rule that is constitutionally based and has constitutional underpinnings is not a violation of the Constitution. In other words: The government can violate Miranda without the threat of civil penalty, as the only remedy to right the governments wrong is an evidentiary fix at trial: suppression of any confession obtained in violation of Miranda. Accordingly, Miranda is only an evidentiary trial rule, not a substantive constitutional right.

During a March 2014 custodial interrogation of Terence Tekoh at his workplace regarding sexual assault allegations, Los Angeles County Sheriffs Deputy Carlos Vega failed to give Tekoh a Mirandawarning. Vega emerged from that interrogation with Tekohs handwritten statement that offered an apology for inappropriately touching the complainant. Tekoh was subsequently prosecuted for the alleged sexual assault, and at Tekohs criminal trial, the government introduced his un-Mirandizedstatement. The jury found Tekoh not guilty.

Tekoh then sued Vega and other defendants for civil damages, alleging that, per Miranda, the custodial interrogation violated his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed with Tekoh and held that the governments use of the un-Mirandized statement provided a basis upon which Tekoh could seek civil damages under Section 1983.

The Supreme Court rejected the 9th Circuits decision, characterizing it as an extension of Miranda and wrong. The courts opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito (and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett), immediately struck an almost incredulous tone at the notion that Miranda ever provided suspects anything other than prophylactic procedures for in-custody interrogations: At no point in the [Miranda] opinion did the Court state that a violation of its new rules constituted a violation of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination. Nor did the courts post-Mirandadecisions characterize it as anything other than a Fifth Amendment safeguard, i.e., additional procedural protection that served the prophylactic function of safeguarding that right during custodial interrogation. Miranda never possessed nor acquired the stature and therefore, protection of a constitutional right; its violation is not tantamount to a violation of the Fifth Amendment; it is therefore not remedied as a right.

Further, the majority noted that had the Miranda court intended to create a constitutional right versus a prophylactic rule, it would have announced Miranda thusly. That court knew how to use its words, and the words used were not constitutional right.

Additionally and since Miranda, the court has repeatedly described the rules it adopted as prophylactic, distinguishing between a constitutional violation and a violation of Miranda.

But wait: Can civil damages arise pursuant to the portion of Section 1983 that allows people to sue state actors for the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the laws?

Interestingly, the majority noted that they can. However, even if Miranda implicates Section 1983 as a remedy, a successful plaintiff must persuasively argue that Miranda should be expanded to include the right to sue for damages. From where Alito sits, except in unusual circumstances, the cost/benefit analysis does not augur in the plaintiffs favor, as [a]llowing the victim of a Mirandaviolation to sue a police officer for damages under 1983 would have little additional deterrent value and the costs would be substantial. What costs? you may ask. Why, judicial economy. Disallowing the creation of unnecessary friction between federal and state courts. Essentially, procedural annoyances, which create a headache for the judiciary. Here, again, Tekoh loses. So, exclusion of the un-Mirandized statement at trial is Tekohs sole remedy, as Miranda safeguards a fundamental trialright and except in unusual circumstances, the exclusion of unwarned statements should be a complete and sufficient remedy.

The dissenting justices Elena Kagan, joined by Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor seemed confounded by the majoritys opinion, given that the courts members all basically agree with Mirandas legal premises: that it grants a right secured by the Constitution; that it grants the defendant a legally enforceable entitlement in a word, a right to have his confession excluded; that it is a decision of constitutional origin, constitutionally-based, and sets forth constitutional guidelines, via a constitutionally-derived rule that sets a constitutional minimum regarding a corresponding right that cannot be overruled by any Act of Congress. Thus, the issue before the court whether Miranda is a right secured by the Constitution should have been answered in the affirmative, given that Miranda, per Dickerson v. United States, is set in constitutional stone.

Reminding the majority of why Miranda is an iconic, venerated case that represents one of the highest watermarks of American constitutional law, Kagan noted that Miranda responded to problems stemming from the interrogation of suspects incommunicado and in a police-dominated atmosphere. The landmark decision afforded protections to suspects who are interrogated by police while in custody. At the time Miranda was decided, the court was concerned about shockingly violent police practices (which the Miranda court cited in its decision): beating, hanging, whipping, and the infamous police procedure known as the third degree, all of which compelled suspects in-custody confessions via torture.

Accordingly, the constitutional rule of Miranda provides the correlative, judicially-enforceable right to exclude un-Mirandized statements from the prosecutors case: From those facts, only one conclusion can follow that Mirandas protections are a right[] secured by the Constitution under the federal civil rights statute, Section 1983, Kagan wrote. That right is sufficiently specific to create obligations binding on [a] governmental unit that an individual may ask the judiciary to enforce. The majoritys decision to the contrary strips individuals of the ability to seek a remedy for Miranda, leaving those violated without redress, a vital component of any scheme for vindicating cherished constitutional guarantees.

In a not-even-partially-veiled swipe at the courts recent and unrelenting willingness to hobble constitutional rights by gutting their available remedies, Kagan lamented the decision. Miranda, one of the increasingly few cultural and court canons that binds us, has been injured, perhaps fatally. What it stood to protect, the Fifth Amendment, now stands before us, newly naked, stripped of its heretofore powerful prophylactic. And in too many quarters, its rules are meant to be broken.

Read this article:
Tantamount to nothing: Miranda rights can(not) be wronged - SCOTUSblog

James and Jennifer Crumbley are in an unusual predicament, if theirtrial strategy is any indication.

They plan on calling their sonthe Oxford school shooting suspect as a witness to help them in their criminal case, their lawyers announced in acourt hearing Monday.

"We need him as a witness in this trial," defense attorney Shannon Smith said incourt, quickly drawing the ire of the prosecution.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald questioned how and why they would use their son "to somehow highlight his role" in the case to help them.

But the defense fired back.

"This is not about the defendants wanting to throw their son under the bus, or making him look bad," Smith argued. "When the prosecution criticizesthe defense of being selfish we are going to be selfish all day ... Selfishly, we have to protect their rights."

"I understand," Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews responded.

Matthews noted, however, that 16-year-old Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time of the shooting,can't invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in front of the jury.

Smith said she understood that, and that herquestioning would be limited to Ethan answering questions involving "extraneous matters that are important in the case."

Assistant Prosecutor Marc Keast said he couldn't fathom how the Crumbleys would be able to call their son as a witness and use him in their defense, though the judge noted "they have a right to call him."

More: Judge denies Crumbleys' request to move trial out of Oakland County

More:Judge denies Crumbleys' request to drop involuntary manslaughter charges

Ethan's potential role in his parents' case came up during the tail end of aheated hearing during which the judge denied the Crumbleys' request to move their trial out of Oakland County. But the judge did grant the parents'request to issue a gag order that preventsthe prosecution from discussing their case with the media and on the internet. The order also applies to the defense.

The couple's lawyers also convinced the judge to keep out of trial numerous elements that they argued were irrelevant and prejudicial, including: the mom's alleged extramarital affair, the couples' alleged "messy house," pot and booze found in the home, a Nazi coin that was found in their son's bedroom, and a bird's head that he allegedly hid under his bed in a jar.

Matthews ruled that all of those elements are inadmissible at trial, which means the jury will not hear them.

But Matthewsdenied the Crumbleys' request to keep other evidence out of trial, including their son's journal, his Instagram messages and text messages he sent a friend in which he discussed his mental health issues.

At issue for the Crumbleys now is the timing of their trial. It is scheduled for Oct. 24 close to the one-year anniversary of the Nov. 30massacre that left four students dead and seven injured.

Their son's trial, meanwhile, was recently pushed toJanuary, and the Crumbleys want their trial to be held after his.

Matthews said she would stick to the Oct. 24 trial date for the Crumbleys, who are charged with involuntary manslaughter for their alleged roles in the case. The prosecution alleges the couplefailed to help their "troubled son," giving him access to a gun, instead of getting him medical help and therapy.

The defense and prosecution left the courtroom in silence Monday, abiding by the new court order.

The Crumbleys have pleaded not guilty, saying they had no way of knowing their son would carry out a mass shooting, and maintaining that they kept their gun in a locked and secure place in their home.

More:Prosecution to Crumbleys: You can't censor us. We have a duty to the victims

All three Crumbleys are being held in the Oakland County Jail pending the outcome of their cases and are not allowed to communicate with one another.

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com

The rest is here:
Crumbleys plan to call their son to testify in their case: 'We need him' - Detroit Free Press

In advance of tomorrows snap hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee, we are publishing the updated criminal evidence tracker (available below and as a PDF).

Thursdays fifth hearing of committee focused on former President Donald Trumps campaign to misuse his own Department of Justice in his efforts to overturn an election he lost, and in particular the role of his main collaborator at DOJ, former DOJ assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark. We outline what the legal significance of what we learned in the hearing about Trumps efforts, Clarks role and more in the fifth edition of our criminal evidence tracker.

The live witnesses were former acting attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen, former acting deputy attorney general Richard P. Donoghue and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel, assistant attorney general Steven Engel. They were examined in a hearing led by Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger and supplemented by the frequently explosive video testimony of other key players, making for another powerful day.

Thursday was notable because more than any of the other hearings, it occurred against the backdrop of significant outside events that were closely related to the subject matter of the hearing. In the 24 hours before the hearings, news broke of multiple subpoenas, including search warrants, relating to the federal criminal investigation of the phony elector scheme. That was capped off with breaking news of federal investigators executing a search warrant on the Virginia home of the main player (besides Trump) of the hearing that followed, Clark.

Clark infamously tried to help Trump overthrow DOJ leadership and overturn the election, resulting in his taking the Fifth Amendment over 100 times in his deposition before the committee. Both the raid on his premises and the content of Thursdays hearing suggested he had good reason.

With the raid and the hearing, we learned two big things: Clark is at severe risk of criminal prosecution. And Trumps exposure got worse.

Among other potential crimes, their exposure may fit within the likely criminal conspiracy (in the words of a federal judge in California) to defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. 371) and to obstruct an official congressional proceeding (under 18 U.S.C. 1512). The likely fraud involved interfering with government functions to prevent the legitimate winner of the election from taking office. That included Trump, with Clarks help, pushing for the fraudulent slates of electors. The likely obstruction included Trumps attempt, again with Clarks help, to use those phony electoral slates as part of a scheme to interfere with congressional recognition of Bidens electors. We explain the new evidence in the linked trackers of evidence of those two federal crimes.

New evidence about possible violation of Georgia criminal law regarding the solicitation of election fraud also came in on Thursday, and we update the third tracker as to that crime as well. For example, the Committee focused on Clarks Dec. 28, 2020, draft DOJ letter containing express references to substituting a separate slate of electors in Georgia and several other states. We heard in the hearing from Clarks superiors, the top leadership of DOJ under Trump, that the proposed letter which Clark tried to get Rosen and Donoghue to signwas totally unfounded. They, along with Engel, numerous witnesses on video, and the committee members, painted a devastating picture of Clarks likely criminalityand certain incompetence. As but one example, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann warned Clark that sending the letter would constitute a felony.

Of course, its not only Clark whose situation got worse with the most recent hearing. Thats because as the committee noted at the previous hearing, President Trump and his campaign were directly involved in advancing and coordinating the plot to have state legislatures replace legitimate Biden electors with fake electors. A loophole in the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845 was central to this plot and a key part of the draft Clark letter that Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign. The 1845 law potentially allows state legislatures to declare that an election has failed and then to replace the choice of presidential electors made by the voters with electors selected by the state legislature itself. Clarks draft letter to Georgia said that the purpose of the special session would be for the Georgia legislature to determine whether the election failed to make a proper and valid choice between the candidates. And now we have learned about how Trump pushed hard to engage DOJ in his coup attempt and tried to thrust Clark upon DOJ as acting attorney general.

The fifth hearing presented some of the most compelling evidence to date of Trump explicitly running the coup effort. His directive to acting attorney general Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Donoghue to just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen, is well-described as a smoking gun in establishing Trumps criminal intent.

Criminal intent as to the fake elector scheme would not be hard to prove, as one of us explained in the Washington Post last week. Whatever Trump and Clark may have believed about the outcome of the election, they are not allowed to engage in a scheme involving forgery, any more than someone who feels the US Treasury has ripped them off can respond by counterfeiting currency in the amount they are owed. Whatever they believed, they cannot break the law to address the problems they perceived (problems which of course were false). It is vigilantism, and thats against the law. OJ Simpson spent a considerable time in jail after he used force to break into a hotel room and seize memorabiliaeven though he believed it was his property.

There was much more of note in the hearing itself. That included important new revelations about Trump wanting to seize voting machines, pursue absurd conspiracy theories and insert one of his associates, Sidney Powell, as special counsel at DOJ to investigate voter fraud. To top all that off, the hearing ended with shocking evidence that a number of congressmen who helped Trump with the scheme were so concerned about their own criminal exposure that they sought pardons. That final bombshell sent the committee into a couple of weeks off with momentum for when the hearings resume in July.

Together with all else we learned Thursday, there is plenty to discuss in the interim. The committee has already presented formidable evidence that Trump led a criminal conspiracy in a coup attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election from the duly elected winner. The Committee has previewed that there is more important evidence to come. All the while, the country has still not seen one shred of credible evidence from Trump and his allies that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election that affected the result or justified the conduct we map in our three trackers.

We will continue to update our charts after tomorrows snap hearing and future hearings. The current editions are provided below and as a separate PDF.

The January 6th Hearings a

See the original post here:
In Advance of the Snap Hearing ... the Jan. 6 Criminal Evidence Tracker Fifth Edition - Just Security

Texas State Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in favor of train project seizing private land, but in accordance to the Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

DALLAS The company proposing a $30-billion projectto build a high-speed bullet train that will shorten the commute from Dallas to Houston by two and a half hours received a win on Monday, but it may come at a cost to landowners.

On Monday, the Texas State Supreme Court ruled in a 5-3 decision in favor of Texas Central's project that'll run through Central Texas and said the organization was entitled to private land of the planned trail connecting the two major cities on the basis of "eminent domain."

"Eminent domain" is a Fifth Amendment right from the Bill of Rights that says the government can seize privately-owned property, but as long as they pay for it.

In the High Speed Rail Alliance's article, Texas Central can pay fair-market rates to acquire the land needed to construct the 240-mile railway, which would turn a four-hour drive into a 90-minute train ride.

The commute from Dallas to Houston is one of the fastest growing super commute in the country. Part of that commute is a stretch of Interstate 45 was ranked the nation's most dangerous road in America,according to our sister station KHOU.

Texas Central celebrated this Supreme Court decision, in a quote from our sister station in Dallas, WFAA, saying, "We are appreciative to the Texas Supreme Court for their time and consideration of this important issue as we continue work on this innovative high-speed passenger train rail."

Read more:
Possible Texas bullet train gets major win, but at the cost of landowners - KCENTV.com