Mississippi Lawyer Blog

A tragic police abuse death case which occurred In the college town of Fullerton, California caused a serious deja vu moment for me. In the Fullerton case, a young mentally ill man, Kelly Thomas, was sitting on a bus bench when he was approached by police. They were investigating a report of some cars being broken into in the area and they wanted to search his backpack. When Kelly asked what he had done wrong the police wouldn't tell him so he ran. He was after all suffering from schizophrenia.

The officers, six in all, gave chase and subdued him with tasers, baton strikes, and general roughing up which included kicks and punches. As he was being beaten, Kelly cried out for his father. Kelly was beaten so badly he was taken to the hospital and later died of these injuries. When his father viewed the body, he assumed that his son had been beaten up by a local street gang. His initial thought was to call the Fullerton police and report the crime. Little did he know that Fullerton police officers were responsible.

The City of Fullerton has become defensive. They claim that this was an isolated incident and that its officers are trained to deal with mentally ill persons. However, either the training these officers received was deficient or they need to be retrained.

Continue reading "California Police Brutality Death Case Causes Deja Vu Moment" »

This is the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Riders coming to Mississippi to help integrate bus stations, lunch counters, hotels, and various other public places. When the Freedom Riders arrived however, Mississippi police officers were waiting and armed with new laws with which to arrest them. These so-called "breach of peace" laws were passed in 1960 and 1961 primarily to allow officers to arrest civil rights protestors. The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction of various Freedom Riders in this 1964 case.

The most disturbing part of these statutes is that most of them are still on the books and being used every day to arrest Mississippi citizens for failing to comply with police orders even when they are not breaking the law in the first place. The Mississippi Legislature did repeal one of the "breach of peace" statutes in 2009.

I cannot recount the numerous cases which I have defended over the years which started out with an officer telling someone to "shut up", "come here", or do something. When the person excercised his or her constitutional right to refrain from doing as the officer said, the person was arrested and charged with "failing to comply with a police officer", "disturbing the peace", "disorderly conduct", and/or "resisting arrest". The facts at trial usually show that the citizen arrested was not committing any criminal act before being told by the officer to do something. Speaking, contrary to most police officer's opinion, is NOT a criminal offense. In fact, the Mississippi Supreme Court has even held that a citizen may even curse at a police officer but I do not recommend this course of action.

Continue reading "Mississippi Freedom Riders and The Laws They Rode In On" »

A man died in the hospital a few days after a chase with law enforcement officers.. The FBI is currently investigating this incident. Now, I am not saying that any police officer did anything which caused this man's death. However, one statement from the news story caught my interest. One of the officers was quoted as saying "I can tell you that our guys saw no one break a law out there, except for the suspect that Jackson was chasing."

My response to that is in 16 years of handling police misconduct cases in Mississippi I have rarely, if ever, had another police officer report a fellow officer for abuse. Some call this phenomenon "the thin blue line" which represents the camaraderie of police officers. However, to others it represents a code of silence among police officers to suppress the truth.

Think about that: police officers who are sworn to uphold the law are compelled by this "thin blue line" not to tell the truth. Police officers probably justify this stance by pointing out that the person assaulted or abused was breaking the law and got what he deserved. Many citizens feel the same way. But by committing an assault, or worse, and then lying about it, aren't the police breaking the law?

This practice needs to be stopped. So-called police Internal Affairs "investigations" are usually very insufficient. The internal affairs investigators are also cops and, like other officers, don't want to accuse a fellow officer of any improper conduct. What happens is that this practice is allowed to continue until something really bad happens and you see a full fledged FBI investigation which leads to arrests, indictments, and convictions.

Continue reading "Police Misconduct in Mississippi: Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil" »