The police in the US can point a gun at you and get you to comply, but if you think the courts are going to accept evidence collected while that gun is unholstered, then you definitely don't understand the justice system here. That's probably the single easiest win for a defense attorney in court.
Yes, a police officer is considered an officer of the court [1]. His exposure to consequences for lying is higher than the average citizen under oath. Given two conflicting statements that cannot be resolved with evidence, it isn't a surprise that the judge is going to defer to the cop.
It should be surprising that they defer to the cop. That's basically assuming that one is guilty without proving it. At a minimum, it should objectively provide reasonable doubt.
I have an experience where a trooper lied to the court twice and I have evidence to back it up. Nobody cares. I tried a the ACLU (bigger fish to fry), a complaint with the department (they counseled him and made the excuse that they have a lot of new guys at this station), I wrote my state representatives multiple times (no reply, except for one, which was a form letter not even applicable to my scenario), we tried the DA's office (they participated in multiple rights violations), we tried the DoJ for civil rights violations (no updates for about 6 months), we submitted complaints against a magistrate and a judge with the board of conduct (no updates and over 6 months), we submitted complaints against the ADAs who participated in incompetent or misconduct to the Bar (was told they only investigate prosecutors if the court formally determines there was prosecutorial misconduct), talked to an civil rights lawyer (was told it was a violation, but the courts don't care unless large monetary damages were involved), and talked to an investigative journalist (ran a story similar to this but said to keep him posted if I find anything explosive).
There's literally nobody to turn to. Almost every person involved in the system made mistakes or misconduct during the process (cop, 2/3 magistrates - 3rd was arrested for an unrelated matter, the judge, 2 ADAs, etc). I have absolutely zero faith in the system.
Are you talking about a judge, or a jury? An officer of the court is compelled to tell the truth, under oath or not. A jury is not required to give an officer of the court any more weight than they give to anyone else.
The trooper lied to "the court", twice. It was a bench trial. Both lies took place in front of the magistrate with no jury present. I have documentation that shows the statement were factually incorrect and that for one of those statements he said the opposite a few minutes beforehand and the evidence supports the out-of-court statement.
Following this conversation, it reminds me of the film 'The Chicago Seven' regarding the problems within the court, and the judge's inherent bias for the officers.
Well, the downside of calling them judges is that sometimes they make a call we don't agree with. Maybe legitimately, maybe not. But it isn't necessarily evidence of a systemic problem, even if it is entirely unjust for you.
What does that have to do with a cop lying in court and continuing to be a cop after that? Judges won't be able to make just decisions if lying cops are allowed to continue to be cops. Allowing garbage-in-garbage-out seems like a systemic issue to me.
Judges generally aren't involved I'm the removal of an officer. That typically happens via IAD, and even then the union tells them to resign so the IAD investigation ends and they can just go to a different department.
Do you mind just explaining in simple terms what actually happened? I'm not really following. Do you have a hidden audio recording of him outside court or something?
The situation would require a book, but here's the simplest I can do, yet it will miss many of the more detailed legal points and citations.
My wife an I both witnessed him say he was amending the charge because he made a mistake. He then went into the court and told the magistrate he was amending the charge to "cut us a break". The magistrate then issued a continuance (instead of dismissing if he knew the true reason). The incorrect charge carried pretrial restriction only found under that charge and the trooper knew that the charge was incorrect for about 6 weeks. State law only allows amendments if the rights of the defendant were not violated (there were 2 other rights violated later, and multiple procedural mistakes too). Subjecting someone to pretrial restrictions under a charge that is known to be wrong is unusual punishment and also a violation of the state constitution. So it would require dismissing the case. We found proof supporting this in the trooper's later testimony where he stated that he knew it was incorrect for those 6 weeks, yet held it against us anyways. The IAD investigation found that he did tell us the correct thing and then told the court something wrong 10 minutes later. The report said it was a "misunderstanding", without any details or explanation.
Later he claimed that a picture he introduced in court was in the investigative file "since the beginning", yet it was not furnished to us when we subpoenaed the file. Another IAD investigation found that the picture wasn't placed in the file until a later time. The magistrate did not throw out the picture because he thought we had access the whole time and we didn't have access to that IAD finding until after the trial (not sure if I trust this or they were covering). Furthermore, the picture was exculpatory evidence under the incorrect charge and should have been furnished to us regardless of the subpoena. So much for Brady...
He made 2-3 other factually incorrect statements that I did not have hard evidence of (just our word against his). These included things like changing his story in a contradictory way. We did have a recording of his testimony and a phone call with him (both consistent with law).
The complaint process also treated us adversarially, which is a violation of feral policy (hence complaint to DoJ). The state police claim they can knowingly hold incorrect charges against people.
Why do US people always put so much emphasis on never talking to the police?
Are you talking only about evidence literally gathered with a gun pointed to your head? If, so, well, my comment wasn't that literal. As a rule, if you have any chance of becoming a suspect, the police here will refuse to interrogate you without your lawyer around, because listening to you can jeopardize their work.
> Why do US people always put so much emphasis on never talking to the police?
There are two classes of damages police can enact on you in the US, both of which makes interacting with them in any capacity dangerous.
The first class is that they can completely ruin or end your life. This includes anything from killing you, leaving you with lifelong injuries or stress disorders, felony charges, etc. Anything that permanently scars your enjoyment of life.
The second class is non permanent, but extremely inconvenient damages. These are very common, take little effort or thought on their part, and ranges from impounding a car, charging you with a misdemeanor, harassing you, taking large sums of cash from your person, disturbing your house or belongings, trespassing you, holding important belongings or documents as evidence, etc.
Either of these classes of damages can be the result of an interaction with police, stemming from saying the "wrong thing", "acting nervous", "acting suspicious", being in the vicinity of a possible crime, being accused of witnessing an event, being too close while they are conducting police business, "making them feel uncomfortable or unsafe", being the victim of a crime, etc.
Each time you speak to police, you risk a chain of events occurring that result in one of these two classes of damages. It's just not worth it. They aren't worth talking to, given some of the possible outcomes.
Why do US people always put so much emphasis on never talking to the police?
Basically if you don't interact with police at all you can't have bad (or good) interactions. Since there are lots of things (race, wealth as indicated by clothing or vehicle, someone having a bad day, ticket/arrest quotas, etc) that can make interactions worse and few that can make them better it's often easier to just avoid contact.
Personal example: I'm doing laundry at a laundromat following the tragic death of a washing machine not long ago. On a recent Sunday night the attendant appears to have quit sometime in the afternoon or early evening (note on the counter "back in 2 hours" but clearly gone much longer than that). I cleaned up the place a bit while my stuff was in the dryer, but since I was the last person there and it was after their last load (and no answer on any of the numbers on the call list behind the counter), I called the local police to see if they could have patrols keep an eye open overnight. I felt fine doing that as a late middle age white guy in whitebread suburbia, but if I was a 20something minority? I suspect the wisest move would be to simply finish my laundry and leave just like I would any other visit to the business.
