Cops Go Free After Violently Beating Teen (Graphic Image)

Organizations hoping to bury unpleasant or potentially controversial news traditionally release information late Friday, in the hope that many folks already in weekend mode miss the development. A classic example: Justice Department reps chose Friday at 6:30 p.m. to inform Alex Landau that they would not be charging the three Denver police officers who brutally beat him with federal civil rights violations. No surprise that Landau is incensed by this turn of events, as are numerous supporters. Look below for details, the lawsuit and more photos from after the incident.
As Joel Warner reported in detail for his 2011 feature article "Black and Blue," Landau was a nineteen-year-old Community College of Denver student when he was pulled over by police on January 15, 2009, allegedly for making an illegal left turn.

Alex Landau's jacket after his beating by police. More photos below. Warning: They're graphic.

Marijuana was subsequently found on Landau's passenger, a fellow student named Addison Hunold, prompting the officers -- identified in the lawsuit as Ricky Nixon, Randy Murr and Tiffany Middleton -- to ask if they could search his trunk. Landau is said to have responded by stepping toward the officers and quizzing them about whether or not they had a warrant -- at which point they began punching him in the face. The attack caused Landau to fall, but the beating continued for several minutes, with one officer yelling, "He's going for the gun." (Landau was unarmed.) Once they finally stopped the assault, one officer reportedly put the following question to him: "Where's that warrant now, you fucking nigger?" A lawsuit over the incident was filed in January 2011, and Landau eventually received a $795,000 settlement from the City of Denver for the damage done to him. But officers Nixon, Murr and Middleton still have not been punished for their actions in the incident. Murr was eventually fired for taking part in another high-profile excessive-force case involving Michael DeHerrera, and Nixon, too, was canned in connection with his role in an alleged assault on four women at the Denver Diner, also in 2009. However, he was later reinstated and remains on the Denver police force, as does Middleton.
Last week, a Denver judge ruled that the city could be put on trial for police brutality over the Denver Diner case -- and the officers who pummeled Landau could still face punishment resulting from a Manager of Safety inquiry whose results were delayed due to the federal investigation. But this prospect offers little solace to Landau.
Look below to see a Landau's statement, included in a release by the Colorado Progressive Coalition, with which he now works; that release also features comments by CPC racial justice and civil rights program director Mu Son Chi. In addition, we've got remarks from Holland, Holland, Edwards & Grossman, the law firm that represents Landau. extremely graphic.
The decision by the Federal Bureau of Investigation not to charge officers with civil rights violations in investigation of the Alex Landau beating by no means lessens Colorado Progressive Coalitions resolve to see officers Tiffany Middleton, Randy Murr and Ricky Nixon removed from the force. While the investigation did not find sufficient evidence to prove the civil rights of Landau had been infringed upon, the decision does not vindicate officers who are still under investigation by the Denver Police Department for the beating that left Landau with neurological damage and in shock was proper.

"What is justice? If the Department of Justice, guided by the FBI probe cannot prove enough evidence in such a blatant case of police brutality, police misconduct, and racial discrimination to produce charges against these officers, then I don't believe our justice system has come far enough.
"In 2009, when I was a 19-year-old college student, I was pulled over by Denver Police. When I calmly asked to see a warrant after officers had already patted me down, I was grabbed, punched repeatedly, brought to the ground, hit in the face with a radio, hit in the face with a flashlight, had a service revolver pressed to my head, my life threatened, and thrown into the gutter. I lost consciousness and I awoke to officers laughing at me. I was asked, 'Where's that warrant now you fucking nigger.' I was dragged across the grass and left on a police jacket to bleed. I wouldn't allow any medical treatment until I got photos and, because of that, went into shock on the way to the hospital. My witness was coerced into writing a false statement. I was falsely charged with felony criminal intent to disarm a police officer. Officers falsified testimony, evidence, and documents to try to cover up their actions. When I went to file a complaint with Internal Affairs, I was told to own up to my actions as a man and that it's not always a good idea to play the race card. My case has been mishandled from the beginning."
"I attended the first day of college with 45 stiches, a broken nose, a concussion, and a brain injury. But none of this is considered sufficient evidence by the Department of Justice or the FBI to bring civil rights violations against these officers who beat me almost to death and then laughed about it. Our community is not laughing. After over 4 years of delay I am concerned that this may be used as a way to overlook officer discipline yet again. In my mind and the eyes of the community, these officers will never be vindicated of their actions. Officers who have assaulted our community need to be taken off the streets."
Mu Son Chi, Colorado Progressive Coalition's Racial Justice and Civil Rights Program Director, explained that the community continues to wait on the Denver Police Department to hand out discipline to the officers involved in Landau's case.
"We have called on the federal government for years to join us in seeking justice for our community. Perhaps they will join us some day. In the meantime, we are not waiting on anyone to continue the fight for justice with Alex Landau and others who have had their lives negatively impacted by racial profiling and police violence.
"We acknowledge the work done by the city to expedite the process for discipline and to streamline the appeals process. However, we are still waiting on discipline in this case. Alex Landau is still waiting after over four years for officers to be disciplined. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the recent rules changes by the city do not change that fact."
CPC is calling on community members to join them on Feb. 16 at 3:30 to attend a meeting in which survivors of police misconduct and brutality, including Landau, will be speaking. During the event, CPC will release its Truth and Justice Report, which details police misconduct data collected through its Racial Profiling Hotline. The event will occur at the CPC offices at 1029 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204.
"Today, we will call on our community to join our members in the fight for justice," said Chi.

Another innocent executed? - Death Penalty - Salon.com

Another innocent executed? - Death Penalty - Salon.com

The state of Texas killed Carlos DeLuna for a crime he appears not to have committed, according to a new report

BY RANIA KHALEK

 
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TOPICS: DEATH PENALTY, TEXAS, POLITICS NEWS

Carlos De Luna

Death-penalty abolitionists long believed that the execution of an innocent person would turn the public against capital punishment. But that conviction has recently been shaken. First, there was Cameron Todd Willingham, who, after his 2004 execution in Texas, was found to have been likely innocent of killing his three small daughters. Nearly a decade later, Georgia executed Troy Davis despite widespread doubts about his guilt.

A new investigative report by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review reveals that Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989, was likely innocent as well. The full report, titled “Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” can be viewed at CHRLR’s newly launched interactive website where readers can view all of the evidence cited in the article.

DeLuna, a poor Latino man described as having the intelligence of a child, was convicted of murdering Wanda Lopez, a 24-year-old single mother who was stabbed to death with a folding knife in 1983 while working behind the cash register at a gas station in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Lopez called 911 when her killer entered the store, leaving behind a recording of the encounter. She is heard answering a series of yes or no questions asked by the dispatcher about the creepy customer with the knife in his pocket and then whispering that he’s “standing right here at the counter” and “can’t talk,” followed by “Okay. This? Eighty-five,” in response to the customer. After more questions from the dispatcher, Lopez is heard pleading for her life and the line cuts off.

The only evidence against DeLuna was the shoddy eyewitness testimony of Kevin Baker, a car salesman who came face to face with Lopez’s killer as he fled the scene. Although DeLuna partly resembled the description given by Baker, upon further investigation it seems that DeLuna and the man Baker described were not the same person. For example, Baker told police that the culprit had a full mustache and so much facial hair that he looked like “he hadn’t shaved in, you know, ten days, a couple weeks.”

When police found DeLuna, he was lying half naked, shoeless and shirtless, underneath a pickup truck with little more than a day or two of stubble and no mustache. DeLuna testified that he was at the nightclub across the street from the crime scene trying to find a ride home when the sound of police sirens freaked him out because he was on parole at the time. So he ran, losing his shirt when he jumped a fence.

According to the CHRLR report, two decades after the murder, Baker admitted to a detective that he was only 70 percent certain that the half-naked man he saw in the back of the police car (DeLuna) and the man he saw stab Lopez were the same. Even family and friends had a hard time telling the difference between pictures of DeLuna and pictures of Hernandez.

From the time he was arrested to his subsequent execution in 1989, DeLuna maintained his innocence, repeating over and over again to his lawyers, family and the media, “I didn’t do it, but I know who did.” Nobody listened. At his trial DeLuna testified that “some other dude named Carlos” was the culprit, and still nobody listened.

DeLuna was referring to Carlos Hernandez, a Latino man whom the police were all too familiar with given his violent criminal history.

The night before his trial, DeLuna told his lawyer that an acquaintance had accompanied him to the nightclub the night of the murder. On the way there, DeLuna said the acquaintance stopped at the gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes for 85 cents, the same amount Lopez was heard saying on the 911 recording.

Like most people in the neighborhood, DeLuna was terrified of Hernandez, which is why it took him several months to identify him by name. Hector De Peña, DeLuna’s first state-appointed lawyer, recalls him saying, “I’m dead whether I’m out [of jail] or in if I identify him.”

Just weeks after Lopez was murdered, Eddie Garza, a Corpus Christi detective, heard from his vast network of informants that Carlos Hernandez was bragging in the streets that he got away with killing Wanda Lopez. At one point, he was suspected of fatally stabbing another woman.

Despite the evidence implicating Hernandez as the possible culprit, police and prosecutors never passed the information on to DeLuna’s lawyer. Instead, the prosecution argued in court that Carlos Hernandez was nothing more than a figment of DeLuna’s twisted imagination, an accusation that was upheld during his appeal.

DeLuna’s identification of Hernandez wasn’t taken seriously until 16 years after his execution. In an in-depth investigation, the Chicago Tribune uncovered evidence showing Carlos Hernandez to be the likely killer. “Ending years of silence, Hernandez’s relatives and friends recounted how the violent felon repeatedly bragged that DeLuna went to death row for a murder Hernandez committed,” reported the Tribune. They didn’t feel safe sharing their knowledge of Hernandez’s crime until after he died of liver cirrhosis in 1999 while serving a prison sentence for assault with a knife.

Given the mishandling of the investigation, prosecutorial misconduct and an inadequate defense, the jury unanimously found DeLuna guilty and he was sentenced to death.

As DeLuna languished on death row, Hernandez managed to get arrested nine times, once for killing a woman and another time for stabbing a Hispanic woman nearly to death. Again, the police and district attorney failed to inform DeLuna’s lawyers and the judges overseeing his appeals. Meanwhile, the prosecution continued to argue that Carlos Hernandez did not exist outside of DeLuna’s mind.

Rev. Carroll Pickett, the death house chaplain who presided over nearly 95 executions, was struck by DeLuna’s claim of innocence until his very last breath. Pickett said that inmates would eventually confess before meeting their maker, which is why Pickett believes that DeLuna was indeed innocent. The chaplain became an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty as a result.

By chronicling the mistakes made by authorities at every stage of DeLuna’s case, the CHRLR report highlights the ease with which the criminal justice system can lead to wrongful conviction and, in capital cases, a deadly and irreversible outcome.

Cameron Todd Willingham, Troy Davis and Carlos DeLuna make up just a handful of people that have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt, which raises the question: How many more people will be strapped to a gurney and injected with poison before the death penalty is abandoned?

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