Blame bad lawyers and judges for taking a parent's worst nightmare and making it last 13 years.

Either destiny or the United States Army – or both – had brought Ashley and Albert Debelbot together.  She had grown up in Mississippi, enlisted, earned promotions to sergeant, and was serving in South Korea when she met her future husband.

Albert Debelbot came from Palau, a nation of 18,000 people spread among hundreds of small islands in the western Pacific.  He was not an American citizen, but joining the U.S. Army could provide a route to citizenship.  Albert enlisted and served a tour of duty in Iraq before being posted to South Korea.

There, Albert and Ashley met.  After their marriage, Albert received a transfer to Fort Benning, Georgia.  On May 29, 2008, at the base hospital, Ashley gave birth to a daughter, McKenzy.  Two days later, they took the baby home.

But within hours, the couple noticed a bump on McKenzy's forehead and took her back to the hospital, where she died.

Losing a child is nightmare enough but the situation quickly worse.  Based on an autopsy, a medical examiner concluded that the baby died from a blow to the head which could not have been accidental.  No one had been around McKenzy except her parents.  The  Columbus, Georgia police arrested both Ashley and Albert and charged them with murder.

 Although the couple stood trial together, they each had a separate lawyer, and the attorneys did not agree on trial strategy.  Ashley's lawyer wanted to retain an expert witness who could review the medical records and testify about the cause of death.  

Albert's lawyer disagreed.  He explained that had heard the medical examiner testify in other cases and saw "no need to question her credibility or her statements."

Ashley's lawyer decided to hire an expert anyway.  Two weeks before trial he found one, but the doctor was not available to testify on the trial date.  Her lawyer filed a motion to postpone the trial so that the expert to testify.  Albert's attorney opposed the requested postponement and the court denied it.

Albert's lawyer, who had been against retaining a medical expert, planned instead to present evidence that his client was of good character, a lazy and ineffective substitute for actually trying to  refute the prosecution's evidence.  When the attorney asked Albert to describe his military service, the prosecutor objected:  Irrelevant!  The judge sustained the objection.

But the defense lawyers' greatest bungle came at end of the trial, during the prosecutor's closing argument.  They remained silent when the prosecutor misstated the meaning of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

"You don't have to be ninety percent sure," the prosecutor told the jury.  "You don't have to be eighty percent sure.  You don't have to be fifty–one percent sure."

Even a second year law student should have been appalled by this gross misstatement.  But the two defense lawyers raised no objection.

The jury found both Ashley and Albert guilty of murder and each received a sentence of life imprisonment.  That was in 2009.

As the years passed, a number of organizations became involved.  They included the Georgia Public Defender Council, the local public defender, the Wisconsin Innocence Project, and some private law firms.  But they were fighting an agonizingly slow uphill battle.

At a hearing for a new trial, the new lawyers presented experts who had reviewed the medical records.  One doctor testified that before the baby's birth, blood clots had formed in her brain.  By blocking the flow of blood, the clots caused pressure to build, pushing against the skull, which was abnormally thin.

Another expert testified that "You can have really quite significant abnormalities of the brain and have a baby that really looks quite normal."

But despite the seemingly normal appearance, there had been subtle signs that something wasn't right.  A third expert explained that the baby had eaten far less than normal on her second day in the hospital, while her head circumference increased at a rate about 10 times greater than normal.

Unimpressed, the judge denied the motion for a new trial, stating that he did not find the experts credible.

While the Debelbots remained in prison, the defense team took the case all the way up to the Georgia Supreme Court    .  In 2019, that court issued a decision which was both encouraging and exasperating.

It was encouraging because the court criticized how the trial judge had rejected the expert testimony without bothering to explain what was wrong with it.  The decision was exasperating because the court merely sent the case back down to have the judge do a better job.

The justices explained that the "trial court's limited findings in the light of the voluminous testimony" did not allow them to do a meaningful review.  In theory, there is nothing wrong with remanding the case for a better analysis.  That's standard operating procedure when the trial court has screwed up.

But that meant more delay while the Develbots waited behind bars.  And the delay might have been avoided.  The justices had spotted the prosecutor's egregious misstatement to the jury and criticized it as "obviously wrong."  They also noted how easily it could prejudice the jury, particularly in this case, based on circumstantial evidence.

The justices also were astounded that the defense lawyers did not object:  "We cannot conceive of any good reason that a competent criminal defense attorney could have to fail to object to such an egregious misstatement of the law."

But instead of throwing out the convictions then and there, it sent the case back down to the trial judge for more analysis and explanation.  That only lengthened the Debelbots' ordeal.  Once more, the trial judge denied the motion for a new trial.

So, while the Debelbots remained in prison, their lawyers appealed.  This time, when the Georgia Supreme Court considered the case, the justices concluded that the Debelbots had received ineffective assistance of counsel:  "[W]e are convinced that the failure to object to the mischaracterization of reasonable doubt was uniquely harmful in this case."

So, the court vacated the Debelbots' convictions and remanded the case for a new trial.  But what about the reason the Georgia Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court for a better analysis of the expert testimony?  Well, it turns out that the justices didn't need it.

They did not even discuss the trial court's fresh analysis except for stating, in a footnote, that it need not be considered.  Maybe it was so mind-bogglingly bad the justices didn't want to fool with it.  In the footnote, they stated that "nothing in our opinion should be taken as an endorsement of the trial court's rulings on these matters.  In fact, members of this Court harbor serious reservations about the correctness of those rulings.  Nevertheless, we need not address them in this opinion, as they appear unlikely to be presented again in precisely the same way in the event of a new trial."

The Georgia Supreme Court issued this ruling on February 28, 2020, but the Debelbots remained in prison until July, when they were released on bond.  At first, it appeared that they would again have to go through the ordeal of trial.  However, in May 2021, a new prosecutor decided to drop the charges.

Afterwards, Ashley Debelbot said "I do not hold bitterness towards anyone."  However, her husband was not so cheerful.  He mentioned how a fellow soldier in Iraq had died "protecting the freedom we believe in." But, he added, "We came home and the same system that we went to war to protect would never protect us."

 

Charged With Murder For Allegedly Attempting to Terminate Her Own Pregnancy

Criminal defense lawyers sometimes joke that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.  A grand jury in a south Texas county did more than that:  It indicted a woman for a crime that did not exist.

The case began in early January of this year, when 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera (above right) went to a hospital, where she had a miscarriage.  Hospital staff, apparently based on something Herrera said, believed that she had tried to induce an abortion.  They called the Starr County sheriff.

The sheriff's office in turn called the district attorney, who submitted the case to a grand jury.  On March 30, nearly 3 months after Herrera had gone to the hospital, the grand jury issued an indictment charging her with murder.

The indictment alleged that Herrera "intentionally and knowingly cause[d] the death of an individual" by a "self-induced abortion."  However, the grand jury, or rather the prosecutor guiding it, must not have read the homicide statute very carefully.  It specifically states that it "does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is. . .conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child."

Herrera spent 2 nights in jail before being released on a $500,000 bond.  District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez (above left) later issued a statement that he would be filing a motion to dismiss the indictment:  "In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted."  He did.

Reportedly, Ramirez did write in a message to an acquaintance that he was sorry:  "I assure you, I never meant to hurt this young lady."

Considering the anti-abortion legislation which Texas recently enacted, it would seem logical to assume that prosecuting Herrera was part of that crusade. Some lawyers have called the indictment "gross negligence." 

Ramirez is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic county.  A local Republic politician believes that indicting Herrera simply was a mistake:  "I just think his office failed in doing their work."  The politician, Ross Barrera, added, "I would put my hand on the Bible and say this was not a political statement."

However, there are reasons to doubt that conclusion.  Starr County has many Hispanic voters who do favor Democrats, but they are also Catholic and tend to be against abortion.  Additionally, the district attorney's news release announcing that Herrera would not be prosecuted included the following:

Although with this dismissal Ms. Herrera will not face prosecution for this incident, it is clear to me that the events leading up to this indictment have taken a toll on Ms. Herrera and her family.  To ignore this fact would be shortsighted.

Note that the district attorney did not say that the arrest and indictment had taken a toll but rather that the events leading up to the indictment had taken a toll.   The district attorney's statement continued:
 

The issues surrounding the matter are clearly contentious, however, based on Texas law and the facts presented, it is not a criminal matter.

It is almost as if the district attorney was hinting that he would like to apologize for not prosecuting Herrera.  But he should apologize - publicly - to Herrera, for adding more pain to an already painful situation.

A Family In Crisis

 Herrera and her husband married in 2015, when she was 19.  They have two children and were expecting a third when her husband left her in early January 2022.  A week later she allegedly tried to terminate her pregnancy.

On the day Herrera was arrested her husband filed for divorce.  One of the assistant DAs in Ramirez' office is representing him in the divorce proceeding.

Texas law allows these prosecutors to have a civil practice on the side.  But it's fair to ask whether the prosecutor representing the husband had anything to do with the grand jury's decision to indict.  The timing smells fishy.

Game wardens have gone high tech, attaching surveillance cameras to trees to catch conservation law violators.  But in Tennessee, the conservation officers were hiding them in trees on private property, and without telling the property owners.  Telling them would spoil their plan.

Tennessee prohibits hunters from using bait to attract game.  If the conservation officers suspect someone is doing that on his farm, they want to sneak a camera onto the property and catch him in the act.

State law gives designated officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency the authority to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in the performance of their duties.  As long as they stay outdoors, away from buildings, they don't need a search warrant.

Thus, they don't have to explain to an independent official why they want to go on someone's property, or what they expect to find there.  They don't have to convince the official that they have good reasons for what they want to do.  They just do it.

Hunter Hollingsworth has a 92.5 acre farm, most of which is in Benton County, Tennessee.  At the entrance, he has posted a "no trespassing" sign on a chained gate.  He doesn't live on the farm but goes there to hunt, fish and camp, sometimes inviting friends along.

On one visit to the property in 2018, Hollingsworth found a camera attached high on a tree.  Several weeks later, half a dozen armed men, wearing bulletproof vests, showed up at his home.  It was early in the day, before Hollingsworth and his girlfriend, who lives with him, were fully dressed.

The agents arrested Hollingsworth on six counts of illegally hunting waterfowl, including by baiting.  They also charged him, and his girlfriend, with stealing the surveillance camera.

Hollingsworth denies that he broke the law, but he entered into a plea bargain to keep his girlfriend from being prosecuted.  He entered a guilty plea to one count of wildlife baiting, and all the other charges were dropped.

Later, Hollingsworth and a neighbor, Terry Rainwaters, sued the TWRA.  They obtained videos which conservation officers had made while they were on the private property.  The officers had shot some of that footage while hiding behind bushes and watching Hollingsworth hunt.

The TWRA raised the defense that its officers were acting on behalf of a federal agency, the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, but the plaintiffs countered that the officers were also enforcing state law.  The court implicitly rejected the defense.

The Fourth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution - prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures - does not help the property owners.  The amendment protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" but an open field does not fit any of those categories.  It's not a person, house, paper, or effect, and the Supreme Court has held that there's no expectation of privacy in an open field.

Fortunately, the Tennessee State Constitution offers greater protection.  Article I, Section 7 protects the "right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions."  At least some farmland would seem to meet the definition of "possession," particularly if the owner did something to occupy it or exercise "dominion" over it.

Lawyers, who have great fun splitting hairs, can argue tirelessly about exactly what it means to "occupy" or "exercise dominion over" a piece of land.  The Tennessee Supreme Court has held, in effect, that "wild or waste lands" are not someone's "possessions" protected from unreasonable search, but other land is protected.

Along with local counsel, lawyers from the Institute for Justice, a non-profit civil rights law firm, represented Hollingsworth and Rainwaters in their suit against the TWRA.  These attorneys won an impressive victory.  They persuaded the court to hold that the statute granting TWRA officers access to private property was unconstitutional on its face, and they did so on a motion for summary judgment.

The court likened this law to a "general warrant," allowing government officers to conduct searches even when there is no evidence that a crime has been committed.  The Tennessee constitution condemns general warrants as "dangerous to liberty."

Although the TWRA may decide to appeal, the court's 35-page decision carefully discusses and applies the existing legal precedents.  For now, its holding that the statute was unconstitutional applies throughout the state.

One of the Institute for Justice's attorneys, Joshua Windham, said that the court's decision was "going to have a really huge impact on landowners in Tennessee."  Because of the court's ruling, Windham said, "Tennesseans can now rest easy knowing that they're secure from these sorts of intrusions on their land."

 

Photos: Institute for Justice

 

After officers arrested Wayne Bowker on a charge of drug possession, they took him to the detention facility in Carter County, Oklahoma.  During the intake procedure, he told the jailer that he was being treated for a number of serious medical conditions, including asthma, bipolar disorder and congestive heart failure.  He also told them he was taking prescription medications for those conditions.

Although the jail had a policy requiring that a licensed physician would provide the inmates with medical care, the jail didn't have one.  Instead, a nurse, Kimberlee Miller, worked at the jail 5 days a week.  If an inmate developed a medical problem when she wasn't there, jail staff were to contact her.

But they didn't like to do that because Miller did not have the sweetest disposition.  As one court noted, "Miller was known to yell at staff when contacted outside of work hours, a problem so pervasive that even the Sheriff was aware that officers were hesitant to contact Miller when off duty."

Court documents allege that, when contacted, Miller would not go to the jail but would try to make a health assessment by phone.  If jail staff didn't manage to get in touch with Miller, the court stated, "detention officers with no medical training were expected to rely on their 'common sense' to determine whether an inmate should be transferred to the emergency room."

Bowker had been in jail 2 weeks when he complained that his breathing was stopping at night and his hands and feet were swelling.  However, he had neither his medication nor the CPAP machine which had been prescribed to treat this condition.

It didn't require a nurse to see that Bowker's condition was serious, even life-threatening.  Bowker's cellmate wrote a note stating "we are afraid he is going to die on us."
 

However, according to court documents, the nurse did not even review Bowker's request until 2 days later.  She did not conduct a health assessment but did contact Bowker's mother, who brought the CPAP machine and Bowker's medicine to the jail.

But jail staff refused to accept this medicine.  The court noted that the jail "had a policy of refusing any medication that was not packaged in bubble packs.  If an inmate's family did not provide medication in this specific type of packaging, an inmate could only obtain medication through a visit to the emergency room, which resulted in a $100 transport fee deducted from the inmate's commissary account pursuant to a policy created by the Sheriff's office."

Jail records show that Bowker did not receive any medication for almost 2 months.  That wasn't atypical.  The jail nurse also took a long time to respond to other inmates' requests for medical treatment.

Bowker submitted a request for medical treatment stating that he had a broken toe and was having trouble balancing,  After waiting 6 days, he submitted another request, repeating that he was having trouble balancing, was experiencing dizzy spells and had fallen twice, injuring his back.  The nurse did not review this request for another 3 days.

Three times, Bowker was taken to the emergency room. The last time, the hospital's discharge instructions directed that he receive care from a neurologist and listed 3 medications he was supposed to continue taking.  However, the jail did not arrange for Bowker to see or a neurologist or receive further medical treatment.

Additionally, the jail only gave Bowker the prescribed medication for 2 days after his discharge from the hospital.  Then, jail staff stopped.  Why they stopped giving him the prescribed medication isn't clear, but without it Bowker deteriorated rapidly.

After a week without medication, he became catatonic, unable to speak coherently, and began defecating on himself.  Two days later, a guard found Bowker collapsed on the floor of his cell.

Bowker died at age 41.  The official cause of death was an enlarged heart, but an expert witness later testified that several different conditions, including encephalopathy, probably contrbuted.

The administator of Bowker's estate sued the sheriff and the nurse.  The trial court concluded that the doctrine of qualified immunity barred the lawsuit and dismissed it.  However, on March 14, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed the district court and reinstated the suit.

Bowker was the third Carter County jail inmate to die within a 10-month period.  About 7 months earlier, a 44-year-old inmate had died of a pulmonary embolism.  Two months before that death, a 20-year-old inmate had committed suicide.

In an ironic twist, after Bowker died, the sheriff himself learned what it felt like to be jailed.  But the lesson didn't last long.

At the time Bowker died, state investigators already had received allegations of misconduct which shed some light on why the sheriff wasn't paying attention to conditions in his jail.  He had other things on his mind.

Agents of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation arrested Sheriff Milton Anthony on a charge of receiving a bribe, and booked him in his own jail.  The bribe did not involve money.  Rather, for almost a year, a woman employed by the sheriff's department provided sex to the sheriff and in return, the sheriff hired the woman's husband as a deputy.

The Oklahoma attorney general also charged the sheriff with sexual battery for – allegedly – fondling another female employee without her consent.

The charges could have landed Anthony in prison for a decade or more, but the prosecutor gave him a good deal.  Without admitting guilt, the sheriff entered an "Alford plea" – essentially a plea of "no contest" – to the bribery charge and the prosecutor dropped the sexual battery charge.  The court sentenced Anthony to 2 years unsupervised probation.  He also lost his certification to serve as a law enforcement officer and resigned as sheriff.

Anthony isn't the only Oklahoma sheriff who has gotten on the wrong side of the law.  An Oklahoma newspaper made a list.

 

   Has the city of Hemet, California, delared war on its black residents?  Three have filed a federal lawsuit against the city.  Their complaint describes the kind of police misconduct associated with the Deep South during the 1950s.

    According to the lawsuit, on March 31, 2021, Ryan Gadison drove to the home of his fiancee, Mariah Hereford.  After he pulled into Hereford's driveway, a Hemet police car with two white officers pulled in behind him.

    The cops allegedly were part of a "gang task force." But the 33–year–old Gadison did not belong to any gang and had not engaged in any illegal activity.  Gadison, the complaint states, was simply "driving home after a long, full day of work.  The HPD officers had no reasonable suspicion or probable cause to initiate a traffice stop."

    One cop claimed that Gadison’s car lacked a front license place and asked permission to search  it.  When Gadison refused, they pulled him out of the car, arrested him for driving with a suspended license, and searched the car.

    Gadison’s fiancee Mariah and her mother, Monett Hereford, were outside their home and began recording video of the arrest with their cellphones.  They repeatedly told the officers they were filming, the complaint said, “in an attempt to moderate the officers’ use of excessive force.”

    One of the officers threatened the women with arrest if they did not back up, even though, the complaint alleges, they were “not in the immediate vicinity of the arrest.”

    Then, one of the cops knocked the phone out of Monett Hereford’s hands.  Officers forced her up against Gadison’car and handcuffed her so tightly it caused pain.   The complaint states:

    Over MONETT’s objection, male HPD officers engaged in an invasive full body “search and frisk,” grabbing and probing MONETT between her legs and groin area, despite the presence of female officers fully capable of conducting a less offensive or invasive search of MONETT.

    Meanwhile, Monett’s daughter Mariah was recording video with her phone.  According to the complaint, a white officer pushed her backwards, swatted the phone out of her hand, and knocked her to the ground.  The complaint continues:

   The HPD officer roughly grab MARIAH by her hair, yanked her head back and slammed her face against the ground, multiple times. When MARIAH pleaded for the HPD officer to let her go, his response was: “Shut your fucking mouth!” The HPD officer then hooked his fingers into the underside of MARIAH’s jaw , as if she were a fish, and yanked her upward from the ground, both chokingand restricting her airway. MARIAH wailed in agony, causing her to lose consciousness several times. While she was on the ground motionless, MARIAH was handcuffed with her hands behind her, and due to her injuries, had to be assisted to the squad car.

    Later that night, she was hospitalized and diagnosed with closed head injury, left shoulder pain, low back pain, neck pain and whiplash.

    While these events took place, her children, who had ventured outside the house, were crying.  The Hereford’s 3 dogs, each chained to individual dog houses, were barking.

    The dogs’ 4-foot chains did not allow them to get near the police.  Nonetheless, two cops came over to the dogs.  The complaint states that an officer grabbed by the collar one of the dogs, named “Blue” and “violently threw him to the ground.  A second HPD officer used a baton to brutally beat their second dog, “Rocky,” who required veterinary treatment.”

    These allegations, which still must be proven in court, indicate that the police have gone ferel, totally out of the city’s control.  But do city officials want it that way?

    About a decade ago, Hemet decided to get tougher on crime.  At one city council meeting, a resident said that “some new elements” were moving  into town.  The city council enacted a “crime-free housing” ordinance similar to those many other cities have adopted.  This program, which Hemet ended last year under federal pressure, involved the police in landlord-tenant matters.

    Under the program, a landlord required each tenant to sign a lease “addendum” that gave the landlord the power to evict the tenant immediately if criminal activity takes place in the leased apartment. But Hemet’s ordinance went further.  Landlords even were evicting tenants who dialed 9-1-1 too often.

    To promote Hemet's crime-free housing law, police would take their SWAT armored vehicle to various civic gatherings.  In sent a clear message that the city had declared war on crime.

    But turning peace officers into war officers burdens them with new expectations and gives them tacit permission to operate under a different, more violent, set of rules.  An us-versus-them war mentality also fosters prejudices.

    Warriors fight enemies wearing uniforms. How do warrior cops know who’s the bad guy?  When they decide friend-or-foe based on skin color, a lot of innocent people get hurt.

    Imagine this: You need a vacation, badly, and decide to treat yourself to a good one. You're waiting to board your flight when you hear your name called over the PA system and go to the counter to find out why.

    TSA officers meet you at the counter, escort you to a room and tell you to wait. Then, they tell you that you're under arrest on a Texas fugitive warrant.

    "But I've never been to Texas!"

    They pay no attention to your protests and handcuff you to a chair. Minutes later, police arrive and take you to jail, where you stay for almost 2 weeks until your family and the lawyers they hired get you out.

    It happened to Bethany Farber at the Los Angeles International Airport. Now, she's suing Los Angeles.

    "I just kept insisting that they check," Farber said, "that they double-check because they had the wrong person, and I made that very clear. I told them over and over again, and they just completely blew me off."

    Her lawsuit alleges that she was kept unsanitary conditions and saw feces being thrown and smeared on walls. Her lawyer, Rodney Diggs, said she "had to spend her nights in a cold jail cell, listening to voices of other inmates screaming, crying, she saw fights within her cell, she saw fights in the common areas of the jail."

    According to Diggs, the Los Angeles Police Department failed to check her birth date, her social security number, her fingerprints, her middle name, or compare her features with a photo of the actual fugitive.

    Meanwhile, her family hired lawyers in both Texas and California. The lawsuit alleges that after about 11 days, the Los Angeles authorities received notice from Texas that they were holding the wrong person but still kept her locked up another 3 days.

    Finally, the family managed to convince the authorities to release Farber by using her cellphone's GPS records to prove she wasn't in Texas at the time of the crime. Farber praised her family: "They were fighting for me every day." But what would have happened if Farber's family had not worked tirelessly and hired attorneys in two states?

    "There's a lot of people out there who this is happening to who don't have anyone advocating for them," Farber said. "They don't have their family fighting for them every day, and every day that they're in jail, wrongfully, their lives are being dismantled."

    When asked about the matter, the LAPD answered that it does not comment on pending litigation.

    However, Farber had something more to say: "It could happen to anyone." 

    In November 1014, a deputy sheriff in Martin County, Florida stopped David Sosa and checked his driver's license.  According to the database, a county in Texas had issued an arrest warrant for a David Sosa.

    The deputy took Sosa into custody.  Sosa spent several hours at the sheriff's department before the officers confirmed that he wasn't the man Texas wanted.  They released him.

    In April 2018, the same thing happened.  Sosa protested that the deputies had made this mistake three years earlier. However, a jail employee told him they had no records of the previous arrest.  Noneless, he spent 3 days in jail before being released.

    How long would they keep him in jail the next time.  To foreclose that possibility, Sosa sued the sheriff's department in federal court.  The lawsuit alleged false arrest and overdetention.  It also alleged that the sheriff's department had failed to train the deputies and had failed to keep adequate records.

    The district court dismissed the lawsuit based on the doctrine of qualified immunity.  Sosa appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.  In September 2021, a three-judge panel affirmed the District Court's dismissal of the allegations of false arrest and failure to train and keep records.  However, the Court held that the doctrine of qualified immunity did not bar Sosa's overdetention claim.

    But that partial victory may be short-lived.  In January of this year, the entire court voted to vacate the panel's decision.  The case will now be decided by the full court.

In 2018, when Brookside, Alabama hired Mike Jones (above) as its police chief, the town had only one full–time officer: Jones. He recently quit, leaving a force with about 9 full–time cops and some part–timers.

How could a town of less than 1,500, with only one retail business - a Dollar General store - afford a police department that large? By writing tickets and by seizing property under the state's civil asset forfeiture law.

Between 2018 and 2020, total revenue from fines increased 640 percent.  In 2020, fines and forfeitures raked in $640,000, more than half the town's budget.

Chief Jones has denied that the police department relies on this revenue but it's difficult to follow the money. Accountants who audited the town report that it doesn't have a written budget.

Jones has been quoted as saying "We don't like writing tickets."  But he also has expressed disappointment that the town is not collecting more.

"I see a 600 percent increase – that's a failure," he told a reporter for AL.com. "If you had more officers and more productivity you'd have more. I think it could be more."

Interstate Highway 22 goes through this Birmingham exurb, but reportedly, the Brookside officers also ticket Interstate drivers outside that 1.5 mile stretch. Jefferson County Sheriff Mark Pettway said that his office receives calls about Brookside officers going outside their jurisdiction to stop motorists: "Most of the time people get stopped they're going to get a ticket. And they're saying they were nowhere near Brookside."

John Archibold, a columnist at Alabama.com, reported that there is actually a state law prohibiting police in small towns from issueing speeding tickets to motorists on an Interstate highway. (The law passed after a state legislator got ticketed in a speed trap.) 

According to Archibold, the Brookside police get around this restriction by issuing tickets for other violations, such as driving too long in the left lane or having a light out. Reportedly, sometimes they make up a violation.

The county's district attorney, Danny Carr, said that a driver going through the town could "fall into a black hole" financially.  New reports describe instances in which Brookside police ticketed drivers for violations they did not commit and even for offenses that did not exist in the law.

The Brookside police harvest additional cash from imarijuana law enforcement.  One lawyer said that when an officer pulled over his client and found a joint in the car, Brookville charged the man not only with possession of marijuana but also with multiple counts of possessing drug paraphernalia. The paraphernalia: a plastic bag which held the cannabis, a jar that once held it, rolling papers, and cigar wraps.

Another lawyer, Bill Dawson, said that when the police caught his client with a joint, they charged him with one count of marijuana possession and with a separate count for drug paraphernalia, meaning the cigarette paper around it.

Reportedly, while drivers are in court paying their traffic fines, Brookside cops are outside walking drug-sniffing dogs around the motorists' cars.  The police department has two such dogs.  One is name "K9 Axel" and the other, tellingly, "K9 Cash."

Jpmes , who wore 4 stars on his uniform, used a lot of this revenue to build his conception of a big city police force.  The Brookside Police Department website bragged that "since accepting the position of Chief of Brookside [Jones] has created a full time police department, with multiple divisions all while still serving the community with his team."  The tiny department even obtained a riot control vehicle on loan from a state agency.

Incidentally, one statement on the police department website should be mentioned simply because of its irony.  The website claimed that the police department's patrol division was "dedicated to serving the community of Brookside, you will see these wonderful men and women responding to calls for service and taking proactive steps to ensuring your safety and prosperity."  Uh, whose prosperity?

Officers do not wear Brookside insignia.  At least sometimes, they have signed tickets not with their names but with the word "Agent" followed by the officer's initials.

Agents "J" and "K"

Retired Birmingham police officer Montague Minnifield, who is black, was riding in the passenger seat when Brookfield police pulled over his girlfriend, who was driving.  Supposedly, her license plate light was not working.

According to Minnifield, one officer approached on the driver's side and another on his side of the car.  They were dressed in dark uniforms and wore masks.

The officer who tapped on the passenger-side window identified himself as "Agent J."

Minnifield replied, "Agent J? I guess this guy over here is agent K, huh?"  When the man agreed Minnifield said, "Oh really? So y’all are the men in black now, huh?"

Even though Minnifield was in the passenger's seat, the officer asked him for his driver's license, but Minnifield did not have it with him.  The officer said that unless Minnifield provided the license, he would be arrested.

The Brookside officers removed Minnifield from the car, cuffed him, put him in the back of their patrol car in a "stress position," and left him there for half an hour before releasing him without charging him with anything.  The officers did write a ticket for the nonworking license plate light.

Allegations of Racism

Plaintiffs have filed at least 5 lawsuits Brookside and its police department. Allegations include racism and retaliation. Rev. Vincent Witt alleges that while he was driving through Brookside in a new car with a temporary license tag, an officer pulled him over. According to the lawsuit, when Witt asked a question, the officer replied "Look, you f****** n*****, just stay out of Brookside."

Witt called the police department and complained. Later, Witt and his sister were arrested and charged with impersonating police officers. However, his sister had not even been in the car when Witt was stopped. The Brookside police department posted mugshots of both Witt and his sister on its website. 

Later, Brookside dropped the charges and removed the photographs from its webpage. After Witt sued, Brookside defended by asserting qualified immunity. However, the judge denied immunity for all the alleged conduct except the initial traffic stop.

A court decides the qualified immunity issue before trial because a grant of immunity spares the defendants not only from having to pay damages but also from the burden of going to trial. At the pretrial stage, to decide the motion, the judge assumes the allegations are true.

In denying immunity, the judge called the alleged conduct reprehensible, harkening "back to the dark period in our nation's history when officers displayed racist tendencies and weaponized their badges to keep minorities from certain communities under the guise of 'law enforcement.'"

Public Complaints

The lawsuits, and news stories and news stories have put Jones in the public eye. On February 1, 2022, more than 200 people attended a meeting hearing complaints about the Brookside police.  At the meeting, Brookside's mayor announced that the town had retained a former circuit court judge to investigate allegations of racial profiling.

Shortly after that meeting, Chief Jones resigned. As of this writing, however, his picture remained posted on the Brookside police department's website.

Recently, both Republicans and Democrats in Alabama have promised to take action about policing in Brookside.  Lieutenant Govenor Will Ainsworth, a Republican, pledged, "We're going to get something done on that." Options include prohibiting police departments from receiving revenue from the tickets its officers issue.

Speed Traps Galore

It's worth mentioning that Brookside isn't the only Alabama town to operate a speed trap.  In fact, Brookside only ranked sixth on a recent list.  And here is a list not limited to Alabama.

In 1958, Alfred Hitchcock Presents aired an episode about a speed trap. It will make you angry until the last scene. You can watch it free online.

 

Screenshots from "The Crooked Road." Other photographs from the Brookside, Alabama, Police Department Website.