It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. – H.L. Mencken
In “Imagination Pinned Down” I explained how the human mind can and often does distort or manufacture memories in order to support an individual’s belief system; I pointed out that the existence of such distortion and fabrication invalidates the whole concept of eyewitness testimony, because there is no simple way to test the veracity of a witness’ memories in order to establish them as true recollections of real events. But that’s not the only reason eyewitness testimony should be cast from the legal pedestal on which it has long been enshrined; people suffering from false memories at least believe what they say on the stand, but a far larger group of witnesses simply lie.
It has been well known for decades that police habitually falsify reports, manufacture or destroy evidence, and routinely commit perjury in order to convict innocent people or exonerate “brother officers” guilty of crimes. The practice even has a name, “testilying”, and seems to have become the rule rather than the exception in the 1960s (when courts began to strengthen the rights of the accused); by 1992 a poll of judges and prosecutors showed that in their belief at least 20% of police testimony was false, and since it is in the best interest of these officials to minimize the issue we can estimate the real figure was more like 40-50%. Since then, virtually everyone who has studied the practice agrees it has grown steadily worse, largely due to the “War on Drugs” and the “thin blue line” mentality cultivated by increasing police militarization. Legal ethicists believe it has reached epidemic proportions: in 1998 noted defense attorney and law professor Alan Dershowitz testified before Congress on the extent of the problem and quoted a police source who said, “Cops are almost taught how to commit perjury when they are in the Police Academy” and that when it comes to minor offenses, “they’re almost always lying.”
One unintended consequence of universal criminality is that since nearly everyone has been accused of some crime or another (including traffic violations and the like) at some point in his life, a very large number of people have themselves been the victims of “testilying”; as a result, juries have become increasingly skeptical of police testimony (especially in consensual crimes), much to the chagrin of prosecutors. But they and police have moved to fill the credibility gap by another method: suborning perjury from manufactured “witnesses”. Now, this is really nothing new; the use of torture to extract “confessions” of witchcraft, heresy or treason is probably as old as civilization, and the practice of rewarding jailhouse stool pigeons for hearsay evidence goes back at least to Biblical times. But in the past few decades a new technique called “climbing the ladder” has gained in popularity among prosecutors, and to a lesser extent among police.
As explained by Harvey Silverglate in Three Felonies a Day, it works like this: Say federal prosecutors want to bring down the head of a corporation, either because of personal enmity or merely because his conviction will make a valuable trophy. Such a man is likely to have money and lawyers who will defeat any ill-supported accusations, so the prosecutors need a strong, credible witness to whatever “crime” they wish to frame their victim for. But anyone close enough to the real target will also have access to legal protection, so the inquisitors start small: they find some patsy whom they can threaten with total social and economic devastation and decades in prison via a host of spurious criminal charges, then make him a deal. He will be “allowed” to plead guilty to a lesser charge, and perhaps even avoid prison time altogether, if he will agree to swear on the stand to whatever cock-and-bull story the prosecutors invent against the biggest victim he can credibly be depicted as having contact with. This “evidence” is then used to threaten the new victim with a similar roster of imaginary offenses, and he, too is offered a deal…and so on, and so on, until they reach the top of the ladder or someone refuses to play the game, at which point he becomes a proxy sacrifice for the victim they really wanted to skin.
This is, of course, the method prosecutors use to bring down escort service owners, though in such cases the ladder is a much shorter one: escorts are threatened with prostitution charges, tax audits, abduction of their children and the like in order to suborn perjury against the service owner; this is necessary because the “crime” of pandering is not a serious enough charge to justify the time and expense, and the prosecution must therefore manufacture “evidence” of money laundering, mail fraud, Mann Act violations, and most recently “human trafficking”. The latter is not limited to actual service or brothel owners, nor even to people who actually have any direct business connection to whores; these are the cases in which the police are as likely to be the agents of coercion as prosecutors. Imagine yourself a teenage streetwalker hauled in by a group of brutal thugs and thrown into a cell, threatened with imprisonment on whatever charges they can dream up…and then a detective or social worker comes in to play “good cop”, telling you that they know you’ve been “trafficked” and are willing to drop all charges – maybe even get you some goodies like a place to live and medical care – if you’ll just tell them the name of the bad men who “forced” you into prostitution. Faced with such a choice, do you honestly believe you’d hesitate to name somebody – anybody – in order to get the deal?
As long as prostitution is criminalized, the only dependable way to discover the extent of coercion in the trade is to get that information from researchers who can win the confidence of a large enough sample of workers to be considered representative. Any such statistics touted by police or other “authorities” is as questionable as the “testimony” they belch out in court, because there is absolutely no way to know how many so-called “human traffickers” were caged due solely to perjury coerced from frightened whores by cops and prosecutors eager to score the currently-popular fad conviction.
One Year Ago Today
“Village Voice Strikes Again” is a brief account of the beginning of what Village Voice Media tells us will eventually become a full-fledged campaign for decriminalization.
Never thought of the tactic ‘climbing the ladder’ before – thanks for bringing it up. Also, enjoyed reading your post (as much as one can enjoy reading/thinking about such a tough topic).
I would never have thought of it, either! That’s why evil people have an advantage over good people; their sick minds can conceive of ways to warp systems to their own ends, and the rest of us don’t recognize it until a good person somehow finds out about the plot and lets everyone else know.
Oh, that’s really uncomfortable, because to me it’s one of the most obvious thing in the world and that it would be a great way of teaching children about delayed gratification.
In my defense, “climbing the ladder” is a common tactic used against actual groups of bad people like terrorists and this is just applying the same concept to people who are innocent.
I have no statistics, but there is likely much more organized “human trafficking” occurring to profit non-sex than sex commerce. I’m thinking of “cheap child labor” for the garment and electronics industry in poverty countries where so many fashion business have outsourced production. That can mean almost inhuman labor conditions. Formally there are international and national laws, regulations, agreements, and inspection procedures in place. This kind of human trafficking and child abuse is much less interesting to global law enforcement and media than anything that can get the “sex” label although this area of the issue is probably larger and more acute. “Human trafficking” is therefore synonymous with “forced sex labor”. A shame.
It is just one instance how society at large likes to look away and not be objectively informed about problems and crimes in areas that it generally considers good and beneficial to people and economy.
Of course. We don’t outlaw the mortgage and banking industry despite all the harm it has recently caused to millions; we don’t outlaw the church despite wide-spread provable crimes of sexual (child) abuse. We deal with cases on their own merit. I understand that we must balance the good and the bad.
But it’s unbearable that ignorance as well as religious and civic brainwashing makes it largely impossible to see the individual and social benefits we need and enjoy from sex work at large, and the efforts and honest dedication of individual whores.
In addition to your Hall of Shame you could launch a Hall of Honest Courtesans for sex workers who have made a real difference in the well-being of individual clients. People know nothing about the great positive impact most whores have with their work, dedication, and human attitude (all depending on the sensitivity and intelligence of their clients). Compiling the list of potential inductees would be a life-long full time job!
In the UK they made it illegal to pay for sex with someone who is coerced even if you are unaware of the coercion. Anybody who agrees with this standard should turn themselves into the police given the global interconnected nature of trade it’s probably impossible that they haven’t at some point benefited from non-sex slavery.
Hi Maggie here’s a good story for you:
http://dailypoliticalreview.com/honor-student-falls-in-love-with-undercover-cop-then-is-arrested/
It’s about a police sting operation carried out here in my state. The gist of it is:
25 year old female police officer goes undercover as a High School student. Said police officer then heavily flirts with a high school student until he develops a crush on her. Police officer then pressures high school student to obtain marijuana for her. Student tries to give her the marijuana, but she pushes some money on him. This allows her to arrest him for selling her marijuana.
Your tax dollars at work.
They’ve released the name of the boy – Justin LaBoy …
Where’s the name of this witch that entrapped him? Let her own her actions.
Yes, I covered that one when it first broke in February (TW3 #7, last item). It’s enough to make one sick.
I agree with all Maggie but I think the key here is to just decriminalize all sex work and get it out of the legal system. Drugs too.
You know I was booted out of a jury pool for giving the cops only a “7” in integrity on a scale of 1 to 10. Hell, i thought that was above average – I put Jesus at a “10” … and many of my fellow jurists ranked the cops as a “10”. Anyone who didn’t – got the boot. I mention this to temper what follows here …
To be honest – I really don’t have a problem with the “climbing the ladder” tactic. Hell, I wish Congress had used it for the Fast and Furious debacle. It was jailhouse “hearsay” that finally gave prosecutors a breakthrough in the Tate / LaBianca murders and I’m almost certain Rudy Giuliani used this tactic to take down the NYC mobs in the 70’s.
This is where an astute defense attorney needs to be active and analyze how “ethically” the “ladder” tactic is used. The defense attorney should point out to the jury the inconsistencies and they should make up their own minds on whether or not the cops got out of hand.
I think the reason you’re so upset with the tactic is because it’s used against non-crimes – like prostitution and consensual drug transactions and usage. I certainly agree with you there. It’s like using a “bush hog” to mow your 1/4 acre lawn – it looks ridiculous when you’re doing it and the results are even more ludicrous when you’re done.
No, I’m always opposed to threatening innocent people with bogus criminal charges no matter WHAT the supposed crime. The end does not justify the means.
That’s where we’ll have to agree to disagree – I detest bad guys and it makes my day to see them get locked up.
I just want to add here Maggie, I really admire your sense of justice and how you are always consistent in applying your moral principles. You don’t have a hypocritical bone in your body…
I tend to adapt my moral principles to the real world though and, in the real world, you don’t beat the evil guys unless you play their game to a certain extent. The “ladder” tactic wouldn’t be an issue for sex workers if sex work itself were a legal activity – so the answer is to decriminalize.
That’s not to say that the police haven’t grown corrupt – as you suggest. And any tool wielded by corrupt people will be abused, and abused in absurd manners that offend common sense.
But there’s got to be a middle ground where the good guys can dart across the line occasionally to get the bad ones. Life is not like Star Wars where the all-pure Jedi triumph over the evil Sith. The fabric of civilization is thin – thinner than most people realize and human history is nothing but a tale of horror and death and it’s the guys who were willing to get into the mud and fight dirty for their tribe that usually always came out on top. Caesar didn’t conquer Gaul using half-measures he used every diplomatic and war tool at his disposal. Napoleon – same. Genghis Kahn – same.
Then you have the “Ron Pauls” of history – and Neville Chamberlain comes to mind, he didn’t fare too well.
And – when the good guys fail – there is a backlash and it’s not just against the good guy who failed but his entire ideology. I’m just saying that to preserve the good in this world – you have to have men willing to venture over to the dark side occasionally. How you keep control of them is a huge question and obviously the police are out of control here. But that doesn’t negate a millennia of human history and lessons learned the hard way.
While it’s true the “Good Guys” go over the line, you have to remember that doing so still damages the fabric of civilization. So going over that line can cause more damage than letting the bad guys get away.
See, the problem with threatening people with bogus charges is that we don’t actually know if they did it. And most of the time, the reason why we can’t find enough evidence is because they didn’t do it. That gut feeling that the guy is guilty is usually wrong.
I’m not sure what you mean by applying “climbing the ladder” to F&F. You don’t need bogus charges if they actually did something illegal. You only need to flip people if you can’t get enough evidence any other way. And Holder is being called out by congress right now, so who exactly are we missing?
I think you’re forgetting that, while civilization is fragile, it’s very powerful.
For instance, the constant invasions of the Western Roman Empire by Barbarians was because they wanted to be Romans. After 476, the victors kept acting like they were actually emperors of Rome under the control of the Byzantine Emperors.
And Genghis Khan adopted a new code of laws banning a number of traditional Mongol practices like making it illegal to kidnap women, which was enforced with typical Mongol brutality. If you were caught doing things to protect your tribe that Mongols had been doing for thousands of years, but Genghis decided to stop, he’d kill you and everybody that tribe to stop him.
All these guys willing to get dirty for their tribe were also willing to do the good things that worked. Like making the law apply to everybody, including those who enforced it. They accepted that other people who weren’t in their tribe were still better than their tribe at certain thing and let them join.
Your views on foreign policy and domestic affairs have a serious disconnect going on. Like, a lot of these great men you talk about, also interfered with their “Tribal” structure and used government force against their own.
I mean:
Is a really good argument that the government should force people to adopt a system of universal health care. After all, sometimes you just have to venture to the dark side for the good of the tribe. Sometimes you have to fight dirty and take things away from other people, even if the other people are members of your tribe.
“No, I’m always opposed to threatening innocent people with bogus criminal charges no matter WHAT the supposed crime. The end does not justify the means.”
– emphasis added
Once we say that it’s OK to threaten innocent people with bogus criminal charges in order to get the real criminals, we’ve left “universal criminality” and “three felonies a day” behind and given law enforcement the green light to just make shit up. They tend towards that anyway, but now you’re saying that it’s alright. It’s OK that they’ve accused you (yes, you) of murder arson and jaywalking, because the guy thirty ladder steps away is a real criminal, somebody who really is a murderer, an arsonist, and yes, a jaywalker. They don’t have any proof or anything like that (if they did they’d skip this long drawn out ladder stuff and just go after him directly and be big heroes), but they know that he’s bad, and so it’s fine and dandy to tear up your life in their quest to get to him.
THAT is the result of “darting over to the dark side.”
Now, if you’re only saying that it’s OK for them make deals with petty criminals (not innocents) to capture truly dangerous criminals, then I can see that, although with the tendency to abuse every tool given to them, the police should be regulated tighter than an alum addict’s butt hole even with that.
When the tactic is used against people who are doing things that are actually wrong, it seems more likely that they won’t need to make stuff up.
That would be a case of making deals with petty criminals (not innocents) to capture truly dangerous criminals.
The “Fast and Furious debacle” was an attempt by the BATFE to do something very similar to climbing the ladder. Where instead of immediately arresting the straw purchasers, they let them go in order to identify the organization’s higher ups, so that they could take down the entire collective.
Except to do that you have to have a system in place to track the guns once they get loose, which … uhm … they didn’t.
Let’s think about this for a minute. Put yourself in this position-
There you are, a teenager out on your own. You’ve chosen prostitution as a job because you can’t make enough to survive other wise in our capitalist society, especially if you are underage.
Then the cops scoop you up, jail you, and proceed with the threats. (Seriously, if that’s all they do to you, you’re lucky. It can be much worse.) You learn that you cannot trust them, that they will hurt you.
So, thinking on that, how much are the cops helping these young women, and keeping them away from “pimps?” Seriously?
It’s just one more abuse.
You say the following:
“As explained by Harvey Silverglate in Three Felonies a Day, it works like this: Say federal prosecutors want to bring down the head of a corporation, either because of personal enmity or merely because his conviction will make a valuable trophy.”
Do you really believe this? On what evidence do you believe that prosecutors routinely prosecute people they believe to be innocent? I know it occasionally happens, as in the Duke “rape” case and maybe what is going on in Florida now, but the vast majority of prosecutors would slit their wrists before they prosecuted someone they knew was innocent.
I mean, for Heaven’s sake other then in the rare high publicity case (and I can tell you a story or two), why would anyone prosecute someone they believed was innocent? I took a 50% cut in pay when I joined the office, and I sure didn’t do it to prosecute innocent people. And let’s face it, there are usually more than enough guilty people around to go after.
That being said, I don’t doubt the sorts of things you describe are taking place. However the culprit is more likely to be excessive zeal than corruption.
Here is how it works (caveat, I have never done a sex worker case, and am extrapolating). You do the raid and you try to separate the bad guys from the not so bad guys. You get one of the not so bad guys (most likely a girl in your fact pattern) in an interview room and explain the facts of life. Maybe she lawyers up, so you explain the facts of life to her lawyer.
The lawyer gets the client alone and explains to her that he can get a deal, but she has to offer the prosecutor something (i.e. she needs to point the finger at someone). If she says she wasn’t trafficked the prosecutor won’t believe her, because he got into this by believing that sex trafficking is a real problem. Her own lawyer will be putting the most pressure on her to “come clean” because he does his best by her if she gets the deal.
So when the girl “sees the light” and admits that yes, she was trafficked by these bad men, the prosecutor isn’t suborning perjury. She is telling him what he expects to hear, so he believes her.
Now, I am not letting the prosecutor off the hook here. A good prosecutor will always distrust witnesses like this and should take steps to make sure he is being told the truth. He should ask her questions to which he knows the answer, or take steps to independently corroborate what he is being told. But, you know, not everyone is as careful as they should be and, after all, the girl is saying what he has been told by the agents and experts to expect.
And there you have it.
If you haven’t read Three Felonies you really need to. As Alan Dershowitz put it, federal prosecutors are routinely teaching people “not just to sing, but to compose”.
That book is on my list and I agree with its central premise, that the federal laws have become dangerously vague. Where I part company is the notion that prosecutors are all (or mostly) venal. If I had to attribute a common sin to them I would probably go with self-righteousness.
“I had to attribute a common sin to them I would probably go with self-righteousness.”
I suspect every witch ever burned was burned by a self-righteous prosecutor. I prefer venality.
Ask yourself why Nifong, Reiner, Harry Connick, Martha Cockley, or Janet Reno are names people can think of for prosecutors. All of them famous for railroading innocent people and putting people in prison for crimes that never happened. Except for Nifong, prosecutors have not gone after criminals in their ranks for suborning perjury and obstructing justice. So until I see a lot of ADAs in prison, it’s prudent to assume you are all Nifongs, Reiners, Connicks, Cockleys, and Renos.
A prosecutor, if he wants to pursue higher office, will get there by convincing voters that he’s tough on crime. Letting innocent people go doesn’t prove that he’s tough on crime; putting guilty people away proves that he’s tough on crime. If said prosecutor has the bad luck to encounter a lot of innocent people and too few guilty ones, there is a direct advantage to said prosecutor to move some of those “we let him go because he didn’t do it” people into the “we put the dirty perp away for a long time; vote for me” column.
Maybe YOU would never do this. Maybe a lot of prosecutors never would (some of them may have no interest in running for higher office). But the motive is there for many of them, and some of them WILL give in to that temptation.
And whether he’s motivated by “I don’t care if he’s innocent; it’s good for me if he’s convicted” or an honest belief that any method is justified to take down those he knows to be guilty (but can’t prove without resorting to crooked acts due to a distressing lack of evidence), the end result is the same: the lives of innocent people are ruined.
Sailor,
I agree and would add one more circumstance to the pot.
If, as Roscoe says, most prosecutors don’t engage in this behavior, then why the nearly universal push back from prosecutors regarding the use of DNA evidence for exoneration? Except for the Dallas DA, who ran on using DNA for exoneration of old convictions, I can’t think of a one who doesn’t use every legal trick in the book to delay such testing and can think of dozens who do.
I don’t recall the case, other than it was a death penalty case in the South East, but a man who was convicted of rape-murder and sentenced to death on the theory of the crime that he was the sole assailant, was re-charged by the prosecutor under a different theory of the crime – death penalty also sought – when DNA evidence exonerated him of the rape. The DA decided that someone else had raped her, but this guy had killed her.
When prosecutors indulge in this kind of behavior, without criticism from their fellows, then I think that we can put them in the same category of police officers who invoke the thin blue line to justify their testilying on behalf of brother officers who do evil things. And I do mean the prosecutors who act as apologists for this abhorrent behavior.
Good point.
And folks, do look at the video I linked to below. You may think you can count basketball passes, but are you really so observant?
Maggie, you are utterly right about eyewitness testimony. Watch this video and then consider what the testimony of most of the people watching it would be worth. Maybe even what your testimony would be worth.
[…] false testimony in courts: the police. In a recent post about police and their lack of honesty I see this: It has been well known for decades that police habitually falsify reports, manufacture or destroy […]
It reminds me of the awesome storyline in the old 2000AD comics “Judge Dredd vs Judge Death”.
Basic storyline? Four law enforcers from another dimension, where the true source of all crime, Life itself, was made a criminal act (where the penaly is, of course, death), enter Megacity One.
Their Names? Judge Fear, Judge Fire, Judge Mortis and Judge Death. They duly start to uphold the Law. Theirs.
Suffice to say, the results are predictable.
This is where the current USA LEO fallacies have an ultimate logical conclusion.
Of course, a significant part of the US population would have to suffer this fate, looking at the apathy of the majority (or even support) before the somnambulent public wake the fuck up.
Pathetic.