Saturday, January 2, 2010

10-01-02 Rampart FIPs (Falsely Imprisoned Persons)

Rampart-FIPs (Falsely Imprisoned Persons)
Rampart-FIPs (Falsely Imprisoned Persons) were and are those who were documented during the Rampart scandal investigation (1998-2000) to have been falsely convicted and falsely sentenced to prison terms by the Superior Courts of California for the County of Los Angeles. PBS Frontline estimated their numbers at many thousands,[1] [2] almost exclusively African-Americans and/or Latinos. The 2006 Rampart scandal report -  Rampart Reconsidered - by the Blue Ribbon Review Panel documented their ongoing false imprisonment -hardly any were freed over the past decade, and senior police, prosecutors and judges were documented as refusing to allow their release.[3][4][5] The same report also documented that all investigations of the affair, their own included, were failures and fundamental facts in the matter were not yet known. From the perspective of a decade, review of the published materials, and additional evidence accumulated regrading the justice system in Los Angeles County, may allow better evaluation of the causes underlying the scandal. Regardless, the ongoing confinement of the Rampart-FIPs was concluded to be a human rights disgrace of historic proportions.[6][7]

Contents
1 Origins of the Rampart-FIPs
2 Current efforts to release the Rampart-FIPs
3 Perspectives
4 References
5 External links

Origins of the Rampart-FIPs
In describing the false imprisonments in Los Angeles County, notable legal scholars, not often given to hyperbole, used unprecedented language:

…judges tried and sentenced a staggering number of people for crimes they did not commit. How could so many participants in the criminal justice system have failed eitFher to recognize or to instigate any meaningful scrutiny of such appalling and repeated perversions of justice? …we felt a particular obligation to ensure that no aspect of the Los Angeles criminal justice system, including the lawyers and judges, escaped scrutiny. A law school, with its concern for all aspects of the justice system, is the obvious place for such an examination.[8]

Any analysis of the Rampart scandal must begin with an appreciation of the heinous nature of what the
officers did. This is conduct associated with the most repressive dictators and police states. …and judges must share responsibility when innocent people are convicted.[9]

Unnerving the judges: Judicial responsibility for the Rampart scandal [10]

The statements above were written in 2000, most likely under the assumption that the victims would be soon released, which was not the case. The widespread corrupt prosecution and trial practices of the Rampart undercover narcotic officers, were uncovered in the plea bargain testimony of the central witness in the Rampart scandal investigation - Rafael Pérez  (police officer). Such practices included routine framing of evidence, and at times also torture of innocent victims, to extract false confessions.[11] The scandal rapidly expanded into a two-year, 200- investigator probe of a single division of the LAPD. Later, the Blue Ribbon Review Panel determined that the practices of the Rampart division were most likely widespread in other division as well - Metro, and Northeast were particularly mentioned in the report. The Panel determined that the investigation was deliberately curtailed to prevent the true scope of the scandal from being uncovered.

A bit more of the underlying circumstances was revealed in the statements of a deputy public defender - who described an environment in the criminal courts that was hostile to the defense, and heavily biased towards the prosecution. In addition, a NYT journalist's report, and an unparalleled PBS Frontline series - LAPD Blues- added much that was allegedly covered up in the investigation.[12] LAPD police officer, who had to be cleared to publish
his writings in national media, bemusing, dismissed the former as "passing the buck", and the latter as exploring "the murky, mysterious depths of the LAPD Rampart scandal".[13] [14]

Further details of 'murky depths' of the Los Angeles criminal courts were explored in litigations that started in 2000 and continued throughout most of the decade, including one, where the deputy public defender was named defendant.[15]

In the immediate aftermath of the discoveries - intensive efforts were initiated to free the Rampart-FIPs. However, unusual events surrounding the First Rampart Trial (2000), led to their premature termination. The litigation of the First Rampart Trial ended in an unprecedented ruling by Judge Jacqueline Connor, where jury verdicts, which convicted three out of four police Defendants were reversed, on Friday evening, December 22, 2000 in ruling announced by the judge from home. The ruling claimed that errors in jury instructions by the judge herself "fatally biased" the jury, and required the voiding of the convictions. The language used was seen as negatively affecting attempts "to 'fix' the Rampart scandal"[16]. Consequently, such efforts to came to an end. Whereas media and various reports mentioned a list of between 50 and 100 police who were routinely involved in framing and false convictions, no additional criminal prosecutions were attempted.[17] The drama around Christmas 2000 led to divergent responses by then then LAPD Chief, Bernard Parks, [18] by mainstream,[19] and by fringe news media, [20][21], and it continued to reverberate through the halls of justice, successive committee reports, and the operation of a Office of Overseer for Civil Rights and LAPD's Consent Decree Bureau, for most of the following decade.[22]

During review of the appeal - originating from Judge Connor's Ruling, filed by the Los Angeles District Attorney (2004), the California Court of Appeal, 2nd District, raised to the surface the inexplicably missing explanation for the core question, which was allegedly covered up in the investigation:

[Justice] Hastings said it was clear to him that since the result of the alleged conspiracy [by Rampart police officers] was the filing of criminal charges against the suspected gang members, an instruction explaining what conduct might have justified those charges was necessary. He was mystified, he said, by the fact none
was given. [23]

The California Court of Appeals upheld Judge Connor's December 22, 2000 Ruling.[24] The same question and similar issues were the basis for the conclusions by the Blue Ribbon Review Panel (2006), that all investigations into the matter, including their own, were entirely failures. Even by the time that the Panel's report was filed, the basic facts were still entirely unknown, the Panel stated. Accordingly, it recommended an "external investigation". 

Such investigation was never instituted. The failure to institute external investigation right from the outset, or anytime afterwards through a succession of reports and investigations, must be deemed a failure of federal law enforcement agencies to perform their duties. The corruption and dysfunction of the Los Angeles County justice system was already proven in the initial Rafael Perez testimony in 1998.

Current efforts to release the Rampart-FIPs
Minimal efforts to bring about the release of the Rampart-FIPs have been documented in recent years.[25] The latest notable effort was in the publication of the LAPD commissioned report Rampart Reconsidered (2006), authored by the Blue Ribbon Review Panel, chaired by Los Angeles black attorney, civil rights activist Connie Rice.

The panel was originally commissioned in 2003 to generate the inexplicably missing final report of the Rampart scandal investigation. The panel was distinguished in its conduct. It produced a report, but it refused to produce the report that it was commissioned to generate. Instead, it concluded that the concept of Los Angeles County investigating itself, on the background of a justice system, which the Panel described as "tolerated routine abuse
and criminality by a significant subcult in its ranks."[26] The Panel called for an external, independent investigation, instead.[27] However, such external review was never instituted. Regarding the Rampart-FIPs, similarly, the Panel refused to make any clear conclusions, except than the primary conclusions, which was known all along - "innocent people remain in prison".[28] The unique contribution of the Blue Ribbon Review Panel report was in documenting almost a decade after the Rampart scandal eruption, the reasons provided by various leaders of the Los Angeles justice system for refusing to free the Rampart-FIPs.
Perspectives Events that led to the false imprisonments of the Rampart FIPs were defined as unprecedented a decade ago, by a leading constitutional scholar.[29][30] 

In attempting to place the Rampart-FIPs in perspective of U.S. history, only few events can be considered: First- the Japanese American internment during World War II- over half-a-century prior to eruption of the [Rampart scandal]. The number of persons interned exceeded 100,000, including entire families, which were relocated into camps. The detentions started in 1942 and ended with the conclusion of the war, and therefore at most were 3-4 years long. All those interned were denied of liberty, however, most were housed in camps, not prisons. In 1988, the United States Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed
legislation apologizing for the detentions - as founded in "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership" - and substantial reparations were disbursed to survivors.

Second: During the still ongoing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, which started following the September 11 attacks in 2001, detention camps were established in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - GITMO. While the U.S. government never released full statistics of such detentions, the overall number of those detained, most likely never exceeded 1,000, and at present was believed to be well under 500. However, concerns of Human rights violations
were raised regarding the GITMO detentions, and were also recorded, and under the Bush administration, an Overseer for Civil rights was appointed [31]. Following election of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Government stated its commitment to close end the detentions at GITMO [32], however, such statement was yet to be acted upon [33]. Third: During the military operations in Iraq, thousands of local residents were detained under U.S. forces control. In some cases, notable human rights violations were recorded, such as in Abu-Ghraib. [34]

Therefore, the internment of Japanese Americans remained separated by over half-a century from detentions in GITMO and Iraq, and false imprisonments in Los Angeles County, and the latter three cases were contemporaneous. In two of the latter three cases - detentions at GITMO, and the Rampart FIPs in Los Angeles - accounts of human rights violations were addressed by appointments of overseers for civil rights, and two of the three latter cases took place outside the territory of the United States, leaving the Rampart-FIPs as the only known
case of this type in the past half century.

A counter example was most recently recorded in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where two State of Pennsylvania judges were found to have routinely engaged in false sentencing of juveniles to confinement terms.[35] Although that scandal was still evolving, corrective actions were expediently initiated by the local judiciary - to review all sentences issued by these judges and to reverse those sentences that were deemed corrupt. [36] In parallel, federal authorities initiated prosecution of the offending judges for racketeering. [37].

The ongoing false imprisonments of many thousands of innocent persons in Los Angeles County, California, with no corrective actions by either State of California or U.S. agencies, therefore remained inexplicable, especially under President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who were all self-identified as black and/or latinos. It remained to be seen, how the case would evolve, and how
history would judge the case of the Rampart-FIPs.

References
2. ^ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/lapd/later/outcome.html
3. ^ http://www.lapdonline.org/assets/pdf/rampart_reconsidered_executive_summary.pdf
4. ^ http://www.lacp.org/2006-Articles-Main/071506-Rampart%20Reconsidered-Full%20Report.pdf
5. ^ http://www.lacp.org/2006-Articles-Main/071506-Rampart%20Reconsidered-Appendices%20Final.pdf
6. ^ Chemerinsky, Erwin, "The Rampart Scandal and the Criminal Justice System in Los Angeles County" (2000).  Duke Law Faculty Scholarship. Paper 1421.
7. ^ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/lapd/bare.html
8. ^ David W. Burcham, and Catherine L. Fisk,34 Loy LA Law Rev 767 2001 Rampart Symposium
9. ^ Erwin Chemerinsky 57 Guild Prac 121 2000
10. ^ Laurie L. Levenson, Loyola Law Review 34, 2000: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v34-issue2/levenson.pdf
11. ^ Chemerinsky, Erwin, "The Rampart Scandal and the Criminal Justice System in Los Angeles County" (2000).
Duke Law Faculty Scholarship. Paper 1421. http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/1421
12. ^ http://truthinjustice.org/20001001mag-lapd.html
13. ^ http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment100300g.shtml
14. ^ http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/commentprint103000a.html
15. ^ http://www.nlada.org/DMS/Documents/1201186304.84/ovan012208.htm
16. ^ http://inproperinla.com/00-12-24-the-judge-s-decision-los-angeles-times.pdf
17. ^ Blue Ribbon review Panel Report (2006) "Rampart Reconsidered" http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/restorejustice-in-l-a 
18. ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2000/dec/24/news/mn-4249
19. ^ http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=94614
20. ^ http://revcom.us/a/v22/1070-79/1079/ramprt.htm
21. ^ http://rwor.org/a/v22/1080-89/1088/ramparts.htm
22. ^ June 15, 2001 Consent Decree in US v City of LA et al (2:00-cv-11769) http://inproperinla.com/00-00-00-usdist-
ct-la-us-v-city-of-la_01-06-15-executed-but-no-pos-doc-123_consent_decree.pdf
23. ^ May 14, 2004 Metropolitan News - Convictions of Three in Rampart Case Not Tainted by Instructional Error
Judge Admitted, C.A. Told http://www.metnews.com/articles/2004/orti051404.htm
17/12/2009 Rampart-FIPs (Falsely Imprisoned Perso…
24. ^ http://inproperinla.com/01-05-01-pbs-frontline_rampart-false-imprisonments-s.pdf
25. ^ http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/restore-justice-in-l-a
26. ^ Rampart Reconsidered (2006), by the Blue Ribbon Review Panel p47, also see p6,9,10,32,33.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/restore-justice-in-l-a
27. ^ Rampart Reconsidered (2006), by the Blue Ribbon Review Panel p78 et seq.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/restore-justice-in-l-a
28. ^ Rampart Reconsidered (2006), by the Blue Ribbon Review Panel p60 et seq.
30. ^ Chemerinsky, Erwin, "The Rampart Scandal and the Criminal Justice System in Los Angeles County" (2000).
Duke Law Faculty Scholarship. Paper 1421. http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/1421
31. ^ January 14, 2009 Military tortured Guantanamo detainees tribunal overseer says, by Bob Woodward for the Washington Post. 
32. ^ January 21, 2009 President Obama issues a directive to shut down detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
33. ^ December 16, 20009 Council on Foreign Affairs, Top of the Agenda: Obama Order on Guantanamo Detainees.
34. ^ August 2005 The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu-Ghraib. 
35. ^ http://inproperinla.com/09-02-11-two-pennsylavnia-judges_indicted.pdf
36. ^ March 26, 2009 Order by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania Middle District http://inproperinla.com/09-03-26-penn-court-corrective-action-s.pdf 
37. ^ September 10, 2009 PA Judges in Corruption Scandal Indicted for Racketeering. http://inproperinla.com/09-09-10-pennsylvania-state-judges-indicted-on-racketeering-law.com.pdf

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