THE JANUARY 24th ICE SHOOTING

 I have just viewed, re-viewed, and viewed again in slow motion the latest ICE shooting of the detainee in Minnesota. I feel that I am qualified to critique the video because of my 30 years as a prosecutor, during which time I investigated many police shooting.

What I saw was at least four officers forcing the detainee to the ground. As he is belly down on the ground, three officers hold him down and struggle with him while a fourth repeatedly strikes the man with an object which I could not identify. There were enough officers on top of the man to restrain him without the use of deadly force. Get his hands under control, handcuff him, and cart him off. That they appeared to be unwilling or unable to use non-lethal force to subdue him suggests at best inadequate training. As the officers crowd around the man, a shot rings out, and the officers scatter from the man as he rolls onto his back. I plainly see him lying flat on his back while two officers draw their weapons and fire multiple shots into his unmoving body. It didn't look like any of the officers in the group were carrying tasers. With officers in a scrum like the one I saw, it bespeaks poor judgment for one of them to fire a shot in such close quarters. The fellow officers appear to have agreed with me, because they scattered at the first gunshot. Now the officers are standing around the man, who is lying unmoving on his back. Two officers produce firearms, point them at the prostrate body, and fire multiple shots. It is claimed that the man was armed with a 9 mm handgun. If so, it was concealed, should have been unavailable to him with three officers on top of him and him on his stomach, and I never saw it. The first shot fired is hard to justify. The follow up multiple shots do not look justifiable, but the man was probably dead at that time, and it isn't a violation of a corpse's civil rights to fire bullets into his dead body.

Suggestions: Since the video raises many questions about the propriety of the shooting, (1) The officers who fired their weapons should be immediately suspended pending a full and fair investigation by an independent agency conducted in tandem with state agencies. (2). Moving forward, ICE officers should be (a). equipped with tasers or some other form of non-lethal weaponry, (b). equipped with bodycams. (c). trained in proper techniques for handcuffing resisting arrestees who are on their bellies on the ground. (3). Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and anyone else in the Federal Government should refrain from making judgmental comments about the incident until the investigation is complete and the results are in. (4). The Federal Government should immediately take steps to de-escalate the situation in Minneapolis, not double down on ICE tactics.

I welcome contrasting, well-informed, courteous views that don't accuse me of being a libtard or a sufferer from TDS.

DEATH PENALTY DELAYS

Although I try to follow the old dictum “If you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say anything,” I sometimes (maybe even often) fail to live up to it. I’m about to say something uncomplimentary about our attorney general who, for reasons of convenience, got an execution postponed. Her reason for doing so, as I understand, was to accommodate a fundraiser she was holding on the original date of the execution. She couldn’t be at both, so she postponed the more important event. This example of misplaced priorities raises a question in my mind: If her judgment is so flawed in this area, how flawed is it in other areas? Do we need an attorney general with such abominable judgment?

I began working on the case which she postponed back in 1988 when I was called to the scene of the crime and observed the recovery of the victim’s body and the preservation of the evidence. It was not pleasant. Two years later, I presented the case to a jury and asked them to recommend the death sentence and asked a judge to impose it. I assisted in any way I could with another prosecution which resulted in another death penalty for the same offender. I saw firsthand the anguish of two families whose daughters had been brutally murdered. Those families will never have closure until the execution is carried out, and our state government owes it to them to see that the execution is carried out as expeditiously as possible.

Any politician who, because of considerations of political advantage, causes a delay in that process deserves censure. That politician deserves a double dose of censure if, as is the case here, that politician is familiar with the death penalty process and knows firsthand the anguish caused to victims’ families when the process is delayed.

The death penalty which has been delayed is the result of one of the best, most professional law enforcement efforts I have ever been involved in. Officers from multiple agencies in Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, and the Federal level showed a level of competence, cooperation, and professionalism unequaled in my 30+ years of experience in the criminal justice system. Multiple prosecutors' offices in two states (Tennessee and Florida) showed a remarkably high level of cooperation and courtesy in working together to obtain two death penalties and to see to it that they were upheld. Now we have (hopefully) come to the end of a much-delayed 25 year process, and it gets delayed one more time because someone wants to attend a political fundraiser. I don't think I will be contributing to her campaign.