Victims of police brutality
face circuitous path through legal system By WALLACE McKELVEY Staff Writer
Winston Bailey contested the
charges of obstruction and resisting arrest he faced after an Atlantic City
police officer allegedly mistook him for another suspect.
He’s had his day in court.
More than ten times.
Without resolution.
“I don’t have the money for all
this stuff,” he said. “But I can’t just let somebody do this to me. I’m doing
it on my own because I think it’s the right thing to do.”
Those who claim police
brutality face a circuitous path through the legal system as they either defend
against criminal charges or pursue civil claims. Many are set up to fail due to
the realities of navigating the state’s legal system, said Alexander Shalom,
senior staff attorney for the ACLU of New Jersey.
“People held in jail for a long
time understand that the quickest way to get out is to plead,” Shalom said.
“That’s not what we want in the criminal justice system. We don’t want to
punish the faintest of heart.”
'The whole system was against
us'
Similarly, most defense
attorneys say they’ve advised clients to take guilty pleas based on an honest
assessment of their chances in court. A guilty plea may make civil cases more
difficult to win, but not in all cases.
“Even though things were
looking good on our side, I was told there was an 80 percent conviction rate,”
said Tiffany Baez, who alleges she was assaulted by police in an Atlantic City
nightclub. “The whole system was against us from the start.”
Baez said her guilty plea meant
six months of pre-trial intervention and a small fine. Considering the
potential jail time and the resulting disruption to her life, she said, it wasn’t
a choice at all.
Bailey said he wouldn’t have
come this far without a supportive employer who allows him to leave work to
appear in court and friends who helped him mount his legal defense. His boss
bought him a car so he could make the trip out to Egg Harbor City, he said.
Not the same for officers
Although the odds appear to be
against defendants who claim police misconduct, most say that isn’t true of
police officers when they face charges of their own outside the Internal
Affairs system.
According to the Internal
Affairs statistics obtained through the Open Public Records Act, Atlantic City
officers have had other criminal charges sustained in 3 of 27 instances in the
last five years.
Baez said her criminal
complaint against the officer in her case hasn’t gone to court after more than
a year, her IA complaint has not been decided and Baez’s attorney has advised
her not to press the issue until her pre-trial intervention program was
complete.
Even those who are able to
mount a vigorous defense can have a difficult time working their way through
the courts.
Steve Scheffler, David Connor
Castellani’s criminal attorney, said defendants who claim police brutality can
see their cases take months and even years to wind through the legal system.
“I’ve represented individuals
in similar circumstances,” he said. “A lot of times, they don’t end well for
the common citizen.”
Criminal cases vs. civil cases
If criminal proceedings can be
an arduous process, civil cases are worse. While the outcomes seem to favor
plaintiffs who claim civil rights violations – at least 13 cases involving
Atlantic City police have been settled for about $1.4 million in recent years –
it can take many years for such claims to work through the system.
The rate at which such cases
have been settled hasn’t changed significantly since before the city began
pursuing a policy of vigorously contesting civil cases. Between 2002 and 2007,
Atlantic City paid nearly $1.2 million in legal fees and settlements in at
least 13 cases claiming excessive force, according to data obtained via OPRA
requests. Those settlements include one alleged incident of domestic violence
by an officer, in which the plaintiff claimed a prior IA complaint was ignored.
Unheard voices, low payouts
Not all plaintiffs have the
wherewithal to even begin that process. That’s not necessarily because of the
expense involved, as lawyers typically work on a contingency fee basis in which
they agree to take a percentage of the eventual award.
“If you’re a poor person with a
very compelling or lucrative case, you can usually find a lawyer who will take
it,” Shalom said. “But knowing which attorney to talk to and when to talk to
them is a different matter. And then there are time limits for filing the case.
It takes a savvy person.”
And not all civil rights cases
are equal.
“If police are systematically
harassing a group of people but not beating them up — so no hospital records —
it’s unlikely those people will get a large pay day,” he said. “Traditionally,
incidents of misconduct far outpace lawsuits filed.”
One recent example was a case
the ACLU was involved with in Camden. Police there had been planting drugs on
suspects to secure convictions; a number of plaintiffs — 87 by the time the
suit was settled last year — joined the suit.
“This was a very large settlement,
$3.5 million when all was said and done, but individual clients didn’t walk
away with lots of money,” Shalom said.
Proving 'a culture of
misconduct'
Aside from eyewitness testimony
and video, attorneys in civil cases typically have to prove a culture of
misconduct in police departments. That involves procuring discipline files,
Internal Affairs reports, performance evaluations and training logs. Attorneys
say municipalities fight to keep these documents from the plaintiffs and, when
they are released, are often restricted from public dissemination.
One example of this came in
December in the ongoing case of Matthew Groark, who alleged two Atlantic City
police officers assaulted him at a night club in Atlantic City. The city’s
attorney argued that the involved officer’s Internal Affairs records were not
relevant to the case, but a judge ruled they were.
One of the officers in the
Groark suit, Sterling Wheaten, has already had a partial version of his
Internal Affairs file released as evidence in another pending case. That
document, which was not heavily redacted, provides a rare glimpse inside the
city’s Internal Affairs process. Wheaten is named in Castellani’s pending civil
case.
According to the file, 21
complaints were lodged against Wheaten over a three-year period between 2008
and 2011, including two from then-Chief John Mooney and Henry White, the
current chief.
Simon Worrall, whose son
Nicholas filed the lawsuit that exposed Wheaten’s Internal Affairs file, said
their attorney had difficulty obtaining evidence. The younger Worrall alleged
he was assaulted at a night club over Labor Day weekend in 2010.
“When we launched the lawsuit,
the video tapes all disappeared,” he said. “The camera wasn’t working between
midnight and 2 a.m. That’s complete hooey.”
