The disaster that is the District Attorney's office

[eldondre]

Here is the other point which many of us have been saying for years.

New gun laws will do nothing. Enforce the current gun laws first.

These stories show how even more ridiculous the 5 illegal gun laws Council passed were. The problem isn't lack of laws, it is lack of keeping the bad guys with guns off the streets.

bing mother****ing go. while the inky has only hinted at this over the years, philly mag has covered this a number of times. the Philadelphia justice system is broken, absolutely and utterly broken. it is the single biggest problem facing Philadelphia today though I'm sure it is very much related to the culture of corruption and incompetence that permeates almost every facet of city government. what is so despicable about this is so many lives are ruined not just financially, but physically. lynne abraham is a joke, an ugly, man joke.

“Twenty-three years old and 44 priors. There's no excuse for that,“ said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey. ..Of the 9,850 gunpoint robberies reported in the city in 2006 and 2007, only a quarter were brought to court, according to an Inquirer analysis. In the end, only two in 10 accused armed robbers were found guilty of armed robbery. ..There's a law on the books that enhances the penalty when you commit a crime with a gun. It's not enforced,“ noted Ramsey, referring to the state's mandatory minimum five-year sentence for brandishing a firearm in the commission of a felony.
“There's no disincentive to carry a gun,“ Ramsey said. “Why wouldn't you carry a gun?“

One result: Among the 10 largest cities in the nation, Philadelphians are the most likely to be robbed at gunpoint. ..Philadelphia has the nation's lowest conviction rate for felony crime. And among the four violent crimes - murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault - robbery was the most out of line with the national average.

In the 75 largest counties in the country, the conviction rate for robbery is 69 percent. In Philadelphia, it's 35 percent. ..Jennifer Mulholland, who was a bartender at Brian's Sports Bar in Frankford, got a taste of that.

Gassew drank there often, she said in an interview, and befriended her.

One night in May 2006, Gassew said good night and left. A short time later, a man wearing a mask burst into the bar with a gun in his hand and demanded that she empty the register.

Mulholland thought it was Gassew. “Quit playing,“ she told him.

“It's not a joke,“ the robber replied, pointing the silver gun at her head.

“I knew it was him,“ she recalled.

He grabbed her by the neck and told her to open the register.

She gave him the money.

Mulholland, whose father is a police sergeant, said she was prepared to testify.

“I never got a court notice,“ she said. ...Of robbery and aggravated-assault cases filed in 2006 and 2007 in Municipal Court, about half were immediately tossed or withdrawn - and never went to Common Pleas Court, where felonies are decided. ..Then began the real ordeal. She said she went to court many times.

She waited hours, only to sit in the hallway. The prosecutor warned her it would be difficult to coordinate the cases, given all the witnesses, so she tried to be patient.

But she felt uncomfortable in the courtroom, worried that Gassew's friends or family could see her.

Poe acknowledges she missed some court dates. She had to work, too, she said. Her friend's testimony in July 2008 was enough to keep the case alive.

Poe has not heard from prosecutors for months, but a few weeks ago, she got some news from a police officer friend that shocked her: Gassew had been shot by police after allegedly robbing several convenience stores. “I thought, 'That's impossible. He's in jail. How could you rob 45 people with a deadly weapon and still get out?' “ ..Gassew got out in October after his mother posted his bail, said his grandmother. Within a few days, police say, he picked up where he left off.

On Oct. 26, they say, Gassew walked into a store at 2634 Bridge St., beat two employees with a handgun, loaded a black bag with cigarettes, and took $630 from the cash register.

Two days later, he allegedly walked into a 7-Eleven store at 8101 Oxford Ave. in the Fox Chase section and smashed Joseph Massey in the face with a gun.

On his way out, police say, Gassew ran into two people and, wielding a black semiautomatic handgun, asked: “You don't see anything, right?“ before speeding off in a stolen 1993 Dodge truck.

In the meantime, Officer Christian Buckman, a 13-year veteran, heard a flash over the police radio and immediately spotted the truck from his cruiser.

Police said Gassew led Buckman on a high-speed chase that ended with his truck smashed into a tree on the 6000 block of Oxford Avenue.

Gassew ran west, down Benner Street and into a parking lot.

Buckman went after him and ordered Gassew to stop several times, according to a police report.

Gassew “turned to the officer with his hand in his hood and the officer fired several times,“ the arrest report states.Wounded, Gassew struggled against the officer as Buckman sought to subdue him.

A witness said she heard the officer screaming at the man to get down on the ground. Gassew was bent over by her car. She saw him get up and the officer fire again as he ran away. She called 911.

In the truck, police said they found a loaded .45-caliber Hi-Point, a cheap and popular gun.

Gassew was charged with robbing the two convenience stores, fleeing police, and stealing the truck.

Police say he was shot four times. He almost died, but doctors at Albert Einstein Medical Center brought him back. He lost his sight in one eye and almost lost his arm, his grandmother said. He is being held in the infirmary at the city Detention Center after failing to post $210,000 bail.

Gassew is expected to recover in time for his trial in May for the one remaining case left over from his 2007 robbery string.

Poe plans to be there.

“The entire system in Philadelphia is screwed up,“ she said. “I'm not scared. I'm tired of going to court.“

Justice: Delayed, Dismissed, Denied: Part 4 | Philadelphia Inquirer

[eldondre]

Kareem Johnson stood over Walter Smith and executed him. He fired so close that Smith's blood splashed up onto Johnson's Air Jordan baseball cap.

He shot him as a favor to a childhood friend.

Smith was a threat because he had come forward as a witness in a murder case against Clinton Robinson.

With the witness dead, Robinson cut a sweet deal. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to just 2 1/2 to five years.

“Basically, I beat it,“ he says now.

He and Johnson know all about beating cases in the Philadelphia courts. In just three years, Johnson, 26, and Robinson, 24, were arrested a total of nine times for gun crimes, but until the charges escalated to murder, nothing stuck.Johnson's bloodletting came to an end only after he killed a 10-year-old boy in 2004 in one of the city's most notorious murders...Only one in 10 people charged with gun assaults is convicted of that charge, the newspaper found.

Only two in 10 accused armed robbers are found guilty of armed robbery.

Only one in four accused rapists is found guilty of rape. ..Of 10,000 defendants who walked free on their violent-crime cases in 2006 and 2007, 92 percent had their cases dropped or dismissed. Only 788 - 8 percent - were found not guilty at trial, The Inquirer's analysis shows.

Abraham, the city's top prosecutor, has failed to keep figures tracking how well - or poorly - her office has done in court.
Criminologists and other prosecutors say keeping such data is essential to prioritizing the work of the office's 300 prosecutors. ..
The system bungles basic, but crucial, steps necessary to getting key witnesses into court. Inmates, needed at trial as witnesses or defendants, never arrive. Police are routinely booked to appear in different courtrooms at the same time, guaranteeing that cases will collapse. ..To catch them, the city court system employs just 51 officers - a caseload of more than 900 fugitives per officer...In a sign of the system's disarray, court officials had trouble answering when The Inquirer asked how much fugitives owed taxpayers in forfeited bail. At first, they said the debt was $2 million. Then they pegged it at $382 million. Finally, they declared it was a staggering $1 billion...Clerk of Quarter Sessions Vivian T. Miller, saying her “inability to provide accurate records“ had stalled the entire effort.

In an interview, Robin T. Jones, Miller's top aide and her daughter, acknowledged the office had no computerized records of the debts, just paper notations in each defendant's file. ..

the most daming numbers an abraham the man prune

1989-2008 Cases files +51%, Cases Dismissed +99%, Criminal Court Judges +9%

of course, it wasn't all bad

In nearly two decades as the city's top prosecutor, Abraham has won praise and criticism for her focus on homicide cases.

Her work paid off.

The Inquirer analysis shows that prosecutors won a conviction in more than eight out of every 10 murder cases in 2006 and 2007. The paper focused on those years to allow time for cases to resolve.

Philadelphia homicide prosecutors do much better than their counterparts across the nation.

The national murder conviction rate was 71 percent, according to the latest federal study. In Philadelphia, it was 82 percent.

Year after year, Philadelphia has been in the bottom rungs for felony-conviction rates in the United States, according to federal studies. In the latest study, a sampling based on 2004 statistics released last year, Philadelphia had the lowest conviction rate of all court systems surveyed...In 1996, city prosecutors won a conviction in 52 percent of their cases. By 2004, that rate had fallen to 40 percent - though the national picture was virtually unchanged. ..Every year, about 4,500 people report being robbed at gunpoint in Philadelphia, yet only about 200 people are convicted of that crime. That's 4 percent.

Justice: Delayed, Dismissed, Denied: Part 4 | Philadelphia Inquirer

[eldondre]

some of this stuff is just mind boggling, not only do we have slumlord judges, judges whose wives own drug bars, who poop their pants but

n January 2003, police say, Johnson jumped from a car and robbed a 17-year-old walking to school. With a gun pointed to his chest, the teenager emptied his pockets and tossed his money - $3 - to the ground.

Johnson scooped it up and ran, police said. Though he got away, police recovered the car, a newly stolen Alamo rental. From inside, technicians lifted a fingerprint. It was a match for Johnson.

But Johnson's attorney dismissed the fingerprint evidence.

“The only evidence in this case is, at one time my client was in the car,“ lawyer Cindene Pezzell said in court. “The car is a rental car, and by its nature, there's dozens of people in the car.“

Eisenberg said it was absurd to view the vehicle as just “a rental car.“

“It's the car used in the robbery,“ he said.

The prosecution easily met its burden at that stage, and the case should have been held for trial, Eisenberg argued. At trial, he said, prosecutors would have obtained rental records in an effort to rebut any suggestion that Johnson had somehow rented that car before.

The judge sided with the defense. She threw out the case.

wow

the inky really did a good job with this series, much more informative the the hack philadelphia weekly's article that crime is arbitrary, has no cause nor solution

aboni Savage was accused earlier this year of ordering at least seven witness-related murders, including those of four children, to protect his multimillion-dollar drug operation.

“Without the witnesses, you don't have no case,“ Savage said in a prison conversation that was secretly recorded by the FBI. “No witness, no crime.“n another taped conversation, Savage said: “These rats deserve to die, right or wrong? . . . My war is with the rats. I'm a hunt every last one bitch that I can, and kill 'em.“

While the Savage case drew headlines, he was just one of many charged with witness intimidation in recent years.

The cases are chilling:

An admitted burglar who had implicated an accomplice was given an unexpected gift while awaiting trial behind bars. It was a block of cheese, wrapped in the statement the man had given to prosecutors.

Scrawled on the paper was his wife's home address...District Attorney Abraham has long maintained that witness relocation is essential to the administration of justice. And for just as long, she has complained that witness relocation was getting short shrift.

Philadelphia's witness-relocation program spent $747,000 last fiscal year to help 67 witnesses and their families.

Statewide, money for witness relocation has dropped off in recent years, a casualty of budget cuts and the faltering economy. After hitting $1.3 million in 2007, funding for the program fell to $980,000 last year. While the Philadelphia program spent just over $11,000 per witness last year, the federal witness-protection program spends more than four times that, not counting enrollment costs of at least $150,000 per witness, according to experts.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/sp.../79264027.html

[DCnPhilly]

some of this stuff is just mind boggling, not only do we have slumlord judges, judges whose wives own drug bars, who poop their pants but

wow

the inky really did a good job with this series, much more informative the the hack philadelphia weekly's article that crime is arbitrary, has no cause nor solution

It makes my head hurt reading this stuff. It's just makes no rational sense at all. I mean what the he11 planet do Philadelphia officials live on??? I knew it was bad but I had no idea to what extent. I am so glad the Inquirer has finally covered all of this so extensively. I just hope they don't let up on it because I am sure there is no shortage of damning information left out there.

[raider.adam]

In nearly two decades as the city's top prosecutor, Abraham has won praise and criticism for her focus on homicide cases.

Her work paid off.

The Inquirer analysis shows that prosecutors won a conviction in more than eight out of every 10 murder cases in 2006 and 2007. The paper focused on those years to allow time for cases to resolve.

Philadelphia homicide prosecutors do much better than their counterparts across the nation.

The national murder conviction rate was 71 percent, according to the latest federal study. In Philadelphia, it was 82 percent.

Of course we could have probably prevented many of those murders by locking them up for violent crimes prior to murder.

[eldondre]

It makes my head hurt reading this stuff. It's just makes no rational sense at all. I mean what the he11 planet do Philadelphia officials live on??? I knew it was bad but I had no idea to what extent. I am so glad the Inquirer has finally covered all of this so extensively. I just hope they don't let up on it because I am sure there is no shortage of damning information left out there.

Philly mag, although otherwise of questionable value, has written about this stuff. it's the main reason I knew it was so broken. of course, the reader base is much, much smaller. no money for witness relocation but we have money for NTI? someone's priorities were effed up. unbelievable.

[Hospitalitygirl]

Has anyone missed a key component in all of this? Hint. One was questioned and deftly tossed off a non-answer answer. It is the group that causes the biggest problem to the police, the DAs, and kow-tows to the Defense Bar.

No answers? Great...


It's the damned judges.

“We have a system that is on the brink of overall collapse,“ said Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, a former Philadelphia judge and a longtime critic of the courts' high dismissal rate, after reviewing The Inquirer's findings.

and

Of the cases that die, 82 percent collapse in Municipal Court, whose judges decide whether cases should proceed to Common Pleas Court for a full trial.

Asked about the low conviction rates, Municipal Court President Judge Marsha H. Neifield said she wanted to study the issues.

“This hasn't been presented to us before,“ she said.

“We want to do the right thing. If we in any way can be construed as causing any problem, we want to fix it.“

Asked to comment on The Inquirer's findings, D. Webster Keogh, administrative judge of Common Pleas Court, said: “I don't have a position on it.“

He added: “It's not the responsibility of a court system to grade itself on convictions and non-convictions. The responsibility of a court is to fairly decide each case on the merits.“

High crime rates, low conviction rates, almost 50,000 fugitives - these are the results of a court system clogged with cases and focused on clearing dockets.

Every day in Philadelphia, at the 65-courtroom Criminal Justice Center and in cramped courtrooms in police districts across the city, scores of serious cases simply crumble, then die.

“We call that a Philadelphia special,“ said A. Charles Peruto Jr., a veteran defense lawyer.

“Witnesses didn't show. Cops didn't show. It was the usual.

“I've won shootings because the witness was waiting in line to get on the elevator,“ he said.

further, from today's article...

Gassew was arrested 11 times as a youth, and was adjudicated delinquent for car theft and sent to a detention center. By the time he was 15, in 2002, Gassew faced his first trial as an adult.

A 13-year-old girl who lived next door said Gassew pointed a sawed-off shotgun at her and asked, “Do you all want to die?“, before firing at her. A judge found the story credible enough to allow Gassew to be tried as an adult. But a different judge found him not guilty.

...

Philadelphia’s Municipal Court gives prosecutors three chances to conduct a preliminary hearing to move the case forward. After “three strikes,” the case is thrown out and the suspect goes free.

Defense attorneys know this and try to game the system. Other systemic problems clog the system and force cases to get dropped as well.

While there’s plenty of blame to go around, much of the problem seems to stem from a dysfunctional Clerk of Quarter Sessions and an overworked, disorganized District Attorney’s Office.

Clerk of Quarter Sessions Vivian T. Miller oversees a broken bail system. There are almost 50,000 fugitives in the city. Defendants who have skipped bail owe the city $1 billion. There seems to be no effort to fix the problem.

Other case management issues doom cases as well. Multiple court delays frustrate witnesses who eventually give up. Police are often booked to appear in two different courtrooms at the same time.

from here.


The judges don't *have* to do this, they just choose to.

[Sharkfood]

I have been reading the Inquirer series and I just can't get over the fact that there has been no mention of Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillson. When interviewed in 2008, Gillson REFUSED to admit that the high felony dismissal rate was even a PROBLEM. I have a lot of respect for Nutter in other areas, but how can a guy who used crime as the centerpiece of his campaign appoint someone Deputy Mayor for Public Safety who doesn't recognize some of the fundamental problems in the city's criminal justice system? It just boggles my mind. See Gillson's quote at the end of the below article.

Policing alone won't solve crime problem
Feb. 3, 2008
Tom Ferrick Jr.
For The Inquirer

Stripped to its essentials, the anticrime effort announced last week by the Nutter administration amounts to a redeployment of about 200 officers to a dozen high-crime districts.

It makes sense - putting officers where the crime is - but it's hardly rocket science.

As new Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey pretty much said, it's not Batman and Robin suddenly emerging from the Batcave, it is basic policing.

What will happen as the police fan out in these high-crime neighborhoods? They will make more arrests.

And what will happen to those who are arrested for serious crimes - also known as felonies?

They will go to the courts, first for preliminary hearings, then for a trial.

And what will happen at their preliminary hearings?

More than half of them will walk and go back out on the streets.

According to the latest data, 54 percent of the felony cases in Philadelphia are dismissed at the preliminary-hearing stage.

Some are dismissed because a judge rules there is not enough evidence to advance to a full trial. But most - nobody knows exactly how many - are dismissed because the case fails to come together: Either witnesses or the arresting officers fail to appear. Or the prosecutor is not ready. Or an important piece of evidence has not arrived.

In Philadelphia's high-volume court system, which handles more than 1,000 cases a week, preliminary hearings rarely come off as scheduled. They are postponed, and then postponed again, and then postponed again, and then dismissed by a judge who feels he must move on to other cases.

I first reported on the city's high dismissal rate eight years ago. So it is a continuing scandal, not a new one.

Federal studies have shown that Philadelphia has the highest dismissal rate of any of the nation's 75 largest counties - nearly double the national average of 24 percent. This is from data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002, the latest year available for department researchers.

So, policing alone is not going to solve the crime problem in Philadelphia. It must involve the entire criminal-justice system.

And the first thing you need to know about the criminal-justice system is that it is not a system. It is a collection of independent duchies that do what they want, when they want, and how they want to do it.

The police and prisons are under the control of the mayor. The courts are an independent branch of government. The district attorney is elected by the people. The public defender's office works under a contract for the city and the courts, but is an independent entity.

That makes Everett Gillison a very important person - though certainly not as visible as Commissioner Ramsey or District Attorney Lynne Abraham or Mayor Nutter.

Gillison is Nutter's new deputy mayor for public safety, and he is going to head something called the Criminal Justice Advisory Board, which will consist of the players named above.

His job will be to get them to work in concert to do something about crime in the city. In other words, he is going to try to herd cats.

Gillison is a member of the defense bar. He worked for more than 20 years as a public defender, and that is going to make his job more difficult.

The appointment has already caught flak from the Fraternal Order of Police, because Gillison was the defender of some high-profile killers, including some who killed police officers.

I have no problem with the fact that killers got lawyers and that Gillison often was that lawyer. The accused have a right to legal counsel, and his job was to defend the accused. As a public defender, he didn't get to pick his clients.

But the defense bar has no problems with the high dismissal rate in Philly courts. They say it is high because the system has too many "B.S. cases." That the police are too quick to arrest people and that the D.A. is too quick to overcharge suspects. And that what the courts are doing is rectifying the actions of overzealous police and prosecutors.

Gillison is far too diplomatic to put it so bluntly, but in a conversation I had with him last week, he certainly leaned in that direction in explaining the dismissal rate.

I think there is something to what the defense bar says. Police can be too quick to arrest. Prosecutors do overcharge (that allows them leverage in a plea bargain, offering to drop a more serious charge if the defendant accepts a less serious one). But not to the tune of 54 percent - not to the tune of the highest dismissal rate in the country.

I think the rate is way too high, and it is because the process - moving a high volume of cases with maximum efficiency - has overtaken the goal of delivering justice.

Gillison urges that we not just watch the numbers.

"My goal is to make sure this system stays human-being-based and not a numbers-crunching situation," he said. "Too often, people are so worried about what their numbers are that they lose sight that there are real people with real problems in the criminal-justice system."

How true, how true.

[eldondre]

as already noted HGirl, Judge Willis Berry chose to commit real estate fraud, allow buildings to crumble, and be a slumlord yet he was judge for years. Judge James DeLeon's wife owns a known drug bar, when the cops shut it down, he showed up and ordered it back open. the point has been made on here and PB many times. philly mag even claims there's one judge that has no control over his bowel movements and that judges are largely controlled by the democratic city committee and ballot position (which itself is controlled by a lottery). we have had this discussion before and perhaps it was with seand, though it doesn't seem anyone took the magnitude of the situation seriously. my own conclusion, and I'm no expert, was that there are two fundamental ways to fix Philly, I suppose. the best is to fix the judge problem. judges control(ed) an enormous amount of power, they are the grease that makes the machines work...installing people into the BRT, the Fairmount Parks Commission, etc. I'm sure the original intent was to have objective judges keep agencies apolitical but the end result was the total and complete corruption of the judicial system (though cash for kids indicates maybe it's not just a philly problem, though it certainly seems worse here...of course, wilkes barre is also infamously corrupt even in PA). the second possible solution is to remove these powers from the hands of the judges in hopes that removing the benefit of controlling judgeships will allow reform of the judicial system. whether those thoughts entered nutter's head when he wanted the BRT and FPC abolished (taken out of the judges hands)I can't say, I can only hope. it's long been said that lawyers fund judges in expectation they let people off so the lawyers, in turn, get more work. don't know if that's true, but I have heard that said and in this town, with this judicial system anything is possible.

ONE DAY IN early March 2007, at the Keystone Building in Harrisburg, there was a lottery drawing. Not for cash, but to decide who would become new Common Pleas judges in Philadelphia. Four slots were open on the city’s highest court, and 27 lawyer-candidates had gotten the thousand signatures required to run. Now it was time to decide ballot position — chits of paper would be pulled from a cardboard box. ..It’s impossible to overstate the importance of ballot position when it comes to electing judges in Philadelphia. Nothing confirms our ignorance of judicial candidates as much as this: The first name we come to on the ballot is almost always one that is going to win. ..That meant spending money, a huge amount of family money, on everything he could think of: mailings, Inquirer ads, even some TV commercials. It meant paying most of the city’s 69 Democratic ward leaders for the privilege of being put on their sample ballots handed out to voters at the polls...And it meant ponying up to the real power brokers in our judicial elections — consultants. Their main job is to tell candidates which ward leaders should get their money. The best of them is a lifelong political insider named John Sabatina, who is 62 years old and calls himself The Kid.

The Kid, who might be the most powerful political player you’ve never heard of in Philadelphia, took on Erdos as a client...When police officer Patrick McDonald was gunned down in September, for example, details quickly emerged about the lenient way in which a Philadelphia jurist, now-retired Common Pleas Judge Lynn B. Hamlin, had handled an earlier robbery and aggravated assault case against McDonald’s killer, Daniel Giddings. At that trial, an assistant D.A. had begged for the maximum sentence — up to 45 years — for Giddings, who had a rap sheet of violent crime that went back to age 10. “I have never seen an individual who presents a higher risk of re-offending,” the assistant D.A. said. Nevertheless, Hamlin gave Giddings the minimum — just six to 12 years...Back in the ’70s, a candidate for Common Pleas named William Marutani did well in South Philadelphia, an Italian scoring with the Italian-American neighborhood. Except that Marutani wasn’t Italian — he was Japanese.

Which is why the real power when it comes to electing judges in Philadelphia lies with the city’s ward leaders and consultants like Sabatina. And lately, the cost of getting them on your side has been rising. Much of the $550,000 that Mike Erdos spent in the 2007 Common Pleas election went to consultants like The Kid, who is also a ward leader in the Northeast, and, in $1,000 and $2,000 chunks, to most of the other ward leaders in the city. This is ethically dubious, but not, alas, illegal. ..Once upon a time, a Democratic City Committee endorsement on a candidacy for Common Pleas was golden, because the party’s ward leaders would follow in lockstep with those candidates and get the vote out. That’s still partly true today. Brady, as local head of the party, keeps an ongoing list of potential candidates. You get on the list, you wait your turn — though Brady adjusts the list, depending on the needs of big-time city players like party secretary Carol Campbell, or Ed Rendell, or, at least until recently, Vince Fumo. ...But the third and most important difference has been the infusion of money. Ten years ago, Common Pleas candidates spent, on average, about $100,000 to get elected. Now, led by Erdos, there’s considerably more money in play. Ellen Green-Ceisler spent $160,000; Linda Carpenter, even with that winning ballot position, spent more than $150,000. Nothing makes political players buck leadership like promises of cash, into either their wards or their pockets. It’s called “street money.” The running joke is whether you, a political operative from South or North or West Philly, can pick up enough for a post-election winter trip to the Bahamas. Except it’s not really a joke....Candidates pay individual wards $1,000 to $2,000 for the privilege of being put on their sample ballots, which ostensibly covers the cost of printing and getting field workers to distribute them, mostly at polls. This is the nuts and bolts of the elective process, since virtually none of us spend the time or know how to check judicial candidates’ qualifications. Your committeeman handing out your ward’s list of preferred lawyers to stick on the bench — why, it’s a service....What really bothers Brady, of course, is losing control, to the point that he and Vince Fumo stood up a few years ago and said city judges should be appointed, not elected. Calling for a system that would allow them to regain their power made it obvious just how far it had eroded. Brady freely admits — in that way of his that’s simultaneously refreshing and infuriating — that he isn’t any better at vetting the candidates than the voters: “I’m not qualified to tell whether someone is qualified for judge or not,” he says. “They all have law degrees, most are practicing law — I can’t tell you a good one or a bad one.”... Since he was already on the bench, was well-known, and had the support of the Democratic city committee, he didn’t need to spend much time going around to ward leaders to woo them individually.

...Turns out this was a big mistake. Ward leaders don’t take kindly to appointed judges to begin with, since they have no say in those picks. Lerner still paid to get on sample ballots, but ward leaders need to be personally feted, assured their one-69th chunk of political Philadelphia is important. “So they took money,” Lerner says, “then cut the **** out of me.” One tactic they used against him, in the Northeast and elsewhere, was to “sticker over” his name on sample ballots with the names of other candidates who’d also paid up — thereby collecting two checks for one ballot spot
...Campbell, head of the city’s 4th Ward and a former city councilwoman, is close to Bob Brady, and wields much of her power through the city committee. She’s gotten into trouble: Campbell was indicted in 2001 for not reporting activities of her political action committee. No problem: Two years later, deeming herself a consultant, she didn’t have to account for the $140,000 she collected from judicial candidates.

...Remember Frank Palumbo, the Common Pleas judge who is generally viewed as not smart enough or experienced enough or tough enough to be a judge, and who has been given a trial docket very heavy on simple procedural cases? When Palumbo ran for Municipal Court, then in 2005 for Common Pleas, he had the advantage of actually being Italian, though he didn’t even need that much help. He drew the number one ballot position. Twice

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/th...e_makers/page2

[Hospitalitygirl]

as already noted HGirl, Judge Willis Berry chose to commit real estate fraud, allow buildings to crumble, and be a slumlord yet he was judge for years. Judge James DeLeon's wife owns a known drug bar, when the cops shut it down, he showed up and ordered it back open. the point has been made on here and PB many times. philly mag even claims there's one judge that has no control over his bowel movements and that judges are largely controlled by the democratic city committee and ballot position (which itself is controlled by a lottery). we have had this discussion before and perhaps it was with seand, though it doesn't seem anyone took the magnitude of the situation seriously. my own conclusion, and I'm no expert, was that there are two fundamental ways to fix Philly, I suppose. the best is to fix the judge problem. judges control(ed) an enormous amount of power, they are the grease that makes the machines work...installing people into the BRT, the Fairmount Parks Commission, etc. I'm sure the original intent was to have objective judges keep agencies apolitical but the end result was the total and complete corruption of the judicial system (though cash for kids indicates maybe it's not just a philly problem, though it certainly seems worse here...of course, wilkes barre is also infamously corrupt even in PA). the second possible solution is to remove these powers from the hands of the judges in hopes that removing the benefit of controlling judgeships will allow reform of the judicial system. whether those thoughts entered nutter's head when he wanted the BRT and FPC abolished (taken out of the judges hands)I can't say, I can only hope. it's long been said that lawyers fund judges in expectation they let people off so the lawyers, in turn, get more work. don't know if that's true, but I have heard that said and in this town, with this judicial system anything is possible.
The Judge Makers - Philadelphia Magazine - phillymag.com

Sabatina is called the Kid, to distinguish him from his late father with the same name. I wonder how it sits with his son, though?

From Tom Ferrick's new online news site:
Justice Denied - Metropolis

The courts employ what is know as the "Three-Strike Rule" - though you will never see that tag in any official documents. After three attempts at hearing the charges, the case is dismissed. It doesn't happen in high-profile cases, such as homicide. But it happens a lot in the other 60,000 felony and misdemeanor cases that enter the court system each year.

Officials in the criminal justice system have known about this situation for years. And they have known that Philadelphia's conviction rate is out of whack with other similar cities. In Los Angeles, for instance, the conviction rate is 83 percent, in Houston it is 71 percent; in the Bronx it is 63 percent and in Chicago it is 60 percent.

In denial

How have they responded to this bad news? By denying it, ignoring it or trying to brush it off. For a while, they used another gambit: denying outsiders access to the information and data needed to analyze criminal case dispositions.

Great credit must go to Craig McCoy, the relentless Inquirer reporter who is the principal author of the series, for pursuing his quest of getting the data for nearly a decade. I also give the Inquirer credit for taking a nuanced view of the situation. It would have been easy to search for a bad guy and stick the blame on him - District Attorney Lynn Abraham comes to mind.

But, this problem isn't a simple one. It's a hexahedron, involving various cultural, legal and political forces - not the least of which is the "Don't Snitch" culture of the streets, a modern-day version of omerta.

One thing is telling about the revelations. When the Inquirer reporters went to officials in the system to talk about the numbers, they were surprised at the data. It was the first time they had ever heard what the numbers were. The people in charge of criminal justice had never - on their own - tried to figure out how they were doing when it came to the essence of their work: dispensing justice.

They never wondered about the bottom line because they don't want to know the bottom line. Like most bureaucracies, they were more interested in process than outcome. Their principal mission - again, unstated - was to keep the system running, keep the cases rolling through. Label a case "Disposed" and move onto the next one.

In a way, it is forgivable - given the volume of cases. In a more profound way, it is unforgivable. It has resulted in a situation where the bad guys game the system and go free while the victims are victimized again. And we call this justice?

I didn't realize that this had gone researched for nearly a decade. There were still some things they missed. The fugitive number is too low. The judges escape their fair share of the blame. The judges that do convict could impose state time instead of county time (the difference is 24 mos. vs 23 mos.) thereby alleviating some of the county prison crowding. And the judges need to stop acting like social workers or defense attorneys in robes.

[eldondre]

it sounds like the ward system needs to be completely abolished but it won't happen. how could it? I suppose this is what people mean when they say Philadelphia needs to be blown up. not physically, just "structurally." there's so little right about the way it works. nad let's not forget jailhouse islam

To Western eyes, two of them became hijabi — Muslim women who cover themselves — by pulling on full-length black burqas....The men — Howard Cain, Levon Warner and Eric Floyd — were themselves Muslim, and knew to expect this reaction. Counted on it. Wagered their freedom on it, as they stopped their vehicle in the fire zone outside the market’s door and turned on the hazard blinkers...ACCORDING TO THE head of Philadelphia’s anti-terrorism squad, here’s what happens the day you arrive in a local prison, fresh from a conviction for whatever crime: You get word. It could come while you eat your first lunch. While you’re standing in the yard, maybe, or sitting in your cell.

The word is clear: Join.Depending on the color of your skin, your choices are to join Neo-Nazi skinheads, the Latin gang, or — most prevalent, in Philadelphia — Islam, in one of several variations.The question arises, then: What happens to prisoners who have none of those particular inclinations? Inspector Joseph O’Connor, commander of the police department’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau, laughs quietly at the idea. “They’d get inclined,” he says. “It’s about survival, at first. And then indoctrination.”..The second is religion: Unlike secular prison gangs, radical Islamists enjoy the Constitutional rights that come along with legitimate prison ministries run by mainstream imams, pastors, rabbis and so forth. ..Sylvester Johnson, for instance, served as America’s first Muslim metropolitan police chief. Along with many other adherents in Philadelphia, he found Islam — or some form of it, at least — decades ago, when the Nation of Islam came to town...In a city electrified with potential for violence, Mosque No. 12 provided a particularly good conduit. From their base in North Philly, some of the mosque’s leaders — called the Black Mafia or Muslim Mob, at the time — perpetrated some of the worst crimes in the city’s history. ...The Muslim Mob deployed an army of clean-cut, well-dressed men under the guise of bringing discipline to city streets. Paul Dandridge, then a city judge, picked one of those young men — “Captain” Clarence Fowler — to head a government-funded program called Safe Streets. Fowler ran a paramilitary unit at Mosque No. 12 with the unlikely name “Fruit of Islam,” an outfit that provided security for the mosque and its leaders. Unwitting politicians such as Arlen Specter, then district attorney, helped funnel money to Fowler’s Safe Streets program. Fowler promptly cut a check for $100,000 in Safe Streets money to his superiors at Mosque No. 12. A year later, in 1970, police arrested Fowler for murdering a Baptist minister.
...For all their claims to be cleaning up Philadelphia, members of the Muslim Mob did just the opposite; they distributed heroin, extorted business owners, and murdered scores of Philadelphians. They shocked the city in 1971 when several Mosque No. 12 members (Fowler was not among them) filed into DuBrow’s furniture store on South Street, pulled guns, bound the employees with electrical cord, and beat many of them. The men doused one employee with gasoline and set him alight, shot another to death, and then set the building on fire. The intruders were, of course, not particularly interested in furniture; the store’s owner had refused to pay them protection money.Mosque No. 12’s most famous crime unfolded a couple of years later, at one of basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s homes in the Washington, D.C., area. An orthodox Muslim leader there had done an audacious thing: Hamaas Khaalis had written a letter to several Nation of Islam mosques, accusing them of misappropriating Islam and using it as a cover for criminal action. So a team of Muslim Mob hit men traveled to D.C. and found Abdul-Jabbar’s home, which he had lent to the local religious leader. Khaalis wasn’t home, but his family was. So the Philadelphia men exacted the worst sort of revenge, killing two adults and five children, including an infant nine days old. It was the worst mass murder in D.C.’s history....The Nation of Islam — the most pervasive version in American prisons — is poorly regarded by orthodox imams, because some of its teachings conflict with the sovereignty of Allah and Muhammad — the belief, for instance, that founder W.D. Fard was God, or that an ancient black scientist created all other races... contorted Islam and federal wiretaps came together most spectacularly in 2005, in the case of Shamsud-din Ali. The FBI was investigating the prominent Muslim cleric for a number of wide-ranging crimes, including racketeering; Ali was close to then-mayor John Street, had served on his transition team, and used his political connections to gain loans, donations and lucrative contracts. Authorities eventually convicted numerous people in and around City Hall. Ali, then 67, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

“I just don’t understand how Shamsud-din Ali could climb that high, get that close to the mayor, without anyone realizing who he was,” Police Inspector O’Connor says. That’s because Shamsud-din Ali, in his younger years, went by the name “Captain” Clarence Fowler, of Mosque No. 12.
..In 2002, for instance, then-police commissioner Sylvester Johnson fathered a massive policing initiative and named it “Safe Streets.” The city’s managing director at the time, Phil Goldsmith, says he hadn’t heard of the 1970s heroin-and-extortion program of the same name...specifically, the paramilitary Fruit of Islam — and the modern, milder incarnation of Mosque No. 12 to help clean up Philadelphia’s streets by deploying an army of 10,000 volunteers to patrol the city.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/th...among_us/page2

[Hospitalitygirl]

it sounds like the ward system needs to be completely abolished but it won't happen. how could it? I suppose this is what people mean when they say Philadelphia needs to be blown up. not physically, just "structurally." there's so little right about the way it works.

Ahh, good. You're catching on. The ward system; the way it works, paying homage literally and figuratively to the ward structure and other elected officials in order to get their endorsement. And if you don't and manage to squeak by the Primary, say for a judicial spot, on your own, you might get pulled in to Brady's office and told in no uncertain terms to step down (see...Coyle, Anne Marie)

[eldondre]

Ahh, good. You're catching on. The ward system; the way it works, paying homage literally and figuratively to the ward structure and other elected officials in order to get their endorsement. And if you don't and manage to squeak by the Primary, say for a judicial spot, on your own, you might get pulled in to Brady's office and told in no uncertain terms to step down (see...Coyle, Anne Marie)

we had this very same discussion at least a year ago, it doesn't matter, nothing changes. between phillymag and seand I caught on a while ago, hopefully the inky gets a few more. I have my doubts. do you disagree with wity my premise? the ward system is unlikely to go to reforming the judicial system may rely more on removing it's political influence? no one will even talk about abolishing the ward system. it's easy to point out the problems (and the detail the inky and phillymag have been publishing is great) but how do you fix them?

[Hospitalitygirl]

we had this very same discussion at least a year ago, it doesn't matter, nothing changes. between phillymag and seand I caught on a while ago, hopefully the inky gets a few more. I have my doubts. do you disagree with wity my premise? the ward system is unlikely to go to reforming the judicial system may rely more on removing it's political influence? no one will even talk about abolishing the ward system. it's easy to point out the problems (and the detail the inky and phillymag have been publishing is great) but how do you fix them?

How to fix.....Get the unions as far away from the process as possible. The whole ward structure/Dem/union/bad politician, bad decisions process is more tied in than you realize. The unions in this city need to be neutralized in some way.

And I came across this tonight. Interesting and positive development, and I have complete faith in the man in charge of this

Before the fix, city officials routinely canceled inmates' trips to the courts because Philadelphia didn't have enough local cells to hold them during trials.

This summer, state prison officials agreed to reserve cells at Graterford Prison in Montgomery County as temporary holding places for inmates subpoenaed to court. The cells hold about 100 prisoners.

State officials have begun transporting court-bound prisoners from various institutions around Pennsylvania to the dedicated cells. This paves the way for the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office to make daily runs to Graterford, just 35 miles from Philadelphia, to get inmates to court.

When the new system began in August, 16 prisoners were subpoenaed to appear in Philadelphia court on the first day and all but one made it to court, according to Assistant Managing Director Chip Junod, a member of Mayor Nutter's criminal justice team. Since then, the system has worked well, he said.

Junod, a former city prosecutor, worked with state prison officials, as well as the District Attorney's Office, the Defender Association, and the Sheriff's Office, to implement the change. It took a new state law to clear the way for Graterford to reserve the cells.

Previously, as many as a quarter of all subpoenaed defendants and witnesses from prisons were failing to show up on any given court day, Junod said.

During his years in the DA's Office, he not only tried cases, but worked on the prison cap cases and did a lot of pre-trial work, so he is more than knowledgeable regarding the problems, and this seems to be an efficient way of dealing with the bring downs.

[caL]

You can blame the DA's office or the courts or political corruption, but regardless this series has been nothing short of painful to read. Like adam said, we can't be too surprised by the news, but it is very alarming to read collectively. 33 arrests by age 23? In a city where one armed robbery is supposed to mean a minimum of 5 years? The guy would be in prison for life on that minimum alone.

Very well done by the Inquirer. Unfortunately, it is far from a feel good story. No one article has made me more disgusted at the city since the MOVE disaster. And the reason is because it shouldn't be this way.

[OKT3]

Very well done by the Inquirer. Unfortunately, it is far from a feel good story. No one article has made me more disgusted at the city since the MOVE disaster.

My sentiments exactly. Another thing I kept thinking about, and el kind of touched on it with the Shamsud-din Ali reference and the derelict judges--there are only a couple degrees of separation between some stone cold thuggery and lots of people with power and/or access. Let's not forget that Shamps didn't hit the radar until he was picked up on a wiretap with an associate of Kaboni Savage, IIRC. (Cue seand and his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject). A friend of City Hall, and a friend of drug dealers that incinerate families.

I swear I remember a discussion on PB about a neighborhood that was having problems with a drug house, but they were stonewalled because it was a long-standing (drug) family active in local politics??

When the article talked about the witness who had his statement to police posted all over the neighborhood, the first thing I thought was--those copies were made on a machine in the CJC or City Hall, no doubt. No wonder people don't want to testify, when info that's been redacted makes it to the public domain. Are defense lawyers really helping all their clients to threaten the lives of witnesses? If not, then who on the inside? It really makes me feel like the city is doomed.

[raider.adam]

I remember one news article back when Shamsud was showing up to court. Commissioner Johnson was there. He (Johnson) actually went up to him and greeted him and shook hands and everything.

How the hell does our police commissioner remain on friendly terms with Shamsud, in public? That story right there made me believe he was dirty.

[caL]

Nutter and Ramsay both have much more integrity than the loons we dealt with before. Either personal integrity = weak in this city (and we're doomed) or all of the negative press related to the city lately...

the dangerous schools as reminded by south philly high
the nonexistent criminal justice system
the backass job of city council (an ongoing theme)
the BRT fiasco

...is a collection of everything that was wrong with this city for years collecting and going out with a bang.

[DCnPhilly]

Nutter and Ramsay both have much more integrity than the loons we dealt with before.

Unfortunately they both need to grow a pair. Their comments and ambition are not at all reflected in the overall actions of City Hall or the Police Department. I get the impression Philadelphia's Government J***-Offs - from DAs and Council Members all the way down to the most insignificant lackeys - don't take Nutter or Ramsey seriously.

[kotter]

You Dems should stop complaining. You elected these people to office.