Former St Louis prosecutor who helped cover up beating of suspect loses her law license

Former St Louis prosecutor who helped cover up beating of suspect loses her law license

ST LOUIS DISPATCH

9/1/16

A disgraced former St. Louis prosecutor who admitted helping cover up a city police detective’s beating of a handcuffed man has been stripped of her law license by the Missouri Supreme Court.

 

Bliss Barber Worrell was disbarred Aug. 10 and no longer has a right to practice law in the state of Missouri.

 

She pleaded guilty in October to misprision of a felony, or helping conceal a crime. She admitted failing to tell supervisors and a judge what she knew about the officer’s attack, and also admitted helping file a bogus charge against the victim.

 

Worrell said she was repeatedly told by then-detective Thomas A. Carroll that he had beaten Michael Waller and stuck a gun in his mouth, possibly chipping his teeth. It happened at a police station in 2014, after other officers caught Waller with a credit card stolen from Carroll’s daughter’s car.

Worrell would later help file charges against Waller, including attempted escape. Those charges were dropped after other prosecutors approached supervisors with concerns that the case was a sham, according to court testimony.

 

As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors recommended probation if she testified truthfully in court. She testified against Carroll in a two-day hearing. The former officer was sentenced in July to 52 months in federal prison.

 

 

The next day, Worrell was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 18 months on probation and 140 hours of community service.

 

Worrell was hired in the prosecutor’s office in August 2013 and left her job in late July 2014 amid internal and criminal investigations into allegations of misconduct. She is the daughter-in-law of former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Todd Worrell.

 

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If you or someone you know is facing charges as a result of Medical Marijuana recommended to you as a medical marijuana patient under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, contact Komorn Law and ensure your rights are protected.  Michael Komorn is recognized as a leading expert on the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. He is the President of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA), a nonprofit patient advocacy group which advocates for the rights of medical marijuana patients and their caregivers.

 

Contact us for a free no-obligation case evaluation at 800-656-3557.

 

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Editorial: Court puts limit on police stealing

Editorial: Court puts limit on police stealing

A state court has broken up one of the biggest theft rings in Michigan.

 

The state Supreme Court should let the ruling stand and the Legislature should enshrine it in law.

 

The Michigan Court of Appeals recently ruled that a key provision of the civil forfeiture law violates the due process rights of defendants.

 

It is a welcome decision and long overdue. State and local law enforcement agencies use civil forfeiture to steal the property of people who not only are never convicted of a crime, but often are never even charged with one.

 

It is a perversion of justice that should have never passed constitutional muster.

 

The appellate court ruled in the case of Shantrese Kinnon, who was arrested along with her husband in Kent County on drug charges.

 

After searching the couple’s home, police seized several pieces of property, including an SUV, a pickup, a motorcycle, laptop computer and $400 in cash.

 

That’s become standard operating procedure for drug arrests. Officers move through a home like burglars, grabbing everything of significant value under the pretense they might have been purchased with the illegal gains from narcotics trafficking.

 

But the Kinnons were never convicted of the charges for which they were arrested, nor for any other crime.

 

And yet when Shantrese Kinnon challenged the property seizures and tried to get her vehicles and other valuables returned, she couldn’t because she was unable to post the required 10 percent bond.

 

In her case, that amounted to $2,000, which she didn’t have.

 

In most forfeiture cases, even if the person whose property was taken can post the bond, getting their stuff back can still cost hundreds or thousands of dollars because it most often requires hiring an attorney and paying other fees.

 

So in effect they are being punished without being convicted. Often, defendants choose to let police have their belongings rather than go through the long and expensive process of getting it back.

 

It’s a lucrative scheme for law enforcement agencies. A report from the Michigan State Police found that in 2014 forfeitures netted police departments $24 million.

 

And they get to keep it all. For most departments, revenue from property seizures makes up a significant part of their budgets.

 

That creates a perverse incentive for agencies to grab as much property as they can, and do everything possible to hang onto it, even bargaining with defendants to drop charges in exchange for their seized assets.

 

Forfeiture is legalized theft, and should not be part of a legal system that purports to value justice.

 

If a defendant is convicted of a crime and prosecutors can make the case that the proceeds of the illegal activity were used to purchase property, an argument can be made for seizure. But that should come only after conviction.

 

Rep. Peter Lucido, R-Shelby Township, has introduced a bill to eliminate the bond requirement on forfeiture challenges. That’s a good first step.

 

The Legislature should pass broader reforms that get police entirely out of the business of stealing other people’s property.

 

11:25 p.m. EDT August 23, 2016

 

 

If you or someone you know is facing charges as a result of Medical Marijuana recommended to you as a medical marijuana patient under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, contact Komorn Law and ensure your rights are protected.  Michael Komorn is recognized as a leading expert on the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. He is the President of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA), a nonprofit patient advocacy group which advocates for the rights of medical marijuana patients and their caregivers.

 

Contact us for a free no-obligation case evaluation at 800-656-3557.

 

www.komornlaw.com

Editorial: Court puts limit on police stealing

Feds using forfeiture to their advantage

The Justice Department recently announced that it is resuming the “equitable sharing” part of its civil asset forfeiture program, thus ending one of the major criminal justice reform victories of the Obama administration.

 

Civil asset forfeiture is a legal tool by which police officers can seize and sell private property without a convicting the owner of any crime, and equitable sharing is a process by which state and local police can circumvent state restrictions on civil asset forfeiture and take property under the color of federal law.

 

It may sound like a scene from a dystopian novel, but under civil asset forfeiture, a police officer can pull you over, claim he smells marijuana, and then take all the cash you have — and maybe even your car, too. Getting your property back requires going through lengthy court procedures to prove that the property is “innocent.”

Back in December, after Congress enacted reductions to the Justice Department’s civil asset forfeiture fund by $1.2 billion, the Justice Department announced that the program was being deferred until further notice.

 

Criminal justice reform advocates hailed this as a major victory, but Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that it was “imperative” that the “decision to suspend the equitable sharing program be immediately reconsidered.” The Justice Department now says that “it was always our intent to resume payments as soon as it became financially feasible.

 

… And now, we are finally at a point where it is no longer necessary to continue the deferral.”

 

Over the past decade and a half, civil asset forfeiture has exploded, and federal incentives have played a large role in that transformation. Last year, American police seized more private property than actual thieves.

 

The Justice Department’s forfeiture fund has provided a huge financial boon to the federal government. The Institute for Justice notes that the federal government “took in nearly $29 billion from 2001 to 2014, and combined annual revenue grew 1,000 percent over the period.”

 

Because federal forfeiture policies allow local police to keep up to 80 percent of what they seize, abuses are rampant. When police are allowed to directly benefit from seizing assets, stark injustices can occur.

 

For example, an art gallery party in Detroit was raided in 2008 because the “gallery did not possess a proper license to hold such an event.” Police seized and impounded 44 vehicles parked on the adjacent street.

 

Outrage over this incident lead to Michigan officials passing a law to raise the evidentiary standard in state asset forfeiture proceedings. Now, to avoid the restrictions of that legislation, all local police will need to do is involve federal officials, entitling them to equitable sharing in the program.

 

Under the federal civil asset forfeiture program, state and local police are encouraged to join in federal drug investigations because their participation entitles them to a large portion of the seized assets — dispersed from the equitable fund.

 

While that may seem like good policy, without proper restraints it simply means the states are just as encouraged as the federal government to seize money from private citizens without just cause.

 

Through programs like granting clemency to nonviolent drug offenders, the Obama administration has made important strides in reigning in our oversized and overused criminal justice system. Resuming the equitable payment system is an unfortunate step in the wrong direction.

 

Trevor Burrus is a research fellow and Randal John Meyer is a legal associate at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

 

If you or someone you know is facing charges as a result of Medical Marijuana recommended to you as a medical marijuana patient under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, contact Komorn Law and ensure your rights are protected.  Michael Komorn is recognized as a leading expert on the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. He is the President of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA), a nonprofit patient advocacy group which advocates for the rights of medical marijuana patients and their caregivers.

 

Contact us for a free no-obligation case evaluation at 800-656-3557.

 

www.komornlaw.com

Editorial: Court puts limit on police stealing

Editorial: Toughen proposed forfeiture reforms

Innocence until proven guilty should also mean an individual isn’t punished until guilt is established in court. But in Michigan and other states, a suspect can lose property and cash without ever even being charged with a crime.

 

A package of bills voted unanimously out of committee would establish a higher threshold for civil forfeitures. But it should be toughened to require a conviction before property is taken.

 

A new report released jointly by the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland and the liberal Michigan ACLU clearly illustrates the problem with forfeitures. That the two often ideologically opposed organizations can find unity on this issue makes the case that reform is needed much stronger.

 

As the joint report notes, under criminal forfeiture property can’t be kept by government until the owner’s guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt.

 

But the standard is much lower for civil forfeitures. State law allows law enforcement to take property merely suspected of attached to an illegal activity, and without the defendant ever having his or her day in court. The requirement is only that there be a “preponderance of evidence” that a crime has been committed.

 

Consequently, many people have been forced to pay huge fines and fees to retrieve their possessions, even though they were never convicted or even charged with a crime.

 

“When the government can transfer property from citizens to the state without proving wrongdoing, there is clearly something wrong,” said Jarrett Skorup, a policy analyst with the Mackinac Center and co-author of the report. “The foundation of good government is private property rights and the rule of law — civil forfeiture violates both of these.”

 

A recent study from a national group, Fix Forfeiture, concluded Michigan’s forfeiture laws are among the most abusive in the country.

 

Local law enforcement agencies are using civil forfeiture to supplement their budgets and pay for specific programs. That provides a perverse incentive to seize property.

From 2009 to 2013, Michigan law enforcement agencies reported $123.5 million in drug-related forfeiture proceeds.

 

At least another $149 million was taken by Michigan law enforcement agencies from 2001 to 2008, an average of about $18 million per year.

 

That means more than $270 million has been seized from Michigan residents since 2001. Since these figures only include forfeitures related to drug crimes, the total value of property seized is likely far greater.

 

The pending Michigan bills raise the burden of proof standard for determining when property is seized to “clear and convincing evidence,” and requires police agencies to track and report seizures. That should result in fewer takings.

 

But they do not require a conviction before a seizure, and that is a major flaw that must be corrected. And they also allow agencies to continue the practice of using seizures to fund their operations.

 

Still, this package is a good start. Efforts should be made to improve the bills to better protect civil liberties.

11:30 p.m. EDT October 5, 2015