Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Rumpole still barking up the wrong tree with Scalia

Rumpole and I have long disagreed about Justice Scalia.  We've been debating his jurisprudence at least as far back as 2009. See also here.  Well, Scalia has proved Rumpole wrong again as Justice Scalia ruled in favor of the 4th Amendment yesterday in the Florida drug dog case, Florida v. Jardines. But strangely he is still criticizing him in today's post.

 David Ovalle has the details in the Herald article here and he has been tweeting all of the Miami trivia and references to the case over the past 24 hours, including that Judge Will Thomas was vindicated for his ruling and that local Miami cops attended the Supreme Court argument.

In other bad news for police officers, a Ft. Lauderdale jury (before Judge Cohn) ruled that Anthony Caravella (who was cleared by DNA evidence) was set up by two police officers and is entitled to $7 million.  Paula McMahon for the Sun-Sentinel has the story and has been doing great work covering the federal courts in Broward. Here's the intro:

The 9,389 days Anthony Caravella wrongfully spent in prison still haunt him, but he was relieved Tuesday that two former police officers who put him away are finally being held accountable.
Jurors decided that William Mantesta and George Pierson framed Caravella, then a mentally challenged 15 year old, for the 1983 rape and murder of a Miramar woman and should pay him $7 million for the close to 26 years he spent in prison.
The city of Miramar or its insurers may have to pay some or all of the judgment against the former detectives, but legal experts said Caravella, now 44, has a good chance of collecting the money — plus his lawyer's fees and costs.
Former Miramar officer Bill Guess and retired Broward Sheriff's Major Tony Fantigrassi were found not liable after the five-week civil rights trial in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.
"I feel good that it's over with," said Caravella, now 44. "I feel like it took a long time but I'm just glad that everybody knows what happened — that's what I feel good about."
The eight jurors unanimously found Mantesta and Pierson liable. Both men acted with malice or reckless indifference to Caravella, who had an IQ of 67, violated his constitutional rights against being maliciously prosecuted, coerced him into confessing and withheld evidence that could have cleared him soon after his arrest, the jurors decided. DNA set him free in 2009.
"I was worried. I was afraid they were going to get away with it," Caravella said.
His lawyer in the civil suit, Barbara Heyer said: "The system really does work. Truth actually does prevail."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Barking. Funny.

Rumpole said...

Oh Yeah? Well I'm not alone. Franky the dog in the drug sniffing case happens to agree with me. He growled at Scalia during oral arguments so I've heard.

Rumpole said...

I'll give you this. At least your headline didn't say "Wednesday News and Notes"