Monday, May 05, 2008

I'm with him

Excellent analysis by a veteran lawyer of the abrupt about-face by Washington County, Minnesota Attorney Doug Johnson in the criminal case filed against Landen Beard can be found right about here:

"The County Attorney obviously thought a crime had been committed. Had he not, he would have been acting unethically in even presenting the case to the grand jury.

I get that the grand jury process is intended to be investigatory, but you don't bring cases to the grand jury unless you think a crime was committed, and you certainly don't ask the grand jury to return an indictment if you don't think a crime has been committed. Both happened here, so we can safely assume that at the end of the grand jury process the prosecutor believed a crime had been committed.

This begs the question, "What has changed?" I'm betting that the correct answer could be any of the following:
a. Zilch
b. Nada
c. Not a thing
d. All of the above"

Yep, that pretty much sums it up for me as well, to my layman's thinking. Let's see if we have this straight. Prosecutor secures a felony indictment against an off-duty, out-of-his-jurisdiction undercover police officer accused of having a road-rage meltdown, then magically decides that there just isn't enough evidence to convict him a few months later, once the heat has died down, and then lets the news slip out on a Friday afternoon, hoping that no one will notice. Well, it was noticed.

The quoted lawyer has it right - if there wasn't any evidence to warrant conviction, then why'd you bother to get the indictment in the first place, Mr. Johnson? Furthermore, Mr. Johnsons (Robert of Anoka County and Doug of Washington County), since the evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Treptow is nonexistent, especially when compared to the plethora of criminal evidence compiled against Mr. Beard, when can Mr. Treptow expect the charges against him to be dismissed, as well? After all, you don't want to be seen as showing bias in favor of Mr. Beard just because of what he does for a living, right?

Right?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's nice to see the corruption and lack of accountability in Minneapolis Law Enforcement following in the footsteps of such greats as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles County.