In November of last year I posted a video showing a West Virginia judge flipping out at a traffic stop in Moorefield, West Virginia. In response to a stop he admitted was justified, he nevertheless pulled rank on a young police officer, immediately identifying himself as a judge, getting his supervisor on the phone, and later trying to get him fired, including threatening judicial retaliation against that department. Here’s that video:
I first exclusively obtained the body cam footage via a FOIA request from that police department. Well, now that judge is facing suspension, according to an order that was issued late last week. As explained in my first video on this, Judge Carter Williams was charged with multiple disciplinary violations. Then, in February of this year, I published yet another video about Judge Williams being in trouble again, over allegations that he kept leaving Walmart without paying for his merchandise. I also published a lengthy blog post about it. Here’s the Walmart video:
Since Judge Williams contested the matter, as he’s entitled to do, on June 14 a contested hearing was held before West Virginia’s Judicial Hearing Board over the course of three days. On September 19, the Judicial Hearing Board held a meeting to discuss the evidence presented, and on September 22, they issued an order finding that numerous judicial ethics rules were violated and recommending specific discipline to the West Virginia Supreme Court. Here’s the order:
The Judicial Hearing Board actually hit the nail pretty much on the head when it wrote in the order:
“There is clear and convincing evidence that the Respondent engaged in conduct that was prejudicial to the administration of justice by being unnecessarily belligerent to the traffic officer, by contacting the traffic officer’s supervisor in a manner suggesting he wanted special treatment and punishment for the traffic officer, by contacting the police chief, former police chief, and mayor in a manner suggesting he wanted special treatment, punishment for the traffic officer, and that his rulings in future cases might be influenced by his traffic stop and the action or inaction taken by police officials in response to his complaints against the officer, and by contacting the prosecuting attorney regarding this same subject matter.”
They recommended that Judge Williams be suspended for a period of one year, with all but three months of that suspension be stayed, pending “supervised probation.” Sounds familiar I’d say. So in effect, a three month suspension, without pay, but the possibility of up to a year with bad behavior. Additionally, they recommended a $5,000 fine, as well as reimbursement of $11,129.06 for costs. So we’ll have to wait to see what the West Virginia Supreme Court does with it. Also, I take it this did not include the Walmart allegations, which are still pending as far as I can tell.
I know that many people are following my progress in the Creepy Cops Search Case out of Putnam County, West Virginia, where drug task force police officers were caught on camera illegally searching my client’s house. That apparently includes those officers and their lawyers in the pending federal civil rights lawsuit. This is the most recent update about the case:
On Friday, the defendant officers’ lawyers filed a motion completely centered on my Youtube channel, requesting an order prohibiting me from ever publishing video deposition testimony of those police officers. Basically they’re requesting court approval for a coverup. Now, important First Amendment issues are implicated. Police already have qualified immunity. The one remedy given to us by Congress it to sue them. Now they want to turn that process into something akin to Family Court or abuse and neglect proceedings, where government gets to operate in secrecy and without accountability and exposure. Here’s the motion they filed:
The video depositions in the Creepy Cops Search Case haven’t even been taken yet. They’re actually scheduled to be taken in a few days. I already agreed to postpone them several times already at their request, because they were concerned that the FBI was investigating them. So I gave them time to evaluate their situation and hire or consult criminal defense attorneys before they testified. Now, they want to testify essentially in secret. Why? Because posting their video testimony allegedly puts them in danger. They went through the prior videos I published on this situation and cherry picked the craziest ones they could find, and presented them to the Court as the basis for why I should be forever silenced from exposing their misconduct.
At the end of every video I tell you that freedom is scary. Why? Why is it scary? Fear is the tool that tyrants use to subject us and take away our freedoms. Over and over again. From the beginning of recorded history to the present. Of course police officers in America, if given the choice, would choose to operate in secrecy. They don’t want to be recorded. They don’t want to give you their names – they just want yours.
You’re home asleep in your bed. It’s two in the morning. Your significant other is asleep next to you. Your child is asleep in the next room. Suddenly, you hear shouting outside. Three armed police officers are outside your house, shining lights, shouting at you to exit your home. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re afraid. You comply with their orders, because they’re the police. There’s three of them, armed with the authority of the government. So you go outside. They order you onto the ground. They place you in handcuffs. Once in custody, you recognize one of the officers. As it turns out, he’s there to intimidate you. And also ask about your puppies.
This happened on August 2, 2020 at the residence of Shane Glover, who was there with his girlfriend and their sleeping child, as reported by the Post and Courier newspaper. These officers showed up to Shane Glover’s home after Glover had attempted to talk to Officer Jermaine Smith earlier that day, about inappropriate comments Smith had made about Glover’s girlfriend. Prior to approaching Officer Smith, Glover called 911, telling dispatchers that “he knew Smith was a police officer and that he did not want anything bad to happen to him when he approached Smith to talk. But Smith drove off before Glover was able to make contact with him. Just hours later, Officer Smith and two of his buddies would show up to Glover’s house and force him out of his home at gunpoint.
Officer Smith can be heard on the video asking Glover, who is now standing outside in his underwear, if he was “making threats.” This is referencing Glover’s attempt to confront him earlier in the day. Glover denies making any threats. Smith says, “it’s all recorded” and “they say you were looking for me.” One of the other officers says, “You’ve got to expect consequences.” The officers eventually uncuffed Glover and his girlfriend and left the property. They were not charged with any crimes. The officers weren’t even in their jurisdictions. The Orangeburg County Sherriff’s Office has jurisdiction over the area. But they were never contacted for assistance. They actually asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (“SLED”) to investigate this incident. An investigation was opened, and is apparently still pending.
As I’ve explained many, many times, at this point, a man’s home is his castle. It doesn’t have to be a brick home. It can be a single-wide trailer, an apartment, or even a hotel room. The police cannot arrest you in your home without an arrest warrant. They cannot arrest you in someone else’s home without a search warrant. Any entry, or violation into the sanctity of a home is presumptively unconstitutional, as explained in the 1967 Supreme Court opinion in Katz v. United States. There are only two valid exceptions: consent and exigent circumstances. Consent is explained in the 1973 Supreme Court opinion in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte. Exigent circumstances is detailed in the 2006 Supreme Court opinion in Brigham City v. Stuart.
Even assuming a threat was made earlier in the day, as Mr. Bamberg correctly explained, the proper response to that would have been to seek a warrant from a judge. Police officers do not get to be judge, jury, and executioner. There was no warrant here, thus, it’s irrelevant whether a threat had been made. Even if it had, that pales in comparison to what happened here, which was essentially a kidnapping at gunpoint, among other things.
The U.S. DOJ announced in a press release today that police officers involved in the Kentucky shooting death of Breonna Taylor have been charged with federal felony civil rights violations. A federal grand jury in Louisville, Kentucky, returned two indictments that were unsealed today, and the Department of Justice filed a third charging document today, in connection with an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old woman who was shot and killed in her Louisville home on March 13, 2020, by police officers executing a search warrant.
“The Justice Department has charged four current and former Louisville Metro Police Department officers with federal crimes related to Breonna Taylor’s death,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Among other things, the federal charges announced today allege that members of LMPD’s Place-Based Investigations Unit falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. Taylor’s home, that this act violated federal civil rights laws, and that those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death.
“On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor should have awakened in her home as usual, but tragically she did not,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke. “Since the founding of our nation, the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution has guaranteed that all people have a right to be secure in their homes, free from false warrants, unreasonable searches and the use of unjustifiable and excessive force by the police.
The first indictment charges former Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) Detective Joshua Jaynes, 40, and current LMPD Sergeant Kyle Meany, 35, with federal civil rights and obstruction offenses for their roles in preparing and approving a false search warrant affidavit that resulted in Taylor’s death. The second indictment charges former LMPD Detective Brett Hankison, 46, with civil rights offenses for firing his service weapon into Taylor’s apartment through a covered window and covered glass door. The third charging document — an information filed by the Department of Justice — charges LMPD Detective Kelly Goodlett with conspiring with Jaynes to falsify the search warrant for Taylor’s home and to cover up their actions afterward.
The first indictment — charging Jaynes and Meany in connection with the allegedly false warrant — contains four counts. Count One charges that Jaynes and Meany, while acting in their official capacities as officers, willfully deprived Taylor of her constitutional rights by drafting and approving a false affidavit to obtain a search warrant for Taylor’s home. The indictment alleges that Jaynes and Meany knew that the affidavit contained false and misleading statements, omitted material facts, relied on stale information, and was not supported by probable cause. The indictment also alleges that Jaynes and Meany knew that the execution of the search warrant would be carried out by armed LMPD officers, and could create a dangerous situation both for those officers and for anyone who happened to be in Taylor’s home. According to the charges, the officers tasked with executing the warrant were not involved in drafting the warrant affidavit and were not aware that it was false. This count alleges that the offense resulted in Taylor’s death.
Count Two charges Jaynes with conspiracy, for agreeing with another detective to cover up the false warrant affidavit after Taylor’s death by drafting a false investigative letter and making false statements to criminal investigators. Count Three charges Jaynes with falsifying a report with the intent to impede a criminal investigation into Taylor’s death. Count Four charges Meany with making a false statement to federal investigators.
The second indictment —against Hankison — includes two civil rights charges alleging that Hankison willfully used unconstitutionally excessive force, while acting in his official capacity as an officer, when he fired his service weapon into Taylor’s apartment through a covered window and covered glass door. Count One charges him with depriving Taylor and a person staying with Taylor in her apartment of their constitutional rights by firing shots through a bedroom window that was covered with blinds and a blackout curtain. Count Two charges Hankison with depriving three of Taylor’s neighbors of their constitutional rights by firing shots through a sliding glass door that was covered with blinds and a curtain; the indictment alleges that several of Hankison’s bullets traveled through the wall of Taylor’s home and into the apartment unit occupied by her neighbors. Both counts allege that Hankison used a dangerous weapon, and that his conduct involved an attempt to kill.
The information charging Goodlett with conspiracy contains one count. It charges Goodlett with conspiring with Jaynes to falsify the warrant affidavit for Taylor’s home, and file a false report to cover up the false affidavit.
All of the civil rights charges involve alleged violations of Title 18, United States Code, Section 242, which makes it a crime for an official acting under color of law — meaning an official who is using or abusing authority given to that person by the government — to willfully violate a person’s constitutional rights. A violation of this statute carries a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment where the violation results in death or involves an attempt to kill. The obstruction counts charged in the indictments carry a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years; and the conspiracy counts carry a statutory maximum sentence of five years, as does the false-statements charge.
The charges announced today are separate from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s pattern or practice investigation into Louisville Metro Government and the Louisville Metro Police Department, which Attorney General Garland announced on April 26, 2021. The charges announced today are criminal against individual officers, while the ongoing pattern or practice investigation is a civil investigation that is examining allegations of systemic violations of the Constitution and federal law by LMPD and Louisville Metro. The civil pattern or practice investigation is being handled independently from the criminal case by a different team of career staff.
It’s a relaxing summer afternoon. You’re visiting family about 15 minutes away from your home. You locked your doors before you left, like you always do. Your three dogs are safely secured inside your house. All of a sudden you get a notification from your Ring doorbell security camera, at your front door. You see two police officers and some other stranger standing on your doorstep. They just busted the lock off your front door. They’re in the process of entering your home. You have three dogs in the house and you immediately have awful thoughts racing through your head about police officers and dogs. Not knowing what else to do, and having no idea what’s happening, you confront them using the doorbell’s audio speaker. They tell you that they’re there to evict you. You have no idea what they’re talking about.
This was the experience of Jennifer Michele of Land O’Lakes, Florida, in Pasco County. It was a complete surprise to her, given the fact that she had no knowledge of any eviction proceedings against her. She had been living there for 13 years. She posted this footage to Tik Tok, and it went viral. Here it is…
The Maxim that “a man’s house is his castle” is older than our Republic, and deeply rooted in Anglo-American jurisprudence. As scholars have observed, it protects all levels of society, down to the “poorest man living in his cottage.” It formed much of the basis of the Fourth Amendment itself. While 4th Amendment protections have eroded over time almost everywhere else – cars, schools, sidewalks, airports, and so on, it has retained its original strength in the home. The home still receives the greatest protection under the Constitution. It’s our castle. This is expanding in many states, with “castle doctrine” and “stand your ground” laws, and other self defense protections for law abiding citizens.
Searches and seizures which take place in a person’s home are presumptively unreasonable, which means they are illegal by default according to the Fourth Amendment. The only exceptions are consent and exigent circumstances, which are not at issue here.
Thus where law enforcement busts your lock off your front door, without a warrant, or in this case a valid eviction order, they violated your Fourth Amendment rights, by default application of the law. But are there any consequences? This is where qualified immunity comes in.
There are two scenarios:
1) Where the warrant or eviction order lists the homeowner’s correct address, but which is actually the wrong address. So on its face, there is a warrant for that address, but it was supposed to be a different address; or 2) where the warrant or eviction order lists an entirely different address and they just showed up and executed it at the wrong house. This could be equally applicable to arrest warrants where the wrong John Smith is arrested. Is the mistake in the warrant, or in the execution of the warrant? If the mistake is in the warrant, then how did it get there, and who was responsible? These questions are all highly important to the qualified immunity issue. The unfortunate reality is that qualified immunity is typically granted in these sorts of mistaken identity or address cases. Not always, but very frequently.
One must also remember that this is Pasco County, the same county as the video I recently posted showing the SWAT style entry into a woman’s home over a building permit inspection. That brings up what is most likely a better legal argument here, which is the existence of a policy of constitutional misconduct. This is likely not the first issue. Why is Pasco County law enforcement showing up in tactical gear, with very little information or communication, for an eviction? There may be a Monell Claim here, which would be important because a county or municipality cannot assert qualified immunity as a defense to Monell liability for a policy of constitutional violations.
The consequence of out of control government here was relatively harmless in the end. But often it’s not. Similar mistakes are often made, with tragic results. When law enforcement forcibly enters someone’s home, they do so with firearms, which often are used against occupants – either human or canine. Because, they have to get home safe at night. Nobody else does, necessarily, but they must, at all costs. Protect and serve. When you have the peace-of-mind of qualified immunity, you can just act first and sort out the damage later. Or, as we used to say in football, “let the paramedics sort them out.”
On July 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit released a published opinion in the case of Sylvia Gonzalez v. Edward Trevino, Mayor of Castle Hills that now appears to be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is an important First Amendment Retaliation case where qualified immunity is the key issue. Qualified immunity is the most important issue in the fight for the civil rights of the American people. It must be defeated, which is why you need to learn about cases like this, which the media will never tell you about.
The case is being litigated by the Institute for Justice. They filed suit for the plaintiff, Sylvia Gonzalez, a retired resident of Castle Hills, Texas, who decided to run for city council, and became the first Hispanic councilwoman in Castle Hills history. I spoke with the Institute of Justice attorneys litigating this case on the same day the opinion was released, and they seemed very optimistic about the future of this case at the Supreme Court.
At Ms. Gonzalez’s first council meeting, she accidentally took home with her petition which had been debated at the meeting. It was laying in her stack of paperwork. It was later discovered that the petition was in her possession, which as it turns out, was technically a misdemeanor crime. The petition sought to remove the city manager. This town has fewer than 5,000 residents. During her campaign, Gonzalez learned that many residents were unhappy with the performance of the city manager. As her first act in office, she submitted this petition to the council. It was entirely unintentional that she ended up taking the petition home with her. She was supporting this petition and had no reason to suppress it or hide it. It was purely unintentional, and it was her first meeting as a councilwoman.
Well, the city leadership was unhappy with Sylvia Gonzalez. After the mistake was discovered, the mayor, Edward Trevino, requested that a Sergeant in the Castle Hills Police Department file a criminal complaint alleging that Gonzalez took the petition without consent. The first officer to investigate, a Sergeant, determined that no crime had been committed. Well, that was unacceptable to the mayor and the chief, so they turned to a so-called “special detective.” The detective decided that Sylvia committed a violation of Texas Penal Code §§ 37.10(a)(3) and (c)(1), which provide that “[a] person commits an offense if he . . . intentionally destroys, conceals, removes, or otherwise impairs the verity, legibility, or availability of a governmental record.”
Special Detective Alex Wright obtained a warrant, and instead of using the typical procedure of obtaining a summons, rather than a warrant, for a nonviolent crime, as well as going through the district attorney’s office, the detective instead obtained a warrant and hand-delivered it to the magistrate himself. The use of this process prevented Sylvia from using the satellite booking function of the Bexar County Jail system, making her unable to avoid spending time in jail when arrested.
There is clear evidence here that this was done with a retaliatory motive, in response to Sylvia Gonzalez’s support of the petition to remove the city manager and disturb their swamp status quo. Sylvia’s arrest enabled the city leadership to remove her from office, as well as to intimidate, punish, and silence her. There was plenty evidence of this. In fact, Sylvia was charged under a statute that has never before or since been used to arrest someone in her position. A “review of the misdemeanor and felony data from Bexar County over the past decade makes it clear that the misdemeanor tampering statute has never been used in Bexar County to criminally charge someone for trying to steal a nonbinding or expressive document.” Indeed, most indictments under the statute involved fake government IDs, such as driver’s licenses, social security numbers, and green cards.
But here was the big problem: technically there was probable cause to charge her under the statute that was charged. So the question is, can law enforcement arrest and prosecute Sylvia in retaliation for her protected free speech, so long as probable cause exists to do so? In other words, this is like a mayor ordering the arrest of a political opponent for some minor crime like jaywalking, where technically the crime was committed, but where there never would have been any prosecution at all, but for retaliation against free speech. This is the dispute, and there is a split in the federal circuits.
In the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court case of Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, 138 S. Ct. 1945, 1954 (2018), the Court held that a municipality could be liable under a Monell Claim where its leadership decides to selectively prosecute a particular person in retaliation for their speech. The federal circuits have differed on how broadly to interpret this holding. The Fifth Circuit, in last week’s opinion, has chosen a narrow interpretation.
The jaywalking example is the ideal example, which was discussed in the opinion:
“If an individual who has been vocally complaining about police conduct is arrested for jaywalking,” the claim should not be dismissed despite the existence of probable cause because “[i]n such a case, . . . probable cause does little to prove or disprove the causal connection between animus and injury.”
The Court “conclude[d] that the no-probable-cause requirement should not apply when a plaintiff presents objective evidence that he was arrested when otherwise similarly situated individuals not engaged in the same sort of protected speech had not been.”
Basically, their conclusion was that since no prior council-person had been prosecuted by the city for taking a petition home with them, then there was no evidence to support a theory of retaliatory selective prosecution. This is of course, absurd. This is like saying that law enforcement may engage in retaliatory prosecutions, so long as they choose a creative statute that has never been used before against the same type of defendant.
The fact is, that Sylvia Gonzalez engaged in highly protected First Amendment conduct, and that as a result of that conduct, a conspiracy of government officials took a material adverse action against her for purposes of retaliation. This is already prohibited under federal law. As the dissenting federal judge noted in his dissent, the police officers and city leadership have been on notice of a string of legal authority, dating all the way back to 1689, that it’s unconstitutional to jail people in response to their petitioning the government.
Hopefully the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn this. The Institute of Justice is doing some great work, not just in this case, but in many different cases across the country. They are likely even jumping into one of my cases, so stay tuned for that. Check out the youtube video the Institute did on the Gonzalez case, back when they first started. There’s a donation link. They need donations now, more than ever. Please donate, if you want to help fund the fight against qualified immunity and government corruption. Here’s the Institute’s video on the case, with donation link:
Here’s the district court order, which originally denied qualified immunity, and which the defendants appealed to the Fifth Circuit:
Someone sent me another interesting video from Tik Tok, this time showing cops making an entry into a home pursuant to a search warrant, guns drawn, due to the alleged high crime of failure to obtain a building permit. Here’s the footage:
You can hear them yell search warrant and then abruptly make entry, which is very close to a no knock entry. There is a constitutional requirement that police officer knock and announce their presence prior to making entry, even with a valid search warrant. There are exceptions for where a no knock warrant is obtained, or where exigent circumstances are presented at the scene, assuming the dangerousness presented wasn’t known prior to the warrant being obtained.
Assuming this is true that the search warrant was obtained due to a failure to obtain a building permit, I have some issues with this. Just because a search warrant is obtained, that doesn’t entitle law enforcement to treat the homeowner like she’s a drug dealer or known violent felon. Police still must act reasonable in executing a search warrant. This requires adjustment for the particular facts of the situation.
Merely executing a search warrant doesn’t justify pointing a gun at someone, assuming someone had been in the home. But alas, this is the world we live in, because we have allowed the government to do what it does best. For this reason, I’m glad that I live in a jurisdiction where there are actually no building permits. Do the buildings fall down around us? No, no they don’t. Just like the fact that we could fire every employee of every state barber and cosmetology board in the nation, and we’d all survive; we’d all be fine.
Government needs to be drastically downsized. How many cops were involved in this? Did they just need some extra hand-on-gun time this month? It’s too bad these tough guys weren’t in Uvalde. All-in-all, I’m sure most judges would allow what’s occurred here. But I wouldn’t. This is unreasonable. Fire everyone involved and don’t replace them. That’s what I’d do.
UPDATE 8/2/22:
The homeowner reached out and spoke with my today, also providing copies of the underlying documents. It only gets worse with more information. Check it out:
Hazelwood, Missouri Police Chief Greg Hall, who had been with his department for 43 years, and who was chair of the St. Louis Area Police Chief’s Association in 2019, was pulled over by another police agency on May 28 for a traffic stop. He was “hammered drunk.” Was he carted off to the jail like you or I would have been? No. He was personally driven home by the police chief of that agency instead. But don’t worry, the colleague police chief promised that, “he and I are going to have a long talk on the way home.” By the way, Chief Hall made $118,000.00 last year. A few days after the traffic stop, he retired. As of an investigative report by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch yesterday, July 14, they confirmed that Chief Hall had not even been charged as of yet. Remember, the stop was on May 28.
O’Fallon Police Department Officer Nathan Dye initiates a traffic stop on a vehicle he later describes as “dodging sniper fire,” referring to excessive weaving on the road. The driver, almost from the very beginning, identifies himself as a the chief of police in Hazelwood. Obviously aware that the body cam is rolling, Officer Dye apologetically initiates field sobriety tests. Chief Hall fails them. Next is the breathalyzer, which results in the chief blowing more than 2 and a half times the legal limit.
Officer Dye’s supervisor arrives. He’s brought up to speed on what’s happened. His first question is whether the stop had been recorded on body cam. The supervisor then expresses disappointment that Officer Dye was recording. “Yeah this is a tough day and age, man, you know, when you have, uh, they insist on all these electronic things and technology,” the sergeant says.
Then O’Fallon Police Department Chief Neske arrives, after being contacted off-camera by Officer Dye and his supervisor. The camera was turned off just before Chief Neske arrived. But another video showed what happened.
So what happened here, is that some animals are more equal than others. This is government corruption. Never forget that police officers are first and foremost, government employees. Agents of your government. They will protect each other. They will utilize protections they have built into the system. However, they will not extend any of those protections to you, the peasant. The only way to root out this cancerous corruption is through public exposure – through video footage and media exposure. Then to a lesser extent, through lawsuits and rare criminal prosecutions. There’s also politics. But that has consistently failed us, and indeed created this problem in the first place.
We saw this illustrated in this video footage. The younger officer, Officer Dye, who made the traffic stop, obviously wants to do the right thing and is making an effort to do the right thing. But look what he’s dealing with. His supervisor, who has clearly been around the block a few times, knows exactly what he’s doing. Question number one: is there video footage. If you wondering whether justice is served by recording as much video footage as possible of our police officers, there’s your answer. It absolutely is. It keeps them honest, when they wouldn’t otherwise be. That’s your government that wants to sneak around and lie to you. But they can’t when they’re caught on video, as here. Then, as if to one-up the wily-old supervisor, the chief himself shows up to the scene, and just bypasses the middleman. He takes the suspect straight out of detainment, and takes him home. But don’t worry…. He’s going to give him a stern talking-to on the way home.
Is this new? No, it’s been happening since the days of Julius Caesar. Government is going to government. That’s what it does. The trick is establishing accountability through public exposure.
Remember, in every interaction between a citizen and a police officer, don’t forget that it’s really an interaction between a citizen and his government. Never forget that, and you won’t have to learn that lesson the hard way.
This week, following public release of the footage showing the arrest of Brian Beckett by Officer Aaron Shrewsbury, of the Mount Hope WV Police Department, the prosecutor on the case filed a motion requesting dismissal of all of the charges, which was granted by the Court. The pending charges of obstruction, disorderly conduct, speeding, and reckless driving were all dismissed and Mr. Beckett was released from bond.
The prosecutor noted in his motion that, “A review of the evidence does not support prosecution of the case.”
This is great news. Many thanks to Mr. Beckett’s criminal defense attorney on the case, Jody Wooten, for a successful conclusion. This doesn’t automatically create civil liability in a federal civil rights lawsuit, but it does foreclose the defense from using the criminal charges, or any criminal conviction, against us in a civil lawsuit. It was also the right thing to do. Our investigation continues in the meantime, both in regards to this incident, as well as into the Nathan Nelson case, where my client had his jaw fractured in two places by the same police officer. Many questions still remain, and information received is still being examined and sorted out.
One of the interesting things I’ve learned is that the police department in this tiny West Virginia town apparently takes up around 50% of the town’s budget. I’ve received lots of tips from credible sources about multiple allegations of corruption surrounding this. So I’ll be taking a deep dive into these issues.
Here’s the dismissal motion and ensuing orders from the Court:
What you see here is Bluefield West Virginia off duty police officer, James Mullins, on October 24, 2021 physically attacking multiple individuals, including a local business owner, his girlfriend, and multiple coworker police officers. He had just been involved in a shootout with multiple people in this parking lot. There are bullet holes in his car and shell casings laying around on the ground. At the end of the day, nobody was charged for the parking lot shootout, including the off duty officer. In fact, despite all the crimes you are about to see committed, only one misdemeanor charge of domestic violence resulted, for the video taped violent push of the officer’s girlfriend. And today, that charge was supposed to go to trial. Instead it was dismissed without prejudice. My original video on this was pretty long, but take a look at these few snippets, and let me know if you think the off duty officer appears to you to have committed any crimes.
For some reason, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, and the West Virginia state trooper assigned to investigate it, only saw fit to charge one count of domestic violence. Nothing for the shootout; nothing for physically assaulting the bar owner; nothing for physically assaulting the multiple police officers.
Today that case was scheduled to go to trial. A conviction for domestic battery would have prevented the off duty officer from ever possessing a firearm again legally, and therefore preventing him from ever being employed as a police officer again in the future. But that didn’t happen. The charges have been dropped and he has been released from bond. He’s currently perfectly capable of now possessing a firearm and also to work as a police officer. Unbelievably, as far as I know he’s still certified to be a police officer through West Virginia’s LEPS subcommittee on law enforcement certification. When I previously asked them if they were going to take steps to investigate or decertify Officer Mullins, they responded that he was being prosecuted criminally, so no they weren’t. Oops. Government fails us once again.
The reason given to the news media regarding the dismissal was that the victim was allegedly “uncooperative.” Okay, that’s common in domestic violence prosecutions. But why is that dispositive here, where the crime was caught on video? Do you even need the victim to testify? What if she doesn’t show up? Who cares. What is she going to show up and say, “nothing happened?” It’s on video. Is justice achieved if violent domestic abusers can persuade their victims to not cooperate? No, of course not.
Now, to be fair, the dismissal documents did note on them that the charge was being dismissed without prejudice, meaning that they can be refiled at a later date, and also noting that “related” charges are going before a grand jury. So, it’s possible that more charges are coming, including possible felony charges, which require grand jury indictment. However, the expected date for the grand jury decision is October. West Virginia has a one year statute of limitations for misdemeanor crimes. So if they wait until after October 24, 2023, he’s in the clear and cannot be prosecuted for this, or any other misdemeanor arising from this incident. That does not prevent indictment for felony charges, which do not have a statute of limitations in West Virginia.
Also, I know from past experience that the favorite way of prosecutors generally to coverup acts of police misconduct, especially shootings, is to present it to a secret grand jury where they return a “no true bill,” or a decision not to indict. This would clear the officer, and make it look like it wasn’t the decision of the prosecutor. In reality, we know that prosecutors are known to be able to indict ham sandwiches, controlling the flow of evidence and law to the grand jurors.
Make sure you subscribe to follow along to see what ends up happening. It would be a travesty of justice, as well as a clear and present danger to the public, to allow this to fade away at this point. The public and politicians should look into West Virginia’s LEPS subcommittee on law enforcement certifications and find out why they haven’t decertified this police officer.
Original full video:
Also, let’s not forget about the fact that he appears to have been drinking from an open container in his car before and during this incident:
