Monday, March 7, 2016
Bulletin: Police who plant evidence: Evidence planting claims not limited to Steven Avery (Making a Murderer); "Some cops justify planting evidence because they believe the suspect is evil and needs to be locked away from society, said McNamara, a consultant at Behavioral Criminology International. Other crooked cops hold grudges against suspects for a variety of reasons, and still others rationalize that if a suspect didn't do this crime, they're bound to commit other ones. "Doing the wrong thing for what you believe is the right thing is totally unnecessary," McNamara said. "There has got to be another way to make a case without planting evidence." John Ferak: USA Today Network: (Must Read. HL);
"From the moment Teresa Halbach's disappearance made the news in 2005, a teary-eyed Steven Avery insisted that the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office was again trying to railroad him. Avery had already lost 18 years of freedom because of a botched rape investigation. But Avery's claims of innocence in Halbach's murder were brushed aside by police. Authorities swiftly arrested him after a pile of human bones were found in a burn pit on his property. By February 2007, Avery's defense attorneys, Jerry Buting and Dean Strang, made allegations of planted blood and fabricated evidence the central theme of the trial. The strategy didn't work. Avery was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and was sent to prison for life. But that didn't end speculation that evidence was planted in Avery's case. The release in December of 'Making a Murderer" sparked worldwide interest in the case — and prompted questions about other cases involving allegations of planted evidence. There is no national statistical data on cases involving police who plant evidence, said Jim McNamara, who retired in 2012 as supervisory special agent at the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia. "It's a very rare occurrence but it only takes one or two bad ones to make everyone suspect," McNamara told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. "When it happens, it's magnified in the public arena including the media, the community and the public." Some cops justify planting evidence because they believe the suspect is evil and needs to be locked away from society, said McNamara, a consultant at Behavioral Criminology International. Other crooked cops hold grudges against suspects for a variety of reasons, and still others rationalize that if a suspect didn't do this crime, they're bound to commit other ones. "Doing the wrong thing for what you believe is the right thing is totally unnecessary," McNamara said. "There has got to be another way to make a case without planting evidence." The USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin identified an array of cases involving evidence planting allegations that run the gamut. Some cases happened in major U.S. cities. Others occurred in America's Heartland. One still-developing case is in Kenosha. Some cases led to criminal charges against the cops and, in some cases, prison time. One case led to the eventual reinstatement of one of the accused officers. In the case involving Avery, the two sheriff's investigators accused of planting evidence remained on their force. They were not subjected to any internal or external investigation surrounding their conduct." (Click on the link below to read USA Today's exploration of these cases):
