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Police used apparently illegal wiretaps to make hundreds of arrests

Brad Heath and Brett Kelman, USA TODAY

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Prosecutors in the Los Angeles suburb responsible for a huge share of the nation’s wiretaps almost certainly violated federal law when they authorized widespread eavesdropping that police used to make more than 300 arrests and seize millions of dollars in cash and drugs throughout the USA.

The violations could undermine the legality of as many as 738 wiretaps approved in Riverside County, Calif., since the middle of 2013, an investigation by USA TODAY and The Desert Sun, based on interviews and court records, has found. Prosecutors reported that those taps, often conducted by federal drug investigators, intercepted phone calls and text messages by more than 52,000 people.

Federal law bars the government from seeking court approval for a wiretap unless a top prosecutor has personally authorized the request. Congress added that restriction in the 1960s, when the FBI had secretly monitored civil rights leaders, to ensure that such intrusive surveillance would not be conducted lightly.

In Riverside County — a Los Angeles suburb whose  court and prosecutors approved almost one of every five U.S. wiretaps last year — the district attorney  turned the job of reviewing the applications over to lower-level lawyers, interviews and court records show. That practice almost certainly violated the federal wiretapping law and could jeopardize prosecutors’ ability to use the surveillance in court.

“A district attorney is playing with gunpowder if he ignores the potential implications of letting somebody else handle the entire process. That’s potentially catastrophic,” said Clifford Fishman, a Catholic University of America law professor who studies wiretapping.

That also  creates a legal problem for Riverside’s massive wiretapping operation, which had  come under scrutiny from Justice Department lawyers. Last week, USA TODAY and The Desert Sun reported that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had secretly helped turn the county into the nation’s wiretap capital, even though federal prosecutors repeatedly warned that the surveillance orders violated a separate part of the wiretapping law and would not withstand a legal challenge.

Federal drug agents used information from Riverside wiretaps to make arrests as far away as Kentucky and Virginia, sometimes concealing the surveillance from judges and defense lawyers.

Wiretaps in Riverside more than quadrupled under the county’s former district attorney, Paul Zellerbach, who left office in January. Despite a federal court ruling that only the district attorney himself should usually approve wiretaps, Zellerbach said in two interviews over the past month that he could not recall having reviewed or personally authorized any of the county’s wiretap applications and said he was unaware of the details of the requests. Instead, he said, he delegated that job to one of his assistants.

“I didn’t have time to review all of those,” Zellerbach said. “No way.”

Because wiretap applications are secret, it is difficult to gauge how often they were approved by other lawyers. A report based on information Zellerbach’s office submitted to federal court administrators lists an assistant, Jeffrey Van Wagenen, as the person who authorized nearly all of the county’s wiretap applications. Van Wagenen’s signature appears on a sealed wiretap application approved last year by a Riverside County judge and obtained by USA TODAY. Van Wagenen, who left the office last year, said it would be inappropriate for him to comment.

Delegating that job poses a legal problem because federal law — which regulates wiretap applications even in state courts — carefully restricts who must approve a surveillance request. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1974 that those restrictions were serious enough that it threw out wiretap evidence in a drug case because the surveillance had been approved by the wrong senior official at the U.S. Justice Department.

The federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reiterated that point in 2013 after federal prosecutors sought to use evidence from a wiretap police obtained from a state court in San Bernardino County, just north of Riverside. The prosecutor who signed off on the wiretap was not the county’s district attorney, Mike Ramos, but one of his deputies. That, the appeals court ruled, wasn’t good enough: Wiretaps had to be signed by the district attorney himself unless he had turned over all of his powers to someone else while he was away from the office.

Read Full Article – http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/19/riverside-county-wiretaps-violated-federal-law/76064908/

Blog, Criminal, Drug Companies, Legal News

Legal Experts Urge Caution as Tribes Enter Pot Business

  • By MARY HUDETZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS

SANTA FE, N.M. — Nov 18, 2015, 10:47 PM ET

Tribes across the U.S. are finding marijuana is risky business nearly a year after a Justice Department policy indicated they could grow and sell pot under the same guidelines as states.

Federal raids on tribal cannabis operations in California followed by a South Dakota tribe’s move this month to burn its crop amid fears it could be next have raised questions over whether there’s more to complying with DOJ standards than a department memo suggested last December.

The uncertainty — blamed partly on thin DOJ guidelines, the fact that marijuana remains an illegal drug under federal laws, and a complex tangle of state, federal and tribal law enforcement oversight on reservations— has led attorneys to urge tribal leaders to weigh the risks involved before moving forward with legalizing and growing pot.

“Everybody who is smart is pausing to look at the feasibility and risks of growing hemp and marijuana,” said Lance Gumbs, a former chairman of the Shinnecock Tribe in New York and regional vice president of the National Congress of American Indians. “But are we giving up on it? Absolutely not.”

At a conference on tribal economic development held in Santa Fe, tribal leaders and attorneys said Wednesday that the raids have shown there may be more red tape for tribes to negotiate when it comes to legalizing cannabis than states have faced.

That’s especially the case for tribes that are within states where marijuana is not legal. In those cases, tribes may face the challenge of figuring out how to bring cannabis seeds onto reservations without crossing a state jurisdiction, and sheriffs and state officials are bound to be less approving of marijuana, said Blake Trueblood, director of business development for the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, host of the conference.

The DOJ memo sent to U.S. attorneys last December directed them not to prioritize prosecuting federal marijuana laws in most cases where tribes legalized the drug for medical or recreational use. The memo calls for tribes to follow an eight-point policy standard that includes taking measures to keep pot out of the hands of children and criminal networks, and not transport it across federal or state jurisdictions where it remains illegal.

“Industrial hemp, medical marijuana and maybe recreational marijuana present a lot of opportunity. But for now, the best advice is to proceed with caution,” said Michael Reif, an attorney for the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin, where tribal leaders filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday after federal agents recently destroyed hemp plants grown for research. “We’re seeing the ramifications of things being unclear in a way states didn’t.”

The Flandreau Santee Sioux in South Dakota — a state where marijuana isn’t legal — was the first to approve recreational pot under tribal law with a vote in June, and was one of the most aggressive about entering the industry, with plans to open the nation’s first marijuana resort on its reservation north of Sioux Falls.

But after weeks of discussions with authorities who signaled a possible raid, the tribe announced last week it had burned all of its marijuana plants. Anthony Reider, the tribe’s president, told The Associated Press the main holdup centered on whether the tribe could sell marijuana to non-Indians, along with issues over where the seed used for planting originated.

He suggested that by burning the crops, the tribe could have a clean slate to relaunch a grow operation in consultation with authorities.

In California, the Alturas and Pit River Indian rancherias’ marijuana operations were raided by federal authorities, with agents seizing 12,000 marijuana plants in July. The regional U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement that the two neighboring tribes planned to distribute the pot off tribal lands and the large-scale operations may have been financed by a foreign third-party.

It’s not clear if the two tribes have plans for new marijuana ventures, and calls from the AP were not immediately returned.

The California and South Dakota tribes are three of just about a half-dozen so far this year that have legalized medical or recreational marijuana on their reservations.

The Squaxin Island Tribe in Washington state is another, and just opened a store last week for retail sales of the drug. But most expect the tribe to face fewer legal challenges because Washington allows for recreational marijuana use and the tribe entered into a compact with the state that sets guidelines for taxing pot sales.

“The tribes are not going to be immune to what the local attitudes toward marijuana are going to be,” Trueblood said. “If there’s one 30,000-feet takeaway from this year, it’s that you’re not going to be successful if you don’t work with your local governments or U.S. attorneys.”

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Follow Mary Hudetz on Twitter at http://twitter.com/marymhudetz. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/mary-hudetz

Blog, Criminal, Divorce, Drug Companies, Legal News, Personal Injury

Charlie Sheen Is HIV-Positive – Could His Exes Sue Him?

BY MICHELE CORRISTON

11/16/2015 AT 10:05 PM EST

Charlie Sheen will tell the world about his HIV diagnosis on Tuesday – a secret he kept hidden partially out of concern he’d face legal consequences, sources say.

“The interview could open up a lot of sympathy for him, but he has to be concerned about a fear of litigation from former sexual partners,” Howard Bragman, a Hollywood publicist and crisis manager approached by those close to Sheen, told PEOPLE of Tuesday’s scheduled Today show sitdown. “You don’t take that lightly.”

Now, the question is when Sheen learned he has HIV and whether any of his exes are at risk. Could the Two and a Half Men star really face charges if he didn’t tell sexual partners about his condition?

In California, it’s illegal to intentionally pass on a sexually transmitted disease – so the state would have to prove Sheen desired to “use HIV as a weapon,” saysScott Burris, the director of the Center for Health Law, Policy and Practice and a professor at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law. Burris is not aware of a single case in which that was proven.

“California has one of the narrowest laws. It’s unlikely that he intended to infect anybody,” he tells PEOPLE. “But who knows where he had sex, and there are states with different laws, and in some of them, it’s enough to expose someone to fluids. In fact, in some states you can be charged even if you used a condom.”

Burris is a vocal proponent of decriminalizing HIV, pointing to research showing putting people behind bars doesn’t reduce the spread of the disease and only “makes people hide.”

But there’s nothing to stop Sheen’s past sexual partners – he’s admitted to soliciting prostitutes, was married three times and once lived with two girlfriends he called “goddesses” – from going to court if they contracted HIV from him.

“He is at risk at losing civil judgments to all the lovers that he’s had if he knew that he was infected and never told them,” Susan Moss, a family law attorney at Chemtob Moss & Forman, tells PEOPLE.

Moss says someone who contracted HIV from Sheen could sue for millions, and that even exes who didn’t get HIV – but slept with him if he had it and did not disclose that – could file civil suits.

“I could only imagine the level of emotional distress that a person is put under when they find out that somebody they had unprotected sex with probably multiple times has this disease and never told them,” she says. “Plus, now everyone in Hollywood is going to know that they’ve been exposed to somebody with HIV, and that also can affect their future relationships. All of these things are actionable.”

Yet as Catherine Hanssens and Allison Nichol from the Center of HIV Law & Policy – which seeks to protect the rights of those living with the virus – stress, HIV has become a manageable medical condition.

“I’m worried that people are talking about HIV as if it is a deadly disease and asking these type of questions 35 years into the epidemic. It’s a little bit like asking us what we would do if we found out that the moon was made out of green cheese,” says Hanssens, the center’s executive director and founder. “HIV is hard to transmit, and it’s very easy to prevent transmission.”

“Many people’s view of HIV is sort of stuck in the 80s and the early ’90s, and I think there’s a lack of information on the part of the American public. The understanding of what it means to be a person with HIV in 2015 is lacking,” adds Nichol, the organization’s co-director. “HIV is viewed as much more on par with someone who has type I diabetes than what people’s I think internal view of this going back to the early 80s is.”

This means any lawsuits, even by people who may have contracted HIV from the actor, wouldn’t be easily won, Burris says.

“His case also reflects the fact that in a very real way, treatment has changed the equation. If he is infected and has been getting treatment that is successfully suppressing the virus in his system, he’s not at terrible risk of infecting anybody, because it’s now our national policy to get people on treatment so that they won’t transmit the virus,” he explains.

Moreover, Sheen’s playboy reputation could work in his favor. In a negligence case, his partners arguably would have known that he has been in more than one relationship in his life, and by today’s standards should have practiced safe sex, Harris says.

“Charlie Sheen is a well known public figure. I don’t think it could possibly be a credible claim that people did not know he was a person who was perhaps sexually active with more than one individual. I think you have to make that presumption about anyone unless it’s someone that you’ve been in a longterm, exclusive relationship with,” Nichol says, arguing that “there’s a shared responsibility for sexual health.”

It’s an issue that reaches far beyond Sheen’s bombshell revelation. Laws punishing people for transmitting STDs have been scaled back as new information about and treatments for them emerge, and people like Hanssens and Nicho dedicate their lives to destigmatizing HIV.

Still, there’s an ideological divide.

“We’re puzzled because we don’t think we would be having a conversation if Charlie Sheen had come out with diabetes or cancer, and neither of us could recall any kind of similar questions when Farrah Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer and Michael Douglas was diagnosed with throat cancer, both of which were caused by sexually transmitted diseases,” Hanssens says. “So why, in 2015, the focus in 2015 on Charlie Sheen’s HIV status?”

But Moss believes people who deceive their sexual partners should be held accountable by the law.

“I think if you put somebody at risk for a life-threatening disease, you are as dangerous as a criminal as somebody who points a gun at another person,” she says. “There’s no difference. Your weapon is sex, their weapon is a gun.”

Blog, Criminal, Legal News

Suge Knight, Katt Williams Plead Not Guilty in Robbery Case

  • By ANTHONY MCCARTNEY, AP ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

LOS ANGELES — Oct 27, 2015, 5:00 PM ET

Former rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight and comedian Katt Williams pleaded not guilty Tuesday to robbery charges filed against them after a celebrity photographer accused them of taking her camera last year.

The pair appeared briefly in a Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday and entered the pleas, which needed to be re-entered because a judge determined two weeks ago that they should stand trial for the September 2014 incident in Beverly Hills.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen on Tuesday admonished Knight because the Death Row Records co-founder had held up a sign conveying a happy birthday message to his son for cameras during his last court appearance two weeks ago.

“If he does it again, I will shackle his hands to a chair,” Coen said. Knight, 50, acknowledged he understood the judge’s warning.

Coen has taken a hard line with Knight, who had a series of medical episodes in court and refused to leave his cell for one hearing, prompting the judge to sign an order to have him forcibly brought to hearings if necessary.

Knight’s attorney denies the Death Row Records co-founder was involved in taking photographer Leslie Redden’s camera last year, just days after he was wounded in a nightclub shooting. His attorneys have cited the wounds as causing some of his courthouse medical episodes.

Attorney Thomas Mesereau said Oct. 13 that threats Knight made toward Redden were attempts to get her to not shoot photos of his young son.

“The only evidence that exists is he didn’t want his son photographed,” Mesereau said. “Any father would have acted as he did.”

Redden recorded a verbal confrontation with Knight on a camera hanging from her neck, but the device did not capture the physical struggle over her professional camera.

Knight remains jailed on $10 million bail in a separate murder case filed after he ran over two men outside a Compton burger stand in January, killing one and seriously injuring an adviser to the film “Straight Outta Compton.” Knight’s lawyers have said he was fleeing armed attackers when he hit the men.

Knight has pleaded not guilty and already been ordered to stand trial in that case, but no trial date has been set. Coen set a Dec. 11 court hearing to get an update on the case.

Knight was a key player in the gangster rap scene that flourished in the 1990s, and his Death Row Records label once listed Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg among its artists. He lost control of the company after it was forced into bankruptcy.

He faces potential life sentences if convicted in either case because of prior convictions for armed robbery and assault with a gun.

Williams, 44, has starred in several comedy specials and appeared in films such as “First Sunday” and “Friday After Next.”

The next hearing in the robbery case is scheduled for Nov. 30. No trial date has been set.

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This story has been corrected to show that Knight is being held on $10 million bail in a murder case, not without bail.

Full Article – http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/suge-knight-katt-williams-due-back-los-angeles-34753983

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Mafia trial puts the ‘Pirate’ of Rome in the dock

Massimo Carminati, a former member of a neo-fascist group, is charged along with dozens of politicians and businessmen.

Sara Manisera |

Rome, Italy – Dozens of politicians, businessmen, and alleged gangsters go on trial on Thursday on charges including corruption, money laundering, and weapons possession in one of Italy’s most important mafia prosecutions in the past decade.

Italy’s Special Operation Squad (ROS) has, since 2012, investigated Mafia Capitale, a mysterious organisation based in the Italian capital that prosecutors allege involves politicians and other public officials working alongside mob figures.
  Italy’s long road of corruption

Important businessmen have been implicated and, according to the prosecutor of the case, alleged Mafia Capitale leader Massimo Carminati delivered envelopes full of money to bribe officials involved in managing public tenders.

Carminati is a former member of the neo-fascist group Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR), which was active from 1977 to 1988 and carried out several terrorist attacks, including the bombing of the Bologna train station that killed 85 people.

Known as “The Pirate” because of his one eye, Carminati gained a reputation as a ruthless mafia boss who controlled large parts of Rome.

Local legend has it that Carminati is immortal after he miraculously survived a close-range gunshot to the head by a police officer in 1981.

The trial opens at Rome’s Palace of Justice on Thursday before moving to Rebibbia prison. It is expected to last until July.

Luca Odevaine, a former deputy head of the mayor of Rome’s cabinet, has confessed to receiving 5,000 euros ($5,500) monthly from Mafia Capitale. Paolo Pozzessere, the former commercial director of Finmeccanica, an Italian public company, has been charged with corruption.

Like other organised crime groups, Mafia Capitale is allegedly involved in extortion, smuggling, and money-laundering, as well as above-board activities that have allowed it to effectively control large parts of Rome.

But Mafia Capitale is not a conventional mafia group, according to Nando dalla Chiesa, who heads the Observatory on Organised Crime.

“Rather than having a hierarchical structure, it is organised as a network with different members – those in charge of using violence, and those who apply a partial territory control,” dalla Chiesa told Al Jazeera.

A wounded woman receives assistance following the Bologna train station bombing on August 2, 1980 [The Associated Press]

Perhaps Carminati’s greatest power is his impunity, observers say.

In 2011, l’Espresso journalist Lirio Abbate wrote one of the first articles published about Carminati headlined The Four Kings of Rome.

Abbate, who has lived under police escort for the past seven years because of his journalism on the mafia, explained that Rome was divided among four bosses and one of them is Carminati – also dubbed the “Last King of Rome”.

Read Full Article – http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/mafia-trial-puts-pirate-rome-dock-151104055722963.html