LL cycled down through the drizzle to the District's federal courthouse this morning to catch a hearing in the Ted Loza bribery case.

Things have been rather quiet in the prosecution of Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham's former chief of staff, and LL was hoping prosecutors might be filing the new charges they've indicated that might be on the way. Alas, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb told LL no such charges would be forthcoming today.

So LL turned around and left, exiting through the courthouse annex. A few steps up 3rd Street NW, lo and behold, was Loza, running late for his 10:15 hearing. It was the first time LL had encountered him since his arrest.

Read More "Ted Loza Speaks: ‘This Is Bullshit’" »

On Feb. 8, plaintiffs in the last remaining Pershing Park case filed a request that would broaden the scope of the U.S. District Court's inquiry into the case's discovery abuse. Plaintiffs attorneys are asking the judge to look into the alleged issues with the D.C. Police Department's video coverage of the mass arrests at Pershing Park on Sept. 27, 2002.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan is already set to hire a forensic examiner to determine how the running resume  (the department's own reported log of events) went missing, and how the department's radio dispatches went dead around the time the arrests were made.

The problematic video tapes turned over by the Office of the Attorney General may be the latest example of the discovery abuses. So far, AG Peter Nickles has thrown up some really lame excuses for why the video footage appears so corrupted.

Read More "Pershing Park Case: Let’s Go To The Videotape!" »

Pity the Pants Lawsuit Guy. He's now bringing his brand of legal crazy to the appeals court. The Legal Times' BLT Blog, G-d bless 'em, sifts through the latest filing. They find that Pants Lawsuit Guy now is taking aim at a U.S. District Court Judge. His evidence? Not an incriminating e-mail trail or memo. Not a recorded phone call. It's a picture:

"Pearson wants the appeals court to take notice of a photograph showing [Judge] Huvelle [who dismissed his lawsuit now on appeal] standing with several Superior Court judges, including Anita Josey-Herring, who is a defendant in Pearson’s suit. Pearson included the photo—taken in May at the annual Law Day Dinner Program hosted by the Washington Bar Association—in his opening brief, filed Jan. 21 in the appeals court."

Read More "Pants Lawsuit Guy Still Biting Ankles" »

�I was just distracted, frankly.�

—Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, Feb. 10

Read More "Loose Lips Quotes of 2009: Marion Barry" »

"I don’t understand your approach today, coming in and throwing down the gauntlet."

—U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, Feb. 6

Read More "Loose Lips Quotes of 2009: Judge Thomas F. Hogan" »

In a recent hearing in the Pershing Park case, Judge Emmet Sullivan warned D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles that he "was playing games with the wrong judge."

In a filing last week [PDF], plaintiffs lawyers suggest Nickles is not taking Sullivan's threat seriously.  Lawyers in the Chang case assert that the crafty AG is still playing games with discovery.

Nickles and Co. had handed over 3,000 pages of material to plaintiffs. The only problem: these pages were overly redacted. In some cases, entire pages were blacked out. Nickles is required by law to justify each redaction. In this case, the marked-up pages came without explanation.

This is the third time Nickles has used this redaction tactic.

Read More "Pershing Park Case: Peter Nickles Continues To Fight Discovery" »

In this morning's hearing in U.S. District Court, Judge Emmet Sullivan edged ever closer to referring the Pershing Park case to the Department of Justice---signaling he's close to handing the matter over to Attorney General Eric Holder.

But first, Sullivan wants to order up one more investigative tool at his disposal: some serious tech support.

Following up on the recommendations in the Sporkin Report, Sullivan ordered that he would hire a forensic examiner to investigate the missing and/or destroyed evidence in the case. He added that the examiner would be selected based on recommendations from both parties and would be paid for by the District.

It was unclear whether the forensic examiner would study both the missing running resume issue and the gaps in the radio tapes from the mass arrests in Pershing Park on Sept. 27, 2002.

"I think it should be someone appointed at the discretion of the court," Sullivan stated. "And the city is going to pay for it."

Read More "Pershing Park Case: Bring On The Forensic Examiner" »

For D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles, Pershing Park isn't over. Though the city's top lawyer had just settled a big lawsuit with 400 plaintiffs over the mass arrests that took place on Sept. 27, 2002, there is another, more stubborn suit sitting out there.

Attorneys in the Chang case represent just four plaintiffs. But these folks are serious: They were the first to file suit over Pershing Park in federal court, and they have already signaled that they won't be content with $18,000 bucks per plaintiff and a few stipulations that city lawyers will safeguard evidence in future cases.

Yesterday afternoon, Nickles met with the Chang principals in the hope of reaching a settlement. It was the first meeting between the parties, and Nickles had a lot riding on the outcome. If he could make a deal, he could save the District millions of dollars in attorney fees and court sanctions, and save his people from defending a tough set of facts at a trial scheduled to start in October 2010.

Could Nickles make Pershing Park go away for good?

No. The meeting was a brief one. Plaintiffs lawyer Jonathan Turley would not comment on the substance of the meeting but says a trial appears inevitable.

“It is unlikely that we will see a resolution of these issues without a trial and a verdict," Turley says. "We have assumed that a trial would occur in this case for years. All I can say is we continue to look forward to Oct. 2010, when we can put these witnesses and this evidence before a jury.�

Late last night, Turley and Co. filed a motion [PDF] in U.S. District Court that made their intentions all too clear.

Read More "Remaining Pershing Park Plaintiffs Amp Up Legal Case" »

On September 27, 2002, D.C. Police surrounded some 400 individuals in Pershing Park. Those individuals were rounded up without warning, arrested, and transferred to the police academy where they were hogtied for hours [See our Boss Hogtie cover story on the incident].

Sally Norton, a nurse in town for a conference at the nearby Marriott, had decided to check out the activity in the park on her walk back from breakfast with a colleague.

"It all looked very peaceful," she tells City Desk today. "We had about 10 minutes before the conference started. We went to leave...by then they had formed a perimeter and they wouldn’t let us leave. We pointed out that we are right here at the Marriott;  it didn’t matter. We tried about six or seven other places. Please let us leave. They either said we couldn’t leave or they didn’t speak to us."

Norton would be arrested and detained for 12 hours. John Passacantando, 48, says on that morning he had wandered into the park to perhaps catch a speaker or listen to some music. He ended up being arrested and hogtied---cuffed right wrist to left ankle---on a gym mat for 17 hours.

"This was literally for being in the park," Passacantando recalls. "I swore to myself that when I got out of there I would find the best lawyers in the land and do everything I could to make sure this didn’t happen to anyone else.... It was my duty to fight back."

Passacantando, Norton, and hundreds of other citizens sought out the Partnership for Civil Justice, a local law firm that specializes in civil rights cases. Today, after more than seven years of  litigation, the plaintiffs announced a settlement which includes an $8.25 million District payout and a series of stipulations concerning evidence storage that the Office of Attorney General must follow.

Norton and Passcantando say they are pleased with their case's resolution.

"I think good police officers see this all over the country and say, 'yeah we get it,'" Passacantando says. "D.C. made a big mistake that day."

Read More "Pershing Park Plaintiffs Speak Out On Settlement" »

After D.C. police mass-arrested about 400 people at Pershing Park on Sept. 27, 2002, they hog-tied their quarries, cuffing their right wrists to their left ankles. The restraint left the arrestees in painful, circulation-stopping positions.

Surely there was a good reason to treat these peaceful protesters and passersby like pork, right? Like, they were a threat to throw garbage cans through plate-glass windows. Or they were getting ready to storm the White House. Or perhaps they aspired to stop traffic.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The cops had a much more compelling motive---to stop the arrestees from feeling each other up, and fucking. Which, of course, is what invariably happens after a mass arrest.

This particular episode in the long-running program "Reality Beats Fiction" comes courtesy of Cathy Lanier, the current police chief who at the time of Pershing Park held a top position in the department. Lanier was among the police officials who helped devise hogtying as a form of protest suppression.

In an after-action report, a police official wrote up an interview with Lanier in which she allegedly stated that the technique "was used to prevent escape, protect the protesters from one another, and to prevent them from committing sexual acts with each other."

Lanier's flexi-cuffs-as-chastity-belt defense had long been a howler among the D.C. Council, a body that has investigated Pershing Park. What has made this less funny is that other officials chose to parrot her defense.

Read More "Cathy Lanier: Hogtying Detainees Prevented Mass Fornication" »

D.C. Police Union Chief Kristopher Baumann has reviewed Ret. Judge Stanley Sporkin's report on the missing and/or destroyed evidence in the Pershing Park case. Baumann says he has concluded that there can be only one next step: The case should be referred to the Department of Justice.

“There needs to be an independent prosecutor set up," Baumann says. There’s a host of potential criminal charges ranging from perjury to obstruction of justice. That’s just what we know….We don’t know that much. What we do know is terrible. What goes on past that is a question obviously someone needs to come in and tear this all apart.�

Read More "Police Union Chief Calls For DOJ To Investigate Pershing Park" »

Late last Friday, Ret. Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin's investigative report [PDF] on Pershing Park was made public. The long-awaited document totaled 18 pages and included findings based on interviews with 14 individuals. Legal Times declared the report's conclusions "fairly modest." The report found  no smoking gun, WaPo observed. After a quick read of the report, we found much to admire in its findings.

On closer inspection, the Sporkin Report includes startling new testimony and/or conflicting statements from witnesses. The report will surely not be the last word on the missing evidence.  Let's review.

Read More "Pershing Park Case: Sporkin Report Reviewed In Detail" »

Ret. Judge Stanley Sporkin's investigation into the missing and/or botched evidence in the Pershing Park case has been released. The 18-page report is not a whitewash as we  had speculated it would be (mea culpa, Judge Sporkin). While the judge failed to name names and definitively conclude what exactly happened to the running resume and the erased radio dispatches concerning the mass arrests on Sept. 27, 2002, the report has much to offer.

For too long, the Office of the Attorney General---and AG Peter Nickles---had downplayed the evidence problems in the Pershing Park cases. Sporkin does no such thing. He suggests that in the case of the now missing running resume that it may have been destroyed on purpose.

"I try to be as surgical as possible," Sporkin tells City Desk. "Just [follow] the facts where they are and at the end of it just look at them. Does it make sense?"

Sporkin says that the D.C. Police were willing participants in his endeavor. "There is nobody that didn't talk to me straight," he says, but added: "There's inconsistencies. What can I say?"

Read More "Pershing Park Case: Sporkin Report Released" »

The District today petitioned a federal judge to return control of the city's public school transportation system to local authorities.

According to today's filing, a "first class school transportation system" has been established under court administrator David Gilmore and "it is now time to return control of this function to the government elected by the citizens of the District of Columbia."

Attorney General Peter Nickles has made it a top priority to remove court oversight from numerous District government agencies---mental health, child welfare, and special education, to name a few. Some haven't been under full local control in decades.

The court oversight of DCPS transportation is relatively young, dating back only to 2003, but the oversight has been complete.

Read More "D.C. Moves to Retake Control of School Buses by July" »

Today, Abdul Karim Khanu was found guilty in federal court of tax evasion. Khanu, 42, had been a prominent nightclub owner. At one point, he operated DC Live, Platinum, and H2O. Now, he is facing a maximum of 10 year prison term.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office:

"Khanu owned and operated two nightclubs on F Street in the District, named DC Live (and later VIP) and Platinum, from at least 2000 through 2003. Khanu skimmed millions of dollars in cash from these clubs to pay employees wages in cash, and for his personal use."

When law enforcement raided Khanu's Potomac home, they found $1.9 million in cash as well as "a double set of books and records."