09-22-00

Dumb Crooks^TM

About 10:30am in the morning on August 16 we received a report of a bank robbery in progress. We arrived shortly after the robber left the scene and had a look at the surveillance video.

The criminal had no type of cover over her face, nothing to disguise her appearance. Since we had the suspect's face on camera, we alerted all officers to be on the lookout for the robber. We got a report about 3 hours later from a local used car dealership that the suspect was just in there buying a used vehicle with the money she stole from the bank.

Since she bought the car, the dealership had all the info they needed on her, including her home address and the name and address of her employer.

We visited her work place and, behold, she was at her workplace doing her job. She was even nice enough to have driven to work in the used car she bought with the stolen money.

A Burnaby man posing as a cop pulled over the wrong guy Monday while playing a grown-up game of cops and robbers.

It turned out he'd pulled over an off-duty Vancouver police officer who promptly arrested the wannabe Mountie.

The bizarre incident occurred at 1:30 a.m. in the 300-block of Duthie in Burnaby when a man in a 1993 Jeep Grande Cherokee, equipped with blue and white flashing lights, stopped Const. Dan O'Donovan. He wasn't sure why he'd been pulled over and became suspicious when the suspect didn't get out of his jeep.

O'Donovan approached the jeep and discovered a 36-year-old man wearing an RCMP T-shirt and a blue nylon jacket with RCMP shoulder flashes.

The man, who smelled of liquor, also had a police scanner.

Police found a fake handgun and more RCMP clothing at the man's home.

The suspect faces charges of impersonation of a police officer and driving with a blood-alcohol level above .08.

"We aren't sure what his intentions were," said Const. Phil Reid of the Burnaby RCMP, adding police are worried the man may have other victims.

“Sheriff” History

In England the office of sheriff existed before the Norman Conquest (1066). The separation of the ecclesiastical from the secular courts under William I the Conqueror left the sheriff supreme in the county and as president of its court. He convened and led military forces of the shire, executed all writs, and, for the first century after the Conquest, judged both criminal and civil cases. From the time of Henry II (reigned 1154-89), however, his jurisdiction was severely restricted as a result of the growing jurisdiction of the curia regis ("king's court"). His duty thereafter was to investigate allegations of crime from within his shire, to conduct a preliminary examination of the accused, to try lesser offenses, and to detain those accused of major crimes for the itinerant justices.

The new offices of coroner (first mentioned in 1194), of local constable (first mentioned in 1242), and of justices of the peace (first known in the 12th century as custodes pacis, "keepers of the peace") all took work and duties from the sheriffs. After the Tudor reorganization of local government in the 15th and 16th centuries, the office was largely ceremonial. English law was consolidated in the Sheriffs Act of 1877, however, under which sheriffs in all parts of England were assigned a unified set of duties. Sheriffs now attend at election petitions and are responsible for the execution of writs; they are liable for the safe custody of prisoners, and they act as returning officer at parliamentary elections. Until the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act of 1965, the sheriffs were also responsible for the execution of sentences of death.

In Scotland the sheriff, as a ministerial and judicial officer, appears in records from the 12th century, and, despite the later introduction of the office of justice of the peace, the sheriff has retained considerable powers. Sheriffs principal and sheriffs for the six sheriffdoms are appointed and removed by the crown on recommendation of the secretary of state for Scotland. The original jurisdiction of the Sheriff Court is exercised largely by sheriffs. In certain civil matters, appeal lies to the sheriff principal and through him to the Court of Session. The civil jurisdiction of the Sheriff Court extends to nearly all actions. Only grave crimes are excepted from the criminal jurisdiction of the Sheriff Court, these being tried by the High Court of Justiciary.

In Northern Ireland the sheriff and salaried undersheriff for a county are appointed by the governor. Their duties, similar to those in England, are set in the Sheriffs (Ireland) Act of 1920.

In the United States, the sheriff is ordinarily an elected public officer in his county, the chief executive officer, and an officer of the court, with a term usually of from two to four years. The deputy is appointed by the sheriff and is delegated duties. The sheriff and deputy are peace officers and thus have the power of police officers in the enforcement of criminal law. They may also assume some of the functions of the local police department and are empowered to call out the posse comitatus ("the force of the county," a summoning of private citizens to assist in maintaining peace). The sheriff's main judicial duties are the service and return of process and the execution of writs, particularly judgments by sale or distress. Although the sheriff is usually a salaried official, he is sometimes paid from fees, which, in populous counties, can be lucrative.

Legal Issues - Is Miranda Rule Constitutional?

The defendant was charged with the federal offenses of bank robbery, conspiracy to commit bank robbery, and using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. He was interrogated by federal agents who did not give the defendant the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona prior to questioning him.

Before trial , the defendant moved to suppress the statement he gave the agents, claiming that it was inadmissible because he had not been given Miranda warnings. The trial court agreed and ordered the statement suppressed.

The government appealed the suppression ruling to the Court of Appeals, contending that 18 U.S.C. Section 3501, which was passed by Congress in response to the Miranda decision, requires only that a statement be voluntary. Failure to give warnings prior to a confession does not, therefore, render the confession inadmissible.

The Court of Appeals agreed with the government’s interpretation of Section 3501 and reversed the trial court’s suppression of the defendant’s statement.

Section 3501 provides that, “In any criminal prosecution brought by the United States or by the District of Columbia, a confession...shall be admissible in evidence if it is voluntarily given.” The statute requires the trial judge to consider various factors, including whether the defendant was advised of certain rights, but concluded that, “the presence or absence of any of the...factors...need not be conclusive on the issue of a ‘voluntariness’ of the confession."

The defendant petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari to decide whether Section 3501 is a valid limitation on the Miranda holding, or whether it is an invalid attempt by Congress to modify a constitutional requirement statute.

Holding: before Miranda was decided, the admissibility of confessions was decided by evaluating the statement’s voluntariness. The voluntariness requirement was based on two constitutional rights; the right to be free from self-incrimination, and the right to due process.

Due process was the primary consideration, and cases determined “whether a defendant’s will was overborne” by the circumstances in which the confession was given. This inquiry continues to be relevant, but in recent years considerable weight also has been given to whether the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment was implicated in the interrogation process.

In Miranda, the Court noted its concern with the use of coercion to obtain confessions. Custodial interrogation “isolates and pressures the individual,” and that makes it difficult to discern whether a statement was voluntary or not. In such an environment, a suspect may not be “accorded his privilege under the Fifth Amendment ....not to be compelled to incriminate himself.”

In an effort to counter the coercion inherent in custodial interrogation, the Court. required “ concrete constitutional guidelines” in the form of warnings that must precede questioning. It is these “Miranda warnings” that Congress attempted to abandon when it passed Section 3501.

Congress’s enactment was effective only if the Miranda warnings were not constitutionally based. If they were grounded in the Constitution, no legislative enactment can change them.

The Miranda warning rule has been applied consistently to prosecutions in state courts. Only constitutional rules may be applied by the Supreme Court against state prosecutions, an indication that the Court considered the warnings to be constitutionally based despite language in some of its earlier opinions to the contrary.

While remedies for coercion other than the Miranda were not ruled out by the Court, it made clear that such remedies must be “at least as effective” as the warnings it prescribed. The alternative procedures set forth in Section 3501 are not an adequate substitute for pre-interrogation warnings.

The Miranda rule has been modified by the Court over time, but that fact alone does not mean that the rule is not constitutionally based. Constitutional rules often are modified, and no court announcing a general rule can foresee all of the ways in which it will be applied, or how it may need to be changed.

Although a different rule might be adopted today, the meaning and procedure of Miranda is well known and has become “embedded in routine police practice.” The cases following the Miranda decision “have reduced the impact of the...rule on legitimate law enforcement while reaffirming the decision’s core ruling that unwarned statements may not be used as evidence in the prosecution’s case in chief.”

While some voluntary statement may be excluded under the Miranda rule, a “totality of the circumstances“ approach like that in Section 3501 is more difficult for law enforcement officers to observe, and for courts to apply.

The Miranda rule is “a constitutional rule that Congress may not supersede legislatively.” To the extent that Section 3501 attempts to do that, it has no effect.

COMMENT: This important decision affirms not only the Miranda warnings requirement, but effectively prevents Congress from changing it. Despite the early negative reaction from law enforcement to Miranda, the rule is now perhaps the best-known requirement in constitutional criminal procedure, and one that results in the exclusion of very few confessions. In fact, some commentators have suggested that voluntariness is most easily established merely by showing that warnings were provided. Dickerson v.U.S.,120 S.Ct. 2326 (2000).

TLETS—Authorized Usage

There seems to be confusion and questions concerning who is authorized to receive data from the Texas Law Enforcement Telecommunications System and the data that can be retrieved from the various database systems. It seems many think city code enforcement is valid law enforcement business, cities that employ code enforcement personal to ticket owners of junk vehicles parked on vacant lots, dogcatchers and parking enforcement (revenue). Also, some administrators believe that their local law enforcement can run driver license checks and criminal history inquiries on prospective employees, as well as annual driver licenses check on current employees that operate city / county vehicles. Some also believe they are permitted to check firefighters, potential coaches, teachers or someone requesting a solicitor's permit, or providing a school system driver license information on a potential bus drivers via TLETS system. If your agency is conducting these types of record checks for city / county business, I would suggest your agency cease from these practices immediately. All agency administrators have signed a legal document (TLETS USER AGREEMENT) that outlines the specific policy. The second and third pages of this newsletter outlines Title 28 from the Federal Register. All users are reminded it is of prime concern the use of on-line telecommunications equipment to access the files for information that is not needed immediately and for which a turnaround of hours or days might be more than adequate. It is extremely important to insure that law enforcement activity of a critical nature has top priority and prompt access for the protection of the law enforcement officer's safety is our utmost priority.

Cyber Space

For those of you that have computers at home and use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, there is now a document that explains how to configure your home computer to access your WCSO e-mail.

Located in the M:\ or forms drive on the WCSO Server, it is accessible through Microsoft Word. Login onto the network, open Word, then choose File -> Open. Select the drop-down list and highlight the Forms drive. Double-click on the General folder, then open the document named “Accessing E-Mail from Home”. Print it out and take it home!

If you configure it as outlined, the system will retain a copy of the E-Mail on the WCSO server, so when you come to work, the mail is still there. You can only delete mail from a WCSO computer.

We keep pushing the dead-line a little further back, but the new Records Management Software is almost ready to be put into operation. A few more tweaks and changes and we’ll be ready!

Currently, the CRIS system has an easy acronym to remember, but the new system doesn’t. So...we need a good name.

Submit names for the new system to Cuff ‘N Stuff.

Some names we’ve already thought of:
REEMS “Reemus” (Records Management System).
WCED “Wacked” (Wise County Electronic Databases)
SWAT (Sequeled Web Accessed Transactions)
SQUIRREL (SeQuel Unified Informational Reporting, Records, and Event Logging)

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From the Chaplain - Marilyn Featherstone