Case Dismissed !!!
The BatBlog is happy to report that the lady whose story about her arrest in the Jan. 30 edition of the BatBlog CLICK HERE has received notice from the Clark Co. prosecutor's office that her case has been dismissed without prejudice by the State of Indiana. The charges of possession of a controlled substance (2) counts that was dismissed, were prescription medications which several had fallen into her purse and were not in their original bottles.
While this middle aged lady MAYBE was technically in the wrong, she tried to explain her situation to the officers who still arrested her and took her to the Clark Co. jail. Her automobile was impounded and she spent 5 hours in the C.C. jail.
As reported earlier by the BatBlog after going to court Judge Weber appeared to originally lean towards dismissing the case as the defendant told him she had documentation from her doctors of the prescriptions, but the prosecutor objected and asked for the case to be continued (later this month) in order for the arresting officers to appear. The continuance and charges were dismissed in the letter she received today from the C.C. prosecutor's office.
While the outcome was a relief to the woman charged and ultimately the right thing was done in this case , it still raises several disturbing concerns to the BatBlog. First it's total BS that this woman was arrested at all, she was up front and honest, explained the situation but was ultimately traumatized. Having never been to jail or had so much as a parking ticket, the embarrassment and the trauma of being jailed plus the added financial burden of recovering her impounded car is not how honest citizens should be treated.
It appears to the BatBlog this was a case of over zealous possibly poorly trained county officers and a court and prosecutor that at least in this case was severely inept. An absolute funny thing about this whole thing is that neither the prosecutor or the judge even bothered to look at the documentation the lady went to the trouble to gather, to verify her prescriptions. She told them she had it (which she did) but they never even looked at the evidence to prove innocence or guilt.
Hopefully this is just an isolated case, because if our whole law enforcement and judicial system is run like this every day it is truly a comedy of errors. As we said before there are enough real bad guys out there....let's harass them ...not the hard working taxpayers....
Remain Vigilant my Friends
The courts are a joke nothing ever gets decided just motions and delays. Crooks go free because lawyers keep pushing dates back and back till charges get dropped. A real circle jerk.
ReplyDeleteI still want to know who the officers were who arrested her.
ReplyDeleteGood job, BatBlog. Public scrunity of the case may have helped this woman.
ReplyDeleteAny chance she'll be compensated for the cost of impoundment?
I could get the officer's names but I won't print them. I don't want to have this woman harassed anymore than she already has been.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the BatBlog post had anything to do with the dismissal, but it was odd the way it was dismissed after another court date had been set.
Terrible injustice!
ReplyDeleteLet's hope these were county officers with little experience -- and an overzealous young prosecutor. Not sure what to say about the judge though -- he should have known better. I hope our newly elected prosecutor, Mr. Mull, reviewed this and put a stop to it. Maybe he read the Bat Blog!!
ReplyDeleteHoosier taxpayer blog saves the day again!
ReplyDeleteHopefully these cops get at least talked to about this. This was totally unnecessary and a honest citizen is out two hundred bucks and spent a night in jail over a BS arrest. Unbelievable...
ReplyDeleteLike I said, having validly prescribed drugs on your person isn't a crime just
ReplyDeletebecause its not in a 'bottle'. SMH.
Anonymous- this is not about an overzealous young prosecutor. This is about a deputy
ReplyDeleteprosecutor who DOES NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY to dismiss due to his boss's policy. I like
and respect Jeremy Mull in many ways, but he is wrong by having such a policy. Stuff
like this happens.
Second, the judge isn't supposed to conduct a 'trial' at the initial hearing.
What should have happened is that the deputy prosecutor should be empowered by his/her
boss to dismiss a case. Why hire a lawyer if you don't trust them to make such
decisions?
There still needs to be inquiry into why the police arrested this person. That has
not been answered. I add that the way she was arrested suggests something much more
was going on. What was it?
If this was just cops playing cowboy on a citizen, there should be a serious
check on it made by their boss.
That's my opinion anyway.
It would be awesome if an attorney would take a case for her Pro Bono. That is the problem with cases like this, no one dares go over this type of injustice! They really don't care that someone is out $200 or that they were traumatized, it is just another Case No. to them. I agree with HT about not revealing the arresting officers name. A lapse in judgment is no reason to condemn this officer or bring unnecessary harassment to him or his family. If he (or she) has any conscious I would hope they realized what they did was wrong.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Goliath for the most part, but I do not agree with letting deputy prosecutors dismiss cases without any oversight.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, anything from it after will fall back on Jeremy's head. I don't blame him for wanting to review cases before they are dismissed.
If the deputy prosecutor feels the case needs to be dropped, is it not possible to get with Jeremy before the initial hearing?
Welcome to the war on drugs. Common sense and what's right doesn't work into their agenda
ReplyDelete"I could get the officer's names but I won't print them. I don't want to have this woman harassed anymore than she already has been."
ReplyDeleteThat says a lot right there...
They pull up behind you and tailgate. At night you are blinded by the headlights. You become anxious, your palms sweat. You are a vulnerable person alone on the highway at night. The paranoid thinking begins. Do I meet the description of a wanted person? Oh my God! Do they think I'm drunk or impaired in some fashion. Has my tags expired, did someone remove my license plate!!! Then in your constant checking the rear view mirror it happens......you cross the dreaded center line. Then it begins, "have you been drinking tonight mam/sir? you crossed the center line several times". They ram sack your vehicle after you give them verbal permission to search your car. You fear that if you deny them permission it will only escalate and get worse. Your mind begins to think of all the countless possibilities of what may happen. Will they find a pill I dropped several years ago. What If my husband/son left marijuana in my car. I will go to jail, be stripped and humiliated. My picture will be on the internet! This happens thousands of times each day in 21st Century America. We as a people have allowed our freedoms to be eroded due initially to the War on Drugs and now the War on Terror. We once again need to stand up as a people and put an end to the loss of our rights and police state activities. It has become an outrage!
ReplyDelete