Brickbats: October 2024

Darien Harris spent 12 years in prison for murder but was freed in December 2023 after it was discovered an eyewitness against him was legally blind. Court records show the witness denied under oath that he had vision problems, but he had advanced glaucoma and had been declared legally blind nine years earlier. A second eyewitness denied Harris was the shooter.

Kansas state law requires counties to destroy their ballots after elections. But Johnson County held off when Sheriff Calvin Hayden claimed to have a warrant authorizing him to seize the ballots as part of a five-year investigation into election fraud. When the elections office never received that warrant, it destroyed the ballots, leading Hayden to accuse it of destroying evidence. Hayden later admitted that no judge had signed his warrant; when it was pointed out that a judge must sign a warrant for it to be valid, Hayden replied, “I didn’t say it was valid.” In July, Hayden announced that he had suspended his investigation.

New York City sheriffs raided and closed several stores and bars for violating COVID-19 shutdown orders. A group of sheriffs then created a “man cave” at a city storage facility stocked with alcohol and tobacco products seized from shuttered businesses. They reportedly even blocked off the security cameras so they could drink and smoke there. Officials say 12 sheriffs were suspended for 30 days without pay but would not release any names.

Two Pennsylvania men who run a business helping dairy farmers manage their cows’ pregnancies spent almost 30 days in jail for contempt of court. The State Board of Veterinary Medicine claimed the men failed to respond to a subpoena for records relating to their use of ultrasound to perform pregnancy checks on cows; the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association has filed multiple complaints claiming that the use of ultrasound means the men are engaging in the unlicensed practice of veterinary medicine.

Police in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, arrested Jeff Adams for driving under the influence (DUI) in 2023. Adams asked for but was not given a Breathalyzer test at the scene. Lab tests later showed Adams was not intoxicated, but that took four months. Meanwhile, he was suspended as an Uber driver, and while he did not lose his day job as a teacher, he fears the arrest hurt his reputation. A local TV station found that police departments throughout the region have arrested sober people for DUIs; many drivers ask for but do not get Breathalyzer tests because departments don’t use them, and it can take up to eight months to get alcohol tests back.

In 2022, San Francisco fireman Robert Muhammad threatened fellow firefighter Gabriel Shin for refusing to reveal who was talking about Muhammad’s personal business at work. He used a work computer to find Shin’s home address, then took a hydrant wrench to Shin’s house and repeatedly hit him with it, leaving Shin with broken arms and a concussion. Shin sued the department, but Muhammad was allowed to remain on the job, and Shin said supervisors have asked him to drop the lawsuit and not cooperate with the criminal investigation.

Ceci Flores searches for the bodies of people who have disappeared and are presumed to have been kidnapped and murdered, often looking where drug cartels are known to dump people. Mexican officials have repeatedly criticized her efforts: Her success at finding bodies undercuts the government’s claims to be searching and its efforts to downplay the scope of violence in the country. After one recent find, prosecutors claimed Flores had found dog bones before admitting they were human remains.

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