Jessica Nelson and Philemon Ellis were killed
instantly when a car driven by Eddy Bustos blind-sided them at an intersection
in Ogden, Utah. Bustos, who was trying to elude a police officer, plowed his
vehicle into Nelson’s car at nearly 80 miles per hour.
Bustos would be sent to prison for manslaughter. Ogden City
officials would quite thoughtfully find a way to cut the victims in for a share
of the blame for the incident as a way of insulating themselves from liability
for the actions of Officer Matt Jones, whose unnecessary pursuit led to the
crash.
Jones, who has involved in police surveillance of a “known
gang member” at what was called a “known gang/drugs/weapons hangout,” gave pursuit
when Bustos left the area – apparently on the assumption that his presence in
the area created reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. A
federal court ruling notes that Jones “was aware of the residential address
of Mr. Bustos and could have waited at that address to arrest Mr. Bustos for
any crimes he may have committed.” Thus no exigent circumstances existed to
justify pursuing Bustos, which is why “the officers were advised and ordered by
dispatch to disengage from the pursuit.”
It was later discovered Bustos
was driving while intoxicated. Officer Jones was under the influence of an
even deadlier narcotic – a cocktail of adrenaline and power lust – as he blew
through five stop lights, ignoring an order to terminate the chase. After being ordered to stop a second time,
Jones turned off his siren and running lights and ceased pursuit. A few seconds
later, Bustos collided with Nelson’s vehicle.
Two years after the fatal car crash, Bustos pleaded guilty to
two counts of vehicular manslaughter and is currently serving a potential
thirty-year prison term. By the time Bustos was sent to prison, Ogden’s ruling
political clique and the police force that serves it had already dealt with the
problem posed by Officer Jones, who was, in effect, Bustos’s accomplice.
Although Jones’s actions met the criteria for a charge of automobile homicide –
which involves causing “the death of another person” while operating a vehicle “in
a criminally negligent manner” – he was not prosecuted or disciplined for that
offense. Instead, he was purged from the force because he had become an
irritant to the mayor and police chief.
On July 27, 2006, about eight months after the deaths of
Nelson and Ellis, Jones was put on paid administrative leave after then-Mayor
Matthew Godfrey complained about the officer’s involvement in a police protest
over the city’s new pay policy. The new guidelines included a ticket quota
as one of the 18 criteria for pay increases. Jones and other members of the
Ogden Police Benefit Association – the local police union – had rented a moving
van and decorated it with a banner reading: “Welcome to Ogden City, home of
Godfrey’s ticket quota. If you disagree, call your city councilman.”
It’s important to understand that the police union was not taking a principled stand in
opposition to the ticket quota; those officers certainly understood that
extorting money at gunpoint was the most important element of their job. The
officers involved in that protest were seeking an increase in pay and benefits
without the imposition of performance criteria, and they were cynically
exploiting public disgust over the ticket quota to that end.
Godfrey saw the van outside the Ogden Municipal Building.
Noting that the person behind the wheel was a female who wasn’t a member of the
Ogden PD, the Mayor lurked in the driveway long enough to see the driver picked
up by a police officer he recognized on sight but whose name he didn’t know. He
took down the license plate number of the officer’s car and called
then-Chief Jon Grenier to demand that something be
done. The Chief contacted a dispatcher and ran the license plate number. One
hour later, a police lieutenant was knocking on Jones’s door to present him
with notice that he was on administrative leave.
It’s worth noting that Jones faced no discipline for his
actions in precipitating a fatal car crash. The death of two Mundanes was scarcely
worth notice. But criticizing the Mayor and confirming the existence of a ticket
quota were firing offenses – and, sure enough, Jones’s paid vacation led to termination
the following January.
When the internal investigation began, Jones insisted that
he would not be treated fairly – and interesting assessment of the integrity of
the department that employed him. After he was fired, Jones told the media that
he was the victim of official retaliation, which
is almost certainly the case. The Ogden PD replied to that criticism by
publicizing the fact that Jones had failed a lie-detector test (a
finding not admissible in court) concerning the theft of two wallets from
“undocumented immigrants” who had been the subject of traffic stops.
According to the department, the internal affairs
investigation “demonstrated that Jones fit the description of the officer
involved in the two thefts, that he was in the vicinity when the thefts
occurred, that Jones had a pattern of targeting Hispanics, and that Jones had a
pattern of manipulating and misrepresenting information about his activities
and whereabouts on the job, thereby creating blocks of free time during which
he was unaccountable to his employer.”
All of this may very well be true, but it doesn’t address
some salient questions: Why didn’t Jones come under scrutiny until after
he had offended the Mayor and Chief of Police by
criticizing the ticket quota? Why didn’t the department investigate the
possibility that Jones was profiling and shaking down Hispanics immediately after
he had illegally pursued a Hispanic driver in an unnecessary car chase that led
to the death of two innocent people?
Six months after Jones was fired by the Ogden PD, he was decertified by the Utah POST Council, which
found that he had engaged in a “pattern of misconduct,” “sexual misconduct with
a co-worker,” and general dishonesty. In
2011, Jones and another former police officer named
Daniel Kotter were found guilty of trying to bribe a Utah Highway Patrol
Officer who had arrested Jones for drunken driving.
By this time, Ogden’s municipal government would have forgotten
about Matt Jones – but for the fact that he figured prominently in lawsuits
filed on behalf of the families of Jessica Nelson and
Philemon Ellis, who had died because of Jones’s actions.
The suit filed by Ellis’s family was quickly dismissed. The
suit filed on behalf of Nelson’s daughter, who was 18 months old when her
mother was killed, went to trial. The legal team defending the city persuaded the
trial judge to exclude evidence regarding the reasons for Jones’s termination –
that is, dishonesty, official misconduct, and criminal behavior that included
preying on vulnerable Hispanics like Eddy Bustos. That evidence was of obvious
and urgent relevance, but it was deemed inadmissible.
Robert Sykes, the attorney representing Jessica Nelson’s
family, filed a motion in limine
prohibiting the City from trawling through the personal backgrounds of the victims.
The trial judge responded by granting that motion – and then proceeding to
ignore it as attorney Heather White, acting on behalf of the City of Odgen,
fired a fusillade of greasy insinuations about the character and activities of
both Jessica Nelson and Philemon Ellis.
In her questioning of Theresa Nelson, Jessica’s mother,
White insinuated that Jessica was a drug-addicted prostitute and that Ellis – a
family friend – was among her clients. At one point White simply disregarded
the order in limine outright and asked the grieving mother: “Did you know that
[Ellis] had a criminal history dealing with prostitution?”
This prompted Sykes to object that “[Mr.] Ellis is dead, and
his history has nothing to do with this, and [White is] trying to besmirch
Jessica Nelson by using this improperly, and she knows it.”
For what little it was worth, the trial judge upheld that
objection, but White’s tactic had the desired effect: It placed the onus on the
victims to explain why they were at an intersection at 3:00 a.m., rather than
on the City of Ogden to defend the criminal actions of the disgraced police officer
who had helped bring about their deaths. The jury played the expected role of
upholding the city government’s claim that both Jones and the political junta that
employed him were shielded by “sovereign immunity.”
“According to our laws and social values, prostitutes are
criminals who should be punished, not rewarded with a verdict,” Sykes pointed
out in a motion for a new trial. “There is a reasonable likelihood that the
jury would have viewed the evidence in favor of Plaintiff’s case more favorably
had [the City of Ogden] not planted the seed, without any basis, that Jessica
and her passenger were involved in criminal activity” (which would have been
more accurately described as consensual indulgence in vice, assuming any such
activity occurred).
The Utah Supreme Court agreed, ruling that Jessica Nelson’s
“presence in the intersection was tragic and random. What she was doing in the
intersection was irrelevant, what she had been doing that night was irrelevant,
and any prior life history of either Jessica or Mr. Ellis was irrelevant. The
questioning therefore … served only to prejudice the jury.” Attorney Heather
White, the court observed, “surrendered, without resistance, to the impulse to
win her case by bludgeoning the character of the dead.”
Those who belong to the political class assume that their
natural and proper role is that of the accuser or the prosecutor, never the defendant. In the case of
Nelson and Ellis, the Ogden political clique demanded that the long-dead
defendants explain their actions, thereby inviting a credulous jury to make
unwarranted and irrelevant inferences.
This same mindset is at work in the Regime’s defense of
drone strikes overseas in which dozens or hundreds of innocent people are
killed – or in the notorious “Collateral Murder” video in which a
US helicopter pilot who had just committed a war crime derisively blames the
Iraqi victims for “bringing kids into a battle.”
Both at home and abroad, the Regime’s armed emissaries are
adept at the use of the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy” – essentially, shooting
first and drawing a bull’s-eye around the bullet hole. This is how the people
in charge of the “targeted killing program” can claim that drone strikes are a
practically infallible method of killing militants: They simply redefine all “military-age”
males (those at least 14 years of age) in a targeted zone as suspected “militants.”
A similar method is used by police who seek to justify
patently indefensible shootings: The officer perceived a “threat” on the part
of the poor schlep up was holding a garden
hose, or a
pair of underwear, or a cellphone,
to kill whenever they consider themselves at risk, which is why pants-wetting
cowardice is a job qualification, rather than a liability, for police “work.”
In some police homicides – such as the deaths of Nelson and
Ellis -- the claim of “officer safety” makes a poor fit. Thus the only suitable
tactic is to do what Heather White did: Traduce the character of the dead victims
in an attempt to convince the jury that they must have been guilty of something.
Although White’s assault on the memory of Nelson and Ellis happened
several years ago, the tactic she employed acquires new relevance in light of
recent revelations regarding the Regime’s omnivorous surveillance program.
The Regime and those who serve it have insisted that
the NSA’s eavesdropping activities are benign because they “only” involve the
collection of “metadata,” rather than content. Leaving aside the fact that this
is a lie, the Regime’s collection of metadata is a totalitarian exercise.
Through metadata analysis it is
possible to extrapolate a detailed account of any individual’s daily
life, his acquaintances, his habits, and his vulnerabilities.
As Harvey Silverglate points out, each of us commits at least
three acts each day that could be described as felonies by any reasonably
ambitious prosecutor. By using
NSA-provided metadata to conduct a “pattern of life” analysis of a targeted
individual, law enforcement agencies could probably contrive an excuse to
arrest practically anybody at any time. This capacity will dramatically expand
opportunities for official retaliation against Mundanes who seek redress for
abuses committed by police – including family members of deceased victims.
Bad as things are in this respect right now, it will get
much worse, very soon.
Dum spiro, pugno!
Dum spiro, pugno!
11 comments:
This case and many other similar cases reveals the transition of this Country from individual sovereignty to government tyranny. The police, prosecutors and courts are not providing "justice" for the individual, they are enforcing the illegal acts of government agencies. Taxpayers/citizens must quit paying for this abuse of power and demand that violators and supervisors be fired.
High speed pursuit makes for great TV but really
fucked-up reality.
These guys are all buck'n for an episode on Cops
while creating a deadly nuisance for the rest of us.
Recently here near Houston an innocent was killed
by two young women fleeing police after having
shoplifted from a nearby mall.
Who is really at fault? Reckless police policy or
the panic stricken suspects (who were minors.)
In either case, was it worth the life of the loving
Mother who was killed?
(Hint: these are rhetorical questions.)
Oh, and by the way...
Interesting that I describe the victim above as a
"loving mother," but I don't have access to her "secret"
dossier as will the State's attny when this case comes
to civil trial.
Your title put a thought into my mind, just to contemplate. What if the state's job was to defend it's masters (citizens) when they are accused and prosecution could come only from private individuals who suffered loss. Why would such a reversal of roles be any problem? Of course, begging the question that the servant, the state, should have any such role at all. -- An intriguing thought.
I was going to refer to these slimeballs in policemen's customes as Pigs, except that it would be a horrible insult.
To the pigs, that is.
Another solid post, Will.
@ Bob,
Try getting one to do something useful like look for truffles ;^)
I started calling my best landrace sow, "Fine Swine"
which is totally unfair as she's a plump, sweet natured and highly productive individual... no human can make bacon like she can(and I wouldn't eat it if they tried!)
Calling our steroid enhanced fatties in blue, "thugs" is probably offensive too. It would take a terminally dumb private sector gangster to employ such narcissistically arrogant, trigger happy, cowardly, unreliable and ill disciplined bunch.
Will,
Many thanks for your insight on the likely use of spying dossiers as well poisoning/ ad hominem etc material in courts and the media.
Friends have already pointed out the potential for spying data being used to blackmail judges and defense lawyers (as though the prospect of state salaries and promotion to state judge in state monopoly court, weren't corrupting enough!).
It says little of a judge and the jurors, that they swallowed a combination of some of the most basic logical fallacies. State education has done its job well.
So I suppose, using Ogden logic, that prostitutes deserve to die without question no matter the hour or location. Especially if official vermin are involved in it.
'The officer perceived a “threat”'
I'm thinking "perceived" is actually "assumed" or "imagined".
Those guys are indoctrinated to assume that *everything* is a lethal threat. No sense loading them with the burden of rational thought. :/
Off topic, but I'm really looking forward to your post about double jeopardy vis a vis the Zimmerman verdict.
Trayvon,
Trayvon likes his skittles
And he got the best of George,
Until George used his rights
His rights to self-defense
And gun shots, gun shots from his gun
Yeah he carried like he could....
PS: He was getting the best of him.
Where was the ref? Who was going to break this up?
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