Flake The Trial Of A Cop

A New York City police lieutenant is facing trial for attempted murder of a prostitute he shot while off duty. The Police Department has proclaimed him a hero who justly defended himself when he was attacked by two hookers with a knife. He is being prosecuted by a young Manhattan assistant D.A. newly assigned the case for trial. The shooting happened four years earlier, when the prosecutor was still in law school, and no one in the D.A.s Office has brought it to trial in all that time. It falls to him to try to penetrate the cover-up and prove that the police framed the two hookers with phony robbery charges and planted a knife at the scene to protect the lieutenant. This would present a daunting challenge for even a veteran trial advocate, much less a lawyer of limited experience. Reminiscent of prosecutor Vincent Bugliosis account of the Charlie Manson case in "Helter Skelter," "Flake" is as real as a true-crime story can get. You the reader sit at the prosecutors table in the Manhattan courthouse as the young but resourceful prosecutor takes on the challenge of going up "against" the police, usually a prosecutors ally in battling crime. You are in on his stratagems - indeed his very thoughts - as he engages in courtroom combat against the cop and his highly experienced defense lawyer. Woven throughout are connections to the Watergate scandal, the N.Y.C. Knapp Commission investigation into police corruption, the shameful Kitty Genovese episode which led to New York being labeled a city of people who didnt care. With a mid-1970s Manhattan backdrop, "Flake" grapples with the centuries-old quandary which continues to challenge our criminal justice system and our society as a whole: Whopolices the police?

A New York City police lieutenant is facing trial for attempted murder of a prostitute he shot while off duty. The Police Department has proclaimed him a hero who justly defended himself when he was attacked by two hookers with a knife. He is being prosecuted by a young Manhattan assistant D.A. newly assigned the case for trial. The shooting happened four years earlier, when the prosecutor was still in law school, and no one in the D.A.´s Office has brought it to trial in all that time. It falls to him to try to penetrate the cover-up and prove that the police framed the two hookers with phony robbery charges and planted a knife at the scene to protect the lieutenant. This would present a daunting challenge for even a veteran trial advocate, much less a lawyer of limited experience. Reminiscent of prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi´s account of the Charlie Manson case in Helter Skelter, Flake is as real as a true-crime story can get. You the reader sit at the prosecutor´s table in the Manhattan courthouse as the young but resourceful prosecutor takes on the challenge of going up against the police, usually a prosecutor´s ally in battling crime. You are in on his stratagems - indeed his very thoughts - as he engages in courtroom combat against the cop and his highly experienced defense lawyer. Woven throughout are connections to the Watergate scandal, the N.Y.C. Knapp Commission investigation into police corruption, the shameful Kitty Genovese episode which led to New York being labeled a city of people who didn´t care. With a mid-1970s Manhattan backdrop, Flake grapples with the centuries-old quandary which continues to challenge our criminal justice system and our society as a whole: Who polices the police?

The true story behind Audre Lorde's 1975 poem "Power"--a masterly, gripping and true account of the tragedy of the early-morning shooting of a child and the trial of a policeman for murder that followed. Was it a case of mistaken identity or race hatred--or both? It happened on the morning of Saturday, April 28, 1973, in Queens, New York, at around 5:00 a.m. In the pre-dawn dark, ten-year-old Clifford Glover was walking with his stepfather, Add Armstead, toward the auto salvage yard where Armstead worked, as they did most Saturdays. Patrolman Thomas Shea and his partner, Walter Scott, drove by in an unmarked car. The cops were on the lookout for a pair of armed robbers dressed similarly to Clifford Glover and Add Armstead, and stopped to give chase. The child and his stepfather, who was carrying his wages from the day before, ran, afraid they were going to be robbed. Shots were fired. Armstead flagged down a passing patrol car, not realizing that Clifford was lying on the ground, mortally wounded, the gun that killed him still in the hand of Patrolman Shea, who would become the first New York City cop in fifty years to be charged with committing murder while on duty. A policeman who shot down a ten year old in Queensstood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish bloodand a voice said "Die you little motherfucker" and there are tapes to prove it. (from "Power" by Audre Lorde)

Excerpt from Chapter One: All Tanenbaum said was “And then what happened, Eddie?” He appeared to enter some weirdly hypnotic, catatonic trance—his already breathy voice became monotonal, his eyes glazed over, his face drained of expression—and he went on and on and on. “She said, ‘Wait until your mother hears this; this is going to break her heart.’ And I said, ‘Please don’t tell my mother, Sherrald; please don’t tell my mother, Sherrald; please don’t tell my mother.’” And while Eddie Hurdle continued to mouth that refrain, “please don’t tell my mother,” both of his hands gripped an imaginary knife and repeatedly, metronomically, plunged it down and raised it up and plunged it down and raised it up, over and over and over again. The three observers—Davin, Tanenbaum, and the stenotypist—sat in stunned silence as Eddie Hurdle reenacted his crime. * * * * “Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out,” wrote playwright John Webster in 1623, and our fascination with murder and murder trials has continued unabated to the present. Murder is, after all, the most dramatically unlawful thing a person can do to another. It runs counter to the very fundaments of human society, breaching what social philosophers have termed the social contract. Society speaks with its firmest voice in addressing the conduct of its members who kill another, and murder prosecutions have the direst of consequences of any court proceeding, as they may occasion the loss of a violator’s liberty for life or even the loss of his or her life itself. But most murder cases, while fascinating in the motives or personalities of the killers or the circumstances of the killings and the ensuing trials, receive little attention and recede into ordinariness. Only rarely does a murder case become a cause célèbre, notorious enough to capture wide attention; the O. J. Simpson–, Scott Peterson–, Claus von Bülow–type cases prove the exception rather than the rule. For the most part, the public’s perception of garden-variety murder trials quickly becomes only memory’s ashes strewn sparsely on the fields of public awareness. Brought to life by the prosecutor who tried the six “everyday murders” narrated here, three in Manhattan and three in San Francisco, these true stories prove redolent with drama, encapsulating raw human emotions that often impel man to murder—greed, lust, jealousy, hatred, as well as mere folly—and actually are quite extraordinary in their own context. Sit at the prosecution’s table with masterful prosecutor Hugh Anthony Levine as he represents the People of the State of New York or the People of the State of California in the trials of some everyday murders.

Recounts the story of the only New York City police officer ever executed for murder, describing his role in a network of early twentieth-century police graft and political corruption, documenting his multiple trials and convictions, and evaluating the probability that he was actually innocent of the crime for which he was sentenced to death.

From the knowledgeable perspective of 25 years as a criminal lawyer (mostly appeals like murder, rape, robbery, etc.), a former co-editor of Gilbert's Criminal Law & Procedure, and a free lance writer for over a decade, the author writes incisively about the remorseless cop killer described by America's newspaper of record as: "Perhaps the best known Death-Row prisoner in the world." (Page 1, New York Times, Dec. 19, 2001, the day after a federal court nullified a racially mixed jury's July 3, 1982 unanimous sentence of death.) Mumia Abu Jamal - The Patron Saint of American Cop Killers exposes the Hollywood backed "Free Mumia! Free All Political Prisoners!" movement's claims of "racism" in jury selection, "police frame-up," and "police intimidation of defense witnesses" as a transparent fraud. With the same precision and insight he devoted to a three part article in the East Hampton Independent (and the Southampton Independent) on the tragic carbon monoxide death of his friend, tennis star, and CBS TV commentator, Vitas Gerulaitis, Hayden takes the reader through the pre-trial, trial, and absurdly lengthy post conviction proceedings. Now that the chances of the cop hating ex Black Panther ever being executed for killing a 25 year old cop are about the same as his chances of ever being found "innocent," Hayden predicts that the middle aged Death-Row prisoner will, like Dr. Martin Luther King's cowardly assassin, racist James Earl Ray, die of old age in a 6 X 9 steel cage in a super max prison somewhere in rural America.

They call California the Granola State — a place where every inhabitant is a fruit, a flake, or a nut. They don’t get any fruitier, flakier, or nuttier than the deviants, crackpots, and losers profiled in “California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts.” A freewheeling catalog of misfits, eccentrics, creeps, criminals, and failed dreamers, “California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts” profiles 45 bizarre personalities who exemplify the Golden State’s well-deserved reputation for nonconformity. “California Fruits, Flakes and Nuts” tells the history that gets cleaned out of respectable history books. In these pages, Gold Rush pioneers are revealed as murderous madmen; Hollywood celebrities are shown to be drug-addled sex maniacs; early hippies are just 1950s weirdos; and even seemingly ordinary Californians have a talent for freakish, crazy, and criminal behavior. From frontier lunatic Grizzly Adams (whose head was one massive wound after multiple bear attacks) to “I Love Lucy” star William Frawley (a racist, misogynist, foul-mouthed drunk) to legendarily awful film director Ed Wood and many more nutjobs and oddballs , “California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts” is a side-splitting look at the people who made California the strangest place on earth.

Few people experience life inside of prison. Even fewer are charged with the formidable responsibility of deciding whether inmates should be released. In his twenty-four years on the Rhode Island Parole Board, Frederic G. Reamer has judged the fates of thousands of inmates, deciding which are ready to reenter society and which are not. It is a complicated choice that balances injury to victims and their families against an offender's capacity for transformation. With rich retellings of criminal cases—some banal, some brutal—On the Parole Board is a singular book that explains from an insider's perspective how a variety of factors play into the board's decisions: the ongoing effect on victims and their loved ones, the life histories of offenders, the circumstances of the crimes, and the powerful and often extraordinary displays of forgiveness and remorse. Pulling back the curtain on a process largely shrouded in mystery, Reamer lays bare the thorny philosophical issues of crime and justice and their staggering consequences for inmates, victims, and the public at large. Reamer and his colleagues often hope, despite encountering behavior at its worst, that criminals who have made horrible mistakes have the capacity for redemption. Yet that hope must be tempered with a realistic appraisal of risk, given the potentially grave consequences of releasing an inmate who may commit a future crime. This book will appeal to anyone interested in the complexities of the criminal justice system, the need to correct its injustices, and the challenges of those who must decide when justice has been served.