CNN’s In Session is currently covering yet another TN trial of yet another police officer for reckless homicide (TN v Ronald Killings) of 11-year-old Lakeisha White.

Sidebar: I hope we won’t see the Serial ME in this trial. I have no doubt, if she does testify, she will deduce from the injuries to the victim that the manner of death was reckless homicide, not simply homicide.

In some respects the issues in this trial resemble those in last year’s NJ trial of State Trooper Robert Higbee, but in some important respects it’s very different. Among the important differences, which are likely to impact the jury’s verdict, are: 1) possible police misconduct in the investigation, 2) possible alcohol consumption by Det. Sgt. Killings and subsequent attempts to cover up the evidence (which the jury may not hear about) and failure to follow procedure, 3) the victim was a pedestrian, not in another vehicle, and 4) the race of both the victim and the officer (both were African American)

Let’s get race out of the way: it ought not to affect the jury’s verdict, but I’m not sure how any juror of any race could not take it into account. Every black victim of a police incident inevitably will raise questions in everyone’s mind: did the system treat the victim with the same respect it would have afforded a white victim?

Sidebar: An eye witness testified today that she saw the little girl’s body struck. She gestured in an arc and said it “floated” in the air. “It was like a rainbow, but the colors were her clothes.” A very sad memorial of a child’s death.

But the most important difference from the Trooper Higbee incident, in my non-lawyer’s opinion, is that the officer in this case was not operating by the book as he sped toward a crime scene, not before, during, or after his vehicle struck the child who was crossing the road. In the military I believe his behavior would have been called “dereliction of duty’; he would have been court-martialled. I feel a CID type of investigation in a police department should also find he violated police procedure.

Police Misconduct

Every citizen is justifiably outraged by police thuggery. Law enforcement authorities have to be trusted to protect us, not to harm us, or the legs will be kicked out from under our liberty. (It’s one of those Kantian categorical imperatives.)

Sidebar: By all accounts, Drew Peterson wouldn’t have been able to get away with abusing his wives, let alone murdering them, if he hadn’t been a police officer and if his colleagues hadn’t repeatedly covered up complaints against him. Peterson was a police thug.

In the Killings case, according to CNN, Officer Killings has been separately indicted for throwing away two liquor bottles he had in his car when he struck the child. The judge has excluded references to this fact in the current trial. (After the verdict, when the jury learns this, they’re going to be very, very angry that this was kept from them.)

In addition, Officer Killings was talking on his cell phone (not his police radio) while driving at high speed in the dark and apparently through a residential neighborhood. This alone—I believe—will convince the jury he was not in the act of performing his duties when he struck the child. This is an arrogant, reckless disregard of public safety. (Here in Illinois it’s illegal to talk on your cell phone, even if you’re stopped at a stop sign.)

Police Investigations

According to CNN, the prosecution is questioning the police investigation of the incident (ironically, since usually it’s the defense that does this). IMHO, police investigative techniques should be scrutinized in each and every crime. Not only should the pseudo-scientific CSI evidence be torn to shreds, but the motives of the investigators must be scrutinized.

In the Killings case, the prosecution seems to be hinting at a serious police cover-up. It reminds me of the Trooper Higbee case, in which the prosecution hinted that the officers who responded to the scene lied to the victims’ grandparents.

The difference between the two trials in this regard is the judge: in this trial the judge excluded the most important evidence of police cover-up (the issue of the liquor bottles); in the Higbee trial the judge did not exclude the testimony of the grandfather.

Admissible Evidence

I bet if you asked every former juror what frustrated them the most about their jury experience, it would be “what they didn’t tell us.”

The “rules of evidence” generally aren’t written by legislators (generally, but not always); the rules of evidence are established by common law and case law (the accumulation of centuries of courtroom practices). In America, a law-school textbook has become the Bible of evidence, even for the U. S. Supreme Court: John Henry Wigmore’s Evidence.

Our courts give incredible power to the lowliest, most-incompetent of judges—the power to admit or exclude evidence. By admitting junk science and innuendo into evidence, a judge can insure a conviction. By excluding exculpatory evidence, a judge can insure a conviction.

Sidebar: I’m not saying the judge in the Killings case is incompetent. In fact, this may be a case in which the law prohibits him from admitting evidence of a separate indictment. However, the jury is still suffering from a deficit of information. Why didn’t the state try Killings first on the minor charges?

Although the jury is called “the finder of fact,” the only facts they can find are ones the judge admits. So, it’s possible the Killings jury may find that—like Trooper Higbee—he was doing his duty. That would be a great injustice: he may have been drinking on duty, and his fellow cops may have helped him cover up this fact.