Johnston's family was angry that Howard was bringing the case to the grand jury, spokesman Hutchins said.
"The family of Kathryn Johnston is extremely unhappy and disappointed with today's turn of events. Mr. Howard's move today of pressing charges would effectively limit the scope of and the potential charges of a federal investigation, and borders on tampering with a federal investigation."
I have no idea whether this is actually the case or not, but it seems any enthusiasm for Howard's actions should probably be tempered. Sorry, I'll read the whole article next time before I hit "publish".
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Fulton County (GA) district attorney Paul Howard is seeking felony murder charges against at least one of the Atlanta police officers involved in the shooting of Kathryn Johnston in an overly zealous and thoroughly botched execution of a no-knock warrant last November.
This isn't the first time an officer has faced charges over this kind of thing, but it's really, really rare to see police called to account for the collateral damage in the war on drugs.
Particularly galling are the comments of the officer's defense attorney:
Csehy conceded his client may have made mistakes, but he said Junnier didn't commit murder. "There was no malfeasance here. It was sloppy police work," Csehy said. "It was cutting corners."
Per Dictionary.com:
mal·fea·sance – the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law; wrongdoing (used esp. of an act in violation of a public trust).
Maybe I'm just a cop-hating bleeding heart, but I'm pretty sure that "sloppy police work" that leads to barging into an old woman's home unannounced with guns drawn and her ending up dead might qualify.
3 comments:
i dont know what powers of discretion cops have, but although it looks wrong to you and i, he may have been within his powers to make that judgement call.
i cant say something illegal was done. and this is the scary part.
It would be tragic if this was the first time this has happened, but it's happened so many times now that the continued use of no-knock warrants is criminal.
We had a minister die of a heart attack during a botched no-knock a couple of years ago... Idiotic.
Kal is right...the real problem is that no-knocks are pretty much standard practice for serving almost any drug-related warrant now. And innocent people die. Click on that link to The Agitator and just keep scrolling...
The criminality in this case isn't that the cops fired back when fired upon, but rather every sloppy thing they did leading up to that situation.
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