Friday, August 12, 2011
A major portion of quality police investigation is no more than common sense and initiative. My favorite example of this principle is a follow-up investigation by my good friend Carl Blesch. Carl Blesch is one of the finest people I have ever known. Carl possesses exceptional intelligence, having spent two years at Duke University Law School (a school I could not have gotten into if my father gave them a new library) before simply walking away without a law degree.
Carl proceeded to embark on a career which rivals my own for sheer number of jobs, but far exceeds mine in breadth. Carl worked as a police officer and sheriff’s deputy, rising to the rank of captain, I believe, in Adams County. Tiring of that, he earned a degree and certification as a physician’s assistant, and at one point moved away from Colorado to practice that discipline full time, then returned here to work for local oncologists. Carl recently managed the community corrections section of the Division of Criminal Justice. He is currently the Chief Deputy Coroner in Jefferson County, an office he once ran as the elected coroner. Interspersed in this checkerboard career were three stints with the Jeffco D.A.s Office. (He is one of the former employees tied with me; the other is investigator Ray Kechter.) Suffice to say that Carl is a brilliant, if somewhat impatient, man whose intelligence, background, education, and character made his the finest criminal investigator I ever worked with. After all how many investigators can provide medical expertise, legal training, and law enforcement experience?
During one of the times when our employment with Jeffco overlapped (you would need a Venn diagram to truly chart those periods), Carl and I worked together a great deal, much to my, and the office’s benefit. I had screened a case involving a vehicular homicide. During rush hour one weeknight, the defendant had crossed a double yellow line to pass a line of cars, hitting an oncoming car head-on, and killing the driver, a married father of three. The defendant was not seriously injured. I cannot recall what the defendant’s blood alcohol was, but I do remember I was not satisfied with the investigation the police brought in. Many times police investigations of traffic accidents, even fatal ones, focus on the physical evidence such as the tire marks, vehicle damage, and blood test results, but neglect to properly investigate the human aspects. I have seen felony filings with literally hundreds of pages of calculations and diagrams of the accident scene, but less than a single page of witness statements. I think the filing investigator truly believes the case can be proven merely by his testimony about coefficients of friction and crush analysis. Trial lawyers, however, like live human beings on the witness stand.
When I screened this particular fatal accident I was reluctant to file the case the way it came in. I sought out my friend Carl to fill in the blanks. Technically this is not the D.A.’s investigators jobs. Initial police investigation should be done by the police agency, however, many times those agencies fail to do an adequate job. In this case I decided referring the investigation back to them would be fruitless so I asked Carl to pick up the slack.
In vehicular homicide and assault cases I like to try to reconstruct the defendant’s day. We can sometimes determine where the defendant was, who he was drinking with, and occasionally how much he had to drink. Carl was a master at this technique. For this vehicular homicide we had no idea where the defendant had been, or who he had been with. The on-scene investigation revealed nothing. Carl, applying common sense, went to the defendant’s workplace, this being a weekday. Booking information in the jail, and the interview by pre-trial services ordinarily contain employment information. Carl learned this defendant worked at a car dealership.
Everyone at the dealership remembered the day of the defendant’s accident. Other employees said the defendant had not worked that day, but they suspected he had spent the afternoon at their local hangout where the defendant was a regular. Carl went to the bar and found that the bartender indeed knew the defendant and remembered the day of the accident. In fact, this bartender was the one who had served the defendant. Despite his potential civil liability (or perhaps he was oblivious to it) the bartender was extremely cooperative. Carl asked what the defendant had to drink, and the bartender replied six beers. Carl asked bottles or draws, and the bartender told him draws. Carl ordered one of the same. When the bartender set the glass down, Carl took out his grease pencil and marked the exact spot where the beer ended and the foam began. He then poured out the beer, drove back to the office and put the glass on my desk. That was investigation.
These days, I think the internet can be mined for information. The Norwegian shooter had posted a manifesto on his website, for example. The media is always digging up information from people’s Facebook pages or other social networking sites. I have often asked the police to look online for a stalker’s Facebook page or to see if a domestic violence offender was on Twitter. Unfortunately, this does not yet seems to be standard police procedure. I don’t think it is laziness just the cops forget to think about it. Hopefully law enforcement will being to use this tool more frequently.
I noticed that the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is monitoring social networking sites seeking to glean information about potential problems as have manifested themselves in England. Perhaps those involved in this kind of research can try to make more forensic investigations, also.
People put all kinds of things on their Facebook page and Tweets. How many celebrities, who should know better, have gotten into trouble over this sort of thing? I imagine most people don’t much worry about who is reading what. Some defendants may seek to brag. Do stalkers write about their obsessions? And not only defendants. Law enforcement should check out the victims and even witnesses. The defense bar is I am sure. I know defense lawyers have brought D.A.s information which was embarrassing, or worse, about people the prosecution was relying upon to prove a case.
In this era of immediate communication and “look at me” culture, using all the tools available, even the relatively low-tech skills of just looking, might just supply the difference between conviction and acquittal.
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