Former San Francisco California Transit Police Officer Johannes Mehserle, Who Still Claims He Didn’t Know The Difference Between His Taser Weapon And Pistol, Files Appeal To Overturn Manslaughter Conviction After Tiny Slap On The Wrist For Killing Unarmed Man

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – Johannes Mehserle, a former San Francisco Bay Area transit police officer, is appealing his involuntary manslaughter conviction for the killing of 22-year-old Oscar Grant in Oakland.

The move has deeply angered Grant’s family, who say the appeal is an attempt for Mehserle to clear his name so that he can become a police officer again.

“I’m here to denounce his attempt to clear his record. He committed such gross negligence that he should not be allowed back on the streets to protect and serve again,” said Grant’s mother Wanda Johnson at a news conference Friday in Oakland.

The appeal to overturn the conviction was filed this week and argued during a court hearing on Wednesday, according to Michael Rains, Mehserle’s defense attorney. The appeal questioned some of the evidence and instructions that were given to the jury at Mehserle’s 2010 trial.

The three-judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco could make a decision on the appeal in 90 days.

Mehserle was accused of fatally shooting Grant on New Year’s Day 2009 on a platform of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station. Mehserle said at the trial that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun.

He was sentenced to two years in prison for the involuntary manslaughter conviction, but was released last year because of a California law that allowed him to reduce his sentence to nearly a year.

Grant’s family members said they were also angry that they were not informed about the court hearing.

“We’re angered. We are hurt,” said Cephus Johnson, Grant’s uncle. “We were denied our right to be at this hearing. We applied to be informed about any hearing that pertained to Johannes Mehserle. This proceeding is an example of shutting victims out of the process. The family is outraged.”

This case has been controversial in California’s Bay Area community for years. The 2009 shooting was captured on a bystander’s cellphone video camera. The video showed Mehserle pulling his gun and fatally shooting Grant in the back as another officer knelt on the unarmed man. The video was widely circulated on the Internet and on news broadcasts, and it spurred several protests in and around Oakland.

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9 Month Jail Sentenced Delayed Again – Former Las Vegas Nevada Drug Prosecutor David Schubert Pled Guilty After Buying Cocaine

A nine-month jail sentence for a former drug prosecutor who pleaded guilty to buying $40 worth of cocaine again has been delayed, this time by Nevada’s high court.

The Supreme Court on Friday said that because the case is under appeal, David Schubert does not have to report to the county jail Monday to start serving his sentence, which was handed down by a district judge in February.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has asked the state attorney general’s office to respond to the sentencing appeal made by Bill Terry, Schubert’s lawyer.

Terry has said Judge Carolyn Ellsworth showed bias against his client at a Feb. 27 sentencing hearing.

At the hearing, Terry said, Ellsworth violated procedure by adjudicating Schubert guilty before arguments by the defense and the prosecution. And Ellsworth’s court marshal handcuffed him before the judge announced she was sentencing him to nine months in jail for his buying $40 of rock cocaine last year.

Last week Chief Judge Jennifer Togliatti denied Schubert’s motion to have the sentence tossed and the case moved to another judge.

The Supreme Court has asked for a response to Terry’s appeal from the state attorney general’s office, which prosecuted the case. As part of a deal with prosecutors, Schubert pleaded guilty to a felony charge of cocaine possession, which under state law results in mandatory probation.

At the sentencing hearing, Ellsworth called the deal “offensive” and sentenced Schubert to three years of probation, which included nine months in the county jail. State law allows a judge to order a defendant to serve a year of probation in jail.

In contrast, two high-profile cocaine prosecutions handled by Schubert resulted in probation and no jail time. At the time of their arrests, celebrity Paris Hilton and singer Bruno Mars both had more cocaine in their possession than the former prosecutor.

Las Vegas police arrested the 10-year veteran prosecutor in March 2011 after they watched a man get out of Schubert’s car, go into an apartment complex and return. Officers found Schubert with a minute amount of rock cocaine and confiscated a 9 mm handgun from his car.

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Ex-Wife Had Chicago Illinois Police Officers Plaster His Car With Bogus Parking Tickets – Federal Appeals Court Allows Him To Target Officers In Court

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Wednesday upheld a motorist’s right to fight back against Chicago, Illinois police officers for plastering his car with bogus parking tickets. Mark Geinosky was hit with twenty-four such tickets over fourteen months. For the alleged offenses to be valid, Geinosky’s vehicle would have to have been parked in two places at the same time. Geinosky suspects the officers had been colluding with his ex-wife, and the three-judge appellate panel found that he had a point.

“Absent a reasonable explanation, and none has even been suggested yet, the pattern adds up to deliberate and unjustified official harassment that is actionable under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Circuit Judge David Hamilton wrote for the court.

Mark Geinosky separated from his wife of twenty years, Sharon, on October 6, 2007, and that’s when his problems began. Sharon Geinosky continued to drive a Toyota that had been registered in Mark Geinosky’s name. Mark Geinosky began receiving parking tickets in the mail in groups of three and four worth around $300 per set. He stood accused of parking in front of a fire hydrant, parking in a crosswalk, blocking a roadway and related offenses.

Officer Wilkerson was responsible for thirteen of those tickets, each with sequential citation numbers. The alleged violations also happened at precisely 10pm on separate days. To avoid paying for infractions he did not commit, Mark Geinosky had to go to court seven times. He won against all twenty-four tickets, but his complaints to internal affairs and the Independent Police Review Authority fell on deaf ears — until the Chicago Tribune began running stories on the case.

US district court Judge John W. Darrah ruled that Geinosky could not file a Section 1983 “class of one” discrimination case against the officers who violated his constitutional rights and abused their police authority because he failed to identify “the norm” of how people are ordinarily treated. The appellate judges ridiculed the lower court’s position and found that Geinosky was clearly singled out and received different treatment.

“In a straightforward official harassment case like the allegations here, forcing the plaintiff to name a person not so severely harassed serves no such purpose (and in any event certainly is not necessary in the complaint itself),” Judge Hamilton wrote. “Are there people in Chicago who have not received more than a dozen bogus parking tickets from the same police unit in a short time? Geinosky could find hundreds of those people on any page of the Chicago phone book.”

The appellate judges noted Geinosky’s case involved a highly unusual circumstance where there is no legitimate justification for the pattern of ticketing and that this would not open the door to more lawsuits.

“We are not inviting every driver with a couple of parking tickets (even invalid ones) to sue in federal court,” Judge Hamilton wrote.

Federal section 1983 lawsuits allow individuals to receive treble damages from public officials who violated constitutional rights under color of law. During oral argument, the judges openly wondered why the city did not settle the case which they said represented the best example of a “class of one” lawsuit that they had ever seen.

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