This story is not unusual and I am glad that Christianna Kyriacou wrote the article, but there is a dimension which she missed. I doubt she is aware of the vast corruption in the criminal justice system.
My experience roughly parallels the time frame in this case, i.e. the OJ, Mark Fuhrman, Officer Perez, US Justice Department's placing the LAPD on parole era. The knowing use of jail house informants, who were committing perjury to obtain favors from the DA, was so widespread that the late 1980's the appellate court had basically told the DA to stop prosecutions based on jail house informants. The Pimp's Testimony should have been disallowed because he was essentially a jail house informant. DA's would also threatened witnesses that if they did not testify exactly the way the DA wanted, then the DA would prosecute them. I heard those threats with my own ears -- more than once.
After the Ramparts Scandal, the LAPD was placed on "parole" under a consent decree with the US Justice Department and its parole officer was called a monitor. The LAPD, however, got a bum rap. The king pins of the railroading of innocent people into prison were the judges. The LAPD officers were low man on the totem pole with the judges at the top and the DA just below the judges leaning on the police to TestiLie -- often against their will.
One defendant had a District Attorney go so far as climb up to his second story balcony and break into his bedroom while he was asleep and then threaten him. When the defendant complained to the judge, he did nothing.
In another case, a DDA came to court to testify that there had been no communications between the DA's office and defense counsel. A short while before, the defense attorney's office and home had been broken into and his stack of fax verifications had been stolen. Although the file cabinets where the defendant's files should have been stored were broken into, the files had been stored elsewhere in the office. Just before the Deputy Dist Atty was to take the stand and lie, lie, lie about no communications, defense attorney produced all 15 of the Fax Confirmations and original correspondence from the DA's Office. (Fax Verifications are printed out at the end of each day listing all faxes sent or received, but fax Confirmations are attached to each fax showing that particular fax had been sent and received.) The Deputy Dis Atty immediately left the courtroom and never returned to do her testiLying.
Judges tend to be political appointees and do the bidding of the political bosses. If the Governor wants to run a Law and Order administration, then he expects judges to render up convictions, not acquittals of innocent people.
Some judges confer with the DA behind the backs of defense counsel. One judge filed a completely bogus state bar complaint against an attorney who happened to be a witness in her courtroom because he rebuffed the Assist DA's demand that he commit perjury or "the judge will get you." The judge's "secret" complaint with the State Bar made it sound as if the defendant had filed the complaint against his own witness. The ostensible reason the bogus State Bar complaint took this form was to create a riff between the defendant and the attorney - witness. Despite the pressure, the attorney refused to commit perjury and when the State Bar discovered that it was the trial judge who was pressing a bogus complaint against a witness in a case a pending in her own courtroom, The State Bar dropped the matter.
Later, the Judicial Commission found it appropriate for a judge to knowingly file a false complaint against an attorney, who was a material witness in her courtroom, in order to coerce him to commit perjury against an innocent person.
The Rot is at the Top. While the LAPD is greatly improved, we should understand that the criminal justice system is rotten from the top downward, and there is no reason to believe that the police will be under less pressure in the future than they have been in the past. I know DA's and police officers who fight this corruption, but they are not in a much stronger position than members of the public. In fact, they are often more vulnerable.
