Shadow Vigilantes by Paul H. Robinson

Author:Paul H. Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633884328
Publisher: Prometheus Books

PROSECUTORIAL OVERCHARGING TO MAKE UP FOR PAST FAILURES OF JUSTICE

Finally Getting Something on a Career Criminal

Edward Augustine, living in New Orleans, has had numerous run-ins with the police, but they rarely end in conviction and punishment.25 He has a single conviction for attempted possession of a firearm with a controlled dangerous substance. He has been through the “revolving door” of the criminal justice system many times. Police regularly arrest him on drug or weapons charges, but he will later walk back out on the street. Sometimes it is because the police are unable to find witnesses willing to testify against him. In other instances, prosecutors do not proceed because at the time they have limited prosecution resources and “higher profile” cases in greater need of their efforts.26

In 2008 the new district attorney, Leon Cannizzaro, has a different attitude. Cannizzaro makes it office policy that no case is too insignificant to try and pursue. He makes it his mission to increase the percentage of cases his office will pursue from 50 percent to 90 percent.

On January 7, 2011, a New Orleans police officer observes a car making an unlawful right turn at a red light. The officer turns on his lights and siren to pull the car over, but the car speeds away. The officer follows the vehicle, and as he pulls up beside it, he sees the driver, Augustine, dumping white powder out of the car window.

The officer chases Augustine for several blocks but stops when Augustine enters a one-way street. Augustine accidentally hits another vehicle. Augustine gets out of his car and flees. The officer pursues him on foot. As Augustine attempts to climb a fence in a nearby alley, the officer Tases him and places him under arrest.

Upon returning to the scene of the crash, the officer learns that Augustine has killed the passenger in the other vehicle, a college freshman who had returned home for the Christmas holidays. The officer also finds numerous packages of heroin in Augustine's possession. It also comes to light that the car being driven by Augustine has been reported missing by its owner, the mother of Augustine's girlfriend.

District Attorney Cannizzaro is unhappy that this career criminal has been allowed to pass through the system on so many occasions without facing any serious punishment. He believes that by not aggressively prosecuting earlier narcotics cases, the system was in effect “creating monsters.”27 He is determined to pursue Augustine aggressively to try to make up for past failings of the office.

He charges Augustine with manslaughter for causing the death in the accident, for which Augustine ultimately gets, at Cannizzaro's urging, a fifty-year sentence. Cannizzaro also charges Augustine with possession with intent to distribute illegal drugs—the drugs he dumped out the window—and, again at Cannizzaro's urging, Augustine gets an additional sentence of fifty years. While Augustine did not have his girlfriend's mother's express permission to drive her car on that occasion, the woman does not wish to press charges. Cannizzaro nonetheless adds this offense to the

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