Poor Senator Brian Joyce: Ain’t Got A Chance.

Anyone reading this better go into the other room and see if you still have your kitchen sink. If it is missing it has been thrown into the indictment against Brian Joyce the former senator from Milton, MA. He was hit with a 102 page indictment. One paper suggested if you were interested you could read the indictment and provided the site.  I decided I’d start reading War and Peace by Tolstoy and be finished sooner.

102  page indictment? I don’t remember but do they read the indictments to the jury in federal cases? Imagine sitting in court while someone reads that to you?

My gut on hearing how long the indictment is that the feds have very little against Joyce. Perhaps that part in the indictment about the time he got a shoe shine at South Station and ran off without paying when the  shoe shine boy turned his back (which I did not know was a federal crime but because it involved interstate commerce it became one ) made me think that their case was weak. Well, truth be told, there was no shoe shine charge. I imagine thought that some of the charges are quite close to it since that’s a ton of charges to drop on a guy without having scraped the bottom of the barrel or the soul of the shoe.

Imagine a juror deliberating on the case and the foreperson is saying “now that we’ve discussed count 76 let’s go on to count 77.” I have to think the reaction of any person still awake would have to be, “come on, let’s just find him responsible for every fifth count  and get out of here.”   Piling 112 counts up against a guy in a 102 page indictment doesn’t give the guy a fighting chance. It gives him no chance.

When I prosecuted I liked things to be clean. If a guy robbed a bank and then a car chase ensued I’d just charge the robbery and nothing related to the subsequent chase. If I lost the robbery so be it. I’d not be consoled if I lost the robbery and convicted him of driving recklessly and speeding.

Why would you want to pile on charges like that against a guy. If he did something worthy of indictment charge him with it but burying him with 112 counts and hoping one or two stick suggests to me the case is not that strong. And looking at the faces of the five men making the announcement of it, shown above, fortifies that feeling.

I wrote about Brian Joyce a while back. He was one of those Boston Globe targeted guys. We haven’t been seeing much of them lately. Your remember the Globe would write a Spotlight Series about some person, then editorialize about it, then have stories based on the editorial and Spotlight, and then tell the U.S. Attorney to indict the guy which she would.

Much of the new about Joyce happened before April 2016. That it took so long to charge him also points to weakness. I originally thought the delay was because Joyce had gone over to the feds and was cooperating.  Then with the change of leadership in the US Attorney’s office I thought Joyce was off the hook. After all, right from the start his attorney said he was cooperating. That’s not what you usually advise your client to do.

Suddenly Friday morning Joyce was woken early and arrested. Taken to Worcester federal court he pleaded not guilty. His attorney, I’m not sure if it was the one who told him to cooperate, said“You just heard Senator Joyce, former Senator Joyce, in a very loud and firm voice in court that he’s innocent of all of these charges. And he is and he expects that’s what’s will happen in court. I should just add that in the last few years, it’s been apparent across the country that the federal government has brought a number of cases against public officials, which have either gone nowhere, or have been rejected by juries, or highly criticized by courts. That’s all we have to say today,”

Joyce stood behind his attorney and did not look well. Can’t blame him. Even if he can beat the rap the odds with so many counts make it unlikely. Further, to try such a case would take many weeks and who can afford that type of money to have an attorney prepare and try cases that  run that long.

Looks like Joyce will have to make a deal. Sadly, we will never know if he really committed any crimes. All we’ll know is you shouldn’t stiff a shoe shine boy.

 

 

16 Comments

  1. The Police are a active barometer of the skill set
    of our criminal justice system.
    As Bill C pointed out in his Navajo Code Talk
    WWBI the next step in the rahabilitation for
    Senator Joyce is a law enforcement enema.
    Oooops sorry Moonbat Joyce does not qualify
    for the taxpayer funded program.
    Joyce is white! Ugh!

    https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/the-abner-louima-case-10-years-later/

    The Abner Louima Case, 10 Years Later
    BY SEWELL CHAN AUGUST 9, 2007 1:11 PM

    Ten years ago today, a 30-year-old Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima was arrested and sodomized with a broomstick inside a restroom in the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. The case became a national symbol of police brutality and fed perceptions that New York City police officers were harassing or abusing young black men as part a citywide crackdown on crime.

    The case also marked the beginning of the unraveling of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s relationship with the black community in New York. That relationship would deteriorate even further, after the police shot two unarmed black men, Amadou Diallo in February 1999 and Patrick Dorismond in 2000.

    One officer, Justin A. Volpe, admitted in court in May 1999 that he had rammed a broken broomstick into Mr. Louima’s rectum and then thrust it in his face. He said he had mistakenly believed that Mr. Louima had punched him in the head during a street brawl outside a nightclub in Flatbush, but he acknowledged that he had also intended to humiliate the handcuffed immigrant. He left the force and was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. The commanders of the 70th Precinct were replaced within days of the assault. As the legal case wore on, Charles Schwarz, a former police officer, was sentenced in federal court in 2002 to five years in prison for perjury stemming from the torture case. A jury found that Mr. Schwarz had lied when he testified that he had not taken Mr. Louima to the station house bathroom where the assault took place.

    in other news

    http://interactives.ap.org/2015/betrayed-by-the-badge/?SITEID=apmobile

    By Matt Sedensky and Nomaan Merchant
    Published: Nov. 1, 2015

    BETRAYED
    BY THE BADGE
    AP Investigation finds hundreds of law enforcement officers have lost their licenses over sex crimes or sex-related misconduct.

    Flashing lights pierced the black of night, and the big white letters made clear it was the police. The woman pulled over was a daycare worker in her 50s headed home after playing dominoes with friends. She felt she had nothing to hide, so when the Oklahoma City officer accused her of erratic driving, she did as directed.

    She would later tell a judge she was splayed outside the patrol car for a pat-down and then made to lift her shirt and pull down her pants to prove she wasn’t hiding anything.

    She described being ordered to sit in the squad car as the officer towered over her. His gun in sight, she said she pleaded “No, sir” as he unzipped his fly and exposed himself to her with a hurried directive. “Come on,” the woman, identified in police reports as J.L., said she was told before she began giving the officer oral sex. “I don’t have all night.”

    The accusations are undoubtedly jolting, and yet they reflect a betrayal of the badge that has been repeated across the country.

    A yearlong investigation by The Associated Press has found about 1,000 officers who lost their licenses in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assaults; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having on-duty intercourse.

    The AP’s review at once represents both the most complete examination of such wrongdoing and a sure undercount of the problem, limited by a patchwork of state laws. California and New York, for example, had no records because they have no statewide system for revoking the licenses of officers who commit misconduct. And even among states that provided information, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were discovered in news stories or court records.

    Bernadette DiPino, police chief in Sarasota, Florida, explains some of the reasons sex misconduct is a problem among law officers.
    “It’s happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country,” said Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “It’s so underreported, and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.”

    The AP’s review is based on a state-by-state pursuit of records on decertification, the process by which a law enforcement license is revoked. Though nine states and the District of Columbia declined to provide information or said they did not track officer misconduct, decertification records from 41 states were obtained and then dissected to determine whether the cause of revocation involved sexual misconduct.

    All told, the AP determined that some 550 officers lost their licenses from 2009 through 2014 for sexual assault, including rape, pat-downs that amounted to groping, and shakedowns in which citizens were extorted into performing favors to avoid arrest. Some 440 other officers were decertified for other sex offenses or misconduct, including child pornography, voyeurism in the guise of police work and consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse.

    About one-third of the decertified officers were accused in incidents involving juveniles.

    Overall, the victims were overwhelmingly women and included some of society’s most vulnerable — the poor, the addicted, the young. Others had criminal records, sometimes used by the officers as a means for exploitation. Some were victims of crime who, seeking help, found themselves again targeted by men in uniform.

    “People are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.”
    – Police Chief Bernadette DiPino
    The law enforcement officials in these records included state and local police, sheriff’s deputies, prison guards and school resource officers. They represent a fraction of the hundreds of thousands whose jobs are to serve and protect. Nevertheless, the AP’s findings suggest that sexual misconduct is among the most prevalent complaints against law officers.

    Recent cases demonstrate the devastation of such depravity.

    In Connecticut, William Ruscoe of the Trumbull Police began a 30-month prison term in early 2015 after pleading guilty to the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl he met through a program for teens interested in law enforcement. Case records detailed advances that began with texts and attempts to kiss and grope the girl. Then one night, Ruscoe brought her back to his home. The victim told investigators that despite telling him no “what felt like 1,000 times,” he removed her clothes, fondled her and forced her to touch him — at one point cuffing her hands.

    In Florida, Jonathan Bleiweiss of the Broward Sheriff’s Office was sentenced to a five-year prison term in February 2015 for bullying about 20 immigrant men into sex acts. Prosecutors said he used implied threats of deportation to intimidate the men.

    And in New Mexico, Michael Garcia of the Las Cruces Police was sentenced in November 2014 to nine years in federal prison for sexually assaulting a high school police intern.

    “I felt sick and disgusted that a person wearing this badge, lawfully carrying all that power, a person who I admired and trusted … would harm me in this way.” – Diana Guerrero
    Listen to Guerrero read her letter

    Left: Diana Guerrero, now 21, was a 17-year-old intern at the police department in Las Cruces, New Mexico, when she was assaulted by Michael Garcia, a sex crimes detective (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan). Bottom: Guerrero is seen with other EXCEL intern program participants (Handout).
    The victim, Diana Guerrero, now 21, said it had been her dream to become a police officer. She was a diligent student, she said, the good kid who’d always done what she was supposed to do. So when Garcia, a sex crimes detective, invited her on a ride-along in the spring of 2011, she happily accepted.

    The two visited a crime scene, and then Garcia drove her to a deserted neighborhood, still under construction, where he reached inside her panties and fondled her, then unzipped his own pants and forced her to touch his genitals, according to court records.

    “I knew it was against the law and that (Guerrero) did not want me to do it,” Garcia said in a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. “But I did it anyway.”

    Guerrero, interviewed in November 2014 by KOB-TV in Albuquerque, explains how her sexual assault by Michael Garcia has impacted her life.
    Guerrero said in court that the assault left her feeling “like a piece of trash” and triggered depression and flashbacks.

    “I lost my faith in everything, everyone, even in myself,” said Guerrero, who agreed to her name being published. She put plans to study criminal justice on hold and is no longer sure she will ever become a police officer.

    Experts on sex assault believe most victims never come forward, and said fears can be compounded if the offender is an officer. Diane Wetendorf, who started a support group in Chicago for victims of officers, recalls the stories of those who did go to authorities: Some women’s homes came under surveillance or their children were intimidated by police. Fellow officers, she said, refused to turn on accused colleagues.

    “It starts with the officer denying the allegations — ‘she’s crazy,’ ‘she’s lying,’” she said. “And the other officers say they didn’t see anything, they didn’t hear anything.”

    Holtzclaw appears in court in Oklahoma City ahead of his trial (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki).
    The issue will be in the spotlight in Oklahoma City when former Officer Daniel Holtzclaw goes to trial, beginning Nov. 2, to face accusations of rape, sexual battery or exploitation of 13 women, including J.L. The AP doesn’t name alleged victims of sexual assault without consent, and J.L. declined to be interviewed. She immediately reported her accusations in June 2014, and detectives launched a wider investigation.

    Police eventually assembled a six-month narrative of alleged sex crimes they said started Dec. 20, 2013, with a woman taken into custody and hospitalized while high on angel dust.

    Dressed in a hospital gown, her right wrist handcuffed to the bedrail, the woman said Holtzclaw coerced her into performing oral sex, suggesting her cooperation would lead to dropped charges.

    “I didn’t think that no one would believe me,” that woman testified at a pretrial hearing. “I feel like all police will work together, and I was scared.”

    Syrita Bowen visits “Dead Man’s Curve,” where she says she was sexually assaulted by now-fired Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who is accused in the sexual assault or exploitation of 13 women he encountered while patrolling (AP Photo/Eric Gay).
    Holtzclaw, 28, a former football star who is now fired from the Oklahoma City Police Department, has pleaded not guilty. His family has said “the truth of his innocence will be shown in court.” His attorney, Scott Adams, would not respond to requests for comment but indicated in pretrial hearings that he will attack the credibility of the accusers, some of whom had struggled with drugs or previously worked as prostitutes.

    The youngest of the accusers, who was 17 when she says Holtzclaw raped her on her mother’s front porch, said the attack left her unsure about what to do.

    “Like, what am I going to do?” she said at the pretrial hearing. “Call the cops? He was a cop.”

  2. watch out judges and FBI agents . . . (not which out)

  3. Well, I’ve read through about half the “Indictment”; it’s phony. The Feds are saying a state legislator can’t do law work in his local town, for private companies,, for individuals who may or may not have legislation pending, for individuals who may be subject to current state law, nor as a lawyer may he give advice about administrative rules and regulations, or legislative matters. I certainly know many lawyers who do all of these things routinely. But the Feds says a company that hired Joyce also gave a summer job to one of Joyce’s relatives and you’ll be horrified at what the relative researched and wrote about . . . . you guessed it: the Law, legislation, the PACE bill or some so-called piece of Legislation the Company was interested in.

    The Worst Indictment against Joyce was when he identified in writing all the companies he was doing business with and made clear, that his role was solely restricted to lawful legal matters and not to his duties or functions as a State Senator. He expressly stated he would do nothing in contravention of State Ethics rules! But wait a minute, the Feds discovered he failed to fully report the amount of money he received one semester, an amendable ethics issue, perhaps, not a federal case.

    If this case continues, which out judges and FBI agents when we start asking what favors your relatives got, what outside income you and your family gets, what priveleges and benefits you get when you stick out your I.D.s or take off your judicial robes. When you point one finger at someone, there’s usually three pointing back at yourself. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Any Court personnel, Clerks, Probation Officers, use their law degrees, or CPAs or MBAs or licenses or experience in outside businesses? Off with their heads!

    Sorry, but I know lots of legislators who practice law, and this loosely worded Federal Indictment is a Federal noose that could fit around anyone’s neck. It’s so inanely and loosely worded that its schizoid: “Looseness of association” being a symptom of schizophrenia.

    Yesteryear Blacks used to complain that they were pulled over for being BWI: Black While Driving.

    Today, The Boston Feds go after local figures for WWBI: working while being Irish or Italian.

  4. Burke’s writings were great; his support for American Independence admirable.

    2. Msfreeh: We read and study history to learn from it; not to get stuck in the past’s ruts, muck and mire, endlessly spinning wheels. Some people think there was a second shooter in Sarajevo. So what?

  5. Ugh!

    in other news

    https://www.boston.com/news/media/2017/12/09/what-boston-herald-writers-are-saying-about-the-sale-of-their-newspaper

    What Boston Herald writers are saying about the sale of their newspaper
    About a quarter of the paper’s employees are expected to lose their jobs.

    Just like we now know who wacked JFK. eh?
    http://jfkconferencedc.com

  6. In 1787 impeachment proceedings started in the House of Lords against Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India. The trial ended in 1795. The lead prosecutor was famed orator Edmund Burke whose summation took nine days, five days longer than he took presenting the charges at the opening. That is quite a pair of natterings. One crusty Lord was heard to remark towards the end that only an innocent man could be proven guilty by a nine day summation. He was right: Innocent on all charges. Side note, jurors to qualify had to be present for all sessions. By the time of the verdict a third of the attending lords were dead.

  7. John King McDonald

    …. the *Governor McDonnell’s and Senator Melendez’s acquittals ….

  8. eJohn King McDonald

    It is time to smell the coffee . You characterize a 107 count Federal indictment as if it is a FBI agent padding his expense report in the worldwide manhunt for that guy you never heard of, but have spent years of time and hundreds of thousands of words on : ” Jim .”

    Obviously, the Senator’s McDonald and Menendez acquittals for bribery and graft of a similar genre give the Joyce defense hope . I would rather you had read through it before offering a knee jerk reaction to its contents , however . I think that , notably unlike Aaron Swartz’s case , there are probably more than sufficient grounds for throwing the Joe DiMaggio Mr.Coffee Maker at him , if not the kitchen sink ! Balance !

  9. Think how Wyshak’s and Ortiz’s et al Prosecutor’s Office drove the brilliant young man, Aaron Swartz to suicide in 2013 for threatening him with 35 years in prison for “downloading” publicly available files. Time Magazine et al covered this in detail. Think what Wyshak did to the Probation Case: case eventually thrown out; to Fitzpatrick (English’s article); to the Motel Owner and others.
    Talk about unscrupulous, overly zealous prosecutors.

    Matt can talk about it, as an expert, and with a great sense of irony and humor.

  10. Great incisive article, Matt.

    • I just returned from Senator Joyce’s Wake. The Boston Globe killed him. “He was one of those Boston Globe targeted guys.” Brian was persona non grata at the State House. He had the guts to run against one of their own, Joe Manning. The Good Old Boys never forgave him and the Globe targeted him. Now a man is dead. His wife is alone and his children have no father.
      Senator Joyce was one of the good ones following in the footsteps of Joe Moakley, Mike Dukakis, Ted Kennedy. They served their constituents. RIP Brian.

      • Dale:

        Thanks for the information. I was surprised and saddened to learn of Brian Joyce’s death. He was a Globe target as you suggest. I knew little of the case but the indictment with all it counts struck me as a great overcharging.