 The Screwdriver The False Burglary Charge Amended to Criminal Trespassing 1987  |
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Burglary III Amended to Misdemeanor Trespassing Charge
I stopped my car after seeing a "for sale" sign in a yard to look at a home, that I believed had been zoned commercial/residential, in midtown at the corner of Somerville Street and Linden Circle on March 23, 1987. I was standing on an outside staircase landing near an emergency exit on the west side of the home looking at the outside staircase wall when the police arrived. They told me that an alarm was activated. It was obvious that the home had been vandalized or entered prior to my arrival. The police could see that it had been occupied by tramps and vandals for quite some time, evidenced by an accumulation of clothes and debris scattered throughout the house. The police gained entry to the house through a damaged door on the side of the home near the west staircase landing. The home had been vandalized and wantonly defaced and damaged extensively in the lower west interior. The assumptions and accusations by the attendant police officers that I could have committed this kind damage or left such an accumulation of debris, and that I could have filled or scattered the home with a nasty accumulation of trash, including beer and liquor bottles, old clothing and garbage, was ridiculous. I was told that the home had been used as a half-way house, counseling and treatment center for drug addicts, psychiatric patients and abused women and children, as well as released convicts, and that the home was owned and operated by a clinical psychologist. The two police officers told me that I should have contacted the owner before I came onto the property to look at the house and charged me with attempted third degree burglary because they observed smashed windows and the rear door that had been damaged, which the police used to gain entry.
One police officer entered the home to examine the interior damage while the other officer held me by the belt loops of my trousers. The officer, once inside the home, found a screwdriver among the mounds and piles of garbage and debris and falsely accused me of using it pry the door open. The officer was looking for anything he could use to make an arrest. The officer that found the screwdriver grabbed me by my trousers when he came out of the house, slammed me into the side of a car and injured me. I was handcuffed, scratched and bruised, and taken to jail. My car was impounded. Throughout the entire encounter I was extremely polite, nicely dressed and well groomed, in possession of a nice automobile, before I was assaulted by the officer without provocation.
The burglary charge was amended on May 22, 1987 to a misdemeanor trespassing charge because the court did not believe the officers claim in the report that I had committed a forced entry into the house with a screwdriver found in the garbage pile inside the house by the officer that assaulted me. The court, also, did not believe the officers claim in the report that I had been inside the home and littered the interior. The prosecuting attorney did not want this case dismissed even though the owner of the home never appeared in court to seek a trespassing charge.
The owner of the home never appeared in court at the hearing. Neither did the officers. The prosecuting attorney recommended dismissal of the burglary charge, insisted that I plead guilty to a trespassing charge under duress, and further insisted that I accept the trespassing charge because he was "tired of it" and that, "it wouldn't be a problem for me", or he would "make things tougher". The prosecuting attorney knew that I couldn't afford an appeal.
This event occured more than twenty years ago and was a dreadful, abominable and frightening violation of my civil rights, grossly offensive, and has been an impediment and an embarrassment which has caused me great horror and unnecessary humiliation. My attorney was Leslie Ballin. General Session Court Clerk manager William C. Freeman believed that it may have been an undercover operation to catch the vandals and that I became a victim of this police exercise while viewing the exterior of the home, and that it may have been unnecessary police harrassment or brutality that could have been turned over to police internal affairs. He also believed that I never should have been charged with burglary III or trespassing, that a plea to trespassing was entered while I was under duress, and that the burglary charge should have been dismissed or expunged after it had been rectified. I spoke with Mr. Freeman at great length about the matter after having been sworn is as Grand Jury Foreman pro tempore for the Shelby County Grand Jury during the autumn session of 2005. I was granted the privilege of speaking with Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk William Key at great length during my service to the Grand Jury as pro tempore. Mr. Key believed that it should have been dismissed or expunged. My hope is that one day it will be removed, but not forgotten, as any act of oppression should never be, and that the students of law will understand and seek virtue by this example, and that they pursue moral excellence in view of ruthless, needless acts of brutality, official oppression and subjugation by cruelty of the innocent which, sadly, impose misery resulting from the affliction of mental and physical pain and can create a lifetime of psychological suffering.
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Excellent speech becometh not a fool; much less do lying lips a prince. Proverbs 17:7