Police arrest Parkland deputy who 'retreated to a place of safety' during school massacre

Deputy Scot Peterson retreated to a position of safety during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre last year. This week, law enforcement responded with a sweeping list of charges that resulted in Mr. Peterson’s arrest, reported the New York Times.

The good guy with a gun allegedly failed to protect the students.

America’s long history of mass shootings have brought a variety of responses: Calls for tighter gun laws, civil lawsuits against companies that manufacture guns and firearm components, collective mourning. The charges represented a highly unusual case of a lawman arrested for failing to save lives.

Around Parkland, whose politically engaged students helped launch a national student movement for more gun control, there was both surprise and satisfaction.

Mr. Peterson, 56, who had been suspended in the immediate aftermath of the attack and later resigned, faces 11 charges of neglect of a child, culpable negligence and perjury. He was booked into the Broward County jail with a bond of $102,000.

The 15-month investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that led to the charges, found that the former Broward County sheriff’s deputy, assigned as a school resource officer to Stoneman Douglas High, “did absolutely nothing to mitigate” the shooting, the department’s commissioner, Rick Swearingen, said in a statement. “There can be no excuse for his complete inaction and no question that his inaction cost lives,” he said.

Officials determined that Mr. Peterson, as well as Sgt. Brian Miller, who was terminated on Tuesday but not charged, “neglected their duties.” Mr. Peterson was taken into custody after an administrative discipline hearing.

Peterson conduct refutes the NRA’s long standing premise that the only way to stop a bad guy with a guy is a good guy with a gun.

The charges were an unusual instance of law enforcement officers being held criminally liable for not protecting the public.

Editors’ Picks

But experts say that criminally charging a law enforcement officer for allegedly being negligent in his response to a mass shooting is new ground.

“This is the first time I have seen somebody so charged like this,” said Clinton R. Van Zandt, a former profiler with the F.B.I. and an expert on mass shootings. “I think that every police officer, sheriff and F.B.I. agent understands that you have to go to the threat and stop it and that we are no longer going to wait for SWAT or set up perimeters.”

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DUI check point declared unlawful in Pennsylvania

They are called sobriety checkpoints.

And many local police forces team up to set them up, like the West Hills DUI Task Force.

“A group of municipalities band together and hold a checkpoint in one specific municipality and pull over all of the motorists, typically driving through the municipality that evening,” Michael Sherman, a DUI defense attorney, told KDKA political editor Jon Delano on Monday.

That’s what happened to Molly Hlubin on her way home from the old Star Lake, now Key Bank Pavilion, in 2013.

But in a 35-page opinion, the state Supreme Court has tossed out her arrest and conviction.

Why?

Because the task force was never authorized by elected officials.

Police officers from 16 municipalities were part of this West Hills DUI Task Force along Steubenville Pike in Robinson, but none of those 16 municipalities had elected officials voting and approving an ordinance authorizing the task force.

And that, says the state Supreme Court, is a problem.

Sherman who represented Hlubin says police cannot set up multi-jurisdictional task forces to arrest people without elected officials approving the mission.

“The elected officials didn’t have any input into the decision,” said Sherman.

There are similar DUI task forces throughout the region.

“We are passionate about getting impaired drivers off the roads,” said Captain Douglas Ogden from the Moon Township Police who ran the checkpoint that stopped Hlubin in Robinson. “Checkpoints are the most effective way of contacting large numbers of impaired drivers and reinforcing public awareness that we’re doing DUI enforcement.”

But this decision could impact other DUI cases now being prosecuted.

“There was no authority to pull the motorist over in the first place,” says Sherman.

Delano: “Do you think this affects hundreds of people?”
Sherman: “It could be thousands.”

If the DUI arrest was made as part of a recent multi-community task force, it could be tossed out, says Sherman.

Of course, it may not take long before the municipalities pass the appropriate local ordinances allowing the task forces.

After all, they have been effective.

The West Hills DUI Task Force alone has arrested 700 drunk or drugged drivers in a 15-year period.

In the meantime, watch for some local communities to step up their own roving DUI patrols within their own municipal boundaries.

That’s perfectly legal.

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A deadly Chicago weekend: 52 wounded, eight dead

At least 52 people were wounded — 8 of them fatally — in shootings over the weekend in Chicago’s most violent weekend of the year so far, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson planned a press conference on Monday to discuss the crime wave. According to The Crime Report, a rash of violence left 31 wounded during the first 12 hours of the weekend, which began at 5 p.m. Friday. Johnson ordered targeted patrols in areas susceptible to retaliatory incidents in response to the flurry.

Authorities seized 81 illegal weapons and arrested 19 people on gun-related charges as a result, said police spokesman Guglielmi said. The wave of violence comes as police announced a decrease in the number of shootings in the first five months of the year compared with the same period last year. In the weekend’s latest fatal shooting, two men were killed Sunday while driving through Old Town on the North Side. Over Memorial Day weekend, 41 people were shot and seven killed in Chicago gun violence.

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If New Hampshire can abolish the death penalty, could Pennsylvania be far behind?

According to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, the odds are long -- but they're not impossible.

For starters, an abolition bill making the rounds of the Republican-controlled state House is being co-sponsored by one of the chamber's most progressive members, Democratic Rep. Chris Rabb, of Philadelphia, and one of its most conservative, Rep. Frank Ryan, of Lebanon County.
And Ryan's explanation of his support sounds a whole lot like the one offered by New Hampshire's French.
"I’m pro-life, which means conception to natural death,” he said, framing his opposition to the death penalty as both practical and moral. “Capital punishment isn’t natural death to me.”
And it's not like Ryan's alone.
As we reported last month, Republicans focused on both the bottom-line cost of capital punishment, and its moral implications, are now stepping up to support its abolition. 

According to a group calling itself Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, Republican lawmakers in 10 more states — Georgia, Louisiana, Kansas, Wyoming, Kentucky, Montana, Missouri, Colorado, New Hampshire and Washington State — are sponsoring death penalty repeal bills.

And according to a 2017 study by the conservative anti-death penalty group, Republican sponsors of death penalty abolition proposals doubled between 2013 and 2016, going from 20 sponsors to 40 sponsors. 

And before our conservative readers go all, “Well these are only RINOs in blue or purple states,” consider this: According to the study, “the data show that Republicans in red states are taking on even more leadership than those in blue states.”

“Among the states where Republicans sponsored death penalty repeal bills, more than 40 percent of them (10 states) were red states,” the report reads. “Of the total number of Republican sponsorships of death penalty repeal bills, more than 67 percent were in red states (143 red state sponsorships out of 211 total Republican sponsorships).”

And if there's  a state that's ripe for abolition, it's Pennsylvania.

Largely because of reversals and resentencings, Pennsylvania’s death row population has fallen over the last 16 years, going from 247 inmates in April 2002 to the current 142 inmates, according to data compiled by the Death Row Information Center.

In all, 170 Pennsylvania death-row prisoners have seen their convictions or death sentences overturned in state or federal post-conviction proceedings. The commonwealth’s state courts have reversed an additional 100 death sentences on direct appeal, according to Death Penalty Information Center data. More than 97 percent of the state’s death row inmates have been resentenced to life or less, or acquitted.

And as we've reported before, Pennsylvania has carried out just three executions in the nearly half-century since the U.S. Supreme Court again declared the death penalty constitutional, at a combined cost to the taxpayers of $816 million.
In a memo seeking sponsors for his repeal bill, Rabb pointed to an Urban Institute Study of Maryland’s death penalty that concluded that a capital case costs $2 million more than a non-capital case.
“We’re approaching budget season, where we’re pinching pennies,” Rabb told us in April, arguing the state could find far better ways to use the money it spends feeding and housing death row inmates and fighting their appeals. “No study shows it’s a deterrent. Plenty of studies show that it is racist.”
We're nearly at 50 percent of states that have abolished capital punishment. Neighboring New Jersey is one of them.
While there's still some distance to go, Pennsylvania lawmakers justifiably take a lot of pride in the strides the state has made on criminal justice reform.
Abolishing capital punishment would be a quantum leap. Let's see if they're up for it.
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Angelica Spanos and Trial Analyst Matthew Mangino on Law and Crime Network

Watch my segment with Angelica Spanos on Law and Crime Network covering the criminal trial of former professional football player Kellen Winslow, Jr.


To watch the CLICK HERE

Mangino talks the recommended pardon of Robert Wideman with KDKA's Robert Mangino

KDKA’s Robert Mangino is joined by former Lawrence County D. A., Matt Mangino. Matt shares his opinions concerning the pardon given to Robert Wideman, a man convicted of murder in 1975. 

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GateHouse: Impeachment would be a disaster

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse Media

May 31, 2019

President Donald Trump wants to be impeached. In fact, he is taunting the Democrats in the House of Representatives to move forward with articles of impeachment.

That sounds counterintuitive for a man who has literally been campaigning for re-election since the day he took office. For one thing, he knows that although presidents have been impeached in the past - Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton - no president has been removed from office. Richard Nixon was on the verge of impeachment when he resigned in 1974.

Trump and his advisors know how impeachment works. The U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 3, Clause 5, provides that the House of Representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment. Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7, provide that the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. No person shall be convicted in the Senate without the vote of two-thirds of the members present.

Trump knows he can do just about anything and, with a Republican majority in the Senate, there will never be enough votes to convict him and remove him from office.

Does that mean the House should not move forward with impeachment? I spent two terms as a county prosecutor in western Pennsylvania. When my office evaluated a case we considered the likelihood of proving the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If we believed that we could not meet that burden we did not proceed. Most prosecutors, especially on the federal level, take the same approach.

A trial, in the Senate or a county courtroom, is not about proving a political point. Trial should not be about embarrassing the accused or sullying his or her reputation. Can you imagine the uproar if a local prosecutor said “I know I can’t convict him, but I wanted to embarrass and annoy him?”

Impeachment is not a political tool. If it becomes a political tool then the Democrats are no better than a guy that would flirt with the Russians to win an election; or cozy up to a ruthless, murderous dictator; or wants to “lock-up” his political opponents.

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued a statement this week upon closing the special counsel office. Mueller highlighted his investigation into possible obstruction of justice by Trump, which arose out of actions the president undertook while the investigation was ongoing. Mueller reiterated, ”(I)f we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that.”

In the aftermath of Mueller’s statement, several members of the House called for impeachment, including Justin Amass (R-MI), Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Several Democrats in the Senate have called for impeachment as well, including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), each a candidate for president in 2020.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said he is committed to holding the president accountable, stating that all options, including impeachment, are on the table but, according to Jurist, refused to commit to impeachment at this time.

Why would the Democrats give Trump what he wants?

Articles of impeachment might embarrass Trump, if that’s possible. On the other hand, as pointed out by veteran political analysts Terry Madonna and Michael L. Young in The Pennsylvania Capital-Star, “Trump’s hard-core constituency of a third or more of the electorate are more likely to be galvanized by impeachment then abandon Trump.”

Trump wants a forum to portray himself as the victim of overzealous political opponents out to get him. He gets that before Election Day with an exoneration in the Senate.

Impeachment would be a disaster. It would be a disaster for both the Democrat and Republican parties - and a disaster for our nation.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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