Posted on 08/12/2010 4:55:05 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Late one night in March 1988, Officer Alan Wightman was patrolling Main Street in downtown Visalia (Tulare County) when he saw a Ford Fairmont speckled with raindrops approaching an intersection. Because the rain had stopped a few hours earlier, Wightman deduced that the car had been parked nearby, in an area where auto thefts and other crimes had been rampant. So he decided to follow it.
The driver cruised along city streets and onto a short stretch of freeway, where he kept his speed at 40 miles an hour in a 55-mph zone. Wightman by then had checked the plates and determined the car hadn't been reported stolen, but he was suspicious of the slow speed and figured that the driver was either drunk or trying to avoid police contact. So he turned on his blinking lights and pulled the car over.
The driver, Richard Letner, wasn't drunk, though he didn't have a license. But it turned out that he and his passenger, Christopher Tobin, had a reason to steer clear of the police -- they had just robbed, beaten and fatally stabbed a 59-year-old woman, Ivon Pontbriant, in her home, and then driven off in her car, according to prosecution evidence described by the state Supreme Court.
Wightman, unaware of the murder, conducted a brief search of the car that found nothing suspicious, and told both men to walk home while police looked after the vehicle. After the murder was discovered the next day,
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
These characters have already lived 20 years too long.
Technicalities like this that get proven killers out of prison or their sentence commuted are Bull****
Was this in California? Yes. Of course.
Were they profiled? Call Eric Holder.
Defense lawyers ON YOUR DIME
plan to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/crime/detail?entry_id=69158#ixzz0wRSWMlnz
“he was suspicious of the slow speed and figured that the driver was either drunk or trying to avoid police contact”
The suposition of drunkeness is iffy enough, but the suspicion that the driver was deliberately avoiding police contact is certainly neither here nor there. Newsflash, cops: NO ONE wants to be pulled over. Even those who have nothing to hide.
“Technicalities like this that get proven killers out of prison or their sentence commuted are Bull****”
The 4th amendment is not a technicality. The cops cannot pluck the guilty out of society willy-nilly.
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The 4th amendment is not a technicality but neither was the dead woman. Punish the cop somehow for making the stop and let the killers burn.
Yeah, great, well: Killers shouldnt be walking free either.
Amen
I agree-As if an illegal traffic stop is the same as murder. God help the people with this mentality.
Just to be clear here, this was a 6-1 decision against the murderers. One judge took their side about the stop being unreasonable. They ain’t goin’ nowhere.
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