Posted on 01/23/2018 8:34:42 PM PST by Theoria
It was after his third mental competency test, all of which he passed, that Joseph Tigano started getting desperate. After all, by that point he had spent six years locked inside the Niagara County, N.Y., jail, awaiting trial on a charge of growing pot. It would be another year before the trial began.
The wheels of justice are known for turning slowly, but they moved so sluggishly in Mr. Tigano’s case that on Tuesday, the United States Appeals Court for the Second Circuit issued a scathing opinion dismissing his indictment. In the opinion, the court said the case was the most egregious trial delay it had ever seen, implicating everyone whom Mr. Tigano had come in contact with: judges, lawyers, prosecutors, United States marshals, even a court reporter.
“No single, extraordinary factor caused the cumulative seven years of pretrial delay,” the appellate judges wrote. “Instead, the outcome was the result of countless small choices and neglects.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
.gov working for ‘ya’.
Now, throw them all in jail, disbar the attorneys, fire them all. Turn their assets over to this guy. Set an example that won’t be forgotten.
$XX,000,000.
This guy should also sue them personally.
Well, there’s at least one drug dealer who’ll think twice before setting up shop again.
If the government can lock people in jail for six years on suspicion for reasons you like, they can do the same for reasons you don’t like. Due process either protects everyone or no one.
To me this falls under the criminal sub-category of “Do stupid things, win stupid prizes”; when you’re running a hydroponic marijuana growing operation of more than 1,000 plants, you shouldn’t expect much good to come of it.
Life is full of unfairness and bad luck the way it is, no need to go out of your way to court it.
Six years in the clink for a pot charge?
If he was doing it, yeah he was stupid, but charge him, try him and sentence him,
SIX YEARS with NO TRIAL is just as egregious as what he did.
Life’s not fair and a person who makes wrong choices is much more likely to experience more unfairness than those who don’t.
A guy plays with matches, intending only to give someone a hotfoot as a prank and ends up accidentally burning his own house down. Tough break, shite happens - life is uncertain that way. But he really can’t complain because the fire he started got out of control.
Charged for growing, not dealing.
>> U.S. Appeals Court opinion: the most egregious trial delay it had ever seen
Dig in your heals... that’s fine. Hell, I’m for executing dealers. But this incarceration was certainly an injustice.
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.”
Sixth Amendment To The US Constitution. Mean anything to you?
Let us know how that works out if you’re incarcerated ‘pending trial’ for littering for, oh, seven years.
heels...
“Charged for growing, not dealing.”
—
From the linked story:
“He and his father, Joseph Tigano Sr., were charged with marijuana distribution”
Fair enough.
“Let us know how that works out if you’re incarcerated ‘pending trial’ for littering for, oh, seven years.”
—
I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m picked up for distributing a boatload of pot to my customers.
All I’m saying is none of this would have occurred if he hadn’t been engaging in obviously criminal actions in the first place. No drug dealing and he wouldn’t have had to be in the pokey to begin with for *anything* to happen.
Yes, it sucks to be him, but if I’m going to indulge in feeling pity for someone it will be directed toward the children who starve to death every day due to no fault of their own. Their short and painful lives suck even more.
And, actually, the guy caught a quite a lucky break due to the errors:
“Marijuana Convict Walks a Decade Early After Second Circuit Steps In”
“Tigano, 53, walks from prison a free man more than a decade before his mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years was set to end. In the federal system, while defendants can win early release, most serve all or nearly all of their sentences.”
Growing would be an appropriate charge for a quantity of plants to support personal consumption. That number is substantially less than the 1,000 plants seized during the raid. The quantity alone establishes intent to commit the crime whether or not actually caught in the act of distribution at the time of arrest.
A parallel example is being arrested for DUI while standing next to your car fumbling with the keys to open the driver’s door (or, better yet, seated inside the car fumbling to get the keys into the ignition lock or with the engine running but not in gear). Save for the arrest (on public safety grounds), intent to commit DUI is pretty well established.
I agree that it should not have taken 7 years for the trial. But lack of a speedy trial does not negate the evidence of his guilt. And insisting on going to trial was one of the primary factors in creating the delay. That insistance also precluded any pre-trial sentencing agreement and exposed him to the full sentence possibilities for his crimes.
Once he did have a trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years. Now the indictment is dismissed. In theory, he got 18 years off of his sentence. The article does not say if the dismissal was with prejudice or not.
I am going to assume it was. But If not, he could still be indicted again and essentially be back to square one. He and his attorney might want to factor that into their calculations about filing suit for false imprisionment, or whatever. If they do sue, I would expect the state to argue that it is a perversion of justice for the obviously guilt to profit from their crime since the crime, which was established at trial and could be established again if necessary, began the unfortunate chain of events.
This is not the case of an innocent man finally being vindicated. He is a guilty man who is the unworthy beneficiary of the appellate court using the case to send a sharp rebuke to the prosecutors and lower courts over the delay of justice.
I do not agree.
Perhaps not applicable in this case as I don’t know what sort of evidence was presented when he finally got a trial, but in general there is bound to be a degradation and a decreasing reliability of any eyewitness testimony either for the defense or the prosecution, or eyewitnesses may have even died after seven years. There are also concerns surrounding the validity and chain of possession of any physical evidence after such a long time.
But what I find the most egregious is this:
It was at this point that a strange case took an even stranger turn. In January 2014, Mr. Tigano’s standby lawyer filed a motion asking the court to force her client to take a third competency test. She was concerned, the motion said, that “in refusing to plead guilty and insisting on his right to a trial,” Mr. Tigano was acting “imprudently.” Judge Skretny referred the matter to one of his magistrates, saying, “Whatever time it takes, it takes.”
The magistrate ordered Mr. Tigano to undergo a 15-day examination at Manhattan’s federal jail — and that, too, was delayed when the warden there reported that the jail had a “high volume of cases.” When he finished the test on May 2, 2014, he was once again deemed fit to stand trial. But instead of returning him to Buffalo, the Marshal Service, which often transports prisoners, “seems to have lost track” of him, the order said. He missed two pretrial hearings, which led to more delays.
So insisting on one’s Constitutional right to a trial by jury now makes one crazy? Having a court appointed attorney do this is OK?Then having him deemed fit to stand trial, getting "lost"? How does one "lose" a prisoner?
The same way foster children are lost.
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