Officer Lied to Obtain Warrant in Fatal Shooting
Posted on Fri Jan 12, 2007 at 10:30:47 AM EST
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The facts were bad enough when it seemed that Kathryn Johnston's death was the result of unnecessarily aggressive tactics in executing a search warrant. Now we learn that the warrant was based on lies. Will the officers involved be held accountable?
As TalkLeft reported here and here, Atlanta police officers broke down an elderly woman's door. The frightened woman fired a gun at the intruders, not realizing who they were. The police returned fire and killed Johnston.
The police obtained a warrant to search Johnston's property by claiming that a confidential informant had purchased drugs at her house. That assertion was a lie, invented by a police officer who otherwise had no probable cause to search. A second lie -- that the "dealer" resident had security cameras outside the house -- was used to justify the request for a no-knock warrant.Lying under oath is perjury. The officer's crime led to the death of Kathryn Johnston. Will Georgia hold him accountable?
Here's the back story to this outrageous abuse of police power:
The shooting occurred on Nov. 21, after three members of the narcotics team arrested a suspected street marijuana dealer, Fabian Sheats, who said he could help the officers hook a bigger fish. Mr. Sheats pointed out Ms. Johnston’s house on Neal Street, near a high-crime area, saying a dealer there had a kilogram of cocaine. The officers, according to the reports of Mr. Junnier’s account, tried to get an informant to the house to make a drug buy. But when that effort hit a snag, a request for a search warrant was drawn up anyway.The paper, signed by Officer J. R. Smith, one of the three officers who made the arrest, claimed that a buy had been made from a dealer named Sam, and that a “no-knock” warrant was needed because Sam had security cameras outside the house — another detail that was fabricated, according to the accounts of what Mr. Junnier told the F.B.I.
The police should know better than to believe information provided by an arrestee who has an incentive to say anything to save himself from prison. Yet police routinely suspend their disbelief of unsavory snitches if they think there's even a possibility of making another bust. When the police can't confirm the snitch's story, it's inexcusable to invent a lie to obtain search authority. And its worse than inexcusable to fabricate an excuse for a dangerous "no knock" warrant that endangers the lives of police officers and home occupants.
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