Prosecutor Sees No Evil in the Baltimore Police Dept.

By TChris, Section Misconduct
Posted on Fri Jun 06, 2008 at 06:51:20 PM EST
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Baltimore police detective Charles Hagee was part of an "elite" team investigating drug trafficking. His credibility was important to the outcome of hundreds of cases. It is therefore distressing that the chief of the state's attorney's police misconduct division, Thomas Krehely, deliberately kept himself in the dark about misconduct allegations that called Hagee's integrity into question.

Krehely ... testified that he does not routinely review police misconduct files after he decides not to press criminal charges, mainly to avoid being subpoenaed by defense attorneys.

Krehely decided not to press criminal misconduct charges, without bothering to review the file, because internal misconduct charges that the police department leveled against Hagee -- charges that the department didn't pursue aggressively -- were resolved in a deal that favored Hagee with a dismissal of the charges that impugned his integrity. Krehely's "see-no-evil" approach meant that (in his mind, at least) he was not required to disclose information to defense attorneys that destroys Hagee's credibility as a police witness. Had Krebely done his job responsibly, resources would not have been wasted on the dozens of prosecutions that have been dismissed because they are tainted by Hagee's involvement. (more ...)

Now that the truth is in the public record, the discredited Hagee is useless as a prosecution witness.

State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy now says Hagee cannot be relied upon to tell the truth on the witness stand and on May 5 -- nearly four years after the incident -- she put him on a list of witnesses prosecutors may not use at trial, said Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for Jessamy.

With good reason, Krehely's ethics have been questioned.

Assistant Public Defender Maureen Rowland accused prosecutors of purposely remaining in the dark about the outcome of police internal investigations. "The state's attorney's office exhibited willful ignorance -- because they didn't want to know," Rowland said in an interview. "They had an ethical responsibility as lawyers to find out what the situation really was, and then disclose that information to defense lawyers."

Kudos to public defender Gregory Fischer, who persuaded a judge to review and disclose the relevant contents of Hagee's personnel file. Here's what he found out:

Court records say the woman [either Hagee's girlfriend or ex-girlfriend, depending on whose story you believe] told Hagee over the phone that she did not want to see him, but he ignored her, driving in a police car to her apartment drunk and in uniform from his part-time job at a parking garage, according to the internal police charging documents. The woman told police that Hagee repeatedly banged on her door, ordered her to open it and threatened to hurt her.
"When the communications division of the Department dispatched the call, Detective Hagee responded, indicating that he was handling the call for service," Maria E. Korman, an attorney for the Police Department, wrote in court filings. The victim "called 911 again and indicated that she heard Detective Hagee speaking on the radio indicating that he was handling the call but that he was the one she was calling about." ...

[I]nternal charging documents allege that the detective fabricated a story about the dispute and redirected responding officers to chase a fictitious suspect. According to court records, Hagee told investigators that the woman's boyfriend, who also was a police officer, was the one banging on her door trying to get inside and not him. Hagee told police that the other man had run down the stairwell.

There's more. The police did not arrest Hagee for driving to the woman's house with a .12 blood alcohol level, and the department dragged out the investigation for so long that Hagee was able to negotiate a wrist-slap (a 10 day suspension for a minor offense) as punishment for his misconduct.

But Krehely, the chief of the state's attorney's police misconduct division, wants to know nothing about the abundant police misconduct evidenced in Hagee's file ... or anywhere else.

He said he does not attend regular meetings of internal affairs investigators or share what he knows with rank-and-file prosecutors because he fears the information will be leaked. He also said that he has an office of two -- himself and an investigator -- and handles about 100 allegations of police misconduct a year.
"All I can say is, I maintain as little information in my databases, any of them, as I can because I do not want it to get out that Tom Krehely has all the information that the Police Department has so that I'm not the first person that gets a subpoena from attorneys, so," he said in the deposition.

In other words, if Krehely actually did his job, accountability might follow. Or, at least, members of the public (and even worse, defense attorneys!) might learn the truth about the actions of the public employees whose salaries they pay.

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Prosecutor Sees No Evil in the Baltimore Police Dept. | 5 comments (5 topical)

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Cops lie all the time (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by scribe on Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 10:26:03 AM EST

just like everyone else.

A little OT, for the lawyers in the crowd, I suggest that if you want to have some fun with cross-examination, take the non-cop spouses in divorce cases. A colleague once had one, in a small-town PD, where the cop got his cop on and decided to be tough about resolving the case. The spouse had told my colleague about all the cop's misbehavior, and it all came out in the cross. Stuff like coming home drunk and shooting his service weapon, then having the DV call squelched.

The thing is (and was), in many states, there is some level of deference given to a cop testifying - whether it's a formal inference, or not. But that only applies when he's testifying as a cop in a criminal case, i.e., for work. When he was testifying against his wife in the divorce case, there was no enhancement given to his credibility. My colleague related the personality-being-shattered reaction the cop gave when it sunk in that no one believed him or his testimony. When my colleague got done, the cop slunk off like the proverbial whipped dog.

Just sayin'.

I live north of Baltimore and work in the (none / 0) (#1)
by Anne on Fri Jun 06, 2008 at 07:11:06 PM EST

downtown area - the Baltimore PD has been rife with problems for a long time - it's embarrassing, really.

It does the people no good for the state's attorney's office to reach the point where they accept the corruption and prosecute cases as if it didn't exist.

[Oh - and minor housekeeping note - you transposed letters in "Baltimore" in your post heading]

: oops (none / 0) (#2)
by TChris on Fri Jun 06, 2008 at 07:17:42 PM EST

Thanks for the catch.

I was on a jury once... (none / 0) (#3)
by dianem on Fri Jun 06, 2008 at 07:44:01 PM EST

...the police officer said one thing. The defendent said that the hadn't said what the officer said he had. The case was about possession of drug paraphenalia - a crack pipe. There was a crack pipe, but there was no evidence to show who owned it, except the admission of the defendant. Not a particularly savory character, smoking crack with kids in the house. But there was no crack, just the pipe. Weird case.

We ended up with a hung jury, because one juror wouldn't give in. I wish it had been me, but I am ashamed to say that I went along with the rest, because I thought he was probably guilty. I realized afterward that I was caving to peer pressure - there was one woman on the jury who kept insisting that policemen don't lie and therefore the defendent had to be lying. I actually argued about that. I wish she could see this case. Police officers are as human as the rest of us. But as long as their leaders choose to think like this woman did, the bad ones will never get weeded out, which means that we can't trust the word of any of them. It's sad, really. Officers of the law should be held to a higher standard, not presumed to be innocent regardless of the evidence.

Why should he? (none / 0) (#4)
by diogenes on Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 12:26:07 AM EST

If an investigator has been found guilty of police misconduct, surely it is the job of the defense to bring this up. You don't see defense lawyers being subpoened to testify about what they know about the credibility of defense witnesses--it comes up on the stand.