St Georges Day April 23rd <bbbbbdfgdfgdgddfg@googlemail.com> wrote in
news:14d68afc-571c-4575-9089-82e5fead3852@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:
> Last update - 23:33 23/04/2008
> Video footage leads to indictment of 3 kibbutzniks for rape
> By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent
> Tags: Israel, Kibbutz Ein Gedi
3 charged in alleged rape in Green Bay
2 also accused of sexually assaulting another female
Three men from Mississippi are facing criminal charges in Green Bay,
accused of raping a 16-year-old girl and videotaping the incident.
Two of those men also are accused of gang-raping a 19-year-old woman.
Marcus Lewis and Daniel Webster appeared Tuesday in Brown County Circuit
Court on charges relating to the crime against the 19-year-old woman. The
men and Dewayne Towner appeared the next day on three criminal charges
involving the 16-year-old girl.
Lewis and Webster on Monday forced the 19-year-old woman off her bicycle
and into the home where they were staying at 1690 Lilac Lane, and forced
her to have sex with them, the criminal complaint said.
She escaped on her bicycle, went to her home and had someone call the
police, the complaint says.
Police were investigating the case involving the 19-year-old woman when
they discovered the videotape of the other rape, according to criminal
complaints filed this week in Brown County Circuit Court.
Police used the 16-year-old girl's picture to help find her in the
neighborhood. The girl told police the suspects invited her into their
house on several occasions, but on the most recent occasion attacked her,
with each of them taking turns forcing her to have sex before releasing
her.
Lewis, 24, is accused of second-degree sexual assault involving the 19-
year-old woman; Webster, 20, is accused of attempted second-degree sexual
assault in the same case. If convicted, Lewis faces a possible 40-year
sentence, and Webster could face a 20-year sentence.
Lewis, Webster and Towner, 26, are charged with being party to enticing
the child into their house, first-degree sexual assault and filming the
16-year-old girl involved in sexually explicit conduct. They each face the
possibility of 125 years in prison.
When questioned, the two men gave various and conflicting accounts, but
both said the woman willingly participated, police said.
The men are being held in lieu of $50,000 cash bonds on the charges
involving the child, and Lewis and Webster have additional $50,000 bonds
on the charges involving the 19-year-old.
Marcus and Lewis are scheduled for adjourned initial appearances on
Tuesday; Towner's initial appearance was adjourned to Aug. 13.
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=/20080802/GPG0101/808020603/1207/GPG01
MORE CHRISTIAN RAPES
How a faulty warrant led to probation in Cape sex case
By TRUDI GILFILLIAN Staff Writer, 609-463-6716
Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2008
CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE - Nothing is a slam-dunk.
Those were the prophetic words spoken by attorney Mike Pinsky on Aug. 11,
2006, the day he represented Michael Ciancaglini at a bail review hearing.
Ciancaglini, Steve Powers and Michael Piccolo, all age 20, and Richard
Leidy, 19, are four Philadelphia friends who came to North Wildwood that
summer to celebrate their high school graduation. Instead, they found
themselves charged with first-degree sexual assault after they had sex -
and videotaped themselves doing it - with two Wildwood Crest girls, ages
12 and 14.
During the 2006 bail hearing, then-Assistant Prosecutor Robert Moncrief
Jr. told Superior Court Judge Michael A. Donio about the videotape. He
said it showed the four males with the two girls engaged in "pretty much
any type of penetration you can imagine."
"They film it. They're laughing about it," Moncrief said. "They passed the
tape around as they took turns with the girls."
But it was Pinsky who pointed out that while the video existed, there was
no guarantee a jury would ever see it.
He was right.
A series of blunders by law-enforcement officials resulted in a judge
throwing out the tape in February.
North Wildwood Police Detective Richard Schmidt made the first mistake. He
left out some basic information in the affidavit used to get the search
warrant that led to the tapes. Assistant Prosecutor Michelle De-Weese was
supposed to check that the warrant was complete. But it was read to her
over the phone and she didn't pick up on the problem.
Then Municipal Court Judge Louis Belasco signed the incomplete warrant.
Ciancaglini, Powers, Piccolo and Leidy will be sentenced Thursday, but not
to the 20 years they had been facing.
The four will be sentenced to probation.
How could it happen?
After one of the girls reported an assault Aug. 6, 2006, North Wildwood
police raced to the 21st Avenue apartment Ciancaglini, Powers, Piccolo and
Leidy had rented.
The four refused to consent to a search, so Schmidt began the process of
obtaining a warrant while officers stayed at the scene.
DeWeese said she had been in touch with Schmidt about the case and was
read the portion of the affidavit relating to probable cause over the
telephone at 12:41 a.m. After that telephone discussion, the warrant was
taken to the judge for his signature.
But DeWeese never actually saw the affidavit, and she never noticed that
the detective had not included a date when the assaults allegedly
occurred.
DeWeese said she has now changed her procedure when dealing with search
warrants. She now requires police officers to e-mail the text so she can
see it herself rather than have it read to her.
Assistant Prosecutor Matthew D. Weintraub said his office was not taking
anybody to task over the incident, but instead using it as a real-life
example of what can go wrong.
North Wildwood Police Chief Robert Matteucci said his office also hoped to
use the error as a learning tool.
"You can miss something very easily," Matteucci said, adding his office
did not take disciplinary action against anyone in connection with the
warrant.
Belasco said that he did not recall signing the warrant nearly two years
ago.
But, he added, "Certainly you can always learn when something like this
happens."
Lt. Lynn Frame of the Prosecutor's Office put it simply. "We didn't do a
very good job in that case and we hope we don't do it again."
Why just probation?
On May 27, Ciancaglini, Powers, Piccolo and Leidy pleaded guilty,
admitting only that they provided alcohol to the girls. There was no
mention of any sexual activity.
Instead of prison time, they face only probation, community service and
in-home detention.
Weintraub took over the case after Moncrief left the Prosecutor's Office.
"Once (the omitted date) came to everybody's attention, nobody was happy
about it," Weintraub said. The tape, Weintraub said, was the state's best
piece of corroborative and substantive evidence.
"Without it, I had to do some calculating, weighing the strength of the
case without the tape and the willingness of the victims to go forward,"
Weintraub said.
Without the video, it would have fallen to the girls to testify and they
would have been subjected to what Weintraub called "vigorous questioning"
by the defense.
Those questions likely would have focused on why the two girls lied about
their ages, their behavior in the video, and another incident that
reportedly took place between at least one of the girls and one of the men
prior to the Aug. 7 incident, Weintraub said.
Weintraub said that after speaking with the victims' families he
determined it would be better to get the men to make some admission of
guilt than to "roll the dice" and take the case to trial.
The parents of one of the victims opposed having their daughter testify,
while the other would have allowed it but preferred not to, he said.
"Once it was out, we tried to come up with a plea we all could live
with," he said. "We took into consideration the victims and the chance of
a conviction."
What does it mean?
Joseph Rodgers, who represents Powers, said that ultimately it means the
system worked as it should.
"There's a lot of competing issues," Rodgers said. But missing a time
element in a search warrant "is a very basic thing that you can't
overcome."
He said the outcome vindicated the Constitution, particularly the Fourth
Amendment, which provides protection against unreasonable searches and
seizures.
"Those laws are much greater than an individual case," Rodgers said,
adding, "The protection applies to everybody."
"Frankly it was just a mistake," he said, "but a fatal one for the case."
George Thomas is a professor of law at Rutgers University. He's not so
sure the system worked.
He sees this case as an example of where stickiness about legal
technicalities might be too extreme.
"We're the only country in the world without a rule of exclusion that
allows a judge to balance the law with the facts of the case," Thomas
said.
Thomas said a judge in Canada, for instance, would have had the ability to
use some discretion and could have opted to keep the video in evidence.
"It's sort of an indictment of our system that the judge didn't have some
leeway," Thomas said.
Thomas said other states make use of a "good faith exception" that would
recognize the good faith efforts of police to properly obtain a search
warrant, but New Jersey courts have rejected that idea.
New Jersey, he said, is intolerant of the mistakes police make.
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/186/story/217718.html