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Crafty_Dog:
By TODD RUGER
todd.ruger@heraldtribune.com

SARASOTA -- John Coffin opened the garage door to see his wife on the floor, screaming in pain as two sheriff's deputies tried to handcuff her, Coffin's attorney said in court Monday.

"He grabs his wife and begins to pull her away," defense attorney Brett McIntosh said. One of the deputies then jumped Coffin from behind, "and that's where this case is focused."

Coffin, 56, faces years in prison on felony battery charges that in April 2006 he attacked deputies James Lutz and Stacy Ferris, whose name is now Stacy Brandau.

Monday was the first day in a trial in which prosecutors will use the serious injuries sustained by the deputies to show Coffin is guilty.

Coffin's defense attorney will argue that he was defending his wife, and his home, from deputies who had no right to be there in the first place.

Prosecutors say the fight started when Coffin came into the garage, punched Ferris in the face and threw her against a wall.

When Ferris tried to arrest him for that battery, Coffin fought them and both deputies "were defending themselves and trying to get away," Assistant State Attorney Jessica Zack said. "The pictures will tell you the story as well."

Coffin's attorneys say the two deputies are the ones who broke the law.

"We will find out about the credibility of these officers," McIntosh said Monday in court.

The deputies were at the Coffins' home trying to serve a civil injunction on Coffin, who had been served the same papers five days earlier in Charlotte County.

The deputies entered the garage even though they did not have a search warrant or arrest warrant allowing them to enter the Coffins' house.

And they arrested Cynthia Coffin, 50, on obstruction charges for not following their order to bring her husband outside.

McIntosh said the deputies had no grounds for the arrest.

The charges against her have since been dismissed. A jury had been picked in Cynthia Coffin's case in December when a judge granted a defense attorney's last-minute motion to dismiss the charges because of those facts.

On Monday in court, Zack held up photographs to show the extent of the deputies' injuries and only touched briefly on the issues the defense has raised.

"Whether or not the officers should have entered the house is something I'm sure they would take back if they could," Zack said.

Brandau got the facial bruising in the photos because John Coffin punched her in the face and threw her against a wall when he came into the garage, Zack said.

Lutz got the injuries to his head when he was shocked with a Taser during the fight, then knocked unconscious with three strikes to the head with the butt of that Taser gun, Zack said.

John Coffin's trial is expected to end today.

Last modified: March 13. 2007 3:35AM
__________________
And the final outcome:

Judge acquits John Coffin on 5 felony charges; Coffin gets time served on 6th.
By TODD RUGER

SARASOTA -- John Coffin won't spend any more time in jail for beating up two sheriff's deputies inside his house, striking one in the head with a Taser gun he took from the other.

Circuit Judge Rick De Furia said at Coffin's trial Tuesday that he doesn't condone the violence against the deputies.

But Coffin, 56, had a right to defend his family and property because the deputies had no right to be in Coffin's house in the first place, De Furia said.

"Law enforcement was responsible for the chain of events here," De Furia said. "I think in situations like this, officers become so frustrated they go beyond what the law allows them to do."

The fight started when Coffin heard his wife screaming in pain, went into the garage and saw two deputies arresting her on the floor.

The deputies were trying to serve Coffin with civil papers that had been given five days earlier. They had entered the garage even though they did not have a search warrant or arrest warrant.

And they arrested Coffin's wife, Cynthia, 50, on obstruction charges even though she had no obligation to follow their orders to bring her husband outside.

"The most critical is the fact the officers broke the law by stopping the garage door from going down," and then entering the garage, De Furia said.

A jury was picked for the trial Monday. But the judge granted a motion by Coffin's attorneys, Derek Byrd and Brett McIntosh, and acquitted John Coffin on five of six felony charges Tuesday morning.

Coffin pleaded no contest to the remaining charge of taking a Taser gun from one of the deputies during the fight.

Before handing down the sentence, De Furia asked how long Coffin spent in jail after his initial arrest.

"You spent eight days in the Sarasota County jail," De Furia said. "That's your sentence. No probation."

Relatives applauded, and Coffin walked out of the courthouse with only a $358 bill for court costs. The sentence surprised even defense attorneys, who had suggested De Furia sentence Coffin to probation.

Prosecutors had asked for more than a year of prison time because of "the totality of the case" and the injuries to deputies James Lutz and Stacy Ferris, whose name is now Stacy Brandau.

The two deputies testified about their injuries Tuesday -- three blows to the head with the butt of the Taser gun knocked Lutz unconscious.

"I just ask that he doesn't get away with this," Brandau told the judge.

Assistant State Attorney Jeff Young told the judge the case "could have been over in five seconds" if the Coffins "had simply come out and cooperated."

"That is a man who took it upon himself to beat up two police officers," Young said.

De Furia said that while he believed the deputies' mistakes were not intentional, the Coffins had every right to lock doors, try to close their garage door and not cooperate.

"What took place in the house was unfortunate," De Furia said, "but Mr. Coffin ... had a right to resist."

Last modified: March 14. 2007 5:36AM
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lewis:
Wow.  That just shows how different the laws are in differing states.  In Kentucky you have no right to resist an arrest, even if it is later proven to be an unlawful arrest.  That case would have been completely different here.

Part of the reason that the issue of what the police can and cannot do is so muddy is that many people go to extremes.  Some people seem to think we can do anything while others think we have almost no authority at all.  As usual, the truth is in the middle.

I have more to say, but no time right now.  Will post again later today.

Crafty_Dog:
Cops Say the Darndest Things!


#16 "You know, stop lights don't come any redder that the one you just went through."


#15 "Relax, the handcuffs are tight because they're new. They'll stretch after you wear them a while."


#14 "If you take your hands off the car, I'll make your birth certificate a worthless document."


#13 "If you run, you'll only go to jail tired."


#12 "Can you run faster than 1200 feet per second? Because that's the speed of the bullet that'll be chasing you."


#11 "You don't know how fast you were going? I guess that means I can write anything I want to on the ticket, huh?"


#10 "Yes, sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don't think it will help. Oh, did I mention that I'm the shift supe! rvisor?"


#9 "Warning! You want a warning? O.K., I'm warning you not to do that again or I'll give you another ticket."


#8 "The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?"


#7 "Fair? You want me to be fair? Listen, fair is a place where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy and corn dogs and step in monkey poop."


#6 "Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven."


#5 "In God we trust, all others we run through NCIC."


#4 "How big were those 'Just two beers' you say you had?"


#3 "No sir, we don't have quotas anymore. We used to, but now we're allowed to write as many tickets as we can."


#2 "I'm glad to hear that Chief (of Police) Hawker is a personal friend of yours. So you know someone who can post your bail."


#1 "You didn't think we give pretty women tickets? You're right, we don't. Sign here!

Crafty_Dog:
Not quite sure how to describe this one , , ,

http://www.biggeekdaddy.com/humorpages/Misc/lawnmowerDUI.html

Crafty_Dog:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/legal/l1980/new_york_v_belton.htm

An automobile in which respondent was one of the occupants was stopped by a New York State policeman for traveling at an excessive rate of speed. In the process of discovering that none of the occupants owned the car or was related to the owner, the policeman smelled burnt marihuana and saw on the floor of the car an envelope suspected of containing marihuana. He then directed the occupants to get out of the car and arrested them for unlawful possession of marihuana. After searching each of the occupants, he searched the passenger compartment of the car, found a jacket belonging to respondent, unzipped one of the pockets, and discovered cocaine. Subsequently, respondent was indicted for criminal possession of a controlled substance. After the trial court had denied his motion to suppress the cocaine seized from his jacket pocket, respondent pleaded guilty to a lesser included offense, while preserving his claim that the cocaine had been seized in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the search and seizure, but the New York Court of Appeals reversed.

Held : The search of respondent's jacket was a search incident to a lawful custodial arrest, and hence did not violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The jacket, being located inside the passenger compartment of the car, was "within the arrestee's immediate control" within the meaning of Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, wherein it was held that a lawful custodial arrest creates a situation justifying the contemporaneous warrantless search of the arrestee and of the immediately surrounding area. Not only may the police search the passenger compartment of the car in such circumstances, they may also examine the contents of any containers found in the passenger compartment. And such a container may be searched whether it is open or closed, since the justification for the search is not that the arrestee has no privacy interest in the container but that the lawful custodial arrest justifies the infringement of any privacy interest the arrestee may have. Pp. 457-463.

============

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-5165.ZS.html

THORNTON v. UNITED STATES
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No. 03—5165. Argued March 31, 2004–Decided May 24, 2004

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Before Officer Nichols could pull over petitioner, petitioner parked and got out of his car. Nichols then parked, accosted petitioner, and arrested him after finding drugs in his pocket. Incident to the arrest, Nichols searched petitioner’s car and found a handgun under the driver’s seat. Petitioner was charged with federal drug and firearms violations. In denying his motion to suppress the firearm as the fruit of an unconstitutional search, the District Court found, inter alia, the automobile search valid under New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, in which this Court held that, when a police officer makes a lawful custodial arrest of an automobile’s occupant, the Fourth Amendment allows the officer to search the vehicle’s passenger compartment as a contemporaneous incident of arrest, id., at 460. Petitioner appealed his conviction, arguing that Belton was limited to situations where the officer initiated contact with an arrestee while he was still in the car. The Fourth Circuit affirmed.

Held: Belton governs even when an officer does not make contact until the person arrested has left the vehicle. In Belton, the Court placed no reliance on the fact that the officer ordered the occupants out of the vehicle, or initiated contact with them while they remained within it. And here, there is simply no basis to conclude that the span of the area generally within the arrestee’s immediate control is determined by whether the arrestee exited the vehicle at the officer’s direction, or whether the officer initiated contact with him while he was in the car. In all relevant aspects, the arrest of a suspect who is next to a vehicle presents identical concerns regarding officer safety and evidence destruction as one who is inside. Under petitioner’s proposed “contact initiation” rule, officers who decide that it may be safer and more effective to conceal their presence until a suspect has left his car would be unable to search the passenger compartment in the event of a custodial arrest, potentially compromising their safety and placing incriminating evidence at risk of concealment or destruction. The Fourth Amendment does not require such a gamble. Belton allows police to search a car’s passenger compartment incident to a lawful arrest of both “occupants” and “recent occupants.” Ibid. While an arrestee’s status as a “recent occupant” may turn on his temporal or spatial relationship to the car at the time of the arrest and search, it certainly does not turn on whether he was inside or outside the car when the officer first initiated contact with him. Although not all contraband in the passenger compartment is likely to be accessible to a “recent occupant,” the need for a clear rule, readily understood by police and not depending on differing estimates of what items were or were not within an arrestee’s reach at any particular moment, justifies the sort of generalization which Belton enunciated. Under petitioner’s rule, an officer would have to determine whether he actually confronted or signaled confrontation with the suspect while he was in his car, or whether the suspect exited the car unaware of, and for reasons unrelated to, the officer’s presence. Such a rule would be inherently subjective and highly fact specific, and would require precisely the sort of ad hoc determinations on the part of officers in the field and reviewing courts that Belton sought to avoid. Pp. 4—8.

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