Road Pirates -- Assemble! "Desert Snow" is Coming to Idaho

Highway Robbery in Progress: Desert Snow-trained Iowa State Trooper Justin Simmons carries out a shakedown.

It isn’t often that honest people receive detailed intelligence about a planned gathering of violent men who steal for a living and kill with impunity. An event of that kind will occur from August 10-12^th here in Idaho.

In fact, I can provide the specific address of the armed robbers’ summit -- 700 South Stratford Drive in Meridian. The location is conspicuously marked and easy to find: It is the Idaho Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST) Academy, which will host a two-day session of Desert Snow’s “Phase 2015” asset forfeiture workshop. 

“Civil asset forfeiture,” for the mercifully uninitiated, is a procedure in which police officers and the agencies that employ them steal money and property from people who have never been convicted of a crime, and quite often never face criminal charges. The agency designates the desired property as “proceeds” of illicit activity and then files an “in rem” civil lawsuit against it – not the owner of the property, but the property itself. In this process, the burden of proof is placed on the victim, rather than the perpetrator. 

Fighting an act of state-licensed larceny of this kind is prohibitively expensive and frequently futile, which means that the privileged plunderers generally make out like the bandits they unfailingly prove themselves to be. 

Desert Snow was founded in 1989 by Joe David, a former California Highway Patrol Officer who -- rather than doing penance for his career as an armed tax-feeder -- devoted himself to the full-time promotion of undisguised road piracy. For more than a quarter-century, David has made a lucrative living as a prohibition profiteer. According to a Washington Post profile, David – who owns a yacht and a vacation condo in Cabo San Lucas -- enjoys a lifestyle many private sector crime lords would envy.

This year, Desert Snow and its companion program, Black Asphalt (a proprietary intelligence-sharing service) will conduct at least 30 regional road piracy training seminars nation-wide.

The courses include recognition of “Indicators of Criminal Activity” – or, more honestly, the art of pretending that inconsequential facts, such as the presence of an energy drink in a vehicle, are such “indicators”; “Developing Roadside Conversational Skills” – or, more accurately, how to manipulate intimidated people into submitting to an unconstitutional search;  “How and When to Seize Currency” – a course that could be digested into a single phrase, “Whenever you find it”; and “Court Testimony Instruction,” a euphemism for “How to commit perjury with composure.”

Each event will attract scores or hundreds of officers eager to develop or enhance such deplorable skills, each of whom will pay $590 to attend the highway robbers’ in-service course. When asked if the event would be accessible to the media, Desert Snow CEO Jeff David informed me that “the class is closed [except to] Law Enforcement Officers” – thereby validating the principle that squalid undertakings cannot withstand exposure to daylight.

When I asked if the Desert Snow instructors were certified law enforcement officers, Jeff David declined a direct answer, protesting  that “our words have been manipulated” by members of the media.

 

Kingpin: David in the 1980s....

“We are a leader in the field and have a reputation second to none,” he insisted. Desert Snow has “trained thousands of officers throughout the United States and Canada … on how to successfully and professionally find major smugglers, terrorist [sic], child abductors and other major criminals. Our success stories and results speak for themselves.”

Allowing media access to Desert Snow training, or answering detailed questions, would be tactically imprudent in light of the anti-police backlash underway on the part of an ungrateful public.

 “Law enforcement in general is under attack,” pouted David, “but sadly without these hardworking dedicated officers this country would be over run [sic].”

Iowa State Troopers Justin Simmons and Eric Vanderwiel are among the “hardworking dedicated officers” who graduated from the Desert Snow Road Pirate Finishing School. They, along with Desert Snow corporately and Joe David individually, are defendants in a civil rights lawsuit filed by William Barton Davis and John Newmerzhycky, from whom the troopers stole more than $100,000 and an Apple iPad2 during an April 15, 2013 traffic stop on I-80 in Iowa’s Poweshiek County.

As recounted in the lawsuit, the heist, which was carried out through the Desert Snow-trained Eastern Iowa Drug Interdiction Team, was a textbook application of the organization’s methods. Trooper Simmons is an experienced predator with a well-established pattern and practice of contriving excuses to stop cars with out-of-state license plates.

...Joe David today.

Davis and Newmerzhycky, who live in California, were headed to Las Vegas following a World Series of Poker competition in Joilet, Illinois. Scott locked onto the vehicle driven by Newmerzhycky and, after shadowing it for 15 miles, executed a traffic stop for a supposed failure to signal a lane change. This was a lie, of course: As the lawsuit points out, “video of the incident from Trooper Simmons’ patrol car clearly shows Newmerzhycky signaling before making the pass in the left-hand lane.”

Simmons recited his potted pretext for the stop, ran the driver’s information through dispatch, and contacted his partner in crime, Trooper Vanderwiel, who was lurking just over the horizon with his drug-detecting dog. After issuing a warning, Simmons did as he had been trained by Desert Snow. After demanding that the driver get out of the vehicle (so he couldn’t simply drive away at the end of the detention) the trooper informed the motorist that he and his passenger were “free to go” – and, affecting a casual and even friendly demeanor, insisted on asking just a “few question” before releasing his captives.

The purpose of this “Roadside Conversation” tactic is to elicit supposedly incriminating details from drivers who are ignorant of the fact that they have no legal responsibility to tell the officer anything. This also extends the traffic stop beyond its constitutionally permissible limit, allowing the officer to devise an “articulable suspicion” of criminal activity that will supposedly justify a “drug sweep” by a conveniently available K-9 handler. This charade inevitably ends with the dog “alerting” on something “suspicious,” which provides an excuse for a hands-on search of the vehicle.

                                                                                                                                   

Every element of this routine is patently illegal and artfully deceptive. On this occasion, as Simmons asked if Newmerzhycky was willing to wait for the K-9 handler to arrive, the driver “denied consent for the search of the vehicle and indicated … that they had been waiting long enough and that they would like to be on their way.”

As a matter of law, that ended the investigative stop. Everything from that point forward was an abduction and armed robbery devoid of even the barest pretense of legality.

Simmons forcibly detained the pair, and the familiar script unfolded. The costumed thieves found the poker money, an iPhone, a Galaxy cell phone, an iPad2, and “a grinder with residual bits of marijuana.” The currency was stolen, the vehicle impounded, and the driver and passenger taken into custody for aggressive interrogation.

At one point during the two hours that the pair spent as prisoners of the Desert Snow-tutored thieves, Newmerzhycky – who suffers from diverticulitis – asked permission to use the bathroom.

“Although Trooper Simmons reluctantly allowed Newmerzhycky to use the restroom located upstairs from the garage [where his rental car was being searched], Simmons followed [the victim] into the bathroom and rather than remaining silent … continued to interrogate Newmerzchycky while he sat in the stall,” narrates the lawsuit. “Simmons laughed and commented on the sounds Newmerzhycky made in the stall and despite the fact that Newmerzhycky asked him to leave him alone and would be done in a minute, Simmons continued to berate and laugh at Newmerzhycky.”

Newmerzhycky received a misdemeanor citation for the trace elements of marijuana on the grinder. His tormentors told him that they were keeping his cash, his cell phones, and Davis’s iPad2. On the following day, the weary and despondent men learned that their homes in California had been searched on the basis of information provided – via the Black Asphalt service – by Simmons and his comrades to their counterparts in California. The victims soon learned that their bank accounts had been frozen as well.

Ironically, on this occasion the victims were somewhat successful in challenging the illegal forfeiture. Ninety percent of the money stolen from them was returned, but one-third of that total was taken in legal fees. What remained was not enough to cover the financial impact of the seizure of their bank accounts and the other damages inflicted on them by being targeted for the Desert Snow treatment.

 

As a result of the police search of his home, Davis was evicted by his landlord. Newmerzhcky, who worked as artisan glass-blower, lost his business and “was forced to live in his car and rent his home to someone so [he] could continue paying the mortgage.”

The Iowa lawsuit is not the only recent scandal in which Desert Snow is implicated. In July 2013, District Attorney Joe Hicks of Oklahoma’s Caddo County reluctantly shut down an interdiction task force through which Joe David himself, and other private contractors associated with Desert Snow, were conducting traffic stops. On one occasion, David – who was wearing a sidearm -- pulled over and interrogated a pregnant woman on I-40 and interrogated her at length – despite the fact that he was not a state-certified law enforcement officer.

Hicks told The Oklahoman Newspaper that he had hired David and his prohibition privateers “because his drug task force had little success on drug stops” and because “he hoped to make money for his office from the drug stops because of a loss of federal funds.” Davis and his henchmen were allowed to keep 24 percent of everything that was stolen by the task force; at the time the program ended, Desert Snow’s take was $40,000, with another $212,000 in the pipeline with Caddo County Special Judge David Stephens shut down the racket.

As he ordered David never again to conduct “interdiction patrols” in his county, Judge Stephens told him that “if you do, I hope to see you soon, wearing orange.”

This episode probably explains why Joe David turned the reins of his criminal empire over to his son Jeff.  Desert Snow, LLC operates out of the Logan County Sheriff’s Office in Guthrie, Oklahoma. The elder David probably wants to avoid visiting his company’s home office, given the depth of his disrepute in that state.

More than 30,000 police officers nation-wide have undergone Desert Snow indoctrination.  As a self-described “Brotherhood” of modern road agents, veterans of the Desert Snow program participate in “an annual competition to honor police who seize the most contraband and cash on the highways,” observes the Washington Post. This is why officers are encouraged “to post seizure data along with photos of themselves with stacks of currency and drugs.”

The Desert Snow alum who brings in the biggest haul is crowned “Royal Knight” in an annual awards ceremony. More importantly, according to the program’s literature, the winner is “considered for an associate instructor position with the Desert Snow Training Program.” As Joe and Jeff David can testify, teaching police how to conduct seizures and confiscations, rather than carrying them out on behalf of law enforcement agencies, is where personal profits can be made.

It is quite likely that at least some of the officers who will attend the Desert Snow training session at the Idaho POST Academy in August aspire to become road piracy “consultants” once they begin collecting their tax-subsidized pensions. One unavoidable result of that event will be an escalation in Idaho law enforcement’s ongoing war against the property and liberties of anybody who uses public highways in the Gem State.

Since the event is closed to the press and public, nobody representing the productive class will be permitted to participate in the proceedings. Given the nature of the facility in which the crime summit will be held, an effort by outraged citizens to arrest the perpetrators would be pointless.

A high-profile protest during the event might produce some useful publicity, but wouldn’t be likely to shame participants into reforming themselves. People capable of decent shame wouldn’t be involved in that kind of criminal enterprise.

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Dum spiro, pugno!

"Blue Privilege" and the Criminal Enterprise Called The Idaho State Police (UPDATE December 13)

Homicide in progress: Seconds later, Deputy Scott Sloan killed Barry Johnson.

“They’ve laid us out,” Idaho State Police Trooper Sam Ketchum reported in a text message to his superiors during an April 13, 2012 court hearing in Payette.  The intended recipient was Lt. Colonel Ralph Powell, who would shortly be appointed ISP Director.  “They” referred to ISP Corporals Quinn Carmack and Brandon Eller, who had – in defiance of expectations – testified truthfully in the preliminary hearing for Payette County Deputy Scott Sloan, who was charged with vehicular manslaughter.

Ketchum’s text message was part of a concerted campaign of perjury, obstructionism, witness intimidation, and retaliation intended to insulate Sloan from prosecution. Troopers Carmack and Eller, along with their supervisor, Sgt. Fred Rice, would suffer official reprisals. The trooper who committed perjury, Justin Klitch (who is no stranger to those who regularly visit this space), would remain a “valued member” of the agency – in no small measure because of his prowess in plundering motorists who wander into the ISP's Patrol District Three, where pretext stops and property seizures are commonplace.

 

“Unsafe Operation”

On October 18, 2011, Deputy Sloan plowed into the driver’s side of a jeep driven by 65-year-old New Plymouth resident Barry Johnson, killing him instantly. At the time, Sloan was driving 115 miles per hour in response to a 911 call. Johnson was turning left into his own driveway when he was blindsided by Sloan.

Predictably, the ISP’s initial report suggested that “alcohol may have played a role” in the crash.  A post-mortem of the victim confirmed that his blood alcohol level had been within the legal limit at the time of death. 

Spokesmen for both the ISP and the Payette County Sheriff’s Office insisted that Sloan was entitled to travel at nearly twice the speed limit as a matter of discretion. Corporal Carmack, an expert crash scene investigator, produced a report concluding that Sloan had made an “unsafe pass” that wasn’t warranted by the circumstances. Corporal Eller, who had been with the crash reconstruction unit for seven years, concurred with Carmack’s assessment. Those findings were submitted to ISP Trooper Justin Klitch, who in an email instructed Carmack to include the phrase “unsafe operation” in the official report. 

After the report was submitted to Gem County Prosecutor Richard Linville – who had been appointed special prosecutor in the case – Sloan was charged with vehicular manslaughter.

“He is only allowed to exceed the speed limit so long as he doesn’t endanger life or property,” explained Linville during the preliminary hearing. He would soon learn that the ISP had arranged to throw the case by having Trooper Klitch perjure himself on the witness stand. 

Klitch Commits Perjury

“To my surprise, after I had rested the State’s case, Trooper Klitch volunteered to testify for the defense,” recalled Linville in a March 11, 2013 letter to ISP Captain Steve Richardson. Klitch’s testimony was intended to create ambiguity by describing “inconsistencies” in the ISP’s crash report. Those inconsistencies did exist; Klitch – who had been covertly collaborating with the defense for several months –  had helped to create them.

In a lawsuit filed in May 2014, Sgt. Rice – who supervised the accident reconstruction team – describes how changes were made “in the Recon Report” and the direction of his superior officers. The revised version deleted the statements “Sloan made an unsafe pass,” and “Sloan was operating an authorized emergency vehicle in an unsafe manner by driving without due regard for the safety of all persons and reckless disregard for the safety of others.” 

Zampolit: Courtroom informant Sam Ketchum.

During direct examination in the preliminary hearing, Klitch was asked about the final line of the initial report, which faulted Deputy Sloan for “unsafe operation of an emergency vehicle.” After admitting that he had inserted the words into the narrative Klitch immediately contradicted himself:

“Correction – going back, I don’t believe that I put that in there…. I’m almost positive I didn’t put that in there because I had no idea what the speed of the deputy’s patrol car was at the time that I did this narrative so I can honestly say that I did not put that in there.”

The problem with that testimony, as a stunned Linville would later explain, is that Klitch had “specifically requested” in an email to Carmack that the phrase “unsafe operation of an emergency vehicle” be included in the report.

This was not the only unpleasant surprise Linville would experience in the Scott Sloan case.

“When I initially asked Trooper Klitch to meet with me to discuss filing the case, he made a recording of our meeting without my knowledge or consent,” Linville wrote to Captain Richardson. “I don’t know why Trooper Klitch would make such a recording. His duty at the time was to present to me all of the evidence he had collected regarding the Sloan case. He was meeting with me to present evidence, not to create it.”

“Never in my 25 years as a prosecuting attorney have I had a law enforcement officer secretly record discussions during case preparation that are otherwise privileged and protected work product, then hide the existence of such a recording from me,” Linville told Richardson.

Klitch “was communicating and cooperating with the defense attorney, unbeknownst to the prosecutor,” observed Erik Strindberg, an attorney representing Corporal Eller. In the fashion of a zampolit in the Soviet KGB, Klitch was informing on the prosecutor to his superiors – just as Trooper Ketchum informed on Corporals Carmack and Eller during the April 2012 preliminary hearing. 

The Reprisals Begin

While that hearing was underway, Lt. Col. Powell summoned Sgt. Rice, Coordinator of the Crash Reconstruction Program, to a meeting that included Captain Richardson and several other high-ranking ISP officers. Rice had just been promoted to that position a few days earlier, with the clear expectation that he would keep a tight rein on Carmack and Eller – whose insistence on telling the truth under oath had produced an unwelcome complication.

“Rice was told that Corporals Carmack and Eller `have laid us out’ and that they might be removed from the reconstruction team,” recounts attorney Strindberg. Three days after that meeting, Rice was summoned before his superiors again and informed that “because of their testimony, Corporal Carmack and Master Corporal Eller could not be trusted, that they should be taken off of the [team] and that they might not even have a job,” continues Strindberg. “Importantly, there were no accusations that either Corporal Carmack or Master Corporal Eller had lied during their testimony; rather the sole issue was that the administration did not like the substance of their testimony.”

Three ISP troopers testified during that April 13 hearing. Two of them, Carmack and Eller, testified truthfully, and their accounts were corroborated by the preliminary draft report and official email correspondence. The third, Klitch, committed perjury. The ISP dealt with this problem by issuing an order requiring that officers assigned to the CRU destroy all “draft copies of their reports.”

Plans were also made to punish those troopers who valued truthfulness more than tribal solidarity. Rice, Carmack, and Eller, reported the Idaho Statesman (in an uncharacteristic specimen of actual journalism), suffered official retaliation in “myriad ways” – including punitive reassignments, “rejected pay increases, denied promotions and poor evaluations.” 

Purged: Former ISP Sgt. Fred Rice.

In March 2013, Linville dropped the vehicular manslaughter charge against Sloan. A few weeks later, Sgt. Rice was suspended for supposedly “withholding exculpatory evidence” in the case. This charge makes sense only if one assumes that Rice knew of Trooper Klitch’s intention to perjure himself on the witness stand, and had tried to discourage him from doing so.

By this time, Corporal Eller had received the first negative evaluation of his career: He was accused of causing “dissention” and displaying poor “communication skills.” On April 24, 2013 – the day the case against Sloan would have gone to trial, had Linville not been forced to dismiss it – Carmack was placed on administrative leave for unspecified reasons. He, too, eventually received an official rebuke for “failing to maintain a high standard of integrity, honesty and respect for others, and for inefficiency, incompetence or neglect of duties.”

“His new supervisor … criticized him as not being a team player … told him he needed to stop more cars and write more tickets and if he did not make the changes it would be reflected in his 2013 evaluation,” summarized attorney Strindberg.  Carmack and Eller, who are still employed by the ISP, have filed whistleblower lawsuits. Rice, who resigned, has filed a lawsuit of his own that is scheduled for trial in October.

“Blue Privilege” Uber Alles 

Scott Sloan was spared prosecution, but he was fired by the Payette County Sheriff’s Office. In January 2014, the Idaho State Industrial Commission ordered Sloan to remit $5,606.23 in worker’s compensation he received following the accident. Between October 2o11 and Sloan’s termination the following February, Sloan “received workers’ compensation income benefit payments from Surety while also receiving his salary from [the] Employer.” 

As it happens, I visited Payette County Sheriff Chad Huff’s office in January 2014 on a morning that found him immersed in paperwork arising from his former deputy’s case with the Industrial Commission. To his credit, the sheriff radiated disgust over Sloan’s attempt to get away with double-dipping in the aftermath of a fatal accident he caused. Not only should Sloan be banned from law enforcement, Huff told me, “he should be facing prosecution.”

Sheriff Huff is a former ISP Trooper. He hasn’t shared with me his opinion of the agency’s conduct in the Scott Sloan case. Jackie Raymond, the only surviving child of Sloan’s victim, has not been diffident on this subject. She describes the ISP’s behavior as that of a criminal “enterprise or conspiracy with Sloan to … conceal evidence, harbor and protect Sloan from criminal and civil liability, and intimidate, influence, impede, deter, threaten, harass and obstruct witnesses … to protect fellow Idaho law enforcement officers from the consequences of their criminal misconduct.”

As is so often the case in ISP Patrol District Three, the focal point of official corruption has been Trooper Justin Klitch, who remains on active duty even as he continues to accumulate lawsuits – and despite earning a Brady List nomination from Gem County Prosecutor Linville.

“Trooper Klitch has lost my trust as a result of his conduct in [the Scott Sloan] case,” Linville informed the trooper’s supervisor, Captain Richardson, in a March 11, 2013 letter. “I ask that he not be assigned to patrol in Gem County so that I will not be put in a position of having to rely on him to testify in prosecution of criminal cases in this jurisdiction.”

“Trooper Klitch is a valued member of the Idaho State Police,” wrote Captain Richardson in his reply to Linville, dismissing the controversy in the Sloan case as a “difference of opinion.”

Klitch’s Lawsuit Collection Expands

Before he was removed from active patrol duty, Klitch had earned both professional and media notoriety for his performance as an “interdiction” specialist – that is, an officer who engineers pretext stops that lead to seizures of contraband and, preferably, cash. Two lawsuits highlighted by the Statesman’s recent coverage of the Scott Sloan scandal document the predatory methods Klitch used to engineer opportunities to plunder unsuspecting travelers.

During a May 2014 encounter, Arizona native Jose Castillo, a retired forest ranger, was tailed by Klitch for several miles on I-84. As Castillo approached a parked emergency vehicle, Klitch “accelerated rapidly toward the rear of Mr. Castillo’s Blazer before moving his patrol car into the passing lane,” thereby preventing the driver from moving into the left lane, as traffic regulations require.

 

Thief, perjurer, and "valued member" of the ISP Klitch.

Prior to doing this, Klitch – who had noticed that the vehicle had Arizona plates and was driven by a Latino male – contacted ISP Trooper Christopher Cottrell, a K9 officer, in anticipation of a pretext stop and vehicle search. A few minutes after Klitch pulled Castillo over for a traffic violation that the ISP officer had created, Cottrell arrived to play his role in this scripted exercise by walking his dog around the captive’s vehicle and prompting it to “alert.”

Castillo, who had done nothing wrong, was forced to undergo a pat-down search at the side of the freeway while Klitch demanded to know “how much cash” he was carrying. The warrantless and unconstitutional search disclosed neither contraband nor treasure.

As if to console himself for failing to find any loot, Klitch mocked and taunted his victim, who said that he suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder: “When Trooper Klitch did not find any drugs or other contraband, he approached Mr. Castillo to inform him that he had repeatedly urinated in the Blazer during the search, stating that he had `only peed in there a couple of times.’”

On that thoughtful parting note, this “valued member” of the Idaho State Police allowed Castillo to leave the scene.

Klitch’s sociopathic resourcefulness isn’t limited to contriving traffic violations. A few weeks prior to his encounter with Castillo, Klitch and ISP Detective Corey Gates used a text message to lure an entirely innocent Idaho resident named Jarrod Bush into an ambush that cost him more than $4,200.

A February 2014 traffic stop and search of a vehicle operated by Gabriel Owen led to a marijuana trafficking charge. Among Owen’s effects was a cell phone containing evidence of phone correspondence with Mr. Bush. Using Detective Gates’ ISP-provided cell phone, Klitch sent Bush a text message “requesting [his] assistance because `Owen’ had been involved in a car accident and needed a ride,” narrates Bush’s lawsuit. A meeting was arranged at a Chevron station in Nampa.

When Bush arrived at the station, he was surrounded by Klitch and a thugscrum of ISP officers who insisted that “it was a `done deal,’ and that there was enough evidence to charge [him] with Conspiracy to Traffic in Marijuana.” This was a lie, of course, as was the subsequent claim that a drug-detecting dog had “alerted” on Bush’s vehicle during the course of an entirely illegal search.

Scouring the interior of the car, Klitch didn’t discover any contraband but he did find $4,260 and a cell phone. These were stolen – or as Klitch and similarly disreputable people would insist, “forfeited” – and Bush was taken to the ISP’s District 3 office for interrogation.

No evidence was ever found that Bush had violated any laws. He was never charged with an offense, nor was a formal civil forfeiture proceeding ever begun.  This was an act of felonious theft devoid of even the pretense of lawfulness. It is also quite typical of the behavior Idaho residents should expect from the criminal syndicate called the Idaho State Police

 Click here to download or listen to this week's Freedom Zealot Podcast.

                                                                                  UPDATE

There have been developments in this story that took place over the summer while my attention was focused on moving my family from Payette to Homedale. I regret the fact that they passed unremarked in this space.
Owing to the exposure of the abusive practices followed by ISP Trooper Klitch in pursuit of forfeiture, the lawsuit filed by Darien Roseen "may have served its purpose without going to conclusion," commented former Idaho Attorney General David Leroy in late June when Roseen filed a motion to dismiss the suit.

Pursuing the matter would mean overcoming Klitch's claim of "qualified immunity" and would thus be tremendously expensive and greatly disruptive to the life of the retired executive, who would be battling against an entity that could draw out the affair as long as it cared to.
Under what we're required to pretend is the law, "it's OK for the officer to be wrong, if there's a reasonable basis for their error," according to Leroy. "But if the trooper was malicious, or is acting habitually without sufficient facts, that is a violation of a citizen's rights." This remains "an open question," he observes, despite the dismissal of Roseen's lawsuit: Roseen's attorney points out that he had received "numerous calls and emails from others with similar stories," notes the Spokesman-Review newspaper. At least two other lawsuits against Klitch remain active, and a third potential suit is still pending. Linville's condemnation of the Trooper's deceit remains part of the record.

Within the past few hours it has been reported that Rice's whistleblower lawsuit against the ISP was dismissed by US District Judge Cheri Copsey.

It's worth pointing out that the Scott Sloan case was not the first one in which Rice was accused of withholding exculpatory evidence -- and that in a previous case of this kind the ISP ardently attested to Rice's professionalism and personal integrity. Rice's expert testimony played a key role in the murder conviction of Jonathan Ellington arising from a fatal car crash in 2011. After Ellington's conviction was overturned five years later, the ISP conducted an internal review clearing Rice of charges that he had lied on the witness stand.

In 2011, the ISP was as eager to exonerate Rice as it was determined to discredit him one year later. The critical variable would appear to be the respective identities of the driver involved in the fatal automobile accidents -- in a phrase, Blue Privilege.

Dum spiro, pugno!