Evidence Which May Be Presented To Meet The Public Charge: Fill & Download for Free

I am a prosecuting attorney. I have, on occasion, declined to file charges on cases presented to me by law enforcement. When I do it is for a variety of reasons. Most often it is because there is insufficient admissible evidence to file the charge. Occasionally it is because the evidence shows conduct that may be morally reprehensible but doesn’t meet the definition of an actual crime. In the United States (as in most other countries) we have the rule of law and due process. That means that you can’t punish someone just because you don’t like what they did. Their conduct has to meet the definition of a crime under an existing law. All crimes have elements of which each must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Before a person can even be arrested and charged, you must have probable cause at a minimum. I frequently see cases where it is clear a crime took place and there is a clear victim that has suffered some kind of harm and a likely the perpetrator but there just isn’t evidence to prove they committed crime. It is very hard to explain to a victim that there is nothing you can do. In ordinary life we make a lot of assumptions and rely on other sources of information to come to conclusions. That’s not good enough to convict someone of a crime.Let me give you an example. An anonymous concerned citizen calls the police about an erratic driver on a highway who appears to be intoxicated. They describe the swerving driving pattern and give a detailed description of the driver. It takes state police about 20 minutes to respond to that area and they find the vehicle pulled off the road. The driver’s side door is open and the engine is running. On the ground near the car is a an unconscious man who perfectly matches the caller’s description with a half empty liter of vodka clutched in his hand. The officer detains the man, we’ll call him Dave Drunkard, and obtains a search warrant to do a blood draw. The warrant takes about 30 minutes but is authorized by a judge and the blood sample is obtained and analyzed. The results show that the level of alcohol in the man’s blood is twice the legal limit.An ordinary person would conclude, not unreasonably, that the man was driving under the influence and is guilty of the crime of DUI. Unfortunately man would very likely not be convicted. Probably not even charged. In Idaho to convict someone of DUI for alcohol you must prove the following:On or about (the date in question)in the state of Idaho (have to prove jurisdiction)the defendant, Dave Drunkard, drove or was in actual physical control ofa motor vehicleupon a highway, street or bridge or upon public or private property open to the public,while having an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more as shown by analysis of the defendant’s blood/breath.The problem we have is we can’t prove several parts of this. We can probably assume the car was operated while upon the highway at some point in order to get to where it was. However, can we prove Dave was the guy was driving to get it there? Nope. He wasn’t in actual physical control of the vehicle when the officer arrived. Unless we locate our anonymous caller and make him testify, nothing he told law enforcement is admissible because it is hearsay and likely violates Dave Drunkard’s constitutional right to confront witnesses. That includes his description of the driver and the driving pattern observed. Anyone could have been driving that vehicle. Dave might have been a passenger or maybe he just happened to pass out next to a stopped car that had nothing to do with him. Even if we could prove he was driving, could we prove he was drunk while he was doing so? Nope. Maybe Dave was stone cold sober and drove to that location. Upon arrival he got out of the vehicle with a bottle of vodka, sat down on the ground and proceeded to drink himself into a stupor. Since Dave could have intoxicated himself after driving, the blood results might not even be admissible because there is insufficient foundation to establish that they prove what they are offered for, to show that Dave was intoxicated while driving.Absent additional evidence, I wouldn’t even bother to file this because it wouldn’t survive a defendant’s motion for a directed verdict. It would never even get to a jury. Hope this helps.

Significantly mixed.The overall impacts of charter schools are in some ways quite positive, and in some ways extremely negative.Separating Good Schools from Bad SchoolsIt’s important to first note that a charter school is not the same as a private school. Charter schools are public schools; they cannot charge tuition, are subject to church-state issues that parochial or private schools are not, cannot require entrance exams, and must participate in required state testing where private schools do not.However, there is incredible variability to how charter schools are organized, run, held accountable, funded, accept students, create and use curriculum, and more.I have a friend who works for Etude High School, a public charter school in Wisconsin. It’s a great learning environment that very much differs from the rigid sit-and-learn methods of traditional schools. It’s a project-based learning, discovery-focused model that allows a lot of work-at-your-own-pace education and challenges students to apply cross-disciplinary skills in every aspect of their education. It’s doing some incredibly innovative education, and it’s been quite successful. My friend has been there for six years and loves it. His students have gone on to be quite successful.Other charter schools fail spectacularly. A recent study found that many online-based charter schools fail to graduate even half of their students. Numerous charter schools have closed mid-year and without warning, leaving students, parents, and even teachers stranded in the middle of a school year with limited options.What divides the two?Largely accountability, organization, and effective resourcing.Some charter schools are “schools within a school,” or otherwise organized under the main public district, and overseen by the district’s publicly elected school board.These can vary from entirely separate “alternative schools” that follow specialized or experimental educational structures, such as Etude, to specific, isolated programs that operate in the same buildings as the regular schools.For example, a nearby city to where I grew up operates an alternative school for students who might otherwise drop out due to teen pregnancy, disciplinary issues, work schedules, and more. The dedicated building is open longer hours (7am to 7pm,) with teachers that operate more on shifts than a traditional school. The school has built-in child care for single teen parents. It is focused on a traditional high school diploma and not just a GED. It doesn’t generally offer extracurricular activities, though students can enroll in those with the main school. (Most don’t.)In contrast, a friend of mine from college who taught English for a number of years was tapped to run an isolated, dedicated program within her school that she created from the ground up for at-risk students who just couldn’t operate in a traditional educational framework. She was essentially her own principal, though she officially reported to the principal of the high school on the organization chart. (She’s been incredibly successful and recently was a presenter at a multi-state regional conference on educational innovation.) This program co-ordinates with traditional classes, replacing most entirely, but still operates within the same school.Both of these charter schools are funded by need. They receive state aid per pupil like public schools, but they also receive grants for specific programs and specific activities. Etude works with a number of local manufacturers who sponsor various projects, extracurricular activities, and courses that work in conjunction with their businesses where students learn to apply their school work to real-world applications.Both of these are accountable to the local public school board. Their books are public record and overseen by the district administration.Other charter schools are privately owned, for-profit organizations, and operate on a contract with local districts. These receive public funding, but are not directly overseen by the public school board. These schools receive grants, local, state, and federal, ranging from the standard state aid per pupil to specific grants for technology, curriculum, or personnel, to undedicated blocks of straight cash to be used as the school sees fit.Some of these are successful. There are numerous privately-run for-profit Montessori schools that operate on contracts with districts to ensure that program graduates can easily transfer right into the public school’s curriculum, and many of these are very successful.Others are essentially nothing more than get-rich-quick schemes or other criminal enterprises by organizers, just as they are in higher education. The fact that they operate on contracts with sometimes little or even no oversight from the public also opens them up to incredible waste, fraud, and abuse. Over a six-year period spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations, the Federal government alone investigated 53 charter schools that resulted in 21 indictments and 17 convictions.Steven Cox, a former insurance executive and the founder of the now-defunct California Charter Academy, at one point the largest chain of charter schools in the country, was indicted on 56 counts of misappropriation and theft for trips to Disneyland and stealing $42,000 from the school to pay his personal income taxes. Eleven years later, Cox’s case still has not been resolved as he continues to use his fortune to litigate it. Horizon Academy in Cincinnati essentially operated as a front for an immigration fraud ring for several years as the founder used it to get work visas for Turkish nationals with absolutely no background in education. The CEO of Philadelphia Academy Charter School admitted to stealing approximately a half a million dollars from the school in part through raiding its vending machines.These schools operate on loose contracts with little to no accountability to the public other than being required to publish graduation rates and test scores. They can often operate for years bilking the public before closing, sometimes abruptly, and absconding with the funds.Positive Charter School Models and OpportunitiesWhere schools are effectively resourced based on demonstrated need, and are publicly accountable just as the traditional public school, charter schools may be quite effective. They can be testbeds for new educational practices and reforms, or offer alternatives for students who need different educational models from their peers.Charter schools might be a great way to differentiate education or provide specialized educational applications, such as in-depth vocational education. Imagine if a student graduated high school ready or significantly far along the track to becoming a journeyman carpenter or a licensed electrician. While requiring specialization through tracked education may not be practical or even desirable (look at me, I was going to be an astrophysicist when I started undergraduate,) offering the opportunities might be quite beneficial.Offering this kind of differentiated education is already a goal of most public schools. However, a charter school with a specific mission, as opposed to the more general liberal arts education of a traditional K-12 school, could provide a more focused differentiated education that goes in-depth on a particular area, rather than more broadly on several disciplines.There are positives and negatives to this. A more well-rounded education has proven itself over time to benefit a person over their whole life. I had a poster up on my wall when I taught that had a picture of scientists running away from dinosaurs that read, “Science will teach you how to clone a T-Rex. Humanities will teach you why it’s a bad idea.”Now, a charter school could have a liberal arts education that is still focused on a certain topic. A charter school focused on churning out STEM educated graduates, for example, may have just as much focus on literature and art and music, but from an engineering perspective. The band students might take more time to learn acoustical physics or metallurgy for better instruments. The literature may focus slightly more heavily on technical documents and scientific literacy, but also include fiction geared towards engineering types. The math might be more practical-application-based.The Perception of Failing Public Schools and The Rise of ConsumerismJon Stewart hosted educational reformer Diane Ravitch several times on his show. Ravitch noted on multiple occasions that the majority of U.S. adults have bought into the narrative that public schools are failing. International benchmark test scores continue to fall for U.S. students, for example. Advocacy documentaries such as Waiting for Superman paint the public schools as a broken system where teachers’ unions continue to drive a status-quo at the expense of children, and charter schools as the revolution in education that would shake up the industry with competition and reform that public schools lack, but limited by lottery systems leaving the unlucky trapped.Yet, Ravitch also noted that on the whole, most U.S. voters surveyed also believe that their local public school is good and successful.Jon Stewart: These areas, so the families in these areas, because this gets into another issue you bring up in the book [Reign of Error]. The families in this area are rightly concerned with the performance of some of the public schools in their area. These schools can be dilapidated, they can be poorly performing and these types of things. There is this movement and the charter movement that says ‘what’s wrong with giving choice to those kids in those areas?’ because the schools around them are not are not serving their needs. What is wrong with that in your mind?Diane Ravitch: Well, what’s wrong with it is that there, it is part of, I believe, a purposeful effort to create a consumer mentality around education. Public education is the public responsibility. Whether you send your children to private schools, or to a religious school, or you home school them, that’s your right. And if you have no children at all, you’re still obligated to support public education. What they’re trying to do is to say that public education is not public, it’s a choice, it’s a consumer choice. They’re trying to destroy the sense of civic obligation so the next time there’s a…JS: So, turn it into a marketplace?DR: Yes, a marketplace, exactly. So, the next time a bond issue is up, you will say ‘well, I don’t have a child in school. I’m not going to vote for the bond issue.’ We’re going to destroy public education that way. . . . I think it’s all wrong. I think that the idea of you look on your school, you go shopping and you pick your school the way you pick your shoes or your automobile, that is wrong too. People should have a good neighborhood school in every neighborhood. One where they are very happy to send their kids because they know the teachers are terrific. The funny thing is if you look at poll data from Gallup, what it shows is if people are asked how is American education doing, they’ve heard thirty years of American education is broken, it doesn’t work, it’s obsolete, so they say ‘oh, American public education, no good.’ How is your school, how is your neighborhood school? ‘Oh, my neighborhood school is terrific. My teachers are great. I love my teachers.’JS: But it is like Congress, you could look at that, too, the same way. Oh, my Congressman is okay, but the institution – it does have issues… [laughter].The increasing narrative of “school choice” around charter schools continues to create a false premise of the consumer mentality towards education; we pay for the educational system, and so we ought to get what we pay for. And if we don’t like the results, we ought to buy something else.Yet, public schools are not allowed in many cases to compete on the same level playing field as private schools or even charter schools.Public schools are reliant on taxes, and obviously, few people really like paying more in taxes. They see their property tax levies as directly funding the schools. They often don’t think about those taxes also funding police, fire, and EMS services. So, when the municipality suggests raising taxes again, adding another bonding bill to the budget, passing another referendum, it gets voted down, often by those who no longer have children in the district.This happens because we’ve bought into this business-consumerism model of education rather than funding it as a public trust for everyone. It used to be that we all understood it was a public trust; even if you didn’t have kids in the school, it was important to fund it for everyone because it makes the public better off.As John Green notes:Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.Consumerism takes the approach that whatever is good for the individual is good for society. This is the absolute worst approach to something like education, and really even good governance or society.Civic Responsibility and Pride, and How That Impacts Government - Including Public EducationEducation is one of the great equalizers of humanity, and it was for that precise reason that the United States was one of the earliest innovators in providing a free, public education to every citizen, even mandating compulsory attendance. We were one of the first countries to achieve a >90% literacy rate.We did so because of the idea of civic responsibility for one another: that if we all contribute to the public good, we all receive back something greater than we put in.Education lifts millions out of poverty by creating a skilled workforce. That skilled workforce put a car in every driveway, a computer in everyone’s pocket, and a man on the Moon. The space program alone yielded innovations that dominate our daily lives ranging from memory foam to LASIK to infrared ear thermometers. It would not have been possible without a broad, skilled workforce, the product of public education.Whether it’s vocational education, professional education, or even general education, public education creates opportunities for every single person in the country to contribute to society. It was that kind of public access to education that turned the United States from a backwater rural agrarian society to the largest, most prosperous industrialized superpower in the world.And we took pride in that. We created state university systems that we wanted to become the envy of the world, publicly available to every citizen. We would produce the finest scientists and inventors and the world’s greatest artists. We would take pride in fostering the world’s greatest economy and the world’s greatest culture.We did that by investing in our people. Collectively. Public institutions would be cathedrals of civic pride. Public buildings such as schools and courthouses were marble and granite, built to last. They were also the centers of civic activity. The school was often the heart of the town, where meetings and debates and festivals and elections were held. The courthouse would be where critical matters of government would be decided and administered. These were buildings of respect, and everyone took pride in that. We built that.We don’t teach that kind of civic mentality anymore, not in our homes and not in our schools. Hell, we can’t even teach that in our schools anymore, because teachers would get fired for politicizing in the classroom.The school is not the center of civic life, because honestly, we no longer have a civic life.Consumerism has replaced that sense of civic responsibility to each other to make the nation better overall. Ayn Rand’s idea of selfishness as a virtue has become the guidestar of the nation: screw you, so long as I got mine.We no longer care about investing in society, trusting that we would reap the benefits. Instead, we only care about consuming from society; if we are not personally benefiting, then it must not be valuable.This is why, I firmly believe, it is so easy for certain people to believe in the idea of a “moocher class” of “welfare queens” who just exist to live fat off the public trough: it’s what they would do if they were allowed to. Why? Because they live from a mentality of consumerism, and not civic engagement.If we start from the premise that public schools are a public trust which we are all responsible for, the whole conversation changes. No longer is it about requiring education to fix itself by forcing it to compete over increasingly limited resources. Instead, it’s a matter of coming together as a culture to improve education. Every stakeholder has some degree of obligation, then.Some of it might be more funding. Maybe people without kids decide to invest their time in coaching. Maybe businesses do more joint ventures with the schools.Most of it is just shifting from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control.And that’s eminently evident in the overall impact of charter schools. The impact of charter schools is that they continue to further the mentality that other people are responsible for making a product that we want to buy and we’ll just keep demanding alternatives until we get what we want, rather than civic ownership of that product and collective work to improve it. If others are responsible for the quality control, then we as a society don’t have to have any responsibility for the outcomes.But if we are responsible for improving that product, that has a whole host of rather difficult implications for us. That’s going to require work.Look. If you want a better country, you have to be better citizens.That starts with understanding that in a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, the people are what make the difference. All of the people. Everyone is responsible for the public good. Everyone has to contribute and work at it.Charter schools are a cheap cop-out to avoid that responsibility. They continue to further an external locus of control that takes away the need for self-agency to work to improve the situation. Someone else can clean it up.Oh, we’ll pay for it. Grudgingly.So long as we don’t actually have to do anything.In BriefCharter schools do provide some valuable alternatives to traditional models of education, and testbeds for educational research. They can be excellent ways to differentiate student learning and provide unique opportunities for some students.They can also be incredibly detrimental to student outcomes and perpetuate a flagging sense of civic responsibility and a consumerist society that abdicates personal responsibility and self-agency for “more choices” and personal satisfaction.It’s difficult to say which of these impacts has the greater weight. Every situation in every place charter schools are implemented is different.Caveat emptor.Your mileage may vary.This is long and I didn’t add any pictures. Here. Have a baby raccoon.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, et cetera and BNBR violation and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly.Thanks for the A2A, Habib.

Study previous investigations such as this, especially previous FEDERAL ones. Look to: Watergate, and Iran-Contra, and Gotti, and Insider Trading Scandal. Study the manner in which they are conducted, and the order and manner they tend to proceed.First, as general rule, they tend to start the very bottom (wherever that may be). They begin not with “interviews” or with any “testimony” — that usually comes much later, as a general rule. They begin with examinations of actual documents, writings, E-Mails, minutes of meetings, tax documents, receipts, bank records, and in some cases, eavesdropping via warrants, or visual observation through warrants. Then, at that lower level, when there appears to be actual evidence of some genuine wrongdoing, or criminality, finally, those at the lowest level are brought in. Sometimes, for an interview, and sometimes an interview under oath. Sometimes, to give testimony to a Grand Jury (always under oath). By the time the feds invite you, they usually 1) have actual evidence, and they believe they have all of the relevant evidence required to make a case, already. The so-called interview is more to confirm what they already have uncovered - PLUS to see if you lie about it, plus to see if you have knowledge of other criminality (even that involving other folk), or other crimes which may have been unaware of, that they also need to investigate. By the time the feds haul you, in most cases, THEY already know the correct answer to every question that they are asking you.Let me repeat that: By the time the feds haul you, in most cases, THEY already know the correct answer to every question that they are asking you.Then, if you lie — they have evidence you are lying. Already. They can then remind you of how long you can serve for lying, and offer to perhaps reduce some of your other acts, IF you are willing to “flip” and tell every detail about everything you know, including the acts of others. Maybe to avoid a long prison sentence.That often begins new avenues that need investigating, and often means they must now increase the sort of crimes they were looking at… and the proceedings all continue, slowly, moving up on “notch” to the next level.They work this way because - 1) this makes certain nobody who is guilty is left out, and overlooked, or not held responsible. It also makes certain that the innocent are not falsely accused. 2) It tends to produce the truth. All of it. You do not want to go right to the top, only to find out that you missed 27 other people who were right underneath them, and are also guilty, sometimes of even worse crimes…This takes time. It is secret. You will only find out what is known through the occasional indictment, or plea bargain, when somebody suddenly “flips.”Example, George Papadopoulis “pled guilty” to a very minor charge, lying. One thing I can assure you (even though Mueller would never say it in public, yet) — that means he was guilty of OTHER criminal acts, and that those other charges were discussed with him, and the prison sentences were laid out. Then, he chose to take a plea deal, to a lesser charge: (he “fibbed under oath” — a small prison sentence). But now George must testify as often as the feds want, and from here on out, he must tell 100% of the truth. Everything he knows. One slip-up, and the deal is off… and George is headed for prison, because all other charges we do not know about (yet) are now presented, and George is back to facing every charge they actually did have evidence of. So, [EDIT, 2/23/18]: we know of two three people who are now talking, and telling everything… (George Padadopoulis and Michael Flynn and Rick Gates, just added). We also know of two others refused to take a plea deal, and are probably headed for prison, unless they change their minds — because Mueller would not actually bring charges without some VERY strong, credible evidence. Mueller is experienced. He is also good.So, Mueller and the investigative team are not going to ask for interviews — certainly — of anyone, until all of the evidence convinces them that 1) they know the full scope of any wrongdoing by that person, and have strong evidence, and they can already convince a Grand Jury; or 2) They are very confident that that person is 100% innocent of any misdeeds, but might be able to add some new information, about others. Until the investigators know that, they will continue to work with others, from the bottom, up…Be patient. These investigators know how to run a tight investigation. Which is why you rarely hear a “peep” of a single leak out of it. Unless the investigators want us to know.Hope this helps…