Thursday, July 17, 2008

Attorney Pushes the "Suicide" Angle

The Attorney for the guards at the Washington DC jail where Ronnie L. White, the suspect in an incident where he was accused of running over a Laurel, Maryland police officer, claims there was a rush to judgement and that it could have been a "suicide."
An attorney for Prince George's County correctional officers said last night that guards did not kill the inmate who was found unresponsive in his cell last month, and she faulted county officials who she said "rushed to judgment" in labeling the death a homicide.

Clothilda Harvey of the Correctional Officers Association predicted that investigators will either find the cause of death for Ronnie L. White inconclusive or determine that he committed suicide.

"There aren't many possibilities," she said. "Was it a homicide, was it a suicide or was it inconclusive? They did not commit homicide. You will not find that."

The guards, she said, "did nothing wrong."

White, 19, was found with no detectable pulse June 29, two days after he was charged in the slaying of a county police officer, Cpl. Richard S. Findley, 39. Jail officials said at the time that they could not rule out suicide.

The next day, however, the state medical examiner's office preliminarily ruled the death a homicide. At a news conference, county officials said that White, who had two broken bones in his neck, had been strangled and that only guards had access to his cell, where he was held in solitary confinement.

Given that there hasn't been ANY justice whatsoever, I'm betting on "inconclusive," even though the possibility that White strangled himself is, well, ludicrous. It's also possible that the DC guards did not strangle him, but were guilty of looking the other way so that someone else could. Was there anyone from Findley's police department at the jail at the time of the murder?

I guess this is what counts for justice in America. Life is cheap, vigilantes are celebrated, and you better hope and pray you're not the next suspect who finds themselves in the custody of these jailers.

--WS

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