Summary: Rafael Barba never intended to fall for Melanie Dodds, but now that he had... He was slowly beginning to uncover that there may be far more to the rough and tumble Detective than meets the eye.
Series Masterlist
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Full Masterlist | A03 Link
Chapter 1: An Evening at Forlini’s
Chapter 2: A Regular Friday Morning
Chapter 3: Deputy Chief William Dodds
Chapter 4: Certified Scuba Diver, Melanie Dodds
Chapter 5: A Pretzel, A Pigeon and A Patrol Officer
Chapter 6: A Game of Subway Surfers
Chapter 7: A Long Awaited Reunion
Chapter 8: A Whirlwind of Emotions
Chapter 9: A Little Brotherly Advice
Chapter 10: Targeted Misfortune
Chapters: 10/? (on hold)
Want to see my rambles about this story? #melrambles
A single mistake in how evidence is handled can turn a strong case into a disaster.
That’s the power of chain of custody. It’s the process that tracks every step of how evidence moves—from the crime scene to the courtroom. And when it’s broken, the whole case can fall apart.
It’s not just a technicality. It’s the reason OJ’s glove evidence got questioned. It’s why JonBenét Ramsey’s case remains unsolved. And it’s why charges were dropped in over 60 cases in Orange County alone.
Justice needs more than evidence.
It needs proof that the system didn’t fumble it.
New blog now live on Raw Reflections.
Chain of custody is the process of documenting how evidence is handled in a criminal case. Learn what it means, why it matters, and how mish
Critical Rage Theory: Injustice is simply this: If a lawyer, a judge, or a jury decides to fuck over a person because of an untruth. Laws be damned. If you make a law-abiding citizen suffer because of a properly worded, procedurally correct lie, then you are unjust. People linger in prison because they are made to adhere to rules that their persecutors didn’t have to!
Bernard was an accomplice to a crime at age 18. He is the ninth person to be executed as part of the Trump administration's end-of-office ki
The Trump administration executed 40-year-old Brandon Bernard on Thursday, his punishment for acting as an accomplice to a crime when he was 18 years old.
The government went through with the killing despite high-profile opposition from 5 of 9 surviving jurors who sentenced Bernard to death, the prosecutor who defended his death sentence on appeal, several members of Congress, 23 current and former prosecutors, reality television star and criminal justice reform advocate Kim Kardashian West, and The Washington Post’s editorial board. Hours before the execution, controversial lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr — who worked on President Donald Trump’s legal team during his impeachment — joined Bernard’s defense team.
Bernard was killed by lethal injection at 9:27 p.m. The Supreme Court denied a last-minute stay of execution for Bernard, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting.
“Today, the Court allows the Federal Government to execute Brandon Bernard, despite Bernard’s troubling allegations that the Government secured his death sentence by withholding exculpatory evidence and knowingly eliciting false testimony against him,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “Bernard has never had the opportunity to test the merits of those claims in court. Now he never will.”
When prosecutors lie and falsify evidence, 'absolute immunity' protects them from justice.
When you're charged with a crime, you're in a tough spot. As soon as charges are filed, you're faced with the necessity of either (1) negotiating a plea bargain, which means you'll plead guilty to something or other; or (2) going to trial, where you risk a much more serious conviction if the jury doesn't believe you. Facts are often confused. The prosecution has access to law enforcement for its investigations. You'll have to pay for yours.
It's a big enough challenge when everybody plays things straight. But what about when you've got a prosecutor willing to lie? Then things are worse. And given that prosecutors often face no consequences for misconduct, it's not surprising that some are willing to lie about it.
That's what happened in the California case of The People v. Efrain Velasco-Palacios. In the course of negotiating a plea bargain with the defendant, a Kern County prosecutor committed what the California appeals court called "outrageous government misconduct."
What prosecuting attorney Robert Murray did was produce a translated transcript of the defendant's interrogation to which he had added a fraudulent confession. The defense attorney got a copy of the audio tape of the interrogation, but it "ended abruptly." Eventually, Murray admitted to falsifying the transcript, presumably in the hopes of either coercing a plea deal, or ensuring a victory at trial.
When the trial judge found out, charges against the defendant were dismissed. Incredibly, the State of California, via Attorney General Kamala Harris, decided to appeal the case. The state's key argument: That putting a fake confession in the transcript wasn't "outrageous" because it didn't involve physical brutality, like chaining someone to a radiator and beating him with a hose.
Well, no. It just involved an officer of the court knowingly producing a fraudulent document in order to secure an illicit advantage. If Harris really thinks that knowingly producing a fraudulent document to secure an illicit advantage isn't "outrageous," then perhaps she slept through her legal ethics courses.
…
Meanwhile, Murray suffered no actual punishment for his wrongdoing. As a report in the New York Observer notes: "For reasons beyond comprehension, he still works for the District Attorney Lisa Green in Kern County, Calif." Murray does face the possibility of discipline from the California bar, but even disbarment would be a light punishment for knowingly producing a false document in a criminal proceeding.
Our criminal justice system depends on honesty. It's also based on the principle that people who do wrong should be punished. Prosecutors, however, often avoid any consequences for their misbehavior, even when it is repeated.
Worse yet, prosecutors are also immune from civil suit, under a Supreme Court-created doctrine called "absolute immunity" that is one of the greatest, though least discussed, examples of judicial activism in history. So prosecutors won't punish prosecutors, and victims of prosecutors' wrongdoing can't even sue them for damages.
That leaves courts without much else to do besides throwing out charges in cases of outrageous misconduct. But if we care about seeing the law enforced fairly and honestly, we need more accountability.
