All charges stemming from my arrest on 2/17/09 have been dropped.

Many of you may know that I have been very involved in bat­tling the State of Illi­nois since Feb­ru­ary 17, 2009. On that day I was on my way home from work when I was pulled over for no rea­son by Joshua Ale­mond, a man act­ing as a Fairview Heights Police Offi­cer. I was ordered out of my truck at gun­point and sub­se­quently beaten and Tasered by Ale­mond and with the assis­tance of Aaron Nyman, another act­ing Fairview Heights Police Officer.

The charges stem­ming from this event include:

A bench war­rant for fail­ure to appear for a pre­vi­ously dis­missed dri­ving with­out a license charge in 2006. The charge had already been dis­missed by Collinsville in 2006 and then improp­erly filed in St. Clair County out­side of the per­mis­si­ble time for fil­ing charges of which I was never law­fully notified.

Improper Lane Usage which allegedly gave rise to rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that I was “intoxicated”.

Fleeing/Eluding a Peace Offi­cer which stems from my slow­ing down, acti­vat­ing my haz­ard lights and high beams, and dri­ving safely for about a mile to a lighted side street out of con­cern for my safety for choos­ing to not stop on the nar­row shoul­der of a dark high­way at 2am.

Resist­ing a Peace Offi­cer which stems from my refus­ing to place my hands behind my back when ordered to do so by Joshua Ale­mond when the com­mand was being given to me while I was being beaten and Tasered with two men, Ale­mond and Nyman, on top of me both of whom are prob­a­bly over 200 lbs each, and after suf­fered a blow to the head and face with an elec­tric shock to the back of my neck.

No Dri­vers License which stems from Ale­mond and Nyman per­form­ing an ille­gal and uncon­sti­tu­tional search of my per­sonal belong­ings that were inside my truck while I was hand­cuffed, injured and bleed­ing in the back of the police cruiser. I was never demanded to pro­duce a dri­vers license, but instead, because they could not find one they decided to charge me with not hav­ing one.

Do Insur­ance which stems from the same cir­cum­stances as the dri­vers license charge.

This store is lengthy and has been chron­i­cled piece-meal in var­i­ous posts so I won’t go into detail here, but I will com­pose a com­pre­hen­sive chronol­ogy of what took place from begin­ning to end. Most of the infor­ma­tion is here http://markmccoy.com/excessiveforce.html

In essence, I never entered a plea to any charges. I chal­lenged juris­dic­tion every step of the way. I pre­sented the court with my Dec­la­ra­tion of Sov­er­eignty and asked Judge Ran­dall Kel­ley to take judi­cial notice of the Dec­la­ra­tion; which he did. Upon chal­leng­ing juris­dic­tion as well as the alleged rea­son­able sus­pi­cion for arrest­ing me the court then had to allow for a hear­ing where I chal­lenged prob­a­ble cause; which in the police report men­tions “believ­ing the dri­ver to be intoxicated”.

I had also been using Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act Requests to try and pro­cure dash­board video and other records which speak to the police report being filled with lies, dis­tor­tions, and fab­ri­ca­tions; as well as con­tain­ing evi­dence which would excul­pate me of all charges. Fairview Heights Police used a num­ber of tac­tics to deny the requests and by press­ing my rights under Fed­eral Rules of Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure (Bai­ley) the police were required to pro­duce any and all evi­dence, of which I was per­mit­ted a copy. Last month I was pro­vided with cer­ti­fied copies of the dash­board video from both police cars. My 8 month strug­gle to pro­cure the video had come to an end, and it speaks volumes.

Yes­ter­day, 11/30/09, was to be THE day where the prob­a­ble cause hear­ing would take place after a num­ber of con­tin­u­ances. I finally had the video, the police report, my sup­port­ing case law, and my ques­tions ready to go. How­ever, this time the Ale­mond and Nyman did not appear.

Judge Ran­dall Kel­ley called myself and the State’s Attor­ney, another Kel­ley (no rela­tion) to the bench. I was asked if I was pre­pared to pro­ceed to which I replied yes. Then Mr. Kel­ley was asked if he was pre­pared to which he replied no. He then asked Judge Kel­ley for a con­tin­u­ance because the police, his wit­nesses, were not present. He said he spoke to them on Fri­day prior to remind them of the appear­ance and they told him they would not be able to attend.

Judge Kel­ley then asked me how I felt about the con­tin­u­ance and I explained that I had been more than accom­mo­dat­ing in agree­ing to nec­es­sary con­tin­u­ances in the inter­est of fair­ness, all of which did ben­e­fit myself and the pros­e­cu­tion, and the last appear­ance date where we dis­cussed this date took into account the sched­ules of the Ale­mond and Nyman. I explained that I had been present and pre­pared at every appear­ance and the pros­e­cu­tion had not. There­fore, I felt another con­tin­u­ance would prove unduly bur­den­some to myself and con­trary to due process. I voiced my objec­tion to grant­ing the continuance.

Judge Kel­ley then asked Mr. Kel­ley if he had done every­thing in his power to ensure the appear­ance of Ale­mond and Nyman, to which he said yes. Judge Kel­ley then said that he agreed with me; that I had been present at every appear­ance and pre­pared to argue my motion. He said that another con­tin­u­ance for the State would prove unduly bur­den­some to me and he there­fore DISMISSED ALL CHARGES.

So, what does this mean? Well, the police would have to been sworn in prior to their tes­ti­mony for the hear­ing. The report and video con­tra­dict each other. The video, being the author­i­ta­tive record of the events, would speak to per­jury and fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence as well as excul­pate me of the charges while show­ing Ale­mond and Nyman engaged in a num­ber of mis­de­meanors and felonies. Ale­mond and Nyman could NOT appear with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing them­selves by way of the evi­dence on the record. There­fore, no wit­ness, no case. I also do not believe the State could have pre­vailed with two obvi­ously com­pro­mised witnesses.

What next? With the video in-hand I am look­ing for an attor­ney who will pur­sue civil action against the Ale­mond, Nyman, and the City of Fairview Heights. I have a num­ber of crim­i­nal (mis­de­meanor and felony) charges that I will be work­ing to have filed against Ale­mond and Nyman. There is still a lot of work to do, but I am unen­cum­bered with any crim­i­nal charges which may tend to cast doubt over my claims against the police.

This whole sit­u­a­tion speaks to a sys­temic prob­lem with what is known as “law enforce­ment”. Police believe they are above the law, they are the law. We are a nui­sance and should we trans­gress upon their par­tic­u­lar sen­si­bil­i­ties they may exact what­ever jus­tice they may see fit to sum­mon and be indem­ni­fied from pros­e­cu­tion because of “depart­men­tal pol­icy”. They believe them­selves to be a supe­rior class of per­son and we, the peo­ple, the rab­ble. This debate needs to take place in the pub­lic domain and illu­mi­nate the self-aggrandizing, mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal threat that is mod­ern “law enforcement”.

I digress. More to come.….….….….….