The Legal Arena

In a case of excessive road rage, Florida sheriff’s deputy Sheila Langlais lost her cool and pulled a gun on an unassuming couple in a car with a 2-year-old in the back seat.
Now the Pinellas County sheriff’s deputy is out of a job and will spend nearly a year in jail in addition to paying a $500 fine.
The embattled deputy has resigned from three law enforcement agencies since 2001.
It all went down on February 7 when Brett Dowd and his fiancee, Brittany Byrne, were driving in the parking lot of Twin Lakes apartment complex to visit friends for a cookout.

Three jurors voted to convict two Albuquerque cops on second-degree murder charges today in the shooting death of a mentally ill homeless man.
But nine jurors voted to acquit the cops, resulting in a mistrial.
Now it’s up to Special Prosecutor Randi McGinn to determine whether to retry Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez for the shooting death of James Boyd in 2014.
Judge Alisa Hadfield declared a mistrial Tuesday after three days of deliberations when it became evident that none of the jurors were going to change their minds.

An elderly couple riding scooters in a Texas Walmart ended up losing each other, so the wife rode outside the doors with items in her basket, prompting an employee to detain her and call police, accusing her of shoplifting.
Guadalupe Martinez, who is in her 70s, said she was not shoplifting, but looking for her husband, Juan Martinez, who is also in his 70s.
But they brought her into a back room anyway and began telling her she was permanently banned from Walmart.

“Do not fucking reach!” an enraged Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy shouted after pulling out his gun on a licensed private investigator sitting in his car in a residential neighborhood working on a case.
But all Ken Sheppard was doing was reaching towards his ear to remove his cell phone ear piece in order to better hear the deputy.
However, that was enough to make deputy Tai Plunkett fear for his life where he kept the gun pointed at Sheppard’s head with trembling hands in a surreal scene seemingly out of a movie.

A Florida cop is being sued after he tasered a woman in the throat and chest when she didn’t respect his authority after he showed up to her job in full uniform while off-duty to lecture her about her personal life.
Escambia County Sheriff deputy Michael Wholer then tried to make amends by sending the victim Stephanie Byron a text message that included a picture of a baked cake decorated with the message “I’m sorry I tased you.”

One South Florida cop forced a woman to perform oral sex on him before raping her on the hood of his car under threat of arrest.
The second cop ordered the woman’s female friend to punch him in the genitals, which is what got him off.
Now Franklin Hartley and Thomas Merenda, who have since by fired from the Lauderhill Police Department, have to pay the women $6.2 million after a federal judge ruled against them in a civil trial last week.

“It hit her pretty much square in the middle of her leg and went through and broke the bone. She had to have a plate and screws to help pin the bone in place,”  Brad Ellis, Ava’s dad told ABC6.

In an effort to cover up their unconstitutional actions, Connecticut State Police made up charges against a young open carry activist last year.
The state eventually dismissed all charges when they heard Michael Picard’s recording of cops plotting to trump up charges against him to “cover our ass.”

A surprising eye witness saw the armed standoff that led to a Baltimore cop killing the young mother, Korryn Gaines last month in front of her child.
Now, her family is suing the Balitmore County Police & Fire Department for wrongful death.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and Waller County have reached a financial settlement with Sandra Bland’s family to pay $1.9 million dollars to end their wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit in federal court.
Sandra Bland was wrongfully arrested by Texas trooper Brian Encinia and booked on a 3rd degree felony charge of assaulting the officer, when there was no probable cause for an actual arrest in the first place, an arrest which was caught on camera by a citizen journalist.
Three days later the 28-year old Bland was found dead in her cell.