US vs. Raney case shows the Government will go to great lengths to prosecute an innocent person.

A police officer in Houston, Texas thought he had a slam dunk case against a motorist he stopped for driving on the wrong side of the road on September 15, 2008. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a February 10 decision overturned the stop on the grounds that driving on the wrong side of the road is not always against the law.

The appellate court majority found that since the right lane of the two-lane road was blocked, it constituted an obstruction allowing Raney's maneuver. The court did not believe, based on the evidence, that prosecutors could prove that Raney should have noticed that Officer Walker was directing traffic. It also disagreed that Raney's actions were reckless

The prosecutor then asked rhetorically why any of the officers would ever risk their careers by lying in court to obtain a conviction. The appellate court found these statements highly objectionable.

"We feel it prudent to address this issue because the government has been cautioned repeatedly by this court against making such arguments, yet we continue to face them on appeal," the majority wrote. "It is troubling to this court that the government made these types of improper remarks in the present matter because the primary inculpatory evidence was the testimony of the law enforcement witnesses whose credibility was bolstered by the prosecution... Despite our precedent clearly condemning such remarks, the government continues to disregard our admonishments."

Judge Fortunato Benavides dissented, arguing that "an ordinary traffic jam" does not necessitate driving on the wrong side of the road. A copy of the decision is available in an 80k PDF file at the source link below.



Links: http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/us-wrongway.pdf

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/34/3412.asp