by admin_lauth | Aug 13, 2010 | Private Investigations News
LOS ANGELES — A man who spent 24 years imprisoned for a murder he did not commit will receive $7.95 million from the City of Long Beach after he sued the police there for withholding evidence in his 1980 trial.
Thomas Lee Goldstein
In 2004, Mr. Goldstein was freed from prison after the Los Angeles district attorney dismissed all charges against him in the 1979 killing of a Long Beach drug dealer. The move was based on new evidence that the police had coached the only witness in the case by pointing Mr. Goldstein out in a photo spread as a suspect who had failed a polygraph test.
Lawyers also presented evidence that the police had offered Eddy Fink, a heroin addict and police informant, leniency in a grand theft conviction if he testified against Mr. Goldstein.
At the trial, Mr. Fink told the jury that Mr. Goldstein had confessed to the killing when the two men briefly shared a jail cell. Mr. Fink, who has since died, lied in court when asked if he had made any deal with the police before testifying, Mr. Litt said.
But Monte Machit, the Long Beach deputy attorney who defended the city in the case, said the police had not provided Mr. Fink “with any benefit in exchange for the information he offered.”
“We don’t believe there was any wrongdoing” by city officials, Mr. Machit said. “This is a lot of money, but in light of the potential verdict,” which could have been $24 million to $30 million and lawyers’ fees, he said, “we thought it better to get it resolved.”
Mr. Goldstein, 61, said the settlement was the end of a 30-year-long “painful chapter” in his life.
He said he would spend his coming years trying to “rebuild my life, prepare for retirement and help others who have not been as fortunate as I am today.”
by admin_lauth | Aug 12, 2010 | Private Investigations News
Lawmaker who’s also RN wants to mandate background checks
State Sen. Patricia L. Miller, R-Indianapolis, plans to introduce legislation that makes background checks mandatory for Indiana nurses.
Miller said she has asked the Legislative Services Agency to draft such a bill in response to an Indianapolis Star report showing Indiana is one of only a handful of states that do not require background checks for nurses.
The Star’s investigation found nurses who had been charged or convicted of crimes involving prescription drugs, alcohol and violence. Licensing officials did not find out about those charges or convictions, however, and the nurses’ licenses were not affected.
“There ought to be a simple way to do this that is really fair and effective,” Miller, a registered nurse, told The Star on Tuesday. “Often the information is available; it’s just not getting to the state.”
Miller, who chairs the Health and Provider Services Committee, plans to introduce the bill in the next legislative session. She is gathering suggestions from nurses and others but is considering three main provisions:
Requiring hospitals, nursing homes and other kinds of health facilities to conduct pre-employment criminal background checks on nurses. They are currently required to perform such checks only on unlicensed professionals.
Requiring employers to pass information they learn about nurses’ criminal activity on to licensing officials.
Requiring law enforcement officials to pass information about nurses’ criminal history on to licensing officials on an ongoing basis (rather than checking nurses’ backgrounds only when they change jobs or renew their licenses).
“If something happens the day after you have your last criminal history check and the police know it,” Miller said, “they ought to report it then.”
by admin_lauth | May 17, 2010 | Private Investigations News
If everyone intends to look up out about someone living near you will consequently it would be appropriate for the public to find out about important tips on a site to investigate someone on the internet. Sometimes when people shift to a new place consequently people involve knowing about the individuals living on our street. Sometimes people think about finding any old lost college friend or any relative. In these cases one can use the Net. Although for performing a perfect research on the Net, the public would involve discovering important tips on a site to investigate someone on the internet.
A few months ago when I was researching on the Net to find out about important tips on a site to investigate someone on the internet consequently I come to know that a lot of on the internet directories are obtainable on the Net which keep the records data for the individuals against their contact info or social security number. So if the public have the contact info like phone number, address or the social security number of any person consequently the public can use these things to locate the person the public have been hunting for. Numerous reverse address research services and reverse phone number research services would be helpful for the public to look up out the new contact info of any old friend or lost relative.
By discovering important tips on find out about someone, the public would be able to know whether your lost friend or relative is alive or not likely because these on the internet databases keep the birth records data and death records due to the fact that well. Moreover the public would also be able to locate the marriage and divorce records data of any person with the help of on the internet databases. The on the internet databases would be helpful for the public to obtain the records data of any person immediately then again for that you would involve paying the payments specified by the aid.
By discovering important tips on a site to investigate someone on the internet you would be able to become a great person who specialized in private investigations. This would be helpful for you in your own life and even if you intend to become a professional investigator consequently you can also do it. If you intend to become an investigator consequently you would have to register yourself on a couple of resources which you think are reliable and you also can use for getting the records data for your research. Most for the resources charge you between $20 and $50 for buying its membership for a specific time period. The paid members of different resources also enjoy other facilities offered by the resource to its paid members.
by admin_lauth | May 13, 2010 | Private Investigations News
Benken draws on years as police officer, attorney
Brian Benken carries natural charm and a gun. The first keeps the latter in its holster.
Benken is the most sought-after private investigator in Houston for criminal cases from murder to health care fraud to financial scandals. He’s a blond mix of obsessive attention to detail and laid-back calm. He’s a hybrid — an attorney and private investigator who looks like a classy cop but thinks like a criminal defense lawyer.
“He has this gift. He makes people so comfortable they want to talk to him,” said Kent Schaffer, a criminal defense attorney who recently used Benken on the R. Allen Stanford financial fraud case and attributes some 10 grand jury no-bills of his clients to Benken. “He’s unassuming, low-key and likeable and he gets turned away very rarely.”
Benken won’t do divorce cases, he’s not interested in what he calls “fighting over salt and pepper shakers.” This sometime sleuth and sometime criminal defense lawyer likes to take a police offense report and dissect it to find more about everything such as puttied-over gunshot holes, alternative ways the drugs might have gotten in the car, why witnesses might lie, Facebook photos that tell a different story and on and on.
Lawyers who hire him these days praise his ability to get more detail than the police did, to zero in on lying witnesses and to unravel discrepancies, as he did in the Galveston case of Robert Durst, the eccentric millionaire who tossed a neighbor’s body parts into the Gulf but was acquitted of murder.
In that case Benken test-fired a gun inside Durst’s duplex to find that it was loud enough that more people likely heard the fatal shots than had admitted it. He also found South Carolina witnesses to detail the threatening nature of the man who died, bolstering his client’s self-defense claim.
A career in curiosity
A graduate of Sam Houston State University, Benken landed a job as a financial investigator in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in 1983. He was interested in what the lawyers did, so he went to law school at night to become one in 1987. He was curious about what police officers did, too, so he went to the police academy and became a peace officer in 1989.
He also became a prosecutor, then a criminal defense attorney, often defending police and deputies. Then he started doing more private investigations. Right now, sometimes he’s the attorney, more often he’s the investigator, but often he uses both his law and investigator licenses.
“People sometimes ask ‘What are you today?’ ” said Benken. His Heights Boulevard office is furnished with antiques, but features a little red chalk-outline-like dead body, stabbed in the heart with a pen.
‘I just like the hunt’
Benken said putting the puzzle together is more fun than arguing in court. He favors murder cases because “there is always something to work with” — like alibis, witnesses who haven’t yet told all, and accidents. He carries a gun but doesn’t feel in danger, except from the occasional growling pit bull.
“I just like the hunt,” Benken said. And many of Houston’s best criminal defense attorneys — Schaffer, Mike Ramsey, Chip Lewis, Dan Cogdell and George “Mac” Secrest among them — like sending him after quarry.
Between his time in the DA’s office and his time out of it, he has quietly gotten his hands on many of the biggest criminal cases in Houston. They range from investigations into corruption at the Hermann Hospital Estate and construction contractors paving private roads for a county commissioner in the 1980s, through the Enron and Stanford financial scandals, and to high-profile cases such as what turned out to be false charges against police in the death of Pedro Oregon, who was shot 12 times by police in a highly publicized and controversial drug raid.
His methods are often creative. In one case, in which a 280-pound client was accused of assaulting a woman in a Suzuki Samuri, Benken taped a re-enactment that showed how difficult it would have been for his large client to maneuver inside the cramped vehicle.
In another case he played a female laundromat owner in a courtroom re-enactment that helped convince the jury she was shot in self-defense.
From client to colleague
When Benken suspected a testifying witness really needed a wheelchair though she said she didn’t, he got video of the FBI wheeling her from her home the next morning to bring her back to court.
Cogdell said that when other investigators come back with a sentence or two saying someone worked at a restaurant, Benken reports on their shift hours, their favorite customers, work enemies and the kind of detail that can make a cross-examination work.
“A lot of investigators are ex-cops, many in the twilight of their careers, and they don’t really believe in the innocence of their clients. Their attitude is: ‘I’ll get around to it when I finish with my cheeseburger and beer.’ But Benken is uniquely reliable, professional and helpful. He gets into the weeds,” said Cogdell, who used Benken to investigate the case against fallen judge Don Jackson and to look into health care fraud by a doctor couple who pleaded guilty last week.
It was in winning freedom for accused Houston police officer Jim Willis in the Pedro Oregon case that Benken found the Dr. Watson to his Sherlock Holmes. The men bonded during the ordeal, and Willis later started investigating with Benken.
Willis says his years as a policeman and his understanding of being wrongly accused makes him a good complement to Benken’s legal mind. “We don’t have to be good cop-bad cop when we interview people. We show them all respect,” Willis said. “I’d say it’s more like good cop-better cop.”
by admin_lauth | May 12, 2010 | Private Investigations News
From missing loved ones to marriages gone wrong, there are a number of reasons why one should hire the services of a qualified private investigator. Don’t make the mistake of trying to do this work yourself! Here are the top five reasons on why a private investigator from your state:
1.) Avoid Danger. By putting yourself in the position one needs to be in to be a private investigator, you are exposed to grave danger. This is because you are unlikely to know how to master the art of surveillance or counter-surveillance – a sure way to get caught early in the investigation. Secondly, the subject you are following may realize your presence and may respond with violent behavior.
2.) Skill and Experience. It is likely that your skills will not match those of a good private investigator. Although the role may look quite easy on television, private investigation is a real art form that requires the utmost dedication and training. Private investigation is much more than simply following a car and taking photographs. Additionally, private investigators of today need to know how to: use overt and covert cameras to their ultimate advantage; install and download GPS tracking devices; use trace mail systems; use the Internet to obtain information; and most importantly, undertake threat assessments and risk management profiles. They also must think many steps ahead in regards to the investigation, and be versatile enough to not only change clothing and/or appearances during the course of surveillance, but also their vehicles.
3.) The Art of Investigation. The work involved with investigation is not simply asking a lot of questions. Although interviewing is a crucial skill for a private investigator in Connecticut and other private investigators to have, more importantly is the manner in which the private investigator asks these questions. For instance, a private investigator may use different probing techniques, or ask certain open-ended questions that will provide leads and answers. Several investigations of today require knowledge of forensic accounting, or, in other words, following a paper trail and discovering the stages of a fraudulent transaction.
Private investigation work also involves highly specialized and often expensive equipment.
4.) Knowing the Law. A professional private investigator is highly familiar with laws and abiding by them. He or she will know the proper way to gather evidence for possible court proceedings, and will never take the risk of losing evidence or disregarding court evidence rules. Police and properly registered private investigators are also the only people that are exempt and allowed to follow individuals and record their movements.
5.) Time and Evidence. As we can all imagine, the time it takes to do the work as a private investigator in Connecticut and other states is considerable. Private investigation is a full time job, and unless you are willing to devote that much time to it, it is very likely you would be able to adequately handle all of the obligations necessary for carrying out the investigation.
And even if you did spend an enormous amount of time on the project, you may come to find out that it was wasted if none of the evidence you gathered is admissible in court. The money you would then have to pay for an attorney could have been invested wisely into the services of a professional private investigator.
