The Kathryn Johnston case: Unethical behavior by the Atlanta Police Department

The Kathryn Johnston case: Unethical behavior by the Atlanta Police Department

Introduction

The books of law are filled with cases that highlight how the legal system has been victim to selfish use by the enforcers of the law. The people who have been charged with the duty to save people, and provide them a sense of safety and security, themselves violate the law within their underlying authoritative jurisdictions.

Moreover, the question posed due to such unfortunate events are always directed towards the top management of the legal departments, who have the duty of designing effective management systems; which put barriers in the way of unethical practices (Cooper, 2012). In order to better understand the relative situations, and their possible solutions; in depth discussion of the related factors is required.

Discussion

Kathryn Johnston Case

Background

In the year 2006, a Tuesday before Thanksgiving, three officers of the Atlanta narcotics department namely Jason Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler were behind their usual arrests and warrants quota. Pressurized under their quota requirements, they decided to blackmail a drug dealer named Fabian Sheats for giving them information regarding drug addicted customers.

Coming under the threat of the officers, Mr. Sheats decided to give them the address of a 92 year old lady namely Kathryn Johnston; and told them they would find a person named Sam with a kilogram of Cocaine there (American Civil Liberties Union, 2007).

The Unfortunate Tragedy and False Conviction

After successfully receiving information from Mr. Sheats, the officers contacted their career informant Alex White, to make an undercover cocaine purchase from the unknown “Sam”. However, Mr. White was unavailable, so the officers lied on the affidavit and acquired a no-knock raid warrant from the court, to execute a raid on poor Kathryn Johnston house at around 6 p.m.

Due to their training expertise, the officers did not have to put many efforts to enter into Kathryn Johnston's house without any prior warnings (Balko, 2007). Considering the period of the night, and the uninvited attack on the house, Kathryn quickly found her .38 revolver, and was able to fire a shot. However, the shot was missed, and in return the officers fired 39 shots on her, killing her without any humane mercy. However, after the killing took place, they were unable to find any bag of cocaine or the mysterious “Sam” in the house.

The Legally Protected Crime

Finding Kathryn bleeding badly lying on the floor, they handcuffed the poor lady and searched the house in depth. However, when realizing that they had made a terrible mistake, the officers decided to lie to their supervisors; and planted three bags of marijuana in Kathryn's house. Moreover, they also planted two bags of crack which they had illegally possessed in order to make a case.

On complete plotting of the crime scene, the officers decided to make one final move to secure their position. They called their informant Mr. White to tell him that he needed to back their story up. However, ...