Justice Issues

May 13, 2013 Associated Press

April 29, 2013 National Constitution Center

April 14, 2013 Associated Press

NEW YORK  — Sometimes the bait is a small amount of cash in a stray wallet. Or a credit card. Even a pack of cigarettes can do the trick.

Police in New York City leave the items unattended — on subway platforms, on park benches, in cars — and wait to see if someone grabs them.

The New York Police Department says the practice has been a valuable tool for catching career criminals and deterring thefts in public places. But a recent court ruling throwing out a larceny case against a Bronx woman cast a harsh light on a tactic critics say too often sweeps up innocent people.

Judge Linda Poust Lopez found that there was no proof Deirdre Myers tried to steal anything — and that she was framed by a sting that took the tactic way too far.

Upholding the charges "would greatly damage the confidence and trust of the public in the fairness and effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and rightly so," the judge wrote.

Myers, a 40-year-old single mother with no criminal record, has since sued the city, claiming she and her daughter were traumatized by a wrongful arrest in 2010.

March 5, 2013 CNN

Washington  -- Attorney General Eric Holder is not entirely ruling out a scenario under which a drone strike would be ordered against Americans on U.S. soil, but says it has never been done previously and he could only see it being considered in an extraordinary circumstance.

Jan. 30, 2013 ABC News

The family of a 7-year-old New York boy is suing police and the city for $250 million, saying cops handcuffed and interrogated the boy for ten hours after a scuffle over lunch money at school.

Wilson Reyes, a student at Public School 114 in the Bronx reportedly got into a fight with a fellow student in December after he was accused of taking $5 of lunch money that had fallen on the ground in front of him. Responding to a complaint of assault and robbery, the police were called and took the boy to the local police precinct where officers allegedly handcuffed and interrogated him for ten hours, according to the lawsuit.

"Imagine how I felt seeing my son in handcuffs," Wilson's mother, Frances Mendez, told the New York Post. "It was horrible. I couldn't believe what I was seeing," she said.

The claim, filed by family attorney Jack Yankowitz, accuses the NYPD, among other things, of false imprisonment, physical, verbal, emotional and psychological abuse, and deprivation of Reyes' constitutional rights.

Robbery charges against the boy were later dropped, and the NYPD, though it disputes the accusations in the suit, is investigating the incident.