Randy Washington, 36, may face a rather unsympathetic jury in his lawsuit against courtroom deputy sheriffs for excessive force. Washington has accused them of excessive force in restraining him after he decked his lawyer in court. Washington hit Jessica Lyons as she tried to defend him on a murder charge. Washington says that he was not resisting but was slammed to the ground — resulting in a broken wrist.
On the morning of Oct. 29, 2014, Washington, 36, was a passenger on a train when Silas Johnson, 64, boarded. Washington texted his girlfriend saying, “I’m gonna get this old head when he gets off.” Washington then grabbed Johnson, threw him to the ground and then fired two lethal shots into him.
Washington was previously represented by another lawyer but he threatened that lawyer.
Though Washington hit Lyons in the head, he claimed officers did not have to throw him to the ground and that they also did not take him for an x-ray after a week to confirm that his wrist was broken.
He now faces 30 years after being convicted guilty of murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a handgun, resisting arrest by flight, and obstructing the administration of law. He was found not guilty of resisting arrest by force. It is surprising that the sentence was not life.
Washington is also accused of killing George Jamison, 43, who was shot and killed on July 30, 2014, while he sat on a bus stop bench in Trenton. Police believe that he is responsible for a series of robberies.
He is a type of person from whom the public needs to be protected. At some point, it becomes less about justice for an individual crime, and more about protecting the public from a menace.
Killed two men for no good reason. Punched a lady attorney. It’s always someone else’s fault. Perhaps this is the extremist version of entitlement.
He put himself in a cage and he can rot there. Now he’ll have to ask permission to go to the bathroom for the duration. Have no choice about what to wear, what to eat, and where to go. Same 4 walls. Guess he showed us, didn’t he?
Those poor loved ones of his victims. Lost like that to this thug.
The jury on his new case should vote to slam him to the ground and then each kick his arse.
It’s always SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT isn’t it ???
Well, looky here! I ran across these notes after having seen this short documentary last summer, but then forgot all about it in my archives. How ironic that I stumble across by accident on the same day Turley posted this story.
While the defendant certainly had no right to assault his attorney, he may very well have had a valid motivation, accounting for why black eyes on public defenders is epidemic now. Not even judges themselves are off-limits anymore. This unequal justice certainly explains why Barry Scheck is so busy freeing 30% of those convicted by a renegade judicial system. I mean, really, one could make the argument here that perhaps judges should be serving 30 years, not defendants.
8/13/17 7:49 AM
CBS Sunday Morning
Unequal justice under the law
By Lee Cowan
“We’re arguing that being appointed an attorney who doesn’t know who you are, doesn’t investigate your case, doesn’t come to see you, doesn’t take your calls, doesn’t ask for a bond reduction, doesn’t investigate the evidence, doesn’t talk to any witnesses, and doesn’t do anything else to move your case, file any motions that are particularized to you, you don’t have an attorney; you have an attorney in name only,” said Lisa Graybill, Southern Poverty Law Center’s deputy legal director.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/unequal-justice-under-the-law/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/unequal-justice-under-the-law/
While the defendant certainly had no right to assault his attorney, he may very well have had a valid motivation,
Only if you inhabit the mental world of the slum hoodlum.
One of the reasons why I don’t practice criminal law!
Another 30 years, consecutively, for the other murder?
The tort of tackling of him, resulting in his injury will go nowhere..
Depending on the circumstances, he might have better luck in court with the lack of providing medical care to the wrist but that is dependent on when the department was actually notified of the injury and whether the security measures where needed to keep him incarcerated to protect medical staff at the hospital from assault.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
This is one of the most outrageous cases of chutzpah since Benedict Arnold applied for vet benefits.
Put him in the ‘Way Back’ machine and send him to 1965, USSR, skip the speech, just off the mutt. There is no there, there, and it certainly does not deserve to be here.
Unfortunately, we have been reduced to living in a society where individuals have been shown–time and time again–that they have the right and privilege to act, with utter impunity, as though they are savage, violent and predatory animals. A society which my parents and grandparents would never have believed could ever exist. Whether it’s protesters, protesting a decision, made on the bench, with which they do not agree, where the authorities–so de-b@lled–must permit and allow them to rampage through the streets, like beasts, smashing store windows and setting neighborhoods ablaze, or whether it’s when these protesters are permitted and allowed to get within inches of the faces of officers, simply attempting to keep the peace and some semblance of order, to scream threats and obscenities, while, simultaneously, throwing bricks, bottles of urine and feces. The courtroom antics, in this article, are just a logical extension of what we have all witnessed transpiring in our streets. A descent into Hell. Our brave men and women in blue are supposed to stand down and do nothing as the maniacs, among us, choose to let off a little steam, and, when law enforcement does, in fact, react to the violence, seeking to protect the public, they are the ones who are now in the wrong. They are now the criminals. They are now the ones who are accused of overreacting. They aren’t thanked and praised anymore for their heroism. They are demeaned and condemned for doing their jobs. Any reaction–and, I do mean, any reaction, by law enforcement –is now considered an overreaction. Police officers, wearing protective gear, in an attempt to shield their bodies from any array of objects and substances hurled at them during protests, are now condemned for doing so. Officers aren’t allowing themselves to be sufficiently vulnerable to the grave danger posed by the lunatics, and, as such, merit our scorn. A society crumbling before our eyes, where a violent offender strikes his attorney, in open court, and decides to sue because he may have broken a bone when the bailiff decided to take him down. Broken wrist? I would’ve taken him off at the wrists. . .
Why would anyone want to be a cop nowadays?
Depends on who runs the county and municipal government and what breed of troll is to be found among the federal and appellate judiciary in your area. If it’s normies, work as a police officer is a satisfactory career for the minority who are suitable for that. If it’s a concatenation of public interest lawyers, black nationalists, progtrash, and poltroons, your department’s morale with be in the toilet.
Yeah, working in Mayberry’s great, but in my experience, there’s ideologues, do-nuffin’s and power-hungry zealots in every backwater.
What are you talking about? Your problem is in core city departments and in a scatter of other locations best by power-drunk judges.
Whatever you say Step….this convo has already exceeded my interest level.
Okay, so the SOB is guilty of murder. How does that justify police abuse and excessive force, never mind Turley’s obvious prejudice? I’m pro-police, however, every time I see police abuse of power, my respect for police goes down one notch. It also goes down another notch when innocent police just stand by and do nothing to rid their force of thugs like this one. And another notch when the perp doesn’t receive medical treatment for a full week. Had Washington decked his lawyer in a back alley, this police thug might well have shot him dead, rather than just inflict a broken wrist. Police get way too damn many free passes, accounting for why there are so many rotten cops infesting ranks everywhere. Going by Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project, law enforcement gets it wrong about one in three times (by lying, manufacturing evidence, witness tampering and planting weapons), while far too many in the public believing law enforcement gets it right all the time. And then there is screwing of the public by all cops who pension spike. And you wonder why half the nation hate police? With public relations like that, Starbucks couldn’t sell coffee for a nickel a cup, much less give it away for free. Yet it is business as usual for agencies all across the nation, profitable, with far too many rotten cops among their ranks, body slamming school kids, manhandling nurses, arresting five-year-olds, shooting unarmed innocent motorists, bribing sexual favors, using Rico laws to confiscate cash from the innocent public, stealing cash and property from deceased accident victims, accidentally killing people with no accountability whatsoever, and countless instances of renegade behavior that has no place in police ranks, much less in life anywhere.
This is satire, right?
He assaulted a female attorney in the court room. There is no evidence the injury happened in the courtroom. He could have done it at some other point. The possibilities are endless. But why would you assume this premeditated murderer of an innocent sr.citizen is telling any truth?
You have to be wary of prisoner claims of a complete lack of medical treatment. While timely and appropriate medical treatment in prisons and jails is certainly a problem, false claims of a failure to provide medical often seem to be made in conjunction with prisoner excessive force claims, at least in my area. I currently have several files where prisoners allege that no medical treatment was provided for a significant period after scuffles. However, the medical records for both reflect immediate response to the location by medical personnel, transport to the infirmary for examination, and immediate treatment. I’m not quite sure why that particular false allegation is so often made, unless the prisoners think it will get more attention than merely alleging the force used was excessive.
Here, Turley, your sloppy writing really interferes with the gist of this jest.
And still, some people are opposed, not only to birth control and abortion, but they are opposed to stepping up to change the culture where this man’s lifestyle is common – in poverty-stricken oppressed cultures. Middle class mainstream culture, on the other hand produces men with huge gun arsenals who enjoy killing in contexts where they are not arrested.
And still, some people are opposed, not only to birth control and abortion, but they are opposed to stepping up to change the culture where this man’s lifestyle is common – in poverty-stricken oppressed cultures.
We don’t have ‘poverty-striken oppressed cultures’ in this country. Truly poor people are an oddity. You see them on skid row or on Indian reservations or in odd little corners like McDowell County, W Va. What we have is cultures where anomie and insecurity are the order of the day.
Middle class mainstream culture, on the other hand produces men with huge gun arsenals who enjoy killing in contexts where they are not arrested.
You’re an idiot, and a malicious one. The homicide rate in Detroit’s suburbs is 2.4 per 100,000. That in Chicago’s suburbs is 2.26 per 100,000. That in New York’s non-metropolitan counties is 1.14 per 100,000. That in Detroit is 48 per 100,000. That in Chicago pre-Ferguson was 16 per 100,000. That in Baltimore pre-Ferguson was 37 per 100,000.
About 3% of the homicides in this country are committed with long guns. People who own rifles and shotguns are common in rural areas and are not notably violent as a rule. Joe Blow off the sidewalks of Chillicothe, Ohio knows this. What’s your excuse for not knowing it?
“People who own rifles and shotguns are common in rural areas and are not notably violent as a rule.”
What would you call, supporting war, torture, and killing animals for “sport” if not “notably violent”?
What would you call, supporting war, torture, and killing animals for “sport” if not “notably violent”?
Not notably violent. You’re too feeble and indolent for hunting and fishing, so you conceptualize people who do hunt and fish as pathological. You’re unfit for military service, so you elect to conceive of people who serve and have those skills and that courage as pathological. You subscribe to the sort of selective pacificism-of-political-recrimination as a self-aggrandizing exercise, and elect to conceptualize people with a rough and ready understanding of why there is conflict in this world and how to contain that conflict as pathological. Other people have to do the difficult work of interrogating suspects and getting information out of them. You cannot do that, so you elect to slander them.
Your problem, Chris, is your own inadequacies. You should learn to appreciate others. If you cannot, you should at least keep silent and not make the world worse. Making the world worse actually is something you know how to do in your petty and rancid little way.
But but but BLACK LIVES MATTER! Here we go again, mass incarcerating another black man! For what??? Because black people have a right to resist arrest!
This is the kind of violent feral savage that the police have to deal with every single day of their lives, and when they end up killing one of the idiots, then NFL players will take a knee during the National Anthem. You know, because equality, man.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
He’s egregious. I doubt being egregious is all that unusual among the slum criminal class. Why was the ‘girlfriend’ with him? Because she thought he was cool?
If he actually is guilty of two murders and a string of robberies, he’s hit that tripwire and the proper disposition in the gallows or the firing squad.
Wow, this guy just should not be out loose in society.
Don’t they have a special chair for this type of individual? Or how do they handle it now?
How about this:
Or, you could make a three ring circus out of it like in the USA. The only more humane way would have been to shoot her before the speech.
This guy must live a great life in his head.
Paul, ordinarily I wouldn’t want to spend two seconds thinking about Washington’s thoughts. But since you asked . . . sort of . . . If Washington’s victims Silas Johnson, age 64, and George Jamison, age 43, were both African-American gentlemen–which would be statistically likely–then Washington might harbor some sort of twisted grudge against older Black men. Don’t ask me to speculate any further than that.
Sorry, but a little copy editing would be helpful. Is the word “murdering” missing here?
“Washington is also accused of George Jamison, 43, who was shot and killed on July 30, 2014, while sitting on a bus stop bench in Trenton.”
Suze, there’s a few facts missing as well. For instance, may we presume that the officers ordered Washington to lie down on the ground? That Washington refused to comply with that order? That the officers threw Washington to the ground after he refused to comply with their order?
If the answers to those questions are yes, yes and yes, then Washington’s claim of excessive force should be dismissed. Otherwise, it should be left to a jury to deny Washington’s claim based on whatever other evidence Turley has probably withheld from his post on this topic.
It’s not exactly unheard of for claims of excessive force to lack merit. Some folks claim it’s common. But we shouldn’t presume it, either. More information is needed.
Your wish is granted. Here is more information:
“”I hit my attorney, but when I hit her, I did not advance toward her, I just waited for the sheriff to come handcuff me,” Washington wrote in the suit.
The incident happened just after closing arguments in the trial ended and the jury was dismissed for deliberations.
He claims that the sheriff’s officers tackled him onto a table and later slammed him to the ground. One of the officer’s knees came down on his wrist, breaking his hand, he alleges in the lawsuit.
Washington claims that once back at the jail, officers refused to send him to the hospital after telling the officers his hand was broken.
On July 6, a week after the incident, an X-ray revealed it was broken. He had a second X-ray on July 25, and had surgery Aug. 7, according to the lawsuit.
Washington claims that he received no medical treatment from the jail between July 6 and July 25, after the break in his hand was originally discovered.
Washington is seeking $1 million in compensation.”
http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2017/09/murderer_files_excessive_force_lawsuit_against_cor.html#incart_river_home
“The Mercer County Sheriff’s Office said Randy Washington “suddenly and violently struck” his court-appointed attorney in the face with a closed fist…Sheriff’s Officers Joseph DiLissio and Joel Adams immediately grabbed Washington and pinned him to a courtroom table before other officers helped remove him from the area…She suffered multiple facial lacerations around her eye and was taken to the hospital, the sheriff’s office said.
Washington was charged with aggravated assault and returned to jail.”
http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2017/06/man_on_trial_for_murder_punches_attorney_in_face.html
The video from the courtroom would be helpful. He does not deserve $1 million. He should get the medical treatment paid for and that’s it. If he actually gets his million, the attorney should sue him for $1 million.
Why would anyone take the word of this guy? But realisticalkt, there are non-criminal witnesses in the courtroom and possibly cameras.
Pam asked, “Why would anyone take the word of this guy?”
Beats me, Pam. According to the report that Prairie Rose provided, the jury had been dismissed before Washington assaulted his lawyer. But there might still have been plenty of other witnesses in the courtroom in addition to the arresting officers, the bailiff, the judge, the prosecutor and the defense attorney.
Chances are Washington’s suit gets dismissed or he loses at trial.
Diane – my guess is this guy could see the handwriting on the wall and it did not say “Get out of jail.” However, this might give him grounds for appeal on the incompetence of his trial attorney, she was so bad I finally had to dot one of her eyes. Then the civil suit might get him out and if he is not asking for too much, sometimes the insurance company will settle for the nuisance value. That will put money in his commissary fund while he is in prison.
There are all sorts of scams to work here, Diane. You just have to figure which one is going on.
Thanks, Prairie Rose. Your suggestion that the assaulted lawyer should sue Washington is brilliant. I’m officially jealous.
I second that. Her attacker should not financially benefit from assaulting her in court.
I have no idea what the original treatment plan was. If it was a tiny fracture, they may have tried to let it heal on its own. What are the chances he followed medical advice? He can’t seem to follow legal advice.
Taking a follow up X-ray and then surgery a few weeks after the incident is not proof of medical malpractice. A lot of people I know have gone through exactly that. They can’t do surgery when it’s swollen, so that often gets pushed off a few weeks. I don’t know if they gave him a soft cast to immobilize it. I don’t know if it was a minor injury but he kept punching that hand to make it worse to try to milk it. He has earned my mistrust.
I slipped and fell on ice a few years ago, breaking my hand. I didn’t know it was broken for several weeks. I had occasional shooting pains, but nothing severe enough to seek medical attention for. Sometimes it takes awhile for the pain to manifest itself significantly. This guy sucker punched a female attorney in the face with a closed fist, sending her to the hospital. Two deputies pinned him to the table. He was only pinned on the floor after he started resisting, and as a necessary means of getting him into handcuffs. His lawsuit is as worthless as he is. I doubt the jury will give him anything, if the class even makes it that far.
Fascinating. What if Washington broke his hand when he punched his lawyer?
Diane – then he assumed the risk.