Slashdot Mirror
One Year in Jail For Abusive Silicon Valley CEO (theguardian.com)
He grew up in San Jose, and at the age of 25 sold his second online advertising company to Yahoo for $300 million just nine years ago. Friday Gurbaksh Chahal was sentenced to one year in jail for violating his probation on 47 felony charges from 2013, according to an article in The Guardian submitted by an anonymous Slashdot reader:
Police officials said that a 30-minute security camera video they obtained showed the entrepreneur hitting and kicking his then girlfriend 117 times and attempting to suffocate her inside his $7 million San Francisco penthouse. Chahal's lawyers, however, claimed that police had illegally seized the video, and a judge ruled that the footage was inadmissible despite prosecutors' argument that officers didn't have time to secure a warrant out of fear that the tech executive would erase the footage.
Without the video, most of the charges were dropped, and Chahal, 34, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor battery charges of domestic violence... In Silicon Valley, critics have argued that Chahal's case and the lack of serious consequences he faced highlight the way in which privileged and wealthy businessmen can get away with serious misconduct.. On September 17, 2014, prosecutors say he attacked another woman in his home, leading to another arrest.
Friday Chahal was released on bail while his lawyer appeals the one-year jail sentence for violating his probation.
Without the video, most of the charges were dropped, and Chahal, 34, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor battery charges of domestic violence... In Silicon Valley, critics have argued that Chahal's case and the lack of serious consequences he faced highlight the way in which privileged and wealthy businessmen can get away with serious misconduct.. On September 17, 2014, prosecutors say he attacked another woman in his home, leading to another arrest.
Friday Chahal was released on bail while his lawyer appeals the one-year jail sentence for violating his probation.
The majority of offenders plead out if they know they have evidence against them so examination of chain of evidence doesn't happen. Police are largely unaware of the law. If all criminals had good lawyers and could afford full trials with defensive investigations we would barely have any behind bars.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Are you representing yourself as a seasoned law enforcement officer currently a member of the San Francisco (or any) police department? I think not. Please state the verifiable sources for your claims of instant-warrants that only require speed-dial and a printer mounted in a squad car.
Speaking as someone that WAS arrested in my home he's mostly correct. I refused a search and a police officer just sat with me while they contacted a judge and got a warrant. Took about an hour. We watched Hell's Kitchen. And this was drug related, not violent, so it wasn't exactly urgent.It did in fact happen via a phone and a printer, though that printer was at the station and they just drove it over.
Actually, to arrest him, you need probable cause. Otherwise you run the risk that the arrest was not done out of probable cause and because of that, the warrant was therefore invalid since the arrest was invalid.
Now, it is actually legal to seize evidence without a warrant, providing you can prove there is a time-sensitive nature to it.
In this case, the police have information that the surveillance footage contains important information to arrest the guy. But without seeing that footage, they technically can't arrest him. So in the meantime, while we ponder how the police are going to get evidence to arrest the guy, but they can't arrest him now (not enough evidence) the guy is free to do whatever, including destroy evidence.
Judges generally look down at warrantless evidence, and they usually convene a subtrial to figure out if the evidence should be thrown out or not.They look to see if exigent circumstances exist to allow the evidence to be used without a prior warrant - i.e., is it possible and likely the evidence would've been destroyed during the time to get a warrant. There's a lot of case law and interpretation behind it - if it was a surveillance system belonging to the building, for example, then it would've been tossed out (it is unlikely the building manager would erase the evidence, and most likely, if you ask nicely, they'll turn it over without questioning).
Oh, and there are times when it is LEGAL for law enforcement to enter your home without a warrant, probable cause or anything else (called "hot pursuit"). In fact, if they came in (during those circumstances) and you're openly doing drugs inside your house, they can arrest you for that, even though in a normal situation, that would be highly illegitimate! (No, most of the time, the cops are not allowed to enter a private residence without being invited or if they have a warrant, except in the narrow case.of hot pursuit).
http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2...