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.

Comments

Re:What is Justice

[ArmoredDragon]

I fail to see how videotaped 100% clear proof of violent crime can be ignored because the police break a rule when obtaining it.

Because if you let it go in this case then you have to let it go in all cases, and if you let it go in all cases then the police are free to break into your home, car, office, etc, hack into your computer, read your mail, record your phone calls, use stingray type devices, and anything else privacy invading just any time they want just to find shit to send you to jail for.

But what's that you say? Who cares about privacy when lives are on the line? Well the thing with that is if police can just do whatever they want to obtain evidence to throw you in jail, then they can practically throw anybody they want in jail because EVERYBODY does things that are illegal, and you bet your ass that politicians would start using this to silence their opposition until we end up with a China style government.

What a terrible legal system

[CanadianMacFan]

I'm sorry but the only reason he wasn't convicted was because the tape wasn't admissible? If some ass hits and kicks his girlfriend 117 times I'm calling in the forensics team because there's going to be the girlfriends blood in the apartment and on his clothes. They will find her blood which will corroborate her statement. Then it doesn't matter if he deleted the video. Besides from the sounds of it he doesn't really sound smart enough to securely delete so that a digital forensics team couldn't retrieve it.

But if all you are going into your trial with is a tape that the police questionably obtained (the lawyer should have seen this coming) then what is your police department and prosecutors office doing with their time because it certainly isn't preparing for cases.

Re:What a terrible legal system

[phantomfive]

Yeah, it's corrupt. The whole city of San Francisco is as corrupt as the cesspools on market street. Former Mayor Willie Brown was paid to cover this problem up. Ed Lee (the current mayor) is extremely unpopular among the citizens, got appointed to that office initially. The state senator from the area was convicted of gun running! Notably he favored gun control laws, I guess he wanted to get rid of the competition. Another guy was demanding "protection" money.

That's just the surface, the ones who've been caught. I don't know how deep it goes, but it definitely extends into the police department.

Re:SJW

[jcr]

This isn't an SJW story, This is a "douchebag gets away with multiple felonies" story.

-jcr