No good deed goes unpunished. I guess that's as good an explanation as any for a man wrongly accused and arrested for a sexual assault. Anyone want to bet, that if Mr. Seggie sees something like this again, he just ignores it?
Good Samaritan arrested and charged with sexual assault. Freed after DNA proves it wasn't him.
STERLING HEIGHTS — A different man has been arrested and charged for a July 2009 sexual assault after DNA evidence recovered at the scene failed to match the original defendant.
Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Diane Druzinski dismissed three counts of criminal sexual conduct and one count of unlawful imprisonment against Ricky Seggie, 25, at the request of the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office March 17.
The same day, prosecutors brought identical charges against Christian Phillip Margosian, 22, who was arraigned before Magistrate Michael Piatek in 41-A District Court.
Margosian must wear a GPS tether if he posts bond, set at $50,000.
“They had the wrong guy,” said Seggie’s attorney, Jerome Sabbota. “The bottom line is, the kid never did it. Unfortunately, Ricky Seggie got caught up by trying to be a good guy.”
The assault in question allegedly occurred near Dodge Park and 16 1/2 Mile on July 17, 2009.
According to Sabbota, the victim, a staffer at a group home, was walking to the facility when a man attacked her. Hearing screams, Seggie, who lives three doors down, emerged to see the suspect back his red Blazer into a tree, then flee the scene, said Sabbota.
Seggie supplied the information to Sterling Heights police, but investigators, wary, arrested him after determining that his appearance was similar to the victim’s description of her attacker.
According to police, the victim picked Seggie out of a photographic lineup on July 29. He was arrested and charged the next day; after two days in jail, he posted bond and was released. His case was bound over to Circuit Court Oct. 1, after a preliminary exam in District Court.
“He was headed to trial,” said Sabbota.
Sabbota dubbed the entire process “questionable,” since discrepancies existed between the victim’s description and Seggie’s appearance, and because the assailant wore a hat and a mask concealing the lower portion of his face.
“All she could really see was this person’s eyes,” he said.
His client owns a red Bronco, not a Blazer, and the Bronco lacked rear damage consistent with a collision, added Sabbota.
Sabbota acknowledged that Seggie failed a lie detector test, further muddling the situation, though the attorney — noting that lie detector test results are not admissible in court — questioned the test’s validity, alleging the administrator distorted the result by asking too many questions.
Police reportedly collected hair samples from the suspect’s hat, abandoned at the scene, and submitted it to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab for analysis in August. But the lab often has a backlog, and while results were pending, investigators became suspicious of Margosian, who matched the suspect description and was driving a similar vehicle when he was arrested Dec. 15 for aggravated indecent exposure under like circumstances.
Investigators obtained a search warrant to obtain DNA samples from Margosian and submitted them for comparison to the hair collected at the July assault scene. The results, released March 15, implicated Margosian, leading to the dismissal of charges against Seggie, according to police.
The Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately return a call for comment, and a listed number for Seggie was not functioning March 19.
Citing the open case, Lt. Luke Riley of the Sterling Heights Police Department said he could not release details about the July assault nor the incident that prompted Margosian’s December arrest.
However, he noted that the CSC charges, which vary in degree, are each tied to specific actions that occurred during the attack. The most severe of them, first degree, is a felony punishable by up to life in prison, he said.
Along with the false imprisonment count, “these are four separate charges that are supported by what happened in this incident,” he said.
Margosian’s preliminary exam is scheduled for March 31 before Judge Kimberley Wiegand in 41-A District Court.
Sabbota said Seggie hasn’t determined his next course of action, if any, but he believes his client has little legal recourse.
It’s especially unfortunate, he said, because while most acquitted defendants get their fingerprints and photographs back, the court system retains those belonging to CSC suspects, innocent or not.
“As they say: No good deed goes unpunished,” he said.
Link:
http://www.candgnews.com/Homepage-Articles/2010/03-17-2010/DNA-evidence-exonerate.asp
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17 comments:
Next time if you hear a rape just ignore it. Otherwise you're putting your neck on the line.
Anon,
Thanks, but no. If you feel that it it better to ignore someone being raped, and make no effort to help (even if it is just calling 911), then you are aiding that rapist, and are no better than they are.
Pierce and I have stated it too many times, that some of our biggest supporters, are people who have been raped. We advocate on behalf of those who are falsely accused of rape, but it doesn't mean that we condone, or ignore rape. But rape victims have so much support in this country, while the falsely accused have almost none. We aim to change that. So please, don't make those types of comments here, or we may have to get heavier handed with comment moderation. I would hate to do that, but I, personally, will not allow this to become a place where people can come to advocate for rape.
maybe you can attempt to take a picture(mobile phones) in the attempt to save her at the same time or call the police and try saving her at the same time.
Look choose you never know what can happen if you wait too long.But try too judge on your own.
and obvious thing that people make mistakes.
"Rape hysteria" in its current form is no longer about protecting women, it is about the power and control if gives the "Gender / Raunch" community.
"Rape hysteria" in its current form is no longer about protecting women, it is about the power and control if gives the "Gender / Raunch" community.
This is so true, what is also true is that many law enforcement communities are engaged in "manufacturing" the faulty and inflamatory statistics that gives the "Gender / Raunch" community all their hysteria power.
Break the gender feminist law
enforcement manufactured statistics ALLIANCE for federal VAWA dollars. It is not only a perversion that leads to perversions of the law..it is un-constitutional.
"Anonymous said...
Next time if you hear a rape just ignore it. Otherwise you're putting your neck on the line.
Apr 16, 2010 12:09:00 AM
E. Steven Berkimer said...
Anon,
Thanks, but no. If you feel that it it better to ignore someone being raped, and make no effort to help (even if it is just calling 911), then you are aiding that rapist, and are no better than they are.
Pierce and I have stated it too many times, that some of our biggest supporters, are people who have been raped. We advocate on behalf of those who are falsely accused of rape, but it doesn't mean that we condone, or ignore rape. But rape victims have so much support in this country, while the falsely accused have almost none. We aim to change that. So please, don't make those types of comments here, or we may have to get heavier handed with comment moderation. I would hate to do that, but I, personally, will not allow this to become a place where people can come to advocate for rape."
I can agree with you in principle, Steven, but you said it yourself in the very first sentence of your post -- No good deed goes unpunished.
There is also the bystander phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
I'm not saying that one shouldn't call 911, but after being falsely accused, that's about all I am willing to do. Further, the Good Samaritan Laws are not uniform in all states in the US and abroad. Rendering aid could in fact get you sued or even made criminally liable, depending on your location.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law
What may be morally and ethically correct may not always be legally prudent.
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By the time I was 30 I had "jumped in and helped" in various scenarios so often that this instinct was eventually knocked out of me, I can't explain quite how it happened, but one day it just wasn't there, not at all.
I can remember being sat in a group of around 8 or 9 in a beachfront, and this girl comes up, says she is hiding from her boyfriend, a few minutes later he walks up and starts beating on her.
I just sat there and watched it, a couple got up to try pulling the guy off, ineffectually, and one other guy got up and smacked him over the head with a piece of wood.
Afterwards the guy who wielded the piece of woods looks at me, sort of nods, and says "snake eyes"
2 days later he is deported.
within a week the girl "borrows" and never repays the equivalent of a few hundred bucks from one of the other samaritans.
within a further two weeks she breaks into the boat owned by the other samaritan, and trashes it.
meanwhile I'm busy building a 10 x 22 metre wooden pergola over the outside section of the restaurant owned by the father of the guy who beat up on the girl, he's they mayor, his brother is the police chief.
there is a moral there.
*** the snake eyes is a reference to a song by the alan parsons project, betting on something you can't possibly win.
the guy with the piece of wood knew as soon as he had done it that it was going to end badly for him, a bet he should never have placed.
STERLING HEIGHTS — A different man has been arrested and charged for a July 2009 sexual assault after DNA evidence recovered at the scene failed to match the original defendant.
Whenever I read about DNA clearing a suspect and implicating someone else, I think back to the Duke lacrosse case, in which DNA tests cleared the entire team two weeks before anyone there was arrested; and indicated that the accuser had had prior sex with as many as 11 other men (none of them Duke students).
Unfortunately, the Duke students had the right PC profile, which was all that counted.
"Thanks, but no. If you feel that it it better to ignore someone being raped, and make no effort to help (even if it is just calling 911), then you are aiding that rapist, and are no better than they are."
Different anon, but no one here is advocating rape. Having the sense not to run into a burning building isn't the same as committing arson. As demonstrated by the article, trying to help -- even if it is just calling 911 -- can ruin that person's life. What if the police didn't find a hat with hair samples? Then what?
"Break the gender feminist law
enforcement manufactured statistics ALLIANCE for federal VAWA dollars."
The police are not manufacturing faulty statistics. Nor are there any programs under the VAWA that grant money to the police based on such statistics. Enough already.
"Sabbota acknowledged that Seggie failed a lie detector test, further muddling the situation, though the attorney — noting that lie detector test results are not admissible in court — questioned the test’s validity, alleging the administrator distorted the result by asking too many questions."
Galvanic skin response lie detectors are highly unreliable in gathering useful evidence. A skilled operator can induce negative responses out of all but the most psychopathic subjects - if that's what they intend to do.
The most useful information one can actually get from a lie detector is the manner in which a subject acts when asked to take one. [a "sh*t test", if you will.] Beyond that, a young, and perfectly reasonably nervous (given the allegations against him) man can very easily be manipulated into "wrong" responses, which will give reading consistent with the nervous response of someone who is not telling the the truth - they cannot measure truth, only that someone seems to be uncomfortable with their answer.
If an innocent man was (as are most men) deeply disgusted by the act of rape, than if he is challenged with the idea that he had committed such an act could well cause him to respond in a defensive and agitated way. His response would be due to his disgust of rape, but could also be interpreted as his lying about his innocence of the crime.
A proper "baseline" response is very difficult to establish, especially with respect to a subject such as rape.
Anonymous said...
"Break the gender feminist law
enforcement manufactured statistics ALLIANCE for federal VAWA dollars."
The police are not manufacturing faulty statistics. Nor are there any programs under the VAWA that grant money to the police based on such statistics. Enough already.
Apr 16, 2010 10:33:00 AM
All due respect sir, but to not understand that law enforcement can now "CASH IN" on male arrest statistics and cannot cash in on "Female arrest statistics" is a sign of ignorance in this area.
Because law enforcement can "Cash in" on male arrest statistics, and cannot "Cash in" on female arrest statistics...this dynamic is leading to innocent men being arrested, and violent women being "Enabled".
And with the police's erroneous male arrest statistics that erroneouslly show "hightened male violence"..the girls "running the numbers" in all these bloated womens shelters can get their "faulty and inflamatory" statistics that they can "Cash in " on also.
Bottom line here folks..Break the gender feminist / law enforcement missinformation Alliance for pork dollars. It is causing such perversion in our society that it is collapsing from the weight of its own pork.
Anonymous - "Because law enforcement can "Cash in""
We been through this one before.
VAWA grants go primarily to non-LE entities which provide services to female victims. Very little goes to LE to underwrite their day-to-day operations. And, when they do get VAWA grant money, it is, A) typically to establish a training programs or a response task-force intended to address female-as-victim crimes; B) substantially less that what those programs will cost the agency seeking to establish them; and, C) with serious over-sight to ensure that LE spending of VAWA monies go only to those activities for which they were applied for (aka, "strings attached").
Please try to understand this important concept - There is no "windfall" available to LE via VAWA grants. VAWA grants are only helpful to those LE agencies who are making a sincere effort - and are willing to pay the lions share for doing so (even if we might disagree with the value of that effort).
If you want to address VAWA "mad money", look at that which is given to women's shelter and rape counselling centers - with no strings attached.
I do understand that in your case LE bungled the job. But you cannot hope to accurately extrapolate something from one individual case that will be applicable to LE collectively. Insisting that one agencies one-time mistake makes all LE now-and-forever corrupt is making you seem more than a little "unhinged" anymore. Please reconsider those, sadly, ill-thought remarks you incessantly post.
if I may suggest, rather than just post unsubstantiated innuendo, perhaps if you were to undertake the writing of a serious piece detailing how your suggested legal distortions are being carried out, your research efforts might well bring you to a better understanding. LE is not actively allied with the rape-culture gender-feminist sexual grievance industry (SGI), but is rather the victim of the bullying from that SGI. LE stumbles and falls many times, but seldom from a nefarious effort to selectively rail-road innocent men. And, BTW, rape is a very small subset of the over-all criminality they deal with. Think that they base everything they do around convicting rapists is as flawed as is the gender-feminist belief in epidemic rapes and the supposed “rape-culture”.
Well Slwerner, we will have to agree to disagree. The law enforcement in the community i live in ..(heavily gender feminist North-eastern state) have in fact engaged in " manufacturing faulty and inflammatory statistics" in order for both the law enforcement, and the womens shelters they are colluding with..to both cash in on VAWA dollars.
And it will take a civil rights case to separate this collusion.
I can assure you I'm quit sane, but I'm also very busy in my life, and get to the root of the perversion as quickly as possible, again, which is this "Alliance."
"All due respect sir, but to not understand that law enforcement can now "CASH IN" on male arrest statistics and cannot cash in on "Female arrest statistics" is a sign of ignorance in this area.
Because law enforcement can "Cash in" on male arrest statistics, and cannot "Cash in" on female arrest statistics..."
This is pure tautology -- induction without a single example.
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