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Hunt: Affirming police officer's false report obstruction conviction

By Tim Cone

In U.S. v. Hunt, No. 06-16641 (May 5, 2008), the Court affirmed a conviction and sentence for making a false entry in a police report with the intent to impede an FBI investigation.Hunt, a Prichard, Alabama police officer, was involved in an arrest where he threw the person to the ground, causing injury and permanent hearing loss. In his police report, however, Hunt stated (falsely) that he had been grabbed first by the person under arrest.The Court rejected the argument that the statute of conviction, 18 U.S.C. § 1519, was unconstitutionally vague. Though the statute was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, its application need not be cabined to the corporate malfeasance at which the Act was targeted, so long as the plain language does not produce absurd results...continue to full post

Full post as published by Defense Newsletter Blog on May 06, 2008 (boomark / email).