Brooklyn Officer Faces 15 Years - For a Crime He Did Not Commit
Policewoman Faces 10 Years Because Dog Bites Suspect
Officer Stephanie Mohr with her police dog, Valk. Stephanie, facing a 10 year sentence, is concerned about her 2-year-old son, Adam.
Prince George’s County (Maryland) Police Officer Stephanie Mohr could be sentenced to serve 10 years in jail because her police dog chased a fleeing suspect and bit him.
The incident goes back to 1995 in Takoma Park, Maryland, where Officer Mohr was patrolling in a P.G. County Canine squad car. Responding to a call in which two burglary suspects were on the roof of a building, Officer Mohr, along with several other officers and a helicopter above, ordered two suspects, Ricardo Mendez and Herrera Cruz, to face the wall. Mendez, instead, apparently started to flee, and Officer Mohr released the police dog to chase him. This was completely within the police guidelines of standard operating procedure. The dog bit suspect Mendez on the leg. Subsequently Mendez and the other suspect were charged with 4th degree burglary. They were deported, but re-entered the U.S. illegally and were arrested for selling crack cocaine at which time they were again deported.
One day before the statute of limitations was set to expire, the federal Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice indicted Officer Stephanie Mohr, along with two other policemen, on civil rights violations and conspiracy charges. The Takoma Park Police Department, under investigation by federal authorities, suddenly brought up this incident almost five years after it occurred.
A re-trial was sought even though jurors interviewed from the first trial said that the case lacked merit. The second trial was held in August 2001. This time, the prosecution convinced the jury that Mohr had released her canine on innocent minority citizens. Officer Mohr was convicted of a federal criminal civil rights violation and is expected to be given the maximum sentence allowed — 10 years. The sentencing is scheduled for December 10, 2001. While the sentence cannot be suspended, it is possible that the judge could allow her to be free pending the appeal.
The principal reason that Mohr was convicted is because in the second trial, unlike the first one, the judge allowed highly prejudicial testimony into evidence that Officer Mohr had used racial epithets in making a prior arrest using her canine. The litigation had not started out as racial, but the prosecutors used this last resort tactic in a desperate move to save their case. This questionable evidence should never have been allowed and is one of the main arguments in Officer Mohr’s appeal.
Stephanie Mohr, who has received more than 25 letters of commendation and two awards for her police work since 1993, resigned after the August 15 conviction. A mother of a 2-year-old son, Mohr appealed to LELDF for assistance with her case. As we think she was unjustly convicted, we are helping Mohr with legal costs for an appeal.
