Homeless man jailed for three months after trying to pay Burger King with $10 bill files suit

[SpankMe]

Emory Ellis, a black homeless man in Boston, was hungry so he went to Burger King one morning in 2015. But instead of breakfast, Ellis got a ride to the police station and more than three months in jail after he was wrongfully accused of using counterfeit cash, he says.

Ellis' attorney said the cashier likely wouldn't have questioned if the money was real if a white man in a suit handed him the same bill. Even if he did, the cashier probably would have apologized and said he couldn't accept the cash instead of calling police, attorney Justin Drechsler said.

Ellis was arrested in November 2015 and charged with forgery of a bank note. His arrest triggered a probation violation and he was held without bail until his final probation violation hearing, according to the lawsuit.

He wasn't released from jail until February 2016, when prosecutors dropped the forgery charge after the Secret Service concluded Ellis' bill was real, the lawsuit says.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/homeless-man-jailed-three-months-after-trying-pay-burger-king-n875346

_____________________________________________________

If this story is true and there isn't a whole lot of missing information here, I think they should sue the local police and federal government, too. A fed could have examined the $10 bill on the spot and determined it was real and they could have let the man continue with his purchase.

But, it took three goddamned months of no-bail incarceration and potential charges of violation of probation before the feds could certify the note as genuine!?!?!?!? What. The. Fuck. ???.

[dalton99a]

1. This story deserves more attention

Fucking ridiculous

[Maraya1969]

2. YES it deserves attention. K & R and I hope it is picked up by other sources.

I hope he gets a nice amount and can get off of the street because of it.

[Stuart G]

3. k and r....nt.

[USALiberal]

4. I don't believe bail is fair, innocent until proven guilty. Hope he wins a lot of cash! nt

[BigmanPigman]

5. Yet the GOP are saying

you can't indict a president who has committed countless crimes (including treason) which effects millions of Americans. Justice must be blind to see the crimes of the moron as no big deal and the normal actions of a black man as a major offense deserving jail time as being fair and just outcomes under the law.

[Downtown Hound]

6. Even if it was fake

How could you possibly know for certain that this man was the forger? Money changes hands all the time. He's homeless. Hey brother, can you spare a computer, a printer, and some photo manipulation software? And then the expertise needed to do something like this?

3 months in jail for mere, and irrational, suspicion. Horrible.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

9. Send those questions to his lawyer.

Definitely he should get prosecution’s answers to those!

[LiberalLovinLug]

10. Yes I was going to comment on that too

I was astounded that the charge wasn't something like 'trying to pass on a counterfeit bill' or something like that. Maybe the reporter got it wrong. Its like charging a pot smoker (where its still illegal) with growing and selling it.

I assumed, on first glance at the story, it was a counterfeit bill and that he, as a homeless person, had been given it by someone else. Maybe as a cruel joke, or because they were themselves too freaked out to try and use it and thought they might as well give it to some homeless person.

But even then, if it was counterfeit, couldn't he just say he had no idea it was? And how the hell could the police even prove that it was he that was the counterfeiter? Like you said it takes a lot of equipment, a place for that equipment, and also a lot of graphics expertise.

But to find out that the bill was real??? Why was there any suspicion in the first place? And why would it take 3 fricken months to confirm it was real? There's a lot more to this story I suspect.

[BadgerMom]

7. What about the BK cashier?

The privilege of calling the cops on anyone seen as a threat or other is appalling.

[LiberalArkie]

12. The police have always since they were created been in the business of serving business

and the wealthy. They are not in the business of serving the serfs.

[erronis]

14. This . The police/politzei/gendarmerie/stasi/whatever are there to maintain order

Order as handed down by the PTB, not by the laws of the land, the constitution, legal documents. But laws as INTERPRETED by people with vested interests. And money is what backs that vested interest (definition.)

[LiberalArkie]

26. You go back to the sheriff of Nottingham, you go back to the Romans

where ever. Law enforcement was always to "serve and protect the public". Most of us here are not in the tax table as public.

[erronis]

28. Yup - landed males with the right genealogy. Not the rest of us (or at least me.)

[MrScorpio]

8. Jeezus freaking keryst.

[Cha]

30. So now you can't spend

money on breakfast at BK while Black.

Will it ever end? How could they even question it was counterfeit when it Wasn't? Paranoid much.

[lame54]

11. Nobody counterfeits ten dollar bills...

reward does not equal the risk

[world wide wally]

13. Such a loyal employee... Protecting the coffers of Burger King from a possible $10 fraud

The asshole should be FIRED!

[KY_EnviroGuy]

15. The crime of existing while black or...

existing while homeless can completely ruin a life, or even kill you - especially if you have physical or mental health problems. I wonder what the public defender was doing during these three months.

Due Process (Wiki):

Due process is the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual person from it. When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law.

Due process has also been frequently interpreted as limiting laws and legal proceedings (see substantive due process) so that judges, instead of legislators, may define and guarantee fundamental fairness, justice, and liberty. That interpretation has proven controversial. Analogous to the concepts of natural justice, and procedural justice used in various other jurisdictions, the interpretation of due process is sometimes expressed as a command that the government must not be unfair to the people or abuse them physically.

Unfortunately, due process does not include any guarantee of expediency. This case should not have taken three months to resolve. I'm guessing his case was trapped in a court time-warp due to entanglements between federal (forgery) and local (probation) claims.

......

[radhika]

16. Hope he wins enough to stop being homeless...

He totally deserved a lot of compensation.

Maybe a small house for him, and maybe even a homeless pal of his. Hoping for a karmic reward for him, and a karmic lesson for Burger King.

[LiberalFighter]

17. Personally, I think the police officer, prosecutor, and judge

should all be prosecuted and jailed.

[TrogL]

18. Maybe it's time you guys got some proper currency

Most other countries have currency that’s damn near impossible to counterfeit.

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/counterfeit-prevention/

[JayhawkSD]

20. Good point.

Our currency is a farce. All notes being the same size, for instance.

[JayhawkSD]

19. Unfortunately, comments seem to overlook the probation violation.

Certainly the charge for forgery was prosecutor's misconduct, but holding without bail was necessary in the face of a violation of probation. A judge would have no choice. You cannot release someone on bail when he is in violation of probation which, if you think about it, actually makes sense. He is certainly a flight risk.

There's a lot wrong about the way this man was treated, beginning with the employee's shameful reaction to his appearance. Probably should never have been arrested in the first place, because police should never have been called.

Police, however, are required to respond to a citizen complaint and, after querying his identity, had no choice but to bring him on the parole violation. Once he showed up before the judge, he had to be held without bail. He is paying the price, albeit a rather unfairly high price, for violating the terms he agreed to when being placed on probation.

The police didn't charge him with forgery, the prosecutor did that. Despite what you see on television, police don't file charges.

The prosecutor charging him with forgery was certainly bogus and abusive, but might not actually might not have caused that much harm, since he had to be held for the probation violation. Three months? Something fishy about that, but he might have faced the prospect of finishing a prison sentence. We don't know all of the facts, so should not be too quick to make accusations.

[dragonlady]

22. What probation violation?

As I read this, the only violation was the fact of being arrested (without justification). I don't see what he did that counts as "violating the terms he agreed to when being placed on probation." That he was treated to three months in jail for something he didn't do is an example of the precarious position that people are in when they become involved in the criminal justice system.

[Crunchy Frog]

23. The "parole violation" WAS the arrest for trying to pay the Burger King

With a normal $10 bill. It was not anything else he did separate from the bogus forgery arrest.

So he "violated terms he agreed to" buy attempting to purchase fast food with cash?

What the ever loving fuck?

[Downtown Hound]

24. LOL. Um, read the story again. What was this probation violation you speak of again?

[JayhawkSD]

29. Maybe someone else should read the article.

"His arrest triggered a parole violation." That means he was on parole and being arrested put him in violation of that parole. He would not be on parole without having pled guilty to something, or having been convicted of something. It was that parole violation which placed the judge in a position of having to deny bail.

What was the parole for? We don't know. What was the sentence he avoided by being given parole? We don't know. What were the specific terms of his parole? We don't know.

Not knowing those things, we cannot say what degree of unfairness was inflicted by being held for three months. What if the parole was in lieu of a six year prison sentence? We don't know, and so it not reasonable to say that the judge and the police were acting unreasonably. They may have been unreasonable, or they may not.

I stipulated the employee who called the police was an idiot, was wrong, and treated the homeless person shamelessly. I stipilated that the prosecutor who charged an act of forgery merely for posession of what was thought to be a forged bill was wrong and was abusing the system. But as to denying bail and holding the man for three months, without knowing the details of his parole we cannot know what degree of injustice, if any, was inflicted.

[Downtown Hound]

31. Yes, the unjustified arrest that he never should have been arrested for triggered a parole violation

In other words, he did not violate his parole. Therefore there was no violation. Therefore, he should never have been held for three months, much less arrested.

And really, does it really take 3 months to figure out if a bill is counterfeit?

[red dog 1]

21. Was he on probation for a violent act?

Has he tried to use counterfeit bills before?

This is BULLSHIT!!!

The cop responding to this call should have checked the bill himself to see if it was counterfeit.
Cashiers at stores know how to tell if a bill is counterfeit or not, especially $100 bills.
I see them doing that all the time.
I've never even HEARD of a counterfeit $10 bill.
WTF?

I hope he gets the amount he's asking for.

K&R, thanks for posting

[btw, all the other news outlets for this story, including WaPo, are using the same AP article as their source, which does not go into more details about this case, especially to answer the question "What was he on probation for?"]

[EarthFirst]

25. People pass judgement on the simple act of eating all the time...

From the homeless man; Emory in this story to the single mother in the grocery store with a SNAP card.

Too many have been led to believe that food and water have become privileges in life.

In a society of extreme abundance; there is no reason why access to nutritional food and clean water should become a divisive topic.

We’re becoming unrecognizable as a compassionate human race.

[WhiteTara]

27. Burger King employee is a wypipo in my book.