By Steve Pomper
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department patrol car (Missvain, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0)
I’m not sure if people understand why it’s a particularly heinous offense when someone murders a police officer compared to other victims. While all innocent victims of murder are tragedies, killing a law enforcement officer is a unique crime.
It’s not because the human behind the badge is more valuable than other people. The added significance comes from what and who the law enforcement officer represents: the community, for which cops are the shield and sword.
When criminals murder a private person, that person is the only direct victim. When a murderer kills a cop, they’re committing a crime not only against the person in uniform but also against every single person in that community. Essentially, the social contract/compact says a society agrees to give up some (primitive) natural rights in exchange for living in a civil society based on the rule of law.
We don’t give up our self-defense rights, but we do give up our “right” to retaliate, avenge, investigate, arrest, try, and impose punishments individually (i.e., caveman days). The criminal justice system is supposed to do that for us. But, as with the recent story NPA brought you about a judge handing out a lenient sentence (no prison just probation) for a criminal who stabbed a 94-year-old San Francisco woman multiple times (she survived), what happens when the justice system doesn’t do that?
People, including cops, lose respect for the system they depend on and that the cops serve.
Cops risk their lives enforcing the law for their communities. When someone kills Officer John Doe because they don’t want to be arrested, they’re not doing it because it’s John Doe; they’re doing it specifically because John Doe is a cop—protector of the community.
This brings us to cop-killing and disappointment in the great city of Indianapolis, Indiana. On 04/09/2020, at about 2:45 p.m., Officer Breann Leath and other officers responded to a reported domestic disturbance at an apartment building.
According to WISH 8 TV News, when officers knocked on the apartment door, the suspect immediately fired eight shots through the door, killing Officer Leath with two bullets to her head. Dorsey also shot and wounded Aisha Brown, a woman he’d been holding hostage, as she escaped into the hallway.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) Officer Breann Rochelle Leath was everything law enforcement agencies are looking for in officers they hire. Officer Leath was also a single mom who left behind her little boy, Zayn, who is now seven about to turn eight. Officer Leath, 24 years old, had been on the job for only 2 ½ years when Dorsey murdered her.
She was a high school dance team captain, served honorably in the Indiana National Guard, and worked as a corrections officer for the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC). “The DOC has since named the unit in Leath’s honor.”
Marion County Superior Court Judge Mark Stoner gave her killer, Elliahs Dorsey, according to WISH TV 8 News, only “time served,” some five years, for killing a police officer.
It’s more than the murder that has the Indianapolis community enraged, though. Headlines, such as at WRTV abc Indianapolis, “Elliahs Dorsey sentenced to more than 30 years in prison in killing of IMPD Officer Breann Leath, other crimes,” are misleading. Dorsey did not get that much time for killing Officer Leath; he got that sentence for shooting and wounding a woman he was holding hostage.
Dorsey may have gotten a three-decade prison sentence, but not for killing a cop. That sentence was for attempting to kill a civilian, which is appropriate. But for actually killing Officer Leath, the judge ordered “time served,” which amounted to about five years.
WISH asked the Leath family if they were upset. “‘Of course, we’re upset,’ Breann Leath’s mom Jennifer Leath said. ‘The judge… basically said you can assault officers… and… you can claim some kind of depression or mental illness and walk away scot free. I am not happy about it.’”
President Rick Snyder of the Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police said, “It’s an absolute disgrace and miscarriage of justice. The decision made by this judge today was to sentence this violent offender to time served for the death of a police officer. That time served was the equivalent to a little over 5 years.”
At sentencing, the family, prosecutors, and the IMPD pleaded with the judge to hand down the maximum. The state had asked for 63 years. However, the cop-killer’s reported “begging” Judge Stoner for “mercy” outweighed the family, police, and prosecutor’s pleas for justice.
As a sign of the times, the legal system is too often heavily slanted toward criminals and away from cops. The “jury rejected murder and found him guilty of reckless homicide in Leath’s death.” So, six years would have been the maximum instead of a possible death penalty. WRTV reported that “With credit for good behavior…,” Dorsey had effectively served his time for killing a police officer.
Insult to injury, this judge also gave Dorsey three two-and-a-half-year prison sentences for “criminal recklessness” for each of the three officers near Officer Leath when he killed her. However, the judge “ordered those sentences to be served concurrently and merge in with the sentence in Leath’s death, which means Dorsey faces no additional prison time.”
So, 30 years in prison for attempted murder and other crimes against a civilian but concurrent and merged sentences and time served for killing one police officer and nearly killing three others. I have that right, don’t I?
The defense successfully argued that their client had a mental illness at the time of the incident and was suffering from a psychotic episode. But he still gave an acceptable sentence for Dorsey’s crime against Brown but a ridiculously low sentence for his heinous crimes against the IMPD officers, including Officer Leath.
The original charges of murder were reduced to reckless homicide, and they took the death penalty off the table due to mental illness. Many people have mental illness but don’t shoot and kill cops, right?
So, after 14 hours of deliberations, the jury found Dorsey “guilty but mentally ill.”
This means the judge and jury’s decisions resulted in this cop-killer’s case going from a possible death penalty to a mere five years in prison for the killing of a police officer—and also nearly killing three other cops.
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, a former federal prosecutor, while respecting the criminal justice system generally, had some harsh words for the judge. Hogsett said in a statement, as posted on X by Donnie Burgess of WIBC FM (read post below).
IMPD Police Chief Chris Bailey also issued a statement critical of the decision, which he does not feel delivered justice in this case. “On a personal level, as a father and a career police officer, I am deeply disappointed in the sentence handed down by the judge this afternoon. This man killed a young mother and police officer, robbing Officer Leath of her life and all the potential she had. He also attempted to kill other officers and Ms. Brown. Nothing less than the full sentence under the law for his violent and senseless actions is acceptable.”
Further, Chief Bailey thanked those involved in the investigation and prosecution and noted “all the officers who endured the pain and trauma of the trial and sentencing hearing.”
Marion County, Indiana, needs everyone connected to its criminal justice system to return to working for equal justice according to the objective rule of law. We’ve seen all across the country how one woke, criminal-loving, cop-hating official can be Kryptonite to a criminal justice system.
Critics have written extensively about the poisoning of the legal system by Soros-styled prosecutors. Still, we can’t forget about the activist judges who can unilaterally alter a community’s quest for justice, as many believe happened in Officer Leath’s case.
These officials must cease giving criminals every benefit of the doubt, no matter how dubious while holding officers to not just high standards but impossible standards and viewing them with evident contempt.
Maybe Judge Stoner can live with such decisions, but as one observer quipped, “[This ludicrous sentence] tells the world, if you’re going to commit a felony, go ahead and kill the responding officer as well. It’s a freebie.”
The call by the Indy Fraternal Order of Police for Judge Stoner to resign couldn’t be a better idea.