Last week we previewed the upcoming federal civil suit over the strange death of Martin Cotton II back in 2007. Cotton died of a subdural hematoma in the Humboldt County Jail following a violent struggle with the Eureka Police Department.
After the jump: The three trial briefs filed with the Federal District Court of Northern California. These three briefs lay out the case that will be made at trial by the plaintiffs — Cotton’s father and daughter — as well as the two sets of defendants: the City of Eureka and individual EPD officers, and the County of Humboldt and county correctional officers.
The briefs are published through the amazing DocumentCloud service, which we just signed on to and which I’m trying to get a handle on.
This article appears in Empire Falters.
What is this? Some new technology that came with your time machine?
About Martin Cotton, I have audio from two people that claim to be witnesses. One of them was from a guy at the jail when Cotton was brought in. It was chilling.
Bust the links, post the audio Tom, or play it on your radio station, lets hear it!!
You rock Tom!
Right about now most of your readers are saying, “Martin who? Why do I care again? Is this that frivolous lawsuit that no one is interested in? Isn’t this just another lunatic attempt by the crazies at CopWatch to hurt that ambiguous ‘they’ that is at the root of all homeless people’s problems?”
Please don’t make us wade through thousands of words of coverage on something that we only really want to know the outcome of. We absolutely do NOT want a blow-by-blow over the next six months of proceedings.
Hank. I’ll stick with those ten bot-collected “local” headlines that my Mac comes up with for me every morning. They somehow seem to always be things that actually matter to real people and yet they are found by a computer!
To paraphrase Martin Niemöller:
When they came for lardo,
there was no one left to speak out.