DA employs common sense in Kohanowich case
Thanks, Guilford County District Attorney Doug Henderson, for not wasting the court's time with the assault charge against Alexander Kohanowich. He declined to prosecute.
Maybe police should have consulted with Henderson before insisting there was good reason to arrest the elderly Greensboro resident.
This embarrassing episode could have been avoided with perhaps a lighter touch in dealing with Kohanowich, who didn't move when ordered by a police officer following a Barack Obama rally at the coliseum.
Clearly the DA didn't see anything to gain by proceeding further. Dropping the charge was the right thing to do.
Comments (3)
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Doug:
I'm glad that the charges were dropped, though you seem to see a lot more clarity in this case than the news release indicates (the DA didn't comment in the story, so it's impossible to tell why the charges were dropped).
The suggestion that police should contact the DA before making an on-the-spot arrest seems silly and unworkable. Consulting with the DA is appropriate for some types of investigations and arrests but not for many others.
Posted on April 28, 2008 12:05 PM
Consulting the DA before deciding whether to make an arrest would be impractical, and I didn't suggest that.
Police might have consulted with him before issuing their statement two weeks later to get an idea of whether he was likely to back them up.
Remember, they did consult with him immediately in the case of the allegedly missing records from the Klan-Nazi-CWP shootout to get his opinion of whether a crime may have been committed.
No, Henderson didn't say why he dropped the charges so I'm guessing that the obvious applies: He didn't think the circumstances warranted prosecution.
Posted on April 28, 2008 12:14 PM
The law of common sense should have applied in the first place!
Posted on April 29, 2008 12:33 AM