You Have The Right To Cover Up Your Offensive Tattoos At Taxpayers' Expense?

JollyRoger said:
It's a way to save taxpayer money on a silly appeal issue down the line. It's practical, not PC.
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I would say a judge granting an appeal solely on the basis of a tatoo would be pretty silly. To be honest, I dont think it saves any money at all.

This is just what we call in our office 'the good idea fairy'. Some hair-brained idea that someone with too much time on their hands comes up with that no one really likes, and ends up doing more harm than good.
 
MobBoss said:
I would say a judge granting an appeal solely on the basis of a tatoo would be pretty silly. To be honest, I dont think it saves any money at all.
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It's not just the granting of the appeal that costs money . . . it's the fighting of whether appeal on the issue gets granted. And if there was a $150/day solution to cover post-offense tattoos, it's not outy of the question that an appeal would be granted. You may have to have a solid understanding of character evidence and when and how it is appropriate under American criminal jurisprudence to recognize the danger of how this could swing back for a retrial.
 
Dutillio cleaned up real purty:



But the stabbing victim's mom thinks he should appear sans makeup:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts...ays-jury-should-see-neo-nazis-tattoos/1057045

John Ditullio, a neo-Nazi accused in a 2006 double-stabbing that left a teenager dead, faced the group of people Monday called to sit on his jury.

The transformation in his appearance since last week was striking.

Before: a striped jailhouse jumpsuit, long beard and prominent tattoos of a barbed wire along his face, a swastika and the words "f--- you" on his neck.

After: a pressed blue shirt and pants, his beard neatly trimmed and the tattoos obscured behind makeup.

Ditullio, 23, is charged with attempted murder and first-degree murder. On March 23, 2006, Pasco authorities say, he put on a gas mask and broke into a neighbor's home, where he stabbed a woman in the face and neck, then attacked a teenager. Patricia Wells was slashed in the face and hands but recovered from her injuries. Kristofer King, who was 17, died.

Authorities have described the case as a hate crime. Wells told authorities the neo-Nazi group harassed her for weeks before the stabbing. She had a black friend who sometimes visited her home, and her son is gay. Authorities think King might have been mistaken for Wells' son.

Ditullio faces a possible death sentence if convicted.

Last week, Circuit Judge Michael Andrews approved a request from Ditullio's lawyer that a cosmetologist be brought in each day to cover up Ditullio's tattoos, which he acquired while in jail.

Defense attorney Bjorn Brunvand said last week that the average juror might be offended or intimidated by them.

It was the judge's ruling that offended King's mother, Charlene Bricken.

"This is part of who he is. This is what the jury should see," said Bricken, 52. "And if the jury is afraid, they should be."

Up to $150 per day of taxpayer money will be used to pay the cosmetologist. Bricken said she would be angry even if it wasn't her son who was murdered.

"The taxpayers should not be paying for this creep," Bricken said.

Brunvand and prosecutor Mike Halkitis spent Monday questioning potential jurors about what they knew of the case.

Several saw news stories about the tattoo issue last week.

Others remember the murder itself, which drew attention from the national media.

One woman said she recently converted to Islam and has seen her husband, also a Muslim, endure harassment because of his religion.

Sitting on the jury to decide the fate of someone associated with a hate group, she said, would be difficult.

The attorneys don't have to find jurors with no knowledge of the case, but they have to be assured that jurors won't let anything but the evidence in the trial determine their verdict.

The death penalty is another challenge.

Several people in the jury pool say they could never vote in favor of a death sentence.

"I don't believe in taking someone's life," one woman said.

In Florida, the only possible sentence for first-degree murder is life in prison or death. Juries are presented aggravating and mitigating factors and then vote on a recommended sentence. The judge has the final say but must give the jury's recommendation great weight.

A 12-member jury with two alternates was seated Monday evening. The trial is expected to last until next week.
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Since I disagree vehemently with the death penalty and would be extremely reticent to support it under any conditions, I guess I'll never serve on a first-degree murder jury in a state that allows it.
 
Screw him. If he's stupid enough to get that then he should live (or die, I dont care either way) with the consequences.
 
This sets a dangerous precedent. How long will it take until the judicial system is spending a lot more money on smoothing over perceived prejudicial attributes?

Plus, since this radically changes his appearance, lets say that hypothetically a witness takes the stand.

The defense attorney says "Do you recognize this man"?

The witness says "No, the man who did this has numerous tattoos on his face"

So what happens, if it is revealed that he has such abominable tattoos, wouldn't that prejudice the jury? If they are not revealed, doesn't that prevent justice from being served, because of reasonable doubt being attributed to the witnesses testimony? I hope at the very least that if his tattoo's are relevant to the case(which they are), they will be revealed in such a hypothetical scenario.
 
Harshad said:
Plus, since this radically changes his appearance, lets say that hypothetically a witness takes the stand.

The defense attorney says "Do you recognize this man"?
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He didn't have the tattoos at the time in the crime, so this helps with witness identifcation.
 
JollyRoger said:
He didn't have the tattoos at the time in the crime, so this helps with witness identifcation.
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Huh, inconvenient for my argument, lol.
 
The prosecution asked a witness if he could afford to have his own tattoos covered up by makeup before his appearance!



http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts...recounts-2006-stabbing-in-pasco-trial/1057612

Spoiler :
Former neo-Nazi recounts 2006 stabbing

By Molly Moorhead, Times Staff Writer

NEW PORT RICHEY — Cory Patnode still bears the markings on his skin of the years he spent as an American Nazi. He has since left the group that adhered to the principle of "whites only," but his tattoos of a rebel flag and swastika remain.

Patnode, 30, took the stand Wednesday in the murder trial of John Allen Ditullio, who was a prospective member of the neo-Nazi group living on Teak Street. He told jurors that early on March 23, 2006, he saw a masked man run into the neo-Nazi compound as a woman ran out of the house next door, bloodied and screaming.

Patnode said he went inside the compound and found Ditullio holding a knife.

"I basically cussed a storm and said, 'What the hell did you do now? Now the cops are definitely coming,' " Patnode testified. "Basically he told me, word for word, 'I killed them, I killed them both, stabbed them in the face.' "

But Patricia Wells, now 48, had actually survived the attack, but her son's friend, 17-year-old Kristofer King, died. Ditullio, 23, could face the death penalty if he is convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder, which authorities say was fueled by bigotry.

Patnode, who is serving time in the Pasco County jail for violating his probation on unrelated charges, talked jurors through the night of the attack. He also described the neo-Nazis' beliefs and lifestyle.

Defense attorney Bjorn Brunvand pressed Patnode about his decision to testify against Ditullio. He also wanted to know why, if Patnode was no longer a neo-Nazi, he still has racist and anti-Semitic tattoos.

"I always assumed tattoos are permanent," Patnode said.

"They can be covered up, can they not?" Brunvand asked.

"Yes," Patnode said.

That prompted prosecutor Mike Halkitis to ask: "Did you have the money to hire a makeup artist?"

Brunvand swiftly objected, and Circuit Judge Michael Andrews had the jury removed from the courtroom.

The issues of tattoos and makeup have dominated news coverage of the case since last week, when Andrews allowed the defense to have a taxpayer-funded cosmetologist apply makeup to tattoos on Ditullio's face and neck each morning so the jury won't see them. The tattoos are a barbed wire running down his face, a swastika and the words "f--- you" on his neck.

During jury selection, potential jurors were asked what they knew of the makeup issue. The ones who had heard about it promised to put it out of their minds.

Now, Brunvand said, he feared the jury would be influenced by Halkitis' question.

But Andrews disagreed, saying it didn't reveal anything new.

"The ones who didn't know still don't know," the judge said.

He brought the jury back, and Halkitis asked Patnode again: Did he have money to pay to have his tattoos concealed?

"No," Patnode answered.

Jurors also heard Wednesday from a DNA analyst, who analyzed blood samples from Ditullio's clothes, the gas mask and the fence. Several samples matched Ditullio and Wells. But Brunvand noted that some samples were contaminated with the analyst's DNA, and one item may have contained the DNA of Shawn Plott, another neo-Nazi.

Earlier in his testimony, Patnode described the night of the stabbing. Wells, who lived next to the neo-Nazi compound, had a black friend and a gay son with openly gay friends, all of which sparked the ire of her neighbors.

Patnode said he came home from work to the compound about 5 p.m. March 22. He, Ditullio and a few others began listening to loud music and drinking whiskey.

Patnode said he and member John Berry went outside into the fenced yard. As they stood talking, they heard a popping sound come from next door — the neighbor's tires being slashed. Patnode said he angrily confronted Ditullio about it, fearing it might draw police to the house. Sheriff's deputies were constantly harassing them, he said.

About 20 minutes later, Patnode said, he saw a man wearing a gas mask hop the fence between the two houses and run into the neo-Nazi house. Then Wells ran out of her home, wounded and screaming.

Brunvand questioned Patnode about his motive for testifying.

"You didn't go to law enforcement and provide them with a statement because you had a change of heart?" Brunvand asked.

"No," Patnode said.

"It was only because you were arrested that you gave a statement?" Brunvand asked.

"Yes," Patnode said.

He acknowledged that when he talked to detectives, he was in the presence of Brian "Zero" Buckley, the Nazi group's president whom Patnode had idolized for years.

Brunvand asked about the group's code of silence, which forbade the members, who thought of each other as brothers, from ratting on each other.

Buckley, Plott, Patnode and Berry were considered brothers; Ditullio, merely a prospect who had to guard the fence and take out the trash, was not.

"To this day, you're not ratting on your brethren, are you?" said Brunvand, who has speculated that Ditullio was made to be the fall guy for the crime.

"No, sir," Patnode said.
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To be fair to the prosecutor the defense pretty much kicked the door wide open. Not sure what he was thinking with that question to be honest.
 
Granted, the defense attorney screwed up by mentioning tattoos in the first place. I just can't believe the prosecutor actually had the nerve to ask that question in that way.
 
Ditullio takes the stand and claims he was framed. He even has a credible witness that suggests he may very well have been set up based on what he was wearing:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts...r-suspect-testifies-at-trial-in-pasco/1057865

Spoiler :
NEW PORT RICHEY — John Ditullio found a sense of belonging and family when he joined up with a group of militant neo-Nazis in the early spring of 2006.

"When I first met them," he said in a Pasco County courtroom Thursday, "I was entranced by the glamor and theatrics of the brotherhood."

But along with the camaraderie, his low position as a recruit came with menial tasks like guard duty and recycling the group's beer cans. Sometimes the members slipped drugs in his drinks to test his mettle, he said.

Ditullio, 23, took the stand in a high-profile murder trial that could send him to death row if convicted. His testimony — calm and unwavering — bolstered the defense's contention that it was another member of the Teak Street American Nazis who broke into the home of the group's neighbor wearing a gas mask and stabbed two people, killing one of them, in a hate-fueled rampage. Patricia Wells, now 48, suffered multiple stab wounds to her face and arms but recovered. Kristofer King, who was 17, died.

Key to the defense's case is the clothing the stabber wore. Ditullio and other witnesses put him in red and black, his standard uniform. The stabber, according to Wells, wore a white T-shirt and khaki pants.

• • •

On March 22, 2006, Ditullio said, he spent hours doing yard work at the neo-Nazi compound, a single-wide mobile home in the Griffin Park area of New Port Richey. That evening, he and the other members cranked up their white supremacist music and began drinking whiskey. Ditullio was still charged with keeping watch at the fence, making sure no one came in. He was in and out.

Once when he came back inside, he said, he picked up his drink and tasted the familiar bitterness of Xanax, a powerful tranquilizer. He began to feel wasted and tired.

The members taunted him to stay awake, and he staggered back outside. There, he said, he saw group member Shawn Plott fumbling with the gate to get back inside.

"The expression on Shawn's face was he had seen a ghost. He was shaking. He wasn't there," Ditullio said.

Back in the house, Plott paced around and carried out a bundle Ditullio described as like a rolled-up sweatshirt with stuff inside it.

Another member told him something was going down.

" 'Everything you need is right here,' and (he) points at some guns," Ditullio said he was told as he fell deeper into a haze.

Plott reappeared briefly, he said, tossed a gas mask at Ditullio and took off.

Then, Ditullio said, he was alone. He didn't know what had happened next door.

His next memory was awakening to a SWAT team barging into the house, guns aimed at his face.

• • •

Sometime during the night, though, he wrote a letter to the brothers who had abandoned him. It was one of several that prosecutors held up to jurors as evidence of Ditullio's guilt.

Ditullio admitted writing them all. In the one penned during the overnight standoff, he called the police outside "pigs" and said he was ready to die for his race.

"I was real upset. I was angry and scared," Ditullio told jurors Thursday, acknowledging that he recognized the beliefs conveyed in the writing as his own but doesn't remember writing the letter.

In another written from jail, he wrote to his father, saying it was "high time I stand up and face the music."

"All this is my fault," he wrote. "These are my actions."

He told jurors the letter referenced his relationship with his father and the lessons he had taught Ditullio. Among them, he said, was "you are the company you keep."

"My actions were hanging out with people who had done something like this," Ditullio explained in court. "That's what I'm trying to say was my fault."

Perhaps most damaging was a letter he sent one Christmas after the killings to Guy King, the father of Kristofer King.

From jail, Ditullio wrote, "I hope your Christmas is full of memories of your dead gay son. Merry f------ Christmas."

In his only display of remorse, Ditullio said he regretted sending it.

"Every time I hear it read, it hurts me," he said.

His reason for sending it: He had received a newspaper story in jail in which King's family was quoted as saying they hoped the wrath of God was visited on Ditullio.

"I was just trying to strike back, man," he said. "I couldn't believe they thought I did this."

• • •

Prosecutor Mike Halkitis said Ditullio attacked Wells because she had a black friend who visited often and because her son and King were open about their homosexuality. Ditullio and the other neo-Nazis harassed and shouted slurs at them for weeks before the stabbings.

Neighbor Katrina Nielson was familiar with the area's tensions, and with the men who flew Nazi flags.

The night of the stabbings, Nielson testified Thursday, she awoke to Wells' screams and walked outside to see people scattering from the compound.

Ditullio, wearing a red T-shirt and black pants with untied boots, headed one way, she said. Plott, who is now a fugitive, took off in the opposite direction. He was wearing a white T-shirt, Nielson said.

The next day, after the sheriff's SWAT team descended on the compound, Ditullio was led away in handcuffs. He wore a red T-shirt and black pants.

The trial is expected to conclude today.
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And now, a last-minute witness claims that someone else confessed to doing it:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts...neo-nazi-confessed-to-pasco-stabbings/1058102

Spoiler :
NEW PORT RICHEY — Defense attorneys for neo-Nazi John Ditullio called a last-minute witness this morning who claimed another member of the white supremacist group admitted stabbing two people, killing one of them — the crime of which Ditullio stands accused.

Samantha Troupe said she was at the group's compound on Teak Street the night of March 22, 2006, hanging out and drinking. She wasn't a member but had lived there off and on since age 12 and ascribed to their whites-only views. She left about 9:30 p.m., hours before next door neighbor Patricia Wells was stabbed in the face and hands by a masked intruder. Kristofer King, a 17-year-old friend of Wells' son, died in the attack.

A year later, Troupe testified, she got a call from the girlfriend of one of the other group members, Shawn Plott, asking Troupe to babysit. Plott came home at one point, Troupe said, and they began talking about the stabbings and how it had ruined the friendships among the American Nazi group.

Then, Troupe testified, "Shawn said to me that he kind of feels bad because he did this, and he feels bad that a kid has to go away for this. But it's okay because he never would have made it as a Nazi."

The defense has contended throughout the trial that the real killer is Plott, 37, who became a fugitive two years ago when he skipped out on his drug offender probation. Dutillio, the defense says, was a low-level neo-Nazi recruit who became the fall guy.

Their key claim is that Wells, now 48, has testified that her attacker was wearing a white T-shirt and khaki pants. Witnesses have said that Ditullio was wearing a red T-shirt and black pants both on the night of the crime and the next day when he was arrested.

Troupe also testified about who wore what.

Plott, she said, was wearing "tan pants, black boots and a white T-shirt." Ditullio was in red and black.

But under cross examination by prosecutor Mike Halkitis, Troupe revealed that she is engaged to be married to Brian "Zero" Buckley, the former president of the American Nazis who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence. Troupe is 20; Buckley is 47.

Ditullio, 23, is still in touch with Buckley and said on the stand Thursday that he considers him a friend. Troupe said she did not know that Buckley and Ditullio were in touch and said she has not communicated with either of them about the case.

"I thought they had already dropped the charges," she said.

She said she didn't know the trial was going on until a friend told her Thursday, at which point she contacted Bjorn Brunvand, Ditullio's attorney, with her story.

She said she is no longer a white supremacist.
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She is no longer a white supremacist, but she's engaged to the head of this organization?!?

What I really don't understand at this stage is why the police waited until the next day to raid the trailer.
 
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