Computer Snafu Ruled a Rights Violation : Wrong Man Repeatedly Detained on Murder, Robbery Charges

The Los Angeles Police Department violated the constitutional rights of a Michigan man by continuing to list him in a nationwide crime information computer system as wanted for murder and robbery, even after it was clear the real suspect was using his name, a federal judge has concluded.

Terry Dean Rogan, 29, will now go to Los Angeles Federal Court to seek monetary damages for having been wrongly detained several times, said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Paul Hoffman.

Hoffman called the recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Kelleher one of “national significance,” an important step toward ensuring that such computer systems do not trample the rights of individuals.

Kelleher, however, found that Los Angeles Police Detectives Richard Crotsley and Lester Slack do not share liability with the city, even though on several occasions they re-entered Rogan’s name in the National Crime Information Center system and failed to add new descriptive information that would have established Rogan as the wrong man.

The city failed, Kelleher ruled, to properly train and supervise the officers in the constitutional protection aspects of using the crime center system and the necessity of adding more accurate information when it becomes available.

The actual suspect, Alabama state prison escapee Bernard McKandes, either came into possession of Rogan’s lost wallet or obtained the latter’s birth certificate--depending upon which one’s deposition is to be believed--and began passing himself off as Rogan in 1981.

Thus Rogan became a suspect in two murders and two robberies in Los Angeles in the spring of 1982. Los Angeles police placed a warrant for his arrest in the FBI’s national computer system that June.

Rogan, then an unemployed part-time student, was first arrested in October, 1982, in Saginaw, Mich., after a fight with his girlfriend. Police learned he apparently was wanted for murder and robbery. He was held in jail until a fingerprint check showed he was not the man being sought.

Nevertheless, Hoffman said, Los Angeles detectives put his name back into the computer, neglecting to add qualifying information, and he was arrested four more times--mostly after routine traffic stops. On two occasions, he was taken into custody at gunpoint, handcuffed and jailed.

It was not until early 1984 that Rogan’s name was removed from the computer system--after a Saginaw News reporter told Crotsley that McKandes was the person actually wanted and that he was by that time back in prison in Alabama.

McKandes, according to the court record, subsequently was convicted of the California murder and robbery charges.