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My focus is on lewd conduct issues relating to public cruising. I also concentrate on cruising on the internet, and possession of erotic materials including the use of computers.
I am devoted to the legal problems that Gays encounter because of their sexuality.
LAW OFFICE
OF
Bruce W. Nickerson
High
Court Backs Gays Against Police Sting
by Mary ann
Swissler (Name of Paper/date?)
Public lewdness charges against Dennis Baluyut and Job Lopez were ultimately dropped, two men out of a total of ten who were detained outside the Video Cassette Outlet adult bookstore in Mountain View, on suspicion of soliciting sex from a male undercover officer in 1992 and 1993. Openly gay attorney Bruce Nickerson has argued all along that the police targeted gay men since no heterosexuals were arrested, and citizen complaints from the bookstore neighbors had not specified anything about gay men.
This week’s high court decision will ease the burden of proof for future plaintiffs claiming police discrimination, because it disagreed with a Fourth District Court of Appeals decision in People v. Smith that demands a high burden of proof. Santa Clara County Municipal Court Judge Douglas Southard had cited that standard, which demands proof that police deliberately intended to punish the men they arrested for being gay. Instead, Southard wrote in his opinion, Mountain Views police had acted out of subconscious anti-gay bias.
But in January 1996, the Sixth District Court of Appeals ordered all charged to be dropped against the men, stating, “A defendant should not be required to psycho-analyze the enforcement authorities to receive the constitutional protections to which he or she is entitled.”
Nevertheless, the state’s Attorney General asked the State Supreme Court to rule on the discrimination claim.
Nickerson said the decision spells the end of gay-specific police sting operations. “They got rid of the Smith requirement of intent to punish, and you just need to show statistics,” he told the B.A.R.
The court remained silent on whether the string operation used by the Mountain view police department had illegally discriminated against gays, because the charges have been dismissed. “It’s not the whole ball of wax,” Nickerson conceded