A perp walk or walking the perpThe term perp is short for perpetrator, and is commonly used by police departments for those they arrest. It is legally inaccurate since the arrested individual's guilt has not been judicially established at that point. (also called a frog march in Washington, D.C.) is a practice in law enforcement of parading an arrested suspect out in public before their initial appearance in court. The suspect is typically escorted from a police station to a police vehicle to the courthouse and then after the court hearing back to a vehicle, creating an opportunity for a media frenzy to take photographs and video of the event (sometimes, if the police have alerted the media to an imminent arrest, it takes place afterwards). The defendant is normally handcuffed or otherwise restrained, and is sometimes dressed in prison garb. Within the United States the perp walk is most closely associated with New York City. The practice rose in popularity in the 1980s under U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, when suspects charged with felonies were perp-walked.
The perp walk arose incidentally from the need to transport a defendant from a police station to court after arrest. Law enforcement agencies often coordinate with the media in scheduling and arranging them. It has been criticized as a form of public humiliation that violates a defendant's right to privacy and is prejudicial to the presumption of innocence, but is defended as promoting transparency in the criminal justice system. American courts have permitted it on the grounds that it arises from the limitations and necessity of police procedure, but have also limited it only to those times when it is actually necessary.
Procedure
In the United States, once a person has been charged with a crime, the government may request that a judge either issue a summons for that person or an arrest warrant, which can lead to a perp walk. The choice of which to request is largely at the discretion of the prosecutor. Judges often defer to them.
Since the arrest power is meant to ensure the defendant's presence in court, lawyers defending the white-collar criminals who have been perp-walked since the late 1980s have complained it is unnecessary and superfluous in their clients' cases, even if it does give the appearance of preferential treatment for wealthy defendants. Lea Fastow, the wife of former Enron executive Andrew Fastow, cited the perp walk she was made to take even though she had expressed her willingness to surrender to a summons in an unsuccessful motion for a change of venue.United States v. Fastow, 292 F.Supp.2d. 914, 917, (S.D. Texas, 2003). Some, like Martha Stewart, have still managed to avoid being perp-walked by responding to summonses, or surrendering in the courtroom as soon as the indictment is presented in open court.
This did not prevent another Houston-area defendant, former Dynegy natural gas trader Michelle Valencia, from undergoing a perp walk in 2003. After waiting all day for the indictment, her attorney told prosecutors she would return there the next morning. Instead, she was arrested at her home before the courthouse opened. Her attorney said prosecutors were bullying her for refusing to cooperate with them. Similarly, lawyers for Adelphia Communications chairman John Rigas criticized prosecutors for having him arrested at his home on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 2002 despite his offer to surrender. Defense lawyers have been advised that if they are aware an indictment and arrest is imminent, to announce to the media that their client will surrender at a particular time in the near future, making a subsequent arrest and perp walk seem gratuitous.
Law enforcement
The ultimate discretion over whether a perp walk occurs belongs to the arresting law enforcement agency. Local departments may inform the media prior to an arrest even occurring, if they wish to have footage of that being broadcast. Federal agencies, on the other hand, are generally prohibited from informing the media of arrests in advance by Justice Department policy. However, they cannot prohibit photography or video of a defendant being transported through public places after the arrest has been publicized.
Once the decision is made to arrest the suspect, or they have voluntarily surrendered, they are photographed and fingerprinted at a police station, and then taken to the appropriate courthouse for an arraignment or similar procedure that brings the case into the legal system. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) usually advises the mediaIn New York City, local media includes three daily newspapers and many weeklies, six broadcast television stations and one citywide cable channel, as well as various Internet outlets. Cases involving defendants arrested in New York often attract national and international interest, and those media are notified as well if they have expressed interest. as to when this will happen in cases that may be of interest; other large departments do not, so photographers and camera crews wait at the central location in hopes of getting a perp-walk image.Dave Krajicek, The Crime Beat: Perp Walks, Criminal Justice Journalists. In 2011, some New York camera crews and photographers waited 15 hours for former International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn to be brought by for his arraignment on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
Many police departments require that defendants facing felony charges wear at least handcuffs regardless of the nature of the crime they are accused of.Clay County, Missouri, Sheriff's Department; ; August 1, 1982; retrieved June 1, 2011. The Alamo Colleges Police Department; ; June 25, 2009; p. 2, retrieved June 1, 2011. The defendant taken to court is usually brought in through an entrance from a public area such as the street or sidewalk, often escorted by plainclothes police officers (who may be those who have investigated the case and made the arrest, especially if multiple agencies were involved) and sometimes accompanied by their attorney. Those areas are accessible to all, including the media. It is there that they may take still or moving images of the defendant, and often ask questions of them. In high-profile cases, with major media interest, such as a crime which has received considerable public attention or in which the defendant is a celebrity, measures such as barricades or extra uniformed officers will be present to ensure there is space to get the defendant and escorting officers into the building. "You naturally assume you're seeing a barbaric mob wreaking random havoc," writes New York Times columnist John Tierney of such scenes. "But that's not the case. It's actually a barbaric mob wreaking exquisitely planned havoc."
Defendants
Most law enforcement agencies will allow suspects to temporarily hide their faces during their perp walks. They may simply (if they are cuffed in the front or not cuffed at all) use their hands to shield their faces from onlookers and the press. Some may wear sunglasses, and some may wear hooded shirts or jackets that they then wrap tightly around their faces. Suspects sometimes pull clothing over their heads or walk with their heads down to hide their faces.This is also sometimes a consequence of how they are handcuffed. The police have the discretion to cuff the defendant either in front or back, with hands back-to-back or not, and tightly or loosely based on how cooperative the defendant has been and the severity of the crime he or she has been charged with. When cuffed tightly, back-to-back in the rear, it is more comfortable to walk in a slightly bent position. Suspects also often struggle to walk and hide their faces at the same time as they are often bombarded with the microphones and cameras of the press covering their arraignments or cases. The police also sometimes provide certain defendants, such as accused current or former police officers and criminals who have been useful to them as informants, with hoods and abbreviated perp walks from a side entrance. Conversely, in a high-profile case, the police may accommodate the media by extending the perp walk into a "perp parade" beyond the necessary distance, such as around the block, or delaying the court proceeding until the media can be present, as was the case at the 1999 arraignment of former Wu-tang Clan rapper Russell Jones on charges that were later dropped. Perp walks were restaged for the benefit of the media until a 2000 court ruling restricted them to those necessary for law enforcement purposes.
Defendants who can anticipate their arrest often dress with the perp walk in mind. Two former federal prosecutors turned defense attorneys advise that a white-collar defendant "should be prepared to look as professional as possible under the circumstances," as the fictional character Sherman McCoy does after he surrenders to face a charge stemming from a hit-and-run accident in Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. New York publicist Mortimer Matz recommends an old raincoat. In addition to concealing the handcuffs, he says, it is not a problem when the garment inevitably gets smudged by fingerprint ink remaining on the defendant's hands. New York Mafia boss John Gotti wore the expensive custom-tailored suits that earned him his "Dapper Don" nickname during perp walks, in contrast to the sweatpants and jackets seen among other contemporary organized-crime figures.
Susan McDougal, subjected to a brief perp walk in a miniskirt, leg irons and a waist chain as she was taken to jail for refusing to testify before special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's grand jury investigating Whitewater, wrote of the experience in her memoir, The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk:
In The Bonfire of the Vanities lawyer Tommy Killian similarly advises Sherman McCoy to affect aloofness and indifference prior to his perp walk.
Ed Hayes, the lawyer Killian was modeled on, gives similar advice to his own clients.
Media
Reporters usually ask questions such as "Did you do it?" if the defendant is not known to have confessed to the crime, or "Why did you do it?" when they have. Usually defendants do not answer or even acknowledge, since by that point they have been advised, as required under the Fifth Amendment, of their right to remain silent. One exception was Emmanuel Torres, arrested in 1984 on suspicion of murdering a woman in the course of an attempted rape. He told reporters that the victim was a "slut" and deserved her fate. At trial he protested his innocence. His remarks during the perp walk were introduced into evidence, and he was convicted. Another defendant, in 1993, suspected of stealing Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, turned to face the cameras and apologized to his dead parents. Actor Judd Hirsch's son Alex, arrested in 1995 by Chicago police on drug charges that were later dropped, promoted an upcoming appearance by his band. An Ohio murder suspect once said "Hi Mom!" to the cameras.