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Former All-Star shortstop Rafael Furcal faces felony charges in South Florida, police say

Former All-Star shortstop Rafael Furcal faces felony charges in South Florida, police say

Chicago Tribune15-05-2025

SUNRISE, Fla. — Former major-league shortstop Rafael Furcal is facing felony charges in South Florida, authorities said.
The three-time All-Star and 2000 NL Rookie of the Year turned himself in at the Broward County jail on Wednesday and was released on bond a short time later, according to court records. He's charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and throwing a missile into public or private dwelling.
Court records didn't list a defense attorney for Furcal. His former agent, Paul Kinzer, declined to comment on the charges and did not provide a way to reach Furcal directly.
The Sunrise Police Department issued the warrant for Furcal's arrest on Monday, but they didn't immediately release details about what led to the criminal charges.
Furcal, 47, started with the Atlanta Braves in 2000, followed by stints with the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals. He was with the Cardinals in 2011 when they beat the Texas Rangers in the World Series. He finished his career with the Miami Marlins in 2014.

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Denver Case Highlights the Potentially Deadly Hazards of Police Raids Based on Secondhand Information
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On a Friday night in March 2023, Sean Horan called 911 to report that Michael Mendenhall, who runs a staffing agency out of a converted townhouse on Blake Street in Denver, had threatened him with a baseball bat. Based on nothing more than Horan's one-sided account of a confrontation at Mendenhall's townhouse, police officers arrested Mendenhall for felony menacing. To support that charge, Detective Nicholas Rocco-McKeel obtained a search warrant by repeating what another officer told him Horan had said. During the ensuing search of the townhouse, police seized the baseball bat as evidence. Prosecutors dropped the case against Mendenhall less than a week later, and it is not hard to see why: Horan's account of what had happened was inconsistent and improbable. But police never returned the bat, which was a valuable collector's item because it was signed by players at the 2021 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Denver. That purloined bat is at the center of a case that aims to overturn a controversial 1960 Supreme Court precedent allowing home searches based on hearsay. Mendenhall argues that the warrant authorizing the search of his property was invalid under the Fourth Amendment because it relied on thirdhand information rather than Rocco-McKeel's personal knowledge. "The Fourth Amendment must be enforced in its entirety," says Anya Bidwell, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, which represents Mendenhall. Although "the Fourth Amendment bans reliance on second-hand information," she says, "the courts have read that requirement out of the Constitution. We're fighting to bring back the original understanding of this very important protection." Issuing a warrant "is no trivial thing," a brief that Mendenhall recently filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit notes. "Warrants authorize armed government agents to seize persons or comb through their most private spaces. Warrants authorize the government to employ violence to accomplish these goals. There is hardly ever a situation in which the individual is more powerless before the State than when its agents arrive armed with a warrant." Although no one was injured in Mendenhall's case, briefs supporting his appeal note that the consequences of hearsay-based warrants can be lethal, as illustrated by the 2020 death of Breonna Taylor. The circumstances that led to the search of Mendenhall's townhouse suggest the hazards of allowing police invasions of private property based on secondhand information. Around 10 p.m. on March 10, 2023, according to Mendenhall's brief, he was "relaxing after work at the townhouse with a friend when he heard women screaming and a man yelling just outside his front door." Concerned for the women's safety, Mendenhall grabbed his commemorative bat and "opened the door to investigate." 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Without talking to Mendenhall, the detective regurgitated that account in an affidavit that he submitted to Denver County Court Judge Renee A. Goble, who issued a search warrant at 12:34 a.m. on March 11. Horan never testified before Goble, submitted an affidavit, or otherwise swore to the facts underlying the allegations against Mendenhall. And Rocco-McKeel, who wrote the affidavit, "neither observed any of the relevant facts nor personally spoke to Mr. Horan," the 10th Circuit brief notes. He "merely repeated what another officer said Mr. Horan had said." All of that was fine under the Denver Police Department's operations manual, which says officers may "rely upon information received through an informant, rather than upon direct observation, to show probable cause" for a search warrant. It was also fine under Jones v. 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