Crime and Punishment

Guards suspended over posting

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:13:46 -0500

Ex-Cop Pleads Guilty In Hurricane Katrina Killing Probe: 2 Shot, Killed On Danziger Bridge

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:56:00 -0500

Ex-Cop Pleads Guilty In Hurricane Katrina Killing Probe: 2 Shot, Killed On Danziger Bridge:

In Hurricane Katrina’s chaotic aftermath, police shot six people – killing two – as they crossed a bridge in search of food. For years the case was a shocking symbol of the confusion and violence that swept through the flooded city. On Wednesday it became a mark of shame for the police department.

As victims’ relatives watched from the courtroom gallery, a retired lieutenant who supervised the department’s probe of the shootings pleaded guilty to orchestrating a cover-up to conceal that police gunned down unarmed civilians.

Michael Lohman, a 21-year veteran of the force, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Prosecutors said Lohman and other unidentified officers conspired to fabricate witness statements, falsify reports of the incident and plant a gun in an attempt to make it appear the killings were justified.

[via]

"Utah, the most comically awful state in the union, is now becoming substantially worse, in a..."

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:06:00 -0500

“Utah, the most comically awful state in the union, is now becoming substantially worse, in a decidedly non-comical way. Both chambers of the state legislature passed new legislation that will define miscarriages due to reckless behavior as criminal homicide, which could result in the guilty party facing up to life in prison. To prove ”reckless behavior,” a prosecutor might only have to argue that a woman drank too often, or even stayed in an abusive relationship. She could also be found guilty of a crime if she attempted to have an illegal abortion that resulted in a miscarriage.”

- Utah criminalizes miscarriage, manages to become worse at being a state - John Knefel - Making a Mockery - True/Slant (via)

NC woman killed fortuneteller for giving bad fortune

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:08:17 -0500

NC woman killed fortuneteller for giving bad fortune:

Didn’t she see this coming…?

Justice Kennedy on Prisons

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0500

Justice Kennedy on Prisons :

Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke out against excessive prison sentences this month in California, criticizing the state’s deeply misguided three-strikes law. It was a welcome message, delivered with unusual force. Much of the blame for the law, however, lies with the Supreme Court, which upheld it in a decision on which Justice Kennedy cast the deciding vote.

Cuts in programs to help inmates questioned

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:46:00 -0500

Cuts in programs to help inmates questioned:

An effort to slash prison costs in California by laying off hundreds of workers who run rehabilitation programs could backfire, resulting in higher recidivism rates and ultimately higher prison costs, critics say.

Over the next several months, prison officials will shave $250 million from rehabilitation spending in prisons and dismiss about 850 prison workers who currently run substance abuse and anger management programs, help inmates get high school diplomas and teach offenders marketable skills such as plumbing, horticulture and graphic arts.

About 57,000 of the state’s 170,000 prisoners take advantage of the education programs each year, and 12,000 enroll in substance abuse classes. The cuts mean that 17,000 fewer inmates will be able to enroll in academic and vocational programs and 3,500 fewer inmates will be able to enroll in substance abuse programs. At San Quentin State Prison alone, 13 of the 19 programs currently offered are slated for elimination, according to teachers there, including all but two of the six vocational programs, an anger management course and a high school program.

California has a 70 percent recidivism rate - the highest in the nation. That number will increase with these changes, said San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, a Democratic candidate for attorney general.

"[David R. Dow] devotes his life to fighting for his clients — many of whom he dislikes enormously,..."

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:00:16 -0500

“[David R. Dow] devotes his life to fighting for his clients — many of whom he dislikes enormously, and all but seven of whom he believes to be guilty — because he’s certain that what Justice Harry A. Blackmun called the American ‘machinery of death’ is broken. Cops fudge the truth. They coerce false testimony. Court-appointed lawyers sleep through trials. They miss deadlines. They fail to put on exculpatory evidence. Juries believe every word uttered by ‘expert’ witnesses who opine on defendants they have never met. Jurors evade responsibility by hiding behind the other jurors. Judges evade responsibility by hiding behind jury verdicts, and appeals courts hide behind the trial courts. The Supreme Court can hide from a case by refusing to take it. Elected judges, particularly in Texas, must deliver convictions. Federal judges named to the federal bench because they are pals with a senator overlook deeply flawed trials. And by the time Dow comes into a case, the law will sometimes not permit him to help his client. As he explains: ‘Prosecutors and judges kowtow to family members of murder victims who demand an eye for an eye, and the lonely lawyer declaiming about proper procedures is a shouting lunatic in the asylum.’”

- Dahlia Lithwick, reviewing Dow’s new memoir, The Autobiography of an Execution (via savingpaper)

A US Soldier Waterboards His Own Child

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:50:00 -0500

A US Soldier Waterboards His Own Child :

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet. Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry. As his daughter ‘squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline. Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water…

[T]he terrified girl was found hiding in a closet, with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat. Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied: ‘Daddy did it.’

Ex-cop charged with murder of unarmed man

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:37:22 -0500

Ex-cop charged with murder of unarmed man:

The off-duty police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man in November has 24 hours to turn himself in after being charged with this morning murder, said District Attorney Seth Williams.

Frank Tepper, 43, allegedly opened fire on William “Billy” Panas, Jr., 21, during a late night melee in the Port Richmond neighborhood where they both lived.

Police initially said Tepper was trying to break up the fight and fired his gun after he was assaulted. Witnesses disputed that, saying Tepper appeared drunk and Panas never threatened him.

Retired Officers Raise Questions on Crime Data

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:28:36 -0500

Retired Officers Raise Questions on Crime Data:

azspot:

In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies — felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat — to misdemeanors, which are not, the researchers said.

Others also said that precinct commanders or aides they dispatched sometimes went to crime scenes to persuade victims not to file complaints or to urge them to change their accounts in ways that could result in the downgrading of offenses to lesser crimes, the researchers said.

(via Prometheus 6)

"The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are persons and that money is speech and that,..."

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:51:50 -0500

“The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are persons and that money is speech and that, therefore, corporations have a greater right to free speech than other, mortal persons with actual mouths but not as much money. These poorer, merely human persons also don’t get to enjoy the apparently divine right of limited liability. Among the more intriguing repercussions of this astonishing and absurd ruling is that foreign corporations are also now free to buy up all the airtime they can afford to run attack ads against American elected officials. The xenophobic right wing seems only dimly aware of this so far, but I can’t help but wonder how they will respond when, say, America Movil — the Latin American mobile phone company owned by Carlos Slim Helu, the world’s third-richest man — decides to run campaign ads attacking U.S. politicians opposed to illegal immigration.”

- slacktivist (via azspot)

"Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline. On that..."

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:28:17 -0500

“Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline. On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections—a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international. The decision heralds even further corporate takeover of the U.S. political system.”

- Noam Chomsky (via azspot)

Pa. House panel approves anti-shackling bill

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:16:41 -0500

Pa. House panel approves anti-shackling bill:

A legislative panel yesterday took the first step toward ending what critics call a medieval procedure of shackling inmates as they give birth.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, in a unanimous vote, endorsed the Healthy Birth for Incarcerated Women Act, which would make Pennsylvania the seventh state to outlaw the practice.

“To me, it seems like something out of a Dickens novel, something that happened 200 years ago in a dark prison,” said Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery), the bill’s sponsor.

It remains unclear, however, even among prison officials, how widespread the practice is.

A woman jailed on marijuana charges who gave birth 15 months ago in shackles lauded the vote, but questioned why it had taken so long to address a policy she called “barbaric.”

“This is America, and I can’t believe it is 2010 and we are just passing a bill like that,” said Tina Torres, 29, of Philadelphia’s Germantown section.

Tortured into confessing, Chicago man freed in Burge case

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:38:00 -0500

Tortured into confessing, Chicago man freed in Burge case:

Tillman was arrested July 22, 1986. He has long maintainted that, over three days in police custody, he was beaten with a phone book, punched in the face and stomach until he vomited blood, had a plastic bag put over his head and 7-Up poured into his nose in a crude form of waterboarding.

The result: Tillman, then 20, confessed to killing Howard, a mail clerk whose body was found in a South Side apartment building where Tillman lived at the time with his girlfriend and worked as the janitor.

Tillman told police at the time that two other men had also raped Howard before she was shot. One of the men, Steven Bell, was acquitted of charges related to Howard’s death, and the other man was never charged, prosecutors said.

He was convicted in a bench trial Dec. 18, 1986, solely on the basis of his confession, according to the petition filed in Cook County Circuit Court that led to his being freed today.

Tillman’s attorney initially raised the torture allegations during his trial, but the judge who heard the case refused to throw out his confession, and Tillman was sentenced to life in prison.

AMERICAblog News: Army tells single mom to deploy and put 10-month-old son in foster care. She says no way. They prosecute her.

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:00:00 -0500

AMERICAblog News: Army tells single mom to deploy and put 10-month-old son in foster care. She says no way. They prosecute her.

When is a murder not a murder?

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:06:03 -0500

When is a murder not a murder?:

robot-heart-politics:

azspot:

When is a murder not a murder?

I guess when the victim is a doctor who performs abortions and the murderer is a fanatic who thinks he’s justified in shooting an unarmed man point blank in the forehead.

The judge in the case of Scott Roeder, who has admitted to planning the killing and then shooting Dr. George Tiller in the head at Tiller’s church last May while Tiller was serving as an usher, ruled Friday that Roeder could argue that he should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder, not because of any facts in the case suggesting it was anything other than a premeditated homicide, but because Roeder thought that his action would ‘save unborn children.

So does that mean if you are motivated by a political belief the illegal, even up to and including murder, is now the legal and acceptable? What’s next? If the holocaust museum shooter had survived (he died the other day) he should be able to plead guilty to a lesser charge than murder because in his mind killing a black man working for a Jewish client would be justified? Maybe they should water down the charges against the Christmas Day bomber too because he thought what he was doing was right in the name of Allah?

Women Moved amid Prison Sex Assault Claims

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:23:37 -0500

Women Moved amid Prison Sex Assault Claims:

Gov. Steve Beshear on Friday ordered some 400 female inmates removed from a corporate-run prison after widespread allegations of sexual misconduct involving the predominantly male corps of corrections officers.

Beshear ordered the women moved from Otter Creek Correctional Complex, operated by Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, to the state-run Western Kentucky Correctional Complex starting by July 1.

The move came four months after the Kentucky Department of Corrections called for security improvements at Otter Creek in a report on the handling of 18 alleged cases of sexual misconduct by prison guards there.

Perry can issue posthumous pardon for man wrongly convicted of rape

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:49:31 -0500

Perry can issue posthumous pardon for man wrongly convicted of rape:

The governor, contrary to an old legal opinion, can grant a pardon to Timothy Cole, who died in prison before he could be proved innocent, Attorney General Greg Abbott said in an opinion issued Thursday.

Gov. Rick Perry indicated he looked forward to pardoning Cole, who died in prison in 1999 after being convicted of a 1985 rape that DNA evidence later showed he did not commit. Perry said the opinion “finally gives his family the opportunity to officially clear his name.

“I hope the Board of Pardons and Paroles will act swiftly in sending a recommendation to my desk so that justice can finally be served,” the governor said. Under state law, he can only grant clemency if the board recommends it.

Perry had previously said he couldn’t consider a pardon in the case, citing a 1965 attorney general’s decision that suggested someone must be alive to legally accept a pardon.

But Abbott said more contemporaneous rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and new state legislation have changed the interpretation of Texas law regarding pardons.

Cole is the first person in Texas exonerated by DNA evidence posthumously.

Two Former Blackwater Guards Charged With Murder

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:14:17 -0500

Two Former Blackwater Guards Charged With Murder:

Two former Blackwater contractors were arrested Thursday on murder charges in the shootings of two Afghans after a traffic accident last year, according to an indictment obtained by The Associated Press.

The indictment charges Justin Cannon, 27, and Chris Drotleff, 29, with second-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges. Both of them are in custody, said Peter Carr, a spokesman with the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia’s eastern district.

Both men have said in recent interviews with The Associated Press that they were justified in opening fire on a car that caused an accident in front of their vehicle, then turned and sped toward them after they got out to help.

Photo

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:10:00 -0500