From [HERE] Although Georgia has made great strides reforming its criminal justice system in recent years, the state still has the highest percentage of people under correctional control in the nation, experts said Thursday.
“The Prison Policy Group out of Massachusetts just published a report that accentuated what many of us know, that Georgia not only has highest number of people under correctional control, we have double the amount of people compared to any other state,” said Douglas B. Ammar, executive director of the Georgia Justice Project. “... We have almost 6,000 people per 100,000 in jail, prison, probation, or parole.”
Ammar made the comments at a Justice Day at the Capitol event held Thursday in Atlanta. The meeting drew more than 250 people to the capitol building to lobby in favor of criminal justice reform.
As explained by Amos Wilson, "given the historical and contemporary virulence of White racism in America and the injustice toward Blacks that such racism engenders, the number of arrests, incarcerations, and in many instances, convictions of Black males should be viewed with a jaundiced eye. The willingness of White Americans to heavily tax themselves in order to finance accelerated and increased prison construction, rapidly expanding police forces and so-called criminal justice system personnel, burgeoning private police and security establishments; their willingness to finance the incarceration of a Black male prisoner upwards of $30,000 to $40,000 per year, in sharp contrast to their unwillingness to tax themselves to provide for the appropriate funding of the education of Black children and to commit themselves to the ending of racist employment practices; to provide adequate housing medical care, food and clothing; clearly implies that alleged Black male criminality plays a very important role in defining the collective White American ego and personality." [MORE]
From [HERE] Mass incarceration is expensive in America — as might be expected from a system that oversees a similar fraction of the population as the Soviet gulags. But how much does it cost? Until today, nobody had attempted to estimate the cost of every part of this system.
Enter the Prison Policy Initiative. A new paper by Peter Wagner and Bernadette Rabuy makes the first systematic attempt to add up every part of the cost of mass incarceration. The total is eye-popping: $182 billion, every year.
As is well-understood at this point, mass incarceration was caused by [white supremacy/racism] racialized panic over the great crime wave during the second half of the 20th century. But this report details another cause — the political economy of incarceration. One major reason so many people are in prison is that the constitutional basis of the criminal justice system has been mostly abandoned in favor of self-interest.
The Prison Policy Initiative's estimate is, of course, rather rough, as Wagner and Rabuy admit upfront. The reason is poor data. Sources on some factors are sketchy or out of date, as with food and utilities. Others, like the cost of the court system, do not break down the total into civil and criminal fractions, and so the authors were forced to guess based on other work. However, on the whole, the estimate is as good as can be done at this stage — and Wagner and Rabuy are careful to hedge on the side of caution, so it's almost certainly an underestimate if anything.
So how do the costs stack up?
The three largest categories are public corrections agencies ($80.7 billion), policing ($63.2 billion) and judicial and legal expenses ($29 billion). Within these categories we can identify sub-categories that serve private interests. There is the private prison industry (costs of $3.9 billion and profits of $374 million); and the cost of utilities ($1.7 billion), food ($2.1 billion), construction ($3.3 billion) and health care ($12.3 billion), which are typically contracted out these days.
Then outside these categories there is civil asset forfeiture ($4.5 billion) — in which police seize the property of those they arrest — and costs to families for commissary and phone calls ($2.9 billion). Finally, much of the money spent on police and corrections means public sector jobs and yet more business for private contractors, who operate much of the bail and probation services. This huge complex of institutions comprises a system dedicated mostly to its own self-preservation and profit.
On the other side of the ledger, there is only one sub-category of spending which is unequivocally dedicated towards due process for the accused: indigent defense — i.e. providing public defenders for the poor — which costs $4.5 billion.
Now, defense attorneys would no doubt also like to keep their jobs, and it's impossible to disentangle exactly how much of the first bundle of stuff is dedicated to constitutional due process and how much is purely private self-seeking. But the number of different mercenary outsourcing operations within the incarceration system, and the yawning abyss between defense and imprisonment, makes it clear where the bulk of it lies.
From [HERE] The audience seated in the basement of Bethany Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis on Tuesday night was mostly Somali immigrants, mostly scared but determined.
They came to learn more about President Donald Trump's executive order on refugees and immigrants from seven mostly Muslim countries. Their questions concerned their fathers, mothers, friends and community and, sometimes, themselves.
"Why did they not let my dad come to the United States?" one person wrote on a blank notecard. "Is the ban constitutional?" wrote another.
Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR Minnesota, which is headquartered at the church, said his organization, as well as immigration attorneys and the ACLU, "have been completely overwhelmed" in the days since the president signed the order.
Teresa Nelson, legal director of the ACLU of Minnesota, advised immigrants already living in the United States to avoid international travel, at least for now.
She said there are teams of lawyers at airports around the country, including at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, to help those who are detained. But people who are stopped must insist on speaking with an attorney; the attorneys are not told by Customs and Border Patrol agents that someone needs them.
Nelson said she knows of no one who has been detained or deported in Minnesota. Several permanent residents have undergone extensive screening but have been allowed to leave.
She called the ban "baldfaced religious persecution."
From [HERE] More than 1,700 residents of Flint, Michigan, on Monday filed [complaint, PDF] a class action lawsuit against the US, claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website] has failed to respond to damage claims arising from the Flint water crisis. The claims total $722 million. The suit alleges that the EPA has failed to fulfill its responsibilities under the Federal Tort Claims Act [text], which allows federal agencies to settle claims against the US. The claim notes that Flint residents were exposed to dangerously high lead contents for nearly 18 months, and that "as of November 25, 2016, the two and one half year anniversary [of the Flint water crisis], the water delivered to the people of Flint remains unsafe to drink, use for cooking or use for bathing."
These claims are some of the myriad of legal actions taken in response to the Flint water crisis. In December Michigan's Attorney General announced [JURIST report] that felony charges were filed against four former state officials connected with the Flint water crisis, with maximum prison sentences of 46 years available to the prosecutors. That same month a federal court affirmed [JURIST report] a lower court decision requiring the state of Michigan to provide bottled water to Flint residents. Last September the US Senate approved legislation to provide $100 million in emergency funding to repair pipes in cities suffering from lead contamination.
From [HERE] The acting secretary of the Army has instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to provide the final permit needed to complete the Dakota Access pipeline, according to two North Dakota GOP lawmakers who support the project.
Sen. John Hoeven and Rep. Kevin Cramer both issued statements Tuesday night saying the acting secretary of the Army, Robert Speer, had ordered the Corps to grant an easement for the pipeline to run under Lake Oahe.
“This will enable the company to complete the project,” Hoeven said, “which can and will be built with the necessary safety features to protect the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others downstream.”
Neither the White House nor the secretary of the Army could be immediately reached for comment. Kamil Sztalkoper, deputy director of public affairs for the Army Corps of Engineers, referred comments to the Army secretary’s chief spokesman and said he “can’t confirm or deny whether that’s accurate.” A representative of the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, said the company did not know anything beyond what it saw on Cramer and Hoeven’s websites.
The apparent move came a week after President Trump issued a presidential memorandum instructing the agency to “review and approve in an expedited manner, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted… for approvals to construct and operate” the pipeline.
The Dakota Access pipeline has become a central battle point for environmentalists who are trying to stop pipelines in general as part of a campaign to keep fossil fuels in the ground. And it became a heavily symbolic battle for Native Americans as the Standing Rock Sioux tribe sought to prevent the pipeline company from disturbing sacred burial grounds and archaeological sites.
The 1,170-mile pipeline crosses four states, and would carry crude oil from the rich shale oil basins of western North Dakota to the pipeline networks and refineries in Illinois. The pipeline is virtually complete, with the 1,100-foot stretch crossing underneath Lake Oahe being one of the final pieces.
The Standing Rock Sioux have also argued that the pipeline puts their drinking water in danger. The final stretch of pipeline crosses under Lake Oahe, a reservoir created when Army Corps built dams further south on the Missouri River. The company plans to drill horizontally below the river bottom and it argues that the pipeline will be safer than trains and trucks that carry some of the crude oil currently being produced.
But opponents of the pipeline say it could still leak and contaminate the water.
President Obama, as weeks of protests added to political pressures, instructed the Army Corps to look at different route options for the pipeline. The company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, had considered laying the pipeline in the Bismarck suburbs, about 25 miles north of the current site. The Standing Rock Sioux officials have accused the company of racism for shunning largely white areas of Bismarck and digging in area close to the Native Americans.
A statement by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, provided by its policy adviser Jodi Gillette Tuesday night, said that while a final easement had not yet been granted, tribal members planned to challenge any such action in court.
“The Army Corps lacks statutory authority to simply stop the [Environmental Impact Statement] and issue the easement. The Corps must review the Presidential Memorandum, notify Congress, and actually grant the easement. We have not received formal notice that the EIS has been suspended or withdrawn.”
“To abandon the EIS would amount to a wholly unexplained and arbitrary change based on the president’s personal views and, potentially, personal investments,” the statement added. “We stand ready to fight this battle against corporate interest superseding government procedure and the health and well-being of millions of Americans.”
From [HERE] A man who President Donald Trump has promoted as an authority on voter fraud was registered to vote in multiple states during the 2016 presidential election, the Associated Press has learned.
Gregg Phillips, whose unsubstantiated claim that the election was marred by 3 million illegal votes was tweeted by the president, was listed on the rolls in Alabama, Texas and Mississippi, according to voting records and election officials in those states. He voted only in Alabama in November, records show.
In a post earlier this month, Phillips described "an amazing effort" by volunteers tied to True the Vote, an organization whose board he sits on, who he said found "thousands of duplicate records and registrations of dead people."
Trump has made an issue of people who are registered to vote in more than one state, using it as one of the bedrocks of his overall contention that voter fraud is rampant in the U.S. and that voting by 3 to 5 million immigrants illegally in the country cost him the popular vote in November.
The AP found that Phillips was registered in Alabama and Texas under the name Gregg Allen Phillips, with the identical Social Security number. Mississippi records list him under the name Gregg A. Phillips, and that record includes the final four digits of Phillips' Social Security number, his correct date of birth and a prior address matching one once attached to Gregg Allen Phillips. He has lived in all three states.
At the time of November's presidential election, Phillips' status was "inactive" in Mississippi and suspended in Texas. Officials in both states told the AP that Phillips could have voted, however, by producing identification and updating his address at the polls.
Citing concerns about voters registered in several states, the president last week called for a major investigation into his claim of voter fraud, despite his campaign lawyer's conclusion that the 2016 election was "not tainted."
"When you look at the people that are registered, dead, illegal and two states, and some cases maybe three states, we have a lot to look into," Trump said in an ABC interview.
President Donald Trump's claim that his recent executive action on immigration and refugees mirrors restrictions put in place under former President Barack Obama in 2011 is not accurate, says Eugene Kiely of Factcheck.org. NBC News reports. (Published 5 hours ago)
Reached by telephone Monday, Phillips said he was unaware of his multiple registrations but asked, "Why would I know or care?"
"Doesn't that just demonstrate how broken the system is?" he asked. "That is not fraud — that is a broken system. We need a national ID that travels with people."
Phillips has been in the national spotlight since Nov. 11, when he tweeted without evidence that his completed analysis of voter registrations concluded the "number of non-citizen votes exceeded 3 million."
Thousands of people liked and retweeted the claim, which led to a viral article three days later on InfoWars.com, a site known to traffic in conspiracy theories.
Phillips also has previously tweeted about the dangers of "inactive voters" being able to vote in U.S. elections. "There is already law that compels states to remove inactive voters. Many don't," Phillips tweeted Nov. 29.
According to media reports, five Trump family members or top administration officials also were registered to vote in two states during the 2016 election — chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon; Press Secretary Sean Spicer; Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin; Tiffany Trump, the president's youngest daughter; and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser.
The Houston-based True the Vote has challenged the validity of voter rolls in numerous states. On Friday, Phillips tweeted that the conservative group "will lead the analysis" of widespread voter fraud, and suggested in a CNN interview that it might release the underlying data in a few months.
Shortly after Phillips appeared on CNN on Friday, Trump tweeted: "Look forward to seeing the final results of VoteStand. Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal. We must do better!"
Jesusize - to believe in something (or someone—real, mythologized or imagined) or even worship it, based on little (scant and sketchy) to no evidence in support of it (single-source propaganda), and uncorroborated accounts that fly in the face of knows history, facts and science. 2) to turn fiction or fictional accounts into fact and history through propaganda, indoctrination coercion and violence. Just because a man called "Jesus" did not exist in history does not mean that you cannot become the Christ you are awakening in (or at least to) the Divine Mystery. (See: Jesus Seminar & Christ Consciousness)
From [HERE] BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Is Al Sharpton right that Jesus is a refugee?
CARLEY SHIMKUS: Well so -- let's talk about his tweet first. On Sunday he tweeted, "Before you head to church today, remember to thank God for his son Jesus a refugee who fled to Egypt.
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Well that's not exactly accurate.
SHIMKUS: Well, according to the Bible, it's really not. And a lot of people on social media had something to say about that. MC wrote, "umm his parents weren't refugees.They traveled to pay their taxes. Please Al." And then Brian, he made it personal. He wrote, "He paid his taxes unlike you. Different times, no comparison. He also returned to his home." As you can imagine, the criticism continues to roll on in.
From [HERE] Pennsylvania family fighting to have their relatives return to the United States after they were detained at Philadelphia International Airport and sent back overseas under the immigration order told "NBC Nightly News" that they voted for Donald Trump.
“I understand he wants to make America safe,” Sarmad Assali said. "We're all on with this. I definitely want to be in a safe place. But people need us and we need to be there for them."
Assali's two brothers, their wives and their two children initiated their immigration attempts in 2003 while living in Syria. In December 2016, they were approved to join Assali and her husband in Allentown after the couple bought and furnished a home for them.
Assali and her husband, Dr. Ghassan Assali, who has a dentistry practice and received his degree from New York University, are originally from Syria but have been living in the United States for 20 years.
But early Saturday morning, after they landed at Philadelphia International Airport, Assali's relatives were detained. They were then sent on an 18-hour flight back overseas.
The detainment and deportation occurred only hours after the president signed an executive order that immediately restricted travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, temporarily halted the refugee program and indefinitely blocked refugees from Syria.
"Two security guards were waiting for them," Assali said. "They took them. They said, 'Are you Syrians?' They said, 'Yes.' They said, 'Come with us.'"
Assali's relatives, who are all Orthodox Christians, had visas and proof of green cards. The six Syrians were told they had to go back on the next flight and return to the Middle East, according to Assali. The next day, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus announced that the order would not extend to green card holders.
From [JURIST] The attorneys general of 16 states, plus the District of Columbia, issued a joint statement [text] on Sunday calling US President Donald Trump's [official profile] executive order [text] on immigration "un-American." The attorneys general pledged to "work together to ensure the federal government obeys the Constitution, respects our history as a nation of immigrants, and does not unlawfully target anyone because of their national origin or faith." The attorneys general from California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Washington originally signed [Reuters report] the statement. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin [official website] showed support for the statement via Twitter and added his name. As of yet, no attorneys general have stated they will file a lawsuit challenging the order. They say they will work to minimize suffering until the executive order is struck down by the judiciary.
On Friday Trump issued an executive order restricting access to the US for refugees and visa holders from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. The order also indefinitely suspends the entry into the US of Syrian refugees. The order further suspended admission of refugees from any country for 120 days while the administration is reviewing the visa program and limited the number of possible refugees for 2017 to 50,000. Over the weekend, several federal judges blocked [JURIST report] parts of the executive order.
From [MMA] A shooter opened fire at the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec on January 29, killing six and wounding eight more. On the January 30 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show, Hannity ran through a list of past violent attacks allegedly tied to Islamic extremism, ending with “somebody, it’s reported, said ‘Allahu Akbar’” at the mosque attack, in an attempt to tie the attack to Muslims:
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): This is since Obama’s been president. Let’s start. LA shooting at an airport. Remember that? An Egyptian national. March of 2006. An SUV attack, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, injuring pedestrians. Remember the, in Seattle, the Jewish Federation shootings, remember that?
Remember all these incidents of terror that have occurred on American – Fort Hood, Texas? Remember, Army Major Hassan, 44, open fire, military processing center, killing 13, wounding 32 others. Army recruitment office in Little Rock, Arkansas. Or the Boston bombing that took place with the Tsarnaev brothers. Or the terrorist attack, three in Washington, one in New Jersey. Ali Muhammed Brown, gunned down, Leroy Henderson, et cetera, et cetera.
The hatchet attack in New York, do you remember that back in 2014. The Garland, Texas art exhibit shooting, remember that incident? The Islamic State, they claimed responsibility for that. The Chattanooga, Tennessee military facility shooting, remember that? You remember the U.S. University of California Merced stabbings, you remember that one? You remember the San Bernardino, California shooting? Do you remember the Philly policeman shooting? Do you remember the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting? Do you remember the Chelsea, New York, Seaside, New Jersey bombings? Do you remember the Minnesota mall stabbings?
Do you remember the Ohio State University incident with the Somali-born Ohio State student? Did you watch what happened in Quebec when somebody, it’s reported, said “Allahu Akbar” this weekend? Now, the facts are very simple if anybody cares to look at truth and fact versus fiction.
Hannity’s misinformation made it’s way through conservative media following reports from fake news purveyors central to the alt-right, Gateway Pundit and Prison Planet, both of which claimed the shooter had shouted “Allahu Akbar.” They cited a then-live-updating CBC report claiming a witness heard the gunman yell “Allahu Akbar” as he fired. According to the most recent reports, the suspect in custody is alleged to be an “obviously pro-Trump” 27 year old white French Canadian who has been described as an “anti-immigrant far-right ‘troll’.”
Hannity was not alone in using the eyewitness report to falsely insinuate a Muslim had committed the attack. Alt-rightoutletsacrosstheinternet parroted false reports that the attacker was a Muslim, or used the "Allahu Akbar" report to insinuate that he was. Gateway Pundit even attacked mainstream media outlets that did not repeat their Islamophobic fearmongering, claiming these outlets were “those who hid the truth,” and had promoted “alternative facts.” Fox News also initially reported the attacker “was of Moroccan origin” before correcting themselves, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer used the Quebec mosque attack to defend the administration's dangerous and "un-American" Muslim ban.
Hannity ended his rant by claiming “the facts are very simple if anybody cares to look at truth and fact versus fiction.” Indeed, the facts are simple -- a white French Canadian with anti-immigrant beliefs and sympathies for extremist politicians like Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump is the singular suspect for the attack, and there is absolutely no sign he is a Muslim. The eagerness with which Hannity, Gateway Pundit, Matt Drudge, and other far-right media jumped the gun or ignored newly-reported facts to prop up their own Islamophobic narrative provides the latest example of fake news and alternative facts being used to advance a harmful agenda.
From [NYTimes] A federal judge on Friday allowed a case brought by former detainees to move forward against two white American psychologists who helped devise the C.I.A.’s now-defunct program to interrogate terrorism suspects using techniques widely considered to be torture.
A United States District Court judge, Justin L. Quackenbush, denied a motion by the psychologists that sought to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction under provisions of a 2006 law that limits the ability of detainees to challenge their treatment.
“This ruling sends the strong signal that anyone who participates in shameful and unlawful government torture can’t count on escaping accountability in a court of law,” said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which, with the Gibbons law firm in Newark, represents the former detainees.
“The court’s decision is an important win and confirms that our clients can continue their fight to hold accountable the psychologists who devised and profited from the C.I.A. torture program,” Mr. Ladin said.
Lawyers for the psychologists, James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, did not respond to requests for comment. They had asked the court to dismiss the case on the grounds that the former detainees were enemy combatants and therefore, according to the Military Commissions Act, legal actions concerning their treatment could not be brought against the United States or its agents.
Judge Quackenbush, in Federal District Court in Spokane, Wash., ruled that Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen provided insufficient evidence that the three plaintiffs, held in secret C.I.A. prisons overseas, were determined to have been properly detained as enemy combatants. The men are Gul Rahman, an Afghan citizen who died in custody; Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a Tanzanian; and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, a Libyan. The lawsuit alleges the men underwent torture, which is illegal under international law.
The psychologists, who worked as independent contractors for the C.I.A. and later formed a consulting company with headquarters in Spokane, also failed to establish that they were agents of the United States government, Judge Quackenbush wrote.
An earlier attempt to dismiss the case was also rejected. The psychologists have denied allegations they committed torture or war crimes. A trial is scheduled for June.
The Rewards of Working for White Supremacy.North Texas police officer, William Martin has received eight commendations in 10 years' service to the system of white supremacy/racism. [MORE]
From [HERE] and [HERE] Video footage of a racially-charged arrest in Texas shows the white police officer used excessive force and indicates he falsified details of the incident in his official statement. In response to the leak, the charges against Jacqueline Craig were dropped.
Through what he called a trusted source, Lee Merritt, Craig's attorney, obtained police body camera footage of the December 21 arrest. The arrest occurred after Craig called police to report that a white neighbor had assaulted her young son.
Video of the arrest captured by Craig's 19-year-old daughter was immediately posted on Facebook Live and went viral. The newly released video from the arresting cop's bodycam shows him kicking Craig's 15 year-old daughter.
Merritt's previous requests of the Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD) for that video had gone unfulfilled. In addition, Merritt accessed FWPD documents related to the arrest. The video and documentation were given to various news outlets including The Root, which released the materials early Thursday.
In response to the leak, Fort Worth authorities have dropped all charges against Craig and her 19-year-old daughter, Brea Hymond. The city also announced that the neighbor, Itamar Vardi, will be charged with a Class C misdemeanor assault charge, punishable by up to one year in jail and a $4,000 fine, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. Merritt had previously called for the neighbor to be charged with felony assault. The white cop declined to arrest the neighbor.
Craig, a 46-year-old black woman, and two of her daughters were arrested on December 21 after she called police to report that a neighbor had grabbed her 7-year-old son by the neck for littering.
Officer William Martin, a 36-year-old white officer, responded to the call and proceeded to provocatively escalate tensions at the scene, focusing on Craig's parenting and not the neighbor. Ms. Craig, explains to the officer that her 7-year-old son was grabbed and choked by the neighbor for littering and “defying him” when he told the child to pick up litter. The cop simply ignores her assault allegations with a blank expression. The cop then provocatively asks, "Why Did You Teach Your Son to Litter?" and 'Whats Wrong with the Neighbor Putting His Hands on Your Son?'
When Craig's 15-year-old daughter attempted to step between a heated Craig and Martin, the officer sprung into action, pointing a Taser at Craig and aggressively arresting her and two of her daughters.
Craig and Brea Hymond were charged with resisting arrest, interference with a "peace" officer and failure to provide identification. The 15-year-old daughter was not charged with a crime.
Hymond had recorded the arrest of Craig and Craig's 15-year-old daughter before she, too, was arrested.
The footage from Martin's body camera complements the recording of the arrest taken by Hymond. The newly released footage shows that Martin kicked the handcuffed 15-year-old daughter as he was placing her in his police vehicle. It also shows that Martin used excessive force on a handcuffed Brea Hymond to compel her to give him her name.
Martin's statement to FWPD's Internal Affairs unit is included in the police documentation obtained by Merritt. In the statement, Martin said that the neighbor, a white male, admitted to grabbing the boy by his neck.
"The W/M [white male] stated that a child had thrown a piece of trash in his yard," Martin said in his statement. "The W/M approached the child and grabbed his arm and told him to pick up the trash. When the child refused, the W/M grabbed the child by the back of the neck and demanded that the child pick up the trash."
Martin, who was only suspended ten days for his behavior, added in the statement that despite the neighbor's admission, he did not believe Craig's version of events, saying her "account of 'choking' may have been exaggerated."
Prior to Thursday's announcement of the new charge, Merritt said the neighbor's admission had been consistently denied by the FWPD.
Furthermore, Merritt said Martin's version of events in the officer's statement given to the Internal Affairs unit includes multiple falsehoods that are obvious in the bodycam footage.
"Martin states while he was handcuffing Jacqueline Craig, Brea Hymond pushed him," Merritt told The Root. "Brea Hymond never approaches Martin as she stands at a distance recording the incident. He further states Craig pulled away her arms and actively tried to resist arrest. This never happens."
Merritt added: "He also states Brea Hymond pulled her arms away and resisting arrest, this never happened. [Martin] further states Jacqueline Craig refused to identify herself, which she is seen doing in the video at 11:10."
"In order to justify false charges he lies about several facts clearly proven false by his bodycam video," Merritt said.
Other documentation obtained by Merritt indicates that Martin had used excessive force on two African-American high school students who were attempting to run from a Taser-wielding Martin in 2013. The students were among many who had accessed the roof of their high school. Martin was not punished for the incident.
Martin has appealed his 10-day suspension with the Fort Worth Civil Service Commission. He is back to work for the FWPD, but Merritt said the department is "hiding" him on the job.
"By manipulating, delaying and denying the release of bodycam video, police departments embolden bad cops to brazenly violate civil rights in high definition, confident that these images are not likely to be released to the public. Just as this video from Martin was not willfully released by the FWPD," Merritt said, according to The Root.
Merritt says the Craig family has four demands: "Fire and charge Officer Martin with assault, perjury, false arrest and official corruption; charge the neighbor with felony assault of a minor; and drop the charges against the Craig family."
Earlier this month, Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald said Martin was in violation of department policy and that he was sorry for his behavior, AP reported. Martin will undergo additional training, Fitzgerald said.
From [HERE] and [HERE] More than 23 years ago, Robert Jones was convicted of robbing, kidnapping and raping a woman in 1992 in Orleans Parish and then soon after pleaded guilty to a pair of other crimes, one of which included killing a tourist in New Orleans’ French Quarter in 1996. Yesterday, on his 44th birthday, Jones was exonerated of those crimes. The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office announced that it would not retry him for the 1992 crimes and vacated the other charges to which he’d falsely pleaded guilty.
The Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) started working on Jones’ case seven years ago. Over the course of those years, attorneys there uncovered evidence which pointed to grave injustice in how then-prosecutors handled Jones’ case, including loss of exculpatory DNA evidence and “steering of a witness” in the 1992 case, writes the Advocate. IPNO also learned that there was absolutely no evidence linking Jones to the other cases to which he’d been advised by his attorney to plead guilty.
In 2015, based on that evidence, Jones was released on bond. He’s been out on bail since that time, but it was unclear as to how long he would remain free given that the Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro had pledged to re-try Jones for the 1992 case.
The Innocence Project, which assisted on the case, was in preparation with IPNO for a hearing scheduled to start earlier this week at which they were going to highlight the misconduct under former Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick. But on Thursday, Assistant District Attorney David Pipes said that the case would not be retried.
From [HERE] The US District Court for the Eastern District of NY in an emergency ruling [text] Saturday stayed the execution, until further notice, of an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump [official website], which would restrict access to the US for visa holders and refugees from certain countries. Trump signed the executive order: 'Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States' [text] on Friday. The order suspends entry into the US for nationals from any country who was facing restrictions under the Visa Waiver program [official website]. In the lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] filed a petition [text] on behalf of two Iraqi refugees who were holding valid US visas, but had been denied entry because of the order. The order has already been challenged in court by several lawsuits, claiming that the order is unconstitutional and that it is in conflict with several federal statutes. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia also issued a decision [text, PDF] Saturday stating, that all legal permanent residents detained had the right to a lawyer and they could not be removed from the US for the next seven days.
The countries in question were not mentioned directly in the order, but the White House has confirmed that the countries are: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. The order also indefinitely suspends the entry into the US of Syrian refugees. According to the order, no Syrian refugees will be allowed into the US before changes are made to the system, possibly referring to a more thorough system of vetting incoming refugees. The order further suspended admission of refugees from any country for 120 days while the administration is reviewing the visa program and limited the number of possible refugees for 2017 to 50,000. When signing the order, Trump said the order would help to: "keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America." The order was signed during Trump's visit to the Department of Defense, during which he also signed an order promising to invest in and rebuild the armed forces of the US.
Friday's executive orders are only two of several orders signed by the President since his inauguration on January 20, 2017. On Tuesday the President signed an executive order to withdraw the US [JURIST report] from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement with 11 Pacific Rim Nations signed a year ago. Also on Tuesday, Trump signed [JURIST report] another order preventing foreign non-governmental organizations from receiving US funding if they provide abortions or promote policies that may lead to abortions. Trump has also addressed the immigration area before in his orders. On Wednesday he signed two orders [JURIST report] withholding federal funding to cities that provide safe haven to illegal immigrants, directing the construction of a wall along the US and Mexican border and an increase in the number of enforcement officials to remove undocumented immigrants. [MORE]
Revenge Not Justice. From [HERE] and [HERE] A Black man was executed on Thursday for killing two sandwich shop employees during a robbery in 2002 after the Supreme Court denied a stay requests arguing that he was not the trigger man and his case was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct before an all white jury. Now three people have been murdered.
Terry Edwards, 43, died of lethal injection at 10:17 p.m. at the state's death chamber in Huntsville, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark in a statement.
“Yes, I made peace with God. I hope y’all make peace with this," Edwards said before he was put to death, according to the statement released by Clark.
The execution was put on hold for about four hours as the Supreme Court considered several motions citing what lawyers for Edwards said were faults in previous legal proceedings. The court rejected those requests late on Thursday evening.
His defense attorneys have presented evidence that they say demonstrates a Dallas County prosecutor — who is known to have wrongfully convicted at least three other people — used fake science to convict Edwards and intentionally stacked the jury with white people. Edwards’ lawyers argue that those actions warrant an investigation by Dallas County’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU). But this week, the CIU abruptly ceased communication with his defense team, foreclosing lawyers’ best shot to stop the execution.
But prosecutorial misconduct continues long after someone is convicted and sentenced to die — often at the expense of justice. Prosecutors typically exhaust all of their resources to keep a capital conviction on the books, through methods such as cutting off access to a department that’s specifically designed to investigate unfair trials. What makes Edwards’ case particularly troubling is that his attorneys had regular communication with the Dallas County District Attorney’s CIU before that open line of communication was cut off this week.
The execution was the 540th in Texas since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the most of any state.
Edwards was convicted along with co-defendant Kirk Edwards, an older cousin, of the July 2002 murders of Dallas Subway sandwich shop employees Mickell Goodwin and Tommy Walker in a robbery.
Kirk Edwards has a projected release date of July 2027, Texas Department of Criminal Justice online records showed.
In an editorial posted online on Wednesday, the Dallas Morning News said the execution should be halted because there are too many unanswered questions in the case.
"These questions do not paint Terry Edwards as innocent. But they do raise uncertainties as to whether the jury was misled when it determined he had pulled the trigger and deserved to die, it said.
Lawyers for Texas have argued that new counsel for Edwards previously tried to halt the execution on similar grounds and that his conviction and sentencing were legal and proper.
John Mills, an attorney for Edwards, said he has evidence indicating that Edwards was not the gunman.
"Previous counsel has done virtually almost nothing to ensure that his case was investigated and that the powerful evidence undermining the reliability and the fairness of his conviction was brought to light," Mills said in an interview.
One of the main pieces of evidence was gunshot residue testing, which at trial was presented and used by prosecutors who said Terry Edwards fired the fatal shots.
In court papers, lawyers for the Terry Edwards said the gunshot residue evidence was improperly interpreted and actually show that Edwards was not the shooter.
Friday, February 3, 2017 at 05:32AM 
