Texas Courts Accuse ICE Protestors of Being Antifa, Gives Out Multiple Decades-Long Sentences.
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Quote of the Day
"The cheerleading, or at best indifference, by Democratic Party supporters and much of the left to these show trials will come back to haunt them. We are exacerbating the growing tribalism and political antagonisms that will increasingly express themselves through violence. We are complicit, once again, of using the courts to carry out vendettas. We are corroding democratic institutions. We are hardening the ideology and rage of the far-right. We are turning those being hounded to prison into political prisoners and martyrs. We are moving ever closer towards tyranny." Chris Hedges, from his article titled, " Lynching the Deplorables ." In short: be careful when cheering that "your side" of politics is winning by questionable means and tactics because power shifts regularly and someday your "enemies" may return the favor.
Parents Hope Sentencing of Son Can Be Changed...
... in particular because of the circumstances : Their issue lies with Alabama’s accomplice liability law which allows a suspect to be charged with murder if someone is killed during the commission of a crime regardless of whether they caused the death. When the five teens broke into a Millbrook home, suspect A’Donte Washington was fatally shot by a responding Millbrook Police officer after he charged the officer with a gun. As a result, Smith and three other co-defendants were charged with murder for Washington’s death. On Friday, Smith appeared before Elmore County Circuit Judge Sibley Reynolds in a post-conviction hearing. Smith’s attorney, Leroy Maxwell argued that Smith’s trial attorney failed to present mitigating evidence that could have helped to shorten his sentence. So instead of just being charged with breaking and entering and/or theft, Smith was charged with the death of someone he didn't kill (again, the police did that). 65 years seems like a long ...
COVID is "Over," So The Justice System Can Be Petty Again.
Assuming that they weren't petty during the height of COVID: This week, the Bureau of Prisons told NPR that 442 people who were released during the pandemic have now returned to prison. Only 17 people out of more than 11,000 who were released committed new crimes, mostly drug related ones, while they were out. More than half, some 230 people including Eva Cardoza, got sent back for alleged alcohol or drug use. Other cases involved technical violations. Sakira Cook of the racial justice group Color of Change explained what that means. "It could be as simple as failing to answer the phone when your probation officer calls you. It could be as simple as the ankle monitor giving an incorrect signal about your location," Cook said. Cook has personal experience with that last problem: a relative recently left federal prison on home confinement, only to get an ankle monitor that didn't work. Fortunately, she said, the probation officer understood the situation. Kevin Ring ...
Victims of "Kids-for-Cash" Scandal Get Some Closure.
And not a moment too soon : Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history. U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.” In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility...