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Jury convicts white Florida woman in fatal shooting of her Black neighbour
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Curt Anderson
Published Aug 16, 2024 • 3 minute read
081624-Neighbor-Shot-Florida
A white Florida woman was convicted Friday of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black neighbour after the jury rejected her claims that she fired through a metal door in self-defense amid an ongoing dispute over children playing outside her home.
The all-white jury in Ocala, Florida, found 60-year-old Susan Lorincz guilty after 2 1/2 hours of deliberation. Lorincz faces up to 30 years in prison at sentencing. She had claimed self-defense when she fired a single shot with a .380-caliber handgun through her front door on June 2, 2023, killing 35-year-old Ajike “A.J.” Owens.
The confrontation was the latest in a dispute between the two neighbours over Owens’ children playing in a grassy area near both of their houses. Prosecutors said Owens had come to Lorincz’s home after her children complained that she had allegedly thrown roller skates and an umbrella at them amid a long-running annoyance at their boisterous play outside.
Lorincz told detectives in a videotaped interview that she feared for her life as Owens yelled and pounded on her door.
“I thought I was in imminent danger,” she said.
Lorincz also said she had been harassed for most of the three years she lived in the neighbourhood.
The victim’s family members broke down in tears after Lorincz left the courtroom with deputies. She showed no reaction or emotion when the verdict was announced.
081624-Neighbor-Shot-Florida
Pamela Dias, center, Ajike “A.J.” Owens’ mother, is consoled by friends and family outside the courtroom after a jury found Susan Lorincz guilty of manslaughter in the shooting death of her daughter, Friday afternoon, Aug. 16, 2024, in Ocala, Fla.
Circuit Judge Robert W. Hodges did not immediately set a sentencing date but ordered a background report to be done on Lorincz.
Anthony Thomas, an attorney for the Owens family, said they would push for the maximum 30-year prison term. Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said she took some solace from the guilty verdict.
“We’ve achieved some justice for Ajike. My heart is a little lighter,” Dias told reporters outside the courthouse. “This has been a long journey to get to this stage, to get to this verdict. I find some peace with that verdict.”
State Attorney William Gladson, whose office prosecuted the case, said it was “a tragic reminder” of the consequences of gun violence.
“The defendant’s choices have left four young children without their mother, a loss that will be felt for the rest of their lives,” Gladson said in a statement. “While today’s verdict can’t bring A.J. back, we hope it brings some measure of justice and peace to her family and friends.”
During closing arguments, prosecutor Rich Buxman had said there was no evidence that Owens posed an imminent physical threat to Lorincz.
“It’s not a crime to bang on somebody’s door. It’s not a crime to yell,” Buxman told jurors. “There was no imminent danger whatsoever when she fired that gun.”
A lawyer for Lorincz countered that she was frightened by Owens’ aggressive actions and was legally justified in firing her gun under Florida’s “stand your ground” law. An autopsy found Owens weighed about 290 pounds (130 kilograms), making her much larger as well as younger than Lorincz, and the two had previous confrontations.
“She can defend herself,” said Amanda Sizemore, an assistant public defender. “She had a split second to make a decision whether or not to fire her weapon.”
Lorincz did not testify but said in an interview with detectives that was played for jurors that she never intended to harm Owens. Still, in one 911 call, Lorincz told a dispatcher, “I’m just sick of these children.”
“She was not in fear. She was angry,” Buxman said.
Owens’ family has expressed surprise no Black jurors were selected for the trial given the racially sensitive nature of the case. There were protests in the Black community when prosecutors took weeks to charge Lorincz with manslaughter, a lesser count than second-degree murder which carries a potential life prison sentence.
The county court clerk’s office said in an email that eight Black people were among the 70 in the initial jury pool. In contrast, 49 were white and 10 were listed as Hispanic, two as Asian and one as “other,” the clerk’s office said, based on records provided by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Ocala is about 80 miles (130 kilometres) northwest of Orlando in central Florida. Marion County’s Black population is about 12%, according to census figures.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Curt Anderson
Published Aug 16, 2024 • 3 minute read
081624-Neighbor-Shot-Florida
A white Florida woman was convicted Friday of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black neighbour after the jury rejected her claims that she fired through a metal door in self-defense amid an ongoing dispute over children playing outside her home.
The all-white jury in Ocala, Florida, found 60-year-old Susan Lorincz guilty after 2 1/2 hours of deliberation. Lorincz faces up to 30 years in prison at sentencing. She had claimed self-defense when she fired a single shot with a .380-caliber handgun through her front door on June 2, 2023, killing 35-year-old Ajike “A.J.” Owens.
The confrontation was the latest in a dispute between the two neighbours over Owens’ children playing in a grassy area near both of their houses. Prosecutors said Owens had come to Lorincz’s home after her children complained that she had allegedly thrown roller skates and an umbrella at them amid a long-running annoyance at their boisterous play outside.
Lorincz told detectives in a videotaped interview that she feared for her life as Owens yelled and pounded on her door.
“I thought I was in imminent danger,” she said.
Lorincz also said she had been harassed for most of the three years she lived in the neighbourhood.
The victim’s family members broke down in tears after Lorincz left the courtroom with deputies. She showed no reaction or emotion when the verdict was announced.
081624-Neighbor-Shot-Florida
Pamela Dias, center, Ajike “A.J.” Owens’ mother, is consoled by friends and family outside the courtroom after a jury found Susan Lorincz guilty of manslaughter in the shooting death of her daughter, Friday afternoon, Aug. 16, 2024, in Ocala, Fla.
Circuit Judge Robert W. Hodges did not immediately set a sentencing date but ordered a background report to be done on Lorincz.
Anthony Thomas, an attorney for the Owens family, said they would push for the maximum 30-year prison term. Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said she took some solace from the guilty verdict.
“We’ve achieved some justice for Ajike. My heart is a little lighter,” Dias told reporters outside the courthouse. “This has been a long journey to get to this stage, to get to this verdict. I find some peace with that verdict.”
State Attorney William Gladson, whose office prosecuted the case, said it was “a tragic reminder” of the consequences of gun violence.
“The defendant’s choices have left four young children without their mother, a loss that will be felt for the rest of their lives,” Gladson said in a statement. “While today’s verdict can’t bring A.J. back, we hope it brings some measure of justice and peace to her family and friends.”
During closing arguments, prosecutor Rich Buxman had said there was no evidence that Owens posed an imminent physical threat to Lorincz.
“It’s not a crime to bang on somebody’s door. It’s not a crime to yell,” Buxman told jurors. “There was no imminent danger whatsoever when she fired that gun.”
A lawyer for Lorincz countered that she was frightened by Owens’ aggressive actions and was legally justified in firing her gun under Florida’s “stand your ground” law. An autopsy found Owens weighed about 290 pounds (130 kilograms), making her much larger as well as younger than Lorincz, and the two had previous confrontations.
“She can defend herself,” said Amanda Sizemore, an assistant public defender. “She had a split second to make a decision whether or not to fire her weapon.”
Lorincz did not testify but said in an interview with detectives that was played for jurors that she never intended to harm Owens. Still, in one 911 call, Lorincz told a dispatcher, “I’m just sick of these children.”
“She was not in fear. She was angry,” Buxman said.
Owens’ family has expressed surprise no Black jurors were selected for the trial given the racially sensitive nature of the case. There were protests in the Black community when prosecutors took weeks to charge Lorincz with manslaughter, a lesser count than second-degree murder which carries a potential life prison sentence.
The county court clerk’s office said in an email that eight Black people were among the 70 in the initial jury pool. In contrast, 49 were white and 10 were listed as Hispanic, two as Asian and one as “other,” the clerk’s office said, based on records provided by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Ocala is about 80 miles (130 kilometres) northwest of Orlando in central Florida. Marion County’s Black population is about 12%, according to census figures.
Jury convicts white Florida woman in fatal shooting of her Black neighbour
"She was not in fear. She was angry," Buxman said.
Mississippi ex-deputy seeks shorter sentence in racist torture of 2 Black men
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Emily Wagster Pettus
Published Aug 26, 2024 • 3 minute read
FILE - Brett McAlpin, one of six former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to a long list of state and federal charges enters the Rankin County Circuit Court for the state sentencing for his involvement in the 2023 racially motivated torture of two Black men, April 10, 2024, in Brandon, Miss.
FILE - Brett McAlpin, one of six former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to a long list of state and federal charges enters the Rankin County Circuit Court for the state sentencing for his involvement in the 2023 racially motivated torture of two Black men, April 10, 2024, in Brandon, Miss.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy is seeking a shorter federal prison sentence for his part in the torture of two Black men, a case that drew condemnation from top U.S. law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Brett McAlpin is one of six white former law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaking into a home without a warrant and engaging in an hourslong attack that included beatings, repeated use of Tasers, and assaults with a sex toy before one victim was shot in the mouth.
The officers were sentenced in March, receiving terms of 10 to 40 years. McAlpin, who was chief investigator for the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department, received about 27 years, the second-longest sentence.
The length of McAlpin’s sentence was “unreasonable” because he waited in his truck while other officers carried out the torture of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, McAlpin’s attorney, Theodore Cooperstein, wrote in arguments filed Friday to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Brett was drawn into the scene as events unfolded and went out of control, but he maintained a peripheral distance as the other officers acted,” Cooperstein wrote. “Although Brett failed to stop things he saw and knew were wrong, he did not order, initiate, or partake in violent abuse of the two victims.”
Prosecutors said the terror began Jan. 24, 2023, when a white person phoned McAlpin and complained two Black men were staying with a white woman in the small town of Braxton. McAlpin told deputy Christian Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies so willing to use excessive force they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”
In the grisly details of the case, local residents saw echoes of Mississippi’s history of racist atrocities by people in authority. The difference this time is that those who abused their power paid a steep price for their crimes, said attorneys for the victims.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the former officers’ actions “egregious and despicable” and gave sentences near the top of federal guidelines to five of the six men who attacked Jenkins and Parker.
“The depravity of the crimes committed by these defendants cannot be overstated,” Garland said after federal sentencing of the six former officers.
McAlpin, 53, is in a federal prison in West Virginia.
Cooperstein is asking the appeals court to toss out McAlpin’s sentence and order a district judge to set a shorter one. Cooperstein wrote that “the collective weight of all the bad deeds of the night piled up in the memory and impressions of the court and the public, so that Brett McAlpin, sentenced last, bore the brunt of all that others had done.”
McAlpin apologized before he was sentenced March 21, but did not look at the victims as he spoke.
“This was all wrong, very wrong. It’s not how people should treat each other and even more so, it’s not how law enforcement should treat people,” McAlpin said. “I’m really sorry for being a part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”
Federal prosecutor Christopher Perras argued for a lengthy sentence, saying McAlpin was not a member of the Goon Squad but “molded the men into the goons they became.”
One of the victims, Parker, told investigators that McAlpin functioned like a “mafia don” as he instructed officers throughout the evening. Prosecutors said other deputies often tried to impress McAlpin, and the attorney for Daniel Opdyke, one of the other officers, said his client saw McAlpin as a father figure.
The six former officers also pleaded guilty to charges in state court and were sentenced in April.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Emily Wagster Pettus
Published Aug 26, 2024 • 3 minute read
FILE - Brett McAlpin, one of six former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to a long list of state and federal charges enters the Rankin County Circuit Court for the state sentencing for his involvement in the 2023 racially motivated torture of two Black men, April 10, 2024, in Brandon, Miss.
FILE - Brett McAlpin, one of six former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to a long list of state and federal charges enters the Rankin County Circuit Court for the state sentencing for his involvement in the 2023 racially motivated torture of two Black men, April 10, 2024, in Brandon, Miss.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy is seeking a shorter federal prison sentence for his part in the torture of two Black men, a case that drew condemnation from top U.S. law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Brett McAlpin is one of six white former law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaking into a home without a warrant and engaging in an hourslong attack that included beatings, repeated use of Tasers, and assaults with a sex toy before one victim was shot in the mouth.
The officers were sentenced in March, receiving terms of 10 to 40 years. McAlpin, who was chief investigator for the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department, received about 27 years, the second-longest sentence.
The length of McAlpin’s sentence was “unreasonable” because he waited in his truck while other officers carried out the torture of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, McAlpin’s attorney, Theodore Cooperstein, wrote in arguments filed Friday to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Brett was drawn into the scene as events unfolded and went out of control, but he maintained a peripheral distance as the other officers acted,” Cooperstein wrote. “Although Brett failed to stop things he saw and knew were wrong, he did not order, initiate, or partake in violent abuse of the two victims.”
Prosecutors said the terror began Jan. 24, 2023, when a white person phoned McAlpin and complained two Black men were staying with a white woman in the small town of Braxton. McAlpin told deputy Christian Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies so willing to use excessive force they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”
In the grisly details of the case, local residents saw echoes of Mississippi’s history of racist atrocities by people in authority. The difference this time is that those who abused their power paid a steep price for their crimes, said attorneys for the victims.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the former officers’ actions “egregious and despicable” and gave sentences near the top of federal guidelines to five of the six men who attacked Jenkins and Parker.
“The depravity of the crimes committed by these defendants cannot be overstated,” Garland said after federal sentencing of the six former officers.
McAlpin, 53, is in a federal prison in West Virginia.
Cooperstein is asking the appeals court to toss out McAlpin’s sentence and order a district judge to set a shorter one. Cooperstein wrote that “the collective weight of all the bad deeds of the night piled up in the memory and impressions of the court and the public, so that Brett McAlpin, sentenced last, bore the brunt of all that others had done.”
McAlpin apologized before he was sentenced March 21, but did not look at the victims as he spoke.
“This was all wrong, very wrong. It’s not how people should treat each other and even more so, it’s not how law enforcement should treat people,” McAlpin said. “I’m really sorry for being a part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”
Federal prosecutor Christopher Perras argued for a lengthy sentence, saying McAlpin was not a member of the Goon Squad but “molded the men into the goons they became.”
One of the victims, Parker, told investigators that McAlpin functioned like a “mafia don” as he instructed officers throughout the evening. Prosecutors said other deputies often tried to impress McAlpin, and the attorney for Daniel Opdyke, one of the other officers, said his client saw McAlpin as a father figure.
The six former officers also pleaded guilty to charges in state court and were sentenced in April.
Mississippi ex-deputy seeks shorter sentence in racist torture of 2 Black men
McAlpin, 53, is in a federal prison in West Virginia.
Ex-sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot Black airman at his home arrested
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Curt Anderson And Jeff Martin
Published Aug 26, 2024 • 2 minute read
FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. — A former Florida sheriff’s deputy charged with killing a Black U.S. Air Force senior airman who answered his apartment door while holding a gun pointed toward the ground was arrested Monday, officials said.
Former Okaloosa County deputy Eddie Duran, 38, was charged with manslaughter with a firearm in the May 3 shooting death of 23-year-old Roger Fortson, Assistant State Attorney Greg Marcille announced Friday. The charge is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
Duran was booked into the county jail Monday, records show. Marcille confirmed his arrest to The Associated Press.
“He did, in fact, turn himself in,” Marcille said in a telephone interview, adding that Duran’s initial court appearance will be via video link Tuesday morning. “He will be held in custody pending his initial appearance.”
An attorney representing Duran did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Authorities say Duran had been directed to Fortson’s Fort Walton Beach apartment in response to a domestic disturbance report that turned out to be false.
After repeated knocking, Fortson opened the door while holding his handgun at his side, pointed down. Authorities say that Duran shot him multiple times; only then did he tell Fortson to drop the gun.
On Friday, the day the charge was announced, candles and framed photos of Fortson in uniform graced the doorway of the apartment where he was killed.
According to the internal affairs report of the shooting, Duran told investigators that when Fortson opened the door, he saw aggression in the airman’s eyes. He said he fired because, “I’m standing there thinking I’m about to get shot, I’m about to die.”
Okaloosa Sheriff Eric Aden fired Duran on May 31 after an internal investigation concluded his life was not in danger when he opened fire. Outside law enforcement experts have also said that an officer cannot shoot only because a possible suspect is holding a gun if there is no threat.
Duran is a law enforcement veteran, starting as a military police officer in the Army. He joined the Okaloosa County sheriff’s office in July 2019, but resigned two years later, saying his wife, a nurse, had been transferred to a Naval hospital out of the area. He rejoined the sheriff’s office in June 2023.
Okaloosa personnel records show he was reprimanded in 2021 for not completing his assignment to confirm the addresses of three registered sex offenders by visiting their homes, telling a colleague he didn’t care about them. Then assigned to a high school as its on-campus deputy, he was also disciplined that year for leaving the school before the final bell and the students’ departure. Florida law requires that an armed guard be on campus when class is in session.
Records of 911 calls show deputies had never been called to Fortson’s apartment previously but they had been summoned to a nearby unit 10 times in the previous eight months, including once for a domestic disturbance.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Curt Anderson And Jeff Martin
Published Aug 26, 2024 • 2 minute read
FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. — A former Florida sheriff’s deputy charged with killing a Black U.S. Air Force senior airman who answered his apartment door while holding a gun pointed toward the ground was arrested Monday, officials said.
Former Okaloosa County deputy Eddie Duran, 38, was charged with manslaughter with a firearm in the May 3 shooting death of 23-year-old Roger Fortson, Assistant State Attorney Greg Marcille announced Friday. The charge is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
Duran was booked into the county jail Monday, records show. Marcille confirmed his arrest to The Associated Press.
“He did, in fact, turn himself in,” Marcille said in a telephone interview, adding that Duran’s initial court appearance will be via video link Tuesday morning. “He will be held in custody pending his initial appearance.”
An attorney representing Duran did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Authorities say Duran had been directed to Fortson’s Fort Walton Beach apartment in response to a domestic disturbance report that turned out to be false.
After repeated knocking, Fortson opened the door while holding his handgun at his side, pointed down. Authorities say that Duran shot him multiple times; only then did he tell Fortson to drop the gun.
On Friday, the day the charge was announced, candles and framed photos of Fortson in uniform graced the doorway of the apartment where he was killed.
According to the internal affairs report of the shooting, Duran told investigators that when Fortson opened the door, he saw aggression in the airman’s eyes. He said he fired because, “I’m standing there thinking I’m about to get shot, I’m about to die.”
Okaloosa Sheriff Eric Aden fired Duran on May 31 after an internal investigation concluded his life was not in danger when he opened fire. Outside law enforcement experts have also said that an officer cannot shoot only because a possible suspect is holding a gun if there is no threat.
Duran is a law enforcement veteran, starting as a military police officer in the Army. He joined the Okaloosa County sheriff’s office in July 2019, but resigned two years later, saying his wife, a nurse, had been transferred to a Naval hospital out of the area. He rejoined the sheriff’s office in June 2023.
Okaloosa personnel records show he was reprimanded in 2021 for not completing his assignment to confirm the addresses of three registered sex offenders by visiting their homes, telling a colleague he didn’t care about them. Then assigned to a high school as its on-campus deputy, he was also disciplined that year for leaving the school before the final bell and the students’ departure. Florida law requires that an armed guard be on campus when class is in session.
Records of 911 calls show deputies had never been called to Fortson’s apartment previously but they had been summoned to a nearby unit 10 times in the previous eight months, including once for a domestic disturbance.
Ex-sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot Black airman at his home arrested
A former Florida sheriff's deputy charged with killing a Black U.S. Air Force airman who answered his door while holding a gun was arrested
High-ranking Toronto cop demoted for promotions cheating scandal
Stacy Clarke can apply to be reinstated as superintendent in two years, according to ruling
Author of the article:Chris Doucette
Published Aug 28, 2024 • Last updated 15 hours ago • 4 minute read
Toronto Police officer Stacy Clarke was demoted from superintendent to inspector for a 2021 promotions cheating scandal on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024.
Toronto Police officer Stacy Clarke was demoted from superintendent to inspector for a 2021 promotions cheating scandal on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024.
The first female Black superintendent in Toronto Police history has been demoted for her role in a 2021 promotions cheating scandal.
But Stacy Clarke, who engaged in a cheating scheme to help fellow Black cops vying for promotion, remains a senior officer within the service under her reduced rank of inspector.
And she can apply to be reinstated to the rank of superintendent in two years, according to a ruling announced at her disciplinary tribunal on Wednesday.
Clarke’s actions brought “unwanted publicity” and caused “irreparable damage” to Toronto Police, hearing officer Robin McElary-Downer said in determining the 26-year veteran must be busted to the rank of inspector for 24 months.
McElary-Downer said there is no question Clarke earned her superintendent rank, “but that rank is a privilege, not a right.”
However, she believes the single mom of two possesses “outstanding leadership qualities,” making her a suitable candidate to be reinstated to superintendent down the road.
Clarke previously admitted during her tribunal that she fed questions and answers to six officers she was mentoring who had applied to become sergeants. She was also part of the panel that interviewed one of the six without disclosing he was a family friend.
However, Clarke claimed she only helped the officers because she was fed up with anti-Black racism within the service and she was tired of seeing good candidates unable to get ahead.
She pleaded guilty last fall to seven counts under the Police Service Act, including three counts each of breach of confidence and discreditable conduct.
Clarke’s lawyer, Joseph Markson, had asked the hearing officer to consider the “context” of the racism she’s faced and demote her to inspector for 12 to 18 months before automatically reinstating her to superintendent.
Counsel for Toronto Police, Scott Hutchison, suggested Clarke should be demoted two ranks to staff sergeant for 12 months and then to inspector for another year before being allowed to return to the rank of superintendent.
In her decision, McElary-Downer pointed out that Clarke only raised her concerns of anti-Black racism and the failure of good candidates to get ahead after she was caught.
She also found it troubling that Clarke committed the “very serious misconduct” within 10 months of being promoted to superintendent.
McElary-Downer looked at numerous other cases of cheating within policing before deciding on a fitting punishment, taking aspects such as Clarke’s intentions into consideration.
She said Clarke deserves credit for recognizing her misconduct, accepting responsibility and apologizing.
McElary-Downer also made a point of stating Clarke didn’t cheat for her own advancement – she did it because she wanted her mentees to be successful.
But Clarke’s mentees ultimately paid a price for her actions, she said.
“Her fingerprints will forever be etched on their damaged careers,” McElary-Downer said.
The hearing officer also gave considerable weight to the damage Clarke’s violation of the public trust and abuse of power caused to the police service.
After reading aloud numerous headlines from the last few years, McElary-Downer said the news reports were “damning” and “will live in perpetuity on the internet.”
Clarke, who previously apologized to police and her community for not taking the “right path,” spoke briefly to reporters as she left headquarters Wednesday.
“I’m just very disappointed and very sad about it,” she said of her ordeal.
“There’s a lot of people who have shared these types of experiences and so, you know, but I’m looking forward to moving forward. There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done and I’m confident that we’ll get it done.”
She refused to say if she plans to appeal the decision.
“I’m just going to take some time with my family – we’ll just let it go through, what needs to be done, and think about what the next steps are,” Clarke said. “But it is what it is.”
Following the conclusion of the tribunal, which has been monitored closely by the Black community, Toronto Police released a statement saying leaders within the service are “held to the highest standards of conduct” and any allegations of misconduct are taken “seriously.
“We acknowledge this case brought forward a number of issues that the service is addressing,” police said. “The service has implemented significant reforms in recent years. Hiring and promotional processes were overhauled and our workforce is diversifying at all ranks.”
Police said the changes are “part of many actions we have committed to as part of our comprehensive equity strategy.
“We are committed, in partnership with the Toronto Police Service Board, to meaningful change and continuous improvement to create a respectful, safe, and inclusive workplace,” Chief Myron Demkiw said. “As a service, we are listening. We continue to acknowledge that while we are on a path of change, more needs to be done to build trust with our communities and our members.”
cdoucette@postmedia.com
@sundoucette
torontosun.com
Stacy Clarke can apply to be reinstated as superintendent in two years, according to ruling
Author of the article:Chris Doucette
Published Aug 28, 2024 • Last updated 15 hours ago • 4 minute read
Toronto Police officer Stacy Clarke was demoted from superintendent to inspector for a 2021 promotions cheating scandal on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024.
Toronto Police officer Stacy Clarke was demoted from superintendent to inspector for a 2021 promotions cheating scandal on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024.
The first female Black superintendent in Toronto Police history has been demoted for her role in a 2021 promotions cheating scandal.
But Stacy Clarke, who engaged in a cheating scheme to help fellow Black cops vying for promotion, remains a senior officer within the service under her reduced rank of inspector.
And she can apply to be reinstated to the rank of superintendent in two years, according to a ruling announced at her disciplinary tribunal on Wednesday.
Clarke’s actions brought “unwanted publicity” and caused “irreparable damage” to Toronto Police, hearing officer Robin McElary-Downer said in determining the 26-year veteran must be busted to the rank of inspector for 24 months.
McElary-Downer said there is no question Clarke earned her superintendent rank, “but that rank is a privilege, not a right.”
However, she believes the single mom of two possesses “outstanding leadership qualities,” making her a suitable candidate to be reinstated to superintendent down the road.
Clarke previously admitted during her tribunal that she fed questions and answers to six officers she was mentoring who had applied to become sergeants. She was also part of the panel that interviewed one of the six without disclosing he was a family friend.
However, Clarke claimed she only helped the officers because she was fed up with anti-Black racism within the service and she was tired of seeing good candidates unable to get ahead.
She pleaded guilty last fall to seven counts under the Police Service Act, including three counts each of breach of confidence and discreditable conduct.
Clarke’s lawyer, Joseph Markson, had asked the hearing officer to consider the “context” of the racism she’s faced and demote her to inspector for 12 to 18 months before automatically reinstating her to superintendent.
Counsel for Toronto Police, Scott Hutchison, suggested Clarke should be demoted two ranks to staff sergeant for 12 months and then to inspector for another year before being allowed to return to the rank of superintendent.
In her decision, McElary-Downer pointed out that Clarke only raised her concerns of anti-Black racism and the failure of good candidates to get ahead after she was caught.
She also found it troubling that Clarke committed the “very serious misconduct” within 10 months of being promoted to superintendent.
McElary-Downer looked at numerous other cases of cheating within policing before deciding on a fitting punishment, taking aspects such as Clarke’s intentions into consideration.
She said Clarke deserves credit for recognizing her misconduct, accepting responsibility and apologizing.
McElary-Downer also made a point of stating Clarke didn’t cheat for her own advancement – she did it because she wanted her mentees to be successful.
But Clarke’s mentees ultimately paid a price for her actions, she said.
“Her fingerprints will forever be etched on their damaged careers,” McElary-Downer said.
The hearing officer also gave considerable weight to the damage Clarke’s violation of the public trust and abuse of power caused to the police service.
After reading aloud numerous headlines from the last few years, McElary-Downer said the news reports were “damning” and “will live in perpetuity on the internet.”
Clarke, who previously apologized to police and her community for not taking the “right path,” spoke briefly to reporters as she left headquarters Wednesday.
“I’m just very disappointed and very sad about it,” she said of her ordeal.
“There’s a lot of people who have shared these types of experiences and so, you know, but I’m looking forward to moving forward. There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done and I’m confident that we’ll get it done.”
She refused to say if she plans to appeal the decision.
“I’m just going to take some time with my family – we’ll just let it go through, what needs to be done, and think about what the next steps are,” Clarke said. “But it is what it is.”
Following the conclusion of the tribunal, which has been monitored closely by the Black community, Toronto Police released a statement saying leaders within the service are “held to the highest standards of conduct” and any allegations of misconduct are taken “seriously.
“We acknowledge this case brought forward a number of issues that the service is addressing,” police said. “The service has implemented significant reforms in recent years. Hiring and promotional processes were overhauled and our workforce is diversifying at all ranks.”
Police said the changes are “part of many actions we have committed to as part of our comprehensive equity strategy.
“We are committed, in partnership with the Toronto Police Service Board, to meaningful change and continuous improvement to create a respectful, safe, and inclusive workplace,” Chief Myron Demkiw said. “As a service, we are listening. We continue to acknowledge that while we are on a path of change, more needs to be done to build trust with our communities and our members.”
cdoucette@postmedia.com
@sundoucette
High-ranking Toronto cop demoted for promotions cheating scandal
The first female Black superintendent in Toronto Police history has been demoted for her role in a promotions cheating scandal.
'White Fragility' author tricked into paying reparations to 'Am I Racist?' producer
Author of the article
ostmedia News
Published Sep 09, 2024 • Last updated 2 days ago • 2 minute read
The author of White Fragility was reportedly tricked into going into her own pocket to pay reparations to a Black producer in podcaster Matt Walsh’s upcoming documentary Am I Racist?
An undercover Walsh, 38, coerced author Robin DiAngelo into paying cash to his producer, Ben, to compensate for so-called sins of the past by offering money himself, the New York Post reported exclusively on Monday.
Walsh, who was conducting an interview with DiAngelo for a documentary project while feigning anti-racist sentiments and posing as an activist, called on Ben after finishing most of his questions.
“This is Ben, a producer on the film. I thought it would be a powerful opportunity to speak directly to a person of colour and confront our racism and also, apologize for the white supremacist systems that oppress Ben,” Walsh began.
DiAngelo, 68, followed suit.
“On behalf of myself and my fellow white people, I apologize — it is not you, it is us. As long as I’m standing, I will do my best to challenge it.”
Walsh announced that he’d pay Ben reparations if he’d accept it, prompting his producer to say, “I mean, I won’t turn it down.”
Walsh then handed Ben some cash from his wallet.
“That doesn’t make up for 400 years of oppression, but it’s all that I have to give,” Walsh said.
Ben, fully in on the trick, explained that he didn’t “know if it’s ever enough,” but praised Walsh for “putting in the work” and acknowledged the “small progress I think we made today.”
DiAngelo appeared bewildered.
“That was really weird,” DiAngelo gasped.
“I think reparations is like a systemic dynamic and approach,” she added. “I mean, I think there may be some people who would be offended by (that).”
Ben said that wouldn’t “turn down cash.” A solemn-looking Walsh then stressed the need to allow “ourselves to be uncomfortable.” He underscored, “This is something that I can do right now” and asked, ‘Why wouldn’t I do it?’”
“I can go get some cash for sure,” she said after. “I don’t mind if that would be something that would be comfortable for you.”
After getting Ben’s blessing, DiAngelo walked over to her pocketbook, pulled out roughly $30, and told him, “That’s all the cash I have.”
“Thanks,” a smiling Ben replied.
When DiAngelo sat down with Walsh earlier in the documentary, she asked for quick information about who he was, noting that she “has to be careful.”
DiAngelo’s book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism hit bookshelves back in 2018 and helped make her famous as a so-called anti-bias training expert.
The New York Times best-selling book features some controversial assessments of racism. She claimed that “White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions.”
At another point, she wrote in the book, “People of colour may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms their prejudice and discrimination into racism; the impact of their prejudice on whites is temporary and contextual.”
Walsh’s documentary is set to hit the silver screen on Sept. 13.
nypost.com
torontosun.com
Author of the article
ostmedia NewsPublished Sep 09, 2024 • Last updated 2 days ago • 2 minute read
The author of White Fragility was reportedly tricked into going into her own pocket to pay reparations to a Black producer in podcaster Matt Walsh’s upcoming documentary Am I Racist?
An undercover Walsh, 38, coerced author Robin DiAngelo into paying cash to his producer, Ben, to compensate for so-called sins of the past by offering money himself, the New York Post reported exclusively on Monday.
Walsh, who was conducting an interview with DiAngelo for a documentary project while feigning anti-racist sentiments and posing as an activist, called on Ben after finishing most of his questions.
“This is Ben, a producer on the film. I thought it would be a powerful opportunity to speak directly to a person of colour and confront our racism and also, apologize for the white supremacist systems that oppress Ben,” Walsh began.
DiAngelo, 68, followed suit.
“On behalf of myself and my fellow white people, I apologize — it is not you, it is us. As long as I’m standing, I will do my best to challenge it.”
Walsh announced that he’d pay Ben reparations if he’d accept it, prompting his producer to say, “I mean, I won’t turn it down.”
Walsh then handed Ben some cash from his wallet.
“That doesn’t make up for 400 years of oppression, but it’s all that I have to give,” Walsh said.
Ben, fully in on the trick, explained that he didn’t “know if it’s ever enough,” but praised Walsh for “putting in the work” and acknowledged the “small progress I think we made today.”
DiAngelo appeared bewildered.
“That was really weird,” DiAngelo gasped.
“I think reparations is like a systemic dynamic and approach,” she added. “I mean, I think there may be some people who would be offended by (that).”
Ben said that wouldn’t “turn down cash.” A solemn-looking Walsh then stressed the need to allow “ourselves to be uncomfortable.” He underscored, “This is something that I can do right now” and asked, ‘Why wouldn’t I do it?’”
“I can go get some cash for sure,” she said after. “I don’t mind if that would be something that would be comfortable for you.”
After getting Ben’s blessing, DiAngelo walked over to her pocketbook, pulled out roughly $30, and told him, “That’s all the cash I have.”
“Thanks,” a smiling Ben replied.
When DiAngelo sat down with Walsh earlier in the documentary, she asked for quick information about who he was, noting that she “has to be careful.”
DiAngelo’s book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism hit bookshelves back in 2018 and helped make her famous as a so-called anti-bias training expert.
The New York Times best-selling book features some controversial assessments of racism. She claimed that “White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions.”
At another point, she wrote in the book, “People of colour may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms their prejudice and discrimination into racism; the impact of their prejudice on whites is temporary and contextual.”
Walsh’s documentary is set to hit the silver screen on Sept. 13.
Exclusive | ‘White Fragility’ author Robin DiAngelo gets tricked into paying reparations to Matt Walsh’s producer in ‘Am I Racist?’ documentary
“White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo was hoodwinked into dipping into her own pocketbook to pay reparations to a black producer in podcaster Matt Walsh’s upcoming documentary &…
nypost.com
'White Fragility' author tricked into paying reparations to 'Am I Racist?' producer
The author of White Fragility was reportedly tricked into going into her own pocket to pay reparations to a Black producer.
Illinois man wrongly imprisoned for murder wins $50 million jury award
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Sep 10, 2024 • 2 minute read
CHICAGO — A federal jury has awarded $50 million in damages to a suburban Chicago man who was exonerated in a murder and released from prison in 2018 after spending about 10 years behind bars.
Monday’s unanimous jury verdict in favor of Marcel Brown, 34, of Oak Park came after a two-week trial, the Chicago Tribune reported, citing federal court records.
Brown was arrested at 18 and sentenced to 35 years in prison after he was convicted of being an accomplice in the 2008 murder of 19-year-old Paris Jackson in Chicago’s Galewood neighbourhood, according to the federal lawsuit he filed in 2019.
Brown was released from prison in July 2018. The criminal case against him was dropped following testimony from his mother and a lawyer hired by his mother, both of whom were prevented from speaking with him the night of his arrest.
Brown was awarded a certificate of innocence in 2019, according to his lawsuit, which named as defendants the city of Chicago, a group of Chicago police officers, an assistant Cook County state’s attorney and Cook County.
Brown’s suit accused the defendants of violating his constitutional rights and of maliciously prosecuting him. It also contended that the defendants intentionally caused him emotional distress when they prevented him from speaking with a lawyer and drew a false confession out of him after more than a day of interrogation later found to be illegal.
In Monday’s decision, the jury split the damages into $10 million for Brown’s detention preceding his trial and $40 million for the postconviction period, according to a court filing. The jurors also ordered one of the detectives in the case to pay Brown $50,000 in punitive damages, court records show.
Brown beamed Monday evening as he addressed reporters outside the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in downtown Chicago following the verdict, surrounded by his attorneys and family members.
“Justice was finally served for me and my family today,” Brown said. “We’re just thankful, being able to be here today. Thank you, jurors.”
Attorney Locke Bowman of the law firm of Loevy & Loevy said the verdict should serve as a “wakeup call” to city leaders “that it is time to get a grip on the way the Chicago Police Department is conducting its interrogations.”
A spokesperson for Chicago’s law department said Monday night that the city was reviewing the verdict and assessing its options.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Sep 10, 2024 • 2 minute read
CHICAGO — A federal jury has awarded $50 million in damages to a suburban Chicago man who was exonerated in a murder and released from prison in 2018 after spending about 10 years behind bars.
Monday’s unanimous jury verdict in favor of Marcel Brown, 34, of Oak Park came after a two-week trial, the Chicago Tribune reported, citing federal court records.
Brown was arrested at 18 and sentenced to 35 years in prison after he was convicted of being an accomplice in the 2008 murder of 19-year-old Paris Jackson in Chicago’s Galewood neighbourhood, according to the federal lawsuit he filed in 2019.
Brown was released from prison in July 2018. The criminal case against him was dropped following testimony from his mother and a lawyer hired by his mother, both of whom were prevented from speaking with him the night of his arrest.
Brown was awarded a certificate of innocence in 2019, according to his lawsuit, which named as defendants the city of Chicago, a group of Chicago police officers, an assistant Cook County state’s attorney and Cook County.
Brown’s suit accused the defendants of violating his constitutional rights and of maliciously prosecuting him. It also contended that the defendants intentionally caused him emotional distress when they prevented him from speaking with a lawyer and drew a false confession out of him after more than a day of interrogation later found to be illegal.
In Monday’s decision, the jury split the damages into $10 million for Brown’s detention preceding his trial and $40 million for the postconviction period, according to a court filing. The jurors also ordered one of the detectives in the case to pay Brown $50,000 in punitive damages, court records show.
Brown beamed Monday evening as he addressed reporters outside the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in downtown Chicago following the verdict, surrounded by his attorneys and family members.
“Justice was finally served for me and my family today,” Brown said. “We’re just thankful, being able to be here today. Thank you, jurors.”
Attorney Locke Bowman of the law firm of Loevy & Loevy said the verdict should serve as a “wakeup call” to city leaders “that it is time to get a grip on the way the Chicago Police Department is conducting its interrogations.”
A spokesperson for Chicago’s law department said Monday night that the city was reviewing the verdict and assessing its options.
Illinois man wrongly imprisoned for murder wins $50 million jury award
A federal jury has awarded $50 million in damages to a suburban Chicago man who was exonerated in a murder and released from prison in 2018
Man who has brain damage has murder conviction reversed after 34-year fight
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Brian Melley
Published Sep 11, 2024 • 2 minute read
LONDON — A man who has brain damage and was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a shopkeeper in London had his decades-old conviction quashed Wednesday by an appeals court troubled by the possibility police elicited a false confession from a mentally vulnerable man.
Oliver Campbell, who suffered cognitive impairment as a baby and struggles with his concentration and memory, was 21 when he was jailed in 1991 after being convicted based partly on admissions his lawyer said were coerced.
“The fight for justice is finally over after nearly 34 years,” Campbell said. “I can start my life an innocent man.”
Campbell, now in his 50s, was convicted of the robbery and murder of Baldev Hoondle, who was shot in the head in his shop in the Hackney area of east London in July 1990.
He had a previous appeal rejected in 1994 and was released from prison in 2002 on conditions that could have returned him to prison if he got into trouble.
Defense lawyer Michael Birnbaum said police lied to Campbell and “badgered and bullied” him into giving a false confession by admitting he pulled the trigger in an accident. He was interviewed more than a dozen times, including sessions without either a lawyer or other adult present.
His learning disability put him “out of his depth” and he was “simply unable to do justice to himself,” Birnbaum said. He said the admissions were nonsense riddled with inconsistencies that contradicted facts in the case.
At trial, he testified that he was not involved in the robbery and had been somewhere else though he couldn’t remember where.
A co-defendant, Eric Samuels, who has since died, pleaded guilty to the robbery and was sentenced to five years in prison. At the time, he told his lawyer Campbell was not the gunman and later told others Campbell wasn’t with him during the robbery.
Lawyers continued to advocate for Campbell that he wasn’t the killer and his case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission which investigates potential injustices.
The three judges on the Court of Appeal rejected most of Birnbaum’s grounds for appeal but said they were troubled by the conviction in light of new understanding about the reliability of admissions from someone with a mental disability. The panel quashed the conviction as “unsafe,” and refused to order a retrial.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Brian Melley
Published Sep 11, 2024 • 2 minute read
LONDON — A man who has brain damage and was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a shopkeeper in London had his decades-old conviction quashed Wednesday by an appeals court troubled by the possibility police elicited a false confession from a mentally vulnerable man.
Oliver Campbell, who suffered cognitive impairment as a baby and struggles with his concentration and memory, was 21 when he was jailed in 1991 after being convicted based partly on admissions his lawyer said were coerced.
“The fight for justice is finally over after nearly 34 years,” Campbell said. “I can start my life an innocent man.”
Campbell, now in his 50s, was convicted of the robbery and murder of Baldev Hoondle, who was shot in the head in his shop in the Hackney area of east London in July 1990.
He had a previous appeal rejected in 1994 and was released from prison in 2002 on conditions that could have returned him to prison if he got into trouble.
Defense lawyer Michael Birnbaum said police lied to Campbell and “badgered and bullied” him into giving a false confession by admitting he pulled the trigger in an accident. He was interviewed more than a dozen times, including sessions without either a lawyer or other adult present.
His learning disability put him “out of his depth” and he was “simply unable to do justice to himself,” Birnbaum said. He said the admissions were nonsense riddled with inconsistencies that contradicted facts in the case.
At trial, he testified that he was not involved in the robbery and had been somewhere else though he couldn’t remember where.
A co-defendant, Eric Samuels, who has since died, pleaded guilty to the robbery and was sentenced to five years in prison. At the time, he told his lawyer Campbell was not the gunman and later told others Campbell wasn’t with him during the robbery.
Lawyers continued to advocate for Campbell that he wasn’t the killer and his case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission which investigates potential injustices.
The three judges on the Court of Appeal rejected most of Birnbaum’s grounds for appeal but said they were troubled by the conviction in light of new understanding about the reliability of admissions from someone with a mental disability. The panel quashed the conviction as “unsafe,” and refused to order a retrial.
Man who has brain damage has murder conviction reversed after 34-year fight
A man who has brain damage and was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a shopkeeper in London had decades-old conviction quashed
Missouri judge rejects innocence claim of Marcellus Williams, who faces execution
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Jim Salter
Published Sep 12, 2024 • 4 minute read
ST. LOUIS — A judge declined Thursday to vacate the conviction and death sentence of Marcellus Williams, a Missouri man scheduled for execution later this month in the stabbing death of a woman in 1998, despite questions challenging DNA evidence on the knife used in the attack.
St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton presided over an evidentiary hearing last month challenging Williams’ guilt. Williams, 55, was convicted in the killing of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His execution by lethal injection is scheduled for Sept. 24.
“Every claim of error Williams has asserted on direct appeal, post-conviction review, and habeas review has been rejected by Missouri’s courts,” Hilton wrote. “There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent, and no court has made such a finding. Williams is guilty of first-degree murder, and has been sentenced to death.”
Attorneys for Williams, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and the Missouri Attorney General’s Office did not respond to messages left Thursday seeking comment.
Williams’ lawyers are expected to request clemency from Republican Gov. Mike Parson and could appeal further.
In January, Democratic St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell cited questions about DNA evidence on the murder weapon in seeking a hearing to consider vacating Williams’ conviction. Bell said the evidence indicated that someone else’s DNA was on the butcher knife used to kill Gayle.
Bell brought the challenge under a 2021 Missouri law that allows prosecutors to ask a court to review a conviction they believe is unjust. That and the setting of an execution date saw Williams facing the prospect of everything from having his conviction overturned and being set free, to having it confirmed and facing pending execution.
Despite Bell’s motion, the Missouri Supreme Court in June set the Sept. 24 execution date. Then, an August hearing date was set on the motion by Bell involving the DNA evidence.
But just before the Aug. 21 hearing, a new DNA report revealed that the DNA evidence was contaminated because officials in the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office touched the knife without gloves before the original trial in 2001.
With the DNA evidence spoiled, lawyers working on behalf of Williams from the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.
Hilton signed off on the agreement. So did Gayle’s family. But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office did not.
At Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s urging, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with the evidentiary hearing on Aug. 28.
An attorney for Williams, Jonathan Potts, said during the hearing that the mishandling of the murder weapon was devastating for Williams because it “destroyed his last and best chance” to prove his innocence.
Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane said other evidence pointed to his guilt.
“They refer to the evidence in this case as being weak. It was overwhelming,” Spillane said at the hearing.
Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams sold it a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted felons out for a $10,000 reward.
Three other men — Christopher Dunn, Lamar Johnson and Kevin Strickland — have been freed after decades in prison under the 2021 Missouri law.
Williams has been close to execution before. In August 2017, just hours before his scheduled death, then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after reviewing the same DNA evidence that spurred Bell’s effort to vacate the conviction.
A rising star in Missouri Democratic politics, Bell defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in a primary this month and is heavily favored in the November general election.
Williams is Black and at the hearing, the man who prosecuted him, Keith Larner, was asked why the trial jury included just one Black juror. Larner said he struck just three potential Black jurors, including one who he said looked like Williams.
Williams’ trial attorney, Joseph Green, told Hilton that when Williams was tried, he also was representing a man who killed his wife and injured several others in a St. Louis County courthouse shooting in 1992. That case took time away from working on Williams’ defense, Green said at the hearing.
“I don’t believe he got our best,” said Green, now a judge.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Jim Salter
Published Sep 12, 2024 • 4 minute read
ST. LOUIS — A judge declined Thursday to vacate the conviction and death sentence of Marcellus Williams, a Missouri man scheduled for execution later this month in the stabbing death of a woman in 1998, despite questions challenging DNA evidence on the knife used in the attack.
St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton presided over an evidentiary hearing last month challenging Williams’ guilt. Williams, 55, was convicted in the killing of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His execution by lethal injection is scheduled for Sept. 24.
“Every claim of error Williams has asserted on direct appeal, post-conviction review, and habeas review has been rejected by Missouri’s courts,” Hilton wrote. “There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent, and no court has made such a finding. Williams is guilty of first-degree murder, and has been sentenced to death.”
Attorneys for Williams, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and the Missouri Attorney General’s Office did not respond to messages left Thursday seeking comment.
Williams’ lawyers are expected to request clemency from Republican Gov. Mike Parson and could appeal further.
In January, Democratic St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell cited questions about DNA evidence on the murder weapon in seeking a hearing to consider vacating Williams’ conviction. Bell said the evidence indicated that someone else’s DNA was on the butcher knife used to kill Gayle.
Bell brought the challenge under a 2021 Missouri law that allows prosecutors to ask a court to review a conviction they believe is unjust. That and the setting of an execution date saw Williams facing the prospect of everything from having his conviction overturned and being set free, to having it confirmed and facing pending execution.
Despite Bell’s motion, the Missouri Supreme Court in June set the Sept. 24 execution date. Then, an August hearing date was set on the motion by Bell involving the DNA evidence.
But just before the Aug. 21 hearing, a new DNA report revealed that the DNA evidence was contaminated because officials in the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office touched the knife without gloves before the original trial in 2001.
With the DNA evidence spoiled, lawyers working on behalf of Williams from the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.
Hilton signed off on the agreement. So did Gayle’s family. But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office did not.
At Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s urging, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with the evidentiary hearing on Aug. 28.
An attorney for Williams, Jonathan Potts, said during the hearing that the mishandling of the murder weapon was devastating for Williams because it “destroyed his last and best chance” to prove his innocence.
Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane said other evidence pointed to his guilt.
“They refer to the evidence in this case as being weak. It was overwhelming,” Spillane said at the hearing.
Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams sold it a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted felons out for a $10,000 reward.
Three other men — Christopher Dunn, Lamar Johnson and Kevin Strickland — have been freed after decades in prison under the 2021 Missouri law.
Williams has been close to execution before. In August 2017, just hours before his scheduled death, then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after reviewing the same DNA evidence that spurred Bell’s effort to vacate the conviction.
A rising star in Missouri Democratic politics, Bell defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in a primary this month and is heavily favored in the November general election.
Williams is Black and at the hearing, the man who prosecuted him, Keith Larner, was asked why the trial jury included just one Black juror. Larner said he struck just three potential Black jurors, including one who he said looked like Williams.
Williams’ trial attorney, Joseph Green, told Hilton that when Williams was tried, he also was representing a man who killed his wife and injured several others in a St. Louis County courthouse shooting in 1992. That case took time away from working on Williams’ defense, Green said at the hearing.
“I don’t believe he got our best,” said Green, now a judge.
Missouri judge rejects innocence claim of Marcellus Williams, who faces execution
A judge declined to vacate the conviction and death sentence of Marcellus Williams, a Missouri man scheduled for execution later this month
Jury awards $6M to family members of Black Lives Matter protester killed by a car on Seattle freeway
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Sep 12, 2024 • 1 minute read
SEATTLE (AP) — A jury in Seattle ruled Thursday that the driver of a vehicle that struck and killed a Black Lives Matter protester on a closed interstate must pay the protester’s family $6 million.
The same King County jury found the state of Washington was not negligent in the death, the Seattle Times reported.
Summer Taylor, 24, was hit and killed by a car that drove the wrong way on Interstate 5 i n Seattle during protests in July 2020. Another protester was critically injured.
Taylor’s family sued the state, saying officials did not take proper precautions that would have protected the protesters on the interstate bridge. The driver, Dawit Kelete, 30, was sentenced in September 2023 to 6.5 years in prison for vehicular homicide and other charges.
The state patrol closed the interstate during nightly protests over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. An attorney for Taylor’s family said the state was also to blame for not properly closing an exit ramp from the freeway.
“No patrol car, no spike strips, no flashing lights, no barricade, nothing. … That’s negligence,” the family’s attorney, Karen Koehler, said during closing arguments.
The state had argued that Taylor’s presence on the freeway was illegal, and Taylor and Kelete were both at fault.
“Had either of them chosen to follow the law that the rest of us are bound by, this doesn’t happen — this accident never happens,” Steve Puz, senior counsel for the Washington Attorney General’s Office, said during opening statements.
Damages included $1.75 million for each of Taylor’s parents and $2.5 million for their brother.
Taylor was a veterinary assistant who one day hoped to attend veterinary school at Washington State University. Taylor was remembered by their family as someone dedicated to racial and LGBTQ+ justice.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Sep 12, 2024 • 1 minute read
SEATTLE (AP) — A jury in Seattle ruled Thursday that the driver of a vehicle that struck and killed a Black Lives Matter protester on a closed interstate must pay the protester’s family $6 million.
The same King County jury found the state of Washington was not negligent in the death, the Seattle Times reported.
Summer Taylor, 24, was hit and killed by a car that drove the wrong way on Interstate 5 i n Seattle during protests in July 2020. Another protester was critically injured.
Taylor’s family sued the state, saying officials did not take proper precautions that would have protected the protesters on the interstate bridge. The driver, Dawit Kelete, 30, was sentenced in September 2023 to 6.5 years in prison for vehicular homicide and other charges.
The state patrol closed the interstate during nightly protests over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. An attorney for Taylor’s family said the state was also to blame for not properly closing an exit ramp from the freeway.
“No patrol car, no spike strips, no flashing lights, no barricade, nothing. … That’s negligence,” the family’s attorney, Karen Koehler, said during closing arguments.
The state had argued that Taylor’s presence on the freeway was illegal, and Taylor and Kelete were both at fault.
“Had either of them chosen to follow the law that the rest of us are bound by, this doesn’t happen — this accident never happens,” Steve Puz, senior counsel for the Washington Attorney General’s Office, said during opening statements.
Damages included $1.75 million for each of Taylor’s parents and $2.5 million for their brother.
Taylor was a veterinary assistant who one day hoped to attend veterinary school at Washington State University. Taylor was remembered by their family as someone dedicated to racial and LGBTQ+ justice.
Jury awards $6M to family members of Black Lives Matter protester killed by a car on Seattle freeway
The same King County jury found the state of Washington was not negligent in the death, the Seattle Times reported.
Reparations are unconstitutional and divisive
Is Kamala Harris backing these giveaways?
Author of the article:Betsy McCaughey
Published Sep 21, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 3 minute read
New York’s City Council voted Thursday to launch a reparations task force, which could lead to calls for billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded payouts to compensate for the impact of slavery and past injustices.
Gotham joins dozens of municipalities, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Evanston, Illinois, as well as three states – California, Illinois and most recently New York state – in considering race-based reparations.
The Democratic Party is pushing the idea. At one time, so did Vice President Kamala Harris.
As a candidate in the Democratic primary for president in 2019, she endorsed “some form of reparations,” cosponsored a federal bill to study race-based reparations, and promised Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network that as president she would sign a reparations study bill into law.
That was then. Now Harris’ campaign declines to say where she stands.
Does she want us to be “unburdened by what has been”?
Americans agree that slavery and Jim Crow were abhorrent parts of our nation’s past.
But this steamrolling movement for race-based reparations locally, statewide and nationally is bad news.
Instead of healing racial tensions, it threatens to raise false expectations of big payouts and provoke resentments.
Reparations for actual victims is good. President Ronald Reagan established $20,000 payments for the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated by our government during World War II – but only for those imprisoned, not their descendants.
Similarly, the German government still pays reparations to Holocaust survivors but not to their descendants.
In contrast, U.S. race reparations force people who had no part in slavery to hand over money to people who were not themselves enslaved.
As New York City Council member David Carr, who voted against a reparations task force, explained on X, “No one currently living in our city had anything to do with the evils of slavery & the vast majority of New Yorkers are descendants of immigrants who came after it was abolished.”
Reparations is divisive – and likely to cause real anger among those forced to pay. In America, we don’t punish people for the crimes of their ancestors.
Pew Research found that 80% of white Americans are opposed to the concept, while 77% of Black Americans support it.
“I’ll move before I’ll pay,” said City Council Minority Leader Joseph Borelli.
Race reparations also violate the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal treatment of citizens regardless of race.
Evanston, Illinois, has paid out $5 million to 203 Black residents, supposedly to make up for historic housing discrimination. Anyone who is Black and resided in Evanston between 1919 and 1969, or had ancestors who did, is eligible – without having to prove they were actually wronged.
Judicial Watch, a constitutional advocacy group, is suing on behalf of six non-Black Evanston residents. Tom Fitton, the group’s president, calls the race-based payments “nothing more than a ploy to redistribute tax dollars to individuals based on race.”
That’s right. The goal isn’t to compensate actual victims of slavery and prejudice.
It’s social engineering – equity on steroids.
Reparations advocates Linda Bilmes and Cornell William Brooks of Harvard’s Kennedy School argue payments are needed to close the wealth gap between whites and Blacks.
Tulsa reparations advocates urge cash payments, because household income there is 75% higher for white residents.
Instead of a confiscatory reparations scheme, how about a jobs program?
In New York, New School professor Darrick Hamilton seemed to have the racial wealth gap in mind at the first meeting of the state’s Community Commission on Reparations.
“The gross inequities that exist today are not the result of inadequate people,” Hamilton declared.
In other words, New Yorkers, hold on to your wallets.
Closing the racial wealth gap by taking from some to give to others is not a legitimate role of government.
Moreover, there isn’t enough money in state and local coffers.
San Francisco’s reparations task force proposed a whopping one-time $5 million payment to each black resident, expressly to erase wealth disparities. Mayor London Breed shut down the preposterous $100 billion effort.
Duke economist William Darity argues that because states and cities can’t afford the $12 trillion he estimates it would take to close the racial wealth gap nationally, Congress should do it.
The Democratic National Committee platform, adopted Aug. 16, calls on Congress to enact a bill that would study federal reparations.
Would a President Harris sign a reparations bill into law? We need to know.
– Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths
torontosun.com
Is Kamala Harris backing these giveaways?
Author of the article:Betsy McCaughey
Published Sep 21, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 3 minute read
New York’s City Council voted Thursday to launch a reparations task force, which could lead to calls for billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded payouts to compensate for the impact of slavery and past injustices.
Gotham joins dozens of municipalities, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Evanston, Illinois, as well as three states – California, Illinois and most recently New York state – in considering race-based reparations.
The Democratic Party is pushing the idea. At one time, so did Vice President Kamala Harris.
As a candidate in the Democratic primary for president in 2019, she endorsed “some form of reparations,” cosponsored a federal bill to study race-based reparations, and promised Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network that as president she would sign a reparations study bill into law.
That was then. Now Harris’ campaign declines to say where she stands.
Does she want us to be “unburdened by what has been”?
Americans agree that slavery and Jim Crow were abhorrent parts of our nation’s past.
But this steamrolling movement for race-based reparations locally, statewide and nationally is bad news.
Instead of healing racial tensions, it threatens to raise false expectations of big payouts and provoke resentments.
Reparations for actual victims is good. President Ronald Reagan established $20,000 payments for the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated by our government during World War II – but only for those imprisoned, not their descendants.
Similarly, the German government still pays reparations to Holocaust survivors but not to their descendants.
In contrast, U.S. race reparations force people who had no part in slavery to hand over money to people who were not themselves enslaved.
As New York City Council member David Carr, who voted against a reparations task force, explained on X, “No one currently living in our city had anything to do with the evils of slavery & the vast majority of New Yorkers are descendants of immigrants who came after it was abolished.”
Reparations is divisive – and likely to cause real anger among those forced to pay. In America, we don’t punish people for the crimes of their ancestors.
Pew Research found that 80% of white Americans are opposed to the concept, while 77% of Black Americans support it.
“I’ll move before I’ll pay,” said City Council Minority Leader Joseph Borelli.
Race reparations also violate the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal treatment of citizens regardless of race.
Evanston, Illinois, has paid out $5 million to 203 Black residents, supposedly to make up for historic housing discrimination. Anyone who is Black and resided in Evanston between 1919 and 1969, or had ancestors who did, is eligible – without having to prove they were actually wronged.
Judicial Watch, a constitutional advocacy group, is suing on behalf of six non-Black Evanston residents. Tom Fitton, the group’s president, calls the race-based payments “nothing more than a ploy to redistribute tax dollars to individuals based on race.”
That’s right. The goal isn’t to compensate actual victims of slavery and prejudice.
It’s social engineering – equity on steroids.
Reparations advocates Linda Bilmes and Cornell William Brooks of Harvard’s Kennedy School argue payments are needed to close the wealth gap between whites and Blacks.
Tulsa reparations advocates urge cash payments, because household income there is 75% higher for white residents.
Instead of a confiscatory reparations scheme, how about a jobs program?
In New York, New School professor Darrick Hamilton seemed to have the racial wealth gap in mind at the first meeting of the state’s Community Commission on Reparations.
“The gross inequities that exist today are not the result of inadequate people,” Hamilton declared.
In other words, New Yorkers, hold on to your wallets.
Closing the racial wealth gap by taking from some to give to others is not a legitimate role of government.
Moreover, there isn’t enough money in state and local coffers.
San Francisco’s reparations task force proposed a whopping one-time $5 million payment to each black resident, expressly to erase wealth disparities. Mayor London Breed shut down the preposterous $100 billion effort.
Duke economist William Darity argues that because states and cities can’t afford the $12 trillion he estimates it would take to close the racial wealth gap nationally, Congress should do it.
The Democratic National Committee platform, adopted Aug. 16, calls on Congress to enact a bill that would study federal reparations.
Would a President Harris sign a reparations bill into law? We need to know.
– Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths
MCCAUGHEY: Reparations are unconstitutional and divisive
New York's City Council voted Thursday to launch a reparations task force, which could lead to calls for billions of dollars in payouts.
Missouri governor, state Supreme Court refuse to halt the execution of man convicted of 1998 killing
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
David A. Lieb And Jim Salter
Published Sep 23, 2024 • 5 minute read
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man seeking to avoid execution suffered dual setbacks Monday as the state’s top court and governor each rejected requests to cancel his scheduled lethal injection.
Marcellus Williams is set to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, on Monday rejected Williams’ clemency request to spare him from the death penalty and instead sentence him to life in prison. Parson, a former sheriff, has been in office for 11 executions, and has never granted clemency.
The Missouri Supreme Court also on Monday rejected a request to cancel the execution so that a lower court could make a new determination about whether a trial prosecutor wrongly excluded a potential Black juror for racial reasons.
Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office argued for the execution to proceed, telling the state Supreme Court that the trial prosecutor denied any racial motivations in removing potential Black jurors. Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane also said officials in the prosecutor’s office did nothing improper — based on procedures at the time — by touching the murder weapon without gloves after it already had been tested by a crime lab.
Attorneys for Williams still have an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Williams, 55, has asserted his innocence. But his attorney did not pursue that claim Monday before the state’s highest court, instead focusing on alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon.
The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, affirmed a lower court ruling rejecting Williams’ arguments.
“Despite nearly a quarter century of litigation in both state and federal courts, there is no credible evidence of actual innocence or any showing of a constitutional error undermining confidence in the original judgment,” Judge Zel Fischer wrote in the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Parson said Williams has received extensive legal opportunities to try to argue his innocence and accused Williams’ attorneys of trying to “muddy the waters about DNA evidence” with claims that courts have repeatedly rejected.
“Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence,” Parson said in a statement. “As such, Mr. Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”
Messages were left with Williams’ attorneys at the Midwest Innocence Project, and with Bailey’s office.
“Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said in a statement. “As the St. Louis County prosecutor, our office has questions about Mr. Williams guilt, but also about the integrity of his conviction. For those reasons we will continue to do everything in our power to save his life.”
The execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.
Williams was less than a week away from execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.
He was just hours away from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after reviewing DNA evidence that found no trace of Williams’ DNA on the knife used in the killing. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case, but that panel never reached a conclusion.
Questions about DNA evidence also led Democratic St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that the DNA evidence was spoiled because members of the prosecutor’s office touched the knife without gloves before the original trial.
With the DNA evidence unavailable, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.
Judge Bruce Hilton signed off on the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at Bailey’s urging, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place Aug. 28.
Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that his arguments all had been previously rejected.
“There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent, and no court has made such a finding,” Hilton wrote.
On Tuesday, Williams’ attorney argued that circumstances are different, because the trial prosecutor had not previously been questioned in court by Williams’ attorney about the reason he removed a specific juror.
The prosecutor in the 2001 first-degree murder case, Keith Larner, testified at the August hearing that the trial jury was fair, even though it included just one Black member on the panel. Larner said he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams. He didn’t explain why he felt that mattered.
The clemency petition from the Midwest Innocence Project focused heavily on how Gayle’s relatives want the sentence commuted to life without parole.
Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop computer were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
David A. Lieb And Jim Salter
Published Sep 23, 2024 • 5 minute read
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man seeking to avoid execution suffered dual setbacks Monday as the state’s top court and governor each rejected requests to cancel his scheduled lethal injection.
Marcellus Williams is set to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, on Monday rejected Williams’ clemency request to spare him from the death penalty and instead sentence him to life in prison. Parson, a former sheriff, has been in office for 11 executions, and has never granted clemency.
The Missouri Supreme Court also on Monday rejected a request to cancel the execution so that a lower court could make a new determination about whether a trial prosecutor wrongly excluded a potential Black juror for racial reasons.
Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office argued for the execution to proceed, telling the state Supreme Court that the trial prosecutor denied any racial motivations in removing potential Black jurors. Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane also said officials in the prosecutor’s office did nothing improper — based on procedures at the time — by touching the murder weapon without gloves after it already had been tested by a crime lab.
Attorneys for Williams still have an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Williams, 55, has asserted his innocence. But his attorney did not pursue that claim Monday before the state’s highest court, instead focusing on alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon.
The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, affirmed a lower court ruling rejecting Williams’ arguments.
“Despite nearly a quarter century of litigation in both state and federal courts, there is no credible evidence of actual innocence or any showing of a constitutional error undermining confidence in the original judgment,” Judge Zel Fischer wrote in the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Parson said Williams has received extensive legal opportunities to try to argue his innocence and accused Williams’ attorneys of trying to “muddy the waters about DNA evidence” with claims that courts have repeatedly rejected.
“Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence,” Parson said in a statement. “As such, Mr. Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”
Messages were left with Williams’ attorneys at the Midwest Innocence Project, and with Bailey’s office.
“Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said in a statement. “As the St. Louis County prosecutor, our office has questions about Mr. Williams guilt, but also about the integrity of his conviction. For those reasons we will continue to do everything in our power to save his life.”
The execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.
Williams was less than a week away from execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.
He was just hours away from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after reviewing DNA evidence that found no trace of Williams’ DNA on the knife used in the killing. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case, but that panel never reached a conclusion.
Questions about DNA evidence also led Democratic St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that the DNA evidence was spoiled because members of the prosecutor’s office touched the knife without gloves before the original trial.
With the DNA evidence unavailable, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.
Judge Bruce Hilton signed off on the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at Bailey’s urging, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place Aug. 28.
Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that his arguments all had been previously rejected.
“There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent, and no court has made such a finding,” Hilton wrote.
On Tuesday, Williams’ attorney argued that circumstances are different, because the trial prosecutor had not previously been questioned in court by Williams’ attorney about the reason he removed a specific juror.
The prosecutor in the 2001 first-degree murder case, Keith Larner, testified at the August hearing that the trial jury was fair, even though it included just one Black member on the panel. Larner said he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams. He didn’t explain why he felt that mattered.
The clemency petition from the Midwest Innocence Project focused heavily on how Gayle’s relatives want the sentence commuted to life without parole.
Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop computer were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward.
Missouri governor, state Supreme Court refuse to halt the execution of man convicted of 1998 killing
Marcellus Williams is set to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle.
Well, he's been executed.
Among those who were arguing against it was the prosecutor who convicted him. But I guess the State of Misery was just hankering for a dead Black guy.
Among those who were arguing against it was the prosecutor who convicted him. But I guess the State of Misery was just hankering for a dead Black guy.
Missouri executes a man for the 1998 killing of a woman despite her family’s calls to spare his lifeblack deaths matter
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
David A. Lieb And Jim Salter
Published Sep 24, 2024 • 4 minute read
BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for breaking into a woman’s home and killing her, despite calls by her family and the prosecutor’s office that put him on death row to let him serve out the rest of his life in prison.
Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, who was repeatedly stabbed during the burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.
Williams’ hopes of having his sentence commuted to life in prison suffered dual setbacks Monday when, almost simultaneously, Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied him clemency and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to grant him a stay of execution. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Tuesday.
Williams was put to death despite questions his attorneys raised over jury selection at his trial and the handling of evidence in the case. His clemency petition focused heavily on how Gayle’s relatives wanted Williams’ sentence commuted to life without the possibility of parole.
“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the petition stated. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”
Last month, Gayle’s relatives gave their blessings to an agreement between the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office and Williams’ attorneys to commute the sentence to life in prison. But acting on an appeal from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s Office, the state Supreme Court nullified the agreement.
Williams was among death row inmates in five states who were scheduled to be put to death in the span of a week — an unusually high number that defies a yearslong decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S. The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. Texas was also slated to execute a prisoner on Tuesday evening.
Gayle, 42, was a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Prosecutors at Williams’trial said he broke into her home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard the shower running and found a large butcher knife. Gayle was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. His girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. She said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward. They said that fingerprints, a bloody shoeprint, hair and other evidence at the crime scene didn’t match Williams’.
A crime scene investigator had testified the killer wore gloves.
Tuesday marked the third time Williams had faced execution. He was less than a week away from lethal injection in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.
Williams was hours from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.
Questions about DNA evidence also led St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.
Without DNA evidence pointing to any alternative suspect, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole. A no-contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purpose of sentencing.
Judge Bruce Hilton signed off, as did Gayle’s family. But Bailey appealed, and the state Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place last month.
Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments all had been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.
Attorneys for Williams, who was Black, also challenged the fairness of his trial, particularly the fact that only one of the 12 jurors was Black. Tricia Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said the prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, removed six of seven Black prospective jurors.
Larner testified at the August hearing that he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement that Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.
Larner contended that the jury selection process was fair.
Williams was the third Missouri inmate put to death this year and the 100th since the state resumed use of the death penalty in 1989.
Missouri executes a man for the 1998 killing of a woman despite her family’s calls to spare his life
Despite her family’s calls to spare his life.
A Black student punished for his hairstyle wants to return to the Texas school he left
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Juan A. Lozano
Published Sep 25, 2024 • 3 minute read
HOUSTON (AP) — A Black high school student in Texas who was punished for nearly all of his junior year over his hairstyle has left his school district rather than spend another year of in-school suspension, according to his attorney.
But Darryl George, 18, would like to return to his Houston-area high school in the Barbers Hill school district for his senior year and has asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would prevent district officials from further punishing him for not cutting his hair. It would allow him to return to school while a federal lawsuit he filed proceeds.
George’s request comes after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown in August dismissed most of the claims the student and his mother had filed in the federal lawsuit alleging school district officials committed racial and gender discrimination when they punished him.
The judge only let the gender discrimination claim stand and questioned whether the school district’s hair length rule causes more harm than good.
“Judge Brown please help us so that I can attend school like a normal teenage student during the pendency of this litigation,” George said in an affidavit filed last month.
Brown has scheduled an Oct. 3 court hearing in Galveston on George’s request.
In court documents filed last week, attorneys for the school district said the judge does not have jurisdiction to issue the restraining order because George is no longer a student in the district.
“And George’s withdrawal from the district does not deprive him of standing to seek past damages, although the district maintains that George has not suffered a constitutional injury and is not entitled to recover damages,” attorneys for the school district said.
The district defends its dress code, which says its policies for students are meant to “teach grooming and hygiene, instill discipline, prevent disruption, avoid safety hazards and teach respect for authority.”
In court documents filed last week, Allie Booker, one of George’s attorneys, said the student was “forced to unenroll” from Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu and transfer to another high school in a different Houston area district because Barbers Hill officials placed him on in-school suspension on the first and second day of the new school year, which began last month.
This “caused him significant emotional distress, ultimately leading to a nervous breakdown. As a result, we had no choice but to remove him from the school environment,” Booker said.
George’s departure “was not a matter of choice but of survival” but he wishes to return, as his mother moved to the area because of the quality of the district’s schools, Booker said.
George was kept out of his regular high school classes for most of the 2023-24 school year, when he was a junior, because the school district said his hair length violated its dress code. George was forced to either serve in-school suspension or spend time at an off-site disciplinary program.
The district has argued that George’s long hair, which he wears to school in tied and twisted locs on top of his head, violates its policy because if let down, it would fall below his shirt collar, eyebrows or earlobes. The district has said other students with locs comply with the length policy.
George’s federal lawsuit also alleged that his punishment violates the CROWN Act, a recent state law prohibiting race-based discrimination of hair. The CROWN Act, which was being discussed before the dispute over George’s hair and which took effect in September 2023, bars employers and schools from penalizing people because of hair texture or protective hairstyles including Afros, braids, locs, twists or Bantu knots.
In February, a state judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by the school district that its punishment does not violate the CROWN Act.
Barbers Hill’s hair policy was also challenged in a May 2020 federal lawsuit filed by two other students. Both withdrew from the high school, but one returned after a federal judge granted a temporary injunction, saying there was “a substantial likelihood” that his rights to free speech and to be free from racial discrimination would be violated if he was barred. That lawsuit is still pending.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Juan A. Lozano
Published Sep 25, 2024 • 3 minute read
HOUSTON (AP) — A Black high school student in Texas who was punished for nearly all of his junior year over his hairstyle has left his school district rather than spend another year of in-school suspension, according to his attorney.
But Darryl George, 18, would like to return to his Houston-area high school in the Barbers Hill school district for his senior year and has asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would prevent district officials from further punishing him for not cutting his hair. It would allow him to return to school while a federal lawsuit he filed proceeds.
George’s request comes after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown in August dismissed most of the claims the student and his mother had filed in the federal lawsuit alleging school district officials committed racial and gender discrimination when they punished him.
The judge only let the gender discrimination claim stand and questioned whether the school district’s hair length rule causes more harm than good.
“Judge Brown please help us so that I can attend school like a normal teenage student during the pendency of this litigation,” George said in an affidavit filed last month.
Brown has scheduled an Oct. 3 court hearing in Galveston on George’s request.
In court documents filed last week, attorneys for the school district said the judge does not have jurisdiction to issue the restraining order because George is no longer a student in the district.
“And George’s withdrawal from the district does not deprive him of standing to seek past damages, although the district maintains that George has not suffered a constitutional injury and is not entitled to recover damages,” attorneys for the school district said.
The district defends its dress code, which says its policies for students are meant to “teach grooming and hygiene, instill discipline, prevent disruption, avoid safety hazards and teach respect for authority.”
In court documents filed last week, Allie Booker, one of George’s attorneys, said the student was “forced to unenroll” from Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu and transfer to another high school in a different Houston area district because Barbers Hill officials placed him on in-school suspension on the first and second day of the new school year, which began last month.
This “caused him significant emotional distress, ultimately leading to a nervous breakdown. As a result, we had no choice but to remove him from the school environment,” Booker said.
George’s departure “was not a matter of choice but of survival” but he wishes to return, as his mother moved to the area because of the quality of the district’s schools, Booker said.
George was kept out of his regular high school classes for most of the 2023-24 school year, when he was a junior, because the school district said his hair length violated its dress code. George was forced to either serve in-school suspension or spend time at an off-site disciplinary program.
The district has argued that George’s long hair, which he wears to school in tied and twisted locs on top of his head, violates its policy because if let down, it would fall below his shirt collar, eyebrows or earlobes. The district has said other students with locs comply with the length policy.
George’s federal lawsuit also alleged that his punishment violates the CROWN Act, a recent state law prohibiting race-based discrimination of hair. The CROWN Act, which was being discussed before the dispute over George’s hair and which took effect in September 2023, bars employers and schools from penalizing people because of hair texture or protective hairstyles including Afros, braids, locs, twists or Bantu knots.
In February, a state judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by the school district that its punishment does not violate the CROWN Act.
Barbers Hill’s hair policy was also challenged in a May 2020 federal lawsuit filed by two other students. Both withdrew from the high school, but one returned after a federal judge granted a temporary injunction, saying there was “a substantial likelihood” that his rights to free speech and to be free from racial discrimination would be violated if he was barred. That lawsuit is still pending.
A Black student punished for his hairstyle wants to return to the Texas school he left
Brown has scheduled an Oct. 3 court hearing in Galveston on George's request.
Court revives lawsuit of Black pastor arrested while watering neighbour’s flowers
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Safiyah Riddle
Published Sep 27, 2024 • 2 minute read
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The police officers who arrested a Black pastor while he watered his neighbour’s plants can be sued, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, reversing a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss the pastor’s lawsuit.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the three officers who arrested Michael Jennings in Childersburg, Alabama, lacked probable cause for the arrest and are therefore not shielded by qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity protects officers from civil liability while performing their duties as long as their actions don’t violate clearly established law or constitutional rights which they should have known about.
Jennings was arrested in May 2022 after a white neighbour reported him to police as he was watering his friend’s garden while they were out of town. The responding officers said they arrested Jennings because he refused to provide a physical ID. Body camera footage shows that the man repeatedly told officers he was “Pastor Jennings” and that he lived across the street.
Attorneys for Jennings argued that the footage shows that the officers decided to arrest Jennings without probable cause “less than five minutes after” they arrived.
“This is a win for Pastor Jennings and a win for justice. The video speaks for itself,” said Harry Daniels, the lead attorney for Jennings. “Finally, Pastor Jennings will have his day in court and prove that wearing a badge does not give you the right to break the law.”
Attorneys representing the officers involved, as well as the city of Childersburg, did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Friday.
In December, Chief District Judge R. David Proctor had dismissed the case against the officers on the basis of qualified immunity.
Alabama law states officers have a right to request the name, address and explanation of a person in a public place if he “reasonably suspects” that person is committing or about to commit a crime, but an officer does not have a legal right to demand physical identification, the 11th circuit court decision said.
Jennings was arrested on a charge of obstructing government operations. Those charges were dismissed within days at the request of the police chief. The pastor then filed a lawsuit a few months later, saying the ordeal violated his constitutional rights and caused lingering problems including emotional distress and anxiety.
Daniels, the lead attorney for Jennings, said that the decision could affect other ongoing civil rights cases across the state.
“This has major implications for anyone who has been subjected to unlawful arrest because they wouldn’t give their ID,” said Daniels.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Safiyah Riddle
Published Sep 27, 2024 • 2 minute read
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The police officers who arrested a Black pastor while he watered his neighbour’s plants can be sued, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, reversing a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss the pastor’s lawsuit.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the three officers who arrested Michael Jennings in Childersburg, Alabama, lacked probable cause for the arrest and are therefore not shielded by qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity protects officers from civil liability while performing their duties as long as their actions don’t violate clearly established law or constitutional rights which they should have known about.
Jennings was arrested in May 2022 after a white neighbour reported him to police as he was watering his friend’s garden while they were out of town. The responding officers said they arrested Jennings because he refused to provide a physical ID. Body camera footage shows that the man repeatedly told officers he was “Pastor Jennings” and that he lived across the street.
Attorneys for Jennings argued that the footage shows that the officers decided to arrest Jennings without probable cause “less than five minutes after” they arrived.
“This is a win for Pastor Jennings and a win for justice. The video speaks for itself,” said Harry Daniels, the lead attorney for Jennings. “Finally, Pastor Jennings will have his day in court and prove that wearing a badge does not give you the right to break the law.”
Attorneys representing the officers involved, as well as the city of Childersburg, did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Friday.
In December, Chief District Judge R. David Proctor had dismissed the case against the officers on the basis of qualified immunity.
Alabama law states officers have a right to request the name, address and explanation of a person in a public place if he “reasonably suspects” that person is committing or about to commit a crime, but an officer does not have a legal right to demand physical identification, the 11th circuit court decision said.
Jennings was arrested on a charge of obstructing government operations. Those charges were dismissed within days at the request of the police chief. The pastor then filed a lawsuit a few months later, saying the ordeal violated his constitutional rights and caused lingering problems including emotional distress and anxiety.
Daniels, the lead attorney for Jennings, said that the decision could affect other ongoing civil rights cases across the state.
“This has major implications for anyone who has been subjected to unlawful arrest because they wouldn’t give their ID,” said Daniels.
Court revives lawsuit of Black pastor arrested while watering neighbour’s flowers
The police officers who arrested a Black pastor while he watered his neighbor's plants can be sued, a federal appeals court ruled