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Saturday, March 31, 2018

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 2018




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"March For Our Lives" Photo Taken March 24, 2018 San Francisco Civic Center

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JOINING FORCES AGAINST POLICING AND JAILS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
A Summit to fight the Prison Industrial Complex

Saturday April 7th, 10am - 3pm
City College, Mission Campus
1125 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

RSVP today. Space limited!
Facebook to stay updated and spread the word!

DOWNLOAD A PRINTABLE FLYER

Hosted by the No New SF Jail coalition, this event will bring together organizational partners and community activists working to stop the violence of the prison industrial complex in San Francisco. Summit presenters and participants will discuss interrelated topics such as jail construction, gang injunctions, justice for community members murdered by police, tasers, bail reform, increased policing on our streets, and more. Interactive workshops, trainings, and panel discussions will allow for participants to share information and strategize between campaigns. Our goal is to strengthen connections between our organizations and efforts in order to better address the interlocking impacts of imprisonment, policing, surveillance, courts, and prosecution in San Francisco. Join us!

Lunch provided. Donations accepted.

Current Sponsors Include: Asian Law Caucus, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Communities United Against Violence, Oakland Power Projects, DSA - Justice Committee, American Friends Service Committee, Critical Resistance Oakland, Californians United for a Responsible Budget.

Accessibility: Venue will be wheelchair accessible. Childcare and interpretation provided upon request, please contact us regarding this and other accessibility needs by March 31st.

Sponsorship: Would your organization like to join as a sponsor? Please contact us and fill out this quick survey.

Contact: nosfjail@curbprisonsp ending.org - 5104440484 - http s://nonewsfjail.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________
News mailing list
News@womenprisoners.org
http://womenprisoners.org/mailman/listinfo/news_womenprisoners.org 

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Cindy Sheehan and the Women's March on the Pentagon

A movement not just a protest

By Whitney Webb
WASHINGTON—In the last few years, arguably the most visible and well-publicized march on the U.S. capital has been the "Women's March," a movement aimed at advocating for legislation and policies promoting women's rights as well as a protest against the misogynistic actions and statements of high-profile U.S. politicians. The second Women's March, which took place this past year, attracted over a million protesters nationwide, with 500,000 estimated to have participated in Los Angeles alone.
However, absent from this women's movement has been a public antiwar voice, as its stated goal of "ending violence" does not include violence produced by the state. The absence of this voice seemed both odd and troubling to legendary peace activist Cindy Sheehan, whose iconic protest against the invasion and occupation of Iraq made her a household name for many.
Sheehan was taken aback by how some prominent organizers of this year's Women's March were unwilling to express antiwar positions and argued for excluding the issue of peace entirely from the event and movement as a whole. In an interview with MintPress, Sheehan recounted how a prominent leader of the march had told her, "I appreciate that war is your issue Cindy, but the Women's March will never address the war issue as long as women aren't free."
War is indeed Sheehan's issue and she has been fighting against the U.S.' penchant for war for nearly 13 years. After her son Casey was killed in action while serving in Iraq in 2004, Sheehan drew international media attention for her extended protest in front of the Bush residence in Crawford, Texas, which later served as the launching point for many protests against U.S. military action in Iraq.
Sheehan rejected the notion that women could be "free" without addressing war and empire. She countered the dismissive comment of the march organizer by stating that divorcing peace activism from women's issues "ignored the voices of the women of the world who are being bombed and oppressed by U.S. military occupation."
Indeed, women are directly impacted by war—whether through displacement, the destruction of their homes, kidnapping, or torture. Women also suffer uniquely and differently from men in war as armed conflicts often result in an increase in sexual violence against women.
For example, of the estimated half-a-million civilians killed in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, many of them were women and children. In the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, the number of female casualties has been rising on average over 20 percent every year since 2015. In 2014 alone when Israel attacked Gaza in "Operation Protective Edge," Israeli forces, which receives $10 million in U.S. military aid every day, killed over two thousand Palestinians—half of them were women and children. Many of the casualties were pregnant women, who had been deliberately targeted.
Given the Women's March's apparent rejection of peace activism in its official platform, Sheehan was inspired to organize another Women's March that would address what many women's rights advocates, including Sheehan, believe to be an issue central to promoting women's rights.
Dubbed the "Women's March on the Pentagon," the event is scheduled to take place on October 21—the same date as an iconic antiwar march of the Vietnam era—with a mission aimed at countering the "bipartisan war machine." Though men, women and children are encouraged to attend, the march seeks to highlight women's issues as they relate to the disastrous consequences of war.
The effort of women in confronting the "war machine" will be highlighted at the event, as Sheehan remarked that "women have always tried to confront the war-makers," as the mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of the men and women in the military, as well as those innocent civilians killed in the U.S.' foreign wars. As a result, the push for change needs to come from women, according to Sheehan, because "we [women] are the only ones that can affect [the situation] in a positive way." All that's missing is an organized, antiwar women's movement.
Sheehan noted the march will seek to highlight the direct relationship between peace activism and women's rights, since "no woman is free until all women are free" and such "freedom also includes the freedom from U.S. imperial plunder, murder and aggression" that is part of the daily lives of women living both within and beyond the United States. Raising awareness of how the military-industrial complex negatively affects women everywhere is key, says Sheehan, as "unless there is a sense of international solidarity and a broader base for feminism, then there aren't going to be any solutions to any problems, [certainly not] if we don't stop giving trillions of dollars to the Pentagon."
Sheehan also urged that, even though U.S. military adventurism has long been an issue and the subject of protests, a march to confront the military-industrial complex is more important now than ever: "I'm not alarmist by nature but I feel like the threat of nuclear annihilation is much closer than it has been for a long time," adding that, despite the assertion of some in the current administration and U.S. military, "there is no such thing as 'limited' nuclear war." This makes "the need to get out in massive numbers" and march against this more imperative than ever.
Sheehan also noted that Trump's presidency has helped to make the Pentagon's influence on U.S. politics more obvious by bringing it to the forefront: "Even though militarism had been under wraps [under previous presidents], Trump has made very obvious the fact that he has given control of foreign policy to the 'generals.'"
Indeed, as MintPress has reported on several occasions, the Pentagon—beginning in March of last year—has been given the freedom to "engage the enemy" at will, without the oversight of the executive branch or Congress. As a result, the deaths of innocent civilians abroad as a consequence of U.S. military action has spiked. While opposing Trump is not the focus of the march, Sheehan opined that Trump's war-powers giveaway to the Pentagon, as well as his unpopularity, have helped to spark widespread interest in the event.

Different wings of the same warbird

Sheehan has rejected accusations that the march is partisan, as it is, by nature, focused on confronting the bipartisan nature of the military-industrial complex. She told MintPress that she has recently come under pressure owing to the march's proximity to the 2018 midterm elections—as some have ironically accused the march's bipartisan focus as "trying to harm the chances of the Democrats" in the ensuing electoral contest.
In response, Sheehan stated that: 
"Democrats and Republicans are different wings of the same warbird. We are protesting militarism and imperialism. The march is nonpartisan in nature because both parties are equally complicit. We have to end wars for the planet and for the future. I could really care less who wins in November."
She also noted that even when the Democrats were in power under Obama, nothing was done to change the government's militarism nor to address the host of issues that events like the Women's March have claimed to champion.
"We just got finished with eight years of a Democratic regime," Sheehan told MintPress. "For two of those years, they had complete control of Congress and the presidency and a [filibuster-proof] majority in the Senate and they did nothing" productive except to help "expand the war machine." She also emphasized that this march is in no way a "get out the vote" march for any political party.
Even though planning began less than a month ago, support has been pouring in for the march since it was first announced on Sheehan's website, Cindy Sheehan Soapbox. Encouraged by the amount of interest already received, Sheehan is busy working with activists to organize the events and will be taking her first organizing trip to the east coast in April of this year. 
In addition, those who are unable to travel to Washington are encouraged to participate in any number of solidarity protests that will be planned to take place around the world or to plan and attend rallies in front of U.S. embassies, military installations, and the corporate headquarters of war profiteers.
Early endorsers of the event include journalists Abby Martin, Mnar Muhawesh and Margaret Kimberley; Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly; FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley; and U.S. politicians like former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Activist groups that have pledged their support include CodePink, United National Antiwar Coalition, Answer Coalition, Women's EcoPeace and World Beyond War.
Though October is eight months away, Sheehan has high hopes for the march. More than anything else, though, she hopes that the event will give birth to a "real revolutionary women's movement that recognizes the emancipation and liberation of all peoples—and that means [freeing] all people from war and empire, which is the biggest crime against humanity and against this planet." By building "a movement and not just a protest," the event's impact will not only be long-lasting, but grow into a force that could meaningfully challenge the U.S. military-industrial complex that threatens us all. God knows the world needs it.
For those eager to help the march, you can help spread the word through social media by joining the march's Facebook page or following the march's Twitter account, as well as by word of mouth. In addition, supporting independent media outlets—such as MintPress, which will be reporting on the march—can help keep you and others informed as October approaches.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, and 21st Century Wire among others. She currently lives in Southern Chile.
—MPN News, February 20, 2018
https://www.mintpressnews.com/cindy-sheehan-and-the-womens-march-on-the-pentagon-a-movement-not-just-a-protest/237835/

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April 1-7: DRONE RESISTANCE WEEK at CREECH AFB
Mark your calendar:  Sept. 30-Oct. 6, SHUT DOWN CREECH: 
Mass Mobilization to STOP KILLER DRONES.


Join CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, and other activists for a week of resistance in the "killer drone fields" of Creech Air Force Base!

With this week's 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, where the U.S. military slaughtered over 500 villagers in Vietnam, it is a time to reflect.  The U.S. Killer Drone Program is as covert as ever, but continues to brutally kill people in the poorest communities of the world, as the they go about their daily lives, driving on a road, praying in a mosque, eating with their family, studying in school, attending a wedding party or funeral.  The ongoing U.S. drone attacks represent modern day mini-My Lai massacres…relentless and barbaric, "hunting" people who have no ability to defend themselves.  

As we approach the 50th anniversary of Martin L. King Jr.'s assassination, April 4, I am reminded of his words of truth:  "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world:  my own country..."  Sadly, it has only gotten worse.  We refuse to adapt to it.

Join us for all or part of the week of peaceful nonviolent resistance.  
Stay in the Goddess Temple guest house or bring your tent and gear and sleep under the beautiful Nevada desert skies.  Collaborate with activists, and join our daily am & pm vigils during rush hour commute, when thousands of military flood into and out of Creech AFB, a key command center of the U.S. killer drone program.  The day hours between vigils allow opportunities for desert walks, camaraderie with other peacemakers, and nature retreats in the beautiful desert….an opportunity for replenishing our souls and brainstorming inspirations for resistance.


Not too late to join us, and hope to see you there!

Maggie, Eleanor, Cecile, Ann Wright, GG, Michael Kerr, Pamela, Mary Dean, Renay, Susan Witka, and Toby



It is so beautiful to see young people in this country rising up to demand an end to gun violence. But what is Donald Trump's response? Instead of banning assault weapons, he wants to give guns to teachers and militarize our schools. But one of the reasons for mass school shootings is precisely because our schools are already militarized. Florida shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was trained by U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program while he was in high school.
Yesterday, Divest from the War Machine coalition member, Pat Elder, was featured on Democracy Now discussing his recent article about the JROTC in our schools. The JROTC teaches children how to shoot weapons. It is often taught by retired soldiers who have no background in teaching. They are allowed to teach classes that are given at least equal weight as classes taught by certified and trained teachers. We are pulling our children away from classes that expand their minds and putting them in classes that teach them how to be killing machines. The JROTC program costs our schools money. It sends equipment. But, the instructors and facilities must be constructed and paid for by the school.
The JROTC puts our children's futures at risk. Children who participate in JROTC shooting programs are exposed to lead bullets from guns. They are at an increased risk when the shooting ranges are inside. The JROTC program is designed to "put a jump start on your military career." Children are funneled into JROTC to make them compliant and to feed the military with young bodies which are prepared to be assimilated into the war machine. Instead of funneling children into the military, we should be channeling them into jobs that support peace and sustainable development. 
Tell Senator McCain and Representative Thornberry to take the war machine out of our schools! The JROTC program must end immediately. The money should be directed back into classrooms that educate our children.
The Divest from the War Machine campaign is working to remove our money from the hands of companies that make a killing on killing. We must take on the systems that keep fueling war, death, and destruction around the globe. AND, we must take on the systems that are creating an endless cycle of children who are being indoctrinated at vulnerable ages to become the next killing machine.  Don't forget to post this message on Facebook and Twitter.
Onward in divestment,
Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Jodie, Kelly, Kirsten, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Natasha, Paki, Sarah, Sophia and Tighe
P.S. Do you want to do more? Start a campaign to get the JROTC out of your school district or state. Email divest@codepink.org and we'll get you started!

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by Rachel Wolkenstein



 

Rally and March to Free Mumia
Saturday, April 28, 2018, 12:00 Noon
Oscar Grant Plaza, Oakland, CA

Other Regional and International Actions to Free Mumia
Detroit, Michigan: National Conference to Defeat Austerity, Saturday, March 24. 10:00 A.M.—5:00 P.M.  St. Matthew's—St. Joseph's Church, 8850 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48202. For more information: www.moratorium-mi.org
Houston, Texas: Banner Drop for Mumia, Monday, March 26, 5:30 P.M.—6:30 P.M.  Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement will do a banner drop over Houston's busiest freeway for Mumia, on Dunlavy Bridge, over Highway 59.
New York City: Break Down Walls and Prison Plantation: Mumia, Migrants and Movements for Liberation, Friday, March 23. 6:00 P.M. Community Supper 7:30 PM, Holyrood Episcopal Church, 715 179th Street, New York, NY 10033
Jericho Amnesty Movement 20th Anniversary, Saturday, March 24. Holyrood Episcopal Church, 715 W. 179th St, New York, NY, Dinner from 5:00 P.M.—6:00 P.M. Downstairs Program from 6:30 P.M.—9:00 P.M. in Sanctuary.
Sunday, March 25: March and Rally, Gather 12:00 P.M., U.S. Mission (799 UN Plaza: 1st Ave. and 45th St.), March 1:00 P.M., to Times Square for 2:00 P.M. Rally, Buses to Philadelphia: Leaving NYC March 27, 5:30 A.M. from 147 West 24 St. For information email info@freemumia.com or call 212-330-8029.
Vallejo, CA, Saturday, March 24: 1:00 P.M.—4:00 P.M., Vallejo JFK Library, 505 Santa Clara Street, Vallejo, CA 94590, Contact Info: New Jim Crow Movement (Vallejo), 707-652-8367, withjusticepeace@gmail.com
Toronto, Canada, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!, Saturday, March 24, 1:00 P.M., Across the street from the U.S. Consulate
360 University Avenue, march24freemumia@gmail.com 
Johannesburg, South Africa, Sunday, March 25, Freedom Park RDD, Poetry. Hip Hop. Kwaito. Drama. Local Organizer: Pastor Rev, Contact Info: +27 649 240514

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Support Herman Bell


Last week the New York State Board of Parole granted Herman Bell release. Since the Board's decision, there has been significant backlash from the Police Benevolent Association, other unions, Mayor De Blasio and Governor Cuomo. They are demanding that Herman be held indefinitely, the Parole Commissioners who voted for his release be fired, and that people convicted of killing police be left to die in prison.
We want the Governor, policymakers, and public to know that we strongly support the Parole Board's lawful, just and merciful decision. We also want to show support for the recent changes to the Board, including the appointment of new Commissioners and the direction of the new parole regulations, which base release decisions more on who a person is today and their accomplishments while in prison than on the nature of their crime.
Herman has a community of friends, family and loved ones eagerly awaiting his return. At 70 years old and after 45 years inside, it is time for Herman to come home.
Here are four things you can do RIGHT NOW to support Herman Bell:
1- CALL New York State Governor Cuomo's Office NOW
518-474-8390
2-EMAIL New York State Governor Cuomo's Office
https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form
3- TWEET at Governor Cuomo: use the following sample tweet:
"@NYGovCuomo: stand by the Parole Board's lawful & just decision to release Herman Bell. At 70 years old and after more than 40 years of incarceration, his release is overdue. #BringHermanHome."
4- Participate in a CBS poll and vote YES on the Parole Board's decision
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/…/herman-bell-parole-police-ou…/
The poll ends on March 21st. Please do this ASAP!
Script for phone calls and emails:
"Governor Cuomo, my name is __________and I am a resident of . I support the Parole Board's decision to release Herman Bell and urge you and the Board to stand by the decision. I also support the recent appointment of new Parole Board Commissioners, and the direction of the new parole regulations, which base release decisions more on who a person is today than on the nature of their crime committed years ago. Returning Herman to his friends and family will help the heal the many harms caused by crime and decades of incarceration. The Board's decision was just, merciful and lawful, and it will benefit our communities and New York State as a whole."
Thank you for your support and contributions.
With gratitude,
Supporters of Herman Bell and Parole Justice New York

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Tell the Feds: End Draft Registration

This morning, in a small community college classroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a newly formed federal commission  scheduled its first public hearing on the future of draft registration in the United States. "The bipartisan, 11-member Commission was created by Congress to review the military selective service process," notes their press release. In addition to eight more (yet to be scheduled) public hearings across the United States over the next two years, the commission has invited feedback via a webform here.

Courage to Resist Podcast: The Future of Draft Registration in the United States

We had draft registration resister Edward Hasbrouck on the Courage to Resistpodcast this week to explain what's going on. Edward talks about his own history of going to prison for refusing to register for the draft in 1983, the background on this new federal commission, and he addresses liberal arguments in favor of involuntary service. Edward explains: 
When you say, "I'm not willing to be drafted", you're saying, "I'm going to make my own choices about which wars we should be fighting", and when you say, "You should submit to the draft", you're saying, "You should let the politicians decide for you."
What's happening right now is that a National Commission … has been appointed to study the question of whether draft registration should be continued, whether it should be expanded to make women, as well as men register for the draft, whether a draft itself should be started, whether there should be some other kind of Compulsory National Service enacted.
The Pentagon would say, and it's true, they don't want a draft. It's not plan A, but it's always been plan B, and it's always been the assumption that if we can't get enough volunteers, if we get in over our head, if we pick a larger fight than we can pursue, we always have that option in our back pocket that, "If not enough people volunteer, we're just going to go go to the draft, go to the benches, and dragoon enough people to fight these wars."
[This] is the first real meaningful opportunity for a national debate about the draft in decades.

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559

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Major George Tillery
A Case of Gross Prosecutorial Misconduct and Police Corruption
Sexual Favors and Hotel Rooms Provided by Police to Prosecution Fact Witness for Fabricated Testimony During Trial
By Nancy Lockhart, M.J.
August 24, 2016

Corruption in The State of Pennsylvania is being exposed with a multitude of public officials indicted by the US Attorney's office in 2015 and 2016.  A lengthy list of extortion, theft, and corruption in public service includes a former Solicitor, Treasurer and Veteran Police Officer  U.S. Department of Justice Corruption Prosecutions.  On Monday August 15, 2016 Pennsylvania State Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane was found guilty of all nine counts in a perjury and obstruction case related to a grand jury leak.  Pennsylvania's Attorney General Convicted On All Counts - New York Times
Although this is a small sampling of decades long corruption throughout the state of Pennsylvania, Major George Tillery has languished in prison over 31 years because of prosecutorial misconduct and police corruption. Tillery was tried and convicted in 1985 in a trial where prosecutors and police created a textbook criminal story for bogus convictions. William Franklin was charged as a co-conspirator in the shootings, he was tried and convicted in December of 1980, because he refused to lie on Tillery.  Franklin is 69 years old according to the PADOC website and has been in prison 36 years. 

Major Tillery Is Not Represented by an Attorney and Needs Your Assistance to Retain One. Donate to Major Tillery's Legal Defense FundMajor Tillery, PA DOC# AM9786, will turn 66-years-old on September 9, 2016 and has spent over three decades in prison for crimes he did not commit. Twenty of those 31 plus years were spent in solitary confinement. Tillery has endured many very serious medical issues and medical neglect.  Currently, he is plagued with serious illnesses that include hepatitis C, stubborn skin rashes, dangerous intestinal disorders and a degenerative hip. His orthopedic shoes were taken by prison administrators and never returned.

Tillery, was convicted of homicide, assault, weapons and conspiracy charges in 1985, for the poolroom shootings which left one man dead and another wounded. William Franklin was the pool room operator at the time. The shooting occurred on October 22, 1976.  
Falsified testimony was the only evidence presented during trial. No other evidence linked Tillery to the 1976 shootings, except for the testimony of two jailhouse informants. Both men swore that they had received no promises, agreements, or deals in exchange for their testimony. Barbra Christie, the trial prosecutor, insisted to the Court and Jury that these witnesses were not given any plea agreements or sentencing promises. That was untrue.

Newly discovered evidence is the sole basis for Tillery's latest Pro Se filing. According to the  Post Conviction Relief Petition Filed June 15, 2016, evidence proves that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania committed fraud on the Court and Jury which undermined the fundamentals of due process. The newly discovered evidence in sworn declarations is from two prosecution fact witnesses. Those two witnesses provided the entirety of trial evidence against Major Tillery. The declarations explain false testimonies manufactured by the prosecution with the assistance of police detectives/investigators. On August 19, 2016 Judge Leon Tucker filed a Notice of Intent to Dismiss Major's PCRA petition.  Notice to Dismiss

Emanuel Claitt Has Come Forth to Declare His Testimony as Manufactured and Fabricated by Police and Prosecutors. Claitt states that his testimony during trial was fabricated and coerced by Assistant District Attorney Barbara Christie, Detectives John Cimino and James McNeshy.  Claitt swore that he was promised a very favorable plea agreement and treatment in his pending criminal cases.  Claitt was granted sexual favors in exchange for his false testimony. Claitt states that he was allowed to have sex with four different women in the homicide interview rooms and in hotel rooms in exchange for his cooperation. 

Prosecution fact witness Emanuel Claitt states in his  Declaration of Emanuel Claitt, and Emanuel Claitt Supplemental Declaration that testimony against Major Tillery was fabricated, coerced and coached by Assistant District Attorney's Leonard Ross, Barbara Christie, and Roger King with the assistance of Detectives Larry Gerrad, Ernest Gilbert, and Lt. Bill Shelton.  Claitt was threatened with false murder charges as well as, given promises and agreements of favorable plea deals and sentencing. In exchange for his false testimony, many of Claitt's cases were not prosecuted. He received probation. Additionally, he was sentenced to a mere 18 months for fire bombing and was protected after his arrest between the time of Franklin's and Tillery's trials.  

Trial Lawyer Operated Under Actual Conflict of Interest. Tillery discovered that his trial lawyer, Joseph Santaguida, also represented the victim. In other words, the victim in this case was represented by trial lawyer Santaguida and Santaguida also represented Major Tillery.  The Commonwealth has concealed newly discovered evidence as well as, evidence which would have been favorable to Major Tillery in the criminal trial. That evidence would have exonerated him. In light of the new Declarations which prove manufactured testimony by prosecutors and police, Major Tillery needs legal representation. He is not currently represented by an attorney. 
Donate: Major Tillery's Legal Defense Fund: Click Here & Donate

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Art by Leonard Peltier

Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

By Leonard Peltier

I am overwhelmed that today, February 6, is the start of my 43rd year in prison. I have had such high hopes over the years that I might be getting out and returning to my family in North Dakota. And yet here I am in 2018 still struggling for my FREEDOM at 73.
I don't want to sound ungrateful to all my supporters who have stood by me through all these years. I dearly love and respect you and thank you for the love and respect you have given me.
But the truth is I am tired, and often my ailments cause me pain with little relief for days at a time. I just had heart surgery and I have other medical issues that need to be addressed: my aortic aneurysm that could burst at any time, my prostate, and arthritis in my hip and knees.
I do not think I have another ten years, and what I do have I would like to spend with my family. Nothing would bring me more happiness than being able to hug my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
I did not come to prison to become a political prisoner. I've been part of Native resistance since I was nine years of age. My sister, cousin and I were kidnapped and taken to boarding school. This incident and how it affected my cousin Pauline, had an enormous effect on me.
This same feeling haunts me as I reflect upon my past 42 years of false imprisonment. This false imprisonment has the same feeling as when I heard the false affidavit the FBI manufactured about Myrtle Poor Bear being at Oglala on the day of the fire-fight—a fabricated document used to extradite me illegally from Canada in 1976.
I know you know that the FBI files are full of information that proves my innocence. Yet many of those files are still withheld from my legal team. During my appeal before the 8th Circuit, former Prosecuting Attorney Lynn Crooks said to Judge Heaney: "Your honor, we do not know who killed those agents. Further, we don't know what participation, if any, Mr. Peltier had in it."
That statement exonerates me, and I should have been released. But here I sit, 43 years later still struggling for my freedom. I have pleaded my innocence for so long now, in so many courts of law, in so many public statements issued through the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, that I will not argue it here. But I will say again, I DID NOT KILL THOSE AGENTS!
Right now, I need my supporters here in the U.S. and throughout the world helping me. We need donations large or small to help pay my legal team to do the research that will get me back into court or get me moved closer to home or a compassionate release based on my poor health and age. Please help me to go home, help me win my freedom!
There is a new petition my Canadian brothers and sisters are circulating internationally that will be attached to my letter. Please sign it and download it so you can take it to your work, school or place of worship. Get as many signatures as you can, a MILLION would be great!
I have been a warrior since age nine. At 73, I remain a warrior. I have been here too long. The beginning of my 43rd year plus over 20 years of good time credit, that makes 60-plus years behind bars.
I need your help. I need your help today! A day in prison for me is a lifetime for those outside because I am isolated from the world.
I remain strong only because of your support, prayers, activism and your donations that keep my legal hope alive.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
Doksha,
Leonard Peltier
If you would like a paper petition, please email contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info.
—San Francisco Bay View, February 6, 2018
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132 
USP Coleman I 
P.O. Box 1033 
Coleman, FL 33521

Donations can be made on Leonard's behalf to the ILPD national office, 116 W. Osborne Ave, Tampa, FL 33603




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More Artwork by Kevin Cooper




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301 Days in Jail,
as of today.
Reality's trial
is now postponed 
until October 15th.


That's 500 Days in Jail,
Without Bail!
   

Whistleblower Reality Winner's trial has (again) been postponed.
Her new trial date is October 15, 2018, based on the new official proceedings schedule (fifth version). She will have spent 500 days jailed without bail by then. Today is day #301.
And her trial may likely be pushed back even further into the Spring of 2019.

We urge you to remain informed and engaged with our campaign until she is free! 


One supporter's excellent report
on the details of Winner's imprisonment

~Check out these highlights & then go read the full article here~
"*Guilty Until Proven Innocent*

Winner is also not allowed to change from her orange jumpsuit for her court dates, even though she is “innocent until proven guilty.”  Not only that, but during any court proceedings, only her wrists are unshackled, her ankles stay.  And a US Marshal sits in front of her, face to face, during the proceedings.  Winner is not allowed to turn around and look into the courtroom at all . . .
Upon checking the inmate registry, it starts to become clear how hush hush the government wants this case against Winner to be.  Whether pre-whistleblowing, or in her orange jumpsuit, photos of Winner have surfaced on the web.  That’s why it was so interesting that there’s no photo of her next to her name on the inmate registry . . .
For the past hundred years, the Espionage Act has been debated and amended, and used to charge whistleblowers that are seeking to help the country they love, not harm it.  Sometimes we have to learn when past amendments no longer do anything to justify the treatment of an American truth teller as a political prisoner. The act is outdated and amending it needs to be seriously looked at, or else we need to develop laws that protect our whistleblowers.
The Espionage Act is widely agreed by many experts to be unconstitutionally vague and a violation of the First Amendment of Free Speech.  Even though a Supreme Court had ruled that the Espionage Act does not infringe upon the 1st Amendment back in 1919, it’s constitutionality has been back and forth in court ever sense.

Because of being charged under the Espionage Act, Winner’s defense’s hands are tied.  No one is allowed to mention the classified document, even though the public already knows that the information in it is true, that Russia hacked into our election support companies." 
 Want to take action in support of Reality?

Step up to defend our whistleblower of conscience ► DONATE NOW

 FRIENDS OF REALITY WINNER ~ PATRIOT & ALLEGED WHISTLEBLOWER
c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610 ~ 510-488-3559

Standwithreality.org

@standbyreality (Twitter)

 Friends of Reality Winner (Facebook)


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SOLIDARITY with SERVERS — PLEASE CIRCULATE!
From Clifford Conner

Dear friends and relatives

Every day the scoundrels who have latched onto Trump to push through their rightwing soak-the-poor agenda inflict a new indignity on the human race.  Today they are conspiring to steal the tips we give servers in restaurants.  The New York Times editorial appended below explains what they're trying to get away with now.

People like you and me cannot compete with the Koch brothers' donors network when it comes to money power.  But at least we can try to avoid putting our pittance directly into their hands.  Here is a modest proposal:  Whenever you are in a restaurant where servers depend on tips for their livelihoods, let's try to make sure they get what we give them.

Instead of doing the easy thing and adding the tip into your credit card payment, GIVE CASH TIPS and HAND THEM DIRECTLY TO YOUR SERVER. If you want to add a creative flourish such as including a preprinted note that explains why you are doing this, by all means do so.  You could reproduce the editorial below for their edification.

If you want to do this, be sure to check your wallet before entering a restaurant to make sure you have cash in appropriate denominations.

This is a small act of solidarity with some of the most exploited members of the workforce in America.  Perhaps its symbolic value could outweigh its material impact.  But to paraphrase the familiar song: What the world needs now is solidarity, sweet solidarity.

If this idea should catch on, be prepared for news stories about restaurant owners demanding that servers empty their pockets before leaving the premises at the end of their shifts.  The fight never ends!

Yours in struggle and solidarity,

Cliff

The Trump Administration to Restaurants: Take the Tips!
The New York Times editorial board, December 21, 2017
Most Americans assume that when they leave a tip for waiters and bartenders, those workers pocket the money. That could become wishful thinking under a Trump administration proposal that would give restaurants and other businesses complete control over the tips earned by their employees.
The Department of Labor recently proposed allowing employers to pool tips and use them as they see fit as long as all of their workers are paid at least the minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour nationally and higher in some states and cities. Officials argue that this will free restaurants to use some of the tip money to reward lowly dishwashers, line cooks and other workers who toil in the less glamorous quarters and presumably make less than servers who get tips. Using tips to compensate all employees sounds like a worthy cause, but a simple reading of the government's proposal makes clear that business owners would have no obligation to use the money in this way. They would be free to pocket some or all of that cash, spend it to spiff up the dining room or use it to underwrite $2 margaritas at happy hour. And that's what makes this proposal so disturbing.
The 3.2 million Americans who work as waiters, waitresses and bartenders include some of the lowest-compensated working people in the country. The median hourly wage for waiters and waitresses was $9.61 an hour last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Further, there is a sordid history of restaurant owners who steal tips, and of settlements in which they have agreed to repay workers millions of dollars.
Not to worry, says the Labor Department, which argues, oddly and unconvincingly, that workers will be better off no matter how owners spend the money. Enlarging dining rooms, reducing menu prices or offering paid time off should be seen as "potential benefits to employees and the economy over all." The department also assures us that owners will funnel tip money to employees because workers would quit otherwise.
t is hard to know how much time President Trump's appointees have spent with single mothers raising two children on a salary from a workaday restaurant in suburban America, seeing how hard it is to make ends meet without tips. What we do know is that the administration has produced no empirical cost-benefit analysis to support its proposal, which is customary when the government seeks to make an important change to federal regulations.
The Trump administration appears to be rushing this rule through — it has offered the public just 30 days to comment on it — in part to pre-empt the Supreme Court from ruling on a 2011 Obama-era tipping rule. The department's new proposal would do away with the 2011 rule. The restaurant industry has filed several legal challenges to that regulation, which prohibits businesses from pooling tips and sharing them with dishwashers and other back-of-the-house workers. Different federal circuit appeals courts have issued contradictory rulings on those cases, so the industry has asked the Supreme Court to resolve those differences; the top court has not decided whether to take that case.
Mr. Trump, of course, owns restaurants as part of his hospitality empire and stands to benefit from this rule change, as do many of his friends and campaign donors. But what the restaurant business might not fully appreciate is that their stealth attempt to gain control over tips could alienate and antagonize customers. Diners who are no longer certain that their tips will end up in the hands of the server they intended to reward might leave no tip whatsoever. Others might seek to covertly slip cash to their server. More high-minded restaurateurs would be tempted to follow the lead of the New York restaurateur Danny Meyer and get rid of tipping by raising prices and bumping up salaries.
By changing the fundamental underpinnings of tipping, the government might well end up destroying this practice. But in doing so it would hurt many working-class Americans, including people who believed that Mr. Trump would fight for them.

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Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations! 
Charity for the Wealthy!

GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

By Jake Johnson, December 18, 2017



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Puerto Rico Still Without Power

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Addicted to War:

And this does not include "…spending $1.25 trillion dollars to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and $566 billion to build the Navy a 308-ship fleet…"



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Kaepernick sports new T-shirt:



Love this guy!


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B) ARTICLES IN FULL
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1)  Torture in America: The Prison System
By Carole Seligman, March 2018
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/marapr_18/marapr_18_01.html

Mumia Abu-Jamal

I had the tremendous honor of meeting Mumia Abu-Jamal on January 18th and Bryant Arroyo on January 19th. After several years of corresponding with these innocent prisoners, respectively serving life sentences in SCI Mahanoy and SCI Frackville, in Pennsylvania, I wanted to meet them in person.

While visiting Mumia, I also met Eddie Africa in the visiting room. Eddie Africa has been imprisoned for four decades after cops attacked their home in the City of Philadelphia in 1978 and arrested the nine occupants—the MOVE 9. Later cops bombed the MOVE home and killed 11 of the organization’s members including five children. Eddie Africa was just denied parole again by the corrupt and callous Pennsylvania Parole Board, although they are well aware that Mr. Africa, had nothing to do with the death of the police officer who died, most likely by “friendly fire” during the attack on the MOVE home in 1978. In the face of such prolonged imprisonment Eddie Africa takes an active role in helping young prisoners to survive in this hostile environment.

While visiting Bryant, I met Major Tillery, an innocent man in prison for 33 years. Major is the man who actually saved Mumia’s life, when Mumia collapsed and went into a coma at the height of his Hepatitis C illness. For that good deed, he was punished, transferred from Mahanoy to Frackville and sent to solitary confinement for four months.

Knowing about their cases—innocent, framed prisoners—and then getting to meet them in person gives one a new understanding of the depth of cruelty in the American prison system, a system whose atrocities and torture are only beginning to be revealed to the public, as there are more and more exonerations, including from death row! The revelations are due in part to the writings and radio broadcasts of Mumia Abu-Jamal, as well as those of several other prisoners who write about their prison experiences and help us understand what we’re up against in the struggle for justice against the capitalist state.

Mumia is a warm, welcoming man. Despite a terribly uncomfortable skin outbreak that keeps him from sleeping, and itching that is constant and unrelenting, Mumia has kept on writing trenchant commentaries on all current pressing issues and recording them in his beautiful voice on Prison Radio. I was introduced by attorney Rachel Wolkenstein who was visiting Eddie Africa, as well as Mumia. Basym Hasan (from the Pennsylvania Prison Society) and Mumia’s brother, Keith Cook, were also visiting and we had a roundtable, wide-ranging discussion on many topics—including the court proceedings of the previous day, DNA testing, the death penalty in Pennsylvania, the water quality in the prison (the guards don’t drink from the water fountains,) the itchy skin conditions that many prisoners are suffering, prison food, the April 20 Women’s March, and the significance of last year’s Women’s March on the day after the Trump inauguration. We also discussed the case of a juvenile lifer, who, after 64 years in prison had his sentence converted to 35 to life, but wasn’t allowed to leave the state to go to family members in the South! Much of our discussion cycled around to the combined conditions of extreme cruelty with irrational idiocy in the prisons.

Now, the system of mass incarceration has spread to the population of undocumented immigrants and refugees who are being rounded up by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal agency—ICE. They are held in profit-making private prisons in horrendous conditions including the forced separation of young children from their parents, inadequate protection from cold weather, inadequate quality and quantity of food—in other words, basic necessities of life. ICE is making a concerted effort to violate local and state sanctuary policies, such as the recent round-up of immigrants in the Northern California Bay Area on February 28.

To write in any meaningful way about the prison system in the United States is to document a litany of abuse. One example, as explained in the January visit: Mumia, while he was on death row in Pennsylvania’s SCI Greene was in the wing of the prison where they could watch the food preparation from their cells. The food was put on carts and delivered to all the different cellblocks, ending with the death row blocks, where it was always cold. When he was transferred to SCI Mahanoy, he burned his mouth because he had grown used to never tasting hot food. Simple cruelty, carried out for years on end. 

Another: Mumia told us about new, colorful, cheerfully painted signs on the Mahanoy prison walls saying: “Help is near,” and “If you feel suicidal, contact staff.” Such irony. “Help” is non-existent there. Suicide is a regular occurrence. Medical neglect a constant reality. Even killings of prisoners by guards!
Mumia’s skin condition seemed to worsen over the time of the visit, with open red areas on his inner arms. As our visit was ending, Mumia gave a message of love for Kevin Cooper, on death row at San Quentin and compliments on Kevin’s beautiful art. And at a “Live From Death Row” event on February 10th in San Francisco, where Kevin called in to a public meeting sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America, Kevin spoke in support and admiration for Mumia. I feel privileged to have listened and participated in conversations with such a big-hearted, knowledgeable person.

Bryant Arroyo
Bryant Arroyo, is serving a life sentence for a terrible crime that he did not do—killing his baby stepson. Another innocent man. Like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Bryant is a person who acts on behalf of others while struggling for his own exoneration. He is known as the “prison environmentalist.” He has spoken out for environmental justice in the prison and surrounding community, about corporate destruction of the environment through a proposed coal de-gasification plant, and also, through organizing prisoners, guards, and community to oppose the building of the plant. Bryant has to jump through prison administrative hoops to speak by phone to students and groups of environmentalists to help educate us about how to protect the environment.

Major Tillery
Major Tillery was framed in Philadelphia, with cops providing sexual favors for prisoners to testify against him. While fighting for his own exoneration, he also advocates for others, focusing on elderly and disabled prisoners who suffer especially in the cold prison environment. An example: Tillery is trying to get the prison to issue long johns to the elderly prisoners who suffer more in the cold weather. You would think such a easy-to-grant demand would get results, but, in the cruel environment of the prisons, the authorities scoff at the request and refuse to grant it.

Kevin Cooper
Kevin Cooper, death row prisoner in San Quentin State Prison, (whose article in honor of Black History Month is in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint), spoke by telephone to a public forum at the San Francisco Public Library. His moving presentation and answers to audience questions inspired many in the audience to write postcard appeals to California Governor Jerry Brown supporting Kevin’s appeal for clemency. Kevin is a tireless campaigner for abolition of the death penalty, educating and speaking out and explaining slavery as the background of the current abusive system of mass incarceration and torture in the U.S. 
California voters recently approved starting up the state’s execution machinery, and if that happens, Kevin is one of the first to die. His innocence is beyond dispute, and yet he was almost executed in 2004, coming within three hours and 42 minutes of lethal injection. He has been in prison for 33 years. Governor Brown has had Kevin’s petition for clemency for over two years. A delegation went to Sacramento on February 22 to deliver petitions with over 20,000 signatures in support of clemency to the governor as part of a campaign to get the governor to act. A letter signed by the deans of four prominent California law schools supporting Kevin’s appeal for clemency was also sent to Governor Brown in February.

Without a doubt, U.S. prisons house an estimated over-100,000 innocent people, and this doesn’t include people incarcerated for infractions such as drug possession. It doesn’t include the thousands of detained immigrants. Most all prisoners (perhaps with the exception of the millionaires caught for white collar crime and corruption) suffer extreme institutional cruelty. (See the article by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson in this and previous issues about how prisoners in Florida State Prison are tortured and abused.) I find it miraculous, almost in the biblical meaning of the word, that the people I write about in this article not only have retained their humanity, but actually struggle for the rights of other oppressed people.

The conditions of prisoners in this country indicate to the most extreme degree the values of capitalist society and its state power. While we must fight like hell to free the innocent and stop the torture of the prisons, it’s also clear that for any humane values to be adopted, the power of capitalism and its state must be definitively broken. A state whose reason to exist is to prop up the capitalist profit system, and to do that with the use of extreme violence, is incompatible with human values of decency. We must bring it down!
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2) School Massacres and the U.S. War Machine
By Bonnie Weinstein, March 2018
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/marapr_18/marapr_18_02.html

There have been 18 school shootings since January 1, 2018— on average, three shootings per week—the latest, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, that killed 17 people and injured more than 15. No other country on the planet even comes close to these murderous statistics. 
The shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, was trained to shoot in that very school when he was in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. And, according to the U.S. Army JROTC Homepage1 “It is one of the largest youth programs in the world with more than 310,000 high school students participating annually…” and they are routinely taught to handle and shoot weapons. The program is an extension of the U.S. military and it has no place in our schools. 

This devastating shooting, along with the 146 people that have been shot and killed by police so far in 2018 according to the a February 21, 2018 update in the Washington Post, has become the norm in this country. But it should be no surprise because the U.S. is the most violent country in the world.

U.S. military might
Make no mistake about it; war is a first priority for the United States. War is how capitalist imperialism settles disputes of power. If things don’t go the way the capitalists want it to, they kill those who stand in their way as they have done since the beginning of our country. And we working people are supposed to be in awe of this power. 

The JROTC teaches the glories of U.S. wars to these students. They are taught to hail our generals as heroes for having the most mighty killing powers. This, they are told, is what makes our country great. And, indeed, the U.S. has the most powerful and the greatest number of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.
According to an April 24, 2017 Forbes article by Niall McCarthy titled, “The Top 15 Countries for Military Expenditure in 2016:” 

“The United States remained at the top of the military spending league last year with $611 billion. That’s 36 percent of the global total and over three times the amount spent by second-placed China. Russia upped its outlay 5.9 percent to $69.2 billion, third overall…” 

And according to nationalpriorities.org, the proposed military budget for 2019 accounts for 61 percent of Trump’s discretionary budget request in the amount of $727 billion. And this does not include national security spending in other departments like nuclear weapons in the Energy Department, Homeland Security or the portion of the federal debt caused by paying for war on the national credit card.

War as a way of life
We are justly horrified by these mass shootings—school shootings, gang shootings, police shootings—but we are immune to the tens-of-thousands of casualties of war perpetrated by the U.S. government on nearly every continent on the planet. We can’t ignore that the violence perpetrated by the U.S. military has set the stage for this violence here at home. 

The U.S. capitalist class not only wages war, but wages assassinations by Special Forces, by drone strikes, that take out “enemy combatants” which most often turn out to be “collateral damage.” War doesn’t just kill “the enemy” it kills civilians—men, women and children who have no say in what their governments do any more than we, here in the U.S. do. We do not vote on war, on expenditures for the military, for nuclear weapons, or for “The Mother Of All Bombs.” That is not our prerogative. Our only choice is to vote for one warmonger over another—from Hillary to Trump. 

Military grade weapons and the struggle against capitalism
From its very inception, the U.S. has outgunned and out-bombed those they labeled “the enemy” from the original inhabitants of this land; the enforcement of slavery; the arming of police; calling in the National Guard against unarmed workers in the early years of the U.S. labor movement; to the May 4, 1970 murder of four students and the wounding of nine more by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University; and the murder of two students and wounding of 12 others by the city and state police May 15, 1970 at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi during the Vietnam War. Not to speak of the millions of Vietnamese who were killed by the U.S. war machine. It took a massive antiwar movement to finally bring an end to the Vietnam War, which the U.S. lost. 

The U.S. lost the war to the Vietnamese fighters who out-fought them. And American soldiers, sick and tired of the carnage and futility of the war, were refusing to continue to fight. At home, the antiwar protesters were clogging the streets in the hundreds-of-thousands in support of bringing the troops home now. We did not take up arms.

The American Civil Rights movement did, on occasion, take up arms in defense against white racist police and the KKK in response to the brutality of lynchings, beatings and bombing of Black school children attempting to integrate all white schools. Malcolm X had armed guards stationed in his defense when he spoke in public. Even Martin Luther King had weapons for self-defense. Self-defense is a human right. That doesn’t mean that people should be able to go to Wal-Mart and buy a tank, rocket, nuclear bomb or even a military-grade automatic weapon like the AR-15 that was used most recently in Florida that is meant to kill large numbers of people in a very short time. 

The fight against violence has to be much broader
The NRA is the marketing/lobbying front for the military weapons industry, which is the supplier for all the wars the U.S. imperialists and their allies are engaged in directly or indirectly. In order to combat this violence, we must combat capitalism. We must demand that the world be disarmed—that weapons of death are not the answer to the social and humanitarian crisis that plague our planet. 

We must demand that the vast sums of money and resources that are spent on weapons of mass destruction be spent, instead, on solving the economic and social inequalities that exist across the globe. 

It is impossible to separate the violence that is occurring at an increasing rate on our streets from the massive U.S. military intervention in the world for the sole purpose of protecting the wealthy from the poor who vastly outnumber them. This is the sole purpose for war and weapons of mass destruction. It has nothing to do with “protecting democracy” since we have no democracy in this country that actually counts. 

We must organize massive opposition to wars and killing as a way to solve social ills and put the blame where it belongs—on the system that perpetrates inequality as a way of life—capitalism. 

How to win the war against war and injustice
Many on the left believe that the working class must arm ourselves in order to win the war against capitalism. And, of course, we must be able to defend ourselves against the brutality of the capitalist dictatorship. But the only way we can accomplish this is to organize workers into such a powerful, anti-capitalist, pro-socialist, unified force, that we are able to win the soldiers over to our side effectively disarming the capitalist class. 

Ending capitalism and establishing socialism is the only way to end the violence that plagues the world today.
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3)  When Bail Feels Less Like Freedom, More Like Extortion
By Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Shaila Dewan, March 31, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/us/bail-bonds-extortion.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

A sign for Blair's Bail Bonds in New Orleans. Some states give bail bond agents broad latitude
to arrest their clients for any reason. William Widmer for the New York Times


Most bail bond agents make it their business to get their clients to court. But when Ronald Egana showed up at the criminal courthouse in New Orleans, he was surprised to find that his bondsman wanted to stop him.
A bounty hunter was waiting at the courthouse metal detector to intercept Mr. Egana and haul him to the bond company office, he said. The reason: The bondsman wanted to get paid.
Mr. Egana ended up in handcuffs, missing his court appearance while the agency got his mother on the phone and demanded more than $1,500 in overdue payments, according to a lawsuit. It was not the first time Mr. Egana had been held captive by the bond company, he said, nor would it be the last. Each time, his friends or family was forced to pay more to get him released, he said.
As commercial bail has grown into a $2 billion industry, bond agents have become the payday lenders of the criminal justice world, offering quick relief to desperate customers at high prices. When clients like Mr. Egana cannot afford to pay the bond company’s fee to get them out, bond agents simply loan them the money, allowing them to go on a payment plan.
But bondsmen have extraordinary powers that most lenders do not. They are supposed to return their clients to jail if they skip court or do something illegal. But some states give them broad latitude to arrest their clients for any reason — or none at all. A credit card company cannot jail someone for missing a payment. A bondsman, in many instances, can.
Using that leverage, bond agents can charge steep fees, some of which are illegal, with impunity, according to interviews and a review of court records and complaint data. They can also go far beyond the demands of other creditors by requiring their clients to check in regularly, keep a curfew, allow searches of their car or home at any time, and open their medical, Social Security and phone records to inspection.
They keep a close eye on their clients, but in many places, no one is keeping a close eye on them.
“It’s a consumer protection issue,” said Judge Lee V. Coffee, a criminal court judge in Memphis. Before recent changes to the rules there, he said, defendants frequently complained of shakedowns in which bondsmen demanded extra payments. “They’re living under a constant daily threat that ‘if you don’t bring more money, we’re going to put you in jail.’” The pressure, the judge said, “would actually encourage people to go out and commit more crimes.”
Unlike payday lenders, the bail bond industry deals with potential criminals whose very involvement with the law raises questions about their trustworthiness. But in the United States criminal justice system, the Supreme Court has affirmed, liberty before trial is supposed to be the norm, not the exception — the system is intended to allow defendants to stay out of jail.
Some bail bond practices have drawn the ire of judges who complain that payment plans are too lenient on people accused of serious crimes, allowing them to get out for just a few hundred dollars or even no money down. Those judges say it should be more difficult for the accused to walk free.
Other judges see some bondsmen as trampling the rights of defendants. One judge in Lafayette, La., Jules Edwards III, held in contempt two bondsmen who were brothers for intercepting a defendant on his way to court and sending him, instead, to jail.
The judge said the commercial bail industry had put its financial interests above justice and public safety. “If he’s not in compliance with the contract, sue him. How do you get to snatch his body and hold him hostage?” Judge Edwards said in a phone interview.
He added that defendants do not have to go with their bondsmen unless there is a warrant out for their arrest, but many of them do not know that. “What they’re doing is intimidating and coercing and lying,” he said. The brothers declined to comment.
In both Mr. Egana’s case and this one, the bondsmen would not have been on the hook for the defendants’ failure to appear, because they diverted the defendants from court dates for unrelated cases, not the ones for which they had bailed them out.
The bond agency, Blair’s Bail Bonds, stopped Mr. Egana, who had prior felony convictions, from going to court on charges of fleeing an officer, but had bailed him out in June 2016 after he was arrested on charges of possession of marijuana, a firearm and stolen property.
Had Mr. Egana been wealthier, he might have been able to post his full bail of $26,000, then gotten it back when he returned for court. But like most defendants, Mr. Egana had to turn to a commercial bail bond agent, which charge a nonrefundable fee for the service of guaranteeing the bond.
Not only could Mr. Egana not afford the full bail, he could not afford the fee, $3,275. He arranged to pay it in installments. After his release, he said, Blair’s informed him that on top of the premium, he would have to pay $10 a day for an ankle monitor, though the judge had not ordered one. Guilty or innocent, Mr. Egana would never see any of that money again. Blair’s has denied any wrongdoing in the matter.
Some customers feel they have no choice but to pay bond agents’ fees — no matter how outrageous they seem. When a home health care aide wanted to bail her son out of Rikers Island in New York City, she was charged $1,000 to have a courier walk her money a few blocks to the courthouse.
A defendant in a serious domestic violence case in Santa Clara, Calif., suffering from a dangerous heart condition, had to have his ankle monitor removed each time he went to the hospital, and was forced to pay $300 to have it put back on afterward.
A woman in Des Moines woke one morning to find that her 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix had been repossessed during the night. Had she put up her car as collateral in a typical loan, she would have been notified that she had fallen behind and given 20 days to pay.
But instead, the car was collateral for a bail bond for her child’s father. She owed $700 to the bail agents. They not only took the car, but turned the father over to the jail. Ultimately the misdemeanor assault charges against him were dismissed.
The bond agents in the Lafayette, New York, Santa Clara and Des Moines cases declined to comment. But Jeffrey J. Clayton, the executive director of the American Bail Coalition, an industry group, said that credit bonds, as the payment plans are called, should be more tightly regulated and require at least a minimum down payment. However, he said, any rules should preserve the benefit to the customer, namely, “If you have the ability to pay it, just not right now, you can get out right now.”
Bond companies fall into a sort of regulatory gulf between criminal courts and state insurance departments, which are supposed to regulate them but seldom impose sanctions. With rare exception, defense lawyers and prosecutors are too busy with their caseloads to keep bond companies in line. Further complicating things, it is often unclear whether consumer protection laws apply, and insurance departments say they lack the resources to investigate complaints.
In the case of Mr. Egana, who worked as a carpenter, it did not take long for him to fall behind on his payments. But he thought that since he was routinely showing up to court, he would be fine.
He was wrong. The bond company detained him several more times, according to court records. At one point, two men with guns and bulletproof vests came to the home where he was working as a contractor and forced him into a car. Each time, they demanded that his mother pay more money.
Jeffrey Orey, a spokesman for Blair’s Bail Bonds, while denying any wrongdoing, declined to comment on the specifics of Mr. Egana’s lawsuit. He said the company had never charged interest or assessed penalties for late payment. The lawsuit, brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Mr. Egana and alleging violation of consumer lending laws, says Mr. Egana’s mother paid at least $5,450 — or almost two times the original premium — to keep her son out of jail. Some of her money, the lawsuit says, was applied to older debts that Mr. Egana still owed.
“It was kidnapping,” Mr. Egana said. “They saw the love that my mom has for me, and they used that to their advantage.”
In May, Blair’s decided it no longer wanted Mr. Egana as a customer and handed him over to the jail.

Siphoning Millions From Poor

The use of bail bonds has come under attack in recent years because it keeps the poorest, rather than the most dangerous, defendants behind bars.
State after state has taken steps to reduce or eliminate the practice of making that freedom contingent on money. In response, the bond industry has worked to undermine reforms and regulations, arguing that commercial bail is still the most efficient and taxpayer-friendly way to keep the public safe and the courts running smoothly.
The bond agent takes a fee in exchange for guaranteeing the amount of the bail on the defendant’s behalf. But the fee — or premium — usually about 10 percent, is too high for many defendants, the vast majority of whom are poor. So they arrange a payment plan. The debt, paid over weeks or months of installments, can outlast the criminal case.
The arrangement can include steep late fees or require signing over collateral worth many times what is owed. And while defendants, or the family members and friends who often shoulder the costs, typically pay no interest as long as their payments are on time, if they go into default they can trigger annual interest rates as high as 30 percent.
The use of financial conditions for bail has not always been as widespread as it is today. In 1990, only 24 percent of those released from jail before trial were required to pay. That number soared to almost 50 percent in 2009, the most recent year for which national figures are available. In some jurisdictions, the number is far higher: In New Orleans in 2015, 63 percent of misdemeanor defendants and 87 percent of felony defendants had to pay to be released before trial, according to a study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit that seeks to improve the criminal justice system.
Commercial bail fees, often scraped together by multiple family members, siphon millions from poor, predominantly African-American and Hispanic communities. Over a five-year span, Maryland families paid more than $256 million in nonrefundable bail premiums, according to a report by the state’s Office of the Public Defender. More than $75 million of that was paid in cases resolved with no finding of guilt, and the vast majority of it was paid by black families.
In 2015, New Orleans families paid $6.4 million in premiums and fees, the Vera Institute of Justice found. In New York City last year, bond companies collected between $16 million and $27 million, “a sizable transfer of wealth,” noted Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, “to the pockets of opportunistic bail bond agents.”
The poor pay more than the rich: Some bond agencies offer lower rates to those who are union members, hire their own lawyer rather than use a court-appointed one, or put up more valuable collateral.
The entire premise on which the commercial bail system is built — that when defendants skip bail, someone must either find them or pay, is somewhat illusory.
The image of the industry, encapsulated by Dog the Bounty Hunter chasing down outlaws on television, is one of danger and high stakes.
But in most cases where defendants miss court, a bond agent may not have to do anything. Many states allow months for a defendant to be found. In Texas, bond agents have nine months before a felony bail is forfeited. In Colorado, according to the American Bail Coalition, even after a bond is paid, the agent has two years to find the missing defendant and get the money back.
With so much time, many defendants will resurface on their own, or be caught during a traffic stop or other law enforcement interaction, without any effort on the bond agent’s part.
In a report last year, government auditors in Utah criticized the long grace periods, saying that more than 70 percent of defendants who skip court show up within a month. Over the course of a year, the auditors found, less than 2 percent of bonds were forfeited.
“If you’re not holding bond companies accountable at every turn, they can wriggle out of a forfeiture,” said Alison Filo, a prosecutor in Santa Clara, Calif., where the district attorney’s office has begun in recent years to pursue payments from bond agents. Ms. Filo said there were some counties in her state where forfeitures were never collected.
The system, though, has worked well for the industry, even attracting private equity investors. Mom-and-pop bail companies are backed by large surety companies, which guarantee the full amount of the bond in exchange for a portion of the premium.
Together, the surety companies and the bail bond agents collect about $2 billion a year in revenue, according to an analysis by Color of Change, a nonprofit focused on racial justice, and the American Civil Liberties Union. “Bail insurers have shaped the entire industry, as well as the laws they operate under, to safeguard their profits at the expense of people’s lives,” said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change.
While most insurance companies expect losses of up to 50 percent, one surety company, Continental Heritage of Florida, had no losses in its bail division for almost two decades. And an industry giant, AIA Bail Bond Insurance Company, said it underwrote more than $800 billion in bonds in 2016. Its losses: zero.

Extortion, Theft and Kidnapping

In Santa Clara County, Gregory Chiotti’s daughter had already been convicted and gone to jail when he got a bill from Jake’s Bail Bonds for $39,755, along with a notice of foreclosure on his house, which he had put up as collateral on her bond.
On paper, California’s bail laws have strong consumer protections, but regulators have grown so frustrated with complaints that they have repeatedly asked lawmakers for more money to police the industry.
Under California law, Mr. Chiotti could be charged only the premium for his daughter’s bond — $5,000 — plus any “actual, reasonable and necessary” expenses incurred by Jake’s.
But Jake’s claimed that Mr. Chiotti owed something called a “recovery cost percentage” of $19,500 and $4,425 for unspecified “equipment,” among other fees, according to an investigative report. To prevent the sale of his house, Mr. Chiotti, then 69, cashed out savings and forked over nearly $40,000.
He thought that was the end of the matter, but Jake’s never released the lien on his property. Six years later, in 2015, he got a second notice of foreclosure. This time the bondsman, Jacob Garcia Peters, said he owed $117,500.
At the time, Santa Clara County had begun a rare effort to prosecute unscrupulous bondsmen, and Mr. Peters was charged with attempted extortion. During the investigation, court records show, Mr. Peters acknowledged that the bonds had been cleared by the court and he had never been required to pay. But according to the file, Mr. Peters said the daughter, who had missed at least one court appearance, had “breached the contract,” so Mr. Chiotti was liable for the money anyway.
Though California law appears to be quite clear about what bond agents can charge, a review of more than 100 bail contracts and legal documents by the criminal justice reform clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law found that such protections were routinely ignored. The contracts included all manner of additional costs, including late fees, interest on delinquent balances and “renewal premiums” that required the defendant to pay again to stay out of jail if the case was not resolved within a year.
Unlike in most states, bondsmen in California must return the premium to customers if they surrender them to jail, unless they can demonstrate that their risk level substantially increased. A new arrest for a lesser crime does not constitute increased risk, the law says. But one contract said that if the defendant moved without prior written notice or was arrested for any new offense, his premium would not be repaid. In another, defendants could be returned to jail without a refund if they did “anything to suggest that they might forfeit the bond.”
California contracts are hardly outliers. Until recently, Maryland bond contracts allowed an automatic financial judgment against a client if the bondsman claimed they had missed a payment. Such provisions, known as “confession of judgment” clauses, are typically forbidden in consumer contracts because they are considered unfair and deprive borrowers of the chance to contest the debt. Under a Beaumont, Tex., contract, one late payment could mean jail.
In New Orleans, the Southern Poverty Law Center has complained to state regulators that bondsmen routinely charge more than is allowed by law. In phone calls placed by The New York Times, several bail bond companies quoted prices that exceeded what is allowable under state law by a few hundred dollars. When asked, they said the extra money was a “lock-up fee” paid to the jail. But there is no such fee.
In one San Francisco case, according to a court filing, a defendant named Juan Contreras claimed he made more than 20 court appearances on a felony domestic violence charge and paid some $20,000 to his bond agency, but was returned to custody when he did not answer the bond agent’s calls.
Between 2010 and 2015 in California, the number of bail complaints to the Department of Insurance nearly quadrupled and became more serious, the department said, with common grievances including kidnapping and false imprisonment for purposes of extortion, forged property liens and death certificates, and theft or embezzlement of collateral.
Complaints about bail bond agents have flooded into insurance regulators across the country, but rarely result in meaningful punishment.
Part of the problem, regulators say, is that they are outmatched and do not have the resources to investigate abuses. The California insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, said he had twice tried to get a law passed to pay for bail investigations, but both times it was defeated after lobbying by the bond industry.
Mr. Clayton of the American Bail Coalition said bond agents objected because the department had over-criminalized the insurance code, pursuing violations as felony cases rather than focusing on revoking licenses.
In Mr. Chiotti’s case, a criminal court judge dismissed the charges against Mr. Peters, the bondsman, saying the evidence did not show attempted extortion. A lawyer for Mr. Peters declined to comment. Mr. Peters reached a confidential settlement with Mr. Chiotti and surrendered his bail license.

An Upside-Down System

In Santa Clara County, Gregory Chiotti’s daughter had already been convicted and gone to jail when he got a bill from Jake’s Bail Bonds for $39,755, along with a notice of foreclosure on his house, which he had put up as collateral on her bond.
On paper, California’s bail laws have strong consumer protections, but regulators have grown so frustrated with complaints that they have repeatedly asked lawmakers for more money to police the industry.
Under California law, Mr. Chiotti could be charged only the premium for his daughter’s bond — $5,000 — plus any “actual, reasonable and necessary” expenses incurred by Jake’s.
But Jake’s claimed that Mr. Chiotti owed something called a “recovery cost percentage” of $19,500 and $4,425 for unspecified “equipment,” among other fees, according to an investigative report. To prevent the sale of his house, Mr. Chiotti, then 69, cashed out savings and forked over nearly $40,000.
He thought that was the end of the matter, but Jake’s never released the lien on his property. Six years later, in 2015, he got a second notice of foreclosure. This time the bondsman, Jacob Garcia Peters, said he owed $117,500.
At the time, Santa Clara County had begun a rare effort to prosecute unscrupulous bondsmen, and Mr. Peters was charged with attempted extortion. During the investigation, court records show, Mr. Peters acknowledged that the bonds had been cleared by the court and he had never been required to pay. But according to the file, Mr. Peters said the daughter, who had missed at least one court appearance, had “breached the contract,” so Mr. Chiotti was liable for the money anyway.
Though California law appears to be quite clear about what bond agents can charge, a review of more than 100 bail contracts and legal documents by the criminal justice reform clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law found that such protections were routinely ignored. The contracts included all manner of additional costs, including late fees, interest on delinquent balances and “renewal premiums” that required the defendant to pay again to stay out of jail if the case was not resolved within a year.
Unlike in most states, bondsmen in California must return the premium to customers if they surrender them to jail, unless they can demonstrate that their risk level substantially increased. A new arrest for a lesser crime does not constitute increased risk, the law says. But one contract said that if the defendant moved without prior written notice or was arrested for any new offense, his premium would not be repaid. In another, defendants could be returned to jail without a refund if they did “anything to suggest that they might forfeit the bond.”
California contracts are hardly outliers. Until recently, Maryland bond contracts allowed an automatic financial judgment against a client if the bondsman claimed they had missed a payment. Such provisions, known as “confession of judgment” clauses, are typically forbidden in consumer contracts because they are considered unfair and deprive borrowers of the chance to contest the debt. Under a Beaumont, Tex., contract, one late payment could mean jail.
In New Orleans, the Southern Poverty Law Center has complained to state regulators that bondsmen routinely charge more than is allowed by law. In phone calls placed by The New York Times, several bail bond companies quoted prices that exceeded what is allowable under state law by a few hundred dollars. When asked, they said the extra money was a “lock-up fee” paid to the jail. But there is no such fee.
In one San Francisco case, according to a court filing, a defendant named Juan Contreras claimed he made more than 20 court appearances on a felony domestic violence charge and paid some $20,000 to his bond agency, but was returned to custody when he did not answer the bond agent’s calls.
Between 2010 and 2015 in California, the number of bail complaints to the Department of Insurance nearly quadrupled and became more serious, the department said, with common grievances including kidnapping and false imprisonment for purposes of extortion, forged property liens and death certificates, and theft or embezzlement of collateral.
Complaints about bail bond agents have flooded into insurance regulators across the country, but rarely result in meaningful punishment.
Part of the problem, regulators say, is that they are outmatched and do not have the resources to investigate abuses. The California insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, said he had twice tried to get a law passed to pay for bail investigations, but both times it was defeated after lobbying by the bond industry.
Mr. Clayton of the American Bail Coalition said bond agents objected because the department had over-criminalized the insurance code, pursuing violations as felony cases rather than focusing on revoking licenses.
In Mr. Chiotti’s case, a criminal court judge dismissed the charges against Mr. Peters, the bondsman, saying the evidence did not show attempted extortion. A lawyer for Mr. Peters declined to comment. Mr. Peters reached a confidential settlement with Mr. Chiotti and surrendered his bail license.

An Upside-Down System

In Santa Clara County, Gregory Chiotti’s daughter had already been convicted and gone to jail when he got a bill from Jake’s Bail Bonds for $39,755, along with a notice of foreclosure on his house, which he had put up as collateral on her bond.
On paper, California’s bail laws have strong consumer protections, but regulators have grown so frustrated with complaints that they have repeatedly asked lawmakers for more money to police the industry.
Under California law, Mr. Chiotti could be charged only the premium for his daughter’s bond — $5,000 — plus any “actual, reasonable and necessary” expenses incurred by Jake’s.
But Jake’s claimed that Mr. Chiotti owed something called a “recovery cost percentage” of $19,500 and $4,425 for unspecified “equipment,” among other fees, according to an investigative report. To prevent the sale of his house, Mr. Chiotti, then 69, cashed out savings and forked over nearly $40,000.
He thought that was the end of the matter, but Jake’s never released the lien on his property. Six years later, in 2015, he got a second notice of foreclosure. This time the bondsman, Jacob Garcia Peters, said he owed $117,500.
At the time, Santa Clara County had begun a rare effort to prosecute unscrupulous bondsmen, and Mr. Peters was charged with attempted extortion. During the investigation, court records show, Mr. Peters acknowledged that the bonds had been cleared by the court and he had never been required to pay. But according to the file, Mr. Peters said the daughter, who had missed at least one court appearance, had “breached the contract,” so Mr. Chiotti was liable for the money anyway.
Though California law appears to be quite clear about what bond agents can charge, a review of more than 100 bail contracts and legal documents by the criminal justice reform clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law found that such protections were routinely ignored. The contracts included all manner of additional costs, including late fees, interest on delinquent balances and “renewal premiums” that required the defendant to pay again to stay out of jail if the case was not resolved within a year.
Unlike in most states, bondsmen in California must return the premium to customers if they surrender them to jail, unless they can demonstrate that their risk level substantially increased. A new arrest for a lesser crime does not constitute increased risk, the law says. But one contract said that if the defendant moved without prior written notice or was arrested for any new offense, his premium would not be repaid. In another, defendants could be returned to jail without a refund if they did “anything to suggest that they might forfeit the bond.”
California contracts are hardly outliers. Until recently, Maryland bond contracts allowed an automatic financial judgment against a client if the bondsman claimed they had missed a payment. Such provisions, known as “confession of judgment” clauses, are typically forbidden in consumer contracts because they are considered unfair and deprive borrowers of the chance to contest the debt. Under a Beaumont, Tex., contract, one late payment could mean jail.
In New Orleans, the Southern Poverty Law Center has complained to state regulators that bondsmen routinely charge more than is allowed by law. In phone calls placed by The New York Times, several bail bond companies quoted prices that exceeded what is allowable under state law by a few hundred dollars. When asked, they said the extra money was a “lock-up fee” paid to the jail. But there is no such fee.
In one San Francisco case, according to a court filing, a defendant named Juan Contreras claimed he made more than 20 court appearances on a felony domestic violence charge and paid some $20,000 to his bond agency, but was returned to custody when he did not answer the bond agent’s calls.
Between 2010 and 2015 in California, the number of bail complaints to the Department of Insurance nearly quadrupled and became more serious, the department said, with common grievances including kidnapping and false imprisonment for purposes of extortion, forged property liens and death certificates, and theft or embezzlement of collateral.
Complaints about bail bond agents have flooded into insurance regulators across the country, but rarely result in meaningful punishment.
Part of the problem, regulators say, is that they are outmatched and do not have the resources to investigate abuses. The California insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, said he had twice tried to get a law passed to pay for bail investigations, but both times it was defeated after lobbying by the bond industry.
Mr. Clayton of the American Bail Coalition said bond agents objected because the department had over-criminalized the insurance code, pursuing violations as felony cases rather than focusing on revoking licenses.
In Mr. Chiotti’s case, a criminal court judge dismissed the charges against Mr. Peters, the bondsman, saying the evidence did not show attempted extortion. A lawyer for Mr. Peters declined to comment. Mr. Peters reached a confidential settlement with Mr. Chiotti and surrendered his bail license.

An Upside-Down System

It is not hard to find people whose entire lives have been upended by the bail bond industry. Some defendants wind up in jail for no offense other than falling behind on their bail payments. Others decide to plead guilty to crimes that they did not commit just to escape from the financial demands of their bondsman.
Frankie Bell’s troubles began last January in New Orleans, when she was charged with misdemeanor domestic abuse after getting into a squabble with her boyfriend. Ms. Bell, 26, had no criminal record. With help from her uncle, she was able to pay the $1,500 premium. But the bond company, citing the fact that she had a Texas driver’s license, required her to wear an ankle monitor — at a cost of $300 a month.
It took less than two weeks for Ms. Bell, who is mentally impaired and lives on $700 a month in disability payments, to fall behind. Almost immediately, the calls from her bail bond company began, she said. “They would threaten to put me back in jail,” she said. “They said they would send the police to my house, arrest me and throw me into a cell.”
Ms. Bell said she tried panhandling on the street, begging her friends for money, and letting other bills slide. Still, by the time she appeared in court in April, she was $800 behind. Ms. Bell had maintained her innocence from the start, but faced a stark decision: plead guilty in a deal that spared her any jail time, or risk being locked up before trial for failing to pay the bond agent. “I don’t want people to think of me as a criminal,” she said, “but I just wanted it all to end.”
Often, even pleading guilty is not enough to get free of the bond agent’s power, since defendants may still owe money. Christopher Franklin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge in February 2017. He had paid his bondsman, Rodney Sawyers, more than $4,000, and owed only $300 more.
But about a week later, Mr. Franklin said, Mr. Sawyers showed up at his house in Charlotte, N.C., in the middle of the night, pounding on the front door.
Mr. Franklin stumbled to answer, disoriented and groggy. Mr. Sawyers muscled his way in, Mr. Franklin said, handcuffed him and drove him to jail.
Mr. Sawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Franklin’s public defender in the case, Eli Timberg, said he has routinely had clients returned to jail for not paying their bondsmen, but Mr. Franklin’s case stood out. “There were no active charges,” Mr. Timberg said. “No bond out for him. It was unbelievable.”
Even the jail staff seemed perplexed when Mr. Franklin arrived, he said, since his case was no longer pending. After five hours, he was released.
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4) Baton Rouge Officer Is Fired in Alton Sterling Case as Police Release New Videos
By RICHARD FAUSSET




Police Chief Murphy Paul of Baton Rouge, La., announcing disciplinary decision for the two officers who shot Alton Sterling in 2016. His action came after the Justice Department and Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeff Landry, declined to seek charges. Josh Brasted/Getty Images

A police officer who fatally shot a black man in Baton Rouge, La., nearly two years ago was fired on Friday, and a fellow officer involved in the episode was suspended for three days. The disciplinary actions were the first serious consequences for the officers after both state and federalofficials declined to bring criminal charges against them.
Blane Salamoni, the officer who was dismissed, fired six shots at the man, Alton B. Sterling, after responding to a call at a convenience store parking lot on July 5, 2016.
After announcing the disciplinary actions, the department released new raw footage of Mr. Sterling’s arrest and his killing moments later. Video taken from a police body camera shows Officer Salamoni repeatedly shouting profanities at Mr. Sterling; slamming him into a car; twice ordering the second officer, Howie Lake II, to use his Taser; and threatening to shoot Mr. Sterling with a gun pointed at his head.
“These actions were not minor deviations from policy,” Chief Murphy Paul of the Baton Rouge Police Department said. “And they contributed to the outcome that resulted in the death of another human being.”

The decision came after the Louisiana attorney general, Jeff Landry, said on Tuesday that the officers would not be charged with state-level crimes, and after the Justice Department declined last May to seek federal civil rights charges. The shooting is one of numerous high-profile fatal encounters between black men and the police in recent years, and prompted large protests in Baton Rouge and beyond.
Chief Paul said that Officer Salamoni had violated the department’s use-of-force rules and that Officer Lake had violated its policies on sustaining “command of temper.”
The chief spoke mostly in generalities about why the men were found to have violated the policies. “One officer attempted to use de-escalation and disengagement techniques consistent with policy and procedure and training,” he said. “And one officer did not follow the tactics, training, professionalism and organizational standards.”
He also said: “Fear cannot be a driver for an officer’s response to every incident. Unreasonable fear within an officer is dangerous.”
The closed-door administrative hearings took place on Thursday. Chief Paul noted that while Officer Lake answered all of the questions put to him at his hearing, Officer Salamoni, on the advice of his lawyer, chose not to answer questions.
The chief’s announcement was expected to bring a modicum of relief to activists and Mr. Sterling’s family members, who have grown increasingly frustrated after the state and federal decisions.
The decision also came amid tension and protests over another police shooting in Sacramento. Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old unarmed black man, was shot at more than 20 times by the police in his grandmother’s backyard on March 18. A private autopsy commissioned by Mr. Clark’s family and released Friday found that eight bullets had struck him, and that his death took three to 10 minutes, raising questions about why he did not receive medical care more quickly.
Part of Mr. Sterling’s fatal encounter with the Baton Rouge officers was captured in a widely seen cellphone video, in which the officers can be seen holding down Mr. Sterling. At one point, someone can be heard saying, “He’s got a gun! Gun!”
The two officers were responding to a call that a man who fit Mr. Sterling’s description had been brandishing a gun.
One newly released video from the vantage of the convenience store shows Mr. Sterling standing by a folding table, where he appears to be doing business with two customers. Officer Lake approaches, and takes Mr. Sterling by the arm.
Footage from Mr. Salamoni’s video camera shows him approaching moments later.
The three men tussle as the officers try to bend Mr. Sterling over the hood of a car and as Officer Salamoni, using expletives, repeatedly threatens to shoot Mr. Sterling in the head. Officer Lake fires his Taser at Mr. Sterling, twice, and Officer Salamoni tackles him to the ground.
Gunshots ring out. As Mr. Sterling lies facedown and motionless on the parking lot, Officer Salamoni swears at him and searches Mr. Sterling’s pockets, apparently for a firearm.
A state report noted that Officer Lake had found a .38-caliber handgun in Mr. Sterling’s pocket after the shooting. The report also included the results of a toxicology test, which said Mr. Sterling’s blood had contained alcohol, cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and THC. The amount of methamphetamine, the report said, was associated with “abusers who exhibited violent and irrational behavior.”
Michael Adams, a lawyer for the Sterling family, said that the videos showed that Mr. Sterling was lucid, and not “deranged” or “out of control.”
“He stayed relatively calm throughout this process,” he said. “And that’s a different story or depiction when you read the attorney general’s findings.”
Another lawyer for the family, L. Chris Stewart, said that he was pleased to see Mr. Salamoni leave the force.
The two officers may now appeal their punishments to a civil service board, which will hold public proceedings and uphold, vacate or modify the punishments. The officers may then appeal that decision to a state district court.
Before the chief’s announcement on Friday, Sharon Weston Broome, the mayor of Baton Rouge, had said publicly that she would like to see Officer Salamoni fired and Officer Lake disciplined. Ms. Broome, who was elected in 2016, pledged during her campaign that she would replace the previous police chief, fulfilling that promise late last year with the announcement of Mr. Paul’s appointment.
Lawyers for the two officers are almost certain in the appeals process to seize on the mayor’s statements calling for the discipline of the officers, and argue that the punishments were a foregone conclusion, said Henry D.H. Olinde, a Baton Rouge lawyer with significant experience with civil service cases.
“The question’s going to be, did the mayor’s declaration in any way influence the decision of the police chief?” he said.
In an interview with a local TV station, John S. McLindon, Officer Salamoni’s lawyer, said he would vigorously pursue the appeal as “a matter of principle,” noting that his client did not expect to get his job on the force back.
“I think it’s unfair,” Mr. McLindon said. “He had to make some split-second decisions — several split-second decisions.”
A lawyer for Mr. Lake could not be reached for comment Friday night.
The new police chief, who is black, has a difficult political path to navigate in a racially and economically divided Southern city. He will have to both rally his police force to his side to support a reform agenda and gain the trust of residents who took to the streets in protest after Mr. Sterling’s death.
Chief Paul spoke at his news conference of a retaliatory act after the shooting, in which a man shot and killed two Baton Rouge police officers and a deputy sheriff. He spoke of all of the work that officers do that rarely garners international attention, and encouraged residents to file complaints if they felt they were mistreated by police.
He also urged them not to resist officers’ orders, and to treat the police with respect.
“Please stop resisting. Stop running,” he said. “When the police officer gives you direction, listen.”

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5) At Stephen Hawking Funeral, Eddie Redmayne and Astronomer Royal Give Readings
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




The coffin of Stephen Hawking arriving at St Mary the Great Church in Cambridge, England.Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated Press
LONDON — Hundreds of people lined the streets of the British city of Cambridge on Saturday, breaking into applause as the hearse carrying the remains of the famed scientist Stephen Hawking arrived at a local church for a private funeral for 500 invited guests.

Dr. Hawking died on March 14 at age 76 after capturing popular imagination with his writings about space and time.
His book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” published in 1988, has sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris. His own story was the basis of an award-winning 2014 feature film, “The Theory of Everything.”
The actor Eddie Redmayne, who portrayed Hawking in the 2014 biographical drama, gave a reading from Ecclesiastes during the service at St. Mary the Great Church. There was also a reading by Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, and eulogies by one of Hawking’s children and a former student.
The service was officiated by the Rev. Cally Hammond, the dean of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University, where Dr. Hawking was a fellow for 52 years.
Flags were lowered to half-mast in many parts of Cambridge to pay tribute to him.
Dr. Hawking, who suffered from motor neuron disease, was known for his groundbreaking research into black holes and other phenomena.
Even as he gradually lost control of his muscles, he traveled the globe to scientific meetings, visiting every continent, including Antarctica; wrote best-selling books about his work; married twice; fathered three children; and was not above appearing on “The Simpsons,” “Star Trek: The Next Generation” or “The Big Bang Theory.”
Dr. Hawking will be cremated at a later date, and his ashes are to be interred at Westminster Abbey in London near the remains of his fellow scientist, Isaac Newton.


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6)  At the Justice Dept.’s Death Penalty Unit, Accusations of Favoritism, Gender Bias and Unwanted Groping
By KATIE BENNER




The Justice Department’s death penalty unit faced accusations of gender bias under its previous chief, Kevin Carwile, who was removed from the post after The New York Times began asking about the allegations. Al Drago for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — When Kevin Carwile arrived to run the Justice Department’s death penalty unit in 2010, he had never prosecuted or sat through an entire capital punishment case. He was moved into the job after overseeing the gangs unit, and some prosecutors worried he lacked the expertise to steer the division.
Now Mr. Carwile has been removed from his post after The New York Times inquired about a series of grievances against him, including complaints that he promoted gender bias and a “sexualized environment.” He fostered a culture of favoritism and sexism, according to court records, internal documents and interviews with more than a half-dozen current and former employees. In one episode, his deputy groped an administrative assistant at a bar in view of their colleagues, according to some who were present. Mr. Carwile asked the witnesses to keep it secret, one said.

Employees of the unit, the capital case section, complained about the issues to Justice Department officials, the inspector general and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at least 12 times. Some allegations went unaddressed for years. In cases that were investigated, the accusers were never told what investigators found. Both Mr. Carwile and his deputy, Gwynn Kinsey, remained Justice Department employees despite the inquiries.
Six employees, including the administrative assistant, said they eventually left the section or quit government altogether in part because of the toxic climate. A defendant in Indiana has asked in court for the government to drop the death penalty recommendation in his case because of the unit’s emerging conduct issues.
Mr. Carwile declined to comment. After The Times contacted the Justice Department for this article, he was demoted and detailed to a different division. Through his lawyers, Mr. Kinsey declined to comment.
“The Department of Justice takes these allegations extremely seriously but cannot discuss specific employee disciplinary actions, or comment on internally handled personnel actions or matters that may impact personal privacy,” said Ian Prior, a Justice Department spokesman. The department confirmed that it referred some allegations made by employees to the inspector general, whose spokesman would not confirm or deny any investigation.
The unit is poised to gain power. President Trump has suggested the United States start executing drug dealers, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has urged prosecutors to seek the death penalty whenever possible in drug-related crimes.

A Mercurial Boss

The Justice Department created the capital case section in 1998 to help the attorney general decide when to apply capital punishment. The section’s prosecutors advise or work with trial teams on cases and a few trials a year. They were involved in some high-profile prosecutions like those of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and Dylann S. Roof, who was convicted in 2016 of murdering nine people at an African-American church in South Carolina.
As the death penalty fell out of favor in the United States, the influence of the unit, already one of the smallest in the Justice Department, waned. About half a dozen trial lawyers worked there in the beginning of 2012, along with a lawyer conducting protocol reviews and three others on loan from different parts of the department.
Mr. Carwile had arrived just before the public learned of the Fast and Furious scandal, a botched operation in which agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives let criminals move guns across the border into Mexico to try to build a bigger case. Many of the firearms were later found at crime scenes. Mr. Carwile incorrectly told superiors that the A.T.F. learned about guns moving illegally only after the fact, according to a subsequent inspector general investigation. He was moved from his post as head of the gangs unit to the much smaller capital punishment division.
He quickly gained a reputation as a mercurial manager with a hands-off style that bordered on neglect, according to current and former employees. He rarely responded to emails, four former employees said, and in meetings his questions revealed that he had not read their messages.
But after his first year, Mr. Carwile received the Excellence in Management award for the criminal division as the section’s lawyers prosecuted more cases.
In 2013, Jacabed Rodriguez-Coss, a prosecutor who had herself won one of the department’s highest awards, complained to human resources that Mr. Carwile expected her to involuntarily travel far more than her male counterparts.
Though she lived in Connecticut and had cases in Rhode Island and Vermont, he assigned her to one in California. She protested that her family needed her nearby. Her husband, an F.B.I. agent, was one of the first on the scene of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and was confronting the aftermath of having worked on the case.
Ms. Rodriguez-Coss filed a complaint to the E.E.O.C., which notified the Justice Department. Mr. Carwile subsequently suspended permission for her to work from Connecticut. She sued the department in 2016, accusing him of gender discrimination and claiming that her permission to work in Connecticut was taken away in retaliation for her complaints.
Seven men and women from the unit filed declarations in her support. Two male colleagues said that they had not been assigned so much travel. Bruce R. Hegyi, a former prosecutor, wrote that he left because of “plainly unethical and improper conduct.”
He said in his filing that Mr. Carwile promoted “a sexualized environment,” took him to a restaurant with scantily clad waitresses and let a fellow prosecutor show naked photographs of a woman during a work gathering of both men and women.
Other employees said in their declarations that Mr. Carwile held men-only meetings, sent emails only to men and assigned more desirable and high-profile cases to men. “Women only go to law school to find rich husbands,” he said, according to a declaration filed by one lawyer, Amanda Haines.
Under Mr. Carwile, there was incentive “not to not stir things up,” said Kevin Little, the lawyer representing Ms. Rodriguez-Coss.
“My client and other of her colleagues feared retaliation,” he said.
The Justice Department said in its response that Ms. Rodriguez-Coss’s claims “boil down to her admitted refusal to perform the essential requirements of her position,” which included taking on cases that required travel.

Life-or-Death Cases in the Balance

Around the same time, Ms. Haines, who worked as a federal prosecutor for 18 years before joining the division, alerted Mr. Carwile to persistent work-quality issues, warnings that she later described in a court filing.
In one case in Pennsylvania, she said, she received no files describing the government’s work by the previous prosecutor, despite numerous requests, and dozens of boxes with discovery materials had sat unreviewed.
She told Mr. Carwile and Mr. Kinsey, but the problem went unaddressed. Her colleague instead received a plum assignment: the Boston Marathon bombing trial.
In the Indiana case, Ms. Haines said her predecessor interviewed over a dozen witnesses without a law enforcement officer or other witness present, an error that could jeopardize the government’s work. She said in a legal filing that the prosecutor, who later won a departmental award, destroyed his interview notes, which he initially denied but later acknowledged.
After Ms. Haines took her concerns to Mr. Carwile, a colleague shared them in an email with Sung-Hee Suh, then the deputy assistant attorney general.
Ms. Haines also described the errors in a declaration filed in Ms. Rodriguez-Coss’s lawsuit. After her accusations became public, defense lawyers in the Indiana case pushed back on the government’s recommendation to seek the death penalty for their client, Andrew Rogers, a felon accused of tying up his cellmate and stabbing him to death.
The notes the prosecutor is accused of destroying could have been the difference “between a verdict for life and a verdict for death,” the defense wrote in a brief in January.
“If you pull on the thread, who knows how many cases could be impacted?” said Mr. Little, Ms. Rodriguez-Coss’s lawyer.

‘Unwelcome Liberties’

Two years ago, another prosecutor in the section, Ann Carroll, was asked to travel for work after she had surgery. Around that time, she learned that a male colleague was allowed to forgo travel to accommodate his gluten intolerance.
“Over the 20 years I had worked at the Department of Justice, I had never experienced a complete lack of sensitivity in the immediate aftermath of a serious medical illness,” Ms. Carroll wrote in a declaration. “I felt Mr. Carwile’s response was arbitrary, and gender-based.” She quit that June.
Before departing, Ms. Carroll said she described ethical violations to Ms. Suh, prompting a management review. Four former and current employees said in court declarations and to The Times that they told Ms. Suh and James Mann, the chief of staff to the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, about the mishandled cases, sexualized culture and gender bias.
Ms. Suh ultimately said that Mr. Carwile and Mr. Kinsey, as a result of the review, were “now doing their best,” according to Mr. Hegyi’s declaration, and she concluded that employees were unhappy because they wanted to work from home, to choose between trials and case reviews, and to be given more ways to bring concerns to management.
Her conclusions dumbfounded employees who said they had shared more serious grievances. A person briefed on the matter said they were not told of steps being taken to address complaints because those were confidential.
Ms. Suh, who now works at the asset manager Pimco, said she could not comment on the details of pending litigation or personnel matters. “Any allegations of misconduct, discrimination, harassment or bias actually brought to my attention were fully and fairly investigated and addressed appropriately,” she said.
The years of warnings that their bosses had ignored or condoned misconduct came to a head last May. During a work-sanctioned happy hour at a restaurant near the Justice Department, colleagues watched Mr. Kinsey grope the administrative assistant, Alyssa tenBroek.
“Mr. Kinsey, who is a married man, began to take what seemed very clearly to be unwelcome liberties of a physical, sexual nature,” Luke Woolman, an intern at the time, wrote in his declaration. He said Mr. Kinsey repeatedly touched Ms. tenBroek, whom he identified as A.T., “inappropriately, openly and obviously” in front of patrons, Mr. Carwile and at least one other Justice Department prosecutor.
Mr. Woolman and the prosecutor, Sonia Jimenez, suggested everyone go home, he later told Ms. Haines. Ms. Jimenez tried to discourage Mr. Kinsey from trying to persuade Ms. tenBroek to go to a hotel with him, according to an internal memo by Ms. Haines.
As the night wound down, Mr. Carwile pulled aside Mr. Woolman and asked him not to tell anyone what he had seen.
“He sternly reiterated his request, specifically stating that he was being serious,” Mr. Woolman wrote.

Fallout From a Night Out

After that night, tensions in the unit exploded into view. Ms. tenBroek showed colleagues text messages from Mr. Kinsey in which he offered to give her money, pay her bills or take her on a trip. He also sent her photos of herself that he had downloaded from the internet.
He signed off “XOXOXOX,” according to Ms. Haines’s memo. In other messages, he appeared to apologize.
Ms. tenBroek later told Ms. Haines and Julie Mosley, another prosecutor, that Mr. Kinsey groped her again in the cab and tried to coerce her into checking into a hotel.
Ms. Mosley told the E.E.O.C., and Ms. Haines sent her memo to superiors at the Justice Department. “I trust you will give this matter the serious attention it deserves,” she wrote. Mr. Woolman said in a court filing that he shared his story with Mr. Mann and an investigator from the inspector general’s office.
Ms. tenBroek did not dispute her co-workers’ accounts and said in a statement that she had participated in the department’s “lengthy and taxing” complaint process. She has since left the agency.
“I have always wanted to pursue a career with the Department of Justice, but it failed me when I reported misconduct,” she said. “No woman should feel compelled to deal with the pervasive harassment that I experienced, much less have her complaint be effectively disregarded.”
The department’s inspector general began investigating, and Mr. Kinsey was demoted and moved to another division. He is appealing. A person close to Mr. Kinsey said that evidence in another investigation is favorable to him, but would not say who was conducting that inquiry.
Current and former employees said the public understandably expects death penalty cases to be handled with integrity. As Mr. Sessions and Mr. Trump push for more capital punishments, the section’s history, they say, could work against the Justice Department.
The same month as the happy hour, the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, sent a memo to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. Sexual harassment, he wrote, “profoundly affects the victim and affects the agency’s reputation, undermines the agency’s credibility, and lowers employee productivity and morale.”

Doris Burke and Kitty Bennett contributed research.


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7)  Student Protesters Take Over Howard University Administration Building
By MAYA SALAM and EMILY BAUMGAERTNER




HU Resist, a student group, has called for the resignation of Howard University’s president and the executive committee of the board of trustees. Emily Baumgaertner/The New York Times



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