Sunday, December 14, 2014

BAUAW NEWSLETTER: SUNIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2014

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL



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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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Cops vs Free Speech
How police are threatening Mumia, convicts, teachers, and all of us with censorship as well as bullets!


• The New “gag” law in Pennsylvania that seeks to silence prisoners. This law, cobbled together in days following Mumia’s recorded presentation to a commencement ceremony at Goddard College, was explicitly designed to “shut him up.” The targets of this blatantly unconstitutional law, however, include all prisoners convicted of violent crimes!

• A Law Suit has been filed to stop the “gag” law from being implemented!  Support for this effort is critical. Donations will go toward the fight against the “gag” law.

• The  suppression of the “Urban Dreams” web site by the Oakland School Board. This teacher-created site of voluntary curriculum ideas included one comparing the suppression of Mumia’s commentaries with censorship of Martin Luther King’s later writings. While the Superintendent of Schools has now promised to restore the site, we must remain vigilant!

• Both of these measures—the “gag” law in Pennsylvania, and the suppression of the Urban Dreams website—were taken at the behest of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)!  The FOP is a highly politicized organization which seeks to silence social critics such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, and dictate the curricula in schools! The FOP and Democrat/Republican politicians will continue their attempts at intimidation and suppression, unless we act!

• Ferguson shows that black and Latino youth particularly are threatened by militarized and politicized police who shoot first and ask questions later, and frame their targets for crimes they didn’t commit. Chief targets have included Native American Activists like Leonard Peltier, militant working-class activists, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Black Panthers and Martin Luther King. Mumia is currently a top target to silence.  But anyone and everyone can be on their enemies list, and in their cross-hairs!  Fight back now!

Donate Now
to fight the “gag” law!
go to:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protect-freedom-of-speech-keep-mumia-on-the-air

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland CA  •  510.763.2347
www.laboractionmumia.org

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Support Prison Radio

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222

Pennsylvania legislators are trying to stop prisoners from speaking about their ideas and experiences. Last week, PA Representative Mike Vereb introduced a bill (HB2533) called the “Revictimization Relief Act,” which would allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General to sue people who have been convicted of “personal injury” crimes for speaking out publicly if it causes the victim of the crime “mental anguish.”

The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.

While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.

If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.

That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.

Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.

We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:

Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne  (717) 787-1349

Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams  (717) 787-5970

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi  (717) 787-4712

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683

Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.

Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!

- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf


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COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action- write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

November 24, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
mchugh_md
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
  • The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help
  • A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.”  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
  • Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).
  • A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!
> > > Please donate today! < < <



Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
 Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org

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Update on the legal fight to #FreeRasmeaNow
Rasmea Defense Committee 

Out of jail!
Rasmea is with her family and returning home to Chicago.

Members of the Rasmea Defense Committee from Chicago and Detroit / Dearborn just welcomed Rasmea back from 5 weeks in a Port Huron, Michigan, jail. She arrived at the U.S. Marshal's office in Detroit for processing at approximately noon today, Dec. 11, and was greeted shortly thereafter by friends and family, who are bringing her home to Chicago now.

She looks strong, and is upbeat and excited to see more of her friends, family, and supporters soon. The defense committee wants to again thank everyone for their phone calls, letters, rallies, protests, and all the other activism that helped us get Rasmea released. She sends her love and appreciation to all, and graciously asks us to be ready for the next stage--winning the appeal and exonerating her fully.

Rasmea will be meeting with her attorneys in the next few days, and they will begin establishing strategies for the sentencing on March 10th and the appeal, respectively. We will reach out to everyone soon, and call on defense committees and supporters across the country to gear up for another intense #Justice4Rasmea campaign.

But for now, let's celebrate knowing that Rasmea will be back home safe, and ready to get back to her work with the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) and its Arab Women's Committee.

We will be welcoming her home publicly for the first time next Wednesday, December 17th, at the AAAN's event showcasing the Wishah popular dance troupe directly from Ramallah in Palestine. Join us to celebrate her, and Palestinian culture and resilience, by purchasing your tickets here!

Stay updated at uspcn.org and stopfbi.net.

Rasmea Defense Committee

Keep updated at uspcn.org and stopfbi.net.


Rasmea Defense Committee

www.uspcn.org
www.stopfbi.net


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Copyright © 2014 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414



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RH Reality Check
RHRealityCheck.org

Two weeks ago, Cleveland police killed Tanisha Anderson in front of her family's home when they'd been called by her family to help her, after she panicked as they were taking her to a local hospital for a psychological evaluation. Her 16-year-old daughter was watching from a window [1] as an officer used a takedown move on her mother, forcing Anderson face down on the icy pavement and then pressing his knee into her back until she stopped moving.

The police told concerned family members that Tanisha Anderson was sleeping and left her there on the ground. When the ambulance finally arrived 20 minutes later, she was dead. Once again, an African American family was reminded that no level of government in the United States is set up to protect and serve the well-being of their loved ones, no matter where they choose to live.

Tanisha Anderson's family can't afford her funeral expenses, and as of now, they've only raised $1,501 of their $7,000 goal. Can you help them today?

http://www.gofundme.com/hbeun4?&utm_medium=email&utm_source=reality&utm_content=2+-+Tanisha+Andersons+family+cant+afford+her&utm_campaign=rhrc&source=rhrc

Natasha Chart,
Campaign Director, RHRealityCheck.org

[1] - "Daughter of mentally ill Cleveland woman who died in police custody hopes for change," by Brandon Blackwell, Cleveland.com, November 18, 2014

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/daughter_of_mentally_ill_cleve.html?&utm_medium=email&utm_source=reality&utm_content=3+-+Daughter+of+mentally+ill+Cleveland+woman&utm_campaign=rhrc&source=rhrc



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 B. ARTICLES IN FULL




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1) Body Cameras Worn by Police Officers Are No ‘Safeguard of Truth,’ Experts Say
By and





2) #BlackLivesMatter Takes the Field: A Weekend of Athletes Speaking Out
Dave Zirin  
December 8, 2014
http://www.thenation.com/blog/192121/blacklivesmatter-takes-field-weekend-athletes-speaking-out




3) Grand Jury System, With Exceptions, Favors the Police in Fatalities
By and




4) Paid to Promote Eye Drug, and Prescribing It Widely
By and




5) Military-Style Technology Finds Way Into School District Safety Measures
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/education/military-style-technology-finds-way-into-school-district-safety-measures.html?ref=us




6) Mom of Boy Shot by Police Wants Officer Convicted
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS





7) I Can’t Be Forgiven for Abu GhraibThe Torture Report Reminds Us of What America Was
By ERIC FAIR




8) Georgia’s Merciless Push to Kill
Injustice in Robert Wayne Holsey’s Case
By
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/opinion/injustice-in-robert-wayne-holseys-case.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region




9) Dollree Mapp, Who Defied Police Search in Landmark Case, Is Dead
By





10) Is It Bad Enough Yet?
"The root of the anger is inequality, about which statistics are mind-boggling: From 2009 to 2012 (that’s the most recent data), some 95 percent of new income has gone to the top 1 percent; the Walton family (owners of Walmart) have as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of the country’s people combined; and “income mobility” now describes how the rich get richer while the poor ... actually get poorer."




11) Thousands March in Washington to Protest Police Violence
By and ELENA SCHNEIDER




12) Supreme Court Revisits Life Sentences for Juveniles
By

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/supreme-court-revisits-life-sentences-for-juveniles/?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region




13) Woman Tapes Police Arresting Someone and Ends Up Being Tasered and Called 'a Dumb B!†@h' on Video
Police allegedly tried to delete the video but the woman's phone had stored it in a cloud service.

By weinenkel
December 13, 2014  
http://www.alternet.org/woman-tapes-police-arresting-someone-and-ends-being-tasered-and-called-dumb-bh-video?akid=12575.229473.svHkb_&rd=1&src=newsletter1028645&t=18




14) A Shooter, His Victim and Race
By




15) More Files Are Released in Shooting in Ferguson
By




16) Grisly Execution in Oklahoma Detailed in Court Brief
By




17) I.R.S. Asset Seizure Case Is Dropped by Prosecutors
By




18) 25,000 March in New York to Protest Police Violence
By BENJAMIN MUELLER and ASHLEY SOUTHALL











































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1) Body Cameras Worn by Police Officers Are No ‘Safeguard of Truth,’ Experts Say
By and

Michael Brown’s family, on the night of the Ferguson grand jury decision, called for all police in the United States to wear body cameras.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, in announcing that some of New York’s police officers would begin wearing them, said “body cameras are one of the ways to create a real sense of transparency and accountability.”

And on Monday, President Obama said he would request $75 million in federal funds to distribute 50,000 body cameras to police departments nationwide, saying they would improve police relations with the public.

But even as departments have started adopting the technology, questions remain about how much it can actually prevent violent encounters with citizens or clarify the boundaries of appropriate police response.No consensus has emerged about when officers should turn on their cameras, which could leave departments open to accusations of selective recording. And tapes do not always lead to universally shared conclusions. The footage of Eric Garner’s death this year on Staten Island and of Rodney G. King’s beating by Los Angeles officers in 1991 ultimately revealed the shortcomings of video as evidence, even as they thrust violence against unarmed black men into the public eye.

So while video offers the illusion of absolute truth, police officials and legal experts say, it can just as often turn into a Rorschach test.

“We shouldn’t just think of video as the safeguard of truth — ‘Now we have incontrovertible evidence of the truth of what happened,’ ” said Mary D. Fan, a criminal law professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former federal prosecutor. “It isn’t necessarily the magic bullet, that now we know the truth and that we’ll all agree, we’ll see the same thing and agree on the same thing.”

Body cameras have already played a role in a few police disciplinary cases. In Phoenix, for example, an officer was fired after his camera captured him in repeated instances of profanity, verbal abuse and threats against civilians.

In other cases it was the absence of video that got the officer in trouble. An officer in Daytona Beach, Fla., was forced to resign after he was caught turning off his camera at critical moments. An Albuquerque officer who shot and killed a woman in April — and whose camera was off at the time — was fired on Monday after being investigated for not complying with department orders that required officers to record all interactions with civilians.

But even when video does exist, it is often not decisive. In the case of Mr. Garner, the Staten Island man who died in July after a police officer put him in a chokehold, a video of the encounter taken with a bystander’s cellphone and viewed millions of times was enough to stir visceral outrage — but not to secure an indictment.

“I don’t know what video they were looking at,” said Gwen Carr, Mr. Garner’s mother, referring to the grand jury that cleared the officer, on Wednesday. “Evidently it wasn’t the same one that the rest of the world was looking at.”

Many of those who poured out to demonstrate after the Garner decision thought, as Greg Jackson, 25, a law student from Oakland, Calif., did, that the video would make an indictment “a slam dunk.”

But slam dunks are rare.

In the beating of Mr. King, the Los Angeles officers involved were acquitted despite a video, shot by a nearby resident, showing them repeatedly kicking and hitting him with batons. In the case that inspired the film “Fruitvale Station,” the transit officer who fatally shot Oscar Grant III in Oakland, Calif., in 2009 was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, a lesser verdict than many protesters had called for after cellphone video of Mr. Grant’s death circulated online.

For one thing, jurors are often sympathetic to police arguments. The officers charged with beating Mr. King after a car chase argued that he was uncooperative and making movements they deemed potentially threatening. (Two of the four acquitted officers were later convicted in federal court of violating Mr. King’s civil rights.)

And police have some latitude to use force when making an arrest. Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who applied the chokehold to Eric Garner, narrated three videos taken of the encounter while testifying before the grand jury, saying he intended only to wrestle Mr. Garner to the ground.

Confronted with a video, the police usually “have a version that seeks to explain what you see, not necessarily to contradict what you see, but to explain it,” said John Burris, an Oakland-based civil rights lawyer who worked on the King and Grant cases.

The potential for officers to tailor their testimony to video evidence highlights an ongoing debate over the extent to which police should have control of or access to the videos taken by their body cameras.The majority of police chiefs surveyed last year by the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit police research and policy organization, said they supported allowing officers to review videos before making statements. In New York, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said officers will have the same opportunity.

Rules about when officers should activate their cameras vary. Some departments have no written policy, according to the Police Executive Research Forum’s report. A common approach requires recording when responding to 911 calls and any situation that might involve criminal enforcement. Officers have the discretion to turn their cameras off under most policies, the report said, but must explain their decision in writing or on camera.

The concern is that “they’ll be selective, that there will be Watergate gaps in the record,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “There have to be mechanisms to ensure against that.”

The New York Police Department has yet to finalize its policy, though officials said the current draft calls for officers to record in seven instances, which include arrests and any use of force. Interior patrols in housing projects were added to the list after an officer shot and killed an unarmed black man in a housing project stairwell in Brooklyn last month.

When it comes to enforcing the policies, “the implications for legitimacy are going to be pretty profound,” said Michael White, the author of a Department of Justice study on police body cameras. “If you have a police encounter that results in a citizen’s death, and it was supposed to be recorded and it wasn’t, you can imagine what the citizens’ reaction would be.”

Cities are moving forward with camera programs even in the absence of much evidence of their benefits: Only three studies have been conducted on them in the United States, Mr. White said, though they have been promising.

In Rialto, Calif.; Mesa, Ariz.; and Phoenix, the use of force and civilian complaints against officers when they wore cameras decreased. But Mr. White cautioned: “We have no idea what the dynamics are that are leading to those reductions.”

In the Garner case, Officer Pantaleo’s lawyer, Stuart London, said his client believed he was in the right, so it did not bother him that he was being filmed.

“I expect everything to be filmed,” he said the officer told the grand jury.

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2) #BlackLivesMatter Takes the Field: A Weekend of Athletes Speaking Out
Dave Zirin  
December 8, 2014
http://www.thenation.com/blog/192121/blacklivesmatter-takes-field-weekend-athletes-speaking-out

The marches in the streets are not done. The die-ins disrupting traffic are not done. Any kind of closure for the families of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, and so many others is far from done. So why should anyone be surprised that the St. Louis Rams were not done? A week after five players raised their arms in the now iconic protest pose of "hands up don't shoot," wide receiver Kenny Britt took the field with the names “Michael Brown” and “Trayvon Martin” written on his cleats. His teammate Jared Cook had the words "I can't breathe," the last gasp of Staten Island's Eric Garner as a police officer cut off his oxygen with a chokehold, written on his wristband. Teammate Davin Joseph had the same phrase written on his cleats.

They were not alone. Detroit Lions running back Reggie Bush, who was attacked by Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League for comparing the late Michael Brown’s hometown of Ferguson to Gaza on Instagram, was not cowed into silence and wore a shirt that read “I can't breathe” during warm-ups. He said, "Honestly, I've always been the quiet kid. I've always been the one who's reserved, to kind of sit back and not really get into politics and things like that. But I don't know why I just felt some kind of ... I guess the situation just touched me."

Bush's mom has also been a police offer for twenty years, and yes I wish I could be a fly on the wall at the Bush house this Christmas.

Browns cornerback Johnson Bademosi also wore an "I can't breathe" shirt before game-time, as did San Diego Chargers linebacker Melvin Ingram. Then there was Brandian Ross of the Raiders, who came out during player introductions without a helmet and with his hands up high, and Washington defensive lineman Chris Baker, who raised his hands up after a sack. Although, in Baker's case, the gesture of anti-racism while wearing a Redskins uniform probably won't make it onto a protest poster anytime soon.

These actions by NFL players come the day after NBA star Derrick Rose wore an "I can't breathe" shirt during warm-ups, which prompted the NBA's number one icon, LeBron James,to say, "I thought it was great. I'm looking for one."

Then there is All-Star guard Damian Lillard who posted this gut-punch of a political cartoonby Rik Sansone to his Instagram account, causing the image to go viral among sports fans and protesters alike.

Two members of the Oregon Ducks basketball team also raised their hands up during the pledge of allegiance the week after Knox College basketball player Ariyana Smith, playing near Ferguson in Claremont, Missouri, lay on the floor of the court and would not move for four and a half minutes, to represent the four and a half hours that Michael Brown was left in the street after dying at the hands of Darren Wilson.

Each of these actions has the effect of amplifying the impact of a new struggle for human dignity in the face of racism. It has has found expression in all fifty states and in solidarity actions in cities around the world all with the message that black lives matter. Seeing the movement impinge upon the highly sanitized, deeply authoritarian world of sports is not only a reflection of just how widespread the outpouring of anger has been. These athletic protests also shape the movement, giving more people the confidence to get in the streets and puncturing the self-imposed bubbles of those who want to pretend that all is well in the world. It is politicizing sports fans and educating those who think that sports in general—and athletes in particular—have nothing to offer the struggle for a better world.

Yes, it is also provoking a great deal of ugliness among a segment of fans on social media, not to mention snide smirks from some sports writers who once a year find time to praise people like Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Arthur Ashe, and others tucked away in the past. They should listen to Lions coach Jim Caldwell, one of only four African-American head coaches in the NFL. When asked about his players getting political the normally taciturn Caldwell said:
I grew up in the 60s, where everybody was socially conscious. I believe in it. I'd be a hypocrite if I stood up here and told you any differently, because more than likely, some of those protests that Dr (Martin Luther) King and some of the others that took a part in non-violent protests, is the reason why I'm standing here in front of you today.
This is a similar moment. Except this movement is not only explicitly about the right to live a life with more opportunity, but the right to simply live. As Howard Zinn said, "You can't be neutral on a moving train." The train is leaving the station, even in the world of sports.





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3) Grand Jury System, With Exceptions, Favors the Police in Fatalities
By and

The circumstances of the case, like others before it and others that would follow, in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, were familiar. A police officer killed an unarmed man. The officer claimed he acted appropriately. A grand jury declined to bring charges.

But the state’s case in Charlotte, N.C., against Officer Randall Kerrick, would not end there. The state attorney general’s office, which inherited the case after the local prosecutor recused himself, quickly resubmitted the case to a different grand jury.

Evidence was reheard. Twice as many as witnesses were called. And in January, the second grand jury indicted Officer Kerrick on charges of voluntary manslaughter in the death of Jonathan Ferrell, 24, a former college football player.The extraordinary steps taken in North Carolina — along with the recent grand jury decisions to bring no charges against white police officers who killed unarmed black men in New York and Missouri — illustrate how the justice system can favor the police, often shielding them from murder or serious manslaughter charges.

The balance tips toward the police from the start: In most felony cases, an arrest is made and a grand jury indictment follows within a prescribed period of time. But in police fatality cases, prosecutors generally use special grand juries sitting for lengthy periods to investigate and gather evidence before determining if an arrest and indictment are warranted.

Another hurdle is the law itself. Most states give officers wide discretion to use whatever force they reasonably believe is necessary to make an arrest or to protect themselves, a standard that hinges on the officer’s perceptions of danger during the encounter, legal scholars and criminologists say.

“The whole process is really reluctant to criminalize police behavior,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “The grand jurors are, the jurors are, the judges are, the appellate courts are.”

The recent decisions to refrain from bringing charges on Staten Island and in Ferguson have sparked protests because, among other things, they seem to defy logic: Shouldn’t the cases be heard at trial, many protesters have asked, and be decided by a full jury?

The questions have strengthened calls for wholesale changes in the grand jury system. Some elected leaders in New York have called for special prosecutors, or the attorney general, to investigate all fatal police encounters. Others say the current process should be stripped of its cloak of secrecy.

No precise figures exist for the number of people killed by the police in the United States, but police departments each year voluntarily report about 400 “justifiable police homicides” to the Federal Bureau of Investigation; it is an incomplete count, criminologists say

Rarely do deaths lead to murder or manslaughter charges. Research by Philip M. Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, reports that 41 officers were charged with either murder or manslaughter in shootings while on duty over a seven-year period ending in 2011. Over that same period, police departments reported 2,600 justifiable homicides to the F.B.I.

Officer Kerrick was the first Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer charged in a fatal shooting in more than 30 years. He was one of several officers who responded to a 911 call, placed by a woman who was alarmed by a stranger knocking at her door at 2:30 a.m.

Moments earlier, Mr. Ferrell, a former safety for Florida A&M University, had gotten into a car accident, and his vehicle had crashed into the trees. He had walked a half-mile or so to seek help. Instead, Mr. Ferrell, who was black, was mistaken for a burglar.

Officers arrived 11 minutes after the call and approached Mr. Ferrell. Police officials said Mr. Ferrell ran toward the officers and was hit with a Taser. When he continued to press forward, Officer Kerrick fired 12 bullets, 10 of which struck Mr. Ferrell.

Charles G. Monnett III, a lawyer for Mr. Ferrell’s parents, said the indictment would not have come had the state prosecutor not taken the case over from the Mecklenburg County district attorney. “The district attorney’s office works way too closely with the local police department and individual officers to be able to objectively look at these cases,” he said.

For most felonies, grand jury hearings are swift, bare-bones proceedings. Prosecutors present enough evidence to show it is probable that the defendant, who rarely testifies, committed a crime, and ask the jury to vote for an indictment. Several cases are usually processed in a single day.

But because most prosecutors impanel a special grand jury to investigate police-related deaths, they insulate themselves from the final decision, while appearing to fulfill the public desire for an independent review, legal experts said. The inquiries often go on for weeks or months, with testimony from several witnesses.

The proceeding is transformed into a trial of sorts, behind closed doors but without cross-examination. Prosecutors control what witnesses appear and in what order, legal scholars said.

In most cases, the officer provides his or her account; prosecutors can decide to let an officer’s version of events go unchallenged or to discredit it with cross-examination. They can do the same with other witnesses.

“If the prosecutor wants an indictment she or he is probably going to get one because they do have so much control over the grand jury,” said Andrew D. Leipold, a law professor at the University of Illinois who is an expert on grand juries. “The accountability for the decision to charge or not to charge rests with the prosecutor, not with the grand jury.”

The grand jury investigating the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island sat for nine weeks and heard 50 witnesses, including Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was videotaped as he used his arm to choke Mr. Garner from behind during a fight to subdue him. A medical examiner ruled Mr. Garner died because of the compression of his chest and neck during the struggle, but also listed his obesity, asthma and high blood pressure as contributing factors. Mr. Garner said several times that he could not breathe.

Geoffrey P. Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina who studies the use of force, said police officers are rarely indicted when they express remorse to jurors, admit they made a mistake, and stress that they were following their training, as Officer Pantaleo had. In shooting cases, officers often testify that they perceived a deadly threat and acted in self-defense. This stance can inoculate them even if the threat later turns out to be false.

Pete Hautzinger, the district attorney in Mesa County, Colorado, said the notion prosecutors lead grand juries to a predetermined conclusion is false. Though he rarely uses a grand jury on most felonies, he chose to present evidence to a special grand jury in 2010 against a state trooper, Evan Lawyer, who had shot and killed an unarmed man after he refused to open his front door. The prosecutor said he wanted a “sounding board” to validate his belief that there was enough evidence not only to warrant a trial, but eventually convict the trooper.

“How do ordinary people react to these facts, and what do they think is right here?” he said. Trooper Lawyer was indicted and eventually acquitted at trial.

Even when there is no hint that a victim was armed, it is difficult to bring a homicide charge if the officer claims the death was an accident, legal scholars say. Murder and manslaughter require proof that the officer intended to kill or harm the victim. To bring a second-degree manslaughter charge, one must show that the officer recklessly disregarded the risk inherent in his or her actions. Criminally negligent homicide requires a finding that the officer’s actions were “a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe.”

The jury’s only guide through the thicket of legal concepts is the prosecutor. “The notion that average people are going to delve into these complex legal issues and get them right is bizarre,” Professor O’Donnell said. “You are doing a deep dive on issues of justification, criminal negligence and recklessness.”

Still, many prosecutors reject the notion that they control the grand juries’ conclusions. They also point out that the panels have worked for centuries to protect the rights of the accused and shield witnesses who might otherwise not testify.

“It tends to be a much more full exchange about gathering the evidence than individuals on the outside understand or believe,” said Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney. “It is a secret process. Folks don’t know that much about it. But in practice, particularly in long investigations, I think the grand jurors are very active.”

He added: “I’ve had grand jurors which were very aggressive in trying to get me to put in evidence that I had not previously considered to put in.”

Jack Begg, Erik Eckholm and Hannah Fairfield contributed reporting.


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4) Paid to Promote Eye Drug, and Prescribing It Widely
By and

When the drug maker Genentech introduced a major product in 2006, it found itself in an awkward position: persuading eye doctors to start using its new more expensive drug instead of a popular cheaper version that the company already sold.

Ophthalmologists had been enthusiastically using the company’s cancer drug Avastin, which cost about $50 a dose, to treat a common eye disease in the elderly, wet macular degeneration. Then Genentech introduced Lucentis, a nearly equivalent drug that cost $2,000 a dose and was approved specifically to treat the disease.

Use of Lucentis took off, and it has become one of Medicare’s most expensive treatments — costing the federal government about $1 billion a year — even though several studies have concluded Lucentis has no significant advantage over its cheaper alternative.

Now, a new federal database shows that many of the doctors who were the top billers for Lucentis were also among the highest-paid consultants for Genentech, earning thousands of dollars to help promote the drug. The data raises questions about whether financial relationships between doctors and drug companies influence treatment decisions, even though physicians maintain they cannot be swayed.

Half of the 20 doctors who received the most money from Genentech to promote Lucentis in 2013 were among the highest users of the drug in 2012, billing for higher amounts of Lucentis than 75 percent of their peers. The figures were compiled from two federal databases that covered different periods, and it is not known whether or how much Genentech paid the doctors in 2012.

The 20 doctors earned $8,500 to $37,000 over five months in 2013, payments that included consulting and speaking fees as well as travel expenses and meals. Genentech says it has an annual cap of $50,000 a doctor for speaking fees.

Specialists who study conflicts of interest between physicians and the drug industry say even modest payments have been shown to influence behavior.

“That’s why a sandwich is so effective — no one wants to feel like they were being bought off for $5,” said Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, an associate professor at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington and director of PharmedOut, a project that educates doctors about drug marketing claims. “That’s why they convince themselves that the drug is better.”

Doctors who speak on behalf of Lucentis say they do so because they believe in it and because they want to educate colleagues on its use. Some said that while they continued to use Avastin, it carried risks that should not be ignored.

“There are certain instances where you would prefer one over the other,” said Alan Ruby, an ophthalmologist based in Livonia, Mich., who received nearly $12,000 from Genentech in the second half of 2013 for conducting what he described as workshops to educate other medical professionals about Lucentis. Dr. Ruby said that Lucentis was a better choice for some patients because of some evidence showing that Avastin carries a slightly higher chance of strokes in patients who are already at risk of developing them.

Dr. Ruby said he used Avastin on roughly a quarter of his macular degeneration patients, and used Lucentis more frequently. A federal database of Medicare billing showed that he billed for a higher amount of Lucentis than 75 percent of his peers. “I think to suggest that physicians are in any way influenced by their interactions with drug companies is very shortsighted,” he said.

Edward Lang Jr., a spokesman for Genentech, which is owned by the Swiss drug maker Roche, said the company chose to work with doctors based on their clinical expertise. “We’re looking to work with doctors who are in the top of their field, and who can provide us an honest perspective on what patients need and don’t need,” he said.

While Genentech says Lucentis is a better option, it supports a doctor’s choice about what is best for a patient, Mr. Lang said, adding, “That comes before us and anything else.”

Lucentis and Avastin, as well as Regeneron’s drug Eylea, are prescribed for the eye disease, which, if left untreated, can lead to blindness. Use of Avastin became popular after clinical trials for Lucentis showed that it worked well for macular degeneration. Doctors speculated that Avastin, which works in the same way as Lucentis, could also be used to treat the disease.

Since Lucentis was approved in 2006, several studies have shown that the drugs are nearly equivalent, including a large government-sponsored clinical trial involving 1,200 patients that was completed in 2011. Avastin is still the most popular choice of doctors: About half of patients who were treated for wet macular degeneration received Avastin, with Lucentis and Eylea sharing the rest of the market.

Genentech has aggressively promoted Lucentis to doctors to encourage them to switch, even paying rebates to those who use large amounts of Lucentis, a practice that critics have described as improper but the company says is legal. For Genentech, the stakes are high. Lucentis is one of its top products, generating $1.3 billion in sales in the first nine months of this year, an increase of 5 percent over that period last year.

Even with widespread Avastin use, injecting Lucentis remains one of Medicare’s costliest procedures. In 2010, Medicare paid $1 billion to treat macular degeneration patients with Lucentis, while it spent $27 million for such patients treated with Avastin, according to a 2012 study from the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services.

In 2011, the office determined that if all patients being treated with Lucentis were instead given Avastin, the federal government would have saved about $1.4 billion.

A review released this year of nine clinical trials showed that Avastin and Lucentis had similar safety profiles and that Avastin did not appear to increase deaths or serious side effects. The review was conducted by the nonprofit Cochrane Collaboration.Still, several doctors, including those who speak on behalf of Lucentis and those who do not, said the choice between Avastin and Lucentis was not simply a matter of cost.

For example, Lucentis is specially prepared to be injected into the eye, but Avastin must be divided into smaller doses by outside compounding pharmacies, which can lead to contamination in rare cases. In 2011, more than a dozen people developed severe eye infections, and some were blinded, after they received injections of contaminated Avastin.

Some doctors say there is no good reason to use Lucentis more frequently than Avastin.

“They keep talking about evidence-based medicine, and they keep pretending the corporate-sponsored research is nonbiased,” said J. Gregory Rosenthal, a retina specialist in Toledo who has become an outspoken critic of Lucentis and Eylea. “The evidence says that Avastin has at least the clinical efficacy of Lucentis and is perhaps safer.”

Some doctors who were paid to promote Lucentis said they also used Avastin. “I usually start with Avastin,” said Dr. Mathew MacCumber, a retina specialist in Illinois who received about $8,500 from Genentech from August through December 2013, mostly to advise the company on topics that included how to promote the drug to doctors.

He received even more, about $16,000, from Regeneron in connection with Eylea, which was approved in 2011. Dr. MacCumber says he switches patients to Lucentis or Eylea if they do not do well on Avastin. He said some patients asked for those two drugs because they are F.D.A.-approved to treat macular degeneration. The federal Medicare database showed that the amount he billed for Lucentis was more than 50 percent of his peers. Dr. MacCumber, who noted he is a retina specialist who treats a high number of patients with macular degeneration, said he also used Lucentis to treat other eye conditions.

Dr. MacCumber said he worked for the companies because it was the best way to learn about the drugs. He says he is not influenced by the money he receives in compensation for his time. “People come to me and ask my advice, so I have to know the real story about things, and the only way to really do that is to know the people in the company who do the research, who know the drug the best,” he said.

Eric Campbell, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, said doctors frequently denied that relationships with drug companies could change their behavior, despite many studies to the contrary. “They are suggesting that the drug companies that are spending this money, that these companies are dumb enough to be wasting their money,” he said.

Not every top Lucentis biller was paid to promote the drug. In fact, several of the highest billers in 2012 got no such payments.

Mr. Campbell said that was because drug companies selected doctors based on their sway in their community. “You don’t have to influence every doctor, you just have to influence the right doctors,” he said.

Agustin Armendariz contributed reporting.




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5) Military-Style Technology Finds Way Into School District Safety Measures
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/education/military-style-technology-finds-way-into-school-district-safety-measures.html?ref=us

METHUEN, Mass. — With a rapid-response team and regular lockdown drills, the school district here, like many across the country, has long been steeling itself for the nightmare scenario of a school shooting.

But over the past two years, a new high-tech approach has been tested at one of the schools here — officials will not say which one — to see whether it is possible to react more effectively.

Engineers from a company called Shooter Detection Systems have installed infrared sensors and microphones that can pick up the sound of gunfire and immediately notify school and law enforcement officials where and when it has occurred. It was installed free of charge, and school officials were hoping they could find the money to put the system, which costs between $20,000 and $100,000, into more schools.

It does not stop the first shot, but company officials say the system can shorten an attack by taking the human element out of alerting the authorities.“The time it takes for police to even be notified can take many, many minutes,” said Christian Connors, the company’s chief executive. “What our device does is lessen the time.”

But there is debate about whether military-style measures like a gunshot-detection system are as valuable as more prevention-minded methods. Many experts say limited resources may be better spent on mental health services, training for teachers and students on what to do if their peers talk about bringing a gun to school, or on officers trained to keep schools safe.

Officials in this city of about 50,000, on the New Hampshire border, say their district’s five buildings are no more likely than any other to experience a mass shooting, although they do perimeter lockdowns from time to time when there is crime in the area. But Police Chief Joseph Solomon said he nevertheless tried to stay ahead on school safety practices.

“You can’t just look at your location — you have to look at how is the world changing,” Chief Solomon said. “You see a propensity for violence to increase.”

Company officials say they have tested the system with thousands of rounds of fire, when students were not in school. In the first public demonstration of the system last month, a police officer posing as a gunman with an AR-15-style assault rifle fired blank rounds in the lobby and school hallways. The police said the system helped them apprehend the “shooter” in less than three minutes.

Mr. Connors used to work on market development for military technology that locates incoming fire, which has been used in Afghanistan. He founded the company last year, he said, to commercialize the technology.

“We look at it like a smoke alarm. We have procedures for that,” Mr. Connors said. “We have no technology for gunfire.”

Mr. Connors said his system had been installed in a school in California, and another installation is planned in Virginia. The company has corporate orders for the system and has tested it in a major airport, he said.

Another company, SST, which makes shot-detection systems for city streets, is rolling out a similar system at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Officials here and at the college emphasized that they used preventive methods, too.

It was easy to persuade the administration to pay for the system, said John Buckovich, the chief of public safety at the Savannah art college. He said the system would hasten the arrival of law enforcement officials in a shooting even if those on campus were scrambling to flee or protect themselves. “Their first reaction may not be to call 911,” Mr. Buckovich said.

He added, “If you can reduce the time that it takes law enforcement to respond on the scene, then you reduce the chance of injury to persons in the situation like this.”

The demonstration here was warmly received by residents. Chief Solomon suggested that such systems needed to become a building code standard. Representative Niki Tsongas, a Democrat, who watched the demonstration, praised what she saw.

“It is the same technology that has been utilized thousands of times by our military to keep soldiers safe in some of the most dangerous locations around the globe,” Ms. Tsongas said in a statement.

But school safety experts questioned whether technology developed with Afghan battlefields in mind was optimal for schools.

“There’s an illusion that having all these video cameras, metal detectors, sensors, SWAT kinds of people on campus makes the place safer,” said Ron Avi Astor, a professor of social work and education at the University of Southern California. “The problem is from an educational perspective: It doesn’t feel safer. It feels like a prison.”

Mr. Astor said he would prefer to see more effort put into educating students and teachers on recognizing and responding to threats as they emerge. “This is a social issue that needs to be solved, that can only be solved through education,” he said.

Kenneth Trump, a school safety consultant, compared the technology to the bulletproof whiteboards and backpacks that have been marketed to schools and parents since the Sandy Hook school shooting two years ago in Newtown, Conn.

Mr. Trump said he thought this was “one of the many well-intended but not well-thought-out items that’s being pitched to pre-K-through-12 school environments in a post-Sandy Hook world.”

“We need to go back and focus on a lot of the proven, reliable things,” he said, “versus feeding into the emotional frenzy that a lot of these efforts over the past two years have tried to address.”

There are concerns, too, about whether the design of this system can protect victims in shootings that can end in just a few minutes.

“With this system, somebody wants to kill someone, they’ll just come on campus with a gun and by the time there’s an indication that there’s gunfire, the target of the perpetrator is dead,” said Ronald D. Stephens, the executive director of the National School Safety Center. He added that he would not recommend that every district buy such systems.

Proponents of the system argue that anything that can reduce response time in a school shooting has value.

“This is just another step in the direction of making responses more effective to the shooters,” said Bernard James, a law professor at Pepperdine University. He said he expected such technology eventually to be integrated into existing alarm systems.

In town, parents welcomed what they viewed as another layer of security for children. Darlene Franzone, 54, said she hoped the system might be a deterrent, adding that she often worries about shootings in public places, like movie theaters or the gym.

“You just don’t know anymore,” Ms. Franzone said.

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6) Mom of Boy Shot by Police Wants Officer Convicted
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CLEVELAND — The mother of a 12-year-old boy shot by a Cleveland policeman says she wants him convicted for killing her son, who was carrying a pellet gun that police say looked real.

Tamir Rice was confronted Nov. 22 when officers responded to a 911 call about someone with a gun near a playground. Surveillance video shows him being shot within 2 seconds of a patrol car stopping nearby.

Samaria (suh-MAR'-ee-uh) Rice said at a news conference Monday that a friend gave her son the airsoft gun, which shot nonlethal plastic pellets.

The family's new attorneys say they want a transparent investigation. A grand jury will consider whether charges are merited.

Other attorneys have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city on behalf of Tamir's family.

The city isn't commenting on the lawsuit.


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7) I Can’t Be Forgiven for Abu GhraibThe Torture Report Reminds Us of What America Was
By ERIC FAIR

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — I SPENT this semester teaching creative writing at Lehigh University. I’ve been a soldier, a police officer and an interrogator. So hearing students call me “Professor” and assigning homework was a significant change of pace.

But the course’s title, Writing War, kept me from straying too far from the memories that have haunted me over the last decade. I am grateful to Lehigh for the opportunity to teach the course. The school’s willingness to put a veteran in the classroom is the very thing this country needs to be doing in order to collectively process what the last 13 years of war have wrought. But teaching a class about war reminded me daily that I am no college professor.

I was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I tortured.Abu Ghraib dominates every minute of every day for me. In early 2004, workers inside Abu Ghraib were scrambling to cover the murals of Saddam Hussein with a coat of yellowish paint. I accidentally leaned up against one of those walls. I still wear the black fleece jacket with the faded stain. I still smell the paint. I still hear the sounds. I still see the men we called detainees.

Last month, my students at Lehigh read “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. During class I talked about the things American soldiers carried in Iraq. I brought in a cigar box filled with the trinkets and mementos I had purchased from Iraqi vendors at Baghdad International Airport. I brought along the black fleece jacket.When I asked the students to share their memories of the release in 2004 of the Abu Ghraib photographs showing the abuse of detainees, I received the sort of looks students give when they think they should know something and are too embarrassed to admit they don’t. Most avoided eye contact, some gave a sort of noncommittal nod, while others went for pure honesty and just yawned.

It was my first encounter with a generation that doesn’t consider the release of the Abu Ghraib photographs to be a critical moment in their lives. I don’t fault them. They were in elementary school at the time. It’s something for history books. It’s something their parents talk about. It’s an answer on a test.

As I looked at their blank faces, I realized I could let myself feel a powerful sense of relief. Abu Ghraib will fade. My transgressions will be forgotten. But only if I allow it.

I’ve published articles in newspapers detailing our abusive treatment of Iraqi detainees. I’ve done interviews on TV and radio. I’ve spoken to groups from Amnesty International, and I’ve confessed everything to a lawyer from the Department of Justice and two agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. I’ve said everything there is to say. It’s not hard to pretend the best thing to do is put it all behind me.

I stood before the class that day tempted to let apathy soften the painful truths of history. I no longer had to assume the role of the former interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I was a professor at Lehigh University. I could grade papers and say smart things in class. My son could ride the bus to school and talk to his friends about what his father does for a living. I was someone to be proud of.

But I’m not. I was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I tortured.Eventually I encouraged the students to track down the photos from Abu Ghraib and record their reactions in creative essays. We spent time talking about the abuses that took place and I even exposed them to some of my own writing. They still called me “Professor,” but I suspect they no longer thought of me as one.

Today, the Senate released its torture report. Many people were surprised by what it contained: accounts of waterboardings far more frequent than what had previously been reported, weeklong sleep deprivation, a horrific and humiliating procedure called “rectal rehydration.” I’m not surprised. I assure you there is more; much remains redacted.

Most Americans haven’t read the report. Most never will. But it stands as a permanent reminder of the country we once were.

In some future college classroom, a professor will require her students to read about the things this country did in the early years of the 21st century. She’ll assign portions of the Senate torture report. There will be blank stares and apathetic yawns. There will be essays and writing assignments. The students will come to know that this country isn’t always something to be proud of.


Eric Fair, an Army veteran, was a contract interrogator in Iraq in 2004.


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8) Georgia’s Merciless Push to Kill
Injustice in Robert Wayne Holsey’s Case
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/opinion/injustice-in-robert-wayne-holseys-case.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

Even by the abysmal standards of lawyering that defendants in capital trials regularly endure, Robert Wayne Holsey’s case stands out.

In 1997, Mr. Holsey was convicted and sentenced to death for killing a Georgia sheriff’s deputy named Will Robinson, who had pulled him over for robbing a convenience store. Despite evidence that Mr. Holsey was intellectually disabled — which should have barred him from execution under the United States Supreme Court’s earlier rulings — his lawyer neglected to make that argument at trial. Mr. Holsey was executed on Tuesday evening after the Supreme Court declined to stay his execution.

The evidence of Mr. Holsey’s mental deficits included an I.Q. test score of 70 when he was 15. In school, his intellectual functioning did not move past a fourth-grade level. But under Georgia law, a defendant is required to prove his intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt — the strictest standard in the country and one unmoored from scientific reality.

Mr. Holsey’s new lawyers challenged Georgia’s standard under a Supreme Court decision issued in May that reaffirmed and clarified its 2002 ban on executing intellectually disabled people. Laws that do not provide a fair chance to prove intellectual disability, the court wrote, “deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects.” The justices should have stayed Mr. Holsey’s death sentence on that ground alone. The egregious failures of his trial lawyer, Andy Prince, added to the injustice.

During the trial, Mr. Prince, a lifelong alcoholic, was drinking a quart of vodka a day. He was also facing his own criminal investigation for stealing more than $100,000 in client funds. Before the trial was over, he was arrested and charged with brandishing a gun, threatening to shoot his black neighbors and yelling racial slurs at them. (Mr. Prince is white, and Mr. Holsey is black.)

Mr. Prince, who was disbarred and sent to prison for theft of funds, later said, “I shouldn’t have been representing anybody in any case.”

Georgia, like other “death belt” states, will go to great lengths to execute the people it has sentenced to death. It is hard to understand how the Supreme Court, which spoke so clearly on the unconstitutionality of executing intellectually disabled people, could stand aside and allow Mr. Holsey to die.

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9) Dollree Mapp, Who Defied Police Search in Landmark Case, Is Dead
By

On May 23, 1957, three police officers arrived at a house in Cleveland and demanded to enter. They wanted to question a man about a recent bombing and believed he was hiding inside. A woman who lived there, Dollree Mapp, refused to admit them.

It was a small gesture of defiance that led to a landmark United States Supreme Court ruling on the limits of police power.

Ms. Mapp told the officers that she wanted to see a search warrant. They did not produce one. A few hours later, more officers arrived and forced their way into the house. Ms. Mapp called her lawyer and again asked to see a warrant. When one officer held up a piece of paper that he said was a warrant, Ms. Mapp snatched it and stuffed it into her blouse. The officer reached inside her clothing and snatched it back.

The officers handcuffed Ms. Mapp — they called her “belligerent” — and then searched her bedroom, where they paged through a photo album and personal papers. They also searched her young daughter’s room, the kitchen, a dining area and the basement.

They did not find the man they were looking for, but they did find what they said were sexually explicit materials — books and drawings that Ms. Mapp said had belonged to a previous boarder — and they arrested Ms. Mapp.

Four years later, after Ms. Mapp had been sentenced to prison on obscenity charges and after her conviction had been upheld on appeal, the Supreme Court took up the case, ostensibly because of questions it raised about obscenity and the First Amendment.

But when the justices ruled, in June 1961, their decision dwelled, with far more significant consequences, on the role of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure. Prosecutors had never produced the supposed warrant brandished by the Cleveland police or proved that it had existed.

The court ruled, 6 to 3, that Ms. Mapp’s conviction should be thrown out, and that all state courts must suppress evidence gathered through police misconduct in certain kinds of cases.

Even though Ms. Mapp’s name is etched in legal history, she had lived quietly in recent years, and besides a brief notice on a funeral home website, it took more than a month for her death to be reported. She was believed to be 90 or 91 when she died on Oct. 31, in or near Conyers, Ga.

Colorful, sometimes brash, Ms. Mapp was married for a time to Jimmy Bivins, a top-ranked fighter who died in 2012. She was later engaged to Archie Moore, a light-heavyweight champion, whom she sued in 1956 for $750,000, claiming he had assaulted her and had backed out of their marriage plans. (He died in 1998.) The bombing that officers were investigating in 1957 had been at the home of Don King, who would go on to become a famous boxing promoter. Ms. Mapp’s encounter with the police that day would not be her last run-in with the law.

Mapp v. Ohio may not ring as familiar as other cases involving civil rights and civil liberties, but it became a legal touchstone that continues to shape cases and stir debate.

Before the ruling, federal courts were required to suppress evidence gathered illegally. The decision extended the rule — known as the exclusionary rule — to state courts. The change has put continuing pressure on police departments to conduct investigations lawfully and brought increased scrutiny when their actions appear improper. Countless cases have been affected, and sometimes thrown out.

“The state, by admitting evidence unlawfully seized, serves to encourage disobedience to the federal Constitution which it is bound to uphold,” Justice Tom C. Clark wrote in the majority opinion.

Justice Clark wrote that evidence gathered illegally had to be excluded. Other measures to address such conduct had proved “worthless and futile.”

Court decisions in the past quarter-century have made exceptions to the exclusionary rule in certain cases when evidence was gathered improperly — for example, if a law enforcement agency appears to have made the errors in good faith when it followed incorrect legal guidance or relied on incorrect information provided by another agency.

The current chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., was a lawyer in the Reagan administration in the 1980s and helped it attack the exclusionary rule through litigation, proposed legislation and other means. In 2009, he wrote the majority opinion in Herring v. United States, a 5-to-4 decision that upheld the conviction of Bennie D. Herring after a search led to his arrest on drug and weapons charges based on false information that he was the subject of a warrant.

Some of the rule’s supporters worry that it could be significantly weakened or abolished under the current court. Jeffrey Fisher, a professor at Stanford Law School, said the issue would most likely go before the high court again as Herring is interpreted by lower courts.

“Some are reading Herring broadly,” Mr. Fisher said, “and some narrowly.”

Dollree Mapp was born in 1923 or 1924, according to census records, one of seven children of Samuel and Mary Mapp. She grew up in Forest, Miss. Her first name was spelled several ways in early records, and she was sometimes called Dolly. As an adult, Ms. Mapp gave numerous dates for her birth; public records show a wide range.

Information about her survivors was not immediately available. Her death was confirmed by the funeral home in Conyers that handled her services.

In 1968, Ms. Mapp moved from Cleveland to Queens. Two years later she was charged with possession of narcotics. Convicted in 1971 with a co-defendant, Alan Lyons, she pursued a series of appeals, claiming that the search warrant used in her arrest had been wrongly issued and that the police had targeted her because of her role in Mapp v. Ohio.

The drugs seized in the case were found at an apartment that Mr. Lyons apparently rented from Ms. Mapp. She lived several miles away. The police searched her home and found rent receipts that prosecutors argued established her as having aided and abetted Mr. Lyons. The officer who had applied for the warrant to search Ms. Mapp’s home was later dismissed from the police force after he was determined to have accepted about $3,500 from a narcotics dealer.

Ms. Mapp’s conviction was upheld, and she served time in the New York State Correctional Institution at Bedford Hills. On Dec. 31, 1980, Gov. Hugh Carey commuted her sentence, making her immediately eligible for parole.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.


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10) Is It Bad Enough Yet?
"The root of the anger is inequality, about which statistics are mind-boggling: From 2009 to 2012 (that’s the most recent data), some 95 percent of new income has gone to the top 1 percent; the Walton family (owners of Walmart) have as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of the country’s people combined; and “income mobility” now describes how the rich get richer while the poor ... actually get poorer."

THE police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe “safety net.” An inability to respond to climate, public health and environmental threats. A food system that causes disease. An occasionally dysfunctional and even cruel government. A sizable segment of the population excluded from work and subject to near-random incarceration.

You get it: This is the United States, which, with the incoming Congress, might actually get worse.

This in part explains why we’re seeing spontaneous protests nationwide, protests that, in their scale, racial diversity, anger and largely nonviolent nature, are unusual if not unique. I was in four cities recently — New York, Washington, Berkeley and Oakland — and there were actions every night in each of them. Meanwhile, workers walked off the job in 190 cities on Dec. 4.

The root of the anger is inequality, about which statistics are mind-boggling: From 2009 to 2012 (that’s the most recent data), some 95 percent of new income has gone to the top 1 percent; the Walton family (owners of Walmart) have as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of the country’s people combined; and “income mobility” now describes how the rich get richer while the poor ... actually get poorer.

The progress of the last 40 years has been mostly cultural, culminating, the last couple of years, in the broad legalization of same-sex marriage. But by many other measures, especially economic, things have gotten worse, thanks to the establishment of neo-liberal principles — anti-unionism, deregulation, market fundamentalism and intensified, unconscionable greed — that began with Richard Nixon and picked up steam under Ronald Reagan. Too many are suffering now because too few were fighting then.

What makes this an exciting time is that we are beginning to see links among issues that we have overlooked for far too long.

In 1970, after spending a year in New York absorbed by concerns seemingly as disparate as ending the war, supporting the rights of Black Panthers to get fair trials (and avoid being murdered) and understanding the role of men in the women’s movement, I — and others — had conversations like this: “Let’s make people understand that all of those issues, plus poverty and racism and the environment and more, are all part of the same picture, and that fixing things means citizens have to regain power and work in their own interests.”Of course we failed, as others did before and since. But these same things can be said now, and they’re being said by people of all colors. When underpaid workers begin their strikes by saying “I can’t breathe,” or by holding their hands over their heads and chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot,” they’re recognizing that their struggle is the same as that of African-Americans demanding dignity, respect and indeed safety on their own streets.

And of course it’s the same struggle: “It’s the same people,” says Saru Jayaraman, the director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. “Young people working in fast food are the same people as those who are the victims of police brutality. So the Walmart folks are talking about #blacklivesmatter and the #blacklivesmatter folks are talking about taking on capital.”

The N.A.A.C.P.’s Rev. Dr. William Barber II, a leader of the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina, captures the national yearning this reflects. “I believe that deep within our being as a nation there is a longing for a moral movement that plows deep into our souls,” he writes. “We are flowing together because we recognize that the intersectionality of all of these movements is our opportunity to fundamentally redirect America.” (The full text of Dr. Barber’s email is on my blog.)

“All of these movements”? Yes: The demands of the fast-food workers movement — $15 minimum wage and a union — have helped to unite movements among airport workers, hospital workers, retail workers and more.

There are already results. Two years ago, there was talk of raising the minimum wage to $10; now $15 per hour is seen as the bare minimum. Seattle and San Francisco have already mandated this, Chicago’s City Council voted to gradually increase to a $13 minimum by 2019, Oakland will move to $12.25 in March and a proposal is being considered in Los Angeles. (And although the amounts were woefully inadequate, four red states voted to approve minimum wage increases last month, showing that the concept resonates across party lines.)

Meanwhile, the credibility of those who argue that employers “can’t afford” to raise pay — McDonald’s paid its C.E.O. $9.5 million last year — is nil. For one thing, there are examples of profitable businesses that treat their employees decently, and even countries where fast-food workers can make ends meet. And for another, underpaying workers simply shifts the cost of supporting them onto public coffers. As Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont says, “In essence, taxpayers are subsidizing the wealthiest family in America.” That would be the Waltons. (Incredibly, many Republicans still want the working poor to pay more taxes.)Then, of course, there are the matters of justice and morality. It simply isn’t right to pay people a sub-living wage with no potential for more, and as the comedian Chris Rock says, employers would pay even less if they could get away with it.

The #blacklivesmatter movement — there’s no better description — is already having an impact as well. Don’t think for a second we’d be having a national debate about police brutality (one that includes many on the right), or a White House plan to examine and fix law enforcement, without demonstrations in the streets.

The initial Obama plan is encouraging but lacking, and that’s all the more reason to keep demonstrating. (What good are body cameras, by the way? The videotape of Rodney King’s beating was seen around the world yet resulted in acquittals; Eric Garner’s choking death, viewed millions of times online, didn’t even lead to a trial, even though police chokeholds are banned in New York City.) Besides, as Sanders says, “Even if every cop were a constitutional lawyer and a great person, if you have 30 percent unemployment among African-American young people you still have a huge problem.”

I have spent a great deal of time talking about the food movement and its potential, because to truly change the food system you really have to change just about everything: good nutrition stems from access to good food; access to good food isn’t going to happen without economic justice; that isn’t going to happen without taxing the superrich; and so on. The same is true of other issues: You can’t fix climate change or the environment without stopping the unlimited exploitation of natural and human resources (see Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything”). Same with social well-being.

Everything affects everything. It’s all tied together, and the starting place hardly matters: A just and righteous system will have a positive impact on everything we care about, just as an unjust, exploitative system makes everything worse.

Increasingly, it seems, there’s an appetite and even unity to take on the billionaire class. Let’s recognize that if we are seeing positive change now, it’s in part because elected officials respond to pressure, and let’s remember that that pressure must be maintained no matter who is in office. Even if Bernie Sanders were to become president, the need for pressure would continue.

“True citizenship,” says Jayaraman of Berkeley — echoing Jefferson — “is people continually protesting.” Precisely.


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11) Thousands March in Washington to Protest Police Violence
By and ELENA SCHNEIDER

WASHINGTON — They came to the nation’s capital on buses and planes and minivans and trains, from Florida, Detroit and Staten Island, led as much by the families, friends and supporters of African-American men and boys killed at the hands of the police as by civil rights leaders.

Thousands of people marched along the National Mall to protest the deaths. It was one of numerous protests held around the nation on Saturday, including hikes in canyons in the West and marches down the streets of the nation’s urban centers. The demonstrators here — many of them wearing T-shirts that read “Black Lives Matter” and chanting “I can’t breathe” — filed in from the blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue, evoking memories of civil rights marches of past decades as they moved toward the Capitol.“It’s a matter of honoring the lives we’ve lost,” said Jackeline Stewart, 30, of the District of Columbia, who came out in the chill to march. “It’s a double-edged sword. I’m proud that we are coming together, but on the other hand, I’m sad that we are here, marching for the right to breathe.” She added, “This is not a localized issue; this is our country’s issue.”

Here and around the nation, from California to Kentucky to New York and to Boston, activists came together for what was billed as a National Day of Resistance.

Tens of thousands of marchers on Saturday coursed through Manhattan while chanting “hands up, don’t shoot” and “justice now” in the largest demonstration New York City has seen since a grand jury on Staten Island decided on Dec. 3 not to indict the police officer who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold. In Boston, where protests were mostly peaceful, the police said they had arrested more than 20 people who had tried to block a highway.

The Washington march — known for years as the National March Against Police Violence — was led by the National Action Network, the organization run by the Rev. Al Sharpton, and was attended by the families of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley and Tamir Rice, all killed by police officers while unarmed.This march led by Mr. Sharpton — who has engaged in perpetual protest over several decades — did not have some of the spontaneity of the social media-driven “die-ins” that have erupted around the country. Some here also complained of a commercial element.

“I didn’t like the fact that people were profiting off T-shirts, flags and hats,” said Jay Bad Heart Bull, 36, who runs a nonprofit in Minneapolis. “I even saw a dog with a shirt that said, ‘I can’t breathe.’ I respect the hustle, but I want it to be for a purpose. How does that help our community?”

The police would not estimate how many marched in Washington, but at midday a plaza that could hold 5,000 people overflowed with demonstrators. As the march moved toward the Capitol, thousands more poured in to form a mobile mass of puffy coats, strollers, posters and spontaneous prayer groups.

Family members of some of those who have been killed were in attendance.

“My son was 12, just a baby,” said Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice, who was shot to death in Cleveland after the police saw him with what turned out to be a toy gun that fired plastic pellets. “He is here with me right now, and this is what he would want me to do,” she added. “He had a promising future. All the families, we share the same pain.”

“I’m marching for everyone’s sons and daughters,” said Esaw Garner, the widow of Mr. Garner.

The march follows protests around the country over recent grand jury decisions not to indict the officer who shot Mr. Brown in Ferguson, Mo., or the one who placed Mr. Garner in a fatal hold on Staten Island. Scores of protesters on Saturday came from Ferguson.

On Friday, the death of Tamir Rice was formally ruled a homicide, according to a county autopsy report; he died in November when an officer shot him within seconds of arriving on the scene.

Protesters in recent weeks have occupied parks, city streets, train stations and retail stores to draw attention to the use of force by the police. In New York, thousands of people have tried to close major roads, bridges and tunnels, disrupting the rhythms of the city. In Berkeley, Calif., an Amtrak train was forced to stop, a central freeway was closed for hours and regional commuter trains were halted.

“For me to come out from my comfortable cocoon in this stage of my existence is something,” said Cynthia Pace, a consultant from Baltimore who was marching here on Saturday. “We have enough money, our children are highly educated, all of these things. But I can’t imagine how we in the American public can see something on TV and 12 people see it differently. There is something wrong with this picture.”

The National Park Service said sponsors of Saturday’s march in Washington, which this year was called Justice for All, had sought a permit for 5,000 protesters, but the crowd appeared quite a bit larger. Many protesters were organized by the American Civil Liberties Union, branches of the N.A.A.C.P. and various labor, civil rights and religious groups. Just steps from the end of the protest, senators worked to complete a budget bill and vote on other measures.

“I’m surprised to see so many ethnicities here today. It’s not just black people, like I thought it would be. Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic, everyone cares about this,” said Peyton Hawkins, 18, a high school senior from Voorhees, N.J., who joined the Washington march. “We are making history.”

Mr. Sharpton followed several other speakers, invoking the history of the civil rights movement while calling on lawmakers to change how police shootings are investigated and adjudicated.

“We are here today because we must have this nation deal with the fact that, just like 50 years ago, the states have taken a position to rob the human rights and civil rights of citizens,” he said. “You can castigate the leaders; you can try and divide us by generation,” he said. “You may bury us, but you didn’t know you were burying seeds. We’ll grow stronger and last longer.”

Mr. Sharpton said that the Justice Department needed special funds and that special prosecutors must be appointed when civilians are killed by the police.

Isabel Martes, 42, a receptionist, drove to Washington from Harlem, N.Y., on Saturday morning with her sister. “I have three sons, and I have a husband,” she said. “Their lives matter. I’ve never been to a protest before, but things are getting out of control for our people, so I needed to come. After today, I’ll be at more protests. I’m hopeful now; I’m hopeful. I’m happy to see so much unity.”




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12) Supreme Court Revisits Life Sentences for Juveniles
By

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/supreme-court-revisits-life-sentences-for-juveniles/?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

The life-without-parole sentences of thousands of juveniles convicted of murder nationwide may be up for reconsideration after the Supreme Court announced Friday that it would, at last, resolve a major uncertainty lingering in a landmark 2012 ruling.

In that decision, Miller v. Alabama, the court held that the Eighth Amendment bars mandatory sentences of life without parole for those who were under 18 at the time of their crime.


Since young people are “constitutionally different” from adults, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court, the law must treat them differently. She pointed specifically to the “hallmark features” of youth, including “immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.”

A court may impose a sentence of life without parole, but only after considering the mitigating factors of youth and making an “individualized sentencing decision.” Going forward, Justice Kagan wrote, “we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon.”

But going backward is the more immediate concern, because the Court did not address whether the ruling applied retroactively — a key ambiguity for the more than 2,000 juveniles sentenced to life without parole before Miller.

Since the Miller decision, state courts around the country have come to opposite conclusions on this question. Nine have held that it is retroactive, while four — Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota — have ruled that it isn’t. (Already this term, the U.S. Supreme Court has let stand rulings that Miller is retroactive by state supreme courts in Nebraska and Illinois.)

On Friday, the court announced that it would resolve the issue by agreeing to hear an appeal from George Toca. Mr. Toca, who has been imprisoned for 30 years, was 17 when he was arrested after his best friend was accidentally shot and killed during a 1984 robbery. He has maintained he is innocent, and has presented evidence that someone else was the shooter. After the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the Miller decision was not retroactive in that state, Mr. Toca petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court.

Given the unqualified language of the Miller opinion, it is hard to see how the court could prevent thousands of young prisoners from even a chance at release somewhere down the road — simply because they had the bad luck to be convicted before Miller was decided.

The legal arguments over retroactivity will be heard by the justices most likely in late March 2015 and resolved by the end of June.

But one claim that often comes up — that retroactivity will somehow lead to a flood of dangerous criminals stalking the streets — is nonsense. No one would be released automatically. Rather, if the court applies Miller retroactively, each inmate who petitions for resentencing will receive careful individualized consideration — just as he should have in the first place.

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13) Woman Tapes Police Arresting Someone and Ends Up Being Tasered and Called 'a Dumb B!†@h' on Video
Police allegedly tried to delete the video but the woman's phone had stored it in a cloud service.

By weinenkel
December 13, 2014  
http://www.alternet.org/woman-tapes-police-arresting-someone-and-ends-being-tasered-and-called-dumb-bh-video?akid=12575.229473.svHkb_&rd=1&src=newsletter1028645&t=18



Police allegedly tried to delete the video but the woman's phone had stored it in a cloud service.
As places like Illinois try to make it illegal to tape record police officers doing their "work", video of police "working" has emerged . Kianga Mwamba says she was heading home from family gathering when she stopped her car to film Baltimore police allegedly beating up a man they had in custody. According to the Baltimore Sun:
Mwamba, 36, flicked on the video recorder on her cell phone, telling officers she was allowed to record. But the situation quickly devolved into Mwamba's being hauled from her Toyota, tasered and charged with assaulting two police officers.
The police said Mwamba tried to run over officers with her car. Mwamba showed them the video.
Also according to the Baltimore Sun:
And when Mwamba was bailed out of jail that Monday morning, she said the video she made appeared to have been deleted from her phone. It was only when she checked another app that backed up her images and videos to the cloud that she found she still had a copy, she said.
Prosecutors dropped all the charges against Mwamba in September, concluding that there was insufficient evidence to move forward, and last week she filed a $7 million lawsuit against a number of officers she says were involved in her arrest and what she says was an attempt by police to destroy the footage.
The police department, having now "officially" seen the video had this to say:
The video does not capture enough information to draw definitive conclusions about what transpired before, during, and after the arrest," the department said. "What is clear is that the language used is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
Also, Kianga Mwamba's dad? He's a veteran of the Maryland Capitol police.
 


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14) A Shooter, His Victim and Race
By

TAMPA, Fla. — IAN MANUEL is a black man who has spent most of his life in prison. Yet he still has a most unusual advocate calling for his release: a white woman whom he met when he shot her in the face.

Manuel fired the bullet when he was barely 13, and he fit all too neatly into racial stereotypes, especially that of the black predator who had to be locked away forever. One of the greatest racial disparities in America is in the justice system, and fear of young black criminals like Manuel helped lead to mass incarceration policies that resulted in a sixfold increase in the number of Americans in prison after 1970. Yet, as his one-time victim points out (speaking with a reconstructed jaw), it’s complicated.

Manuel grew up in a housing project here in Tampa to a mom with drug problems, without a dad at home, and he drifted early to crime. By the time he was 13, he had had 16 arrests. He desperately needed help, but instead the authorities kept returning him to a dysfunctional home.

Then, as part of a gang initiation, he was handed a gun, and he joined a couple of other teenagers on July 27, 1990. They confronted Debbie Baigrie, a stay-at-home mom who had gone out with friends for the first time since the birth of her second child.

“Give it up!” Manuel remembers shouting, as he pulled the gun. Baigrie screamed and Manuel fired wildly and repeatedly. One .32-caliber bullet entered Baigrie’s mouth, ripped through her jaw and teeth and went out her cheek. She began running away, awkwardly on high heels, blood pouring down her face and drenching her shirt.

Manuel fired after her, missing, and then he ran away with his friends. Later, arrested in an unrelated case, he confided to a cop without realizing the trouble he could face. “You know that lady that got shot downtown the other night?” he said he told the officer. “I’m the one who did it.”

Although he had just turned 13, prosecutors charged him as an adult, and the judge sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, the lawyer now representing him, says that every single child 13 or 14 years old sentenced to life without parole for a nonhomicide has been a person of color.

Manuel found himself the youngest, tiniest person in a men’s prison — by his account, abused and fearful. One day as his second Christmas behind bars approached, he placed a collect phone call to Baigrie.

Baigrie debated whether to accept the charges. She said her dentist had wept when he had seen her jaw, for the bullet had torn out five teeth and much of her gum. She faced 10 years of repeated, excruciating surgeries, requiring tissue from her palate to rebuild her gum.

Still, she was curious, so she accepted the charges. Manuel said he wanted to apologize for the shooting. Awkwardly, he wished her and her family a Merry Christmas.

“Ian,” she asked bluntly, “why did you shoot me?”

“It was a mistake,” he answered timidly.

Later he sent her a card showing a hand reaching through prison bars to offer a red rose. Baigrie didn’t know whether to be moved or revolted. “I was in such pain,” Baigrie remembers. “I couldn’t eat. I was angry. But I’d go back and forth. He was just a kid.”

Thus began a correspondence that has lasted through the decades. “You are about one in a million who would write to a person that’s tried to take their life,” he wrote in one letter.

“I wish I was free,” he wrote in another. “To protect you from that evil world out there.”

Over time, Baigrie became friendly with Manuel’s brother and mother. Baigrie began to feel sympathetic because, as she says: “When you’re 13, you do stupid stuff.”Baigrie was also troubled by the racial dimensions of the case. “If he was a cute white boy at 13, with little dimples and blue eyes, there’s no way this would have happened,” she says.

Her husband and friends thought Baigrie was perhaps suffering from some bizarre form of Stockholm syndrome. “People were saying, ‘you’re an idiot,’ ” Baigrie recalls.

Yet she persevered and advocated for his early release. When the Supreme Court threw out life-without-parole sentences for juveniles who had not committed murder, she testified at his resentencing and urged mercy. It didn’t work: Manuel was sentenced to 65 years. He is now scheduled to be released in 2031.

Manuel, now 37, did not adjust well to prison, and his prison disciplinary record covers four pages of single-spaced entries. He was placed in solitary confinement at age 15 and remained there almost continually until he was 33. For a time, he cut himself to relieve the numbness. He repeatedly attempted suicide.

Returned to the general prison population, Manuel did better. He earned his G.E.D. with exceptional marks, including many perfect scores. He drafts poems and wrote an autobiographical essay, which Baigrie posted on her Facebook page. His mother, father and brother are now all dead; the only “family” he has left is Baigrie, who sometimes regards him as a wayward foster son.

Race in America is a dispiriting topic, a prism to confirm our own biases. Some will emphasize the unarguable brutality of Manuel’s crime, while others, myself included, will focus on the harshness of a sentence that probably would not have been given to a white 13-year-old. In other columns, I’ve focused on racism that holds back perfectly innocent people because of their skin color; those are the easiest cases, while Ian is a reminder that racial injustice also affects those who made horrific mistakes or committed brutal crimes. It’s still injustice.

There’s a tragic symmetry here. We as a society failed Manuel early on, and he, in turn, failed us. When you can predict that an infant boy of color in a particular ZIP code is more likely to go to prison than to college, it’s our fault more than his. The losers aren’t just those kids but also crime victims like Baigrie — and, in a larger sense, all of us. Manuel never had a chance to contribute to society and is costing us $47.50 each day he is in prison. That’s a waste of money, of human talent, of life itself.

Overcoming the racial gulf in this country will be a long and painful task, but maybe we can learn something from Baigrie’s empathy.

“Walk a mile in his shoes,” she says. And if Debbie Baigrie and Ian Manuel can unite and make common cause, linked by a bond of humanity that transcends the faint scar on her cheek, then maybe there’s hope for us all.



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15) More Files Are Released in Shooting in Ferguson
By

St. Louis County’s prosecutor on Saturday apologized for failing to immediately make public all documents tied to a grand jury’s decision last month not to indict a white police officer in the death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., and released a new set of records — the third such release — since the grand jury’s return.

In a case that set off a national debate over race and policing, Robert P. McCulloch, the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, had taken the unusual step of pledging to release to the public all evidence, testimony, autopsies and forensic reports examined by the grand jury as it considered charges against the former Ferguson officer, Darren Wilson. Thousands of pages of such documents were released as Mr. McCulloch announced the grand jury’s decision last month and then additional materials including audio of gunshots and police radio calls were released last week.“Clearly, I inadvertently omitted some material from the November 24, 2014, release and I apologize for any confusion this may have caused,” Mr. McCulloch said in a news release that was issued Saturday morning. “At this time, I believe I have released all evidence presented to the grand jury. However, as I promised throughout the investigation and again on November 24, if I later find anything that was omitted, it will be released as soon as possible thereafter.”Included in the latest release from the prosecutor were transcripts of interviews with people who witnessed the shooting of Michael Brown in August by F.B.I. agents, St. Louis County detectives, and by officials from the Justice Department. The Justice Department is still conducting a separate investigation into the shooting. Distinct from that, federal officials are conducting a civil rights investigation into the practices of the Ferguson Police Department.

Witnesses like Dorian Johnson, a friend of Mr. Brown’s who was with him when the shooting occurred, appeared before the grand jury in person. But jurors also heard recordings of interviews that law enforcement authorities had already conducted with them.

Released on Saturday, for example, was Mr. Johnson’s interview from just days after the shooting with federal agents and local detectives. While some details varied, Mr. Johnson told largely the same story during that more than two-hour interview, the newly released transcript showed, as he would, nearly a month later, provide directly to the jurors.

Mr. Johnson, who was walking with Mr. Brown down the middle of a Ferguson street before noon on Aug. 9, told the authorities four days later that the officer had ordered them to walk on the sidewalk, then backed up his police vehicle and got into an altercation with Mr. Brown. “His left arm came out the window and he placed it directly on my friend’s throat,” Mr. Johnson said of Mr. Wilson during his Aug. 13 interview with the authorities. He described a struggle in which Mr. Brown, he said, was trying to pull away from the officer and Mr. Wilson was trying to pull Mr. Brown into the car.

After Mr. Brown was shot and started running away, he turned around, Mr. Johnson said, and was raising his arms when the officer fired again. Mr. Johnson said that Mr. Brown started to say something like: “I’m unarmed” or “I don’t have a gun.”

Mr. Johnson’s testimony conflicted with accounts by some other witnesses and with that of Mr. Wilson, who said he shot Mr. Brown because the teenager was charging at him in a threatening way. Mr. Wilson said that Mr. Brown’s hands were not raised, and that Mr. Brown had one hand in his waistband.

Witnesses have given conflicting accounts of what happened during the 90-second encounter.

Among the newly released interviews with witnesses by the federal authorities was a witness who used the nickname “Ears” in what appears to be a reference to Mr. Wilson, saying in an interview on Aug. 26: “ ‘Ears’ is what we call him around here, he be the one messing with people around here, pulling people over.” That witness’s description of the events conflicted with those of others who were present. The witness said that four police officers in two vehicles were on the scene, rather than only Mr. Wilson as numerous others said.


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16) Grisly Execution in Oklahoma Detailed in Court Brief
By

The Oklahoma doctor involved in the bungled execution of Clayton D. Lockett in April made one last frantic attempt to insert an intravenous line in the prisoner’s groin but struck an artery by accident and was sprayed with blood, according to a document filed in Federal District Court.

“It was a bloody mess,” the document quotes Anita Trammell, the warden of the Oklahoma state prison where the execution took place, as saying in an interview with state investigators.

The court document, filed late Friday, includes gruesome details about Mr. Lockett’s final moments after he seemed to regain consciousness on the execution table, writhing in pain. The brief, filed in a lawsuit seeking to stop the executions of four prisoners in early 2015, also provides new evidence of the poor training and disarray among state officials, the paramedic who failed in numerous attempts to place a catheter and the doctor who tried to complete the task.The prolonged and apparently agonizing death of Mr. Lockett, who was convicted of shooting a 19-year-old woman in 1999 and burying her alive, prompted new debate about the reliability of lethal injection and over questions about the drug combinations that states have tried as alternatives when the traditionally used barbiturates became scarce.

State officials had previously revealed that during the April 29 execution the doctor had, without realizing it, failed to place the catheter needle properly in Mr. Lockett’s femoral vein, causing the three drugs in the injection to diffuse locally rather than enter the bloodstream. When Mr. Lockett began to fight against his restraints and moan, officials closed the blinds on public witnesses.

At that point, according to the new document, the doctor tried again to insert a needle through Mr. Lockett’s groin. He did not realize at the time, he testified, that there were no drugs left for the injection. In keeping with state law, the doctor and others directly involved in the execution are not identified in the brief.

The doctor, working with a needle that he described as “kind of marginal” because it was shorter than those normally used to reach the femoral vein, punctured an artery. “Blood squirted up and got all over his jacket then,” Ms. Trammell testified. And the doctor, she told investigators, said he had to “get enough money out of this to go buy a new jacket.”

Minutes later, officials formally called off the execution, but Mr. Lockett’s heart soon stopped anyway and no efforts were made to resuscitate him.

Several officials acknowledged, according to the court brief, that they had no contingency plans in case Mr. Lockett failed to die according to plan.

Originally, Mr. Lockett’s execution was supposed to be followed two hours later by that of Charles F. Warner, who was convicted of raping and murdering an infant in 1997.

But Oklahoma immediately suspended his execution and others, pending a state investigation of what went wrong. Corrections officials say they have improved training and procedures, and Mr. Warner is now scheduled to die on Jan. 15, followed by three other convicts on Jan. 29, Feb. 19 and March 5.

Officials have said they plan to use a three-drug combination similar to that used for Mr. Lockett: a sedative, midazolam, but at ten times the dose used in his case, followed by a paralyzing agent and one that stops the heart.

The lawyers seeking to delay the planned executions contend, among other objections, that the use of midazolam is inherently flawed and that this regime amounts to unconstitutional experimentation on humans.

In hearings on the suit this week, the lawyers plan to call medical experts who say that midazolam cannot reliably achieve a level of sedation needed for a painless execution and that multiplying the dosage does not necessarily cause deeper sedation. The same agent was used in an execution in Arizona in July that dragged on for nearly two hours, as the prisoner gasped and officials repeatedly injected more drugs.


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17) I.R.S. Asset Seizure Case Is Dropped by Prosecutors
By

Federal prosecutors have agreed to dismiss a case against Carole Hinders, an Iowa restaurant owner whose bank account was seized by the I.R.S. based solely on a pattern of cash deposits, Ms. Hinders’ lawyer said Friday.

“After her deposition, at which it became overwhelmingly clear that Carole was an innocent and hardworking restaurateur, the assistant United States attorney on the case told us that he informed the I.R.S. that they should not go forward with the case,” said Larry Salzman, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm representing Ms. Hinders.

A spokesman for the United States attorney of Iowa’s Northern District did not return a call or email on Friday.

Ms. Hinders was never accused of any crime. The Mexican restaurant she owned, Mrs. Lady’s, did not accept credit cards, and she regularly deposited earnings in a bank branch a block away.

After doing business this way for nearly four decades, Ms. Hinders was told that the I.R.S. had seized $33,000 from her bank account after agents detected a pattern of deposits under $10,000. Under a law designed to catch terrorists, money launderers and drug lords, depositing less than $10,000 is illegal if it is done to evade a federal bank reporting requirement, but Ms. Hinders, 67, said she never knew about the requirement.

Critics say the I.R.S. rarely investigates such cases to see if the business owner has legitimate reasons for making small deposits, such as an insurance policy that covers only a limited amount of cash.

Seizing assets without criminal charges is legal under a controversial body of law that allows law enforcement agents to seize cars, cash and other valuables they believe are tied to criminal activity. The burden of proof falls on owners seeking the return of their property. This week, the two high-ranking members on the House Ways and Means committee filed bipartisan legislation to curb abuses of the practice, known as civil asset forfeiture. Civil forfeiture has become an issue in the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who as United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York presided over a case involving more than $440,000 seized from a family-run business on Long Island.

The I.R.S. recently announced that it was sharply curtailing seizures in cases like Ms. Hinders’s, where there is no suspicion that the money involved came from an illegal source. But officials said they would not drop cases that were already underway.

Mr. Salzman said that early last week, he agreed to halt depositions in Ms. Hinders’s case when prosecutors said they would drop it, return her money, and clear the way for her to recover interest, expenses and legal fees. He wanted a “stipulated” dismissal, signed by both parties, but was unable to reach an agreement with prosecutors to include language that would declare Ms. Hinders innocent.

Still at issue was whether prosecutors would drop the case with prejudice, clearing the way for Ms. Hinders to recover interest and legal costs, or without prejudice, reserving the right to reopen the case at some time, Mr. Salzman said.


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18) 25,000 March in New York to Protest Police Violence
By BENJAMIN MUELLER and ASHLEY SOUTHALL

More than 25,000 people marched through Manhattan on Saturday, police officials said, in the largest protest in New York City since a grand jury declined this month to indict an officer in the death of an unarmed black man on Staten Island.

Just before 2 p.m. they began spilling out of Washington Square Park, and after an hour and a half, the park still had not emptied. Walking north toward 34th Street, the protesters filled the cold air by chanting “I can’t breathe,” the last words of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man, who died from a chokehold after an officer dragged him to the ground on a hot day in July.

The protest, which at times stretched for over a mile, highlighted growing anger nationwide over recent police deaths, including that of Mr. Garner, 43, who officers accused of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

Though the march was largely peaceful, after it had run its scheduled course, some demonstrators continued on over the Brooklyn Bridge, where two officers were assaulted, the police said. They were recovering in the hospital. The police also said they found a bag of hammers on the bridge.

As of late Saturday, the police said they had not made any arrests. In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio called the attacks on the officers an “ugly and unacceptable departure from the demonstrations thus far.”

“Those who reject peaceful protest and provoke violence can expect immediate arrest and prosecution,” he added. “Such acts are beneath the dignity of New York City, they undermine the very values these protests are working to advance, and they simply will not be tolerated.”

The march was led by the families of a number of unarmed black men who died at the hands of police officers, including Ramarley Graham and Sean Bell, who were both killed in the city. But protesters insisted that the movement was as much about those deaths as it was about the daily indignity of being confronted by the police for, they said, little to no reason.

Denise Mayer, 64, of Montclair, N.J., said she had marched in protests over the Vietnam War, but that this movement was different. “This is more of an everyday frustration that the violence seems to be escalating,” she said, holding a poster of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

They moved through the streets, pushing children in strollers, waving black liberation flags and carrying signs. They also chanted “hands up, don’t shoot,” the rallying cry in Ferguson, Mo., over the police shooting death in August of another unarmed black man, Michael Brown, 18.

“A young black man in America shouldn’t be scared to interact with the police or talk with the police,” another protester, Jelanie Deshong, 22, said.

In some places, revelers participating in SantaCon, an annual pub crawl in which people dress as Santa Claus, crossed paths with the march.

As dusk descended and the march moved south toward New York Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan, around 100 protesters, many of whom wore scarfs and bandannas over their faces, slipped away from the crowd on 32nd Street. They hurled traffic cones and trash cans at police cars, and beat their fists against the cars’ windows. “Whose streets? Our streets!” they shouted.

As officers tried to pen them in, the group rejoined the crowd on Broadway.

The march stopped in front of Police Headquarters, with protesters screaming at the assembled officers and beating on drums. Several relatives of those who had been killed by officers spoke. Among them was Constance Malcolm, the mother of Ramarley Graham, who was unarmed when he was killed in the bathroom of his Bronx apartment in 2012. “We must get justice for our loved ones,” she said.

Some protesters who broke away from the crowd sought to stop traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, but they were countered by hundreds of police officers, who tried to divert them.

In a call-and-response with the demonstrators, an organizer shouted, “Are we done yet? No! Shut this city down.”

Later, they brought bridge traffic from Manhattan to a stop, and unfurled a banner reading, “When we breathe, we breathe together.” They locked arms and formed a chain across the lanes.

The protesters then continued slowly into Brooklyn, chanting “You serve us” in front of the 75th Precinct station house before arriving around midnight at the Louis H. Pink Houses, where Akai Gurley, 28, an unarmed black man, was killed by an officer on Nov. 20.

Invoking his memory, they observed a moment of silence.


John Corrales, Dan Glaun and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.




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