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Major George Tillery

MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION SEX FOR LIES AND MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony. These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors. Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters. Homicide detectives and prosecutors threatened Claitt with a false unrelated murder charge, and induced him to lie with promises of little or no jail time on over twenty pending felonies, and being released from jail despite a parole violation. In addition, homicide detectives arranged for Claitt, while in custody, to have private sexual liaisons with his girlfriends in police interview rooms. In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org. Without the coerced and false testimony of Claitt there was no evidence against Major Tillery. There were no ballistics or any other physical evidence linking him to the shootings. The surviving victim's statement naming others as the shooters was not allowed into evidence. The trial took place in May 1985 during the last days of the siege and firebombing of the MOVE family Osage Avenue home in Philadelphia that killed 13 Black people, including 5 children. The prosecution claimed that Major Tillery was part of an organized crime group, and falsely described it as run by the Nation of Islam. This prejudiced and inflamed the majority white jury against Tillery, to make up for the absence of any evidence that Tillery was involved in the shootings. This was a frame-up conviction from top to bottom. Claitt was the sole or primary witness in five other murder cases in the early 1980s. Coercing and inducing jailhouse informants to falsely testify is a standard routine in criminal prosecutions. It goes hand in hand with prosecutors suppressing favorable evidence from the defense. Major Tillery has filed a petition based on his actual innocence to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Larry Krasner's Conviction Review Unit. A full review and investigation should lead to reversal of Major Tillery's conviction. He also asks that the DA's office to release the full police and prosecution files on his case under the new  "open files" policy. In the meantime, Major Tillery continues his own investigation. He needs your support. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years The Pennsylvania courts have rejected three rounds of appeals challenging Major Tillery's conviction based on his innocence, the prosecution's intentional presentation of false evidence against him and his trial attorney's conflict of interest. On June 15, 2016 Major Tillery filed a new post-conviction petition based on the same evidence now in the petition to the District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit. Despite the written and video-taped statements from Emanuel Claitt that that his testimony against Major Tillery was a lie and the result of police and prosecutorial misconduct, Judge Leon Tucker dismissed Major Tillery's petition as "untimely" without even holding a hearing. Major Tillery appealed that dismissal and the appeal is pending in the Superior Court. During the decades of imprisonment Tillery has advocated for other prisoners challenging solitary confinement, lack of medical and mental health care and the inhumane conditions of imprisonment. In 1990, he won the lawsuit, Tillery v. Owens, that forced the PA Department of Corrections (DOC) to end double celling (4 men to a small cell) at SCI Pittsburgh, which later resulted in the closing and then "renovation" of that prison. Three years ago Major Tillery stood up for political prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and demanded prison Superintendent John Kerestes get Mumia to a hospital because "Mumia is dying."  For defending Mumia and advocating for medical treatment for himself and others, prison officials retaliated. Tillery was shipped out of SCI Mahanoy, where Mumia was also held, to maximum security SCI Frackville and then set-up for a prison violation and a disciplinary penalty of months in solitary confinement. See, Messing with Major by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Major Tillery's federal lawsuit against the DOC for that retaliation is being litigated. Major Tillery continues as an advocate for all prisoners. He is fighting to get the DOC to establish a program for elderly prisoners. Major Tillery Needs Your Help: Well-known criminal defense attorney Stephen Patrizio represents Major pro bonoin challenging his conviction. More investigation is underway. We can't count on the district attorney's office to make the findings of misconduct against the police detectives and prosecutors who framed Major without continuing to dig up the evidence. Major Tillery is now 67 years old. He's done hard time, imprisoned for almost 35 years, some 20 years in solitary confinement in max prisons for a crime he did not commit. He recently won hepatitis C treatment, denied to him for a decade by the DOC. He has severe liver problems as well as arthritis and rheumatism, back problems, and a continuing itchy skin rash. Within the past couple of weeks he was diagnosed with an extremely high heartbeat and is getting treatment. Major Tillery does not want to die in prison. He and his family, daughters, sons and grandchildren are fighting to get him home. The newly filed petition for Conviction Review to the Philadelphia District Attorney's office lays out the evidence Major Tillery has uncovered, evidence suppressed by the prosecution through all these years he has been imprisoned and brought legal challenges into court. It is time for the District Attorney's to act on the fact that Major Tillery is innocent and was framed by police detectives and prosecutors who manufactured the evidence to convict him. Major Tillery's conviction should be vacated and he should be freed. Major Tillery and family HOW YOU CAN HELP Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom. Go to JPay.com; code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false. Call: 215-686-8000 or Email: justice@phila.gov Write to: Major Tillery AM 9786 SCI Frackville 1111 Altamont Blvd. Frackville, PA 17931 For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org Call/Write: Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com

Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info

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Free Leonard Peltier!

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

By Leonard Peltier

Art by Leonard Peltier

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132 

USP Coleman I 

P.O. Box 1033 

Coleman, FL 33521

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

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1) Colin Kaepernick's Nike Campaign Keeps N.F.L. Anthem Kneeling in Spotlight

By Kevin Draper and Ken Belson, September 3, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/sports/kaepernick-nike.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront

Colin Kaepernick tweeted the new Nike advertisement he appears in as part of a new deal with the company.

Colin Kaepernick, the former N.F.L. quarterback who inspired a player protest movement but who has been out of a job for more than a year, has signed a new, multiyear deal with Nike that makes him a face of the 30th anniversary of the sports apparel company's "Just Do It" campaign, Nike confirmed on Monday.

The first advertisement from Nike, one of the league's top partners, debuted Monday afternoon, when Kaepernick tweeted it, assuring that his activism and the protest movement against racism and social injustice he started would continue to loom over one of the country's most powerful sports leagues.

[Related: How Colin Kaepernick controls the N.F.L. protest conversation without saying anything]

Nike will produce new Kaepernick apparel, including a shoe and a T-shirt, and if the merchandise sells well, the value of the deal will rival those of other top N.F.L. players, according to people close to the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because Nike had not formally announced it. Nike will also donate money to Kaepernick's "Know Your Rights" campaign.

The N.F.L. did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The ad and the campaign, coming a few days before the start of the N.F.L. season on Thursday, is likely to annoy the league's top executives and its owners. On Thursday, Kaepernick won a victory in his grievance against the league when an arbitrator let his case, in which he accuses the league of conspiring to keep him off the field because of his activism, advance.

A wave of on-field protests has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, since summer 2016, when Kaepernick began kneeling during the playing of the national anthem.

Now, with just one tweet, the former N.F.L. quarterback and Nike have set the world alight, causing a flurry of stories in major publications, inspiring a top trending hashtag across social media and possibly even contributing to a broader decline in the stock market.

Reaction to Kaepernick's tweet was swift. Almost immediately, "Just Do It" and "Nike" became top trending terms on Twitter in the United States, and by morning the hashtag #NikeBoycott was one of the most used on the social media service. People posted videos and photographs of themselves destroying their Nike apparel in response to the company's decision to work with Kaepernick. Kaepernick has been a Nike endorser since he entered the N.F.L. in 2011.

Nike's stock price fell more than two percent in early trading Tuesday. It was the worst performing stock in the Dow Jones industrial average, helping to drag the average to a fall for the first part of the day. While some investors are likely nervous that the company's decision to prominently feature Kaepernick could inspire a boycott, the stock price of main competitor Adidas was also down more than two percent. The broader stock market downturn was being blamed on worries about tense negotiations over Nafta.

The N.F.L. has struggled to contain the on-field protests, which have also included raised fists and other gestures, which league officials have blamed for dragging down the league. Television ratings have declined and certain segments of the fan base have reacted angrily. President Trump has made the N.F.L. a target for not firing players who refuse to stand for the national anthem.

The protest movement Kaepernick started has been interpreted by some as being disrespectful to the American flag and the military. Political conservatives have widely condemned it. Many of those posting on social media Monday and Tuesday about boycotting Nike or throwing out their Nike gear referenced their connection to and support for the military, even though the players who, like Kaepernick, have protested have made it clear they are not anti-military and some veterans have expressed support for their actions.

The Kaepernick deal could be awkward for the league.

In March, Nike and the N.F.L. announced an extension of an apparel deal through 2028. As part of that deal, Nike supplies 32 teams with game-day uniforms and sideline apparel that features the company's swoosh logo. When that deal was announced, Brian Rolapp, the NFL's chief media and business officer, called the company "a longtime and trusted partner" of the league.

Kaepernick and Nike already had an endorsement deal, dating to when he entered the league in 2011, but it was expiring soon and has now been extended.

The new Kaepernick ad features a close-up, black-and-white photograph of his face, with copy that references his kneeling and his belief that his activism is keeping him out of the league.

The ad reads: "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything."

When asked if Nike had run the campaign by the N.F.L., a spokeswoman, Sandra Carreon-John, responded: "Nike has a longstanding relationship with the N.F.L. and works extensively with the league on all campaigns that use current N.F.L. players and its marks. Colin is not currently employed by an N.F.L. team and has no contractual obligation to the N.F.L."

The new contract was negotiated by Kaepernick's lawyers, Mark Geragos and Ben Meiselas, and Nike executives.

Even as the N.F.L. season approaches, the Kaepernick story has continued to dominate the N.F.L. narrative. On Friday, Kaepernick received an ovation from the crowd at the United States Open match between Serena Williams and Venus Williams.

Serena Williams, LeBron James, Odell Beckham Jr., Shaquem Griffin and Lacey Baker are also part of the "Just Do It" anniversary campaign.

Nike's decision to make new Kaepernick merchandise and to make him the face of a campaign could, if they are successful for the company, undercut the argument from N.F.L. owners that he is bad for business. Previously, Nike stated that it "supports athletes and their right to freedom of expression on issues that are of great importance to our society," but the company had not used Kaepernick in any recent ad campaigns.

There is reason to believe that Kaepernick, despite not playing, will move merchandise. During the second quarter of 2017, his officially licensed jersey was the 39th-best selling in the league. As an unsigned free agent, he was the only player in the top 50 of those rankings not signed to a team.

With Kaepernick seemingly having little chance of playing in the N.F.L. again, Geragos was eager to try to portray him as something more than a football player.

"I give Nike credit for understanding that he's not just an athlete, he has become an icon," Geragos said.

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2) Like frogs in a slowly boiling pot, Americans are finally realizing how dire their labor situation is
By Harold Meyerson, September 3, 2018
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-meyerson-labor-question-20180903-story.html#

Labor union members in a protest outside the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at UCLA on May 8.

The Labor Question is back, big-time. The term came into use around the turn of the 20^th century; it was a shorthand way of asking: What should be done about the working class' smoldering discontent in the wake of industrialization? The anger was palpable, made manifest in waves of worker revolts that stretched from the nationwide rail strike of 1877 through the general strikes of 1919.

Not all the battles were fought in the plants and in the streets. Progressive state legislatures in the early 20^th century enacted laws setting minimum wages and limiting the hours women and children could be compelled to work; the courts routinely struck them down, and just as routinely short-circuited strikes by imposing jail sentences on strikers.

It was the New Deal, and the rise of unions that the New Deal facilitated, that rendered the Labor Question seemingly moot. In the three decades following World War II, when unions were strong and prosperity broadly shared, the term receded into the history books alongside other phrases – like, say, "slaveholder" – that evoked a dark and presumably buried side of America's past.

For the last several decades, however, it's the largely egalitarian spirit of the New Deal that has receded into the shadows. The economic inequality that preceded the New Deal is back with us; the Labor Question has returned.

At the core of the problem is the imbalance of economic power, which takes the form of booming profits and stagnating wages. The Financial Times recently reported that the share of company revenues going to profits is the highest in many years, which necessarily means that the share going to the main alternative destination for company revenues – employees' pockets – has shrunk.

Nor is this a short-lived phenomenon brought about by the Republican tax cut. In 2011, the chief investment officer of JP Morgan Chase calculated that three-quarters of the long-term increase in U.S. companies' profit margins was due to the declining share going to wages and benefits. A study last year by Simcha Barkai, an economist at the University of Chicago's Stigler Center, found that labor's share of the national income has dropped by 6.7% since the mid-1980s, while the share of the nation's income going to business investment in equipment, research, new hires and the like has dropped by 7.2%. Correspondingly, the share of the nation's income going to shareholders (the lion's share to the very wealthy, among them the CEOs who are compensated with shares) rose by 13.5%. That shift has put American workers at a double disadvantage, as their wages and the private-sector investment that creates jobs and boosts productivity have both hit the skids.

Like slowly simmering frogs, Americans have required some time to grasp just how dire their situation has become. On Labor Day 2018, however, it's clear that most of them now realize the need to reshuffle the power structure. A Gallup Poll released on Friday showed support for unions at 62%, the highest level in 15 years, with majority backing from every demographic group except Republicans, and even they are evenly split, 45% to 47%.

The overwhelming public support for striking teachers this spring in such red states as West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona was no fluke; another recent poll, this from the venerable education pollster PDK, found 73% support for teachers' strikes, and a remarkable 78% support from parents of school-age children. The two-to-one rejection of a right-to-work law this summer by Missouri voters is further evidence of a pro-labor shift in public opinion, as are the successful unionization campaigns over the past year of such not-easily-fired workers as university teaching assistants and journalists (including those at such venerable anti-union bastions as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times).

As was the case during the years when the Labor Question was first before the nation, the chief instrument the right relies on to diminish worker power is the courts. The Supreme Court's decision in June in the Janus case, which was meant to reduce the membership and resources of public-sector unions, was just the latest in a string of rulings to advantage corporate and Republican interests. During the past year, however, progressives have put forth some of the most far-reaching proposals in many decades to rebalance economic clout, including bills from two Democratic senators – Massachusetts' Elizabeth Warren and Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin – that would require corporations to divide their boards between representatives of workers and representatives of shareholders.

Since conservatives and business interests began pecking away at the New Deal's handiwork in the 1970s, class conflict in America has been largely one-sided. On this Labor Day, however, it's clear that the battle has finally been joined. The Labor Question is before us and remains to be resolved.

Harold Meyerson is executive editor of the American Prospect. He is a contributing writer to Opinion.

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3) Trump Administration Moves to Sidestep Restrictions on Detaining Migrant Children
By Caitlin, September 6, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/trump-flores-settlement-regulations.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

A child who was separated from his mother at the border arrived for a court hearing on his immigration status in Houston in August.

Moving to bypass restrictions on the detention of migrant families in federal custody, the Trump administration introduced on Thursday a regulation that would upend a federal court settlement that requires such families to be released after 20 days.

The so-called Flores settlement has become a prime target in the administration's attempt to punish migrants for crossing the border with their children as a means of deterrence. Administration officials have long believed that migrants, primarily from Central America, are bringing children to the United States to shield themselves from consequences of crossing the border without permission.

"Today, legal loopholes significantly hinder the department's ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country," said the secretary of Homeland Security, Kristjen Nielsen. "This rule addresses one of the primary pull factors for illegal immigration and allows the federal government to enforce immigration laws as passed by Congress."

The proposal is likely to end up in court, where the federal district judge overseeing the Flores consent decree, Dolly M. Gee, has rejected repeated attempts to modify its provisions.

The settlement stems from a 1997 consent decree reached in litigation over a migrant child based on claims that federal detention was damaging, physically and emotionally, to children's health. In 2016, the courts extended the settlement to apply to migrant families.

Unaccompanied migrant children at a shelter in Houston. An administration proposal to bypass restrictions on the detention of migrant families is expected to end up in court.

The administration has challenged the settlement repeatedly, rhetorically and in court, referring to it as a legal loophole permitting illegal immigration. But as recently as early this year, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions installed a new zero-tolerance border policy that resulted in the jailing of thousands of migrant parents, the administration did not succeed in winning a reprieve from the settlement's provisions protecting children from lengthy confinement.

Immigrant advocates decried the move for new regulations as a workaround that would put migrant families at risk.

"The Trump administration has been whittling away at the basic rights of women and children since they came into office. Efforts to weaken or eliminate basic child protection standards by calling them a burden or loopholes, and eliminating their obligations for the basic care of children, is just another example of the administration's abdication of human rights," said Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission. "The court has already had to to step in repeatedly to uphold these basic child welfare principles. It is clear that the administration is incapable of holding themselves accountable."

The proposed rule, now under review through the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, would enshrine into regulation the relevant terms of the Flores settlement and terminate the long-running litigation. It would "satisfy the basic purpose" of the settlement agreement by ensuring that all migrant children in government custody "are treated with dignity, respect and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors," the administration said in its announcement.

The new regulatory structure would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold families with children in licensed facilities or those that meet ICE's family residential standards, as evaluated by independent reviewers engaged by ICE.

The public has 60 days to comment on the proposed rules, followed by a 45-day period in which lawyers who negotiated the original settlement can challenge the government's move in court.

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4) Roy Oliver got jail time for killing Jordan Edwards. Is widespread police accountability next?
By Chauncey Alcorn, August 30, 2018

Of the estimated thousands of American police officers who have killed civilians while on the job over the past 13 years, Roy Oliver is only the second to be convicted of murder.

The former Balch Springs, Texas, patrolman who fatally shot 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in the head with an AR-15 in 2017 was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday night, despite pleas for mercy to jurors from his mother and wife.

Oliver's half sister, Wendy Oliver, shocked the court Wednesday by testifying against her own brother during his sentencing hearings, urging jurors to send him to jail for life.

Prosecutor Mike Snipes said the outcome of this case should restore public trust in the American justice system by demonstrating that bad officers will be held criminally accountable.

"We believe this case shows if a rogue policeman gets out of line that we will prosecute you," Snipes said Thursday. "I think that justice was done in the case. All we cared about was Jordan Edwards and his family."

The Edwards family's civil attorney, Lee Merritt, who is representing the late teen's parents in a planned civil suit against the city of Balch Springs, said Oliver's conviction and 15-year sentence are a "huge deal" for the country.

"It does set a precedent," Merritt said during an interview. "We need cases like this to exist on the books."

Oliver's defense attorneys have already announced plans to appeal his conviction, but Merritt says that appeal is unlikely to succeed.

"His attorneys would have to find some evidence that was new that was not discoverable previously, or some misconduct on behalf of the prosecutors," Merritt said. "Despite this being a really important case, it's very limited [in terms of the evidentiary elements that determined its outcome]."

Oliver's case would have to make it through a lengthy Texas criminal court appeals process and be ruled on by the state's supreme court before his attorneys could bring it before a federal circuit court judge, and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It's going to change the law if it's appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court," Merritt said. "Texas is certainly one of the worst places for civil rights litigation in the country. We're always concerned about a judge that has conservative leanings who supports law enforcement creating a roadblock, but that would have had to happen at the trial level, even in Texas."

The lasting impact of this rare kind of murder conviction is still debatable, in part because Jordan Edwards was what multiple attorneys referred to as the "perfect victim" — an unarmed honor roll student and popular athlete with no criminal record who was beloved by everyone in his community.

"Our victim was a beautiful, perfect kid who had a remarkable life ahead of him," Snipes said. "We felt like the defendant was the converse of that."

Merritt said people needlessly killed by police shouldn't have to be saints for their killers to be held criminally accountable — but it certainly helped in Edwards' case.

"We need the Jordan Edwards of the world, unfortunately," he said. "When the civil rights movement was started, Claudette Colvin was the first woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, but Rosa Parks had to come forward, who was loved by her community and had no blemishes. They used her case to upset Montgomery, which then changed the world."

Since 2005, there have been thousands of people killed by police, yet only 93 non-federal law enforcement officers have been arrested for murder or manslaughter for an on-duty shooting, according to Bowling Green State University criminal justice Professor Philip Stinson, whose research focuses on crimes committed by police officers.

According to Stinson, of those 93 arrested officers, only 33 have been convicted of a crime resulting from those shootings. Sixteen of those officers took a plea deal and seventeen were convicted by a jury. 

The only other officer found guilty of murder in the last 13 years is former Rocky Ford, Colorado, Police Officer James Ashby, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in October 2016 for the fatal shooting of Jack Jacquez.

"In the cases where an officer has been convicted, it is often for a lesser offense," Stinson said Thursday. "Roy Oliver testified in his own defense at his trial. Anecdotally, I can tell you over the last several years when that happens, the officers are generally acquitted or they have a hung jury or a mistrial."

Former University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing testified in his own defense twice during two separate trials that resulted in hung juries after Tensing fatally shot an unarmed Sam DuBose on July 19, 2015.

Tensing told jurors that he feared DuBose was going to run him over with his car during a traffic stop. Footage from Tensing's body camera didn't back up his story, compelling UC police to fire him. Earlier this year, Tensing received a police union grievance settlement of almost $350,000 from UC for terminating his employment.

Former North Charleston, South Carolina, Police Officer Michael Slager pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges in 2017. Slager's criminal prosecution for fatally shooting Walter Scott in the back while Scott was running away from the officer resulted in a mistrial after he testified in his own defense — even though the shooting was captured on video by a witness's cell phone camera.

Edwards, DuBose and Scott are all black and all three were unarmed when they were killed.

Oliver's conviction may be encouraging to police reform advocates, but Stinson doesn't think this one case says anything definitive about changes in how the criminal justice system treats officers accused of homicides.

"Policing is very static," Stinson said. "I don't think the Oliver case would have much of an effect. We see roughly the same number of shootings each year. We don't seem to see much change in terms of the conviction rate in these cases. They're very difficult cases to obtain convictions from prosecutors."

Still, Merritt said Oliver's conviction and sentencing are a step in the right direction. Since the officer's fate was announced Wednesday, Merritt said he's seen many people on social media complaining that Oliver's sentence was too lenient. He's eligible for parole after 7.5 years, but Merritt said it's unlikely Oliver will be released before the end of his full sentence.

"He will be a cop behind bars," Merritt said. "He's going to have a really tough time in there. It's unlikely he'll make it seven and a half years without doing something to survive that will make it difficult for him to get parole. The inmates will realize he's up for parole and they're going to be egging him on to get marks on his record that will not allow for his release."

Jordan Edwards' family was happy Oliver was convicted, but were disappointed he didn't get a life sentence, according to Merritt, who sees the outcome of the case as a victory.

"I know it's difficult for black folks to recognize a win as a win sometimes because we've been so abused in this country," Merritt said. "I don't want to delegitimize their concerns, but people came together and moved heaven and earth to achieve this conviction. We should at least acknowledge the progress even if we're not satisfied, which we shouldn't be."

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5) Trump Administration Discussed Coup Plans With Rebel Venezuelan Officers

By Ernesto Londoño and Nicholas Casey, September 8, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/americas/donald-trump-venezuela-military-coup.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

A military ceremony in Caracas, Venezuela, this month. The White House declined to answer detailed questions about talks with rebellious officers.

The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks.

Establishing a clandestine channel with coup plotters in Venezuela was a big gamble for Washington, given its long history of covert intervention across Latin America. Many in the region still deeply resent the United States for backing previous rebellions, coups and plots in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil and Chile, and for turning a blind eye to the abuses military regimes committed during the Cold War.

The White House, which declined to answer detailed questions about the talks, said in a statement that it was important to engage in "dialogue with all Venezuelans who demonstrate a desire for democracy" in order to "bring positive change to a country that has suffered so much under Maduro."

But one of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks was hardly an ideal figure to help restore democracy: He is on the American government's own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venezuela.

He and other members of the Venezuelan security apparatus have been accused by Washington of a wide range of serious crimes, including torturing critics, jailing hundreds of political prisoners, wounding thousands of civilians, trafficking drugs and collaborating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

American officials eventually decided not to help the plotters, and the coup plans stalled. But the Trump administration's willingness to meet several times with mutinous officers intent on toppling a president in the hemisphere could backfire politically.

Most Latin American leaders agree that Venezuela's president, Mr. Maduro, is an increasingly authoritarian ruler who has effectively ruined his country's economy, leading to extreme shortages of food and medicine. The collapse has set off an exodus of desperate Venezuelans who are spilling over borders, overwhelming their neighbors.

Even so, Mr. Maduro has long justified his grip on Venezuela by claiming that Washington imperialists are actively trying to depose him, and the secret talks could provide him with ammunition to chip away at the region's nearly united stance against him.

"This is going to land like a bomb" in the region, said Mari Carmen Aponte, who served as the top diplomat overseeing Latin American affairs in the final months of the Obama administration.

Beyond the coup plot, Mr. Maduro's government has already fended off several small-scale attacks, including salvos from a helicopter last year and exploding drones as he gave a speech in August. The attacks have added to the sense that the president is vulnerable.

Venezuelan military officials sought direct access to the American government during Barack Obama's presidency, only to be rebuffed, officials said.

Then in August of last year, President Trump declared that the United States had a "military option" for Venezuela — a declaration that drew condemnation from American allies in the region but encouraged rebellious Venezuelan military officers to reach out to Washington once again.

"It was the commander in chief saying this now," the former Venezuelan commander on the sanctions list said in an interview, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals by the Venezuelan government. "I'm not going to doubt it when this was the messenger."

In a series of covert meetings abroad, which began last fall and continued this year, the military officers told the American government that they represented a few hundred members of the armed forces who had soured on Mr. Maduro's authoritarianism.

The officers asked the United States to supply them with encrypted radios, citing the need to communicate securely, as they developed a plan to install a transitional government to run the country until elections could be held.

American officials did not provide material support, and the plans unraveled after a recent crackdown that led to the arrest of dozens of the plotters.

Relations between the United States and Venezuela have been strained for years. The two have not exchanged ambassadors since 2010. After Mr. Trump took office, his administration increased sanctions against top Venezuelan officials, including Mr. Maduro himself, his vice president and other top officials in the government.

The account of the clandestine meetings and the policy debates preceding them is drawn from interviews with 11 current and former American officials, as well as the former Venezuelan commander. He said at least three distinct groups within the Venezuelan military had been plotting against the Maduro government.

One established contact with the American government by approaching the United States Embassy in a European capital. When this was reported back to Washington, officials at the White House were intrigued but apprehensive. They worried that the meeting request could be a ploy to surreptitiously record an American official appearing to conspire against the Venezuelan government, officials said.

But as the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela worsened last year, American officials felt that having a clearer picture of the plans and the men who aspired to oust Mr. Maduro was worth the risk.

"After a lot of discussion, we agreed we should listen to what they had to say," said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak about the secret talks.

The administration initially considered dispatching Juan Cruz, a veteran Central Intelligence Agency official who recently stepped down as the White House's top Latin America policymaker. But White House lawyers said it would be more prudent to send a career diplomat instead.

The American envoy was instructed to attend the meetings "purely on listening mode," and was not authorized to negotiate anything of substance on the spot, according to the senior administration official.

After the first meeting, which took place in the fall of 2017, the diplomat reported that the Venezuelans didn't appear to have a detailed plan and had showed up at the encounter hoping the Americans would offer guidance or ideas, officials said.

The former Venezuelan commander said that the rebellious officers never asked for an American military intervention. "I never agreed, nor did they propose, to do a joint operation," he said.

He claimed that he and his comrades considered striking last summer, when the government suspended the powers of the legislature and installed a new national assembly loyal to Mr. Maduro. But he said they aborted the plan, fearing it would lead to bloodshed.

They later planned to take power in March, the former officer said, but that plan leaked. Finally, the dissidents looked to the May 20 election, during which Mr. Maduro was re-elected, as a new target date. But again, word got out and the plotters held their fire.

It is unclear how many of these details the coup planners shared with the Americans. But there is no indication that Mr. Maduro knew the mutinous officers were talking to the Americans at all.

For any of the plots to have worked, the former commander said, he and his comrades believed they needed to detain Mr. Maduro and other top government figures simultaneously. To do that, he added, the rebel officers needed a way to communicate securely. They made their request during their second meeting with the American diplomat, which took place last year.

The American diplomat relayed the request to Washington, where senior officials turned it down, American officials said.

"We were frustrated," said the former Venezuelan commander. "There was a lack of follow-through. They left me waiting."

The American diplomat then met the coup plotters a third time early this year, but the discussions did not result in a promise of material aid or even a clear signal that Washington endorsed the rebels' plans, according to the Venezuelan commander and several American officials.

Still, the Venezuelan plotters could view the meetings as tacit approval of their plans, argued Peter Kornbluh, a historian at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

"The United States always has an interest in gathering intelligence on potential changes of leadership in governments," Mr. Kornbluh said. "But the mere presence of a U.S. official at such a meeting would likely be perceived as encouragement."

In its statement, the White House called the situation in Venezuela "a threat to regional security and democracy" and said that the Trump administration would continue to strengthen a coalition of "like-minded, and right-minded, partners from Europe to Asia to the Americas to pressure the Maduro regime to restore democracy in Venezuela."

American officials have openly discussed the possibility that Venezuela's military could take action.

On Feb. 1, Rex W. Tillerson, who was secretary of state at the time, delivered a speech in which he said the United States had not "advocated for regime change or removal of President Maduro." Yet, responding to a question afterward, Mr. Tillerson raised the potential for a military coup.

"When things are so bad that the military leadership realizes that it just can't serve the citizens anymore, they will manage a peaceful transition," he said.

Days later, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has sought to shape the Trump administration's approach toward Latin America, wrote a series of Twitter posts that encouraged dissident members of the Venezuelan armed forces to topple their commander in chief.

"Soldiers eat out of garbage cans & their families go hungry in Venezuela while Maduro & friends live like kings & block humanitarian aid," Mr. Rubio wrote. He then added: "The world would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator."

In a speech in April, when he was still White House policy chief for Latin America, Mr. Cruz issued a message to the Venezuelan military. Referring to Mr. Maduro as a "madman," Mr. Cruz said all Venezuelans should "urge the military to respect the oath they took to perform their functions. Honor your oath."

As the crisis in Venezuela worsened in recent years, American officials debated the pros and cons of opening lines of dialogue with rebellious factions of the military.

"There were differences of opinion," said Ms. Aponte, the former top Latin America diplomat under Mr. Obama. "There were people who had a lot of faith in the idea that they could bring about stability, help distribute food, work on practical stuff."

But others — including Ms. Aponte — saw considerable risk in building bridges with leaders of a military that, in Washington's assessment, has become a pillar of the cocaine trade and human rights abuses.

Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico who preceded Ms. Aponte as the top State Department official for Latin America policy, said that while Washington has long regarded the Venezuelan military as "widely corrupt, deeply involved in narcotics trafficking and very unsavory," she saw merit in establishing a back channel with some of them.

"Given the broader breakdown in institutions in Venezuela, there was a feeling that — while they were not necessarily the answer — any kind of democratic resolution would have had to have the military on board," said Ms. Jacobson, who retired from the State Department this year. "The idea of hearing from actors in those places, no matter how unsavory they may be, is integral to diplomacy."

But whatever the rationale, holding discussions with coup plotters could set off alarms in a region with a list of infamous interventions: the Central Intelligence Agency's failed Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro as leader of Cuba in 1961; the American-supported coup in Chile in 1973, which led to the long military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet; and the Reagan administration's covert support of right-wing rebels known as the contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

In Venezuela, a coup in 2002 briefly deposed Mr. Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez. The United States knew a plot was being hatched but warned against it, according to a classified document that was later made public. The coup took place anyway and the George W. Bush administration opened a channel to the new leader. Officials then backed away from the new government after popular anger rose against the coup and countries in the region loudly denounced it. Mr. Chávez was reinstated as president.

In the latest coup plot, the number of military figures connected to the plan dwindled from a high of about 300 to 400 last year to about half that after a crackdown this year by Mr. Maduro's government.

The former Venezuelan military officer worries that the 150 or so comrades who have been detained are probably being tortured. He lamented that the United States did not supply the mutineers with radios, which he believes could have changed the country's history.

"I'm disappointed," he said. "But I'm the least affected. I'm not a prisoner."

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6)  Dallas Police Officer Kills Her Neighbor in His Apartment, Saying She Mistook It for Her Own

By Matthew Haag, September 7, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/us/dallas-police-shooting-botham-shem-jean.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage&action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Botham Shem Jean was fatally shot inside his Dallas apartment by a police officer on Thursday night.

A Dallas police officer fatally shot a neighbor inside the man's apartment late Thursday night, claiming that she mistook his apartment for her own and believed he was an intruder, the police said.

After completing her shift on Thursday, the officer went to her apartment building across the street from the Dallas Police Department's headquarters shortly before 10 p.m. But the officer, who was still in police uniform, did not go to her own unit and instead tried to enter the residence of a neighbor, Botham Shem Jean. She then shot him, the authorities said.

Mr. Jean, 26, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

It was not clear how the officer, whose name has not been released, mistook where she lived or why she opened fire.

Chief U. Renee Hall of the Dallas Police Department said that investigators were seeking an arrest warrant to charge the officer with manslaughter. Chief Hall said it became clear in the beginning of the investigation that the case was not a standard officer-involved shooting.

"We were dealing with what appears to be a very unique situation," Chief Hall said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. "Right now, there are more questions than we have answers."

The Police Department asked the Texas Rangers, the state's top law enforcement agency, to take over the investigation.

Chief Hall said that the officer had been questioned only when other officers responded to the shooting on Thursday night. While the officers took a blood sample from her to test for alcohol or drugs, investigators have been unable to further question her.

The chief identified the officer only as a patrol officer who is white, saying that the officer was not in custody and that she did not know her whereabouts.

Within hours of the shooting, there was an outpouring of grief for Mr. Jean from Dallas to St. Lucia, his home country in the Caribbean, as well as demands that the officer be charged in his death.

Mr. Jean was born in the Caribbean and later moved to the United States, where he graduated in 2016 from Harding University in Arkansas. He was active on campus and in student groups, including as a member of the Good News Singers, the university said on Friday. With a booming, soulful voice, Mr. Jean often led the group in songs.

Bruce McLarty, the university's president, said on Friday that he recalled when he asked Mr. Jean in 2014 to sing a hymn at a major event at Harding, which is associated with the Churches of Christ. Mr. Jean agreed but later confessed that he had said yes without actually knowing the song.

"He called back to St. Lucia and asked his grandmother to teach him that old hymn on the phone," Dr. McLarty said in a statement. "He shared it with us at Lectureship that night, and it was a truly special moment."

Mr. Jean moved to Dallas after college. After an internship at the accounting firm PwC, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, he joined the company full time in July 2016 in its Dallas offices, the company said. He was currently a risk assurance experienced associate.

"This is a terrible tragedy," a PwC spokeswoman said in an email. "We are simply heartbroken to hear of his death."

Mr. Jean was a member of a prominent family in St. Lucia. His mother, Allison Jean, was a senior official in St. Lucia's Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development. A family friend said that Ms. Jean could not comment on Friday because she was receiving chemotherapy treatment.

One of Mr. Jean's uncles is the chief executive of a regional water utility in St. Lucia, while another uncle, Earl Jean, played professional soccer in Europe and on the island's national team.

"How can this nasty world take you away from me," Earl Jean wrote on Facebook on Friday. "This is the worst day of my life thus far."

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7) District Attorneys Dismantle Legacy of Tough Marijuana Enforcement

By Jan Ransom and Tyler Pager, September 7, 2018

"A New York Times investigation in May found that the primary targets of marijuana arrests in New York City are black and Hispanic people. In the past three years, black people were arrested on low-level marijuana charges at eight times the rate of white people, and Hispanic people were arrested at five times the rate of white people. In Manhattan, those figures were even more troubling: Black people were arrested at 15 times the rate of white people."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/nyregion/nyc-marijuana-laws.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage&action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Cyrus R. Vance Jr., right, the Manhattan district attorney, is expected to announce next week that his office will vacate misdemeanor marijuana warrants dating to 1978.

Even as the authorities in New York City have scaled back enforcement of marijuana laws, a legacy of tough policies remains: People are hindered from getting jobs, apartments and access to education because of decades-old marijuana convictions and outstanding warrants.

Now Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, is expected to announce next week that his office will vacate misdemeanor marijuana warrants dating to 1978. In Brooklyn, District Attorney Eric Gonzalez is going further, offering people with low-level convictions for marijuana possession the chance to have them vacated and the underlying charges dismissed.

Mr. Gonzalez's office will also automatically vacate 3,438 open marijuana warrants stemming from summonses and is encouraging people to come forward to have misdemeanor arrest warrants cleared.

The moves are part of a national shift in how states and cities are rethinking marijuana laws. The drug has been legalized in nine states and Washington, D.C., and cities including San Francisco and San Diego are automatically clearing old misdemeanor convictions.

Both the Manhattan and Brooklyn district attorneys have stopped prosecuting the vast majority of people arrested on marijuana offenses, responding to enforcement policies that ended up targeting young black and Hispanic men.

"We must remember those who have convictions on their record based on these cases that we are no longer going to prosecute," Mr. Gonzalez said during a news conference Friday announcing the changes. "To fail to address these past convictions would be hypocritical and would be to turn a blind eye on all the harm caused by marijuana enforcement in prior years."

In Manhattan, where 3,042 misdemeanor marijuana warrants will be vacated, 78 percent of the defendants in those cases are black and Hispanic.

"The effect of an open warrant can be very negative," Mr. Vance said during an interview at his office this week. "It can prevent you from getting a job. It can prevent you from going to the police to report other crimes for fear that you're going to be picked up. If you are an immigrant, you also run the risk of deportation.

"When folks say this is crazy and New York City is going to hell in a handbasket, we are not. The city wants a rational approach to criminal justice."

Mr. Vance said he would also like to clear certain marijuana convictions, but that would require state legislation that would allow for record expungement. Mr. Gonzalez is circumventing the legislation issue by instead vacating convictions and dismissing charges. In Brooklyn, at least 20,000 people have a low-level marijuana conviction dating to 1990.

People with certain violent felonies or sex offenses are not eligible to have their convictions vacated in Brooklyn.

Defense attorneys, elected officials and academics lauded the new initiatives, calling them "a step in the right direction."

"The recognition is that this has to stop," said Justine Luongo, the chief of Legal Aid's criminal defense practice. "Marijuana is not an issue that should be criminalized."

Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, called Mr. Gonzalez's decision to vacate convictions "a visionary one."

"It will save so many of our clients from deportation, loss of student loans, loss of housing, removal of their children and other very disproportionate outcomes that make no sense," Ms. Schreibersdorf said. "Of course, New York should legalize marijuana, but in the meantime this is an incredible opportunity for Brooklyn residents."

In the spring, the Brooklyn district attorney's office began declining to prosecute some cases of people who were arrested on charges of smoking marijuana in public. In Manhattan, prosecutors spent six months studying cities that have legalized marijuana and released a report in May. The purpose, Mr. Vance said, was to review what other states were doing and seize on opportunities for improvement in New York.

"The impact on individuals and communities affected marks a significant shift in the understanding of prosecutors and the job they're doing and how they should do it," said David M. Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. "It represents another really important step in a new trajectory that the city is on with respect to criminal justice and public safety."

A New York Times investigation in May found that the primary targets of marijuana arrests in New York City are black and Hispanic people. In the past three years, black people were arrested on low-level marijuana charges at eight times the rate of white people, and Hispanic people were arrested at five times the rate of white people. In Manhattan, those figures were even more troubling: Black people were arrested at 15 times the rate of white people.

The following month, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the Police Department would cut down on arrests for publicly smoking by more than half and give people summonses instead, but would continue to arrest some individuals who have past arrests or convictions. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced last month that a working group will draft legislation proposing the legalization of marijuana.

When asked about the programs announced by the district attorneys in Brooklyn and Manhattan, Mr. de Blasio's Office of Criminal Justice said it would review the initiatives.

It was unclear whether district attorneys in other boroughs are considering similar measures. In Staten Island, the district attorney's office declined to comment. The Bronx district attorney, Darcel D. Clark, called for the State Legislature to decriminalize marijuana.

"Decriminalization would ensure fairness for residents of the Bronx and throughout New York State," Ms. Clark said in a statement. "The piecemeal approach to enforcing marijuana laws county by county creates disparity and will not change the underlying fact that marijuana is still illegal."

A spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said the office would review any marijuana misdemeanor arrests that have not been dismissed. City Councilman Rory Lancman criticized Mr. Brown for not doing more.

"Every New York City resident has the right to ask their district attorney why they can't have the same benefits as the policies in Brooklyn and Manhattan," Mr. Lancman said, adding that in Queens the office has lagged behind in "recognizing how damaging many years of policing and prosecution have been to hundreds of thousands of residents over the years."

A 36-year-old woman who asked to remain anonymous because she hopes to have her marijuana possession conviction dismissed said she has long dreamed of being a New York City taxi driver. She had held off applying for fear she would not get the job with a drug conviction in her past.

But after Mr. Gonzalez's announcement, the woman, a mother of three, said she will begin to save money to pay the Taxi and Limousine Commission's application fee. She hopes that her conviction will be vacated.

"I know I broke the law," she said. "I became a public nuisance. I want to show the community that I changed."

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8) New Antarctica Map Is Like 'Putting on Glasses for the First Time and Seeing 20/20'

By Shannon Stirone, September 7, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/science/antarctica-map-rema.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront

The Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica in a new map made with satellites operated by a Department of Defense agency.

You may never make it to the South Pole, but you can now see Antarctica and its glaciers in unprecedented detail. 

Researchers this week announced the release of a new high resolution terrain map of the southernmost continent, called the Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica, or REMA, which they say makes Antarctica the best mapped continent on Earth. 

Antarctica is the most desolate and inhospitable place on Earth and its remoteness makes monitoring changes in the fluctuations of ice and water levels difficult. Because of the warming climate, seasonal changes at Antarctica are becoming more severe, making the need to understand the loss of ice even more important.

Ian Howat, the project's principal investigator and a professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, and Paul Morin, of the University of Minnesota, used data from a constellation of polar orbiting satellites to image the frozen wastes. The satellite data was licensed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is part of the Department of Defense.

Previous maps of the continent had a resolution similar to seeing the whole of Central Park from a satellite. With this new data, it is now possible to see down to the size of a car, and even smaller in some areas. The data is so complete that scientists now know the height of every feature on the continent down to a few feet. 

"If you're someone that needs glasses to see, it's a bit like being almost blind and putting on glasses for the first time and seeing 20/20," said Dr. Howat.

The team used 187,585 images collected over six years to create the map. 

"Until now, we've had a better map of Mars than we've had of Antarctica," said Dr. Howat. 

The pictures are so detailed they had to use one of the most powerful supercomputers on Earth to ingest the data. Having access to this amount of information will allow researchers to better monitor the effects of climate change on the ice.

Previous images of Antarctic terrain left much to be desired. The difference between two images from previous surface imaging on the left and the new map on the right demonstrates the difference. 

The upturned shovel feature in the bottom right is called Siple Dome. Hills like these are found all over Antarctica, their smooth surface made by accumulations of ice. The large mounds act like obstructions in this stream of glacial ice that is flowing out to the Ross ice shelf, Antarctica's largest.

Observing snowfall, ice-growth and the rate of melt and fissures will allow scientists to monitor sea-level rise and glacial melt with more accuracy. Ice shelves bear the brunt of pressure from flowing rivers pushing against them. The faster the ice melts on the land, the more weight the ice shelf has to contain, resulting in breaks of glaciers into the sea.

Scientists who keep a close watch on large ice shelves like Larsen C, above, will now be able to study the streams of ice and stress fractures that occur between the mountains. Because of the location of Antarctica and because the rest of the year there isn't enough sunlight at the poles for the satellites to see the land, images can only be taken from December through March, the summer season. Since the last set of data was collected, a large section of this glacier has broken off into an iceberg named A-68.

This is a large river of ice flowing between two mountains called the Glacier South of Dry Valley. Images like these will be free and accessible to scientists for their research.

Explorers and scientists stationed at Antarctica will also find the new map useful. By having such a detailed topographical map, new routes to science stations can be planned around the continent's dangerous terrain. 

At the center of this image above are two locations called Halley V & VI. Both were British research bases. They have since had to move because the ice shelf began to break off.

"Something that's always been a problem is knowing where the ice is and knowing how thick it is," Dr. Howat said.

The 150 terabyte data set is the first that will allow researchers to watch the fracturing of ice shells within a three week time span, nearly tracking changes on the ice in real time. These streams are flowing into Filchner ice shelf where stress fractures can be seen forming between hills. Such fractures are often the early signs of a full break from the glacier.

Dr. Howat and Mr. Morin hope to update the map every year. With REMA it will be possible to watch icebergs forming and glaciers moving like this flow of ice at Byrd Glacier, which is the largest ice stream on Antarctica.

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9) Gov. Brown needs to speed up the review process for death row inmate Kevin Cooper

By The Times Editorial Board, September 6, 2018

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-brown-cooper-death-penalty-20180906-story.html

Melanie Bostic of Lancaster and Michael Wharton of San Leandro, Calif., protest outside the state prison in San Quentin on Feb. 9, 2004. 

A San Bernardino jury sentenced Kevin Cooper to death three decades ago after convicting him of murdering two adults and two children and severely wounding a third child. But the jury didn't know that the investigation into those murders was, to say the least, problematic.

Subsequent inquiries and analyses persuasively show that investigators may have planted a blood sample from Cooper on a T-shirt found near the crime scene; that they failed to test — and then lost — a pair of bloody overalls worn by another man on the day of the murders; that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence from Cooper's lawyer; and that the only eyewitness — the wounded child — initially told a hospital social worker that the attackers were three or four white men. (Cooper is black.) The victims suffered multiple slash and stab wounds from a number of weapons, more than one could reasonably expect a single perpetrator to inflict. Nevertheless, the child testified at trial that the attacker was a single man.

Cooper, though, has had an inordinate amount of trouble getting the courts to give him a fair hearing. In one appeal, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Cooper's plea for a new hearing despite a scathing, 100-page dissent by Judge William Fletcher that dissects how the police and courts not only failed to give Cooper a fair trial, but also apparently conspired to convict him. "Kevin Cooper has now been on death row for nearly half his life," Fletcher wrote. "In my opinion, he is probably innocent of the crimes for which the state of California is about to execute him."

Cooper has asked Gov. Jerry Brown to order new, more sophisticated DNA tests on the shirt and other items, tests that he believes will prove once and for all that someone else committed the murders. He also wants the governor to conduct an innocence hearing to weigh those test results and, ultimately, to pardon him. Brown has asked the San Bernardino County district attorney's office, which opposes reopening the case, for a response by Oct. 11 to Cooper's allegations before deciding whether to conduct the review.

But time is running out on Brown's term, and chances are increasing that it could end before the review process does. If so, the next governor and his legal staff would probably have to start over, assuming they chose to address Cooper's requests at all. That would unjustly delay yet again the search for the truth, and the possible freeing of an innocent man.

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10) Kenny Stills Carries Colin Kaepernick’s Torch by Continuing to Kneel

By Ken Belson, September 7, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/sports/kenny-stills-national-anthem-protest.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

Miami Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills has picked up the torch once carried by Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, who are no longer on N.F.L. rosters.

DAVIE, Fla. — As the N.F.L. season gets underway, Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback who has not taken a snap in nearly two years, is back at center stage, his presence looming over the league because of Nike’s dramatic ad campaign featuring his willingness to sacrifice his career for his political beliefs.

All but a few players have returned to standing or raising fists during the playing of the national anthem, but Kenny Stills, a wide receiver on the Miami Dolphins, continues to kneel and has quietly become the on-field face of the movement Kaepernick started in 2016.

Stills, entering his sixth season, is an unlikely torch bearer for the protests. Other than a few episodes at Oklahoma, he said he had not endured outright acts of racism.

He grew up in San Diego, a city with a significant military presence, and does not fit cleanly into the often misguided assumptions about the controversy surrounding the protests — that they are somehow antimilitary, or that all military people and the players who know them are against the protesters. Stills’s grandfather was in the Marines. Several influential figures from his childhood have military backgrounds.

However, like Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who was the first N.F.L. player to refuse to stand for the national anthem, Stills wants to use his visibility to shine a light on police brutality, economic inequality and other forms of social injustice. A hero to some, Stills, like Kaepernick before him, has been branded unpatriotic, ungrateful and ignorant, though he insists he has nothing against the military or law enforcement. He says he only wants the police to be held accountable if they wrongly shoot someone.

“It shouldn’t be this complicated,” Stills, 26, said of the criticism after a recent practice. “There are people in this country who are saying there are issues we want to bring to light, can you help us make change. Instead of people saying, yeah, let’s do this, let’s make change, let’s make our country a better place, it’s like, no, don’t do this then, this isn’t the right place, you don’t like the police.”

Stills’s profile has grown as he and a handful of other players who kneel, raise their fists or refuse to take the field for the national anthem, continue to make headlines in the drama that has by turns inspired and infuriated fans, the television networks and sponsors of the country’s most popular sport. As the protests enter their third season, positions on all sides of the debate have calcified, leaving the N.F.L. in the position of alienating significant numbers of its constituents no matter what it does to address the controversy.

“There is no obvious ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution,” said Phil de Picciotto, the president of Octagon, an agency that represents players and coaches. “The league is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. That does not mean, however, that it shouldn’t keep trying.”

Entering the opening slate of games this weekend, the controversy shows no sign of abating. President Trump continues to attack the league for not penalizing players who protest. His criticism, which several owners have echoed, has prompted players who stopped protesting to resume doing so.

Stills, who has never stopped protesting, said he began kneeling two years ago because he felt helpless watching videos of African-Americans dying at the hands of the police. He wondered how he would feel if one of those people had been his nephew, father or uncle. One day, he broke down crying on the way to work and vowed to do something.

Inspired by Kaepernick, he wanted to kneel. He called his old Pop Warner coach in California and asked for advice. That coach, Joe Mascarenaz, told him not to protest.

“I have a lot of respect for him,” Stills said, “but I slept on it, prayed on it and decided if I didn’t get involved in some way, somehow, I wasn’t going to be able to live with myself for the rest of my life,” Stills said.

Last season, his teammates Michael Thomas and Julius Thomas (not related) joined Stills in kneeling at various times. After Coach Adam Gase told his players to stand for the anthem or remain in the locker room, Stills stood in the tunnel to the field. During this preseason, he resumed kneeling on the field. Just as Eric Reid knelt with Kaepernick, Stills’s teammate Albert Wilson has joined him.

“I thought I was going to be by myself out there,” Stills told reporters after a preseason game. “Today, I had an angel with me with Albert being out there. I’m grateful he sees what’s happening, and he wants to do something about it as well.”

Stills’s actions have had consequences. In August, the Broward County Police Benevolent Association said it would no longer buy discounted tickets to Dolphins games because of the protests, and it encouraged other police groups to follow suit.

Reactions like those throughout the country, as well as complaints from angry fans, declining television ratings and pressure from the White House, led the owners at their quarterly meeting in May to enact rulesaimed at ending on-field protests. The new protocol required players to remain in the locker room or stand on the field for the anthem. The league said it would penalize teams whose players violated the rules and leave the question of how to penalize players up to each team.

As soon as the league changed its policy in May, the owners broke ranks. the Jets’ chairman, Chris Johnson, said he would not penalize his players if they protested. The San Francisco 49ers’ chief executive, Jed York, said he had abstained from voting.

Stills’s boss, the Dolphins owner, Stephen Ross, has made conflicting statements about the protests. In July, the team included a sentence in its rule book that said players could fined or suspended if they did not stand for the anthem. Ross, who has spoken with Stills about his protests, later said that the sentence was merely a placeholder, not a policy.

Angered that the league changed its anthem policy unilaterally, the N.F.L. Players Association filed a grievance. The union also made it clear it would not begin negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement if there were different rules for different teams. In July, the league announced it would hold off on enforcing the new rules while the owners talk with the union about possible revisions.

Five days after that announcement, the Dallas Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, said his players must stand on the field for the playing of the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and not stay in the team’s locker room. His son, Stephen, suggested that players would be cut if they disobeyed.

“Our policy is you stand during the anthem, toe the line,” Jones toldreporters.

Jones was among the owners deposed in legal cases brought by Kaepernick and his former teammate, Reid, who have accused the league of blackballing them because of their political views. An arbitrator overseeing the cases last week dismissed the N.F.L.’s bid to throw out Kaepernick’s case, which sets the stage for a trial-like hearing in the coming months.

Stills, who is in the second year of a four-year contract, said he planned to continue protesting.

In March, he traveled to sites in the South that played a role in the civil rights movement. In Memphis, he visited the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. In Selma, Ala., he walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where police beat nonviolent protesters. He traveled to Tallahassee, Fla., where he joined a rally against police brutality, and to New Orleans, where he attended a camp where Kaepernick taught young people their rights when stopped by the police.

His appreciation for people he met who are working for change steeled him to continue speaking out. “The work they are doing was uplifting to my spirit because the first two years of this protest have been really difficult with the negative backlash we’ve been receiving,” he said.

In Miami, Stills has won the team’s community service award the past two seasons. He helps pay for tailgates at Dolphins home games that bring students, coaches, parents, community leaders and the police together. He organized a police ride-along program and took part in a town-hall meeting with law enforcement officials to talk about racial inequality.

Stills is not part of the Players Coalition, which worked with the league to develop a program that would funnel up to $90 million to groups trying to address social injustice. Stills called this initiative a “Band-Aid” aimed at getting the players to stop protesting. If the owners were serious about addressing the issue, Kaepernick and Reid would still be playing in the N.F.L., he said. Only if they return to the field will he consider standing during the national anthem.

“No one wants this added stress or added negativity or hatred coming toward them,” he said. “We truly just want to use our platform to say, hey, we’ve got issues going on, how can we all get involved to work together.”

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11) Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals
By Charles Ornstein and Katie Thomas, September 8, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/health/jose-baselga-cancer-memorial-sloan-kettering.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in 2015.

This article was reported and written in a collaboration with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization.

One of the world’s top breast cancer doctors failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in recent years, omitting his financial ties from dozens of research articles in prestigious publications like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.

The researcher, Dr. José Baselga, a towering figure in the cancer world, is the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He has held board memberships or advisory roles with Roche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, among other corporations, has had a stake in start-ups testing cancer therapies, and played a key role in the development of breakthrough drugs that have revolutionized treatments for breast cancer.

According to an analysis by The New York Times and ProPublica, Dr. Baselga did not follow financial disclosure rules set by the American Association for Cancer Research when he was president of the group. He also left out payments he received from companies connected to cancer research in his articles published in the group’s journal, Cancer Discovery. At the same time, he has been one of the journal’s two editors in chief.

At a conference this year and before analysts in 2017, he put a positive spin on the results of two Roche-sponsored clinical trials that many others considered disappointments, without disclosing his relationship to the company. Since 2014, he has received more than $3 million from Roche in consulting fees and for his stake in a company it acquired.

Dr. Baselga did not dispute his relationships with at least a dozen companies. In an interview, he said the disclosure lapses were unintentional.

He stressed that much of his industry work was publicly known although he declined to provide payment figures from his involvement with some biotech startups. “I acknowledge that there have been inconsistencies, but that’s what it is,” he said. “It’s not that I do not appreciate the importance.”

Dr. Baselga’s extensive corporate relationships — and his frequent failure to disclose them — illustrate how permeable the boundaries remain between academic research and industry, and how weakly reporting requirements are enforced by the medical journals and professional societies charged with policing them.

A decade ago, a series of scandals involving the secret influence of the pharmaceutical industry on drug research prompted the medical community to beef up its conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements. Ethicists worry that outside entanglements can shape the way studies are designed and medications are prescribed to patients, allowing bias to influence medical practice. Disclosing those connections allows the public, other scientists and doctors to evaluate the research and weigh potential conflicts.

“If leaders don’t follow the rules, then we don’t really have rules,” said Dr. Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh. “It says that the rules don’t matter.”

The penalties for such ethical lapses are not severe. The cancer research group, the A.A.C.R., warns authors who fill out disclosure forms for its journals that they face a three-year ban on publishing if they are found to have financial relationships that they did not disclose. But the ban is not included in the conflict-of-interest policy posted on its website, and the group said no author had ever been barred.

Many journals and professional societies do not check conflicts and simply require authors to correct the record.

Officials at the A.A.C.R., the American Society of Clinical Oncology and The New England Journal of Medicine said they were looking into Dr. Baselga’s omissions after inquiries from The New York Times and ProPublica. The Lancet declined to say whether it would look into the matter.

Christine Hickey, a spokeswoman for Memorial Sloan Kettering, said that Dr. Baselga had properly informed the hospital of his outside industry work and that it was Dr. Baselga’s responsibility to disclose such relationships to entities like medical journals. The cancer center, she said, “has a rigorous and comprehensive compliance program in place to promote honesty and objectivity in scientific research.”

Asked if he planned to correct his disclosures, Dr. Baselga asked reporters what they would recommend. In a statement several days later, he said he would correct his conflict-of-interest reporting for 17 articles, including in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the publication he edits, Cancer Discovery. He said that he did not believe disclosure was required for dozens of other articles detailing early stages of research.

“I have spent my career caring for cancer patients and bringing new therapies to the clinic with the goal of extending and saving lives,” Dr. Baselga said in the statement. “While I have been inconsistent with disclosures and acknowledge that fact, that is a far cry from compromising my responsibilities as a physician, as a scientist and as a clinical leader.”

The corporate imprint on cancer research

Dr. Baselga, 59, supervises clinical operations at Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the nation’s top cancer centers, and wields influence over the lives of patients and companies wishing to conduct trials there. He was paid more than $1.5 million in compensation by the cancer center in 2016, according to the hospital’s latest available tax disclosures, but that does not include his consulting or board fees from outside companies.

Many top medical researchers have ties to the for-profit health care industry, and some overlap is seen as a good thing — after all, these are the companies charged with developing the drugs, medical devices and diagnostic tests of the future.

Dr. Baselga’s relationship to industry is extensive. In addition to sitting on the board of Bristol-Myers Squibb, he is a director of Varian Medical Systems, which sells radiation equipment and for whom Memorial Sloan Kettering is a client.

In all, Dr. Baselga has served on the boards of at least six companies since 2013, positions that have required him to assume a fiduciary responsibility to protect the interests of those companies, even as he oversees the cancer center’s medical operations.

The hospital and Dr. Baselga said steps had been taken to prevent him from having a say in any business between the cancer center and the companies on whose boards he sits.

The chief executive of Memorial Sloan Kettering, Dr. Craig B. Thompson, settled lawsuits several years ago that were filed by the University of Pennsylvania and an affiliated research center. They contended that he hid research conducted while he was at Penn to start a new company, Agios Pharmaceuticals, and did not share the earnings. Dr. Thompson disputed the allegations. He now sits on the board of Merck, which manufactures Keytruda, a blockbuster cancer therapy.

Ms. Hickey said the cancer center cannot fulfill its charitable mission without working with industry. “We encourage collaboration and are proud that our work has led to the approval of novel, lifesaving cancer treatments for patients around the world,” she said.

Some disclosures are required; others aren’t

After the scandals a decade ago over lack of disclosure, the federal government began requiring drug and device manufacturers to publicly disclose payments to doctors in 2013.

From August 2013 through 2017, Dr. Baselga received nearly $3.5 million from nine companies, according to the federal Open Payments database, which compiles disclosures filed by drug and device companies.

Dr. Baselga has disclosed in other forums investments and advisory roles in biotech start-ups, but he declined to provide a tally of financial interests in those firms. Companies that have not received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for their products — projects still in the testing phases — do not have to report payments they make to doctors.

Serving on boards can be lucrative. In 2017, he received $260,000 in cash and stock awards to sit on Varian’s board of directors, according to the company’s corporate filings.

ProPublica and The Times analyzed Dr. Baselga’s publications in medical journals since 2013, the year he joined Memorial Sloan Kettering. He failed to disclose any industry relationships in more than 100, or about 60 percent of the time, a figure that has increased with each passing year. Last year, he did not list any potential conflicts in 87 percent of the articles that he wrote or co-wrote.

Dr. Baselga compiled a color-coded list of his articles and offered a different interpretation. Sixty-two of the papers for which he did not disclose any potential conflict represented “conceptual, basic laboratory or translational work,” and did not require one, he said. Questions could be raised about others, he said, but he added that most “had no clinical nor financial implications.” That left the 17 papers he plans to correct.

Early-stage research often carries financial weight because it helps companies decide whether to move ahead with a product. In about two-thirds of Dr. Balsega’s articles that lacked details of his industry ties, one or more of his co-authors listed theirs.

In 2015, Dr. Baselga published an article in the New England Journal about a Roche-sponsored trial of one of the company’s drugs, Zelboraf. Despite his financial ties to Roche, he declared that he had “nothing to disclose.” Fourteen of his co-authors reported ties to Roche.

Dr. Baselga defended the articles, saying that “these are high-quality manuscripts reporting on important clinical trials that led to a better understanding of cancer treatments.”

The guidelines enacted by most major medical journals and professional societies ask authors and presenters to list recent financial relationships that could pose a conflict.

But much of this reporting still relies on the honor system. A study in August in the journal JAMA Oncology found that one-third of authors in a sample of cancer trials did not report all payments from the studies’ sponsors.

“We don’t routinely check because we don’t have those kind of resources,” said Dr. Rita F. Redberg, the editor of JAMA Internal Medicine, who has been critical of the influence of industry on medical practice. “We rely on trust and integrity. It’s kind of an assumed part of the professional relationship.”

Jennifer Zeis, a spokeswoman for The New England Journal of Medicine, said in an email that it had now asked Dr. Baselga to amend his disclosures. She said the journal planned to overhaul its tracking of industry relationships.

The American Association for Cancer Research said it had begun an “extensive review” of the disclosure forms submitted by Dr. Baselga.

It said that it had never barred an author from publishing, and that “such an action would be necessary only in cases of egregious, consistent violations of the rules.”

Among the most prominent relationships that Dr. Baselga has often failed to disclose is with the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche and its United States subsidiary Genentech.

In June 2017, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, Dr. Baselga spoke at a Roche-sponsored investor event about study results that the company had been counting on to persuade oncologists to move patients from Herceptin — which was facing competition from cheaper alternatives — to a combination treatment involving Herceptin and a newer, more expensive drug, Perjeta.

The results were so underwhelming that Roche’s stock fell 5 percent on the news. One analyst described the results as a “lead balloon,” and an editorial in The New England Journal called it a “disappointment.”

Dr. Baselga, however, told analysts that critiques were “weird” and “strange.”

This June, at the same cancer conference, Dr. Baselga struck an upbeat note about the results of a Roche trial of the drug taselisib, saying in a blog post published on the cancer center website that the results were “incredibly exciting” while conceding the side effects from the drug were high.

That same day, Roche announced it was scrapping plans to develop the drug. The news was another disappointment involving the class of drugs called PI3K inhibitors, which is a major focus of Dr. Baselga’s current research.

In neither case did Dr. Baselga reveal that his ties to Roche and Genentech went beyond serving as a trial investigator. In 2014, Roche acquired Seragon, a cancer research company in which Dr. Baselga had an ownership stake, for $725 million. Dr. Baselga received more than $3 million in 2014 and 2015 for his stake in the company, according to the federal Open Payments database.

From 2013 to 2017, Roche also paid Dr. Baselga more than $50,000 in consulting fees, according to the database.

These details were not included in the conflict-of-interest statements that are required of all presenters at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference, although he did disclose ownership interests and consulting relationships with several other companies in the prior two years.

ASCO said it would conduct an internal review of Dr. Baselga’s disclosures and would refer the findings to a panel.

Dr. Baselga said that he played no role in the Seragon acquisition, and that he had cut ties with Roche since joining the board of a competitor, Bristol-Myers, in March. As for his presentations at the ASCO meetings in the last two years, he said he had also noted shortcomings in the studies.

The combination of Perjeta with Herceptin was later approved by the F.D.A. for certain high-risk patients. As for taselisib, Dr. Baselga stands by his belief that the PI3K class of drugs will be an important target for fighting cancer.

Charles Ornstein is a senior editor at ProPublica.

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12) Colin Kaepernick Will Not Be Silenced
By Dave Zirin, September 7, 2018
https://www.thenation.com/article/colin-kaepernick-will-not-be-silenced/

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick on January 1, 2017.

With a new ad by Nike, and new recriminations from the amoral White House, Colin Kaepernick has been the leading topic of conversation as the NFL season gets underway. But lost in the debates about his Nike campaign—and people setting fire to their own sneakers—is what is new about his collusion case against the NFL.

On Thursday of last week, NFL franchise owners were dealt a serious blow when their efforts to dismiss Kaepernick’s collusion case were denied by independent arbitrator Stephen Burbank. In his statement, released by Kaepernick’s attorney Mark Geragos, Burbank wrote, “On August 28, 2018, the System Arbitrator denied the NFL’s request that he dismiss Colin Kaepernick’s complaint alleging that his inability to secure a player contract since becoming a free agent in March 2017 has been due to an agreement among team owners and the NFL that violates Article 17, Section 1 of the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the NFLPA [union].”

The significance of the ruling is not only that the NFL’s efforts were stymied. The collective-bargaining agreement is central to the labor question in the arbitrator’s ruling. As NFL veteran Russell Okung tweeted, “What started as a protest to highlight systemic injustice, continues to evolve & now encompass a legit labor dispute. Encouraged by the System Arbitrator’s level headed interpretation of the CBA & decision to deny the NFL’s request to dismiss @Kaepernick7’s case. Huge! #ImWithKap”

If NFL owners were savvy, rather than mostly legacy billionaires who live in fear of Donald Trump’s tweets, they would make every effort at this point to settle with Kaepernick. Geragos and his investigators have now been sanctioned to dig even deeper, to depose owners and executives and excavate the shadowy corners of the league that NFL owners seem to think is their birthright to keep hidden— that means e-mails, phone records, text messages. In addition, if found guilty of collusion—if Geragos can summon smoking-gun evidence, a whistle-blower or some tangible proof—the verdict could invalidate the league’s collective-bargaining agreement with the players’ union two and a half years before it is due to expire in 2021. With the season about to get underway, the NFL Players Association would have the ownership over the proverbial barrel.

But NFL owners’ settling this case would be more surprising than a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl run. This is a predominantly conservative ownership fraternity that has a reservoir of cultural capital invested in making an example out of Colin Kaepernick. They need him to be a ghost story, a cautionary tale that can be used against any player who even dreams of using the NFL as a political platform to speak out against racism.

Already, this strategy has proven to be disastrous. Kaepernick has instead become first a martyr, someone whose memory inspired players to keep protesting last season, and then an icon of resistance, the kind of person who gets standing ovations at the US Open.

Even if NFL owners come to their senses and offer a settlement, Colin Kaepernick is not going to settle. He clearly believes that this is about more than money. It is about police violence and being vocal for those who don’t have a voice. It is about standing up to this idea that billionaires seem to have that they can silence whomever they want without repercussions. This is so much bigger than the NFL. We are about to witness a case that will determine whether the powerful can treat free speech as a privilege. Colin Kaepernick is determined to define it as a right.

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