Get Malik Out of Ad-Seg Keith "Malik" Washington is an incarcerated activist who has spoken out on conditions of confinement in Texas prison and beyond:  from issues of toxic water and extreme heat, to physical and sexual abuse of imprisoned people, to religious discrimination and more.  Malik has also been a tireless leader in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery which gained visibility during nationwide prison strikes in 2016 and 2018.  View his work at comrademalik.com or write him at: Keith H. Washington TDC# 1487958 McConnell Unit 3001 S. Emily Drive Beeville, TX 78102 Friends, it's time to get Malik out of solitary confinement. Malik has experienced intense, targeted harassment ever since he dared to start speaking against brutal conditions faced by incarcerated people in Texas and nationwide--but over the past few months, prison officials have stepped up their retaliation even more. In Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at McConnell Unit, Malik has experienced frequent humiliating strip searches, medical neglect, mail tampering and censorship, confinement 23 hours a day to a cell that often reached 100+ degrees in the summer, and other daily abuses too numerous to name.  It could not be more clear that they are trying to make an example of him because he is a committed freedom fighter.  So we have to step up. Who to contact: TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier Phone: (936)295-6371 Email:  exec.director@tdcj.texas.gov Senior Warden Philip Sinfuentes (McConnell Unit) Phone: (361) 362-2300

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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. 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. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years Major Tillery Needs Your Help: 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: Security Processing Center Major Tillery AM 9786 268 Bricker Road Bellefonte, PA 16823 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 *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* On Monday March 4th, 2019 Leonard Peltier was advised that his request for a transfer had been unceremoniously denied by the United States Bureau of Prisons. The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee appreciates and thanks the large number of his supporters who took the time to write, call, email, or fax the BOP in support of Leonard's request for a transfer. Those of us who have been supporting Leonard's freedom for a number of years are disappointed but resolute to continue pushing for his freedom and until that day, to continue to push for his transfer to be closer to his relatives and the Indigenous Nations who support him. 44 years is too damn long for an innocent man to be locked up. How can his co-defendants be innocent on the grounds of self-defense but Leonard remains in prison? The time is now for all of us to dig deep and do what we can and what we must to secure freedom for Leonard Peltier before it's too late. We need the support of all of you now, more than ever. The ILPDC plans to appeal this denial of his transfer to be closer to his family. We plan to demand he receive appropriate medical care, and to continue to uncover and utilize every legal mechanism to secure his release. To do these things we need money to support the legal work. Please call the ILPDC National office or email us for a copy of the postcard you can send to the White House. We need your help to ask President Trump for Leonard's freedom. DONATE  ©2019 ILPDC | 116 W Osborne Avenue Tampa, FL 33603  Web Version  Preferences  Forward  Unsubscribe   Powered by GoDaddy Email Marketing ® Free Leonard Peltier!

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1) Family to Get $10 Million After Death of Man Left in Jail Cell With a Broken Neck
An Oklahoma county agreed to pay the estate of Elliott Williams, whose complaints were ignored by members of the detention and medical staff for five days.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/us/elliott-williams-settlement-oklahoma.html

Elliott WilliamsCredit...Family Photo

Surveillance cameras at the Tulsa County Jail captured the response by emergency medical workers.Credit...Tulsa County Jail/Tulsa World, via Associated Press

Elliott Williams tried to tell guards at an Oklahoma jail that he had broken his neck. 

But surveillance footage shows staff members at the Tulsa County Jail throwing trays of food toward him and placing water out of his reach as he struggled to move on the floor. They dragged him on a blanket from another cell, and would later say he "acted as if paralyzed" and wanted "to be waited on." 

Elliott Williams was eventually found dead in his cell, lying naked on the floor.

More than eight years later, the county agreed this week to pay $10 million to the estate of Mr. Williams, marking the end of a civil rights lawsuit filed by his parents. 

By the time he died, he had been injured for five days, and the jail recorded the final 51 hours of his life from a monitored medical unit. 

"It's so disturbing," said Dan Smolen, the estate's attorney. "There were dozens of people who came in contact with Elliott Williams in the Tulsa County Jail and laughed at him, mocked him, thought he was faking and didn't do anything."

"It's the dehumanization of people who are in their custody," Mr. Smolen added. "There's just a total attitude of indifference."

In 2017, a federal jury awarded the Williams estate a $10.25 million payment that the county then appealed. The settlement announced on Tuesday eliminated the requirement for Stanley Glanz, who was the sheriff at the time of Mr. Williams's death, to pay $250,000.

Guy Fortney, a lawyer representing the county, said that both parties were pleased to agree to a resolution and that everyone wanted to put the matter behind them.

Mr. Williams, a 37-year-old Army veteran, had been arrested in October 2011 on an obstruction complaint in a hotel lobby in the Tulsa suburb of Owasso. The police noted in the arrest report that Mr. Williams was having a mental breakdown and that he said he was going to kill himself.

After he was brought into custody, Mr. Williams was transferred to a cell at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center, where he bashed his head into a steel door and broke his neck. His complaints about the injury were largely ignored by detention and medical staff members.

The medical examiner confirmed in 2014 that Mr. Williams had died from complications of vertebro-spinal injuries, as well as starvation and dehydration.

"Unfortunately, prisoners are by and large a population that can be harmed, can be mistreated, can even be tortured often with impunity," said David C. Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project.

Mr. Williams's older brother, Kevin Williams, described a sense of relief following the settlement, saying it was some good news after what had been a frustrating, drawn-out battle.

"At the same token," Kevin Williams said, "no amount of money will bring him back."

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2) Civilian Toll in Israel-Gaza Clashes Comes Under Scrutiny
The two-day conflict has killed 16 civilians, including two 7-year-old boys and two toddlers, according to human rights investigators.
By The Associated Press, November 15, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-civilian-casualties.html

A funeral for members of the Malhous family in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, on Thursday, after their house was hit by an Israeli airstrike.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

GAZA CITY — Residents say the airstrike came this week without warning: With fighting raging between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants throughout Gaza, two loud blasts destroyed a home in central Gaza, killing eight members of the family in a split second.

Abdelhaj Musleh, a neighbor, said many children lived in the house in the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah that was struck on Thursday. "If there had been a warning, no one would have waited for this death and destruction," he added.

Israel has claimed victory in its latest battle against Gaza militants,a clash set off by the Israeli military's killing of an Islamic Jihad commander. But its tactics of carrying out airstrikes on private homes thought to be of harboring militants could once again come under scrutiny over the civilian death toll. 

On Friday, the Israeli army said it would investigate the "unexpected" harm to civilians in the Gaza strike.

Palestinian militants also have come under international criticism for firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilian areas.

A truce announced early Thursday appeared to be breaking down less than 24 hours later, as Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza overnight Friday after a series of Palestinian rocket attacks. Among the 34 people killed in the two-day conflict, 16 were civilians, including two 7-year-old boys and two toddlers, according to human rights investigators.

Since Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007, Israel has fought three wars and dozens of skirmishes against Islamic militant groups. While the wars have inflicted heavy damage on Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group, hundreds of civilians have also died in Israeli airstrikes.

The high civilian death toll has drawn heavy international criticism, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague has opened a preliminary investigation into Israel's battlefield tactics. Israel has rejected the criticism, saying it takes numerous precautions to prevent unnecessary civilian casualties.

It says its targets are based on sophisticated intelligence and cleared by legal advisers and other experts, and that it often warns inhabitants to evacuate before their homes are struck. It says it has fine-tuned its guided missiles, delivering small payloads that minimize damage beyond the precise target.

"Our operations against the Islamic Jihad were very accurate, very deliberate, based on the highest level of intelligence that we have," Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters on Thursday after the cease-fire was declared.

"One of the key considerations was and remains to limit to the greatest extent possible collateral damage and the effect on noncombatants," he added.

The latest round of fighting began early Tuesday, when an Israeli airstrike killed Baha Abu al-Ata, a senior Islamic Jihad commander who Israel said was responsible for numerous rocket attacks and was planning a deadly infiltration operation into Israel. The 4 a.m. missile strike hit the top-floor apartment in Gaza City where he was sleeping, also killing his wife, Asmaa Abu al-Ata.

Colonel Conricus said Israel had been following Mr. Abu al-Ata for 10 days but had held off attacking him sooner because he routinely surrounded himself with crowds of civilians for protection.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a group of Israeli soldiers to congratulate them on what he called a successful mission. "Our enemies got the message," he said. "We can reach anyone, even in their beds."

Such airstrikes can be permissible under international law, depending on the threat posed by the target and whether the damage to civilians is "proportional" to the military gain, said Omar Shakir, the country director of Human Rights Watch.

Palestinians gathered around a crater following an Israeli air strike in Deir al-Balah.Credit...Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

"Too often civilians pay the price for political brinkmanship by states and armed group," Mr. Shakir said. "We've seen several rounds of fighting now in Gaza where civilians have lost their lives or had their property damaged and faced harrowing circumstances as the result of unlawful attacks by both parties."

Palestinian militants also have been denounced for firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas. The Israeli military said dozens of the rockets this week had been misfired and landed in Gaza, with one believed to have damaged the offices of the International Commission for Human Rights, a Palestinian watchdog group. 

The group stopped short of criticizing the militants and called for an investigation of the incident.

In the case of the airstrike in Deir el-Balah, neighbors said an Islamic Jihad commander lived in the home that was destroyed. The commander, however, was not home and had apparently gone into hiding.

Instead, his brother Rasmi Abu Malhous, 45, was killed, along with both of their wives and five children under the age of 13. They included his 7-year-old son and two nephews, ages 2 and 3.

The neighbors, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to anger the family, said Rasmi Abu Malhous had not involved in any militant activity. The home virtually disintegrated in the blast, leaving a large crater with kitchenware, pillows and mattresses strewn about. Neighbors dug out eight bodies and tried to salvage school backpacks and clothes.

"When we came, we did not recognize where the house was standing," said Mr. Musleh, the neighbor. "The airstrike intentionally targeted civilians."

Israel argues that civilian casualties are inevitable in Gaza's densely populated urban environment. Militants often fire rockets from crowded residential areas, drawing Israeli retaliatory strikes, and Israel accuses the militants of using civilians as human shields.

Colonel Conricus, the military spokesman, said he had no information about the particular airstrike. But he defended the attacks on private homes, saying that Islamic Jihad commanders used their residences to store weapons or as command and control centers, making them legitimate military targets.

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3)     JUSTICE DEMANDS ABU-JAMAL'S FREEDOM - NOT CONTINUED IMPRISONMENT TO APPEASE THE F.O.P.                          
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

mobilization4Mumia@gmail.com

 November 15, 2019      

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qo1jrdfgPWggtIbLi_TlqknyBwz5lZtwCTVnUjJOtr4/edit?usp=sharing

Mumia Abu-Jamal and his supporters are closer than ever to winning his release after 38 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. The Fraternal Order of Police, former district attorneys, and other political higher ups who participated in the frame up are now shaking in their boots because an innocent man may be given a new trial in which judicial, police and prosecutorial misconduct will be exposed.

Formerly hidden evidence disclosed by current District Attorney Larry Krasner justifies a new trial and Abu-Jamal's immediate release. That decision is currently in the hands of State Superior Court judges. 

Pam Africa, of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and a MOVE member, said "Abu-Jamal should have been released by Krasner on the basis of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct--as many others have been recently. By doing this,  Krasner would be following the color of the law."

While Maureen Faulkner/Palkovic, widow of Daniel Faulkner, is being put forward as the face of the opposition in recent court proceedings, the real players behind the scenes are the FOP and their cronies. And they are dangerously worried. It is in the interest of the 6500-member FOP Lodge 5 to bring down Larry Krasner, the popular new DA with an anti-corruption agenda.  The FOPs' campaign is nothing less than an effort to terrorize any court official who values justice more than letting an unfair conviction stand.

At a Nov. 12 press conference at the FOPs' lodge, Faulkner claimed "I'm here for justice." In 38 years, Faulkner and the FOP have never fought for justice. In fact, the FOP has a decades-long violent and racist history of defending every cop accused of police brutality and terror against Black and Brown and poor people.

Previous district attorneys were more concerned with getting high rates of convictions against African American and Latinx residents than actual justice. Their policies resulted in the unfair jailing of innocent people like Mumia Abu-Jamal and mass incarceration. "The police at the scene, supported by the FOP, also the prosecution under Edward Rendell knew that Mumia was innocent. The FOP and Faulkners' recent attempt to remove DA Krasner from Mumia's new appeals is just another cover-up " said Rachel Wolkenstein, longtime Mumia supporter.

The FOP wants Abu-Jamal's case to be taken from Krasner's office and handled instead by conservative PA Attorney General Joshua Shapiro, who has staffed his office with several former assistant DAs fired from the Philadelphia DAs office - some of whom were complicit in Mumia's unfair conviction.

DA Krasner says he found potentially damaging evidence about the prosecution's trial witnesses in newly discovered files. He believes that evidence should be aired in court - but hasn't said if Abu-Jamal deserves a new trial.

Abu-Jamal's attorney Judith Ritter contends that the new evidence shows Abu-Jamal's trial was "fundamentally unfair and tainted by serious constitutional violations."

Abu-Jamal was a well-known political activist when he was severely beaten by police and charged with murder in 1981. Questions that have been suppressed and buried for decades could now could be made public for the first time during a new trial:

• DA Joe McGill paid off witnesses with favors and cash.

• McGill allowed a cab-driver witness with a suspended license to keep driving. (Photos of the crime scene by the Philadelphia Bulletin prove the cabbies' car was literally not at the scene.) 

• Joe McGill illegally removed Black jurors.

• Joe McGill tracked and fixed the outstanding cases of other key witnesses.

• The DA's office for 37 yrs withheld and suppressed critical information from Mumia's criminal defense team.

• Judge Albert Sabo stated "I am going to help them fry the n*****" in front of Judge Richard Klein and court clerk Terry Maurer Carter.

•Alfonso Giordano--Philadelphia Police Commander -- the highest ranking officer on the scene of officer Faulkner's murder on Dec. 9th 1981 falsely stated that Mumia confessed while he was beating him in the police van.  

On Dec. 2, Krasner is expected to submit a response to arguments from Abu-Jamal's lawyers for a new trial-- taking a stand for justice against FOP intimidation.

The current FOP attack on DA Krasner is part of the 38 year effort to silence Abu-Jamal once and for all. We who believe in justice will not allow that to happen.

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4) Harvard students walk out en masse from Israeli consul talk (and liberal Zionists are saddened)
By Phillip Weiss, November 14. 2019
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/11/harvard-students-walk-out-en-masse-from-israeli-consul-talk-and-liberal-zionists-are-saddened/

Students walk out on Dayan at Harvard Law School. He can be seen speaking at lower left, in background.

In yet another sign that Palestinian solidarity activists are getting room inside mainstream institutions, scores of Harvard students walked out on the Israeli consul general yesterday as he began a talk at Harvard Law School on the settlement project. The students were largely silent and held up signs saying, "Settlements are a War Crime."

Dani Dayan spoke to a largely-empty room and expressed contempt for the demonstrators as being like kindergartners.

More than 100 students "from across Harvard" walked out, according to the Palestine Solidarity Committee at the school. Most of the hall empties in this video of the protest posted by Hamzah Raza, a student at Harvard's Divinity School.

Dayan is himself a settler and spoke on the "legal strategy of Israeli settlements." He was sponsored by a program on Jewish and Israeli law at the Law School, and introduced by Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor and expert on religion, who said that the invitation did not represent an endorsement of Dayan's views, but a desire to engage his views.

The Palestine Solidarity Committee posted a photograph of the largely empty hall after the walkout. It shared credit for the protest with the "Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine."

Dayan thanked Harvard for hosting him at its "most prestigious institution." But the Palestine Solidarity Committee statement reports that he was disdainful:

Smiling at the sight of the protesters silently leaving the room, Dayan remarked: "I remember a time doing something similar in my kindergarten." He later tweeted (translated): "On my way back to NYC I'm thinking why are these people so happy with themselves? A bunch of losers trembling in fear of the disciplinary committees of their school."

That statement characterized the protest as part of a trend:

This event is part of a growing momentum on Harvard's campus for justice in Palestine. "We do not intend on sitting out on complicity in oppression," a student organizer remarked. "Not at Harvard, not anywhere else."

The Palestine Solidarity Committee also tweeted, "We cannot tolerate his extremist views."

Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard was pleased by the demonstration.

Liberal Zionist Richard Goldwasser seconded the idea that the protest reflects a trend– and Israel better get with it. He endorsed the walkout but said he was saddened.

I support protesting Dayan. At the same time, this saddens me. It's only going to grow. Israel needs to change course. Now.

Debra Shushan of Peace Now endorsed the protest but echoed Goldwasser's view. "I feel the same way. If I copied a few lines from your tweet ("This saddens me. It's only going to grow. Israel needs to change course. Now.") I could use it as commentary to about half the things I share on Twitter."

The Palestine Solidarity statement was not saddened:

Dayan is a vocal advocate for the illegal expansion of Israeli settlements into Palestinian territory. In a 2012 op-ed in the New York Times, he wrote that the international community should abandon its vain attempts at the two-state solution and accept the Israeli presence in the West Bank as "an irreversible fact." Israeli settlements are blatant violations of international law, and the Israeli settler movement is a violent project of settler-colonialism in occupied Palestine.

"I'm disappointed that the Harvard Law School would let this kind of propaganda for a colonial project for accumulation by dispossession be framed as "legal." This is not only complicit but simply dishonest," a student organizer remarked. "Let us be clear, there is a consensus among the international community that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and a violation of the fourth Geneva Convention," they added.

Thanks to Scott Roth, Terry Weber, and James North. 

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5) Court Stops Execution of Rodney Reed in Texas After Outcry
Mr. Reed had been scheduled to die on Wednesday. Celebrities, politicians and the state’s parole board had all argued for a reprieve.
By Manny Fernandez and Richard A. Oppel, Jr.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/us/rodney-reed-texas-execution.html?searchResultPosition=1

Rodney Reed waving to his family in court in Bastrop, Texas, in 2017.Credit...Ricardo Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated Press

HOUSTON — A Texas prisoner who has long claimed his innocence in the murder of a woman 23 years ago was days away from his execution on Friday when an appeals court stepped in to suspend his death sentence indefinitely. 

The dramatic decision by the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas halted the execution of the prisoner, Rodney Reed, and ordered the court where he was originally tried to consider new evidence in the case, including testimony from eyewitnesses who have come forward in recent months pointing toward the victim’s fiancé as another suspect.

The court’s ruling came just hours after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had also supported halting the execution and recommended that Gov. Greg Abbott grant a 120-day reprieve for Mr. Reed, 51, one of 215 prisoners on Texas’ death row. 

“I have tears streaming down my cheeks,” said Andrew MacRae, one of Mr. Reed’s lawyers, after learning of the parole board recommendation.

Mr. Reed’s case has generated intense interest in recent weeks, with a rare confluence of Republican lawmakers and high-profile celebrities, including Kim Kardashian West and Rihanna, calling on courts and the governor to spare his life. He had been scheduled to die on Wednesday.

By granting the indefinite stay and sending the case back to a trial court, the Texas appeals court — the highest criminal court in the state — provided Mr. Reed’s defense team a sweeping victory.

“At every turn we have asked for a hearing at which we can present the evidence, in full, of Rodney Reed’s innocence,” said Bryce Benjet, one of Mr. Reed’s lawyers. “So it is extremely rewarding that we can finally have a chance to fully present his case in court, so it can be determined that he did not commit this crime.”

Mr. Benjet added that he had just spoken to Mr. Reed’s mother. “She was both relieved and elated,” he said.

Mr. Reed was convicted of the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas. Ms. Stites, 19, was strangled, and her body was dumped alongside a rural road. Prosecutors said she had also been raped, and Mr. Reed was arrested based mostly on DNA tests.

He maintained that he and Ms. Stites had been having an affair, which would explain how his DNA was recovered from her body. 

Mr. Reed’s lawyers have argued previously that the state’s forensic investigators made critical errors regarding the timeline of the killing, which some investigators later admitted in affidavits. 

Most recently, at least three people have come forward with new testimony regarding Ms. Stites’s fiancé, Jimmy Fennell. Mr. Fennell is a former police officer who was released from prison in 2018; he pleaded guilty in 2008 to kidnapping a woman he had encountered while on duty. The woman said he had also raped her.

A man who served time in prison with Mr. Fennell said in a sworn affidavit last month that he had heard Mr. Fennell confess to killing Ms. Stites because she had cheated on him with a black man. Mr. Reed is black.

Mr. Fennell’s lawyer, Robert M. Phillips, said that Mr. Fennell denies killing Ms. Stites. 

It was unclear whether Friday’s ruling would lead to a resolution of one of the most contentious issues in the case: Mr. Reed’s lawyers have pushed for the murder weapon — Ms. Stites’s belt — to be tested for DNA evidence, which has yet to happen.

Mr. MacRae said he expected that an evidentiary hearing would take place in another four to six months, in which the new witnesses would testify and other evidence would be examined in court. He said it was possible that Mr. Reed’s defense team would also subpoena Mr. Fennell.

Other witnesses could still come forward, Mr. MacRae added. “It’s still an open investigation,” he said.

What made the Reed case unique was the widespread support he received from Republican elected officials, many of whom had in the past avoided speaking out publicly about the guilt or innocence of death row inmates and who have been staunch supporters of the death penalty.

Senator Ted Cruz was one of several Texas Republican leaders who called on Mr. Abbott and the state parole board to stop the execution and grant Mr. Reed a reprieve so that the new evidence could be examined. The list included the Republican congressman who represents Bastrop, where the crime took place.

Eight Republican and eight Democratic state senators sent a letter supporting a reprieve to Mr. Abbott and the board. The letter referred to the decision in 1998 by George W. Bush, the governor at the time, to commute the death sentence of Henry Lee Lucas.

“One thing we often grapple with when discussing criminal justice reform is balancing justice with mercy, particularly when we consider a heinous crime,” the letter read. “Executing Rodney Reed without certainty about his guilt erodes public trust — not only in capital punishment, but in Texas justice itself.”

State Representative Matt Krause, Republican of Fort Worth, said on Friday that the court’s action was a best-case scenario because it will provide an opportunity to review the new evidence. 

“I want to make sure that anytime the state does use that ultimate final punishment,” said Mr. Krause, who supports the death penalty, “that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that was the person who committed the crime.”

Texas runs the nation’s busiest death chamber. Since December 1982, when the state resumed carrying out capital punishment after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Texas has executed 566 men and women, more than any other state.

In February 2018, Governor Abbott took his only action during nearly five years in office to block a death sentence, granting clemency to Thomas Whitaker, who had been sentenced to death for orchestrating the killing of his brother and mother. Mr. Whitaker’s father, a survivor of the murders, had asked the governor to spare his son’s life. Mr. Abbott commuted Mr. Whitaker’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole, after a unanimous recommendation from the state parole board.

That was the only other time, until Friday, that the parole board had recommended Mr. Abbott take action to delay or stop an execution.

Manny Fernandez reported from Houston, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from New York.

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6) When the Judge Became the Defendant
Judge Shelley Joseph, charged with obstruction of justice and accused of helping an undocumented immigrant escape detention, has signaled she will risk a trial.
By Ellen Barry, November 16, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/us/shelley-joseph-immigration-judge.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Judge Shelley Joseph leaving federal court in Boston in April. Steven Sennets/Associated Press

NEWTON, Mass. — When she was brought before a court this spring, charged with the federal crime of obstruction of justice, Judge Shelley Joseph did not look like a rebel. 

Her face was tear-streaked, and bore an expression of helpless dismay, as if she were struggling to take in the upside-down worldin which she was the defendant. 

In April, she and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. 

The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice, setting off a debate over whether and how states can refrain from carrying out President Trump’s immigration policy.

Massachusetts has been at the forefront of the sanctuary city movement, passing a series of legal rulings that constrain Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining immigrants in courthouses.

The judge’s supporters say she is no crusader, but an inexperienced judge who stumbled into a bitterly contested area of the law. They warn that if the case goes forward, it will open the door for prosecution of other judges, undercutting their independence, as the country grapples with its deep divisions over immigration. 

Judge Joseph has refused a plea deal that would have allowed her to avoid prosecution if she admitted violating federal law, signaling that she is prepared to go to trial in a case that could drag on for years. 

For a federal prosecutor to indict a state judge is so rare that, in search of a Massachusetts precedent, observers have cast back to 1787, when Judge William Whiting was removed from the bench for defending a farmer’s rebellion against state tax collectors. 

Some in Massachusetts’s sprawling legal and immigration rights community kept a distance from Judge Joseph, in part because the evidence against her was damning: Before allowing the man to be led out of her courtroom, Judge Joseph could be heard on an audio recording instructing the court clerk to switch off the recorder in an apparent effort to conceal what they were saying.

But legal heavyweights have rallied in her defense, arguing that the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, Andrew E. Lelling, has crossed a line by indicting a state judge, inviting the use of federal power to intimidate state officials into compliance.

This summer, the state Supreme Judicial Court ordered the restoration of her $184,000 salary while the case is pending, for fear that the threat of being stripped of a paycheck would make judges hesitant to challenge prosecutors, diminishing the “over-allindependence of the judiciary.” 

Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, said, “What Joseph’s behavior has become is a rallying cry, not just for judicial independence, not just for states’ rights, but also a form of civil disobedience, that we, as state duly appointed judges, won’t be cowed by federal prosecutors.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Lelling declined to comment on the pending case. 

Through her lawyer, Judge Joseph also declined to comment, as did her lawyer, Thomas Hoopes. Judge Joseph has pleaded not guilty, as has Mr. MacGregor.

“This prosecution is absolutely political,” Mr. Hoopes told reporters in April. “Shelley Joseph is absolutely innocent.”

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based organization that favors reduced immigration, said the judge is the one propelling the case forward by choosing not to accept the plea deal.

“They just want to make it clear that what she did was wrong, but if she remains defiant, it kind of boxes them into a corner,” she said. “It’s just a question of how long she wants to draw it out.” 

She added, “Maybe she thinks of herself as a martyr for the cause.”

Mounting Tension

Judge Joseph, who joined the bench five months before the incident, was not well known or particularly outspoken. 

After a career as a prosecutor and defense attorney, she had been nominated by the state’s Republican governor, Charlie Baker, as an associate justice of the Framingham District Court, hearing misdemeanors and minor felonies. The main indication of her politics was a stint working on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign and a term on the Democratic State Committee in the 1990s. 

At her nomination hearings in 2017, colleagues spoke of her compassion and, as one put it, her “belief in human goodness.” The newly minted judge was beaming and a bit nervous, kneading her fingers in her lap under the table. She spoke of lessons she had learned from her mother.

“She taught me to be an advocate, to stand up for what is right, and never to compromise my values,” she said. “The most important thing she taught me was to be nice.”

She was entering a court system that was under strain, particularly around the bitterly contested legal ground of ICE detentions.

“Massachusetts courts blatantly and willfully disregard ICE’s requests to detain aliens on a daily basis, and cannot be relied upon to honor our requests,” an official in ICE’s Boston field office complained in internal emails. 

One person tasked with pushing back against the state’s left-leaning trends was Mr. Lelling, the United States attorney appointed under President Trump. Mr. Lelling promised, right away, that Massachusetts would see his office take a tougher stance on immigration.

“Some of our judges are motivated by their personal conclusions that it’s unfair in certain instances to deport someone,” he told The Boston Globe. “That’s not law, just their personal feelings.”

A 52-second gap

Tension over the question was in the background when an ICE officer arrived at the Newton District Court at 9:30 a.m. on April 2, 2018, with orders to detain Jose Medina-Perez, an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic.

Newton District Court is a sleepy, two-room courthouse in a wealthy, liberal suburb. On a recent afternoon, a judge hearing a woman’s shoplifting case admiringly noted her degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

“This is Newton,” joked its clerk magistrate, Henry Shultz, “where you’re considered a dropout if you only have a master’s degree.” 

Judge Joseph was a visiting judge in the courthouse, occasionally hearing cases on Tuesdays. 

Mr. Medina-Perez, who also went by the name Oscar Peguero, had been arrested in Newton on narcotics charges, and had been linked to an eight-year-old warrant for drunken driving from Pennsylvania. He had been deported twice from the United States, and the second time, in 2007, he had been prohibited from entering the country for 20 years, according to the federal indictment.

At 12:04, while Mr. Medina-Perez was sitting in the glass dock to the right of her bench, Judge Joseph instructed the court clerk to ask the ICE officer to leave the courtroom and wait in the lobby outside. According to defense briefs, the judge was complying with established policy at the Newton courthouse at the time. 

Only later would it become clear what had happened inside, as Judge Joseph held a sidebar conference with the assistant district attorney and Mr. Medina-Perez’s defense attorney. Both agreed that Mr. Medina-Perez was not the man wanted in Pennsylvania. 

He could have been released on bond from the jail in Billerica, Mass., but the defense attorney, David Jellinek, jumped in. 

Defense Attorney: There is an ICE detainer. So if he’s bailed out from Billerica when he goes back there, ICE will pick him up —

Judge Joseph: ICE is gonna get him?

Defense Attorney: Yeah.

Judge Joseph: What if we detain him?

Defense Attorney: Are we on the record?

Judge Joseph: {Clerk,} can we go off the record for a moment?

Clerk: What’s that?

Judge Joseph: Are we off the record? 

Clerk: No, we’re on the record.

Defense attorney: Can we go off the record for a moment?

At this point, according to the indictment, the clerk switched off the courtroom recorder for 52 seconds, in violation of Massachusetts courtroom rules. When the recording picked up again, the three resumed their conversation, agreeing to release Mr. Medina-Perez — but not, as is standard, through the courtroom lobby. (Mr. Jellinek declined to comment for this article.)

Defense attorney: I would ask that he, uh — I believe he has some property downstairs. I’d like to speak with him downstairs with the interpreter if I may.

Judge Joseph: That’s fine. Of course.

Defense attorney: Thank you.

Seven minutes later, the indictment reflects, Mr. Medina-Perez departed through the courthouse’s rear exit, which opens into a public parking lot. But this was not communicated to the ICE officer, who remained in the lobby. The courthouse closes its doors at 4:30 p.m., seven hours after the ICE officer showed up.

He departed empty-handed and, presumably, frustrated.

A rapid escalation

Word of what had happened moved quickly up the chain of command, reaching Washington in a matter of hours, said Thomas D. Homan, who was the acting director of ICE at the time.

“I heard about it the same day it happened,” Mr. Homan said. “I was dumbfounded. I said, ‘Well, now, things are going a bit too far.’ For an officer of the court to help someone escape ICE arrest. I’ve done this 35 years and never seen anything like that.”

Informed of the decision by Matthew Albence, then the director of enforcement removal operations and now ICE’s acting director, Mr. Homan said he immediately began asking about legal recourse. 

“I remember I got angry,” he said. “I asked, ‘Is there a legal action I could take?’ I was looking to do whatever I could do to make that happen.” He said he considered it a clear case of obstruction of justice, but that his agency did not have the power to bring charges. “We’ve got to find a U.S. attorney who is willing to indict. I talked to my legal staff, they said it would be up to the U.S. attorney’s office.’” 

The idea of such a prosecution was popular in Washington.

In 2018, Mr. Trump publicly urged Jeff Sessions, who was then the attorney general, to bring obstruction of justice charges against Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, Calif., for warning her constituents of an impending ICE raid. 

In an interview with WGBH radio, Mr. Lelling, the United States attorney, said that Judge Joseph’s case was not the first time he had heard of a judge impeding a detention, but that it stood out because of the quality of the evidence.

“We’ve heard rumors of, you know, judges doing this or that, I don’t want to identify them,” he said, “but this was the first time we have come across an instance where, one, as alleged in the indictment, we thought it was clearly criminal, and two, we think we can prove it.”

Mr. Lelling said the case should not be viewed within the context of the legal tension over immigration. 

“To me, it’s not an immigration case,” he said. “I know that seems counterintuitive to people. It’s a rule of law case. You have, the indictment alleges, a sitting judge who helps a federal fugitive evade capture by letting him out the back door. You can’t do that.” 

Even some immigration advocates were cautious about defending Judge Joseph. 

“We were quiet on this,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, which filed a lawsuitto stop ICE courthouse detentions.

“There are elements of this that have a very bad look,” he said. “People are sympathetic with Judge Joseph but at the same time there are elements of what happened in the courtroom that most people wouldn’t defend. I wouldn’t defend turning off the recorder in the courtroom.”

Carol Ball, a retired Superior Court judge who was making the rounds of retired judges, seeking support for Judge Joseph, encountered that reaction in some cases. 

But she said that was missing a much more important point: Judges’ behavior in the courtroom is typically subject to judicial discipline, not federal prosecution. 

For a federal prosecutor to indict a sitting judge is crossing a line, she said.

“If she did what they say she did, she does deserve to be dealt with,” she said. “Nobody is saying, ‘It’s fine, no problem.’”

She said federal immigration authorities were “furious” at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which had recently ruled that state courts could not hold subjects purely on the basis of ICE detainers.

Massachusetts “is the home of all those liberals who hate Donald Trump, you know what I’m trying to say?” she said. “You don’t indict a sitting judge without getting direct clearance from Washington.”

Judge Joseph, she said, was simply not prepared for the battleground she was walking into. 

“She was a baby judge, caught in this swirling vortex of change,” she said. 

In the months that have passed, Judge Joseph has figured regularly in the Boston newspapers. 

In the Globe’s letters column, one admiring reader put her in a category with Henry David Thoreau and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as an icon of civil disobedience who “knew that there were consequences for disobeying the law” and “accepted them.”

The right-wing radio host Howie Carr, writing for The Herald, has derided her as “a lawless, privileged moonbat judge” who is “hoping for an O.J. Simpson-like jury nullification from 12 Democrats afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

As for the judge herself, she has been silent.

Alicia Shems, a friend from high school, said it had been a painful period for the judge, who has spent the past decades consumed with her work. 

She said Judge Joseph at first struggled to fill her days, which Ms. Shems described as “empty and terrifying.”

To settle her mind, Ms. Shems said, Judge Joseph is training for her fourth marathon, running so much and eating so little that she has lost 10 or 20 pounds. 

As for the threat of a prison sentence, she said, “she can’t think about that or she won’t be able to function.”

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7) ‘Yellow Vest’ Anniversary Brings Fires, Tear Gas and Dwindled Crowds
A protest movement that once brought tens of thousands to the streets of Paris has been confined to marginal sites and outmaneuvered by the president whose program it challenged.
By Adam Nossiter, November 16, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/world/europe/yellow-vest-anniversary-paris.html

A “Yellow Vest” protester in Paris on Saturday. The movement has dwindled since late last year, when it could mobilize tens of thousands.Credit...Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

PARIS — Clouds of tear gas covered a major square in southern Paris on Saturday as the police attempted to quell a “Yellow Vest” demonstration marking the movement’s anniversary.

Protesters, some masked, threw paving stones and set trash cans on fire, while dozens of other demonstrators, a few wearing the yellow road-emergency vests that became the movement’s uniform, milled about on the Place d’Italie at the capital’s southeastern edge.

But the mayhem was largely confined to a small area and could not hide the weak mobilization on Saturday, which numbered in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands seen at the movement’s inception in November 2018. 

Then, nearly 300,000 turned out for what began as apparently spontaneous demonstrations against a proposed fuel tax rise but quickly broadened into a major social protest movement that rocked the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.

By midafternoon on Saturday, the police had made 61 arrests in Paris, down sharply from the hundreds that were the norm throughout months of Saturday protests last fall and winter. 

The police canceled a planned protest march through Paris because of the violence at the Place d’Italie, and they earlier closed off the Champs-Élysées, the central avenue that was a focus of previous demonstrations.

“All those who are there and who hide their faces will be systematically arrested,” the Paris prefect of police, Didier Lallement, said at a midafternoon news conference, referring to the Place d’Italie. “The rest of Paris is calm,” he added.

The protesters, many chanting, “We’re here even if Macron doesn’t want us to be!” and “Happy birthday!” also flooded the Porte de Champerret in the northwest of Paris, attempting to block the ring road around the capital before they were dispersed.

Public sympathy for the movement, a cry of protest over stagnating wages and declining living standards, was strong at first, but largely dissipated after weeks of violence tore up sections of Paris and some of the major provincial cities. Mr. Macron quashed the movement by deploying a three-pronged strategy: cash, the unbridled deployment of the police and dialogue.

Mr. Macron granted nearly $19 billion in fiscal concessions to the lower-middle-class workers populating the movement, largely in tax breaks and direct subsidies like an increase in the so-called work bonus. Economists estimate that his breaks added some $900 in average purchasing power to French family budgets.

In addition, Mr. Macron unleashed France’s tough riot police, resulting in well over 2,000 injuries and dozens of blindings from rubber bullets, along with a significant fear factor that kept people from turning out for the demonstrations. 

The president also embarked on a national talking campaign that saw him tour the provinces that were the seedbed of the protest movement, spending hours in dialogue with small-town mayors and citizens over four months. The tactic worked.

The Yellow Vests were undermined from within, analysts say, by their failure to coalesce around leaders, fixed goals and a long-term strategy.

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8) In Win for Protesters, Chile to Vote on Replacing Constitution
The country plans to hold a referendum next April on replacing the country’s dictatorship-era constitution.
By Reuters, November 15, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/world/americas/chile-constitution.html

A demonstrator throwing a fire extinguisher at riot police during an antigovernment protest on Thursday in Santiago, Chile.Credit...Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images

SANTIAGO, Chile — Lawmakers in Chile agreed on Friday to hold a referendum next April on replacing the country’s dictatorship-era constitution, bowing to demands of protesters who want the country’s social and economic model overhauled.

Voters will be asked whether they approve the idea of a new constitution and whether current lawmakers should serve on the commission that would redraft the document.

The two-page “Agreement for Peace and a New Constitution,” signed after midnight following intense negotiations, calls for a “commitment to re-establish peace and public order in Chile.”

A month of protests has sown chaos in the South American nation. More than 20 people have died during riots, arson and looting that caused extensive damage and prompted President Sebastián Piñera to call soldiers on to the streets. The Chilean peso this week plunged to a new low against the dollar.

Though protesters lack a clear leader or spokesperson, a new constitution emerged quickly as an important demand. Critics say Chile’s existing Magna Carta, written and adopted during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship, lacks legitimacy.

Lawmakers revised the original 1980 document after Chile returned to democracy but many say it still falls short, failing to ensure for proper health care, education and citizen participation in government.

Opponents of an overhaul say the charter has been a pillar of stability for Chile, among the region’s strongest and most investor-friendly economies.

The details will be worked out by a constitutional convention whose composition will be determined in the April referendum. A second vote, in October 2020, will allow voters to select those who will finally serve on the convention.

A final vote on the draft itself will be obligatory for all voting age Chileans, according to the agreement.

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