11/30/2020

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, November 30, 2020


RALLY To Drop Charges Against Julian Assange 

Demand that members of Congress support the Congressional Resolution 

December 10, 2020, 11:00 A.M.

Barbara Lee's Congressional Office

1301 Clay St # 1000N, Oakland, CA 94612

Oakland, CA 94612

Please sign this petition in support of H. Res. 1175

Congress: Drop the charges against Julian Assange!

A bipartisan resolution to drop the charges against Julian Assange has just been introduced in the House of Representatives. Democrats and Republicans are joining together and calling out the charges against Julian for what they are—a threat to free journalism and free speech.

Our movement to protect our First Amendment rights is not partisan. Sign our petition now to urge your representatives to join this effort and condemn the attack on our civil liberties.

We can defend the free press and Julian Assange, but we need your representatives to stand up and do the right thing. Sign our petition and let your representative know how crucial it is that the United States drop its charges against Julian!

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/9c9d866f95b78222a6092f9915a31bffa7918343?hash=933dd0413057ee1b02a96902b76454da&link_id=3&can_id=2787c928536944be51dc3490ab96c045&source=email-support-house-resolution-to-drop-all-charges-against-


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Urgent Demand For Mumia's Release
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM 8335
 
There is a serious outbreak of COVID 19 in Mahanoy Correctional Facility, where Mumia and 2,400 other men live.  As of now 20 guards have tested positive 4 COVID 19, and the prison is frantically testing those housed in the prison.  Obviously, this a a huge cause for concern.  Despite the prison being on lockdown, meaning no one leaves there cell except for showers and emergencies.  Food is brought to the cells. 

 

Needless, to say, Mumia quite worried as he should be.  He is 66, years old, has liver damage and prison personnel are the ones bringing in the virus. 

 

Please call Governor Tom Wolf to demand Mumia and other aging elders with underlying vulnerable health concerns be considered for compassionate release.  Clearly, there is no such thing as social distancing in prison.  The only way to stop this virus from spreading and killing those in its' path is to send our elders home
who pose no threat to our community. 

 

Governor Tom Wolf -1(717) 787-2500  Fax 1 (717) 772-8284
Office of the Governor
508 Main Capitol Building
HarrisburgPA  17120    
 
After calling the governor, send an online communication about our concerns.   https://www.governor.pa.gov/contact/#PhoneNumber
 
Let us know what there response was, Thank you.  Mobilization4Mumia@gmail.com
 
ONA MOVE
 

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Colin Kaepernick Supports Mumia!

 This message is from: the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

21 November 2020

Colin Kaepernick is a professional football quarter-back with a sterling record, but he is now an unemployed free agent. This could not be a more important indication of systemic racism in the US, nor a greater condemnation of the corporate worms that own football in this country.

In the 49ers' third preseason game in 2016 Kaepernick sat during the playing of the US  National anthem prior to the game, as a protest against police brutality and systematic oppression of blacks in this country. Throughout the regular season, Kaepernick continued his protest by kneeling during the anthem. During a post-game interview that year, Kaepernick explained his position stating, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”

Colin Kaepernick Speaks Out...and Gets Opposition

Since then, Kaepernick has continued his outrage against ongoing racist police murders of black people, such as that of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, among many others. This has, of course, not come without opposition. President Trump mobilized his racist base with comments such as this: NFL owners should "fire" players who protest during the national anthem. 

Kaepernick has been unemployed in professional football since the end of the 2016 season.

Kaepernick Supports Mumia Abu-Jamal

Now, Colin Kaepernick has come out with a statement in defense of one of the most important political prisoners in recent US history: Mumia Abu-Jamal. We say this not because other political prisoners are not important--they are--but because prisoners such as Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier are specifically singled out as enemies of the state...of the US government specifically. 

Mumia, falsely accused of killing a Philadelphia cop in 1981, and Peltier, also falsely accused, in his case of killing federal agents at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975, are both the victims of frame-ups that extend through all levels from the US Justice Department, the FBI, and to national, state and local politicians and officials. These cases are prime examples of a racist and class-divided society that is corrupt every inch of the way from top to bottom.

An Important Time for Prisoners 

Colin Kaepernick’s statement on former Black Panther and MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal is an accurate and riveting summary of the false case made against this determined anti-racist fighter, who continues his insightful commentaries from behind bars in his 39th year of incarceration for a crime he did not commit.

This statement comes at an important time for all prisoners in the US, particularly those in federal and state prisons, because of the Covid-19 virus pandemic. Prisoners have been denied protective measures, or sent to solitary confinement, or arbitrarily moved to other prisons resulting in the spread of infections in those prisons. 

The Labor Action Committee To free Mumia Abu-Jamal initiated several protests at San Quentin Prison beginning in May 2020. This work is now being carried forward by the No Justice Under Capitalism Coalition (NJUChttps://www.facebook.com/NoJusticeUnderCapitalism/ 

And for more information on Mumia Abu-Jamal, check http://www.freemumia.com/who-are-we/  and: www.laboractionmumia.org.

Colin Kaepernick’s Statement on Mumia:

 Free Mumia (6:52) Colin Kaepernick  

https://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/mumia-abu-jamal-sci-mahanoy/free-mumia-652-colin-kaepernick

11/16/20

When I was invited to speak on behalf of Mumia, one of the first things that came to mind was how long he's been in prison. How many years of his life had been stolen away from him, his community, and his loved ones. He's been incarcerated for 38 years. Mumia has been in prison longer than I've been alive.

When I first spoke with Mumia on the phone, I did very little talking. I just listened. Hearing him speak was a reminder of why we must continue to fight. Earlier this year,  The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner issued a statement, noting that prolonged solitary confinement, the precise type often used in the United States, amounts to psychological torture.  Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent roughly 30 out of his 38 years in solitary confinement.

In his book Live From Death Row, Mumia wrote that prison is a second by second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours, and hours into days. He has had to endure this second-by-second assault on his soul for 38 years.

He had no record before he was arrested and framed for the death of a Philadelphia police officer. Since 1981, Mumia has maintained his innocence. His story has not changed. Mumia was shot, brutalized, arrested, and chained to a hospital bed. The first police officer assigned to him wrote in a report that the “Negro male made no comment” as cited in Philly Mag. Yet 64 days into the investigation, another officer testified that Mumia had confessed to the killing. Mumia’s story has not changed, but we're talking about the same Philadelphia Police Department whose behavior “shocks the conscience,” according to a 1979 DOJ report.  Behaviors like shooting nonviolent suspects, abusing handcuffed prisoners, and tampering with evidence.

It should therefore come as little surprise that, according to Dr. Johanna Fernandez, over one third of the 35 officers involved in Mumia's case, were subsequently convicted of rank corruption, extortion, and tampering with evidence to obtain convictions in unrelated cases. This is the same Philadelphia Police Department where officers ran racial profiling sweeps, like Operation Cold Turkey in March, 1985, targeting Black and Brown folks; and bombed the MOVE house in May of that year, killing 11 people, including five children and destroying 61 homes. 

The same Philadelphia police department, whose officers eight days before the 2020 presidential election, shot Walter Wallace Jr. dead in the streets in front of his crying mother. The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police has unrelentingly campaigned for Mumia’s execution. During their August, 1999, national meeting, a spokesperson for the organization stated that they will not rest until Abu-Jamal burns in hell. The former Philadelphia president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Richard Castello, went as far as to say that if you disagree with their views of Mumia, you can join him in the electric chair and that they will make it an electric couch.

The trial judge on Mumia's case in 1981, Albert Sabo was a former member of the Fraternal Order of Police. Court reporter Terry Maurer Carter even heard Judge Sabo telling a colleague “I'm going to help them fry the nigger.”

Found in December, 2018, in an inaccessible storage room of the DA's office, six boxes of documents for Mumia's case reveal previously undisclosed and highly significant evidence showing that Mumia’s trial was tainted by a failure to disclose material evidence in violation of the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions. In November, 2019, the Fraternal Order of Police filed a King's Bench Petition asking the court to allow the state attorney general, not the Philadelphia DA's office, to handle the upcoming appeals.

As the FOP president John McNesby said just last year, “Mumia should remain in prison for the rest of his life.” And a King's Bench order provides the legal angle for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to uphold Judge Sabo’s original wish, which was for Mumia ultimately to die in prison. 

Today we're living through a moment where it's acceptable to paint “end racism now” in front of the Philadelphia Police Department’s 26th district headquarters, and yet a political prisoner who has since the age of 14 dedicated his life to fighting against racism, continues to be caged and lives his life on a slow death row. We're in the midst of a movement that says Black Lives Matter. And if that's truly the case, then it means that Mumia’s life and legacy must matter. And the causes that he sacrifices life and freedom for must matter as well. 

Through all of the torture Mumia has suffered over the past 38 years, his principles have never wavered. These principles have manifested themselves in his writing countless books while incarcerated, in his successful radio show, and the time and energy he has poured into his mentorship of younger incarcerated folks and the continued concern for the people suffering outside of the walls. Even while living in the hells of the prison system, Mumia still fights for our human rights. We must continue to fight for him and his human rights.

Well, Mumia is 66 years old. He is a grandfather. He is an elder with ailments. He is a human being that deserves to be free. 

Free Mumia.


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Courage to Resist

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

 

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SIGN PETITION: Don't reincarcerate Jalil Muntaquim


Support for Jalil Muntaqim petition from the Movement for Black Lives:

Please click the below link to sign & share widely.



Support for Jalil Muntaqim
STATEMENT OF COMMUNITY SUPPORT FOR JALIL MUNTAQIM We the undersigned fully support the New York State Parole Board’s decision to release Jalil Muntaqim. The parole process is meant to evaluate a person for release based on who they are today, not to extend one’s sentence into perpetuity. Mr. Muntaqim has been incarcerated since 1971, when he was 19 years old. During his 49 years in prison, Mr. Muntaqim has led education/mentorship programs for prisoners, earned several educational degrees and mentored many younger incarcerated men. He has been commended for preventing prisoner violence and promoting safety. As a result, hundreds of organizations and individuals have stepped forward to support his release including community and faith leaders, family members, and the NY State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus. The Board finally acted honorably in following the guidelines put forth by New York State Executive Law 259-(i). A 2011, bi-partisan amendment to the law passed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers makes it clear that an individual’s readiness for successful re-entry should take priority in the decision to grant release. Upon his release, Mr. Muntaqim was warmly welcomed by a large, diverse set of community leaders and residents of Rochester, New York. He reported to his parole officers and followed instructions to sign up for various social services required by all senior citizens in his position. He was handed a large stack of paperwork including a voter registration form. Muntaqim, eager to follow instructions, appropriately filled out and signed everything required of him. Now, the Rochester District Attorney is attempting to reincarcerate an elder recovering from COVID-19 because he filled out a form as instructed. We are statewide and national organizations, community and faith leaders, elected officials, civil rights organizations, public defenders, and residents of the Rochester area. We pledge our continuing support for Mr. Muntaqim and our assistance in facilitating his reintegration into society. We vehemently oppose any efforts to remove him from our community and/or place him back in prison.
Please click the below link to sign & share widely.


Charlie Hinton
No one ever hurt their eyes by looking on the bright side

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Governor denies restoring voting rights to parolee Jalil Muntaqim

David Andreatta, November 25, 2020

https://www.wxxinews.org/post/governor-denies-restoring-voting-rights-parolee-jalil-muntaqim
Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, a parolee living in Brighton facing felony charges for attempting to register to vote, has been denied a pardon from the governor restoring his right to cast a ballot that is granted to most parolees, according to the Governor's Office and the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Parolees are not allowed to vote in New York upon release from prison without the pardon.

 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has issued such pardons as a matter of course on a monthly basis since 2018, when he signed an executive order directing the corrections commissioner to submit to him each month a list of every felon newly eligible for parole, with each name to be “given consideration for a conditional pardon that will restore voting rights.”

 

Anyone on the list is eligible for a pardon as long as they are not flagged by law enforcement for any specific concerns. Most parolees receive their pardon, which does not expunge their record, within four to six weeks of their release.

 

A spokesperson for the Governor’s Office said Muntaqim was denied a voting pardon last week.

 

In a notable twist, however, the Department of Corrections listed Muntaqim on its website as having received the pardon. The spokesperson called the listing "a clerical error."

 

The error could be found as recently as Monday on the department’s “Parolee Lookup” page, which provides information on parolees to the public, including their date of birth, parole status, and whether their voting rights have been restored.

 

On the page assigned to Muntaqim, the word “Yes” was shown next to a line that indicates whether a voting pardon has been issued. The agency modified that to “No” late Monday after CITY inquired about Muntaqim’s voting eligibility status.

 

Muntaqim, 69, was released from prison on parole on Oct. 7, after serving nearly 50 years on a pair of first-degree murder convictions in the 1971 shooting deaths of two New York City police officers. He was convicted and served under his given name, Anthony Bottom.

 

About two weeks after his release, the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office charged Muntaqim with tampering with public records and offering a false instrument for filing, both felonies, and a misdemeanor for filing a completed voter registration form with the county Board of Elections.

 

Muntaqim filled out the form the day after his release, before being notified whether he had received the governor’s pardon. He filled out the form using his given name, which he never formally changed after assuming his new name in prison decades ago.

 

The Board of Elections subsequently rejected his registration.

 

A conditional pardon restoring Muntaqim's voting rights would have put a wrinkle into his prosecution, which has gotten the attention of national organizations that advocate for expanded ballot access for formerly incarcerated people.

 

Muntaqim has been arraigned in Brighton Town Court and is scheduled to appear next on Dec. 14.

 

Should he be convicted on the felonies, he would likely be returned to prison. One of the felonies carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison. The other carries a maximum of four years.

 

"This case is just another reminder of the extreme outcome for the underlying act that is being called into question and the extreme level of punitiveness that characterizes American criminal jurisprudence," said Nicole Porter, the director of advocacy at the Sentencing Project, an advocacy group for criminal justice reform.

 

"It is incredibly frustrating that prosecutors are willing to make an example of this man and take away someone's liberty for something like this," Porter said. "I don't know how these prosecutors sleep at night."

 

The United States has a long history of disenfranchising felons, even after they’ve served their time, although a national movement to restore their voting rights is gaining traction. This month, California and Florida overwhelmingly approved measures to re-enfranchise voting rights to parolees.

 

"The point of parole is to encourage people to reintegrate themselves into the community in a healthy way," said Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program at New York University. "We should all want people who are being released from prison and returned to their communities to play a productive role in their communities. That shouldn't be a controversial proposition." 

 

District Attorney Sandra Doorley said in an interview that Muntaqim's case was presented to her as an instance of potential voter fraud and that the facts were straightforward.

 

Reached at home, Muntaqim declined to comment. His lawyer, a public defender, also declined to comment.

 

His mother, Billie Bottom Brown, has called his filing of a voter registration form “a mistake.” She said the form was within a packet of paperwork provided to her son to help him assimilate back into society.

 

Friends of Muntaqim’s said the paperwork was provided by the county’s Department of Human Services, which helps newly released prisoners acclimate. Those packets include everything a former inmate might need — information on Medicaid, food stamps, child care, becoming an organ donor, and a voter registration form.

 

“I don’t think he was trying to game the system” by signing the form, said James Schuler, 52, a youth advocate in Wayne County who has known Muntaqim since they met as inmates at Auburn Correctional Facility in 2000 and considers him a mentor.

 

“One thing he wanted to be more than anything was be a productive member of society,” Schuler said. “They gave him paperwork to do that and he signed.”

 

David Andreatta is CITY’s editor. He can be reached at dandreatta@rochester-citynews.com. 


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History, Great Britain, and Julian Assange

By Clifford D. Conner

Below are the comments Clifford D. Conner made at a September 8, 2020 press conference in front of the British consulate in New York City. Conner is an historian and author of Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution and The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump. The court in Britain is holding hearings on the Trump administration’s request to have Julian Assange, the Australian editor, publisher and founder of WikiLeaks, extradited. Assange would be tried in a Virginia court on 17 counts of espionage and one count of conspiracy to commit a computer crime. If convicted, he could face up to 175 years in prison.

In 2010 Assange had the audacity to post a video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter indiscriminately murdering a dozen civilians and two Reuters’ journalists in the streets of Baghdad.

Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, testified in court on September 16 that Assange could not receive a fair trial in the United States. When he pointed out that the Collateral Murder video was clearly a war crime, the prosecution maintained that Assange was not wanted by Washington for it but for publishing documents without redacting names. Ellsberg pointed out that when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, he did not redact a single name.

Assange’s lawyer has since informed the London court that in 2017 former Republican U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher and Charles Johnson, a far-right political activist, relayed Trump’s offer to pardon Assange if he provided the source for the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. This was described to Assange as a “win-win” situation for all involved.

A National Committee to Defend Assange and Civil Liberties, chaired by Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, and Alice Walker has been set up. For further information, go to: www.facebook.com/CommitteeToDefendJulianAssangeThe press conference was organized by the New York City Free Assange Committee. The press conference was organized by the New York City Free Assange Committee: NYCFreeAssange.org

—Dianne Feeley for The Editors, Against the Current


Comments by Clifford D. Conner

I am here at the British Consulate today to protest the incarceration and mistreatment of Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison in Great Britain, to demand that you immediately release him, and above all, to demand that you NOT extradite Julian Assange to the United States.

As a historian who has written extensively on the case of the most persecuted journalist of the 18th century, Jean Paul Marat, I am in a position to make historical comparisons, and in my judgement, Julian Assange is both the most unjustly persecuted journalist of the 21st century and arguably the most important journalist of the 21st century.

Julian Assange is being hounded and harassed and threatened with life in prison by the United States government because he dared to publish the truth about American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan for the whole world to see. This persecution of Julian Assange is an assault on the fundamental principles of journalistic freedom.

The sociopathic Donald Trump and his accomplice, Attorney General William Barr, are demanding that you deliver Assange to them to face false charges of espionage. Every honest observer in the world recognizes Trump and Barr as utterly incapable of acting in good faith. If they succeed in suppressing Julian Assange’s right to publish, it will be a devastating precedent for journalists and publishers of news everywhere—and above all, for the general public, who will lose access to the information necessary to maintaining a democratic society.

If you allow yourselves to become co-conspirators in this crime, History will not look kindly on Great Britain for that.

Last November, more than 60 doctors from all over the world wrote an open letter to the British government saying that Julian Assange’s health was so bad that he could die if he weren’t moved from Belmarsh Prison, where he was being held, to a hospital, immediately. Your government chose to ignore that letter and he was not hospitalized, then or later. History will not look kindly on Great Britain for that.

Of all crimes against humanity, the most unforgivable is torture. No nation that perpetrates torture has the right to call itself civilized. United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, has unequivocally characterized Julian Assange’s treatment in Belmarsh Prison as torture. History will neither forget nor forgive that terrible moral transgression.

Furthermore, the exposure of the widespread use of torture by the United States military and the CIA at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, at Guantánamo Bay, and at so-called “black sites” all over the world, absolutely disqualifies the United States from sitting in moral judgement of anybody. If you deliver Julian Assange into the hands of torturers, history will not look kindly on Great Britain for that.

So, I join together today with human rights advocates and advocates of journalistic freedom around the world.

I stand with the Committee to Protect Journalists, which declared: “For the sake of press freedom, Julian Assange must be defended.”

I stand with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which said that the attempt to prosecute Julian Assange is “a worrying step on the slippery slope to punishing any journalist the Trump administration chooses to deride as ‘fake news’.”

And I stand with the ACLU, which said: “Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for WikiLeaks’publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.”

History will not only record the names of the countries that collaborate in this travesty of justice, but also the names of the individuals—the judges, the prosecutors, the diplomats, and the politicians—who aid and abet the crime. If you, as individuals, choose to ally yourselves with the likes of Donald Trump and William Barr, be prepared for your names to be chained to theirs in infamy, in perpetuity.

History will certainly absolve Julian Assange, and it certainly will not absolve his persecutors.


Against the Current, November/December 2020

https://againstthecurrent.org/history-great-britain-and-julian-assange/



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About Albert Einstein

In September 1946, (after the war, before the civil rights movement), Albert Einstein called racism America’s “worst disease.” Earlier that year, he told students and faculty at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the oldest Black college in the Western world, that racial segregation was “not a disease of colored people, but a disease of white people, adding, “I willl not remain silent about it.” 

His peers criticized this appearance. The press purposefully didn't cover it. He simply wanted to inspire young minds with the beauty and power of science, drawing attention to the power of ALL human minds, regardless of race.

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.” -Albert Einstein


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https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

Know Your Rights Materials

The NLG maintains a library of basic Know-Your-Rights guides. 

WEBINAR: Federal Repression of Activists & Their Lawyers: Legal & Ethical Strategies to Defend Our Movements: presented by NLG-NYC and NLG National Office

We also recommend the following resources: 

Center for Constitutional Rights

Civil Liberties Defense Center

Grand Jury Resistance Project

Katya Komisaruk

Movement for Black Lives Legal Resources

Tilted Scales Collective

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 JUSTICE INITIATIVE
Note: Below are comments from Ambassador Andrew Young, who is also the former Mayor of Atlanta. The Ambassador notes that Imam Jamil Al-Amin was wrongfully convicted and that it's time to 'rejudge'.

Below is also a correction in the title of the previous posting about Otis Jackson, who admitted to the killing of which Imam Jamil Al-Amin was falsely accused of committing. The article is included below with the title correction being, "There are demands for a new trial"

And again, please sign the petition for a new trial and ask your friends to do so as well.

August 10, 2020
Justice Initiative


"(There's one case) that weighs heavy on my heart because I really think he was wrongfully convicted."
 
This Man, a Muslim, helped "clean up" Atlanta's West End.
 
"I'm talking about Jamil Al-Amin," he said, "H. Rap Brown."
 
"I think it's time to rejudge. He's been dying of cancer and has been suffering away from his family in the worst prisons of this nation." 
 
Ambassador Andrew Young Jr. 
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Otis Jackson Speaks - 
The Man Who Committed 
The Crime Imam Jamil Is Serving Life For
There are demands for a new trial for 
Imam Jamil Al-Amin
Please sign the petition for a new trial

The Confession - My Name Is James Santos aka Otis Jackson (We Demand A Retrial For Imam Jamil)
The Confession - My Name Is James Santos aka OtisJackson (We Demand A Retrial For Imam Jamil)


Otis Jackson is a self-proclaimed leader of the Almighty Vice Lord Nation (AVLN). Founded in the late 1950s, the AVLN is one of the oldest street gangs in Chicago.
According to Jackson, the group under his leadership was focused on rebuilding communities by pushing out drug dealers and violence.
In a never-before published sworn deposition, Jackson recalls the events of the night of Thursday, March 16, 2000, in vivid detail.
It was a cool night as Jackson remembers. He wore a knee-high black Islamic robe with black pants, a black kufi-Muslim head covering-underneath a tan hat, and a tan leather jacket. His silver sunglasses with yellow tint sat above his full beard and mustache.
He arrived at Mick's around 7PM, when he realized his schedule had changed. He was no longer the food expediter in the kitchen; his title was now dishwasher/cook, which meant he would wash dishes and then help close the kitchen at night.
Since his title changed, he wasn't required to work that Thursday night. It immediately dawned on him that he had a 10-hour window to do whatever he wanted. As a parolee under house arrest, the opportunity to have truly free time was rare if even existent. Jackson decided to fill his new found freedom like most people fill their free time-he ran a few errands.
His first stop was the West End Mall where he got a bite to eat, did some shopping and then headed toward the West End community mosque, led by Al-Amin. He knew it was a regular building off of Oak Street, but wasn't sure which one exactly.
He parked his black Cadillac in an open field and walked down toward a house that turned out to be the mosque. He passed a black Mercedes before he got to the mosque, where he met a man named Lamar "Mustapha" Tanner. They talked for a while during which Jackson explained to Tanner that he was looking for Al-Amin to talk about how the AVLN could help Al-Amin's community.
Tanner told Jackson to check the grocery store, since Al-Amin could usually be found there. Tanner then gave Jackson his phone number and hurried away to go pick up his wife. Jackson proceeded to the grocery store. He wanted to discuss with Al-Amin how his AVLN organization could help further clean the streets of drug dealers in the West End community.
By the time Jackson made his way to Al-Amin's store, it was already late. He was afraid the store would be closed since he didn't see anyone else on the street. His fear was affirmed; the store wasn't open.
Hoping that maybe the owner would be in the back closing up, he knocked on the door a few more times. No answer. As he turned to leave, Jackson saw a patrol car pull up. By the time Jackson walked by the black Mercedes, the patrol car was parked in front of it, nose-to-nose. The driver of the patrol car got out and asked Jackson to put his hands up.
Immediately, this scenario flashed through Jackson's head: Here he was, violating his parole by not being at work, with a 9mm handgun in his waist. Jackson was afraid the cops would think he was breaking into the store. That meant they would probably frisk him and find the gun. The gun would be a direct violation of his parole; he'd be sent back to prison in Nevada.
Jackson ignored the order to put his hands up and instead began to explain that he was not trying to break into the store. He stated that he wasn't trying to steal the Mercedes either; his car was parked down the street. Both officers were out of the car with guns drawn and demanding Jackson put his hands up. The cops were closing in and there was little space between them. Jackson made a quick decision. He backed up against the Mercedes, pulled out his gun and began to fire.
He fired off two shots. The officers, while retreating, returned fire. Jackson wasn't hit and bolted toward his car, where in the trunk he had an arsenal of other weapons. As Jackson explains, "the organization I was about to form, the Almighty Vice Lord Nation, we're anti-oppression, and we fight, you know, drug dealers and what not, so...we need artillery."
He quickly opened the trunk - the lock was broken and held together with shoe string-and grabbed a lightweight, semiautomatic carbine Ruger Mini-14 with an extended clip housing 40 .223 caliber rounds. Jackson then headed back toward the cops; one was moving for cover behind the Mercedes, the other was on the police radio screaming for backup.
Jackson approached the officer he thought was the most aggressive, who was using the Mercedes for cover and resumed firing his rifle. The officer returned fire, hitting Jackson in the upper left arm twice.
Jackson, now angered and fearful for his life, shot back, downing the officer. Jackson stood over him and shot him in the groin up to four times. The fallen officer, Deputy Kinchen, in a last attempt to plead with his killer, described his family, mother, and children to Jackson, hoping for mercy.
But Jackson admits that by this time, "my mind was gone, so I really wasn't paying attention." Jackson fired again at the officer on the ground. Dripping his own blood on the concrete where he stood, Jackson then turned his attention to Deputy English who was running toward the open field. Jackson believed English was flagging down another officer; he couldn't let him get away.
Jackson hit English four times. One shot hit him in the leg; he soon fell, screaming, thereby confirming Jackson's shot. After English went down, Jackson, in a state of shock, walked down pass the mosque.
Nursing his bleeding wounds, he tried to stop three passing cars on the road; no one dared pull over. He then walked back down the street and knocked on three different doors for assistance. Only one even turned the light on, but no one opened the door for Jackson. He then made his way back to his car and drove to his mother's home.
As he walked in the door, the phone rang. His mother was asleep, so Jackson hurriedly answered it in the other room. It was a representative from the Sentinel Company that provided the monitoring service for Jackson's ankle bracelet. The man on the phone asked where Jackson was; he responded that he was at work. The Sentinel representative explained that his unaccounted for absence would have to be marked down as a violation. Jackson agreed and quickly ended the conversation.
Although one bullet exited through the back of his arm, the other was still lodged in his upper left arm. Jackson called a couple of female friends, who were registered nurses. The women, who were informed by Jackson that he was robbed in the middle of the night, arrived at his house and worked for three hours to remove the bullet from his arm. Jackson then called Mustapha Tanner, whom he just met earlier in the evening, and asked him to come by his house.
Tanner arrived before 10am. Jackson explained what had happened the previous night and said he needed to get rid of the guns and the car. Jackson's car trunk contained enough artillery for a mini-militia: three Ruger Mini-14 rifles, an M16 assault rifle, a .45 handgun, three 9mm handguns and a couple of shotguns. Once Tanner left, Jackson called his parole officer Sarah Bacon and let her know that he "had been involved in a situation," but left out the details.
In the following days, Jackson was asked to report to the Sentinel Company. He checked in with the monitoring company and his parole officer, and was then given a ride back home. As they pulled onto his street, Jackson noticed many unmarked police cars. After entering his driveway, multiple police officers emerged. The police searched Jackson's house and found rounds of Mini-14, .223, 9mm, and M16 ammunition. Jackson's bloody clothes and boots from the shootout with the deputies the night before were left untouched in his closet.
On March 28, 2000, Jackson's parole was revoked and he was sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence in Nevada. Upon his detainment in Florida and later transfer to Nevada, Jackson confessed the crime to anyone who would listen. Jackson claims that when he reached the Clark County Jail in Las Vegas, Nevada, he made numerous phone calls to the F.B.I., after which an agent arrived to discuss the incident with him. Jackson recalls telling his story to "Special Agent Mahoney."
Special Agent Devon Mahoney recalls documenting the confession, but not much beyond that. Mahoney remembers getting a call from a superior to "talk to someone" in a Las Vegas jail and then to "document it and file it up the chain of command." The confession was documented and filed on June 29, 2000.

Gray & Associates, PO Box 8291, ATLANTA, GA 31106
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Timeless words of wisdom from Friedrich Engels:



This legacy belongs to all of us:

“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forest to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. . . Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature–but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.” The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man 1876. —Friedrich Engels



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Still photo from Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove"released January 29, 1964

Enough is Enough: Global Nuclear Weapons 


Spending 2020

  In its report "Enough is Enough: Global Nuclear Weapons Spending 2020" the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has produced the first estimate in nearly a decade of global nuclear weapon spending, taking into account costs to maintain and build new nuclear weapons. ICAN estimates that the nine nuclear-armed countries spent $72.9 billion on their 13,000-plus nuclear weapons in 2019, equaling $138,699 every minute of 2019 on nuclear weapons, and a $7.1 billion increase from 2018.
These estimates (rounded to one decimal point) include nuclear warhead and nuclear-capable delivery systems operating costs and development where these expenditures are publicly available and are based on a reasonable percentage of total military spending on nuclear weapons when more detailed budget data is not available. ICAN urges all nuclear-armed states to be transparent about nuclear weapons expenditures to allow for more accurate reporting on global nuclear expenditures and better government accountability.
ICAN, May 2020
https://www.icanw.org/global_nuclear_weapons_spending_2020

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When faced with the opportunity to do good, I really think it’s the instinct of humanity to do so. It’s in our genetic memory from our earliest ancestors. It’s the altered perception of the reality of what being human truly is that’s been indoctrinated in to every generation for the last 2000 years or more that makes us believe that we are born sinners. I can’t get behind that one. We all struggle with certain things, but I really think that all the “sinful” behavior is learned and wisdom and goodwill is innate at birth.  —Johnny Gould (Follow @tandino415 on Instagram)


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Support Major Tillery, Friend of Mumia, Innocent, Framed, Now Ill




Major Tillery (with hat) and family


Dear Friends of the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia,

Major Tillery, a prisoner at SCI Chester and a friend of Mumia, may have caught the coronavirus. Major is currently under lockdown at SCI Chester, where a coronavirus outbreak is currently taking place. Along with the other prisoners at SCI Chester, he urgently needs your help.

Major was framed by the Pennsylvania District Attorney and police for a murder which took place in 1976. He has maintained his innocence throughout the 37 years he has been incarcerated, of which approximately 20 were spent in solitary confinement. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture has said that 15 days of solitary confinement constitutes torture.

When Mumia had Hepatitis C and was left to die by the prison administration at SCI Mahanoy, Major Tillery was the prisoner who confronted the prison superintendent and demanded that they treat Mumia. (see https://www.justiceformajortillery.org/messing-with-major.html). Although Mumia received medical treatment, the prison retaliated against Major for standing up to the prison administration. He was transferred to another facility, his cell was searched and turned inside out repeatedly, and he lost his job in the prison as a Peer Facilitator.

SCI Chester, where Major is currently incarcerated, has been closed to visitors since mid-March. Fourteen guards and one prisoner are currently reported to be infected with the coronavirus. Because the prison has not tested all the inmates, there is no way to know how many more inmates have coronavirus. Major has had a fever, chills and a sore throat for several nights. Although Major has demanded testing for himself and all prisoners, the prison administration has not complied.

For the past ten days, there has been no cleaning of the cell block. It has been weeks since prisoners have been allowed into the yard to exercise. The food trays are simply being left on the floor. There have been no walk-throughs by prison administrators. The prisoners are not allowed to have showers; they are not allowed to have phone calls; and they are not permitted any computer access. 

This coronavirus outbreak at SCI Chester is the same situation which is playing out in California prisons right now, about which the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia, along with other groups, organized a car caravan protest at San Quentin last week. Prisons are enclosed indoor spaces and are already an epicenter of the coronavirus, like meatpacking plants and cruise ships. If large numbers of prisoners are not released, the coronavirus will infect the prisons, as well as surrounding communities, and many prisoners will die. Failing to release large numbers of prisoners at this point is the same as executing them. We call for "No Execution by COVID-19"!

Major is close to 70 years old, and has a compromised liver and immune system, as well as heart problems. He desperately needs your help. 

Please write and call Acting Superintendent Kenneth Eason at:

Kenneth Eason, Acting Superintendent
SCI Chester
500 E. 4th St.
Chester, PA 19013

Telephone: (610) 490-5412

Email: keason@pa.gov (Prison Superintendent). maquinn@pa.gov (Superintendent's Assistant)
Please also call the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections at:Department of Corrections
1920 Technology Parkway
Mechanicsburg, PA 17050

Telephone: (717) 737-4531
This telephone number is for SCI Camp Hill, which is the current number for DOC.
Reference Major's inmate number: AM 9786

Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
Demand that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections immediately:

1) Provide testing for all inmates and staff at SCI Chester;
2) Disinfect all cells and common areas at SCI Chester, including sinks, toilets, eating areas and showers;
3) Provide PPE (personal protective equipment) for all inmates at SCI Chester;
4) Provide access to showers for all prisoners at SCI Chester, as a basic hygiene measure;
5) Provide yard access to all prisoners at SCI Chester;
6) Provide phone and internet access to all prisoners at SCI Chester;
7) Immediately release prisoners from SCI Chester, including Major Tillery, who already suffers from a compromised immune system, in order to save their lives from execution by COVID-19.

It has been reported that prisoners are now receiving shower access. However, please insist that prisoners be given shower access and that all common areas are disinfected.


In solidarity,

The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal



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1) Why Charges Against Protesters Are Being Dismissed by the Thousands

Prosecutors declined to pursue many of the cases because they concluded the protesters were exercising their basic civil rights.

By Neil MacFarquhar, Nov. 19, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/us/protests-lawsuits-arrests.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

Kentucky state troopers dressed in riot gear took protesters who were violating curfew in Louisville, Ky., into custody in June. Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times


LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Matt Kaufmann loved bringing real-world issues into his classroom, but he never expected he would become a lesson himself. The headlines, however, made it hard to avoid: “Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year Arrested,” blared the local news after he was detained on May 31.

 

An English teacher at Marion C. Moore School at that time, Mr. Kaufmann was among more than 800 people swept up by the police in Louisville during the many months of demonstrations prompted by the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.

 

Mr. Kaufmann and his fiancée, protest novices, joined a large downtown crowd in late May, he said, when police officers began to break up the demonstration by firing tear gas and charging from all sides. With a helicopter thumping overhead, he suddenly found himself lined up on the ground with dozens of other protesters, then hauled off to a crowded jail cell.

 

“I had never experienced anything like that before,” Mr. Kaufmann, 41, said. “It was scary.”

 

Now, more than five months later, as Mr. Kaufmann’s case and those of thousands of others finally land in courts across the United States, a vast majority of cases against protesters are being dismissed. Only cases involving more substantial charges like property destruction or other violence remain.

 

Prosecutors called the scale of both the mass arrests and mass dismissals within a few short months unrivaled, at least since the civil rights protests of the early 1960s. With the police detaining hundreds of people in major cities, the arrests this year ended up colliding with the limitations of the court system.

 

In the aftermath, prosecutors declined to pursue many of the cases because they concluded that the protesters were exercising their basic civil rights. Cases involving free speech or free assembly rarely succeed in court, according to prosecutors across the country, and the coronavirus pandemic also played a role in the decision. A wave of thousands of minor cases threatened to capsize courts already floundering under hefty lockdown backlogs.

 

There was also the recognition that law enforcement officers often use mass arrests as a technique to help clear the streets, not to confront illegal behavior.

 

For those handling the cases, the task has felt Sisyphean. “Every day I would think I was done and the next morning there would be 50 or 100 cases to tally,” said Mary Ellen Heng, a deputy city attorney for Minneapolis. So far the city is pursuing about 75 of 666 cases.

 

“What’s happened in the last few months here is nothing like I have seen in my 23 years when it comes to the volume of cases,” she said.

 

Most charges in the almost 300 federal protest cases involve arson or assaulting police officers, as do the state and municipal cases.

 

“This is the hangover from months of protests,” said Ted Shouse, a criminal defense attorney in Louisville who helped to organize more than 100 volunteer defense attorneys.

 

Protest leaders and defense attorneys nationwide accuse the police of piling on charges to try to halt the demonstrations. “It was to squelch dissent,” said Attica Scott, the only Black woman in the Kentucky State Legislature and one of the protest organizers detained by the police.

 

The arrest of Ms. Scott in September has become one of the most contentious cases in Louisville because she and several other protest leaders were initially accused of trying to ignite a library, a felony, and of violating a 9 p.m. curfew.

 

The Jefferson County attorney, Mike O’Connell, appeared in court himself to ask that the felony charges be dropped after reviewing the evidence, including a live Instagram broadcast by Ms. Scott with a time stamp showing that the arrests came before curfew.

 

Defense attorneys working on cases in numerous cities said more people of color than white people were charged, but it was not a universal pattern. “Even adjusting for the racial makeup of the protests, Black people have been charged out of proportion,” Mr. Shouse in Louisville said.

 

A recent study by The Louisville Courier-Journal found that Black people constituted 53 percent of those arrested there during the four months starting May 29, but that they faced 69 percent of the felony charges. In Portland, Ore., which is predominantly white, white defendants constituted 65 percent of the more than 140 cases moving forward, while 32 percent were from other racial groups.

 

Sgt. John Bradley, a spokesman for the Louisville Metro Police Department, said that officers made arrests on the basis of Kentucky law, and that it was up to the county attorney whether to prosecute.

 

Precise numbers on both arrests and dismissals nationwide are elusive amid the complicated patchwork of law enforcement agencies and the state, county or city prosecutors involved.

 

In Los Angeles County, for example, the district attorney declined to file criminal charges against 334 people but is pursuing 257 cases of people arrested between the end of May and the beginning of August, said Greg Risling, a spokesman.

 

But not all jurisdictions in Los Angeles County are dismissing cases. Beverly Hills is pursuing misdemeanor charges against a group of 25 people stemming from one protest in June and plans to pursue others from another protest in July, said Rachel Steinback, the coordinator for the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles’s Mass Defense Committee.

 

In Portland, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office boiled its numbers down into a neat chart: District Attorney Mike Schmidt has rejected 721 cases, is pursuing 144 and has 165 under review.

 

Based on the example of Occupy Wall Street protesters a decade ago, Mr. Schmidt knew that judges would toss out most cases or impose small sentences. “Seventy to 80 percent would not survive constitutional challenges,” said Mr. Schmidt, who added that the costs far outweighed any benefit to public safety.

 

Adding 1,000 cases to the yearly average of under 20,000 would be daunting, he said. The same is true for the Minneapolis city attorney, whose office handles some 15,000 misdemeanors annually. “Even if Covid was not a problem, it would be a monstrous task for us to prosecute 500 additional cases,” Ms. Heng said.

 

Walk into virtually any large courthouse in America and the strain of dealing with the case backlog is palpable.

 

In Louisville, those cases are referred to as being in the “parking lot.” There are some 22,000 such cases over all, with just four of 10 trial courts functioning in the Jefferson County Courthouse. Across two days in late October, 300 protest case arraignments were jammed onto the calendar, about 10 times the normal rate.

 

Judge Lisa Langford briefly lost track of which cases were in the courtroom and which were on Zoom. “He has been waving at me, I thought he was just happy to see me,” she joked after locating a lawyer on Zoom.

 

Prosecutors have moved to dismiss 219 protest cases, said Josh Abner, the spokesman for the Jefferson County attorney.

 

“We don’t have a magic wand that we can wave in connection with all these cases,” said Mr. O’Connell, noting that a team of four prosecutors was combing through them.

 

After mass arrests during the 2000 Republican National Convention, Philadelphia legislated a lesser charge to get people off the streets. Police officers started issuing summonses outside regular courts. Misdemeanors and felonies go to the district attorney, while summonses do not.

 

Larry Krasner, the city’s district attorney, said that his office was reviewing 586 cases and that the city was dropping up to 2,000 summonses. Cases being reviewed involve incidents like breaking into stores or torching police vehicles.

 

Prosecutions there and elsewhere were also curtailed by the chaotic nature of the demonstrations, especially during the first few weeks when most arrests occurred. With the police working double shifts, paperwork lagged, so finding reports or witnesses for some cases proved impossible.

 

In Louisville, as the months drag on with the charges dangling overhead, many protesters feel stuck in limbo.

 

Kelly Parry, 33, both a volunteer defense attorney and a defendant, was among some 76 protesters arrested while blocking an avenue in July. “It is mentally draining not knowing what might happen to you,” she said. “You are constantly thinking, ‘Is this a small situation or will it become something bigger?’”

 

Mr. Kaufmann, the teacher, was charged with a curfew violation, a misdemeanor, but tried to ignore it. “I don’t want to give in to fear,” he said, focusing instead on his new job within the Jefferson County school system that involves helping to develop a social justice curriculum.

 

He and Stephanie Kornexl-Kaufmann, then his fiancée and now his wife, decided to join the protesters after hearing the recording of the 911 call that Kenneth Walker, Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend, made as the police broke into her apartment during a botched drug raid.

 

“We were dumbfounded, we were shocked,” Mr. Kaufmann said. “The country does not live up to the values that we have been teaching in class.”

 

Mr. Kaufmann had been named the state’s high school teacher of the year partly for building classroom discussions around real-world issues like the #MeToo movement. But none had hit quite so close to home.

 

News of his arrest spread at lightning speed.

 

Kaelyn Goatley, 17, a senior at Marion C. Moore School, had to explain to her grandmother, who was initially appalled, why Mr. Kaufmann’s arrest was a good thing.

 

“I was proud that I had a teacher who was out on the streets fighting for justice,” she said. “He has this big title being high school teacher of the year and the fact that he was out there protesting and being arrested meant that he risked that. It shows how adamant he is about making change.”

 

In late October, Mr. Kaufmann learned that the charges against him, his wife and a former student who was with them would be dropped. He was elated but noted that hundreds of cases were still pending.

 

“My young Black male and female friends who I met through the protests were in greater danger than I was and some of them are still dealing with these charges,” he said. “It is not fair, it is not consistent and we have to do better.”



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2) America Is Letting the Coronavirus Rage Through Prisons

It’s both a moral failure and a public health one.

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom. Nov. 21, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/21/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-prisons-jails.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images


As Americans grapple with how — or whether — to gather with loved ones this holiday season, the roughly two million people confined in the nation’s prisons and jails face an even grimmer challenge: how to stay alive inside a system being ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Like the nation overall, U.S. correctional facilities are experiencing record spikes in coronavirus infections this fall. During the week of Nov. 17, there were 13,657 new coronavirus infections reported across the state and federal prison systems, according to the Marshall Project, which has been tracking these numbers since March. The previous week saw 13,676 new cases. These are by far the highest weekly tolls reported since the pandemic began. With winter descending, the situation threatens to grow bleaker still.

 

The American penal system is a perfect breeding ground for the virus. Squabbles over mask wearing and social distancing are essentially moot inside overcrowded facilities, many of them old and poorly ventilated, with tight quarters and with hygiene standards that are difficult to maintain. Uneven testing, inadequate medical resources and the constant churn of staff members, visitors and inmates further speed transmission. Crueler still, inmates suffer disproportionately from comorbidities, such as high blood pressure and asthma, putting them at an elevated risk for complications and death.

 

Eight months into the pandemic, the precise shape and scope of the devastation remains difficult to pin down. But the available data is heartbreaking. As of mid-November, more than 196,600 coronavirus infections had been reported among state and federal prisoners. More than 1,450 of those prisoners had died. The case rates among inmates are more than four times as high as those of the general public, and the death rate is more than twice as high.

 

Inmates are not the only ones trapped with the virus. The correctional system employs more than 685,000 people — guards, nurses, chaplains and so on. There have been more than 45,470 reported coronavirus infections and 98 deaths among staff members to date. Their case rates are three times as high as for the general public.

 

Remember: These are the reported cases. The real numbers are assumed to be higher. The virus ripples outward from these hot spots, engulfing the families and communities of inmates and workers. The coronavirus does not respect prison walls any more than it respects state or national borders. It will not be confined.

 

This spread poses a particular problem for rural communities — 40 percent of prisons are in counties with fewer than 50,000 residents — which typically lack the health care infrastructure to deal with such outbreaks. Even a modest outbreak can quickly overwhelm local hospitals with scant numbers of ventilators and I.C.U. beds.

 

Local jails face additional challenges. While prisons report much larger case numbers, the rapid turnover in jails — where many people are confined for only a few days or even hours — enables the virus to circulate swiftly between inmates and the larger community, and makes tracking all the more difficult. In a report last month on outbreaks in the Mountain West, The Times noted that in Cascade County, Mont., infections at the local jail made up about a quarter of all known cases in the county. Over two months, the facility knowingly released 29 people who were considered actively infected.

 

As with so much about the pandemic, this is a problem that should have been dealt with more aggressively early on. In the spring, Attorney General Bill Barr was among those calling on correctional facilities to mitigate risk, with a focus on reducing overcrowding through early release and other decarceration measures. While some progress has been made, it has been uneven and inadequate.

 

“Prisons and jails experienced declines in total population (approximately 11 percent of the incarcerated population) in the first half of 2020,” according to a report on decarceration put out by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report notes that “these reductions appear to be mainly the result of declines in arrests, jail bookings and prison admissions related to lockdowns and the closure of state and local courts.” It continues: “The releases among sentenced jail and prison populations that have occurred have, for the most part, occurred on a case-by-case basis and have been procedurally slow and not well suited to crisis situations.”

 

While many jails saw a population drop during the first few months of the pandemic, the numbers of people being held in jails began climbing again over the summer, according to a September briefing by the Prison Policy Initiative, which analyzed 451 county jails. “In 88 counties, jail populations are higher now than they were before the pandemic” the briefing notes.

 

Some states have taken legislative action to speed the decarceration process. A bill signed by New Jersey’s governor last month permits prisoners with less than a year left on their sentences to be released up to eight months early. This has already prompted the release of more than 2,000 people, with another 1,000 or more releases anticipated.

 

All too often, continued foot-dragging or dysfunction by prison officials requires the courts to step in. In the spring and summer, the San Quentin State Prison in California had a major coronavirus outbreak. Built in the mid 1800s and early 1900s, the outdated facility suffered from overcrowding, inadequate medical staffing, “exceedingly poor ventilation, extraordinarily close living quarters and inadequate sanitation,” according to a panel of medical experts from the University of California, Berkeley, who were brought in to assess the situation in June. By late July, the number of active cases had topped 1,600. Tents were erected to house the sick. Before the outbreak faded, around 2,200 inmates had confirmed coronavirus infections, and 28 had died. In addition, 298 staff members were infected, resulting in one death.

 

The problem continued to fester. In late October, a state appeals court ruled that the prison authorities’ efforts to address the issue had been insufficient and that inmates’ constitutional protection from cruel and unusual punishment was still being violated. To deal with the emergency, the prison was ordered to cut its population by around half, through a mix of releases and transfers. (The original outbreak was sparked by the transfer to San Quentin of infected inmates from another prison.)

 

Clearly, more needs to be done. The report by the National Academies outlines best practices for reducing the incarcerated population, broken down into short-term and longer-term solutions. The suggested measures start with a systemic commitment to diversion efforts such as “noncustodial penalties” for minor infractions, including probation and parole violations, and the limiting of pretrial detentions through means such as reducing or eliminating bail.

 

In addition to offering guidance on a bolder decarceration effort, the report stresses the importance of minimizing risks to the families and communities involved, such as “offering testing prior to release, a place to quarantine in the community, and examination of parole and probation policies and procedures.” More comprehensive and more standardized testing and reporting requirements are also needed.

 

Managing this kind of crisis is not a one-and-done effort, the report emphasizes. It is a process requiring “sustained engagement” by a wide array of actors at all levels.

 

It is all too easy for many Americans to ignore the horrors of what is happening inside the nation’s prisons and jails. Inmates are isolated from the broader populace, their suffering kept out of sight. But their welfare in this pandemic remains inextricably linked to everyone else’s. The nation’s continued failure to bring the virus to heel among this vulnerable population is both a public health catastrophe and a moral one.


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3) Fatal Shooting of 2 Black Teenagers by Florida Deputy Is Under Investigation

Relatives are demanding answers about the shooting deaths of Angelo Crooms, 16, and Sincere Pierce, 18, by a sheriff’s deputy in Cocoa, Fla.

By Johnny Diaz and Michael Levenson, Nov. 22, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/us/angelo-crooms-benjamin-crump-video.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
Screenshots from a video released by the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in Florida of a deputy fatally shooting two Black teenagers. Credit...Brevard County Sheriff's Office

The authorities are investigating the fatal shooting by a Florida sheriff’s deputy of two Black teenagers who were in a moving car during an encounter with law enforcement.

 

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the Nov. 13 shooting of the teenagers, Angelo Crooms, 16, and Sincere Pierce, 18, both of Cocoa, Fla., Jessica Cary, a department spokeswoman, said on Friday. She declined to discuss details, citing the need to protect the integrity of the investigation.

 

The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office released a video on Nov. 17 of the encounter.

 

At about 10:30 a.m., two deputies, Jafet Santiago-Miranda and Carson Hendren, were following up on what they thought was a possible stolen car that had “fled from another Deputy in the Cocoa area,” Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County wrote in a Facebook post.

 

Dashcam video showed the deputies in each of their cruisers following a car as it turned onto a street and then into the driveway of a house in a residential neighborhood in Cocoa, which is about 45 miles east of Orlando. It was not clear how long the deputies had been following the car.

 

The deputies got out of their cars “in an attempt to make contact with the occupants,” Sheriff Ivey said.

 

The video showed the car backing out of the driveway and moving in the direction of the deputies, whose cruisers were parked on each side of the street.

 

“Stop the vehicle!” Deputy Santiago-Miranda repeatedly told the driver, who was later identified as Mr. Crooms.

 

The police said that Mr. Crooms then drove at Deputy Santiago-Miranda, who fired his gun “in an attempt to stop the deadly threat of the car from crashing into him.” On the video, at least eight shots could be heard striking the car.

 

Deputy Santiago-Miranda was the only deputy who opened fire, Tod Goodyear, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said.

 

Mr. Crooms and Mr. Pierce were taken to hospitals, where they were later pronounced dead, the police said. A third occupant, who was not identified and who was not injured, was interviewed and released, Mr. Goodyear said.

 

Two firearms were found in the car, the police said.

 

Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the teenagers’ families, said on Twitter that the teenagers were “terrified” and trying to drive around the deputies.

 

“Out of harm’s way, the deputy moved closer to get a better shot,” and fired with the “intent to kill,” and “then kept firing as the car passed by,” Mr. Crump wrote.

 

Eric Smith, Mr. Crooms’s father, said the family hoped the deputies would be prosecuted.

 

“It’s obvious what we’re looking for — justice,” Mr. Smith said. “We’re looking for answers. There’s nothing justifiable about what the Brevard County sheriffs did.”

 

The family buried Mr. Crooms on Saturday, mourning a teenager whom Mr. Smith described as a “good kid” who liked football and was trying to figure out what he wanted to do in life.

 

Natalie A. Jackson, a lawyer for Mr. Pierce’s great-aunt and legal guardian, Cynthia Green, said the car that the teenagers were in belonged to Mr. Crooms’s girlfriend and was not stolen.

 

In an interview, Ms. Green recalled what happened on the morning the teenagers were killed.

 

She said Mr. Pierce had gotten into the back seat of the car outside the house in Cocoa, where she and Mr. Pierce lived. Ms. Green said she was also leaving at that time and was getting into her car when she saw the deputies drive by.

 

She was concerned that the deputies might harass Mr. Pierce and his friends, so she said she decided to follow them in her own car.

 

Ms. Green, who had cared for Mr. Pierce since he was 2 days old, said she saw the deputies point their guns at the car minutes later.

 

“Please, don’t shoot! Please, don’t shoot! My baby’s in that car!” she recalled screaming. Deputy Santiago-Miranda then fired, even though the car with the teenagers inside was turning away from him, she said.

 

“My baby left home at 10:31, and at 10:33 he was dead,” Ms. Green said. “That man just kept shooting.”

 

Ms. Jackson, the lawyer, said that if the deputies were concerned that the car had been stolen, they could have checked the license plate instead of drawing their weapons.

 

Mr. Pierce, who was known as Spud, loved music and cracking jokes, Ms. Green said.

 

“Sincere was a lovable child,” she said. “And he was one of the best dancers as a little child I could ever imagine.”

 

The deputies have been placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation. Once the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has concluded its investigation, it will present its findings to the state attorney, Ms. Cary said.

 

Last week, dozens of Cocoa residents held a rally and vigil for the teens. People carried signs and flags that read “Black Lives Matter.”


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4) These Items in Your Home Are Harming America’s Sea Animals

A new report examines how plastic waste affects marine wildlife.

By Catrin Einhorn, Nov. 19, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/climate/plastic-ocean-animals.html?surface=home-discovery-vi-prg&fellback=false&req_id=375813036&algo=identity&imp_id=231949603&action=click&module=Science%20%20Technology&pgtype=Homepage
A green sea turtle on Midway Atoll in the Pacific. Credit...Caleb Jones/Associated Press

How severely the world’s plastic waste crisis is affecting marine wildlife is not fully understood, despite decades of research and gruesome images of whales’ bellies filled with plastic and a turtle with a straw lodged in its nostril. A new report by Oceana, a conservation group, illustrates some of what we know about how plastic affects sea turtles and marine mammals in United States waters.

 

The findings offer a glimpse of a larger problem.

 

The authors focused on sea turtles and marine mammals for practical reasons. These animals are federally protected, so when they are found in distress or wash up dead on a beach, responders are required to document it. By collecting data from government agencies and marine life organizations around the country, the authors found almost 1,800 cases of plastic entanglement or ingestion affecting 40 species since 2009.

 

But the report notes that the number is “a gross underestimate” because humans observe a tiny fraction of animal deaths in the ocean. Even so, of the nation’s 23 coastal states, it found cases in 21.

 

“This is the first time we’re looking at the problem from a U.S. perspective,” said Kimberly Warner, the report’s author and a senior scientist at Oceana. “This brings the problem home.”

 

In 2016, the United States produced more plastic waste than any other nation, and more of that plastic entered the ocean than previously thought, according to a recent study. As of 2015, less than a tenth of the world’s cumulative plastic waste had been recycled.

 

The Oceana report found that in the reported cases, 90 percent of the animals had swallowed plastic, and the rest were entangled in it. Necropsies often showed that the animals had died from blockages or lacerations. Other times, ingesting plastic may have simply weakened the animal or played no role in its death. Over all, in 82 percent of the cases, the animals died.

 

The culprits go beyond the usual suspects.

 

In the 1980s, environmental activists warned of the devastating effects of six-pack rings ensnaring sea animals. People started dutifully cutting them before disposal, and in 1994 the Environmental Protection Agency mandated that six-pack rings must be degradable, though the process may take months. Consumers have also been warned about releasing balloons, which can harm marine animals.

 

Recently some municipalities, counties and states have banned single-use plastic bags, one of the biggest contributors to ingestion and entanglements, according to the report. Plastic packing straps were found constricting the necks or bodies of seals and sea lions, naturally curious animals who may have gotten entangled while trying to play. Manatees ingested lots of fishing line.

 

But the report also found many more surprising items caused harm. Along the Gulf Coast, mesh produce bags were found in the guts of sea turtles and also entangling their bodies. In 2015, a loggerhead turtle in Georgia was found with a toothbrush and fork in its digestive tract, among other items. Two years later, another turtle was found in New York with a plastic dental flosser inside it. Food wrappers, sandwich bags, sponges, and even decorative plastic Easter grass were among the items discovered. A bottlenose dolphin in North Carolina had its head stuck in the hole of a flying disc. In Virginia, a DVD case lacerated the stomach of a sei whale.

 

Many of the victims are endangered or threatened.

 

More than a dozen species at risk of extinction — including sea turtles, Hawaiian monk seals and sei whales — ingested or were tangled in plastic. Manatees, those gentle, slow-moving giants that graze on seagrass, made up 700 cases. The report quotes Brandon Bassett, a biologist at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, describing part of what he found inside one dead manatee: “Imagine a ball of plastic bags in the stomach, about the size of a cantaloupe, and then a bunch of plastic bags that were wrapped and almost like a rope that was about 3 feet long.”

 

Scientists are learning more about why animals consume plastic. To sea turtles, a floating plastic bag may resemble a jellyfish meal, but that doesn’t explain the bottle caps and hard plastic shards found in their digestive tracts or stool. One study suggested that plastic starts to smell appetizing as it becomes coated in algae and microorganisms.

 

In South Carolina, one ailing loggerhead passed almost 60 pieces of plastic through its digestive system during its rehabilitation at a sea turtle center. Juveniles are more at risk because of their size and undeveloped gastrointestinal tract. More than 20 percent of the sea turtles that had ingested plastic were just months old. Some were only a few days old. A recent Australian study found that just 14 pieces of plastic in their digestive tracts significantly increased sea turtles’ risk of death.

 

Still, plastic waste is not the biggest killer of marine life.

 

Humans have created all kinds of dire problems for sea animals: rising sea temperatures, fishermen hauling in unintended species, ships striking them, other marine pollution and habitat degradation.

 

“Plastic in and of itself may not be as big of a threat as we’re led to believe,” said Jesse Senko, an assistant research professor and senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University. “The scientific community has not done a good enough job of really assessing these questions, looking beyond how it affects an individual animal.”

 

He believes that images of decomposing sea birds with bellies full of plastic lead the public and media to focus on plastic even when other threats are more significant.

 

Ultimately, plastics and rising sea temperatures are connected; after all, the vast majority of plastic is derived from fossil fuels.

 

The Oceana report calls on national, state and local governments to restrict the production of single-use plastics and it asks companies to offer consumers plastic-free options.

 

“I’m old enough to remember a time when it didn’t permeate everything in my life,” Dr. Warner said. “And yet it’s built up at an alarming rate.”


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5) Even in a Pandemic, the Billionaires Are Winning

While many Americans suffered, the richest among us kept getting richer.

By Farhad Manjoo, Opinion Columnist, Nov. 25, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/opinion/coronavirus-billionaires.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Zoom’s chief executive, Eric Yuan, became a billionaire last year and his fortune has continued to climb. Credit...Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

When I called up Chuck Collins on Tuesday afternoon, I found him glued to one of the grimmest new metrics documenting America’s economic and social unraveling.

 

Collins is a scholar of inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, and since March he has been tracking how the collective wealth of American billionaires has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. In previous recessions, Collins said, billionaires were hit along with the rest of us; it took almost three years for Forbes’s 400 richest people to recover losses incurred in 2008’s Great Recession.

 

But in the coronavirus recession of 2020, most billionaires have not lost their shirts. Instead, they’ve put on bejeweled overcoats and gloves made of spun gold — that is, they’ve gotten richer than ever before.

 

On Tuesday, as the stock market soared to a record, Collins was watching the billionaires cross a depressing threshold: $1 trillion.

 

That is the amount of new wealth American billionaires have amassed since March, at the start of the devastating lockdowns that state and local governments imposed to curb the pandemic.

 

On March 18, according to a report Collins and his colleagues published last week, America’s 614 billionaires were worth a combined $2.95 trillion. When the markets closed on Tuesday, there were 650 billionaires and their combined wealth was now close to $4 trillion. In the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, American billionaires’ wealth grew by a third.

 

It is difficult to think of a more succinctly obscene illustration of the unfairness of the American economic and political system.

 

“The economy is now wired ‘heads you win, tails I lose,’ to funnel wealth to the top,” Collins told me.

 

Billionaires amassed their new billions just as millions of other Americans plunged into dire financial straits. More than 20 million people lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic. As Congress lazily contemplates whether or not to bother to continue to provide economic assistance to America’s neediest, as many as 13 million people are at risk of losing the expanded benefits that keep them just beyond the grip of hunger and homelessness.

 

Food banks across the country are bracing for another surge in demand. If a federal moratorium on evictions is allowed to expire at the end of the year, millions of Americans will have to pay months of back rent — making them vulnerable to what housing advocates warn will be a wave of evictions.

 

Why are American billionaires doing so well while so many other Americans suffer? Part of the story is garden-variety American inequality. Stocks are overwhelmingly owned by the wealthy, and the stock market has recovered from its early-pandemic depths much more quickly than other parts of the economy.

 

But some billionaires are also benefiting from economic and technological trends that were accelerated by the pandemic. Among these are the owners and investors of retail giants like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree and Dollar General, which have reported huge profits this year while many of their smaller competitors were clobbered as the coronavirus spread.

 

Then there are companies that have bet on the rapid digitization of everything. Eric Yuan, the chief executive of Zoom, became a billionaire in 2019. Now he is worth almost $20 billion. Apoorva Mehta, the founder of the grocery-delivery company Instacart, was not a billionaire last year; this year, after a spike in orders that led to a new round of investment that pumped up the value of his company, he’s safely in the club. Dan Gilbert, the chairman of Quicken Loans, was worth less than $7 billion in March; now he commands more than $43 billion.

 

But like in the rest of the economy, there is a great deal of stratification even among billionaires — richer billionaires got even richer in 2020 than the poorer ones did.

 

Some of the numbers are staggering. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, was worth about $113 billion at the start of the pandemic. Now he is worth $182 billion — an increase of about $69 billion. Jim, Alice and Rob Walton, three of the largest shareholders of Walmart, saw their combined wealth grow by $47 billion during the pandemic.

 

Two years ago, Bezos was the only “centibillionaire” on earth — the trendy neologism for people whose wealth exceeds $100 billion. Now there are five — in addition to Bezos, there’s Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Bernard Arnault, the French luxury tycoon. Arnault’s wealth plummeted early in the pandemic, but demand for some luxury goods has rebounded in recent months, and his fortune is once again secure.

 

The political scene has also been kind to billionaires in 2020. A year ago, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren appeared to have a good shot at capturing the Democratic nomination for president, and pundits like myself were suggesting extreme measures like the abolishment of billionaires.

 

Billionaires can breathe much easier now. Joe Biden, not Sanders or Warren, is going to be the president. As he told a gathering of donors last year, Biden believes that rich people are “just as patriotic as poor people,” and he suggested that “nothing would fundamentally change” for the wealthy when he’s in charge.

 

The possibility that the Senate will remain in Republican hands — or, if not, will be closely divided — is also good for billionaires. Some of the most ambitious liberal efforts to combat inequality — like a repeal of Trump’s corporate tax cuts, a new wealth tax or a tax on financial transactions — look unlikely to pass.

 

The political results point to the continuing danger to our democracy of the rise of superbillionaires — that they will use their wealth to build a political fortress around themselves, allowing them to gain even more wealth and influence.

 

“I do think we’re at risk of the oligarchic death spiral,” Collins told me. “Wealth concentrates and power concentrates, and the wealthy use their power to rig the rules to get more wealth and power.”

 

Collins is hopeful that we can avert the death spiral. He suggested that extreme inequality could prompt a political backlash. Perhaps, seeing the pandemic’s toll on nonbillionaire Americans, our leaders will be moved to fight for greater benefits for workers, more affordable and accessible health care and child care, and progressive taxation that can reduce some of the disparities between people at the top and everyone else.

 

In the absence of such reforms, Collins said, we may be staring down an uglier future. “The knot that we’re in is a tough one to unravel in a peaceful way,” he said.


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6) This Wrongly Convicted Man Spent 25 Thanksgivings in Prison

This holiday, he says he’s thankful. Are you?

By Charles M. Blow, Opinion Columnist, Nov. 25, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/opinion/christian-pacheco-prison-thanksgiving.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Barry Williams

In 1995, I was a 25-year-old Brooklyn father of a one-and-a-half-year-old son. I had recently joined The Times and had become the paper’s youngest newsroom department head since a man named Lester Markel was named Sunday editor in 1923.

 

In 1995, Christian Pacheco was a 18-year-old Brooklyn father of a one-and-a-half-year-old son. He had recently joined the Latin Kings street gangs and become the second youngest co-defendant in a murder case.

 

Pacheco and some friends, including a young woman that he was seeing, were at a small, corner lounge in the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn, when a bump on the dance floor quickly escalated into a brawl in which the victim was stabbed and his throat slit.

 

One witness testified that Pacheco was the person who slit the man’s throat. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life.

 

Pacheco insisted that he was innocent. Although he had fought another man earlier in the altercation, he had not stabbed the victim nor slit his throat. He contends that he knew the victim, came to his rescue, and as a result was stabbed several times himself for doing so.

 

Still, it wasn’t until this year that Pacheco’s conviction was overturned after newly discovered information proved that he did not receive a fair trial and that the testimony of the witness who said that Pacheco did the killing was “most probably false.”

 

I spoke to Pacheco this week. He told me what he recalled about that moment, years ago, when the judge read the verdict and he learned that he’d go to prison:

 

“Honestly, I don’t remember much, but I remember saying to myself, I said uh, ‘Oh God, I can’t believe this.’ You know, and I was shocked.”

 

He continued:

 

“And then I turned around. I looked at my son’s mom. She had the baby there. And she was there with her mother. And all I remember seeing was my son’s mom, um, getting up from the seat where she was sitting, crying, and walking away from the courtroom.”

 

I spent the Thanksgiving of Pacheco’s conviction year in the largest apartment I would ever occupy in New York: A rambling four-bedroom unit in Prospect Heights, which I rented from a colleague who was moving away to take another assignment, but was having a hard time selling the place in the wake of the Savings and Loan Crisis. There were so many rooms that some we just left empty.

 

Pacheco would spend his first prison Thanksgiving occupying a 6-by-9-foot prison cell. He was still just a teenager. He was still in shock that he had been convicted. As he said: “I’m missing my family, especially my son, you know, and my mother.” He stresses, “I left a baby behind, and that was the one that was killing me inside: that I left the mother of my child with my child, out there,” knowing, as he says, that he had nothing to do with the killing.

 

He was allowed just 10 minutes to scarf down a special “facility meal” for Thanksgiving. But, as Pacheco said, mustering a laugh, “But, believe me, it’s nowhere near the Thanksgiving you would have out here.”

 

Over the years, he learned to cope with the loneliness and sadness of incarcerated holidays the best way he knew how. For Thanksgiving he would decorate his cell with pictures of turkeys he cut from magazines and hang up pictures of his family.

 

Sometimes, one of the inmates who could cook would make a special meal. One year Pacheco says that his cellmate made a special meal of instant rice, squid or calamari and spices bought from the commissary, placed in a clear garbage bag and heated on the cell’s hotpot.

 

I spent all those years surrounded by friends and family and eating like a glutton.

 

(Indeed, four years after Pacheco’s conviction, I moved just six blocks away from where the murder had occurred and stayed there almost the entire time Pacheco was in prison.)

 

Pacheco said that he learned through his lawyers twice, sometime in 2007 or 2008, that the prosecution would hand him a plea deal if he would plead guilty to a lesser charge. They would consider the time he’d already spent in prison as time served, and he could go home. Both times he refused. As he told me: “I told the attorney at that time, I said, ‘No, I’m not doing that because they know that I didn’t do this.’ ”

 

Furthermore, as The New York Post reported in 2017, another man pleaded guilty in federal court to cutting the victim’s throat and “laid out the crime in a 2013 letter to the Brooklyn D.A.’s office.”

 

When we spoke this week, Pacheco told me about what he recalled about the moment this year when the judge read the ruling that freed him. “All I remember was looking back, and I saw my grandma and my mother tearing, you know. And, I just kept looking at them,” he said, adding, “I remember a few tears came down my own eyes.”

 

That is not to say this is the end of things. The Conviction Review Unit still asserts that there was “strong direct and circumstantial evidence” that Pacheco was involved in the incident and that he was “not factually innocent.” Pacheco says that he is still fighting to fully clear his name and has filled a $100 million lawsuit against New York State for unjust conviction and imprisonment.

 

Our sons are now both 26, his in the Navy and mine in medical school. As I talked to him all I could think of was all the memories I have of my son over those years, watching him grow up, and all those same opportunities for memories that were stolen from Pacheco.

 

This is the first year in my life, because of the pandemic, that I will be forced to be away from family and friends. But I am still thankful and hopeful because I know that this is the first year in 25 years that Pacheco will be able to be with his family and friends.

 

When people complain about the restrictions that the pandemic has placed on our lives, when some go so far as to claim that it has unfairly stripped us of our rights and liberties, remember that there are people among us whose freedoms have truly been unfairly taken, people who would be happy if their only concerns were having to wear a mask and socially distance.

 

Pacheco was wrongly convicted, spent 25 Thanksgivings in prison, and he’s still thankful. As he told me:

 

“I’m thankful just to be home and be free, blessed to be able to do that with my family and my loved ones. And, when I say loved ones, I mean family and friends alike, you know what I mean. So, I am thankful for that. And, I give thanks to the most high, which is God, you know, and that he was able to make this happen. It doesn’t matter if it’s 25 years, 30 years, five years. What matters is that I’m out here now.”

 

Pacheco is now living with the woman he was seeing the night of the killing, the night that he himself was stabbed in the scrum, and they will spend Thanksgiving together.


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7) New Rule Would Allow U.S. to Use More Methods for Executions

The rule, which would permit methods including firing squads and electrocution, comes as the administration rushes to execute five more prisoners before President Trump’s term ends.

By Hailey Fuchs, Published Nov. 25, 2020, Updated Nov. 26, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/us/politics/executions-firing-squads-electrocution.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
The federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., where the government has carried out its recent injections. Credit...Bryan Woolston/Reuters

The Justice Department has created new regulations allowing for the use of more methods for federal executions, including firing squad and electrocution.

 

The new rule, which is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Friday, comes as the administration rushes to execute five more prisoners before the end of President Trump’s term. It is part of a spate of moves and rule-making processes before he leaves office.

 

Unlike in some of the final-hour decisions, the practical effect of the rule remains unclear. The Justice Department has not indicated that it plans to execute inmates by a manner other than lethal injection, which has been the only method of execution the federal government has used in decades. Although lethal injection has come under increasing legal assault, the Supreme Court has already rejected recent challenges to it presented by inmates on federal death row. And President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who can rescind the rule, has signaled his opposition to the federal death penalty.

 

Last week, the Justice Department announced that it plans to execute three more inmates on federal death row. If the administration does so, along with two other executions already scheduled, it will have put 13 prisoners to death since July, marking one of the deadliest periods in the history of federal capital punishment since at least 1927, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

 

The rule, reported earlier by ProPublica, stipulates that the federal government may conduct executions by lethal injection “or by any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed or which has been designated by a court in accordance with” the law that governs implementation of the death sentence. It will go into effect 30 days after its scheduled publication on Friday, before some of the executions are set to take place.

 

All states that use the death penalty allow execution by lethal injection, according to the rule. Some also authorize other means. For example, Alabama allows the prisoner to elect a death by electrocution or nitrogen hypoxia (a lethal dose of gas) instead of lethal injection. A law signed by the governor of Utah in 2015 states that a firing squad shall be used to execute an inmate if substances for lethal injection are unavailable on the scheduled date.

 

States have already struggled to obtain suitable drugs for their lethal injection protocols. Several years ago, reports of high-profile botched executions, which involved prisoners who reportedly gasped or writhed in pain, prompted new scrutiny over the death penalty. After an instance in Oklahoma, President Barack Obama directed his attorney general to review the application of the death penalty in the United States.

 

Federal executions carried out since the Trump administration ended a nearly two-decade hiatus on the practice have been exclusively by lethal injection. The government’s protocol uses a single chemical, pentobarbital, for which the Supreme Court cleared the way in June.

 

The rule recently finalized by the Trump administration concerns how the federal government must comply with state execution protocols. The Federal Death Penalty Act requires executions to be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence is imposed.”

 

When it filed an initial version of the rule published in August, the Justice Department noted that a state might one day require executions to be conducted by a means other than lethal injection. The proposed rule said it would forestall potential challenges by prisoners to their executions because federal regulations did not expressly authorize execution by means other than lethal injection.

 

Agencies are generally supposed to allot at least 60 days for public comment. The Trump administration gave only 30 days for the proposed rule.

 

Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, noted that Mr. Biden could reverse the rule, but said that it represented a “symbolic” and “deeply practical” step by the department to carry out its five scheduled executions.

 

“It’s a pretty gruesome way to go out,” he said. “This is basically the attorney general doubling down on, you know, sort of making it possible to execute as many federal prisoners as he can before his tenure is over.”

 

He also highlighted recent legal hurdles that the Justice Department faced in death penalty litigation. Before the execution of a federal inmate, Orlando Cordia Hall, last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the department’s lethal injection protocol could violate the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. That law requires a prescription for the execution drug, pentobarbital. But the court still declined to issue in an injunction in the case.

 

In its effort to revive the death penalty under the Trump administration, the Justice Department declined to use the three-drug cocktail it had once used and instead introduced a protocol using a single drug, pentobarbital.

 

The announcements from the Justice Department for the five scheduled executions said four prisoners would be executed by lethal injection at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. The department did not specify the manner of execution for one prisoner, Dustin John Higgs, convicted of kidnapping and murdering three women. A Justice Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity also did not comment on his method of execution.

 

Ruth Friedman, the director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, who represented the first man executed by the Trump administration, called the rule a “grand arrogation of power.” She criticized the department’s decision to strip some judicial oversight. The rule removed a requirement that a government lawyer submit to the court, among other matters, the date and place of the execution, part of a provision the department deemed redundant.

 

Ms. Friedman also said that, more troubling than the rule, was the administration’s intention to execute prisoners so shortly before a new administration that has signaled opposition to capital punishment.

 

The Justice Department official defended the decision, saying that the regulations were intended to align federal sentences with the law.

 

Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, expected that the new rule would most likely result in fewer and less complicated legal challenges to executions, but that it would quickly become immaterial under an administration that does not seek to execute inmates.

 

“It tells us more about how much the administration wants to kill prisoners than it does about any real correctional need,” he said.


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8) Macron’s Rightward Tilt, Seen in New Laws, Sows Wider Alarm in France

One bill would reach into Muslim life, and another would place new restrictions on filming of police. Critics say they’re part of a drift toward repressive government policies.

By Adam Nossiter, Nov. 25, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/world/europe/france-macron-muslims-police-laws.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
A protest in Paris last week against a security bill that would restrict filming of the police, a step civic groups consider a shield for brutality. Credit...Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

PARIS — A rightward push by the French government is alarming civil liberties advocates in France and raising questions about President Emmanuel Macron’s positioning ahead of an expected electoral challenge from the far right in 2022.

 

Propelled by a national wave of anxiety following recent terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists, two proposed new laws underscore what critics have called an alarming drift toward repression in government policy.

 

One bill, which passed an initial hurdle in the lower house of Parliament, the National Assembly, on Tuesday, restricts the public filming of the police, a step civic groups consider a shield for brutality at a moment when law enforcement has come under more scrutiny for aggressive tactics, often from citizens armed with cellphone cameras.

 

The other, still to be considered by Parliament, seeks further restrictions against Islamism as the French government has defined it, reaching into some aspects of Muslim life. This bill would ban home-schooling, flag in a database those deemed to “excuse” terrorist acts, subject organizations that receive government subsidies to a test of allegiance to “the values of the republic,” and increase strictures against polygamy, which is already illegal.

 

The law aimed at curbing Islamist extremism follows a series of terrorist attacks, including one at a basilica in Nice that left three dead and the beheading of a teacher in a suburb of Paris, that have set off a government crackdown that critics have contended is already overly broad, in rare cases sweeping up even children as young as 10.

 

In tilting right, Mr. Macron, a shape-shifting centrist who came out of the Socialist Party, has placed himself largely in step with public opinion. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, pollsters say, much of the French public is demanding protection from a perceived Islamist threat, and from public disorder of the sort seen during the Yellow Vest protests against economic hardship two years ago.

 

But while Mr. Macron has little to lose politically, and almost everything to gain, by moving to the right to keep his nationalist opponents at bay, his latest measures have dismayed even some of his early supporters.

 

Critics have faulted his government for a repressive, stigmatizing tone toward Muslims, perhaps a tenth of France’s population. “Under the pretext of reinforcing republican values, we’re actually serving the opponents of the republic, who have a xenophobic agenda,” said Aurélien Taché, a representative in Parliament who quit Mr. Macron’s party.

 

“This law does nothing to reinforce secularism,” said Mr. Taché, using the French term laïcité. “Those who pretend to want to do that, actually what they actually want is to exclude the Muslims,” said Mr. Taché, who represents a Paris suburb.

 

The law restricting the filming of police officers now threatens to engender even broader criticism because its wording is so open-ended that it has provoked antigovernment demonstrations in Paris and other cities. “Big Macron is Watching You,” read a sign held aloft at a Saturday rally attended by around 10,000 in Paris.

 

The law prescribes a penalty of a year in prison and a fine of some $54,000 for anyone who broadcasts “the face or any other identifying element” of police officers in action if the goal is to “physically or mentally harm” them.

 

Even the European Commission has raised questions, in addition to an outcry from journalists and left-leaning politicians.

 

“An authoritarian regime is installing itself,” thundered Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing France Unbowed party, before Parliament. “The first liberty the citizen should benefit from is the control of those who exercise authority.”

 

Still, in the context of France’s heightened anxiety — which comes after scores of attacks for several years that have left more than 250 people dead — Mr. Macron’s bigger concern is with the right, and Mr. Mélenchon’s diatribe can only serve the president’s purpose.

 

“You’re seeing an evolution of the electorate to the right,” said Gérard Grunberg, a political scientist. “Public opinion is demanding toughness,” said Mr. Grunberg. “Toughness toward Islamists, whoever. There’s definitely been a change,” he said.

 

Mr. Macron’s opposition in 2022 will come either from the far-right former National Front party led by Marine Le Pen or from the mainstream right, neither of which finds any fault with the new laws — both want them to be tougher.

 

The president’s disappointed supporters on the left will have no choice but to vote for Mr. Macron again, especially if his opponent is once again Ms. Le Pen, just as many did in 2017.

 

In an environment of fear and xenophobia after the terrorist killings, few voices have been publicly raised, yet, against the measure on what Mr. Macron describes as Islamism, or against his accompanying efforts to exert state oversight of the activities of imams in France.

 

Representatives of France’s main mosques and Muslim organizations have not publicly raised objections to Mr. Macron’s proposals. There is agreement on the need to curb extremism and put a stop to the influence of foreign countries who send imams to France.

 

In the police bill, civil libertarians have decried what they say is an attempt to stifle what is seen as a major tool in curbing French police violence — a term rejected wholesale by Mr. Macron — in recent years: the filming of the police by citizens, equipped with nothing more than their smartphones.

 

Police unions have been demanding such a measure, and in France these unions, unlike others, often get what they want. Governments have traditionally been afraid to cross them. The police in France are rarely punished for acts of violence.

 

And they have always hated being filmed. Several now-notorious cases of police brutality have come to light as a result of this impromptu filming, including the suffocation death of a bicycle delivery driver earlier this year after he had filmed his own arrest. Incidents of police brutality against Black and North African youth in the suburbs, quasi-endemic according to independent reports, have also been filmed by citizens.

 

On Monday night, citizens filmed the police violently breaking up a migrant encampment in central Paris, harsh scenes which led to an internal police investigation; “shocking” is how even the hard-line interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, characterized them.

 

“So, Mr. Interior Minister, you’ll agree then that these images are actually useful — and you’re the one who wanted to ban them,” wrote Clémentine Autain, a parliamentary representative of France Unbowed, on Twitter.

 

Under the new bill, they might soon be illegal.

 

France’s public citizens’ rights guardian has raised alarm bells, saying that these images are “legitimate and necessary” in a democracy. So have many journalists and academics.

 

“For the last two years, because of these videos, the whole issue of police violence has become a major subject in society, which it was not before,” said David Dufresne, a freelance journalist whose compilation of police violence videos during Yellow Vest protests brought into sharp focus the government’s harsh repression of the movement.

 

“Now they have introduced the idea of intention,” he said. “But what they want to do is stop the introduction of these images.”

 

The measure nonetheless passed easily thanks to Mr. Macron’s large parliamentary majority, smoothed by promises from Mr. Darmanin, who is seen as especially receptive to the French police, that press freedom was not at stake.

 

In the measure on Islam, the muted criticism has focused on an increasing official tendency to single out the country’s large Muslim community for regulation.

 

Originally an initiative against what Mr. Macron himself described as “separatisms,” it was rebaptized as a law to “reinforce republican principles,” in an apparent effort to back away from undertones of stigma.

 

The critics are not fooled, however. “I’m very disappointed by his secularist, authoritarian drift,” said Olivier Roy, one of France’s best-known scholars of Islam. “Teachers are being told to denounce their students. This is unacceptable,” he said.

 

‘‘Every statement against laïcité becomes separatist,” Mr. Roy said, referring to the republic’s guiding precept of secularism, which guarantees freedom of worship but also enforces a strict neutrality of the state on religious matters. “This is very serious. It’s an assault against freedom of expression.”

 

Others warned against potential long-term consequences. “Absurd and counterproductive, and it weakens the republic. Was it really a good idea to alienate 10 percent of the French public?” asked Ayyam Sureau, who heads a refugee aid association in Paris. “They’ve rallied together the moderates and the Islamists,” she said.

 

Mr. Macron himself, in an October speech heralding the initiative, slipped imperceptibly from denunciations of “Islamism,” to decrying the problems of Islam itself, and then back to “Islamism.”

 

“I feel this is wounding for the Muslim community as a whole,” said Ms. Sureau. “This consecrates the separation. I don’t see what’s new apart from stigmatizing the entire community.”

 

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.


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9) Honestie Hodges, Whose Handcuffing Changed Police Policy, Is Dead at 14

Honestie’s handcuffing by the police in Grand Rapids, Mich., caused a national uproar and led to a new law enforcement policy on dealing with youths. Honestie died of Covid-19.

By Glenn Rifkin, Nov. 24, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/obituaries/honestie-hodges-dead-coronavirus.html?surface=most-popular&fellback=false&req_id=442889377&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-15min&imp_id=211890211&action=click&module=Most%20Popular&pgtype=Homepage

Honestie Hodges, in a recent photo. Credit...via Hodges family


Honestie Hodges, who was handcuffed by the police outside her home in Grand Rapids, Mich., when she was 11, a frightening incident that drew outrage and national headlines in 2017, died on Sunday. She was 14.

 

Her death, at the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, was caused by Covid-19, her grandmother Alisa Niemeyer wrote in a post on the website GoFundMe.

 

The incident occurred on Dec. 6, 2017. Honestie had stepped out the back door of her home with her mother and another family member to go to the store when they were confronted by police officers with their guns drawn.

 

“Put your hands on top of your—,” an officer ordered them before he was interrupted by Honestie’s mother screaming, “She is 11 years old, sir!”

 

“Stop yelling!” the officer responded, as recorded by an officer’s body camera. He ordered Honestie to walk backward toward him with her hands up.

 

A second officer grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back and handcuffed her. Honestie shouted, “No, No, No!” pleading with the officers not to place the cuffs on her. The police, who said they had been searching for a 40-year-old woman in connection with a stabbing, removed the handcuffs after several minutes.

 

The incident caused a widespread uproar that led to a soul-searching within the Grand Rapids Police Department. In a news conference, the police chief at the time, David Rahinsky, said that “listening to the 11-year-old’s response makes my stomach turn; it makes me physically nauseous.” He retired in 2019.

 

None of the officers were disciplined because they had not violated any departmental policies, Mr. Rahinsky wrote in a statement at the time. Nonetheless, the department acknowledged that the officers had made a mistake in how they handled the child.

 

By then the police force was already facing criticism for a similar encounter that March in which five innocent teenagers were held at gunpoint.

 

At the time, Honestie, who was Black, spoke out. “I have a question for the Grand Rapids police: If this happened to a white child, if her mother was screaming, ‘She’s 11,’ would you have handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police car?” she was quoted as saying on MLive.com, a Michigan news site.

 

In March 2018, the police department adopted the “Honestie Policy,” which called for using the least restrictive options when dealing with youths. Even so, several more incidents involving the police pointing weapons at children have heightened tensions in Grand Rapids. A local television station, WOOD-TV, reported this summer that Honestie and her family were negotiating with the city to settle a claim filed over the handcuffing episode.

 

Honestie developed severe stomach pains on Nov. 9, her 14th birthday. Taken to the hospital, she tested positive for the new coronavirus and was sent home. But her condition worsened that evening, an ambulance was called, and she was admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit. Over the next few days she received iron and blood transfusions as complications arose. She was placed on a ventilator on Nov. 14. But her condition never improved. Ms. Niemeyer updated the GoFundMe page asking for prayers.

 

Then, on Sunday, Ms. Niemeyer wrote: “It is with an extremely heavy heart that I have to tell you that my beautiful, sassy, smart, loving granddaughter has gone home to be with Jesus.”

 

Ms. Niemeyer had created the GoFundMe page to collect donations for her daughter, Whitney Hodges, who had had to stop working to care for Honestie and her four other children.

 

Lynn Sutfin, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said Honestie was not the youngest person to die of Covid-19 in Michigan.

 

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that Covid-19 deaths among children were rare over all, but that Hispanic and Black children were more likely than their white peers to be hospitalized or admitted to an I.C.U.

 

Ms. Niemeyer told WOOD-TV that Honestie had been “healthy and happy” with no underlying health issues.

 

“She could have been the vice president one day, or maybe the president,” Ms. Niemeyer said. “The world was open to her.”


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10) Governor denies restoring voting rights to parolee Jalil Muntaqim

David Andreatta, November 25, 2020

https://www.wxxinews.org/post/governor-denies-restoring-voting-rights-parolee-jalil-muntaqim
Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, a parolee living in Brighton facing felony charges for attempting to register to vote, has been denied a pardon from the governor restoring his right to cast a ballot that is granted to most parolees, according to the Governor's Office and the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Parolees are not allowed to vote in New York upon release from prison without the pardon.

 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has issued such pardons as a matter of course on a monthly basis since 2018, when he signed an executive order directing the corrections commissioner to submit to him each month a list of every felon newly eligible for parole, with each name to be “given consideration for a conditional pardon that will restore voting rights.”

 

Anyone on the list is eligible for a pardon as long as they are not flagged by law enforcement for any specific concerns. Most parolees receive their pardon, which does not expunge their record, within four to six weeks of their release.

 

A spokesperson for the Governor’s Office said Muntaqim was denied a voting pardon last week.

 

In a notable twist, however, the Department of Corrections listed Muntaqim on its website as having received the pardon. The spokesperson called the listing "a clerical error."

 

The error could be found as recently as Monday on the department’s “Parolee Lookup” page, which provides information on parolees to the public, including their date of birth, parole status, and whether their voting rights have been restored.

 

On the page assigned to Muntaqim, the word “Yes” was shown next to a line that indicates whether a voting pardon has been issued. The agency modified that to “No” late Monday after CITY inquired about Muntaqim’s voting eligibility status.

 

Muntaqim, 69, was released from prison on parole on Oct. 7, after serving nearly 50 years on a pair of first-degree murder convictions in the 1971 shooting deaths of two New York City police officers. He was convicted and served under his given name, Anthony Bottom.

 

About two weeks after his release, the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office charged Muntaqim with tampering with public records and offering a false instrument for filing, both felonies, and a misdemeanor for filing a completed voter registration form with the county Board of Elections.

 

Muntaqim filled out the form the day after his release, before being notified whether he had received the governor’s pardon. He filled out the form using his given name, which he never formally changed after assuming his new name in prison decades ago.

 

The Board of Elections subsequently rejected his registration.

 

A conditional pardon restoring Muntaqim's voting rights would have put a wrinkle into his prosecution, which has gotten the attention of national organizations that advocate for expanded ballot access for formerly incarcerated people.

 

Muntaqim has been arraigned in Brighton Town Court and is scheduled to appear next on Dec. 14.

 

Should he be convicted on the felonies, he would likely be returned to prison. One of the felonies carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison. The other carries a maximum of four years.

 

"This case is just another reminder of the extreme outcome for the underlying act that is being called into question and the extreme level of punitiveness that characterizes American criminal jurisprudence," said Nicole Porter, the director of advocacy at the Sentencing Project, an advocacy group for criminal justice reform.

 

"It is incredibly frustrating that prosecutors are willing to make an example of this man and take away someone's liberty for something like this," Porter said. "I don't know how these prosecutors sleep at night."

 

The United States has a long history of disenfranchising felons, even after they’ve served their time, although a national movement to restore their voting rights is gaining traction. This month, California and Florida overwhelmingly approved measures to re-enfranchise voting rights to parolees.

 

"The point of parole is to encourage people to reintegrate themselves into the community in a healthy way," said Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program at New York University. "We should all want people who are being released from prison and returned to their communities to play a productive role in their communities. That shouldn't be a controversial proposition." 

 

District Attorney Sandra Doorley said in an interview that Muntaqim's case was presented to her as an instance of potential voter fraud and that the facts were straightforward.

 

Reached at home, Muntaqim declined to comment. His lawyer, a public defender, also declined to comment.

 

His mother, Billie Bottom Brown, has called his filing of a voter registration form “a mistake.” She said the form was within a packet of paperwork provided to her son to help him assimilate back into society.

 

Friends of Muntaqim’s said the paperwork was provided by the county’s Department of Human Services, which helps newly released prisoners acclimate. Those packets include everything a former inmate might need — information on Medicaid, food stamps, child care, becoming an organ donor, and a voter registration form.

 

“I don’t think he was trying to game the system” by signing the form, said James Schuler, 52, a youth advocate in Wayne County who has known Muntaqim since they met as inmates at Auburn Correctional Facility in 2000 and considers him a mentor.

 

“One thing he wanted to be more than anything was be a productive member of society,” Schuler said. “They gave him paperwork to do that and he signed.”

 

David Andreatta is CITY’s editor. He can be reached at dandreatta@rochester-citynews.com.



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11) McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

Court filings reveal consultants’ talk of a records purge during the opioid crisis, and shed new light on sales advice given to the billionaire Sackler family and their drug company, Purdue Pharma.

By Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, Nov. 27, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/business/mckinsey-purdue-oxycontin-opioids.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Jeffrey A. Rosen, deputy attorney general, discussed criminal charges last month against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Credit...Yuri Gripas/Reuters

When Purdue Pharma agreed last month to plead guilty to criminal charges involving OxyContin, the Justice Department noted the role an unidentified consulting company had played in driving sales of the addictive painkiller even as public outrage grew over widespread overdoses.

 

Documents released last week in a federal bankruptcy court in New York show that the adviser was McKinsey & Company, the world’s most prestigious consulting firm. The 160 pages include emails and slides revealing new details about McKinsey’s advice to the Sackler family, Purdue’s billionaire owners, and the firm’s now notorious plan to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales at a time when opioid abuse had already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

 

In a 2017 presentation, according to the records, which were filed in court on behalf of multiple state attorneys general, McKinsey laid out several options to shore up sales. One was to give Purdue’s distributors a rebate for every OxyContin overdose attributable to pills they sold.

 

The presentation estimated how many customers of companies including CVS and Anthem might overdose. It projected that in 2019, for example, 2,484 CVS customers would either have an overdose or develop an opioid use disorder. A rebate of $14,810 per “event” meant that Purdue would pay CVS $36.8 million that year.

 

CVS and Anthem have recently been among McKinsey’s biggest clients. Press officers for the two companies said they had never received rebates from Purdue for customers who had overdosed on OxyContin.

 

Though McKinsey has not been charged by the federal government or sued, it began to worry about legal repercussions in 2018, according to the documents. After Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against Purdue, Martin Elling, a leader for McKinsey’s North American pharmaceutical practice, wrote to another senior partner, Arnab Ghatak: “It probably makes sense to have a quick conversation with the risk committee to see if we should be doing anything” other than “eliminating all our documents and emails. Suspect not but as things get tougher there someone might turn to us.”

 

Mr. Ghatak, who also advised Purdue, replied: “Thanks for the heads up. Will do.”

 

It is not known whether consultants at the firm went on to destroy any records.

 

The two men were among the highest-ranking consultants at McKinsey. Five years earlier, the documents show, they emailed colleagues about a meeting in which McKinsey persuaded the Sacklers to aggressively market OxyContin.

 

The meeting “went very well — the room was filled with only family, including the elder statesman Dr. Raymond,” wrote Mr. Ghatak, referring to Purdue’s co-founder, the physician Raymond Sackler, who would die in 2017.

 

Mr. Elling concurred. “By the end of the meeting,” he wrote, “the findings were crystal clear to everyone and they gave a ringing endorsement of moving forward fast.”

 

McKinsey’s plan was accepted, even though Russell Gasdia, then Purdue’s vice president of sales and marketing, questioned the firm’s approach, writing Mr. Ghatak the night before the meeting to say that he had real concerns “on the need to turbocharge sales” of OxyContin.

 

Another Purdue executive, David Lundie, agreed with the strategy, however. Mr. Lundie said the proposal would catch the Sackler family’s attention, according to the documents. It did.

 

By 2017, Purdue’s chief executive, Craig Landau, wrote that the crisis was caused by “too many Rxs being written” at “too high a dose” and “for too long.” The drugs, he said, were being prescribed “for conditions that often don’t require them” by physicians who lacked “the requisite training in how to use them appropriately.”

 

When McKinsey was later called on to “disassemble” the aggressive sales campaign, according to the court filings, Mr. Landau was quoted as saying that it was something “we should have done five years ago.”

 

A press officer for McKinsey on Wednesday said the firm had been “cooperating fully with the opioid-related investigations” and had announced in 2019 that it “would not advise any clients worldwide on opioid-specific business.”

 

In a statement last month, the Sacklers said that family members “who served on Purdue’s board of directors acted ethically and lawfully.”

 

McKinsey’s involvement in the opioid crisis came to light early last year, with the release of documents from Massachusetts, which is among the states suing Purdue. Those records show that McKinsey was helping Purdue find a way “to counter the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed” from OxyContin.

 

On Tuesday, Purdue pleaded guilty to criminal charges, including defrauding federal health agencies and paying illegal kickbacks to doctors. The company also faces roughly $8.3 billion in penalties. As part of the settlement, members of the Sackler family will pay $225 million in civil penalties.

 

In a statement issued after the announcement of the settlement in October, Purdue said it “deeply regrets and accepts responsibility” for misconduct involving its marketing of OxyContin.

 

The federal settlement with Purdue comes as states and municipalities seek compensation from opioid makers for helping fuel a health crisis that has killed more than 450,000 Americans since 1999. Purdue is now seeking bankruptcy protection, as are other manufacturers.

 

“This is the banality of evil, M.B.A. edition,” Anand Giridharadas, a former McKinsey consultant who reviewed the documents, said of the firm’s work with Purdue. “They knew what was going on. And they found a way to look past it, through it, around it, so as to answer the only questions they cared about: how to make the client money and, when the walls closed in, how to protect themselves.”

 

Mr. Giridharadas is a New York Times contributor who wrote a 2018 book that examined the power of elites, including those at McKinsey, for how they evade responsibility for social harm.

 

In recent years, McKinsey has attracted criticism and unwanted attention for its dealings around the world, including in authoritarian countries such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Its business in South Africa was decimated after McKinsey worked with companies tied to a corruption scandal that led to the ouster of the country’s president. In the United States, McKinsey worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Trump, proposing ways to cut spending on food and housing for detainees.

 

The documents released last week detail McKinsey’s work with Purdue going back to 2008, the year after the drugmaker pleaded guilty to misleading regulators. The Food and Drug Administration had previously told Purdue that OxyContin would face sales restrictions and that doctors prescribing it would require specialized training.

 

The Sackler family saw those rules as a threat and, joining with McKinsey, made a plan to “band together” with other opioid makers to push back, according to one email. McKinsey prepped Purdue executives for a vital meeting before an F.D.A. advisory committee reviewing its proposed reformulation of OxyContin to make it less prone to abuse. The reformulation went on the market in 2010.

 

McKinsey put together briefing materials that anticipated questions Purdue would receive. One possible question: “Who at Purdue takes personal responsibility for these deaths?”

 

The proposed answer: “We all feel responsible.”

 

Dr. Richard Sackler, now the family patriarch, was pleased with the preparations, writing to his daughter in a January 2009 email: “Marianna, I am writing to tell you how impressed I was by the preparation for the F.D.A. meeting. Both the method and process as well as the content was excellent and a major departure from efforts like this in the past.”

 

Purdue’s F.D.A. meeting appeared to be at least partly successful. “Even to this day, the F.D.A. has never required specialized training for OxyContin prescribers,” wrote the state lawyers who filed the documents last week.


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12) Police Body Cameras Cited as ‘Powerful Tool’ Against Stop-and-Frisk Abuses

City police officers who were assigned body cameras documented more stops than officers who did not wear the devices during a yearlong pilot program.

"Darius Charney, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of the lead plaintiffs’ lawyers in the stop-and-frisk case, said the New York study’s key findings suggest that the problems at the heart of the case — underreporting and racial bias — are much larger than previously known."

By Ashley Southall, Nov. 30, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/nyregion/nypd-body-cameras.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=New%20York
Body camera video of New York police officers arresting a man on a boardwalk. A new report says that the presence of body cameras can help satisfy the public’s expectation to see video of controversial encounters and judge for themselves. Credit...New York Police Department, via Associated Press

Police body cameras can help reduce the kind of bogus stops that have fueled accusations of racial bias and harassment against police officers in New York City, according to a long-awaited report released Monday.

 

Officers who wore the devices reported almost 40 percent more stops than officers who did not, the report found, suggesting that body cameras could compel officers to provide a more accurate accounting of their pedestrian stops under the department policy known as stop-and-frisk.

 

Peter Zimroth, the federal monitor who prepared the report and is guiding changes to the stop-and-frisk policy, attributed the increase in documented stops to officers being more inclined to record their actions on official paperwork knowing that they were recorded and could be reviewed. Underreporting has hindered court-ordered reform efforts for years, but the report suggests that the cameras are key to understanding the scope of the problem and fixing it.

 

While body cameras are not a cure-all for policing problems, Mr. Zimroth said in the report, their ability to illuminate police encounters can be “a powerful tool for increasing transparency and accountability for officers, the public and for police officials.”

 

Underscoring critics’ claims that the stop-and-frisk policy still disproportionately affects people of color, the report found that encounters were significantly more likely to involve Black or Hispanic people. They were also more likely to be deemed unlawful by supervisors reviewing the resulting video.

 

Darius Charney, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of the lead plaintiffs’ lawyers in the stop-and-frisk case, said the New York study’s key findings suggest that the problems at the heart of the case — underreporting and racial bias — are much larger than previously known.

 

“Those two things together raise a red flag for me,” he said in an interview. “That would suggest that the stop data is actually hiding the true extent of the disparities and the true extent of the racial bias in stops.”

 

Mr. Charney said that he was disappointed that the monitor did not provide policy recommendations or dive deeper into the implication that the underreporting issue could be racially skewed.

 

Mr. Zimroth, who does not grant interviews, was appointed as a monitor by a federal judge who declared the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional in 2013. The study was designed to assess the risks and benefits of outfitting the city’s entire police force with body cameras, but the city went ahead with a departmentwide rollout before the yearlong pilot program started in April 2017.

 

 Alfred J. Baker, a police spokesman, said the department welcomed the report, but it reflected outdated practices. Some 22,000 of the roughly 35,000 officers in the department wear the cameras, including all officers on patrol and in specialized units.

 

“The NYPD has long since deployed body-worn cameras for its entire patrol force to realize the benefits of increased transparency and better compliance by officers with the NYPD’s policies and procedures, including those relating to street stops,” he said.

 

The Police Department joined other law enforcement agencies in rapidly adopting the devices after cellphone video shed light on the police killings of Black men like Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York, and ignited nationwide unrest and calls for greater accountability for officers.

 

Some law enforcement agencies around the country, however, have stopped using the devices, citing the exorbitant costs of storing the resulting video footage and the lack of proof of their effectiveness.

 

Police body cameras have generated more than eight million videos since they were adopted in New York City, officials said last year, and officers record about 130,000 videos each week, according to the monitor. The devices are routinely used by the police, prosecutors and the city’s civilian police watchdog agency to investigate crimes and review officer conduct in the line of duty.

 

The vast majority of the footage is shielded from the public, but police have released footage from incidents like fatal shootings to show why they believe officers’ actions were justified. Legal activists have also used the video to push for changes in department policies and procedures, like removing officers from calls dealing with people in mental or emotional crisis.

 

The Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates accusations of police misconduct filed by civilians, has said that body-camera footage increases the likelihood that its investigators will be able to complete their investigations and substantiate claims against officers.

 

Mr. Zimroth said his study fills a research deficit and provides critical guidance to police officials weighing whether to adopt or keep body camera programs.

 

The report adds to a small body of research that has produced mixed findings on the benefits and limitations of body cameras. One study of 2,200 officers in Washington, D.C., found that body cameras did not have a meaningful effect on officers’ behavior, as measured by civilian complaints and uses of force.

 

The debate over the policy came to a head in New York in 2013, when Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled the Police Department used the stops to target Black and Hispanic people without valid legal reason, in violation of the Constitution. The judge appointed Mr. Zimroth to oversee changes designed to bring the policy in line with the Constitution, including a pilot study of whether body cameras provided any remedial benefits.

 

Since then, stops have plummeted. Officers conducted 13,459 stops last year, down from 191,851 stops in 2013. At the peak of stop-and-frisk in 2011, officers made 685,724 stops.

 

But Mr. Zimroth has repeatedly raised concerns about officers failing to file official paperwork documenting the stops, which allow officers to detain and question people who they reasonably suspect are involved in criminal activity.

 

In a recent report, the monitor said that 30 percent of stops conducted in 2019 were not reported by officers. Those who did fill out department paperwork failed to articulate a sufficient legal reason for 21 percent of the 1,237 stops that were audited last year.

 

During the pilot study, Mr. Zimroth found that the number of stops reported by officers wearing cameras rose 38.8 percent.

 

The justifications given by officers who reported stops while wearing cameras were more likely to be judged as unlawful compared with those given by officers who did not use the devices. The trend was also true for stops that led to subsequent police actions like frisks, searches and arrests.

 

The New York study involved more than 1,200 uniformed and plainclothes officers working the 3 p.m. to midnight shift in 40 precincts. The precincts were paired based on their similar levels of enforcement activity, civilian complaints and demographics of officers and neighborhoods. One precinct in each pair was part of the treatment group assigned to wear body cameras, while the other precinct was part of the control group that did not use the devices.

 

The study found that officers wearing body cameras drew 21 percent fewer complaints than officers who did not wear them, suggesting that both parties — officer and civilian — were mindful of their behavior when the devices were present.

 

But the devices had no significant effect on arrests, officers’ use of force, reporting of crimes and domestic disputes, or public attitudes toward the police, according to the monitor’s report.

 

“At the very least,” Mr. Zimroth said, the presence of body cameras helps to satisfy the public’s expectation to see video of controversial encounters and judge for themselves. The devices also signal that mechanisms exist to hold officers responsible for misconduct, and their use can help improve public attitudes about the legitimacy of police actions, he said.

 

“Given the demonstrated benefits and absence of harmful outcomes, this study supports not only the use of body-worn cameras by the NYPD, but their use by other departments as well,” he concluded.


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Posted by: Bonnie Weinstein <bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com>

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