Red SilverJ: Why Racists Are Glad Dr. Sebi Is DEAD: Curing AIDS Since 84!

RedSilverJ

The [unaccountable] NYPD's Civil Forfeiture System Has Taken Millions From Low-Income Non-White New Yorkers

From [HERE] Just how common, and exactly how much money the NYPD is currently taking from low-income New Yorkers, is the basis of a lawsuit filed last week against the NYPD by the Bronx Defenders, alleging effective denial of the public defender’s FOIL requests on how much money the NYPD is seizing from New Yorkers and under what specific justification it's doing so. After years of stonewalling by the NYPD, it finally released to the Bronx Defenders just a single year’s worth of property clerk’s data, revealing that it had more than $68 million in seized cash on hand, only $6.5 million of which had been legally forfeited that year. The department still gave no specific accounting of where the money came from or through which process it was taken.

Since 2014, there have been multiple efforts made to try to rein in the NYPD’s cash grabs — a bill introduced last year by Bronx councilman Ritchie Torres would mandate that the NYPD provide a full accounting of the items it seizes from those it arrests, how much money it takes in from them, and where, exactly, that money goes. That legislation is scheduled to come to a vote this fall, but considering the de Blasio administration’s hesitance to legislate any police reform whatsoever, it might never see the light of day. A separate lawsuit by the Bronx Defenders did find some success, however. A federal case against the Bronx district attorney is now on hold after the D.A. agreed to streamline its property release process, just one of a series of hurdles that people have to go through to retrieve their money or possessions.

Breaking the story in 2014, I wrote about how, for decades, the NYPD has been taking the money and possessions of anyone it arrests, or even stops on the street, under the legal pretense of civil forfeiture. The idea of seizing money or goods during an arrest originally became popular in the 1970s to take money and yachts out of the hands of drug dealers, even if they ended up beating the case anyway. Law enforcement was able to make a case against the money — possible criminals would have to prove exactly how they came to possess such amounts. Now, however, the NYPD uses the practice primarily to take money and property from the pockets of those who can least afford to get it back. Almost all of the time, the NYPD and the district attorney decline to actually pursue any type of forfeiture after they’ve seized it during an arrest. Typically, the NYPD never had a reason to take the money in the first place, and certainly not a good enough reason to hold up in court. But the process of getting your money back from the NYPD’s convoluted and arcane bureaucracy, even if you were never charged with a crime, can be so labor-intensive and maddening that many people give up.

“Because you’re not provided with a lawyer for this type of case, almost everyone tries to navigate it pro se,” said Adam Shoop, an attorney with the Bronx Defenders, stressing that those who can afford lawyers are the most likely to be able to retrieve their cash. [MORE]

Palast: The Hidden Billionaires behind Trump The Foreclosure King, The Three-Headed Dog from Hell and Goldman Sachs

Greg Palast

Trump desperately needs to get his tiny hands on some cash to fund his presidential campaign. On TV, Trump may play the role of a gazillionaire, but the reality of his reality TV persona is that it’s all paid for with other people’s money. His self-funding pledge is going the way of all Trump’s promises — down the gilded crapper. This week on The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: Election Crimes Bulletin, we focus on where and how Trump is going to get his campaign funds — and the deal he’s made with Wall Street’s devils in order to get it. [MORE]

White Man who shot up "Draw Muhammad" event was urged to "tear up Texas" by undercover FBI agent

BlackListted News

Elton Simpson is one of the two men who fired assault rifles at people gathered for a "Draw Muhammad" event in Garland, Texas before being shot to death by an off-duty police officer; in the weeks leading up to the attack, Simpson had corresponded with an undercover FBI agent who urged him to "Tear up Texas." When a Daily Beast reporter phoned the FBI to ask about the message, the FBI spokeswoman Carol Cratty hung up on her. This is the latest in a string of domestic terror incidents that involved undercover agents and informants who provided encouragement, plans, and even weapons to would-be terrorists.

Newly released American drone policy explains how US citizens, other targets can be chosen

CLG

The Obama administration has released a previously secret 18-page policy guidance document [President Policy Guidance, or PPG] that lays out how potential drone targets may be chosen and approved and the President's role in the decision-making process...If the target is a US citizen or someone living in the US, or if there is not unanimous agreement among the President's key national security officials regarding the nomination of the target, it will be submitted to the President for a decision. However, the head of the nominating agency themselves can approve lethal action against a proposed individual if all of the major national security officials unanimously agree it should be undertaken, but the President has to be apprised of the decision.

JP Morgan Accused of Ripping off Inmates

Bloomberg

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s contract to provide debit cards to inmates released from federal prison may have backfired after a former convict raised a ruckus.

The bank agreed to pay a total of $446,822 to thousands of ex-prisoners to settle a class-action suit claiming JPMorgan ripped them off with $10 fees to withdraw money from a teller window and $2 charges for using non-network ATMs, according to a filing on Monday in federal court in Philadelphia.

JPMorgan’s contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons was a scheme “to exploit one of the most vulnerable groups imaginable -- releasees from federal corrections facilities,” according to the complaint. “Every cent counts for federal releasees who are coming out of prison without an immediate means of income.”

The New York-based bank also agreed to pay as much as $250,000 in plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees and costs, the filing said. The relatively small payout to inmates, which almost 50,000 ex-cons qualify to share in, doesn’t faze the lead plaintiff in the case, 33-year-old Philadelphia artist Jesse Krimes.

Principle and Precedent

“It’s about the principle of the matter, and setting a precedent for future litigation against similar predatory practices,” said Krimes, who made artwork from prison-issued sheets and soap while serving six years after pleading guilty to distributing cocaine. (The accord comes just in time for a solo exhibition in New York starting Aug. 4.)

“I left prison with $120,” an unidentified former inmate said in the complaint. “Because of the fees, I was only able to use about $70 of it.” [MORE]

lawcropping basics - These broke lawyers don’t get paid enough; at least pay them on time

A BUNCH OF LAWYERS complaining about not getting paid promptly ordinarily wouldn’t generate a whole lot of public sympathy. But the way the state treats Victoria Bonilla and about 3,000 other attorneys like her is practically criminal.

For nearly a quarter century, Bonilla has carved out time from her practice to act as a bar advocate — a private lawyer appointed by the state to represent the indigent in Massachusetts’ courts. The work is “demanding,” she says, but hugely gratifying. It’s also far from lucrative. She earns $50 or $60 an hour, depending on whether a case is heard in district or superior court, but there’s a limit of eight billable hours a day, even when she logs 10 or 12. If it takes all morning for a docket number to be called, too bad — the state won’t pay for more than an hour of waiting. Hours spent traveling don’t count either, and if she needs legal secretarial assistance, it comes out of her own pocket.

Bonilla and other bar advocates say they accept those restrictions (and more). After all, no one forces them to take on the cases of men, women, and children in desperate straits. They shouldn’t, however, have to put up with what has become an annual fabricated crisis on Beacon Hill. As the fiscal year nears its end on June 30, the state invariably runs out of money to pay for services bar advocates already have rendered, forcing them to go weeks without compensation. After a series of unnecessary procedural delays, Governor Charlie Baker late last month signed off on supplemental funding to replenish the budget. The money, about $14.2 million, was dispersed through the Committee for Public Counsel Services, a state agency charged with overseeing bar advocates, as well as a smaller number of underpaid public defenders who are on staff. Bonilla only recently received her tardy check — $2,664 that covered late April through June. Other bar advocates, many of whom were waiting for much more, also just got paid. “We still have mortgages,” says Bonilla. “Life goes on. It becomes an issue.”

In an e-mail after the supplemental budget was approved, the committee told the attorneys it understood the “frustration and concern this delay has caused for many of you.” But empathy doesn’t count for anything on a credit card statement. The state owes it to bar advocates to more accurately estimate how much money will be needed to run the program annually, instead of knowingly underfunding it year after year. Beyond that, the Committee for Public Counsel Services ought to be able to anticipate when a shortfall might be looming, long before it’s a fiscal emergency. Baker says a $30 million supplemental budget already has been filed for the current fiscal year to ensure that attorneys receive timely payments. That’s encouraging, but the measure requires approval by the Legislature when it convenes for a new session in 2017, so don’t bank on it yet.

Understandably, some lawyers long ago grew frustrated with the state’s payment system and opted out of taking on cases as bar advocates. Fortunately, there are many others who continue to represent people — guilty and innocent — who can’t afford to hire someone to stand up for them in front of a judge. Bar advocates perform an important and often thankless service. They help uphold basic constitutional rights. The state shouldn’t make it any more difficult for them to do so. [MORE]

Farrakhan on Hillary Clinton: 'That's a Wicked Woman"

Yale sets up committee to rename buildings deemed racist, offensive

Yale.edu

Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming

In recent years, and with increasing intensity during the past year, a wide-ranging conversation has taken place at Yale and elsewhere about the role of naming and renaming in acknowledging and confronting our history. Although decisions at Yale and other universities have been widely publicized, the issue is not limited to college campuses: there has been discussion and debate about renaming monuments, buildings, counties, streets, and other public spaces around the country and around the world.

Charge

The charge of the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming is to articulate a set of principles that can guide Yale in decisions about whether to remove a historical name from a building or other prominent structure or space on campus—principles that are enduring rather than specific to particular controversies. The committee will review the experience both at Yale and in other institutions and communities that have addressed the question of renaming. In doing so, it will consult with experts, communicate and coordinate with other universities that are addressing similar issues, and collaborate with other groups at Yale that have been charged with related work, such as the Committee on Art in Public Spaces. After the committee's recommendations have been articulated, approved, and disseminated, Yale will be able to apply these principles to requests for the removal of a name. 

Community Input

The committee will collect input from the Yale community and review input already received on this topic during the conversations of the past year. To send an email to the members of the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming, follow the "Contact the Committee" link at right.

White L.A. Sheriff to Face Trial in Corruption Case [alleged scheme involved destruction of records, cover-ups, interference with a grand jury investigation, tampering with witnesses, and the threatening of an FBI agent]

Courthouse News

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca on Monday withdrew a guilty plea of lying to federal investigators, a decision that means he will face a trial and potential obstruction of justice charges.

     Baca returned to U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson's courtroom after the judge ruled two weeks ago that a six-month sentence would be too lenient for the official's alleged part in a conspiracy to obstruct an investigation into jailhouse abuses.

     After Baca's attorney Michael Zweiback made clear that his client would not accept the option of a harsher sentence, Anderson asked Baca at a brief Monday afternoon hearing if he wanted to withdraw his plea.

     "Yes, your honor," said Baca, who stood before the judge wearing a gray pin-striped suit and pink tie.

     Outside the courthouse, Baca told reporters that he had entered the plea to "avoid a lengthy and expensive trial and to minimize the court drama associated with this case."

     "I have made this decision due to the untruthful comments about my actions made by the court and the U.S. Attorney's Office that are contradicted by the evidence in this case," Baca said.

          At his sentencing hearing two weeks ago, Anderson had said six months would not account for Baca's culpability in a scheme that had involved the destruction of records, cover-ups, interference with a grand jury investigation, tampering with witnesses, and the threatening of an FBI agent.

     In April, former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka was convicted as the ringleader of a conspiracy to hide informant Anthony Brown within the jail system after the discovery of an FBI phone in his cell. Tanaka was sentenced to five years in June.

     Prosecutors said that Baca, who entered his plea agreement in February, "knowingly and willfully" made false statements to investigators during an interview in April 2013.

     After jailers discovered the phone and concluded that Brown was cooperating with the FBI, Baca ordered Brown isolated from the rest of the jail population, prosecutors said.

     In August 2011, Baca asked Tanaka to investigate how the phone had ended up with the inmate.

     The following month, Baca allegedly instructed officials to "do everything but put handcuffs" on FBI agent Leah Marx, who was investigating the case.

     In an infamous videotaped encounter, two Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau officers, Sgt. Scott Craig and Sgt. Maricela Long, threatened Marx — now known as Leah Tanner — outside her apartment complex after she returned home from work on Sept. 26, 2011.

     Craig told Tanner she was the "named suspect in a felony complaint" and said he was "in the process of swearing out a declaration for an arrest warrant."

     Anderson set a trial date for Sept. 20, 2016, at 8:30 a.m.

     Zweiback indicated that he would seek a continuance and told reporters outside the courtroom that he expected a superseding indictment to include similar obstruction of justice charges that were proven against Tanaka, though he went to pains to explain that he believes the cases are quite different.

Exonerated Black Man John Thompson Asks Department of Justice to Investigate White New Orleans Prosecutors

Innocence Project 

Exoneree and founder of Innocence Network project Resurrection After Exoneration John Thompson will file a formal complaint today asking the Department of Justice to investigate alleged incidents of prosecutorial misconduct during the tenure of former Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick.

Thompson will ask the department’s Civil Rights Division to review all cases handled by former Assistant District Attorney James Williams, one of the prosecutors who sentenced Thompson to death in 1985 for a murder he did not commit.

Two people convicted under Williams, including Thompson, were later exonerated and two others had their sentences commuted. Thompson said in a statement that

prosecutorial misconduct was systemic at the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office for years and that other innocent people languish in prisons as a result.

“That same misconduct obviously didn’t stop at our cases,” Thompson said in the statement. “We were just lucky enough to have lawyers to prove it.”

Read the Times-Picayune story here.

Learn more about John Thompson’s case here.

Right-Wing Media Outraged That Border Patrol Won’t Arrest Immigrants In Schools, Churches, And Hospitals

Media Matters

Right-wing media attacked the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s “sensitive location” policy, which forbids border patrol officers from surveilling and arresting immigrants in locations such as churches, hospitals, and schools, without prior authorization as “lawlessness” and accused the agency of “advising” illegal immigrants on how to avoid arrest.

U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement Enacts “Sensitive Locations Policy”

U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement Announces Policy. In a 2011 memorandum to field officers, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) detailed its sensitive locations policy, which forbade customs officers from conducting arrests, interviews, searches, and surveillance in “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals, churches and public protests. From the memorandum:

The enforcement actions covered by this policy are (1) arrests; (2) interviews; (3) searches; and (4) for purposes of immigration enforcement only, surveillance. Actions not covered by this policy include actions such as obtaining records. documents and similar materials from officials or employees, providing notice to officials or employees, serving subpoenas, engaging in Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) compliance and certification visits. or participating in official functions or community meetings.

The sensitive locations covered by this policy include. but are not limited to, the following:

• schools (including pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools, post-secondary schools up to and including colleges and universities, and other institutions of learning such as vocational or trade schools);

• hospitals;

• churches, synagogues, mosques or other institutions of worship, such as buildings rented for the purpose of religious services;

• the site of a funeral, wedding, or other public religious ceremony; and

• a site during the occurrence of a public demonstration, such as a march, rally or parade. [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 10/24/11]

“Absolute Lawlessness”: Right-Wing Media Freak Over Policy

Fox’s Trish Regan Reports Illegal Immigrants Evading Arrest Are “Getting Help” From Border Patrol. Fox host Trish Regan and guest Paul Babeu reported that undocumented immigrants hiding from police are “getting help from the U.S. Border Patrol.” Regan and Babeu criticized Obama for the creation of the sensitive locations policy and for “telling everyone where they are”:

TRISH REGAN (HOST): Illegal immigrants hoping to avoid capture are now getting help from the U.S. Border Patrol? An advocacy advisory on the agency's own website offers a whole list of places that are off-limits for agents to search. Those include schools, churches, hospitals, and protests. It's all part of the Department of Homeland Security's sensitive locations policy and sheriff Paul Babeu from Pinal County, Arizona, says you know what? It's just plain old ridiculous. Sheriff, good to see you.

PAUL BABEU: Good to see you.

REGAN: What bothers you the most about all this?

BABEU: This continues the march of President Obama for absolute lawlessness. Not only there's a lack of enforcement or consequences for law, now he's provided actual sanctuaries throughout the entire country, not just cities, throughout the entire country, of no-go places for us in law enforcement to enforce the law. Our heroes in the border patrol.

REGAN: He’s not only putting them out there, he's telling everyone where they are as well.

BABEU: Absolutely.

REGAN: So if you’re an illegal immigrant you know you can go to X, Y, or Z for shelter. [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 8/2/16]

Sean Hannity: Government Is “Actually Advising” Illegal Immigrants Where To Cross. Sean Hannity asked his guest Newt Gingrich if Trump should focus on his “hallmark issues” like border security and said that the U.S. Border Protection Agency was “advertising safe zones where illegals” can enter the United States:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Would it be good advice for Donald Trump to focus in these remaining 97 days until Election Day on jobs, the economy, protecting the homeland, and, by the way, other issues that have become the hallmark of his campaign, like border security, et cetera. I don’t know if you know this -- story out today that U.S. Border Protection Agency is advertising safe zones where illegals can cross. We’re actually advising them where to cross. And all this talk about taking in refugees, did you know that this year alone Obama took in 6,877 Syrian refugees, 6,834 were either Sunni, Shia, or just generic Muslim, and we seem to already be discriminating against Syrians if they are Christian, because as we know and we’ve been chronicling, there’s been genocide against Christians and the world barely pays attention to it.

NEWT GINGRICH: Exactly. That’s why you have to recognize -- and the fact that they just announced that they’re going to give 18 months of sanctuary to 8,700 Syrian refugees. You have to ask yourself the question, why is it that they're willing to risk American lives on behalf of people about whom we know nothing? [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 8/2/16]

Fox News Reports Obama Administration Is Giving Illegal Immigrants “Advice” On “How To Avoid Being Caught.” Bret Baier reported that the Obama administration’s border enforcement website offered advice “to illegal immigrants about how to avoid being caught,” citing the sensitive locations policy that bars officers from “interviewing, searching or arresting” suspects in places such as churches and schools:

BRET BAIER (HOST): Critics are calling the Obama administration’s approach to border enforcement schizophrenic over the advice on the border patrol's own website to illegal immigrants about how to avoid being caught. It has to do with “safe zones,” where agents are barred from interviewing, searching ,or arresting suspected illegal immigrants. Such places as schools, churches and medical treatment facilities are listed on that website. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 8/2/16]

Policy Provides Officers Means Of Enforcement And Enhances “Public Understanding And Trust”

Sensitive Locations Policy Provides Exceptions And Serves Public Purpose. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection website states a customs officer may carry out enforcement actions at sensitive locations if he receives prior approval from a supervisor or faces “exigent circumstances necessitating immediate action.” The department stated the sensitive location policy is “meant to ensure that ICE and CBP officers and agents exercise sound judgment” and to “ensure that people seeking to participate in activities or utilize services provided at any sensitive location are free to do so, without fear or hesitation.” From the department website:

The policies provide that enforcement actions at or focused on sensitive locations such as schools, places of worship, and hospitals should generally be avoided, and that such actions may only take place when (a) prior approval is obtained from an appropriate supervisory official, or (b) there are exigent circumstances necessitating immediate action without supervisor approval. The policies are meant to ensure that ICE and CBP officers and agents exercise sound judgment when enforcing federal law at or focused on sensitive locations, to enhance the public understanding and trust, and to ensure that people seeking to participate in activities or utilize services provided at any sensitive location are free to do so, without fear or hesitation.

[...]

ICE and CBP officers may carry out an enforcement action at a sensitive location without prior approval from a supervisor in exigent circumstances related to national security, terrorism, or public safety, or where there is an imminent risk of destruction of evidence material to an ongoing criminal case. [U.S. Customs and Border Protection, accessed 8/2/16

Immigration Agents Don’t Follow The Law When It Comes To Asylum Seekers

ThinkProgress

A Bangladeshi asylum seeker who arrived at the southern U.S. border was turned away after a border agent told him to seek asylum in Mexico. Another Central American asylum seeker was told by an immigration agent that he would be deported, regardless of whether he signed a statement testifying that he would be at risk of persecution or torture if he was returned to his country. And yet a third immigrant was told that it would be “better if you just ask to be deported” or “we’re going to throw you out.”

These anecdotes come from a new report by a U.S. government commission that makes federal policy recommendations, which documented the inconsistent experiences with immigration agents that asylum seekers and refugees encountered when they claimed a credible fear of being returned to their home countries and were instead put into an expedited removal process from the United States.

In the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report — which follows up on a two-volume report released more than ten years ago — researchers found that these immigrants continue to confront barriers found in the 2005 report, including agents who did not refer immigrants to other agencies when they expressed a fear of being returned, openly skeptical or hostile agents, and a lack of official interpreters.

Asylum seekers and refugee have the legal right to ask for humanitarian relief either at the border or within the United States if they can prove that they have a valid reason to stay in the country. Under U.S. law, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have to document that an asylum seeker or refugee expressed fear, then send that person’s file to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency, which is responsible for assessing the fear claim, known as a credible fear determination. But researchers found that initial interviewers sometimes sent immigrants home without sending their files on to the proper immigration agencies. [MORE]

Election Rigged for HRC

4th Media

Most glimpses into past history provide insights on what is taking place in the real time current society. When applied to the realm of politics and raw power, the established order gets their way.

Ignoring the will of the people is so evident that only a dedicated flunky for maintaining the false narrative of democratic rule would deny the reality of the illicit system.

Allowing voters to actually elect their leaders is a risk that the masters of the world order will not tolerate.

Even the first Trilateral Commission President admits the truth in 2016: 2016: The Year Americans Found out Our Elections Are Rigged.

“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.” — Former President Jimmy Carter

Do not be naïve. Presidential elections in America have rarely been a reflection of populist sentiment under – one person one vote legitimacy. Now that computerized selections have become the norm, Voter Fraud Inevitable from Digital Elections becomes the primary method of stealing elections.

A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America by Victoria Collier provides some crucial lessons on how elections really work.

1. If there is any conceivable way to tamper with or rig an election — someone will attempt it. This includes average citizens as well as officials charged with protecting the process.

2. Every voting system is open to tampering, but paper ballots counted in public are the easiest system to protect and monitor. (It’s estimated that only 2% of Americans still vote on a hand-counted paper ballot).

3. Secret vote counting is illegal. Remember: counting them faster is not a justification for counting them secretly.

4. When machines began to take over our vote counting systems, election rigging became an exciting new national industry.

5. Lever machines were the first to appear, and they were riggable in a number of ways. One could rig the lever machine itself, or, much more easily, the electronic scanning machines that counted the ballots. (See the Votescam video for footage of ballot rigging under the supervision of both parties and the Dade County Election Supervisor).

6. Computerized voting machines are the easiest to rig. Their software is not open to public scrutiny, or the scrutiny of Election Supervisors (rendering their title meaningless). There are nearly infinite ways to program the machines to count votes fraudulently. Since they are accessible by modem, they can be controlled from a remote, centralized location.

7. Voting machine companies operate with no federal oversight, certification process, standards or restrictions. Controlling members of some of the most powerful voting machine corporations are convicted criminals, some are politicians with obvious conflicts of interests, others are not even American citizens. Just two companies –Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Diebold Voting Systems — now control about 80% of the vote count in the U.S.

8. Vote fraud on a statewide and national scale is not possible without the complicity of (among others) corrupt Election Supervisors, Secretaries of State, Judges, voting machine corporations, and top officials of the major media outlets.

9. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have been complicit in vote rigging for decades, to their mutual benefit. Vote rigging is NOT a partisan issue (though recent evidence suggests Republicans might be gaining the upper hand in the race to control our elections).

10. The corporate major media networks play a vital role in perpetrating and covering up vote fraud. Media methods of vote rigging are explored in the Votescam book, including the role of Voter News Service (VNS). (VNS was a consortium of all the major media outlets. It recently closed up shop and scurried off into the shadows, but for decades, under two different corporate names, it controlled the compilation and dissemination of national vote totals, with the power to alter the reported results. The networks have actually not competed for vote totals, as they claim to have done, since 1965. They got all their numbers from VNS, which operated behind an iron curtain of secrecy. Any questions regarding their operation were met with the ubiquitous response: “This is not a proper area of inquiry.” Most people erroneously thought they were simply a polling organization, though no evidence of their supposedly massive polling operation could be found by investigators). See my interview with Bill Headline, former head of VNS, at http://www.votescam.com/articles.php

11. Election Day media polls are untrustworthy at best, and very likely fabricated to influence voter decisions and to support phony vote results.

White Chicago Cop's credibility questioned by judges in at least 13 cases, defense attorneys told

Chicago Tribune 

Cook County prosecutors recently notified defense lawyers in at least 10 criminal cases that a judge found the court testimony of a veteran Chicago police officer to be false, a determination about the officer's credibility that could affect the cases as they move to trial.

The state's attorney's office also has told defense lawyers in at least three other cases that another Cook County judge has cast doubt on testimony from two other police officers, raising questions about those cases as well.

Prosecutors notified the lawyers through a type of court filing commonly called a disclosure notice, and followed a Chicago Tribune investigation in May that found Chicago police were rarely punished when a judge found they had testified falsely or in a way that raised questions about their credibility.

The state's attorney's office, in fact, had done nothing about any of the officers' testimony until the Tribune investigation raised questions about the cases. The office then issued the disclosure notices, which the Tribune obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. [MORE]

The Delaware Supreme Court struck down the state’s death-penalty statute

The Atlantic

The Delaware Supreme Court struck down the state’s death-penalty statute Tuesday, ruling that the latitude it granted to judges during the sentencing phase violated the Sixth Amendment.

Most high-profile death-penalty cases revolve around the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. But Rauf v. Delaware instead centers on the Sixth Amendment and the right to a jury it protects.

States with the death penalty generally require a jury to weigh aggravating and mitigating circumstances before sentencing a defendant to life imprisonment or death. At the start of 2016, three states—Alabama, Delaware, and Florida—allowed judges to impose a death sentence independent of the jury’s determination. In some cases, judges could override a jury’s recommendation of a life sentence and impose death instead.

Those statutes came under renewed scrutiny in January after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death-penalty statute in Hurst v. Florida. Florida’s procedures only allowed jurors to render an “advisory sentence” during the sentencing phase; state judges could then independently weigh the factors and hand down life or death.

The Court struck down the scheme by an 8-1 vote. Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that like earlier sentencing procedures quashed by the Court, “Florida does not require the jury to make the critical findings necessary to impose the death penalty.” By handing that power to the judge, the system ran afoul of the Sixth Amendment.

The Court’s ruling in Hurst proved fatal to Delaware’s death-sentencing procedures. Under state law, jurors only need to unanimously agree that at least one aggravating factor exists for a judge to hand down a death sentence. Jurors then also determine whether the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors. But, unlike in almost all other states with the death penalty, that calculus doesn’t bind the judge, who can hand down a death sentence of his or her own accord.

In a concurring opinion joined by two other justices, Delaware Chief Justice Leo Strine laid out a lengthy history of American capital punishment and the paramount role juries played in it. A fourth justice partially concurred with the decision, arguing that some of the questions answered by the Court should have been left to the Delaware legislature.

Only Justice James Vaughn Jr. argued against applying Hurst to the state’s death-sentencing procedures. Central to his reasoning were significant differences between Florida’s unusual system and the methods used by Delaware.

“Since the jury’s role was purely advisory, the judge could reject a jury finding that no statutory aggravating factor existed and sentence the defendant to death based on his or her own findings,” he wrote, describing the Florida scheme struck down by Hurst. “That cannot happen under Delaware’s statute,” which requires the jury to find at least one aggravating factor before proceeding, he noted. [MORE]

New website allows white people to offer ‘reparations’ directly to people of color

WashPost

One Louisiana native just wanted some books. A mother from Oklahoma simply wanted some help to buy a new laptop battery.

So they, along with dozens of other people of color, took to a new website to ask for help from those who have discriminated against them for decades: white people. Simultaneously, white people came to the site, called Reparations, to offer what they could and to start to answer the question: What can I do to help fix racial injustice? [MORE]

PARIS - Break The Grip Of Shame