White House Tells Feinstein CIA Torture [of non-whites] Report Will Be 'Preserved' But Not Declassified

TechDirt

Over the last few weeks, we've noted that Senator Dianne Feinstein has pushed for the CIA Torture Report that she originally commissioned be declassified (beyond the 500 page, heavily redacted, executive summary that was declassified). And then we wrote about two former Senators asking for President Obama to make sure that he preserve the report as a federal record. This is important. The full report, approaching 7,000 pages and costing $40 million to prepare, apparently details all sorts of wrongdoing by the CIA in torturing people in the Middle East. It's a comprehensive look into not just the horrific program by the CIA, but its failure to produce anything useful and the details of how the CIA lied about it. And here's the problem: Feinstein's colleague on the Senate Intelligence Committee, the current chair, Senator Richard Burr, wants the report destroyed. 

Burr is claiming that the report is a Congressional Record and not a federal record, and thus has asked for all copies to be returned, where he can make sure they are destroyed and never to be read by anyone. This dispute has resulted in people in the Executive Branch being told not to read the report and not to enter it as a federal record, thus keeping it away from being subject to FOIA requests, and while everyone figures out what to do about Burr's request. 

In response to Feinstein's more comprehensive request for declassification, top White House lawyer Neil Eggleston has written a letter saying two things: first that the document will be preserved under the Presidential Records Act, even if the copies at various agencies are returned to the Senate. This is good. It means that even if Burr gets the document back, he can't destroy every single copy, and also that it's likely that someday there will be a release of a declassified version.

I write to notify you that the full Study will be preserved under the Presidential Records Act (PRA). The determination that the Study will be preserved under the PRA has no bearing on copies of the Study currently stored at various agencies.

Then there's the bad news: that day won't be any day soon. Eggleston also informs Feinstein that there is no effort underway to declassify the report, meaning that it's simply not going to happen under this President at all. He does note that under the PRA, the information should be classified for twelve years:

Consistent with the authority afforded to him by the PRA, the President has informed the Archivist that access to classified material, among other categories of information, should be restricted for the full twelve years allowed under the Act. At this time, we are not pursuing declassification of the full Study.

This is a ridiculously weak cop-out. The study deserves to be declassified -- especially as the incoming President elect has said that he plans to reintroduce elements of the torture program and even push for it to go further than it did in the past. Having the public recognize the problems of the program -- not to mention other government officials, seems like it would be fairly important. 

Of course, given that Trump and his team have suddenly picked a fight with the CIA -- including accusing the CIA of lying, perhaps he'll actually be more interested in exposing the CIA's lies detailed in the report. In this age of topsy-turvy news where everything has been flipped upside down, stranger things have happened...

Political Prisoner Jalil Muntaqim Sent to Solitary Confinement for Teaching Inmates Black History

AfrikanBlackcoalition

Political Prisoner Jalil Munatqim (former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army Member) has been in the SHU since Tuesday for teaching Black History on Monday nights which was approved by the administration. He has taught Black History for almost 2 months now starting from 1861-2 with the confiscation act and was currently on 1960’s period anti-Vietnam and the Black Panther Party and other groups during that time period. More information will come forward when Jalil goes to a hearing but for now it can be suspected the authorities didn’t like what he was saying, so Jalil was placed in the SHU with 5 charges. This has been a part of an ongoing program to censor Jalil that has ramped up this year when he beat false charges for writing a letter to an outside organization and being denied newspapers from the outside, stepping up the repression by now removing him from the general population. Jalil would like the word to get out with what is going on and please focus on the Twitter Storm this Wednesday December 14th to Governor Cuomo- directions Below!

In addition to appealing this latest parole denial, Jalil has also submitted a request to Governor Cuomo for commutation of sentence to time served.

Bradenton Cop fired after writing racist posts on Facebook

Bradenton.com

A Bradenton police officer has been fired for writing racist and homophobic posts and comments on Facebook.

Mark Roberts was officially terminated as of Dec. 1, after a nearly four-month-long internal affairs investigation. A command staff review board determined Nov. 30 that the offensive comments and posts, made between Feb. 8, 2013, and June 3, 2016, violated department policy.

Roberts, a Bradenton officer for nine years, was placed on administrative duty and assigned to work at the front desk when the investigation started. He worked there until he was fired.

llegations of conduct unbecoming an officer, neglect of job duties and a violation of general orders and rules regarding social media against Roberts were all sustained, according to internal affairs report.

Roberts admitted making the posts on his personal Facebook page, and in some identified himself as a Bradenton police officer. But he is fighting the firing and is demanding he be reinstated and receive back pay, benefits and seniority rights. He claims the posts and comments did not violate departmental policies.

“He stated all of his postings were simply jokes and did not constitute a pattern of animosity towards any particular group of people,” the report states. “He stated he did not hate gay or black people.”

The report includes copies of several posts in which Roberts made racist or homophobic comments.

Bradenton Police Chief Melanie Bevan wrote a summary for the report, and cited some of the offensive posts. The first one she lists is Roberts’ response to a posting featuring the father of a black 17-year-old burglar shot dead by a homeowner. Roberts wrote, “I’m glad your kid is dead. Now go make another one.”

In another post, he ridiculed gay men after a baker in Arizona refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Bevan said Roberts’ firing sends a clear message to the department that this type of behavior will not be tolerated.

“The Bradenton Police Department strives to maintain a professional and unbiased agency. Any actions by officers that may impair working relationships, impede the performance of duties, impair harmony among coworkers or negatively affect the public perception of the BPD will not be tolerated,” Bevan wrote in a command staff review board summary. “The citizens of Bradenton demand and deserve respect and impartiality from those who serve their community.”

Since Roberts’ termination, Bevan said she and other members of the department’s command staff reaffirmed to all employees that this type of behavior will not be tolerated.

Roberts never denied any of his actions, according to the IA report. But he filed a formal grievance on Wednesday, saying he was fired without just cause, according to the form.

Several Bradenton police officers and dispatchers and a former police officer were questioned during the investigation. Still pending is a separate line of inquiry of all Bradenton police officers and staff who either liked or commented on Roberts’ posts.

The investigation was prompted by an email Bevan received June 3 from someone who said he felt compelled to bring to light “Roberts making openly racist comments online.”

Roberts was first interviewed about the allegations on Aug. 8 and confirmed that he made all the postings he was confronted with, according to the internal affairs report.

When confronted with his comment about the father of the slain burglar, Roberts said he had been fed up with people making excuses for their actions and blaming homeowners or law enforcement when a burglar is shot, according to the report, which was written by police Capt. John Affolter.

“Officer Roberts stated he did not view his post as a stereotype towards black people, and ‘If you do, I’m not the one with the racist views,’” Affolter wrote.

Roberts received commendations in the past, being named officer of the month twice in 2015.

After probe into investigation tampering, Inver Grove Heights White police chief to resign

StarTribune

Months after he was placed on leave amid allegations that he tampered with an investigation, the embattled police chief of Inver Grove Heights is expected to resign, pending the City Council's signoff.

Larry Stanger had been on paid administrative leave since April. He was under criminal investigation for allegedly leaking information to a suspect about a pending search warrant in a theft investigation. Another law enforcement agency contacted city staff about Stanger's alleged involvement in a case his detectives had been working on. 

The Scott County attorney's office reviewed the allegations for possible charges of misconduct by a public official or a data practices violation. In August, County Attorney Ron Hocevar declined to file charges because of insufficient evidence.

Inver Grove Heights city officials also hired a law firm to determine whether Stanger violated any city policies, procedures or codes. The report has not been made public. Stanger couldn't be reached for comment.

Stanger is the third metro top cop to resign in the past week. Ramsey County Sheriff Matt Bostrom announced last week that he will leave his post to lead a University of Oxford study on changing hiring practices to increase trust in police. Mendota Heights Police Chief Mike Aschenbrener also stepped down after 13 years following a tumultuous decade that included the July 2014 line-of-duty shooting death of officer Scott Patrick, who earlier that year filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the department, as well as three internal investigations of officers for various misconduct over the past 12 months.

The City Council was expected to vote on Stanger's separation packages, which includes his resignation, on Monday, said City Administrator Joe Lynch. He and City Attorney Tim Kuntz recommended approval.

The city and Stanger have 15 days to rescind the agreement. After the 15 days, reports about the criminal and internal investigations will be made public. Lynch said. He wouldn't comment on the either report. [MORE]

A White Alabama prosecutor generated $1 million in the last 5 years for his office from pretrial diversion programs.

NY Times

It was a run-of-the-mill keg party in an open field, until one guest, Harvey Drayton Burch III, objected to paying for his beer. Witnesses said Mr. Burch fired a gun over the crowd and began spraying Mace. With partyers fleeing, Mr. Burch jumped into the back seat of a car as it drove away.

The driver had a name well known in Henry County: Douglas A. Valeska II, the son of the local district attorney. When the car was stopped, a deputy found a loaded magazine and knife in Mr. Burch’s pocket, a gun and pepper spray in a backpack, and a pink pill on the floorboard. After Mr. Burch admitted to firing his weapon, he was arrested. The district attorney arrived to take his son and two other passengers home.

Mr. Burch, then 28, was charged with gun and drug possession, but not with firing a weapon or spraying Mace. He did not face prosecution. Instead, District Attorney Douglas A. Valeska granted him pretrial diversion, an alternative to court that is usually reserved for nonviolent offenses. After Mr. Burch paid $2,396 in fees and stayed out of trouble for two years, the case was dismissed in 2011.

The same year, Mr. Valeska gave the Henry County Sheriff’s Office $2,300 from his pretrial diversion fund to pay for scuba gear. The department’s dive team was led by Lt. Troy Silva, the arresting officer in the Burch case. Lieutenant Silva said in an interview that the money was not related to the case and that Mr. Valeska routinely allocated diversion funds for police equipment.

Diversion was created nationwide to spare first-time or low-risk defendants the harsh consequences of a criminal record and to give prosecutors more time to go after dangerous offenders. But things have played out differently in places like southeast Alabama’s Wiregrass Country, where an investigation by The New York Times found that diversion resembles a dismissal-for-sale scheme, available only to those with money and, in some cases, favor.

Mr. Valeska has proved exceedingly adept at using diversion, generating more than $1 million for his office in the last five years.

The money has helped him consolidate his singular power over the justice system in Houston and Henry Counties, where he has presided as the chief prosecutor for three decades.

Dothan, the seat of Houston County and, with 70,000 residents, the regional hub, can feel like it is caught in a Southern time warp, immune to change and defined by racial division. Dothan, where one in three residents is black, has never had a black mayor, police chief, circuit judge or school superintendent. Meetings of the city commission are held in a room adorned with 28 portraits of city leaders, all of them white men. An old photograph shows police officers, including the current chief, posing beside a Confederate flag.

Many black residents say they are at a significant disadvantage in the criminal justice system, complaining of nearly all-white juries and harsher sentences. Last year, two-thirds of those arrested in Dothan were black.

In the 1990s, Mr. Valeska had a string of convictions overturned for illegally striking blacks from the jury pool — a practice critics say continues to this day. He referred to one black defendant as “the yard boy.” He has never hired a black prosecutor.

“If you take Doug Valeska personally, I don’t think he’s racist — I don’t agree with that,” said the Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, a black ex-convict and longtime advocate for criminal justice reform. “But he represents and endorses and enforces and upholds a racist system.”

Mr. Valeska declined repeated requests for an interview.

Though he is a prodigious user of diversion, he has shown little inclination toward its goals of mercy and rehabilitation. At 65, with a thatch of tungsten-colored hair and an impatient forward lean, Mr. Valeska takes an Old Testament approach to justice, asking juries to exact “an eye for an eye.”

Houston County ranks in the top 10 counties nationwide for death row prisoners per capita.

In one case dating from 1996, Mr. Valeska continues to pursue a death sentence that has been overturned four times by higher courts. In 2014, Mr. Valeska successfully moved to bar testimony from a victim’s relative who wanted to request mercy for the defendant. Last month, a jury considered the sentence yet again but deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial.

Mr. Valeska is a critic of recent efforts to reduce the prison population through sentencing reform, telling the local newspaper, “I don’t believe that’s the goal of the people and victims of the state of Alabama.”

It is not uncommon for residents to suffer severe penalties for crimes that would be considered minor elsewhere. Lee Brooker, a 77-year-old disabled veteran, was caught growing marijuana in his backyard in 2011. By introducing prior convictions from 1991, Mr. Valeska sought, and won, life without parole for Mr. Brooker.

Still, Mr. Valeska is willing to offer second chances to those who can afford them. Though his circuit is relatively poor and rural, Mr. Valeska’s diversion fees are among the highest in the country, according to a Times review of 225 diversion programs in 37 states.

US mayors warn Trump against repealing immigration policy

[JURIST]

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel [official website] delivered a letter [PDF] to US President-elect Donald Trump Wednesday signed by many US mayors warning of the potential economic losses Trump could cause if he repeals Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) [official website]. DACA allows undocumented young immigrants to remain in the US if they arrived before they turned 16 and are currently working, pursuing higher education or serving in the military. The letter, which was signed by the Mayors of New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco among others, warned [press release] that repealing DACA could result in a loss of $9.9 billion in tax revenue over four years and $433.4 billion in US gross domestic product over 10 years. Emanuel wrote:

Ensuring DREAMers can continue to live and work in their communities without fear of deportation is the foundation of sound, responsible immigration policy. Ending DACA would disrupt the lives of close to one million young people, and it would disrupt the sectors of the American economy, as well as our national security and public safety, to which they contribute. We encourage your Administration to demonstrate your commitment to the American economy and our security by continuing DACA until Congress modernizes our immigration system and provides a more permanent form of relief for these individuals.

Federal judge rejects Trump's request to stop Wisconsin recount

[JURIST]

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a request by supporters of Presiden-elect Donald Trump [official profile] to block Wisconsin's recount. Judge James Patterson ruled [Reuters report] that "the recount is an inherent part of what ensures the integrity of elections." The challenge came from the Great America political action committee [website] and Stop Hillary PAC, both forming a challenge to stop the recount in the state. The state election committee has stated that the recount is around 88 percent complete, and expects the results to be concluded by Monday. Even if the recount is to go through, it was unlikely that recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would have been able to change the ultimate outcome of the election.

Supreme Court to rule in drug forfeiture case

[JURIST]

The US Supreme Court [official website] on Friday granted certiorari to Honeycutt v. United States [docket; cert. petition, PDF], a case dealing with collecting forfeitures from drug deals. At issue is whether one co-conspirator in a drug deal is liable for forfeiting all of the reasonably foreseeable proceeds from the deal. Tony and Terry Honeycutt were charged [SCOTUSblog report] with federal drug crimes after selling a chemical that is an ingredient in methamphetamine at their hardware store. Although Terry forfeited $200,000, the government wanted him to forfeit the rest of the proceeds, which Terry argued he never received. 

All but four states allow youth to be charged and tried as adults for drug charges.

Sentencing Project 

Successful campaigns to raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction have rolled back some excesses of the tough on crime era. After the implementation of Louisiana’s SB 324 in 2017 and South Carolina’s SB 916 in 2019, just seven states will routinely charge 17-year old offenders as adults, including the two states that also charge 16-year olds as adults.1) Despite other state laws that differentiate between adults and youth, placing limits on teens’ rights to serve on juries, vote, or marry without parental consent, the criminal justice system in these jurisdictions erases the distinction when they are arrested.

Though the vast majority of arrested juveniles are processed in the juvenile justice system, transfer laws are the side door to adult criminal courts, jails, and prisons. These laws either require juveniles charged with certain offenses to have their cases tried in adult courts or provide discretion to juvenile court judges or even prosecutors to pick and choose those juveniles who will be tried in adult courts.

It is widely understood that serious offenses, such as homicide, often are tried in adult criminal courts. In fact, for as long as there have been juvenile courts, mechanisms have existed to allow the transfer of some youth into the adult system.2) During the early 1990s, under a set of faulty assumptions about a coming generation of “super-predators,” 40 states passed legislation to send even more juveniles into the adult courts for a growing array of offenses and with fewer procedural protections.3) The super-predators, wrote John J. DiIulio in 1995, “will do what comes ‘naturally’: murder, rape, rob, assault, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, and get high.”4)

This tough-on-crime era left in its wake state laws that still permit or even require drug charges to be contested in adult courts. Scant data exist to track its frequency, but fully 46 states and the District of Columbia permit juveniles to be tried as adults on drug charges. Only Connecticut, Kansas, Massachusetts, and New Mexico do not. States have taken steps to close this pathway, including a successful voter initiative in California, Proposition 57. Nationwide, there were approximately 461 judicial waivers (those taking place after a hearing in juvenile court) in 2013 on drug charges. The totals stemming from other categories of transfer are not available.

From 1989 to 1992, drug offense cases were more likely to be judicially waived to adult courts than any other offense category.5) Given the recent wave of concern over opiate deaths, it is reasonable to fear a return to this era, even as public opinion now opposes harsh punishments for drug offenses.6)

The ability of states to send teenagers into the adult system on nonviolent offenses, a relic of the war on drugs, threatens the futures of those teenagers who are arrested on drug charges, regardless of whether or not they are convicted (much less incarcerated) on those charges. Transfer laws have been shown to increase recidivism, particularly violent recidivism, among those convicted in adult courts. Research shows waiver laws are disproportionately used on youth of color. Moreover, an adult arrest record can carry collateral consequences that a juvenile record might not. Since very few criminal charges ever enter the trial phase, the mere threat of adult prison time contributes to some teenagers’ guilty pleas. This policy report reviews the methods by which juveniles can be tried as adults for drug offenses and the consequences of the unchecked power of some local prosecutors. [MORE]

Why Hasn’t New York Passed a Law to Record Interrogations? [not enough white defendants]

Innocence Project 

On Thursday, New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer posed the question that many people who care about criminal justice are asking: Why did New York state go yet another year without passing a law requiring the recording of custodial interrogations?

As Dwyer clearly explains, “Recording interrogations is a way to know whether law enforcement—and jurors—can be confident in the confessions that result.”

For almost a decade, the Innocence Project has pushed for legislators to pass a law that would mandate the recording of interrogations across the state for all law enforcement. It’s clear that New York needs one; the problem of false confessions in New York is pervasive.

Related: Brendan Dassey’s Confession Highlights Importance of Recording Interrogations

“In just the last decade, the city and state have paid out tens of millions of dollars to innocent people sent to prison, a startling number of them because of false confessions,” writes Dwyer.

Black Couple Sues Barneys For Racial Discrimination - Fuck Barneys

From [HERE] Barneys New York is the latest retailer hit with allegations of racial discrimination. Yesterday (December 8), an Elizabeth, New Jersey-based couple filed a lawsuit against the luxury department store chain.

New York Daily News reports that Geneva Gordan and Conrad Barton filed the suit with the Brooklyn Supreme Court after an October 4 visit to a Barneys store in New York City resulted in an exchange with a loss prevention worker that Gordon characterized as “disheartening and embarrassing and unnecessary.”

Per the Daily News, the lawsuit alleges that when Barton attempted to return a $1,045 pair of jeans and $321 scarf, accompanied by his receipts and the debit card he used to make the purchases, he was told to wait. Fifteen minutes later, a loss prevention officer masquerading as a manager demanded identification. When Barton made it clear that the store’s return policy did not require ID, the officer confiscated the clothing and his debit card.

After Gordon argued with the officer, an actual manager came over and handled the transaction. When the couple’s attorney contacted the company’s legal rep, they were initially assured that the situation was being investigated, but then communication dropped off, prompting them to sue. The couple is Black.

“Barneys has the temerity to look customers straight in the face and charge $1,200 for so called ‘designer jeans,’ and then look down their noses at the same patrons who then decide to return the item,” their lawyer Peter Gleason told the Daily News. “One would think that Barneys would have instituted change after being fined over $500,000 by the New York State Attorney General for this very type of discriminatory behavior.”

Gleason referenced a suit that was settled in 2014 when the company paid $525,000 for racial profiling. As part of that settlement, the company was supposed to employ consultants to eliminate racial profiling.

Constitutional Lawyer: It's an "Outrage" That Judge Halted Michigan Presidential Election Recount

Democracy Now

On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered Michigan’s Board of Elections to stop the state’s electoral recount. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith said he would abide by a court ruling that found that former Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein could not seek a recount. Goldsmith concluded, "A recount as an audit of the election has never been endorsed by any court." Stein has pledged to continue to push for a recount. Michigan is one of three battleground states where Stein had demanded a recount. The other two states are Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. President-elect Donald Trump narrowly defeated Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton in all three states. For more, we’re joined by John Bonifaz, attorney and political activist specializing in constitutional law and voting rights. He was one of a group of leading election lawyers and computer scientists calling for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Green Party's Jill Stein on Obstacles to Vote Recount: "This is Not What Democracy Looks Like"

Democracy Now

A Wisconsin judge is set to decide if a recount of the state’s presidential vote can proceed. We speak with Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein, who has requested recounts in three states where Donald Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But Stein has faced obstacles in all three states. Today’s hearing in Wisconsin comes after two pro-Trump groups, the Great America PAC and the Stop Hillary PAC, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the recount process. Meanwhile, in Michigan, a judge has already halted the recount. Another hearing will be held in Pennsylvania today to decide if a recount there can begin.

California Owes Reparations To Victims Of Forced Race & Intellectual-Based Sterilization, Study Finds

Breaking News for Black America

Historians want to mobilize reparation efforts for California sterilization victims who suffered under a government-mandated program in the early 1900s.

A new American Journal of Public Health report titled, “California’s Sterilization Survivors: An Estimate and Call for Redress,” examines the scope of the state’s sterilization recommendations.

Sterilization was an option spurred by eugenics––a controversial practice aimed at controlling the genetic population by encouraging reproduction among those with traits deemed “desirable.” Back in the day, eugenics leaders advocated for population control solely based on intellectual acumen and race.

Alexandra Minna Stern, a University of Michigan professor who led the study’s research efforts, began searching for answers after uncovering more than 20,000 sterilization recommendations in a Sacramento government office, dating back to 1919 through 1952.

One of the most startling letters of recommendation was written for a 7-year-old, according to the study. Stern and her fellow researchers found that out of the 20,000 victims, including men, women and children, an estimated 830 could still be alive, with the average age being 88, the report says.

NYPD Assault, Racially Profile Retired Black Corrections Officer

Breaking News for Black America

Retired Nassau County, New York corrections officer Ronald Lanier broke down sobbing at a press conference when he recalled the physical and emotional assault by two White police officers who racially profiled him, CBS News New York reports.

Lanier said the Garden City police officers tackled him on Nov. 30 in a supermarket. He identified himself to them as a former law enforcement officer, but they laughed and proceed to rough him up.

“I’ve never been cursed, physically abused, beaten and treated like a slave as I was two days ago,” said Lanier, who ended up hospitalized for his injuries.

“For somebody to grab me by the neck in the supermarket, and I’m telling you, ‘I’m one of you,’ and you disrespect it — it was like you’re just another Black dude,” he added.

The police department declined to identify the officers involved in the incident. A spokesperson told CBS that the cops were searching for a Black shoplifting suspect who fled into the supermarket.

“That doesn’t give you the right to go into a store and grab the first Black person you see and throw them to the ground,” Lanier’s his attorney, Fred Brewington, told 1010 WINS, according to CBS.

The officers released Lanier after he sat in their patrol car for 20 minutes.

“The sergeant, without any apology or any other way of making it clear that they were acknowledging the mistake that they had made, just said cut him loose,” the attorney stated.

Brewington plans to file a civil rights lawsuit, and wants the officers to lose their badges and weapons.

Atlanta police sergeant indicted for Breaking Black Man's Leg in Wrongful Shoplifting Arrest @ Walmart

From [HERE] A federal grand jury Wednesday indicted an Atlanta police sergeant for violating the rights of a man by using excessive force while on a detail at a Wal-Mart in Atlanta.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in a news release, announced the indictment against Trevor King, 48, of Rex, Georgia.

According to the indictment, King was working off duty as a security guard at the store on Oct. 13, 2014, when he stopped a customer from leaving because he wrongfully believed the customer had shoplifted.

Authorities said King allegedly grabbed the customer's shirt and began striking the man with an expandable baton multiple times, ultimately breaking the man's leg.

The police department, in a statement, said King has been on administrative leave with pay since authorities learned of the incident.

"The Atlanta Police Department takes this type of allegation against one of its own very seriously. Now that the indictment has been announced, Sgt. King will appear before the chief who will make a determination regarding his continued status with the department," the statement said.

It was unknown if King is represented by an attorney.

Touting Public Service, Congressman Fattah Seeks Lighter Sentence

Legal Intelligencer

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard On Dakota Access Pipeline

Tulsi Gabbard born April 12, 1981 is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who has been the United States Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district since 2013. She was also a vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee until February 28, 2016, when she resigned in order to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. Elected in 2012, she is the first American Samoan and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress, and, along with Tammy Duckworth, one of its first female combat veterans.

Dummy Trump’s Looming Mass Criminalization

The Nation

William Diaz-Castro is about to become one of the  “criminal illegal immigrants” whom Donald Trump campaigned against for 17 months—and whom, as president-elect, he now plans to deport immediately.

“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records—gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably
2 million, it could be even 3 million—we are getting them out of our country,” Trump said in an interview on 60 Minutes four days after his victory. “Or,” he added, “we are going to incarcerate.”

This statement had the appearance of softening his earlier position; at times during the campaign, Trump threatened to deport every one of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who live in the United States. But the impact on families and communities of immediately removing even 3 million people would be cataclysmic. That’s equal to the population of the state of Mississippi, and more people than Barack Obama removed during his entire presidency.

The people Trump says he will target—those “bringing drugs,” “bringing crime,” who are “rapists,” as he put it in the speech that launched his campaign—sound terribly scary. The idea that there are millions of them is quickly seeping into our political discourse as though it were fact. In reality, any effort to deport 3 million “criminal” immigrants will first require branding law-abiding people as
criminals—a process that’s been unfolding across presidential administrations stretching back to Bill Clinton’s, but that Trump plans to escalate massively.

This is how it happened for Diaz-Castro: On March 22, the soft-spoken 30-year-old construction worker and his partner, Linda Guzman, 29, who works the day shift at a laundromat, were awakened by the sound of urgent knocking on the door of their two-bedroom apartment in New Orleans. Their 3-year-old son, Willie, was asleep in a bed beside them; a friend was spending the night in the second bedroom. Before Diaz-Castro could get out of bed and dress, his friend opened the door and found five armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in black jackets. Documents say they were conducting a “knock and talk,” the name ICE gives to its home-based roundups. The friend let the agents in without asking if they had a warrant (they did not).

The officers began to question Diaz-Castro in the living room. He says they insisted on scanning his fingerprints. The scan didn’t turn up any criminal warrants, but it did turn up two past deportations. ICE took
Diaz-Castro into custody and sent him to an immigration detention center in central Louisiana run by the private prison firm GEO Group. The facility is one of many that ICE uses to house people whose immigration cases are being adjudicated in the civil immigration system—the main way undocumented immigrants have historically been processed. The penalty in a civil proceeding would be deportation, like Diaz-Castro had faced before. [MORE]

The Problem With Jailhouse Snitches

Houston Press

Houston defense attorney Randy Schaffer says the only solid evidence Harris County prosecutors had against his client in his 2002 capital murder trial was that he admitted to being present when his drug dealer was killed.

But then a jailhouse witness named Karl Jones took the stand, and he told the jury that, yes, actually, David Holford had confessed to committing the murder while they were sitting in the privacy of a holdover cell. Holford was convicted.

Jailhouse snitches are always a red flag to Schaffer, who says that in his 40-plus years of experience he has never once encountered jailhouse witness testimony used ethically in a capital case. There’s a certain irony about these jailhouse snitches: They are the most inherently unreliable witnesses, yet they are often testifying in the most high-stakes trials. Their testimony is generally only necessary when most other evidence against defendants is weak — yet those are also the cases in which a wrongful conviction is most likely.

And so when Schaffer encounters them in a capital case like Holford’s, he digs. To start, Schaffer found Jones had only agreed to testify against Holford if prosecutors could offer him something in return. In this case, prosecutors told him they could write a nice letter to the parole board if he cooperated — the hallmark of a jailhouse informant case, Schaffer says.

Next, Schaffer was able to dig up the prosecutors’ written summary of their first conversation with Jones — and it turns out Jones had told them a different story than the one he told in court. Schaffer says he originally told prosecutors Holford confessed while they were linked on a chain of prisoners, chaperoned by deputies as they walked through the underground tunnel leading from the courthouse to the jail. Schaffer now alleges that prosecutors coached Jones into changing his story so it would be more believable to a jury, then buried any documentation of the first conversation and kept it from Holford’s defense counsel. When Schaffer asked for the recording of the initial conversation with Jones, Schaffer said he was told the recording didn’t exist because Jones wouldn’t let prosecutors record it. “Since when is the DA's office allowing a prison inmate to tell them what to do?” he said. [MORE]