As [the unidentified Latino man] approached the intersection of Division and West Avenues, three white teens hanging out in a nearby parking lot called out to him. Seconds later he was struck in the face, knocked to the ground, and as the teens shouted racial slurs, robbed of cash and other personal items. …. Just another case of “beaner hopping” in Long Island’s Suffolk County.
SAN ANTONIO — The highest-ranking criminal judge in Texas, the woman who presides over the most active execution chamber in the country, sat at a defense table on Monday to face charges of intentionally denying a condemned man access to the legal system.
More prisoners today are serving life terms than ever before — 140,610 out of 2.3 million inmates being held in jails and prisons across the country — under tough mandatory minimum-sentencing laws and the declining use of parole for eligible convicts, according to a report released Wednesday by The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group that calls for the elimination of life sentences without parole. The report tracks the increase in life sentences from 1984, when the number of inmates serving life terms was 34,000.
Two-thirds of prisoners serving life sentences are Latino or black, the report found. In New York State, for example, 16.3 percent of prisoners serving life terms are white.
Although most people serving life terms were convicted of violent crimes, sentencing experts say there are many exceptions, like Norman Williams, 46, who served 13 years of a life sentence for stealing a floor jack out of a tow truck, a crime that was his third strike. He was released from Folsom State Prison in California in April after appealing his conviction on the grounds of insufficient counsel.
Every time I read about things like this, I start thinking about just how many people are wrongly incarcerated right this second, and my heart just drops. I was 8 years old when this happened; the thought that Efren Paredes, Jr. was not much older when he was given two life sentences for a crime he didn’t commit is simply horrifying.
via The Unapologetic Mexican:
Learn about innocent 15-year-old Latino former high school honor student named Efren Paredes, Jr. who was wrongly convicted in 1989 for a murder and armed robbery he did not commit; a crime to which others plead guilty. The crime occurred in St. Joseph, Michigan (Berrien County), USA.
Efren was tried and convicted only three months after his arrest on March 15, 1989 and convicted by 11 White jurors and one Black juror in a city whose racial composition was 95% White. The judge, prosecutor, and all the investigating police were also all White. [...]
The case against Efren was entirely circumstantial and based primarily on the statements of other youth who received reduced charges and sentences from the prosecutor in exchange for their incentivized testimony.
Asst. Prosecuting Attorney Michael Sepic knowingly committed professional misconduct when he allowed a man, who would later become the jury foreman, to be seated on the jury who worked with the aunt of the victim’s widow in Efren’s case.
I teach a late-afternoon class on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I wasn’t able to go stalk Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna in SoHo today. They were doing a free talk at the Apple store or something. It’s completely devastating, because in my mind, Gael and I are meant to be together. (For future reference, I’m also supposed to be with Junot Diaz, Prince William, Alex Kapranos, The Rock, and a bunch of other actors whoses names I’ll leave out for the sake of brevity.) I’ll probably never get another chance to see them again, unless they decide to make an appearance at the last Tribeca Film Festival screening of their new movie (I fully intend to stand around outside on Sunday in hopes of scoring a ticket).
HOLLYWOOD, California (CNN) — Reality television featuring law enforcement officers on the beat is nothing new. A show featuring a lawman who makes jailed inmates wear pink underwear and uses actors to trick suspects, however, is a new twist.
Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio — whose showy brand of justice has raised charges of discrimination and civil-rights abuses while making him a hero among fans of his tough-on-crime attitudes — will star in “Smile: You’re Under Arrest.”
Today the NY Times published yet another horrifying article about an ICE detainee’s death. Hiu Lui Ng, an immigrant from Hong Kong who had been living in the U.S. since he came over at the age of 17 in 1992, died in custody last week after months of negligence and living in excruciating pain.
He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.
But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.
In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of [ICE] in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months. [...]
