“Is there any way that I could get a permit that would let me stay in this country?”
The question came from a young man who, the day before, had been nabbed by Border Patrol officers as he waded the Rio Grande River. Like most of the men in the courtroom, the questioner was short, thin and young. I guessed his weight at 120 pounds, but it could have been less.
Like the thirty-five men and women standing with him in the magistrate court on the fourth floor of the federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas, the man asking the question was pleading guilty to a charge of entering the United States illegally. Most of the defendants had been deported on multiple occasions, but this young man was apprehended by Border Patrol on his first attempt to enter the country illegally.
And yet he asked an innocent question; innocent in the sense that children are innocent. He meant no one any harm. He was just looking for a chance to earn a decent living. He was ready to work long and hard. He was eager to contribute to the greater good. He entered the United States for the purest of motives, and yet he was being prosecuted as a criminal. (more…)
Ted Olson and David Boies–opposing counsel in the Supreme Court case Bush V. Gore–have been on the same legal team defending the right to gay marriage. Mr. Olson is one of the most conservative lawyers in the nation, while Mr. Boies falls the other extreme end of the spectrum. They won the landmark case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger at a federal court and in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is set to go before the U.S. Supreme Court next year.
In this video, Mr. Olson explains the difference between judicial activism and judicial responsibility, arguing that upholding the right to gay marriage would not fall under judicial activism; after all, the United States Supreme Court has upheld the right to marriage fourteen times since 1888, and upholding it again would reflect the responsibility of the Court to defend people’s right to marriage. When Fox News’s Chris Wallace asks Mr. Olson why we should not let the people decide state by state–as we did in California–Mr. Olson asks, “Would you like your right to free speech put up by a vote?…We do not put the Bill of Rights for a vote.”
The United States Supreme Court ruled this past month that children cannot receive life-without-parole sentences. The following letter from a mother appeared on Douglas A. Berman’s blog. In 1986, Dr. Linda White’s daughter was abducted, raped, and murdered. In 2000, Dr. White met her daughter’s killer thanks to Bridges to Life, an organization that employs the practices of restorative justice and victim-offender dialogue to help victims of crime heal by allowing them to meet their perpetrators.
On June 25, the Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs that it is cruel and unusual to impose mandatory life-without-parole sentences on children. As a mother whose daughter was murdered by two teenage boys, I speak for many victims’ family members who support the Court’s sound decision.
I certainly never imagined that I would become a passionate advocate against life imprisonment without parole for juvenile offenders. I had never confronted the issue until November 18, 1986, the day my world was forever changed when my 26-year-old daughter Cathy, then pregnant with her second child, was killed by two teenage boys.
This tragedy set me on an unlikely path that led me to discover that even youths who commit the worst crimes have the capacity to grow into mature, redeemed adults. I know this because I watched my daughter’s killer, Gary, become such an adult.
I spent the years following Cathy’s death studying to become a grief counselor. I became involved in a restorative justice program, Bridges to Life, that allows convicts and crime victims to open a dialogue and work toward reconciliation. In 2000, I opened myself up to this dialogue with Gary.
When I met Gary, I found that he was a very different person from the boy who once committed a horrible act. He was a remorseful grown man desperately seeking forgiveness and a chance to make up for the hurt he caused. My decision to forgive Gary does not mean that what happened is OK. It can never be OK, and Gary knows that as well as I do. But keeping him in prison for a longer period would not bring my daughter back.
Gary has now been out of prison for over a year. He has since dedicated himself to being a positive influence in his community, including working with drug and alcohol addicts at his church. He regularly tells me that he wants to live a good, impactful life as a “memorial” to my daughter.
Gary is a poster child for why I believe life sentences are so unjust for juveniles. I have seen that youth have enormous potential to change, and that we should not lock them up without giving them a second chance.
I have also seen that my story is not unique. I was one of many victims’ family members who appealed to the Supreme Court to do away with juvenile life-without-parole sentences. While each of our experiences are different, we are united in our belief that keeping children like Gary permanently locked away only compounds the ugliness of crime with the ugliness of hopeless prison sentences.
I strongly believe that young offenders need to be held accountable for their actions. But it is wrong to sentence them to punishments that fail to take into consideration their age and capacity for change. By denying children the opportunity to someday earn release, you are telling these kids, as Justice Ginsburg stated, that they are throwaway kids. As they go before judges for resentencing, factors that were dismissed before, such as their age at the time of the crime, their histories of abuse and neglect and their roles in the crime must be considered. I will feel a sense of calm that children who made tragic mistakes will have an opportunity to be judged by more than their worst act.
Even though he committed an unspeakable crime, Gary was not a throwaway kid. Had he been sentenced to life-without-parole, he would never have been able to become a living memorial to Cathy.
“I forgive you, and God will, too.” These were the last words Cathy spoke before her death. I know Cathy would be gratified to see Gary have a second chance and become the positive member of society that he is today.
Stories of redemption like Gary’s are testaments to why the Supreme Court got it right by prohibiting mandatory life-without-parole sentences for children. The Court has taken an important step in upholding America’s promise to never give up on our children.
The following is part 1/4 of Meeting with a Killer, a brief documentary on Dr. White’s experience.
An Arlington, Texas family has filed a wrongful death suit after officers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies broke down a door and killed an innocent, unarmed man.
This is an old, old story. As an ATF agent quoted in the story says, officers never know what might be waiting for them behind a locked door. For all they know, a gang of desperadoes, AK 47s at the ready, might be lying in wait. You have to be prepared for every eventuality, right?
The chances of things ending badly increase with every additional officer involved in the raid. All it takes is one paranoid kid or a budding sociopath eager for a little gun play and bad things are bound to happen. A small, experienced unit with high standards of professionalism is much less likely to gun down innocent people than a ragtag assortment of officers who aren’t used to working together.
In this case, at least the ATF had the right house and they appear to have been looking for a genuinely dangerous individual. But kicking down doors and storming into a room is an intrinsically dangerous undertaking. The inevitable excuse when the innocent die is the old “I thought he had a gun” canard. When you enter a room, it can take several seconds to evaluate whether the folks behind the door constitute a threat. Since dead people can’t kill you, the chances that some undisciplined cowboy will shoot first and ask questions later are unacceptably high. Anyone, even a child, could be armed.
The high degree of risk inherent in no-knock raids makes the occasional tragedy inevitable. The officers should have known that the guy they were looking for didn’t own the home they were entering, and that they would likely encounter a family member with no connection to organized crime. Much better to approach a suspect in such a way that the chances of collateral damage can be reduced.
Overwhelming force is great for officer safety, but it places the public at risk. No-knock raids should be reserved for truly exceptional situations and I doubt the case described below qualifies.
David Womble, a supervisor of facilities management in Dallas County, received a pay raise after R.L. Lawson filed a complaint indicating Womble had made racial and anti-gay remarks. Now, Dallas County is being sued for sixty million dollars.
According to the lawsuit, plaintiffs were subjected to a racist and discriminatory work environment that included graffiti with the words “white power”, a “black Coke can found hanging with a “noose” from a box in the North Tower engine room,” and better tools for white workers. Womble is also said to have worn a fake gold tooth while mocking his black subordinates.
Dallas County maintenance workers allege racial discrimination in federal lawsuit
Dallas County has a history of racial discrimination in its jail maintenance department and officials have done little about numerous complaints in recent years, even boosting the pay of one white supervisor at the center of the allegations, a $60 million federal lawsuit claims.
County officials have said they are investigating allegations in that department after several black employees complained about racist graffiti and mistreatment. But an attorney for Dennis Jones, R.L. Lawson and Clarence Jones said it’s too little, too late.
“If Dallas County was serious in addressing the problems, this action would have been taken long before now,” said the attorney, Larry E. Jarrett.
County officials declined to comment about the investigation or the allegations because of the pending lawsuit. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said he couldn’t comment but said the county is “committed to providing a nondiscriminatory workplace for all of its employees.”
The problems allegedly began in 2010 when black maintenance employees first complained. Grievances tell of “white power” epithets spray-painted on jail walls, anti-gay jokes, a noose and racially insensitive remarks made by white supervisors.
One supervisor allegedly put false gold teeth in his mouth to mock a black subordinate.
Jarrett said he has photographs of the graffiti and what he says was a noose, as well as witnesses to the hostile work environment.
Dennis Jones, 51, who initiated the lawsuit, claims he was fired along with two other black employees — LaParker Smith and Darian Fisher — for having felony records even though they disclosed their records when they were hired. They were the only ones fired. The lawsuit said whites and Hispanics with similar backgrounds were allowed to keep working.
All three men were later rehired.
The lawsuit was originally filed last year and amended to include Lawson and Clarence Jones this month.
Clarence Jones, 27, who is not related to Dennis Jones, filed a grievance through the county in February, saying he went to the depopulated Bill Decker jail on his normal rounds and saw the words “white power” sprayed on the walls in the maintenance shop. He said in the grievance that management “does not do enough to inform employees of what harassment is nor admonish or warn individuals to abstain from such behaviors.”
If you want to know why America’s immigration policy is so badly broken, this article by Tom Berry is a great starting place. “Continuing down the same course of border security buildups, drug wars and immigration crackdowns will do nothing to increase security or safety,” Berry says. “It will only keep border policy on the edge – teetering without direction or strategy.”
This article, originally published in Truthout, is an edited excerpt of the policy report Berry produced for the Center for International Policy. Berry appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2009 and the horrors he discussed with Terry Gross have only worsened in the ensuing three years. AGB
Prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the term “border security” was rarely used. Today, however, it is both a fundamental goal of US domestic security and the defining paradigm for border operations. Despite the federal government’s routine declarations of its commitment to securing the border, neither Congress
nor the executive branch has ever clearly defined the term “border security.”
Border security constitutes the single largest line item in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) budget. Nonetheless, DHS has failed to develop a border security strategy that complements US domestic and national security objectives. DHS has not even attempted to delineate benchmarks that would measure the security of the border or specify exactly how the massive border security buildup has increased homeland security.
In its strategic plan, DHS does promise: “We will reduce the likelihood that terrorists can enter the United States. We will strengthen our border security and gain effective control of our borders.” And DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano assured us last year that, as a result of new border security spending by the Obama administration, “the Southwest border is more secure than ever before.”
Since 2003, Homeland Security and the Justice Department have opened spigots of funding for an array of border security operations. These include commitments for 18-foot steel fencing, high-tech surveillance, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), increased prosecutions of illegal border crossers and new deployments of the Border Patrol and National Guard.
Yet the federal government’s continued expressions of its commitment to border security only serve to highlight the shortcomings of this commitment and to spark opposition to long- overdue immigration reform. “Secure the border” – a political demand echoed by immigration restrictionists, grassroots anti-immigrant activists and a chorus of politicians – now resounds as a battle cry against the federal government and liberal immigration reformers. These border security hawks charge that the federal government is failing to meet its responsibility to secure the border, pointing to continued illegal crossings by immigrants and drug traffickers. Border sheriffs, militant activists and state legislatures have even started taking border security into their own hands.
The post-9/11 imperative of securing “the homeland” set off a widely played game of one-upmanship that has had Washington, border politicians and sheriffs, political activists and vigilantes competing to be regarded as the most serious and hawkish on border security. The emotions and concerns unleashed by the 9/11 attacks exacerbated the long-running practice of using the border security issue to further an array of political agendas – immigration crackdowns, border pork-barrel projects, drug wars, states’ rights and even liberal immigration reform. Yet these new commitments to control the border have been largely expressions of public diplomacy rather than manifestations of new thinking about the border. (more…)
“I understand why people hung people from trees…[I] want to go home and put on my white pointy hat.” Those are the alleged words Denton County felony Prosecutor Cary Piel told his black co-worker Nadiya Williams-Boldware who sued in federal court and was awarded over half million dollars for the discriminatory incident.
After being called a troublemaker by a co-worker, dismissed by her boss—the supervisor happened to be Cary Piel’s wife— and turned away by the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division, Boldware took her complaints to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The story can be found here.
Susan Piel
After the verdict—on Monday, June 22, 2012—Denton County District Attorney Paul Johnson fired the four prosecutors who cost the county the hefty $510,000 penalty: Susan Peil, Cary Peil, John Renz, and Ryan Calvert. Calvert is Cary Peil’s brother-in-law, and Renza was Peil’s partner in court. Read more about the firings here.
“A Snitch’s Dilemma” takes us inside the world of a typical Atlanta street hustler. His name is Alex White. It’ a long piece, but this isn’t the kind of story you can tell in 700 words. White made his living as a drug dealer and a snitch. Narcotics officers knew he was dealing but didn’t care; the men who supplied him with drugs may have known he was a snitch but looked the other way so long as he only set up “nobodys”.
Then a gang of Atlanta narcotics cops killed an innocent old woman in a botched drug raid and Alex White’s neat world came apart.
Ted Conover wrote this piece for the NYT Magazine. He doesn’t glamorize his subject or his life on the streets. Instead, he gives us a portrait of a man trapped by the streets. When federal authorities urge him to get out-of-town for his own safety, White is terrified by the thought of leaving his familiar streets. He can’t survive anywhere else.
Alex White is smart. Smart enough to have excelled in school had he been so inclined. But, in the words of his on-again-off-again girlfriend, he was too “hoodish” for the straight life. But did he choose to be that way or was there are a certain inevitability about it?
A Snitch’s dilemma takes us inside the world Alexandra Natapoff describes in “Snitch,” the best book I have seen on the subject of criminal informants. But this isn’t really a story about a snitch; it’s about the neighborhood that shaped Alex White and the social and economic conditions that shaped that neighborhood.
This is also a story about the futility of a drug war that perpetuates the evils it was ostensibly created to eliminate. Highly recommended.
Molly Worthen’s NYT essay on the social cleavage between white and black evangelicals is a statement of the obvious and a work of art.
Worthen teaches history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and her writing reflects a deep understanding of evangelicals black and white.
The term “evangelical”, in its common usage, refers exclusively to white folks. This may be the best explanation for a curious fact: only 35% of Americans in a recent Barna poll correctly identified Barack Obama’s religious faith as Christian. Ask African-Americans about Obama’s religion and I suspect over 95% would get it right. So I can’t help but wonder about the results from Caucasian respondents. My guess is that fewer than 25% of white people know that Obama is a Christian.
If we use political affiliation as a rough proxy for race (which, tragically, it is) the figures are interesting. 52% of Democrats know that Obama is a Christian (African-American respondents likely skewed this figure upward); but only 29% of Independents and 24% of Republicans believe that Obama is a Christian (with 18% believing he is a Muslim). (more…)
By Alan Bean
Friends of Justice 