The Associated Press: Sheriff profits as Ala. inmates claim lack of food
DECATUR, Ala. (AP) — Complaining of paper-thin bologna and cold grits, skinny prisoners testified Wednesday about meals so skimpy and unappetizing they have lost weight behind bars as a federal judge considered Alabama’s unusual practice of letting sheriffs profit from feeding inmates.
U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon held the hearing to determine whether the Morgan County Jail is violating a 2001 agreement that required the sheriff to provide adequate meals to prisoners.
One after another, 10 prisoners told Clemon about receiving meals that are so small they are forced to buy additional snacks from a for-profit store jailers operated inside the lockup. Most of the inmates appeared thin, with baggy jail coveralls hanging off their frames.
Inmates told of getting half an egg, a spoonful of oatmeal and one piece of toast most days for breakfast, served at 3 a.m. daily. Lunch is usually a handful of chips and two sandwiches with barely enough peanut butter to taste.
Bartlett said he personally made about $95,000 last year feeding inmates after also receiving money from the county and the U.S. government for housing federal prisoners. Despite rising food costs, Bartlett said he made a $62,000 profit in 2007 and $55,000 in 2006.
Yet another example of profiting from prisons that needs to fixed now. There should be no profit motive whatsoever in caging human beings. I’m not some namby-pamby who doesn’t realize there are some bad people out there who need to be caged, but the caging needs to be a civic duty, not a commercial one. The goal should be to have as few people in cages as possible, not as many as possible.
Posted by "Radical" Russ on January 8, 2009 at 9:15 am.
Categories: No Justice No Peace
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Teen pleads in crash that killed 3 | www.jconline.com | Journal and Courier
A Crawfordsville teenager has admitted to smoking marijuana about two weeks before causing a two-vehicle crash a year ago that killed two of his classmates and an Indianapolis woman.
Tyler R. Sutton, 18, pleaded guilty this morning in Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 to three counts of operating a vehicle with a controlled substance causing death and feticide, all Class C felonies.
If Judge Thomas Busch accepts Sutton’s plea with the Tippecanoe County prosecutor’s office, at least two of those counts would have to be served concurrently – meaning the former North Montgomery High School student could spend up to 16 years in prison.
Toxicology tests taken after the crash showed that Sutton had marijuana metabolites in his blood, though Sutton’s Indianapolis-based attorney, Dennis Zahn, disputed in court that the drug was present in the teen’s urine.
Indiana law requires only that narcotic metabolites be present to establish impaired driving.
Though Sutton also admitted to smoking marijuana, he said today that it was his first and only time.
The teenager was 17 years old at the time of crash, but juvenile court Judge Loretta Rush waived him to adult court in March.
Indiana is one of the states with a per se DUID statute. In layman’s terms, that means if you test positive for any drug metabolite, you’ve been driving impaired in the eyes of the law. That’s metabolites, not the actual drug, as would be the case with someone failing an alcohol breathalyzer.
In the case of marijuana, inactive, non-impairing marijuana metabolites can remain detectable in one’s system for weeks. Tyler Sutton was no more an impaired driver than any other sober driver on the road; he just had the misfortune to smoke a joint a couple of weeks prior to the wreck
These insane per se statutes that count metabolites as impairment essentially mean that anyone who smokes marijuana in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, South Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, or Georgia and then drives anytime within the next few days (for light, occasional tokers) to up to a month and a half (for chronic tokers like me) is as guilty of a DUI as a drunk who blows over .08 BAC on a breathalyzer.
Now THESE are my kind of Christians!
Four Iowan’s Attempt Citizen’s Arrest On Karl Rove | AHN | July 27, 2008
Des Moines, Iowa (AHN) — Four people were arrested Friday for attempting to make a citizen’s arrest on Karl Rove.
The group of three Catholic workers and a retired Methodist minister and Peace and Justice Advocate were cited for trespassing and released after trying to enter the Wakonda Country Club in Des Moines where Rove was scheduled to speak at a Republican Fundraiser.
The small group were acting under Iowa law that states private citizens have a responsibility to arrest someone if they believe a felony has been committed. That person is then turned over to police officials and a judge for formal indictment. Under the law a federal judge must evaluate the charges and decide if an indictment should be made.
This is the second attempt by two members of the group to arrest Rove, whom many believe should be held accountable, along with other members of the Bush administration, for war crimes, murder and lies to the public related to the Iraq war.
The retired minister, Rev. Chet Guinn, 80, told reporters who were on site for the pre-arranged arrest that everyone who remains silent when major crimes are being committed against all humanity becomes an accomplice.
As the blogger/podcaster for NORML, I have been covering the Rachel Hoffman story since May. Here is a link to all of my previous stories.
I am currently in contact with Rachel’s friend who was interviewed on 20/20, and I am hoping she’ll come on the show to tell us a little more detail. Wait until you hear more about the behavior of the cops in this incident…
Great Seattle-PI piece on SCOTUS slashing to $500M what were punitive damages of $2.5B which had been an original jury award of $5B against Exxon for glopping up Prince William Sound and countless wildlife with crude oil. I mentioned on the show how little this hurts a corporation that makes $1,300 per second and how a mere 4.5 days-worth of profit isn’t enough of a punishment to force them to change their ways. It becomes a simple cost/benefit analysis where it’s cheaper to hire lawyers than to make safety and environmental improvements. Now, the original jury award of $5B, that’s half of an earnings quarter, and shareholders would feel that.
Toward the end of the piece, though, there’s a bit that feels like one of those “green” commercials big oil and big coal put on during the political debates and network news shows — you know, the PR campaign to make you think fossil fuel providers really want thriving solar and wind power while funneling big ad dollars to corporate media to make sure the talking heads don’t raise any questions about climate change.
Exxon Valdez ruling worries environmental watchdogs
But for Alaska Tanker’s Mathur, that kind of thinking is foreign to a stronger-than-ever safety culture. He points out that in the past six years, the company’s ships have not spilled a drop of crude oil. It mirrors improvements in much of the industry, environmental regulators say.
And Mathur said young sailors are a new breed.
This week, he was talking to a young seaman, telling him how he should take care to “protect the environment.”
“This 20-year-old, able-bodied seaman puts up his hand and says, ‘Mr. Mathur, would you mind calling it our environment instead of the environment?’ ” Mathur said.
I will take that last sentence to heart. That’s good framing. The environment is something outside of you; our environment means we all have responsibility to save our selves.
Why is the White House so afraid of letting our Constitutional system of justice work? Now that the Supreme Court has ruled detainees can challenge their detention in court, the Cheneyburton Maladministration wants you to think that suddenly there will be terrorists walking the streets! Yup, if we can’t hold them secretly without rights and trials and torture them from time to time, the only other option is to let the most dangerous killers in the world run free throughout small town America.
White House says ruling could free detainees in US – Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON – The White House said Thursday that dangerous detainees at Guantanamo Bay could end up walking Main Street U.S.A. as a result of last month’s Supreme Court ruling about detainees’ legal rights. Federal appeals courts, however, have indicated they have no intention of letting that happen.
“I’m sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said about al-Qaida’s former third in command.
“We are in uncharted territory, and we have never had enemy combatants afforded constitutional rights like all of us have, so anybody who thinks that they know exactly what’s going to happen if a detainee challenges his detention — his or her detention — in court, they’re not being honest because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Perino said.
“But there is considered judgment, from many federal government lawyers — all the way up to the attorney general of the United States_ that it is a very real possibility that a dangerous detainee could be released into the United States as a result of this Supreme Court decision.”
“The judge might say to the United States, ‘You don’t have enough evidence to hold this person,’” Perino said. “And then what do we do? … Is he allowed to leave? And if so, is he picked up by immigration? Even if that’s the case, they’re only allowed to be held for six months.”
Wait a minute, do you mean to say that if we can’t prove we even have enough probable cause to detain someone we suspect is a dangerous killer, much less be able to prove in a court of law that the detainee is a dangerous killer, then these people we just have a hunch about being dangerous killers will be stalking our kids at the swimming pool this summer?
Or could it be that most of the people rounded up into Guantanamo are not dangerous killers, but just poor losers who ended up on the wrong side of a tribal feud and were turned over for some bounty money? Could it be you don’t have enough evidence to stand up in court because there was no evidence to be found, you just wanted to round up Ay-rabs and do unspeakable things to them in a “shock and awe” psychological campaign?
McClatchy Washington Bureau | 06/18/2008 | General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes
WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.
The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.
The number one thing I will be watching for from the Obama Administration is whether they pull a “Gerry Ford” and decide to put this dark national nightmare behind us and in the “spirit of healing” decide to pardon or not prosecute the war crimes of this Administration. The pardon of Nixon for raping the Constitution is what put us in this position in the first place, with many of the same traitorous thugs from that administration leading this one down the same “unitary executive” path.
Let the world see our Constitution in action. Let us all regain the faith that no one, not a former president, not a former vice president, no matter how deeply in the pockets of big oil, is above the law. Let us restore our reverence for the Constitution and mete out strong punishment for those who would violate it willingly and to act as a deterrent for the future administrations who’d usurp our rights given the chance.
AKRON, Ohio – A medical examiner must change her autopsy findings to delete any reference that stun guns contributed to the deaths of three people involved in confrontations with law enforcement officers, a judge ruled.
Friday’s decision was a victory for Taser International Inc., which had challenged rulings by Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler, including a case in which five sheriff’s deputies are charged in the death a jail inmate who was restrained by the wrists and ankles and hit with pepper spray and a stun gun.
Kohler ruled that the 2006 death of Mark McCullaugh Jr., 28, was a homicide and that he died from asphyxiation due to the “combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint.”
Visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman said in his ruling that there was no expert evidence to indicate that Taser devices impaired McCullaugh’s respiration. “More likely, the death was due to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia brought on by severe heart disease,” the judge wrote.
Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh’s death undetermined and to delete any references to homicide.
The judge also said references to stun guns contributing to the deaths of two other men must be deleted from autopsy findings. Dennis Hyde, 30, died in 2005 after a confrontation with Akron police, and Richard Holcomb, 18, died the same year after being hit with a stun by a police officer in suburban Springfield Township.
I don’t know why anyone bothers to amass a mountain of student loan debt to work hard and go to medical school and forensics school to become a medical examiner, when all you need is a judge’s robe to know how and why people die in police custody. The guy died of a heart attack; those 50,000 volts coursing through his body had absolutely no effect on a pepper-sprayed fully-restrained young man with coronary disease. Continue Reading…
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