Category: News

Categories
News

Convicted Man Who Never Went to Jail Because of Clerical Error Set Free By Judge

A Missouri judge ordered the state on Monday to set free a man who was convicted of robbery in 2000 but never sent to prison until a clerical mistake was discovered last year.

Cornealious ‘Mike’ Anderson was 23 when he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for his role in the robbery of a fast-food restaurant’s assistant manager. He told The Associated Press last month that he waited, and even asked about going to prison, but the order never came.

In the years since his conviction, Anderson started his own construction-related businesses, married and had children. He also coached youth football and volunteered at his church in Webster Groves, Missouri.

A free man: A judge ordered Cornealious Anderson (left) out of jail today. He was arrested last year when it was discovered he was never sent to prison for a robbery conviction in a clerical mistake. Pictured above with wife LaQonna and daughter Nevaeh, 3, after his release today

Family man: When summons never came to report for jail, Anderson went on to live a life dedicated to his family. Pictured above leaving court Monday morning

Reunion: Anderson embraces his grandmother Mary Porter after being released from custody on Monday

+10

Nightmare over: Anderson, his grandmother (left), wife LaQonna (right) and daughter Nevaeh walk down the stairs and out of court today

Judge Terry Lynn Brown lauded Anderson’s ‘exemplary’ behavior during his 13 years of freedom before the arrest. “You’ve been a good father. You’ve been a good husband. You’ve been a good taxpaying citizen of the state of Missouri.

‘That leads me to believe that you are a good man and a changed man.’

As the judge announced his decision, about 10 of Anderson’s relatives broke out in sobs and cried. Anderson stared straight ahead but dabbed tears from his eyes. Afterward, he hugged his toddler daughter tight. The hearing lasted about 10 minutes.

The judge said rather than Anderson being granted parole, he would get credit for the 4,794 days between when he was convicted and when he was arrested last year.

+10

Mistake: If he served his full sentence, Anderson would have been released last July. That’s when authorities realized the clerical error and brought him to prison

Anderson’s plight drew international headlines last month. An online petition on change.org includes more than 35,000 signatures urging the state to set him free. Even Attorney General Chris Koster seemed inclined to find a solution to resolve what he called a ‘difficult situation.’

Anderson, 37, had never been convicted of a serious crime before the robbery. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for the holdup, then told to wait for orders that would specify when and where he was to report to prison.

But the orders never came. Anderson suspected that his case had been overlooked and asked his former attorney what to do.

‘Day by day, month by month, year by year, time passed, and they never picked me up,’ he said in the interview with AP.

Changed man: In his 13 years of freedom, Anderson got married, had children, started a construction business, coached his son’s youth football team and volunteered at his church

So Anderson went about his life, never trying to conceal his whereabouts or identity.

He married, divorced, married again. He raised three children of his own and a stepchild, owned and operated three construction businesses. He coached his son’s youth football team in Webster Groves, and he ran the video operation at his church.

In July, Anderson’s sentence was supposed to end. It was then that someone at the Missouri Department of Corrections realized he had never been put behind bars.

Eight U.S. marshals arrived one morning at his home in a middle-class neighborhood and took him away. He was in prison by noon that day, and has remained behind bars ever since.

The Missouri judge decided to free Anderson based on his life after his convicted. Pictured on the right his his wife LaQonna

Koster said last month that his goal was to suggest a way for the court to balance the seriousness of Anderson’s crime with the clerical error made by the justice system and Anderson’s conduct since the robbery.

‘All three factors deserve recognition in resolving this difficult situation,’ Koster said.

Anderson’s attorneys filed an appeal in February calling his imprisonment unfair and unjust. They had also asked Gov. Jay Nixon to commute the sentence or grant clemency.

Justice: Anderson walks out of court victorious today with wife LaQonna and daughter Neveah

Read more: DailyMail

Categories
Education News Politics

New Jersey and Mississippi: Perfect Together

There can be no more damning a statistic than the one in today’s Star-Ledger and on nj.com. This article lays out in stark detail why Chris Christie will not be elected president, and why he should not have been reelected this past November. His economic record is terrible and New Jersey is tied with Mississippi, and just above New Mexico, as the state with the most anemic private sector job increases in the country.

Mississippi at least has some excuses for its place on the list, owing to its history, relatively poor population and the destruction of its industrial base over the past 40 years. New Jersey should be doing better. After all, this is the home state of the major pharmaceutical industries and one with a terrific public school system (unless Christie has his way with it) and a college-educated work force willing to put up with serious infrastructure problems (‘nother train tunnel anyone? Anyone?) and terrible roads/trains/buses. And that’s before we even get to work.

The governor will surely blame his troubles on the Democrats who run the legislature and who won’t approve his business-friendly judges or cut the income tax so he can starve the public sector unions that contribute so much to the state’s bottom line. He’d much rather make the unions pay even more for their pensions and benefits, simultaneously taking more money out of the economy and destroying the middle class, while blocking the even small revenue boost that would come from asking the wealthy to pay more. And he won’t even make the pension payment he promised.

The Governor wants to run on his economic record. The problem is that he doesn’t have one that the rest of the country would benefit from. He still also opposes marriage equality and ran against an immediate minimum wage increase of $1. It passed because the people of New Jersey voted for it, but nobody’s getting rich on it.

Further complicating Christie’s future plans is the entry of Jeb Bush into the national Republican conversation. Now donors might have to choose the Bush that even his mother preferred to be president with a governor who’s still defending himself over a traffic jam. Right now, Christie is losing that race too. It really has gone from bad to worse. He won reelection with over 65% of the vote. Now he might not even compete with the family whose last son presided over the destruction of the economy and fought two wars on credit cards.

I’ll say it again: Chris Christie won in 2013. That will prove to be his final general election win.

Register your comments at www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Featured News Rape

Heroic 8-year-old Boy Beaten to Death Trying to Protect his Sister, 12, from Rapist

Fearless: An 8-year-old Virginia boy identified as Martin Cobb was beaten to death trying to defend his older sister from a rapist

A community in Richmond, Virginia, is reeling after an eight-year-old boy was beaten to death while trying to protect his 12-year-old sister from a rapist.

The boy, identified as Martin Cobb, was pronounced dead at the scene in the 200 block of Brandon Road Thursday night.

His sibling, whose name is not being released because of her age and the nature of the crime, was taken to a hospital.

Police have since apprehended the suspect, who turned out to be a black teenager. Initially, the victim described her assailant to as a white man with scraggly facial hair, the local station WWBT reported.

Investigators later determined that the suspect had threatened to kill the 12-year-old girl if she provided police with accurate information about him.

The teenager is currently being evaluated at Tuckers Psychiatric Clinic in Richmond as police are preparing to charge him with murder and assault.

At around 6.30pm Thursday, the brother and sister were playing by the train tracks near their home when a stranger approached the 12-year-old girl, sexually assaulted her and slashed her face, the kids’ aunt and stepfather told WRIC.

Scroll down for video

Community shocked: The siblings were playing by the train tracks along Brandon Road in Richmond Thursday when a stranger came out of nowhere and attacked the 12-year-old girl

+8

Too young: Martin’s family say the little boy tried to intervene in an effort to protect his big sister, at which point her assailant threw a rock at his head, killing him on the spot

When her 8-year-old brother tried to intervene, the teenage attacker allegedly turned on him, throwing a rock at his head. The child died instantly.

‘To have the courage to defend his sister as if he was a grown man,’ neighbor Sudan Aunu told Richmond Times Dispatch. ‘His sister is alive today because of him.’

Police responded to the scene a short time later after someone saw the 12-year-old girl running naked and covered in blood out of the nearby woods.

The child was taken to a hospital to be treated for bruises and laceration. Her family said she was very distraught by what happened. .

As officers gathered evidence at the scene in the gathering darkness, shaken neighbors gathered in a circle for an impromptu prayer.

False information: The rape victim initially told police her attacker was a grown white man with a scraggly beard, but it was later revealed that he was a black teen

DailyMail

Categories
News Politics unemployment rate

Good News for America, Bad News For Republicans – Unemployment Rate 6.3%

More good news for America, some very bad news for Republicans. And its messed up that things are this way, but this is unfortunately the path Republicans have chosen – be against everything that’s good for the country.

Republicans have gone out of their way to show the world that they are against progress in this country. That’s why today’s unemployment numbers will make these America-hating Republicans upset!

The Labor Department reported today that the unemployment rate dropped to 6.3 percent, due to a better-than-expected employment numbers in April. The numbers show that employers added 288,000 workers to their payroll in April.

The 6.3 percent unemployment rate represents a 5 year low, and it also represents that this country is headed in the right direction. But don’t tell that to the Republicans. Right now, I’m sure they’re bunkered down, trying to figure out a way to spin these numbers negative.

Tune in to Fox News and listen to the Congressional Republicans to find out their latest negative talking point on this very positive employment news story.

Categories
NAACP News Racism

Leon Jenkins came under fire after it was made known his chapter honored Donald Sterling.

NAACP interim President and CEO Lorraine Miller has accepted the resignation of the Los Angeles chapter president after questions surfaced as to why his branch honored beleaguered L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life Tuesday after revelations surfaced regarding Sterling making numerous statements denigrating black Americans.

In a letter of resignation, L.A. chapter President Leon Jenkins wrote, “Please be advised that the legacy, history and reputation of the NAACP is more important to me than the presidency. In order to separate the Los Angeles NAACP and the NAACP from the negative exposure I have caused the NAACP, I respectfully resign my position as president of the Los Angeles NAACP.”

LOS ANGELES NAACP: Sterling donation led to award

STERLING SCANDAL: Clippers owner could use divorce to avoid sale

Jenkins has come under fire from the public in recent days after it was made public that the chapter honored Sterling with a lifetime achievement award in 2009 and planned to do so again this month. Published reports indicated that Sterling had donated $45,000 to the chapter since 2007.

Earlier in the week, Jenkins told a press conference that the donations came to “an insignificant amount” and the chapter planned to return the money.

The NAACP said in its statement Thursday that its national office in Baltimore is developing guidelines to assist branches in their award selection process.

h/t – usatoday

Categories
News South Korea

Heartbreaking Video shows Students as Ferry Sinks – Video

Cellphone video taken by student on board sinking South Korean ferry records last words and pictures of teenage passengers. Father requested faces be blurred to protect grieving families. (May 1) Video provided by AP AP

John Bacon, USA TODAY7:38 p.m. EDT May 1, 2014

A 17-minute recording made by a student who died when a ferry sank off the coast of South Korea provides the most heartbreaking glimpse yet of how a fun trip turned into horror for young passengers on the doomed Sewol.

The video, translated by USA TODAY and the Associated Press, was found on the phone of 17-year-old student Park Su Hyeon when rescuers recovered his body. His father, Park Jong Dae, said he released it to give his mourning nation a glimpse of the April 16 tragedy from inside the vessel.

The video was released to select South Korea media Monday, the same day authorities released a video taken by a coast guard member showing the Sewol’s captain fleeing the sinking ship while hundreds of passengers, most of them Danwon High School students on a class trip, remained below deck. The videos outraged the nation already devastated by the catastrophe. More than 300 of the 476 people who were on board are dead or missing.

The student video begins at 8:52 a.m. Korea time on April 16. The ship had just begun to list, and the chatter among students is a mix of humor and fear.

Early on, an announcement can be heard: “Don’t move away from your places and brace for any possible accidents.”

A student lightly asks, “Am I going to die?” But another quickly chastises with “It is not time to laugh. We are in a real situation.”

Moments later, one student says “Dad, I don’t want to die.” Another says, “It will be fun if waters flow in.”

Students are heard discussing problems with life jackets, which increases in importance after an announcement is made to don life jackets. By the time the clip ends at 9:09, everyone in view is wearing one.

Some of the students in the video struggle as they try to buckle their life jackets. As the ferry lists, they joke about “final commemorative pictures” and “defying gravity” by trying to walk on the walls.

“It’s like we’re becoming the Titanic,” one student says.

Passengers were repeatedly told to say in place. The announcement, at 9:08: “We’re again announcing: For passengers who can wear life vests, please wear them now. Never move away from your places.”

Capt. Lee Joon Seok said he delayed having passengers evacuate the ship because of worries about sending them into cold waters and fast currents before rescuers arrived. He said he ultimately ordered an evacuation, but it was not clear if that order was ever announced to passengers.

The captain and 14 crewmembers have been detained on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need. Prosecutors are investigating whether stability issues related to too much cargo or a redesign that added more cabins to the ship contributed to the sinking.

Some of the teens in the video use it to offer their last words. Some warn their siblings not to take school trips unless they want to end up like them.

“I’m really scared,” a student says.

“Is it really sinking?” another asks. “Wow, they’re giving us life vests.”

“I’m getting out of here,” one says. “Me too, me too,” says another.

A student says: “We have to survive now.”

“We’re all finished. I have to leave some farewell words before I die,” says another.

One says, “Mom, I love you.”

Contributing: Jae Yang; the Associated Press

Categories
News

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Heading to Rehab as Crack Smoking video Emerges

The admitted crack smoker and heavy drinker has long dodged calls for him to resign or go to drug rehab. He relented Wednesday after a video, shot early Saturday morning, shows him reportedly smoking crack cocaine. An audio clip, recorded secretly Monday night, reportedly catches Ford during a drunken evening out at a bar.

THE GLOBE AND MAILToronto Mayor Rob Ford is seen in this screen grab from a recently surfaced video holding a pipe. The clip was reportedly taken Saturday morning at his sister’s house.

Rob Ford is going to rehab.

A lawyer for the crack-smoking, booze-loving Toronto mayor say he’ll take a leave of absence from the job to seek help for substance abuse.

The announcement came Wednesday as new video of Ford smoking crack as recently as Saturday has emerged via The Globe and Mail newspaper. And an audio clip, reportedly secretly recorded Monday at a suburban Toronto bar, caught the mayor cursing and ranting during a late-night drinking bout,according to the Toronto Sun.

The oft-maligned mayor of Canada’s largest city will suspend his reelection campaign as he gets help to “deal with his issues,” Ford told The Sun on Wednesday evening.

He said he is “ready to take a break.”

FRANK GUNN/APToronto Mayor Rob Ford was caught on video smoking crack cocaine but has not bent to calls for his resignation.

Ford has been urged to get help after videos of him smoking crack came out last year. He said he had smoked the drug once in a “drunken stupor” and publicly said he had cut back on his drinking.

But The Sun claims they have an audiotape from Monday of an “unruly” Ford ranting and cursing while ordering booze at a bar in Etobicoke, a Toronto suburb.

He even takes a nasty shot at one of his opponents in the mayoral race, Karen Stintz.

“I’d like to f—— jam her, but she doesn’t want … I can’t talk like this … I’m so sorry,” Ford reportedly says on the recording. “I forgot there’s a woman in the house.”

Read more:http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/toronto-mayor-rob-ford-substance-abuse-article-1.1774840#ixzz30QeXugkD

Categories
Education marriage equality News Politics

The Wide Left Turn

First it was marriage equality. Now it’s the minimum wage. And prison reform. And some lefty laboratories in cities across the country. It’s not a sharp turn to the left as many had anticipated with Obama’s election in 2008. It’s a wide turn, and the country’s already done the first hand-over-hand on the cultural-political wheel.

If you haven’t seen the Frontline series on American prisons, please go their post-haste and watch what you can. The growth of the prison population in this country is staggering, and is a direct result of the conservative policies that created minimum sentences and the mandated arrests of millions of low-level and non-violent offenders, most of whom were males of color. Pair that with the creation of laws that, in some states, treated 12 year-olds as adults, and the results are explosive. We built prisons, then made sure we filled them up.

That’s changing. Many states, such as Kentucky, are trying to reform and rewrite their legal codes to provide the kind of care that young, at-risk juveniles and older, clearly sick men and women need in order to avoid jail time. One of the stories on the program shows a clearly distressed young women who needs counseling, medication, emotional support and a mentor if she is to thrive as a citizen. Otherwise, she’s going to wind up as a ward of the state and she might commit a violent act against someone. Another story shows a 67 year old addict who’s been released from jail to a halfway house with nothing. No money, no prospects, no clothes other than the sweats on his body. And he’s supposed to get a job? Go on welfare or food stamps (that the GOP wants to cut more)?

And while we were spending all of this money on being punitive, the right wing also told us that we needed to spend less on schools and lower taxes that paid for needed government services. Spending more on prisons and less on schools has had a direct impact on our culture. But as I said, that’s changing.

There are other signs of a wide left turn. Minimum wages are going up in some states. In New Jersey, the people voted to raise the wage over the objections of Governor Christie. Today’s vote to try and raise the national wage ended in a Republican-led filibuster, which will show up in Democratic ads come the fall. The national reactions to comments from Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy shows that, although there are still racists in the United States, they will not be tolerated as they were before. Courts are striking down voter ID laws, most recently in Wisconsin, which is a welcome sign for democracy.

We still have work to do, and there will be setbacks, but slowly and surely, ideas that for years were ridiculed as soft and unworkable are seeing the light of day.

A left turn indeed.

Register your comments at www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Featured New York News

Almost Half Of New Yorkers Are Poor


(Getty Images)

From 2011 to 2012, the number of New Yorkers who were at or near poverty levels remained constant at 46%. According to a new report [PDF] released by the City’s Center for Economic Opportunity andobtained by the Times, “nearly half of New Yorkers were making less than 150 percent of the poverty threshold, a figure that describes people who are struggling to get by.”

Being gainfully employed does not necessarily keep you from “struggling to get by”: 17% of families with a full time worker remained in poverty, as did 5.2% of families with two full time workers.

The poverty rate has stopped growing since the recession, but this belies the reality of a city that isimpossibly expensive to live in and has only seen an increase in low-wage jobs with no benefits.

Mayor de Blasio’s first deputy mayor Anthony Shorris says that the new administration “got elected almost entirely on this question,” and vowed to fight “this stubborn undercurrent” with paid sick leave, a living wage law, municipal ID cards, and universal pre-K.

New York’s reality mirrors what the country is experiencing. Per another report on the meager wage job boom in the Times:

The National Employment Law Project study found that there were about a million fewer jobs in middle-wage industries — including parts of the health care system, loan servicing and real estate — than there were when the recession hit.

Economists worry that even a stronger recovery might not bring back jobs in traditionally middle-class occupations eroded by mechanization and offshoring. The American work force might become yet more “polarized,” with positions easier to find at the high and low ends than in the middle.

h/t – gothamist
Categories
Featured News

Hidden Camera Shows Bedridden Great-Grandmother Crying for Help 321 Times – Ignored by Staff

Carers ignored the desperate cries for help of bedridden 98-year-old woman despite her calling for assistance 321 times in a single hour.

Shocking secret footage filmed inside Oban House care home in Croydon, south London showed great-grandmother Yvonne Grant begging to be taken to the toilet for up to two-and-a-half hours.

Tragically the hidden camera, which was placed in the room by concerned granddaughter Vanessa Evans, captured the final undignified days of Ms Grant’s life, as she died less than a month later.

Ignored: 98-year-old great-grandmother Yvonne Grant begged to be taken to the toilet for up to two-and-a-half hours. Her carers apparently did not respond, despite being stationed directly outside her room

The secret footage forms part of a BBC Panorama investigation into abuse at care homes, which airs this evening.

Since Ms Grant’s death in January last year, two members of staff have been convicted of common assault over their treatment of the former seamstress, the Daily Mirror reported.

The footage shows the mother-of-four crying out for help hundreds of times in less than an hour, including making 45 requests to be taken to the toilet.

When a member of staff finally arrives two-and-a-half hours later, they instructed Ms Grant to use her incontinence pad – something she had never done before.

Cries for help: Since Ms Grant’s death in January last year, two members of staff have been convicted of common assault over their treatment of the former seamstress

Tragic: The hidden camera, which was placed in the room by concerned granddaughter Vanessa Evans, captured the final undignified days of Ms Grant’s life, as she died less than a month later

Ms Grant was then helped out of bed and told to walk to the toilet by herself. When she couldn’t manage it, the 98-year-old was dropped roughly back onto the bed.

It wasn’t until some time later that she was finally taken to the toilet.

Speaking to the newspaper, Ms Grant’s granddaughter Vanessa Evans,43, said: ‘When I saw the video I was devastated and fuming. But I can’t say I was shocked.’

‘I was expecting to find something but I didn’t think it would be this extreme. Her calls were definitely ignored because the nurse’s station is right outside the room,’ she added.

Ms Grant, who moved into the Oban House care home in 2010 after losing her RAF hero husband John 24-years earlier, died within days of her granddaughter telling her that she had placed a secret camera in the room and recorded her suffering.

Read more: DailyMail

Categories
Featured News Oklahoma

Botched Execution Left Man in 40 Minutes of Agony Before He Died

Clayton Lockett spent forty minutes writhing in agony before dying of a heart attack

A death row inmate spent forty minutes writhing in agony before dying of a heart attack following a new cocktail of drugs administered in a lethal injection on Tuesday night.

Oklahoma prison officials halted Clayton Lockett’s execution after the  left the man writhing and clenching his teeth on the gurney.

The 38-year-old, who was found guilty of shooting a woman and watching his friends bury her alive, was declared unconscious ten minutes after the first of the state’s new three-drug lethal injection combination was administered.

Three minutes later, though, he began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.

It later emerged his vein had ruptured.

The blinds were eventually lowered to prevent those in the viewing gallery from watching what was happening in the death chamber, and the state’s top prison official eventually called a halt to the proceedings.

Lockett died of a heart attack a short time later, the Department of Corrections said.

Local media present said Mr Lockett sat up and said ‘something’s wrong’ 13 minutes into the procedure.

‘It was a horrible thing to witness. This was totally botched,’ said Lockett’s attorney, David Autry.

HOW THE BOTCHED EXECUTION PLAYED OUT!

6:23 p.m. – The injection process begins. Lockett has heavy, slow blinks, laid still

6:29 p.m. – Consistently closed his eyes

6:30 p.m. – First check of consciousness; still conscious

6:33 p.m. – Announced Lockett was officially unconscious

6:34 p.m. – Lockett started to move his mouth

6:36 p.m. – Lockett began convulsing and mumbling

6:37 p.m. – Lockett sat up and said ‘something’s wrong’

6:39 p.m. – Prison officials lowered the blinds

7:06 p.m. – Lockett dies of massive heart attack

Read more: DailyMail

Categories
News

Reality Sets In – MH370 May Never be Found

In what is seen as an admission that MH370 will never be found, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said today that the surface search was being scaled back because it is ‘highly unlikely’ clues will be found on the surface of the Indian Ocean

Instead, the search will enter a new phase with the focus on the ocean floor – despite there being no ‘pings’ from what was earlier hoped were the aircraft’s black boxes.

Mr Abbott said that as the aircraft, which had 239 people on board, has been missing for 52 days, if there had been any debris from the aircraft it would have now sunk.

‘By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk’ said Mr Abbott.

He paid tribute to the ‘tremendous work’ of air crews from eight nations who have contributed to the search.

His words were seen as virtually admitting that the search had little prospect of finding the aircraft, particularly as a concentrated hunt by the undersea search vehicle Bluefin-21 in a ‘likely area’ had found nothing.

h/t Daily Mail

Exit mobile version