“People may not like his style” begins the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s denouement of the Chief Pennington years.
As if the crime-weary public has been complaining all along about the cut of Chief Pennington’s jib, not the fact that he poo-poohed the rising crime wave, turned on his own officers, and stopped doing his job. ...
Chief Pennington is leaving, but Al Sharpton has set up camp. Atlanta can’t catch a break. From an Atlanta Journal Constitution article:
Sharpton Decries Black on Black Violence ...
I wrote this a few weeks back and never posted it: I was waiting for a confirmation of some details. In December, Crime Victims Media Report will be re-launching with more emphasis on The Guilty Project, an effort to document the ways prolific and violent offenders avoid justice.
I have been hearing recently from crime victims, their families, and other people who personally knew offenders before they were caught: their stories are compelling, and they have a lot to say about the justice system that needs to be heard by wider audiences. ...
Courtwatcher Orlando’s Laura Williams brings attention to the case of Loc Buu Tran:
2006-CF-014820-O In custody since 10/19/06 ~ Trial now scheduled for 11/16/09 with Judge John Adams. 1st Degree Murder. Allegedly stabbed a UCF student to death 10/06 when she tried to break up with him. Also was convicted 8 years ago in Clearwater for rape. Mistrial was declared 8/12/09 after Judge Jenifer Davis realized during the first witness’ testimony that she had worked on the case when in the PD’s office.
Why can’t we seem to get this guy tried? ...
So suddenly the Fulton County Courts cannot function, thanks to a huge planned budget cut. But how were they functioning before, with violent felons and repeat offenders getting a free stroll out the door for a variety of reasons? This is a scene playing out across the country:
Georgia’s biggest court system warned Wednesday that a 2010 Fulton County proposal that cuts $53 million from the judicial budget could force them to shut down the courthouse, jeopardize death penalty cases and slash as many as 1,000 jobs. ...
Imagine if reporters actually behaved neutrally when approaching subjects like the government’s efforts to stop child predators. Imagine if they sat themselves down and said: I am going to suspend my natural tendency to side with the accused and control my adolescent rebelliousness towards all authority. I am going to behave as if I am the blank slate I am supposed to be, suspending judgment as I gather and report facts.
No? I didn’t think so. ...
Graydon Carter has a problem. How do you pose as a moralist while excusing your own history of peddling young flesh — and justifying the child-rape committed by your friend?
It’s a tall order. Under Carter’s tutelage, Vanity Fair has acquired a strange fixation on certain types of photos of nude young women. It’s simply weird how often the editor feels compelled to litter his pages with shot after shot of extremely youthful actresses in the buff surrounded by other people in clothes — also weird how vehemently and frequently he defends this basement-porn aesthetic in the magazine’s pages. This tightrope act occasionally threatens to unravel beneath the weight of one too many coy verbal gestures toward the breasts of girls who could be one’s daughter, or rather grand-daughter. But Carter just can’t seem to help himself. ...
What happens when you strip away consequences for holding a gun to somebody’s head, or kicking in somebody’s back door? What happens when you tell a 16-year old that the worst thing that will happen to him if he commits a serious crime is a few months behind bars, hardly a threat to a child who views incarceration as a sign of street cred? And what happens when you prevent police from even detaining the kids who just broke into your neighbor’s house?
This is what happens to the offender: ...
Pardon the brief hiatus from journalistic ethics week, which I’ll just roll over into journalist ethics fortnight, Jane Austen style.
Everybody was behaving so ethically out there, I just lost steam. Nobody ran headlines falsely accusing the families of the D.C. sniper victims of being “vengeful” for saying things like: “It helped to see the completion. It helped to a degree,” upon witnessing John Muhammad’s execution. Nobody made utterly false allegations of prosecutorial malfeasance, claiming, “[t]here are several documented cases where DNA testing showed that innocent people were put to death by the government,” then refused to correct the record when it was brought to his attention that there are actually no documented cases where DNA testing showed that innocent people were put to death by the government (and that’s according to death penalty opponents). ...
When the A.C.L.U. manufactures an utterly frivolous legal issue that costs the state millions of dollars to litigate, the St. Petersburg Times views that as money well-spent in the interest of “ensuring the health of our democracy.” When A.C.L.U.-associated lawyers profit from lawsuits arising from the group’s activism, the St. Petersburg Times doesn’t complain. It’s all in the interest of ensuring the health of our democracy, you see, and if lawyers turn a few million dimes “keeping the system honest,” well, power to the people.
When health-care non-profits accept funding from hospitals and medical and drug companies that stand to profit from their activism, the St. Petersburg Times doesn’t smell a rat: they smell roses. As they should. Actually, they usually don’t even notice such transactions, since this is the way non-profits simply do business. ...
Stop the presses! It’s journalistic ethics week, and so perhaps it’s fitting that this first story plopped down in a big steaming mess on the pages of every newspaper that carries the AP.
Anthony Sowell, who was recently found knee-deep in the decaying bodies of his victims, doesn’t deserve to be labeled a rapist, according to the AP. ...
Over the years, I’ve noticed that Saturdays seem to be the day when NPR reporters take a deep breath from the toils of the week, settle down with a steaming cup o’ joe, and recharge their batteries by indulging in a little calisthenic empathy for the pointedly unsympathetic: child killers on death row, for example, or gang members terrorizing neighborhoods full of innocent people they don’t bother to interview (because it would just be perplexing to listen to the grandmas explain that what they really need is more police protection from gangs).
There is a frisson of self-righteousness in such behavior, and a bonus frisson of danger, imagined, not real, of course, because no child killer or gang member worth his salt would bother to shank the PR machine. So, through their empathetic identification with vicious sociopaths, the reporters get to feel simultaneously superior to everyone else and victimized by society. ...
What happens if you sign a hate crimes bill, and then all the wrong types of people commit “hate crimes?”
Well, you keep your mouth shut about it. ...
From the Valdosta Daily Times:
Inmates out of control
Former officers share tales of terror at Valdosta State Prison
...
The Guilty Project documents flaws in the justice system that enable serial offenders to commit more crimes.
Failure to Prosecute, Wrongful Acquittal by Jury, Early Release by State, Family/Employer Cover-Up ...
DeKalb Officers blog pulled up James Ferrell’s arrest record after Ferrell shot a cop last week, an attempted murder already reduced to an aggravated assault charge.
How is shooting an officer, even if you only hit him in the leg, not attempted murder? If the sentencing code of Georgia is so incoherent that it is better to charge someone with a lesser crime in order to circumvent the possibility of a shorter sentence, why doesn’t the legislature fix that terrible problem? Or is it the District Attorney’s office that is being incoherent on the “shooting a cop isn’t attempted murder” thing? Would Ferrell be charged with attempted murder if he had shot a cop in some other county? ...
From reader Chris Murphy, who attended the Jonathan Redding hearing to determine if Redding will be required to provide information to a Grand Jury about his partners in the murder of John Henderson:
I was at that last hearing. The judge, Kimberly Esmond Adams, was looking for any excuse to allow his attorney into the grand jury, which goes against the rules. She delayed the decision, and it never was publicized what she ruled. That’s the kind of s**t that passes for justice: make a ruling, but do it when no one is around, if possible. ...