Judges Ordered to Pay More than $200 Million to Victims of Juvenile Detention in “Kids for Cash” Corruption Scheme

From [HERE] A federal judge on Tuesday ordered two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated the “kids for cash” corruption scandal to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of their victims.

“Although most memories fade over the years, certain events are so punctuated by overwhelming circumstances and emotions that no amount of time can erase their mark,” wrote U.S. District Judge Christopher C. Conner of the Middle District of Pennsylvania in his decision. “Tragically, for many young citizens of our Commonwealth, the day they were adjudicated delinquent by former judge, now convicted felon, Mark A. Ciavarella … is such an event.”

The Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal have coverage.

Ciavarella, who along with his co-defendant Michael T. Conahan presided in the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania, advocated for the closing of the county’s juvenile facilities and construction of new for-profit detention centers in 2002. According to Conner’s memorandum opinion, the former judges received payouts of more than $2.7 million for helping to build and then fill the PA Child Care and its sister facility, the Western PA Child Care, between 2003 and 2007.

In 2009, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court authorized a special master to vacate and dismiss with prejudice all the juvenile court cases in which Ciavarella entered adjudications of delinquency or consent decrees during the five-year period in which he received kickbacks. According to the Associated Press, about 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 kids were thrown out.

Ciavarella was convicted in 2011 for racketeering, mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy and filing false tax returns and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison in the same year after entering a guilty plea in the case.

Conner heard testimony from 282 plaintiffs and 32 parents in a civil lawsuit against the judges last year, noting in his opinion that “they recounted [Ciavarella’s] harsh and arbitrary nature, his disdain for due process, his extraordinary abruptness, and his cavalier and boorish behavior in the courtroom.”

In one case involving a 14-year-old who appeared with her mother for an unpaid underage drinking citation, Ciavarella told her that if she “liked to drink like the bulldogs” she “could get locked up like them too,” Conner said. Ciavarella wouldn’t let the girl hug her mother before sending her to juvenile detention, Conner added.

According to Conner, another teenager who was 16 spent nearly a year in juvenile detention for driving without a license the wrong way on a one-way street. She told the court that Ciavarella said, “I want you to count the number of buttons on your blouse, and that’s the number of … months that you’re going away for.”

“The court heard numerous accounts of senseless detentions,” Conner said in his opinion. “Of the 282 former juveniles who testified, 79 were under the age of 13. One individual testified that he was only 8 years old when he was first adjudicated by Ciavarella.”

Many of these plaintiffs were detained for lengthy amounts of time for minor infractions, including smoking on school property, stealing candy and jaywalking, Conner said. They described being shocked when they were immediately handcuffed and shackled and also spoke of harms from their exposure to people in juvenile detention who were charged with armed robbery, arson and other violent felonies.

Conner said the plaintiffs missed school and life events, and many were later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. Some admitted to contemplating suicide and self-medicating with illegal drugs.

“Plaintiffs are the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions,” said Conner, who awarded them $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages. “The law is powerless to restore to plaintiffs the weeks, months and years lost because of the actions of the defendants.

“But we hope that by listening to their experiences and acknowledging the depth of the damage done to their lives, we can provide them with a measure of closure and, with this memorandum opinion, ensure that their stories are never forgotten.”

New Study Reveals the CIA Used Incarcerated Black People as Guinea Pigs in MKULTRA and Brainwashing Experiment w/No Scientific Merit. Tortured and Dosed Them with Unsafe Levels of Psychoactive Drugs

From [FTP] By now, many will be familiar with Project MKULTRA. For decades, the CIA conducted highly unethical experiments on humans in order to perfect brainwashing, mind control and torture techniques.

Perhaps the program’s most notorious aspect was the administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs to targets, particularly LSD. These substances were brought to Langley’s attention in 1948 by Richard Kuhn, one of 1,600 Nazi scientists covertly spirited to the U.S. via Operation Paperclip following World War II. When MKULTRA was formally established five years later, some individuals consulted directly on the project.

The unwitting dosing of U.S. citizens with LSD is infamous; among those spiked were CIA operatives themselves. That the Agency exploited mental patients, prisoners, and drug addicts for the purpose – “people who could not fight back,” in the words of an unnamed Agency operative – is less well-known.

A study by academics at the University of Ottawa’s Culture and Mental Health Disparities Lab sheds significant new light on this underexplored component of MKULTRA and illuminates a hitherto wholly unknown dimension of the program; people of color, overwhelmingly Black Americans, were disproportionately targeted by the CIA in its service.

SPOKEN OF AS ANIMALS AND TREATED AS SUCH

In 1973, due to fears CIA covert action might be officially audited in the wake of the Watergate scandal, then-Agency chief Richard Helms ordered all papers related to MKULTRA destroyed.

Tens of thousands of documents somehow survived the purge. Even more conveniently, a significant portion of the research yielded by the project’s experiments was published in freely-accessible, peer-reviewed scientific journals, as over 80 private and public universities, prisons, and hospitals – whether knowingly or not – conducted psychedelic drug experiments on behalf of the CIA. While LSD was the preponderant substance of interest, the effects of DMT, mescaline, psilocybin, and THC were also extensively explored.

In all, the University of Ottawa team analyzed 49 of these papers, published from the 1950s to the 1970s. Forty percent related to experiments conducted at the Addiction Research Center in Kentucky, which the CIA directly managed.

The site included a prison for individuals charged with violating narcotics laws, a “special ward” for drug research, and a prison populated by purported “addicts.” Researchers employed there avowedly preferred to perform tests on former and current drug users, as they were considered to be “experienced” in the effects of illicit substances and therefore better able to give informed consent than the abstinent. In practice, the CIA’s guinea pigs frequently had no idea what was being administered.

In analyzing available literature, the academics examined participants’ stated race and ethnicity, recruitment strategies, methodology, and potential dangers to participants. All studies used captured, incarcerated test subjects, coercive incentives for participation, unsafe dosing levels, and had questionable scientific merit.

In almost 90% of cases, at least one ethical violation was identified, over three-quarters employed a high-risk dosing schedule that would be unacceptable under modern guidelines, and 15% used participants with psychotic disorders. Roughly 30% exploited people of color.

While in many studies, the race or ethnicity of test subjects was not recorded, further investigation by the Ottawa academics revealed Black Americans were significantly overrepresented in the recruitment sites from which test subjects were drawn. It is inevitable that the actual number of MKULTRA studies that abused people of color is far larger. For example, while people of color constituted just 7% of Kentucky’s population at the time of experiments at the Addiction Research Center, Black and Mexican Americans represented 66% of the site’s inmate population.[MORE]

If You’re Black, Pro-FBI and Support Unrestrained Searches Then You Possess a ‘GOINTELBRO’ Mind and Accept White Liberals’ Agenda as Your Own. Blacks Parroting Trump Obsessed Dems Subvert Themselves

As Defined in FUNKTIONARY

GOINTELBRO – Government Operative Incognegro Notifying The Enforcers Liberating Blackamerica’s Racist Oppressors. A Gointel-bro is a sorry-ass sophisticated hanky-head, coin-operated, Sam-Bohican, Snigger on the payrolls of the F.B.I. (or any other alphabet threat agency) as an undercover informant to foment divisiveness in Blackamerica’s ongoing centuries-long struggle for socioeconomic advancement as a people. Sniggers are equal in intent, and bound by the same flaw—covertly soul-selling out the potential self-determination of his people for the sake of his Massa’s overtly racist, statist or fascist law. (See: Snigger, COINTELPRO, Sambo, Black Flask Brigade, BOHICAN & Coin-Operated)

According to FUNKTIONARY:

propaganda – a psychological technique and means by which the lawless confound the lawful (dwellers upon the land). 2) any message intended to influence whether true or false. 3) disinformation used as programming that in its absence wouldn’t stand up itself nor stand up for itself by itself. 4) the over-preponderance of a certain message that is designed to impose certain forms and frames of reference and patterns of thought the objective of which being to subjugate a people. . . Propaganda is to be used as subversion, which is the undermining or detachment of the loyalties of significant social groups and their transference to the symbols and institutions of the aggressor-oppressor. “It is a political necessity to destroy the African consciousness of colonialized Africans or African people.” ~Dr. Amos N. Wilson. [MORE]

By [MARGARET KIMBERLY] Why would Black people laud the FBI or criticize protection against self-incrimination? The unrestrained FBI search of Donald Trump's home has reawakened Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Progressives love the FBI? Leftists embrace the Espionage Act? Of course, one man is responsible for this madness, and he is none other than Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States. The fallout from the FBI search conducted at Trump’s home shows the rank confusion spread by people who call themselves liberal but who are as dangerous as anyone on the right. From the moment that Trump announced the raid they were in full fascist mode, even as they claimed to be fighting fascism.

Trump did what he usually does, play fast and loose with the truth. Of all former presidents only he would ignore subpoenas and claim to have declassified documents when he hadn’t done so. He can’t get out of his own way and thus makes himself a target. But Democrats should know that the search is seen as nothing more than a personal attack against him. Millions of people who love Trump will love him all the more and conclude that the raid was meant to keep him from running for president again. Liberal dead-enders will be happy, but everyone else will say that something rotten was conducted at Mar-a-Lago.

Attorney General Merrick Garland says that the documents were subpoenaed but the former president didn’t respond. The FBI search warrant states that the search encompassed three different issues: gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which is part of the Espionage Act; concealment, removal, or mutilation concerning the handling of records and reports; and the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy, which is part of a section dealing with obstruction of justice. The warrant also states a search for information on Roger Stone and on the President of France.

Aside from the item descriptions, no one knows what Trump had or what the FBI found. Leaks from the Justice Department indicate something about nuclear weapons, but no one knows what that means. The lack of information hasn’t stopped the speculation which Trump always causes. There is conjecture that he was selling information to Russia or to Saudi Arabia or was plotting some other treason. There are even claims that documents were buried with his recently deceased ex-wife. It is fascinating that there can be so much guesswork about issues no one can know.

The years long Russiagate investigation is responsible for ordinarily sensible people losing their minds. Hardly anyone recalls that the charge of collusion was actually disproven, that Robert Mueller only indicted for process crimes, such as those which occur when people let down their guard and talk to the FBI. Most Americans who know the name Paul Manafort think he was a Russian spy but don’t know that he went to jail for tax and bank fraud. Propaganda works very well when it is repeated over and over again.

Worse than the silly Trump inspired derangement is the way that those who call themselves left or progressive have chosen to defend federal law enforcement and bad legislation like the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act is a relic from the earliest days of the cold war, and Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Palmer Raids which targeted the left for persecution and prosecution. Barack Obama used it more than all previous presidents combined in order to prosecute journalists who published what the state didn’t want us to know. As for the FBI, its Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, created dissension in the liberation movement, targeted individuals for prosecution, spied on Martin Luther King and told him to commit suicide, and killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark among others. The FBI continues to use informants to entrap Black people in phony terror cases.

It is truly shameful to see Black people exalt the FBI and act as if punishing Trump is the organizing principle of all political activity. The Trump organization is also under investigation by the New York Attorney General and the former president refused to answer questions put to him in a deposition. The right to remain silent is one of the most important in American law and should be used a lot more often. But copagandatelevision shows and Trump hatred have caused their own form of insanity, and his exercise of a fundamental right was widely lampooned. No one should ever be condemned for utilizing their fifth amendment right, not even Donald Trump.

Of course, this spectacle is also used to deflect from Biden administration failures. His approval rating is still low, for the simple reason that he didn’t do what he claimed he would for American voters. He continues to pour public money into the losing effort in Ukraine and needlessly provokes Russia and China. But who is paying attention if there is speculation that Trump put files in Ivana’s casket? [MORE]

Liberals Only Talk About Prison Reduction and Police Accountability to Trick the Gullible Black Votary: Efforts to Reduce the Mostly Black Jail Population End in LA, NYC, Chicago, Philly, etc.

ABOVE CORPSE JOE DURING THE CAMPAIGN USING GEORGE FLOYD’S FAMILY FOR A PHOTO OP.

NEUROPEON BIDEN BEGGED AND BEGGED BLACKS TO VOTE FOR HIM AND HE PROMISED “TO ROOT OUT SYSTEMIC RACISM IN OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM AND TO ENACT POLICE REFORM IN GEORGE FLOYD’S NAME.” HE ALSO pledgeD to “strengthen America’s commitment to justice and reform our criminal justice system.” THIS WAS ALL BULLSHIT THAT THE GULLIBLE BLACK VOTARY WANTED TO HEAR OR PROOF THAT HE WILL STAND FOR WHATEVER GULLIBLE BLACKS WILL FALL FOR. ACCORDING TO THE BRENANN CENTER BIDEN HAS MADE ‘LITTLE TO NO PROGRESS.’

Decarceration is Incompatible with White Supremacy’s Goal of PLACING LARGE NUMBERS OF NON-WHITE PEOPLE INTO Greater Confinement.

From [HERE] More than two years after instituting policies to keep more nonviolent offenders out of jail to reduce populations during the pandemic, California’s biggest metropolitan areas are making a U-turn in the midst of rising crime.

Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Clara are among the counties that recently stopped setting zero bail for certain misdemeanors and nonviolent felony offenses.

Such pandemic-era policies were separate from broader criminal justice reform moves over the past few years that have included laws limiting the use of bail and new approaches by district attorneys who won office on platforms de-emphasizing incarceration.

Those were driven by advocates and lawmakers who said that harsh prison sentences did little to reduce crime and that bail was unfair for people too poor to pay it.

The policies instituted at the start of the pandemic, meanwhile, were public-health measures meant to quickly depopulate jails, which were home to numerous outbreaks of the then-new coronavirus. The U.S. jail population plunged 25% in 2020 from mid-2019, to about 550,000, its lowest level in nearly a decade, according to federal data. 

California made such policies optional in mid-2020, a few months after instituting them that spring. But counties that are home to some of the state’s biggest cities kept the policies in place until this summer, after increases in crime sparked public calls for a tougher approach. In San Jose, Mayor Sam Liccardo said the pandemic jail policies were among the reasons that 43 people were arrested and then released without bail on at least 10 separate occasions between January 2020 and April 2022. Officials of Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, have disputed his claims.

“The zero-bail experiment largely failed,” said Mr. Liccardo, a Democrat. “There is a compelling reason to rethink cash bail to ensure it does not perpetuate the racial and economic inequities inherent in the criminal justice system, but we have seen too many violent and repeat offenders put out into our community without sufficient supervision, drug treatment or constraints.”

Nationwide, jail populations have risen but were 15% below their prepandemic levels as of the end of 2021, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for reducing prison populations.

Homicide rates have increased nationwide over the past two years, but have edged down in the first half of 2022, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

That has put district attorneys known as progressive prosecutors, in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, on the defensive. Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled in June by voters angry over rising crime. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams wants the state to do more and has been drawing attention to examples of suspects who were released and went on to commit other crimes. [MORE]

[A Major Goal of Racism White Supremacy is to Put Non-White People in Greater Confinement] The US Leads the World in Incarceration with 2.2 million people in prisons & jails; 67% are Non-White

Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly 5 times the rate of white Americans.

Nationally, one in 81 Black adults per 100,000 in the U.S. is serving time in state prison. Wisconsin leads the nation in Black imprisonment rates; one of every 36 Black Wisconsinites is in prison.

In 12 states, more than half the prison population is Black: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Seven states maintain a Black/white disparity larger than 9 to 1: California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.

Latinx individuals are incarcerated in state prisons at a rate that is 1.3 times the incarceration rate of whites. Ethnic disparities are highest in Massachusetts, which reports an ethnic differential of 4.1:1. [MORE]

For 8 Minutes 7 Cops and 2 Paramedics Stood and Watched as a Latino Teen Hung Himself, but None Intervened at Rikers, a Reprehensible Jail Run by Liberals. 4 Cops Now Charged w/Felonies

From [FTP] Eight minutes — this is the amount of time multiple officers and a captain stood by and watched as 18-year-old Nicholas Feliciano wrapped a homemade noose around his neck and proceeded to hang himself in a jail cell. More than a half dozen officers and jail staff did nothing as he hung from his neck, flailed around before going completely limp.

Only after watching the 18-year-old go still and his lifeless body hang limp in the jail cell did anyone move to cut him down. On Nov. 27, 2019, the rope was cut and Feliciano's limp body slammed to the floor.

According to court documents, Feliciano used a sweater to try to hang himself from a U-shaped piece of metal in the ceiling above the toilet. The ceiling fixture was supposed to have been removed after another detainee had used it to attempt suicide six days earlier. It was not.

For seven minutes and 51 seconds, seven correction officers, a captain and two paramedics walked by or watched on from a guard station as Feliciano hung himself, and according to the surveillance footage, not a single one of them acted.

For three years as Feliciano remained hospitalized with severe brain damage, requiring round-the-clock care, not a single one of the officers faced charges, and, in fact, they all continued to collect their paychecks from the New York City Department of Corrections.

Last week, however, that changed and Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney who has jurisdiction over Rikers Island, filed felony charges against four of the officers involved.

The NY Times reports:

A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office said that the cases against the guards took nearly three years to prosecute because the city Department of Investigation brought them first to federal prosecutors before taking them to Ms. Clark’s office.

Charged with official misconduct and reckless endangerment on Monday were the correction captain, Terry Henry, 37, and Officers Kenneth Hood, 35, Daniel Fullerton, 27, and Mark Wilson, 46. All four men pleaded not guilty and were released without bail. Their lawyers declined to comment.

Mr. Feliciano’s family welcomed the charges against the officers on Monday but said they were too slow in coming.

“These officers should have been indicted a long time ago instead of still working at Rikers Island while Nicholas was still in the hospital trying to live,” Feliciano’s grandmother, Madeline Feliciano, said in an interview. “It hurts. It’s very painful. It is devastating to see him the way he is because of somebody’s negligence.”

Despite the fact that four other officers were present and watching Feliciano hang himself, none of them have been charged or fired and all but one is still working at Rikers. [MORE]

Since 2020 Nearly 200 Georgia Prison Employees Arrested and Charged with Crimes

From [EJI] A list obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows 195 people working for the Georgia Department of Corrections were arrested for crimes related to their jobs between the start of 2020 and June 30, 2022.

Most of the arrested employees are corrections officers, the AJC reports, and 69 of the arrests involved drugs—including a case where two corrections employees allegedly tried to smuggle methamphetamine inside a Hot Pocket.

The list shows that 21 arrests involved a charge of battery, including four employees accused in the beating of a handcuffed man at Rutledge State Prison in Columbus, Georgia, in September 2021, the AJC reports.

A fifth employee accused of beating a person incarcerated at Rutledge in a separate incident is also among the listed arrests.

Nine GDC employees were arrested for sexual assault. The AJC reports that these arrests included four people accused in assaults against people incarcerated at Georgia’s largest women’s prison, Lee Arrendale State Prison.

A teacher at Autry State Prison was also among those arrested for sexual assault against a person in custody, according to the AJC.

In September 2021, even as a Justice Department investigation into sexual violence against lesbian, gay, and transgender people by staff and other incarcerated people was underway, federal prosecutors launched a statewide investigation into Georgia’s failure to adequately protect people from violence in its prisons.

Earlier this month, two of the men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery asked the court sentencing them on federal hate crime charges to keep them in federal custody, citing the extreme violence in Georgia’s prisons. The federal court denied the request.

Private Autopsy of Black Death-Row Prisoner Joe Nathan James Shows Uncivilized Authorities Subjected Him to a Torturous, Hours-long Murder Process. Experts say the Longest Execution in US History

From [DPIC] A private autopsy of Alabama death-row prisoner Joe Nathan James, Jr. suggests that unqualified corrections personnel subjected him to a torturous, hours-long execution process in a botched execution that experts say was the longest since the advent of lethal injection forty years ago.

The autopsy findings, described by reporter Elizabeth Bruenig in an August 15, 2022 exposé in The Atlantic, document multiple failed attempts to set an intravenous execution line, puncture wounds in Mr. James arm muscles that appear to be unrelated to efforts to insert the IV, multiple unexplained incisions, and bleeding and bruising around Mr. James’ wrists where he was strapped to the gurney. Bruenig called the execution “lengthy and painful," and a doctor who attended the autopsy said the execution team that carried it out “was unqualified for the task in a most dramatic way.”

The report belies the representation by ADOC Commissioner John Hamm that “nothing out of the ordinary” occurred during the three-hour period between the scheduled start of James’ execution at 6:00 p.m. on July 28, 2022 and the time the curtain to the execution chamber was opened at 9:02 p.m. to reveal a motionless and nonresponsive James on the execution gurney.

The autopsy, which was conducted August 2, 2022, several days after the official post mortem examination, was funded by the human rights organization Reprieve US on behalf of James’ family. Bruenig, who witnessed the private autopsy, along with noted Emory University anesthesiologist Joel Zivot, wrote that James’ “hands and wrists had been burst by needles, in every place one can bend or flex” during a “lengthy and painful death.“ The “carnage” on his body, she said, indicated that “[s]omething terrible had been done to James while he was strapped to a gurney behind closed doors without so much as a lawyer present to protest his treatment or an advocate to observe it.”

Reprieve executive director Maya Foa estimated that the execution took between three and three and a half hours to carry out from the time the execution team first attempted to insert the intravenous execution line. Reprieve’s review of 275 botched U.S. executions since 1890 found that it was the longest botched execution on record. 

Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham said in a statement that “There is no question that this is another botched execution, and it is among the worst botches in the modern history of the U.S. death penalty.” It is the longest botched lethal-injection execution in the 40-year history of that execution method, followed by Alabama’s 2½-hour failure to establish an execution line in the aborted February 2018 execution of Doyle Ray Hamm.

Over the Objections of the Victims Family Texas Murdered a Laotian Man Whose Conviction Relied on Discredited Forensics to Get Revenge for the Victims Family. He was Unarmed and Strapped to Chair

From [DPIC] Texas authorities murdered a Laotian man who fatally stabbed a white suburban Dallas real estate agent more than 16 years ago, the second execution this year in what has been the nation’s busiest death penalty state.

He was unarmed and strapped to a chair. [MORE]

Kosoul Chanthakoummane is the second defendant of color in less than a month to be put to death over the objection of the victim’s family.

Chanthakoummane was convicted and sentenced to death in Collin County for the 2006 murder of Sarah Walker, a real estate agent who was found murdered in a model home. He has long maintained his innocence. 

Chanthakoummane’s conviction relied on bite-mark analysis and witness hypnosis, two discredited forensic techniques, and statistically flawed DNA testimony. The son of Laotian refugees who escaped to the United States during the Vietnam war, Chanthakoummane admits that he stopped in the model home because he was having car trouble. While there, he says, he got a glass of water from the sink, leaving behind his DNA. Prosecutors say his DNA was found under Walker’s fingernails and in various locations throughout the house.

Walker’s father, Joe Walker, said in a video, “I don’t have any hate towards him at all. I don’t want him put to death.”

When her body was discovered, Sarah Walker had a bite mark on the back of her neck. Prosecutors retained forensic dentistry consultant Brent Hutson to try to link Chanthakoummane to that bite. Hutson made a mold of the bite and, using Adobe Photoshop, compared it to a mold of Chanthakoummane’s teeth. At trial, Hutson testified that he was “unable to exclude [Chanthakoummane] from that population of individuals that could have inflicted this injury.”

Bite mark evidence is notoriously unreliable and was been discredited by the National Academies of Science, which, in its landmark August 2009 report by its National Research Council, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, found “no evidence of an existing scientific basis for identifying an individual to the exclusion of all others.” As of 2019, false bite mark testimony had been implicated in 31 wrongful convictions. In 2016, the Texas Forensic Science Commission joined the National Academies in concluding that “there is no scientific basis for stating that a particular patterned injury can be associated to an individual’s dentition,” and recommended that bitemark testimony no longer be permitted in criminal cases.

Prosecutors also presented testimony from two witnesses who testified that they had seen a “man of Asian descent” walking toward the model home on the day of Walker’s murder. However, Texas Ranger Richard Shing had hypnotized the witnesses, encouraging them to use their “mind’s eye” to imagine the suspect from different angles. Hypnosis of witnesses and suspects was widely used by the Texas Rangers until 2021, when they suspended its use because it can lead to false or misleading testimony.

In seeking the death penalty against Chanthakoummane, prosecutors ignored the vocal objections of the victim’s family. At Sarah Walker’s funeral, her father asked those in attendance to pray for her murderer. He also told prosecutors that he did not want them to seek the death penalty. In a video, Joe Walker, who has since died, said, “I’d be foolish to say I wasn’t angry about [the murder]. But I’m not angry enough to reject the Lord and his teachings. … Our Lord said that the greater the sinner, the more entitled they are to mercy.” 

In 2017, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) granted Chanthakoummane a stay of execution and directed the trial court to hold a hearing on his junk science claims. At that hearing, Chanthakoummane presented expert testimony that the hypnotically refreshed testimony against him was unreliable, that bite-mark identification testimony has no scientific validity, and that the prosecution testimony on DNA relied on erroneous data in the FBI DNA database and flawed statistical methodology. The trial court rejected his claims, signing the proposed factfinding submitted by Collin County prosecutors verbatim.

In 2020, a badly divided TCCA voted to uphold his conviction and death sentence. Four judges agreed that Chanthakoummane had shown that the prosecution had presented false DNA testimony, but found that proper DNA analysis would still have pointed to him as having been present at the crime scene and the contributor of DNA found under the victim’s fingernails. The majority also agreed that the bite-mark testimony had been discredited, but deemed its use harmless in light of the remaining evidence against him. The court also rejected Chanthakoummane’s challenge to the use of hypnotically-induced testimony on procedural grounds, saying that the flawed nature of the practice was already known and should have been raised at the time of trial. Three judges dissented, saying the court should have agreed to review the constitutionality of the hypnosis evidence.

Chanthakoummane is one of sixteen defendants sentenced to death in Collin County, three-quarters of whom have been Asian (2), Black (3), or Latinx (7). Seven of those defendants have been executed, five of whom were Black (2) or Latinx (3).

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Rules that Arkansas’ 3 Drug Protocol Used to Murder the People on It's Mostly Black Death Row Is not Cruel and Unusual Punishment Under the Imaginary 8th Amendment

Although Arkansas is Only 16% Black, It's Death Row is 50% Black

From [HERE] The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Tuesday held that Arkansas’ three-drug execution protocol does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The case, Stacey Johnson v. Asa Hutchinson, was initially brought by death-row prisoners seeking to avoid the execution protocol in Arkansas. Though Arkansas’ supply of the three drugs has expired, the ruling means that the death-row prisoners still could face execution.

Arkansas death row is 50% Black despite the state being overwhelmingly white, 68%.

The court affirmed an earlier district court ruling which also found the death-row prisoners failed to establish that the three-drug execution protocol violated the Eighth Amendment. Death-row prisoners first brought the case in 2017 when Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson scheduled their execution ahead of when the state’s supply of one of the drugs was set to expire. Four of the scheduled executions occurred, but courts halted the other four. At the time, the prisoners asked the court to find the three-drug execution protocol in violation of the Eighth Amendment and to stay their executions.

Following trial, the district judge ruled that the death-row prisoners failed to prove that the three-drug execution protocol created a substantial risk of severe pain. The judge also noted that the death-row prisoners failed to present a feasible alternative to reduce the risk of severe pain they alleged was presented by the three-drug execution protocol.

The three-drug execution protocol used by Arkansas relies on midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Midazolam is meant to sedate the death-row prisoner. Vecuronium bromide then stops the lungs. That is then followed by potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

At issue before the appeals court was whether the district court erred in finding that the three-drug execution protocol presents an unsubstantial risk of severe pain. At the heart of the death-row prisoners’ argument was the so-called “ceiling effect” presented by midazolam. The prisoners argued that while the drug effectively sedates the death-row prisoner, they are still aware of the pain that comes with the issuance of the second and third lethal drugs. Both the state and the prisoners presented competing scientific evidence.

Ultimately the court found “With no scientific consensus and a paucity of reliable scientific evidence concerning the effect of large doses of midazolam on humans, the district court did not clearly err in finding that the prisoners failed to demonstrate that the Arkansas execution protocol is sure or very likely to cause severe pain.”

Arkansas has not executed any death-row prisoners since the start of the case in 2017. Arkansas’ supply of the three drugs used in the execution protocol has since expired and has not been replaced.

Evictions Spike, Rent Soars Causing a National Emergency for Mostly Non-White Tenants w/Black Women Most at Risk. Will Biden Do Anything Tangible for Blacks/Latinos Besides Appointing Token Rolebots?

Black Homeowners in an Affluent White Area File Suit Alleging a White Realtor, “20/20 Valuations” and loanDepot Undervalued Their Home in a Racial Conspiracy to Deny their Refinance Loan

From [HERE] Claiming racial discrimination, a pair of Black homeowners in an affluent neighborhood of Maryland called Homeland claim in a federal complaint that they missed out on historically low interest rates because Loandepot.com would not refinance their mortgage on the basis of a low appraisal conducted by 20/20 Valuations.

The complaint states:

Plaintiffs Dr. Nathan Connolly and Dr. Shani Mott bring this action for damages, injunctive relief, and declaratory relief against Defendants Shane Lanham, 20/20 Valuations, LLC, and loanDepot.com, LLC (“loanDepot”), to seek redress for violations of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1691 et seq., the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1982, and Maryland Fair Housing Laws, Md. Code, State Gov’t § 20-702 et seq.

Defendants Lanham and 20/20 Valuations discriminated against Plaintiffs by dramatically undervaluing their home in an appraisal because of Plaintiffs’ race and their home’s location adjacent to a Black census block, notwithstanding that it is also located within Homeland, an affluent, mostly white neighborhood. Defendant loanDepot discriminated against Plaintiffs by knowingly relying on that appraisal to deny Plaintiffs a refinance loan and retaliating when Plaintiffs explained why the appraisal was discriminatory.

Homeland is a historic neighborhood in Baltimore. It is predominantly white. Plaintiffs bought a four-bedroom, 2600 square foot single-family detached house in Homeland and moved there in 2017. They are professors at Johns Hopkins University. Both are Black.

Plaintiffs applied to Defendant loanDepot in mid-2021 to refinance their existing mortgage debt and take advantage of historically low interest rates. loanDepot approved their application for a loan with a 2.25% interest rate, subject to confirming the $550,000 estimated value of the home with a formal appraisal. loanDepot’s loan officer wrote to Plaintiffs that “we should be good” because the estimated value was “pretty conservative.”

loanDepot contracted with Defendant Shane Lanham’s company, Defendant 20/20 Valuations, for the appraisal.

Lanham conducted the appraisal, which was inconsistent with professional appraisal standards in many ways. He improperly limited his search for comparable recently-sold properties to a very small portion of Homeland, north of Northern Parkway (and, still, chose a comparable from outside the neighborhood boundary); failed to consider houses throughout Homeland, both north and south of Northern Parkway, that were more similar to Plaintiffs’ house than ones he used for his valuation; made excessive downward adjustments to the sales prices of the houses he used; failed to make appropriate upward adjustments to reflect features those houses lacked but that Plaintiffs’ house has; and failed to account for substantial improvements Plaintiffs made to their home in 2020. Lanham also questioned whether Plaintiffs were legitimate residents of Homeland by asking if they paid dues to the Homeland Association.

Lanham appraised Plaintiffs’ home for only $472,000, over $75,000 below the loan officer’s “conservative” estimate of value. Defendant loanDepot denied Plaintiffs’ loan application because of the low valuation.

Plaintiffs were shocked at the appraisal and recognized that the low valuation was because of racial discrimination. They told this to their loanDepot loan officer and challenged the appraisal in a detailed letter.

loanDepot maintained its application denial and did not provide any substantive response to Plaintiffs’ communications about the discriminatory and flawed nature of the appraisal. Instead, the loan officer stopped responding to Plaintiffs’ phone calls.

Plaintiffs applied to another lender in early 2022 to refinance their mortgage debt. This time they “whitewashed” the house prior to the appraisal, removing the many indicia that a Black family lived there, such as family photos and their children’s drawings of Black people, and replacing them with items borrowed from white friends. Plaintiffs enlisted a white colleague to be present when the appraiser came and stayed away from the house themselves.
The home appraised for $750,000. Plaintiffs obtained their refinance loan on that basis, but at a higher interest rate than they would have received from loanDepot. Defendant Lanham’s dramatically lower valuation reflected his beliefs that a

Black family did not genuinely belong in Homeland and could not be the owners of a higher- valued home, and also that their home was less valuable because it was at the edge of an area with a predominantly Black population. Lanham violated professional standards to devalue Plaintiffs’ home because of these racist beliefs. Defendant loanDepot relied on Lanham’s appraisal despite being informed that it was infected by discrimination and stopped answering or returning Plaintiffs calls once they challenged the appraisal on that basis.

Defendants’ actions reflect intentional racial discrimination and retaliation against Plaintiffs for identifying those actions as discriminatory. Defendants’ actions have caused financial and emotional injury to Plaintiffs for which they seek declaratory and injunctive relief and compensatory and punitive damages. [MORE]

Catholic Order of Jesuit Priests, who Unjustly Enriched Themselves Off Slave Labor and Sales for Over a Century, Claim its Struggling to Raise Money after Promising to Atone for African Genocide

From [HERE] A prominent order of Catholic priests vowed last year to raise $100 million to atone for its participation in the American slave trade. At the time, church leaders and historians said it would be the largest effort by the Roman Catholic Church to make amends for the buying, selling and enslavement of Black people in the United States.

But 16 months later, cash is only trickling in.

The Jesuit priest leading the fund-raising efforts said he had hoped that his order would have secured several multimillion-dollar donations by now, in addition to an initial $15 million investment made by the order. Instead, only about $180,000 in small donations has flowed into the trust the Jesuits created in partnership with a group of descendants whose ancestors were enslaved by the Catholic priests.

Alarmed by the slow pace of fund-raising, the leader of the group of descendants that has partnered with the Jesuits wrote to Rome earlier this month, urging the order’s worldwide leader to ensure that the American priests make good on their promise.

The American Jesuits, who relied on slave labor and slave sales for more than a century, had discussed plans last year to sell all of their remaining former plantation lands in Maryland, the priests said. They discussed transferring the proceeds, along with a portion of the proceeds of an earlier $57 million plantation sale, to the trust. Money from the trust will flow into a foundation that will finance programs that benefit descendants, including scholarships and money for emergency needs, and promote racial reconciliation projects.

But the remaining land has yet to be sold and the proceeds from prior land sales have yet to be transferred to the trust, Jesuit officials and descendants say.

“It is becoming obvious to all who look beyond words that Jesuits are not delivering in deed,” Joseph M. Stewart, president and chair of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, wrote in his letter to the Rev. Arturo Sosa, the Jesuit superior general. “The bottom line is that without your engagement, this partnership seems destined to fail.”

In his letter, Mr. Stewart warned that “hard-liners” within the order maintained the position that they “never enslaved anyone and thus do not ‘owe’ anyone anything.”

In an interview, Mr. Stewart said he believed that the Jesuit leadership remained committed to the partnership, describing ongoing meetings and conversations. The point, he said, was that the descendant community needed the priests to do more than talk. [MORE]

Political Activity on Campuses a Thing of the Past? Colleges Function as 'Corporate Profit Centers' Producing Cloned Mandroids (docile, conformist sheeple) ‘Strangely Oblivious’ to Corporate Power

From [RALPH NADER] When it comes to corporate power and control over their lives, now and into the future, today’s college students are perilously dormant.

When it comes to putting pressure on Congress to counter the various dictates of corporatism, there is little activity other than some stalwarts contacting their lawmakers on climate violence.

Much of campus activity these days focuses on diversity, tuition, student loans, “politically correct” speech demands and conforming conduct.

This campus environment is strangely oblivious to the corporate abuses of our economy, culture and government. This indifference extends to the endless grip of corporate power over the educational institutions that the students attend.

Companies see universities and colleges as profit centers.

Corporate vendors influence or control the food students eat on campus, down to the junk in vending machines, along with their credit cards, iPhones, very expensive textbooks and, of course, student debt.

College boards of trustees are dominated by corporate executives or corporate-affiliated people.

Corporate science is — as from drug companies, biotech, military weapons and fossil fuelcompanies — co-opting, corrupting or displacing peer-reviewed, academic science, unencumbered by corporate profiteering.

Corporate law firms dominate law schools, with few exceptions, seriously distorting the curriculum away from courses on corporate crimes and immunities and courses that show how corporations have shaped public institutions such as Congress, state legislatures, and the Pentagon along with state and federal regulatory agencies.

Business schools, except for a few free-thinking professors, are finishing schools for Wall Street and other businesses. They operate in an empirically starved environment regarding what is really going on in the world of global corporate machinations, while feeding their student’s dogmatic free-market fundamentalism.

Engineering departments narrowly orient their students toward corporate missions, without educating them about the engineering professions’ ethical and whistleblowing rights and duties.

Social science courses are largely remiss as well. There are very few courses on plutocratic rule and uncontrolled big-business ways of getting commercial values to override civic values.

Teachers may be wary of raising such taboo topics, but the enthusiastic student response to Professor Laura Nader’s course on “Controlling Processes” at The University of California, Berkeley over the years might indicate deep student interest in courses on top-down power structures.

Active students in the 1960s and 70s took their environmental, civil rights and anti-war concerns directly to Congress. They, with other citizen groups, pushed Congress and got important legislation enacted.

Students in about 20 states created lasting full-time student advocacy groups called Public Interest Research Groups or PIRGs.

Today the PIRGs are still making change happen in the country. However, few new PIRGs have been established since 1980.

Students need to embrace how important, achievable and enduring such nonprofit independent PIRGs can be. With skilled advocates continuing to train students in civic skills and providing students with extracurricular experiences for a lifetime of citizen engagement, the PIRGs create a vibrant reservoir for a more functioning democracy.

As a leading European statesman, Jean Monnet said decades ago — “Without people nothing is possible, but without institutions nothing is lasting.”

Students need to think about the civic part of their years ahead and focus on building the pillars of a democratic society that dissolve the concentrated power of giant corporations and empower the citizenry as befits the “We the People” vision in our Constitution.

"The Military Industrial Academic Complex" and "The Illusion of Wisdom:" US Universities are Pipelines to the Defense Industry - Knowledge in Service of Weapons of Destruction, Surveillance and Death

FOR MORE SEE The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-industrial-academic Complex AND EMPIRE OF ILLUSION

From [HERE] In his 1961 farewell address, Dwight D Eisenhower warned the nation against the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex. But a lesser known part of the speech was addressed to universities: “In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”

We didn’t listen.

For the better part of the pandemic, I’ve been researching the defense industry’s ties to college campuses as part of an investigative fellowship for the magazine In These Times. On 11 August, we published a 4,300-word feature article on Lockheed Martin’s sweeping recruitment on college campuses.We found an environment in which Stem students are funneled into the defense industry through recruitment, research, financial assistance or some combination of the three.

Lockheed offers cash-prize competitions, scholarships and paid internships to students which have served as pipelines to employment. In 2020, the company hired 2,600 interns and claimed over 60% of graduating former interns converted to full-time jobs.

On campus, Lockheed has set up recruiting tables in the lobbies and hallways of student buildings and hosts workshops on everything from space exploration to résumé-building. At the University of Texas at Arlington, a $1.5m donation resulted in one of their buildings being renamed the Lockheed Martin Career Development Center.

But the company’s signature recruiting event, which is hosted at more than a dozen universities, is something called Lockheed Martin Day. Recruiters attract students with virtual reality demos, flight simulators and, in some cases, landing their helicopters directly on campus. Company officials have been known to offer on-the-spot job and internship opportunities to students during the event.

Additionally, Lockheed has poured resources into the financial support and recruitment of students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), earning its place as the number one industry supporter of HBCU engineering institutions for seven years in a row.

But before anyone says this is a good thing, it’s worth pausing to ask ourselves how we got here in the first place.

When Black women hold the highest average student loan debt ($41,466), it’s hard to argue against additional financial support no matter where it comes from. Unless you start with a more basic question: why do Black women graduate with the largest debt burden? Why are HBCU endowments, on average, 70% smaller than other universities?

Why is $1.7tn for Lockheed’s F-35 fighter jet considered a worthwhile investment but $1.7tn in student debt relief considered a handout?

Why is $1.7tn for Lockheed’s F-35 fighter jet considered a worthwhile investment but $1.7tn in student debt relief considered a handout?

The answer boils down to what priorities we set as a nation and the investments we are willing to make based on those priorities.

US Housing Affordability in June Was the Worst Since 1989

From [HERE] It was more expensive to buy a U.S. home in June than it has been for any month in more than three decades, as record-high home prices collided with a surge in mortgage rates.

The National Association of Realtors’ housing-affordability index, which factors in family incomes, mortgage rates and the sales price for existing single-family homes, fell to 98.5 in June, the association said Friday. That marked the lowest level since June 1989, when the index stood at 98.3.

Existing-home sales have declined for five straight months. During that period, interest rates shot up while home prices steadily climbed, leading to the sharpest erosion of affordability for the U.S. housing market in years and pricing more buyers out of the market. Even with fewer transactions, prices continue to rise from a year ago because the number of homes for sale around the U.S. remains below historical levels.

The drop in affordability makes it especially hard for first-time buyers to enter the market and access the main path for the U.S. middle class to build wealth. First-time buyers typically need to save up for a down payment and can’t benefit from selling a previous home.

Conditions have eased a bit in recent weeks. Mortgage rates hit a 13-year high in June but have ticked lower since. Some sidelined buyers re-entered the market in July and August, according to real-estate agents.

“Thankfully, the worst in affordability could already be over for this cycle,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Mortgage rates have calmed down in recent weeks, and the consistent wage growth ... is narrowing the gap with home-price growth.”

Existing-home prices have jumped 46% nationally in the past three years, according to NAR, fueled for much of that period by buyers seeking more space during the pandemic. Still, home buying remained relatively affordable in 2020 and 2021 because mortgage rates dropped to record lows, offsetting much of the price increases for buyers. [MORE]

Cops Want to Kill Blacks and Any Excuse Will Do: Video Shows White Denver Cop Shoot Black Man After He Put Gun Down, Put Hands Up. In Disregard of Life Cops Shot in Front of a Crowd, Hit 6 Bystanders

From [HERE] and [HERE] The Denver Police Department has released the bodycam video of the police shooting that left six bystanders injured in Lower Downtown on July 17.

Police say they shot Jordan Waddy after he pointed a gun at them. But the newly released video tells a different story, as it shows Waddy tossing his gun and putting his hands up just as officers began firing.

Bodycam video shows Waddy pulling the handgun from the lefthand side of his hoodie and throwing it onto the ground as he raises both hands into the air before police began firing at him from the front and the side.

Yamilette Bravo said “He did put the gun down, he threw it down and he backed away. He was in a surrendering position and yet they still shot,” Bravo said.

“There are so many civilians in that area, you basically shot innocent people. Why couldn’t you think of different ways?” Murillo inquired after watching the video.

Both students say the trust is trying, especially after seeing this video, which has now led to many people wondering what to do in this situation.

Guadalupe Murillo observed: “He did surrender, he did what almost everyone should do and officers still shot him, which is very disturbing for me.”

“I think also punishment. They did shoot innocent people. What’s going to be their punishment? If I were to go out on the street and I had a gun and I shot someone, I know I would have to serve time, I know I would have a punishment,” Bravo explained.

In a news conference, Matt Clark the commander of the Denver Police Department’s Major Crimes Division said the officers attested they had feared for their lives or the lives of their fellow officers, so they fired their weapons.

The officer on the sidewalk, who was several feet away to the right of Waddy, said he was aware of the crowd outside the Beer Hall and “explained he worked to obtain a clear sight picture of Mr. Waddy before firing one round. The officer stopped firing their weapons when they believe Mr. Waddy was no longer a threat,” Clark said in a critical incident briefing. 

The video show the cops statements are lies.

Investigators have not found any evidence that Waddy ever fired the weapon they say he pulled and the officers who fired their guns did not alert the crowd they were going to shoot, nor did they tell them to clear the area beforehand as they did not have time to do so, the commander said. [MORE]

Sacramento to Pay Only $1.7M to Stephon Clark’s Parents. White Cops Murdered Black Man, Shot at Him 20X Without Warning as he Held a Phone in Backyard and After he Fell to His Hands and Knees

From [HERE] The city of Sacramento on Friday said it had agreed to pay $1.7 million to the parents of Stephon Clark, an unarmed Black man who was shot seven times by city police officers in March 2018.

The payment settled the final portion of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by his parents and ends the family’s legal action against the city, the city attorney, Susana Alcala Wood, said in a statement.

Mr. Clark was 22 years old when two officers in the Sacramento Police Department chased him into his grandmother’s backyard and shot at him 20 times, killing him. His death ignited widespread protests in the capital city and prompted the city and the state to change their policies around the use of deadly force by police officers.

In October 2019, the city agreed to pay $2.4 million to Mr. Clark’s two sons, then ages 2 and 5, after his family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city and the two officers involved in the shooting. A later court ruling left his parents as the sole remaining plaintiffs, the statement said.

The two white officers who shot Mr. Clark, Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet, did not face criminal prosecution because Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a racist suspect liberal democrat declined to file charges. In fact she has Not Charged Any Cop in Over 30 Separate Shooting Investigations

Both white officers are still employed by the police department, a police spokesman said.

"The involved officers . . . fired 20 shots striking (Clark) approximately eight times," including shots as he was going to the ground and shots after he had already went down to the ground. At the time of the shooting, DECEDENT was unarmed, with nothing but a cell phone in his hand.”

"The conduct of officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet was willful, wanton, malicious, and done with reckless disregard for the rights and safety" of Clark, the lawsuit alleges. It says the officers violated Clark's basic civil rights.

At the time of the shooting Clark posed no immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to either Officers TERRENCE MERCADAL or JARED ROBINET, or any other person, especially since he was unarmed and since he was going to the ground or already on the ground when he was shot, including multiple shots to his back.

Officers did not give Clark a verbal warning that deadly force would be used prior to shooting him multiple times, despite it being feasible to do so and they did not issue appropriate commands to Clark. Further, the involved officers did not announce themselves as police prior to the shooting.

Further, Clark was not suspected of committing any serious crime, the involved officers did not observe him commit any crime, the involved officers had no information that he was armed with a weapon, and there was no information that he had physically injured anyone.

The involved officers shot Clark even though he was not an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officers or anyone else and there were other less than lethal options available. Officers TERRENCE MERCADAL and JARED ROBINET did not show a reverence for human life.

The involved officers are responsible for every single shot they fired and this was not an immediate defense of life situation.

After striking Clark approximately eight (8) times, TERRENCE MERCADAL and JARED ROBINET did not provide or summons timely medical attention for Clark, who was bleeding profusely and had obvious serious injuries, and TERRENCE MERCADAL and JARED ROBINET also did not allow and prevented responding medical personnel on-scene to timely render medical aid/assistance to him. [MORE]

An analysis of police video footage by The New York Times found that the police officers continued to shoot Mr. Clark after he had fallen to his hands and knees.

The killing ignited protests to demand accountability, with demonstrators stopping traffic in downtown Sacramento and on a major interstate that runs through the city.

Mr. Clark’s brother, Stevante Clark, said at a news conference on Friday that he would continue to call for the officers involved to be fired, charged and prosecuted, the local NBC affiliate KCRA reported.

“There’s no reason I should be out here talking about my brother’s legacy, defending my brother’s legacy, when the officers who murdered him should be proving their innocence in court,” Mr. Clark said. “We always have to relive the death of Stephon.”

Stevante Clark said that he had organized a protest for Saturday afternoon and that events would be held throughout the weekend in honor of what would have been Stephon Clark’s 27th birthday on Aug. 10.

“Stephon Clark’s death was a tragedy that brought pain and sorrow to his family and to our entire city,” the mayor of Sacramento, Darrell Steinberg, said in the city’s statement about the settlement. “Everyone wishes this heartbreaking event had not occurred.”

Investigations by the city, county and state and federal agencies found that the officers acted within the rules of the police department and the laws of the state.

“The fact that the officers acted within the law does not diminish the tragedy of what occurred,” Ms. Alcala Wood said in the statement. “This case has led our city to implement meaningful improvements to policy, and it will continue to do so.”

Mr. Clark’s death prompted California to raise the legal standardfor when police can use deadly force to “only when necessary in defense of human life.” Previously, the law allowed for the use of deadly force when “reasonable.”

The Sacramento Police Department also updated its body camera, foot pursuit and use-of-force policies.

Although Lexington, Mississippi is 85% Black, Elite Whites are in Control of Everything of Value. Said Phenomenon which Defies Statistical Laws of Probability is Finally Questioned in Police Lawsuit

THE WORLD IS 90% NON-WHITE BUT EVERYWHERE WHITES AND BLACKS LIVE TOGETHER THE WHITES ARE IN CONTROL. THERE IS NO SYSTEM OF BLACK SUPREMACY IN EXISTENCE

Truthout reports that “A flagrantly racist and violent ex-cop is bringing national attention to a small town in Mississippi where Black residents say they were systematically “terrorized” by police and the court system. Civil rights advocates condemn the officer’s actions and say they are a symptom of a larger problem that extends far beyond one rural community and a “bad apple” among the local police.

A lawsuit filed in federal court this week claims white police in the rural, majority-Black town of Lexington, Mississippi, targeted Black residents and subjected them to false arrests, brutality, excessive fines and unreasonable searches. The department’s discriminatory intent was made clear by a leaked recording of Sam Dobbins, the former police chief, hurling racist and homophobic slurs and bragging about killing 13 people as an officer, the lawsuit argues. In the recording, Dobbins relishes the idea that residents “fear” him.

Dobbins made national headlines after a Black officer secretly recorded 17 minutes of audio capturing his former boss repeatedly using words such as “faggot” and “N—–” while boasting about police brutality. Dobbins patrolled the streets of Lexington “with impunity” despite a well-known history of harassment, racist remarks and allegations that he jailed a man on bunk charges while working for a different Mississippi county in 2013 and nearly beat the man to death, according to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which first revealed the audio recording. The officer who secretly recorded Dobbins reportedly resigned on July 19.’

Local aldermen voted 3-2 to fire Dobbins on July 20 to applause from Black residents. However, those residents and activists say the problem of racist policing in Lexington and across the South is much bigger than Dobbins. Jill Collen Jefferson, founder and director of JULIAN, the Mississippi-based civil rights group that filed the lawsuit, said it’s time to shine a light on the ongoing racist abuses in Lexington. Representing several local Black plaintiffs, the group is asking a federal judge for a temporary restraining order on Lexington police to protect Black residents.

Civil rights groups and local plaintiffs are also calling on the Justice Department to investigate, as federal officials have done in larger cities with patterns of racist police abuse, a practice that was temporary halted under former President Donald Trump before resuming under President Joe Biden. Allegations included in the lawsuit also come from witnesses working for the Lexington police, who reported that Dobbins and other officers brutally beat residents after handcuffing them or dragging them out of the back of patrol cars. 

“There needs to be a formal, federal investigation, and not just of the one office or two offices or the police department, but of this entire town,” Jefferson said in an interview. “It’s really hard to explain [to outsiders], but every branch of government in Lexington is corrupt, every branch of government is controlled by white supremacy.”

Of Lexington’s roughly 1,800 residents, about 85 percent are Black, but former Police Chief Dobbins, the local prosecutor, the judge, the mayor, and other top officials are all white and politically intertwined with one wealthy white family, according to Jefferson. Katherine Barrett Riley, the city’s attorney and a member of the family Jefferson described, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Despite his checkered past, Dobbins was hired by city officials to “control” the local Black population and boost revenue with fines and legal fees, Jefferson said. Residents reported hundreds of roadblocks set up in the tiny town to target and stop Black drivers. Two plaintiffs, both Black men, say they were targeted and arrested on bogus charges — including for possessing marijuana that was allegedly planted by police — after speaking out about police harassment at a community “know your rights” meeting earlier this year.

Former resident Tasha Walden said she fled Lexington and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to protect her family from Dobbins, who repeatedly wrote baseless tickets and made “repeated excuses” to arrest her son without a warrant. Walden’s son, who followed her and now lives in Memphis, is one of several plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which lays out a disturbing pattern of racial profiling, excessive force and sexual harassment by Lexington police.

“It’s a nightmare, it’s terrible, people are afraid to even walk down the street to go to the store to pay bills, because every time Black people come out, it’s always a problem,” Walden said over the phone on Thursday. “No matter if you ride or if you’re walking, it’s still a problem, especially the young Blacks, the younger generations, it’s a problem for them.” [MORE]

Anon states:

Q: Are you saying blacks cannot be racist toward whites?

A: That’s correct. Of course, all people can be hateful or prejudiced. Those terms describe individual behaviors, not systematic power. Racism is the COLLECTIVE behaviors of a group. A white individual within a system of racism/white supremacy has the implicit or explicit support of that system IF they choose to practice racism.

If a poor man robs a rich man at gunpoint that doesn’t mean the poor man is more powerful (economically and politically) than the rich man. The poor man is an individual who committed a crime of opportunity. There are no powerful institutions or systems that support his right to rob the rich man, but there are institutions and systems that allow the rich man to rob the poor man - which is why he doesn’t need a gun to do it.

A black person who mistreats a white person doesn’t mean black people are more powerful (economically and politically) than white people. Never confuse the actions of a black individual (or a group of black individuals) that mistreats someone white as proof that black racism exists. Their “power” is limited ONLY to what they can do as individuals. There are NO black institutions or systems that support, defend, or finance the right of blacks to mistreat whites.

There are NO black individuals or black organizations that have the power to strip whites of their collective right to live where they want, work where they want, get an education wherever they want, or control what white people do collectively in ANY area of human activity. There are NO black institutions that are more powerful than white institutions. Therefore, blacks do not have the COLLECTIVE POWER to diminish the quality of life for the white collective. [MORE]

SYSTEM OF RACISM WHITE SUPREMACY IS A BEHAVIORAL SYSTEM OF SURVIVAL. In reality, persons who classify themselves as Whites make up less than 10% of the world's population. That is, 90% of the world's population of 7 billion people are non-white. [MORE]

Dr. Bobby Wright observed, “although the world is 90% non-white, everywhere one finds whites and blacks in close proximity to each other, whether it is Chicago or Zimbabwe, the whites are in control. Yet Blacks rarely question this extraordinary universal phenomenon which defies every know statistical law of probability.” [MORE]

Dr. Amos Wilson, a true rebel to lionize, similarly stated, "[Blacks] must question how is it that a minority people [whites], a very small percentage of mankind, a people who are essentially resourceless in terms of their natural resources, maintain the power they have. Why is it that the peoples [Afrikans] whose lands contain the wealth of the earth are the poorest people? This implies that there must exist a political, social situation wherein the mental orientation of our people must be so structured that the power and the ability of the Europeans to rule this earth are continually maintained.' [MORE] 

Dr. Blynd explains, "Racism is not individualistic, but institutional, cultural, economic, political, linguistic, self-perpetuating and systematic." White Supremacy is a “power group dynamic” involving the relationship between whites and Blacks in a vast system of unequal power. It is economic discrimination by one group over and against another for the purposes of subjugation and/or maintaining the imbalance of power through cooperative control, misinformation, indoctrination, genocide and oppression. [MORE] 

Fuller states, "in a socio-material system dominated by White Supremacists, all major decisions involving non-white people are made by White Supremacists. The White Supremacists are their bosses, their masters, and their major decision-makers. Whatever a Black person gets, and/or is allowed to keep, is the result of decisions made by White Supremacists. This is the functional meaning of White Supremacy (Racism) that many people — particularly non-white people — prefer not to acknowledge. 

Wilson asks Black people, 

‘Who has control of your food? Who has control of your electricity? Who has control of your water? Of your jobs? Who tells you what to wear when you go to work? Who tells you when to come to work...when to leave...when to go to lunch...how to speak...how to write...how to do this...how to do that...and how are these things taught, and how they are conditioned?"-- It is by reward and punishment. " You do this you get paid; you don't do this you don't get paid; you get a raise, you get docked. What do we have here?’

To live under the power of another people is to be created by that people. To be rewarded or punished by that people is to be created by that people. We are living under them as the result of the exercise of the power of another people over us. Therefore, if we wish to change this situation (i.e., the conditions under which we live), then we must change the power relationships. If we are to prevent ourselves from being created by another people and are to engage in the act of self creation, then we must change the power relations.’ [MORE]