Tag: criminal justice

Pittsburgh Voters Stop a Soros-Backed Prosecutor Candidate
Business

Pittsburgh Voters Stop a Soros-Backed Prosecutor Candidate

PittsburghStephen Zappala, a lifelong Democrat, has been the district attorney in Allegheny County since 1998. He won a seventh term Tuesday with an unusual strategy: He ran as a Republican. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Texas Juror Was Misled Into Voting For Death Penalty
Politics

Texas Juror Was Misled Into Voting For Death Penalty

In 1991, Brent Brewer was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing Robert Laminack during a robbery. Sixteen years later, the Supreme Court vacated his sentence, finding that jurors had not been allowed to adequately consider evidence of Brewer’s abusive childhood and his mental health and addiction struggles. Michele Douglas, one of the jurors in Brewer’s 2009 resentencing case, didn’t think Brewer intended to kill Laminack and she didn’t want to sentence him to death. “It seemed to me that he was trying to steal a truck and things simply got out of hand, with a tragic outcome,” she wrote in a Houston Chronicle op-ed on Friday. “I also did not believe that Brent would be dangerous in prison. For these reasons, I felt a life sentence was warranted. At least one of my fellow jurors agreed.”...
New Jersey Solitary Confinement Reform Hasn’t Changed Much In Prisons
Politics

New Jersey Solitary Confinement Reform Hasn’t Changed Much In Prisons

This story was produced in partnership with the Inside/Out Journalism Project by Type Investigations, which works with incarcerated reporters to produce ambitious, feature-length investigations, with support from the Wayne Barrett Project.Nathan Gray often found himself pacing his cramped cell, barraged night and day by the sound of other men’s screams. The cell was chilly, with a paper-thin mattress, a small shelf for his belongings and a combined sink and toilet. In this small space, he ate his meals, read Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis and slept when he could. When depression overwhelmed him, he had no one to talk to. He didn’t tell his family about the conditions he was forced to deal with; he didn’t want to worry them.Gray and his neighbors were permitted to leave their cells for only...
Kevin Spacey Found Not Guilty of Sexual Assault in London. It Doesn’t Mean He Isn’t a Creep – RedState
Politics

Kevin Spacey Found Not Guilty of Sexual Assault in London. It Doesn’t Mean He Isn’t a Creep – RedState

Kevin Spacey grew up and went to high school only a few miles from me. As close in geography as we might have been, we might as well have been from different planets. He was a theater nerd. I wasn’t. Spacey went to work as an actor, and as his fame grew and roles increased, some of the friends I grew up with who were actors or were in “The Industry” knew him by reputation. He was someone to avoid if you were gay. Spacey, it seemed, had a reputation for being aggressive. Don’t take my word for it, Spacey has admitted to being a “big flirt,” which seems to be his euphemism for being a “creep.” When Harvey Weinstein was finally brought down, it was no surprise to anyone in the business that the sexual predator, once outed by one woman, would be exposed by others. But there were other men ...
How Prosecutors Might Charge Trump for January 6th
Entertainment

How Prosecutors Might Charge Trump for January 6th

Last week, former President Trump received a “target letter” from Jack Smith, a special counsel for the Justice Department, indicating that Trump will likely be criminally charged in connection with at least some aspects of his role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. On Thursday, the Times reported that the letter mentioned three criminal statutes: conspiracy to defraud the government, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. The last of these is a Reconstruction-era civil-rights law; specifically, it forbids people from conspiring “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person . . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”I recently spoke by phon...