Jury reaches decision on sentence of Parkland school shooter.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A jury said Thursday that it has reached a decision on whether to recommend that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz be executed for the 2018 massacre that killed 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The recommendation was not immediately released and came in the second day of deliberations, 15 minutes after jurors arrived and examined the gun Cruz used.

The decision promises an end to a three-month trial that included graphic videos, photos and testimony from the massacre and its aftermath, heart-wrenching testimony from victims’ family members and a tour of the still blood-spattered building.

The jury’s decision must be unanimous if it intends to recommend the death penalty, and if that happens, it will be up to Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer to make a final decision. If all jurors can’t agree on recommending death, then Cruz would get life in prison.

The jury of 12 people had asked late Wednesday to see the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, but the Broward County Sheriff's Office security team objected, even though the gun has been made inoperable and Cruz's ammunition would be removed from the jury room.

Lead prosecutor Mike Satz, who has more the five decades of experience, pointed out that in every murder case he has tried or knows, jurors got to examine and handle the weapon in their room — and he said a knife or machete is more dangerous than a gun without a firing pin. Security has never been an issue, he said.

Cruz's attorneys had no objection to jurors seeing the gun.

Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to murdering 14 students and three staff members and wounding 17 others on Feb. 14, 2018. Cruz said he chose Valentine's Day to make it impossible for Stoneman Douglas students to celebrate the holiday ever again. The jury will determine only if Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole. For Cruz to get a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous.

During the prosecution's rebuttal case, Satz and his team argued that Cruz's smooth movements with the gun and his ease in reloading helps show he does not have any neurological disorders, as claimed by his attorneys.

Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill and her team have never disputed that Cruz committed a horrible crime, but they say his birth mother's excessive drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and put him on a path that led to the shooting.

The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

As reported by Terry Spencer on Oct 13th, 2022

Los Angeles Councilwoman Nury Martinez resigns following her leaked racist remarks.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Embattled Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nury Martinez has resigned, days after a recording of her making racist comments against the city's Black and Oaxacan communities was leaked.

"It is with a broken heart that I resign my seat for Council District 6, the community I grew up in and my home," she said in a statement.
The recorded conversation involving Council-members Martinez, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León captured the now-former councilwoman describing the Black son of a white council-member in crude and racist language. She also described Oaxacan immigrants in Koreatown as "short little dark people."

The resignation comes hours after protesters disrupted a scheduled Wednesday city council meeting inside Los Angeles City Hall. With no resignation, there would be no meeting, they said in chants.

Prior to her resignation, Martinez had stepped down as president of the council, but stopped short of leaving the council altogether. Cedillo and de León have issued apologies, but haven't resigned.

Council-member Mike Bonin, whose son was the subject of Martinez's comments, earlier in the day tweeted a call for the three to step down.
It's unlikely that just Martinez's resignation will satisfy the L.A. community.

Dozens of protesters inside the meeting room on Wednesday shouted over President Pro Tempore Mitch O'Farrell as he attempted to speak and call for order. The protesters held signs that demanded members resign and chanted for an hour, as the meeting sputtered along.

O'Farrell attempted to order the group to quiet down, but finally called the meeting to an end after losing a quorum before anything on the agenda was addressed.

As reported by: Jaclyn Diaz & Vanessa Romo for NPR News on September 13th, 2022

Dad chokes driver who tried to run Florida family off road in hate crime.

Pinellas County, FL - After a driver tried forcing a family off the road, in what prosecutors say was a racially-motivated hate crime attack in Florida, the father fought back in self defense.

The roadway attack escalated at a red light where the man got out of his car, charged and tried punching the father, court documents show. But the incident ended when the dad, who is Black, got the man in a chokehold, according to officials.

What Jordan Patrick Leahy, 29, didn’t know was that the father is a martial artist who swiftly dodged his closed fist and kept Leahy restrained until Pinellas County deputies arrived, according to court documents.

A federal jury in Tampa found Leahy guilty of a hate crime on Aug. 24, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

After a driver tried forcing a family off the road, in what prosecutors say was a racially-motivated hate crime attack in Florida, the father fought back in self defense.

The roadway attack escalated at a red light where the man got out of his car, charged and tried punching the father, court documents show. But the incident ended when the dad, who is Black, got the man in a chokehold, according to officials.

What Jordan Patrick Leahy, 29, didn’t know was that the father is a martial artist who swiftly dodged his closed fist and kept Leahy restrained until Pinellas County deputies arrived, according to court documents.

A federal jury in Tampa found Leahy guilty of a hate crime on Aug. 24, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. He faces up to 10 years in prison.- ADVERTISEMENT -


When deputies arrived on the scene at the time, Leahy made comments showing “his bias motive, including telling the officers that Black people need to be kept ‘in their areas,’” a news release from the attorney’s office says.

McClatchy News contacted attorneys listed for Leahy for comment on Aug. 25 and was awaiting a response.

The attack goes back to when the father was driving his 4-year-old daughter and girlfriend home from a family dinner in Seminole on Aug. 8, 2021, court documents show.

They were driving southward in the left lane on Starkey Road when Leahy “zoomed up” with his car directly next to them and pretended to shoot at the family using gun hand gestures while shouting racial slurs, according to court documents.

Then, Leahy swerved into the family’s lane in trying to run their car off the road before tailgating them as the father tried to get away, prosecutors say.

Leahy’s “pursuit” of the family went on for roughly a mile and half until he sideswiped their car, causing the cars’ mirrors to collide, and then he sped off down the road, according to court documents and the release.

The father wanted to take a picture of Leahy’s car to report the attack to police, so he followed him down Starkey Road until they both came to a red light, court documents state.

This is when prosecutors say Leahy got out of his car and tried assaulting the father while hurling more racial slurs at him.

“No one should be targeted, threatened, intimidated or assaulted because of their race,” U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg said in a statement.

“The defendant in this case acted upon his bigoted beliefs and put an entire family and others’ safety at risk,” Handberg added.

Leahy previously pleaded guilty to battery and DUI charges in connection to the incident, according to court documents.

He is facing a fine up to $250,000 as part of this sentence, according to the release.

Pinellas County is on Florida’s Gulf Coast, just west of Tampa.

Originally reported by:
Julia Marnin for Yahoo! News

Father, son get life for hate crime in Ahmaud Arbery’s death.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The white father and son convicted of murder in Ahmaud Arbery's fatal shooting after they chased the 25-year-old Black man through a Georgia neighborhood were sentenced Monday to life in prison for committing a federal hate crime.

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced Travis McMichael, 36, and his father Greg McMichael, 66, in Brunswick. Both were previously sentenced to life without parole in a state court for Arbery’s murder.

“A young man is dead. Ahmaud Arbery will be forever 25. And what happened a jury found happened because he’s Black,” Wood said.

In February, a federal jury convicted the McMichaels and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan of violating Arbery's civil rights, concluding they targeted him because of his race. All three were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels were convicted of using guns in the commission of a violent crime. The McMichaels armed themselves with guns and used a pickup truck to chase Arbery after he ran past their home on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery with a shotgun. The McMichaels told police they suspected Arbery was a burglar, but investigators determined he was unarmed and had committed no crimes.

Greg McMichael addressed the Arbery family, saying their loss was “beyond description.”

“I’m sure my words mean very little to you but I want to assure you I never wanted any of this to happen,” he said. “There was no malice in my heart or my son’s heart that day.”

Outside the courtroom, Cooper-Jones responded to his statement.

“I think he realizes that he made some horrible decisions. Unfortunately, his apology doesn’t bring back my son,” she said.

Travis McMichael declined to address the court, but his attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, said her client had no convictions before Arbery’s slaying and had served in the U.S. Coast Guard. She said a lighter sentence would be more consistent with what similarly charged defendants have received in other cases, noting that the officer who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, got 21 years in prison for violating Floyd’s civil rights, though he was not charged with targeting Floyd because of his race.

Greg McMichael’s attorney, A.J. Balbo, also cited the Chauvin sentence as well as his client’s age and health problems, which he said include a stroke and depression.

Prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein said Chauvin at least had some legitimate authority to engage Floyd initially.

“Greg McMichael had absolutely no legitimate reason to run inside and get a gun and chase after a young man who was doing nothing other than running down the road,” Bernstein said.

Arbery’s killing became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice and killings of unarmed Black people including Floyd and Breonna Taylor and in Kentucky. Those two cases also resulted in the Justice Department bringing federal charges.

“The evidence we presented at trial proved ... what so many people felt in their hearts when they watched the video of Ahmaud’s tragic and unnecessary death: This would have never happened if he had been white,” Christopher Perras, another prosecutor, said Monday.

A state Superior Court judge imposed life sentences for the McMichaels and Bryan in January for Arbery’s murder, with both McMichaels denied any chance of parole. Bryan had a sentencing hearing scheduled later Monday in the federal case.

All three defendants have remained jailed in coastal Glynn County, in the custody of U.S. marshals, while awaiting sentencing after their federal convictions in January.

Because they were first charged and convicted of murder in a state court, protocol would have them turned them over to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve their life terms in a state prison.

In court filings last week, both Travis and Greg McMichael asked the judge to instead divert them to a federal prison, saying they won’t be safe in a Georgia prison system that’s the subject of a U.S. Justice Department investigation focused on violence between inmates.

Copeland said during Monday’s hearing for Travis McMichael that her client has received hundreds of threats that he will be killed as soon as he arrives at state prison and that his photo has been circulated there on illegal phones.

“I am concerned your honor that my client effectively faces a back door death penalty,” she said, adding that “retribution and revenge” were not sentencing factors, even for a defendant who is “publicly reviled.”

Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr., said Travis McMichael had shown his son no mercy and deserved to “rot” in state prison.

“You killed him because he was a Black man and you hate Black people,” he said. “You deserve no mercy.”

Wood said she didn’t have the authority to order the state to relinquish custody of Travis McMichael to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but also wasn’t inclined to do so in his case. She also declined to keep Greg McMichael in federal custody.

During the February hate crimes trial, prosecutors fortified their case that Arbery’s killing was motivated by racism by showing the jury roughly two dozen text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan used racist slurs and made disparaging comments about Black people.

Defense attorneys for the three men argued the McMichaels and Bryan didn’t pursue Arbery because of his race but acted on an earnest — though erroneous — suspicion that Arbery had committed crimes in their neighborhood.

By RUSS BYNUM for AP News

Advocates struggle with how much they can help with self-managed abortions.

At a rally in Nashville, Planned Parenthood organizer Julie Edwards looked out at some of the "back alley abortion" imagery on signs, including bloody coat hangers. But, Edwards told the crowd, driven into the streets by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on abortion rights, it's not like the old days before Roe v. Wade.

Nearly a decade ago, Edwards was a teenager and got medication from some older friends. Edwards said that may be the new normal in abortion-ban states like Tennessee.

"I'm standing in front of you having had a self-managed abortion, having gotten abortion pills from people in my community. And I'm safe," Edwards said to cheers. "It's going to take all of us to keep each other's secrets, to hold each other's hands, to keep each other safe."

Medications are now available for first trimester abortions. And it's become the primary way abortions are induced.

The regimen involves two prescription drugs that hit the market since Roe was decided in 1973. Mifepristone is taken first. It's the abortion drug that's fairly expensive and highly regulated. A day or two later, the patient takes misoprostol, which is much more widely available and can work on its own to induce an abortion. The drug was developed for treating ulcers in the 1970s but has several other off-label uses aside from abortions, such as alleviating arthritis. It's even prescribed for animals, so veterinary supply stores carry the medication. Misoprostol is even sold over-the-counter in Mexico.

"It's really based on what somebody can get. And in the self-managed context, the only way to get mifepristone plus Misoprostol is through the internet, so it takes time to wait for the delivery," said Susan Yanow, spokesperson for Women Help Women, a nonprofit based across four continents that works to increase access to abortion.

The international organization ships both medications all over the world — but not to the U.S. because laws vary so much state to state. Social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram have already started pulling down posts offering to send these drugs by mail. Many states that now ban abortion have recently strengthens their laws on mail-order abortion drugs.

"We still have the right to share information," Yanow said. "People use the internet. People use their phones. People will find ways to obtain these pills."

But it's more than finding the medications, which is why Yanow's organization has a detailed guide on how to use them safely. And she provides training for local reproductive rights groups, as do others.

Lynsey Bourke of Self-Guided Abortion, based in Montana, began producing video tutorials late last year and publishing them on Youtube, explaining how to use Misoprostol alone and offering ways to make the process more sacred by building an altar, burning incense and lighting candles. She even provides post-abortion yoga instruction.

With Misoprostol alone, multiple rounds are needed. Nausea is common. And the medicine induces cramping and bleeding that can be alarming for those who aren't prepared.

Even some OB-GYNs are quietly supportive of self-managed abortion.

"I'm more worried about people who can't get to one of these sources and are just so desperate that they take matters into their own hands," said Dr. Nikki Zite, an OB-GYN at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville.

She said clinical counseling before taking the pill combo is ideal. For example, some patients are anemic and could bleed enough to need emergency care. And some just don't do well with pain and lots of blood.

"Not every patient is a good candidate to miscarry at home," she said.

But at this point, Zite can't afford to provide that consultation. In Tennessee, she would be risking a felony and prison time under a six-week ban now in effect, and an all-out abortion ban set to take effect in August. And it's unclear just how far law enforcement is willing to reach.

References to coat hangers have been used to protest the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Abortion rights activists say "self-managed abortions" are much safer today because of medications — but women still need guidance.

Tennessee's laws specifically exempts the pregnant person from prosecution. But a motivated prosecutor could find ways to press charges related to a self-managed abortion, said criminal defense attorney David Raybin in Nashville.

"I mean, that is fraught with peril," Raybin said. "I would strongly recommend against a woman using such quote-unquote underground methods to get medication like that."

He said it's best to get a legal abortion in another state. But abortion rights activists in Tennessee say they know travel will be difficult for many. And even for those who can, a self-managed abortion may be more convenient. To a degree, reproductive rights groups are willing to help navigate the legal gray area.

Healthy and Free Tennessee, an organization working to promote sexual health and reproductive freedom, has organized several training sessions through Women Help Women in recent weeks. Policy director Nina Gurak said their biggest worry isn't health complications — it's the legal risk.

"We recommend that if someone is self-managing an abortion that they have a supporter or friend. That supporter or friend may be at a higher legal risk than the actual person who is self-managing an abortion," she said. "And then you have to decide for yourself — is that something I'm comfortable with? Is that something I'm not comfortable with?"

Organizations in states with abortion bans have their own risk to assess. They feel confident the First Amendment protects sharing medical information endorsed by the World Health Organization.

But abortion rights advocates are torn between raising awareness and becoming a target for anti-abortion lawmakers — who are no longer limited by Roe v. Wade.

"We definitely are concerned about increasing criminalization of abortion or self-managed abortion and abortion pills," Gurak said. "We also want to balance that with the need for communities to have the information that they need to make the decision for themselves."

Originally reported by NPR on July 05, 2022 11:36 ET

Supreme Court conservatives flex muscle in sweeping rulings.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s sweeping rulings on guns and abortion sent an unmistakable message. Conservative justices hold the power and they are not afraid to use it to make transformative changes in the law, none more so than taking away a woman’s right to abortion that had stood for nearly 50 years.

No more half measures, they declared Friday in overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to outlaw abortion. And the day before, in ruling for the first time that Americans the right to carry handguns in public for self-defense, they said the Constitution is clear.

“A restless and newly constituted Court,” is how Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of three liberals on the nine-member court, described her colleagues earlier in June.

The abortion case in particular was a repudiation of the more incremental approach favored by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The decisions in the blockbuster cases on consecutive days were the latest and perhaps clearest manifestation of how the court has evolved over the past six years — a product of historical accident and Republican political brute force — from an institution that leaned right, but produced some notable liberal victories  to one with an aggressive, 6-3 conservative majority.

Originally published by: By MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO on June 25/2022

Two White Men Arrested After Viral Vids Capture Terrifying Attack on Black Teen.

Two white men were arrested in Florida this week and accused of racial profiling after allegedly hurling a massive stone at a Black teen who was driving in the same town where Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012.

“I was racially profiled while driving through my friends neighborhood,” the victim, who identified himself as JJ, wrote on his Instagram Wednesday. “They didn’t like the way I was driving, so they felt the need to hit my car with a cone, and throw a rock through my window. All I wanted to do was de-escalate until police came, because I wasn’t about to get charges pressed on me for no reason.”

According to Seminole County records, Donald Eugene Corsi, 52, and Howard Oral Hughes, 61, were arrested Wednesday. They were first identified by social media sleuth @ThatDaneshGuy. Corsi faces felony charges for damage to property and launching a weapon into a vehicle. Hughes has been charged with felony property damage and a misdemeanor for battery. Both men have since been released from the Seminole jail on bond.

In a video initially posted on Facebook Tuesday, a man who identified himself as JJ’s father, CJ Jones, said, “This is the video my son took while calling 911. …And as you can see they [admit] to having guns.”

In the video, one man in a blue shirt stands with his hands on his hips, watching the person holding the camera, presumed to be JJ. Another man in sunglasses walks around a white Mercedes sedan with his phone pointed toward the license plate

“Right here! Tell me what you’ve done!” the man in sunglasses shouts.

The camera pans to the car, which has a broken window in the seat behind the driver.

“Burning out and racing through my fucking neighborhood!” the man in sunglasses yells in JJ’s face. The man in the blue shirt joins him in front of the camera.

“I’m not in your face,” the man in the blue shirt says after JJ tells him to move. “Get out of my neighborhood, you fuckwad!”

JJ asks the men if they have a gun, and one of them says he has a permit to carry.

After the two men trail JJ on the residential street, other people in the neighborhood come out to inspect what’s going on.

A woman in the street with a striped towel wrapped around her waist and a cross hanging from her neck accuses JJ of possessing a gun.

“Get out of this neighborhood!” she shouts. “You don’t belong here!”

JJ walks back to his car and films glass shards all over the backseat and a dent on the car door.

In a follow-up Facebook Live video Jones posted Tuesday, he mentioned that the incident happened in the Forest Lake neighborhood of Sanford.

“Not too far where Trayvon Martin got killed,” he wrote.

The video shows police arriving on the scene as residents stood outside their homes. Jones said that he wanted to go live “just so we have evidence, in case something happens to me out here today.”

He then turned the camera toward the house where his son was supposed to visit a friend.

“Even when I was coming into this neighborhood, I had a couple yell at me,” Jones says. “Black people cannot stay around here.”

The Daily Beast was unable to reach Corsi and Hughes on Thursday.

Originally reported by Brooke Leigh Howard

Thu, June 16, 2022, 12:59 PM