Brooklyn: the flip side of Ferguson?

MoonHowler

article-slain-police-officers-1220

Washingtonpost.com:

A gunman shot and killed two New York City police officers before taking his own life in a brazen ambush that played out on a quiet Brooklyn street corner Saturday afternoon, New York police said.

Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were shot at point-blank range while sitting beside one another in a police car in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, police said.

“It’s clear that this was an assassination,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference Saturday night. “These officers were shot execution-style, a particularly despicable act which goes to the heart of our society and our democracy.”

“It is an attack on all of us,” he added.

Ramos and Liu, who were shot in the head, were transported to Brooklyn’s Woodhull Medical Center, where they were later pronounced dead, according to New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, who also spoke at the news conference Saturday evening.

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McDonnell faces possible 10 year sentence

MoonHowler

washingtonpost.com:

The federal agency that will play a pivotal role in guiding the sentence of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has recommended that the onetime Republican rising star spend at least 10 years and a month in prison, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The guidelines recommended by the U.S. probation office are preliminary, and even if finalized, U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer is not required to follow them. But experts said that Spencer typically heeds the probation office’s advice, and judges in his district have imposed sentences within the recommendations more than 70 percent of the time in recent years.

“It’s of critical importance,” said Scott Fredericksen, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer. “The fact is, the vast majority of times, courts follow those recommendations closely.”

The matter is far from settled. The probation office recommended a punishment from 10 years and a month to 12 years and 7 months. Calculating an appropriate range of sentences in the federal system is a complicated, mathematical process that takes into account a variety of factors, including the type of crime, the defendant’s role and the amount of loss. The judge has yet to see the arguments from each side.

This sentencing threat is overkill.   The stark reminder is that McDonnell broke no Virginia laws.  I will be outraged if he receives a 10 year sentence.

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Campus sexual assault: Let’s not stop at UVA

MoonHowler

 

Dailypress.com:

RICHMOND – Legislative support is coalescing behind a proposal to require that university officials quickly turn rape allegations over to law enforcement, or potentially face prosecution themselves.

A trio of Republican House leaders backed the requirement Monday, though they didn’t spell out potential punishments. In the state Senate, Democratic Minority Leader Richard Saslaw said last week that he’s working on a similar bill, and that he’ll attach the possibility of a year-long prison sentence for violators.

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Washington State school shooting: Is there an accurate profile?

MoonHowler

For years after the Columbine shooting Americans were led to believe that the kids you had to watch out for were the loners, those who were bullied, and the goth-type kids. As these horrible shootings continue to crop up across the nation, it is becoming more and more apparent that the “prototype” student killer really doesn’t fit the profile that was originally suggested.
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Passing around the sex offender

MoonHowler

jesse

As closure comes to the Graham family, friends, and the UVA community, my anger grows more and more.  How could this have happened?

I understand that there are twisted individuals.  I watch Criminal Minds.  I also realize that there are serial killers, rapists, and all sorts of sick ****s  out there.   What I don’t understand is why Jesse Matthew was passed from school to school.

I don’t buy the privacy excuse.  If someone has misbehaved badly enough to be expelled from a school, then that school has a moral obligation and duty to attach a reason for expulsion  to all future transcripts.  If they don’t, they are cowards.  If there are laws preventing an attachment describing the reason for removal, then those said laws need to be fixed, repealed or whatever it takes.

Jesse Matthew was sent packing from both Liberty University and Christopher Newport for sexual assault or misconduct at best.    I have no idea why he wasn’t prosecuted for rape.  Were the girls involved pressured into dropping charges?  Were the cops being lazy?  Were both these incidents brushed under the proverbial rug?  Did both schools want to protect their reputations as crime safe academic communities?

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NJ teen-athletes arrested for hazing, sex assault, season cancelled

MoonHowler

football

New York Times:

Seven New Jersey teenagers were charged on Friday in connection with a series of sexual assaults in a hazing scandal that prompted a high school to cancel the rest of its football season, the authorities said.

Six of the teenagers were taken into custody on Friday evening on charges stemming from attacks on four students in four separate encounters at Sayreville War Memorial High School, in Parlin, Andrew Carey, the Middlesex County prosecutor, said in a joint statement with Chief John Zebrowski of the Sayreville Police Department. The seventh teenager has surrendered to the police, the authorities said on Saturday.

Those charged range in age from 15 to 17. Officials withheld their identities because they are under the age of 18.

The county prosecutor said that on four separate occasions between Sept. 19 and Sept. 29, some of the suspects held the victims, who are also juveniles, against their will, while others “improperly” touched them “in a sexual manner.” One of the victims was kicked during an attack, officials said.

The school had been scheduled to play its homecoming football game on Friday night against Monroe High School. But school officials canceled the game and the rest of the season on Monday after they received complaints that older players had bullied and harassed younger ones.

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Sky Ranger drone searches for missing student

MoonHowler

Apparently drones aren’t just for wars and Amazon any more. Charlottesville police borrowed Sky Ranger from Va Tech to help them look for missing student Hannah Green.

The Daily Progress:

As crews today followed tips in their search for Hannah Graham, authorities in Orange and Newport News said they were reviewing the cases of four other women who went missing, never to be found.

Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr., 32, of Albemarle County, faces a Dec. 4 preliminary hearing on a charge of abducting Graham with intent to defile, his attorney Jim Camblos said today. Matthew is scheduled to face a bond hearing this morning in Albemarle County General District Court on reckless driving charges.

Christopher Newport University also confirmed Matthew had been questioned in a sexual assault case that occurred on Sept. 7, 2003, on the campus where he was a student.

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White House security breach worse than reported

MoonHowler

New York Times:

WASHINGTON — An armed man who jumped the White House fence this month made it far deeper into the mansion than previously disclosed, overpowering a Secret Service agent inside the North Portico entrance and running through the ceremonial East Room before he was tackled, according to a member of Congress familiar with the details of the incident.

The man, Omar J. Gonzalez, who had a knife, was stopped as he tried to enter the Green Room, a parlor used for receptions and teas, said the congressman, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the Republican chairman of a subcommittee looking into the security breach. Earlier, Secret Service officials indicated that Mr. Gonzalez, 42, had only made it steps inside the North Portico after running through the door.

The new development, first reported by The Washington Post, raised immediate questions about whether the Secret Service had been forthright in its initial accounts of the episode. It will set the stage for an explosive congressional hearing on Tuesday when lawmakers say they intend to grill Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, about whether an undisciplined culture inside the long-heralded agency has eroded its ability to protect the president and his family.

It sounds like the entire Secret Service needs an over-haul.  There have just been too many incidents in recent years that compromise our president and our national security.   This issue transcends all political party and needs to be dealt with swiftly and severely.  If heads roll, TFB.  Its past the time for internal correction.  Perhaps this is just the job for Congress, as long as they stick to topic and don’t try to bring in politics.

A serial killer among us?

MoonHowler

I have been quiet, for me, on the subject of the  Hannah Graham case.  It creeps me out.  I knew all the places mentioned.  I knew the places where she was sighted by name.  Grady Avenue,  14th Street, Preston Avenue, the Mall.  I also wanted to shake her.  She did the most foolish thing a young woman can do.  She did what we warn all our daughters not to do, from her dress, to her state of inebriation, to talking to strangers.

I fear, regardless of outcome, people wont have that very serious talk with their children.  Somehow if we think people are dead, we often don’t say the things that really need to be said, out of some misapplied respect.

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James Brady death ruled a homicide

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

Monday’s death of President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary James S. Brady has been ruled a homicide resulting from the gunshot wound he suffered in the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981, more than three decades ago.

The ruling was made by the medical examiner’s office in Virginia, where Brady, 73, died in an Alexandria retirement community, and was announced Friday by Gwendolyn Crump, the D.C. police department’s chief spokeswoman.

There was no immediate word on whether the shooter, John W. Hinckley Jr., who has been treated at St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital since his trial, could face new criminal charges. Hinckley, 59, was found not guilty by reason of insanity after he shot Reagan and three others on March 30, 1981.

But the decision to pronounce Brady’s death a homicide 33 years after he was wounded outside the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue NW raises questions about whether prosecutors can, and will, try to get around double jeopardy — the legal concept that protects a person from being tried twice for the same crime — and pursue a murder charge.

Isn’t charging John Hinckley with murder really overkill?   Why on earth should Hinckley be charged with murder some 30 years after the fact?  He has been incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for over three decades.  He was found not guilty by reason of insanity at the time.  What are prosecutors hoping?  He will be less insane?  More insane?  Even if he had been charged and convicted of murder, he might be eligible for freedom after 3o years.

Suggestion:  Leave it alone.  Recharging Hinckley just costs the taxpayer more money with very little end result.   It seems to me that the medical examiner was acting out of political motivation.  Had Hinckley shot anyone else, would the ME really declare a death  a homicide  after 30 some years?  Probably not.

James Brady, RIP

MoonHowler

James Brady, Sarah Brady

Washingtonpost.com:

By Jon Thurber August 4 at 5:24 PM

James S. Brady, the often-irreverent press secretary to President Ronald Reagan who was shot in the head during an assassination attempt on his boss in 1981 and who became an enduring symbol of the fight against unfettered access to guns in American society, died Aug. 4 at a retirement community in Alexandria, Va. He was 73.

Gail Hoffman, a family spokeswoman, confirmed his death and said she did not know the immediate cause. Mr. Brady had long suffered from health problems resulting from the shooting.

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Press helps perpetuate McDonnell defense

MoonHowler

The press has helped the McDonnell’s defense in the former governor’s criminal trial  but reporting on every salacious tidbit that comes out.  We have heard about school board crushes, meetings, shopping trips, Ferrari’s and doomed marriages that have lost their luster.  We have watched as the McDonnell couple has gone from hand holding to arriving separately.  A year ago the couple appeared united as illustrated by the hand holding.  Now Maureen McDonnell arrives with her daughter, with pursed lips.

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Arizona: two hours to die

MoonHowler

lethal_injection3

Washingtonpost.com:

The execution of a convicted murderer in Arizona lasted for nearly two hours on Wednesday, as witnesses said he gasped and snorted for much of that time before eventually dying.

This drawn-out death of Joseph R. Wood III in Arizona prompted the governor to order a review and drew renewed criticism of lethal injection, the main method of execution in the United States, just months after a high-profile botched execution in Oklahoma.

“I’ve witnessed a number of executions before and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dale Baich, one of Wood’s attorneys, told The Washington Post in a phone call. “Nor has an execution that I observed taken this long.”

Wood was sentenced to death in 1991 for shooting and killing his ex-girlfriend Debra Dietz and her father, Eugene. In 1989, Wood went to a body shop where Debra and her father worked and shot Eugene Dietz in the chest; he then shot Debra twice, killing her.

He was killed at the Arizona State Prison Complex in an unusually prolonged process that immediately brought to mind lethal injections that have gone awry in recent months.

“I take comfort knowing today my pain stops, and I said a prayer that on this or any other day you may find peace in all of your hearts and may God forgive you all,” Wood said as part of his final words, according to the Associated Press.

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Just a little Sexting in Manassas: Not just for Weiners any more (Anthony)

MoonHowler


(video from Vanity Fair)

Washingtonpost.com:

(Byline: Tom Jackman)

A Manassas City teenager accused of “sexting” a video to his girlfriend is now facing a search warrant in which Manassas City police and Prince William County prosecutors want to take a photo of his erect penis, possibly forcing the teen to become erect by taking him to a hospital and giving him an injection, the teen’s lawyers said. A Prince William County judge allowed the 17-year-old to leave the area without the warrant being served or the pictures being taken — yet.

The teen is facing two felony charges, for possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography, which could lead not only to incarceration until he’s 21, but inclusion on the state sex offender data base for, possibly, the rest of his life. David Culver of NBC Washington first reported the story and interviewed the teen’s guardian, his aunt, who was shocked at the lengths Prince William authorities were willing to go to make a sexting case in juvenile court.

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