Tennessee forfeiture law reform bill on its way to Gov. Haslam – Long Overdue! kra
Ken’s Comments:
Thank God: Increasingly, states are realizing that these “tough on crime” forfeiture laws were one dumb ass idea! Read related articles on this website. In 2014 police seized more than was taken in all burglaries nationwide!
Excerpts from the Article:
A bill providing new protections for people to regain property and cash seized by Tennessee law enforcement officials is headed to Gov. Bill Haslam’s desk after receiving state Senate approval Thursday. The vote for the bill, sponsored by Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, was unanimous. “This is a rare bill because you had the ACLU on one side and the Beacon Center on the other, and they both agreed on it,” Gardenhire told senators.
The bill is intended to address long-standing complaints and controversies involving law enforcement seizures of property tied to actual crimes or suspected unlawful activity. Sheriffs, police chiefs and prosecutors have defended the practice, saying it deprives suspected criminals like drug traffickers of assets that law enforcement can use to fund future operations.
Under current state civil-asset forfeiture laws and procedures, agencies often keep the property or cash. Critics have long charged the legal deck is often stacked against innocent third-party owners.
“Tennesseans should not have their property seized without being charged with, or convicted of a crime,” Venable said. “This bill brings much-needed reforms which should drastically curtail the practice of civil asset forfeiture.”
Daniel had pushed the issue for several years but encountered stiff opposition from local and state law enforcement officials. Last year, Carter, chairman of the House Civil Justice Committee, engaged in the issue after his panel heard horror stories involving several Tennesseans’ efforts to regain their property.
A Knoxville attorney described at that hearing how a woman suspected of drunken driving was stopped and charged with possession of prescription drugs for sale. Police seized $11,000 in cash. The drugs turned out to be over-the-counter antacid medication, the cash from the just settled estate of the woman’s late mother, according to the attorney.
A criminal court judge threw out the case, but the attorney said the woman had to fight a lengthy and confusing battle in state administrative courts to regain her money and vehicle.
The legislation requires authorities to provide quick, formal notice within five days of a property seizure of a forfeiture-warrant hearing, regardless of whether the person was present or not at the time the property was taken. It also says a seizing agency found to be in the wrong must pay attorneys fees not to exceed the lesser of 25 percent of property or cash or $3,000.
In the case of those charged at the scene and their assets seized, they, too have a more defined legal process to seek return, provided the property was not involved in commission of a crime. Another significant aspect, is that cash itself is not in and of itself a crime.
For years, critics have charged that law enforcement in Tennessee and across the country have taken advantage of seizures to fund operations, calling the practice “policing for profit,” a description denounced by law enforcement.
Illegal tactics used to force confessions from California prisoners, ACLU alleges – Widespread Crimes – WHY are they not prosecuted? kra
Ken’s Comments:
What is a word stronger than “outrageous”? Horrific? Despicable? Those responsible for this entrenched system to violate rights should be imprisoned! AGAIN, where is the U S Attorney – the feds?
Not everyone has a famous star like Bob Dylan to tell their story, as Rubin Carter did!
Excerpts from the Article:
Prosecutors and sheriff’s deputies in California’s Orange County used jailhouse informants in an extraordinary and long-running scheme to illegally obtain confessions from criminal defendants, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is alleging in a new lawsuit. The suit, filed early Wednesday, alleges that the district attorney’s office and sheriff’s department in the suburban county south of Los Angeles routinely employed prisoners – including hardened gang members – as informants and used “threats of violence to coerce confessions” from defendants, violating their rights to an attorney. The ACLU cited a mountain of evidence, amassed in criminal cases over the past five years, that prosecutors obtained material illegally, suppressed parts favorable to the defence, and sought to cover up the existence of the scheme.
“For 30 years, the Orange County sheriff’s department and district attorney’s office have been operating an illegal informant program out of the jails,” the ACLU lawyer Brendan Hamme told the Guardian. “They’ve used it to coerce information from defendants, including with threats of death, and at the same time they’ve been systematically hiding evidence of that program. These sorts of tactics are offensive to basic constitutional principles and ethical duties.”
The ACLU’s 41-page complaint lays out the particulars of the scandal, much of it based on documents produced by the county and by the courtroom testimony of county officials, in unforgiving detail: evidence of informants telling their cell mates they were marked for death by a “shot caller”, or gang leader, and could only save themselves if they talked in detail about their crimes; evidence that one informant was encouraged by the police to help frame a 14-year-old boy for attempted murder even though several witnesses said the boy was nowhere near the scene of the crime; evidence that informants were paid tens of thousands of dollars for their services; evidence that prosecutors had repeatedly failed to hand over documentation to defence lawyers as required by law; evidence that sheriffs had repeatedly lied under oath when asked about the existence of the informant program.
The scandal in Orange County, a bastion of law-and-order conservatism, first erupted in 2013, when Scott Sanders, a public defender, noticed that the same jailhouse informant was cited in two high-profile murder cases he was working. That informant turned to be a member of the Mexican mafia, whose jailhouse file included the instruction “Do not use as a CI [confidential informant]”.
One of the compromised cases was the biggest mass killing in the county’s history. Prosecutors went all out for the death penalty for Scott Dekraai, who shot and killed eight people in a hair salon in 2011, but the scandal delayed sentencing for years and the judge forced the county to settle for a life sentence instead.
In Orange County, the scandal has been remarkable for the tenacity of the officials at the center of the storm. Sheriff Sandra Hutchens has announced she will not be seeking re-election this year, but has persisted in saying that any abuses were the work of a few rogue deputies only. Tony Rackauckas, the district attorney, has been stridently unapologetic and is locked in a furious re-election battle with a county supervisor who is using the scandal as his primary political weapon.
Do Conviction Integrity Units Work? I suspected they would NOT. kra
Ken’s Comments:
The system is such a mess that prosecutors in 35 states now have people review claims of wrongful conviction! To learn the many reasons for wrongful convictions, read articles on this website like John Grisham: Eight reasons for America’s shameful number of wrongful convictions
Excerpts from the Article:
In May 1988 on the south side of Chicago, a video store caught fire in the middle of the night. The fire spread quickly, eventually burning down seven other nearby businesses and killing two people. The police determined it was arson, and quickly identified the owner of the video store as the mastermind of a four-person plot. But it was a local repairman, Arthur Brown, who prosecutors accused of actually setting the fire, using gasoline as an accelerant. Two other people were accused of taking part, and all four were charged with first-degree murder and arson. At the first bond hearing, local prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty for three of the men, including Brown. He immediately collapsed to the floor. “I’m just emotional,” Brown said, apologizing to the judge. “I’ve never been in a courtroom before.”
Brown had signed a confession during his interrogation but steadfastly maintained his innocence afterward, continually stating that he only signed it after being beaten and threatened by the cops for over seven hours. However, in 1990, after a trial led by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Brown was granted a new trial in 2003, but was once again found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. But last November, a judge threw out his conviction and ordered a new trial based on Brown’s post-conviction petition. That petition argued that prosecutors in his second trial had not only solicited testimony they knew to be false from one of the police officers who handled his case, but “improperly relied extensively on that false testimony in its opening statement and closing argument.” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx asked her Conviction Integrity Unit to review the case. Days later, prosecutors dismissed the charges and Brown was released.
Brown is one of the 139 people who was exonerated last year, according to the annual report of the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE), released last week. According to the report, 42 of those exonerations involved Conviction Integrity Units (CIUs). These units, which are part of prosecutors’ offices, are intended to “prevent, identify, and correct false convictions.”
As prosecutorial reform has garnered more attention, many district attorneys have responded to the calls for change by creating CIUs. These conviction review teams have become more common — according to the report, there were 33 CIUs in 2017, “more than double the number in 2013, and more than six times the number in 2011.” (That list doesn’t include recently created units in Detroit, Michigan, and Jacksonville, Florida.) But while the number of CIUs is growing, they are still extremely rare. There are, after all, 2,300 prosecutor’s offices in America — meaning a whopping 98.5 percent of offices don’t have a CIU.
Further, the mere fact that a CIU exists means very little — several have accomplished nothing. In fact, of the 33 offices listed in the report, 12 of them have never exonerated a single person. Another five offices have exonerated only one.
In Boston, Suffolk County DA Dan Conley has touted the importance of his Conviction Integrity Program. Last year, he awarded his office’s Unsung Hero award to the director of the program, Donna Patalano, stating that her “commitment to the interests of justice has helped us set a national standard with policies replicated by prosecutors across the country.” That Conley brags about this unit is baffling. Suffolk’s CIU has no full-time staff. It’s not even mentioned on the office’s website. And in six years, it has exonerated only one person.
At first glance, San Diego’s office may look a little better than Boston’s. Two years ago, the office formalized its Conviction Review Unit. Before that, an assistant district attorney in the office had served as the office’s liaison to the Innocence Project since 2011. Now, the division has two full-time staff attorneys. It also has a website where people can apply online to have their convictions reviewed. The site even quotes Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” But in seven years, the office has been responsible for just one exoneration.
The list goes on. Los Angeles County is the biggest county in the nation, yet in three years, its office has exonerated exactly two people, according to its report. Manhattan’s DA, Cy Vance, has exonerated just five people since 2010. Philadelphia has exonerated just three people in four years.
And those offices look pretty good compared to cities like Tucson, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Fort Worth, and Sacramento. All of those offices have CIUs and yet, according to the report, they have yet to exonerate a single person.
Exonerations can take years, and sometimes these offices are facing circumstances outside of their control. For example, in Texas, the post-conviction process “presents unique procedural hurdles to the innocence process,” according to a 2016 article written by former Harris County ADA Inger Chandler in the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice magazine. “It’s not enough in Texas to believe justice would be served by overturning a conviction. Nor is it enough to say, ‘Had I known then what I know now, I would not have prosecuted this case.’” In Texas, there must be a constitutional violation to vacate a conviction.
CIUs have done at least some good. According to NRE’s report, they’ve “helped secure 269 exonerations from 2003 to 2017; more than 80% [of which] occurred since 2014.” But many of these offices see tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of cases each year, and the evidence says that prosecutorial misconduct is far from unusual. According to the report, 60 percent of all wrongful convictions last year — including 84 percent of homicide wrongful convictions — involved official misconduct. And while official misconduct encompasses a large group, “the most common misconduct documented in the cases in the Registry involves police or prosecutors (or both) concealing exculpatory evidence.” If in 15 years, these units have identified fewer than 300 cases where a person was wrongfully convicted, they are certainly not effective enough.
The truth is that CIUs’ biggest asset is also their biggest obstacle. On the one hand, these units have incomparable access to district attorneys’ internal evidence, and have better access to other law enforcement agencies.
But because CIUs are part of the DA’s office, they are often incentivized to protect their own. Most of these units are staffed by career prosecutors, who are given the task of investigating their colleagues and their superiors — so even when they do identify misconduct, they may be hesitant to accuse those around them of wrongdoing. “Conviction review units are totally contained within the office, and the prosecutor has total control over which case he’ll review and which ones he won’t,” said Phil Locke, Ohio Innocence Project advisor, in CounterPunch magazine. “My personal opinion is that CRUs [another term for CIUs] are politically motivated and self-serving. It’s the fox guarding the henhouse problem. They’ll cherry-pick the cases, overturn the obviously worst ones, thump their chests about all the good being done.”
There are some institutional necessities for an effective CIU. According to a report released by the Quattrone Center, a policy hub at the University of Pennsylvania focused on preventing errors in the criminal justice system, CIUs should fundamentally be “independent, flexible, and transparent.” The report lays out several policy and practice recommendations, including: the unit should stand alone, rather than within an office’s appellate or post-conviction division; it should be “led by an attorney with firsthand prosecutorial and criminal defense experience;” and it should “review all petitions on their factual merits, and not on non-substantive grounds,” meaning the office should even review cases where a petitioner pled guilty. According to Quattrone’s report, testing evidence and establishing an “open exchange of information” are also important, as are personnel trainings and written policies. Certainly, all of these things are critical. But even following these guidelines won’t guarantee an effective CIU unless they have support from the top — these units require a strong, dedicated district attorney who is concerned with justice above convictions.
Consider the case of Harris County, the third largest county in the nation. The DA’s office is led by Kim Ogg who was elected in 2016, and is generally considered one of the most progressive prosecutors in the nation. In the past, Harris County DAs were known for prosecuting trace cases, or cases that involve a miniscule amount of drugs. Often, due to a crime lab backlog, it took months for that trace drug evidence to be tested. That meant that many defendants who could not afford bail would have to sit in jail, waiting for a test to prove their innocence. Unsurprisingly, many would ultimately just plead guilty so that they could be released. The drug labs, then, would de-prioritize testing those samples at all, since the cases had technically been resolved.
In 2014, under former District Attorney Devon Anderson, Harris County’s CIU identified the backlog and the large number of people who were innocent but had pled guilty. As a result, the report states, “the District Attorney’s Office developed a plan to clear that backlog and exonerate as many of the innocent defendants as possible.” Now the office has a policy that drugs must be tested before a guilty plea is accepted. Harris County is a rare example, and it’s unclear if the office has been as aggressive about identifying wrongful convictions outside of the drug context. Still, this is one instance where a CIU was effective — the unit recognized wrongdoing, the office exonerated the innocent, and policy changes were implemented to prevent further wrongdoing.
Unfortunately, there just aren’t many examples like this. For many prosecutors, establishing a unit allows them to appear as if they are making strides towards justice. But an actual dedication to integrity is a different matter altogether.
In fact, as NRE’s report points out, many CIUs are anything but eager to investigate these cases, even when there’s evidence of innocence. “Most CIU exonerations were initially investigated by defense attorneys, innocence organizations, journalists, or others. In some cases, the exonerated defendants even faced concerted resistance by the prosecutors’ offices before the CIUs came around to supporting the exonerations.”
Arthur Brown’s case followed such a path. His wrongful conviction was initially investigated by an outside attorney dedicated to exonerating the innocent. And even after a judge vacated his conviction and ruled that he was entitled to a new trial due to prosecutorial misconduct, Cook County prosecutors vowed to retry him. It wasn’t until Brown appealed to Foxx directly that the CIU decided that the case should be dismissed.
In the past few years, CIUs have become stronger and more prevalent than ever. But that doesn’t mean they’re adequate. If prosecutors truly believe it’s their role to fight for justice, they should implement, staff, and encourage independent CIUs. After all, there are thousands more Arthur Browns languishing in prison as we speak. It’s prosecutors’ job to exonerate them.
Where America’s future prisoners are born – Preying on the Poor – kra
Ken’s Comments:
This report is no surprise to me. Our criminal justice system long has attacked the poor and those of color. See many articles under “Race”.
Open the Story to see the charts, like the one: “Incarceration rate of men between 28 and 34, by parents income”!
Men who grew up in the poorest 10 percent of American families are 20 times as likely to be imprisoned by their early 30s than men from the richest 10 percent of families, according to a new Brookings Institution analysis of the drivers of incarceration.
“We estimate that almost one in ten boys born to families in the lowest income decile are incarcerated at age 30, and they make up about 27 percent of prisoners that age,” the study’s authors, Adam Looney and Nicholas Turner, concluded.
By contrast, fewer than half of 1 percent of men from the richest 10 percent of families were imprisoned on any given day in their early 30s.
That stark relationship — between childhood family income and adult incarceration — underscores how much the environments children grow up in can shape their life trajectories.
To produce their analysis, Looney and Turner collected Internal Revenue Service tax returns for 2.9 million incarcerated individuals. For a subset of about 500,000 of those inmates, they were able to link incarcerated individuals to their parents’ income tax returns, providing snapshots of where the future inmates were born and how much money their families made at the time of their birth.
While the incarceration rates for girls were much lower, the data showed a similarly sharp incarceration gradient running along the income spectrum.
They also found that children from single-parent families were about twice as likely to end up incarcerated as the children of married parents, regardless of family income.
Children of poor families are thus heavily overrepresented in the prison population. Among the cohort of prisoners age 28 to 34 the authors examined, the bottom 5 percent of families, by income, produced about 30 percent of the inmates. The bottom 20 percent of households produced nearly half the inmates, while the bottom 50 percent of families accounted for over 82 percent of inmates.
Incorporating family structure into the analysis, the study found that “boys from single-parent families in the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution — a group that makes up only 3.7 percent of the overall population” — accounted for 20 percent of all prisoners in 2012. Conversely, boys with married parents who grew up in the top 50 percent of households accounted for 46 percent of all boys but only 14 percent of men in prison.
“The neighborhoods with high incarceration rates are predominantly black, or are otherwise nonwhite, have child poverty rates that are two to three times the national average, and have male unemployment rates substantially higher than the rest of the country,” Looney and Turner found.
“Poor African American and Native American boys living in segregated communities of concentrated poverty are highly unlikely to experience anything but unemployment or incarceration or both,” wrote the Brookings Institution’s Camille Busette in an accompanying commentary. “If we add to this the fact that police disproportionally kill African American and Native American men, it is clear that the level of exclusion faced by these men is staggering.”
Other research has shown that one way out of the cycle of poverty, violence and incarceration is to get out — literally. A 2015 study by Raj Chetty and colleagues found that “moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood significantly improves college attendance rates and earnings for children who were young (below age 13) when their families moved.”
Op Ed Submission – My America is Gone- 3/19/18
Updated 3/26/18: PUBLISHED on page A 4 of The Delaware State News of 3/26/18
Op Ed Submission – My America is Gone – 3/19/18
I grew up as a child in Dover, DE, from 1952 to 1965, when I entered college. I was 5 when we moved here in ’52 from Venezuela, where Dad was working for Shell Oil administering their field hospitals in that country. He became the administrator of what is now Bay Health Kent General. Dover was a wonderful, quiet little town, and the neighborhood we moved to, near what is now Central Middle School, was a great, safe place for kids. We played outdoors most of the time, rode out bikes everywhere, and actually knew our neighbors. There was virtually never a shooting! Drugs were not a problem of any significance (I suppose some were around, but those troubles really did not start until decades later), and our friends were friends, irrespective of politics, skin color, or where they came from.
The city in which I grew up is gone, as are thousands of similar communities across America, and it is a real shame. We have shootings every week, drugs are everywhere, and bodies (3 in the last couple of months) are turning up in the lake, Silver Lake, where we swam in the summers and played ice hockey in the winters. The joy of childhood is one casualty of many societal ills plaguing America today.
How did this happen? I suggest that our abysmally failed “war on drugs”, other “tough on crime” policies, mass incarceration – causing so many children to grow up without parents – , the decline of the influence of our churches, and the degeneration of political discourse into the rancorous political tones of today all are somewhat responsible. Other towns have even worse problems with violence, rampant drug overdoses, senseless (bigoted) hatred, and some have bombings in their neighborhoods. Witness the four recent explosions in the Austin TX area, all targeting minorities. I was not there, but bet you that Austin TX was as peaceful and pleasant as Dover DE was in the ’50s.
Let’s all tone it down! Let’s report crime to the authorities when we see it (that is not being a “snitch”, it is merely being a responsible citizen; a snitch is one who acts – rats on another – to save his/her own butt!). Let’s have sensible and fair laws and policing policies, with plenty of community engagement between police and civilians. And, OMG, let’s all tone down the terribly divisive political comments! Just tone it down!
Ken Abraham, Dover, DE 302-423-4067
Speak Out on Important Issues! Letter to the Editor about pay/performance gap.
I was a state employee for 6 years (1 as law clerk to the Supreme Court, and 5 as Deputy Attorney General, handling thousands of criminal cases, where I saw how lazy/incompetent too many government workers are. Since then, during the past 40 years, I have see great real personal harm done to many by too many such state and federal workers. Raise a little hell about it; they work for YOU!
I sent this out to my 250+ press email list this morning:
Letter to the Editor – Why such a huge disconnect between pay and performance? 3/19/18
A recent news article reported that 1,700 employees of the state of Delaware each were paid more than $100,000 annually, and it listed the “top ten”. Five of those ten, each being paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars annually, are in the mental health/substance abuse field. So I wonder why it is that mental health care, as it is in most states, is still in a state of tremendous neglect, virtually nonexistent in our prisons, and that drugs still are such a scourge on society! Why is there such a huge disconnect between pay and performance?
We should be a bit less “top heavy” and implement laws and policies that work. Let us reward those who actually improve the lives those who are paying them: the citizens.
Ken Abraham, former Deputy Attorney General, founder of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE, Dover, DE 302-423-4967
…………………………………………………
I get lots of letters published, and ghost write for others. THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO REACH THOUSANDS OF READERS! The keys to getting your Letter published are:
1. Keep it to 250 words or fewer.
2. Do not make it about “poor little old me”. Describe the problem as one which not only affects the individual, but is a senseless or ineffective measure, policy, or law which also harms communities and society. For example, with reentry, the obstacles make it unnecessarily difficult for the individual, but also harm society by making it hard to become productive, spending money and paying taxes in the community, and they cause increased recidivism = increased crime.
3. Speak from your heart.
4. Google any facts you are not sure about.
5. Do not name-call.
Do what works: Write that Letter!
…………
Letter to Editor – sign name, town, state, and your phone number (they often call to verify that you sent it), and “Member of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE” if you like – shows you are part of a large group.
Send the email to yourself, and put on the “bcc” bar the email addresses for Letters to the Editor for the top ten newspapers in your state and several national ones – The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, U S A Today (google the Letter to Editor email addresses). Any questions, CALL me at 302-423-4067!
GOOGLE THE EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR “LETTERS TO THE EDITOR” FOR THE TOP TEN NEWSPAPERS IN YOUR STATE AND SAVE THAT INFORMATION FOR REPEATED USE – Some papers will print a letter from you every 2 weeks, some every 30 days, some every 90 days. They have varying policies. But if you really want to make a difference shoot them a new letter once a month! I send one out every 2 weeks.
Need a Letter on some criminal justice issue and not a great letter writer? NO EXCUSE! Email me a rough draft and call me and I’ll polish it up! kenabraham3138@gmail.com .
ANY QUESTIONS, CALL ME AT 302-423-4067.
Letter from a concerned citizen, Pam Rehmer, about racism in the criminal justice system.
A friend of mine in Massachusetts sent me this letter [she should send it out as a Letter to the Editor, perhaps with the introductory sentence being “I am writing to increase awareness of a major problem in our criminal justice system”] and I include it here because racism is a major problem in the system. Although polls show that 74% of Americans don’t think the system is racist, many, many studies show that it is. Read articles here under “Race”. No sane, objective person can argue that our justice system is not tragically racist!
Hispanics too are harmed greatly by the racism in the system. I will add that the current president is part of the cause for this today; he clearly is racist himself and does nothing to encourage inclusion. His wild enforcement of our immigration laws is diminishing this nation’s “greatness”, not creating it! The land of freedom and opportunity, sought by so many worldwide, is imprisoning children and families in horrid private prisons by the hundreds of thousands, while they await deportation simply because they were born here. Is this justice? Hell no!
Daryl Cagle / politicalcartoons.com
Letter from Pam Rehmer 3/18/18:
I am writing this article based on the current climate of the Criminal Justice System. I have worked in the Criminal Justice System for 30 years in various capacities with diverse populations, as well as a rehabilitation Counselor. Although polls show that 74% of Americans don’t think the system is racist, many, many studies show that it is.
The most horrifying aspect of american policing and prosecution is the way that black boys are targeted. Sometimes only 10 or 12 years of age, they find themselves in the crosshairs of suspicion and implicit bias no matter what they do. Of course, the presumption that someone is violent or is dangerous or is guilty is never acceptable merely as a presumption, yet men and women all over the USA have seen such presumptions cause injustice. However, most cultures hold their children dearest, and so what happens when every African-American boy grows up knowing that cops will assume he has done something wrong because he has stopped on the street corner, or not stopped; walked too slowly, or too quickly; looked away, or looked around down; what happens when an entire subset of the US population knows that he was essentially outlawed from the cradle?
Policing critiques the many ways the Criminal Justice System impacts the lives of African-american boys and men at every stage of the criminal process, from arrest through sentencing. The historical roots of racism in the Criminal Justice System to an examination of modern-day police killing of unarmed black boys and men. Racial profiling, the power and discretion of the police and prosecutors [too often used unwisely and unfairly], the role of implicit bias, the racial impact of police and prosecutorial decisions, the disproportionate imprisonment of black men, the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, and the Supreme Court’s failure to provide meaningful remedies for the injustices in the Criminal Justice System all have caused much harm to individuals, families, and societal harm. Policing the black boy/man is a critical issue of race and justice in America.
Pamela Rehmer
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I get lots of letters published, and ghost write for others. THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO REACH THOUSANDS OF READERS! The keys to getting your Letter published are:
1. Keep it to 250 words or fewer.
2. Do not make it about “poor little old me”. Describe the problem as one which not only affects the individual, but is a senseless or ineffective measure, policy, or law which also harms communities and society. For example, with reentry, the obstacles make it unnecessarily difficult for the individual, but also harm society by making it hard to become productive, spending money and paying taxes in the community, and they cause increased recidivism = increased crime.
3. Speak from your heart.
4. Google any facts you are not sure about.
5. Do not name-call.
Do what works: Write that Letter!
…………
Letter to Editor – sign name, town, state, and your phone number (they often call to verify that you sent it), and “Member of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE” if you like – shows you are part of a large group.
Send the email to yourself, and put on the “bcc” bar the email addresses for Letters to the Editor for the top ten newspapers in your state and several national ones – The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, U S A Today (google the Letter to Editor email addresses). Any questions, CALL me at 302-423-4067!
GOOGLE THE EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR “LETTERS TO THE EDITOR” FOR THE TOP TEN NEWSPAPERS IN YOUR STATE AND SAVE THAT INFORMATION FOR REPEATED USE – Some papers will print a letter from you every 2 ekke, some every 30 days, some every 90 days. They have varying policies. But if you really want to make a difference shoot them a new letter once a month! I send one out every 2 weeks.
Need a Letter on some criminal justice issue and not a great letter writer? NO EXCUSE! Email me a rough draft and call me and I’ll polish it up! kenabraham3138@gmail.com .
ANY QUESTIONS, CALL ME AT 302-423-4067.
Conor Lamb wins Special election.Dump Trump: He is a disaster for our criminal justice system. kra
I post this because:
- Every patriot has a duty to speak out against this fool we have elected President.
and 2. tRump is a disaster for our criminal justice system.
tRump spent over an hour at that rally in PA, trying to defeat Lamb. Of course, the pompous fool spent 95% of the time talking about himself. Well, a clear message has been sent. What is that message? “You, Mr. President, are an incompetent, pompous fool, incapable of restoring America’s greatness. We do not want a lying, cheating, narcissistic bully as our president!”
The way he fired Tillerson, a man who left a position of power and great income to enter public service!? tRump is such an inconsiderate Bozo; to learn why his “base” are such fools, read: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-the-science-of-blue-lies-may-explain-trumps-support/
The Article:
Police Held This Man Down Until His Flesh Cooked Away. Now He’s Suing for $26 Million.
Ken’s Comments:
These kinds of cases not only cost you, the taxpayers, billions of dollars needlessly every year. They cost us the loss of confidence in our police in many, many communities. It is not just the cost of any ultimate settlement or jury award; who do you think pays for the lawyers for the wrongdoers, the judges … the clerks, etc. and all involved in the process with thousands of such “excessive force” cases filed every year? YOU DO!
The neglect of our mentally ill alone in this country costs us $444 billion every year!
Why were the officers not prosecuted? I have been writing about these abuses for six years now, and they will not stop until the wrongdoers are prosecuted and imprisoned! READ Why only PROSECUTION and IMPRISONMENT Will Stop Prison Abuse and Police Abuse! Demand It!! How to Avoid the Deaths of More Prison Guards!
Excerpts from the Article:
A mentally ill man whose flesh was seared from his body after California police held him against 170-degree pavement until his skin literally cooked away is now suing for $26 million. James Bradford Nelson suffered extensive burns when multiple officers with the Citrus Heights Police Department pinned him to the ground in front of a Kentucky Fried Chicken on June 23, 2017.
Eight officers initially responded to a call complaining about a shirtless man behaving strangely, according to The Sacramento Bee. At least two of those officers ultimately held Nelson down against the pavement in excess of five minutes. Temperatures outside were over 100 degrees that day and the National Weather Service notes that human skin is “instantly destroyed” at 162 degrees.
Nelson’s complaint notes: During this time on the ground Nelson was screaming and yelling in excruciating pain. However, the officers forced his head down onto the hot pavement, leaning onto it with such force that Nelson could not move it for relief, exposing the right side of his face and neck to the scorching heat of the concrete. Roughly 20 minutes later, Nelson was placed inside of an ambulance–unconscious due to the severity of the third-degree burns spanning the entirety of his chest and abdomen as well as large sections of his face and neck.
Nelson’s claim also notes that he suffers from a host of mental health issues, including paranoid schizophrenia, and that such issues are “exacerbated in extreme conditions of weather.” A video of Nelson’s actions leading up to the incident shows him inside the KFC acting oddly before taking a swing at an employee. He was ultimately charged with a parole violation over his behavior.
The claim also notes that Nelson spent weeks in the UC Davis intenstive care burn unit where he went through skin-grafting procedures and had to receive liver and kidney failure treatment because of his injuries. In the end, Nelson was left with massive physical scars, post traumatic stress disorder and permanent disabilities, according to the claim.
Citrus Heights Police Chief Ronald Lawrence declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said the case is “something that will involve the judicial system, and will not be resolved in the court of public opinion.” The claim filed against the City of Citrus Heights notes that Nelson’s medical bills as of last month had reached $1.8 million. The action also asserts an additional $25 million claim for “general damages” and an as-yet-unspecified demand for punitive damages against the officers who took part in the removal of Nelson’s flesh.
CALL ME! – My Experience – the tip of the iceberg. kra
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I am a professional who specializes in Applications for Pardons and for Clemency/Commutation. READ Know Anyone With an Innocence Project Team? Practical Tip: Tell them “Get them out First” kra
Know Anyone With an Innocence Project Team? Practical Tip: Tell them “Get them out First” kra
All of law school is three years; where we are taught contracts, wills and estates, torts, evidence, and about a dozen other subjects. I spent four years doing nothing but studying criminal justice issues for 18 hours a day, every day, from B4 the sun rose until after it set [the lights are on 24/7 in that isolation cell!] , and I have been IMMERESED in all such issues for nearly eleven years now! Think about it!!
Why am I so successful? READ Practical Tip – There is ONE way to win – Be Prepared!
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