DeSantis seeks to block school mask mandates in Florida
DeSantis said: “I want to see our children smile”. He should have said: “I want to see our kids sick and dead”! This moron is a disgrace to humanity.
Excerpts from the Article:
Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to reject mask mandates for school-age students on Friday and issued an order allowing parents or guardians to choose whether their child wears a mask in schools.
The Republican governor, who threatened to call a special session on masks in schools, signed the emergency action Friday, which is in response to the Broward County School District making masks mandatory for students and teachers in the face of the coronavirus Delta variant spreading throughout the state. Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the fourth-largest school district in the country, will make a decision on mask mandates in the coming days.
“As of today, very few [school districts] are requiring it. Nevertheless, we have a lot of push from the CDC and others to make every single person, kids and staff have to wear masks all day,” DeSantis said during the event. “That would be a huge mistake.”
The governor said the order would direct his Department of Education and Department of Health to craft emergency rules giving parents the right to choose whether their kid wears a mask, which has been an issue amplified by DeSantis in recent weeks. Many schools in Florida are set to resume in-person learning in the coming weeks.
The governor’s moves come as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week issued new guidance on masks in schools, saying that all K-12 students should wear face coverings inside schools regardless of vaccine status. It also furthers the governor’s hands-off approach to the pandemic and follows his pledges to reject any school closures, lockdowns or Covid-mandates.
Florida is currently seeing a surge in coronavirus infections, reporting 17,589 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, the state’s highest mark since January. Florida is now one of the worst-hit states in the nation and makes up one in five new infections nationally.
But the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, criticized DeSantis’ mask move as overreach against local school boards.
“Gov. DeSantis continues to think that Tallahassee knows best what all Floridians need,” FEA President Andrew Spar said in a statement.
We reject that kind of thinking,” Spar said. “Instead, we ask Gov. DeSantis to allow all Florida’s citizens to have a voice by empowering the elected leaders of cities, counties and school districts to make health and safety decisions locally based on their unique needs and circumstances.”
DeSantis could also face some opposition in Miami-Dade County, where Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the school district will seek Covid-19 recommendations from local health experts “regardless” of any executive order. The district is consulting with its health team two weeks before classes are slated to begin on Aug. 23, Carvalho said in remarks Friday.
“I believe that generalized pronouncements, via executive order or state statute that basically don’t differentiate between conditions, which may vary significantly from south Florida to central Florida to the panhandle, … may not necessarily be in the best interest of our communities,” Carvalho said.
DeSantis’ sweeping action comes a mere two days after local leaders in Broward County, one of the largest school districts in Florida and the nation, unanimously voted to make masks mandatory for children and adults districtwide.
The Broward County school board said Friday it will review DeSantis’ order after he issues it and then consider next moves.
Most school districts are prepared to begin the semester with masks as an optional precaution, but the Delta variant has pushed some counties to rethink their Covid-19 policies.
“If a parent really feels that this is something that’s important for their kid, we’re not stopping that,” DeSantis said Friday. “I think that’s the fairest way to do it — to let the parents have the decision.”
Jim Jordan is a Nervous Wreck because he knows subpoenas are coming!
And I will gladly pay $100 to anyone who sticks a cherry bomb up his sorry ass!
Baltimore’s mayor unveils new violence prevention plan
This overall comprehensive approach is our only hope.
Excerpts from the Article:
Aiming to treat gun violence as a public health crisis, Baltimore’s mayor on Friday unveiled a five-year violence reduction plan for the U.S. city where violent crime rates have remained high since a 2015 surge.
Mayor Brandon Scott, who took office in December, said the plan aims to end the city’s foundering efforts to tackle its top problem. He asserted that Baltimore — which has had four mayors and five police commissioners over the past six years alone — had never before developed a multiyear strategy to stem violence, instead lurching from year to year with disparate approaches.
Now, Baltimore is touting an all-hands-on-deck strategy, beefing up investments in violence intervention programs such as Safe Streets, increasing community engagement and putting a renewed focus on diminishing illegal guns. Overall, the plan aims to reduce gun violence by 15% per year.
“We understand that no single policy or initiative serves as a cure-all for the long legacy of violence Baltimore has endured. There’s no silver bullet. However, I believe wholeheartedly that this transformative approach can move the needle and make every neighborhood in Baltimore a safer place to live,” Scott said outside a community center.
Gun violence rates have remained high in Baltimore since the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a young Black man who suffered a fatal injury in police custody. His death triggered massive protests and the city’s worst riots in decades.
Maryland’s biggest city has recorded more than 300 annual homicides for six years in a row. So far this year, it has recorded 192 homicides, compared with 183 during the same period last year. There’s been nearly 400 nonfatal shootings so far in 2021.
Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said the new plan combines “effective policing” with other approaches to strengthen community relationships and build back trust. Since 2017, Baltimore has been under federal oversight after the U.S. Justice Department discovered longstanding patterns of excessive force, unlawful arrests and discriminatory police practices.
Law enforcement alone cannot effectively reduce violent crime, the police commissioner said.
“This is about breaking the cycle and culture of violence in our city, rather than the sole reliance on using police deployment alone,” Harrison said Friday as officials tried to drum up enthusiasm for the new plan at a series of events in the crime-weary city.
How the violence prevention plan’s various efforts will actually mesh with prosecutors, police and neighborhoods remains to be seen. But some experts said taking a comprehensive approach to gun violence and framing it as a public health problem is likely the right way to go.
“While it acknowledges the importance of fair and effective law enforcement, it clearly lays out that public safety isn’t and can’t be just a policing issue. These are important differences from some of the approaches in the past and have the potential to lead to real change,” said Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director for the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The city’s top prosecutor, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, said Friday that there is now a “unified approach” to fighting violent crime in Baltimore.
“We know we cannot simply arrest and incarcerate our way out of the violence,” she said.
Scott’s plan describes one tactic known as “group violence reduction strategy” that officials believe could be effective if it is sustained. Under this targeted strategy, law enforcement aims to prevent violence by identifying people who might be in a position to become shooters or victims and offering them help, such as work opportunities or substance abuse treatment.
Scott has also directed city police to establish a Firearms Intelligence Unit, which will investigate straw purchases and stem the flow of illegal guns onto the streets. The unit will collaborate with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents.
The plan calls for a reentry network to better provide services to people returning home from prison. And it touts the establishment of “neighborhood policing plans” so police can try to address quality-of-life issues and other challenges identified by residents. It’s unclear how this might actually work in a city with large swaths of deeply disenfranchised neighborhoods and thousands of uninhabitable residential properties with boarded-up windows.
A core part of the plan aims to boost violence intervention programs that focus on mediating conflict and providing socials services with federal funding. This would include some of the city’s $640 million allocation from the American Rescue Plan, President Joe Biden’s sweeping COVID-19 relief package.
“Many of these programs have suffered from insufficient or inconsistent funding which can lead to inconsistent effectiveness. It’s important that these programs have sufficient and sustained funding for them to work,” Crifasi said in an email.
Does Suspension End Giuliani’s Career in Law?
Few have fallen as far a Rudy: from “America’s Mayor” to Laughingstock. He’s a menace, and he’s toast! 🙂
Excerpts from the Article:
The days of practicing law for the mob-busting prosecutor turned point man for pushing Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election may be over.
Rudy Giuliani’s law license has already been suspended in his home state. That suspension, in practice, may well amount to a national suspension.
A New York appeals court took the action in June, saying Giuliani’s bid to discredit the election was so egregious that he poses “an immediate threat” to the public.
States have an interest in weeding out lawyers deemed unethical. So when one state takes steps against a lawyer, other states typically take the same steps. That means there will be few places, if any, where Giuliani will be able to practice law or appear in court on behalf of clients as long as his New York license is suspended.
States seek to mirror disciplinary actions of other states under what’s known as Rule 22 on reciprocal discipline, modeled on American Bar Association recommendations. All states have some version of it.
Lawyers don’t necessarily need a law license in a state to represent clients at a court hearing. They can file a motion asking a state or federal judge to grant them permission to participate. The motions — called pro hac vice, which means “for this occasion” in Latin — are regularly granted.
But lawyers, like Giuliani, who are no longer in good standing in their home states are unlikely to get the OK.
The importance of a clean disciplinary record was illustrated by Giuliani himself in litigation over the election.
Weeks after the Nov. 6 election, he was granted permission to represent Trump in a federal court in Pennsylvania, where he does not have a law license. It was granted based on his then-valid New York license. In his motion, Giuliani listed multiple courts in which he was authorized to practice, including all courts in New York and the District of Columbia. As required, he also verified he’d never had his license suspended and was not the subject of any disciplinary process. That’s no longer true.
Yes. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals in July pointed to the New York ruling in suspending Giuliani from practicing in D.C. courts — at least until the discipline procedures play out in New York. The two-page ruling cited the district’s reciprocal discipline rule requiring that it mirror the New York suspension.
Giuliani’s law license had already been inactive in D.C., meaning he would have had to pay dues and apply to start practicing in the city anyway. The D.C. court ruling means that, even if he wanted to, he can no longer seek to practice in the city.
New York requires that lawyers whose licenses are suspended in the state themselves notify regulatory bodies in other states. It’s unclear if Giuliani has done so for all the states in which he holds a law license.
Regulators can also learn about a suspension in another state via a national database managed by the ABA. As of Wednesday, there was no record of Giuliani’s suspension in New York. The normal notification process can take several weeks.
The New York appeals court said Giuliani not only made false statements but may have made them knowing they were false. Among the examples it gave were Giuliani’s claims that thousands of votes in Philadelphia were cast in the names of people who were dead, including, he asserted, deceased former boxing champion Joe Frazier.
The New York court is expected to make a final decision on Giuliani’s license after additional depositions, hearings and testimony. That mostly confidential process could take months, even years. For now, the suspension is considered interim. A final ruling could include a fixed-term suspension or disbarment for Giuliani. A simple reprimand would also be an option.
The tough language of the court’s June ruling, though, suggests Giuliani could be looking at the most severe sanction, said Bruce Green, director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at the Fordham University School of Law. “Having read the court’s opinion, I would say the chances (of disbarment) are pretty good,” he said.
Giuliani suggested to WABC-AM that the New York court’s decision was part of an effort “to shut me up.” He added: “They want Giuliani quiet.” In filings before the court ruled, Giuliani said his statements on the election were protected by the First Amendment and that he didn’t knowingly make false statements.
He will no longer be able to step up and lead battles in court on Trump’s behalf. With most other attorneys balking at Trump’s post-election legal theories, Trump relied heavily on Giuliani’s eagerness and, some would argue, lack of scruples to help.
Otherwise, Giuliani hasn’t shown much enthusiasm for courtroom work. Before he began representing Trump in litigation over vote counting, court records indicate Giuliani had not appeared in court as an attorney since 1992.
The suspension of his law license may not directly impact his lobbying work or business as a security consultant. But it adds to the reputational damage for Giuliani, whose widely praised work as a U.S. attorney in New York City had helped him become the city’s mayor.
A federal judge in Michigan is considering whether to order fines or other penalties against several of them, including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood.
They had brought a lawsuit alleging votes for Trump were destroyed or switched to votes for Joe Biden. The suit was dropped after a judge found nothing but “speculation and conjecture” in the filing.
States scale back virus reporting just as cases surge
In some Republican states, like Florida, this is happening because the sad truth is that Republicans do not care about ordinary folks. It is obvious in their policies and the laws they enact!
Excerpts from the Article:
Several states scaled back their reporting of COVID-19 statistics this month just as cases across the country started to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their communities.
The shift to weekly instead of daily reporting in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota marked a notable shift during a pandemic in which coronavirus dashboards have become a staple for Americans closely tracking case counts and trends to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S.
In Nebraska, the state actually stopped reporting on the virus altogether for two weeks after Gov. Pete Ricketts declared an end to the official virus emergency, forcing news reporters to file public records requests or turn to national websites that track state data to learn about COVID statistics. The state backtracked two weeks later and came up with a weekly site that provides some basic numbers.
Other governments have gone the other direction and released more information, with Washington, D.C., this week adding a dashboard on breakthrough cases to show the number of residents who contracted the virus after getting vaccines. Many states have recently gone to reporting virus numbers only on weekdays.
When Florida changed the frequency of its virus reporting earlier this month, officials said it made sense given the decreasing number of cases and the increasing number of people being vaccinated.
Cases started soaring soon after, and Florida earlier this week made up up one-fifth of the country’s new coronavirus infections. As a result, Florida’s weekly releases — typically done on Friday afternoons — have consequences for the country’s understanding of the current summer surge, with no statewide COVID stats coming out of the virus hotspot for six days a week.
In Florida’s last two weekly reports, the number of new cases shot up from 23,000 to 45,000 and then 73,000 on Friday, an average of more than 10,000 day. Hospitals are starting to run out of space in parts of the state.
With cases rising, Democrats and other critics have urged state officials and Gov. Ron DeSantis to resume daily outbreak updates.
“There was absolutely no reason to eliminate the daily updates beyond an effort to pretend like there are no updates,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from the Orlando area.
The trend of reducing data reporting has alarmed infectious disease specialists who believe that more information is better during a pandemic. People have come to rely on state virus dashboards to help make decisions about whether to attend large gatherings or wear masks in public, and understanding the level of risk in the community affects how people respond to virus restrictions and calls to get vaccinated.
“We know that showing the data to others actually is important because the actions that businesses take, the actions that schools take, the actions that civic leaders take, the actions that community leaders take, the actions that each of us individually take are all influenced by our perception of what the risk is out there,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who leads the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
But reporting the numbers on a weekly basis still allows people to see the overall trends while smoothing out some of he day-to-day variations that come from the way cases are reported and not the actual number of new cases. And experts have long advised that it makes sense to pay more attention to the seven-day rolling average of new cases because the numbers can vary widely from one day to the next.
And Florida health officials say that they have not curtailed the sharing of data with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Maintaining daily updates on the virus does require significant resources for states. For instance, Kansas went to reporting virus numbers three times a week in May because the state health department said providing daily statistics consumed too much time for its already overwhelmed staff.
In Nebraska, officials decided that continuing to update the virus dashboard daily wasn’t the best use of state resources now partly because there had been a steady decline in the number of views of the website indicating less interest in the numbers, spokeswoman Olga Dack said. The state could return to providing daily updates if the governor’s office decided that was needed, she said.
“Now that Nebraska is back to normal, some of the staff that has been dedicated to the dashboard has been able to focus on some of the other important issues,” Dack said.
State health departments have a long history of providing the public regular updates on other diseases like flu and West Nile, but those viruses have none of the political baggage associated with COVID-19.
In Florida, a former health department employee was fired last year after publicly suggesting that managers wanted her to manipulate information on coronavirus statistics to paint a rosier picture. The employee, Rebekah Jones, did not allege any tampering with data, but her comments sowed doubts about the reliability of the metrics.
Infectious disease specialist Dr. David Brett-Major said that for many people, national websites such as the one run by the CDC can be a good source of data on the latest state trends and weekly updates could be OK. The World Health Organization often uses weekly updates, but he said they do that for practical data management reasons, not political ones.
He said the message Nebraska sent when it ended its dashboard that the state emergency was over and conditions were returning to normal was troubling.
“The main problem is that it reflects a disinterest in pandemic risk management,” said Brett-Major, with the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, said part of the problem is that public health officials generally don’t have sophisticated data systems so it is more labor intensive to produce the daily dashboards. Even though public health agencies have money for operations at a time when pandemic government spending is flush, they haven’t necessarily had the chance to upgrade.
“It would be great if daily reporting could be made widely available, but public health would have to be funded better to do that and right now that is just not the case,” said Hamilton.
And even in states where virus numbers aren’t being reported publicly every day health officials are still looking at the latest data, Hamilton said.
But at a time when the delta variant is, in the words of the CDC director, “spreading with incredible efficiency,” Bibbins-Domingo said it is important that everyone can see the latest trends and understand the risks.
“Even if we know that they are available to decisionmakers on a daily basis, there is considerable value to providing the data to the public,” she said.
Trump friend Tom Barrack says ‘I’m 100% innocent’ of illegal lobbying for the United Arab Emirates
This fool said: “I think what you’ll find is that … over time, you’ll all see that I’m 100% innocent,”.
Not likely! He had better plan a hasty escape to Brazil, because his own documents and words are the best evidence against him!
Excerpts from the Article:
Private equity investor Thomas Barrack and a business associate pleaded not guilty Monday through their lawyers in New York to charges of illegally lobbying his friend ex-President Donald Trump on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.
“As you’d expect, the system is working,” Barrack, 74, said as he left Brooklyn federal courthouse after his arraignment.
“I think what you’ll find is that … over time, you’ll all see that I’m 100% innocent,” said Barrack, who was arrested last Tuesday in Los Angeles on the charges.
His $250 million release bond was maintained by a judge during the hearing, where his next court appearance was scheduled for Sept. 2.
Judge Sanket Bulsara also ordered Barrack to refrain from traveling on private aircraft and from conducting any foreign financial transactions and to limit his domestic financial transactions to $50,000 or less.
And Bulsara told Barrack not to have any contact with officials from the UAE.
Barrack, who will live in his residence in Aspen, Colorado, is allowed under the bond to travel only to southern California to visit his children, and to New York for court appearances. His compliance with the travel restrictions is being monitored by an electronic ankle bracelet and GPS.
As he entered the courthouse before his arraignment, Barrack was met by a man hoisting a sign saying “Traitor” in big black letters.
Barrack had been jailed without bond until Friday, when a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered him released on the $250 million bond, one of the largest criminal bails in history.
The bond is secured by $5 million cash, more than $21 million in securities, and by four properties. On Monday, Barrack’s son, ex-wife and a former business partner appeared Monday via video monitor to co-sign the release package and pledge properties to secure the bond.
Prosecutors in a detention memo last week had raised concerns that Barrack might flee to avoid the charges, given his holding of Lebanese citizenship and his access to a private jet.
Barrack, who chaired Trump’s inauguration committee, with a 27-year-old business associate, Matthew Grimes, is charged in an indictment accusing them of secretly working to advance the interests of UAE with Trump’s 2016 campaign and then during his presidency.
Grimes was released on a $5 million bond on Friday, and was arraigned with Barrack on Monday.
Barrack, who never registered with the American government as an agent for the oil-rich UAE, is also charged with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a June 2019 interview with federal law enforcement agents.
Prosecutors have said that as Barrack was promoting UAE’s interests with the Trump administration, he was informally advising U.S. officials on Middle East policy and was seeking appointment to a senior role in the U.S. government, including as special envoy to the Middle East.
The indictment also charges another man, UAE national Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, 43, who remains at large after fleeing the United States three years ago after being interviewed by law enforcement authorities.
Last Friday, Falcon Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company backed by Barrack, withdrew its registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying it was abandoning planned transactions.
The transactions had included an initial public offering of 25 million shares to raise $250 million for Falcon Acquisition, which was formed by Barrack’s family office Falcon Peak and TI Capital. The SPAC had planned to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
Barrack stepped down in 2020 as CEO of Colony Capital, a private equity firm he founded. He resigned as the firm’s executive chairman in April
Seaford woman called police for help; one who responded shot her dead
Another cop out of control, and another case demonstrating the importance of vastly improving our mental health care systems. This lawsuit will be won or settled for many thousands of dollars … YOUR tax money again being wasted; the whole thing could have been prevented.
Excerpts from the Article:
Kelly Rooks called Delaware State Police for help, but the officer who responded shot and killed her and broke her elderly mother’s hip, according to a complaint filed in federal court.
The 51-year-old Rooks was bipolar and had been experiencing severe paranoia the week before she died, calling Troop 5 in Bridgeville multiple times, the complaint says.
Most of the officers who responded “were nice and approached her carefully, understanding she had a mental illness,” and one even spoke to her psychiatrist, court documents say.
One trooper, however, “was hostile and aggressive” toward Kelly, according to the complaint, and he was one who responded March 25 after Kelly called because she thought she’d been poisoned.
A short time later, she was dead from multiple gunshot wounds.
Wilmington law firm Jacobs & Crumplar filed the lawsuit against a yet-to-be-named Delaware State Police trooper on July 12 on counts of excessive force, assault and battery, gross negligence and wrongful death. The suit is seeking punitive damages as well as funeral expenses.
The trooper is not known to the Rooks family because police records are protected in Delaware until an investigation into the use of force is completed. Instead, the lawsuit refers to him as John Doe.
Kelly’s brother, Raymond Rooks, is representing her estate in the lawsuit. Her mother is listed as a separate plaintiff.
Delaware State Police spokesman Gary Fournier said the trooper is still employed and on active duty but declined to otherwise comment on the lawsuit.
In the days following the shooting, Delaware State Police said they were dispatched to the scene to “assist medical personnel,” who were already at the residence when the woman “armed herself with a firearm” and “threatened” the troopers and medical professionals.
Rooks’ bipolar disorder surfaced about the time she was injured in a car accident, around 2015. The mental illness “substantially limited her in the performance of major life activities,” according to the complaint.
She appears to have lived a full life in spite of it. She worked for many years as a phlebotomist. Her longtime boyfriend, Robert Krause, lived at the Danny Drive residence with her. To her mother, Kelly Rooks was “beloved,” the complaint states.
“As a human being, she deserved better,” the Rooks family wrote in a statement issued shortly after the shooting.
Krause, who used a wheelchair, was at the home at the time of the shooting, along with Rooks’ mother, Geraldine Rooks.
When the trooper and medics arrived at about 7:30 p.m. March 25, a neighbor asked if Kelly had done anything wrong. The trooper, seeming “agitated or tired,” responded, “You tell me, I’ve got multiple calls from this address,” according to the complaint.
After the trooper entered the Rooks’ home without a warrant or announcing his presence, Kelly came out of her bedroom, court documents say, “rubbing her stomach and saying she needed to go to the hospital. She did not have a weapon.”
The situation escalated within two minutes of the trooper’s arrival, according to the complaint.
The trooper “was acting angry, hostile and aggressive. He was screaming, ‘What have we got here?’ Kelly asked him if Geraldine could go with her to the hospital. The angry, hostile … (trooper) aggressively screamed, ‘No!’
“Kelly and Geraldine felt they were not free to leave and that they were unable to decline (the trooper’s) requests or otherwise terminate the encounter. Geraldine walked toward her daughter to comfort her as she was obviously in mental distress that increased when (the trooper) screamed at her. … She was not disobeying any lawful command (the trooper) had given.”
That’s when the trooper shoved the 78-year-old Geraldine Rooks to the ground, breaking her hip, the complaint says, and Kelly Rooks ran to her room and grabbed a shotgun.
Both Krause and Geraldine Rooks were removed from the home before shots were fired, according to the complaint, and Geraldine Rooks was in the front yard when she saw the trooper point his gun at her daughter’s bedroom door and fire multiple times.
Three shots were fired through the door, which, based on the angle of the bullet holes, was closing or closed, the complaint says.
The complaint asserts that knowing Kelly was emotionally disturbed, the trooper should have proceeded slowly and with caution, using a calm voice. He failed to de-escalate the situation despite being trained to do so, and instead escalated it when he “provoked an otherwise static situation by his reckless tactical response,” the complaint says.
“The standard of care required a police officer, upon seeing Kelly retrieve a gun, (is) to get to a covered position, which was within (the trooper’s) ability,” the complaint states. “The situation was not so fluid or time dependent that Kelly could not have been talked down by a properly trained professional. A Crisis Intervention Team officer or negotiator specially trained in negotiation should have been employed.”
After shots were fired, backup arrived, parking along Danny Drive and the adjacent Airport Road. Two tanklike vehicles responded to the scene and a helicopter hovered above, according to the complaint. Neighbors were evacuated and police searched the woods surrounding Danny Drive.
Police cut a hole in the bottom of the home and ran a camera inside, presumably to see if Kelly was dead, the complaint says.
The activity lasted until after midnight.
Kelly died from her wounds at 9:47 p.m.
The Whole Story and the Actual Lawsuit
Innocent man tried 6 times for murder – then FREED!
I was horrified the first time I heard about the Curtis Flowers case, years ago. Tonight I am horrified again listening to the 60 Minutes broadcast again about that case. It is a case about an innocent black man in Mississippi who was tried by a good ole boy, ignorant, racist prosecutor 6 times for murders he did not commit. He eventually was freed and exonerated only after a podcast by a team of reporters, who unmasked the prosecutor and unraveled his story.
In tonight’s broadcast the idiot prosecutor even made up two new stories, when, in fact, there is no mention of either in tens of thousands of pages transcripts from the trials and interviews! He said “someone saw Curtis Flowers walk in the front door of the store on the day of the killings” and “Someone saw Curtis Flowers burning a pile of bloody clothes and sneakers … in that part of town over there near his home”. THERE IS NO RECORD OF ANYONE SAYING ANYTHING LIKE THIS!
As a former prosecutor, I tell you again that there is nothing worse than a bad one, and this one should be executed!
Here is the 60 Minutes broadcast. WATCH it; it is an eye-opening 15 minutes!
The U S Supreme Court said:
“Our review of the history of the prosecutor’s peremptory strikes in Flowers’ first four trials strongly support the conclusion that his use of peremptory strikes in Flowers’ sixth trial was motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent,” Kavanaugh wrote.
“Stretching across Flowers’ first four trials, the State employed its peremptory strikes to remove as many black prospective jurors as possible. The State appeared to proceed as if Batson had never been decided.
“The State’s relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the State wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury.”
PRESS RELEASE – UNIVERSITY STUDY OF REENTRY
PRESS RELEASE – UNIVERSITY STUDY OF REENTRY
Citizens for Criminal Justice, based in Dover, DE, is pleased to announce that its founder and former Deputy Attorney General, Ken Abraham, is participating in a University of Delaware (sociology department) study of reentry and those who assist people in reentry.
One of their points of interest is “what motivates those who assist people in reentry?”. Having counseled thousands of people in reentry through his daily work, and with his vast and varied experience with the criminal justice system (former prosecutor, defense attorney, addict, prisoner, probationer, victim of prison abuse) Mr. Abraham is a wealth of reliable information for the study.
The first Zoom interview was a great success, and more will follow. With about 9,000 people on probation or parole in Delaware, and more than 3 million Americans on probation or parole nationwide, the issues are important to everyone.
Milford doctor guilty in federal court of prescribing opioids for cash
“Mr. Greed” got hold of this doctor. With all of the pill mills which have been prosecuted, he was stupid to do it. He should get, and probably will get, prison time.
Excerpts from the Article:
A doctor who operated a pain clinic in Milford has been convicted of more than a dozen federal drug offenses tied to his practice’s dispensing of addictive and dangerous opioids.
A federal jury on Wednesday found Dr. Patrick Titus guilty of 13 crimes for knowingly dispensing narcotics without a legitimate medical purpose as well as one charge for maintaining Lighthouse Internal Medicine, the practice he operated in Milford from 2005 to 2014, primarily as an outlet for selling drugs.
At trial, prosecutors argued that Titus gave out dangerous prescriptions without rendering meaningful medical care while both ignoring warning signs of patient abuse and raking in cash from those patients.
His defense attorneys argued the Air Force veteran was acting in good faith to help people in pain. “We are going to continue to fight this case vigorously as we did in the courtroom and now on appeal,” said Edson Bostic, an attorney defending Titus.
After two weeks of trial, jurors convicted Titus of dispensing narcotics outside the realm of medicine to 13 separate patients, a small sample of many that often paid cash for his services.
Read more about those patients and why federal prosecutors felt his practice was a “drug dealing operation dressed up as a doctor’s office” in the story linked here.
The case against him is another chapter in the government’s efforts to seek accountability for those who created an opioid crisis that killed more than 400 Delawareans last year.
Also on Wednesday, the state announced it will receive some $100 million as part of a nationwide lawsuit settlement with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, as well as three major medical distributors – Cardinal Health, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen.
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