Edwin Valdemar Artiaga Perez was returned to prison after authorities stymied an escape attempt he engineered with his pregnant 19-year-old common law wife, Maria del Mar Arjona. Arjona had been allowed a conjugal visit with her husband, who is serving 20 years on weapons charges, when prison guards noticed her struggling with an abnormally heavy suitcase on her way out. When they opened it, they found Perez.
Watch the video, first uploaded by the Associated Press on July 6, 2011, below:
Rev. Al Sharpton celebrated the fact that Donald Trump will stand Tuesday in the same courtroom as the Central Park Five – the since exonerated men that Trump demanded be given the death penalty 34 years ago.
In a fiery address Saturday, Sharpton linked Trump’s impending indictment and the 1989 arrests of the Black youths who were wrongly convicted of rape.
“I know that Donald Trump, who said Barack Obama wasn’t born here. I know that Donald Trump, that took out ads calling for the death penalty of five black and brown boys from this community,” Sharpton said, according to the New York Daily News.
“I know on Tuesday morning he’s got to walk into that same building those five boys did.”
The Central Park Five received a $41 million settlement from the city in 2014, several years after they were imprisoned.
Trump paid for adverts to run in city newspapers during their trial demanding that they face the death penalty.
Yusef Salaam, one of the youths, on Friday gave his reaction to the indictment of Trump over allegations that he illegally paid a porn star hush money to hide an extramarital affair the ex-president had with her.
“Karma,” he said.
A large coalition of Catholic nuns has issued a public letter supporting transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive individuals – and “implicitly rebuking recent statements from the U.S. Catholic hierarchy,” the Religious News Service reported Saturday.
The letter was issued by a wide range of Catholic communities representing more than 6,000 religious orders across 18 states, RNS reported.
As members of the body of Christ, we cannot be whole without the full inclusion of transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive individuals,” the letter reads.
It goes on to argue that “we will remain oppressors until we — as vowed Catholic religious — acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people in our own congregations. We seek to cultivate a faith community where all, especially our transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive siblings, experience a deep belonging.”
The letter had been in the works since a wave of bills targeting trans people swept across state legislatures, one of its authors –Sister Barbara Battista, congregation justice promoter for the Sisters of Providence, St. Mary-of-the-Woods – told RNS.
But she added that release of the letter was “jump-started” by an anti-trans statement by Catholic Church leaders.
“The nuns’ effort comes in the wake of a doctrinal statement published earlier this month by a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which discouraged Catholic health care groups from performing various gender-affirming medical procedures, arguing doing so does not respect the “intrinsic unity of body and soul,” RNS reported.
The nuns were explicit about their disagreement with legislators and church leadership.“Battista noted that many of the bills working their way through state legislatures revolve around the health care needs of trans people, an issue that hits home for her as a licensed physician’s assistant in Indiana.
"She described her work as “participating in the healing ministry of Jesus,” rooted, she said, in a “sacred trust” between patients and providers.“ But Catholic leaders and government officials, she argued, have tried to “insert themselves into the private, very personal and intimate conversations and decisions made between the health care provider
Donald Trump is widely expected to use his familiar legal tactic of “delay, delay, delay” in an attempt to slow the judicial process for his indictment by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Politico reported Saturday.
“By dragging out the proceedings between the indictment and his trial, Trump could push the trial deep into the 2024 presidential campaign — with Trump expected to be the top contender for the Republican nomination,” the report states.
“Trump has spent decades refining tactics for prolonging his legal fights as his lawyers attempt to out-wait and outlast the patience of his adversaries. Though a criminal indictment presents him with a different set of options — and obstacles — than his many previous bouts in civil court, there is still a substantial menu for him to choose from.”
Those options include “an attempt to dismiss the entire case, a bid to relocate his trial outside of New York City, an effort to disqualify the prosecutor or judge in his case, a bid to move the case from state to federal court, extensive negotiations
over security protocols for his appearances in court and a motion to reduce his charges from felonies to misdemeanors,” according to the report.
Politico predicted that Trump’s delaying tactics will be on display as soon as next week.
“The first indication of Trump’s posture will likely come Tuesday at his arraignment when a deadline will be set for various motions in the case,” it reported. That will be followed by a relatively strict series of “adjournment dates” for other phases of the case.
“One of those deadlines arrives in early May: a 35-day post-arraignment deadline for District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to provide all relevant documents and evidence to Trump’s defense team. Trump’s attorneys are sure to use each of those inflection points to file a new series of motions, Catherine Christian, a 30-year veteran of the Manhattan district attorney’s office who is now a defense attorney, told Politico.
“If they’re doing their job, they’re going to do everything they can to delay, delay, delay, delay. Every single motion they can think of. That’s what they’re going to file.”
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