Brandon Johnson sworn in as Chicago mayor: ‘Our best and brightest days are ahead of us’
May 15, 2023, 4:47 PM ET
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'Morally right thing': Former Alabama governors urge their state to stop executing people
May 29, 2023
Former Republican Gov. Robert Bentley and Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman came together to pen a warning in the Washington Post last week imploring change over the death penalty. With 167, the state has more people on death row than any other per capita.
They called it "146 people too many."
"As former Alabama governors, we have come over time to see the flaws in our nation’s justice system and to view the state’s death penalty laws in particular as legally and morally troubling," the governors wrote. "We both presided over executions while in office, but if we had known then what we know now about prosecutorial misconduct, we would have exercised our constitutional authority to commute death sentences to life."
They cited data from the Death Penalty Information Center, which counted that for every 8.3 executions, there has been one person exonerated since 1976. It means they're putting people to death who weren't guilty about 12 percent of the time. Applying those statistics to Alabama means as many as 20 people shouldn't be there and were wrongfully convicted.
"The center has found that wrongful convictions are 'overwhelmingly the product of police or prosecutorial misconduct or the presentation of knowingly false testimony.' Judge Alex Kozinski, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, has said the withholding of exculpatory evidence by prosecutors is an 'epidemic' in the United States. Shamefully, such misconduct most frequently involves Black defendants (87 percent)," the column explained.
The governors cited one person in Alabama that has been exonerated, but they said there are more convictions that lawmakers should find concerning. They went so far as to say that those convictions should "haunt Alabama leaders."
"In 1998, a non-unanimous jury recommended death for Toforest Johnson for the killing of an off-duty sheriff’s deputy based on the testimony of someone who, unknown to the defense, was later paid a $5,000 reward," they recalled. "The case of Rocky Myers, convicted of murdering his neighbor, is even more disturbing. Myers was never connected to the murder scene, and even though the jury recommended life without parole, the judge overrode the recommendation and ordered his execution."
Siegelman mentioned Freddie Wright, who he could have commuted in 2000, but didn't. He said it haunts him. After 23 years, he's fairly certain that Wright was wrongfully charged, prosecuted, and convicted for a murder he likely didn't commit.
They also cited a 1976 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door for prosecutors to use grand juries to get convictions without any accountability for themselves. The joke has always been that a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich. It's not far off, as the governors cite close to a 99 percent indictment rate.
They described the "stealth setting" as a place without a judge or defense lawyers overseeing what prosecutors are doing. It gives them free rein to provide false evidence or testimony and withhold any evidence they want to get the conviction. The District Attorneys prosecutors work for are political officials, meaning their success rate becomes a campaign talking point. Convictions are seen as doing a good job.
Before the Supreme Court made that ruling, there were about 200,000 people that were incarcerated. After the 1976 ruling, it shot up to 1.6 million.
"In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that a unanimous verdict is required to convict someone of a capital crime warranting death. The court highlighted the racist underpinnings of non-unanimous verdicts as a Jim Crow practice dating from the 1870s," the governors explained.
"Alabama had been the only state to allow a person to be sentenced to death by this legal relic and has 115 people scheduled to die based on non-unanimous jury verdicts."
Under the guise of being "tough on crime," Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) recently signed a law allowing someone put to death in Florida on a jury vote of 8-4.
Alabama has banned judicial overrides, which allowed judges to bypass the jury and give whatever sentence they wanted. In the state, 7 percent of death sentences were from these kinds of judicial overrides. When the law was signed, it didn't help the 31 people on death row in the state that were already there because of the practice.
The men closed by saying that 146 people on death row in Alabama are there due to split juries or judicial overrides.
"We missed our chance to confront the death penalty and have lived to regret it, but it is not too late for today’s elected officials to do the morally right thing," they closed.
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Pro-Trump activist claims that Casey DeSantis is 'exaggerating' her fight against breast cancer
May 29, 2023
Far-right activist, conspiracy theorist, and die-hard Donald Trump supporter Laura Loomer took aim at the wife of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this Saturday, suggesting in a tweet that Casey DeSantis faked her struggle with breast cancer.
“DeSantis supporters say you aren’t allowed to criticize Jill DeSantis because she claims she had cancer (I’ve never seen the medical records), but they have no problem attacking Melania Trump,” Loomer wrote, calling the Florida First Lady by her birth name. “Personally, I think Jill’s health has been over exaggerated in a desperate effort to get votes for DeSantis. They even used it in a 2022 campaign commercial which is very tacky.”
“They are welcome to release the medical records though to show that they aren’t exaggerating,” she continued in her tweet. “Especially since they want to use her as a campaign surrogate and cancer as a way to appeal to voters. You can’t say ‘my wife is a part of my campaign’ then also say ‘you aren’t allowed to criticize her because she had cancer.'”
Casey DeSantis was declared breast cancer-free in January of last year and completed her final chemotherapy treatment. She was first diagnosed in October of 2021. But Loomer, a known conspiracy theorist, is claiming, without evidence, that her health struggles have been “exaggerated.”
“She’s fair game,” Loomer declared in her tweet.
Loomer, a former congressional candidate who rose to prominence in alt-right circles as a vocal anti-Muslim activist, is also a prolific spreader of conspiracy theories, once claiming that ISIS was behind the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
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Black TikToker shames plane passenger in seat next to her for sending racist texts about her
May 29, 2023
A Black woman confronted the passenger sitting next to her on a plane after she read racist text messages he was sending about her, according to a TikTok video.
The video starts out with the woman telling the man that she initially wasn't going to say anything, but then changed her mind.
“You know what? I wasn’t going to say anything … but I decided I want you to feel as uncomfortable as I do,” the woman told the man off camera who she was sitting next to. “And I want you to know that I saw your text messages and I think you’re disgusting.”
The woman, identified by The Independent as Taila Rouse, said she saw the words “big Black woman” in the man's text message when she glanced over.
“He and his family went on and on about the woes of being stuck next to Black and gay people,” she said, adding that she saw him write that "he hopes airlines raise prices so these people get weeded out.”
“If you’re going to be bold enough to pull your phone out in the middle seat of an airplane and freely talk disrespectfully about Black people, then I’m going to be bold enough to say something to you," Rouse wrote in her video's caption.
Watch the video below or at this link.
@taila.thecreator Sitting next to a racist on my four hour flight from Puerto Rico to Atlanta this week. Yes I could’ve minded my own business, but why should I let him slide? I happened to glance over and see the words “big black woman” so I continued reading. He and his family went on and on about the woes of being stuck sitting next to Black and gay people. Then I see this man say he hopes airlines continue to raise prices so these people get weeded out. If you’re gonna be bold enough to pull your phone out in the middle seat of an airplane and freely talk disrespectfully about Black people, then I’m going to be bold enough to say something to you. What would you have done? #traveltiktok #racistoftheday #racistencounter #airplanedrama #travelingwhileblack #blacktravelfeed
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