Tennessee State Rep. Paul Sherrell is now expressing regret for floating a proposal to bring back hanging convicted criminals from trees.
News Channel 5 Nashville reports that Sherrell originally expressed an openness to bringing back tree hangings during a discussion on another Republican's proposal to bring back executions by firing squads.
While talking about the proposal at a House Criminal Justice Committee meeting, Sherrell asked if he could "put an amendment on that it would include hanging by a tree also?"
Although his suggestion was ignored by other lawmakers, it did catch the attention of Gloria Sweet-Love, the President of the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, who called his remarks "beyond disgusting" and accused him of "celebrating a particular form of execution used against African Americans in Tennessee and across the nation, including innocent and wrongfully convicted persons."
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Days after the controversy erupted, Sherrell expressed regrets for his remarks.
"I regret that I used very poor judgment in voicing my support of a colleague’s bill in the Criminal Justice Committee on Tuesday," he said in a prepared statement. "My exaggerated comments were intended to convey my belief that for the cruelest and most heinous crimes, a just society requires the death penalty in kind."
A Wisconsin man pleaded guilty to federal charges for intimidating and interfering with Black residents because of their race and because they were exercising their right to fair housing, the Department of Justice said Thursday in a news release.
William McDonald, 45, of West Allis, Wisconsin, pleaded guilty to one felony and one misdemeanor.
McDonald faces a maximum sentence of up to 11 years in prison. He’s scheduled to be sentenced June 29.
McDonald confessed to vandalizing a Black woman’s vehicle parked outside her apartment by slashing her tires and smashing her windshield and leaving a note on her car laced with racial slurs threatening to slash her throat and demanding she move out of West Allis in March, 2021. A week later he slashed two of her car tires and left another note filled with racial slurs with the warning that she move out of the neighborhood or suffer violence.
IN OTHER NEWS: Lindsey Graham admonished by ethics panel for violating Senate rules
In April 2022 after a Black woman moved into his apartment complex with and her two minor children, McDonald vandalized the family’s front door with racial graffiti and left a note calling her family a racial slur and demanding the woman leave the building.
“No one should feel unsafe in their home or be subjected to harmful and derogatory threats because of the color of their skin,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said.
“The Justice Department will continue to protect the housing rights of all individuals and vigorously prosecute those who use racially-charged threats to drive people from their homes.”
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was involved in prosecuting the case.
“The conduct at issue in this case strikes at the very core of the civil rights guaranteed to every American citizen under federal law,” U.S. Attorney Gregory J. Haanstad said.
“I commend the courage of those targeted by Mr. McDonald for coming forward. The U.S. Attorney’s Office remains committed to working with all of our federal, state, and local partners to hold individuals who violate the civil rights of others fully accountable under federal law.”
In a letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the Senate Ethics Committee rebuked him for a repeated violation of Senate rules.
Specifically, the letter noted, Graham has on multiple occasions conducted interviews soliciting campaign funds from inside the Senate office complex, which is against ethics regulations.
"The Committee initiated its inquiry after receiving a complaint alleging that you solicited campaign contributions in support of Georgia senatorial candidate Herschel Walker during a media interview conducted in the Russell Senate Office Building on November 30, 2022," said the letter. "The complaint included a link to a video clip of the interview, which the Committee has reviewed as well as the information you provided to the Committee regarding this matter." Subsequent probing found "five separate times" in which Graham did this, which the letter calls a "repeat violation of Senate standard of conduct."
Despite issuing the "Public Letter of Admonition," the Ethics Committee, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans under Senate rules, declined to issue any disciplinary sanctions, citing "mitigating factors" to conclude Graham's conduct was "inadvertent, technical, or otherwise of a de minimis nature."
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This decision is par for the course; a recent exclusive Raw Story investigation found that out of the last 1,523 ethics complaints against senators, the senators on the Ethics Committee issued disciplinary sanctions against their colleagues exactly zero times — even in the 204 cases where there was enough evidence to launch a "preliminary investigation."
Walker, a former NFL star turned Trump-backed candidate for Senate in Georgia, saw his campaign derailed by scandal, including allegations he paid for abortions for women he impregnated, and of violent behavior toward his family and former partners.
Writing for the New York Times on Thursday, reporters revealed that Donald Trump's lawyer, Evan Corcoran, would not be pleading his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Corcoran is set to testify to the grand jury in Washington, D.C., over the theft of the documents the former president is accused of snatching upon leaving the White House. Special counsel Jack Smith has worked his way through a number of witnesses around Trump and Mar-a-Lago at a time that the documents were being shifted around.
In the case of Trump's lawyer, it's incredibly rare for attorney-client privilege to be broken, but in this case, four judges agreed that it could be as a result of a crime being committed.
Another lawyer, Jennifer Little, is being brought in to testify. While her work is isolated only to the Fulton County, Georgia grand jury, she was discussing things with Trump at the time of the Mar-a-Lago documents shuffle and the Justice Department's request for the documents back.
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"The extraordinary back-and-forth in the past several weeks between Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Mr. Corcoran and his lawyers, and Mr. Smith’s prosecutors — not to mention with multiple witnesses who are also Mr. Trump’s lawyers, as well as all of their lawyers — has turned the federal courthouse in Washington into a bustling hive of Trump-related inquiries," the Times reported.
“The latest example came on Thursday when lawyers for Mr. Trump — including Mr. Corcoran — appeared before a new chief judge, James E. Boasberg, with lawyers for former Vice President Mike Pence," the report closes. "They were there to discuss some issues related to Mr. Pence’s testimony before a grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, an inquiry also being overseen by Mr. Smith, the special counsel.”
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