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Sunday 31 March 2013

British Government enforce New Changes that start today!



Here's same of them:

***Monday 1 April***

Bedroom tax introduced

The aim is to tackle overcrowding and encourage a more efficient use of social housing. Working age housing benefit and unemployment claimants deemed to have one spare bedroom in social housing will lose 14% of their housing benefit and those with two or more spare bedrooms will lose 25%. An estimated 1m households with extra bedrooms are paid housing benefit. Critics say it is an inefficient policy as in the north of England, families with a spare rooms outnumber overcrowded families by three to one, so thousands will be hit with the tax when there is no local need for them to move. Two-thirds of the people hit by the bedroom tax are disabled.

Savings: £465m a year. As many as 660,000 people in social housing will lose an average of £728 a year.

***Monday 1 April***

Thousands lose access to legal aid

Branded by Labour a "day of shame" for the legal aid system, the cutoff to claim legal aid will be a household income of £32,000, and those earning between £14,000 and £32,000 will have to take a means test. Family law cases including divorce, child custody, immigration and employment cases will be badly affected.

Savings: a minimum £350m from £2.2bn legal aid bill.

***Monday 1 April***

Council tax benefit passes into local control

Council tax benefit, currently a single system administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, is being transferred to local councils with a reduction in funding of 10%. Council tax benefit is claimed by 5.9 million low-income families in the UK. The new onus on councils has come at a time when local government funding, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has fallen by 26.8% in two years in real terms. A Guardian survey of 81 councils last week found many claiming they face difficult cuts, with almost half saying they were reducing spending on care services for adults. This also comes at a time when 2.4m households will see a council tax rise.

Savings: up to £480m a year, but depends on decisions of local councils.

***Monday 1 April***

NHS commissioning changes for ever

An NHS commissioning board and a total of 240 local commissioning groups made up of doctors, nurses and other professionals will take control of budgets to buy services for patients. They will buy from any service providers, including private ones so long as they meet NHS standards and costs. Strategic health authorities and primary care trusts disappear.

Costs: £1.4bn, mainly in redundancies, followed by savings as high as £5bn in 2015 owing to fall in staff numbers.

***Monday 1 April***

Regulation of financial industry changes

The Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority, housed in the Bank of England, replace the Financial Services Authority. The Bank promises these changes do not represent the death and Easter resurrection of the same body. A new, proactive supervisory approach towards the City is promised, focused on outcomes rather than a tick-box culture. It has powers to prosecute, throw people out of the industry and withdraw a bank's licence. Above all it monitors risk to the financial system as a whole.

***Saturday 6 April***

50p tax rate scrapped for high earners

Announced in the 2012 budget. George Osborne said the 50p rate, introduced in April 2010, caused massive distortions in 2010-11 and raised only £1bn, rather than the £2.5bn forecast by Labour back in 2009. HMRC found £16bn was deliberately shifted into the previous tax year, largely by owner/directors of companies taking dividends in the previous year when the highest rate was still 40p. Labour claims 13,000 millionaires will get a £100,000 tax cut.

***Monday 8 April***

Disability living allowance scrapped

The personal independence payment (PIP) replaces the disability living allowance and, according to the DWP, is not based on your condition, but on how your condition affects you, so narrowing the gateway to the PIP.

It will contain two elements: a daily living component and a mobility component. If you score sufficient points, a claim can be made. Assessments will be face-to-face rather than based on written submissions, starting in Bootle benefits centre, handling claims across the north-west and north-east.

***Monday 8 April***

Benefit uprating begins

For the first time in history welfare benefits and tax credits will not rise in line with inflation and will instead for the next three years rise by 1%. Had there been no change benefits would have risen by 2.2%. Disability benefits will continue to rise in line with inflation.

Savings: £505m in the first year, rising to £2.3bn in 2015-16. Nearly 9.5 million families will be affected, including 7 million in work, by £165 a year.

***Monday 15 April***

Welfare benefit cap

The most popular of the welfare reforms will begin on 15 April in the London boroughs of Bromley, Croydon, Enfield and Haringey. The intention is that no welfare claimants will receive in total more than the average annual household income after tax and national insurance – estimated at £26,000. Other councils will start to introduce it from 15 July and it will be fully up and running by the end of September. Some estimate 80,000 households will be made homeless. The DWP says around 7,000 people who would have been affected by the cap have moved into work and a further 22,000 have accepted employment support to move into work. Households where someone is entitled to working tax credits will not be affected.

Savings: £51m over three years.

***28 April***

Universal credit introduced

The new in- and out-of-work credit, which integrates six of the main out-of-work benefits, will start to be implemented this April in one jobcentre in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester. The aim is to increase incentives to work for the unemployed and to encourage longer hours for those working part-time. It had been intended that four jobcentres would start the trial in April, but this has been delayed until July, and a national programme will start in September for new claimants. They will test the new sanctions regime and a new fortnightly job search trial, which aims to ensure all jobseeker's allowance and unemployment claimants are automatically signed onto Job Match, an internet-based job-search mechanism. Suspicion remains that the software is not ready.

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BR: That's some of the Changes that have taken effect Today!! ...
Remember the Poll Tax Riots in the early 1990's ;) There on the Way!!
 
British Revolution
 
British Revolution

A message to Jimmy Savile's accomplices from Bill Maloney.




A message to Jimmy Savile's accomplices from Bill Maloney.

Filmmaker and child abuse survivor Bill Maloney sends a message to Institutional Paedophile Rings.
Maloney is aggressively attacking Institutional paedophilia within his work and is asking for people to sign a petition that he is backing to give Amnesty to whistle blowing paedophiles who expose the rings they're working with: http://www.change.org/petitions/uk-go...

In this film Maloney shows his strength to the perpetrators after a breakdown due to sheer exhaustion.
Welcome back Bill.
God bless all victims and survivors.
Maria Maloney (Producer)
http://www.pienmashfilms.com

Government Harassment of Leslie Pickering and Burning Books

 
Leslie James Pickering has been politically active since the mid 1990s and is best known for his role as Spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front Press Office and authoring a number of radical histories, including Mad Bomber Melville. He currently resides in his hometown of Buffalo and runs Burning Books with Theresa Baker-Pickering and Nate Buckley.

Back in early September, he got word that an old, west coast acquaintance received a phone call from the Buffalo field office of the FBI, asking a number of questions about him. A couple of weeks later, a half-sheet of USPS cardstock was "accidentally" left in his mailbox, detailing a mail cover on him and his residence. Last month he found out that a local institution was served a federal grand jury subpoena for records on him covering the last 2 years, and when he went to board a flight early this month he was suddenly given Secondary Security Screening Selection (SSSS) status, when he'd never before had any trouble with airline security.
Leslie has good legal help, locally, and has filed FOIA requests to relevant agencies. He also has strong local media support, some of have also filed FOIA requests. Due to all this government pressure, he is also no longer allowed to cross the border into Canada.

More information will be released soon including how we can help!

http://burningbooksbuffalo.com/
--
Freedom Archives  www.freedomarchives.org



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SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!

Free All Political Prisoners!
nycjericho@gmail.comwww.jerichony.org

Christy phillips





www.gofundme.com/... c/o Christy phillips michael K. Cernyar attorney-at-law 400 oceangate eighth floor long beach, ca. 90802. mail donation c/o Christy Phillips defense fund

2013 We Are Anonymous UK




This is the official video for the anonsource awareness & promotion campaign.

You can come and join us at http://anonuk.anonsource.org/

Please comment as your feedback will help make our local and international communications communications more effective

Saturday 30 March 2013

Documentary: CIA in Uruguay P2 P1




Via conducting interviews with previous Uruguayan politicians, the documentary deals with the illegal detention, torture, and killing of Uruguayans by the CIA during the Cold War.

Russell Maroon Shoatz has been moved





Just heard from Theresa, Maroon's daughter, that he has been moved:

Shoats, Russell Maroon
#AF3855
SCI-Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd., Frackville, PA 17932
Birthday: August 23, 1943

Take the time to send him a card or write a short note.



--
SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!

Free All Political Prisoners!
 www.jerichony.org

Christy Clinton Phillips


Listen to internet radio with SpiritAliveNetwork on Blog Talk Radio
Faith Behind Bars and Beyond the Show that deals with families impacted by incarceration


About Christy

My name is Christy Clinton Phillips. I am being held in prison under violations of my civil and political rights I need help in fighting for the protection of these rights. The issue of my case in short form, is as follows: I was 15 yrs. old when my crime occurred and was sentenced to life in prison. According to the UN INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS(to which the United States is a party to) AND CRC(Convention/Committee on the rights of the child). a life sentence for a child is explicitly prohibited under article 37(a) of CRC and(article 6 the right to life, survival and development) paragraph 11 and paragraph 77.

Under article 14(g)4 the court procedure must be such as will take account of a juvenile persons age and the desire ability of promoting their rehabilitation. In my case, the court did not take my age into consideration nor did they promote rehabilitation by sentencing me to LIFE in prison. "LIFERS" in prison are mostly denied access to rehabilitative services because of the lengthy sentence. Article 14(g) also prohibits law enforcement to cause a child to be compelled to testify against himself or to confess guilt. In my case, I reported a homicide, I was held in the lounge area of the Rialto Police Station over night and interrogated the next day. I requested to the interrogating officers three times if I could be taken to a telephone to contact my mother I was told that I could not contact anyone outside the police station until after I was interrogated.

After being held away from home and in a police station over night, I was intimidated confused and tired so under duress I cooperated with them I was under the impression that I would not be allowed to go home until after I cooperated with them. During my interrogation the detectives made it clear that they wanted me to admit guilt and would not end the interrogation until after I had done so, I did and was convicted and sentenced to life in prison based on that coerced confession.
Letter of support:Christy Phillips W-94100 C.C.W.F. P.O.BOX 1508 512-15-2up Chowchilla, Ca. 93610
www.gofundme.com/20h29c
www.change.org/petitions/justice-for-christy-clinton-phillips-cdc-w-94100. http://tobtr.com/3046483

Bedroom Tax Protest -- London 30th March 2013




Bedroom Tax Protest outside 10 Downing St, London on 30th March 2013. Citizens are worried about the tax claiming it is going to crush the poor. People on benefits are concerned that they would have to move to smaller accommodation.

The House I Live In'





The House I Live In's photo.

"There are more African Americans in jail on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850 – a decade before the Civil War." - Michelle Alexander

The war on drugs has never been about drugs.

Watch the eye-opening film about the War on Drugs, The House I Live In, on Independent Lens | PBS April 8 at 10 PM. http://to.pbs.org/WEyI1u

Clashes as Bedroom Tax Protest London gets violent






The bedroom tax protest in London gets a bit violent as police remonstrate in scuffles and clashes with Anonymous protesters.

Several hundred people gathered in London's Trafalgar Square on Saturday to protest against the government's welfare cuts and the controversial "bedroom tax".

Simultaneous protests were held in towns and cities across the UK ahead of the cuts scheduled to come into force in April. In Glasgow, around 2,500 people, including trade unionists and people from disabled groups, marched from Glasgow Green to George Square in the city centre.

The "bedroom tax", which is due to be introduced next month, will entail a cut in housing benefit for claimants whose home has a spare room. Pensioners, who have the highest number of spare rooms, are exempt, but critics say that a spare room is a necessity for many families, particularly those with ill or disabled members.

Bedroom tax rally in london 3/30/2013


Anonymous Message: #OpAnonRat



#OpAnonRat

Transcript:

Hello Citizens of the world, We are Anonymous. Dear brothers and sisters. Now is the time to open your eyes and expose the truth!

It has come to our attention that someone within the world of anonymous, their has been grave threats life, physical attacks, as well as compromised IRC networks.

Their are certain groups of people that pose as Anonymous that have connections with the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other government agencies aimed at harming or killing activist and people with in the anonymous community.

These groups that are promoting disunity and false information, tricking our fellow brothers into a contaminated cloud of operations and information in an effort to depict Anonymous as a terrorist organization and to invoke psychological warfare within the anonymous community.




The DOX exposes such Anti Anonymous members as I haz candy, who's real name is David Michael Heine. Mr. Heine is a FBI and CIA informant as well as a suspected pedophile during a darknet investigation. Anonymous discovered that Mr. Heine was a past channel operator in teen related channels on EFNET. Further research has shown him to even operate portals targeting underage children.

The Jester, who's real name is Thomas Ryan has been pushing lies and disinformation across the web. Mr. Ryan is a strong advocate against Occupy wall street and Wikileaks, and Thomas is obsessed with unmasking members of anonymous, Extreme pro military industrial complex, and Right Wing Neo Conservative. Mr. Ryan Is obsessed with anonymous turned snitch Hector Monsegur also known as Sabu.

Da Black Packet, who was responsible for Operation Warhead causing anonymous to look like extreme terrorist is known to operate on Facebook. Da Black Packet is considered dangerous and has complete access to any Facebook accounts. Anyone who reports Da Black Packet for abuse such as hacking Facebook pages get automatically banned from Facebook. Such people who are targeted by Da Black Packet are Information warriors, activist, Freedom fighters, and members of anonymous.

After obama's speech to congress threatening activist and anonymous members live on national television, Anonymous members and liberty activist began to go missing or killed, run over by Government cars, targeted with sniper rifles, Destroyed financially. All of these actions where conducted without Charge or trial and is part of the national defense authorization act.

While their are other extreme threats to Information warriors, activist, Freedom fighters, and members of anonymous, it is imperative to know that such threats exist within the liberty community and the ninety nine percent is responsible for protecting the lives of those who fight for our inalienable rights to life, freedom and liberty.

Anonymous cannot and will not tolerate threats of physical harm or cyber domination to the innocent. Anonymous will systematically expel any person from the internet who feels that the life of another has less value then their own. Such actions will have no place in the world of the ninety nine percent and will be forced to seek refuge with the elite one percent.

Too many anonymous brothers and sisters have risked their lives to spread truth.

There is no leader of anonymous, there is no god of Anonymous. Anonymous is an idea. And an idea can not be killed.

United as one, divided by zero.

We are anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

Friday 29 March 2013

Duo flame - Awesome

Missing Jessie Foster ... WHO KNEW?


March 29, 2013 will be 7 years since my daughter Jessie disappeared. Jessie is an international endangered missing woman and the victim of human trafficking. PLEASE WATCH & SHARE WITH OTHERS ... Thank you, Jessie's mom, Glendene.

Medical neglect and pepper spray bring death to mentally ill man in SCI Albion’s dark hole

by Andre Jacobs
Statue of Liberty, lynchingIf only Lady Liberty knew
That I sit in prison an innocent man
Railroaded and denied my right to testify
And how I see other innocent men, women and children
Who got “justice” because they had no money or social connections.
If only Lady Liberty knew
That when the cops, judges and prosecutors
See a certain color or that a defendant came from a certain geographical area,
They pursue that person more vigorously, imprison him first and longer than others
And how the big money corporate thugs
Lobby for laws that help imprison the poor by the millions
As the rich go free.
If only Lady Liberty knew
How the pain rips through and rapes the essence of human beings
When justice is denied
And criminals are made
When the punishment doesn’t match the crime
Then she would rip off that rusty blindfold and get her ass some glasses.

The murder

Amid rumors that SCI (State Correctional Institution) Albion has been authorized to establish a brutal and bloody regime in its solitary confinement hole, prison guards murdered Stony Schaeffer (DW8560) in his cell using chemical munitions – Oleoresin Capsicum (O.C. or pepper) spray – and electro-shock weapons.
In a scenario almost identical to the murder of John Carter at SCI Rockview on April 26, 2012, a cell extraction riot team, led by Lt. Zillman and supervised by Warden Harlow and his subordinates, Hall, Sutter and Hebner, doused Stony in the face and body with deadly pepper spray. Knowing they could not save him because the door was jammed, Stony was left choking and dying on a cell floor for almost 20 minutes as guards and the maintenance department used hammers and other tools to pry the cell door open so the guards could get inside the cell.
Upon entering, the guards immediately assaulted Stony with the electro shield despite him being unresponsive and literally jammed his limp body through the crack in the door. I know a dead body when I see one.

And that is how they treated Stony: worse than a dog. “Let him suffer, and if he makes a peep, spray him, kill him, drag him out of the cell and throw him in the dirt to be forgotten forever.” Dogs get more respect than that.

Homicide is defined by Webster’s Dictionary of the Law (2000) as “an act or omission resulting in the death of another person. Also called criminal homicide, the crime of causing another’s death through conduct that was intentional, knowing, reckless, extremely negligent, without justification.”

A suffering man in need

Stony, 44, had been in the hole for the past eight years straight. He had no kids and his mother and father were deceased. It seemed he had little to no outside support, in view of his extreme dependence on prison staff and mental health workers who he didn’t seem to understand did not care whether he lived or died.
SCI Albion made light of Stony’s cries for help up until his dying day. In the 30 days I’ve been housed across from Stony, I’ve witnessed him threaten to kill himself at least six times. Each time he was talked into giving staff the razor or noose, but he was never put in an anti-suicide restraint chair and was permitted to retain all other instruments of suicide. On Aug. 8, 2012, after retrieving a noose from Stony, supposed “psychologist” Mary Beth Anderson stated, “One of these days I’m gonna just let you do it” (kill himself).
On the day of the murder, Anderson was available but refused to help Stony.
There are two different versions of how Stony died. One, the most accepted, is that Stony was trying to tie a noose to the cell vent when the cell extraction team approached his cell. They sprayed him two or three times in large amounts. He fell off of the toilet and when he tried to get back up, they sprayed him again and he never got back up. They entered the cell, shocked him at least once and jammed him through the opening in the door.
The second version, told of course by staff, is that Stony committed suicide and “it’s on video.” However, if Stony was already hanging, why would they spray him multiple times? Moreover, I witnessed them drag his dead body out and he had nothing wrapped around his neck. In fact, when men – who I believe were police of sorts – entered the cell later that day, I overheard one say, “Did anyone take anything off of the vent?” because nothing was there.

SCI Albion made light of Stony’s cries for help up until his dying day.

Ever since the Program Review Committee (PRC) laughed at Stony’s plea for release from the hole weeks ago, he lost all hope for the future and deteriorated. He would scream every day, “I can’t take this shit anymore!” He ripped apart steel and concrete fixtures in his cell and broke the windows. That is the picture-perfect example of a man who was pushed beyond his limits.
So, whether Stony died by suicide or spraying, the blood is on the hands of all SCI Albion’s staff who heard his cries for help and laughed at him.

The hole as mental torture

I identify the following three policies, practices and customs as contributions to Stony’s death and the pain men, women and children are being subjected to across the nation.
1) Excessive use of misconduct system
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC) uses their misconduct system in the same way slave overseers used their whips – to break the spirits of resistance of slaves. The system is this simple: A state member writes a misconduct report. The hearing is held by another staff member; zero testimony is offered. The prisoner is denied witnesses in his defense and he or she is convicted and sentenced three to six months or more in solitary confinement.
Once in the hole, if the prisoner files grievances, uses a curse word, looks at a staff member the wrong way or is fearful of living in the same cell as a rapist, murderer or violent inmate, a staff member can repeatedly use the misconduct system until the prisoner is faced with serving literally 10,000 days in the hole. Then as if for retaliation, training or pleasure, PRC and medical staff then “program” the prisoner to “work off” the excessive sentence or risk continued suffering or death in solitary.
There is no shortage of prisoners, myself included, who have been oppressed in this way for 10, 20, 30, 40 years straight. Menticide, torture, murder.
2) Get what you pay for
The PADOC has caused the deaths or deterioration of many mentally ill men and women through its systematic employment of unlicensed, incompetent or otherwise unprofessional medical staff who use prisoners as nothing more than lab rats – new drugs and theories get tested right here in DOC prisons. When a witness to Stony’s death asked how he should cope with the anxiety and inability to sleep, Thomas was told by so-called psychologist Ceaser to “sleep it off.”
The incentive for employing reject medical staff is, of course, money. There are approximately seven alleged psychologists or psychiatrists at Albion employed to treat nearly 3,000 prisoners. Many medical staff the DOC employs have limited licenses to practice or cannot work in a real medical facility for lack of qualifications or prior misconduct. The less qualified they are, the cheaper the expense; and unlike bartering for commissary, electronics or other items to sell to prisoners, providing cheap medical labor causes death.
3) Ignoring the signs of suffering
Any blind man could see that Stony was crying out for help from his suffering. The medical literature on solitary confinement states that even after only short periods, inhabitants will experience (a) hyper-responsivity to external stimuli, (b) perceptual distortions, illusions and hallucinations, (c) panic attacks, (d) difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory, (e) intrusive obsessional thoughts, (f) overt paranoia and (g) problems with impulse control.
According to Stuart Grassian, M.D., the leading expert on the issue: “This syndrome was strikingly unique – some of the symptoms described above are found in virtually no other psychiatric illness: acute dissociative, confusional psychoses are a rare phenomenon in the context of such confusional state is exceedingly rare.”
Those combinations of symptoms “form a discreet syndrome” – that is, a sickness unknown to the world of psychiatry beforehand. Despite the uncontradicted findings of Dr. Grassian and every other doctor in the country who did studies on the issue beyond 60 days, the PADOC continues to argue that there is no harm in containing human beings in cells the size of a bathroom amid extreme noises, smells and tensions for years.
The legal claim is one of systematic deliberate indifference to the well-known adverse side effects of solitary confinement in the employment of cheap, incompetent prison doctors to save money at the expense of prisoners’ mental health and safety. The evidence is in the absence of procedures designed to identify and treat the established adverse side effects of solitary confinement.

The message

When one is able to read through the lines of what prison administrators throughout the country are really saying, the message being sent is: “Prisoners are less than human.” Don’t get lost in the technicalities. Their basic foundation is the same as it was during chattel slavery days: work ‘em, let ‘em starve, let ‘em die, let ‘em suffer, but just don’t stop the money flow!
The modern-day slavery system (prisons) is much more dangerous than the previous form. Then, freedom fighters and supporters argued that the slaves did nothing wrong to be forced into labor and treated worse than dogs. Today, supporters of slavery simply mask their profit-driven intentions by arguing that prisoners committed crimes, so it’s okay to enslave and treat them worse than dogs.

The message being sent is: “Prisoners are less than human.”

And that is how they treated Stony: worse than a dog. “Let him suffer, and if he makes a peep, spray him, kill him, drag him out of the cell and throw him in the dirt to be forgotten forever.” Dogs get more respect than that.

Albion, the death trap

In attempting to get in the cell as Stony choked to death, the maintenance department was unsuccessful in ripping the door off because they had previously installed door-stoppers designed to prevent prisoners from passing legal and reading materials to each other. Those door-stoppers remain on all of the cells and continue to serve as a fire and safety hazard to all of the prisoners who might need to be saved.
There is a pattern and practice at Albion of top officials authorizing the maintenance department to add fixtures to the cell doors which, in the case of a fire or other emergency calling for evacuation, would mean sure death as in the case of Stony. For example, bolt locks in addition to locks built into the food slots and padlocks on all 96 cells in addition to top quality electronic security doors.
On Feb. 15, 2012, the Huffington Post reported Albion’s murder of prisoner Dennis Austin. Already suffering from lung cancer, medical staff allowed Dennis to self-medicate and be medicated by untrained prisoners as he rotted in a blood and pus-soaked bed and died with bed sores all over his body.
On Feb. 24, 2012, former Albion prisoner Derrick Jones was awarded $312,000 for negligent care by the medical department. He was misdiagnosed, denied X-rays for five days and was never given an MRI for the broken ankle which caused him further injury. Dogs get more respect than that.
Andre Jacobs, web
Andre Jacobs
And it’s not just the prisoners dying at Albion. According to Kevin Barwell, retired Albion prison guard: “We’ve been averaging almost one successful employee suicide every three years. That’s not being addressed. A guy I was car-pooling with put a gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger and lived for two days. We just had one a year ago that did the same thing. They’re killing themselves off faster than the inmates are attempting suicide, but nobody wants to talk about it.” Albion is killing its own employees!

Rather die on my feet

I personally do not fear death and I especially do not fear man. I will continue to let my pen scream the pain and frustration of the masses and I don’t care who doesn’t like it. My real concern is when will the color, crass and mental barriers fade so that we can all see the value and beauty in each other. My real concern is when will all who are afflicted by this system of oppression, sexism, racism, discrimination and slavery state firmly, “That’s it.” My real concern is when can we all live again, breathe again, exist again?

My real concern is when will all who are afflicted by this system of oppression, sexism, racism, discrimination and slavery state firmly, “That’s it.”

Send our brother some love and light: Andre Jacobs, DQ5437, SCI Albion RHU, 10745 Route 18, Albion, PA 16475.

http://sfbayview.com/2013/medical-neglect-and-pepper-spray-bring-death-to-mentally-ill-man-in-sci-albions-dark-hole/ 

The forgotten Abu Ghraib massacres, Washington's unpunished crimes....

 
 
The forgotten Abu Ghraib massacres, Washington's unpunished crimes....

All war crimes stipulated by the Geneva Conventions and the rest of the international conventions and treaties were committed by the US army in Iraq. In fact, the crimes committed by the US army during the occupation of Iraq were worse than those stipulated by international agreements. There are dozens of international reports documenting these crimes in detail. Torturing prisoners is nothing new; our governments have been doing it since time immemorial.

The Bush Crime Family, in their flawless execution of yet another unspeakable travesty of human decency – the unwarranted and unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation – has literally gotten away with the murder of 1.5 million Iraqi civilians, not to mention the 3,000 Americans who died on 9-11-2001. Thousands of young men and women who serve in our military were being brainwashed into thinking they were over there to somehow defend the United States from it’s enemies.

So what did actually happen there?
1-Homosexual rape, male homosexuality is deeply shameful in Arab culture; naked Arab prisoners were forced to simulate and undergo gay sex, and pictures were taken to be used as blackmail,threatening these men that they would show their friends and family.
2-Thousands of prisoners were treated like animals.
3- In Abu Ghraib, not only where there no mechanisms in place to prevent abuse of human beings, but also the "contractors" – the private mercenaries that the US government pays to run these prisons – are not subject to the Geneva Conventions, and have direct supervisory status over our military personnel.

Posted by: Wall of illusion
 
 

Donae Johnican Donae


Donae Johnican Donae was a very beloved and amazing human being he was an incredible musician On 03_19_13 a tragedy changed the life's of many who knew donae and were fortunate to meet an angel like him.
 support. Video of Donae winning the Debug "Schooling the Schools" Music Contest youtu.be/qSfOLYBftrE 

Do You See What I See? ~Anonymous




Thanks https://www.facebook.com/djdeewreck [Derek SacredLife Gedney] for your creation of this video for the Anonymous Activists
Original video:.http://youtu.be/WWRlIGEIBuA

Computer Law Used Against Swartz May Get Tougher


aaron1
The most controversial computer law in the United States could finally be updated — and it’s the exact opposite of what activists like Aaron Swartz have been fighting for.
Advocates have urged Congress to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act since way before 26-year-old hacker Aaron Swartz committed suicide in January while awaiting trial for a CFAA case that could have sent him to prison for decades and since then petitions to push for a new CFAA have come and gone. Members of both the US Senate and the House of Representatives have said that the legislation is too strict and needs adjustment, and meanwhile hackers like Andrew Auernheimer have had their lives turned upside down thanks to the government’s arguably asinine interpretations of the CFAA.
Just this week, though, some real talk of an update to the CFAA finally started to surface. A draft began circulating on the Web on Monday that suggests Capitol Hill lawmakers might be looking to finally update legislation that’s been called draconian, archaic and drastically in need of serious change.
A screenshot from scribd.com
Lawmakers are indeed in talk to revise the CFAA, but not in a way that warrants a round of applause from hackers, advocates and activists. A discussion bill being passed around would actually make the CFAA even stricter, essentially allowing the government to go after a multitude of not-so-malicious computer users and sentence them to lengthier prison stints than what’s already on the books.
The House Judiciary Committee has started circulating a draft that would be used to update the CFAA in a number of aspects, but little would let so-called hackers off the hook for the questionable crimes that federal prosecutors have used to go after the likes of Swartz — who faced 35 years for downloading academic articles — or Auernheimer, who was sentenced to 41 months last week for discovering a security flaw on the servers of telecom giants AT&T.
If the proposed revisions to the CFAA are approved in Congress, not only will penalties be more severe but simply discussing alleged computer crimes could be grounds for a felony conviction. The proposal involves extending maximum sentences for CFAA violations, grouping some forms of hacking with racketeering and even criminalizing the “conspiracy and attempt” of computer crimes that never come to fruition.
READ MORE

http://www.secretsofthefed.com/computer-law-used-against-swartz-may-get-tougher/ 

Thursday 28 March 2013

North West Tonight interview and report with the Minister for disabled people over DLA changing to PIP.

North West Tonight interview and report with the Minister for disabled people over DLA changing to PIP. Aired 26/03/2013

Angola 3: Robert H. King responds to Louisiana Attorney General James Caldwell



http://t.co/aUVwQUTOGq

The new issue of the Angola 3 Newsletter is featured below and also available at the shortened link above. There are only a few days left before the end of Amnesty's online action campaign supporting Albert Woodfox. So if you have not yet sent an email to AG Caldwell please do so now at Amnesty's online action page: 
 http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=519457
Angola 3 Newsletter:  March 27, 2013
Of Solitary and Kings and False Allegations and Things
Robert H. King responds to Louisiana Attorney General James Caldwell

Many thanks to all of you who have aided our cause and added your voices to our quest to free Albert from an obviously unjust imprisonment of more than 40 years. Please continue to make your voices heard and your dissent known, especially in light of the recent email response by Louisiana's Attorney General, James Caldwell. One wonders: Why in the face of so many mitigating facts and circumstances would the Attorney General persist in his unethical efforts to pursue the persecution of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace? Is it really justice he seeks, or is there something else he wants? The following may add some light to the subject.

When Woodfox was first granted a new trial in 1993, the Attorney General's Office elected to retry the case, which is a rare occurrence. Twenty-three years earlier, John Sinquefield, a young and ambitious local assistant district attorney, prosecuted Albert and made repeated references/inferences to Albert's political beliefs and militancy. Having had prior involvement in this case, Sinquefield could not (or chose not to) prosecute in his second hearing. However, this recusion (or self restraint) did not apply to his assistants. Enter Julie Cullen, an attorney working with Sinquefield.  It was Cullen who declared to the press, that she would retry Albert as "a 'Black Panther." During that trial in 1999,when I appeared as a character witness for Albert, Julie Cullen made repeated references to Woodfox's militancy as Sinquefield had done before her and Woodfox was again convicted.

Sinquefield, Cullen and Caldwell were all previously connected to this case by the thread of time and they have all used this case to further their careers. Sinquefield and Caldwell are well-documented boyhood friends, who went to school together, graduated together and became lawyers together. In Sinquefield's own words, "We've been friends, allies ever since." Julie Cullen has worked with and been very close to both men. As you can see, their careers have been protected at all costs, even accusing innocent men of murder or rape, as Caldwell in his recent email has done once again.

Buddy Caldwell has long done a great disservice to people of intelligence, especially lawyers...and jurists, in his attempt to sell this malicious and unsubstantiated rape lie. If, in 1969 there had been actual evidence of Albert committing rape, why would the system instead choose to try Woodfox on only the lesser charge of robbery? According to Caldwell, Albert was considered "a career criminal." The logical question therefore remains...If Albert had committed all of these other alleged crimes and was in fact a career criminal, why was he not prosecuted? Just for the record - any young black man that was arrested became a suspect for unsolved crimes. This was a process so widespread that across the country the practice is known as "clearing the books."  

It is in this same context that Caldwell has wrongfully accused Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace of committing the murder of prison guard Brent Miller. The evidence linking Herman and Albert to the crime is nonexistent. The bloody fingerprint at the scene of the crime did not match Herman or Albert's. A knife found at the scene of the crime had no fingerprints on it at all. Other DNA evidence that allegedly had Albert's specks of blood on it was lost by the prison. Furthermore, multiple alibi witnesses testified that Albert and Herman were in other parts of the prison at the time of the murder. In contrast, it has been proven that state witnesses were bribed to lie under oath. Albert's conviction has now been overturned three times, and Herman's conviction is similarly under Federal Court scrutiny for evidence exposing prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations.

Finally, by claiming that the Angola 3 have never been in solitary, Caldwell is redefining the nature of solitary confinement and minimizing its inhumane conditions. Courts here in the USA have already ruled that confining prisoners in cells 23 hours a day constitutes solitary confinement regardless of any small privileges that may or may not be incrementally given and taken away at random. Over a decade ago, we filed a civil lawsuit challenging the State of Louisiana for their unconstitutionally cruel and unusual treatment that is solitary confinement. Magistrate Judge Dalby describes our almost four decades of solitary as "durations so far beyond the pale" she could not find "anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence." It is for the courts and not for Attorney General Caldwell to define whether or not being held in close cell restriction constitutes solitary confinement.

Attorney General Caldwell would do well to consider that I was prosecuted for being a "co-conspirator" by proxy for only knowing Albert and Herman and for my affiliation with the Black Panther Party. I had never met prison guard Brent Miller but I was put in solitary confinement and placed under investigation for this crime for 29 years. More to the point, had I not been 150 miles away at the time in another prison but at Angola prison, I would probably have been charged and convicted for a murder I did not commit. As I am free, speaking out now is what I must do.

Again, thanks to the many individual supporters and organizations who stand by the Angola 3 and ask you to continue to take action.

Power to the People/As Ever

Robert H. King
International Coalition to Free the Angola 3
Amnesty International says Enough is Enough and makes a renewed call for real justice

Following Amnesty International's recent action calling for Attorney General Caldwell to let Albert's ruling stand, they have issued an article examining why this case "continues to paint a disturbing picture of justice in Louisiana". 

Amnesty writes that "Attorney General Caldwell has recently renewed his public attacks, circulating allegations about Woodfox's alleged criminal activities in the 1960s, linking him to unsolved rapes and sexual assaults, and insisting that the state's murder case against Woodfox is 'very strong.'"

In a section, entitled "Setting the Record Straight," Amnesty refutes several claims made by Caldwell, including Amnesty's assertion that: "Albert Woodfox has never been tried or convicted of rape. Nor, after 41 years in prison, does his disciplinary record indicate that he is dangerous or violent. The prison system's own mental health assessments indicate that he does not pose a threat to himself or others."

"Enough is enough. After four decades, real justice in this case is long overdue." said Tessa Murphy, USA Campaigner at Amnesty International. "The ruling by the federal district court should be allowed to stand."

Read Amnesty's full statement here.

H&A 
Albert Woodfox #72148            Herman Wallace #76759
David Wade Correctional Center        Elayn Hunt Correctional Center
N1 A3                                                        CCR D #2
670 Bell Hill Road                                    PO Box 174
Homer, LA  71040                                  St. Gabriel, LA  70776


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Freedom Archives  www.freedomarchives.org




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SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!

Free All Political Prisoners!
 www.jerichony.org

Message from PP Marshall Eddie Conway




Uhuru Comrades 
I have just received word from Marshall Eddie Conway, a political prisoner held here in Maryland State, and he has informed me to spread the word to the public that he is about to go back to court on June 24, 2013 and that if all goes well that he will be set free in mid-July! He is also asking that all his supporters and friends come out and pack the court house! As more information comes in we will keep you informed.
Eddie is a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) who has been held for approximately 43 years as a political prisoner by Maryland State! He is a victim of the illegal counterinsurgency war that is still being waged against the Black community. During the 1960's and the 1970's the Black Panther Party (BPP) came under ruthless attack from the United States government through the use of the FBI illegal counterintelligence program know as COINTELPRO! This illegal operation resulted in comrades being incarcerated, forced into exile and murdered and today after all these years we have still not recovered fully from this!
Eddie, like many of our political prisoners and prisoners of war, has accomplished much while illegally incarcerated for a crime that he did not commit! We in the Maryland State Jericho Movement (MSJM) Chapter fully support Marshall Eddie Conway, as doesthe entire Jericho Amnesty Movement, and we believe that should he be returned to society he will have much to offer! There is much that we can learn from this noble comrade! This comrade has received a collage degree and has been a mentor to many of our youth while incarcerated! He has worked with Friends of Friends to reduce the Mass Incarceration rate of our youth and provide them the chance to change their lives for the better!
He has informed me that he plans to visit our elder, another political prisoner/prisoner of war Sundiata Acoli upon his release! He also informed me that we must continue to educate the community about this noble elder as well as educate them about the legacy of all our political prisoners and prisoners of war currently held hostage! Eddie has always expressed to me his interest in the care of all his comrades who have been incarcerated and/or are living in exile!
We encourage people to show their love and support by writing Marshall Eddie Conway and if they can make a donation to him! Let us not forget the legacy of this noble comrade and those who have put their life on the line so that we can be free and live the life that we are living today! Let us support them and show them that they have not been forgotten, let us take a stands for their freedom-Uhuru Sasa!
 Marshall Eddie Conway#116469 can be contacted at:
Jessup Correctional Inst.
PO BOX 534
Jessup, MD 20794

 We in the Maryland State Jericho Movement (MSJM) Chapter can be reached at:
PO BOX 2623
Baltimore, Maryland 21215

email address: jerichomdst@gmail.com 
Or you can contact me at Abdul Jabbar Caliph at:
cellphone number 610-621-0699 or through email at Abdul Caliph abduljabbarcaliph@gmail.com>

6

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"We Must Pick Up The Work To Free ALL Our Political Prisoners & Prisoners Of War!"



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SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!

Free All Political Prisoners!
www.jerichony.org

NYC, Tues. 4/2: Pack the Stop and Frisk Trial at 500 Pearl St





JOIN THE MALCOLM X GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT & THE PEOPLES' JUSTICE COALITION  TO PACK THE COURT
on Tuesday, April 2, beginning at 9:00AM
Southern District court located @ 500 Pearl St. (lower Man) [directions at bottom of msg.]
Courtroom 15-C

Since March 18, a historic trial has been underway. Floyd v. the City of New York is named after MXGM member David Floyd who testified at the start of the trial on March 18. Another one of MXGM's members, Lalit Clarkson, will also soon be testifying. As many of you know, MXGM is a member organization of the PJ coalition and this trial stands as the most pivotal legal challenge to the discriminatory and racially-biased stop-and-frisk program of the NYPD. Back in 2002, MXGM was heavily involved in supporting the first of these lawsuits known as Daniels v. the City of New York and they have been looked to for their leadership around these issues and cases today. MXGM and PJ have been long time fighters for community control and police accountability and we need YOU to help us continue that fight by coming out to make your presence felt and your voices heard!

We are coming together on Tuesday, April 2 at 9AM and calling on all our members, friends, allies, and community members to join us in the courtroom.

If you can attend the trial, please RSVP on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/605411499486747/
OR contact Nadia at nadia@mxgm.org or Aidge/Luke aidge@peoplesjustice.org to let them know.
Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

MXGM's People's Self-Defense Campaign
Like our facebook page!
Follow us on twitter! @MXGMCopwatch
Check out our blog

 

Peoples' Justice Coalition
Like our facebook page!
Follow us on twitter! @Peoples_Justice
Check out our website
Yul-san Liem
Justice Committee
212.614.5343 yul-san@justicecommittee.org justicecommittee.org
Like us on facebook.com/justicecommitteeny
Subscribe at youtube.com/justicecommitteeny
Follow us on twitter @Watchthecops


Directions to 500 Pearl St. / Moynihan Federal Courthouse / U.S. Southern District Court:  This curvy, post-modern skyscraper just northeast of Foley Sq., at `bottom` of Mulberry Bend Park, has entrances on Pearl St. just west of Park Row - and - on Worth St. btw Baxter & Mulberry, where most actions are; transit:  J train (not M) to Chambers; #4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall; R (never N) to City Hall (at Broadway & Warren); A, C to Chambers; N, Q to Canal (east exit stairs, through J platform, to Centre St.); #1, 2, 3 to Chambers;  E to WTC; PATH to WTC; M22 bus via Madison St., East Broadway, Worth & Chambers; M9 via Essex St., East Broadway & Park Row; buses via 3rd Av./Bowery or via Broadway or via 2nd Av. & Allen St.;
maps: <http://ow.ly/5or1N>; <http://goo.gl/maps/Td8j4>; bus map <http://ow.ly/6SK4u



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SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!

Free All Political Prisoners!
www.jerichony.org

New Flyer on CMUs by CCR


Daniel's lawyers at Center for Constitutional Rights have released a new flyer about the Communication Management Units (CMU) that the Bureau of Prisons operates. These are the units Daniel was held in for most of his prison sentence and the subject of a lawsuit (Aref v Holder) brought by Daniel and former/current CMU prisoners. 

You can read the text of the flyer at:

You can download a PDF of the two page flyer at http://www.ccrjustice.org/files/CCR_CMU_Factsheet_March2013.pdf

You can read more about the CMU and the legal case against it at




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SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!

Free All Political Prisoners!
 www.jerichony.org

We need to ask !!





We need to ask ourselves what kind of Government would steal money from the poorest citizens through “reforming” the system of welfare provision, when we are in recession. Then ask again why there is a desire to redefine poverty in a way that excludes the obvious reason for it : a lack of money. One cannot help but wonder why the Coalition think that poor people need money taken from them to “incentivise” them, but very wealthy people need money giving to them, to “incentivise” them. Where did the money come from that rewarded so well those who do not need it ? Oh yes, I can see now….

A simple truth is that poverty happens because some people are very, very rich. That happens ultimately because of Government policies that create, sustain and extend inequalities. We are in an economic recession, and I do believe the Government has a duty to protect the most vulnerable of its citizens, rather than blaming them for the consequences of Government policies. What has happened instead is Coalition policies have contributed enormously to creating more poverty and are set to continue to do so, at a rapid pace, especially once the rest of the cuts via the Localism Bill, Bedroom Tax and benefit cap are implemented from April. Coalition policies have of course generated more money for the wealthy, with the very wealthiest gaining around £100, 000 each per year. That is the cause of poverty: utilising social and economic policies to bring about a hugely unequal, grossly unfair and unmerited redistribution of wealth.


Sue Jones

Inside Story Americas - The ethics of solitary confinement




This weekend the New York Times reported that on any given day 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement in American detention facilities. Nearly half are kept isolated for more than 15 days - the point at which experts say they are at risk of severe psychiatric harm. More widely, according to federal records, some 80,000 prisoners were held in solitary confinement across the US in 2005 - the last time such information was released by the government. Amongst those in solitary confinement today are juveniles as young as age 16, with one study suggesting that in 2012 14 percent of adolescents in the New York City prison system had been held in isolation at least once. So, why does the United States put more people into solitary confinement than any other country in the democratic world? To discuss the issue further, Inside Story Americas with presenter Shihab Rattansi, is joined by guests: Wilbert Rideau, who spent 44 years in prison between 1961 and 2005, and spent time in solitary confinement. he has written extensively about the criminal justice system; David Fathi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project; and Reverend Richard Killmer, the executive director of the National Religious Campaign against Torture

The Color of Success TV Show featuring Mistah Wilson aka Bing Bing thawi...




Host Ontresicia Averette alongside Co-Host Carolyn Wiggins interviews rapper/promoter Bing Bing also known as Mistah Wilson of www.thawilsonblock.net

Free Lynne Stewart


Find more artists like FREIHEIT FUER MUMIA!!! at Myspace Music 


Petition to Free Lynne Stewart: Save Her Life - Release Her Now!

 

 

http://www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-save-her-life-release-her-now-2

Lynne Stewart has devoted her life to the oppressed – a constant advocate for the countless many deprived in the United States of their freedom and their rights.

Timothy McKinney fights for his life

In an article first published in The Nation, Liliana Segura details the case of Timothy McKinney--an innocent man repeatedly put on trial for his life.
Timothy McKinney 
Timothy McKinney
ON CHRISTMAS night, 1997, Crumpy's Comedy Club in North Memphis hosted a party sponsored by a local barbershop, Magic Clippers. The club had opened that spring, attracting popular Black comedians like Bruce Bruce, D.L. Hughley and Earthquake. That night, hundreds of revelers came for jazz, blues and stand-up, and the celebration went long past midnight.
But it would end in tragedy. By dawn, a Memphis police officer lay in critical condition, paralyzed by a bullet fired into his neck. Donald Williams, an African American father of two, was assigned to area schools; that night he was off duty and working as a security guard, when at 2:30 a.m. he was shot at close range in front of the club.
Doctors said he would never walk again; community members pitched in to cover his hospital bills, and "one business planned to refurbish his home to accommodate a wheelchair," according to The Commercial Appeal. But just over a month later, on January 29, Williams died of pneumonia due to complications from his wound. He was 38 years old.
Williams's death shook the community, particularly Donald Crump, the owner of Crumpy's. Crump, who also owned a hot wings chain, collected donations at his restaurants and sent food to Williams's family. "He wasn't just a guy doing security for me," he said. "He was a personal friend of mine."
Around 1 a.m. on the night of the shooting, Crump had ordered a drunken man out of the club. Williams wanted to have him arrested, but in the Christmas spirit, Crump said, he convinced Williams to let him go. Later, Crump was told that this was the man who'd shot Williams. "And I said, 'If I had just left him alone, stayed my butt out of it, Officer Don would still be alive.'"
Williams was still alive on December 27, when Crump received word that police were arresting the shooter near the South Memphis restaurant where he was working. "I said, 'Well, I'm on my way.'" A SWAT team had an apartment complex surrounded, and reporters were on the scene. But when he saw the man being taken out in handcuffs, Crump didn't recognize him. Concerned, he told a police officer this wasn't the man he had thrown out that night.
Fifteen years later, it still nags at him. "I don't know who fired the shot," Crump says, wearing a faded Crumpy's Hot Wings T-shirt and a weary expression. "But I put one person out of that club. And they said the person I put out of the club was the one that shot and killed Officer Don. But when they brought [the man] out of the house, he wasn't the guy."
Crump was never interviewed by police. He still doesn't know why. But "when it's a police officer killed here in Memphis, you know, they quick to nail somebody."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE MAN in handcuffs was 23-year-old Timothy Terrell McKinney, on parole for armed robbery, who'd had a hostile exchange with Williams that night. McKinney couldn't find his car and became convinced that it had been stolen or towed. (In fact, a friend had moved it.) Enraged, he threatened to "blow up" the club, according to Williams's partner, but eventually he found his car, apologized and was told to leave. Later, he returned.
Another police officer, Ronald Marshall, was on duty and was called to the scene. He put McKinney in his squad car, taking his name, address and date of birth before letting him go. A slip of paper with that information was later retrieved from Williams's bloody jacket.
Police put out a call for McKinney, describing him as an armed Black man with a medium to dark complexion and driving an Oldsmobile, which "may possibly have bullet holes." The car would later be found‚ without bullet holes but with the license plates removed, heightening suspicion of his guilt.
McKinney was tried in 1999. He refused to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. Jurors deliberated for just over two hours before convicting him. "I would ask the jury to spare my life so I would be able to prove my innocence," he said before they condemned him to die. Shelby County Assistant District Attorney Jerry Harris said that McKinney "would squeeze off a round into Mother Teresa."
But in the years that followed, proof emerged that Harris had suppressed evidence that would have cast doubt on McKinney's guilt--and he'd done so with the complicity of McKinney's own defense attorney. After 10 years on death row, with the help of New York law firm Davis, Polk & Wardwell, McKinney saw his conviction overturned on the grounds that he had had inadequate defense counsel. The appeals court found that the proof against him at trial "was not overwhelming," and that his attorneys' failures had "rendered the entire proceeding fundamentally unfair."
But no sooner had McKinney been ordered off death row than the Shelby County DA's office announced its intention to send him back. It was a dramatic move: of 38 Tennessee death sentences overturned on the same grounds, most have been settled with a lesser sentence. But Shelby County prosecutors have a record of resisting such settlements. Indeed, veteran Shelby County prosecutor Thomas Henderson re-convicted a man named Richard Austin in 2001, resulting in a second death sentence. (Austin died of natural causes at 68, the oldest man on Tennessee's death row.)
Today, Henderson is prosecuting McKinney. His first attempt to re-convict him, last April, ended in a hung jury. This April, Henderson will try again.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A WHITE-haired firebrand of a lawyer, Henderson comes from the same generation of prosecutors as Jerry Harris, who sent McKinney to death row. In a fawning 2003 profile in The Commercial Appeal titled "Best in the Business," Henderson is depicted as a swashbuckling crusader for justice who "wears his tough-guy image like a badge."
Harris, who worked with Henderson for decades, called him "relentless," saying: "He once tried a weeklong case over an $8 credit-card fraud...like a murder case." Twice, the profile marveled, he won murder trials in cases where no victim's body was found.
In at least one of these cases, Henderson has been caught suppressing evidence, as Harris did in McKinney's first trial. Last fall, a judge found that Henderson made "blatantly false" statements denying the existence of exculpatory evidence in the case of death row inmate Michael Rimmer, according to USA Today reporter Brad Heath. (Such lies are "typical" of Memphis prosecutors, a federal judge said in 2008.)
In a pending bar complaint obtained by The Nation, Rimmer's post-conviction attorney, Kelly Gleason, identifies other capital cases in which Henderson has hidden such evidence. Shelby County, which is responsible for more than a third of the state's death sentences, has "vigorously defended the misconduct and continued to permit [him] to try capital cases," she writes.
Like Rimmer's case, McKinney's lacks key physical evidence. No gun was ever found. No blood was discovered on McKinney's clothes. His car was sold at police auction two months after the crime, before it could undergo forensic testing.
The case against McKinney hinges on eyewitness testimony--evidence whose extreme fallibility has become well-known since he was first convicted. Last year, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor called it "staggering" that eyewitness misidentification was responsible for 76 percent of the first 250 wrongful convictions overturned through DNA.
As McKinney goes on trial for a third time, the most pressing question apart from his guilt may be whether, in Shelby County, innocence matters. Says Gleason, "It's very easy in Memphis for an innocent person to get convicted and not get released."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
TIMOTHY MCKINNEY'S family says he was in good spirits on Christmas Day, 1997. It was his first holiday after four years in prison, and he had vowed never to return. His older sister, Marie, says he "kissed the ground" after coming home. He found a job with a fencing company, bought a car and got an apartment. "He was a totally different person," she said. McKinney had celebrated Christmas at her house before heading out to the party at Crumpy's.
A Polaroid taken at Crumpy's shows a smiling McKinney wearing dark pants, a black fedora, a gold/brown vest, and a loud patterned sweater with red, gold, black and white stripes. Along with his car, the sweater, vest and hat would later be found at the home of Debra Kimble, a woman he was dating.
McKinney says he was there, four miles from Crumpy's, when Williams was shot. He and Kimble were supposed to meet that night, but he didn't arrive at her home until 2:15 or 2:20 a.m., according to Kimble's early statements to police. Before the 1999 trial, Kimble told defense investigators that she woke up, went to the door and argued with McKinney for about 20 minutes, sending him to sleep on the couch.
This account alone could have provided McKinney with an alibi, since Williams was shot at 2:30. But there's reason to believe that McKinney arrived at Kimble's even later than she estimated. Police logs show that Marshall, the officer who put McKinney in his squad car, got to Crumpy's after 2:01--making it impossible to believe that he was detained and questioned, then drove to Kimble's, argued with her and returned to Crumpy's to shoot Williams by 2:30.
But prosecutor Jerry Harris never turned over the police logs to McKinney's original defense team, allowing the state to present a manipulated timeline of events at trial. The time of the shooting was pushed later, and Marshall claimed to have detained McKinney much earlier.
Most devastating for McKinney, Kimble became a witness for the prosecution, abandoning her twenty-minute estimate and testifying that she'd "fussed" at McKinney for "a couple of minutes, maybe." A police officer testified that he'd driven from her address to Crumpy's in just four and a half minutes. The resulting timeline was still a stretch, but it was not physically impossible.
The prosecution's case turned, however, on two eyewitnesses. One was a woman named Joyce Jeltz, who saw the shooting as she left Crumpy's. The other was Don Williams's partner, Frank Lee, also an off-duty officer, who said he saw McKinney "eye to eye" before chasing him into an alley and exchanging gunfire with him before he drove off.
At the police station at 5:10 a.m., Jeltz said the shooter wore brown pants and a "dark color knit turtle neck sweater pulled over his nose and mouth." After seeing a photo spread later that morning that included McKinney, she stated: "I cannot identify the suspect at this time." The next day, she did not identify anyone but picked photos of McKinney and another man as looking like the shooter. She said she recognized McKinney because she'd seen him on TV.
A year and a half later, at the 1999 trial, Jeltz's description changed. She was uncertain about the turtleneck and introduced a new item: a brown vest that matched the one McKinney wore that night. Jeltz had previously denied the shooter wore a vest; on the stand, she admitted that prosecutors had shown it to her that morning. The vest became critical, with a forensics expert testifying that it was found to contain particles consistent with gunshot residue.
Frank Lee's description also changed between the shooting and the first trial. At 2:36, moments after pursuing him, he radioed in a description of the shooter as wearing a white cap, black shirt and black pants. But soon thereafter, he insisted the shooter was the man who had been ranting about his car. On the stand, Lee said he wore the "same sweater" he had seen on McKinney earlier that night, along with an "orange bandana around his mouth."
Jurors at the 1999 trial never heard Lee's first description of the shooter. Nor did they know about Jeltz's and other witnesses' failure to identify McKinney in photo arrays. Prosecutors concealed these, along with other statements, including wildly disparate descriptions of the shooter's outfit, ranging from a black turtleneck and a long, white coat to a blue shirt and jeans.
In his closing statements, Jerry Harris emphasized Frank Lee's claim that only McKinney had a motive for harming Williams, since there hadn't been "a single other altercation" that night. But this wasn't true, as Donald Crump had tried to tell police. What's more, one week after the shooting, a woman named Angela Tucker told police that she'd heard about another man "bragging...that he shot Officer Williams." This man was Patrick Johnson, from the same neighborhood as McKinney, with a history of violence, and who had just left prison.
Police made some attempts to contact Johnson but never followed up, even as rumors persisted that Johnson had boasted about "the cop getting what he deserved," as a woman named LaQuita Williams told a defense investigator in the summer of 1998. At a post-conviction hearing in 2006, numerous people implicated Johnson, including a man who testified that two days after the shooting, Johnson "said Tim didn't do it...and then he said he did it and just laughed like it was a joke."
But the state could not have railroaded McKinney without his own lawyers, particularly lead attorney Jim Ball. Internal memos from 1998 and 1999, produced by Inquisitor Inc., the investigative firm assigned to aid the defense, reveal growing alarm at Ball's lack of preparation as McKinney's trial approached.
The president of Inquisitor is Ronald Lax, a veteran investigator best known for helping free the West Memphis Three. (Lax will be played by Colin Firth in an upcoming film about the case.) As his firm chased down exculpatory leads in advance of the 1999 trial, Lax repeatedly urged Ball to obtain police logs and witness statements from the prosecutors. Ball responded that he "believed in 'picking (his) fights'" and that Jerry Harris would not withhold exculpatory evidence, since the two were "very good friends."
In fact, unbeknownst to Lax, four months before trial, Ball and Harris had struck a highly unorthodox deal. In a consent order signed January 4, 1999, Ball agreed not to pursue evidence Harris claimed had no exculpatory value, including witness statements and "police reports, call sheets and log reports regarding the activities of the officers on the night of the murder."
The consent order was the nail in the coffin for McKinney. As his trial began, Lax tried in vain to convince Ball to call witnesses for the defense. On July 15, two days after his twenty-fifth birthday, McKinney was convicted of first-degree murder. Harris implored the jury to sentence him to death. The judge set an execution date the next day, telling McKinney that on New Year's Day, he would be "shocked by a sufficient current of electricity until you are dead and may God have mercy on your soul."
McKinney was given two more execution dates, in 2002 and 2003, before his conviction was overturned in 2010. He has been at Shelby County Jail ever since.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I VISITED Memphis this past February, two months before his third trial was scheduled to start, and drove to the Skylake Shopping Center, where Crumpy's once stood. Donald Crump closed the club after the shooting--"I just couldn't go there and laugh"--and today it's a laundromat called Paradise Cleaners.
It was Super Bowl Sunday, and the roads were empty; I entered Debra Kimble's address into my GPS and took the fastest route, driving above the speed limit. It took six minutes and forty-five seconds. The way back took just over six minutes. Investigators at Inquisitor say they have done the drive in six to seven minutes. Five minutes would be "breaking all kinds of laws," one investigator told me. Four and a half? "Impossible."
I met McKinney at Shelby County Jail, just as the Super Bowl was getting under way. We spoke via fourteen-inch video monitors behind a dirty glass screen. Visitors sit on metal stools nailed to the floor, in numbered booths carved with graffiti. After thirty minutes, the screen goes dark.
McKinney is bald, with a mustache and an easy smile. He was polite and affable, often turning to greet the men on his side of the glass. At 38, McKinney is considered an "old-timer." "They call me 'Unc,' for 'uncle,'" he explains. "Or 'Old School.'"
The past 15 years have been an "emotional roller coaster," he says--for him and the Williams family, too, he always adds. While he was on death row, Tennessee executed six people, one in the electric chair. That's when "reality sets in that they are murdering another human being under the pretext of justice...and you could be next," he says.
As a form of "meditation," he would paint luminous acrylics on canvas panels, some of which I saw at the Virginia home of his longtime pen pal, Katharine Smith, one of numerous advocates who believe he's innocent. A portrait of Barack Obama deftly renders his features; a fiery sunset painted for Smith's birthday in 2005 shows waves crashing ashore. But at Shelby County Jail, painting is forbidden. So McKinney spends a lot of time worrying about his case. He's aware of Henderson's "antics" and believes the judge, who is black, is biased against him: "He's a former prosecutor himself."
"I've got nothing to hide," McKinney tells me. He says he was still at Kimble's on December 26 when several people paged him to say they had seen reports about him on TV. His mother said police came and told her she'd better hope he would turn himself in before they found him on the street. "I was scared as hell," he says. "Everybody in the streets know the police don't play fair."
He took the plates off his car and started looking for a lawyer. He says Kimble drove him around, helping him evade police. After he was arrested, she too was handcuffed and brought to the station. McKinney doesn't know why she turned state's witness, but believes she wanted to disassociate herself from him.
McKinney offered to turn himself in but never followed through. He was at his cousin's apartment the day police found him, refusing to open the door until his father knocked. McKinney says he told his family he wanted the media there to make sure there were plenty of people watching the arrest.
News reports from that year suggest he had reason to be afraid. In July 1997, months before McKinney was arrested, an unarmed black teenager named Rodie Dale Gossett was shot in the back of the head by a white police officer not far from Crumpy's. The killing sparked outrage, and the local NAACP called for a federal investigation, citing other police shootings.
Months before McKinney's trial, the officer who shot Gossett was tried in Shelby County. Representing the state were Jerry Harris, the same prosecutor who would soon send McKinney to death row, and Assistant DA Lee Coffee. Coffee was later elected as a Shelby County Criminal Court judge. He presided over McKinney's trial last year and is poised to do so again this spring.
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IN APRIL 2012, McKinney went on trial for the second time. Thomas Henderson represented the state, along with prosecutor Alanda Dwyer. Thirteen years after the first trial, the prosecution's key witnesses changed numerous details of their testimony.
Joyce Jeltz said she looked the shooter "in his eyes" and, despite having long insisted he wore a dark top, described him in a "multi-colored sweater." Frank Lee, retired from the police force, said the shooter wore a black T-shirt. Of his previous description of a colorful sweater, he said, "I don't know if I made a mistake or they typed it wrong."
On April 13, the defense called a surprise witness: Lester Bibbs, a comedian who remembered McKinney from Crumpy's. He had mocked his "ugly sweater" onstage, making him laugh. Bibbs also remembered another man, a belligerent drunk wearing a dark sweater and dark pants, who got in his face, threatening him. "He said, 'I will eff you up,' basically," Bibbs said. Officer Williams and others forced the man outside. According to Bibbs, the man said, "Ya'll got me effed up. I'll be right back."
Later, Bibbs was in a car outside when he saw someone who resembled the drunken patron approaching Williams. "As a matter of fact," Bibbs recalled telling his companions, "that is the MF that they threw out." Bibbs said he heard a "pop," then saw the man running away. He left quickly to catch a 6 a.m. flight back home to Los Angeles. Later, he heard the shooter had been caught. "I didn't follow up," Bibbs said.
Cross-examining Bibbs, Dwyer seized on inconsistencies in his statements to defense investigators as well as the fact that Bibbs had been smoking marijuana. Checking Twitter the next day, Bibbs saw a reporter tweet from court: "Prosecutor Henderson says testimony about seeing another shooter is from a drunk/high witness." Bibbs fired off tweets in his own defense, adding: "I know WTF I saw & its not who they say it is."
On April 16, 2012, Judge Lee Coffee declared a mistrial. Word spread that one person hung the jury; everyone else had wanted to convict McKinney.
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I MET one of the jurors who wanted to convict at a Starbucks in the affluent suburb of Collierville, which is 80 percent white. It is a sharp contrast to Memphis, which is predominantly Black. Other aspects of the racial divide in the city are similarly jarring. That week, the City Council voted to rename three public parks, one of which had been named after the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
The juror wore a cashmere cardigan and fine jewelry. She had agreed to meet on condition of anonymity and remained upset about the mistrial. In her opinion, "the lone person that hung the jury felt like it was a race thing," which she found "maddening." "It was a black judge," she said, adding that the state's "star witness," Frank Lee, was also African-American.
The juror, whose father had been a Shelby County sheriff's officer, acknowledged that police "look after their own." She said the cops had done "stupid things with the evidence," like tossing McKinney's clothes on the floor at the precinct, where they could have picked up gunshot residue.
"I think it's possible that the police skewed things," she admitted. Nevertheless, "I kept coming back to the fact that Officer Lee identified Mr. McKinney as the person that shot his partner." As for comedian Lester Bibbs, he was "a dope addict who was higher than a kite," she said. "Like I'm gonna believe him over the police officer? I don't think so."
She also noted something "interesting" about Judge Coffee, who met with jurors after the trial. "My question to him was, 'Are eleven of us wrong?'" In response, "He said, 'No. If I had been in the jury room, I would have felt like Mr. McKinney was guilty.' So I don't even know if the same judge is gonna try the case again. Obviously, he could not say that from the bench."
Another juror I spoke with, who also wanted to convict, came away from that meeting believing "even if we had found [McKinney] not guilty, the judge would have overturned it" (something a judge cannot do). He added, "I don't know if he wants this known or not."
In an e-mail to The Nation, Coffee said, "I never comment about the propriety of a jury's verdict." Doing so would violate the Tennessee Code of Judicial Conduct, which states: "A judge shall not commend or criticize jurors for their verdict other than in a court order or opinion."
If meeting with jurors after a trial, judges "should be careful not to discuss the merits of the case." If Coffee did make such remarks, Vanderbilt law professor Terry Maroney believes they may be grounds for recusal in McKinney's case. "The judge has affirmatively broadcast his view of guilt even though the jury split," she explained.
Just over a month before McKinney's third trial was set to start, I spoke with two more jurors. The first, who served on the second trial, said that, in fact, two people had been unconvinced about McKinney's guilt. "I was one of those people," she said.
Under pressure, the other person capitulated, but this juror refused. Other jurors pointed to the fact that McKinney hid from police, but she said she found the conflicting witness statements and Lester Bibbs's testimony more compelling. After all, she said, in some black communities, people don't trust the police. "I know a guy whose brother was shot and killed by police," she said. McKinney probably "feared for his life."
"I'm sorry for the policeman," she said, adding that she would not have had a problem imposing a death sentence if she believed McKinney was guilty. "It just wasn't proven to me. And I don't want to say somebody did something like that when I have to go home and sleep at night. I can't if there's any doubt about it."
The second juror served on McKinney's original trial in 1999. She knew about the retrial and did not wish to revisit it. She said she'd done her best and had made her peace with God. But she said, "If he truly is innocent, I hope that justice will prevail."
First published at TheNation.com.
 http://socialistworker.org/2013/03/28/mckinney-fights-for-his-life