Rampant Racism. U of Wyoming marks 1969 dismissal of 14 black football players

Disgusting rampant Racism. I knew nothing of this horrible, yet typical, 1969  incident of American racism.  The 14 players  wanted to meet with the Coach and discuss wearing black armbands. Why?  The team was scheduled to play Brigham Young University, deep in the heart of Mormon territory.  The players were upset over the racism they experienced during earlier games against BYU. For even bringing up the issue the 14 players were summarily dismissed from the team and lost their scholarships.

Associated Press printed in Chicago Sun Times  9.13.2019

University officials planned to unveil a plaque at War Memorial Stadium commemorating the so-called Black 14. The players were kicked off the Wyoming football team for seeking to wear armbands to protest racism.

LARAMIE, Wyo. — Fifty years after 14 black football players were kicked off the University of Wyoming football team for seeking to wear armbands to protest racism, eight of them returned to the Laramie campus to commemorate the anniversary as the school takes another step toward reconciliation.

University officials unveiled a plaque Friday at War Memorial Stadium commemorating the so-called Black 14. The marker joined an alleyway mural in downtown Laramie that was dedicated last year, and the ceremony capped five days of ceremonies and discussions about the infamous dismissal of all the university’s black players in 1969.

They are now being recognized as leaders in the tradition of protest in sport. It’s a pantheon that includes U.S. track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who raised their fists on a 1968 Olympics medal podium to protest racism and injustice.

Wyoming 14 I 9.18.2019

More recently, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick accused the NFL of blackballing him for kneeling during the national anthem before games to protest police violence against African Americans.

Protest is appropriate for athletes who want to use their fame and visibility to be heard, Black 14 member Tony Gibson said.

”You can judge them any way you want. But when they’re saying things that matter or are trying to draw your attention to things that might need addressing, I think it’s very important,” Gibson said.

On Oct. 17, 1969, Wyoming head coach Lloyd Eaton summarily dismissed the players and revoked their scholarships after they met with him to propose wearing black armbands during an upcoming game against Brigham Young University.

Eight of the 14 were starters. Eaton’s legacy isn’t confined to the Black 14 episode, Black 14 member John Griffin said.

”He destroyed the Cowboys football team for a decade or so. He is the one who prevented blue-chip players from coming here,” Griffin said. “That was on him, not us.”

The players wanted to protest racism some of them experienced in previous games against BYU and how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the time barred African Americans from the priesthood. Eaton would have none of the idea — and was backed up by the university’s board of trustees and Gov. Stan Hathaway.

They never got a chance to mention the armbands before Eaton lit into them about coming from fatherless families and saying they would only be accepted by traditionally black colleges if they weren’t at the University of Wyoming, they said.

”Our side is coming out. All these years everybody thought we protested and stuff, and we never did,” said Black 14 member Ted Williams.

The healing and reconciliation is not complete for some of the men who came back to campus this week. Some struggled for years after they were labeled as members of the Black 14.

Lionel Grimes said the episode repeatedly came up during job interviews, and he wondered how many job opportunities he missed because of it. The anger has taken years to overcome, he said.

”I was angry about the fact that I had to pay to go to school. I was angry at how the coach had insulted not only me, my fellow teammates, my ancestry,” Grimes said.

Most of all, not being able to learn why Eaton acted as harshly as he did bothers Black 14 members. Eaton could have defused the situation simply by telling the players they couldn’t wear the armbands, Grimes said.

”We would’ve just played football. He never gave us the opportunity to sit down and talk to him,” Grimes said. “We were very respectful then.”

Wyoming had made it to the Sugar Bowl after the 1967 season, losing to LSU 20-13, and went 7-3 in 1968. They were off to a 4-0 start before that day. The now all-white Cowboys went on to beat BYU and San Jose State but lost their last four games.

After Wyoming finished 1-9 in 1970, Eaton was demoted to assistant athletic director. He died in 2007, leaving the Black 14 without an apology or explanation.

”To me, the disappointment, my greatest disappointment, is I never had a clear understanding of his mindset. I never had a clear understanding of what compelled him to act against, as I understood years later, some of the wishes of his coaches,” Black 14 member Guillermo Hysaw said.

Griffin and some of the others have been back to campus over the decades, including for a 1993 event honoring the best players from each previous decade, but until the past several years reception for the Black 14 was lukewarm, Griffin said.

”Now it’s (a) very sincere welcome back: ‘We’re glad to have you back and we’re sorry,’” Griffin said.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/9/13/20864376/wyoming-dismissal-of-black-players-anniversary

 

BiBi Toast?? Cliffhanger in Israel. Arab Parliament members could be deciders

The Trump lapdog Bibi Netanyahu may be on the way out of office and on his way to criminal prosecution.  The American public should take the action in 2020 and send this Clown packing and into criminal indictment.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 9.17.2019

Exit polls show Netanyahu’s Likud and the centrist Blue and White in a close tie. Neither party has enough seats with their allies to form a majority, raising the prospect of tough negotiations for a unity government.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to suffer a setback in national elections Tuesday, with his religious and nationalist allies failing to secure a parliamentary majority, early exit polls showed.

Exit polls from Israel’s three major television stations showed the centrist Blue and White party of ex-military chief Benny Gantz is projected to win 32 seats, while Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party is on pace for 31 seats.

Arab parties come in third place

The Joint List, an alliance of Arab parties, came in third with 14 seats, according to exit polls. They have suggested they could potentially block Netanyahu from becoming prime minister by recommending Gantz. 

Netanyahu in a late night address to party supporters said that he wanted to assemble a “strong Zionist government and to prevent a dangerous anti-Zionist government” with any Arab parties.

Continuing a campaign theme against Israel’s 20% Arab minority that critics have called racist, he claimed that Arab parties “negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state” and “glorify bloodthirsty murderers.”

Israeli election 9.17.2019

Read more: Will election-weary Israelis end Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule?

Israeli exit polls are often imprecise and unofficial results expected on Wednesday could shift the seat count.

Either way, the results indicate that Netanyahu or Gantz will face tough and protracted negotiations to cobble together a government.

The initial results showed that neither Blue and White nor Likud would be able to form a 61 seat majority in the 120 member Knesset with the support of their allies.

Likud and its religious and nationalist allies with which it hoped to form a majority only have 55 seats, less than in April’s election, according to the average of the three exit polls. Blue and White could enlist support of 59 for a center-left government.

Lieberman as kingmaker

The results put ex-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman in a kingmaker role. His secular, hardline Yisrael Beitenu that receives most of its support from Russian-speakers was on pace to win 9 seats, nearly double its performance in April’s election.

Lieberman, a former Netanyahu protege, refused to join a Likud-led government following April’s election because of what he said was excessive influence ultra-Orthodox religious parties. His move forced Netanyahu to called new elections to avoid giving other parties a chance to form a government.

Late Tuesday, the Moldovan-born Lieberman reiterated that he sought a broad unity government with Likud and Blue and White.

“There is only one option for us,” he said, adding the unity government should exclude the country’s ultra-Orthodox religious parties. 

A complication is that Gantz has ruled out forming a government with a Netanyahu-led Likud at a time when the prime minister is expected to be indicted on corruption charges in the coming weeks. Lawmakers in Gantz’s party have said they are open to a unity government with Likud, but not under Netanyahu’s leadership.

“We will act to form a broad unity government that will express the will of the people,” Gantz said at a post election rally, though he cautioned supporters to wait for final results.

Meanwhile, Lieberman is unlikely to want to sit in a government with left-wing Arab parties or the ultra-Orthodox religious parties. Blue and White is also unlikely to ask Arab parties to join a coalition.

https://www.dw.com/en/israel-election-too-close-to-call-exit-polls/a-50464397

Official Secrets. American Edward Snowden in exile eyes German Asylum

Edward Snowden is off the Radar except for those in law enforcement who seek to imprison him for releasing information which the public has a right to know about, view and debate.

Deutsche Welle 9.16.2019

American whistleblower Edward Snowden has once again expressed interest in seeking political asylum in Germany. He has warned that if he turns up dead, it will not be the result of suicide.

Edward Snowden, a former employee of the US National Security Agency (NSA), said in an interview he would still like political asylum in Germany. “If Germany were to grant me asylum, it would not be viewed as a hostile act toward the United States,” Snowden told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.

Edward Snowden II 9.16.2019

Snowden criticized Germany and France for not doing anything to support his case so far. “The two countries’ governments were looking for reasons to stop me from coming,” he said. Snowden also reiterated that he didn’t reveal anything that put people’s lives at risk.

Read more: Freedom is acting without asking permission, Edward Snowden tells Berlin

Snowden has previously sought asylum from a number of countries, including Germany, though without success.

The former NSA contractor has been living in exile in Russia for the past six years.

Since he leaked details of secret and extensive US government global surveillance programs in 2013, the US has regarded him as an enemy of the state and slapped him with charges of espionage.

In a separate interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel, he said that if he was found dead it would not be the result of suicide.

“This is important for the record. I am not now, nor have I ever been suicidal. I have a philosophical objection to the idea of suicide, and if I happen to fall out of a window, you can be sure I was pushed.

Snowden’s book, titled “Permanent Record,” is going to be released worldwide on September 17.

 

Until the leaks, the public did not know the extent of the surveillance of the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ. Snowden’s information led to the wider use of encryption technology and an overhaul of data transfer practices from Europe to the US.

Snowden’s actions in 2013 sparked a huge debate about the extent of government surveillance by intelligence agencies. US officials who conduct annual classified assessments of damage from Snowden’s disclosures say the documents will continue trickling out into the public domain for years to come.

Time for a memoir

Snowden has now written a book about his actions and motivations. Titled “Permanent Record,” it’s going to be released worldwide on September 17.

The book offers by far the most expansive and personal account of how Snowden came to reveal secret details about the government’s mass collection of Americans’ emails, phone calls and Internet activity in the name of national security.

The story traces Snowden’s evolution from childhood, from growing up in the 1980s in North Carolina and suburban Washington, where his mother worked as a clerk at the NSA and his father served in the Coast Guard.

Though the book comes six years after the disclosures, Snowden attempts in his memoir to place his concerns in a contemporary context. He sounds the alarm about what he sees as government efforts worldwide to delegitimize journalism, suppress human rights and support authoritarian movements.

“What is real is being purposely conflated with what is fake, through technologies that are capable of scaling that conflation into unprecedented global confusion,” he says.

https://www.dw.com/en/edward-snowden-still-eying-asylum-in-germany/a-50429478

Our 12 year old dog Jack makes 5 day – 15 mile journey along Pacific Coast to home

THIS IS A TRUE STORY

September 15, 2019

Our 12 year old lab mix Jack was found by a kindly gentleman at 44th Avenue and Irving in San Francisco around 10 am this morning after 115 hours and many miles traveling along the Pacific Coast shoreline near San Francisco.

A network of volunteers blanketed the area with Posters and contacted a network of dog walkers, professional organizations, volunteer groups and offices in two counties in the effort. In the end it was one Poster seen by a conscientious citizen which resulted in Jack coming home.

In reality Jack knew it was time and ALLOWED himself to be found.

Jack made an amazing journey from the Westmoor area below Daly City (lower circle map) to 44th Ave and Irving (upper circle near GGP map).

IMG-2777

Jack was on his way to the Doggie Bath-o-Matt at 41st Avenue and Irving. Jack had turned up from the beach at precisely the spot of this route.

Jack went rogue around 16:00 on 9.10.19, just a day after he arrived at the dog boarder’s home in Daly City where he was to have stayed during our 10 day trip to Montana.

We left Missoula as soon as we could book a flight out.

Jack is 12-years old. The pads of his feet are raw. He is tired, hungry, and thirsty. Otherwise, he seems to be in good shape.

He will be checked by Balboa Pet Hospital

Jack must have encountered many dangers on his 5-day journey home. He evaded the dog catcher’s net. San Mateo County Animal Care and Control chased him and was unable to nab him. He evaded coyotes, traffic, and other people.

Thank goodness Jack is back. I was grief stricken looking at the possibility of losing my dear companion, Jack. The sounds of crashing furniture and shrieks of frustration could be heard heard both at the Inn in Missoula and from my office when we returned to San Francisco.

We adopted him as a rescue dog nearly eight years ago.

We worked indefatigably to find Jack. We connected to an amazing network of women who have dedicated their lives to re-uniting lost dogs with their grieving owners. They continue their efforts in the face of hatred and enmity towards decent people by President Trump.

The women wanted to show others that women care about others in need. One is a retired San Francisco Deputy City Attorney who worked in the Department of Public Health for 10 years. The other is a good samaritan who assisted in the effort and provided a lot of practical advice.

Happily, the resourceful Jack made his way home by himself and the cadre of volunteers could move onto another Dog rescue project.

San Francisco’s ‘cruelest landlord,’ is sued by her longtime attorney

Truth is stranger than fiction in the legal world.  Then again this is San Francisco.  Anything is possible politically and legally, no matter how outrageous.  Translation.  Money, power and connected attorneys take precedenc over the rules of procedure and legal doctrine. Anything goes if you can get away with it, particularly in the often tawdry world of  housing law.

Mission Local by Joe Eskenazi 9.9.2019

Anne Kihagi, (pictured below) the notorious landlord who has been successfully sued by the city and a bevy of illegally evicted former tenants, can add one more litigant to the battalion of people and entities pursuing her legally: Her own longtime attorney.

mission-local-iii-9.9.2019.jpg

Karen Uchiyama, the lawyer who for years defended Kihagi, served as her muscle in attempting to evict or otherwise dislodge tenants — oftentimes elderly and/or disabled — from her many buildings, and chauvinistically advocated for the woman known as “San Francisco’s cruelest landlord” last week turned against her erstwhile client.

On Sept. 4, Uchiyama filed suit against Kihagi — as well as some of her alphabet soup of LLCs, including Zoriall, Xelan Prop 1, Renka Prop, and Nozari 2 — seeking $158,501.66.

“Defendants failed to pay for legal services per contract after benefits from Plaintiff’s services,” sums up Uchiyama’s filing.

Confoundingly, a substitution-of-attorney document dated Sept. 6 — two days after Uchiyama filed suit against  Kihagi and her LLCs — reveals Uchiyama to be the new counsel defending Kihagi’s Xelan Prop 1 LLC against claims by Umpqua Bank.

Uchiyama is, per court documents, simultaneously suing and defending Xelan Prop 1 LLC. Calls and e-mails to her have not been returned.

This setup is, to put it mildly, unconventional. “A red flag would go up for me as a legal ethicist,” says Josh Davis, a law professor at the University of San Francisco and the director of the USF Center for Law and Ethics. “The general rule would be that you can’t simultaneously be adverse to a party and also represent that party.”

Added Davis’ fellow USF law professor and legal ethicist Lara Bazelon, “that seems like a classic conflict of interest. If that’s not a conflict of interest, I don’t know what is.”

If Uchiyama’s client doesn’t take action, Davis says, both the state bar and the judge might see fit to do so.

This is the latest bizarre twist in a case replete with them. Kihagi burst onto the San Francisco scene in 2013; over the next two-and-a-half years she, her sisters, and a web of LLCs obtained at least 11 San Francisco buildings for just shy of $30 million. Between 2006 and 2013, she had bought at least 14 properties in Southern California.

There as here, she systematically targeted rent-controlled structures, often inhabited by longtime, elderly and/or disabled tenants. These buildings have an ostensibly limited income stream — but not if you eject the longstanding tenants and bring in new, market-rate renters, as she repeatedly did. She could then borrow against this enhanced revenue stream and leverage that into obtaining a next building and a next building.

And that worked out great. Until it didn’t. In May 2017, Judge Angela Bradstreet sided with the city in its suit vs. Kihagi, hitting her with 1,612 separate violations. In October 2017, a jury awarded illegally evicted tenants Dale Duncan and his wife Marta Muñoz $3.5 million — purportedly the largest award in state history for a single unit.

This year, the Court of Appeal declined to overturn the 2017 ruling against Kihagi, putting her on the spot for millions in fines and setting in motion a series of court orders. All 11 of her known city properties have been placed into receivership and three of those have been sold already. A procession of people and entities are jockeying for their share of that money — and, now, Uchiyama appears to be getting in that line. At the end.

Kihagi currently owes the city some $4.5 million; the city in May collected around $3 million from a bond it insisted she obtain. To get that bond, Kihagi had to put up collateral — possibly some of her Southern California properties but, truly, it’s difficult to know. Kihagi tends to shuffle ownership of buildings among her many family members and her web of LLCs.

While comparisons to Trump are often facile, Kihagi has amassed an impressively Trump-like collection of series of stiffed employees – flooring guys, surveyors, contractors, and, yes, lawyers She paid for their work only when a judge ordered they be paid. Or didn’t.

In a profoundly on-the-nose moment, a PR maven earlier this year hired to soften Kihagi’s image claimed she promptly stiffed him $2,000

Another mistreated workman, a surveyor named Richard Langford, sued her in what he calls an “open-and-shut” case of nonpayment. He told San Francisco Magazine that he was mystified when Kihagi appealed the judge’s ruling, and still more mystified when, he said, she threatened to sue him in small-claims court in Los Angeles for the amount she owed him.

Mission Local I 9.9.2019

“I told her, ‘If I have to show up in Los Angeles, I’m bringing your ex-husband who can’t find you and I’m bringing all the tenants who can’t find you,’” he told the magazine. “I got calls — constantly — from people who saw I had some dealings with her.”

Langford told the magazine that he ended up recovering most of his $6,855 ruling, but it required nearly two years to do so.

Kihagi has both sued and been sued by multiple attorneys. Others, who did not opt to make their case in court, have also claimed she stiffed them. One, Daniel Bornstein, purportedly complained loudly enough in public about Kihagi’s nonpayment that other attorneys overheard him doing so. When queried about this, he told me “I can only say I am relieved to not be representing her anymore.”

The endgame for Kihagi is as difficult to grasp as the property structure of her many buildings. Whether Uchiyama’s suit is the beginning of the end or end of the beginning is hard to say. But this legal move comes not from an aggrieved tenant but the lawyer working to evict those tenants — and a vocal Kihagi defender.

“Kihagi’s attorneys are going to get the receivership withdrawn,” Uchiyama wrote in an e-mail last year.

This year the receivership was, as noted above, extended to all 11 of Kihagi’s known San Francisco properties. As also noted above, three of them have been sold already by the court-appointed receiver.

“Keep believing everything you hear,” Uchiyama continued in that 2018 e-mail. “It creates an illusion that the tenants are winning in court when they are not.”

The millions in fines owed by Kihagi are compounding at an annual rate of 10 percent, which roughly comes out to $850 a day.

When asked his thoughts on the lawyer who cross-examined him in court — and cast him as the villain persecuting Anne Kihagi — joining him in line for compensation from Kihagi, Duncan laughed.

“It just shows how crazy the world is,” he said.

https://missionlocal.org/2019/09/anne-kihagi-san-franciscos-cruelest-landlord-is-sued-by-her-longtime-attorney/

 

SUV a Military vehicle. Berliners call for ban after fatal accident. 4 people dead.

Why it takes a horrific event to move people to radical action is part of human nature. SUV’s are gas guzzling, environmentally disastrous and a clear and present danger to all in their path.  Berlin is a start. Ban them all, worldwide.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 9.8.2019

Four people were killed in Berlin when a Porsche SUV veered onto a sidewalk. While hundreds of people held a candlelight vigil on Saturday evening, environmental protection organizations called for a ban on SUV vehicles.

A 3-year-old boy, a 64-year-old woman and two men in their late 20s were killed in an apparent road accident in Berlin on Friday evening, Berlin police said Saturday.

A Porsche SUV mounted a footpath full of pedestrians at the corner of Invaliden and Acker streets in central Berlin. The vehicle hit construction fencing and landed in a vacant building plot.

Berlin accident II 9.8.2019

It is “completely irresponsible to produce and drive SUVs,” said Benjamin Stephan, a Greenpeace official, adding that German manufacturers must move away from “climate killers” and produce lighter electronic cars.

“The risk of dying in an accident involving an SUV is much higher than a normal car. Pedestrians have a 50% higher risk of fatal accidents due to the higher bonnet,” according to Greenpeace.


Environmental activists blocked a SUV loading dock after the fatal accident in Berlin

“Given the evidence so far, we assume this was a traffic accident and not a deliberate act,” police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said.

The injured driver was taken to hospital for treatment, where he died. Two other people from the vehicle were also hospitalized.

“Initial indications that a medical emergency involving the driver could have been the cause, as well as all other witness statements, information and evidence, are part of the investigation,” the police said.

Authorities are reconstructing the accident to determine the cause of the accident. Police are also investigating whether the SUV hit pedestrians.

Sorrow and anger

Stephan von Dassel, the district mayor of Berlin-Mitte, said “armor-like SUV cars” don’t belong in the city, as every driving error puts the lives of innocent people at risk.

“These care are also climate killers. They are a threat even without an accident,” Von Dassel said.

Protest against SUVs

Berlin accident III 9.8.2019

Environmental activists protested against SUV vehicles on Saturday. A Greenpeace member told AFP news agency that environmentalists blocked a SUV loading dock for about three hours.

https://www.dw.com/en/berliners-call-for-suv-ban-after-fatal-traffic-accident/a-50342322

 

Mexican photojournalist wins top award. Tragic portrayal of migrant caravan

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series

The inhumane policies of the current American Administration, criminalizing and dehumanizing,  has a human face which all the World needs to see.

Deutsche Welle 9.7.2019

The migrant caravans to the US border have generated no shortage of debate among politicians and the public. Take a look at Mexican photojournalist Guillermo Arias award-winning depiction of their perilous journey.

Mexican Photog I 9.7.2019.jpg

Mexican photojournalist, Guillermo Arias, won the prestigious Visa d’or news photojournalism prize, for his depiction of the Central American migrant caravans.

The AFP photographer won the award on Saturday for his story entitled “the Caravan” at photojournalism’s biggest annual festival. He beat off competition from The New York Times, Reuters and The Washington Post.

Throughout 2018 and 2019, migrant caravans with thousands of people made the way northwards from Central America. Most were heading to the US border in a bid to escape poverty and violence in their home countries.

Mexican Photog III 9.7.2019

In response, the US sent troops to secure the border, as well as setting up controversial camps to detain those who crossed the border illegally, and instigating a draconian policy where children were separated and detained away from their family.

https://www.dw.com/en/in-pictures-photojournalist-wins-top-award-for-portrayal-of-migrant-caravan/g-50341493

Plaintiff’s rowdy past torches his case. Montana jury finds No Police Abuse

This is some very solid news reporting. The writer doesn’t excuse the Montana Sheriffs use of force behavior.  He points out that the Plaintiff Larry Martinez’s medical history and behaviorial issues definitely hurt his police abuse lawsuit with the Jury.  It is hard enough to prove police misconduct  It is surprising this litigant was able to find counsel who took the matter to trial.

Perhaps there is more here.  On its face, reading the news article, I am asking myself why Larry Martinez sued.

Above – Lake County Sgt. Michael Carlson demonstrates for the jury handcuffing methods on defense attorney Mitch Young during an excessive use of force trial on Sept. 5.

Jurors, six men and six women of varying ages, went into deliberations shortly after 1 p.m. to determine whether Martinez’s constitutional rights had been violated and whether Sgt. Michael Carlson and then-detention officer Cody Strubel acted with “reckless disregard” in handling his arrest that day.

 

After a little more than three hours of deliberations, the verdict came through: Lake County law enforcement had not “recklessly disregarded” Martinez’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and Martinez was awarded nothing.

 

Montana Police Abuse Trial II 9.6.2019

Lake County Sheriff Don Bell

Martinez’s August 2017 lawsuit alleged Carlson’s handcuffs caused nerve damage to his wrists requiring surgery, and that Strubel had body-slammed him in the detention center lobby for not listening to directions. Martinez testified this week he has been completely hearing impaired since birth.

 

The arrest in question stems from July 31, 2016, when Martinez, allegedly drunk, drove his pickup off the road and became stuck in the ditch.

 

Martinez’s attorneys had spent four days laying the framework to show he had suffered since the injuries sustained during the arrest. He’s now suffering chronic pain and is without the ability to play golf or go fishing and hiking — essentially each of the reasons the couple retired in Polson from Colorado. But beyond leisure activities, it’s the anxiety and stress that’s now a part of Martinez’s life, said plaintiffs’ attorney Jason Williams.

During closing arguments, Williams injected his own experience from the night earlier into his closing arguments in order to punctuate Martinez’s experience.

“Last night, early in the morning, I couldn’t go to sleep,” he said. “What did I do? I turned on the radio, turned on music so I could drown out my thoughts, make them quiet. Mr. Martinez doesn’t have that ability. Mr. Martinez is hearing impaired. No way to shut out the thoughts, the fear, the anxiety, the flashbacks.”

 

But defense counsel argued the tangible injuries could be tracked through medical records as far back as 1996 when a disastrous motorcycle crash left Martinez in a “halo” head brace and long-lasting pain conditions. In the 20 years between that crash and his Lake County arrest, Martinez had been in other car crashes, bar fights and took a bad spill on the ice. Two experts who testified for the defense on Thursday, a neurologist and a forensic psychiatrist, considered his conditions to be pre-existing based on their in-person reviews with Martinez.

 

Lead defense counsel Maureen Lennon, for her closing arguments, produced a blown-up poster board with Martinez’s booking photograph, in which he has his head tilted back with a big grin. The picture was taken several hours after Martinez’s arrest.

“This is the face of a man who a couple of hours before this picture was taken, has told you that he lost virtually everything,” Lennon opened. “He was so grievously and seriously injured in the incident with law enforcement that he lost his ability to work, mow his lawn, cook, fish, ride his motorcycle.”

 

Lennon contended that Martinez wasn’t being punitively manhandled around the detention facility but instead was “belligerent, uncooperative and drunk.” After the tumble in the detention center, Martinez was taken to the hospital where a blood sample showed his blood-alcohol content at .288, more than three times the legal limit.

 

“Cody Strubel threw him down in front of the watchful eye of a surveillance camera, a medic crew and highway patrol officers? I don’t think so,” Lennon said.

 

The jury sent three questions to the judge within two hours of deliberations: Could they find no negligence on the county’s part and still award Martinez some damages? No, was the answer. So they wanted to watch the video again, and in the end, ruled in favor of law enforcement.

https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/jury-finds-in-favor-of-lake-county-law-enforcement/article_b67b92c7-bc53-5354-bc54-e981f651a1ff.html#utm_source=missoulian.com&utm_campaign=%2Femail-updates%2Fbreaking&utm_mediu

 

Ghost Ship trial. One defendant walks. Hung Jury for the other. Families shocked

The families of the 36 dead people are in a state of shock.  In Oakland it would be very tough to get a conviction.  Why?  The District Attorney did not charge City officials or the owners of the property with any criminal wrongdoing.  Instead, the DA went for the proverbial easy Mark, the building managers. In the end the Jurors determined something was not right with the Prosecution’s strategy.

The defendants, not necessarily stellar citizens, had a very aggressive and competent Defense team who fought for their clients.  That is what Lawyers should be doing.  

Still, the exultation shown by at least one defense counsel following the verdict is classless given the traumatic events of the Ghost Ship fire.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 9.5.2019

Almost three years after a fire ripped through an Oakland warehouse and killed 36 people, jurors in the Ghost Ship criminal trial acquitted one defendant of involuntary manslaughter Thursday and hung on the guilt of the warehouse’s master tenant.

Ghost Ship III 9.5.2019.jpg

Max Harris, 29, walked out of jail in Dublin on Thursday night and Derick Almena, 49, spent another night in his jail cell, as prosecutors decide whether to retry him on the 36 charges of involuntary manslaughter.

Each faced up to 39 years in prison if convicted on all charges stemming from the deadly Dec. 2, 2016, inferno at an electronic music party in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. Five months after the trial began, jurors found Harris not guilty, while only 10 of the 12 jurors could agree Almena was guilty of negligence in turning the warehouse into a deadly firetrap.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Ghost-Ship-trial-Jury-acquits-defendant-Max-14416802.php

To the Barricades. San Francisco declares NRA “domestic terrorist organization”

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has taken a courageous and practical unanimous vote.  

The NRA is a “Domestic Terrorist Organization.”  For too long this group of gun toting demagogues has bullied, intimadated and coerced elected officials at all levels from town councils to Congress and the Executive Branch  stop meaningful gun control in America. Their conduct is disgraceful and abhorrent.

The murder rate and mass shootings historically afflicting this country has been aided and abetted by the powerful, mindless and doctrinaire reactionaries of the NRA.   

The NRA has and will continue advocate for the right to keep and bear arms regardless of the consequences to the public.

San Francisco Chronicle 9.4.2019

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution to declare the National Rifle Association a domestic terrorist organization, while also urging other cities, states and the federal government to ascribe the same label to the gun lobbyist group.

NRA II 9.4.2019

Supervisor Catherine Stefani, a Deputy District Attorney, introduced the resolution after the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting, and she said that incident as well as mass shootings in El Paso and Odessa, Texas, as well as Dayton, Ohio, have bolstered the argument for passing the resolution.

“It is time to rid this country of the NRA and call them out for who they really are: They are a domestic terrorist organization,” Stefani said.

Stefani  (pictured below) blamed the NRA for the proliferation of guns in the United States and the mass shootings that have become a near daily occurrence.

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Stefani’s statement notes that the U.S. Department of Justice defines terrorist activity as the use of any “firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device, with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals” and any member of an organization that “commits an act that the actor knows, or reasonably should know, affords material support, including communications, funds, weapons, or training to any individual has committed or plans to commit a terrorist act.”

The resolution was introduced after an attack on July 28, 2019 that made Gilroy, California the 243rd community in the United States to experience a mass shooting.

Since then, Stefani said, we have seen “more carnage across this country” with massing shootings in El Paso, Texas, Dayton, Ohio, and Odessa, Texas.

“The NRA exists to spread disinformation and knowingly puts weapons in the hands of those who would harm and terrorize us by blocking common-sense gun violence prevention legislation, and by advocating for dangerous legislation like stand-your-ground laws, permit-less carry, and guns in schools from kindergarten on up through university,” Stefani said.

She also called the NRA a misogynist organization because of its stance on arming domestic abusers.

The NRA responded with a statement calling the resolution a “ludicrous stunt,” according to multiple news outlets.

 

“This ludicrous stunt by the Board of Supervisors is an effort to distract from the real problems facing San Francisco, such as rampant homelessness, drug abuse and skyrocketing petty crime, to name a few,” the statement said. “The NRA will continue working to protect the constitutional rights of all freedom-loving Americans.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-supervisors-declare-NRA-a-domestic-terrorist-14412974.php