SCOTUS UPHOLDS CONVICTION OF MAN QUESTIONING DNA RELIABILITY
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the prosecuter’s crime lab analysts are not required to give live testimony as part of a defendant’s right to confront his accusers.
The LA Time’s David G. Savage has the story. Here’s a clip:
By a splintered 5-4 vote, the justices upheld the conviction of a Chicago rapist who was found guilty based on a DNA match done by a crime lab in Maryland. The majority said the expert testimony provided by an Illinois police lab analyst was sufficient.
The ruling came as the court entered the last two weeks of its term. Major rulings on healthcare, immigration and broadcast indecency are still pending. The justices will hand down decisions Thursday and again on several days next week. The court’s partial retreat in Williams vs. Illinois is a victory for prosecutors and state lawyers.
The 6th Amendment says the accused “shall enjoy the right … to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” Justice Antonin Scalia had led a revival of this right and said it applied not just to the eyewitnesses of a crime, but to all people who provided crucial testimony for the prosecution.
PROBATIONERS GET A NEW START WITH CLEAN SLATE DAY
California lawbreakers have to deal with the stigma of their criminal history in a multitude of ways. One of the biggest is the difficulties that a criminal record creates where the job market is concerned. Last week in the Bay area, some of those convicted of low level crimes and given probation had a chance to partially clean up their records through a program called Clean Slate Day, which—in addition to expungement—offers those attending a bunch of resources designed to help them reintegrate more successfully back into society.
SF Gate’s Carolyn Said has the story. Here’s a clip:
Advocates say the need for a fresh start is more acute than ever, as most major employers now require background checks, even as the number of people convicted of crimes continues to rise, in part spurred by stringent drug-sentencing laws.
A quarter of all adult Americans have an arrest or conviction that could show up on a background check, said Jessie Warner, director of re-entry legal services and policy for Rubicon Programs, a social-service agency that helps low-income people achieve financial independence.
No longer being stigmatized by past convictions “can make a huge difference between low-wage work and career development,” she said. “It’s a life-changing moment for a lot of clients.”
Thursday’s Clean Slate Day – run by Rubicon, the East Bay Community Law Center, Bay Area Legal Aid and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights – was part of a larger Homeless Connect event at the Willow Pass Community Center that offered a range of services for low-income people – free haircuts and dental care, a DMV counter, wheelchair/bicycle repairs and meetings with social-service providers. The event, which drew more than 700 people, had a county fair feel with free barbecue and rows of tents where agencies met with people and handed out brochures.
LA MAGAZINE’S ED LEIBOWITZ ON KING’S LIFE AND DEATH
Ed Leibowitz wrote a controversial yet definitive profile on Rodney King for LA Magazine in 1999.. He writes again on King for LA Mag. giving his take on the life AND death of King. Although we wrote on King’ death last night, we felt Leibowitz’s piece demanded another round. Here’s how it opens:
For a long time after I’d written a profile about Rodney King for the Los Angeles Times Magazine in 1999, I kept a message he’d left on my answering machine. I erased it accidentally about four years after it was recorded, but I still remember it—how earnest, gentle and hesitant his voice sounded, such a contrast to the PCP-crazed inner-city monster that the jurors bought at the 1992 Simi Valley trial. “Hey, Ed. It’s Rodney, a little late. Yeah, I think I am going surfing this morning. I’m not going as early as I thought I was, but if you want to come, give me a call.”
Read the rest.
Photo by Charles Dharapak for AP
What a croc of shit the piece by Leibowitz is. He makes reference to the brain injury from blunt force trauma from the beating being the cause of King’s troubles with the law.
Prior to March 3, 1991 King was a convicted wife beater and armed robber. The whole pursuit happened because King thought he would be going BACK to prison for violating his parole.
And now, because the cops fucked up, people are trying to make King out as some kind of martyr or hero.
Laughable.
He wasn’t the devil, but he damn sure wasn’t an angel.
Enough about Rodney King already.
The videotaped flogging of motorist Rodney King. The subsequent acquittal on all charges of the police officers at their state criminal trial in Simi Valley.
These two items are widely known for their association with the 1991 L.A. Riots, but they were not the sole catalyst for 4 days of robbery, looting, arson, destruction, assault and murder.
Here are some bullet points from a personal short list:
1.) The other more shocking video. This video comes from the security camera at the neighborhood market which shows a 14 year old African American girl shot in the back at close range by the Korean shopkeeper working the register.
That video shows the shot which killed Latasha Harlins and resulted in criminal prosecution of the shopkeeper. A plea of involuntary manslaughter was negotiated between the defendant and L.A.D.A. Gil Garcetti.
The shocker came at the sentencing when Judge Joyce Karlin capped the defendants time in custody at the days served pending trial and ordered her released to probation.
Couple the Latasha Harlin’s video with Judge Karlin’s weak sentencing and you will find the second powder keg of resentment and anger placed in the black community alongside the King video and Simi Valley acquittal of LAPD.
2.) The video of the choreographed LAPD pull-back from Florence and Normandie. One way to describe the pullback video is as an homage to the synchronized swimming pool musicals produced at MGM in the 1930’s. That film genre featured pretty girls with bobbed hairdoes in bejeweled bathing suits performing sequential moves in a sound stage swimming pool shot by an over head camera looking down.
The Florence and Normandie pullback video substitutes a phalanx of LAPD cruisers filmed looking down from a hovering news chopper. The sequenced moves consist of car doors closing and vehicle backing up, u-turning and leaving.
The point demonstrated: LAPD is no longer enforcing basic law on the streets of South L.A.
The point is driven home by local tv news programmers who broadcast the pullback video over and over and over again. Followed by the video of the mob breaking through the chained gates of Tom’s Liquor Store and sending cases of booze passed overhead and out to the crowd.
Thus notice is spread wide and far via television broadcast – anyone who wants in on some looting and rioting without fear of arrest, Come on Down!
3.) A little help from Riot Assistance Services.
Actually, we don’t know who they were and their truck was unmarked, but their help was needed to expand the boundaries of the designated riot zone.
The grocery store at the intersection of Pico Blvd. and Fairfax Avenue in Mid-City stood closed on the 2nd day. Just like many offices and retail businesses, the grocery store had sent all the employees home and chained the doors shut.
This store was stocked full with meat and liquor and disposable diapers, but the lawbreaking hadn’t reached this area. People still required a little push to engage in generally unacceptable behavior. All of the top-notch black agent provocateurs had been utilized at Tom’s Liquor and were now out of sight.
Into the grocery store parking lot now comes the pick-up truck with the heavy duty steel rear bumper and heavy chain link. The driver backs up to the entrance of the store, wraps his chain through the chain securing the entry doors, gets back into the truck, drives forward and pops the grocery store open for business.
Don’t know how many other stores were popped open for the reticent looters of Los Angeles by the friendly folks in the truck, but they certainly proved essential to get things started in Mid-City. As suddenly as they had arrived, they drove away, having looted nothing for themselves.
4.) the bullet that burned down one hundred buildings.
Thats a silly name for a bullet. If you think of a better name, we can use it. Day 3 of the L.A. Riots was a big day for opportunist commercial property owners capable of swift decisions. The National Guard would soon roll into town and shut down the party. If the numbers worked out right – Day 3 and Night 3 was the chance to book some profits.
1988-89 had been the peak of a real estate price bubble in SoCal. 1991-92 was the trough. Certain commercial property investors who were insured for full replacement cost calculated their best case scenario – burn it down.
Dvine intervention was already on their side. It arrived as an errant bullet which struck an LAFD fireman driving a ladder truck. Got him in the leg, he ended up recovering well, eventually became a fire captain.
But after he took the bullet in his leg while perched atop the ladder truck, the Mayor of L.A. issued an order effective immedeatly:
No City emergency responder (Fire and Paramedic) will dispatch without LAPD escort.
Even a professional arsonist can use a few extra minutes for his work to reach fully engulfed. Night 3 brought down some commercial property located far from any riot activity.
A bank property at Wilshire and La Brea. A retail minimall on Ventura Blvd. in Encino.
What happened? Burned down by rioters, of course – why do you even ask. Now, just move along!
Clean Slate Day amounts to a cover-up of criminal records and lying to potential employers, who need background checks for workers, particularly those considered for senstive areas such as dealing with money or children.
Crime has and should have consequences, including the effects on one’s future, and people need to consider that before they commit illegal acts.
This plan may make a bunch of do-gooders feel good, but it ignores extended impacts, which include the wrong lesson to young people that they can do something illegal and it will be covered up for them.
If you condone covering up criminal activity, don’t complain the next time that some rich guy gets his kid out of trouble with his own money.
School grades affect one’s employment potential, so let’s give all students the same grades so that no one is “disadvantaged.”