I wonder how many white people in Florida get sentenced to 400 years in prison for being the getaway driver in an armed robbery in which no one was hurt? That was the sentence imposed on Sidney Holmes in 1989, and he wasn’t even the getaway driver in the robbery. He was convicted on the [&hell[...]
Posts Tagged ‘Crime’
Insurrection senator gave free pass to crooked insurance company
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who raised a clenched-fist salute in solidarity with violent rioters trying to overthrow the 2020 election (photo, left), ignored “a Christian-backed medical insurance company” that was stealing from his constituents when he was Missouri attorney general (read st[...]
Santos accused of ATM skimming
Rep. George Santos (R-NY; photo, left), aka Anthony Devolder, is secretive about his personal finances and where he got the $700,000 he loaned to his campaign (see story here). He would have good reason to be, if his “business” activities were a criminal enterprise, and those funds were [...]
March 2nd, 2023 - 11:24 pm § in Law and Courts
Crime blotter: Trial predictions
Defendants are presumed innocent until there’s a guilty plea or verdict, but you just know lots of people are placing bets on the outcomes of these high-profile cases. People bet on everything from dog races to cockfights. I won’t put money on it, but … Alex Murdaugh This story per[...]
Trumper gets 9 years for bomb plot
A judged locked up Ian Benjamin Rogers (photo, left), 46, of Sacramento, California, for 9 years for plotting to bomb the Democratic Party headquarters in downtown Sacramento “as revenge for what they falsely believed was a stolen election,” the Sacramento Bee reported on Wednesday, Marc[...]
Going to prison isn’t optional
Steve Bannon is on trial for a scheme that allegedly defrauded donors to a privately funded border wall. Bannon avoided federal prison because Trump pardoned him, but faces state charges in New York because some of the donors are from there (see story here). He’s already been separately senten[...]
February 24th, 2023 - 3:32 pm § in Law and Courts
What “beyond a reasonable doubt” really means
Two deer hunters were gunned down in rural Michigan in 1990. Jeff Titus, then 39, was a nearby property owner. Mere proximity to the crime scene made him a suspect. But no physical evidence linked him to the crime, and he was hunting 27 miles away when the murders occurred. Police cleared him. There[...]
February 22nd, 2023 - 1:06 pm § in Law and Courts
What if a state refuses to obey the Supreme Court?
Arizona badly wants to execute cop killer John Montenegro Cruz (photo, left), and has defied Supreme Court rulings standing in the way. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that if prosecutors seek a death sentence by telling jurors a defendant is a threat to society, the judge must allow his attorneys [...]
February 14th, 2023 - 6:52 pm § in Law and Courts, Racism
Good riddance
“Teddy Von Nukem, a southwest Missouri man featured prominently in photos from the infamous 2017 Charlottesville white-supremacist rally, died Jan. 30 this year, the same day he was scheduled to go trial for allegedly trafficking fentanyl across the Mexico border,” a local newspaper repo[...]
Prosecutors and judges go too easy on gun violations
There have been 67 mass shootings in the U.S. in the first 45 days of 2023. It’s obvious we’re not doing a good enough job of keeping guns away from people who shouldn’t have them. That’s because Republicans and the Supreme Court are blocking nearly all gun control efforts, l[...]