US crime

Three white men sentenced to life in prison for Ahmaud Arbery’s murder

A judge in Georgia sentenced Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan to life in prison on Friday for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was running through their mostly white neighborhood in February 2020 when they chased him down and killed him.

Under Georgia law, murder carries a mandatory life sentence unless prosecutors seek the death penalty. For the judge, Timothy Walmsley, the main decision was whether to grant father and son Greg McMichael, 66, and Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor, Bryan, 52, a chance to earn parole.

Arbery’s family had made powerful statements, asking Walmsley to show no leniency.

Before sentencing, Walmsley said: “Ahmaud Arbery was hunted down and shot, and he was killed because individuals here in the courtroom took the law into their own hands.”

Walmsley said Arbery left his home for a jog and ended up running for his life for five minutes as the men chased him in pickup trucks then cornered him. The judge paused for a minute, to help drive home a sense of what that time must have been like for Arbery.

“When I thought about this,” he said, “I thought from a lot of different angles. I kept coming back to the terror that must have been in the mind of the young man running through Satilla Shores.”

The McMichaels will spend the rest of their lives in prison. Walmsley ruled that Bryan could seek parole after 30 years, the minimum sentence allowed.

'Devastated': family members pay tribute to Ahmaud Arbery at sentencing of killers – video — ‘Devastated’: family members pay tribute to Ahmaud Arbery at sentencing of killers – video

Arbery’s mother said she suffered an intense loss made worse by a trial where the men’s defense was that Arbery made bad choices.

“This wasn’t a case of mistaken identity or mistaken fact,” Wanda Cooper-Jones said.

“They chose to target my son because they didn’t want him in their community. They chose to treat him differently than other people who frequently visited their community. And when they couldn’t sufficiently scare or intimidate him, they killed him.”

Cooper-Jones rebutted a point made by a defense lawyer that caused outrage. During the trial in November, Laura Hogue made a reference to Ahmaud Arbery’s appearance many found egregious and racist.

Hogue said: “Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts, with no socks, to cover his long dirty toenails.”

On Friday, Cooper-Jones said her son was sometimes messy.

“He sometimes refused to wear socks or take good care of his good clothing. I wish he would have cut and cleaned his toenails before he went out for that jog that day. I guess he would have if he knew he would be murdered.”

Marcus Arbery Sr, Ahmaud’s father, also addressed the court. He said: “When I close my eyes, I see his execution in my mind, over and over. I will see that for the rest of my life.

“Not only did they lynch my son in broad daylight, they killed him while he was doing what he loved more than anything: running. That’s when he felt most alive, most free, and they took all that from him.”

Arbery’s sister, Jasmine Arbery, described her brother as a positive thinker with a big personality. Weeping, she told the judge her brother had dark skin “that glistened in the sunlight” and “thick, curly hair and an athletic build”.

“These are the qualities that made these men assume that Ahmaud was a dangerous criminal and chase him with guns drawn,” she said. “To me, those qualities reflect a young man full of life and energy who looked like me and the people I loved.”

Ahmaud Arbery's mother responds to defence lawyer remarks about 'long dirty toenails' – video — Ahmaud Arbery’s mother responds to defence lawyer remarks about ‘long dirty toenails’ – video

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski asked the judge for life without parole for the McMichaels and the possibility of parole for Bryan. But she said all deserved that mandatory life sentence.

The McMichaels grabbed guns and jumped in a truck to chase Arbery, 25, after spotting him running on 23 February 2020. Bryan joined the pursuit and recorded video of Travis McMichael firing close-range shotgun blasts.

The killing went largely unnoticed until two months later, when video was leaked, touching off a national outcry. The Georgia bureau of investigation arrested all three men.

The attorney Robert Rubin argued that Travis McMichael deserved the possibility of parole as he fired only after “Mr Arbery came at him and grabbed the gun”.

“This was not a planned murder,” Rubin said. “This was a fight over a gun.”

Hogue, for Greg McMichael, said her client “did not view his son firing that shotgun with anything other than fear and sadness”.

Bryan’s lawyer said he showed remorse and cooperated with police.

Next month, the McMichaels and Bryan face a second trial on federal hate crime charges. Prosecutors will argue that the men targeted Arbery because he was Black.

On Friday, Ben Crump, a leading civil rights attorney, said: “These brutal crimes nearly went unpunished because of the deep corruption that pervades so many of our systems.”

He added: “The tragic murder of Ahmaud Arbery must not be in vain. America, we are showing progress. Now is not the time to retreat. We must continue to demand better from law enforcement, from our justice system and from our society as a whole.”

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Atlanta spa shootings: Georgia hate crimes law could see first big test

A hate crimes law passed in Georgia amid outrage over the killing of Ahmaud Arbery could get its first major test as part of the murder case against a white man charged with shooting and killing six women of Asian descent at Atlanta-area massage businesses this week.

Prosecutors in Georgia who will decide whether to pursue a hate crimes enhancement have declined to comment. But one said she was “acutely aware of the feelings of terror being experienced in the Asian American community”.

Until last year, Georgia was one of four states without a hate crimes law. But lawmakers moved quickly to pass stalled legislation in June, during national protests over racial violence against Black Americans including the killing of Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was pursued by several white men and fatally shot while out running in February 2020.

The new law allows an additional penalty for certain crimes if they are motivated by a victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender or mental or physical disability.

Governor Brian Kemp called the new legislation “a powerful step forward”, adding when signing it into law: “Georgians protested to demand action and state lawmakers … rose to the occasion.”

The killings of eight people in Georgia this week have prompted national mourning and a reckoning with racism and violence against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic. The attack also focused attention on the interplay of racism and misogyny, including hyper-sexualized portrayals of Asian women in US culture.

sex addiction.

Asian American lawmakers, activists and scholars argued that the race and gender of the victims were central to the attack.

“To think that someone targeted three Asian-owned businesses that were staffed by Asian American women … and didn’t have race or gender in mind is just absurd,” said Grace Pai, director of organizing at Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Chicago.

Elaine Kim, a professor emeritus in Asian American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “I think it’s likely that the killer not only had a sex addiction but also an addiction to fantasies about Asian women as sex objects.”

Such sentiments were echoed on Saturday as a diverse, hundreds-strong crowd gathered in a park across from the Georgia state capitol to demand justice for the victims of the shootings.

Speakers included the US senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and the Georgia state representative Bee Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American in the Georgia House.

“I just wanted to drop by to say to my Asian sisters and brothers, we see you, and, more importantly, we are going to stand with you,” Warnock said to loud cheers. “We’re all in this thing together.”

The US senators Raphael Warnock, right, and Jon Ossoff participate in a march and rally in downtown Atlanta. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

Bernard Dong, a 24-year-old student from China at Georgia Tech, said he had come to the protest to demand rights not just for Asians but for all minorities.

“Many times Asian people are too silent, but times change,” he said, adding that he was “angry and disgusted” about the shootings and violence against Asians, minorities and women.

Otis Wilson, a 38-year-old photographer, said people needed to pay attention to discrimination against those of Asian descent.

“We went through this last year with the Black community, and we’re not the only ones who go through this,” he said.

The Cherokee county district attorney, Shannon Wallace, and Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, will decide whether to pursue the hate crime enhancement.

Wallace said she could not answer specific questions but said she was “acutely aware of the feelings of terror being experienced in the Asian-American community”. A representative for Willis did not respond to requests for comment.

The US Department of Justice could bring federal hate crime charges independently of state prosecutions. Federal investigators have not uncovered evidence to prove Long targeted the victims because of their race, two unnamed officials told the Associated Press.

A Georgia State University law professor, Tanya Washington, said it was important for the new hate crimes law to be used.

“Unless we test it with cases like this one, we won’t have a body of law around how do you prove bias motivated the behavior,” she said.

Surveillance footage shows Atlanta shooting suspect leaving massage parlour – video

Given that someone convicted of multiple murders is unlikely to be released from prison, an argument could be made that it is not worth the effort, time and expense to pursue a hate crime designation that carries a relatively small additional penalty. But the Republican state representative Chuck Efstration, who sponsored the hate crimes bill, said it was not just about punishment.

“It is important that the law calls things what they are,” he said. “It’s important for victims and it’s important for society.”

The state senator Michelle Au, a Democrat, said the law needed to be used to give it teeth.

Au believes there has been resistance nationwide to charge attacks against Asian Americans as hate crimes because they are seen as “model minorities”, a stereotype that they are hard-working, educated and free of societal problems. She said she had heard from many constituents in the last year that Asian Americans – and people of Chinese descent in particular – were suffering from bias because the coronavirus emerged in China and Donald Trump used racial terms to describe it.

“People feel like they’re getting gaslighted because they see it happen every day,” she said. “They feel very clearly that it is racially motivated but it’s not pegged or labeled that way. And people feel frustrated by that lack of visibility and that aspect being ignored.”

View Source

Capitol attack: more than 60 Proud Boys used encrypted channel to plan, indictment says

The neo-fascist Proud Boys deployed a large contingent in Washington on 6 January, the day of the US Capitol attack, with more than 60 “participating in” an encrypted messaging channel called “Boots on the Ground”, a federal indictment says.

The indictment, which includes conspiracy charges against four men described as leaders of the far-right group, presents fresh evidence of how officials believe members planned and carried out a coordinated attempt to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump.

At least 19 leaders, members or associates of the Proud Boys have been charged in federal court with offenses related to the 6 January riot, which resulted in five deaths. More than 300 people have been charged in total. Trump was impeached for the inciting the insurrection but was acquitted after only seven Republican senators broke ranks to vote to convict him.

The indictment unsealed on Friday also suggests that the Proud Boys, whom Trump told to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate last year, were discussing what they would do after he left the White House.

“We need to start planning and we are starting planning for a Biden presidency,” one alleged leader wrote after the Capitol invasion, according to the indictment.

Just two days before the Capitol attack, the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested in Washington, charged with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church, and ordered to stay out of the District of Columbia.

The Proud Boys reacted with alarm, one alleged leader warning that communications could be “compromised”, telling members they could be “looking at Gang charges” and suggesting they “stop everything immediately”, according to the indictment.

But they regrouped, creating fresh encrypted channels to communicate and advising members to meet at the Washington Monument at 10am on 6 January, according to the indictment. One alleged leader told members on 5 January to “avoid getting into any shit tonight. Tomorrow’s the day.” Proud Boys were repeatedly warned not to wear their typical black and yellow colors. “Cops are the primary threat,” one channel was warned on the night before the attack.

On 6 January, the Proud Boys marched to the Capitol before Trump finished addressing thousands of supporters near the White House.

About two hours later, just before Congress convened a joint session to certify the election results, a group of Proud Boys followed a crowd who breached barriers at a pedestrian entrance to the Capitol grounds, the indictment says. Several Proud Boys entered the Capitol after the mob smashed windows and forced open doors.

A Wall Street Journal investigation of video footage found Proud Boys members were “key instigators”, at the “forefront” in many pivotal moments.

The messages in the indictment show the Proud Boys using military language before and during the attack, one asking if leaders should hold a “commander’s briefing” before gathering at the Washington Monument.

At 3.38pm, Charles Donohoe, an alleged leader of a chapter in North Carolina, announced on the Boots on the Ground channel that he and others were “regrouping with a second force” as some rioters began to leave the Capitol, according to the indictment.

Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs, two of the four defendants charged, were arrested several weeks ago on separate but related charges. A day before the riots, Biggs posted on the Boots on the Ground channel that the group had a “plan”, according to the new indictment, which also charges Donohoe and Zachary Rehl, described as leader of a chapter in Pennsylvania.

“This was not simply a march,” the assistant US attorney Jason McCullough said in a recent hearing for Nordean’s case. “This was an incredible attack on our institutions of government.”

All four defendants are charged with conspiring to impede certification of the electoral college vote. Other charges include obstruction of an official proceeding, obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder and disorderly conduct.

The defendants carried out their conspiracy in part by obtaining paramilitary gear and supplies, including tactical vests, protective equipment and radio equipment, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors have said the Proud Boys arranged to communicate using Baofeng radios, Chinese-made devices that can be programmed for use on hundreds of frequencies, making it difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop.

A lawyer for Biggs declined to comment. Attorneys for the other three men didn’t immediately respond to messages.

In Nordean’s case, a federal judge accused prosecutors of backtracking on claims that he instructed Proud Boys members to split up into smaller groups and directed a “strategic plan” to breach the Capitol.

“That’s a far cry from what I heard at the hearing today,” the US district judge Beryl Howell said on 3 March.

Howell concluded that Nordean was extensively involved in “pre-planning” for the events of 6 January and that he and other Proud Boys “were clearly prepared for a violent confrontation”. However, she said evidence that Nordean directed other Proud Boys members to break into the building was “weak to say the least” and ordered him freed from jail before trial.

Proud Boys members describe themselves as “western chauvinists” and have engaged in street fights with antifascist activists. The Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016, sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling it a hate group.

On Friday, Howell ordered the group member Christopher Worrell detained in federal custody pending trial on riot-related charges. Prosecutors say Worrell traveled to Washington and coordinated with Proud Boys leading up to the siege.

“Wearing tactical gear and armed with a canister of pepper spray gel marketed as 67 times more powerful than hot sauce, Worrell advanced, shielded himself behind a wooden platform and other protestors and discharged the gel at the line of officers,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

His defense attorney John Pierce argued his client wasn’t aiming at officers and was only there in the crowd to exercise his free speech rights.

“He’s a veteran,” Pierce said. “He loves his country.”

View Source

Atlanta shootings: why US hate crime data is so lacking | Mona Chalabi

Of the eight people killed in Atlanta spas on Wednesday, six of them were Asian women. The police claim it is too soon to know if the suspect was motivated by racial hatred, focusing instead on the idea that the massage parlors were a “temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate”.

This, of course, ignores the possibility that someone might be motivated by racial hatred and sexism.

Unfortunately, most statistics make the same assumption. Hate crime data that is gathered by the FBI is often categorized according to a single motivation (such as religion, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, gender identity). Less than 3% of the hate crimes that were reported in 2019 recorded multiple biases.

Reality is obviously much more complex than these numbers capture. Many of the victims of Wednesday’s attack were Asian and women and possibly sex workers (police have long identified the spas as places where sex work and possible sexual exploitation regularly occurred). These facts can not be treated in isolation.

Things get even more complicated when you consider reporting rates. A person’s race and gender identity will affect the likelihood that they will report a hate crime to the police. This is particularly true of sex workers, whose work is is still largely criminalized across the United States.

So, what numbers are we left with? We could instead look to data on violent victimization that isn’t specifically motivated by hate. It’s imperfect since it includes robberies and assault data.

A study published earlier this year tried to use a different dataset – the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) – to take a closer look at anti-Asian hatred.

The authors found hate crimes against Asian Americans are more likely to be committed by non-white offenders than hate crimes against Black Americans or Hispanics. They attribute this to the “model minority” stereotype which inspires animosity from other people of color. They also found that hate crimes against Asians are more likely to take place at school and found the same explanation for this difference.

Lastly, we could look to data gathered by organizations that have a closer connection to the Asian community.

From March 2020 to February 2021, 3,795 incidents of anti-Asian hatred were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit organization that tracks discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. They found that verbal harassment (68%) and shunning (21% – ie the deliberate avoidance of Asian Americans) made up the two largest types of reported incidents. Reports showed that discrimination was happening in all kinds of contexts – businesses (35%), street/sidewalk (25%) and online (11%).

Anti-Asian hatred has been stoked by Donald Trump’s repeated insistence on referring to Covid-19 as the “China virus”. This language reappeared in many of the incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate – for instance a woman who was approached by two male neighbors that “approached me threateningly on the street, pulled down the corners of their eyes and said, ‘“Go back to Wuhan, bitch, and take the virus with you!’”

Another report from a woman in Brooklyn says: “A white man catcalled me, then aggressively followed me down the block, and got inches from my face and yelled “Ch*nk!” and “C*nt!” after realizing I was Asian. Lots of neighbors were standing outside their homes and no one intervened.”

These narratives make it clear that any attempts to separate sexism and racism are meaningless.

View Source

FBI under pressure to tackle anti-Asian hate crime in wake of Atlanta shootings

Federal and local law enforcement agencies are under pressure to increase efforts to combat the rising tide of hate crimes against Asian Americans in the wake of the Atlanta, Georgia spa shootings that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent.

The FBI and other police forces are facing criticism for levels of reporting of hate crimes that remain abysmally low, despite several attempts by Congress to highlight the outrages.

Asian American community leaders expressed dismay on Wednesday, a day after the shootings at three massage parlors, that the discrimination and harassment historically faced by their communities continued to be downplayed.

“It’s taken six Asian American women dying in one day to get people to pay attention to this,” Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) told the Guardian. “Record keeping of hate crimes against Asian Americans is so low because they are not even willing to accept that we are discriminated against and harassed because of our race.”

In the latest statistics for hate crimes compiled by the FBI for 2019, a total of 4,930 victims were identified where race or ethnicity was the motive. Of those, 4.4% were victims of anti-Asian bias, compared with 48.5% of anti-black and 14.1% of anti-Hispanic bias.

The data is widely accepted to be a gross understatement of the hate crime problem in America today, including for Asian Americans. A federal law has been in place since 1990 requiring records to be kept on hate crimes, but it is largely ineffective as individual police forces are under no obligation to participate.

As a result, almost 90% of the law enforcement organizations involved in the 2019 hate crimes study reported no incidents at all – a blank filing that many civil rights advocates regard as frankly unbelievable. On top of that, a federal report released in February found that more than 40% of hate crimes are never reported to authorities.

“We don’t even have a clear picture of the true amount of hate crime in the US. The FBI can tell you how many bank robberies occurred last year, but they can’t tell you a real assessment of bias crimes,” said Michael German of the Brennan Center for Justice who worked in the 1990s as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating white supremacist groups.

German pointed out that between 2017 and 2018 there were 230,000 violent hate crimes, according to a Department of Justice survey of victims. Yet over the same period the DoJ only prosecuted 50 hate crime cases.

“That’s an indication of the lack of interest and priority that the federal government pays to this subject,” German said.

new report itemizing 3,795 incidents of verbal harassment, physical assault, workplace discrimination and other forms of bias that occurred during the pandemic.

The group said the incidents represented “only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur, but it does show how vulnerable Asian Americans are to discrimination”.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice is another group that encourages self-reporting of hate and harassment through its hate tracker, StandAgainstHatred.org. Marita Etcubañez, the organization’s senior director of strategic initiatives, said that the chronic under-reporting of hate incidents had many causes, including individuals’ reluctance to engage with law enforcement and lack of language support.

“Many immigrants are distrustful of government and aren’t confident that they will get the help and support they need if they do report,” she said.

Women and older Asian Americans appear to have been especially targeted in the wave of incidents ranging from verbal assaults to brutal attacks. In January Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, was fatally attacked on the streets of San Francisco.

Choimorrow said that there had been a surge in hate incidents during the pandemic. Her group, NAPAWF, had conducted a soon-to-be-published survey that found that about 50% of Chinese American women in the sample had experienced racist slurs in public, rising to 64% of Korean American women.

She said that she could personally attest to that. “I have experienced racism directed at me around the pandemic just walking around my Chicago neighborhood. I’ve had a man chasing me and my daughter down the street yelling ‘Go back to China and take your virus with you!’”

The precise motivation of the male Atlanta spa shooter remains unclear, with some reports suggesting it may have been more of a sexual than a racial nature. But fears among Asian Americans have been elevated by the killings, coming as they do on top of the spike in hate incidents that followed the former US president Donald Trump’s xenophobic description of coronavirus as the “Chinese virus”.

Joe Biden addressed the shootings on Wednesday. “Whatever the motivation here, I know Asian Americans, they are very concerned, because as you know I have been speaking about the brutality against Asian Americans, and it’s troubling,” he said.

In his first week in office, the president signed an executive order designed to combat racism and xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. It condemned “inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric” without mentioning Trump by name.

The order also instructed the US attorney general, since confirmed as the former federal judge Merrick Garland, to “expand collection of data and public reporting regarding hate incidents”.

German said that in the wake of the Atlanta shootings the justice department would now be in the spotlight.

“Garland will be under pressure to do more. The public is concerned about hate crimes and the significant uptick in violence against Asian Americans,” he said.

View Source

Asian Americans reported 3,800 hate-related incidents during the pandemic, report finds

Asian Americans reported nearly 3,800 hate-related incidents during the pandemic, a number that experts believe to be just a fraction of the true total.

From 19 March 2020 to 28 February 2021, Asian Americans from all 50 states experienced everything ranging from verbal abuse to physical assaults, from getting coughed on to getting denied services because of their ethnicity, according to a report released on Tuesday by Stop AAPI Hate, a not-for-profit coalition tracking incidents of violence, discrimination and harassment.

More than 68% of the abuse was verbal harassment or name-calling, while 11.1% was physical, the report found.

California. “Afterwards, he drove to where the remaining Asian protesters stood and was witnessed by multiple protesters aggressively driving onto the walkway where several protesters were gathered.”

The report come amid growing awareness of anti-Asian violence in the US following several recent attacks. In Oakland, California, a 75-year-old man from Hong Kong died after being robbed and assaulted by a man police said had a history of victimizing elderly Asian people. Earlier this year, an 84-year-old Thai man, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was killed in a seemingly unprovoked attack in San Francisco.

“The number of hate incidents reported to our center represent only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur, but it does show how vulnerable Asian Americans are to discrimination, and the types of discrimination they face,” the report authors wrote.

The authors noted that before the surge of awareness around anti-Asian attacks, Stop AAPI Hate had documented 2,808 incidents in 2020 but had since received a number of other reports.

In addition to physical and verbal assaults, the report documented incidents of vandalism, online harassment, workplace discrimination, being barred from transportation or establishments, and avoidance or shunning – all because the victims were Asian.

“A [ride-hailing service] driver said to me after I got into his car, ‘Damn, another Asian riding with me today, I hope you don’t have any Covid’,” read one testimonial from the Las Vegas in the report. “After I told him, ‘Have a good day’, he replied back, ‘You shouldn’t be requesting anymore rides from anybody’.”

Women reported hate incidents 2.3 times more than men. California and New York, the two states with the largest Asian American populations, had the most reported hate incidents, with 1,691 reported in California and 517 in New York.

View Source

Chauvin lawyer seeks trial delay in wake of $27m George Floyd family settlement

The defense attorney for the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with George Floyd’s murder, on Monday asked the judge to delay the trial now under way, saying the announcement by the city of a record $27m settlement for Floyd’s family could make a fair trial impossible.

Defense attorney Eric Nelson also raised the possibility of renewing his previously unsuccessful motion to move Chauvin’s trial to another city.

The settlement announced by the city of Minneapolis last Friday and the criminal trial of Chauvin are ostensibly completely unconnected. But the timing of the payout, coming while the trial is still going through jury selection, was surprising to some.

On Monday, Nelson said: “I am gravely concerned with the news that broke on Friday.” He said thought it “has incredible potential to taint the jury pool”.

There was tension in the Hennepin county court in downtown Minneapolis on Monday, where the building is surrounded by barriers and guards in what some observers see as an aggressive gesture of fortification, the court room itself is severely restricted because of the pandemic.

The judge, Peter Cahill, expressed frustration with the timing of last Friday’s settlement announcement, calling it “unfortunate”.

Cahill said he would recall seven jurors seated last week to ask if they had seen news of the settlement and whether it would affect their impartiality.

“I wish city officials would stop talking about this case so much,” the judge said, before resuming jury selection on Monday morning. “At the same time, I don’t find any evil intent that they are trying to tamper with the criminal case.”

Floyd’s family filed a federal wrongful-death lawsuit against Chauvin and the city of Minneapolis last year. The city called a news conference to announce the settlement, which included emotional comments by Floyd’s brothers and Mayor Jacob Frey.

Meanwhile, Nelson also noted that Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison’s son, Jeremiah, sits on the city council that unanimously approved the settlement, and questioned the timing, though he said he was not making accusations.

Keith Ellison heads the prosecution team and often has been present in the courtroom.

During a break in jury selection, Ellison stopped at Nelson’s table and said: “Is there anything else anyone would like to not accuse me of?”

Nelson looked at Ellison but did not reply.

Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, deferred questions about the timing of the settlement to city attorney Jim Rowader, who declined to comment.

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher said the state had no control over Frey and the city council.

Floyd family attorney Ben Crump called the $27m the largest pretrial settlement ever for a civil rights claim.

Cahill agreed to consider the request for a delay.

He has previously denied a request to move the trial, saying coverage of Floyd’s death was so pervasive it was “unlikely to cure the taint of potential prejudicial pretrial publicity”.

Floyd, a Black man, was declared dead on 25 May after Chauvin, who is white, kneeled against his neck for almost nine minutes, while Floyd begged for his life.

Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter and denies the charges.

The first potential juror questioned Monday was quickly dismissed after volunteering that she’d heard about the settlement and presumed it meant the city didn’t feel it would win the civil case.

“When I heard that, I almost gasped at the amount,” she said, adding that she couldn’t promise she could disregard it.

Potential jurors questioned later didn’t mention hearing of the settlement, and neither attorneys nor the judge directly asked if they were aware of it.

View Source

FBI arrests two men for ‘bear spray’ assault on Capitol officer who later died

Two men have been arrested and charged with assaulting Brian Sicknick, the police officer who died after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January in support of the former president’s attempt to overturn election defeat by Joe Biden.

Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania and George Pierre Tanios, 39, from West Virginia, were arrested by the FBI on Sunday and expected to appear in federal court on Monday.

They were charged with assaulting Sicknick with a “toxic spray”, thought to be bear spray, which Khater was allegedly seen discharging into the officer’s face in footage of the riot. It is not yet known if it caused Sicknick’s death.

Sicknick, 42, was one of five people to die as a direct result of the assault, which Donald Trump incited when he told supporters to “fight like hell” in his cause. The officer died in hospital on 7 January. A police statement said he “was injured while physically engaging with protesters” and “returned to his division office and collapsed”.

His body lay in state at the Capitol. The cause of his death is still not known. Initial statements that he suffered blunt force trauma after being hit with a fire extinguisher were walked back. Investigators now believe Sicknick may have ingested a chemical substance, possibly bear spray, that may have played a role in his death.

Brian Sicknick was one of five people to die as a direct result of the assault on the Capitol. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AP

Court papers stated: “Officers Sicknick, Edwards and Chapman suffered injuries as a result of being sprayed in the face with an unknown substance by Khater. The officers were temporary blinded by the substance, were temporary disabled from performing their duties and needed medical attention and assistance from fellow officers.”

In social media footage, Khater is seen spraying Sicknick and others with a spray he refers to as “bear shit”, according to the court papers. The spray has not been directly linked to Sicknick’s death.

The papers state that Khater is seen making his way towards Tanios, then says, “Give me that bear shit,” and reaches into Tanios’s backpack. According to the papers, Tanios says: “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet … it’s still early.”

The papers state: “Khater is then seen emphatically telling Tanios, ‘They just fucking sprayed me,’ and Khater is seen holding a white can with a black top that appears to be a can of chemical spray.”

The court papers claim the exchange shows the two men were “working in concert and had a plan to use the toxic spray against law enforcement”.

According to the Be Bear Aware Campaign, humans exposed to the pepper-based spray, meant to be used against dangerous bears, can experience “chest pain, cold sweat, or shallow breathing” while “asthma sufferers may experience acute stress”.

The US justice department opened a federal murder investigation into Sicknick’s death, but prosecutors are still reportedly evaluating what charges may be brought. The medical examiner’s report is incomplete and Capitol police have said they are awaiting toxicology results.

More than 300 people have been arrested over the Capitol riot. Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection – and acquitted when only seven Republican senators decided he was guilty.

Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, paid tribute to Sicknick in remarks on the Senate floor in January, calling his death a “crime” that “demands the full attention of federal law enforcement.”.

“When white supremacists attacked our nation’s capital,” Booker said, “they took the life of one of our officers. They spilled his blood, they took a son away from his parents. They took a sibling away from their brothers.”

Booker also called Sicknick “a Jersey guy through and through”.

View Source

Derek Chauvin trial: jury selection resumes as officer faces possible new charge

Potential jurors in Derek Chauvin’s murder trial return Thursday to continue a selection process moving more quickly than expected. Meanwhile, the former policeman charged in George Floyd’s death faced the prospect of an additional third-degree murder charge.

Five jurors have been seated after just two days of screening by attorneys and Peter Cahill, the judge who had set aside at least three weeks to fill the panel.

Cahill was expected to start Thursday’s proceeding by discussing next steps in the state’s effort to add a third-degree murder charge. Cahill rejected the charge twice before an appellate ruling in an unrelated case provided new grounds for it right before the trial began. On Wednesday, the state’s supreme court rejected Chauvin’s effort to block the charge.

Attorneys have given considerable attention to the jury pool’s attitudes toward police in the first two days of questioning, trying to determine whether they’re more inclined to believe testimony from law enforcement over evidence from other witnesses to the fatal confrontation.

The first juror picked Wednesday, a man who works in sales management and grew up in a mostly white part of central Minnesota, acknowledged saying on his written questionnaire that he had a “very favorable” opinion of the Black Lives Matter movement and a “somewhat unfavorable” impression of the Blue Lives Matter countermovement in favor of police, yet “somewhat agreed” that police don’t get the respect they deserve. He said he agrees that there are bad police officers.

“Are there good ones? Yes. So I don’t think it’s right to completely blame the entire organization,” he told the court under questioning from prosecutor Steve Schleicher.

He also said he would be more inclined to believe an officer over the word of another witness. But he said he could set aside any ideas about the inherent honesty of an officer and evaluate each witness on their own.

The second, a man who works in information technology security, marked “strongly agree” on a question about whether he believes police in his community make him feel safe. His community wasn’t specified – jurors are being drawn from all over Hennepin county, which includes Minneapolis and many of its suburbs.

“In my community, I think when there is suspicious activity the police will stop by, they will ask a question,” he said. “I think that sense of community is all we want right? We want to live in a community where we feel safe regardless of race, color and gender.”

Schleicher noted that the man also stated in his questionnaire that he strongly disagreed with the concept of “defunding” the police, which has become a political flashpoint locally and across the country in the wake of Floyd’s death.

“While I necessarily might not agree with the police action in some situation, I believe that in order for police to make my community safe they have to have the money,” he replied.

The questionnaire explores potential jurors’ familiarity with the case and their own contacts with police. Their answers have not been made public, and the jurors’ identities are being kept secret. Their racial backgrounds often aren’t disclosed in open court.

Floyd was declared dead on 25 May after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against the Black man’s neck for about nine minutes. Floyd’s death sparked sometimes violent protests in Minneapolis and beyond, leading to a nationwide reckoning on race.

Chauvin and three other officers were fired. The others face an August trial on aiding and abetting charges. The defense hasn’t said whether Chauvin will testify in his own defense.

Schleicher used a peremptory challenge Wednesday to remove from the panel a woman who has a nephew who’s a sheriff’s deputy in western Minnesota. She said she was dismayed by the violence that followed Floyd’s death.

“I personally didn’t see any usefulness to it,” she said. “I didn’t see anything accomplished by it, except I suppose bring attention to the frustrations of the people involved. But did I see anything useful coming out of the burning of Lake Street and that sort of thing? I did not.”

The dispute over the third-degree murder charge in Chauvin’s case revolves around the conviction of another former Minneapolis police officer in the unrelated killing of an Australian woman. The appeals court affirmed Mohamed Noor’s third-degree murder conviction in the 2017 shooting death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond.

The state argued that the Noor affirmation established precedent for the third-degree murder charge under the circumstances of Floyd’s death. If the Minnesota supreme court had taken up Chauvin’s appeal, it might have meant months of delay in his trial.

After their ruling, the Court of Appeals rejected as moot the state’s request to pause the trial pending the appeal.

Legal experts said adding the charge would give prosecutors an additional option as they seek to gain a conviction.

View Source

Oakland warehouse fire: man sentenced to 12 years for blaze that killed 36 people

The master tenant of the Oakland Ghost Ship warehouse, where a fire killed 36 people in 2016, received a 12-year sentence – but he is not likely to see the inside of a state prison.

Already on house arrest after being released from jail last year because of coronavirus concerns, Derick Almena, 50, on Monday was ordered to serve the rest of his term under electronic monitoring, followed by three years of probation.

“I know that no family member will find this in any way acceptable, and I accept that responsibility,” Trina Thompson, a judge on the Alameda county superior court, said.

She added: “I wish I could in the stroke of a pen take away your deep loss and your sadness.”

The sentence marked an end to an emotionally charged case that devastated the local underground arts and music community. The 2 December 2016 Ghost Ship inferno, one of the deadliest structure fires in US history, brought into focus the harsh reality of the Bay Area’s housing crisis, and the hazardous conditions it was forcing local artists to accept in order to continue living and working.

Almena, who lived in the warehouse with his family, was accused of ignoring fire codes and warnings that the space was hazardous when he illegally converted it into commune-style living quarters. He filled the building with Balinese statues, antiques, discarded material and wooden pallets, racking up a history of violations and complaints. Almena often hosted for-profit concerts at the commune, even though it was not licensed for entertainment.

The night of the blaze, prosecutors alleged Almena knowingly packed dozens of people into a “fire trap” for an electronic music party, trapping victims on an illegally constructed second floor. Prosecutors said the victims got no warning and had little chance to escape down the narrow, ramshackle staircase.

Many of the those who died that night came from the local community, including musicians, artists, students, teachers and photographers.

In 2019, a jury acquitted Max Harris, Almena’s purported right-hand man, of involuntary manslaughter, but could not reach a verdict on charges against Almena. Almena pleaded guilty in January to 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter in exchange for a 12-year sentence, a plea deal he struck with prosecutors to avoid a second trial.

Many of the relatives of the 36 killed had urged the judge to reject the plea deal. Because he received credit for time already spent behind bars while awaiting trial and for good behavior, he will spend the next year and a half at home with an ankle monitor.

“This lenient, slap-on-the-wrist sentence is vastly inappropriate for the crimes Derick Almena committed,” the family of Sarah Hoda, a victim of the fire, said in a statement read to the court via teleconference. “Upholding the DA’s irresponsible plea recommendation would shortchange 36 victims and their families.”

Emilie Grandchamps, the mother of Alex Ghassan, another victim, said Almena along with the warehouse’s owners and city agencies that are supposed to enforce regulations should be held accountable.

“I often ask, ‘Why was my son given a death sentence for being in the wrong place and at the wrong time and those responsible for his and 35 others’ death are given a second chance at life?’ I want my son’s death not to go in vain,” she said.

The judge and prosecutors said they took into consideration the difficulties of trying the case again, given the challenges of selecting jurors and calling witnesses who could face traveling during a pandemic, and because Almena had admitted his guilt. Almena apologized to the victims and said he was “sick with shame”.

“My shame cannot stand as any defense against what I am responsible for. It is my fault, my terrible accumulation of error, that shaped and built a place so dangerous,” he said in a statement read to the court through his attorney, Tony Serra.

Almena became the object of ire in the wake of the fire after after he posted on Facebook, just hours after the flames broke out: “Everything I worked so hard for is gone. It’s as if I have awoken from a dream filled with opulence and hope … to be standing now in poverty of self worth.”

The post was later deleted. Past residents and artists later came forward to describe not only dangerous living conditions at the warehouse, but what they called Almena’s erratic, manipulative behavior.

The Oakland city council agreed last year to pay just over $33m to settle civil lawsuits filed on behalf of the victims. The settlements included $23.5m to families of 32 victims and $9.3m to a survivor who suffers from “severe, lifelong injuries.”.

Almena was also ordered to pay about $181,000 in restitution for funeral expenses and counseling. A restitution hearing will be held on 30 April.

View Source