cnn

Texas: Rick Perry insists ‘justice system is color blind’ after Zimmerman verdict

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) on Sunday praised a Florida jury’s decision to find former neighborhood watchmen George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin, and insisted that the case had not been influenced by race because “the justice system is color blind.”

“A very thoughtful case was made by each side, the jurors made the decision and we will live with that,” the governor explained to CNN’s Candy Crowley.

The CNN host, however, pointed out that critics of the verdict had asserted that the justice system was innately unfair and weighted against African-Americans.

“Do you think that?” Crowley asked.

“I don’t,” Perry insisted. “I think our justice system is color blind, and I think that, you know, again, you don’t find people that always agree with the jury’s decision. But that’s the reason we have the system we have in place, and I think, by and large, it may not be full proof, people may make mistakes in the jury system. On the civil side, you have that appellate process.”

“But in this case, I will suggest that 2 extraordinarily capable teams laid out the issues and that jury made the right decision from their stand point.”

Earlier this year, a New York Times editorial ripped the Texas justice system for executing a disproportionate number of African-Americans under Perry.

“Texas’s death penalty system is notorious for its high tolerance of ineffective counsel for defendants, overly zealous prosecutors, and racial discrimination in jury selection,” the Times wrote. “In Texas as well as other states, a black person who murders a white person is more likely to receive the death penalty than when the victim is black.”

(source: The Raw Story)

Former Illinois governor released from custody

Good luck to George Ryan, who as Illinois governor jump-started modern progress in abolishing the death penalty by first enacting a moratorium on executions and then in one of his last acts of governor, he commuted the sentences of all 167 inmates on Illinois’ death row. Three inmates had their sentences reduced to 40 years in prison, while the remaining 165 received life in prison. The Illinois death penalty was finally abolished in 2011.

(CNN) – Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan has been released from federal custody, according to Bureau of Prisons spokesperson, Chris Burke.

Ryan had been on home confinement for the past five months in Kankakee, Illinois. He will now be on supervised release for the next year.

The former Republican governor was serving a 6 1/2-year sentence on racketeering and fraud convictions.

The disgraced ex-governor was convicted in April 2006 of fraud in a case stemming from bribes paid for various state licenses. The Supreme Court turned down his appeal in 2008.

His wife, Lura Lynn Lowe, passed away in 2011 while he was in custody but he was temporarily released so he could be with her during her final hours.

Ryan served as governor from 1999-2003. In one of his last acts of governor, he commuted the sentences of all 167 inmates on Illinois’ death row. Three inmates had their sentences reduced to 40 years in prison, while the remaining 165 received life in prison.

FLORIDA – Zimmerman’s Attorney Wants Judge Out, Records Sealed

The attorney for George Zimmerman filed a motion late Monday asking the court to recuse the judge in the case over a possible conflict of interest.

Mark O’Mara, Zimmerman’s attorney, requested that Seminole Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler be removed after she revealed that her husband works with Mark NeJame, a CNN legal analyst. Last week, after O’Mara agreed to take Zimmerman as a client, NeJame revealed that he had been approached by Zimmerman—the 28-year-old neighbourhood watchman accused of second-degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin—about representing him. NeJame declined, but suggested five lawyers, including O’Mara, to Zimmerman, reports The Cutline.

On Friday, Recksiedler said she would consider stepping aside.

Meanwhile, several news organizations—including CNN, USA Today and the Miami Herald—petitioned the court to reverse an order sealing records in the case.

O’Mara told CNN Monday he wants them sealed to prevent the steady flow of leaks that have already marred the case.

“It’s an overall philosophy of trying to keep the information flow concentrated within the court system,” O’Mara said. “It’s much better handled there. And, again, if information like this, even a police report with names on it, gets out, then my concern is that they’re going to be spoken to. They’re going to be questioned. There’s going to be four or five different statements from this one witness, let’s say, and then we have to sift through all of that to try and get to what is the truth.”

O’Mara said he’s also concerned about the safety of the witnesses.

Connecticut may be latest state to repeal death penalty

april 5 2012

(CNN) — The Connecticut Senate on Thursday voted to repeal the death penalty, setting the stage for Connecticut to join several states that have recently abolished capital punishment.

In the last five years, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Illinois have repealed the death penalty. California voters will decide the issue in November.

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives, where it is also expected to pass. Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, has vowed to sign the measure into law should it reach his desk, his office said.

“For everyone, it’s a vote of conscience,” said Senate President Donald Williams Jr., a Democrat who says he’s long supported a repeal. “We have a majority of legislators in Connecticut in favor of this so that the energies of our criminal justice system can be focused in a more appropriate manner.”

In 2009, state lawmakers in both houses tried to pass a similar bill, but were ultimately blocked by then-Gov. Jodi Rell, a Republican.

Capital punishment has existed in Connecticut since its colonial days. But the state was forced to review its death penalty laws beginning in 1972 when a Supreme Court decision required greater consistency in its application. A moratorium was then imposed until a 1976 court decision upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment.

Since then, Connecticut juries have handed down 15 death sentences. Of those, only one person has actually been executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonpartisan group that studies death penalty laws.

Michael Ross, a convicted serial killer, was put to death by lethal injection in 2005 after giving up his appeals.

“It’s not a question of whether it’s morally wrong, it’s just that it isn’t working,” said Richard Dieter, the group’s executive director. “I think when you hear of 15 to 20 years of uncertain appeals, that’s not closure and that’s not justice. It’s a slow, grinding process.”

Eleven people are currently on death row in Connecticut, including Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, who both were sentenced for their roles in the 2007 murders of the Petit family in Cheshire, Connecticut.

The high-profile case drew national attention and sparked conversations about home security and capital punishment. In vetoing the measure to eliminate the death penalty in 2009, Rell cited the Cheshire deaths.

Dr. William Petit, the sole survivor in that attack, has remained a staunch critic of repeal efforts.

“We believe in the death penalty because we believe it is really the only true, just punishment for certain heinous and depraved murders,” Petit told CNN affiliate WFSB.

Advocates of the existing law say capital punishment can act as a criminal deterrent and provides justice for victims.

Opponents say capital punishment is often applied inconsistently, can be discriminatory and has not proven to be an effective deterrent. They also point to instances in which wrongful convictions have been overturned with new investigative methods, including forensic testing.

“Mistakes can be made and you may not know about it until science later exposes them,” said Dieter.

But a recent Quinnipiac poll found that 62% of Connecticut residents think abolishing the death penalty is “a bad idea.”

“No doubt the gruesome Cheshire murders still affect public opinion regarding convicts on death row,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz.

That number jumps to 66% among Connecticut men, and drops to 58% among the state’s women, according to the poll.

The Senate’s proposed law is prospective in nature, meaning that it would not apply to those already sentenced to death.

CNN interview of the wrong conviction of Alan Northrop !

march, 25, 2012

Woodland, Washington (CNN) — Alan Northrop was playing pool in 1993 when his life changed forever. He was lining up a bank shot when he felt something on his wrist: a handcuff.

Northrop was arrested for the rape and kidnapping of a housekeeper. “I instantly said, ‘No, you’ve got the wrong guy,'” Northrop recalls telling detectives. But detectives believed the victim’s testimony, although she was blindfolded for most of the attack. A jury agreed, sentencing Northrop, a father of three children under age 6, to 23 years in prison.

From behind bars, Northrop tried to prove police had the wrong guy. In 2000, he contacted the Innocence Project Northwest at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle.

For years, prosecutors denied the project’s requests to use more advanced DNA testing on the evidence in Northrop’s case. In 2005, a new state law gave judges the power to order additional testing. But it took five more years for Northrop’s testing to be completed and for a court to consider the results that conclusively showed another man’s DNA was on the victim.

In 2010, Northrop, still sitting in prison, got a letter with news he thought he might never get.

“I was jumping around the day room saying, ‘I’m out of here! I’m out of here!'” Northrop said.

read full interview on CNN

Justice for Trayvon Martin National March and Rally, March 26, 2012 4:00 pm !

march 23,

WASHINGTON — President Obama did not mention race even as he addressed it on Friday, instead letting his person and his words say it all: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Weighing in for the first time on the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot and killed a month ago in Florida by a neighborhood watch volunteer, Mr. Obama in powerfully personal terms deplored the “tragedy” and, as a parent, expressed sympathy for the boy’s mother and father.

“I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids,” Mr. Obama said. “Every parent in America,” he added, “should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

While speaking movingly from his perspective as the father of two girls, one a teenager, Mr. Obama notably made no reference to the racial context that has made the killing of Trayvon and the gunman’s claim of self-defense a rallying point for African-Americans. Since Mr. Obama first began campaigning to be “president of all the people,” as his advisers would put it when pressed on racial issues, he has been generally reluctant to talk about race. And after his historic election as the first black president, Mr. Obama learned the hard way about the pitfalls of the chief executive opining on law enforcement matters involving civil rights.

source : New york time  read here.

This is not a case of death row, but a case of injustice and tragedy.

Trayvon Martin was killed.

In the moments before Martin was shot, he was on his cellphone talking to his girlfriend.

“He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man,” the girl told ABC News. “I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run but he said he was not going to run.”

Law enforcement officials in Sanford, Fla., investigating last month’s shooting of an unarmed black teen by self-appointed neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman say they may have missed a possible racist remark made by Zimmerman to a 911 operator seconds before he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

read the case, video on : Huffington post

Uptade march, 22  source CNN

Sanford, Florida (CNN) — After a no-confidence vote and demands for his resignation, pressure mounted Thursday on the police chief of the Florida city where unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was killed.

Sanford city commissioners voted 3-2 Wednesday night in favor of a nonbinding measure of no confidence against Police Chief Bill Lee. It was not immediately clear what impact, if any, that would have.

City Manager Norton Bonaparte said Thursday that he would like an independent review of police action in the wake of the shooting.

NAACP President Ben Jealous, however, was more forthright. Parents, he said, don’t feel their children will be safe with Lee heading the police department.

“He needs to go right now,’ Jealous said.

Meanwhile, the uproar over Martin’s death continued to grow with another rally planned Thursday night at a Sanford church. The Rev. Al Sharpton was slated to lead that rally before news of his mother’s death.

Martin was fatally shot February 26 while walking to the house of his father’s fiancee in Sanford after a trip to a convenience store. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch leader, said he shot the teen in self-defense.

Zimmerman has not been arrested. A police report describes him as a white male; his family says he is Hispanic.

Public outrage over the shooting and police response reverberted well beyond Sanford, a racially mixed Orlando suburb.

Demonstrators crowded New York’s Union Square Wednesday night, in a protest attended by Martin’s parents. Many wore hoodies and carried Skittles, the type of clothing Martin was wearing and the candy he purchased from a convenience store the night he was killed.

CNN videos about Trayvon Martin : watch here