I heard from the father of Bria Metz yesterday: he said it’s been two years since Bria’s murderer, Aurelio Martinez, confessed to the crime. Yet Martinez still hasn’t been to trial or been sentenced.
Bria Metz, murdered at 17, her body was abandoned by the side of a highway ...
I wonder what Bob Barr has to say about Ed Kramer’s health these days.
Ed Kramer, Pre-Miraculous Recovery/New Child-Endangerment Charges ...
It is not yet August, and 94 police officers have been killed in the line of duty this year, 87 by the mid-year mark (June 30), and seven more in July. That’s an increase of 43% since 2009. But another fact emerging from the statistics is even more chilling: gun killings of officers have more than doubled in the last twenty-four months, rising 22% in 2008 – 2009, and a staggering 41% in 2009 – 2010.
That is an increase of 63% in just two years. ...
Now that fugitive child rapist “Poppa Love” Speights has been tracked down by the police (for the second time — after a Tampa judge actually cut him loose on bail despite his flight from the law on child-rape charges in 2008), maybe more of his victims will come forward.
Then again, that’s what was said the last time, too. ...
The print news coverage of the Michael Harvey trial continues to skirt important questions:
Meanwhile the AJC’s coverage is even more confusing today than it was a few days ago: ...
Much is being made about Rodney Alcala’s allegedly superior intelligence. I don’t buy it any more than I buy it when defense attorneys wave a piece of paper in the courtroom and claim their client is mentally challenged and thus deserves a break. It’s just theater. Alcala’s a haircut with cheekbones: his IQ, whatever it might be, matters far less than the pro-offender sentiments of the era when he was first tried, and re-tried.
It certainly didn’t take a rocket scientist to play the California criminal justice system for a fool back in the 1970’s. Unfortunately, in many ways, the same is still true. ...
The good news: U.S. Marshals in Houston caught violent serial rapist Ali Reza Nejad after he slipped off his ankle monitor and fled Georgia upon hearing that the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed his conviction and 35-year sentence last week.
Nejad, Before and After Dye Job ...
Man rapes, tortures five daughters, impregnates them repeatedly, forces them to deliver babies at home.
Administers beatings with steel-toe boots, wooden boards. Withholds food, doles out extreme psychological torture. ...
Barack Obama is arguably the most offender-friendly, victim-loathing president the country has ever seen. His judicial and political philosophies are reflexively anti-incarceration. His political career suggests a particularly disturbing pattern of disrespect for victims of sex crime.
In the Illinois state senate, Obama was the only senator who refused to support a bill allowing victims of sexual assault to have certain court records sealed. The bill was intended to protect victims from having their sex lives and other extremely personal information (medical and gynecological records) splayed out in the public record for all to see after a trial had ended. The legislation was written to protect the dignity of women who had been victimized by rapists, and then re-victimized in the courtroom at the hands of sleazy defense attorneys. ...
Defense attorneys in Tampa Bay are attempting to derail the trial of accused two-time rapist Kendrick Morris. They are demanding that DNA evidence identifying Morris as the rapist in two extremely violent sexual assaults be thrown out because, they allege, police collected it improperly.
Of course, there is no other way for them to defend their client: his DNA matches the two rapes. So Morris’ lawyers are treating the courtroom like a casino craps table, not a serious truth-finding forum, a sadly reasonable presumption on their part, in fact. Warped rules of evidence, piled one upon the other, create countless opportunities for keeping important facts from being considered by judges and juries. ...
Yesterday, I linked to one section of an interesting Philadelphia Inquirer series on chaos in the courts. The entire series is worth reading, but you have to download a flash player to view it all (pathetically, that’s onerous for me): here’s the link.
Anyone who believes the problems described by the Inquirer are limited to the City of Brotherly Love has not visited a courtroom in their own jurisdiction lately. ...
Disorder in the courts. It is the main reason violent offenders and repeat offenders are still on the streets. Why is our court system falling apart?
The Philadelphia Inquirer has some of the best crime journalism in the country. They understand that covering the justice system doesn’t just mean hounding the cops and covering big trials: it means investigating the courts, particularly courts’ systematic failures to enforce the law. Why this fact continues to elude nearly every other big-city newspaper eludes me. If you read nothing else this week, take a look at this: ...