Sometimes, journalists should apologize.
Tony Holt of the Tampa Tribune is one. ...
Less than three months ago, John Kalisz received probation for aggravated assault with a weapon. Now a police officer in a town near Gainesville, Florida is dead at his hand, along with two other victims. An additional two women are seriously injured.
John Kalisz ...
Two stories today underscore the media’s fundamental prejudices — prejudice against those who try to uphold the law, and prejudice for offenders.
In the St. Petersburg Times, there was a follow-up story to Susan Taylor Martin’s highly personal hatchet job on Mark Lunsford, father of murder victim Jessica Lunsford. Back in November, Martin sneeringly attacked Lunsford for, among other things, having the temerity to earn $40,000 a year working as an advocate for child predator laws although, as she observed, he holds “only” a high school diploma. She also criticized Lunsford for comping a $73 celebration at Outback Restaurant on the night the man who raped and murdered his daughter was convicted for her death. ...
The Florida Department of Corrections (headed by Walter McNeil) needs to stop pointing fingers and start taking responsibility for the escape of Tommy Lee Sailor. They’re the ones who screwed up by failing to notice when the violent serial offender absconded from his ankle monitor on New Year’s Eve, enabling Sailor to attack yet another innocent victim.
The Florida Parole Commission (headed by Frederick B. Dunphy) also needs to stop hiding and start answering questions about their decisions and policies that freed Sailor before his sentence was complete. ...
Which part of this story isn’t part of the reported story?
- A violent rapist is foiled when his victim secretly dials 911 and a savvy emergency operator keeps silent for 15 minutes while monitoring the attack and getting help to the woman in danger.
- Improvements in the technology that pinpoints cellphone locations save the victim of a violent rapist when police are able to find her after she secretly dials 911 during the attack.
- A convicted serial rapist, convicted serial armed robber, and self-proclaimed serial killer receives serial leniency from Florida’s Parole Board. Unjustly freed from prison, he disables his ankle monitor, leaves his house for hours to go drinking in a bar, and returns with a victim he proceeds to try to rape, while threatening her with death. He nearly gets away with a heinous crime, and police must risk their own safety to hunt him down, when he should never have been out of prison in the first place.
#3. Of course. And with no real reporting on the multiple failures that led to Tommy Lee Sailor being free and under-monitored, the following won’t be part of any future story, either: ...
(Hat tip to Pat)
In 2007, I stood by the mailbox of the house I once briefly rented in Sarasota, Florida, contemplating the short distance between my house and the house where my rapist grew up, less than a mile, and a strikingly direct path over a well-worn shortcut across the train tracks. ...
From the Bradenton (FL) Herald:
Repeated Judicial Leniency, Misuse of Mental Incompetence Status, Parole Board Leniency, Repeated Failure of “Community Control” ...
Courtwatcher Orlando’s Laura Williams brings attention to the case of Loc Buu Tran:
2006-CF-014820-O In custody since 10/19/06 ~ Trial now scheduled for 11/16/09 with Judge John Adams. 1st Degree Murder. Allegedly stabbed a UCF student to death 10/06 when she tried to break up with him. Also was convicted 8 years ago in Clearwater for rape. Mistrial was declared 8/12/09 after Judge Jenifer Davis realized during the first witness’ testimony that she had worked on the case when in the PD’s office.
Why can’t we seem to get this guy tried? ...
When the A.C.L.U. manufactures an utterly frivolous legal issue that costs the state millions of dollars to litigate, the St. Petersburg Times views that as money well-spent in the interest of “ensuring the health of our democracy.” When A.C.L.U.-associated lawyers profit from lawsuits arising from the group’s activism, the St. Petersburg Times doesn’t complain. It’s all in the interest of ensuring the health of our democracy, you see, and if lawyers turn a few million dimes “keeping the system honest,” well, power to the people.
When health-care non-profits accept funding from hospitals and medical and drug companies that stand to profit from their activism, the St. Petersburg Times doesn’t smell a rat: they smell roses. As they should. Actually, they usually don’t even notice such transactions, since this is the way non-profits simply do business. ...
The Guilty Project documents flaws in the justice system that enable serial offenders to commit more crimes.
Failure to Prosecute, Wrongful Acquittal by Jury, Early Release by State, Family/Employer Cover-Up ...
I didn’t have to look far to find today’s dreadful example of the media blaming anyone except criminals for criminal acts. In the St. Pete Times today, Howard Troxler, a normally reasonable man, wanders far down an ugly path by questioning the recent conviction of a knife-wielding repeat offender on two grounds: the purported reputation of the officer who confronted him, and some trumped-up technicality about types of knives that should be considered weapons.
Troxler apparently feels that police officer Joe Ardolino is permanently tarnished because, in 2003, he was involved in a car chase (of a violent, prolific offender) that ended in the suspect’s death. Never mind that Ardolino was cleared in the incident, as he should have been: once charged, always guilty, at least when it comes to the police. Troxler crosses a troubling line when he impugns the officer in the subsequent murder of a fellow officer: ...
Delmer Smith is now either being investigated or charged in 11 attacks on women and one on a man that occurred after he left DNA at a crime scene in 2008. Had the FBI bothered to upload his DNA profile into their database in a timely manner, these 12 rape, murder, and assault victims would not be victims today. For, if the FBI had done its job, Smith would have been identified the first time he committed a sexual assault after release from prison, and police would have known where to find him because he also had to register his address with the parole board.
Looking beyond the FBI’s screw-up, this case illustrates the importance of probation and registration requirements and of laws that require all convicted felons to give samples of DNA. ...
This is Delmer Smith, who is responsible for a recent reign of terror on Florida’s Gulf Coast that left women from Venice to Bradenton terrified of violent home invasions, murder and rape:
...
On September 4, the jury in the Denise Lee murder trial returned a verdict of death for the man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered her, Michael King. The next day the Sarasota Herald Tribune ran a story detailing the travails King would face on death row, such as limited access to exercise and no air conditioning:
Air conditioning is forbidden on death row, so inmates mostly keep still. “It’s awful,” said the Rev. Larry Reimer, who has visited for 27 years to minister to a death row inmate. “It is hotter there than you permit animals to be kept.” ...
On August 28, jurors in the Michael King trial in Sarasota, Florida found King guilty of raping and killing 21-year old mother, Denise Amber Lee. Here is a photo of Lee’s father, Rick Goff, listening to the last 911 call Denise managed to make, in which she was recorded begging for her life. It’s worth remembering that the families were forced to sit through all the courtroom games the defense played while trying to get King off on a technicality. Which technicality? Any and all of them, of course.
Immediately following the jury’s conviction, the sentencing hearings began. King’s lawyers set out to argue that a childhood sledding accident rendered him incompetent, a mitigating factor the jurors would have to weight against his crimes — if it was true. ...
With so many opportunities to exclude evidence, and so few ways to get it admitted, it is only the most unlucky offenders who ever see the inside of a courtroom. This terrible reality is what many journalists and defense attorneys call the genius of our system, though, of course, it doesn’t feel that way when it is your daughter or wife begging for her life.
~~~ ...
One day after the on-duty murder of Tampa Police Cpl. Mike Roberts, the St. Petersburg Times actually published a story bemoaning the killer’s hard life.
We learn that Humberto Delgado Jr. had insomnia, was good at fixing things, was a dad just like Roberts — well, not exactly, because he didn’t support his children and he murdered a police officer, but the Times is nothing if not relentless in its efforts to assert that offenders are as much the victims of the crimes they commit as the people they choose to victimize: ...
From PROTECT, the National Association to Protect Children:
Miami’s Julia Tuttle Causeway fiasco–where about 70 “registered” sex offenders have been herded under a bridge to live–is being challenged in court by the ACLU. ...
Yesterday, while writing about the Times‘ willful misrepresentation of a child sexual assault conviction, I noted:
[W]hen I see an offender with a record of one or three instances of “inappropriate touching,” I suspect that’s the tip of the iceberg. I suspect the conviction is the result of a plea bargain agreed to just to get the sick bastard away from the child and onto a registry, which is the most victims can reasonably hope for in the courts these days . . . ...
The New York Times is the most important newspaper in America, and that is unfortunate, for in their pages, ordinary criminals are frequently treated with extreme deference and sympathy, even respect. Some types of criminals are excluded from this kid-glove treatment, but that is a subject for another day. For the most part, ordinary (property, drug, violent, sexual) criminals comprise a protected class in the Times. Even when it must be acknowledged that someone has, in fact, committed a crime, the newsroom’s mission merely shifts to minimizing the culpability of the offender by other means.
There are various ways of doing this. Some have to do with selectively criticizing the justice system: for example, the Times reports criminal appeals in detail without bothering to acknowledge congruent facts that support the prosecution and conviction. They misrepresent the circumstances that lead to (sometimes, sometimes not) wrongful convictions while showing no curiosity about the exponentially higher rate of non-prosecution of crimes. ...
What can be done about crime in the neighborhoods around Georgia Tech? As reported by the AJC, the youths who have been arrested — and the ones who are yet to be caught — are perhaps the most dangerous type of criminal: immature and armed. As James Fetig, an administrator at Georgia Tech, observed:
“[o]ne concern is the age of the criminals. Police tell us they are between 16 and 19,” Fetig said. “This is not a time when young men tend to consider consequences. We are very concerned that one of these robberies could go terribly wrong and have terrible consequences.” ...
I have been watching the growth of court-watching in Georgia, and it is encouraging to see the practice taking hold. Nothing will change on the streets until public scrutiny is brought to bear on the courts, where evidence abounds that judges have been breaking and bending the intent of Georgia’s sentencing laws with no professional consequences whatsoever.
No consequences for judges, even when they actually violate Georgia’s sentencing laws. No prosecutor dare complain when a judge cuts an illicit deal with an offender — because the prosecutor must appear before that judge, or one of that judge’s peers and colleagues, every single day. You can’t be critical of judges and be effective in the courtroom. So there are no consequences for judges, even when their decision to overlook the law or their failure to do their jobs with appropriate diligence results in preventable murders, like the killing of Dr. Eugenia Calle. ...
Back in the 1990’s, Georgia Lt. Governor Mark Taylor made it a priority to build the state’s DNA crime database. He did this long before other states got on board, and for many years Georgia was rightly viewed as a leader in using DNA to solve violent crimes. Taylor was driven by his strong commitment to victims of rape and child molestation who had been denied justice. He did not heed the civil rights and convict rights lobbies who tried to stir up hysteria over using DNA to solve crimes (ironically, these same activists are howling over the Supreme Court’s utterly reasonable decision last week not to enshrine post-conviction DNA as a blanket, federal right, when 46 states already guarantee it, as even Barry Scheck admits: don’t believe virtually anything you read about this case on the editorial pages).
Taylor’s leadership on DNA databasing yielded an extraordinary number of database “hits” long before other states got their databases up and running. In 1998, only convicted and incarcerated sex offenders were required to submit DNA samples in Georgia, yet 13 repeat-offender rapists were immediately linked to other sexual assaults, and scores of “unidentified offender” profiles were readied to be used if those offenders were finally caught and tested. ...
I stop by the convenience store near my house a few times a week. It is the only store for a few miles in either direction, on a rural stretch of highway. There’s a stop light, the divided highway, a single train track, the convenience store, and then 55+ trailer parks, tomato fields, and cow pastures leading out to the bay. If you drive south on the highway, you hit the county line.
In other words, it is a perfect target for crime. Easy-in, easy-out, with little traffic and a good view of the people coming and going. The women who work as cashiers there are world-weary. They are bitter and fatalistic about the fact that they keep getting robbed. When I spoke with one of them a few weeks ago, she seemed a little embarrassed that she was even upset about the latest armed robbery. She looks like somebody who has had few breaks in life and has learned not to complain. She stands less than five feet tall and might weigh 100 pounds soaking wet, as they say. Like most of the store’s employees, including the security guard they have hired, she is a senior citizen. Once you get to be in your sixties, it’s hard enough to find work. ...
Midtown Atlanta Neighborhood Association safety chair Randall Cobb, commenting in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about two stabbings in Piedmont Park, got it right:
“Crime has not gone down in the city, no matter what the city says they’re doing,” [he said] noting a spike in Midtown break-ins and armed robberies since 2007. ...
CORRECTION TO THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: A reader informed me that the names of judges currently presiding over a court division in Florida attach to previous cases from that division — therefore, the judge listed online may not be the same judge who meted out a previous sentence in that division. I have corrected the following story to reflect this.
Why this happens is another issue. There ought to be real transparency in court proceedings, and it shouldn’t require a trip to the courthouse or a phone call to sometimes-unresponsive clerks to discover how a particular judge ruled on a particular case — who let a sex assailant and child abuser go free, to kill another victim, for instance. ...
From Nicholas Kristof, in Friday’s New York Times:
[W]hile we have breakthrough DNA technologies to find culprits and exculpate innocent suspects, we aren’t using them properly — and those who work in this field believe the reason is an underlying doubt about the seriousness of some rape cases. In short, this isn’t justice; it’s indifference. ...
Apparently, while it may be hard to be a pimp, as the popular song goes, it isn’t particularly hard to be a defendant in a child molestation case:
DragonCon founder’s health might keep him from standing trial
Edward Kramer was charged in 2000 with molestation children
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ...
Recently, the august St. Petersburg Times sundered a little bit more of its augustness in the interest of chasing down the pocket change that passes for newspaper profits these days.
They started a mug shot page. ...
The St. Pete Times has recently begun running a “mugshot” feature, like the ones published in cheap tabloid form and sold in convenience stores. It’s a sad day for that institution (the Times, not convenience stores).
Here is the type of reporting for which the Times used to be routinely known. It offers real insight into a tragic crime and –unlike so much reflexively pro-criminal reporting, like this disturbing L.A. Times whitewash — explores the price innocent people pay for our collective failure to put criminals away: ...