In a statement following the Supreme Court ruling, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said the decision “will have little to no impact here in Philadelphia. The decision involves juveniles under the age of 18 serving a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for a crime other than murder. In Philadelphia we believe there are no such cases.”

But the reality isn’t so clear-cut: Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion states that “defendants who do not kill, intend to kill, or foresee that life will be taken are categorically less deserving of [life without the possibility of parole] than are murderers.”

In Pennsylvania, the felony — or second-degree — murder rule imposes a mandatory life sentence without parole for any crime involving a homicide, whether or not that homicide was intended. And because the commonwealth allows juveniles to be tried as adults in murder cases, there are many cases in Pennsylvania involving juveniles sentenced to life without parole for crimes in which they did not kill, intend to kill or foresee that a life would be taken.

Most of the coverage following the Supreme Court’s decision two weeks ago emphasized that relatively few kids incarcerated for life would find their sentences affected by the new legislation. But states where the felony murder rule is law may find that number significantly higher in upcoming months.

The parties did not identify any decisions issued prior to 1989 concerning whether a reckless investigation violated an accused [person's] right to a fair trial. A reasonable officer in 1989 would not have fair warning that conducting a reckless investigation was unconstitutional.”

Meanwhile, Whitley is pretty much penniless, having given up the best years of his life to an unwarranted prison term. His son grew up without him, his family aged thinking he was a murderer.

Though Pennsylvania has no standard for compensating wrongfully convicted men and women, the Innocence Project in New York recommends that states:

• Compensate exonerated people immediately after release with a fixed sum or a range of recovery for each year of wrongful incarceration. Congress and President Bush have recommended that this amount be set at $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration.
• Provide immediate re-entry funds and access to job training, educational, health and legal services after an innocent person’s release.

From the Trib:

[Laing] faces several felony charges, including four counts of terroristic threats, two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of reckless endangerment, McCandless police Chief Gary Anderson said.

Anderson said police got a call from someone requesting an ambulance to come the Presidential Arms apartment complex, 9815 Presidential Drive, about 1 a.m. yesterday. When officers arrived, they found the door to the third-floor unit slightly ajar.

Officers called out the name of the man inside, got no answer and went in. Inside, they found a man seated on a couch with an assault rifle in his hands.

“He cocked it in front of the officers,” Anderson said. “At that moment, their safety was at risk.”

The officers left the apartment and dispatched Allegheny County police for help. A SWAT team came to the scene to try to convince the man to come out.

Authorities removed the man from the apartment just after 5 a.m.

But despite loaded sentences like, “Police say they were familiar with Laing, but would not elaborate on how,” apparently either 1) no one thought to Google the guy’s name or look him up on the local UJS portal of magisterial docket sheets, or 2) my standards for investigation are low and bloggy. Regardless, it turns out the guy has a bit of a past. Behold “The Russel [sic] Laing Story” from the Gun Owners Alliance:

Today my gun collection still sits, I suppose, in the garage of the WDPD where they placed it after stealing it from my home. They refused to answer a certified letter sent in October 1997 to provide a lawfully required listing of the property they had taken from my home. During the course of my petition to vacate/expunge my 302 record, they filed a cleverly worded statement with the court implying that they could not open the gun safe that they dragged out of my home (how did they know it had/has guns in it?)…even though I personally  unlocked it for them after they threatened to destroy it.  But my story is not about the illegal and outrageous actions of a few local police officers who deviated from the honorable and trustworthy profession of law enforcement. My story is about legislation which was passed unanimously by Pennsylvania legislators which actually writes into law provisions that deliberately circumvent the PA and United State’s constitutionally provided right to due process under the law…so that just about anyone can “cry-witch” against any lawful abiding gun owner, as was done to me, and take their right to own firearms, their lawfully owned valuable property, their personalliberty, and their reputation with less due process than would be need to assess a parking fine!

The gist here is that according to Laing himself, this exact same “Officers Find Ridiculous Amount Of Guns Inside Apartment” situation happened in April 1996. Despite having been involuntarily committed to a mental institution (that’s a “302” here in Allegheny County), Laing was later allowed to become a legal gun owner.

Some interesting unanswered questions remain: Who made the call “requesting an ambulance” in this recent gun hoarding scenario? And why? And what sort of event was Laing experiencing when he decided to open his front door “slightly” and “cock” his assault rifle in front of police officers?

If previous literature is any indication, I’m guessing this is not the last we’ll hear from Russell Laing (who also has some other interesting drug and prostitution related charges that have been withdrawn from his record (PDF)).

A county jail in Colorado doesn’t allow inmates to read newspapers — except for USA Today.  The Garfield County Jail bans newspapers because the commander says they make inmates unsafe. The commander tells the Aspen Daily News that inmates can be targeted for violence if other inmates learn in the newspaper what others have been convicted of. Jail commander Steve Hopple says that USA Today is the only paper allowed because it carries “well-rounded national news.” The newspaper ban has been in effect about a year, but jail officials just this week confirmed the ban to the Aspen newspaper. In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisons could ban newspapers and magazines.”

This “we’re keeping the prisoners safe” logic seems asinine to me. Not only does this Colorado jail deprive its inmates of a connection with local news (replacing that local news with already-digested national news summaries), it also hinders the Colorado justice system’s access to perhaps its strongest — though most dubious — form of prosecutorial ammunition: snitches.

Though not all snitches come forward with testimony against fellow inmates after they’ve seen a crime reported in a newspaper, some do. And even the “well-rounded” USA Today reports on it every now and then.

Main point is: the idea that any human being, incarcerated or free, crackhead or not, should be denied access to topical reading material (potentially relevant to their life or case) makes me ill. Not ill to the extent that I would want “to grab the nearest taser, jam it down my throat, pull the trigger, and hope that my bodily fluids would conduct the 10,000 volts of electricity to instantly fry my brain,” but still — ill. Colorado should rethink this.

Hattip: DSC, Michael Hastings

State prison officials say a 26-year-old New York man serving a triple life sentence for attempted murder was accidentally released from a downtown prison Thursday.

Officials said Raymond Taylor, who was sentenced to three terms of life in prison on an attempted first-degree murder charge in 2005, was erroneously released at 2 p.m. from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center in Baltimore. The Baltimore Sun reported at the time that Taylor tried to kill his ex-girlfriend and her two daughters at their Pentland Drive home in Northeast Baltimore.

Taylor pleaded guilty to shooting Tammie Johnson and her teenage daughters Cierra Johnson and Shatera Brooks. Each was shot multiple times in the head and body with a .22 caliber handgun, prosecutors said.

And he’s still at-large. Anyone who sees this accidentally released convict is asked to call 911.

UPDATE: Captured.

However, realizing that a lot of writers and reporters (including myself) are having a rough time finding work, I made the flip observation that “work is work” — implying that if working for the Church of Scientology is the only gig you can get, then so be it. Who am I to judge?

My colleague Steve Weinberg — professor of investigative journalism, author of well-researched books, and writer for seriously good publications like Miller-McCune and the IRE Journal –  commented to say the following:

Because I’m so deeply identified within the journalism world as an investigative journalist, I often receive requests for advice. Recently, an experienced investigative journalist who has found it difficult to conduct his work because of the economic downturn asked me if he should apply for the Scientologists’ opening. I told him no, even though I like to see superb investigative reporting no matter who is funding it. More than any other existing organization that comes to mind, the Scientologists have been so hostile to outside journalists that I cannot see crossing the line to accept employment there.

But then earlier this week, Howard Kurtz posted an article about investigative journalists working for the Church of Scientology. And guess who’s featured in the post?

Steve Weinberg, the former IRE executive, who has taught at the University of Missouri’s journalism school for a quarter-century, says he was paid $5,000 to edit the study and “tried to make sure it’s a good piece of journalism criticism, just like I’ve written a gazillion times. . . . For me it’s kind of like editing a Columbia Journalism Review piece.”

He says their agreement requires that the church publish the study in full, if it decides to make it public, but that “the contract says the church has the right to do nothing with it except put it in a drawer.” That means Scientology leaders have an out if the recently completed study isn’t to their liking.

Weinberg acknowledges that the “unusual situation” gave him pause, saying: “It certainly wouldn’t be something just any reporter would do. My role was more limited, and I can certainly use the money these days.”

I have a deep respect for Weinberg. I’m a member of the organization he helped to found so many years ago. I e-mailed him for comment: “What made you change your mind and take $5,000 from this organization to edit copy? Was it purely the (admittedly very good) money, or something else about their terms? A combination of the two? Something else?” After an exchange of a few e-mails, he said the following (I’ve chosen to quote him at length, verbatim, giving him the opportunity to explain his thinking in his own words):

The two reporters, both of whom I respect and have read for decades, asked me to serve as the editor. They paid me from a larger sum they negotiated with the Scientologists. The Kurtz account is imprecise, and he has expressed his regret to me in writing that his posting failed to note various nuances. I realize that the nuances might feel irrelevant to some folks, but they are vital to me.

He followed that with:

Here is the context: Two veteran investigative journalists — one who has won a Pulitzer Prize and many other national honors, the other who has won numerous national print and broadcast awards — replied to a Scientology advertisement about hiring freelancers for various projects. I knew nothing about the advertisement. After the two reporters agreed to examine St. Petersburg Times coverage of the church, they contacted me about serving as the project editor. I did not deal with the Scientologists, except to receive a contract and later payment in the mail. I dealt entirely with the two superb investigative reporters.

We received payment before the reporting and editing began so the Scientologists could not influence the project by withholding the entire fee or offering a kill fee. As journalists often do when being examined by other journalists (for Columbia Journalism Review or wherever), those at the St. Pete Times refused to cooperate. The “ongoing coverage” excuse is sad to read, because the coverage at the Time of the Scientologists will always be “ongoing.”

The Scientologists have the contractual right to withhold the study. If it’s published, it must be published without changing a comma, much less the substance.

Kurtz is writing and Times editor Brown is commenting without knowing what the two independent investigative reporters wrote. At this juncture, I have no idea whether the Scientologists will publish the study.

I edited the manuscript with the same devotion to factual and contextual accuracy as I would edit any piece of first-rate reporting.

Still more:

Naturally, I asked about editorial independence. They showed me the contract they had negotiated with the Scientologists, which spells out complete editorial independence.  That independence included payment in full before the reporting/writing began. That independence also included the proviso the study would be published as submitted, without any alterations (not even comma placement) or would simply become an internal document for the Scientologists.

Except for filling out standard paperwork so that I would receive my share of the overall payment, I had no contact with the Scientologists. The reporters submitted their draft to me in late January, I edited for a couple of weeks as drafts passed back and forth among Szechenyi, Carollo and me, and then I declared my editing complete. Szechenyi and Carollo then submitted the study to the appropriate Scientologist executive.

Now, I’m hoping the Scientologists will choose to publish the study soon. The Scientologist spokesman, Tommy Davis, characterized the study of the St. Petersburg Times coverage as highly negative.  (Kurtz tells me those were not the exact words of Davis, but that those two words fairly capture the gist of Davis’ characterization.) I would liek everybody interested in this situation to read the actual study reported/written by Szechenyi and Carollo, plus edited by me. Then each reader can decide on her/his own about the quality of the newspaper’s coverage and the quality of the study examining that coverage.

If you’ve made it to this point, congrats: You’ve fallen about as far into the rabbit hole of journalism ethics as I’d recommend. But you’ve made it. So what do you think? Is it ok for veteran investigative reporters to write for the Scientologists? Or is  working for an organization “so hostile to outside journalists” just not right?

We’ll really get to the bottom of this when we find out if the CoS publishes the investigation or not.

More here and here.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Koua Fong Lee has insisted since 2006 that he tried everything he could to stop his 1996 Toyota Camry from crashing into the back of an Oldsmobile and causing a horrifying wrack-up that left three people dead and landed him in prison on an eight-year stretch.

Today the Associated Press (via the LA Times) highlighted his case as representing the kinds of unfortunate accidental scenarios that might’ve happened while Toyota was supposedly ignoring their brake problems.

Lee’s accident is among a growing number of cases, some long resolved, that are getting new attention since Toyota admitted its problems with sudden acceleration were more extensive than originally believed. Numerous lawsuits involving Toyota accidents have been filed over the recent revelations, and attorneys expect the numbers will climb.

No one on Wall Street seems to give a shit, and Prius’s are still selling like crazy to other people who also don’t give a shit, but nonetheless, stay tuned.

And of course watch out for “financially oriented pirates.”

The SF Chronicle reports:

Case records don’t show whether police or juvenile courts suspected that Ramos had entered the United States illegally. But under the city’s sanctuary policy, as juvenile authorities then interpreted it, they would not have passed along that information to federal immigration officials.

Mayor Gavin Newsom reversed that practice in 2008 and ordered city employees to report suspected illegal immigrant youths to federal authorities after felony arrests. City supervisors passed an ordinance over Newsom’s veto that delayed reporting until a youth is found to have committed a felony, but the mayor is refusing to enforce it, saying it violates federal law.

Judge Charlotte Woolard of San Francisco Superior Court said cities “generally are not liable for failing to protect individuals against crime.” More from the The Chron:

After Ramos’ release, federal authorities learned of his immigration status but did not take him into custody. The family’s lawsuit contended, however, that the city was responsible for the shootings because its policy had allowed Ramos to go free.

In her ruling, Woolard said San Francisco had no duty to protect the Bolognas or anyone else from Ramos unless city officials had information that he posed a specific danger to them. There was no such evidence in this case, she said

So there’s at least two unfortunate things going on here: 1) San Francisco has way too many illegal immigrants to track (which also likely means it’s politically expedient to just kinda look the other way in most immigration/deportation situations), and 2) because Ramos didn’t threaten his victims before he shot them, they’re not eligible to claim that the city failed to protect them. I’m no immigration scholar, but I’m guessing if “America’s Toughest Sheriff” was employed by the City of San Francisco, this ruling might have gone a different way.

What’s the answer to this boondoggle? To whom should the victims’ family look for restitution in this nightmare case? Should they even seek restitution? Or should they put aside those hopes and take comfort in Ramos’ status as a man facing life in prison without the possibility of parole in one of the worst prisons in the world?

They shaved her head and smeared her face with nail polish. They forced Daugherty to drink and eat urine, detergent, medication, spices and vegetable oil. They beat her with a towel rack, a vacuum hose and a crutch. They wrapped Christmas lights around her. Knight stabbed her in the chest, side and neck, an affidavit said. Smyrnes told police he cut her in the wrist. The suspects implicated each other in the murder, police said.

Knight and Smyrnes stuffed the victim into a trash can and dragged it a few blocks to the parking lot of Greensburg Salem Middle School, police allege. It was found about 6:30 a.m. Thursday.

Greensburg Police identified the following suspects:

There’s already death penalty discussion surrounding this case, despite the plethora of questions and the lack of available answers. The Post-Gazette quotes Greensburg police Chief Walter Lyons saying this might have been a case of jealousy gone horrifically insane, but investigators are not getting consistent stories from so-called persons of interest.

“We’re getting different statements from different people,” he said. “We’re still trying to talk to all the people who are involved to try to pin down exactly what the motive was.” Police have said Ms. Daugherty had “some relationship” with Mr. Smyrnes, but they were still trying to determine its nature.

People — and even people with no identifiable connection with the situation or the town or… anything, really — have a tendency to go berserk with outrage in cases like this. Some are already calling this a “cult killing.”

The tendency to go berserk is certainly justifiable; the thought of six individuals torturing a helpless and innocent woman for 33-hours before stabbing her to death and throwing her into a trashcan… well, that’s enough to get anyone furious. But let’s see how this one plays out. A few of the suspects have certifiable mental illnesses, and one psychologist told the Tribune-Review there’s a good chance some suspects were more involved in this murder than others.

Susan Goldberg, a psychologist at Duquesne University specializing in criminal behavior, said the alleged murder likely was triggered by the presence of one strong individual in the group.

“I’m suggesting there is a leader,” Goldberg said. “Most murders do not rise to this level of sadism. And it’s difficult to imagine all six individuals exhibiting the same sadistic tendencies to this degree.”

Of course, it’s all speculation at this point. And none of that last bit holds much weight in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. “Accomplice liability” means that if you participated in a crime that resulted in a murder, your degree of involvement doesn’t really matter; you’re liable to get charged with murder anyway.

Which means the R.I.P. Jennifer Daugherty page on Facebook might soon begin to look a lot like the Capital Murder For Richard Poplawski page.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE via UpTheDown, Gargilius and others on Reddit: Consider that some say it costs states quite a bit more to execute a person than it does to keep them in prison for life. Discuss if you’re up for it.