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At least five people were exonerated in 2018 after having been wrongfully convicted in cases that involved the misuse or threatened use of the death penalty, a DPIC analysis of data accompanying a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has shown. The National Registry's annual report on wrongful convictions, Exonerations in 2018, recorded a record 151 new exonerations across the United States in 2018, including 68 exonerations resulting from wrongful homicide convictions. Two of those exonerations freed death-row prisoners Vicente Benavides and Clemente Aguirre.
A record number of the exonerations in 2018 were the product of wrongful convictions obtained by police and/or prosecutorial misconduct (107) or perjury/false accusation (111), with both often occurring in combination. The two also were the leading factors contributing to wrongful homicide convictions, 79.4% of which involved police and/or prosecutorial misconduct (54 cases) and 76.5% of which involved perjury/false accusation (52 cases). Historically, those two factors are the leading causes of wrongful capital convictions. Both were present in more than two-thirds of the homicide exonerations (47 cases, 69.1%) in 2018, including the wrongful capital convictions of Benavides and Aquirre. DNA evidence helped to exonerate 14 of those wrongfully convicted of homicide in 2018, only 20.1% of homicide exonerations. The prosecution presented perjured testimony or false witness accusations in all of the murder cases involving DNA, and police and/or prosecutorial misconduct was also present in more than 60% of those cases. DNA helped to rebut false or misleading forensic evidence presented by the prosecution in five of the homicide exonerations.
At least three other homicide exonerations in 2018 involved the wrongful use or threat of the death penalty. Bobby Joe Maxwell was capitally prosecuted in Los Angeles, California for a series of ten murders and five robberies attributed to the "Skid Row Stabber" in 1978 and 1979. No physical evidence directly linked Maxwell to the murders and witnesses failed to identify him or his voice in police lineups. He won a new trial in 2010 after new evidence exposed the prosecution's prison informant as a "serial liar." The prosecution dropped charges against Maxwell after he suffered a heart attack that left him comatose. Matthew Sopron was convicted of a double murder and sentenced to life without parole in 1998 in Chicago, Illinois after an 18-year-old prosecution witness falsely implicated him after having been threatened with the death penalty. William Bigeck subsequently admitted that Sopron "had absolutely nothing to do with the murders" and testified in post-conviction proceedings in 2018 that he would have done anything to avoid the death penalty and that he had changed his initial statement to obtain a plea deal that took the death penalty off the table. Daniel Villegas was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in El Paso, Texas in August 1995 for a drive-by double murder. The 16-year-old falsely confessed to the murders after a police detective handcuffed him to a chair, threatened to take him to the desert and "beat his ass," slapped him, and said he would die in the electric chair if he didn't confess. "[T]errified out of his mind," Villegas confessed. The Texas state courts overturned the conviction in 2012, citing ineffective assistance of counsel. Presenting evidence of innocence at his third trial, Villegas was acquitted in October 2018.
The Fresno County District Attorney's office has announced that it is dropping the death penalty against Douglas Stankewitz (pictured), California's longest-serving death-row prisoner. After reviewing extensive mitigating evidence that Stankewitz's trial counsel had failed to investigate, Fresno prosecutors announced on April 19, 2019 that a sentence of life without parole would be "fair and just" in Stankewitz's case and that they will not pursue a third capital-sentencing proceeding against him.
Stankewitz was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1978 for a murder committed while he was 19 years old. He was the first person sent to California's death row after the state reestablished the death penalty earlier that year. Prior to trial, Stankewitz's trial lawyer asked the court to conduct a hearing on his client's competency to stand trial. The court-appointed psychiatrist reported that Stankewitz suffered from "paranoid delusions that his public defender was in collusion with the prosecutor" and that this delusion "interfered with his ability to cooperate in the conduct of his defense." Nonetheless, the trial court refused to conduct a competency hearing and Stankewitz was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The California Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1982 based upon doubts about Stankewitz's competency. Before his retrial, the trial court found an irreparable conflict existed between Stankewitz and his public defender and appointed private counsel, Hugh Goodwin, as substitute counsel. Despite believing that Stankewitz was incompetent, Goodwin failed to obtain a psychological evaluation of his client. Stankewitz was convicted and sentenced to death a second time.
More than 25 years later, a California federal district court overturned that death sentence based upon Goodwin's failure to investigate and present a broad range of mitigating evidence of intellectual impairment, abuse, neglect, and brain damage. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Stankewitz v. Wong, upheld the district court's decision in 2012. The court wrote that Goodwin presented a "paltry" penalty-phase defense that primarily "focused … on the 'power of God' to help persons change their lives" and that praised the work of prison chaplains.
The available mitigating evidence showed that Stankewitz had experienced a deeply traumatic upbringing, enduring a variety of abuses common among death-row prisoners. Stankewitz was born into poverty in a home without electricity or running water, where there was rarely enough food for all ten children. While she was pregnant with him, Stankewitz's mother drank alcohol excessively, and his father hit her in the abdomen. His parents and older siblings abused him physically and mentally, and by age five, he had started sniffing paint. Alcohol and drug abuse soon followed. His older siblings abused him so severely that he has "a substantial indentation on his cranium." He was removed from his home at age six because his mother beat him with an electrical cord and was sent to jail. From then until his arrest at age 19, he was in various forms of government care, where he continued to experience abuse. He was sexually abused, beaten, unnecessarily drugged, tied to beds, and deliberately tortured. Mental health examinations have shown that he is borderline intellectually disabled and has significant brain dysfunction, likely as a result of fetal alcohol syndrome and severe childhood trauma.
Rather than extend the case further, prosecutors ultimately agreed that this mitigating evidence justified a life sentence.
Three southern states have taken action to limit the public's access to information relating to executions by increasing secrecy surrounding lethal-injection drug suppliers. On April 12, 2019, the Texas Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision that would have disclosed the source of lethal-injection drugs used to carry out executions in Texas in 2014, asserting that disclosure "would create a substantial threat of physical harm to the source's employees and others." On April 9, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed into law one of the most expansive and punitive execution secrecy laws in the nation, concealing the identity of lethal-injection drug suppliers from the public and criminalizing disclosure of execution-related information. Act 810 exempts lethal-injection records from the state's Freedom of Information Act and makes the intentional or reckless disclosure of the exempted information a felony. In Louisiana, amidst partisan feuding over the reasons the state has not carried out executions, a bill that would make secret the source of execution drugs was referred to the House Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice on April 8, the first day of the 2019 Louisiana state legislative session. Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards, who voted against a similar bill five years ago while serving as a state legislator, indicated that he would likely sign the measure. Louisiana's legislature is also considering two bills that would abolish capital punishment.
The Texas Supreme Court decision marked the culmination of several years of litigation over the state's lethal-injection secrecy policy. A Texas district court and a state court of appeals both ordered disclosure of the drug supplier's identity, and the Supreme Court initially upheld those lower court rulings. The state asked for a rehearing, arguing that disclosure would have "potentially devastating consequences" to public safety. The rehearing took place after BuzzFeed News revealed through investigative reporting that the state had obtained lethal-injection drugs from Greenpark Compounding Pharmacy, a Houston based compounding pharmacy with a history of safety violations. When the compounder's identity was revealed, activists peacefully protested outside the pharmacy. Attorney Ari Cuenin, arguing for the state, said that protests, along with alleged threats, had convinced pharmacies not to provide drugs to the state. The state called the pharmacy a "soft target" in an "urban area, whose only defense is its anonymity."
A number of states have asserted that anti-death-penalty activists have intimidated pharmacies and major pharmaceutical companies into refusing to supply drugs for executions and have argued in legislative debates and in litigation that these alleged threats justify execution secrecy. In its secrecy bill, the Arkansas legislature alleged without evidence that "there is a well-documented guerilla war being waged against the death penalty" and that "[a]nti-death penalty advocates have pressured pharmaceutical companies to refuse to supply the drugs used by states to carry out death sentences." In fact, calling the use of their medicines in execution contrary to their medical mission, several drug companies have sued Arkansas or filed friend-of-the-court briefs alleging that the state engaged in misrepresentations and subterfuge to improperly obtain their drugs. Independent media and law enforcement investigations have concluded that the alleged threats against drug manufacturers and suppliers have been unfounded or grossly exaggerated. A 2016 BuzzFeed News investigation revealed that FBI records debunked an alleged threat that Texas and Ohio claimed established the need for secrecy. That supposed threat was an email from a university professor who provided his name and phone number and warned an Oklahoma pharmacy to take safety precautions. The email was one of three pieces of evidence, along with a blog post and comments left on the website of a previous supplier, that the Texas court relied on in its decision. "There is no evidence of a history of specific threats to that particular pharmacist or pharmacy because the source's identity has been kept confidential," the court wrote. "Thus, the question before us in this case is whether the mere fact that the public knows that the Department is receiving lethal injection drugs from some source, whoever it might be, is enough to conclude that a substantial threat of physical harm will come to bear on the source of the drugs if the identifying information is made public."
A civilian federal appeals court has dealt another blow to the Guantánamo military commission death-penalty proceedings, striking more than two years of decisions in the USS Cole bombing prosecution of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Al-Nashiri because of a military judge's undisclosed conflict of interest. Al-Nashiri faces capital charges for his alleged role in the suicide bombing attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000 in which 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and another 39 were injured.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a writ of mandamus vacating all orders issued by Colonel Vance Spath (pictured) between November 19, 2015 and his retirement in 2018 because Spath had not disclosed to defense counsel that he had applied for employment with the Department of Justice (DOJ) as an immigration judge while continuing to preside over pretrial proceedings against Al-Nashiri, who is being prosecuted by the DOJ. During the time period in which he was seeking employment with the DOJ, Spath issued numerous oral rulings from the bench and more than 450 written orders. The panel wrote that "[r]equiring Al-Nashiri to proceed under the long shadow of all those orders, even if enforced by a new, impartial military judge, would inflict an irreparable injury unfixable on direct review. Al-Nashiri thus has no adequate remedy for Spath's conduct other than to scrub Spath's orders from the case at the earliest opportunity." The court, which has appellate authority over the Guantánamo U.S. military commissions, also vacated all military appeals decisions by the United States Court of Military Commission Review involving orders issued by Spath.
The long-delayed Guantánamo military commission proceedings against Al-Nashiri have been beset by controversy. Captured in 2002, Al-Nashiri was subjected to 14 years of "physical, psychological and sexual torture" in secret CIA-run detention centers. His lawyers unsuccessfully sought to have him tried in civilian court rather than in a military tribunal as a result of the torture. In October 2017, after Spath refused to allow Al-Nashiri's defense lawyers to investigate the discovery of eavesdropping devices in a meeting room reserved for attorney-client communications, his entire civilian legal team resigned from the case. Judge Spath then held Brigadier General John Baker, the Chief Defense Counsel for the Military Commissions Defense Organization, in contempt after Baker said he had lost confidence in the integrity of "all potential attorney-client meeting locations" at Guantánamo and refused to reverse his decision authorizing the defense team to withdraw. The civilian Convening Authority of the Guantánamo tribunals, Harvey Rishikof, then intervened to release Baker from detention. The resignations left Al-Nashiri's defense solely in the hands of a single military lawyer, Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, who had never tried a murder case. Spath repeatedly denied Piette's request for a continuance until expert death-penalty counsel could be appointed, instead telling Piette to "engage in self help" by attending special training to become "more comfortable handling capital matters." Then, in February 2018, Spate indefinitely halted all pretrial proceedings in the case, and in July 2018 announced his retirement from military service. A Freedom of Information Act request by reporter Carol Rosenberg discovered that Spath had been seeking to become a DoJ immigration judge during this period.
In vacating Spath's rulings, the federal appeals court wrote: "We do not take lightly the crimes that Al-Nashiri stands accused of committing. To the contrary, the seriousness of those alleged offenses and the gravity of the penalty they may carry make the need for an unimpeachable adjudicator all the more important."
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a South Dakota death-row prisoner whose jurors made anti-gay statements and relied on homophobic beliefs in deciding to sentence him to death. On April 15, 2019, the Court without comment denied a petition filed by Charles Rhines (pictured) asking the Court to declare that the constitutional right to an impartial jury applies equally to bias against a defendant's sexual orientation. In a statement responding to the Court's decision, Shawn Nolan, one of Rhines' federal appeals lawyers, said: "As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in an earlier case, '[o]ur law punishes people for what they do, not who they are.' New evidence – which has never been heard by any court – shows that some of the jurors who sentenced Mr. Rhines to death did so because of who he was, not for what he did." The jurors in Rhines' case knew that he was gay, and, Nolan said, new statements from jurors in the case "show that some jurors … thought that he would enjoy life in prison with other men and it would not serve as a sufficient punishment. The jurors' anti-gay bias deprived Mr. Rhines of his right to a fair sentencing process under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments."
Rhines had sought review based on the Supreme Court's 2017 ruling in Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado that "where a juror makes a clear statement that indicates he or she relied on racial stereotypes or animus to convict a criminal defendant, the Sixth Amendment requires ... the trial court to consider the evidence of the juror's statement and any resulting denial of the jury trial guarantee." He argued that the same constitutional principle should apply to bias based on sexual orientation.
Jurors told Rhines' attorneys that "[t]here was lots of discussion of homosexuality" during sentencing deliberations. "There was a lot of disgust. … There were lots of folks who were like, 'Ew, I can't believe that.'" In a 2016 sworn statement, juror Frances Cersosimo reported that one juror said, "If he's gay, we'd be sending him where he wants to go" by sentencing Rhines to life in an all-male prison. Juror Harry Keeney said in a sworn statement, "We also knew he was a homosexual and thought he shouldn't be able to spend his life with men in prison." Several civil rights groups urged the Court to hear his case. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, American Civil Liberties Union, and seven LGBTQ rights organizations submitted amicus briefs in support of Rhines. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund wrote, "Just as the Constitution does not permit a person to be sentenced to die because of his race, it should not permit a person to be sentenced to die because of his sexual orientation." Nolan echoed that idea in his statement on the Supreme Court's denial, saying, "both racial prejudice and anti-gay prejudice have no place in the criminal justice system. Both undermine public confidence in the fairness of the system, particularly when jurors must decide between life imprisonment and death."
Despite the 2017 decision allowing consideration of racially biased juror comments, the Court has declined to intervene in two cases this term in which death-row prisoners were sentenced to death by racist jurors. On March 18, the Court denied review in the case of Georgia death-row prisoner Keith Tharpe. One of Tharpe's jurors signed an affidavit saying "there are two types of black people: 1. Black folks and 2. N[**]gers," and Tharpe was not in "the 'good' black folks category." This same juror also said he "wondered if black people even have souls." On April 1, the Court also declined to hear the case of Julius Jones, an Oklahoma death-row prisoner whose jury included a juror who said, "they should just take the n****r out and shoot him behind the jail." The Court also received harsh criticism after it vacated a federal appeals court stay of execution and permitted Alabama to execute Domineque Ray, a Muslim prisoner who said Alabama's refusal to allow his imam in the execution chamber amounted to religious discrimination.
In a contentious ruling issued in the early morning hours of April 12, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a stay of execution issued by lower federal courts and cleared the way for Alabama to execute Christopher Price (pictured). The Court's 5-4 decision, issued after 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, came after Alabama had postponed Price's execution minutes before the midnight Central time expiration of his death warrant, with the lower court stay of execution still in effect. Joined by the three other liberal and moderate justices, Justice Breyer authored a scathing dissent that exposed sharp divisions in the Court over the manner in which it considers execution-related challenges in death-penalty cases.
Scheduled to be executed April 11, Price challenged Alabama's lethal-injection protocol as unnecessarily torturous and –as required by Supreme Court case law – proposed an alternative method of execution. Price selected nitrogen hypoxia, the alternative method of execution made available in Alabama's death-penalty statute. The Alabama Attorney General's office opposed Price's motion, arguing that lethal gas was not available to Price because he had failed to select it during the 30-day window created when Alabama added lethal gas to its execution statute. The district court agreed and denied Price's claim, prompting an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The circuit court ruled that once Alabama had codified lethal gas as an alternative method of execution under its statute, it could not claim that gas was unavailable to execute Price. However, the circuit court rejected Price's stay motion, saying he had failed to meet the additional burden imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court that he prove that execution by nitrogen hypoxia would significantly reduce the risk of unnecessarily severe pain during the execution.
Following the 11th Circuit's ruling, Price returned to the district court with uncontroverted affidavits from medical experts who said nitrogen gas posed a significantly reduced risk of severe pain compared to the state's lethal-injection protocol. Based on this evidence, the federal district court granted Price a stay of execution. Later in the day, without ruling on the merits of the district court's order, the 11th Circuit imposed its own stay of execution to consider jurisdictional issues presented by the district court stay. Alabama then filed an emergency motion in the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to vacate the stay, leading to the overnight ruling by the Court.
In a one-paragraph order vacating the stay, the majority said that Price had not timely selected lethal gas during a 30-day window created when Alabama added lethal gas to its execution statute and then waited until February 2019 to challenge the state's method of execution. As a result, the majority viewed Price's lawsuit and pre-execution filings as untimely. Justice Stephen Breyer – joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan – wrote an impassioned dissent. "Should anyone doubt that death sentences in the United States can be carried out in an arbitrary way," he wrote, "let that person review the … circumstances as they have been presented to our Court this evening." Breyer highlighted the uncontested evidence presented in the courts below: that Alabama's lethal injection protocol will likely cause Price "severe pain and needless suffering"; that lethal gas is a readily available method, and that lethal gas is likely less painful than Alabama's lethal injection protocol. Breyer also criticized the majority's substitution of its judgment for the district court's finding that Price had been "proceeding as quickly as possible on this issue since before the execution date was set" and was not attempting "to manipulate the execution." Breyer expressed deep concern for the majority's insistence on vacating a stay despite his request to consider the issue at a prescheduled conference to be attended by all the justices that morning. "To proceed in this way calls into question the basic principles of fairness that should underlie our criminal justice system," Breyer wrote.
Alabama has not yet set a new execution date.
In a vote death-penalty opponents praised as "historic," a veto-proof supermajority of the New Hampshire legislature gave final approval to a bill that would repeal the state's death penalty statute. By a vote of 17-6, the senators voted on April 11, 2019 to end capital prosecutions in the Granite State, exceeding the two-thirds majority necessary to override an anticipated veto by Governor Chris Sununu. In March, the state House of Representatives passed the same abolition bill, HB 455, by a veto-proof 279-88 supermajority. For the second consecutive year, the bill received bipartisan support, including sponsorship by seven Democratic and six Republican sponsors across both legislative houses. Twelve Democratic and five Republican senators voted in favor of repeal. An identical bill to repeal the death penalty passed the legislature in 2018, but was vetoed by Gov. Chris Sununu, and an attempt to override the veto fell two votes short in the Senate.
The Governor's office issued a statement after the vote saying that Sununu "continues to stand with crime victims, members of the law enforcement community, and advocates for justice in opposing a repeal of the death penalty." Repeal advocates quickly responded to that claim, noting that numerous retired prosecutors, members of law enforcement, and relatives of murder victims had testified in favor of repeal. Rep. Renny Cushing (D – Rockingham), whose father and brother-in-law were murdered in two separate incidents, was one of the leading proponents of the bill. Cushing has described the death penalty as a "ritualized killing" that does nothing to compensate for a victim's family's loss. "The governor has positioned himself as saying he's vetoing the repeal of the death penalty because he cares about law enforcement and victims, but he's refused to meet with murder victims' family members who oppose the death penalty," Cushing said. Sen. Ruth Ward (R – Stoddard), whose father was killed when she was 7 years old, spoke briefly before casting her vote: "He never saw us grow up. My mother forgave whoever it was, and I will vote in favor of this bill," she said.
During the Senate debate, senators mentioned costs, racial inequities, and wrongful convictions among their reasons for supporting repeal. Senator John Reagan (R – Deerfield), a Republican who voted in favor of repeal, told The New York Times that he doesn't trust the government with capital punishment. "The more and more experience I had with government, I concluded that the general incompetency of government didn't make them the right people to decide life and death," he said. The New Hampshire legislative vote reflects emerging bipartisanship in state legislative efforts to repeal the death penalty. "The vote to end New Hampshire's death penalty included many conservative Republican lawmakers," said Hannah Cox, national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. "They join a growing number of GOP state legislators around the country who feel strongly that capital punishment does not comport with their conservative beliefs, such as limited government, fiscal responsibility, and valuing life." Republican-backed bills to abolish the death penalty or limit its use have been introduced in a number of states this year, including Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Wyoming.
The New Hampshire repeal bill applies only to future crimes, and does not address the fate of Michael Addison, the only person on New Hampshire's death row. No one has been executed in New Hampshire since 1939. If the bill becomes law, New Hampshire will be the 21st state to abolish capital punishment and the ninth in the past 15 years.
The Missouri Supreme Court has ordered a new sentencing trial for Marvin D. Rice (pictured), a former sheriff's deputy whose trial judge sentenced him to death despite the votes of 11 of his 12 jurors to sentence him to life. On April 2, 2019, the court vacated the death sentence imposed by St. Charles County Judge Kelly Wayne Parker in 2017 under the state's controversial "hung jury" sentencing provision. Under that law, the trial judge has authority to independently evaluate the evidence and determine the sentence to be imposed whenever the jury vote for life or death is not unanimous. Rice, a former Dent County deputy sheriff and state correctional officer, was charged with murdering his ex-girlfriend, Annette Durham, during a custody dispute over their son and killing her boyfriend, Steven Strotkamp. The jury convicted Rice of capital murder for killing Durham but was deemed hung when a single juror held out for death. It convicted him of second-degree murder in Strotkamp's death and agreed to a life sentence for that murder. Parker disregarded the jury's vote and imposed the death penalty for Durham's murder.
No state in the United States authorizes a judge to override a jury's recommendation of a life sentence and all three states that previously permitted the practice ended it in the past three years. Missouri law, however, considers a non-unanimous vote a nullity rather than a recommendation, entrusting the sentencing decision to the judge. Rice challenged the constitutionality of the statute under the U.S. Supreme Court's January 2016 ruling in Hurst v. Florida that "[t]he Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death." Rice also argued that the prosecutor's repeated comments about his decision not to testify at trial violated the Fifth Amendment, which bars the use of a defendant's silence against him. The Missouri court granted a new sentencing trial on the Fifth Amendment issue, avoiding having to decide the constitutionality of the state statute.
No jury has sentenced anyone to death in Missouri since 2013. However, since that time, Missouri judges have sentenced two defendants to death under the hung jury provision. In addition to Dent, a trial judge sentenced Craig Wood to death in 2018 after his jury split 10-2 in favor of a death sentence. As in Dent's case, Wood's lawyers have argued that allowing a judge to impose a death sentence when a jury does not reach a unanimous sentencing decision is unconstitutional. In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court and the Delaware Supreme Court struck down provisions in their death-penalty laws permitting judges to impose death sentences based upon non-unanimous jury recommendations for death. Alabama still permits that practice if ten or more jurors have voted for death.
Executions worldwide have fallen to their lowest levels in a decade, according to a new report released April 9, 2019 by Amnesty International. In its annual Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions 2018, the human rights organization says it recorded at least 690 executions in 20 countries in 2018, a 31% decline from the 993 executions it recorded in 23 nations in 2017 and 58% below the 1,634 reported executions in 2015. Five countries accounted for 84% of all recorded executions—Iran (253), Saudi Arabia (148), Vietnam (85), Iraq (52) and Egypt (43). Nonetheless, executions in Iran fell by half in 2018, as the country revised its death-penalty law to bar capital punishment for some drug offenses. Data was unavailable for executions in China—where Amnesty says thousands of undocumented executions likely took place—and North Korea, two countries in which information on death sentences and executions is considered a state secret. The 25 executions in the U.S. were the seventh most of any nation.
Amnesty International's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo called the global decline in executions "dramatic" and said it "proves that even the most unlikely countries are starting to change their ways and realize the death penalty is not the answer." Although Thailand carried out its first execution in nearly a decade and Japan, Singapore, and South Sudan reported their highest execution levels in years, Naidoo said these "regressive steps" were countered by the significant reduction in executions "carried out by several of the worst perpetrators."
The report found that global death-sentencing levels in 2018 were similar to those in 2017. Amnesty recorded at least 2,531 death sentences in 54 countries last year, down 2% from the 2,591 reported in 2017. However, death sentences were down 19% from the reported 3,117 death sentences imposed in 55 countries in 2016. The U.S. ranked 12th in death sentences known to have been imposed. Amnesty reported that at least 19,336 people were known to be on death rows around the world at the end of 2018, a 12% decline from the 21,919 people known to be on death row globally at the end of 2017. Only two nations in the Western hemisphere—the United States and Guyana—imposed any death sentences in 2018, the fewest to do so since Amnesty began tracking global death sentences in 1979. For the tenth consecutive year, the U.S. was the only country in the Americas to carry out any executions.
Amnesty characterized the global death penalty as "firmly in decline," pointing to Burkina Faso's abolition of the death penalty for ordinary crimes, moratoria on executions declared in the Gambia and in Malaysia, and the Washington state supreme court's declaration that the death penalty in that state was unconstitutional. At the end of 2018, Amnesty said, 106 countries had abolished the death penalty in law for all crimes and 142 had abolished it in law or practice. In December, a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty received the support of a record 121 countries, while only 35 nations opposed the resolution. "Slowly but steadily, global consensus is building towards ending the use of the death penalty," Naidoo said, "but with more than 19,000 people still languishing on death row worldwide, the struggle is far from over."
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the execution of Mark Robertson (pictured), a Dallas death-row prisoner whom Texas had scheduled for execution on April 11, 2019. The court's April 8 stay order did not specify the reason it halted the execution, but Robertson's lawyers had filed an appeal seeking review of their claim that his court-appointed trial lawyer, Michael Byck, had "engaged in purposeful discrimination" by deliberately excluding African Americans from serving on his jury. In 1997, Byck testified in a hearing in the case that he had been "more than happy to violate anybody else's rights" in picking a jury and that he had intentionally struck prospective black jurors. He also testified that he had told prosecutors prior to the trial that he "didn't want to have any blacks on the jury" because he believed they would not be sympathetic to Robertson, a white defendant. The Dallas County District Attorney's office had a long history of racially discriminatory jury selection practices, and Byck testified that he and the prosecutors had agreed to "indulge each other" in their "prejudices."
Race discrimination in death-penalty jury selection has been an issue for decades. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court in Swain v. Alabama, upheld a death sentence imposed by an all-white Alabama jury on a black defendant charged with rape, imposing on the defendant the burden of proving that the prosecutor in a county had systematically removed all black jurors in "case after case … with the result that no Negroes ever serve on petit juries." In Dallas County, a 1963 office manual instructed prosecutors not to "take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a member of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or how well educated." In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that Swain had erected an insurmountable evidentiary burden and declared that the removal of even a single prospective juror on the basis of race was unconstitutional. Dallas prosecutors nonetheless continued to discriminatorily strike black jurors, and District Attorney Henry Wade – the county D.A. from 1951 to 1987 – once threatened an assistant prosecutor, "If you ever put another n****r on a jury, you're fired." In 2005, in the case of death-row prisoner Thomas Joe Miller-El, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Dallas D.A.'s office had a "culture of discrimination" that was "suffused with bias against African-Americans." It twice reversed lower court decisions that had denied Miller-El relief for the racial discrimination in his case and granted Miller-El a new trial.
Jeremy Schepers, one of Robertson's attorneys, unequivocally condemned Byck's discriminatory actions. "Mr. Robertson's trial attorney testified under oath that it was his 'conscious desire' to keep African Americans off the jury," Schepers told the Houston Chronicle. "And, through a variety of methods he succeeded in doing just that. By now there should be no confusion on this matter – racial discrimination in the administration of justice is intolerable. The courts should not hesitate to denounce this unacceptable behavior." In a motion filed in Robertson's case, attorney Lydia Brandt urged the court to intercede, rather than allow a death sentence tainted by discrimination to stand. "In the end, Mr. Byck succeeded in his discriminatory plan – Mr. Robertson was tried by an all-white jury," she wrote. "At best, the State turned a blind eye towards Mr. Byck's discrimination; at worst, they were a willing co-conspirator."
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But wait a minute! Of course, I'm not saying that XML is the evil player of this game, because you'd be completely misunderstanding my point. XML is great for different reasons, which are definitely out of the scope of this article. But when you need to build large XML documents from scratch or even parse them in some way, you can be faced with a quite challenging and time-consuming process that might cause hair loss!
However, as you know, PHP 5 comes equipped with a number of extensions that will make your life much easier when it comes to building and parsing things like XML data. For example, there's the "SimpleXML" library, which permits you to perform some useful tasks, such as reading XML data from files and strings, iterating over XML documents, parsing individual nodes, and so forth.
PHP 5 has yet another extension that can be really helpful for handling XML data in all sorts of clever ways. In this case, I'm talking about the one called "XML DOM." If you've already worked with it during the development of your PHP 5 applications, then you should be well aware of its strong capabilities when it comes to dealing with XML data.
Of course, there's the possibility that aside from being a PHP programmer, you're also a professional diver, who spends most of your time exploring the beauty of the oceans and, in consequence, you've never heard about this PHP extension. In that case, let me tell you a couple of interesting things that you can do with it.
Simply put, the DOM XML extension, as its name suggests, will permit you to work on XML documents by way of the DOM API. In this way, it allows you to read from and write to XML files, build XML data from scratch and parse specific nodes, extract them as an array, and even process HTML markup in different ways by using a handful of intuitive methods that closely resemble the ones used with JavaScript.
As you can see, this PHP extension offers a bunch of powerful features that can be useful for working with XML data. Therefore, provided that you're interested in learning how to get started using it within your own PHP applications, in this article series I'll be discussing some of its most relevant methods and properties and accompanying all of these explanations with concise and instructive hands-on examples.
Does this sound good to you? Let's get started right now!
{mospagebreak title=Building XML documents from scratch}
The first thing that I'm going to show you concerning the use of the DOM XML extension with PHP 5 is pretty basic. It consists of building an XML document from scratch, adding a root element to it, and finally outputting this raw data on the browser.
The following script performs all of the tasks described above, so analyze its definition in detail:
$dom=new DOMDocument('1.0′,'iso-8859-1');
$element=$dom->createElement('testnode','This is the root element of the new DOM document');
// insert the new element as root (child of the document)
// tell the browser the output is XML via the 'Content-Type' HTTP header
header('Content-Type: text/xml');
// display DOM document
echo $dom->saveXML();
/* displays the following
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<testnode>This is the root element of the new DOM document</testnode>
Now that you have taken a close look at the previous script, it's time to dissect it into separate parts and see what it does. First a new, empty DOM document is created through an instance of the "DOMDocument" class, which as you'll see in subsequent examples, will always be the starting point for building XML documents.
Then a root element is created with the pertinent "createElement()" method and inserted into the document via another one, called "appendChild()," which comes in handy when appending new elements to an existing document tree. In the end, these recently added contents are printed to the browser by using the "saveXML()" method. This method's function is simply to return the XML data just created to client code. Quite simple to understand, right?
At this point, you've learned how to build a simple XML document, which only contains a root element, from scratch. It's clear to see in the previous example how the DOM API is utilized. For instance, it can be used to append new nodes to a given XML document via the "createElement()/appendChild()" methods used in tandem. As you saw in the prior example, the first method takes up two primary arguments: one is the name of the node to be created, while the other is its respective text value (or in other words, its text node).
Having demonstrated how to construct a basic XML document with the DOM XML PHP extension, I'm pretty sure that you'll find numerous similarities when working with the DOM and JavaScript, since you can also create new elements, copy and remove new nodes from the web document tree, and so forth.
However, I'm only scratching the surface when it comes to exploring the methods provided by the DOM XML extension, which means that there is still a long way ahead of us. Therefore, in the upcoming section, I'm going to show you how to add multiple nodes to an XML document.
Want to see how this will be done? Click on the link below and keep reading.
{mospagebreak title=Adding multiple nodes to an XML document}
In the previous section, you learned how to build an XML document from scratch and how to add a single root node to it. Nevertheless, this is merely a basic example of what you can do with the DOM XML extension. Now let me go one step forward and show you another practical example aimed at demonstrating how to insert multiple nodes into an existing XML document.
The corresponding code sample is as follows:
$dom=new DOMDocument('1.0′,'iso-8859-1');
$secondElement=$dom->createElement('secondnode','This is the second element of the new DOM document');
$thirdElement=$dom->createElement('thirdnode','This is the third element of the new DOM document');
// insert the new elements into the document
// tell the browser the output is XML via the 'Content-Type' HTTP header
header('Content-Type: text/xml');
// display DOM document
echo $dom->saveXML();
/* displays the following
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<secondnode>This is the second element of the new DOM document</secondnode>
<thirdnode>This is the third element of the new DOM document</thirdnode>
As shown previously, adding several nodes to an existing XML document requires using exactly the same methods that you learned in the first example. In this case, the XML document is built through the corresponding "DOMDocument" constructor and the successive elements are created and appended in that order by using the "createElement()/appendChild()" combination.
Finally, all the XML data is echoed naturally to the browser via the "saveXML()" method by sending the appropriate "Content-Type" HTTP header to the client. That was really simple to do. Don't you think so?
At this moment, and with these two examples still spinning in your mind, you may have noticed the remarkable similarity between the DOM XML API and the one used when working with JavaScript, which can facilitate learning how to perform basic tasks on XML documents with this PHP extension.
Indeed I don't want to get away from the main goal of this article. Therefore, now that you understand how to build a basic XML document as well as how to insert a few simple nodes into it, it's time to move forward and learn how to create XML data from an existing array.
This is an interesting topic that will be discussed in detail in the next section. Thus jump ahead and keep reading.
{mospagebreak title=Adding nodes to a simple XML document by using array elements}
As you saw in the prior section, inserting a few basic nodes into a recently-created XML document is actually a no-brainer process that can be tackled with minor hassles, even if you're just getting started using the DOM XML extension. So, assuming that you grasped the logic that stands behind this procedure, I'm going to show you another concrete example where different nodes are added to a new XML document, but in this case using a simple PHP array.
Having outlined how this brand new example will work, pay attention to its corresponding source code, which is listed below:
$elements=array('element1'=>'Element 1′,'element2'=>'Element 2′,'element3'=>'Element 3′,'element4'=>'Element 4′,'element5'=>'Element 5′,'element6'=>'Element 6′,'element7'=>'Element 7′,'element8'=>'Element 8′,'element9'=>'Element 9′,'element10'=>'Element 10');
$dom=new DOMDocument('1.0′,'iso-8859-1');
// insert the root element into the document
// insert additional elements into the document
foreach($elements as $key=>$value){
// tell the browser the output is XML via the 'Content-Type' HTTP header
header('Content-Type: text/xml');
// display DOM document
echo $dom->saveXML();
/* displays the following
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<element1>Element 1</element1>
<element2>Element 2</element2>
<element3>Element 3</element3>
<element4>Element 4</element4>
<element5>Element 5</element5>
<element6>Element 6</element6>
<element7>Element 7</element7>
<element8>Element 8</element8>
<element9>Element 9</element9>
<element10>Element 10</element10>
See how simple it is to build a multi-node XML document by utilizing a basic PHP array to construct the nodes in question? I bet you do! In this case, I used the pair of "createElement()/appendChild()" methods to accomplish this basic task, so since you've already seen how they function, you shouldn't have major problems seeing how the previous example works, right?
However, a brief note is in order here: while the logic implemented by the aforementioned example is actually very simple to grasp, it does demonstrate how easy it is to create complete XML documents from an external source, like a PHP array. Obviously, instead of using array elements, you could use a MySQL database table to build an XML-based representation of the stored data utilizing a script similar to the one shown previously.
This is only one basic example of what you can do with the DOM XML extension, but you'll find many others as you climb through the corresponding learning curve. In the meantime, feel free to use all the code samples that were developed in this tutorial to acquire a more solid background when using this powerful PHP library.
Final thoughts
In this initial article of the series, I provided you with a quick overview of some basic tasks that you can perform with the DOM XML extension that comes bundled with PHP. From creating XML documents from scratch to adding a few simple nodes, all these things are fairly easy to grasp.
In the next part of the series, I'm going to show you how to use many other features offered by this useful PHP extension, such as adding attributes to existing nodes of an XML document, creating CDATA sections, and much more.
Don't miss the next article!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Cancer and cancer treatment may cause changes to the way you look, feel, and perform regular activities. Some cancer treatments can cause temporary or permanent changes to your body, but not all treatments do. You may also experience changes in your physical abilities, such as decreases in your strength and endurance.
Cancer and cancer treatment can also affect how your body changes as a teen. During your teenage years, your body is changing as a part of normal development. Trying to figure out which changes are normal and which are related to cancer and treatment can be confusing. The following list includes some of the effects that cancer treatment can have on normal changes during puberty:
Cancer and cancer treatment can affect your growth and slow it down.
It may delay the beginning of menstrual periods in young women.
It may make acne harder to treat.
If you have questions or concerns about any of the changes in your body, be sure to talk with your doctor or a nurse.
Side effects from cancer treatment
Every cancer treatment has a risk of side effects. The side effects you experience may be different from what someone else experiences. Whether you develop side effects depends on the type of treatment, the dose you had, and how well your body copes with the treatment. Below are some of the more common side effects of cancer and cancer treatment. Learn more about other side effects.
Scars from surgery or loss of a body part
Hair loss from radiation therapy or chemotherapy
Weight gain or weight loss from the cancer or treatment
Pain from the cancer or its treatment
Fever, which could be a sign of an infection
Tell your parents and your health care team if you notice any of these side effects, even if it feels embarrassing. Your cancer care team can help ease many of these side effects. In fact, relieving side effects, also called symptom management, palliative care, or supportive care, is an important part of your cancer care and treatment. Don't feel that you have to suffer while getting treated for cancer.
Coping with looking and feeling different
Outward changes, such as skin problems or losing your hair, can make you feel self-conscious. Even changes that aren't as visible, such as feeling tired or a hidden scar, can make you feel differently about yourself. It may help to remember that most teens feel self-conscious at times and that's normal. These tips may help you cope with looking and feeling different:
Give yourself time to get used to your new appearance and adjust to your body.
Remember that many body changes, such as hair loss or weight gain, are only temporary. Some permanent changes, such as scars, will become less noticeable over time.
Talk with other teens with cancer about how they cope with their body changes.
Be prepared for questions and comments about your appearance. Decide how much you want to tell people and think about how you'll answer questions. If you prefer not to talk about it, just tell your friends that it's private.
Remember that while your body may look and feel different, you're still the same person on the inside. The qualities that make you unique and special aren't changed by cancer.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the changes in your body, ask your doctor for a referral to a counselor or a social worker.
Fertility and sexual health
Some treatments may affect your ability to have children later in life. Although, most teens think of parenthood as something for the future, it is important to talk with your doctor about fertility and reproductive health before treatment begins. There are options for both men and women to protect their fertility, called fertility preservation. For these options to be successful, they need to be considered before cancer treatment begins.
It's also important to be careful not to become pregnant or to have unprotected sexual intercourse while you are receiving cancer treatment. If you are sexually active or thinking about becoming sexually active, talk with your doctor or another member of the health care team about how to keep you and your partner safe. For instance, it may be necessary to use a condom to protect your partner from exposure to chemotherapy.
Once cancer treatment is finished, talk with your doctors and nurses about what to expect for your reproductive health. For women, this discussion may include when to expect regular menstrual periods. If you are sexually active, ask about when it is okay to start again. Finally, make sure you or your parents keep the information about your cancer treatment and fertility preservation for future doctors. Learn more about fertility and reproductive health.
More Information
Additional Resources
Look Good—Feel Better for Teens/2bMe


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Child Support Services
Children need the support of their families to thrive and be healthy and successful. They have the right to count on their parents for the emotional, spiritual, medical and financial support they deserve. Parents have the moral and legal obligation to ensure the health, welfare and safety of their children is first priority. The children are our future! The OCSS provides paternity establishment and child support services to families where the child, mother and/or father are enrolled members of the KBIC or other federally recognized Tribe when at least one of the parties reside on the L'Anse Reservation. The OCSS also processes income withholding orders for all Tribal employees.
Application for Services can be found here.
Mission Statement
The Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) is committed to improving the lives of children.
We strive to strengthen family responsibilities and values through quality service and cultural integrity.
We work to ensure that paternity is established when appropriate; financial disputes between separated parents are minimized; and parents are held accountable to support their children in accordance with their resources and abilities.
We are committed to maintaining an effective program that will meet the needs of families; improve the welfare of children; and strengthen tribal sovereignty.
Our goals are founded in our commitment to families while complying with Tribal Codes and Federal Regulations to:
- Establish Paternity
- Establish, Monitor, Modify and Enforce Child Support Orders;
- Locate Custodial and Non-Custodial Parents
- Provide Quality Customer Service; and
- Provide Customer and Community Education


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Conference Announcements
Submitted by rc-admin on
Two conference announcements came today. First, for the latest Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers Conference:
The Thirteenth Annual Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Conference: "Women's Texts and Cultural Contexts" April 14-17, 2005, Hilton Lafayette, Hosted by the Department of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Keynote speakers: Catherine Burroughs (Wells College), Linda Hughes (TCU), and Susan Staves (Brandeis University).
There will be a performance of Fanny Burney's The Witlings during the conference. We welcome a wide range of papers on the conference theme and related issues. Topics might include but should not be limited to the following:
Women Writing Culture, Performing Culture, Sensation Fiction, Religion and Women's Writing, Women and Science, Women's Professions, Women in Journalism, New Women and their Impact, Domestic Ideologies, Writing for Children, Images of the Woman Poet, Subversive Women, Women's Bodies Bodies of Women, Mothers as Cultural Icons, Women and Empire, Women and the Public Sphere.
Please submit 1-2 page abstracts for individual presentations and panel proposals by October 31, 2004. Please include a cover sheet with your name, address, phone number, email address, institutional affiliation and a brief biographical paragraph. Please do not include any identifying information
on your abstract. Proposals may be sent via regular mail to:
British Women Writers Conference
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Department of English
PO Box 44691
Lafayette, LA 70504
Abstracts may also be submitted by email (include name, phone number, mailing address, institutional affiliation and brief biographical paragraph) to: email@example.com
Additional details about the conference including registration and hotel
information can be found at our website:
Christine DeVine
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
And this one from the U.K.:
Midlands Romantic Seminar:
Romanticism and the Midlands Enlightenment
One Day Conference, sponsored by University of Central England and Nottingham Trent University, Saturday 3rd July, 10.00am-5.00pm.
Birmingham and Midland Institute
Margaret Street,
Keynote Speakers: George Rousseau and Desmond King-Hele
Registration fee £25.
For further details, please contact:
Dr Gavin Budge


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Firebug Start Button
A lot of questions on Firebug newsgroup have been related to Firebug icon recently (available on Firefox status bar in the past). This icon is quite important piece of Firebug UI since it represents Firebug entry point and it's also the only thing visible after Firebug is installed. Since the Firefox status-bar has been abandoned in Firefox 4, this icon has been moved to Firefox toolbar (since Firebug 1.7).
This UI shift was also the result of a feedback we have got last year.
Anyway, if you prefer having the icon at the bottom (e.g. because it's closer to the actual Firebug UI), you can customize your Firefox toolbars and move the existing Firebug (toolbar) button on Add-on bar.
Here is what you need to do to start toolbar customization.
In order to open Customize Toolbar dialog, right click on Firefox tab-bar area and pick Customize…
Don't forget to also check the Add-on Bar menu item so, the Add-on Bar is displayed and you can drop the button on it.
Since the button is on the toolbar already, you won't see it in the Customize Toolbar dialog. Just drag the button from the toolbar and drop it on the Add-on bar and you are done!
If you still insist to have the good old Firebug icon available – set the following preference to true:
Please post feedback in the newsgroup, thanks!
Jan Honza Odvarko


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Are you looking to build a budget PC, but have a limited budget to work with? We have had a number of readers and businesses that we consult with looking for new systems that will save power and be faster than the systems they currently have. When we started to look into low cost Do-It-Yourself (DIY) systems we found that you could easily build an AMD Llano system for less than $300. And when we say under $300, we mean with shipping included!
You would think that for under $300 we would have to cut corners and use knock off brands, but that is not the case here. We are using the top of the line AMD A8-3870K APU and an OCZ Vertex Plus R2 60GB Solid-State Drive (SSD) into this system. The one corner that we did cut is the operating system. Most people that are upgrading an older PC are okay with using the license they still have, so that should be an issue. Microsoft Windows 8 is coming out later this year, but not too many people are looking forward to that.
Rather than just showing you how to build the system and show you a few benchmarks and call it a day, we wanted to show you a real world problem that a company was facing. A local business wanted to upgrade an office full of computers that they purchased back in 2004. The power supplies in the systems were failing due to leaking capacitors and some of the hard drives were starting to fail with over 50,000 hours of up time. Back in the day they spent over $1500 for these systems. They were custom built by the company that uses the propitiatory software that runs only on Windows XP 32-bit. These systems were built with Intel Celeron 2.0GHz single core processors along with 80GB IDE hard drives, 1GB of memory and an AOpen H340A slim ATX case with a 200W TFX power supply.
The only requirements that the business had was that they wanted to stay with MicroATX slim desktop cases, have a system that felt faster and that they needed to stay with Windows XP. It appears the software developers have not been able to successfully get their code to work on Windows 7 or they are just too lazy and live off the licensing fees that they get each year. Building up a new system that would perform much better than the old ones shouldn't be an issue at all!
For our budget mainstream system we went with a Slim microATX case called the R379-M by Rosewill. This case comes with an ATX12V Flex 300W Power Supply, which is more than enough for our mainstream build. The Gigabyte GA-A55M-DS2 is one of the lower cost AMD A55 chipset powered boards on the market. Since we didn't need USB 3.0, SATA III 6Gbps or plan on overclocking we
were fine with the reduced features on this board. We are going to be
running Windows XP 32-bit, so a 4GB kit of Corsair XMS3 1333MHz DDR3
memory was more than enough and the price was right at $22 for the kit.
With only about 10GB of space being used on the storage drive the OCZ
Vertex Plus R2 60GB SSD was selected along with the lowest cost optical
drive we could find.
These parts add up to $279.94 before any taxes and shipping expenses. If you live in a state that doesn't not get hit with Newegg taxes the shipping charges would be the total up to $286.92. You can easily trim this price down if you wanted to by using a different case or removing the $23 DVD writer as not everyone needs optical drives in this day and age. If you didn't need the optical drive you are looking at $264 shipped for this build!
Let's take a closer look at the hardware and get this system built!
Comments are closed.


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Use the diagram below to identify the type of part you want to replace. Parts not shown in the diagram are listed further below. Follow the link to the parts selector window or to order from your local Therma-Tru dealer.
Certain vintage items may not be available as replacement parts. Please contact your local Therma-Tru Dealer or our Customer Care Department at 1-800-843-7628 (1-800-THERMATRU) for assistance with replacement parts.


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Well, now we know why the Cowboys have been so interested in trying to extend the contract of quarterback Tony Romo.
Apart from the importance of reducing his $16.8 million cap number for 2013, Romo's contract was crafted in a way that prevents the Cowboys from applying the franchise tag in 2014.
According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Romo's contract extends beyond 2013 by three years. (According to NFLPA records, it definitely does.) Thus, Romo will become a free agent in 2014 not by the expiration of the deal, but by the voiding of the final three years.
And while the deal apparently doesn't include a no-tag provision, Rapoport explains that the deal will void after the deadline passes for using the franchise tag.
In other words, Romo won't be a pending free agent — and in turn not eligible to be tagged — during the two-week franchise-tag window in February 2014. Then, after the window closes, the contract will void, making Romo a free agent.
Allowing that loophole to exist in the deal would be enough to get the owner to fire the General Manager. If the owner wasn't the General Manager.


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Move Over, Harlem Shake — 'Gallon Smashing' Is the Next Big Internet Trend
Tired of the Harlem Shake? We think we've found the next big YouTube video everyone will be copying -- at least for the next week or so. It's called gallon smashing, and it's a grocery store employee's worst nightmare.
Gallon smashing, unlike the planning and editing that goes into creating your very own Harlem Shake video, is very simple. You just walk down an aisle at your local grocery store holding two one-gallon containers of milk or juice, then intentionally throw yourself to the ground, sending the containers flying.
For that extra bit of drama, struggle to get up when concerned people rush to your side and attempt to get you back on your feet.
We feel a little bad for the employees that have to clean up the mess, but trust us that these tears are all from laughter.


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MIAMI – It has sort of a Miss Congeniality vibe to it, the NBA's Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award that was presented to Miami Heat forward Shane Battier on Saturday.
Except for two things:
- The men after whom the award is named, Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes, lend a gravity to the honor that should not be taken lightly.
- The voting actually couldn't be more different. That is, the players who spend the most time around the winner and know him best can't actually vote for him … unlike those, y'know, pageants.
That's a quirk of the process, which prohibits NBA players from voting for a current teammate as Teammate of the Year. But it might actually lend credibility to the award, rather than reducing it to a popularity contest.
"The beauty of it is I'm a 13‑year veteran, 35 years old," Battier said, teasing. "I've probably played with 250 of the current players that are in the league. But for guys that don't know me, who only played against me, to look at me and say, 'You know what, he looks like he'd be a great teammate,' that means a lot to me."
Like the inaugural TMOY winner last year, Chauncey Billups, Battier has been around for a while and played for multiple teams (Memphis, Houston, Miami). That means exposure to a lot of players who aren't on the Heat roster and therefore can vote for him.
Of the top five finishers in this year's balloting, only Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki, who finished third, has spent his entire career with one team. Then again, the Mavericks have had a revolving door recently, so some of Nowitzki's teammates have moved on, their eligibility to vote for him restored.
In the point system used to determine the winner, Battier finished with 1,322 points and 67 first-place votes. Charlotte's Al Jefferson was second (798 points, 29 firsts), followed by Nowitzki (784, 28), L.A. Clippers guard Chris Paul (754, 40) and L.A. Lakers forward Pau Gasol (753, 36).
As for the first reason the TMOY award means something, Battier wanted everyone to know the tale of Twyman and Stokes, teammates on the Rochester/Cincinnati Royals from 1955 to 1958. Stokes suffered an on-court injury that caused him to lapse into a coma days later, with resulting brain damage that left him permanently paralyzed. Twyman became his legal guardian and supported Stokes – who died at age 36 in 1970 – for the rest of his life.
Twyman, who died in 2012, was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983, but he spent years lobbying for Stokes, whose remarkable skills were evident before his career was cut short. In 2004, Stokes also was enshrined.
"If you don't know the story about Maurice Stokes and Jack Twyman, it's an amazing story of brotherhood and being the ultimate teammate," Battier said. "The award represents so much. It's really a huge honor. It means a lot to me because I've tried to be a good teammate my entire life."


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Usher's Ex-Wife Files for Emergency Hearing Seeking Custody of Sons After Pool Accident
We knew this was bound to happen since their divorce was so acrimonious and their custody battles were ugly.
Usher's ex-wife Tameka Raymond filed paperwork in Fulton County, Ga. after their son, Usher Raymond V, was injured in a swimming pool accident at the R&B crooner's home. She is seeking an emergency hearing so that she can wrangle custody of their sons since she feels Usher, who has primary custody, has created an unsafe environment for the boys.
Usher's ex, pictured above with the singer in happier times, claims that he has shirked his parental duties, letting two incompetent people care for their sons and pick up the slack.
TMZ claims she is specifically upset about Usher's aunt, as it was she who was watching Usher Raymond V, who is only 5, when the pool situation occurred. The boy swam to grab a toy from the drain and his arm got caught. It took several attempts to free him. He's okay, but it was hairy for a minute.
Tameka lodged prior complaints against the aunt, saying she let a stalker in the home where Usher and the boys lived. She also alleges that the aunt is entirely too physical in her disciplinary actions when it comes to the children.
Tameka has limited custody, which she seeks to reverse in light of the pool scare.


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Transfer news: Newcastle have rejected an Arsenal bid for Yohan Cabaye
Newcastle have rejected an Arsenal bid of around £10m for highly-rated French midfielder Yohan Cabaye.
Last Updated: 19/08/13 8:41pm
The Gunners' Premier League season began with a miserable 3-1 home loss to Aston Villa at the Emirates on Saturday and boss Arsene Wenger has been criticised for not strengthening his squad this summer.
But Wenger has made it clear he does expect to make signings before the transfer window closes at the end of the month and Cabaye has now emerged as a target.
However, Newcastle are not thought to have paid much less than £10m for Cabaye themselves and have turned down Arsenal's offer.
The 27-year-old Cabaye has been linked with several clubs over the summer, notably French champions Paris Saint Germain.
And Arsenal have now entered the running for the France international, who joined Newcastle from Lille in the summer of 2011 and helped the Magpies to finish fifth in the Premier League that season.
Newcastle did not fare so well last term, perhaps in part because Cabaye, who has been capped 23 times by France, had to miss some time due to injury.
This is Arsenal's second unsuccessful foray into the transfer market this summer following their failure to acquire Liverpool forward Luis Suarez after lodging a well-publicised £40m + £1 bid.
And the pressure on Wenger to spend has increased following the news that the Arsenal Supporters Trust have released a statement saying it would be 'inappropriate' to offer the long-serving boss a new contract.
Meanwhile, PSG boss Laurent Blanc remained coy when asked about his interest in playmaker Cabaye, but did say that he "loves" the player.
Premier League rivals Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur as well as Blanc's PSG have also been linked with a move for the former Lille midfielder before September's transfer deadline.
When quizzed about Cabaye by reporters following his side's 1-1 draw at home to Ajaccio on Sunday, Blanc appeared reluctant to confirm or deny his interest.
"We're still interested in buying more players," said the 47-year-old. "Cabaye? There are a lot of things that you [journalists] write in the press.
"At the moment I can only say that I love this player."


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Jennifer and her students produced a documentary film that explores the difficulties in merging organizational cultures after an acquisition.
The team researched the strategies that make mergers work successfully and then filmed the interactions of various businesses that have been bought and sold. In addition to producing the documentary, the students wrote case studies and other educational material for professional journals and educational textbook companies.
The seminar's partners (and potential subjects) include Huntington National Bank, Corbett Accel Health Care Group, Fisher Properties, and Raymond James Associates.


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About this song.This track features layers of organic melodies, textures, and rhythms, with a modern cinematic feel. It's rich, evolving soundscape lends a strong sense of movement, energy, and emotional depth, without being too overpowering.
The music evokes images of progress, discovery, innovation, creativity, and wonder. Ideal for promos, commercials, films, trailers, documentaries, and technology or motivational projects.
Instrumentation.Marimba, electric bass, rhodes, various synth and textural pad elements, and percussion.
Included Tracks.There are five variations included with this song, giving you ultimate flexibility. Here they are in order of appearance in the preview track:
- Full Song (As described above) 2:08
- Main Loop (A seamlessly loopable version of the main song section, making it easy to extend the music to the length you need) 1:01
- 1 Minute Version (A minute long variation great for standard length commercial/video spots. Final hit around 0:58) 1:02
- 30 Second Version (Ideal for use with shorter commercial/video spots or as a musical intro/outro. Final hit around 0:27) 0:31
- Logo Version (A compact variation perfect for use as a brief intro/outro or logo reveal sequence. Final hit around 0:11) 0:15
Each variation is its own separate file, included as both a full resolution WAV as well as a high quality MP3 for quick and easy use over the web and portable devices.


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Reset your MySQL database password
To enter phpMyAdmin or use your database remotely, you need a password to access it.
- Log in to your GoDaddy account.
- Click Web Hosting.
- Next to the hosting account you want to use, click Manage.
- In the Databases section, click the type of database you're using.
- From your list of databases, click Actions next to the database you want to use, and then click Details.
- In the Password section, click Reset.
- Enter the new password you would like to use in the Enter New Password and Confirm New Password fields. Click Change
The password for the selected database takes up to one hour to change. Use this new password to log in to the Database Manager of this database.
Note: If you use a MySQL-based application, such as WordPress®, you must update your connection strings to use the new password.


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25 September 2013 at 3.28pm | Comment on this article
It comes as no surprise that Giuseppe Verdi is a popular choice on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Considered by some to be the most influential composer of operas, Verdi wrote classic works, ranging from La traviata to Il trovatore, Rigoletto to Don Carlo.
A look through the BBC Radio 4 archive shows that some 334 castaways have chosen music by Verdi to accompany them on their desert island. Those selecting works by the great Italian include Harry Potter actor and West End star Zoë Wanamaker, who chose 'Offertorio' from the Requiem Mass; actor Richard Briers and politician Neil Kinnock, who both chose the fiery tenor aria 'Di quella pira' from Il trovatore; and Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, who explains that he was introduced to Verdi at as a teenager when his mother, on realizing he did not know 'Sempre libera' from La traviata, feared she was 'raising a barbarian'.
Michelin-starred TV chef Heston Blumenthal chose the 'Grand March' from Aida, while James Bond star Roger Moore chose the prelude to Act I of La traviata. Il trovatore's 'Tacea la notte placida' was selected by soprano Renée Fleming, while comedian Harry Enfield included the rousing soldiers' chorus 'Or co'dadi' from the same opera. Hollywood star Hugh Grant chose the famous 'Va, pensiero' chorus from Nabucco.
The BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Disc archive lists every castaway interviewed since 1942, with a number of programmes available to listen to online. Find out which castaways chose music by Wagner.
Nabucco runs 6–30 July 2016. Tickets are still available.
Il trovatore runs 2–17 July 2016. Tickets are still available.


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'The day my partner went and bought 11 wild camels'
Wayne Morris had 20 years' dairy farming behind him and had taken a break from the land to work in a macadamia processing plant, when the camel idea kicked in.
Shrugging off the farming routine and early mornings outdoors hadn't come easily and so he and partner Melanie Fitzgibbon, a school teacher, had been thinking about how they could get back to dairying in some way.
As soon as he heard about milking camels, Wayne knew that was what he wanted to do.
"He came home the next day and said I've just bought 11 camels – I thought he might have just bought one but no, he got the whole herd," Melanie recalls.
And so began the couple's love affair with the highly misunderstood goliaths of the Australian desert – and a Gympie region food story that continues to evolve.
That was all back in 2014 and a lot a has happened in the three years since.
Their original herd was owned by farmers in nearby Bauple who kept the camels there while the couple looked for a place to lease.
"Our eight acres wasn't going to cut it," Melanie said.
They secured a patch, moved the herd and a year later travelled to Birdsville to look at a bull camel to buy. If they thought their original 11 were wild, they hadn't seen anything.
And yet, while these camels had had very little human contact, and didn't even know what a water trough or a feed bucket was – Melanie was struck by their grace and gentleness.
"I had imagined some Jurassic creatures running around but they were just standing there."
Her heart sank when the owner told them whichever camels they didn't buy would be heading for the abattoir.
She and Wayne took a lunch break to discuss their pending purchase.
"He looked at me and said we're taking them all aren't we?"
And suddenly it was real; they were seriously dairy farming, albeit with slightly bigger beasts than the bovines Wayne had previously worked with. Camelot Dairies was launched.
The couple have been milking for just over a year now and distribute their pasteurised camel's milk – and a new feta cheese – to health shops and providores around south-east Queensland.
They are regulars at festivals and food events – including Regional Flavours in Brisbane this weekend – and have discovered a growing agri-tourism side to their venture with crowds visiting the farm on the second Sunday of every month. Bookings are essential at camelotdairies.com.au
"They're just like giant Labradors really," Melanie said of her unusual herd.
"We had two girls here on the weekend and they actually just sat down with them for a couple of hours and were patting them, and one of them said to me it was the loveliest thing she'd ever done."
They're highly intelligent and they each have their own personalities, she said.
"There's been a lot of awful things said about camels but most of that is untrue – you would have to be horribly unkind for them to become angry, they're just so laid back.
"Wayne will take them for a walk up the road to graze on the side of the road, no lead, and when it's time to come home he'll turn and say 'come on girls' and they'll follow him home.
Melanie said camel's milk has a lighter flavour and lower fat content than cow's milk, and was regarded as a good source of vitamin C, magnesium, iron and calcium. It is also significantly lower in lactose than cow's milk.
Camelot Dairies is one of just three camel dairies in Queensland.
"It's a new industry. It's lovely to be on the ground floor of something that people are embracing," Melanie said.


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The Hotel Riu Palace Macao (24h All Inclusive) is an impressive complex located in the city of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic enjoying a beachfront location on Arena Gorda: a paradise of palm trees and turquoise water for perfect holidays in this Caribbean destination.
Sunlight, heavenly beaches, coconut palms and a relaxing atmosphere are just a few aspects to describe this wonderful Caribbean destination. Here you can relax, enjoy a calm stay in the company of your family, as a couple or with friends. You'll find a fresh water swimming pool and a solarium-terrace. You will also find a gym, steam bath and a wellness centre Renova Spa with a range of different treatments and massages (payment services) in the Riu Palace Bavaro.
The cuisine of the Dominican Republic offers a wide variety of dishes, with flavours and colours as dominant features on its plates. Dominican cuisine has received influences from African and Spanish cooking, and includes a wide variety of fruits and vegetables that enrich dish plate with a unique flavour. In the buffet restaurant and themed restaurants you can sample the best recipes prepared by our chefs to satisfy any palate.
The Hotel Riu Palace Macao is within a Riu Resorts complex together with the Riu Palace Punta Cana, ClubHotel Riu Bambu, Hotel Riu Naiboa and Hotel Riu Palace Bavaro, and like its neighbours it offers an entertainment programme that you can enjoy all day long. The All Inclusive system gives you the opportunity to try out various activities and sports such as table tennis, gymnastics, water polo, volleyball, windsurfing, sailing, kayaking, bodyboarding and much more.
The beaches of Punta Cana are considered to be some of the most beautiful in the world. Here you can breathe in an authentic Caribbean atmosphere with palm groves, coconut palms and a unique feeling of peace in the world. If you want to go on excursions or visit the surrounding area, you'll have the opportunity to visit fabulous places such as the Marinarium marine park , the beautiful sugar fields of Higüey, Altos de Chavón, Isla Saona island, the Caribbean Cachondeo where you can ride a horse or many other options.
The high quality service at the Riu Palace Macao makes it a unique and incomparable place. Enjoy the best offers of Dominican Republic and spend some relaxing time at the hotel.
RIU Hotels & Resorts offers you the possibility of enjoying incredible facilities with numerous aquatic attractions to experience new thrills during your RIU holiday. If you stay at our hotels, you'll have free admission to Splash Water World, where you'll find water attractions, a snack bar with soft drinks, juices and water. Have fun with RIU Hotels & Resorts!
Spring Break Policies: Spring Breakers (either groups or individuals, regardless of age) are not allowed at this property, at any time during the year. RIU Hotels & Resorts, reserves the right to withhold admission to any Spring Breaker. The hotel reserves the right of admission and may request clients to show passport or official ID to prove full identification. Guests can and will be removed from the property at their own expense in case of any disturbance or complaint from other guests or hotel staff. Parties in rooms are not allowed. Spring break groups or unruly behavior is not allowed all year round at any property.


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AT&T fails to sway council
When it comes to politics, AT&T plays in the big leagues.
Several years ago, the company, then called SBC Communications, paid more than $3.5 million to hire 112 lobbyists to persuade the Texas Legislature to pass legislation it wanted.
Faced with opposition from, among others, the major cities of Texas, it lost in the regular session but won after the governor authorized a special session to take up the issue.
On the national level, the company is not only a major player in Congress, but it is well-represented in the campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.
According to USA Today, current and former AT&T lobbyists serve as McCain's campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, Senate chief of staff, campaign co-chairman, finance director and national finance co-chairman, as well as some of the campaign's leading fundraisers.
'Pretty much junior high'But with all this big-league experience, AT&T struck out in its efforts to keep the bedroom township of West University Place from passing a school zone ban on cell phone use, including hands-free talking.
The town's City Council voted 5-0 Monday evening to make first-time violations subject to a $200 fine and subsequent violations to a $500 fine.
Worse was the way West University Police Chief Ken Walker characterized AT&T's lobbying.
"I expected them to put out a much more sophisticated effort," he said. "It was pretty much junior high."
The effort included recruiting community leaders, including members of the Greater Houston Partnership, to send letters using "talking points" and "proposed letters" to City Council faxed from AT&T's office in Bellaire.
Ban shaving also!Not surprisingly, someone forwarded the coaching documents — which were not on AT&T letterhead, but did include the "signature" fax number from the Bellaire office — to West University officials.
From the "proposed letters":
•"When I read about the proposed ordinance to ban drivers from using cell phones in the school zone, I wondered, 'What's next?' Will we see laws that say left turns in parking lots on Sunday are illegal?"
•"Imagine this scenario: You're driving across town to pick up the kiddos from elementary school and your doctor calls your cell phone with your lab results. You cross into a school zone and have you (sic) cut your physician off mid-sentence because cell phone use is banned on this stretch of road. Your kids jump in the car as you pull away, your middle schooler calls but you can't take the call because ... you guessed it ... cell phones are banned in the school parking lot."
•"Another problem with the proposed ban is that it fails to address other causes of distracted driving. How many times a day do you see drivers reading while driving, reaching into the back seat for a CD, applying lipstick, even shaving!"
Kerry Hibbs, an Austin-based spokesman for AT&T, says the company opposes only the "hands-free" portion of the ban on cell phone use in school zones, and is in the early stages of working on a statewide law prohibiting handheld conversations in school zones.
But the "talking points" sent out from Bellaire said: "AT&T strongly opposes any efforts to ban the use of wireless devices, including hands-free, by experienced drivers (i.e., non-provisional drivers)."
A few members of the Greater Houston Partnership did send in letters that appeared to be generated by AT&T's call for help. And a few other organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Texas Municipal Police Association, opposed the ordinance.
But the council was more impressed by the research prepared by police Lt. T.M. Olive and by the considerably greater number of letters, e-mails and phone calls they received in support of the ordinance.
Olive's report included reviews of scientific studies from the New England Journal of Medicine, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the AAA Foundation for Traffic and Safety.
All found cell phone use significantly increased the chance of accidents. The studies that addressed the issue found little difference between hand-held and hands-free use.
The New England Journal study found a risk level similar to "the hazard associated with driving with a blood-alcohol level at the legal limit," and that "motor vehicle collisions result from a driver's limitations with regards to attention rather than dexterity."
Police also monitored the school zone for about two weeks, checking on apparent cell phone usage. Six of the 48 moving traffic violations observed appeared to be "the result of driver inattention due to cellular usage," Olive reported.
Olive's report wasn't a doctoral thesis compared to the "junior high" AT&T talking points and "proposed letters."
But he did submit it as a research paper for a University of Houston class he is taking.
City Council already gave him an "A."
You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at firstname.lastname@example.com .


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