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An unarmed black man shot Sunday night by Minneapolis police has died, and activists are calling for police to release videos of the incident that led to his death.
Jamar Clark, 24, had been on life support since the shooting. After his family removed him from life support, he died Monday evening, the Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a division of the Department of Public Safety, confirmed to The Huffington Post.
Clark was shot Sunday night during an apparent struggle with police. The BCA said paramedics called police to report an individual interfering with an assault victim they were trying to aid; after an "altercation" with the individual, of of the officers fired at least one shot.
But witness accounts differ drastically from the police version of events.
"That man was shot in cold blood when he had his hands behind his back," witness Keisha Steele told the Associated Press.
Witness accounts saying Clark was handcuffed at the time of the shooting sparked anger in the community and calls for police to release video of the shooting. On Monday evening, protesters blocked Interstate 94 for about two and a half hours. At least 43 adults were arrested during the peaceful protest.
BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said in a Tuesday press conference that authorities had several partial videos of the incident -- none of which came from police body cameras or patrol dashboard cameras -- but that they would not release any of it while the investigation was ongoing.
"We don't want to taint the interviews that may be ongoing with witnesses in this case," Evans said. "And by having this video going public, we may potentially taint portions of the investigation."
The Hennepin County Coroner's Office released its autopsy report Tuesday, ruling that Clark died from a gunshot wound to the head, and called the manner of death a homicide under investigation by the BCA and the FBI.
Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges has called for a federal investigation into Clark's shooting.
The two responding officers have been placed on leave, per department protocol, according to the BCA. On Wednesday, the BCA identified the officers as seven-year police veterans Officer Mark Ringgenberg and Officer Dustin Schwarze.
We need to know exactly what happened," Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau said in a press conference Tuesday. "We need to know the truth. Everyone involved needs that and deserves that."
At least 1,000 people have been killed by law enforcement this year, according to the Guardian database that tracks police killings.
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Donald Trump approves of the way his supporters responded to a Black Lives Matter protester, reportedly beating him during a Saturday rally in Birmingham, Alabama.
"Maybe he should have been roughed up," Trump said during a Sunday morning call-in appearance on "Fox & Friends." "It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing."
A CNN reporter captured video of the Saturday incident in which a protester was reportedly punched and kicked after he was tackled to the ground by attendees or security at Trump's rally. At least one onlooker yelled, "Don't choke him! Don't choke him!" according to The Washington Post.
Trump is heard in the video yelling, "Get him the hell out of here!"
Birmingham police removed three protesters following the episode and told The Huffington Post that no incident report was filed after the altercation.
"The man you say was, I don't know, roughed up -- he was so obnoxious and so loud, he was screaming," Trump said Sunday. "I had 10,000 people in the room yesterday and this guy started screaming by himself."
"This was not handled the way Bernie Sanders handled his problem, I will tell you," the Republican presidential hopeful added.
In August, Black Lives Matters protesters commandeered the podium at a Seattle rally where Sanders was scheduled to speak. The incident prompted Sanders to both meet with prominent activists supportive of Black Lives Matter and release a racial justice platform.
Protesters have been a common sight at Trump rallies. In October, a pro-immigration demonstrator was violently dragged out of a campaign rally in Florida.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment following the Saturday campaign stop.
"This was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker and he was looking to make trouble," Trump said Sunday, noting he didn't see the actual incident.
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Donald Trump approves of the way his supporters responded to a Black Lives Matter protester, reportedly beating him during a Saturday rally in Birmingham, Alabama.
"Maybe he should have been roughed up," Trump said during a Sunday morning call-in appearance on "Fox & Friends." "It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing."
A CNN reporter captured video of the Saturday incident in which a protester was reportedly punched and kicked after he was tackled to the ground by attendees or security at Trump's rally. At least one onlooker yelled, "Don't choke him! Don't choke him!" according to The Washington Post.
Trump is heard in the video yelling, "Get him the hell out of here!"
Birmingham police removed three protesters following the episode and told The Huffington Post that no incident report was filed after the altercation.
"The man you say was, I don't know, roughed up -- he was so obnoxious and so loud, he was screaming," Trump said Sunday. "I had 10,000 people in the room yesterday and this guy started screaming by himself."
"This was not handled the way Bernie Sanders handled his problem, I will tell you," the Republican presidential hopeful added.
In August, Black Lives Matters protesters commandeered the podium at a Seattle rally where Sanders was scheduled to speak. The incident prompted Sanders to both meet with prominent activists supportive of Black Lives Matter and release a racial justice platform.
Protesters have been a common sight at Trump rallies. In October, a pro-immigration demonstrator was violently dragged out of a campaign rally in Florida.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment following the Saturday campaign stop.
"This was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker and he was looking to make trouble," Trump said Sunday, noting he didn't see the actual incident.
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Sometimes a wheat pasting is worth a thousand words.
Days after Donald Trump sparked outrage by proposing that all Muslims be banned from entering the United States, Atlanta police are investigating wheatpasted images featuring a caricature of the Republican presidential candidate on a Nazi flag.
The images were posted beneath highway overpasses around north Atlanta's Lindbergh neighborhood sometime early Wednesday morning, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
A cartoon-like image of the real estate mogul shows him sporting an Adolf Hitler mustache and a bow tie made out of a U.S. $100 bill.
AJC photographer John Spink captured several photos and videos of the images before and during their removal:
Officer Thomas Coxe told the AJC he spent roughly 30 minutes using a scraper to remove the images -- a task that became increasingly difficult as they dried. According to Coxe, the perpetrator(s) could face jail time.
"If caught, they'll be incarcerated for illegally posting in a public way," he said, noting that it was "extremely dangerous" to post and remove the images because of the busy highway traffic.
Police told CBS Atlanta affiliate WGCL-TV they would be reviewing surveillance footage from nearby businesses in an effort to catch whomever pasted the images.
Critics of Trump's controversial proposal to bar Muslims from entering the U.S. have compared his idea to the Nazis' persecution of Jews and the U.S. government's imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar likened Trump's Islamaphobic worldview to the extremist views of the Islamic State terrorist group, while Robert Gordon University in Scotland publicly revoked the honorary business degree it had bestowed upon Trump, saying he'd made "a number of statements that are wholly incompatible with the ethos and values of the university."
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Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday accused anti-capital punishment activists of mounting "a guerilla war on the death penalty" as the court heard arguments on whether lethal injection violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Alito noted during arguments in Glossip v. Gross that the high court has thus far upheld the death penalty as constitutional. But he acknowledged, "It's controversial as a constitutional matter. It certainly is controversial as a policy matter."
He continued:
Those who oppose the death penalty are free to try to persuade legislatures to abolish the death penalty. Some of those efforts have been successful. They're free to ask this court to overrule the death penalty. But until that occurs, is it appropriate for the judiciary to countenance what amounts to a guerrilla war against the death penalty, which consists of efforts to make it impossible for the states to obtain drugs that could be used to carry out capital punishment with little, if any, pain?
The court is considering whether the drug midazolam, when used as the first of three drugs in lethal injection, can reliably render an inmate unconscious and free of pain as the second and third drugs paralyze him and stop his heart. Midazolam was first used in Oklahoma's botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014, and has been used in putting 14 inmates to death since.
Prior to 2008, the 32 states that allow the death penalty used a three-drug cocktail with sodium thiopental as the first to be administered. But in recent years, drug manufacturers have either stopped selling sodium thiopental to prisons or have quit making the drug altogether, forcing corrections officials to search for alternatives like midazolam.
Justice Antonin Scalia also expressed frustration with the case brought by death row inmates. Referring to Robin Konrad, the attorney representing the plaintiffs on behalf of the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Arizona, Scalia said, "And now you want to come before the court and say, 'Well, this third drug is not 100 percent sure.' The reason it isn't 100 percent sure is because the abolitionists have rendered it impossible to get the 100 percent-sure drugs. And you think we should not view that as relevant to the decision that that you're putting before us?"
Justices Elena Kagan and Sonya Sotomayor hammered Oklahoma's representative, who was defending lethal injection. Sotomayor suggested that Oklahoma solicitor general Patrick R. Wyrick had mischaracterized opinions from a state expert witness.
"So nothing you say or read to me am I going to believe, frankly, until I see it with my own eyes the context, okay?" Sotomayor told Wyrick.
Kagan said she was troubled that lethal injection drugs can't ethically be studied on humans. She repeatedly returned to the effects of the second drug in today's lethal injection protocols, potassium chloride.
"It's like being burned alive," Kagan said.
"We've actually talked about being burned at the stake, and, and everybody agrees that that's cruel and unusual punishment," Kagan said. "So suppose that we said, 'We're going to burn you at the stake, but before we do, we're going to use an anesthetic of completely unknown properties and unknown effects. Maybe you won't feel it, maybe you will. We just can't tell.' And -- and you think that that would be okay."
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Botched executions, inmate exonerations, lethal drug boycotts and admissions of prosecutorial misconduct -- in recent years opponents of the death penalty in the United States have been calling attention to serious concerns about when and how the state kills.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard opening oral arguments in the closely watched case of Glossip v. Gross, which centers on the constitutionality of using the drug midazolam in executions.
The plaintiffs, all inmates on Oklahoma's death row, argue midazolam has no pain-relieving properties and "cannot reliably produce a deep, comatose unconsciousness" to ensure the inmate doesn't experience "intense and needless pain and suffering" when the paralytic and heart-stopping drugs are injected.
The court is expected to issue its ruling by early to mid-June, and how it will rule is far from obvious.
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt told HuffPost via email: "Seven previous courts have considered the same facts that will be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. All previous courts have ruled that the lethal injection protocol used by Oklahoma is constitutional. My office believes the U.S. Supreme Court, after considering these facts, will also find that Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol is constitutional and thus allow the sentences for these heinous crimes to be carried out in accordance with the law."
Fordham Law professor and death penalty expert Deborah Denno told The Huffington Post, "I find it very hard to predict what the court's going to do. I do think this is a court that's going to be much more educated in pharmacology and science and medicine than it was in 2008" in the case of Baze v. Rees.
It's "a statement in itself" that the court chose to hear the case in the first place, Denno noted.
How we got here
Currently 32 states have the death penalty, and all of them use lethal injection as the primary method of execution. For years, states used a fairly similar three-drug protocol in which the first drug, sodium thiopental (also know as sodium pentathol), was used to render the inmate unconscious, a second drug stopped respiration, and a third drug essentially induced cardiac arrest. In the 2008 case Baze v. Rees, which challenged that protocol, the court ruled in a 7-2 decision that Kentucky's protocol did not violate the Eighth Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment.
Nevertheless, drug manufacturers decided either to stop selling sodium thiopental to prisons or to stop making the drug altogether, forcing departments of corrections to look for alternatives.
Eric M. Freedman, a professor of constitutional law and history at Hofstra University, told The Huffington Post Tuesday that in the wake of Baze, a patchwork of protocols sprang up where there previously had been just one.
Now many states use midazolam as part of a three-drug protocol. Other states, like Georgia, have started using lethal doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital on its own.
"Baze was a spectacular failure because [the court] didn't provide clear guidance to anyone," Freedman said.
What's at stake
In states like Oklahoma that have a three-drug protocol, the controversial sedative midazolam is the first drug deployed. It was used for the first time in 2014 in the botched execution of Clayton Lockett.
"The case is a very narrow case," said Dale Baich, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs. "We're simply asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that states cannot use midazolam as part of the lethal injection protocol."
"If we're successful in the Supreme Court, it doesn't mean that lethal injections cannot go forward," Baich said. "Oklahoma can purchase pentobarbitol. Since a stay was issued in our case, Texas and Missouri and Georgia have all carried out executions using pentobarbitol."
If the court's opinion is broad, however, it could ripple out to other states, according to Rick Halperin, a death penalty and human rights expert at Southern Methodist University.
"The decision has the potential to affect other states' protocols, even if they have a different one from Oklahoma," Halperin said. "It depends on if the order is narrowly applied just to Oklahoma or more broadly."
Who to watch
"We have four justices who are pretty fed up with the way things are going," Denno said, "but even [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor's dissent in the stay [for Oklahoma inmates] was a narrow dissent. It seems pretty clear than Kennedy is going to be the swing vote."
Denno suggested that evolving public opinion about the death penalty could also be an X-factor.
"We always know the justices are looking at the surveys, the reports. They're factors we know the court considers, but how much they weigh them is an open question," Denno said. "The court certainly isn't immune to what's happening in the public sphere, and they're not supposed to be."
Another figure to watch will be Oklahoma's expert witness, Dr. Roswell Lee Evans. Though doctors are ethically barred from participating in executions, Evans has previously offered testimony that inmates "would not sense the pain" of an execution after receiving a large dose of midazolam.
Sotomayor is likely to have some of the strongest opinions on this score. She wrote previously she was "deeply troubled" by Evans' research, which she criticized for not citing any case studies and for appearing to rely heavily on the website Drugs.com as a source.
Possible outcomes
Abolitionists who hope the court will strike down the death penalty entirely will almost certainly be disappointed by the ruling: All the experts interviewed by The Huffington Post agreed that SCOTUS tends to write its opinions narrowly and is unlikely to address any wide-ranging questions about the death penalty.
"Technically the court could make the opinion so broad that it would get rid of the death penalty," Denno said. "The court isn't going to do that."
Halperin agreed: "The court is certainly, almost assuredly, not poised to strike down lethal injection as a method of execution. It's never struck down any method of execution. The court is going to allow executions to continue."
Freedman said the court has an interest in ruling narrowly if they want a consensus.
Halperin, for his part, thinks Glossip v. Gross will be a small but nonetheless meaningful step toward the eventual elimination of the death penalty in the U.S.
"It took 17 years -- from 1988 to 2005 -- for the court to see that executing juvenile offenders was wrong. It took 13 years -- from 1989 to 2002 -- for a pro-death penalty Supreme Court to decide executing someone with mental disabilities is wrong," Halperin said. "We're now at a point where a lot of people can really see an end to this."
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Someone has taken up Justice Stephen Breyer's invitation to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Breyer suggested in a dissenting opinion last month that the death penalty "very likely violates the Eight Amendment," and called for the U.S. Supreme Court to address "that very basic question."
The plaintiffs who lost Glossip v. Gross, the case pertaining to Breyer's dissent, on Friday filed a petition for the high court to re-hear their case.
The plaintiffs, all inmates on Oklahoma's death row, challenged the use of midazolam, the controversial drug used in several botched lethal injections. When the Supreme Court ruled against them, new execution dates were set almost immediately.
Richard Glossip, the lead plaintiff in the case, is now scheduled to be the first executed, on Sept. 16.
The plaintiff's attorneys are now arguing in their petition for a more basic reason to eliminate the death penalty: Glossip is innocent.
"That’s what I wanted them to do them the first time," Glossip told The Huffington Post by phone Friday of his attorney's argument. "We’re fighting. That’s all that matters."
"It would be appropriate for the Court to use this case to address the constitutionality of the death penalty because the outcome will turn not on facts specific to any single litigant, but on circumstances common to the administration of the death penalty," the petition reads.
Breyer wrote in his dissent that the “circumstances and the evidence of the death penalty’s application have changed radically” since the court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty nearly 40 years ago.
The unusually fiery oral arguments in Glossip v. Gross were only a warmup to the scathing dissenting opinions the liberal justices would eventually pen -- opinions Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed as "gobbledy-gook."
“It’s a long shot, but the Breyer dissent was inviting people to challenge the death penalty," Kathleen Lord, one of Glossip's attorneys not involved in the latest Supreme Court filing, told The Huffington Post Friday. "They just accepted the invitation."
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Richard Glossip wakes up each day knowing that at 6 p.m. on Jan. 29, he's going to die.
The 51-year-old has been on death row ever since he was convicted of first-degree murder nearly 17 years ago on the testimony of a single witness. Glossip has maintained his innocence from the start, and now he's hoping that a last-minute reprieve from Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) -- or the White House -- can spare him from becoming the 196th person to be put to death by the state of Oklahoma.
Justin Sneed, a young contract handyman who worked and lived at the Best Budget Inn that Glossip managed in Oklahoma City, confessed to beating motel owner Barry Van Treese to death with a baseball bat on Jan. 7, 1997. Prosecutors said Glossip feared losing his job and recruited Sneed to kill his boss. Sneed would later testify that Glossip promised him $10,000 to commit the crime. Both men were convicted of first-degree murder. In exchange for his testimony, Sneed received a life sentence without parole; Glossip received a death sentence.
A judge told Glossip that if he admitted his involvement in Van Treese's death, he would be sentenced to life in prison and eligible for parole in 20 years. Glossip said he refused to perjure himself by admitting to something he didn't do.
Last month, Glossip went on a hunger strike, which drew more attention to his case. He had already brought several anti-death-penalty advocates into his corner, including Sister Helen Prejean, the nun and clemency advocate behind the memoir Dead Man Walking. A Change.org petition calling for Fallin to spare Glossip's life has garnered more than 11,000 signatures.
If Glossip is executed as planned, he'll leave behind four children: Christina, 35; Erica, 32; Tori Lynn, 28; and Richard Jr., 26, as well as two grandchildren, ages 14 and 8. The Huffington Post spoke to him by phone earlier this week.
I laugh all the time. I know the guards done think I flipped, completely crazy, because I laugh at the TV all the time.
I love British comedies. Especially this one called "Last of the Summer Wine." It's these three guys, these old buddies who have been friends for years and years since school. And it's about the things they enjoy, like climbing a hill and lying in the grass. They don't need cars, homes, all that fancy stuff. They just need a cup of tea or to go lie on a hill somewhere.
And you watch that, it makes you realize you didn't need all them things in life either. All you need to live is a simple life. A simple life will always be the best.
You just gotta make do with what you have. And I do. Anything funny that comes on, I'll watch, and I'll sit and laugh with it. It helps me get through every day, knowing something's there to laugh at.
It doesn't always have to be a serious thing every day that you get up. Just because you're facing being executed, don't mean you can't laugh and try to live a life as best you can while you're in your situation.
I'm proud to say a lot of people down here say I've made a difference in their lives, and it's helped them to cope with this a lot better. You gotta spend the time you have no matter where you are, make the best out of the situation.
My last cellie, Wendell Grissom -- he ended up seeing that you don't have to live every day in this place miserable. That you don't have to be mad at a guard because he does something to you that you didn't like. It's their job; you can't be getting mad and kicking on the door and screaming at people just because they decided they didn't like what you're doing at the time.
Grissom had that problem at first. Even his pen pal in England wrote me and said, "I've never seen such a big change in a person." She said his demeanor is so much better since he met me.
And that makes you feel good, knowing you could help change somebody. To make a difference. Letting it destroy your mind or taking whatever peace you have left is just crazy. You just can't let that happen to you.
I didn't realize I had that much strength to deal with this for so many years. People complain about the simple things in life that they don't have. Like a new car or this or that. I get up every day facing this and I fight. It surprises me that I have it in me. I sure didn't think I did.
I thought I'd have been a granddad many times over. I am a granddad, and I'm happy about that. But a lot is different now, that's for sure. I just thought life would be totally different.
I have two grandkids that I've never seen except in pictures. It gives you something to look forward to. That if something should happen, and this should change, I would get to see these people and get to be part of their lives. They'd get to see me, who I am, and see that this place hasn't changed me.
The entrance to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, where Glossip is being held.
Every now and then I'll lie back and think about that. I really do. I just think about amazing things that could happen if I were to be set free.
I think about just being able to hug my family. Being with them at mealtimes. And I miss working so bad, it's unbelievable. I love to work. I've always loved to work.
That's one of the things I miss most in life. Being able to get up and go to work each day, and bust my ass each day, as I always have. I know it sounds strange and simple.
My oldest daughter just got back into my life. We had written each other several times since I've been locked up, but as for phone conversations, we just started talking on the phone a little over a month ago. She was so excited to talk to her dad, since we haven't seen each other for so long.
When your family starts getting back in your life and you see how much they loved you, even after all the years you've been separated from them, it helps keep you very, very strong. Especially over these last couple of weeks.
They showed up at my trial without my consent. I really didn't want them there. I didn't want them drug into this mess. That's what it was. A mess.
I didn't want them visiting me in prison, which made them very upset, for the most part. I didn't want them seeing me through the glass and cuffs and shackles. I didn't want them seeing their dad like that. I wanted them to remember me as I was.
My uncle was a preacher, so I had to grow up in the church. But I've never really been away from the church for long periods of time. I've always believed.
I think [being on death row] makes you a lot stronger in your beliefs. Or you better let it make you a lot stronger in your beliefs, that's for sure. When you get down close to where I'm at now, it's a comfort to know that you've made peace with everything. Especially God.
A lot of people ask if I hate [Sneed]. I don't hate him. Hatred ain't gonna do anything for you. I don't know what people believe in the afterlife, or what's going to happen. I don't even know, to be honest with you 100 percent, what I believe. But I do believe that there is something after this life, and that I don't want to be going through it hating everybody.
I don't give up hope in any way, shape or form. Because until they lay you on that table and stick them needles in you and you're completely dead, you always have hope. I'll never let them take that away from me, no matter what.
I'm not afraid of dying. Everybody dies. It's just a part of life: You're born, you die, that's it. But I do want people to know that I'm innocent.
Everybody's skeptical when you first tell them you're innocent. When you're on death row and in prison, people come up and say, "I'm innocent; I didn't do it." But when you look into the case and start seeing for yourself, "Hey, something ain't right here," then it really kind of bugs some of these people that I'm not more angry than I am. That I'm taking this like I am. But I'd rather take it like this than be miserable every day up until that day.
A lot of reporters have asked me, "If you got out tomorrow, would you be bitter toward all of the things that have happened to you?" I told them, "No, I wouldn't." I'm not a bitter person now, and I don't want to be a bitter person ever. Things happen. It's unfortunate that they do. But all I can do now is fight.
My friends say, "You just can't seem to catch a break." Maybe now I'll catch the break. Who knows. It's not over till it's over.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length. For more on HuffPost's conversation with Glossip, listen to our podcast below:
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Someone has taken up Justice Stephen Breyer's invitation to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Breyer suggested in a dissenting opinion last month that the death penalty "very likely violates the Eight Amendment," and called for the U.S. Supreme Court to address "that very basic question."
The plaintiffs who lost Glossip v. Gross, the case pertaining to Breyer's dissent, on Friday filed a petition for the high court to re-hear their case.
The plaintiffs, all inmates on Oklahoma's death row, challenged the use of midazolam, the controversial drug used in several botched lethal injections. When the Supreme Court ruled against them, new execution dates were set almost immediately.
Richard Glossip, the lead plaintiff in the case, is now scheduled to be the first executed, on Sept. 16.
The plaintiff's attorneys are now arguing in their petition for a more basic reason to eliminate the death penalty: Glossip is innocent.
"That’s what I wanted them to do them the first time," Glossip told The Huffington Post by phone Friday of his attorney's argument. "We’re fighting. That’s all that matters."
"It would be appropriate for the Court to use this case to address the constitutionality of the death penalty because the outcome will turn not on facts specific to any single litigant, but on circumstances common to the administration of the death penalty," the petition reads.
Breyer wrote in his dissent that the “circumstances and the evidence of the death penalty’s application have changed radically” since the court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty nearly 40 years ago.
The unusually fiery oral arguments in Glossip v. Gross were only a warmup to the scathing dissenting opinions the liberal justices would eventually pen -- opinions Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed as "gobbledy-gook."
“It’s a long shot, but the Breyer dissent was inviting people to challenge the death penalty," Kathleen Lord, one of Glossip's attorneys not involved in the latest Supreme Court filing, told The Huffington Post Friday. "They just accepted the invitation."
Also on HuffPost:
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Someone has taken up Justice Stephen Breyer's invitation to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Breyer suggested in a dissenting opinion last month that the death penalty "very likely violates the Eight Amendment," and called for the U.S. Supreme Court to address "that very basic question."
The plaintiffs who lost Glossip v. Gross, the case pertaining to Breyer's dissent, on Friday filed a petition for the high court to re-hear their case.
The plaintiffs, all inmates on Oklahoma's death row, challenged the use of midazolam, the controversial drug used in several botched lethal injections. When the Supreme Court ruled against them, new execution dates were set almost immediately.
Richard Glossip, the lead plaintiff in the case, is now scheduled to be the first executed, on Sept. 16.
The plaintiff's attorneys are now arguing in their petition for a more basic reason to eliminate the death penalty: Glossip is innocent.
"That’s what I wanted them to do them the first time," Glossip told The Huffington Post by phone Friday of his attorney's argument. "We’re fighting. That’s all that matters."
"It would be appropriate for the Court to use this case to address the constitutionality of the death penalty because the outcome will turn not on facts specific to any single litigant, but on circumstances common to the administration of the death penalty," the petition reads.
Breyer wrote in his dissent that the “circumstances and the evidence of the death penalty’s application have changed radically” since the court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty nearly 40 years ago.
The unusually fiery oral arguments in Glossip v. Gross were only a warmup to the scathing dissenting opinions the liberal justices would eventually pen -- opinions Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed as "gobbledy-gook."
“It’s a long shot, but the Breyer dissent was inviting people to challenge the death penalty," Kathleen Lord, one of Glossip's attorneys not involved in the latest Supreme Court filing, told The Huffington Post Friday. "They just accepted the invitation."
Also on HuffPost:
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From papal speeches to street protests, death penalty news loomed large in 2015.
Some states like Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Connecticut informally halted or outright struck the practice from their books, while others like Texas and Oklahoma scrambled to keep their death chambers running -- sometimes with disastrous results.
A lethal injection procedure became the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case, prompting one justice to write a dissent that all but invited a constitutional challenge to the practice.
Six people were exonerated from death rows around the nation, while the rate of executions overall dropped to its lowest level in almost two decades.
The fewest number of people were sentenced to death in 2015 than in any year since the Supreme Court declared many state death penalty systems "cruel and unusual" and capital punishment across America was halted from 1972 to 1976.
"2015 has been a historic year in a number of respects," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, who wrote a year-end report on capital punishment released Wednesday.
A total of 28 executions were carried out this year in just six states -- the fewest number of executions since 1991, Dunham notes in his report. Just 49 death sentences were handed down, a 33 percent drop from last year.
Even states like Texas, Missouri and Georgia, which were responsible for most of the executions this year, offer proof that the death penalty is in decline. "The people they executed [this year] were sentenced to death in '80s and '90s," Dunham told The Huffington Post.
"Montana, Virginia and Georgia did not sentence anyone to death this year," he added, "and Texas only sentenced three people to death."
Because of changes to some state laws, more defendants are receiving competent taxpayer-funded lawyers and, unlike in the past, jurors are being told that their sentencing options include life without parole.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Dunham said, "procedural safeguards were weaker" for death penalty defendants, and "U.S. hysteria about crime" was at a peak.
"These are the cases that are coming up for execution now," he said. "And they're fraught with legal error, with bias, and are generally regarded as the least reliable convictions in death sentences that have been imposed."
The death penalty remains on the books in only 31 states, and even there its application is wildly uneven. California's Riverside County alone accounted for 16 percent of all new death sentences in 2015.
Three states -- Texas, Missouri and Georgia -- carried out 86 percent of all the executions this year, Dunham said. Together with Florida, those four states accounted for 93 percent of executions.
On the other hand, there are states with the death penalty on the books that rarely use it anymore. Kansas hasn't executed anyone since 1965.
The growing cost of maintaining the death penalty was among the factors driving Nebraska to abolish capital punishment in May. (The measure survived a gubernatorial veto, though death penalty proponents put abolition on hold until a referendum in 2016.) Meanwhile, a dwindling supply of approved lethal injection drugs pushed some conservative states like Utah and Oklahoma to the extreme measures of approving older or untested methods like the firing squad or the nitrogen gas chamber.
This year a death row inmate became not only a social media trending topic but nearly a household name. Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip was scheduled for execution three different times in 2015. He won last-minute stays from a court twice. On the third attempt, the execution was called off when officials discovered they had the wrong drugs.
That mixup -- and the revelation that the Oklahoma Department of Corrections briefly considered using the wrong chemicals -- triggered a statewide moratorium on executions and the exit of at least two high-profile prison officials.
"More than any other single state failure during the year, [Oklahoma's] botch of the attempted execution of Richard Glossip underscored people's concerns about the inability or unwillingness of states to properly administer the death penalty," Dunham said.
He pointed to Pope Francis' three-day visit to the U.S. in September as another key moment. Francis, who had previously spoken out against the death penalty, told Congress, "Every life is sacred."
"He addressed an issue that many people are concerned about: the basic inhumanity of the death penalty," Dunham said. The pope's comments helped "dispel the notion that there's such thing as a peaceful and humane execution."
Also on HuffPost:
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The Oklahoma attorney general has suspended all executions in the state following a disastrous lethal injection drug mix-up that occurred just hours before a scheduled Wednesday execution.
Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) on Thursday afternoon wrote that his office "needs time to evaluate the events that transpired on September 30, 2015," including how the state Department of Corrections secured a drug contrary to protocol, and the DOC's internal protocol surrounding executions. (See the order below.)
The order applies to the three inmates with scheduled executions: Benjamin Cole on Oct. 7, John Grant on Oct. 28 and Richard Glossip on Nov. 6.
Glossip was being prepared for his 3 p.m. execution Wednesday when DOC realized the state had purchased potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride.
Oklahoma has a three-drug protocol that uses a cocktail of midazolam to sedate the inmate, pancuronium bromide to paralyze him and potassium chloride to induce a heart attack.
According to an order from Gov. Mary Fallin (R), who issued the stay for Glossip's execution, the state is investigating whether it can lawfully use potassium acetate in executions.
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The Florida Supreme Court stopped Thursday's scheduled execution of a convicted killer amid questions over whether the state's lethal injection drugs constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
The state high court on Tuesday evening ordered a stay of execution for Jerry William Correll, scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case questioning the constitutionality of Oklahoma's similar lethal injection drug cocktail. Correll, 59, has been on Florida's death row since 1986, after he was convicted of stabbing to death his ex-wife, Susan, their 5-year-old daughter and two of his in-laws.
"Because the lethal injection protocol under review in the Supreme Court is virtually identical to the Florida three-drug lethal injection protocol, a stay of execution in this case is appropriate," Florida Justice Jorge Labarga wrote in the majority 5-2 decision Tuesday.
The U.S. Supreme Court in January agreed to hear a case brought by Oklahoma
death row inmate Richard Glossip challenging the constitutionality of the state's use of midazolam hydrochloride in its three-drug lethal injection protocol. The court stayed executions for Glossip and two other Oklahoma killers while it considers the case.
Glossip's execution would have been Oklahoma's second since botching Clayton Lockett's lethal injection in April.
The Florida opinion continues:
Without a stay of execution in this case, Florida risks the unconstitutional execution of Correll, for which there is no remedy. In contrast, a stay pending determination of the issue in the United States Supreme Court will not prejudice the State and, more importantly, will ensure that Florida does not risk an unconstitutional execution, a risk that would threaten the viability of Florida’s entire death penalty scheme.
In a lengthy dissent, Justice Charles Canady argued Glossip's case in Oklahoma is broader than that of Correll's. Canady said the "suggestion that the forthcoming decision in Glossip will have any bearing on Florida executions is purely speculative."
Challenges to the constitutionality of using midazolam hydrochloride as a lethal injection drug have cropped up since European manufacturers of previous lethal injection drugs cut off supply for U.S. executions, bowing to a European Union boycott.
An Alabama judge granted an emergency stay to inmate Tommy Arthur on Tuesday over his challenge that Alabama's lethal injection protocol was cruel and unusual. Arthur's execution had been scheduled for Thursday.
Outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday voiced his personal view that there should be a nationwide moratorium on the death penalty.
"I think fundamental questions about the death penalty need to be asked," Holder said at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington. "And among them, the Supreme Court's determination as to whether or not lethal injection is consistent with our Constitution is one that ought to occur. From my perspective, I think a moratorium until the Supreme Court made that determination would be appropriate."
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated Richard Glossip's scheduled execution would have been Oklahoma's first since botching Clayton Lockett's lethal injection. The state executed Charles Warner following Lockett's death.
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Botched executions, inmate exonerations, lethal drug boycotts and admissions of prosecutorial misconduct -- in recent years opponents of the death penalty in the United States have been calling attention to serious concerns about when and how the state kills.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard opening oral arguments in the closely watched case of Glossip v. Gross, which centers on the constitutionality of using the drug midazolam in executions.
The plaintiffs, all inmates on Oklahoma's death row, argue midazolam has no pain-relieving properties and "cannot reliably produce a deep, comatose unconsciousness" to ensure the inmate doesn't experience "intense and needless pain and suffering" when the paralytic and heart-stopping drugs are injected.
The court is expected to issue its ruling by early to mid-June, and how it will rule is far from obvious.
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt told HuffPost via email: "Seven previous courts have considered the same facts that will be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. All previous courts have ruled that the lethal injection protocol used by Oklahoma is constitutional. My office believes the U.S. Supreme Court, after considering these facts, will also find that Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol is constitutional and thus allow the sentences for these heinous crimes to be carried out in accordance with the law."
Fordham Law professor and death penalty expert Deborah Denno told The Huffington Post, "I find it very hard to predict what the court's going to do. I do think this is a court that's going to be much more educated in pharmacology and science and medicine than it was in 2008" in the case of Baze v. Rees.
It's "a statement in itself" that the court chose to hear the case in the first place, Denno noted.
How we got here
Currently 32 states have the death penalty, and all of them use lethal injection as the primary method of execution. For years, states used a fairly similar three-drug protocol in which the first drug, sodium thiopental (also know as sodium pentathol), was used to render the inmate unconscious, a second drug stopped respiration, and a third drug essentially induced cardiac arrest. In the 2008 case Baze v. Rees, which challenged that protocol, the court ruled in a 7-2 decision that Kentucky's protocol did not violate the Eighth Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment.
Nevertheless, drug manufacturers decided either to stop selling sodium thiopental to prisons or to stop making the drug altogether, forcing departments of corrections to look for alternatives.
Eric M. Freedman, a professor of constitutional law and history at Hofstra University, told The Huffington Post Tuesday that in the wake of Baze, a patchwork of protocols sprang up where there previously had been just one.
Now many states use midazolam as part of a three-drug protocol. Other states, like Georgia, have started using lethal doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital on its own.
"Baze was a spectacular failure because [the court] didn't provide clear guidance to anyone," Freedman said.
What's at stake
In states like Oklahoma that have a three-drug protocol, the controversial sedative midazolam is the first drug deployed. It was used for the first time in 2014 in the botched execution of Clayton Lockett.
"The case is a very narrow case," said Dale Baich, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs. "We're simply asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that states cannot use midazolam as part of the lethal injection protocol."
"If we're successful in the Supreme Court, it doesn't mean that lethal injections cannot go forward," Baich said. "Oklahoma can purchase pentobarbitol. Since a stay was issued in our case, Texas and Missouri and Georgia have all carried out executions using pentobarbitol."
If the court's opinion is broad, however, it could ripple out to other states, according to Rick Halperin, a death penalty and human rights expert at Southern Methodist University.
"The decision has the potential to affect other states' protocols, even if they have a different one from Oklahoma," Halperin said. "It depends on if the order is narrowly applied just to Oklahoma or more broadly."
Who to watch
"We have four justices who are pretty fed up with the way things are going," Denno said, "but even [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor's dissent in the stay [for Oklahoma inmates] was a narrow dissent. It seems pretty clear than Kennedy is going to be the swing vote."
Denno suggested that evolving public opinion about the death penalty could also be an X-factor.
"We always know the justices are looking at the surveys, the reports. They're factors we know the court considers, but how much they weigh them is an open question," Denno said. "The court certainly isn't immune to what's happening in the public sphere, and they're not supposed to be."
Another figure to watch will be Oklahoma's expert witness, Dr. Roswell Lee Evans. Though doctors are ethically barred from participating in executions, Evans has previously offered testimony that inmates "would not sense the pain" of an execution after receiving a large dose of midazolam.
Sotomayor is likely to have some of the strongest opinions on this score. She wrote previously she was "deeply troubled" by Evans' research, which she criticized for not citing any case studies and for appearing to rely heavily on the website Drugs.com as a source.
Possible outcomes
Abolitionists who hope the court will strike down the death penalty entirely will almost certainly be disappointed by the ruling: All the experts interviewed by The Huffington Post agreed that SCOTUS tends to write its opinions narrowly and is unlikely to address any wide-ranging questions about the death penalty.
"Technically the court could make the opinion so broad that it would get rid of the death penalty," Denno said. "The court isn't going to do that."
Halperin agreed: "The court is certainly, almost assuredly, not poised to strike down lethal injection as a method of execution. It's never struck down any method of execution. The court is going to allow executions to continue."
Freedman said the court has an interest in ruling narrowly if they want a consensus.
Halperin, for his part, thinks Glossip v. Gross will be a small but nonetheless meaningful step toward the eventual elimination of the death penalty in the U.S.
"It took 17 years -- from 1988 to 2005 -- for the court to see that executing juvenile offenders was wrong. It took 13 years -- from 1989 to 2002 -- for a pro-death penalty Supreme Court to decide executing someone with mental disabilities is wrong," Halperin said. "We're now at a point where a lot of people can really see an end to this."
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a 5-4 vote that Oklahoma may continue to use a controversial lethal injection drug during executions.
The Oklahoma death row prisoners who brought the matter to court "failed to identify a known and available alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the opinion in which Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy concurred.
The prisoners also failed to show that a large dose of the controversial drug, midazolam, "entails a substantial risk of severe pain," Alito wrote.
In a scathing dissent from the court’s liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, suggested the high court’s ruling would allow prisoners to be "drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake" by states that wished to put them to death.
In a separate dissent, Breyer and Ginsburg questioned outright whether the death penalty itself is constitutional.
Breyer wrote that he believed it was "highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment" and called for the court to address that "basic question." Breyer suggested that since the use of the death penalty has declined over the years, it’s now an "unusual" punishment that been "imposed arbitrarily" in the past 40 years.
The lawsuit that prompted the decision was brought on by lead plaintiff Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma inmate who has been on death row for 17 years. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that midazolam, the first drug used in Oklahoma's three-part lethal injection protocol, can't reliably render an inmate unconscious and free of pain while the second and third drugs paralyze him and stop his heart, thus making the execution cruel and unusual punishment. Midazolam was first used in Oklahoma's botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014, and since then has been used in putting to death more than a dozen inmates.
Citing previous rulings, Alito noted that while methods of execution have changed over the years, "[t]his Court has never invalidated a State’s chosen procedure for carrying out a sentence of death as the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment."
Glossip told The Huffington Post last week that a ruling against him would be disappointing.
"I’d feel like I’d have to apologize to [the other plaintiffs]," he said. "Like I somehow let them down, like I didn’t do enough for our cause."
The justices have been sharply divided on the issue since the fiery opening oral arguments were heard in April. Alito accused anti-capital punishment activists of mounting "a guerrilla war on the death penalty." Kagan, meanwhile, said the pain caused by lethal injection when not mitigated by an effective anesthetic was like "being burned alive."
The remaining 31 states that have the death penalty all have lethal injection as the primary execution method. Until 2009, most states had a three-drug protocol similar to Oklahoma's that used an anesthetic, a paralytic and then potassium chloride to stop the heart and cause death.
The primary U.S. drug supplier of sodium thiopental, the first-step drug used by most states before 2009, stopped manufacturing it in 2011 after several European drug-makers either raised objections to their drug being used in executions or ceased its production altogether.
Since then, states like Florida have adopted a single-drug protocol, while states like Oklahoma continue to have a three-drug protocol.
Faced with the possibility of midazolam's use being ruled unconstitutional, earlier this year Oklahoma lawmakers hastily approved an entirely new method of gas chamber execution that uses nitrogen instead of cyanide gas. Critics said nitrogen gas is not a state-sanctioned execution method anywhere else in the world.
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Oklahoma on Friday added the gas chamber to its arsenal of ways to execute condemned killers if lethal injection, which has been plagued by chemical shortages and constitutional challenges, can't be used.
Gov. Mary Fallin (R) signed the law authorizing nitrogen hypoxia as a backup if the primary execution method, lethal injection, isn't available. The electric chair and firing squad are farther down the state's list of execution options.
Fallin said she supports the death penalty and believes it should be carried out "effectively and without cruelty."
"The bill I signed today gives the state of Oklahoma another death penalty option that meets that standard," Fallin said in a statement.
Oklahoma is among death penalty states rushing to approve backup execution methods as supplies of lethal injection chemicals dwindle due to manufacturers exiting the market or cutting off supply to prisons. The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled arguments on whether Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol amounts to cruel and unusual punishment at the end of April.
Gas chamber supporters said nitrogen hypoxia, which causes death by depleting the oxygen supply in the blood, is a humane, painless method of execution.
Rep. Mike Christian (R-Oklahoma City) who sponsored the legislation after reading a 2014 Slate article, told The Huffington Post in March that the nitrogen hypoxia method was "revolutionary."
Critics said nitrogen gas is not a state-sanctioned execution method anywhere else in the world.
Dr. Joel Zivot, assistant professor of anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University School of Medicine, previously told HuffPost that it's ethically impossible for doctors to conduct tests and verify claims on execution procedures.
"No physician is an expert in killing, and medicine doesn’t position itself intentionally in taking a life," Zivot said. "There’s no therapeutic use of nitrogen gas, and there’s no way to ethically or practically test if nitrogen gas is a humane alternative."
Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip, the lead plaintiff in the lethal injection lawsuit headed to the Supreme Court this month, told HuffPost by phone this week that he's confident there will be a swift legal challenge to the Oklahoma gas chamber.
The Oklahoma legislation passed 85-10 in the state House and unanimously in the Senate with no debate.
Lydia Polley, former chair of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish The Death Penalty, said in a statement that it's "a waste of our tax dollars to set up another method of execution." She said public funds would be more effectively spent on improving public safety, education, victim support and cold case investigations.
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Richard Glossip wakes up each day knowing that at 6 p.m. on Jan. 29, he's going to die.
The 51-year-old has been on death row ever since he was convicted of first-degree murder nearly 17 years ago on the testimony of a single witness. Glossip has maintained his innocence from the start, and now he's hoping that a last-minute reprieve from Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) -- or the White House -- can spare him from becoming the 196th person to be put to death by the state of Oklahoma.
Justin Sneed, a young contract handyman who worked and lived at the Best Budget Inn that Glossip managed in Oklahoma City, confessed to beating motel owner Barry Van Treese to death with a baseball bat on Jan. 7, 1997. Prosecutors said Glossip feared losing his job and recruited Sneed to kill his boss. Sneed would later testify that Glossip promised him $10,000 to commit the crime. Both men were convicted of first-degree murder. In exchange for his testimony, Sneed received a life sentence without parole; Glossip received a death sentence.
A judge told Glossip that if he admitted his involvement in Van Treese's death, he would be sentenced to life in prison and eligible for parole in 20 years. Glossip said he refused to perjure himself by admitting to something he didn't do.
Last month, Glossip went on a hunger strike, which drew more attention to his case. He had already brought several anti-death-penalty advocates into his corner, including Sister Helen Prejean, the nun and clemency advocate behind the memoir Dead Man Walking. A Change.org petition calling for Fallin to spare Glossip's life has garnered more than 11,000 signatures.
If Glossip is executed as planned, he'll leave behind four children: Christina, 35; Erica, 32; Tori Lynn, 28; and Richard Jr., 26, as well as two grandchildren, ages 14 and 8. The Huffington Post spoke to him by phone earlier this week.
I laugh all the time. I know the guards done think I flipped, completely crazy, because I laugh at the TV all the time.
I love British comedies. Especially this one called "Last of the Summer Wine." It's these three guys, these old buddies who have been friends for years and years since school. And it's about the things they enjoy, like climbing a hill and lying in the grass. They don't need cars, homes, all that fancy stuff. They just need a cup of tea or to go lie on a hill somewhere.
And you watch that, it makes you realize you didn't need all them things in life either. All you need to live is a simple life. A simple life will always be the best.
You just gotta make do with what you have. And I do. Anything funny that comes on, I'll watch, and I'll sit and laugh with it. It helps me get through every day, knowing something's there to laugh at.
It doesn't always have to be a serious thing every day that you get up. Just because you're facing being executed, don't mean you can't laugh and try to live a life as best you can while you're in your situation.
I'm proud to say a lot of people down here say I've made a difference in their lives, and it's helped them to cope with this a lot better. You gotta spend the time you have no matter where you are, make the best out of the situation.
My last cellie, Wendell Grissom -- he ended up seeing that you don't have to live every day in this place miserable. That you don't have to be mad at a guard because he does something to you that you didn't like. It's their job; you can't be getting mad and kicking on the door and screaming at people just because they decided they didn't like what you're doing at the time.
Grissom had that problem at first. Even his pen pal in England wrote me and said, "I've never seen such a big change in a person." She said his demeanor is so much better since he met me.
And that makes you feel good, knowing you could help change somebody. To make a difference. Letting it destroy your mind or taking whatever peace you have left is just crazy. You just can't let that happen to you.
I didn't realize I had that much strength to deal with this for so many years. People complain about the simple things in life that they don't have. Like a new car or this or that. I get up every day facing this and I fight. It surprises me that I have it in me. I sure didn't think I did.
I thought I'd have been a granddad many times over. I am a granddad, and I'm happy about that. But a lot is different now, that's for sure. I just thought life would be totally different.
I have two grandkids that I've never seen except in pictures. It gives you something to look forward to. That if something should happen, and this should change, I would get to see these people and get to be part of their lives. They'd get to see me, who I am, and see that this place hasn't changed me.
The entrance to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, where Glossip is being held.
Every now and then I'll lie back and think about that. I really do. I just think about amazing things that could happen if I were to be set free.
I think about just being able to hug my family. Being with them at mealtimes. And I miss working so bad, it's unbelievable. I love to work. I've always loved to work.
That's one of the things I miss most in life. Being able to get up and go to work each day, and bust my ass each day, as I always have. I know it sounds strange and simple.
My oldest daughter just got back into my life. We had written each other several times since I've been locked up, but as for phone conversations, we just started talking on the phone a little over a month ago. She was so excited to talk to her dad, since we haven't seen each other for so long.
When your family starts getting back in your life and you see how much they loved you, even after all the years you've been separated from them, it helps keep you very, very strong. Especially over these last couple of weeks.
They showed up at my trial without my consent. I really didn't want them there. I didn't want them drug into this mess. That's what it was. A mess.
I didn't want them visiting me in prison, which made them very upset, for the most part. I didn't want them seeing me through the glass and cuffs and shackles. I didn't want them seeing their dad like that. I wanted them to remember me as I was.
My uncle was a preacher, so I had to grow up in the church. But I've never really been away from the church for long periods of time. I've always believed.
I think [being on death row] makes you a lot stronger in your beliefs. Or you better let it make you a lot stronger in your beliefs, that's for sure. When you get down close to where I'm at now, it's a comfort to know that you've made peace with everything. Especially God.
A lot of people ask if I hate [Sneed]. I don't hate him. Hatred ain't gonna do anything for you. I don't know what people believe in the afterlife, or what's going to happen. I don't even know, to be honest with you 100 percent, what I believe. But I do believe that there is something after this life, and that I don't want to be going through it hating everybody.
I don't give up hope in any way, shape or form. Because until they lay you on that table and stick them needles in you and you're completely dead, you always have hope. I'll never let them take that away from me, no matter what.
I'm not afraid of dying. Everybody dies. It's just a part of life: You're born, you die, that's it. But I do want people to know that I'm innocent.
Everybody's skeptical when you first tell them you're innocent. When you're on death row and in prison, people come up and say, "I'm innocent; I didn't do it." But when you look into the case and start seeing for yourself, "Hey, something ain't right here," then it really kind of bugs some of these people that I'm not more angry than I am. That I'm taking this like I am. But I'd rather take it like this than be miserable every day up until that day.
A lot of reporters have asked me, "If you got out tomorrow, would you be bitter toward all of the things that have happened to you?" I told them, "No, I wouldn't." I'm not a bitter person now, and I don't want to be a bitter person ever. Things happen. It's unfortunate that they do. But all I can do now is fight.
My friends say, "You just can't seem to catch a break." Maybe now I'll catch the break. Who knows. It's not over till it's over.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length. For more on HuffPost's conversation with Glossip, listen to our podcast below:
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Oklahoma lawmakers voted Thursday to reinstate the gas chamber as a backup execution method to lethal injection.
The Oklahoma Senate voted 41-0 in favor of HB 1879, which legalizes execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Said by supporters to be more humane than using gases that cause suffocation, nitrogen hypoxia causes death when nitrogen gas pumped into the chamber depletes the oxygen supply in the blood.
"It just goes to show you how hell-bent they are on killing people," Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma death row inmate whose lawsuit on lethal injection will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court later this month, exclusively told The Huffington Post after the vote. "If they can gas them, use lethal injection -- it should really scare everyone out there that they're so bent on this."
The bill was approved by the House in March, and now goes to Gov. Mary Fallin (R) for signature. Reached by The Huffington Post Thursday, a gubernatorial spokesman declined to comment on the legislation until the governor's office has reviewed the measure.
Lethal injection is still the primary execution method in Oklahoma and all 31 other states that have the death penalty. The nitrogen gas chamber would be employed as a secondary method should lethal injection drugs become unavailable, or in the event the state's protocol is deemed unconstitutional when the Supreme Court examines its legality later this month.
Rep. Mike Christian (R-Oklahoma City) who sponsored HB 1879 after reading a 2014 Slate article, told The Huffington Post in March that the nitrogen hypoxia method was "revolutionary."
"If Oklahoma is a state that does executions, we can find a better, humane way to carry them out," he said.
Execution by nitrogen gas is not yet a state-sanctioned method anywhere in the world, according to Slate. Dr. Joel Zivot, assistant professor of anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University School of Medicine, previously told HuffPost that it's ethically impossible for doctors to conduct tests and verify claims on execution procedures.
"No physician is an expert in killing, and medicine doesn’t position itself intentionally in taking a life," Zivot said. "There’s no therapeutic use of nitrogen gas, and there’s no way to ethically or practically test if nitrogen gas is a humane alternative."
Christian said he would be interesting in eliminating electrocution, Oklahoma's current second alternative method of execution.
"I don’t see why there’s any need to have the electric chair in the 21st century," he said in March.
Oklahoma also authorizes the use of firing squads, only if other methods are found unconstitutional, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Stakes like Oklahoma are increasingly pushing forward backup methods to lethal injection as it faces legal pressure and supply challenges. Stores of the lethal injection chemicals on which states used to rely have dwindled in recent years as European and U.S. manufacturers cut off supply or pull their drugs from the market.
State corrections departments have turned to local compounding pharmacies to mix alternatives, but just last month the American Pharmacists Association spoke out to discourage pharmacists from participating in executions in any way.
Oklahoma in particular is at the center of a forthcoming Supreme Court decision for its use of the drug midazolam, which was used in the botched 2014 execution of inmate Clayton Lockett. All executions in Oklahoma have been stayed pending a ruling.
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Facing dwindling supplies of lethal injection chemicals and increased legal scrutiny of the practice, some states are considering a return to antiquated execution methods like firing squads and gas chambers -- and Oklahoma is considering using a new type of gas. But experts warn the problem with both new and old methods is the same: They may violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
"States have painted themselves into a corner with lethal injection and are trying to bring back these old methods,” Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that distributes information about capital punishment, told The Huffington Post Tuesday. “There is no painless method.”
Allegations of torture and cruel and unusual punishment surfaced in the wake of botched lethal injections last year, like those of Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett and Arizona inmate Joseph Wood. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court delayed execution for three Oklahoma prisoners while it reviews the state’s protocol.
In response, Oklahoma legislators recently advanced bills that would authorize “nitrogen hypoxia" -- which causes death by depleting the oxygen supply in the blood -- as a gas chamber alternative to poisonous hydrogen cyanide gas.
Rep. Mike Christian (R-Oklahoma City), who sponsored the House bill on nitrogen hypoxia, told The Huffington Post via email that "nitrogen hypoxia is a painless form of capital punishment that is simple to administer, doesn’t depend upon the aid of the medical community, and is not subject to the supply constraints we are faced with when using the current three drug cocktail protocol." (Supply for the three-drug lethal injection cocktail was disrupted after its European manufacturer refused to further supply the drug to the U.S. for executions.)
Christian noted the idea for nitrogen hypoxia came from a 2014 Slate article on the subject. No countries in the world use nitrogen gas as a state-sanctioned execution method, according to the article.
Oklahoma state Sen. Anthony Sykes (R-Moore), who sponsored the state Senate version of the nitrogen hypoxia bill, told the Associated Press the method is "recognized as the most humane by those who oppose the death penalty,” adding that "it causes a very quick and sudden loss of consciousness and of life almost simultaneously." Sykes did not cite a specific expert or entity in his claim and did not immediately respond to The Huffington Post’s request for comment.
But Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, one of the nation's foremost death penalty experts, said such claims are similar to ones death penalty supporters made about lethal injection in the 1970s.
“If you look at all the statements and newspaper clippings made in 1977 when lethal injection was introduced [in Oklahoma], they sound very similar,” Denno told The Huffington Post. “You would read comments about how this would be painless and immediate."
Dr. Joel Zivot, assistant professor of anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University School of Medicine, told HuffPost it's ethically impossible for a doctor to conduct tests -- and therefore reach conclusions -- on execution procedures.
"No physician is an expert in killing, and medicine doesn’t position itself intentionally in taking a life," Zivot said. He added, "There’s no therapeutic use of nitrogen gas, and there’s no way to ethically or practically test if nitrogen gas is a humane alternative."
Meanwhile, Utah is considering a measure to bring back firing squads if it’s unable to maintain its supply of lethal injection drugs. In May 2014, Tennessee lawmakers authorized a re-use of the electric chair as a back-up to lethal injection. Months later, Tennessee inmates sued the state and called the chair an unconstitutional "torture device.”
Lethal injection rose to prominence in the early 1990s and is the primary method of execution in the 32 states that still allow the death penalty. Other methods may still be used, typically at the inmates’ discretion. Eight states still have the electric chair, four have the gas chamber, three still permit hanging and two allow firing squads on certain technicalities. The last use of the gas chamber was in Arizona in 1999.
Both experts and capital punishment abolitionists have criticized the secretive nature of many state executions. States are less than forthcoming about many details of the procedure, including protocols; the identity of drug manufacturers; the identity of prison personnel involved in executions; and what personnel training for executions entails. (Medical professionals are ethically barred from participating in executions and are only present to declare time of death.) In 2014, The Guardian, The Associated Press and three Missouri newspapers sued Missouri for withholding such information. Similar lawsuits were filed by Ohio death row inmates last year.
Denno said since execution methods don't have trial runs, any new or adjusted protocol is effectively an experiment on the inmate.
"You can’t ask a person who was executed if their death was cruel," Zivot said.
Denno added that what little research is available has suggested that the gas chamber is the most painful form of punishment. "There’s been a bit of a consensus that lethal [cyanide] gas has been the most egregious [method],” she said. “There’s no question that people are dying a slow death in a very painful way.”
While gas chamber victims slowly suffocate, Denno said, electrocution imparts an extra indignity by leaving its victims “mutilated.”
"Some people scream out when the electricity is first being applied, but you're essentially burning to death,” Denno explained. "Your body fluids are boiling. One’s eyeballs can pop out -- that’s why they put a cap over people’s head."
In other instances, like that of the 1997 Florida execution of Pedro Medina, the head, skin or hair can catch on fire mid-execution.
Ironically, Denno said, firing squads are perhaps the most effective execution method. "We’ve had three firing squad executions in the modern area -- since the '70s -- that have gone off without a hitch,” she said.
Zivot criticized Oklahoma as having shown "a lack of seriousness" about determining whether its methods meet both ethical and constitutional requirements.
“You’re left with the state declaring this to be safe and a form of execution that’s not needlessly cruel," Zivot said. "I would ask the state, ‘Prove that.’”
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Firing squads are a legal execution method once again in Utah.
A law signed Monday by Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R) establishes firing squads as a secondary execution method in the event the Department of Corrections can't obtain drugs for lethal injection.
Lethal injection remains the primary execution method for Utah and the 31 other U.S. states that allow the death penalty as a punishment for certain murders.
“Those who voiced opposition to this bill are primarily arguing against capital punishment in general and that decision has already been made in our state,” Marty Carpenter, spokesman for Herbert, said in an emailed statement. “We regret anyone ever commits the heinous crime of aggravated murder to merit the death penalty and we prefer to use our primary method of lethal injection when such a sentence is issued. However, when a jury makes the decision and a judge signs a death warrant, enforcing that lawful decision is the obligation of the executive branch.”
The bill easily passed both chambers of the state legislature. Herbert deliberated for about a week before he signed it.
"It's not our preference, but we need to have a fallback," Herbert said during a news conference last week, according to NBC News.
Utah was the last state to execute an inmate by firing squad. On Friday, the governor's staff met with Randy Gardner, whose brother, Ronnie Lee Gardner, was the last Utah inmate executed by firing squad in 2010, The Associated Press reported. Randy Gardner reportedly told the governor's staff he opposed bringing back the firing squad and recalled the pain of seeing his brother's body "riddled with bullet holes."
Faced with dwindling supplies of lethal injection drugs, botched executions and legal challenges to the controversial protocol, a growing number of states are looking to legalize alternative execution methods.
Lawmakers in Oklahoma -- the only other state to allow firing squads as an execution method -- are considering a new form of the gas chamber that hasn't been used in a state-sanctioned execution anywhere else in the world.
In February, an Alabama lawmaker drafted a bill that would make firing squads a legal execution method in that state.
Eight other states have the electric chair as an alternative protocol, four have the gas chamber, and three permit hanging, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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A Cleveland police officer involved in the November 2014 fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice has been fired from the department, city officials announced Tuesday. A second officer involved has been suspended.
The department fired Timothy Loehmann, who was a rookie cop at the time of the shooting, and issued a 10-day suspension to veteran officer Frank Garmback, his partner on the scene. Both officers had been on restricted duty while the department conducted an internal review related to the incident.
Garmback’s suspension without pay was related to the shooting ― investigators determined that he had violated safety protocol when he pulled his cruiser too close to Tamir. Loehmann was fired, however, for lying on his application to the Cleveland Police Department.
Loehmann, who was still a probationary officer at the time of the incident, did not disclose on his application the nature of his tenure at the police department in Independence, Ohio.
He had been allowed to resign from that department after six months. His supervisors deemed him immature, distracted, “weepy” and altogether unfit for police work. “I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies,” the department’s deputy chief wrote in a letter regarding Loehmann’s employment.
Loehmann’s firing “only added insult to the pain and grief of the Rice family,” a spokesperson for Tamir’s relatives said. They called the Tuesday announcement “deeply disappointing.”
“Loehmann has been fired because he should never have been a police officer in the first place — but he should have been fired for shooting my son in less than one second, not just for lying on his application,” Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, said in a statement.
On Nov. 22, 2014, Loehmann and Garmback were dispatched to investigate 911 calls about a “guy with a gun.” The caller said the person was pulling a weapon from his waistband and pointing it at people.
The officers skidded their patrol car near the boy and were on the scene less than three seconds before Loehmann opened fire, killing the boy. It was later determined that Tamir had been playing with an airsoft toy gun in the Cudell Recreation Center near his home.
In December 2015, an Ohio grand jury declined to indict either Loehmann or Garmback.
An investigator hired by the since-ousted Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Timothy McGinty, declared Tamir’s killing to be “tragic” but “objectively reasonable.” That investigation was widely criticized for being sympathetic to the police and not being led by an independent prosecutor.
Ken Katsaris, an expert in police use of force, conceded that the 911 dispatcher erred by not relaying certain information to officers ― including that the caller repeatedly said “the guy with a gun” was “probably a juvenile” and that the gun was “probably fake.” The dispatcher was later given an eight-day suspension for failing to follow protocol.
The city of Cleveland paid $6 million to Tamir’s family in 2016 to settle a lawsuit without admitting wrongdoing.
This article has been updated with comment from the Rice family.
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Barack and Michelle Obama are now Washington homeowners.
The former president and first lady bought the nine bedroom, eight-and-a-half bathroom home in D.C.’s historic Kalorama neighborhood that they had been renting since leaving the White House in January. They closed on the $8.1 million purchase on Wednesday, according to property records.
The Obama family has said they plan to stay in D.C. at least until their youngest daughter, Sasha, finishes high school. Their oldest daughter, Malia, will head to college in the fall.
“Given that President and Mrs. Obama will be in Washington for at least another two and a half years, it made sense for them to buy a home rather than continuing to rent property,” Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said in a statement.
The Obamas were renting the 8,200-square-foot home from former President Bill Clinton’s press secretary, Joe Lockhart, and his wife, Giovanna Gray Lockhart.
The sprawling Tudor home was built in 1928 and renovated in 2011. It includes an au pair suite, sprawling gardens, an oversized terrace, a two-car garage and a “gated motor court for 8 to 10 vehicles,” according to the property listing.
The Obamas will also hang on to their $1.5 million six bedroom, six bathroom home in Chicago’s South Side neighborhood of Kenwood ― to the chagrin of some neighbors who don’t want the home to be a tourist attraction. The forthcoming Obama Presidential Library will be built nearby.
Neighbors in the posh Kalorama neighborhood include Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos; first daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and her husband, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner; and Dianne Bruce, the fur-draped, wine-sipping neighbor who broke new ground in the art of schadenfreude.
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An expert commissioned by the Ohio prosecutor investigating last year's fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice called the killing "objectively reasonable" in a report issued Thursday.
The report -- the third expert opinion justifying Cleveland, Ohio, police actions in the killing -- said a toy gun that Tamir brandished gave Officer Timothy Loehmann "only one split second" to decide whether to open fire.
"This unquestionably was a tragic loss of life, but to compound the tragedy by labeling the officer's conduct as anything but objectively reasonable would also be a tragedy, albeit not carrying with it the consequences of the loss of life, only the possibility of loss of career," Ken Katsaris, a police expert from Florida, wrote in the report.
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office on Thursday released the report and new surveillance footage from Tamir's Nov. 22 confrontation with police as the child played with the toy gun in a park. The report is the third commissioned by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, who continues to investigate the shooting. The two previous reports also concluded that Loehmann's actions were "reasonable" under the circumstances.
Loehmann, who has not been charged in the boy's killing, and his partner, Officer Frank Garmback, were dispatched to investigate a "guy with a gun" pulling a weapon from his waistband and pointing it at people. The gun was later determined to be an airsoft pellet gun.
Katsaris wrote that the police dispatcher should have broadcast details given by a 911 caller, including the caller's repeated observations that "the guy with a gun" is "probably a juvenile" and that the gun was "probably fake."
But given the nature of the perceived threat, Katsaris said those details ultimately would have been "irrelevant to the deadly force decision."
The situation "provided only one split second choice for Officer Loehmann under what is clearly a tense and rapidly evolving situation that required the application of deadly force to protect both or either of the officers," Katsaris wrote.
"This decision, in my opinion, was clearly objectively reasonable, given the totality of the circumstances," he added.
“He's sitting on a swing right now, but he keeps pulling it in and out of his pants,and pointing it at people. He's probably a juvenile, you know?”
Katsaris was among experts who testified at the trial of Michael Brelo, a Cleveland police officer who fired 15 shots into the car of two unarmed black motorists in an unrelated incident.
The expert opinions notwithstanding, Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine in June found there was enough evidence to charge Loehmann with murder. Adrine's non-binding opinion was in response to a court motion filed by activists and doesn't compel the prosecutor to file charges.
McGinty said in a statement Thursday it was his sworn duty to uphold the law and seek justice in every case "regardless of popular opinion or public controversy." He said evidence surrounding Tamir's death would be presented to a grand jury.
Activists have criticized McGinty's handling of the case as favoring law enforcement interests. On Thursday, clergy members called for McGinty to step down from the case and appoint an independent prosecutor after he made comments about Tamir's mother and her attorney having "economic motives."
McGinty said his comments weren't about Tamir, but rather were meant as "a response to a civil attorney’s inflammatory attacks on the grand jury process."
Also on HuffPost:
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An Ohio grand jury has declined to indict the Cleveland police officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice, an unarmed black 12-year-old, in 2014.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty announced the decision Monday afternoon, 401 days after rookie patrolman Timothy Loehmann shot Rice at a park in Cleveland. The grand jury also declined to indict veteran officer Frank Garmback, who responded to the scene with Loehmann, on charges of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty.
Tamir’s family criticized the grand jury decision and in a statement accused McGinty of "abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment.”
On Nov. 22, 2014, Loehmann and Garmback were dispatched to investigate 911 calls about a "guy with a gun" pulling a weapon from his waistband and pointing it at people. The gun was later determined to be an airsoft pellet gun.
McGinty on Monday called Tamir's death a "perfect storm of human error," not a criminal act.
"The outcome will not cheer anyone,” McGinty said, arguing that Loehmann's assessment that he was about to be shot was "a mistaken but sincere belief” given the stress of the situation.
“It would be irresponsible and unreasonable if law required a police officer to wait and see if the gun was real,” McGinty said.
Officers said they believed Tamir to be a man in his 20s and that the orange safety tip on his toy gun was missing. An expert hired by McGinty's office conceded in a November report that dispatchers should have relayed to responding officers the 911 caller's observations that "the guy with a gun" was "probably a juvenile" and that the gun was "probably fake."
In statements filed with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office, both officers claimed they repeatedly yelled at Tamir to "show me your hands." But surveillance video shows that Loehmann opened fire within two seconds of emerging from the police cruiser.
Jonathan Abady, an attorney for Tamir's family, said Monday they were "saddened and disappointed" by the decision not to indict the officers, but not surprised. The family also renewed their calls for the Justice Department to make an independent investigation into the case.
“It has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment,” Abady said in the statement. “Even though video shows the police shooting Tamir in less than one second, Prosecutor McGinty hired so-called expert witnesses to try to exonerate the officers and tell the grand jury their conduct was reasonable and justified. It is unheard of, and highly improper, for a prosecutor to hire 'experts' to try to exonerate the targets of a grand jury investigation.”
Tamir's family and their advocates have been highly critical of McGinty’s office during what they considered an unreasonably lengthy and biased investigation.
McGinty's office released three expert reports over the past few months, all of which determined Tamir's fatal shooting to be "reasonable."
Critics claimed McGinty's investigation was biased toward police, noting that his office hired people that included the police expert who testified at the trial of Michael Brelo, a Cleveland police officer who was cleared after he fired 15 shots into the car of two unarmed black motorists in an unrelated incident.
Lawyers representing Tamir's family in a wrongful death suit against the officers and the City of Cleveland earlier this month released a report of their own that disputes the findings of the investigations commissioned by McGinty's office.
The report from the Rice family's expert said the shooting was "unreasonable" and that Loehmann reacted too quickly for there to be a "meaningful exchange" between the officer and Tamir before he was shot.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) in a statement Monday called Tamir’s death a “heartbreaking tragedy” but urged the community not to give in to “anger and frustration.”
“We have made progress to improve the way communities and police work together in our state, and we’re beginning to see a path to positive change so everyone shares in the safety and success they deserve,” Kasich said.
The Justice Department said Monday it would continue its review of the case and "determine what actions are appropriate, given the strict burdens and requirements imposed by applicable federal civil rights laws."
In May, the DOJ concluded an 18-month investigation into the Cleveland Police Department. Its scathing report found that officers in Cleveland routinely use unjustifiable force against not only criminals and suspects, but also innocent victims of crimes.
McGinty's office on Monday took pains to note that officers face deadly threats in the line of duty and called for "deference" to their on-the-scene judgments of how much force is necessary.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story miscalculated the number of days that have passed since Rice was killed.
Also on HuffPost:
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An expert commissioned by the Ohio prosecutor investigating last year's fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice called the killing "objectively reasonable" in a report issued Thursday.
The report -- the third expert opinion justifying Cleveland, Ohio, police actions in the killing -- said a toy gun that Tamir brandished gave Officer Timothy Loehmann "only one split second" to decide whether to open fire.
"This unquestionably was a tragic loss of life, but to compound the tragedy by labeling the officer's conduct as anything but objectively reasonable would also be a tragedy, albeit not carrying with it the consequences of the loss of life, only the possibility of loss of career," Ken Katsaris, a police expert from Florida, wrote in the report.
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office on Thursday released the report and new surveillance footage from Tamir's Nov. 22 confrontation with police as the child played with the toy gun in a park. The report is the third commissioned by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, who continues to investigate the shooting. The two previous reports also concluded that Loehmann's actions were "reasonable" under the circumstances.
Loehmann, who has not been charged in the boy's killing, and his partner, Officer Frank Garmback, were dispatched to investigate a "guy with a gun" pulling a weapon from his waistband and pointing it at people. The gun was later determined to be an airsoft pellet gun.
Katsaris wrote that the police dispatcher should have broadcast details given by a 911 caller, including the caller's repeated observations that "the guy with a gun" is "probably a juvenile" and that the gun was "probably fake."
But given the nature of the perceived threat, Katsaris said those details ultimately would have been "irrelevant to the deadly force decision."
The situation "provided only one split second choice for Officer Loehmann under what is clearly a tense and rapidly evolving situation that required the application of deadly force to protect both or either of the officers," Katsaris wrote.
"This decision, in my opinion, was clearly objectively reasonable, given the totality of the circumstances," he added.
“He's sitting on a swing right now, but he keeps pulling it in and out of his pants,and pointing it at people. He's probably a juvenile, you know?”
Katsaris was among experts who testified at the trial of Michael Brelo, a Cleveland police officer who fired 15 shots into the car of two unarmed black motorists in an unrelated incident.
The expert opinions notwithstanding, Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine in June found there was enough evidence to charge Loehmann with murder. Adrine's non-binding opinion was in response to a court motion filed by activists and doesn't compel the prosecutor to file charges.
McGinty said in a statement Thursday it was his sworn duty to uphold the law and seek justice in every case "regardless of popular opinion or public controversy." He said evidence surrounding Tamir's death would be presented to a grand jury.
Activists have criticized McGinty's handling of the case as favoring law enforcement interests. On Thursday, clergy members called for McGinty to step down from the case and appoint an independent prosecutor after he made comments about Tamir's mother and her attorney having "economic motives."
McGinty said his comments weren't about Tamir, but rather were meant as "a response to a civil attorney’s inflammatory attacks on the grand jury process."
Also on HuffPost:
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As a former NASA astronaut, retired Navy Capt. Mark Kelly has seen some of the most unique views of the earth.
In response to the news Thursday that President Donald Trump would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change, Kelly tweeted that “seeing the Earth from 250 miles up gives you a new appreciation for the environment” and slammed Trump’s decision as “irresponsible.”
Responding to reports one day earlier that Trump would indeed exit the climate deal, Kelly noted Wednesday via Twitter: “My 1st space flight was in 2001, my last in 2011. I saw our planet change in one decade. This is nuts.”
In response to Trump’s Thursday comment that he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Kelly’s twin brother, Scott, who is also a retired NASA astronaut, tweeted:
Earlier in the day, Scott Kelly shared images of his year in space with a message encouraging clean energy over fossil fuels like coal.
Former NASA astronaut Leland Melvin has made similar comments about how seeing the earth from space made him want to conserve the planet. In a 2015 interview with HuffPost, Melvin said, “If you had more people able to see this vantage point, it would shift and maybe make you want to do more good to save our civilization.”
The United States’ exit from the historic climate deal it helped broker is expected to have significant effects on everything from trade to foreign relations. The 2015 agreement was ultimately ratified by 147 countries, including the U.S. and China, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
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As a former NASA astronaut, retired Navy Capt. Mark Kelly has seen some of the most unique views of the earth.
In response to the news Thursday that President Donald Trump would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change, Kelly tweeted that “seeing the Earth from 250 miles up gives you a new appreciation for the environment” and slammed Trump’s decision as “irresponsible.”
Responding to reports one day earlier that Trump would indeed exit the climate deal, Kelly noted Wednesday via Twitter: “My 1st space flight was in 2001, my last in 2011. I saw our planet change in one decade. This is nuts.”
In response to Trump’s Thursday comment that he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Kelly’s twin brother, Scott, who is also a retired NASA astronaut, tweeted:
Earlier in the day, Scott Kelly shared images of his year in space with a message encouraging clean energy over fossil fuels like coal.
Former NASA astronaut Leland Melvin has made similar comments about how seeing the earth from space made him want to conserve the planet. In a 2015 interview with HuffPost, Melvin said, “If you had more people able to see this vantage point, it would shift and maybe make you want to do more good to save our civilization.”
The United States’ exit from the historic climate deal it helped broker is expected to have significant effects on everything from trade to foreign relations. The 2015 agreement was ultimately ratified by 147 countries, including the U.S. and China, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
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Leland Melvin was propelled by many a rocket during his time as a NASA astronaut, but just two weeks ago the 50-year-old was launched to viral stardom by a single tweet.
While researching the Challenger explosion, reporter Adam Aton came across Melvin’s official NASA portrait from 2009. Within hours, Melvin’s self-described “big cheeseburger smile” -- and his two rescue dogs that he snuck into the photo -- were a big hit on the web.
“When you take your picture, you take your family,” Melvin told The Huffington Post. “But I wasn’t married and my family was all in Virginia, so I thought, ‘Why don’t I take my boys?’”
Melvin has since hung up his spacesuit, having retired from NASA exactly one year ago. Now, he hosts the Lifetime competition “Child Genius,” which is wrapping its first season. Melvin took some time to talk to The Huffington Post about having grit, the power of reinvention and the best music to jam to during an international space smorgasbord.
On Balancing Science And Art“My mom gave me a chemistry set —one of these age-inappropriate non-OSHA certified things — when I was six or seven,” Melvin said. "I blew up her carpet and got a spanking, but that was something that really activated my brain to say ‘Hey, this science thing is cool.’"
As an educator, Melvin preaches STEAM -- which doesn’t have anything to do with blowing things up.
“I focus on science, technology, engineering, arts and math,” Melvin said. “Arts has to be in there. When you think about arts and culture, that’s the thread that connects us all on the planet.”
On Embracing Failure As A Stepping Stone To SuccessDrafted in 1986 by the Dallas Cowboys, Melvin had dreams of a football career. But a hamstring injury during practice dashed his hopes for good, and he continued with his education until he landed at NASA.
After years of intensive training, Melvin suffered another injury that once again threatened to end his career. At NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a giant pool used to train astronauts for spacewalking, a technician forgot to include a pad in Melvin's helmet that would allow him to clear his ears as he was submerged.
“When I came out of the water, I was completely deaf,” Melvin said. “Blood was coming out of one ear, the doctor was talking to me and I couldn’t hear anything."
After surgery and a three-week hospital stay, his hearing began to return -- but he was told he’d never fly in space.
Rather than quit NASA, Melvin went to Washington, D.C. to work in the administration’s education programs.
“That’s when we lost the space shuttle Columbia and all my friends,” Melvin said, his voice breaking as he spoke about the 2003 disaster, in which the shuttle was destroyed during re-entry after a 16-day space mission. “As we went around the country for the different memorial services, the chief flight surgeon said ‘I’m watching you clear your ears and I see the good work you’re doing for this country trying to inspire kids and teachers.’"
The surgeon signed a waiver for Melvin to fly in space.
“You have to have grit,” Melvin said. “What was that thing that got you over the edge? Grit comes from failure."
On Erasing Boundaries In SpaceDuring a 2008 mission to the International Space Station, Melvin said the lead commander invited his team to a meal: “‘You bring the rehydrated vegetables, we have the meat.’"
"We’re having this meal, we’re floating food to each other’s mouths and listening to Sade on the computer — I think 'Smooth Operator' is playing,” Melvin said.
“Then I looked back on the planet from the space station -- there are no borders. It’s one blue marble spinning below you. And here I am working with people from around the world we used to fight against: the Russians, the Germans. We were breaking bread and working in harmony at 17,500 miles per hour. If you had more people able to see this vantage point, it would shift and maybe make you want to do more good to save our civilization.”
On How ‘Star Trek’ Inspired HimSpace has always been ahead of the curve, even in pop culture, Melvin said. He cites ‘60s-era “Star Trek” for its diverse cast and depictions of interracial (and even interspecies) romance.
“[Star Trek creator] Gene Roddenberry was trying to show a future of people living and working together, trying to show a future for the universe,” Melvin said. "I remember when Nichelle Nichols, who was playing Lt. Uhura, said she was going to quit 'Star Trek.' She was in a hotel in Georgia and met Dr. Martin Luther King and he told her she cannot quit. She was portraying a leader, an African-American woman on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. He saw her as one of the she-roes of the time."
On The Power Of Reinvention"My dad was a science teacher. He played in a band for extra money,” Melvin said. "When I was six or seven he brought a bread truck home and said ‘This is our camper.’ I said ‘No, that’s a bread truck.’
“Over the summer, he worked to convert it into an RV for camping, because as teachers, it’s the cheapest way to take a vacation,” Melvin said. “I learned to be an engineer over that summer.
“That Marita Bread truck became our camper because my dad had the vision to take a $500 bread truck and take us around the country. You can have a vision for something even if other people can’t see it. You just have to actualize it."
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Mountain climber Alex Honnold defied death and made history at California’s Yosemite National Park ― and he did it all in under four hours.
The 31-year-old elite climber on Saturday became the first person to scale the nearly 3,000-foot face of Yosemite’s El Capitan granite formation without ropes or safety gear, an act known in mountaineering as free-soloing.
National Geographic, which exclusively reported Honnold’s ascent, called it perhaps “the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport.” Fellow elite climber Tommy Caldwell had another way of describing Honnold’s feat:
“This is the ‘moon landing’ of free-soloing,” Caldwell told National Geographic. Caldwell would know difficulty: In 2015, with a partner and safety gear, he scaled the Dawn Wall, considered El Capitan’s most difficult route.
After Honnold completed his climb in 3 hours and 56 minutes, he shared a photo of his climb via Facebook and said he was “so stoked to realize a life dream today.”
A free-solo climb on the smooth granite face roughly a half-mile high means there’s no margin for error; a misplaced foot could spell death, which Honnold is well aware of.
What’s unique about the climber is his unmatched ability to control his fear ― a feat so strong neuroscientists have studied parts of his brain, according to National Geographic.
“With free-soloing, obviously I know that I’m in danger, but feeling fearful while I’m up there is not helping me in any way,” Honnold told the magazine. “It’s only hindering my performance, so I just set it aside and leave it be.”
He told National Geographic in January that he fears death as much as anyone, but simply has “more of an acceptance that I will die at some point.”
When it came to preparing for his climb, Honnold followed an intense training regimen that included hanging by his fingertips and doing one-arm pull-ups in the converted van he lives in. He also began memorizing the path ― and thus each hand and foothold along El Capitan’s “Freerider” route ― at least two years ago.
Video of Honnold’s climb will be part of an upcoming National Geographic feature.
Correction: An earlier version described El Capitan as roughly a mile and-a-half high. It’s roughly a half-mile high.
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Mountain climber Alex Honnold defied death and made history at California’s Yosemite National Park ― and he did it all in under four hours.
The 31-year-old elite climber on Saturday became the first person to scale the nearly 3,000-foot face of Yosemite’s El Capitan granite formation without ropes or safety gear, an act known in mountaineering as free-soloing.
National Geographic, which exclusively reported Honnold’s ascent, called it perhaps “the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport.” Fellow elite climber Tommy Caldwell had another way of describing Honnold’s feat:
“This is the ‘moon landing’ of free-soloing,” Caldwell told National Geographic. Caldwell would know difficulty: In 2015, with a partner and safety gear, he scaled the Dawn Wall, considered El Capitan’s most difficult route.
After Honnold completed his climb in 3 hours and 56 minutes, he shared a photo of his climb via Facebook and said he was “so stoked to realize a life dream today.”
A free-solo climb on the smooth granite face roughly a half-mile high means there’s no margin for error; a misplaced foot could spell death, which Honnold is well aware of.
What’s unique about the climber is his unmatched ability to control his fear ― a feat so strong neuroscientists have studied parts of his brain, according to National Geographic.
“With free-soloing, obviously I know that I’m in danger, but feeling fearful while I’m up there is not helping me in any way,” Honnold told the magazine. “It’s only hindering my performance, so I just set it aside and leave it be.”
He told National Geographic in January that he fears death as much as anyone, but simply has “more of an acceptance that I will die at some point.”
When it came to preparing for his climb, Honnold followed an intense training regimen that included hanging by his fingertips and doing one-arm pull-ups in the converted van he lives in. He also began memorizing the path ― and thus each hand and foothold along El Capitan’s “Freerider” route ― at least two years ago.
Video of Honnold’s climb will be part of an upcoming National Geographic feature.
Correction: An earlier version described El Capitan as roughly a mile and-a-half high. It’s roughly a half-mile high.
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A fight at an apartment complex in Columbus, Ohio, late Saturday left a Somali-American woman hospitalized, a neighbor facing eviction and police looking for answers.
Columbus police on Monday released information about the brawl, which was allegedly marked by racist threats, in an effort to dispel “rumors and speculation” circulating on social media, they said.
The incident comes amid heightened tensions over hate crimes against racial and religious minorities ― most recently from the mass transit stabbing in Portland, Oregon, in which a white supremacist who was berating a black girl and a Muslim girl fatally stabbed two men who tried to intervene.
Columbus police have not made arrests “due to the lack of physical evidence and conflicting stories by all parties at the scene.” They said they were unable to determine “who the primary aggressor was” in Saturday’s incident, but said there is no evidence to suggest it was a hate crime.
Two women offered to HuffPost strikingly different accounts of what happened Saturday. Both say the encounter grew violent. Beyond that, there is little they agree on.
Rahma Warsame, a 45-year-old Somali-American woman, was hospitalized with facial fractures and “some knocked out teeth” following the Saturday night melee, according to Jennifer Nemir, legal director for the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Nemir says Warsame was beaten when she tried to intervene in a situation where a male neighbor was in a “verbal altercation” with another woman.
Sam Morales, a 31-year-old Mexican-American woman who lives in the same apartment complex as Warsame, disputes CAIR’s version of events. Morales says she was the one being attacked by her neighbors, and that her boyfriend, Ricky Alan Boice, became involved while trying to help her.
“This was a neighborhood fight where they ganged up on me and just got out of hand,” Morales told HuffPost Monday. “And people got hurt. And some people got hurt worse than others.”
Morales claims the incident started after she witnessed a Somali woman named Muna Warsame ― no relation to Rahma ― hitting her child in the face with a shoe.
“I didn’t want to get involved,” Morales said. “I just thought if I went outside and I made my presence known, she would stop beating her kid.”
Morales says that once she intervened, the child ran away. She says Muna Warsame then accused her of kidnapping the child after Morales refused to tell her which way the child had gone.
In dispatch audio provided to HuffPost, a woman identified by Columbus police as Muna Warsame is heard calling 911 and trying to give her location to the operator. She tells the operator she has a stun gun for her protection. After several minutes, the crackling sound of electricity can be heard as a woman screams.
Morales says that Muna Warsame shocked her with a stun gun and that “four to five Somali men came out of nowhere” and started punching her, prompting Boice to join the fray. She denies that Boice intentionally attacked Rahma Warsame, who she says was also at the scene.
“I think she got hit by all the people involved. There’s no way they’d be able to tell who they were hitting,” Morales said. “I’m pretty sure I probably hit someone myself.”
Nemir, of CAIR, said the incident with Rahma Warsame started when Boice and Muna Warsame were arguing. She said witnesses told her Boice went to his apartment to get a knife and was “chasing other people around.” Police recovered a kitchen knife at the scene but did not indicate who it belonged to.
Nemir said Rahma Warsame and other Somali residents at the apartment complex are now afraid of further violence. Morales says that she, too, is afraid and is being harassed by her neighbors.
Nemir said that according to some of the Somali witnesses from the apartment complex, the neighbors had previously been uneasy or afraid around Boice. She said he has made racially biased comments in the past.
“He made a comment before he hit [Rahma Warsame] saying something like ‘You’re all going to get shipped back to Africa,’” Nemir said.
Morales denied that there was any previous tension among the neighbors.
“My kid and their kids play together,” she said of her Somali neighbors. “They go to school together.”
Following Saturday’s altercation, the children are unlikely to play together for much longer: Morales says she is being evicted over the incident.
She added that while she’s concerned about Rahma Warsame’s well-being, she’s frustrated that Rahma is the only one being portrayed as a victim.
Though Morales has a starkly different account than Nemir regarding how Saturday’s incident unfolded, both share an apparent frustration with the police’s investigation ― though for different reasons.
Morales said police responded over two and a half hours after her first call. If they’d came sooner, she said, the entire fight could have been de-escalated.
Nemir, meanwhile, is disappointed that police did not talk to more witnesses or take anyone into custody.
“Other incidents have been less severe and not as many witnesses,” Nemir said. “It’s baffling why the police handled it the way they did.”
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Chipotle employees have sued the fast-casual restaurant chain for allegedly failing to pay overtime compensation, which they say they are entitled to under a recent Labor Department rule at the center of a separate court battle.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in a federal court in New Jersey, maintains that the Obama-era Labor Department rule ― which vastly expands overtime pay to salaried workers ― still applies, even though a federal judge in November issued a preliminary injunction to block the Labor Department from enforcing it.
The suit seeks class-action status for employees like lead plaintiff Carmen Alvarez, one of Chipotle’s so-called “apprentices,” or managers-in-training. Alvarez and others were not eligible for overtime under the old salary cap, but were eligible under the new one, said Joseph Sellers, a lawyer from Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll who is among the representatives for the suit.
After the Obama administration finalized the rule change last year, Sellers said, Chipotle paid Alvarez and others for a few weeks for overtime they were newly qualified to receive. The payment stopped when the federal injunction against the rule was issued in late November.
“The [Fair Labor Standards Act] has two ways of enforcing overtime rule. One is from [the] Department of Labor, and the other is individual parties,” Sellers explained. “The injunction stops the Department of Labor, but says nothing about private enforcement.”
“We contend the rule went into effect,” Sellers added. As the lawsuit notes:
Although [the judge’s order] preliminarily enjoined the Department of Labor from implementing and enforcing the Overtime Rule, the Eastern District of Texas did not stay the effective date of the rule or otherwise prevent the rule from going into effect.
A spokesman for Chipotle told HuffPost in an email that the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, adding: “All of our employment practices are compliant with applicable laws. I would also note that a lawsuit is nothing more than allegation, and is proof of absolutely nothing.”
Under President Barack Obama’s overhaul of the Fair Labor Standards Act, hourly and some salaried workers are entitled to time-and-a-half pay for any hours over 40 they work in a week. Salaried workers qualify if their annual income is below $47,476. The previous threshold of $23,660 had not been changed since the George W. Bush administration.
Exemptions to salaried employees applied if they earned more than the threshold amount, or if their duties were considered substantively managerial, like overseeing other workers or possessing hiring and firing power. (The Labor Department’s fact sheet address the full range of exemptions.)
The rule change had an effective date of Dec. 1, 2016. The Labor Department is expected to file a response to the injunction later this month.
Chipotle has yet to formally respond to the suit. Sellers said the company will likely argue that the new rule never really went into effect because the injunction stopped it.
“There’s been a widespread misbelief about the overtime rule,” Sellers said. “I think a careful read of the law ― for people who want to follow the law ― [sees] this rule as in effect.”
Sellers suggested there’s been a snowball effect thanks to the rule’s ambiguity. If a business sees that other companies aren’t complying with the rule, it won’t comply either.
“What I hope this case helps to address is [what] the actual state of the law is, rather than what people’s perceptions may be,” he said.
Plaintiffs are seeking back overtime pay, court costs and damages.
The lawsuit is the latest legal and public-relations headache for Chipotle. A 2015 outbreak of E. coli has been blamed for an ongoing sales decline, while just last year, the company was sued by 10,000 employees alleging wage theft. Most recently, Chipotle suffered a security breach in which hackers stole customers’ payment information, including credit card data.
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CHICAGO -- The Chicago Police Department's top cop has been fired.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday that he had formally asked for the resignation of Superintendent Garry McCarthy, whom he hand-picked to lead the department in 2011.
McCarthy has faced harsh criticism for his handling of the high-profile shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager shot 16 times in 2014 by a white Chicago police officer.
Emanuel praised McCarthy Tuesday as an "excellent leader" throughout his tenure, but said his appointee was now "a distraction" as the department grapples internally with misconduct and externally with mistrust from the community. The mayor said the department's leadership had been "shaken."
"I have a lot support and confidence in the work and results he has done," Emanuel said of McCarthy. "But our goal is to build the trust and confidence with the public."
"At this point -- in this juncture in the city -- he has become an issue rather than dealing with the issue," he said.
Chief John Escalante, McCarthy’s deputy, will lead the department until a new superintendent is appointed.
Last Tuesday, McCarthy and Emanuel appeared in a joint press conference ahead of the release of damning dashcam footage from the 2014 shooting. The video shows the officer, Jason Van Dyke, gunning down the teen in the middle of the street as he walks away from police.
Both the department and the mayor's office had tried to keep the recording from going public. Reporters and lawyers fought for more than a year to get the dashcam footage released, and filed multiple lawsuits to compel the department to do so. The city was finally forced to release the video under court order.
Earlier Tuesday, McCarthy appeared on NBC Chicago for an in-person interview in which he claimed responsibility for the now widely discredited police account after McDonald's 2014 death.
“The initial press release was mistaken, no two ways about it,” McCarthy told NBC. “I guess that’s my fault.”
Hours later, the normally collected mayor appeared nervous throughout the press conference, stammering over his prepared remarks before facing a barrage of questions from reporters, who probed into a suspected political agenda behind McCarthy's ouster.
The embattled mayor, who is facing calls for his own resignation, had scheduled the conference to announce the city's new police accountability task force. But after announcing McCarthy's departure midway through, reporters asked if the news was a sign of Emanuel's leadership becoming a "distraction" as well.
Emanuel said his decision to let McCarthy go was an example of his accountability as mayor, but exempted himself from his own call for "fresh eyes and new leadership."
Various political, religious, legal and activist groups have called for the jobs of Emanuel, McCarthy and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez in the week since the city released footage of the shooting.
While McCarthy's ouster is the most significant fallout from the tape's release, pressure on Emanuel and the police department shows no signs of letting up.
Activists urged a Black Friday shopping boycott to protest McDonald's killing, and occupied Chicago's tony downtown shopping district on Michigan Avenue. Local store managers and staff later told the Chicago Tribune that the protests cost shops 25 to 50 percent of their projected sales for the day.
Though the police department has also released four additional dashcam videos from the night of McDonald's fatal shooting in response to open records requests, it remains far from forthcoming.
As of Tuesday, officials were still dodging questions over why audio is selectively missing from the first video released, and why 86 minutes of security footage from a Burger King restaurant near the incident vanished after police requested access to the tapes.
A restaurant manager for months has maintained police requested access to Burger King's surveillance system and erased footage; Newly published photos show police at the restaurant the night of the shooting.
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Note: This video is graphic and may be disturbing to some viewers.
CHICAGO -- City officials on Tuesday released police dashcam video showing an officer shooting teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times, continuing to fire well after the youth falls to the ground. The court-ordered release of the video came hours after authorities charged Officer Jason Van Dyke with first-degree murder in the teen's killing.
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez described the 2014 video footage as "chilling" during a news conference hours before its release.
“I have no doubt this video will tear at the hearts of all Chicagoans,” Alvarez said.
The video shows McDonald, 17, carrying a small knife and walking away from officers. Van Dyke opens fire from about 10 feet away. McDonald's hand jerks out and his body spins around before he collapses to the ground. Van Dyke keeps shooting for as long as 15 seconds -- even after the teen falls.
The video is dramatically different than the initial police account of the shooting. Chicago police said at the time that McDonald was acting strangely and lunged at police before an officer fired.
Court documents laying out the state's case against Van Dyke say the veteran officer emptied an entire clip of ammunition into the teenager, then attempted to reload:
Officer A reported that there was a brief pause in the shots when he looked at defendant and saw that he was preparing to reload his weapon. Officer A could hear McDonald struggling to breathe, told defendant to hold his fire so Officer A could approach and kick the knife away.
All 16 shell casings from Van Dyke's weapon were recovered at the scene.
McDonald is seen in the video lying on the ground for more than a minute before the video cuts off.
Alvarez's office charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder on Tuesday. He could face 20 years to life in prison if convicted.
Van Dyke's actions were "not justified and were not a proper use of deadly force by this police officer," Alvarez said. “Our investigation determined Officer Van Dyke was on the scene less than 30 seconds before shooting.”
Alvarez said she was confident her office could prove its case against Van Dyke, and told reporters that other officers on the scene said they didn't see McDonald lunge at police or do anything threatening.
The Cook County State's Attorney's office learned of the video two weeks after the killing and has had a copy of the video since Nov. 4, 2014, Alvarez said. The disclosure prompted a new round of criticism over the 13-month delay in releasing the video and bringing charges.
Alvarez said investigators were interviewing relevant parties "until last week" and called the investigation "meticulous" and "tenacious." She said protracted timelines for police-involved shootings weren't uncommon.
“Our investigation determined Officer Van Dyke was on the scene less than 30 seconds before shooting.”
“At the end of the day, I'd rather take my time and get it right than rush to judgement and get it wrong,” Alvarez said.
For more than a year, community members have urged officials to release video of the shooting. The city was forced to act after a judge ordered the release of the video before 3 p.m. Wednesday.
The dashcam video was one of several collected from the scene. Alvarez said investigators were unable to download one, and another was too far away to be usable. Alvarez backed city officials' denial that police had tampered with video evidence.
The district manager for the Burger King near the scene of the shooting has maintained for months that Chicago police deleted the restaurant's security footage, which showed the shooting.
The fast food restaurant manager, Jay Darshane, told NBC Chicago in May that police were given access to restaurant security recordings. When they left three hours later, about 86 minutes of footage covering the time of the shooting was missing, he said.
McDonald's family members, who received a $5 million settlement from the city, did not want the video released, but said they understood the decision.
"We deeply appreciated the outpouring of love and support for Laquan," the family said in a statement through attorneys. "While we would prefer the video not be released, we understand a court has ordered otherwise."
They family has also appealed for calm, urging that those who view the video "don't resort to violence in Laquan's name."
Van Dyke, 37, was stripped of his duties after the shooting and was on paid leave until Tuesday. The 14-year veteran of the force had 18 previous complaints against him, according to ABC Chicago.
The police union said it was standing by Van Dyke and vigorously opposed the video's release. Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo on Tuesday suggested that making the video public could taint jurors at Van Dyke's trial.
Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Mayor Rahm Emanuel appeared together for a press conference shortly before the video was released.
“Every day in this city, you see thousands of officers performing admirably,” McCarthy said. “The officer in this case took a young man’s life, and he’s going to have to account for his actions.”
Emanuel acknowledged there would be feelings of outrage and anger, but pleaded for protests to remain peaceful. Just one day earlier, Emanuel was rebuffed by black youth activists who had been among those who have spent the last year calling for accountability in McDonald's death.
Veronica Morris Moore, a member of the organization Fearless Leading by the Youth, said the mayor's invitation for a meeting was too little too late.
"Rahm ignores young black people until it’s a moment when he needs us. It’s not until we become useful to him," Moore said. She said the year-long wait for charges against Van Dyke was not only "embarrassing," but "an insult to Laquan McDonald, to Laquan McDonald's family and to the people watching this [case] since last year."
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The Justice Department will investigate the Chicago police for possible civil rights violations, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Monday morning.
Later Monday, NBC and CBS reported that Constantine "Dean" Andrews, the Chicago Police Department's chief of detectives, had resigned from his post.
As the second largest force in the nation, Chicago's will be the biggest city department the Attorney General's office has ever investigated (Puerto Rico's was the largest one overall).
The investigation will focus on the racial and ethnic disparities involving the CPD’s use of force, use of deadly force and its's systems of accountability, Lynch said.
"Our goal in this investigation, as in all of our pattern-or-practice investigations, is not to focus on individuals, but to improve systems," Lynch said. "To ensure that officers are being provided with the tools they need -- including training, policy guidance and equipment -- to be more effective, to partner with civilians and to strengthen public safety."
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wrote to Lynch Dec. 1 to urgently request an investigation into the police department. Madigan asked the DOJ to investigate whether the department's use of force and racial disparity issues amount to civil rights violations.
Madigan's call for the DOJ probe came just days after a court order forced the city of Chicago to release dashboard camera footage of a 2014 fatal shooting that involved police. The video shows 17-year-old Laquan McDonald walking away from police before he is shot 16 times.
The FBI, the Justice Department and the Independent Police Review Authority are all reviewing the McDonald case, including claims that police tampered with surveillance video from a nearby Burger King restaurant that captured the shooting.
The department will release a report of the findings at the end and if necessary, compel the CPD and the City of Chicago to address constitutional violations through a court motion.
Neither Lynch nor her deputy, Vanita Gupta, could say how long the investigation into the roughly 12,000-person police force is expected to take.
A 2012 federal investigation into excessive force by the roughly 1,500-person Cleveland Police Department took 18 months to complete. Lynch rejected concerns that an investigation into a department the size of Chicago would stretch beyond her tenure in President Barack Obama's administration.
Chicago's massive police force has an equally robust history of misconduct that stretches back nearly a century. Lynch would not specify how far back she would go in her investigation.
"Regardless of the findings in this investigation, we will seek to work with local officials, residents and law enforcement officers alike to ensure that the people of Chicago have the world-class police department they deserve," Lynch said.
Gupta promised that the Civil Rights Division investigation would be thorough and "leave no stone unturned."
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who originally resisted the notion of a federal probe, said in a statement Monday that he welcomed the DOJ's investigation and pledged the city's "complete cooperation."
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The sight of a cop emptying 16 bullets into the body of a black teenager was one Chicago police likely hoped the public would never see. But after a year-long battle to get dashcam footage released, viewers around the world on Tuesday night watched video of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald take his last steps before officer Jason Van Dyke buried him in a haze of bullets and gun smoke.
Viewers struggled to understand why the 14-year veteran cop would repeatedly shoot a teenager who, though armed with a small knife, was walking away. Still more wondered why a cop would continue to shoot -- and try to reload -- well after the teen was motionless on the ground.
Van Dyke's actions were an outlier on the scene. Of the eight police officers present, he was the only one who had fired his weapon. He did so because he "feared for his life," his lawyer said.
Though Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy lamented the tragedy, they painted it as the actions of one bad apple. But for Chicago police, the department's reputation of being "rotten to the core" -- marked by conspiracy, corruption, torture and racism -- stretches back nearly a century.
"The utter disregard for the fulfillment of their duties by the police department is appalling, and there is no question in the minds of the members of this jury that the police department is rotten to the core," Frank J. Loesch, founder of the Chicago Crime Commission and anti-corruption reformer, said of the Chicago police in 1928.
At that time in Chicago's history, there was a vanishing line between organized crime and corrupt politicians. The department was described in a 1929 Illinois Association for Criminal Justice study as a pawn for both.
That same year, President Herbert Hoover's Wickersham Commission peered into the nation's law enforcement efforts and found that police torture and interrogation tactics dubbed the "third degree" were "thoroughly at home" in Chicago: adult and even juvenile suspects were worked over with everything from a rubber hose to the Chicago phone book.
In the subsequent decades, the tactics would only get worse.
Chicago police treatment of not just suspects but everyday citizens made worldwide in headlines in 1968 when officers clashed with anti-Vietnam War protesters amid the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In one of the more egregious instances of brutality, police took off their badges and marched into crowds of chanting protesters to club them to the ground.
Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff called the police action "Gestapo tactics" in front of the entire convention as a furious Mayor Richard J. Daley looked on.
Robert Maytag, the chairman of Colorado's delegation, at one point interrupted the convention proceedings to ask: "Is there any rule under which Mayor Daley can be compelled to suspend the police state terror perpetrated this minute on kids in front of the Conrad Hilton?"
The following year, the Chicago Police Department reached another grim benchmark with the slaying of Fred Hampton.
Burge, who honed his torture techniques during Vietnam, oversaw the abuse of roughly 100 black men over three decades. Many of his victims were wrongfully convicted -- some to death row -- as a result of the interrogations that included beatings, suffocation and electric shocks to the genitals.
The city has since paid more than half a billion dollars in Burge-related lawsuits, while Burge himself served 3 1/2 years after he was convicted of perjury in 2011. While many of his victims still fight for restitution, Burge now lives near Tampa, Florida, where he keeps a boat named "Vigilante" and is on a $4,000-a-month police pension.
The 22-year-old Boyd was shot to death by Dante Servin, an off-duty detective, as she was enjoying an unseasonably warm spring evening with friends on the South Side in March of 2012.
Servin got into a verbal altercation with Boyd's group over noise as they were standing in the park. He claimed he "feared for his life" after a man in Boyd's group pointed a gun at him. It later turned out to be a cell phone. Servin fired over his arm at the group, fatally hitting Boyd in the back of the head.
Boyd's family was awarded $4.5 million in a wrongful death suit against the city, but Servin himself escaped conviction. He was cleared of all charges of involuntary manslaughter without having to mount a defense. The judge made her ruling on a technicality, saying prosecutors could not prove Servin acted recklessly because his actions were clearly intentional. In other words, the cop walked because he was under-charged.
Cook County State Prosecutor Anita Alvarez on Tuesday charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder in the shooting of Laquan McDonald. Alvarez said she was confident her office could meet its burden, citing video footage of the shooting as well as witness accounts. Alvarez didn't specify if the witnesses were motorists on the scene, or any of the seven police who were on the scene with Van Dyke.
Taylor expressed skepticism that any of the officers on scene would break their supposed "code of silence."
"[Cops] go on record, they write reports, they testify before a grand jury. And if they’re proven wrong, they’re committing perjury," Taylor said. "They can’t turn back."
For police that do break rank, Taylor said retribution is all but certain. He cited Detective Frank Laverty, who handed prosecutors evidence he gathered in 1982 which proved cops had fingered the wrong man for a crime.
"Laverty, an experienced homicide detective, was reassigned to watch new recruits give urine samples," said Chicago attorney Flint Taylor, whose People's Law Officewas involved in the case. "In the station, we learned later that when Laverty walked through the room, [Cmdr. Jon] Burge would pull out his gun, put it to Laverty's back and go 'Pop! Pop!' in front of all the other cops in the room."
Van Dyke's indictment was the first time in more than 30 years that a Chicago police officer had been charged with murder. If convicted, he could serve 20 years to life in prison -- and would be the first Chicago cop in the modern era to be convicted of first-degree murder from an on-duty shooting.
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CHICAGO ― Spencer Leak, who’s helped prepare Chicago’s dead since he was a boy, is looking back at 2016 with a mix of shock and sadness.
The city has seen more than 750 homicides this year and approximately five times as many shootings.
“My dad founded the funeral home in 1933, and I’ve been at my father’s business since I was 12,” the 79-year-old president of Leak & Sons Funeral Home said Tuesday. “I’ve never seen violence like it is now. And I’ve seen a lot.”
In January, Chicago’s homicide figures were already forecasting a violent year ahead. That has proved tragically accurate. Over the Christmas holiday weekend alone, at least 57 people were shot, a dozen of them fatally.
“I looked at our city over the holiday, and how beautiful it was with people enjoying the season,” Leak said. “And blocks away, people were destroying each other. This can’t keep going on.”
As crime dips to historic lows nationwide, Chicago has struggled with a homicide problem that now outpaces New York and Los Angeles combined. The year 2016 has been Chicago’s deadliest since 1997.
And just as a few big cities like Chicago can skew the national average, only a handful of neighborhoods are responsible for Chicago’s rising numbers overall.
Of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods, eight have more than 90 homicides per 100,000 people, while at least 11 have less than one, according to data compiled by the Chicago Tribune and The Trace, a news nonprofit. (The official homicide figures from the Chicago Police Department tend to be somewhat lower than the numbers compiled by media organizations and the medical examiner’s office, because of the way the police department adjusts its crime stats as investigations progress.)
City officials have categorized most of the shootings as gang-related, with criminals and bystanders alike among the dead.
“What I’m seeing now is random violence as opposed to targeted violence,” Leak said. “I’m seeing situations where people do mass shootings. That’s something we did not see 20 to 30 years ago.”
There’s little agreement as to what the biggest contributing factors are.
Community members in the hardest-hit neighborhoods cite the lack of mental health care, economic investment or educational opportunities. The city’s mass shuttering of 50 public schools in 2012 largely affected low-income black and Latino communities.
Politicians and police have their own list of grievances, including comparatively weak gun laws in the neighboring states of Indiana and Wisconsin that facilitate a flow of illegal guns into the city. They also blame thinning police ranks and relatively short local jail sentences for gun-related charges.
Chicago’s homicide clearance rate ― the share of cases that get solved ― is about 30 percent. That’s less than half the national average, according to the FBI’s 2012 data.
The city last grabbed headlines for its homicide total in 2012, when it passed the grim milestone of 500 for the year. That high-water mark prompted outrage from the community and promises of action from City Hall ― largely in the form of more police.
In 2016, the outrage is familiar, as are the promises.
A new wrinkle, though, involves the idea that anti-police sentiment linked to viral videos of officers killing black people ― the so-called “viral video effect” or “Ferguson effect” ― is somehow contributing to rising murder rates in Chicago and elsewhere.
CPD Superintendent Eddie Johnson has repeated this claim throughout the year, despite nationwide polling that suggests the public largely respects police, and despite criminal justice experts debunking the theory.
“The anti-police rhetoric has emboldened and empowered these gang members to do what they do,” Johnson said at a press conference Monday. “You know when they feel [the] public will speak out for them, and not the police officers, that’s giving them the power to go out and do what they do.”
Johnson, a CPD veteran, assumed the role as Chicago’s top cop earlier this year as the violence was surging.
His predecessor, former Superintendent Garry McCarthy, was unceremoniously booted amid national outrage following the November 2015 release of a police dashcam video that showed a CPD officer fatally shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times as the teen walked away.
Johnson was tasked with repairing the broken trust between the police and the communities they patrol.
As Chicago heads into a new year with more questions than answers over how to stem the tide of shootings, Leak and his South Side funeral home expect to remain busy.
Leak said he and his team start each day with a prayer, knowing that the hours ahead will likely involve an onslaught of ringing phones and heart-wrenching conversations with families of slain Chicagoans.
Leak said he is praying for everyone in Chicago and hopes for bold moves in the new year to counter the city’s violence.
“Let’s do something extraordinary,” he said. “We’ve got to match extraordinary for extraordinary.”
Moments later, he apologized for having to cut the conversation short.
“I’ve got to go,” Leak said, before hanging up the phone. “I have another family I need to attend to.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated that Chicago surpassed 500 murders in 2012 for the first time in nearly a decade. The city had more than 500 murders four years earlier, in 2008.
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CHICAGO -- Embattled Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez was ousted in the Democratic primary Tuesday night by challenger Kim Foxx (D), who now eyes a November bid for the role of top prosecutor of the nation's second-largest county.
Shortly before 9 p.m., Foxx led with more than 61 percent of the votes with 76 percent of the precincts reporting. Alvarez's staff said she was calling Foxx to concede and vow a "smooth transition."
“Obviously, we hoped the results would be different,” Alvarez told supporters during her concession speech Tuesday night.
“I’ve been criticized that I wasn’t a very good politician,” she said, adding, “I am damned proud of the fact that I am a very good prosector.”
Foxx, 43, triumphed thanks to a wave of support and heavy organization from anti-discrimination and anti-police brutality groups in Chicago, many of which are affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Foxx was among those who criticized Alvarez's handling of the Laquan McDonald case -- including the decision to wait more than 13 months to bring murder charges against the Chicago cop who was seen on camera shooting the teenaged McDonald 16 times.
"The public has to hold feet to the fire on these issues. And Anita Alvarez's feet have not been held to the fire," Foxx said in an interview with the Chicago Reader.
The Chicago native's history was also undeniably powerful: Raised in the now-demolished Cabrini-Green projects, Foxx fought through homelessness in high school to make it to college and then law school. She spent 12 years as a prosecutor in the Cook County States Attorney's office, eventually working under Alvarez.
Foxx has said she was initially inspired by Alvarez, who held the role as Cook County's top prosecutor since 2008, when she was the first woman and first Latina to score the Democratic nomination. But as those feelings gave way to disappointment, Foxx moved on to become chief of staff to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, considered the most powerful Chicagoan, according to Chicago Magazine -- and a noted Alvarez foe.
Preckwinkle was hardly the only one hoping to see Alvarez's term come to a close.
Alvarez handily won her previous re-election bids, but her pattern of harsh prosecution of youth offenders -- which made Cook County among the leaders for juvenile life without parole sentences -- and low rate of prosecuting police misconduct eventually drew the ire of those hoping for progressive reform.
In 2012, Alvarez gave a disastrous interview with "60 Minutes" in which she defended police amid evidence that Chicago, at that point, had managed to rack up more false convictions than any other city in America.
Critics, including Chicago aldermen, activists and justice reform advocates, accused Alvarez of being compromised due to her cozy relationship with the city's powerful police union.
Alvarez made national headlines once again when video of a Chicago police officer shooting McDonald 16 times was finally made public.
Kelly Hayes, a Chicago organizer whose group Lifted Voices was among those working to oust Alvarez in favor of Foxx, said Alvarez was complicit in the Chicago Police Department's "blue wall of silence."
"For this campaign, we wanted to make sure people walked into the voting booths with Laquan McDonald and Rekia Boyd in their hearts,” Hayes said Tuesday.
Alvarez eventually charged officer Jason Van Dyke with first-degree murder -- more than 13 months after the shooting -- despite having obtained video of the incident within two weeks of it occurring.
"Sixteen shots and a cover-up" became a rallying cry from both Chicago residents and community leaders who called for the jobs of both Alvarez and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose office was also accused of suppressing the video until a court order forced it into the open.
By then Alvarez had been facing criticism for months from the fallout from Boyd's shooting death by off-duty Chicago detective Dante Servin.
Boyd, a 22-year-old unarmed black woman, was killed in 2012. Alvarez charged Servin with involuntary manslaughter a year later.
Hayes said she and organizers like her, which include the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter, the Black Youth Project 100 and Assata's Daughters, had "no illusions" that a Foxx win would spell the end of racism or that Foxx would end racism or problems in the CPD.
"Everyone involved in this campaign understands the limitations of an electoral victory. It’s not going to change the culture of racism, but it’s a step," Hayes said.
Though Foxx secured an endorsement from county Democrats, her campaign stirred controversy when she was fined $20,000 by state election officials for failing to report a campaign poll paid for by Preckwinkle and for being late on certain campaign disclosure filing deadlines.
Foxx’s campaign said at the time it disagreed with the board’s ruling and would appeal.
Foxx now faces Republican Christopher Pfannkuche in the November general election.
She thanked a crowd of electrified supporters Tuesday night, congratulating her opponents on their efforts and noting the historic nature of having three women candidates in the Democratic primary race.
"I want to be absolutely clear... This race is not just about saying goodbye, it’s about turning a page," Foxx said.
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CHICAGO -- The Chicago Police Department must face a "painful but necessary reckoning" that includes acknowledging its racist history and the legacy it has created, according to a report released Wednesday by the city's Police Accountability Task Force.
"CPD cannot begin to build trust, repair what is broken and tattered unless --from the top leadership on down -- it faces these hard truths, acknowledges what it has done at the individual and institutional levels and earnestly reaches out with respect. Only then can it expect to engage the community in a true partnership," the task force wrote.
The scathing 190-page report addressed issues ranging from the department's unequal treatment of black people to the city's acquiescence to the will of the powerful police union. It also slammed the supposedly impartial oversight body, the Independent Police Review Authority, calling it "badly broken."
The report called the community's lack of trust in the CPD "justified," and said the department has done little to confront racial bias within its ranks.
"CPD’s own data gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color," the report read.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel in December formed the nine-member task force following a rare mea culpa for the way he and the department handled the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
The report emphasized multiple issues the McDonald shooting -- and subsequent fight over transparency and accountability -- brought into the national spotlight.
“[W]hile many individuals and entities have a role to play, the change must start with CPD.””
The task force, which includes a mix of legal experts, academics and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), spent four months gathering feedback from current and former members of the department, public servants and community members.
The task force made more than 100 different recommendations for reform, the most striking of which included a call for CPD's superintendent to publicly recognize the "history of racial disparity and discrimination" in the department.
Other recommendations addressed community empowerment, creating a new structure for officer accountability and tackling "institutional" issues that range from the department's "code of silence" to its lack of de-escalation and crisis training:
Replace IPRA with a civilian-based oversight board
Replace the longstanding community policing model with one focused on citizen "engagement and empowerment"
Make data on officer disciplinary information available to the public
Install an inspector general specifically for CPD who will monitor racial bias
Emphasize restorative justice tactics for encounters with civilians, especially young people
Create a more comprehensive response system for addressing mental health-related crisis calls
- Reform the police union contract to help end the institutionalized "code of silence"
Expand the department's body camera program
Improve officer training and diversity recruitment within the force
Beyond the racial disparities in policing, the task force noted that the CPD's current system of discipline and oversight "benefits bad officers at the expense of good officers.”
The task force has given the department and the city council 90 to 180 days to enact policies and plans to implement the changes.
The report was revealed just hours after CPD Interim Superintendent Eddie Johnson was unanimously confirmed by the city council Wednesday afternoon.
Addressing reporters after Johnson's confirmation, Emanuel said "there's no question there’s work we have to do in restoring trust and building certain values of transparency," noting he had not yet seen the report and could not comment on it specifically until he had been briefed.
“I don’t really think you need a task force to tell us there’s racism in America … in Illinois, or that there’s racism that exists in the city of Chicago, or that exists in our departments,” he added.
The report is cautiously optimistic on the prospect of true change, noting that while reform is possible, it must begin with CPD's "acknowledgement of the sad history and present conditions which have left the people totally alienated from the police, and afraid for their physical and emotional safety."
"And while many individuals and entities have a role to play, the change must start with CPD."
Scroll down to read the executive summary of the task force report:
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The National Women’s Law Center has sued the Department of Education in an effort to pry loose a trove of data related to the agency’s oversight and rules enforcement related to sexual harassment in U.S. schools.
The nonprofit, which advocates for women’s rights, claims the Department of Education failed to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition in January for data that are “a matter of public concern,” according to the complaint filed Monday in a federal court in Washington, D.C. (Read the full complaint below.)
The NWLC argued that the Education Department’s data on Title IX ― the education law that bars sex-based discrimination, including sexual assault and sexual harassment, at schools that receive federal funding ― is needed to understand how the department is handling Title IX enforcement under Donald Trump’s administration. The department typically released such data annually under President Barack Obama.
“Radio silence from the Department of Education in response to our simple request ... is totally unacceptable.”
The group filed a request in late January seeking records related to sexual harassment cases pending before the department’s Office of Civil Rights that include compliance reviews, information on how cases were resolved, investigations and other data.
Agencies typically have 20 days to acknowledge a FOIA request, at which point they can grant a request or specify why one was denied. According to the NWLC’s complaint, the Education Department denied the FOIA petition “due to the backlog of requests and the competing demands for the time of staff that are working to respond to [NWLC’s] request.”
The department didn’t say when it might be able to reply. Months later, the group said, it has heard nothing and still doesn’t have the records it’s seeking.
“Radio silence from the Department of Education in response to our simple request to see documents about its enforcement of prohibitions against sexual harassment in schools is totally unacceptable,” NWLC President-elect Fatima Goss Graves said in a statement.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The issue is even more pressing, the NWLC argues, because Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been noncommittal when it comes to keeping the stricter Title IX enforcement guidelines that were instituted during the Obama administration.
The Obama-era guidelines, outlined in a 2011 letter, included nonbinding policies on standards of evidence and timelines for investigations. During her January confirmation hearing, DeVos said “it would be premature” for her to decide whether the department should continue to follow Obama’s letter.
“There is a lot at stake,” Goss Graves added. “Without the release of these documents, students, families and advocates are kept in the dark about whether the department is enforcing legal protections for student survivors of sexual harassment and rape. Without their release, survivors won’t know if they can trust the government to intervene on their behalf.
The Obama-era rules were due in part to what was seen as campuses shirking their responsibilities under Title IX and often mishandling reports of sexual violence.
Since April 2011, the Department of Education has conducted 397 investigations related to colleges allegedly mishandling such reports, 355 of which are currently active, according to a database by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Goss Graves said that, without the release of the data, “it will be harder for victims to hold their schools accountable for their Title IX violations.”
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District attorney seats have been among the safest in local elections.
Recent incumbent prosecutors' election losses suggest a tough-on-crime approach is becoming a political liability rather than an asset.
Declining crime rates and activists organizing at the local level are influencing this new trend.
During Chicago's most recent Election Day, voters made it clear to the top prosecutor of the nation's second-largest county that it was time to start packing.
Anita Alvarez, the state's attorney for Cook County who had waited more than a year to indict the officer who shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, lost her bid for re-election that night -- badly. In Ohio, so did Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty, who had declined to indict the cop who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
Criminal justice reform groups hailed the unseating of two prosecutors who had bungled major police shooting cases as an important win. "This could be a sea change and might mean that prosecutors might become more accountable to the public," Daniel Medwed, a Northeastern University law professor specializing in criminal law, said via email. "This is largely attributable to Black Lives Matter and the attention paid to prosecutorial decisions about how to proceed."
Alvarez and McGinty's defeats were certainly notable. On average, incumbent prosecutors win re-election 95 percent of the time (in districts with more than 100,000 voters, like Cook and Cuyahoga counties, the rate dips to 90 percent). They win re-election slightly more often than state lawmakers, according to a study from Ohio State University's law school. Between 55 and 80 percent of the time, prosecutors run for re-election unopposed.
Yet while reform groups targeted both Alvarez and McGinty because of high-profile national scandals, this only partially explains why the two prosecutors lost.
In fact, some experts now say that a string of incumbent defeats across the country suggests it doesn't take a Black Lives Matter-specific flashpoint for voters to reject incumbent prosecutors. For many DAs, their longstanding embrace of tough-on-crime policies is reason enough.
"DAs almost never lose elections," said John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham University's law school. "And now they’re starting to."
While Pfaff says McGinty's ouster was "entirely a rejection for his failure to prosecute Tamir Rice's shooter," Alvarez had a history of advancing harsh and seemingly vindictive policies during her tenure.
But Pfaff cites the defeats of two prosecutors in the deep South as even more revealing examples of how voters are beginning to reject a decades-old approach to crime along with the incumbents themselves.
In November, Mississippi voters sacked District Attorney Forrest Allgood after 27 years in office. The Washington Post described Allgood as "one of America's worst prosecutors" due to his aggressive prosecutions against vulnerable defendants, including a 13-year-old boy and an intellectually disabled young woman. Both convictions were overturned.
"Allgood lost to someone smarter on crime, less tough on crime," Pfaff said. "That's a much more promising trend."
In Louisiana's Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport, acting District Attorney Dale Cox faced such long odds that he pulled out of the race before the November election. Cox, who was in and out of the district attorney's office for thirty years, established a shockingly high record of capital murder convictions: Caddo Parish is home to roughly five percent of the state's population, but accounts for a third of the state's death sentences -- several of which have been overturned.
That's a sign of a major shift in public sentiment. In the 1980s and 1990s, when crime rates were significantly higher than they are today, prosecutors embraced policies like "three strikes" laws and mandatory minimum sentences. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush's thumping of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election stood for years as a clear signal to elected officials that being tough on crime was a key to victory.
During a 1996 speech on crime at New Hampshire’s Keene State College, then-first lady Hillary Clinton infamously invoked the term "super predator," a junk science term that predicted a wave of fearless, brutal, amoral juveniles who would kill, rape or steal without remorse.
As crime rates have declined, however, prosecutors have been slow to adjust to the new reality. "They retained those policies even as crime was falling, which makes it hard to justify those policies now," Pfaff said.
Accusing your opponent of being "soft on crime" "no longer seems to be the dependable political cudgel it once was," reported the online journalism nonprofit The Marshall Project last year.
Rob Smith, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, also notes that local prosecutors have become more visible thanks to increased media coverage of incidents like the Laquan McDonald shooting. Consequently, the public is becoming more aware of the unilateral decision-making power they wield.
"Prosecutors have a lot discretion over what crimes they charge," Smith said. "There’s a saying that a jury can indict a ham sandwich. But if you can indict a ham sandwich, why can’t you indict a cop who killed a kid?"
“There’s a saying that a jury can indict a ham sandwich. But if you can indict a ham sandwich, why can’t you indict a cop who killed a kid?”
That doesn't mean putting lots of people in prison has fallen completely out of favor, Pfaff noted. County prosecutors may still find support for such tactics in the suburban parts of their district.
"Suburbs feel the benefits of the city being safer," he said. "They feel the risk of drugs coming into their neighborhood being kept at bay, they feel safer when they commute to work in the city … but they don’t feel the costs of that enforcement."
The result, Pfaff said, is that "we sort of allow the suburbs to have a say in how policing affects the city."
Mariame Kaba, who has backed an array of racial justice, anti-criminalization and anti-violence organizations in Chicago for nearly three decades, cites Cook County as a prime example of suburban voters' influence on urban policy.
"You see this divide over city and suburbs: Suburbs love 'tough on crime' because it doesn’t affect them," she says. "To them, it’s black and brown people who are running wild and need a firm hand to tamp them down."
Suburban voters will continue to have disproportionate power in prosecutor elections, Pfaff said. But, he added, the Black Lives Matter movement has proved to be a powerful entry point for increasing support for various criminal justice reform issues.
Many more district attorneys who have prosecuted aggressively and punitively will be replaced in the next five years, Smith predicts.
"I think you’re going to see a lot more progressive candidates running for office, you're going to a see a lot of places with more contested elections, and see more places where an incumbent prosecutor is ousted," he said.
Pfaff believes that even in places like Maricopa County, Arizona, or Harris County, Texas -- both notorious for their tough-on-crime approach -- more-engaged voters could soon rein in aggressive prosecutors.
"We could be on the precipice of one of the most important changes in history about how the state and individuals interact with each other," Pfaff said.
Just four weeks ago, voters in Corpus Christi, Texas, voted out Mark Skurka, the county district attorney. Skurka and his office had been accused of misconduct, which Pfaff said "appalled" voters and local journalists alike.
"A tattooed defense lawyer ran against him in the primary and won," Pfaff said. "I think that’s powerful."
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Victims of the deadly warehouse fire at the Ghost Ship artist collective in Oakland, California, are slowly being identified as officials sift through the wreckage of one of the deadliest fires in the city’s history.
(See the faces and names of the victims below)
Authorities were removing debris from the site “bucket by bucket” and identifying victims by fingerprint after the warehouse roof collapsed during the fire, they said. About 75 percent of the debris removal process was complete, Oakland Deputy Fire Chief Darin White said Monday.
“Our first priority is the humane and compassionate removal of the victims’ [remains],” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a Sunday news conference.
Officials had identified at least 33 victims and released 17 of their names as of Monday morning.
Sgt. Kelly confirmed that teenagers and foreign nationals from Asia and Europe were among the dead.
“We have some children who are 17 years old, possibly younger,” Kelly said. He noted that the tragedy hit close to home: “One of our deputies that we work with lost his son in the fire.”
Sgt. Kelly noted there were several trailers inside the building that appeared to be makeshift residences.
The three-alarm fire broke out late Friday night during a dance party at the Ghost Ship artists’ collective warehouse. Eyewitnesses described flames pouring out of the multi-level building. The roof ultimately collapsed onto the warehouse’s second floor.
Officials said there were about 50 people inside. They anticipated dozens of casualties, making the blaze one of the deadliest fires in Oakland’s history.
The cause of the fire is still unknown, though the city had recently received complaints about “blight and unpermitted construction” at the warehouse, according to officials.
Names, ages and cities confirmed by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Bureau.
Hayley Miller contributed reporting.
This article has been updated to include new details, including the identification of victims of the fire.
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Victims of the deadly warehouse fire at the Ghost Ship artist collective in Oakland, California, are slowly being identified as officials sift through the wreckage of one of the deadliest fires in the city’s history.
(See the faces and names of the victims below)
Authorities were removing debris from the site “bucket by bucket” and identifying victims by fingerprint after the warehouse roof collapsed during the fire, they said. About 75 percent of the debris removal process was complete, Oakland Deputy Fire Chief Darin White said Monday.
“Our first priority is the humane and compassionate removal of the victims’ [remains],” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a Sunday news conference.
Officials had identified at least 33 victims and released 17 of their names as of Monday morning.
Sgt. Kelly confirmed that teenagers and foreign nationals from Asia and Europe were among the dead.
“We have some children who are 17 years old, possibly younger,” Kelly said. He noted that the tragedy hit close to home: “One of our deputies that we work with lost his son in the fire.”
Sgt. Kelly noted there were several trailers inside the building that appeared to be makeshift residences.
The three-alarm fire broke out late Friday night during a dance party at the Ghost Ship artists’ collective warehouse. Eyewitnesses described flames pouring out of the multi-level building. The roof ultimately collapsed onto the warehouse’s second floor.
Officials said there were about 50 people inside. They anticipated dozens of casualties, making the blaze one of the deadliest fires in Oakland’s history.
The cause of the fire is still unknown, though the city had recently received complaints about “blight and unpermitted construction” at the warehouse, according to officials.
Names, ages and cities confirmed by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Bureau.
Hayley Miller contributed reporting.
This article has been updated to include new details, including the identification of victims of the fire.
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The sexual harassment claims against former Fox News chief Roger Ailes have only grown worse in the month since Gretchen Carlson filed suit against the 76-year-old media legend.
Carlson, a former Fox News host, dropped the bombshell allegation that Ailes had harassed her throughout her time at the network and enabled a hostile work environment there. Other women have now accused him of sexually related misconduct from unwanted groping to decades of “psychological torture.”
The list of Ailes’ public and private accusers has grown to more than 20, Carlson’s lawyers have said.
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Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox, moved quickly to try to contain the disastrous developments. Within two weeks of Carlson’s lawsuit, an outside law firm was hired to investigate the claims and Ailes was booted out (with a $40 million golden parachute).
New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, who has interviewed more than half a dozen of those claiming harassment, writes that their stories cover decades. Carlson’s complaints go back to at least 2009, after she’d highlighted sexist treatment at Fox News, and continue as recently as her June ouster from the network. Other allegations reach back more than 50 years to when Ailes was a producer on “The Mike Douglas Show,” putting them past the statute of limitations for any legal relief.
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Still other Ailes accusers had previously settled with him and signed non-disclosure agreements, yet they’re now coming forward. 21st Century Fox is also waiving those agreements to allow anyone to speak to the law firm investigating the situation.
Andrea Tantaros, who was taken off the air as a Fox News personality but remains on its payroll, told New York Magazine that in the past, complaints to Fox News’ human resources department were ignored.
Ailes, through his lawyers, has denied the claims against him. Here are some of the women who say he did it:
Gretchen Carlson
Rich Polk/Getty Images
Gretchen Carlson said in her July 2016 lawsuit against Ailes that the onetime Fox News chief retaliated against her for speaking up about sexist treatment. According to the lawsuit, he later told her, "I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better."
Megyn Kelly
Associated Press
Following Carlson's accusations, Fox News star Megyn Kelly remained conspicuously silent even as female colleagues spoke out in support of Ailes. New York Magazine, citing two Fox News sources, soon reported that Kelly had talked to the law firm investigating the Ailes situation and told them the former chief had sexually harassed her 10 years ago when she was a young correspondent.
Laurie Luhn
Paul Morigi/Getty Images
Laurie Luhn, a former booker for Fox News, told New York Magazine in a devastating interview that Ailes had sexually harassed and "psychologically tortured" her for 20 years. She was among the few women who said she had acquiesced to Ailes' demands, knowing he could help her career.
Ailes eventually directed her to recruit young staffers for him, she said. “You’re going to find me ‘Roger’s Angels.’ You’re going to find me whores," Luhn accused him of saying.
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Andrea Tantaros
Joe Kohen/Getty Images
Former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros said that Ailes asked her to twirl for him, requested she hug him and made comments about her body. After she complained, she said she was demoted and taken off the air. She remains on Fox's payroll.
Fox News said Tantaros was not retaliated against for her complaints but rather disciplined for breaking company policy by not letting the network vet a book she wrote.
Kellie Boyle
Boyle Public Affiars
Kellie Boyle, a former Republican National Committee field adviser, told New York Magazine that Ailes propositioned her in 1989 shortly after he'd helped George H.W. Bush win the presidency. “You know if you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys,” Ailes allegedly told Boyle, who was 29 and married at the time.
Rudi Bakhtiar
Mark Sullivan/Getty Images
Rudi Bakhtiar, a former Fox News correspondent, said she was fired for complaining about sexual harassment by then-Washington bureau chief Brian Wilson. She said Ailes also behaved inappropriately, asking her to stand during a job interview so he could see her legs and sending her miniskirts to wear at work.
Bakhtiar, who previously took legal action against Fox, said she is speaking out now because she believes the network's culture of sexual harassment is not limited to Ailes.
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Shelley Ross
M. Von Holden/Getty Images
Three decades ago, Shelley Ross worked on "The Tomorrow Show," which followed Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," with Roger Ailes. She recently wrote an Daily Beast essay describing sexual harassment in the media industry, including her encounter with Ailes.
"Roger was very persistent as he continued to explain how much he believed in loyalty and how much he believed the best expression of that loyalty comes in the form of a 'sexual alliance,'" she wrote.
Marsha Callahan
Nick Valinote/Getty Images
Marsha Callahan (left) said that in the 1960s, Ailes told the then-aspiring model she could advance her career by sleeping with him. As a producer on "The Mike Douglas Show," Ailes allegedly asked Callahan to wear a garter belt and stockings and lift up her skirt for him.
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Steve Bannon, the Breitbart News Network executive chairman known for having white nationalist views ― and who has himself been accused of anti-Semitism ― was named chief strategist and senior counselor to President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday.
Bannon, 62, was taking time off from Breitbart to serve as CEO of the Trump campaign before Sunday’s announcement giving him a senior leadership role in the incoming administration.
Trump also announced Sunday that Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus would serve as his chief of staff.
“Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory,” Trump said in a press release announcing the appointments. “Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again.”
David Axelrod, who served as senior advisor to President Barack Obama during his first term, said via Twitter Sunday that picking Priebus over Bannon as chief of staff could signal Trump taking a more “conventional” approach, but later said that having Bannon in the White House at all was “deeply troubling.”
Bannon’s name appeared above Priebus’ in the release, suggesting his significance in the Trump administration could rival that of the chief of staff. A president’s top strategist and senior counselor typically control access to the president and help set and carry out his agenda.
At Breitbart, Bannon helped make the hardline populist website a go-to resource for white nationalists and the alt-right, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.
Breitbart served as a mouthpiece for the Trump campaign and an attack dog against conservatives like House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who were critical of Trump.
Breitbart has propagated conspiracy theories, like Planned Parenthood having Nazi ties or Clinton aide Huma Abedin being a spy for Saudi Arabia. The website traffics in misogynist and racist stories; it frames women who push back against harassment or gender bias as weak and incompetent and portrays people of color and immigrants as inherently criminal.
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) spokesman Adam Jentleson said Trump’s choice of Bannon “signals that White Supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump’s White House. “
“It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion,” he added.
The SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League expressed concern over the appointment as well, with the ADL saying Bannon and “his alt-right are so hostile to core American values.”
Bannon’s road to the White House, like his boss’, was winding and unconventional.
Bannon was U.S. Naval officer before making a fortune from various media and banking investments. (He reportedly made a chunk of his wealth from “Seinfeld” royalties, having helped negotiate the show’s sale in 1993.)
Ben Shapiro, the former editor-at-large of Breitbart, has criticized Bannon as opportunistic and sinister.
“[Bannon] is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies,” Shapiro wrote in the Daily Wire in August.
Shapiro, who resigned in protest from Breitbart in March, predicted a plum role for Bannon if Trump won the election.
“Because Bannon’s ambitions extend to Steve Bannon, he’ll tell Trump he’s doing a fantastic job even if he isn’t,” Shapiro wrote. “That’s how Bannon Svengalis political figures and investors – by investing them in his personal genius, then hollowing them out from the inside.”
This story has been updated with statements from Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) spokesman Adam Jentleson, the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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CHICAGO -- Citing a lack of confidence in Chicago's top prosecutor, a coalition of politicians, lawyers and community leaders on Tuesday formally called for an independent prosecutor to handle the trial of the police officer charged in the shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald.
Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez's political allegiance to the city's powerful police union creates a conflict of interest that prevents her from "zealously and effectively" prosecuting the cop charged in the killing, claims a legal petition filed in criminal court and signed by Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-lll.) Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), the Cook County Bar Association and the Chicago Urban League, among others.
"States Attorney Alvarez lost the public’s confidence when she delayed charging Officer Van Dyke for 400 days,” Cook County Commissioner Chuy Garcia said Tuesday during a news conference announcing the petition.
Officer Jason Van Dyke shot McDonald 16 times as the 17-year-old walked away from police in October 2014, but wasn't charged with first-degree murder until the city was forced to release police dashcam footage of the killing in November 2015.
Calls for a special prosecutor are increasingly common in police misconduct cases, but few formal requests are actually filed. Even fewer are granted.
"It only happens when there’s a great public outcry," said Flint Taylor, a civil rights lawyer with the People's Law Office who helped file the petition.
Taylor said an independent prosecutor has only been appointed in a handful of Chicago cases in the last 40 years. "It always takes a tremendous amount of public pressure to have an independent prosecutor appointed," he said.
Under Illinois law, institutional connections between the police and the prosecutor's office aren't enough to require an outside prosecutor, Taylor said.
“There’s no denying that a politician offends the Fraternal Order of Police at his or her peril in this city."”
"What is required is proof that there is actually a conflict. That is, a competing interest on the part of the states attorney that actually interferes with her ability to conduct an independent and zealous investigation and prosecution," said Locke Bowman, executive director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University's law school who also is a co-petitioner in the independent prosecutor request.
Alvarez's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but defended her record in a statement to the Chicago Tribune and called the timing of the petition "more than a little coincidental."
Alvarez faces a diffiicult re-election this year. Many of the petitioners back her election rival, Kim Foxx.
"Anita Alvarez has cast her lot with the Fraternal Order of Police and that political alliance is interfering with her ability to act independently," Bowman said. "And there’s no denying that a politician offends the FOP at his or her peril in this city."
Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty to murder. Police video shows him firing shots at McDonald even after the teen had fallen to the ground.
The Fraternal Order of Police version of the shooting cast McDonald as a crazed, knife-wielding aggressor who prompted the officer to "fear for his life" and fire in self-defense. Dashcam footage that contradicted the police account was only disclosed after a legal battle with journalists -- hours after Van Dyke was charged.
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CHICAGO -- Citing a lack of confidence in Chicago's top prosecutor, a coalition of politicians, lawyers and community leaders on Tuesday formally called for an independent prosecutor to handle the trial of the police officer charged in the shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald.
Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez's political allegiance to the city's powerful police union creates a conflict of interest that prevents her from "zealously and effectively" prosecuting the cop charged in the killing, claims a legal petition filed in criminal court and signed by Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-lll.) Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), the Cook County Bar Association and the Chicago Urban League, among others.
"States Attorney Alvarez lost the public’s confidence when she delayed charging Officer Van Dyke for 400 days,” Cook County Commissioner Chuy Garcia said Tuesday during a news conference announcing the petition.
Officer Jason Van Dyke shot McDonald 16 times as the 17-year-old walked away from police in October 2014, but wasn't charged with first-degree murder until the city was forced to release police dashcam footage of the killing in November 2015.
Calls for a special prosecutor are increasingly common in police misconduct cases, but few formal requests are actually filed. Even fewer are granted.
"It only happens when there’s a great public outcry," said Flint Taylor, a civil rights lawyer with the People's Law Office who helped file the petition.
Taylor said an independent prosecutor has only been appointed in a handful of Chicago cases in the last 40 years. "It always takes a tremendous amount of public pressure to have an independent prosecutor appointed," he said.
Under Illinois law, institutional connections between the police and the prosecutor's office aren't enough to require an outside prosecutor, Taylor said.
“There’s no denying that a politician offends the Fraternal Order of Police at his or her peril in this city."”
"What is required is proof that there is actually a conflict. That is, a competing interest on the part of the states attorney that actually interferes with her ability to conduct an independent and zealous investigation and prosecution," said Locke Bowman, executive director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University's law school who also is a co-petitioner in the independent prosecutor request.
Alvarez's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but defended her record in a statement to the Chicago Tribune and called the timing of the petition "more than a little coincidental."
Alvarez faces a diffiicult re-election this year. Many of the petitioners back her election rival, Kim Foxx.
"Anita Alvarez has cast her lot with the Fraternal Order of Police and that political alliance is interfering with her ability to act independently," Bowman said. "And there’s no denying that a politician offends the FOP at his or her peril in this city."
Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty to murder. Police video shows him firing shots at McDonald even after the teen had fallen to the ground.
The Fraternal Order of Police version of the shooting cast McDonald as a crazed, knife-wielding aggressor who prompted the officer to "fear for his life" and fire in self-defense. Dashcam footage that contradicted the police account was only disclosed after a legal battle with journalists -- hours after Van Dyke was charged.
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Illinois law enforcement authorities will need court approval to use cell phone trackers like StingRay that can sweep up data from innocent citizens, according to a new state law.
The ACLU of Illinois said the law, signed on Friday, is “as far-reaching and comprehensive as anywhere in the county.”
“There’s a growing sense of awareness in the legislature that these privacy issues are really important,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois.
The new Citizen Privacy Protection Act requires law enforcement in most cases to obtain a warrant before using StingRay, a device capable of extracting information like location, contact lists, text messages and incoming and outgoing call data. Law enforcement must tell the court who they’re looking for and how they plan to tailor the technology so that it doesn’t target unintended citizens.
“One of the things we now know is that if a StingRay is used at an event publicly because of one person, police are required to delete information about everyone else who was there,” Yohnka said.
Privacy advocates complain that the StingRay and similar devices capture data from all cell phones in its range, not simply the intended target. The Illinois law will require police to delete this extraneous user data at least every 24 hours.
Police say the technology is valuable because it can help pinpoint the location of a kidnapper or fugutive, for example.
“If police are tracking a particular suspect and they think they’re inside of a certain home or apartment, they can track them pretty closely.” Yohnka said.
Privacy advocates, however, liken the technology to an unlawful digital “stop and frisk.” Chicago demonstrators have accused police of using the technology to spy on their protest activities and say they fear officials will use the data to build a database of protesters.
Devices like StingRay and a competitor called Triggerfish are known as cell tower site simulators, or “International Mobile Subscriber Identity catchers.” They’re about the size of a suitcase, so they can be concealed in a police vehicle, aircraft or carried by an individual.
When a StingRay is activated, it mimics a cell tower by broadcasting a strong signal that tricks nearby cell phones into connecting to the surveillance device and releasing location data. Once the StingRay drops the cell phone signal, the phone reconnects with a legitimate cell tower.
Phone users may notice when a cell tower site simulator is nearby. Typical signs are rapid battery drain, difficulty sending or receiving text messages and calls, difficulty connecting to the internet, and sometimes a phone shutting down.
The surveillance technology was originally designed for the military and is widely used by federal investigative agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Marshals Service. The ACLU says police in at least 24 states and the District of Columbia also have cell tower site simulators.
“Once the manufacturers has exhausted their opportunities to sell it to the federal government, they’ve started selling it to local governments,” said Matt Topic, a Chicago civil rights attorney.
Topic represents Freddy Martinez, a Chicago-area tech expert who is suing the Chicago Police Department for its refusal to comply with open records requests concerning the use of StingRay.
The department, like many others, has been reluctant to admit it has a StingRay, let alone uses it. Legal experts have been troubled by some police departments apparently misleading judges or omitting information from warrant requests about how the technology is deployed.
Illinois’ law drew bipartisan support as it unanimously passed the state legislature this year. State and local police were neutral on the bill and did not comment when Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) signed the measure into law. It takes effect Jan. 1.
Topic praised the new law, but said it falls short of protecting citizens’ privacy.
“The way the technology works is that it intrudes into everyone’s phone in the area, and that hasn’t been really addressed,” Topic said. “You’d still have a Fourth Amendment problem as soon as the invasion occurs.”
He said he favors an outright ban on the technology.
“To me that would be the best protection.”
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kim bellware
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Illinois law enforcement authorities will need court approval to use cell phone trackers like StingRay that can sweep up data from innocent citizens, according to a new state law.
The ACLU of Illinois said the law, signed on Friday, is “as far-reaching and comprehensive as anywhere in the county.”
“There’s a growing sense of awareness in the legislature that these privacy issues are really important,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois.
The new Citizen Privacy Protection Act requires law enforcement in most cases to obtain a warrant before using StingRay, a device capable of extracting information like location, contact lists, text messages and incoming and outgoing call data. Law enforcement must tell the court who they’re looking for and how they plan to tailor the technology so that it doesn’t target unintended citizens.
“One of the things we now know is that if a StingRay is used at an event publicly because of one person, police are required to delete information about everyone else who was there,” Yohnka said.
Privacy advocates complain that the StingRay and similar devices capture data from all cell phones in its range, not simply the intended target. The Illinois law will require police to delete this extraneous user data at least every 24 hours.
Police say the technology is valuable because it can help pinpoint the location of a kidnapper or fugutive, for example.
“If police are tracking a particular suspect and they think they’re inside of a certain home or apartment, they can track them pretty closely.” Yohnka said.
Privacy advocates, however, liken the technology to an unlawful digital “stop and frisk.” Chicago demonstrators have accused police of using the technology to spy on their protest activities and say they fear officials will use the data to build a database of protesters.
Devices like StingRay and a competitor called Triggerfish are known as cell tower site simulators, or “International Mobile Subscriber Identity catchers.” They’re about the size of a suitcase, so they can be concealed in a police vehicle, aircraft or carried by an individual.
When a StingRay is activated, it mimics a cell tower by broadcasting a strong signal that tricks nearby cell phones into connecting to the surveillance device and releasing location data. Once the StingRay drops the cell phone signal, the phone reconnects with a legitimate cell tower.
Phone users may notice when a cell tower site simulator is nearby. Typical signs are rapid battery drain, difficulty sending or receiving text messages and calls, difficulty connecting to the internet, and sometimes a phone shutting down.
The surveillance technology was originally designed for the military and is widely used by federal investigative agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Marshals Service. The ACLU says police in at least 24 states and the District of Columbia also have cell tower site simulators.
“Once the manufacturers has exhausted their opportunities to sell it to the federal government, they’ve started selling it to local governments,” said Matt Topic, a Chicago civil rights attorney.
Topic represents Freddy Martinez, a Chicago-area tech expert who is suing the Chicago Police Department for its refusal to comply with open records requests concerning the use of StingRay.
The department, like many others, has been reluctant to admit it has a StingRay, let alone uses it. Legal experts have been troubled by some police departments apparently misleading judges or omitting information from warrant requests about how the technology is deployed.
Illinois’ law drew bipartisan support as it unanimously passed the state legislature this year. State and local police were neutral on the bill and did not comment when Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) signed the measure into law. It takes effect Jan. 1.
Topic praised the new law, but said it falls short of protecting citizens’ privacy.
“The way the technology works is that it intrudes into everyone’s phone in the area, and that hasn’t been really addressed,” Topic said. “You’d still have a Fourth Amendment problem as soon as the invasion occurs.”
He said he favors an outright ban on the technology.
“To me that would be the best protection.”
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Penguin Random House will publish forthcoming books by Barack and Michelle Obama, the publisher announced Tuesday. The former president and first lady will publish separate books, but jointly sold the rights.
The auction to secure the publishing deal for the two books topped $60 million. The figure is a record-breaking total for presidential memoirs, the Financial Times reported. The rights to Bill Clinton’s 2004 autobiography, “My Life,” netted $15 million; George W. Bush’s 2010 “Decision Points” scored an estimated $10 million.
Obama, who left office in January at the age of 55 (young by the average standards of previous presidents), has said his immediate post-presidency plans include a vacation with Michelle and writing a book.
A portion of the book advances will be donated to charity, including the Obama Foundation, The New York Times reports. The books are expected to be released sometime in 2018.
Both of the Obamas have previously written books, though Michelle Obama has never written an autobiography. Barack Obama’s autobiography, the 2004 “Dreams from My Father,” and the 2006 “The Audacity Of Hope” were both massive bestsellers. In fact, more than 75 percent of the Obamas’ income since 2006, when Barack Obama first became a U.S. senator, has come from book sales, according to Forbes.
The publisher did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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in Data Studio
@article{Ma_Le_Kang_Dou_Cadigan_Freitag_Ritter_Xu_2025,
author = {Ma, Marcus and Le, Duong Minh and Kang, Junmo and Dou, Yao
and Cadigan, John and Freitag, Dayne and Ritter, Alan and Xu, Wei},
title = {CROSSNEWS: A Cross-Genre Authorship Verification and Attribution Benchmark},
journal = {Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
year = {2025},
volume = {39},
number = {23},
pages = {24777--24785},
month = apr,
doi = {10.1609/aaai.v39i23.34659},
url = {https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/34659}
}
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