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Officer Released On Bail After Indictment For Killing Patrick Lyoya

June 15, 2022 Abayomi Azikiwe, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Patrick Lyoya, 26, an African immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was shot in the back of the head by patrolman Christopher Schurr on April 4. This act of police violence was met with widespread shock and mass demonstrations demanding that Schurr be terminated from the Grand Rapids police department and charged with murder. There was an announcement made on June 15 saying that Schurr had been fired from the Grand Rapid Police Department. This came less than a week after his indictment on second degree murder charges in the death of Lyoya. Despite the national attention focusing on the killing of Lyoya, it would take more than two months for Schurr to be indicted for second degree murder.

Three Animal Rights Advocates Face Trial Over 2019 Hog Farm Occupation

June 13, 2022 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Abbotsford, B.C., Canada – It’s been three years since two hundred animal rights advocates descended on the Excelsior Hog Farm on April 28, 2019 “to expose the reality of what is happening to the victims of the ‘meat’ industry and to challenge the current mindset within our society,” according to the activist group Meat The Victims. Over a year later, a total of four activists were facing multiple charges, however today, three of them stand trial at the end of June 2022. During the farm action, approximately 50 of the activists got inside the building where they witnessed deceased pigs in a dumpster, pigs laying on the ground unable to get up because of injuries, and “row upon row of pregnant pigs crammed inside metal crates the size of their own bodies, unable to even turn around or move for months on end.”

But For The Failures Of His Attorneys, He Would Not Have Been Convicted

June 11, 2022 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. , , ,
“Innocence is not enough” are words to chill your heart. That’s the language Arizona state prosecutors used as a reason not to revisit the conviction of Barry Lee Jones, after the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Jones had not received effective counsel, and that if he had, his jury would likely not have convicted him of the murder of his girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter. And the Supreme Court agreed this week. They voted six to three, in a case called Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, that incarcerated people, including death row inmates like Jones, have no right to bring new evidence in their claims of ineffective lawyering in federal court, even if that evidence would show they’d committed no crime.

Mounting Public Pressure Forces DA To Drop All Charges Against Queens Man

June 10, 2022 Amanda Yee, Liberation News. , , ,
On June 6 on the steps of Queens Criminal Courthouse, community members celebrated a hard-fought victory after nearly eight years of struggle: the dismissal of all murder charges against 22-year-old Prakash Churaman. Those celebrating with Churaman included his attorney, family members, members of the press as well as community organizations that have worked closely with Churaman over the years he had been fighting the charges, including Desis Rising Up and Moving, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, How Our Lives Link Altogether, Voices of Community Activists and Leaders New York, and the Free Prakash Alliance. In 2014 a then-15-year-old Churaman was arrested and coerced by New York Police Department into a false confession for the murder of his friend Taquane Clark during a robbery.

Assange’s Lawyer Has Reached A Settlement With The Government

June 10, 2022 Jessica Warren, Daily Mail. , , ,
One of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's lawyers has reached a settlement with the Government after it accepted it was likely she was the subject of 'covert surveillance which breached her human rights', she said. Jennifer Robinson welcomed a statement by the European Court of Human Rights which she said meant the UK Government has 'accepted her rights were breached by surveillance'. She was one of the three lead claimants in a complaint against the UK Government which went to the court. Ms Robinson said the UK Government has reached a 'friendly settlement', admitting there was reasonable cause to believe she was the subject of surveillance. She said: 'The UK Government has now admitted that its surveillance and information-sharing arrangements with the US violated my rights.

The Setback In Russiagate Probe

June 8, 2022 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. , , ,
Michael Sussmann, an A-list attorney who was a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, was acquitted by a jury in the federal District Court of the District of Columbia last week. Sussmann had been accused of lying to the F.B.I., a crime widely considered to be a “process felony” or a “throwaway felony,” something the Justice Department charges you with when they can’t get you for anything else.  Even though the federal sentencing guidelines called for 0-6 months in prison had Sussmann been convicted, the loss of his law license and the humiliation of a felony conviction would have been a far worse punishment. But that didn’t happen.  Sussmann was acquitted after the jury had deliberated for only six hours, two of which were spent eating lunch.

Eighth Circuit Court Of Appeals Claims Terrorism Enhancement Is ‘Harmless’

June 7, 2022 Free Jessica Reznicek, Popular Resistance. , , ,
St. Paul, MN - The 8th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld Jessica Reznicek’s 8 year prison sentence. In their decision the three Trump-appointed judges refused to address whether the use of a terrorism enhancement was appropriate saying, “Reznicek argues that the enhancement should not have applied because her actions were directed at a private company, rather than the government. Even if that is right, any error was harmless.” Reznicek’s supporters worry that If the decision stands, the judicial branch will continue applying terrorism enhancements to activists, while claiming that a drastically increased sentence from being labled a terrorists by the U.S. govenment is harmless.  In July 2021 Judge Rebecca Ebinger applied a terrorism enhancement to Reznicek’s case that automatically increased her sentencing guidelines range from 37-46 months to 210-240 months.

Exxon Must Go To Trial Over Alleged Climate Crimes, Court Rules

May 29, 2022 Chris McGreal, The Guardian. , , ,
The Massachusetts high court on Tuesday ruled that the US’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, must face a trial over accusations that it lied about the climate crisis and covered up the fossil fuel industry’s role in worsening environmental devastation. Exxon claimed the case brought by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, was politically motivated and amounted to an attempt to prevent the company from exercising its free speech rights. But the state’s supreme judicial court unanimously dismissed the claim in the latest blow to the oil industry’s attempts to head off a wave of lawsuits across the country over its part in causing global heating. Healey’s lawsuit accuses Exxon of breaking the state’s consumer protection laws with a decades-long cover-up of what it knew about the impact on the climate of burning fossil fuels.

IUVENTA: Humanity On Trial

May 28, 2022 Titus Molkenbur, Progressive International. , , ,
On 2 August 2017, Italian authorities seized the IUVENTA, our search and rescue ship. We, a group of young students and activists from Germany, had started this journey by earning our first donations selling cookies and second-hand clothes at a flea market.  Between the summer of 2016 and the IUVENTA's seizure, we had rescued more than 14,000 people who had embarked on the dangerous journey across the deadliest border in the world, the Central Mediterranean Route to Europe. Now, our comrades stand accused of "aiding and abetting unauthorized immigration". These charges are based on the testimony of a former police officer who worked as a security guard on another rescue ship.

New Surveillance Transparency Report Documents An Urgent Need For Change

May 23, 2022 Matthew Guariglia, Electronic Frontier Foundation. , , ,
The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) has released its Annual Statistical Transparency Report disclosing the use of national security surveillance laws for the year 2021—and to no one’s surprise it documents the wide-ranging overreach of intelligence agencies and the continued misuse of surveillance authorities to spy on millions of Americans. Specifically, the report chronicles how Section 702, an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), that authorizes the U.S. government to engage in mass surveillance of foreign targets’ communications, is still being abused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to spy on Americans without a warrant. Specifically, the report reveals that between December 2020 and November 2021, the FBI queried the data of potentially more than 3,000,000 “U.S. persons” without a warrant.

Detroit Organizations Demand Justice Department Act On Police Misconduct

May 21, 2022 Abayomi Azikiwe, Popular Resistance. , , ,
CPTA begins the memorandum by stating that: “The Coalition for Police Transparency and Accountability (CPTA) requests a federal investigation of a pattern of killings and excessive force by the Detroit Police Department (DPD) and an institutional culture within the department that promotes violence and racial discrimination within the Department and against members of the community. The mission of CPTA is to expose police misconduct in all its forms and thereby demand police transparency and accountability as well as garner community support for this effort. The Coalition was formed after the killing of Hakim Littleton in July 2020 by the Detroit Police Department officers.

Johnson & Johnson Seeking To Avoid Thousands Of Lawsuits

May 21, 2022 Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime Reporter. , , ,
The ‘Texas Two-Step’ is the name given to a highly controversial legal strategy that some of the biggest companies are now using to shield their assets from accountability.  It allows massively wealthy corporations whose products caused harm to avoid paying damages to the victims of that harm and it denies the victims their right to make their case in court and be judged by a jury of their peers.  Earlier this year, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee highlighted the story of Kimberly Naranjo, a mesothelioma victim who testified about Johnson & Johnson’s actions.  Naranjo has been denied her right to hold Johnson & Johnson accountable in court. “There’s a justice system for rich people and powerful corporations – and there’s the system for everyone else,” said Durbin.

Steven Donziger: A Tale For Our Times

May 16, 2022 Craig Murray. , , ,
29 years ago, in 1993, Steven Donziger, a New York lawyer, visited Ecuador and saw communities who lived their lives with their bare feet and hands permanently covered in oil sludge and other pollutants, whose agriculture was ruined and who suffered high levels of mortality and birth defects. He started a class action against Texaco in the United States, representing over 30,000 local people. Texaco, confident that they had control of Ecuador, requested the US court to rule that jurisdiction lay in Ecuador. It also set about obtaining the agreement from the Government of Ecuador to cancel any liability. In 2002 the New York court finally agreed with Texaco (now Chevron) that is had no jurisdiction and the case moved to Ecuador, much to Chevron’s delight.

Lawyers Argue Jessica Reznicek’s Actions Do Not Constitute Terrorism

May 13, 2022 Free Jessica Reznicek, Popular Resistance. , , ,
St. Paul, MN - In a defining moment for the climate justice movement and for all civil rights, the court will decide whether or not to uphold a “domestic terrorist enhancement” that an Iowa court applied to Reznicek’s prison sentence. Reznicek argues that the terrorism enhancement was both illegally and unjustly applied.  The appeal is supported by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR),  National Lawyers Guild, Water Protectors Legal Collective, and the Climate Defense Project. “If Jessica Reznicek’s acts can be punished as terrorism,” says an amicus brief filed by CCR, “the United States will have moved so far past the international consensus as to be operating in a completely different realm.”

Hundreds of Bodies Buried Under a Parking Lot

May 13, 2022 Steven Lieberman, The Sentinel. , , ,
In the wealthy Washington, DC suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, just off River Road, there is an asphalt parking lot that covers the graves of hundreds African Americans. That parking lot is the subject of a lawsuit in which descendants of individuals buried in the Moses Cemetery, the Pastor of the Macedonia Baptist Church, and the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition have asked a court to prevent the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission (“HOC”), the quasi-governmental agency that owns the parking lot, from selling the parking lot and the adjacent land and building to a developer for $51 million. Under the terms of the sales agreement, the developer would have been free to continue to use the burial ground as a parking lot, to build another structure on top of the burial ground, or even to convert the burial ground into a dog park.
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