- All three people on death row are black men. In a state that is only 4.3% African American, Colorado’s death row is 100% African American.
- All three men on death are from the same one county, out of Colorado’s 64.
- All three men committed their crime when they were under the age of 21.
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In Colorado, Blacks Make Up 4 Percent Of The Population And 100 Percent Of Death Row
In March, Colorado came close to becoming the 19th state to abolish the death penalty, but the bill failed
after Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) voiced opposition and suggested a
possible veto. A few months later, Colorado’s death penalty is still
firmly in place, and the state is poised to complete what would be only
the second execution in 45 years (the last was in 1997). Few dispute
that Nathan Dunlap committed a horrific crime and murdered several
people at a Chuck E. Cheese. But judges, university professors, and
other prominent state leaders are urging Gov. Hickenlooper
to commute Dunlap’s sentence, both because crucial errors that defined
his trial may have led him to get a harsher sentence than others, and
because killing anyone under the perverted state system would be a
miscarriage of justice. According to letters filed with Hickenlooper’s
office:
24 Harvard Student Groups: Graduating Jason Richwine ‘Debases All Of Our Degrees’
In response to the news that Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
bestowed a doctrate upon disgraced former Heritage staffer Jason
Richwine, 24 student groups at the elite university released a strongly
worded letter condemning the decision to approve Richwine’s dissertation:
We are deeply concerned with the academic integrity and the reputation of Harvard Kennedy School and the University as a whole. It has been recently made public by the Washington Post and the New York Times that in 2009 the Kennedy School accepted a dissertation written by Jason Richwine which claims that “Immigrants living in the US today do not have the same level of cognitive ability as natives” (Richwine Dissertation, 26). Richwine goes on to state that “the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against” (Richwine Dissertation, 66) and argues for an immigration policy based on IQ. Central to his claim is the idea that certain groups are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than others. In his troubling worldview Asians are generally at the top, with whites in the middle, Hispanics follow, and African Americans at the bottom (Richwine Dissetation, 74). To justify his assertions he cites largely discredited sources such as J. Philippe Rushton whose work enshrines the idea that there are geneticallyrooted differences in cognitive ability between racial groups.
Read on....
We are deeply concerned with the academic integrity and the reputation of Harvard Kennedy School and the University as a whole. It has been recently made public by the Washington Post and the New York Times that in 2009 the Kennedy School accepted a dissertation written by Jason Richwine which claims that “Immigrants living in the US today do not have the same level of cognitive ability as natives” (Richwine Dissertation, 26). Richwine goes on to state that “the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against” (Richwine Dissertation, 66) and argues for an immigration policy based on IQ. Central to his claim is the idea that certain groups are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than others. In his troubling worldview Asians are generally at the top, with whites in the middle, Hispanics follow, and African Americans at the bottom (Richwine Dissetation, 74). To justify his assertions he cites largely discredited sources such as J. Philippe Rushton whose work enshrines the idea that there are geneticallyrooted differences in cognitive ability between racial groups.
Read on....
How The Cleveland Kidnapping Trial Could Turn Into A Proxy War Over Abortion
Yesterday, Cuyahoga County, Ohio prosecutor Thomas McGinty announced that he may seek the death penalty against Ariel Castro,
the man who allegedly kidnapped, raped and beat three women and held
them captive for about a decade. The basis for seeking the death penalty
is charges that Castro forced one of his captives to miscarry by starving and punching her. Under Ohio law, “unlawful termination of another’s pregnancy” is considered murder.As a constitutional matter, there is nothing improper about treating involuntary termination of another’s pregnancy as a very serious crime. The Supreme Court’s decisions recognize “the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.” This is a right that belongs to the pregnant woman, not to monsters who would violently impose their wishes upon a woman. So even if the alleged miscarriages in this case occurred before “viability,” Castro will find little comfort in the Court’s abortion decisions. Nor should he. It is tough to imagine a more depraved act than intentionally abusing a woman until she miscarries.
Read on...
We Can't Let Hatred and Gun Paranoia Silence Our Great Democracy
We were struck this week by one response to our broadcast last week on
gun violence and the Newtown school killings. A visitor to the website
wrote, “It is interesting to me that Bill Moyers, who every week
describes the massive levels of corruption in our government… [and] the
advocates for gun control don’t understand that we who own guns in part
own them to be sure that when our government becomes so corrupt we have
guns to do something about it.”
About the same time that man’s post showed up on the web, we saw the startling survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind polling organization, the one finding that nearly three in ten registered voters agree with the statement: “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” Three out of ten! That includes 44 percent of Republicans, 27 percent of independents and 18 percent of Democrats.
That poll also noted that a quarter of Americans think that facts about the Newtown shootings “are being hidden,” and an additional 11 percent “are unsure.” As Sahil Kapur wrote at Talking Points Memo:
Read on...
About the same time that man’s post showed up on the web, we saw the startling survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind polling organization, the one finding that nearly three in ten registered voters agree with the statement: “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” Three out of ten! That includes 44 percent of Republicans, 27 percent of independents and 18 percent of Democrats.
That poll also noted that a quarter of Americans think that facts about the Newtown shootings “are being hidden,” and an additional 11 percent “are unsure.” As Sahil Kapur wrote at Talking Points Memo:
Read on...
Cleveland Horror Caps Week of Violence Against Women
These tales of misogyny should jolt us to connect the dots and to shine a
stronger light on the violence against women that’s always there
beneath the surface.
In just the last few days, we’ve seen a
series of news stories involving violence against women. The violence
comes in different forms -- physical, psychological, financial -- and
from different quarters: a former school-bus driver in Cleveland, the
NRA convention in Houston, the military, congress. And so it’s not
surprising that the media, as usual, is delivering these stories as
unrelated incidents. But arriving almost simultaneously, these tales of
misogyny should jolt us all to connect the dots and to shine a stronger
light on the violence against women that’s always there, just below the
surface.
The story of the three Cleveland women who were found alive after being held captive (and, by all accounts, raped, beaten and bound) in a neighbor’s house for 10 years is the most shocking. The suspect, Ariel Castro, 52, reportedly let them outside only twice in all that time. Michelle Knight was 20 when she disappeared in 2002, Amanda Berry had been reported missing in 2003 when she was 16, and Gina DeJesus vanished at age 14 in 2004 on her way home from school. Berry’s mother died in 2006 of what friends say was “a broken heart” less than two years after a psychic on "The Montel Williams Show" told her Amanda was dead. DeJesus’ mother believed her daughter had been sold into the sex trade. On Monday, Berry and her 6-year-old daughter (possibly fathered by Castro) escaped with the help of neighbors Charles Ramsey and Angel Cordero. The other women came out shortly after. Berry and DeJesus are now home, while Knight remains in the hospital.
Read on...
The story of the three Cleveland women who were found alive after being held captive (and, by all accounts, raped, beaten and bound) in a neighbor’s house for 10 years is the most shocking. The suspect, Ariel Castro, 52, reportedly let them outside only twice in all that time. Michelle Knight was 20 when she disappeared in 2002, Amanda Berry had been reported missing in 2003 when she was 16, and Gina DeJesus vanished at age 14 in 2004 on her way home from school. Berry’s mother died in 2006 of what friends say was “a broken heart” less than two years after a psychic on "The Montel Williams Show" told her Amanda was dead. DeJesus’ mother believed her daughter had been sold into the sex trade. On Monday, Berry and her 6-year-old daughter (possibly fathered by Castro) escaped with the help of neighbors Charles Ramsey and Angel Cordero. The other women came out shortly after. Berry and DeJesus are now home, while Knight remains in the hospital.
Read on...
State Department Forces Texas Law Student to Take Down Instructions for 3-D-Printed Guns
Defense Distributed, the Texas-based company specializing in
3-D-printed plastic firearms, took down its downloadable files on
Thursday at the request of the State Department's Directorate of Defense
Trade Control Compliance. The company posted a blueprint for the first
fully-operational printed plastic handgun, "The Liberator," on Monday at
its site, DEFCAD; the file was downloaded more than a 100,000 times in
its first three days.
In a letter to the company's founder, Cody Wilson, the State Department alleged that the Defense Distributed's file-sharing service violated the terms of the Arms Export Control Act, and demanded that it take down 10 of its files, including the Liberator, within three weeks.
"Our theory's a good one, but I just didn't ask them and I didn't tell them what we were gonna do," Wilson, a University of Texas law student, told Mother Jones. "So I think it's gonna end up being alright, but for now they're asserting information control over the technical data, because the Arms Information Control Act governs not just actual arms, but technical data, pictures, anything related to arms."
Read on...
In a letter to the company's founder, Cody Wilson, the State Department alleged that the Defense Distributed's file-sharing service violated the terms of the Arms Export Control Act, and demanded that it take down 10 of its files, including the Liberator, within three weeks.
"Our theory's a good one, but I just didn't ask them and I didn't tell them what we were gonna do," Wilson, a University of Texas law student, told Mother Jones. "So I think it's gonna end up being alright, but for now they're asserting information control over the technical data, because the Arms Information Control Act governs not just actual arms, but technical data, pictures, anything related to arms."
Read on...
America's 10 Worst Prisons: Reeves County
Serving time in prison is not supposed to be pleasant. Nor, however,
is it supposed to include being raped by fellow prisoners or staff,
beaten by guards for the slightest provocation, driven mad by long-term
solitary confinement, or killed off by medical neglect. These are the
fates of thousands of prisoners every year—men, women, and children
housed in lockups that give Gitmo and Abu Ghraib a run for their money.
While there's plenty of blame to go around, and while not all of the facilities described in this series have all of the problems we explore, some stand out as particularly bad actors. We've compiled this subjective list of America's 10 worst lockups (plus a handful of dishonorable mentions) based on three years of research, correspondence with prisoners, and interviews with criminal-justice reform advocates concerning the penal facilities with the grimmest claims to infamy. We will roll out the remaining contenders in the coming days, complete with photos and video. Number 8 on our list is a corporate-managed Texas facility where Tylenol apparently passes for significant medical treatment.
Read on...
While there's plenty of blame to go around, and while not all of the facilities described in this series have all of the problems we explore, some stand out as particularly bad actors. We've compiled this subjective list of America's 10 worst lockups (plus a handful of dishonorable mentions) based on three years of research, correspondence with prisoners, and interviews with criminal-justice reform advocates concerning the penal facilities with the grimmest claims to infamy. We will roll out the remaining contenders in the coming days, complete with photos and video. Number 8 on our list is a corporate-managed Texas facility where Tylenol apparently passes for significant medical treatment.
Read on...
Plant Tomatoes. Harvest Lower Crime Rates.
I suppose the easy thing
to do would be to rail against food deserts, the dearth of fresh
produce and other healthy foods for those living in impoverished
neighborhoods. Or to enter the debate over whether there are, in fact,
food deserts. (A couple of recent studies have suggested that proximity
to decent grocery stores isn't the key problem of inner-city nutrition.)
But considering Emily Schiffer's photos, I was reminded of Mother
Teresa's visit to a housing project on Chicago's West Side in the
mid-1980s. What rattled her was not the poverty of the pocketbook. She'd
seen worse in India. Rather, it was what she called "the poverty of the
spirit."
Looking at Schiffer's photos and talking with people involved in urban farming, I've come to realize that their efforts have less to do with providing healthy food than they do with a reclamation of sorts, taking ownership of their community and their daily lives. Growing Home is one of Chicago's larger urban farming projects, much of it located in Englewood, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. While it harvests 13,000 pounds of vegetables a year on a half-acre site, nearly all are sold to restaurants and at a farmers market on the city's more prosperous North Side. But Growing Home has altered the landscape of the neighborhood—and it employs local residents, many of whom because of past indiscretions have trouble finding work elsewhere.
Read on...
Looking at Schiffer's photos and talking with people involved in urban farming, I've come to realize that their efforts have less to do with providing healthy food than they do with a reclamation of sorts, taking ownership of their community and their daily lives. Growing Home is one of Chicago's larger urban farming projects, much of it located in Englewood, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. While it harvests 13,000 pounds of vegetables a year on a half-acre site, nearly all are sold to restaurants and at a farmers market on the city's more prosperous North Side. But Growing Home has altered the landscape of the neighborhood—and it employs local residents, many of whom because of past indiscretions have trouble finding work elsewhere.
Read on...
Racism in a Texas Death Case
In the annals of racism in the Texas criminal justice system, seven
death penalty cases are in a class by themselves. In 2000, after the
Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing hearing in one of them, Senator
John Cornyn, who was then the state attorney general, called for new
sentencing hearings in the other cases for the same reason: because race
was improperly and explicitly considered as a factor in determining the
sentence.
Duane Buck, who was convicted of two murders, is the only one among the defendants who was not granted a new sentencing hearing. His post-conviction lawyers have uncovered a lot of mitigating evidence that his trial counsel did not present to the jury that sentenced him to death. He is seeking life without parole and is awaiting a decision on this matter by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Read on...
This is from a NYTimes editorial. Tom
Duane Buck, who was convicted of two murders, is the only one among the defendants who was not granted a new sentencing hearing. His post-conviction lawyers have uncovered a lot of mitigating evidence that his trial counsel did not present to the jury that sentenced him to death. He is seeking life without parole and is awaiting a decision on this matter by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Read on...
This is from a NYTimes editorial. Tom
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