A Look Inside the Astonishing Black Panther Murder Trial of 1970-71

These drawings are the only known visual record of the 1970-1971 trial of New Haven, Conn., Black Panther Party members for the murder of fellow Panther Alex Rackley. Suspecting that Rackley was a police informant, Panthers shot and killed him in 1969. Those who pulled the trigger admitted their guilt. The question at stake in the trial was whether Panther leaders Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale were involved.

Robert Templeton, a sketch artist and painter, received a commission from CBS News to document the trial. The courtroom was technically closed to artists and photographers, so he had to hide his work. Templeton executed his drawings in two stages, first sketching initial impressions in pastel, and then making larger, more complete images on helicopter rides from New Haven to CBS headquarters in New York. CBS showed the finished products on the evening news.

The network went to such lengths to procure courtroom images because the story was a media circus that lasted for more than a year. On May 1, 1970, a crowd of 15,000 out-of-town Panther Party members, Yale students, and other supporters gathered on the New Haven Green to protest the trial, which they believed was a baseless attempt to disempower and discredit the Panthers. Yale’s president, Kingman Brewster, publicly supported the protesters; Benjamin Spock spoke at the rally. (This excellent slideshow from the New Haven Register tells the story of the trial and the protests in photos.)

Read on...

How Do Police Rule Out Foul Play?

Also, why don’t they just call it “murder?”

French academic and political adviser Richard Descoings was found dead in his room at New York’s Michelangelo Hotel on Tuesday. Blood was coming out of his mouth, and his cell phone was discovered on a lower-floor landing. Police told reporters they have not ruled out foul play. How would they rule out foul play?

By looking for internal injuries. Most mysterious deaths come from natural causes, accident, or suicide, but even when there are no signs of violence police often make a point of saying they cannot rule out foul play until there’s been an autopsy. Medical examiners sometimes find hidden, superficial clues, such as a small gunshot wound in the victim’s scalp, that escaped police notice. They also check the inside of the victim’s body for evidence of a violent attack. It’s possible to fatally damage someone’s organs without leaving major bruises on his abdomen, for example, and strangulation can cause internal hemorrhaging and damage to neck muscles without leaving a mark on the skin. Advanced toxicology methods can uncover a case of homicidal poisoning, though these are quite rare. (Jeffrey Dahmer is probably the best known poisoner of recent years. He used chloroform and other chemicals to kill some of his victims.)

The medical examiner considers the likelihood of natural or accidental death by reviewing the deceased’s medical background. A history of drug abuse or heart disease can guide the examination and go a long way toward ruling out foul play.

Read on...

Graphic: Where are Toronto’s murders happening?

When Justin and Jerome Waterman were found on Feb. 20, shot in the head in a North York parking garage, the 2012 Toronto homicide total climbed to eight. But focusing solely on the year-to-date caseload ignores what came before.

A look at the locations of the homicides since 2006 reveals a lot about our city.

Read on....

US Child Appeals Against Being Tried for Murder as an Adult

Jordan Brown, who was 11 when he allegedly killed his father's pregnant fiancee, could face life sentence with no parole

by Ed Pilkington in New York

Lawyers for a child in Pennsylvania who was 11 when he allegedly shot and killed his father's pregnant fiancee attempted today to persuade an appeals court not to try him as an adult under America's harsh system of juvenile justice.

Judges are to rule on whether Jordan Brown, who has been charged with homicide, should be tried as an adult. (Photograph: Ho/AFP/Getty Images)

Unless the lawyers for Jordan Brown who is now aged 13, can convince the judges to change tack, he will be tried in adult court and if convicted will serve an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole. He would become the youngest child in US history to be sentenced to be incarcerated forever.

The US is the only country where juveniles are serving life imprisonment without parole under the so-called "life means life" policy. Only the US and Somalia have refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which rules out life sentences with no chance of release for crimes committed before the age of 18.

Read on...

'Honor' Killing: The Crimewave that Shames the World

It's one of the last great taboos: the murder of at least 20,000 women a year in the name of 'honor'. Nor is the problem confined to the Middle East: the contagion is spreading rapidly.

by Robert Fisk

It is a tragedy, a horror, a crime against humanity. The details of the murders - of the women beheaded, burned to death, stoned to death, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled and buried alive for the "honor" of their families - are as barbaric as they are shameful. Many women's groups in the Middle East and South-west Asia suspect the victims are at least four times the United Nations' latest world figure of around 5,000 deaths a year. Most of the victims are young, many are teenagers, slaughtered under a vile tradition that goes back hundreds of years but which now spans half the globe.

2008 Pic from Women's News Network: Police look at the bodies of Sunita Devi (bottom L), 21, and her partner Jasbir Singh, 22, after they were killed by villagers in an “honor killing” in Ballah village in the northern Indian state of Haryana

A 10-month investigation by The Independent in Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank has unearthed terrifying details of murder most foul. Men are also killed for "honor" and, despite its identification by journalists as a largely Muslim practice, Christian and Hindu communities have stooped to the same crimes. Indeed, the "honor" (or ird) of families, communities and tribes transcends religion and human mercy. But voluntary women's groups, human rights organizations, Amnesty International and news archives suggest that the slaughter of the innocent for "dishonoring" their families is increasing by the year.

Read on....

Too Terrible To Be True?

Why aren't we talking about the new accusations of murder at Gitmo?

By Dahlia Lithwick

Guantanamo Bay military prison

Some torture stories are just too horrible to contemplate, while others are too complicated to understand. But Scott Horton's devastating new exposé of the possible murders of three prisoners at Guantanamo in 2006 is neither: It's simply too terrible to allow to be true. Which is why it has been mostly ignored this week in the mainstream American media and paid little attention by the usual crew of torture apologists on the right. The fact that three Guantanamo prisoners—none of whom had any links to terrorism and two of whom had already been cleared for release—may have been killed there and the deaths covered up, should be front-page news. That brand-new evidence of this possible atrocity from military guards was given only the most cursory investigation by the Obama administration should warrant some kind of blowback. But changing what we allow ourselves to believe about torture would change the way we have reconciled ourselves to torture. Nobody in this country is prepared to do that. So we have opted to ignore it.

If you haven't read Horton's piece, you should. Here is Andy Worthington's summary. Following up on a study released in December by Mark Denbeaux at Seton Hall, Horton chases down yet more evidence—much of it from four camp guards—that three "suicides" alleged to have happened in a single night at Gitmo in June 2006 were not actually suicides at all. As the Seton Hall study concluded, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service report on the incident that was issued in 2008 was quite literally beyond belief. Horton writes:

Read on....