Yet another immigration sob story

We have noted, many times, that the Lexington Herald-Leader is out-of-touch with its potential audience. I say potential audience because what used to be the newspaper for much of central and eastern Kentucky is barely a shadow of its former self, publishing only thrice a week, and a day early so it can be delivered not in the morning, but by the United States Postal Service, at whatever time the mailman gets to your house.

What my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal has been all-in on the Democrats, but in 2024, Kentuckians gave 64.47% of their votes to Donald Trump, not just a landslide margin, but Mr Trump’s highest percentage total in three campaigns. When Mr Trump ran on deporting illegal immigrants, Kentuckians said, “Yes!”

As a witness, I can say our immigration reform is the ‘worst of the worst’ | Opinion

By Mary Cobb | Monday, January 19, 2026 | 5:30 AM EST

In the fluorescent haze of the ICE office lobby, an agent hands the plane ticket back to me. Outside in the rain, a man peers in through the glass door, watching his son with an ankle monitor do a check-in with officers. A gnome dressed as Santa dangles from the metal detector, and laughter from “The Price is Right” studio audience bounces from the lobby TV. I try not to get distracted by the mix of frivolity and stress around me.

“But, the judge’s written order says to deliver this ticket to you….” I can feel right away that my words don’t matter. Neither, apparently, does the court order.

I am there on a cruel errand: deliver someone’s passport and plane ticket to ICE, so that they can deport him. It is a favor to a friend, because the deportee’s family finds the thought of the ICE office too intimidating, and they wanted someone else to go. I said yes.

The “criminal” to be deported — I’ll call him Cesar — is an average guy in our part of the world. Early 20s, loves his family, grew up in Appalachia attending church and public schools and playing sports, eventually married a young woman he had met in high school. His “crime?” Being brought across the border from Mexico when he was 3 years old. Like the majority of ICE detainees, Cesar has no criminal record. What he does have is a decent job, a loving family, and a baby due in April.

Really? He has no prior criminal record, we are told, but how can he have “a decent job” when it is illegal for non-citizens without a green card to work in the United States? Every employer — not every employer beyond a certain size, but every employer — must complete an Immigration Form I-9 on every employee, which demonstrates his legal ability to work in the US, whether by being a citizen or by having a valid work permit, generally known as a green card. How is it that “Cesar” has that “good job” if he doesn’t have those documents? How is it that “Cesar’s” employer, who is obligated under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 to discharge any employee he discovers is an illegal immigrant, let him stay employed?

Under the Handbook for Employers M-274, Section 11.8, it is specified that:

Unlawful Employment Criminal Penalties
Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Knowingly Hiring or Continuing to Employ Unauthorized Aliens

If you or your business are convicted of having engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (or continuing to employ aliens knowing they are or have become unauthorized to work in the United States) after Nov. 6, 1986, you may face fines and/or six months imprisonment.

Engaging in Fraud or False Statements, or Otherwise Misusing Visas, Immigration Permits, and Identity Documents

You may be fined and/or imprisoned for up to five years if you:

  • Make a false statement or attestation to satisfy the employment eligibility verification requirements;
  • Use fraudulent identification or employment authorization documents; or
  • Use documents that were lawfully issued to another person.

Other federal criminal statutes may provide higher penalties in certain fraud cases.

This is what the author, Mary Cobb, “a ninth-generation Kentuckian, and . . . the Director of Kentucky Refugee Ministries/Lexington,” fails to address. Rather, her OpEd tells us what a good person, what a great guy, “Cesar” is, and how he’s an asset to the community. While I have no doubt that he’s everything she said about him, he’s still here illegally, and was apparently working here illegally as well. The IRCA does not have any particular “great guy” exceptions.

“Cesar’s” wife is expecting their baby in April, we are told. Well, good for them, but if she is due in April of 2026, that means she became pregnant around August of 2025, seven months after Donald Trump became President again, and months after he showed that his intention to deport all of the illegals, “anchor babies” notwithstanding. Surely “Cesar” and his wife knew about that, but they decided to reproduce anyway.

“No one is above the law” our good friends on the left, including then-President Joe Biden, several state governors, senators and congressmen, constantly told us, when they were trying to throw Donald Trump in jail. Well, “Cesar” is not above the law either, he was here illegally, and he had to go.

How to Win Friends and Influence People Don Lemon never read that book!

In 1936, Dale Carnegie published his famous self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. This is clearly a book that Don Lemon, a television journolist[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading best known for being a host on CNN from 2014 until 2023 never read. He had been plagued by allegations of misogyny, something made more credible due to his homosexuality, and was eventually fired because CNN was having other trouble with him.

Well, here he goes again:

Don Lemon And Rabid Anti-ICE Loons Invade Minneapolis Church Service

by Nina Bookout | Sunday, January 18, 2026

The anti-ICE protestors are getting worse by the minute. Today, the rabid shrieking harpies and loons decided it was totally fine to invade church services in Minneapolis.

Anti-ICE protest disrupted a Sunday church service in Minneapolis after a group of activists entered a congregation and forced worship to stop, according to footage shared online.

The incident occurred at Cities Church, a Southern Baptist Convention congregation, where protesters stormed into the sanctuary chanting anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement slogans. The group alleged that one of the church’s lead pastors was affiliated with ICE, a claim the protesters repeated while interrupting the service.

So, without any genuine facts in evidence, these rabid loons decided one of the pastors is with ICE and thought it was totally fine to invade a church service and disrupt the proceedings. This as other anti-ICE goons have been stalking people for driving the wrong kind of vehicle (yes, really), or dressing the wrong way thus making it ok to be accosted while having lunch.

Conveniently, Don Lemon, former CNN hack, was prancing alongside these asshats.

There’s more at the original.

I have no idea whether one of the ministers at Cities Church supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or is “affiliated” with ICE. Although Hennepin County went strongly for then-Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, 502,710 (69.80%) to 197,244 (27.39%) for then former and now current President Donald Trump, he still had some support. Statewide, Mrs Emhoff carried the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but not by a ridiculous margin. There are clearly some people in the state who support President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies.

The congregation at Cities Church? Well, who knows, but the Southern Baptist Convention tends to be politically conservative, moreso than some other Protestant denominations. But I would imagine that Dale Carnegie would be shaking his head at the demonstration and incursion that Mr Lemon led as not being a very effective way of persuading the worshipers they interrupted and bothered. I would guess that, if anything, the protesters both strengthened the resolve of the good congregants who support the detention and deportation of the illegals, and caused those who don’t want to see the illegals deported to see the boorishness of those on their side.

The Golden Age Times tweeted:

Disgraced ex-CNN host Don Lemon & anti-ICE Leftists STORM into a Minneapolis church, shouting anti-ICE slogans.

“This is the beginning of what’s going to happen here.”

“You have to make people uncomfortable.”

I can’t speak for others, but I wouldn’t feel ‘uncomfortable,’ I’d just be pissed off. This is just another version of idiotic climate cultists trying to destroy art or blocking major roads, making people late for wherever they were headed.

References

References
1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Bad causes attract bad people

I have said, more than once, that a facial tattoo means automatically guilty. It also makes the person automatically stupid, because a facial tattoo makes a suspect instantly recognizable.

Nick Sortor claimed to have been the one who captured the theft on tape, including an image of 33‑year‑old Raul Gutierrez, along with the license plate of the getaway vehicle. Mr Gutierrez is currently a guest of the federal government, at least until some Obama-appointed, America-hating crackpot judge like James Boasberg orders him released.

Latin Kings Gang Member Arrested For Stealing FBI Weapons

by Billal Rahman | Friday, January 16, 2026 | 12:01 PM EST

An alleged Latin Kings street gang member was arrested Thursday after federal authorities said he stole equipment, including body armor and weaponry, from a vandalized FBI vehicle in Minneapolis. . . .

The Department of Homeland Security said in a post on X that it had “caught one of the individuals that was part of destroying the FBI vehicles [and] he will now be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. His life has changed forever due to his foolishness. Don’t be like him.” . . .

Multiple FBI vehicles had been vandalized and broken into during the protests, and federal property was taken from inside some of the vehicles, according to an FBI public notice seeking information on the incidents.

Fox News reported that 33‑year‑old Raul Gutierrez was arrested on January 15 in a joint operation involving the Department of Justice and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

“The suspect is a member of the Latin Kings gang with a known violent criminal history,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in a post on X.

If Mr Gutierrez is a known gang member with a violent criminal history, the obvious question is: why wasn’t he already behind bars?

Good causes attract good people, while bad causes attract bad people, and protesting the enforcement of our immigration laws, our forty-year-old immigration laws is a bad cause; just the people that cause has attracted shows us that the cause itself is bad. Minnesota’s and Minneapolis’ response to legitimate immigration law enforcement fostered an attitude that the police weren’t going to do anything, which may have inspired Mr Gutierrez and his fellow Latin Kings gangbangers to make their raid on the FBI’s vehicles.

A Catholic parish commits a crime Church policies on immigration do not supersede American law

That the Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a proud member, supports far less restrictive transnational immigration is well known, and His Holiness Pope Leo XIV has been pushing hard on the subject. Thus, the following article comes as no surprise to me:

UPDATE: ICE deported Minnesota church employee, surveilled parish during Mass, mayor says

ICE’s presence outside the church impedes parishioners’ free exercise of religion, said the pastor of St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota.

By Kathleen Murphy · DC Bureau · Friday, January 9, 2026 · 3:01 PM EST

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surveilled St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota, on Epiphany after deporting the parish’s beloved maintenance worker to Mexico five weeks earlier.

The Trump administration last year eliminated a federal policy that generally prohibited immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches, and hospitals. Attendance at St. Gabriel’s Spanish Mass has dropped by half since the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and parishioners have expressed fear of churchgoing about eight miles from where an ICE agent shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good on Jan. 7.

Father Paul Haverstock, pastor of St. Gabriel’s, said he had vested for the 1 p.m. Spanish Mass Jan. 4 when a parishioner told him about men wearing ski masks in a car outside the church. He said he was disturbed to receive the report, went to the sacristy to get his cellphone, and placed it next to his chair in the sanctuary.

“If there is an incident of agents coming in, I want to make sure that it’s recorded, and I want a clear recording of me letting the agents know that we’re in the middle of a religious service,” Haverstock said.

Two of the hyperlinks in the quoted story above were not in the original, but researched and added by me.

It has to be asked: why were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside the church?

Church employee Francisco Paredes, 46, who had lived in the U.S. for 25 years with one conviction for driving under the influence, was handcuffed by ICE Dec. 4, 2025. Eight federal vehicles pulled into a large parking lot adjacent to St. Gabriel’s on 13th Avenue South after Paredes picked up coffee on his way to work, Paredes said, and he was driven to a processing facility. . . .

Until Paredes’ arrest and before ICE parked outside St. Gabriel’s, more than 400 people had usually attended the Spanish Mass, Haverstock said. Haverstock said he is considering offering a temporary Sunday Mass dispensation in his parish for those who are afraid.

So, St Gabriel’s holds well-attended Masses in Spanish, and the church previously employed an illegal immigrant; the article stated, in its mealy-mouthed way, that Mr Paredes “lacked legal permission to live in the U.S.” It is reasonable to suspect that significant numbers of illegal immigrants live in the area and attend those Masses.

Father Haverstock stated that Mr Paredes was a great employee, fully bilingual, and a tremendous help around the parish. That’s fine, but then there’s this:

Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, requirements come out of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). IRCA prohibits employers from hiring and employing an individual for employment in the U.S. knowing that the individual is not authorized with respect to such employment. Employers also are prohibited from continuing to employ an individual knowing that he or she is unauthorized for employment. This law also prohibits employers from hiring any individual, including a U.S. citizen, for employment in the U.S. without verifying his or her identity and employment authorization on Form I-9.

The IRCA was passed in 1986, which was 40 years ago; Mr Paredes has been in the United States for a stated 25 years, which means that he was hired by the parish church well after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 became law.

Under the Handbook for Employers M-274, Section 11.8, it is specified that:

Unlawful Employment Criminal Penalties
Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Knowingly Hiring or Continuing to Employ Unauthorized Aliens

If you or your business are convicted of having engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (or continuing to employ aliens knowing they are or have become unauthorized to work in the United States) after Nov. 6, 1986, you may face fines and/or six months imprisonment.

Engaging in Fraud or False Statements, or Otherwise Misusing Visas, Immigration Permits, and Identity Documents

You may be fined and/or imprisoned for up to five years if you:

  • Make a false statement or attestation to satisfy the employment eligibility verification requirements;
  • Use fraudulent identification or employment authorization documents; or
  • Use documents that were lawfully issued to another person.

Other federal criminal statutes may provide higher penalties in certain fraud cases.

For Mr Paredes to have been employed by St Gabriel’s, at least one of these things had to have happened:

  • The parish hired Mr Paredes without a reasonable effort at verifying the documents provided; or
  • The parish hired Mr Paredes without checking his documents at all or filling out Form I-9; or
  • Mr Paredes presented false or fraudulent documents good enough to have passed a reasonable inspection by Pastor.

All of these are crimes!

The article provided by EWTN News does not tell us how long Mr Paredes was an employee of St Gabriel’s. The parish staff page tells us that Fr Haverstock first became Parish Administrator in 2020, and assigned as Pastor on Independence Day of 2021, so, if Mr Paredes was hired before those dates, Fr Haverstock could not have been the person who hired him. However, if he became aware that his employee was an illegal immigrant after he became Administrator, but before Mr Paredes was detained, yet continued to employ Mr Paredes, he would be in violation of the law. Fr Haverstock would not be required to report the illegal immigrant’s presence in the United States, but he would have had to discharge him.

There are no exemptions for churches or church employees under our immigration laws. Church policy, even coming from the Pope himself, does not supersede American law.

Perhaps article author Kathleen Murphy did not realize it when she wrote, but she published the report of a crime. And while this is the documentation of one crime in one parish, who would be surprised if this hasn’t happened widely throughout the thousands of parishes and hundreds of dioceses in the United States?

Larry Krasner beclowns himself Philly's chief law enforcement officer doesn't want our immigration laws enforced

Remember when Philadelphia’s criminal-loving, police-hating, George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner previously made a fool of himself with his spittle-flecked declaration that he would seek to find state charges against the January 6th Capitol kerfufflers who were pardoned by President Trump, despite the fact that the vast majority had already served their sentences?

Then we have this gem from the Philly persecutor. That’s right: Mr Krasner wants to go after anyone who might have been involved with the late Jeffrey Epstein. But, let’s tell the truth here: if Mr Krasner found anyone connected to Mr Epstein who has “ties back to (his) jurisdiction,” which is the confines of Philadelphia County — Philadelphia city and county are co-terminus — Mr Krasner wants to throw the book at them, but only if they are Republicans. As with his previous mentioned threat, nothing came of that, either. The late Mr Epstein’s homes and businesses were not in the City of Brotherly Love.

And now, here he goes again!

DA Krasner condemns fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis, says officers who commit crimes in Philly will ‘be convicted’

Krasner said the actions of the ICE agent who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good were unlawful.

by Jesse Bunch | Thursday, January 8, 2026 | 3:50 PM EST

District Attorney Larry Krasner, responding to the killing of a 37-year-old woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, vowed to prosecute law enforcement officers who commit crimes in the city of Philadelphia.

“You will be arrested, you will stand trial, you will be convicted,” Krasner said during a news conference Thursday.

His remarks came a day after a masked ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Good multiple times in her SUV.

In widely circulated videos of the incident, Good appears to be driving away from a group of immigration agents as they order her to get out of her vehicle.

The District Attorney does not seem nearly as concerned with the law when it comes to our immigration laws. From the Tampa Free Press:

Shortly after entering office in 2018, the liberal prosecutor created the Immigration Counsel position in order to provide consultations on cases specifically involving foreign nationals. Krasner initially stated the position would work to achieve “immigration-neutral” outcomes, which in practice means evaluating and possibly lowering charges against migrants, including illegal immigrants, to ensure their conviction would not result in their deportation.

Krasner’s office repeatedly suggested early on that the Immigration Counsel would only focus on cases involving “low-level” offenders, but a case list obtained by a conservative immigration group in 2021 revealed that his office consulted in a myriad of cases involving foreign nationals accused of gruesome crimes, such as rape of a child, rape, sexual assault, arson and murder.

An additional case list released in 2024 revealed the Immigration Counsel has continued to be involved in serious criminal cases. Krasner’s office consulted with or worked on 21 aggravated assault, domestic violence and other crimes of violence cases; 26 possession of drugs with intent to distribute cases; 12 firearm cases; nine rape and indecent assault and sexual assault on a child cases, nine robbery or burglary cases and one vehicular homicide case, according to a case list for the 2023 calendar year.

Translation: Mr Krasner loves him some illegals, and would rather keep those who commit serious crimes other than those connected with their immigration status in the United States.

Mr Krasner said during the press conference.

I will charge you with those crimes. You will be arrested. You will stand trial. You will be convicted. Donald Trump cannot pardon you for a state court conviction. Do you hear me, ICE agents?

Arrests can get messy if the subjects being apprehended resist, and it looks to me as though Mr Krasner is encouraging illegals to resist arrest. And he’s attempting to intimidate ICE agents from coming to Philadelphia to enforce our immigration laws.

I would suggest that ICE do a deep dive into the members of Mr Krasner’s staff, to see if any of them might be here illegally.

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

Adrian Gonzales, mugshot by Uvalde County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office, and is a public record.

No, Adrian Gonzales, pictured to the right, is not your typical criminal. Rather, he was the police officer stationed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County, Texas, who channeled Scot Peterson, the coward of Broward, and chose not to confront the shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers during the shootings.

Trial begins for former Uvalde officer charged in Robb Elementary shooting response

Adrian Gonzales faces multiple counts of endangerment, abandonment of a child.

By Peter Charalambous, Josh Margolin, Jenny Wagnon Courts, and Jim Scholz | Monday, January 5, 2026 | 5:12 AM EST

Nearly four years after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, a jury is set to decide whether a police officer should be held criminally responsible in connection with one of the worst school shootings in American history.

Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, charged with allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by failing to respond to the crisis as it unfolded.

Perhaps Mr Gonzalves is not in as big a heap o’ trouble as the headline suggests, given that Mr Peterson was acquitted.

Prosecutors allege that Gonzales, one of the first of nearly 400 officers to respond to the rampage, failed to engage the shooter despite knowing his location, having time to respond and being trained to handle active shooters. It ultimately took 77 minutes for law enforcement to mount a counter-assault that would kill the gunman.

Ever since the shooting tore apart Uvalde on May 24, 2022, families of the victims have been seeking accountability and answers. Many have argued their children might have been saved had police confronted the gunman more quickly.

The trial, being staged 200 miles from Uvalde in Corpus Christi, marks an exceedingly rare instance of prosecutors seeking to convict a member of law enforcement for a response to a school shooting.

Prosecutors in June 2024 charged both Gonzales and Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — the on-site commander on the day of the shooting — with multiple counts of endangerment and abandonment of a child.

I will state for the record that I have never been put in the position of having to charge into a situation with an armed killer. Yeah, we’d all like to think that we’d be brave enough to take action, but until you actually face the bullets, face the gunfire, knowing that there is a chance that you would be killed, you can’t actually know how you would react.

Our entire history is full of men who did bravely charge into the face of gunfire. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz said of the Marines who fought on Iwo Jima, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue,” and 6,821 Americans died in that battle, along with another 19,217 wounded. Out of 73,000 American troops — and the D-Day landings included British, Canadian, and French troops as well — who hit the beaches in Normandy on D-Day, 2,501 were killed, and more than 5,000 were wounded. These men, trained to run into the fire, their courage doubtlessly bolstered by the courage of the men beside them, did their duty. In our bloodiest war, the War Between the States, somewhere between 620,000 and possibly as high as 850,000 men went bravely toward their deaths, at a time in which the intense military training of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines during World War II was mostly non-existent.

American courage has not been in scarce supply, overall, but it was a scarce quantity at Uvalde. Many of the Americans who hit the beaches were draftees, many of the 58,200 Americans whose lives were wasted in Vietnam, were conscripts[1]Full disclosure: I was draft eligible in 1972, but by then American involvement in Vietnam was ending. With a high lottery number, and the great reduction of American involvement in that waste case … Continue reading, but every law enforcement officer who arrived on the scene in Uvalde was a volunteer, was a man who had personally committed himself to running toward the fire.

They were trained to do just that:

Two months before a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the school district’s then-police chief was required to attend a training about how to respond to an active shooter, which instructed in no uncertain terms that an “officer’s first priority is to move in and confront the attacker.”

When Pete Arredondo, the police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District at the time of the May 2022 shooting, was confronted with precisely the situation his training should have prepared him for, he did the opposite of what the training instructed would have saved lives, according to a newly released trove of documents from the Uvalde school district.

“Time is the number one enemy during active shooter response,” a lesson plan for the training said. “The best hope that innocent victims have is that officers immediately move into action to isolate, distract, or neutralize the threat, even if that means one officer acting alone.”

Officers Arredondo and Gonzales were trained to run toward the fire, and did not. Now they are facing charges over their inactions that sad day. There’s some hesitancy on my part to write about men who chose not to do their duty, in a potentially lethal situation, because I have not personally been tested in such a way, and who knows? Perhaps I would have ducked and run for cover had I been there.

But I was not there, and have taken no training or commitment to run toward the fire. These trials may establish just what the actual commitment of those who do so commit really means.

References

References
1 Full disclosure: I was draft eligible in 1972, but by then American involvement in Vietnam was ending. With a high lottery number, and the great reduction of American involvement in that waste case of a war, I was not called, and did not volunteer.

Deonte Demarcus Carter ain’t in too big a heap o’ trouble

Sadly, my usual title for these articles, “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!” doesn’t really apply to Deonte Demarcus Carter, because he’s in far less trouble than he should be for killing two men.

Mother says she was failed by KY courts after man gets 10 years in 2 killings

Deonte Demarcus Carter, mugshot via Kentucky Online Offenders Lookup, and is a public record.

By Taylor Six | December 26, 2025 5:00 AMCristina Sandusky feels failed by the Fayette County justice system.

Deonte Demarcus Carter was sentenced this month to 10 years in prison for his role in a pair of fatal Lexington shootings that happened 21 days apart. One of those killed her son.

No, of course what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal didn’t publish the killer’s mugshot, but it was easy enough for me to look it up. While the McClatchy Mugshot Policy describes the non-publication of mugshots as meant to protect those accused but not yet convicted of a crime, something which would not apply to Mr Carter, but also frets about “disproportionately harm(ing) people of color.”

Carter pleaded to lesser charges of manslaughter in both cases, and Judge Julie Muth Goodman sentenced him to a total of 15 years: two 10-year sentences, to be served simultaneously, for the killings, and five years for criminal facilitation to robbery.

The charges were reduced as part of a plea negotiations made with prosecutors, who felt they didn’t have enough evidence to convict Carter of murder.

In a Dec. 9 interview with the Herald-Leader, Sandusky described different parts of her experience with legal officials as “dismissive,” “disheartening” and “disrespectful.”

“They didn’t do anything for my son,” she said of Fayette County prosecutors. “Just got to have a win under their belt.”

Sadly, if Cristina Sandusky feels failed by the justice system, she would feel even more failed if she chose to use the Kentucky Online Offender Lookup system, to see what Mr Carter is facing. According to the system, Mr Carter’s maximum date of release is December 21, 2036, eleven years from now. However, his potential “good behavior” release date is March 21, 2033, 7¼ years from now, and he will be eligible for parole as early as June 21, 2030, in just 4½ years from now, when he will be just 32 or 33.

From the moment Carter’s case was assigned to Judge Goodman, Sandusky said she was told the judge was not friendly to victims’ families.

Goodman has been criticized, including by Kentucky’s attorney general, for previous rulings deemed lenient. But Sandusky maintained faith the judge would do the right thing.

For the mother, that meant sentencing Carter to the maximum sentence of 20 years — 10 years apiece for the killings, plus some additional time for the robbery charge.

But Sandusky instead described Goodman’s comments in the courtroom as “more sympathetic to the defense.”

“She was nasty and dismissive,” Sandusky said. “She didn’t look at me one time.”

I would suspect that Her Honor was at least slightly ashamed of what she was about to do, but to be ashamed requires a sense of shame, and too-lenient judges have none.

Goodman lauded Carter and said the justice system had failed him throughout his youth, Sandusky recalled.

The judge “lauded” Mr Carter, a man who killed two people? “(T)he justice system had failed him throughout his youth”? How does that excuse him murdering two people?

Judge Julie Muth Goodman, from 2022 Kentucky Voter Guide.

So, who is Judge Julie Muth Goodman? The 2022 Kentucky Voter Guide gave the Her Honor the opportunity to post a campaign biography, as well as answer a couple of questions:

What do you see as your primary responsibilities and duties if elected to this office?

My primary responsibilities are to enforce our laws and by doing so make sure our community is the safest and fairest possible.

I will admit to not seeing how a sentence which could have a two-time murderer to possibly be back on the streets in just 4½ years, still at a young age, as “mak(ing) sure our community is the safest and fairest possible.”

What are your views on whether the court, as a whole, deals effectively with racial bias? What could improve that?

Unfortunately I do not believe that the Court system or our community always effectively addresses racial bias. I have effectively worked with the Administrative Office of the Courts to mandate that the county attorney’s diversion program which often denied people of color the opportunity to participate because the office inappropriately used Juvenile records which are adjudications and confidential to deny people of color access to the program and to also require that the program use a sliding scale so that all eligible people can afford to participate. By making these changes more people of color have been given the same access to the program as others.

Translation: she’s going to give defendants “of color” a real break, or at least she certainly did for Mr Carter. Even with the Alford plea, she could have sentenced him to 25 years in the state penitentiary — two consecutive ten-year sentences for manslaughter plus five years for the robbery — but chose to give him an extreme break. It should be noted that both of the men Mr Carter killed were black; do black lives not really matter to Judge Goodman?

Of course, Kobby Martin and Devon Sandusky are both stone-cold graveyard dead, pushing up daisies for four years now, so what’s the point of locking up their killer for 25 years; it won’t bring Messrs Martin and Sandusky back to life, will it? Just because Mr Carter is a ‘persistent felon,’ as described under Kentucky law, but not prosecuted this time as part of the plea deal, doesn’t mean that he won’t straighten up and fly right after this prison term, does it? And if Mr Carter kills someone else after he gets out of prison, whenever that is, it won’t be Judge Goodman’s fault in the slightest, will it?

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Not a particularly Merry Christmas for yet another pervert

Richard Adamsky, 66, mugshot via Bucks County sheriff.

Say hello to Richard Adamsky, 66, a former sports coach and teacher at Nativity of Our Lord Catholic School in Warminster, Pennsylvania. You can also say goodbye to him as well, as he’s about to spend at least five years in prison.

Longtime teacher at Catholic school in Bucks County admits to child porn charges

Adamsky, 66, taught seventh and eighth grades and also served as a sports coach at Nativity of Our Lord Catholic School in Warminster. He had worked at the school for 38 years.

by Robert Moran | Monday, December 22, 2025 | 7:24 PM EST

A former longtime teacher at a Catholic grade school in Bucks County pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Philadelphia to receiving and possessing child pornography, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said.

Richard Adamsky, 66, taught seventh and eighth grades and also served as a sports coach at Nativity of Our Lord Catholic School in Warminster. He had worked at the school for 38 years.

No, of course The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t include Mr Adamsky’s mugshot, but it is widely available elsewhere.

His sentencing is set for April 14.

Christopher J. Serpico, a lawyer representing Adamsky, said his client faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison for downloading child pornography.

There’s more at the original. Mr Adamsky faces a maximum sentence of 40 years. Federal prisoners must serve a minimum of 85% of their sentences before becoming eligible for parole, which means he could not possibly get out of prison in less than four years and three months. The Inquirer story did not tell us whether Mr Adamsky was taken immediately to prison.

Mr Serpico is attempting to put together mitigating evidence to keep his client’s sentence as close as possible to the mandatory minimum, and stated that there was no evidence that Mr Adamsky actually abused any children. At least one of the images found in his home included the sexual abuse of a prepubescent child.

I suspect that Mr Adamsky, to use a line by Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS, “will not do well in prison.”

Crazy People Are Dangerous: At least this guy is going to be locked up for a long, long time

The First Street Journal has previously reported on Kimbrady Carriker, the fine young gentleman who murdered five people in the City of Brotherly Love. Now, 2½ years later, we finally have a conviction in the case, and Mr Carriker actually might not spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

Man who killed five people in the Kingsessing mass shooting pleads guilty, is sentenced to decades in prison

Kimbrady Carriker walked through Kingsessing dressed in body armor and armed with an AR-15-style rifle, then shot and killed five people at random on July 3, 2023.

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, December 18, 2025 | 2:34 PM EST | Updated: 4:17 PM EST

The man who walked through the streets of Kingsessing and shot people at random in 2023, killing five and wounding five others in one of Philadelphia’s deadliest mass shootings, pleaded guilty Wednesday to multiple counts of murder and was sentenced to decades in prison.

Kimbrady Carriker, 43, admitted that on the evening of July 3, 2023, he calmly walked through a Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood dressed in body armor and wearing a ski mask, and pointed his AR-15-style rifle at seemingly random passersby — then pulled the trigger.

What is an “AR-15-style rifle”? Was it an ArmaLite-15, or was it something else?

No, of course The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t publish a photo of Mr Carriker, but instead had a five-picture montage of his victims. Mr Carriker has already pleaded guilty, so it’s not as though the newspaper has to somehow protect him prior to trial. But, of course, the most frequently circulate image of Mr Carriker on that internet thingy that Al Gore invented depicts him in drag, and, Heaven forfend! the newspaper wouldn’t want to have people jump to the conclusion that the transgendered are Just Plain Nuts.

There is nothing in reporter Ellie Rushing’s story to indicate that Mr Carriker was actually transgender or perhaps just an occasional cross-dresser; she does tell readers that his attorneys had prepared an insanity defense, and the District Attorney’s Office feared that he might actually be acquitted by reason of insanity. He is pretty much bonkers.

He killed five people: DaJuan Brown, 15; Lashyd Merritt, 21; Dymir Stanton, 29; Ralph Moralis, 59; and Joseph Wamah Jr., 31.

Five others were injured: a 13-year-old boy he shot multiple times in the legs, and a mother who was driving with her 2-year-old twins and 10-year-old niece when he fired more than a dozen bullets into her car.

Further down:

Prosecutors did not want to risk that a jury might find Carriker not guilty by reason of insanity, Wainwright said. So they offered Carriker the opportunity to plead guilty to five counts of third-degree murder, five counts of attempted murder, and gun crimes. They asked a judge to sentence him to 37½ to 75 years in prison.

Mr Carriker is 43 years old, and he’s already spent 2½ years in custody. In theory, he would be eligible for release when he is 78 years old. He should never see the outside of prison walls.