Tag Archives: #Crime

Posted on by

“Based on the injuries and Riley’s physical condition, I suspected that foul play was involved” How many more innocent people are going to have to pay the ultimate price for Democratic policies of not enforcing the law?

Elwood P Dowd, the pseudonym for one of my good friend William Teach’s frequent liberal commenters, tried to conflate patriotic Americans with neo-Nazis:

White neo-Nazi and family “friend” Don Stephen McDougal was arrested for the murder 11 year old Audrii Cunningham. Audrii was found dead at the bottom of the Trinity River with apparent severe head trauma.

While all neo-Nazi’s are white, racist, anti-Semitic right-wingers, not all white, racist, anti-Semitic right-wingers are neo-Nazis. Or are they?

Do any of you Cove regulars proudly sport a swastika tattoo?

America would be a better place if all neo-Nazis were locked up for life.

True Fact: If Adolf Hitler were alive today, Don Trump and his MAGAt kult would support Adolf and the Nazis!! Admit it.

Perhaps, in his eagerness to conflate this (alleged) killer with patriotic Americans, the esteemed Mr Dowd left out a few things, things which were ferreted out by Robert Stacy McCain:

Say hello to Don Steven McDougal, 42, another repeat offender who never should have been let out of prison. Over the years, I’ve called attention to lots of criminals who fit this description. They keep getting turned loose until finally they commit an atrocity that makes nationwide headlines, but no matter how many times the lesson is repeated, people never seem to learn. Here is a summary of McDougal’s Texas record:

  1. February 2003: 3 years for assault of a public servant out of Liberty County
  2. February 7, 2006: 8 months for theft out of Harris County
  3. February 14, 2006: 180 days for possession of less than 1 gram of meth out of Harris County
  4. March 2007: 2 years for enticing a child out of Brazoria County
  5. July 2009: 180 days for unauthorized use of a vehicle out of Harris County
  6. February 2010: 4 years for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon out of Harris County
  7. September 2020: 2 years for unauthorized use of a vehicle out of Liberty County
  8. September 2022: McDougal is released after completing his sentence

That’s (seven) convictions over the span of about 20 years, so it seems that McDougal spent basically his entire adult life either (a) committing crimes or (b) serving prison time. At no time was he ever a law-abiding citizen, but they kept turning him loose until he finally killed somebody.

The dates boldfaced in the list were convictions for felonies. The Lone Star State has a three strikes and you’re out law, but, with four felony convictions, the George Soros-sponsored Harris County prosecutor Kim Ogg apparently didn’t seek that enhancement. Mr McDougal should have been in prison, serving a life sentence, when he (allegedly) killed Audrii Cunningham. Young Miss Cunningham is stone-cold graveyard dead due to liberal Democratic policies.

That, unfortunately was not the only one of Mr McCain’s crime stories relating to Democratic soft-on-crime-and-illegal-immigration policies:

Joe Biden’s Policy Gets a College Girl Killed, But White Lives Don’t Matter

by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, February 24, 2024

Since Joe Biden took office, millions of illegal aliens have been released into the United States. This is not an accident. This is Biden’s policy. Americans are literally being killed by this policy:

A Venezuelan illegal immigrant has been arrested and charged for the murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student who was found dead in a wooded area of University of Georgia at Athens (UGA) campus on Thursday.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was arrested and booked into Clarke County Jail for the accused murder of Laken Riley and charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, and other criminal violations including kidnapping, according to the Daily Mail.

Ibarra was released into the interior of the US by Customs and Border Patrol because the border crisis had worsened to a point where they did not have enough space at a detention facility to hold him.

Riley, 22, was found dead in the wooded area of campus after a roommate reported her as missing. UGA Police Chief Jeffrey Clark told reporters that this was possibly a “crime of opportunity.”

“He did not know her at all. I think this is a crime of opportunity where he saw an individual and bad things happened,” Clark said. . . .
Evidence consistent with blunt force trauma is what led to her death, according to police.

This is the first homicide that has been reported on the campus in 30 years, according to Clark.

The news of the murder broke amidst reports that there have been at least 7.2 million illegal immigrants crossing into the US since President Joe Biden took office not counting those immigrants who have gone undetected while crossing into the US.

My article title? It comes from Collin Ruggs’ tweet on the crime.

Given that the murder was (allegedly) committed by an illegal immigrant, we already know what will happen: the credentialed media will quickly forget it ever happened. A site search for Laken Riley on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, conducted at 1:28 PM EST, returned no hits. The New York Times did cover the story, but rather than telling readers that the accused killer is an illegal immigrant, they simpy stated, “while Mr. Ibarra lives in Athens, he is not a citizen of the United States.” It’s like I’ve said before: The credentialed media don’t exactly lie, but they conceal politically incorrect facts.

In both of these crimes, we can see liberal Democratic Party policies as strongly contributing factors. President Biden cancelled President Trump’s executive orders concerning illegal immigration and border control policies, and the result was clear and obvious: we’ve seen a treendous surge in illegal immigration since the dummkopf from Delaware took office. The Associated Press reported:

The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that President Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said.

That President Trump was able to significantly reduce — he didn’t eliminate it — illegal immigration without Congress changing our immigration laws, and that President Biden is now considering something similar, now that Democratic mayors in heavily Democratic cities are squalling that there’s just no more room for them since Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) started shipping the illegals to those ‘sanctuary’ cities, proves one thing: the immigration bill, which would have allowed illegal immigration to continue, up to a point, was not needed!

So what do we have? We have Democratic prosecutor Kim Ogg, another George Soros minion, fighting “mass incarceration,” and Audrii Cunningham paid the price. We have Joe Biden and the Democrats being oh-so-sympathetic to poor, impoverished immigrants, and Laken Riley paid the price. How many more innocent people are going to have to pay the ultimate price for Democratic policies of not enforcing the law?

Posted on by

Killadelphia: “Justice” in Philadelphia

We have previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote major stories on the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, murdered by Latif Williams, a black 17-year-old, in a botched robbery. On December 2, 2021,the Inquirer published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. This was a big story in the City of Brotherly Love, in part because Mr Collington was an intern with the City Commissioners’ Office and knew the ‘right people’, and in part because it was yet another example of violence and lawlessness around the Temple University campus. When my daughters were considering to where they would go to college, I absolutely vetoed Temple, because I knew the neighborhood.

Well, more than two years after the murder, young Mr Williams has finally been convicted:

Man convicted in 2021 murder of Temple University student Samuel Collington

Latif Williams, 19, of Olney, was found guilty of third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime, and illegal possession of a firearm in connection with the killing.

by Nick Valada | Tuesday, February 20, 2024 | 6:06 PM EST | Updated: Wednesday, February 21, 2024 | 1:52 PM EST

Latif Williams, photo by, Philadelphia Police Department, via KYT-TV, Philadelphia.

A Philadelphia man was convicted Tuesday in the 2021 murder of 21-year-old Temple University student Samuel Collington.Latif Williams, 19, of Olney, was found guilty after a one-day bench trial of third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime, and illegal possession of a firearm.

A “bench trial” is one in which the defendant is tried by a judge, without a jury; both the prosecution and defendant must agree to that type of trial for it to proceed.

A native of Prospect Park, Delaware County, Collington was a senior at Temple studying political science at the time of his murder. He was shot outside his apartment on the 2200 block of North Park Avenue near Dauphin Street on Nov. 28, 2021, in what police said appeared to be a robbery and carjacking.

Collington was expected to graduate in spring 2022 from Temple’s College of Liberal Arts. At the time of his death, he had recently received a high score on the LSAT, planned to attend law school in the fall, and worked as a democracy fellow in the Office of the Philadelphia City Commissioners.

“The District Attorney’s Office is grateful for the conviction of Latif Williams for this outrageous crime, which not only deeply impacted Mr. Collington’s family and loved ones but affected the entire Temple University community,” District Attorney Larry Krasner said. “I again extend my deepest condolences for the terrible loss of a promising young man.”

The cited article continues to tell readers some details about the case, and the fact that young Mr Williams was under police investigation in connection with several armed robberies in the area and an August 2021 carjacking of an elderly man. Mr Williams will be formally sentenced in May, and is scheduled to be tried for the carjacking on the same day.

Patrick Link, Williams’ attorney, said Tuesday that the third-degree murder conviction for his client was the “appropriate verdict,” as Williams was initially charged with first- and second-degree murder, which would have brought harsher sentences. A first-degree murder conviction calls for a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

Yeah, uh huh, right. What is “third-dgree murder” in Pennsylvania?

Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502. Murder.

  • (a) Murder of the first degree.–A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing.
  • (b) Murder of the second degree.–A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the second degree when it is committed while defendant was engaged as a principal or an accomplice in the perpetration of a felony.
  • (c) Murder of the third degree.–All other kinds of murder shall be murder of the third degree. Murder of the third degree is a felony of the first degree.

Those are fairly simple definitions. Given that Mr Williams shot and killed Mr Collington while attempting to rob him, his crime would fit the definition of second-degree murder. Though not stated in the definition above, first-degree murder normally requires proof of premeditation, which would seem to rule it out in this case.

So, what are the penalties for murder in the Keystone State?

Pennsylvania Title 18 §1102.1. Sentence of persons under the age of 18 for murder, murder of an unborn child and murder of a law enforcement officer.

  • (a) First degree murder.–A person who has been convicted after June 24, 2012, of a murder of the first degree, first degree murder of an unborn child or murder of a law enforcement officer of the first degree and who was under the age of 18 at the time of the commission of the offense shall be sentenced as follows:
    • (1) A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was 15 years of age or older shall be sentenced to a term of life imprisonment without parole, or a term of imprisonment, the minimum of which shall be at least 35 years to life.
    • (2) A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was under 15 years of age shall be sentenced to a term of life imprisonment without parole, or a term of imprisonment, the minimum of which shall be at least 25 years to life.
  • (b) Notice.–Reasonable notice to the defendant of the Commonwealth’s intention to seek a sentence of life imprisonment without parole under subsection (a) shall be provided after conviction and before sentencing.
  • (c) Second degree murder.–A person who has been convicted after June 24, 2012, of a murder of the second degree, second degree murder of an unborn child or murder of a law enforcement officer of the second degree and who was under the age of 18 at the time of the commission of the offense shall be sentenced as follows:
    • (1) A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was 15 years of age or older shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment the minimum of which shall be at least 30 years to life.
    • (2) A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was under 15 years of age shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment the minimum of which shall be at least 20 years to life.

You will note, however, that there is no specific sentence listed for third-degree murder, which is simply listed as a first-degree felony. That’s indicated below:

Pennsylvania Title 18 §1103. Sentence of imprisonment for felony.

  • Except as provided in 42 Pa.C.S. § 9714 (relating to sentences for second and subsequent offenses), a person who has been convicted of a felony may be sentenced to imprisonment as follows:
    • (1) In the case of a felony of the first degree, for a term which shall be fixed by the court at not more than 20 years.

There is, however, no minimum sentence specified, though normally the sentence range is ten-to-twenty years. A second-degree felony in the Keystone State has a maximum sentence of ten years in the state penitentiary.

Lori D. Esq, a former prosecutor, tweeted:

DAO did waiver trial in front of Okeefe who only convicted of 3rd degree murder. But apparently Okeefe always gives 3rd degree discount yet Larry has policy that DAO always agrees to waiver unless a cop is a defendant. What a disgrace.

“Okeefe” is Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Scott O’Keefe.

So, let’s look at what made Mr Link so happy. Under Title 18 §1102.1(c)(1), a juvenile defendant of Mr Williams’ age at the time of the murder would be sentenced to a minimum of 30 years, up to a life sentence, with the possibility of parole. But with the third-degree murder downgrade, Mr Williams faces no more than 20 years, which would see him released, at the latest, at age 37 — assuming no consecutive sentences are applied, and that Mr Williams receives credit for time served — while Mr Collington will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

We won’t know Mr Williams’ sentence until May, but at this point I am reminded of a couple of OpEds that the Inquirer published, both of which told readers that teenagers’ brains weren’t fully developed, and that we should treat them leniently, to give them chances to reform. We can’t know if Judge O’Keefe read them or will be influenced by them, but one thing we do know is that justice has not been done here.
__________________________________
Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

Posted on by

Does The Philadelphia Inquirer really want to excuse juvenile crime?

As we reported on Ash Wednesday, The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to three Montclair State University ‘academics,’ in which they argued that the barins of teenagers are not fully matured by age 18, and that they should usually be treated as juveniles for several more years, to give them a chance for rehabilitation. Well, it was just a day later, that the newspaper gave more OpEd space, for two more activists to make the same point:

Locking teens up won’t make our city safer. It will have the opposite effect, and here’s why.

When young people commit nonviolent offenses, they should be able to learn from and make amends for their poor choices. We hope our new police commissioner knows this.

by Donna Cooper and Anton Moore, For The Inquirer | Thursday, February 15, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

While it is incredibly welcome news that gun deaths in Philadelphia decreased in 2023 from the peaks of the COVID-19 years, there is so much work that needs to be done to prevent people — especially our young people — from going down the path that leads to violence.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s selection of Kevin Bethel as police commissioner is a good one because — as the former chief of school safety — he has the right mindset and experience to invest in our children. Commissioner Bethel recognizes that the brain isn’t fully developed until a person’s mid-20s, which means young people make reckless decisions at 16, 17, and 18 years old that they would likely never make in adulthood. When those reckless decisions are nonviolent offenses, it is undeniably better to give children and teens the structure to learn from and make amends for their poor choices, not lock them up.

One obvious point: juveniles who are incarcerated are not out on the streets able to commit further crimes.

We have hope that Bethel understands this. He successfully led an expansion of the Philadelphia Police Department’s school-based diversion program, which responds to low-level misbehavior — like marijuana possession or bringing scissors to school — by linking kids to supportive services, instead of arresting them. These alternatives include academic support and mentoring to identify reasons why kids may be acting out. Since 2013, arrests in Philadelphia public schools have gone down by over 90%. (Bethel’s diversion program began in the 2014-15 academic year.) Youth in the program were also less likely to be suspended or arrested within five years after they went through the program than those students who were arrested at school.

We need to bring this same approach of diversion over arrest to the community.

Uhhh, the problem isn’t teens bringing scissors or pot to school; those things don’t get teens arrested on Philly’s streets. The problems are theft, destruction of private property, carjackings, shootings, fatal beatings, crimes which have identifiable victims.

Further down:

And yet, too many people assume that the only solution to stop youth crime is to lock children up long term.

While there are times when detaining teenagers is warranted, it cannot be the first and only response if we really want to end violence, because it doesn’t address the reasons so many kids are committing crimes in the first place.

Actually, it can. The criminal who is incarcerated or not incarcerated is not the only one who is learning a lesson here. The criminal, teenaged or otherwise, who is not incarcerated, who is treated as leniently as Curtis Wallace, Jr, was, learns the lesson that he’ll always get cut a break; that’s not a lesson the article authors have contemplated.

But it’s also the people around the malefactor who learn a lesson, the lesson being either that, hey, Curtis got busted, but was let go, so I’ll get let off, too, or the lesson that, dang, Curtis got busted and drew ten years in the state pen. The teenaged delinquents the authors contemplate getting whatever services and education that they expect might get that, were they to get their way, but the kids around the leniently treated criminal won’t; they’ll only see that their buddy got away with it.

Philadelphia needs to invest in a full array of services, including prevention and community-based services, to stop the cycle of arrest and incarceration. And we have the funds to do it: A recent economic analysis of the Philadelphia juvenile justice system showed an estimated $17 million in unspent funds each year — money that could be invested in evidence-based solutions that actually reduce crime by helping young people understand how to make better choices and make amends with those they’ve harmed.

And there we have it! The authors were very careful not to use the term “restorative justice,” that leftist prosecutors like Larry Krasner and Pamela Price like to employ, but that’s what “make amends with those they’ve harmed” means. And every place the George Soros-sponsored liberal prosecutors have taken power, crime rates have soared. The lessons of leniency have been well learned, as people with bad intentions have learned that they’ve less to fear than before. Even in the semi-deranged brains of the criminals, cost-benefit calculations are made, even if in forms we wouldn’t necessarily see as reasonable.

I have more than once mocked Mr Krasner as having a diabolically brilliant plan to get criminals off of Philly’s streets: keep excusing them and excusing them and excusing them until they commit a crime which gets them locked up for life, or, more efficiently, killed. That has been the result in the City of Brotherly Love. The problem with the authors’ OpEd is that they are taking seriously the notion that crime by juveniles should be excused, better to teach them a lesson.

The authors used the appointment of Kevin Bethel as their starting point, and even concluded with an appeal to him concerning ‘diversion’ of arrests to some sort of better program. But the duty of the Police Commissioner is to police the city. Even if the Commissioner believed in such diversion programs, such programs would be the purview of agencies outside of the Police Department.

We’ve actually seen such a ‘program,’ though not really stated formally, before, as the Broward County Sheriff’s Department kept letting Nikolas Cruz go, time after time, for his misdemeanors and even a couple of felonies. The school board did the same thing, keeping him out of the so-called ‘school-to-prison pipeline.’ Thus Mr Cruz had no criminal record, and was legally able to purchase the AR-15 with which he shot up the Margery Stoneman Douglas High School, sending 17 people to their deaths, and wounding 17 others.

He could have been in jail on St Valentine’s Day of 2018, but the leniency of the left kept him free as a bird. That is what such leniency does.

Posted on by

Why do the credentialed media hide the news? Two police officers and a paramedic murdered, and the professional media are ignoring the story as much as they can

My good internet friend Robert Stacy McCain noted that the local police and credentialed media decided to keep secret the identity of the “suspect” who murdered two police officers and a paramedic on Sunday in the Minneapolis suburb of Burnsville.

Mr McCain noted:

(The alleged suspect) petitioned the court in 2020 to have his gun rights restored, which a judge denied.

However, the Associated Press reported:

The suspect, who officials said had multiple guns and large amounts of ammunition, also died.

Clearly, clearly! this report must be false. Since the (alleged) suspect was legally prohibited from owning or possessing firearms, he couldn’t possibly have had the weapons in question.

The only reasonable answer is that one of the children in the house owned and had the firearms, one of the kids shot the police officers and fireman, and the (alleged) suspect, in nobly trying to shield the children, wound up sacrificing his life.

I started this article early, but put it on the shelf, waiting to see if The Philadelphia Inquirer would update it, but nope, the 8:28 AM EST version of the story is the last one posted. More, it no longer shows on the main page of our nation’s third oldest newspaper, and the newspaper of record for the sixth largest city, and seventh largest metropolitan area in our country. And a site search for Shannon Gooden, made at 4:50 PM EST, the (alleged) suspect, returned nothing connected with this story.

Mr McCain, and many others, have wondered why the credentialed media kept the name, and thus the photo, of the (alleged) suspect under wraps, and many have suggested that it is because Mr Gooden is black, and that had he been a MAGA hat wearing white male, his name and image would have been all over the news. Perhaps that’s true, though there’s at least the possibility that the police were waiting until Mr Gooden’s family had been notified.

But it wasn’t just the Inky which never updated a story to identify Mr Gooden. A Google search for Shannon Gooden, conducted at 5:10 PM EST, returned only one national news source, CBS News, with the story on the first page. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Duluth News-Tribune, both had stories, but they’re local news sources, not national.

Two police officers and a fireman working as a paramedic, murdered, and this story is being quickly memory-holed.

Posted on by

After six second chances, a Philadelphia thug does something which gets him stone-cold graveyard dead.

As we noted almost two years ago, when the Philadelphia Police Department tried to keep the identity of a police officer involved in a shooting which killed a common criminal, because then-Commissioner Danielle Outlaw claimed that the officer’s personal safety was at risk, The Philadelphia Inquirer put together its sources, and identified and published the identity of the officer.

Well, oops, they did it again!

Police are investigating a traffic stop that ended with an injured officer and fatally shot driver

A police officer shot Curtis Wallace Jr. on the Adams Avenue Bridge in Crescentville after he allegedly hit the officer with his car.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, February 16, 2024 | 12:56 PM EST

Curtis Wallace, Jr, from a 2022 mugshot, via WTAE.

Philadelphia police on Friday continued to investigate an attempted traffic stop Thursday night that authorities said led to an officer being struck by a car, then pinned against a wall by the vehicle, before the officer shot and fatally wounded the driver.

Family identified the man who died as 36-year-old Curtis Wallace Jr. And while police declined to name the officer involved, multiple law enforcement sources identified him as 38-year-old Marckenson Smith, an eight-year veteran of the force.

So, when the Usual Suspects protest against this incident — they’ve even protested the police shooting of a thug who had shot an officer.

And, no, of course the Inquirer didn’t provide Mr Wallace’s old mugshot, but it didn’t take much searching to find it.

The incident began around 7 p.m. Thursday, when Smith attempted to pull over a white Ford Lincoln sedan at Roosevelt Boulevard and F Street in Crescentville, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said outside Einstein Medical Center Thursday night.

Bethel did not say what prompted the traffic stop, and a department spokesman on Friday said that remains part of the investigation.

You can follow the link to the newspaper’s original, to read the details which have been published. To me, the interesting part is toward the end of Miss Rushing’s story:

Records show (Mr Wallace) has a history of prior arrests and run-ins with the law.

In March 2015, records show he pleaded guilty to theft and receiving stolen property, and was sentenced to two years’ probation. Later that year in December, he was charged with aggravated assault after police said he broke into a house, beat a man with a metal pipe, dragged him out of the property, and threatened to kill him. Wallace pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 1½ months to a year in jail, plus two years’ probation, and was released on time served.

Really? What kind of sweetheart plea deal was he given? Under Title 18 §2702, aggravated assault is, depending on a couple of circumstances, either a First-degree or Second-degree felony, which under Title 18 §106 has a sentence of over ten years (b)(2) for First-degree, or a maximum of ten years (b)(3) for a Second-degree felony conviction. Yet Mr Wallace released on time served in jail awaiting trial. This was after he was already on probation.

He continued to violate this probation over the years, records show. In early 2019, he was charged with indecent assault, violating a protective order, and strangulation, but the charges were later dismissed for reasons that were not immediately clear.

Most recently, in January 2022, he was convicted of theft and conspiracy for breaking into a woman’s car and stealing her computer, $900 cash, and Burberry coat, records show. He was sentenced to up to 23 months in jail, plus 30 months probation, though he was immediately paroled and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.

Just a few months later, he was arrested and charged with orchestrating a catalytic converter theft ring in Allegheny County. Records show he pleaded guilty to theft and was sentenced to one year probation.

Mr Wallace appears to have spent much of his past few years on probation, but, despite continual violations, never had his probation revoked and sent to prison. It’s obvious that previous probation sentences, previous second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth chances, didn’t turn Mr Wallace to the straight and narrow, didn’t get him to reform his life and become a law-abiding citizen.

Instead, he got let go and leniently treated, and shown just about every courtesy possible, right up until he did something which put him on a slab in the morgue. I have previously joked that that was District Attorney Larry Krasner’s — though the Allegheny County event is not on Mr Krasner — brilliant policy to reduce crime by releasing criminals until they do something which gets them off the streets permanently.

Perhaps my joking isn’t all that much of a joke. But if Mr Wallace had been treated according to the laws passed by the Commonwealth’s elected representatives, who (supposedly) reflect the will of the people, he’d be alive today, alive behind bars, but at least able to look forward to getting out at some point.

He won’t be getting out of that pine box.

Posted on by

Very compassionate academics want “juvenile” definitions extended beyond age 18, so they can let violent twenty-somethings be “reformed” I say that, if you kill someone, you should never, ever get out of prison

What is adulthood? In one way, our Constitution specifies adulthood, with the Twenty-sixth Amendment:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Much of the impetus for this came from the Vietnam war, in which 18-and-19-year-olds could be and were drafted and sent to fight in Southeast Asia, but most states had set their voting ages at 21. Growing up in Kentucky, I did have that then-rare privilege of being able to register to vote at 18, as both Georgia and the Bluegrass State had previously lowered their voting ages to 18, but it barely made a difference: the only election in which I was able to vote as an 18-year-old when such wasn’t available in all of the other states was the May primary in 1971. 🙂

Nevertheless, adulthood has had different definitions throughout time, for different purposes. The ages of consent for sex vary across our country, set by the states, not the federal government, and several of them specify 16 or 17 as the age of consent. And, in our then older, wider Western civilization, most people were married by age 16, if not earlier. Eleanor of Aquitaine, for example, was first married at age 13, and such was in no way unusual in the twelfth century. Her eldest son, Henry the Young King, was married at age 17, though his father, King Henry II, waited until the ripe, old age of 19 to marry Eleanor! Marriage at an age in which girls were still in puberty was considered a societally and religiously practical thing, as it kept illegitimacy down.

And now come Tina M. Zottoli, an associate professor in the department of psychology and director of the Legal Decision Making Lab at Montclair State University, Tarika Daftary-Kapur, a professor of justice studies at the same school, and Kim Echevarria, a doctoral student in the department of psychology there. Though they say nothing about ages of consent for sex, or to be able to vote, they are very, very upset that 18-year-olds are being held responsible as adults for breaking the law:

An 18-year-old is not an adult, brain science shows. The criminal justice system is failing our kids.

The criminal justice system must stop considering teenagers as adults, and offer more chances for rehabilitation to people in their late teens and early 20s.

by Tina M. Zottoli, Tarika Daftary-Kapur, and and Kim Echevarria, For The Inquirer | Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024 | 7:00 AM EST

In November, the state of Texas executed Brent Brewer for a homicide he committed in 1990, when he was 19 years old. If Brewer had committed the crime a day shy of his 18th birthday, he would be alive today. In fact, he might even be free.

That’s how much difference a day can make.

The authors go on to tell us that:

In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States abolished the death penalty for people whose crimes were committed before age 18. Then, between 2010 and 2016, the court tightly restricted the cases for which a youth could receive a sentence of life without opportunity for parole. As a result, the number of people serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers dropped from 2,300 in 2016 to fewer than 1,500 in 2020.

But you know what the three academics don’t tell us? They don’t give readers the name of Robert Laminack. Mr Laminack got his death sentence in 1990, at the hands of Mr Brewer. Mr Brewer has now been sent to his eternal reward, and, on this Ash Wednesday, a committed Catholic like me can at least hope that he repented of his sins and sought absolution for them, that his eternal reward might not be Hell.

As our regular readers, both of them, know, I am opposed to capital punishment; I wish that Mr Brewer had not been executed. However, one almost throwaway sentence from the authors really annoys me:

In fact, he might even be free.

Well, yes, he might, but whether still behind bars, or released from prison, Mr Laminack would still be stone-cold graveyard dead. The authors, who couldn’t even bring themselves to name Mr Brewer’s victim, seemingly don’t care about that. As we previously reported, 17-year-and-363-day old Quadir Humphrey has been charged with the apparently-senseless murder if 16-year-old Tyshaun Welles, when he (allegedly) fired almost randomly into a crowd at the Philadelphia City Hall SEPTA subway station. The three academics wrote, ” The court further acknowledged — correctly — that youth who commit crimes can be rehabilitated.”

Well, young Mr Humphrey wasn’t rehabilitated, despite being in custody, twice, on June 4, 2021 on a gun charge, and again on March 4, 2023, on a stolen car charge, neither of which had been adjudicated on the day that he (allegedly) shot Mr Welles. Even if charged and prosecuted as an adult, Mr Humphrey, if convicted, cannot be sentenced to either death or life without parole, but Mr Welles will still be dead. That, to paraphrase the three academics, is how much difference two days can make.

Our work following juvenile homicide offenders released from sentences of life without parole in Philadelphia shows that the court got the science right. Among the first 174 released, only six (or 3.4%) were rearrested within an average two-year follow-up, and only two (or 1.1%) were convicted, both for minor offenses. In comparison, the two-year rearrest rate for homicide offenders nationally is 30%.

Like Brewer, some of the individuals in our study had originally been sentenced to death. But unlike Brewer, they had not yet turned 18 when they committed their crimes, so they were given a chance to show us that they could change.

Those paragraphs fall under the category of lies, damned lies, and statistics! From the City Controller’s office, on January 15, 2022:

The increase in gun violence coincided with other concerning gun-related trends. As gun violence surged over the last six years, clearance rates — the share of cases solved by the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) — for homicides and non-fatal shootings declined. In 2020, just 37% of fatal shootings were cleared by the PPD. At the same time, the number of individuals arrested for illegal gun possession increased by more than 100% between 2015 and 2020. While gun possession arrests have drastically increased, conviction rates — the share of cases prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office (DAO) that result in conviction — for gun possession declined. Between 2015 and 2020, the share of illegal gun possession cases resulting in conviction fell from 65% to 42%. . . . .

In 2015, clearance rates for non-fatal shootings were already low at 27%. As non-fatal shooting victims increased by more than 80% from 2015 to 2020, clearance rates continued to decline. The clearance rate reached a low point in 2020, when only 19% of non-fatal shooting incidents were cleared by the PPD. This clearance rate translates to nearly 1,500 non-fatal shooting incidents for which no arrest was made in 2020.

So, when the three academics tell us that the arrest and conviction rates were low in the City of Brotherly Love, they are basing their claims on statistics from a crippled Police Department under the thankfully-departed, failed Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, and the refusal of the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and criminal-loving District Attorney Larry Krasner to seriously prosecute some crimes, including gun crimes.

More, the authors restricted their statistical study to “an average two-year follow up,” something which is not only a short period of time, but one which, if they described it accurately in their article in the Inquirer, was shorter than two years in some cases.

The authors indicated their bias in their own linked (supposedly) academic study, when they stated:

Moreover, in light of the growing recognition that addressing the incarceration epidemic will necessitate re-evaluation of long-term prison sentences for individuals who were convicted of violent offenses, these outcome data have implications far beyond just those that pertain to the resentencing and release of juvenile lifers.[1]Resentencing of Juvenile Lifers: The Philadelphia Experience, page 1 of the report, page 2 of the .pdf file.

On page 3 of the document, the authors refer to the “crisis of mass incarceration,”[2]ibid, page 3 of the report, page 4 of the .pdf file. as though mass incarceration is a problem, rather than not enough people being incarcerated, for not a long enough period of time.

Considering that the overwhelming majority of individuals who commit crime — even serious crime—“age out” of criminal behavior, the societal benefits of continued incarceration are called into question, especially in comparison with the costs.[3]ibid, page 3 of the report, page 4 of the .pdf file.

There is a huge problem with the study. The authors are speaking, in the quoted parts above, about offenders previously sentenced to life, or what they have referred to as “virtual life,” by which they mean sentences of 50 or more years, studied in a re-sentencing project, but drawing inferences on juvenile offenders whom they hope to receive much shorter sentences. As they stated previously:

A subset of 38 cases were considered for resentencing by both the prior and current administrations. The average sentence offered in these cases by the prior administration (District Attorney Seth Williams) was 38.8 years; under Krasner, the average offer in these cases was 27.6 years. Across all cases, this difference equates to an additional reduction of 394 years.[4]ibid, page 2 of the report, page 3 of the .pdf file.

An offender really can “age out” of prime criminal activity years, after he has spent 38.8 years, or even 27.6 years, behind bars, but the type of lenient treatment the authors like and want to see continued under Mr Krasner when it comes to juveniles, does not lead to any ‘aging out’.

On page 6 of the report, page 7 of the .pdf file, the authors note that all of the juvenile offenders resentenced following a life sentence were murderers,, meaning that their victims are dead, never again to draw another breath of life. They noted that 38% of them were convicted of Second degree murder, felony murder, which means a homicide committed during the commission of another felony, robbery (78%, home invasion (16%), and “drug-related” offenses (6%), but does not require that the convicted be the one who actually pulled the trigger. The verbiage is such that the reader could infer that none of the 38% were the ones who pulled the trigger, but the charge of First-degree murder in Pennsylvania requires premeditation, not just the adrenaline-fueled, split-second reaction involved in a felony.

In their Inquirer OpEd, the authors concluded:

Of course, whenever a line is drawn, there will be errors at the margins. But if we, as a nation, continue to maintain the most severe of criminal sanctions — the death penalty, and life without parole — and if we justify these sanctions partly on the basis that they ought to be reserved for people who cannot be reformed, we must acknowledge that the dividing line between 17 and 18 years mistakenly classifies far too many young people as irredeemable.

And therein lies the assumption which destroys their entire article: “if we justify these sanctions partly on the basis that they ought to be reserved for people who cannot be reformed.” Not just no, but Hell no! When the result of the crime is that someone else is killed, we should not be looking at whether or not his killer can or cannot be reformed, but the fact that someone’s life was taken from him, and that the killer should not be released until the dead person comes back to life.

References

References
↑1 Resentencing of Juvenile Lifers: The Philadelphia Experience, page 1 of the report, page 2 of the .pdf file.
↑2 ibid, page 3 of the report, page 4 of the .pdf file.
↑3 ibid, page 3 of the report, page 4 of the .pdf file.
↑4 ibid, page 2 of the report, page 3 of the .pdf file.
Posted on by

CNN reporter Barbie Latza Nadeau accidentally tells the truth, though I’m sure she is appalled by it

I spotted this following story thanks to a tweet from William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove. Mr Teach noted that CNN seemed far more concerned that an alleged gang rape of a 13-year-old girl in Sicily would benefit conservative politicians — called the “far-right” by CNN — than they were about the fact that a young teenager was raped!

An alleged gang rape shocks Italy, and provides fodder for an ascendant far right

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN | Sunday, February 11, 2024 | Updated: 5:27 AM EST

Rome CNN — Italy has been shaken by the alleged gang rape of a 13-year-old girl in front of her boyfriend in a public park in the Sicilian city of Catania, the latest in a string of shocking sexual attacks in the country.

The case is reminiscent of two alleged gang rapes last summer. A group of seven men and teenage boys between the ages of 15 and 18 are currently on trial for the alleged rape of a 19-year-old girl in Palermo in August.

Weeks later nine young men were arrested and charged with allegedly raping two cousins aged 10 and 12 near Naples and broadcasting the attack live on social media. They, too, are facing trial.

Last month’s alleged gang rape in Catania has become not only a symbol of violence against women in the country, but a cause célèbre for Italy’s far-right government. The seven suspected perpetrators were all Egyptian migrants, three of them under the age of 18, Catania police confirmed to CNN.

There’s more at the original.

As we previously reported, a ‘migrant’ from Venezuela has been arrested for trying to shoot an New York City Police Officer, and wounding a tourist in Times Square. Neither the United States as a whole, or New York more specifically, has a “far-right” government to which to tie that crime, and somehow, some way, CNN didn’t cover the story of the arrest of Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa at all, or at least a site search for Rivas-Figueroa conducted at 12:55 PM EST this morning returned no stories on the subject.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, came to power in September 2022 on an anti-immigration platform, but her efforts to curb irregular migration into the country have so far been unsuccessful.

How interesting that CNN reporter Barbie Latza Nadeau characterized Prime Minister Meloni and her government as “far-right,” and then linked an article which said, among other things, “She was nowhere near as far-right as some had feared, and the multilingual career politician was at ease with global world leaders.” 🙂 Perhaps if she had been more stringently “far-right” Italy would have been more successful in intercepting and turning around the ‘migrants’ boats.

The CNN writer then had a several paragraph section beginning with, “Italy has long struggled with the problem of gender-based violence,” even as she noted that the parliament has passed measures to more greatly criminalize such.

The legislation was inspired by the case of Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old woman murdered by an ex-boyfriend. She was one of 118 femicides in Italy last year. In 2022, women were the victims of 91% of homicides committed by family members, partners or former partners, according to the European Data Journalism Network.

“Violence against women is a phenomenon that’s more or less present in all countries, caused by structural causes like the disparity between men and women, stereotypes and prejudices,” Elena Biaggioni, vice president of D.i.Re, a national association that coordinates anti-violence centers and women’s shelters, said last June.

Speaking at a protest after a pregnant woman was allegedly stabbed to death by her partner, she added: “But of course in countries where there’s a macho culture and sexism is stronger, like Italy, this violence is justified in a different way.”

Yet in the latest case, officials have centered their attention on the background of the alleged perpetrators.

So, are you convinced yet that this is not really a problem of the illegal immigrants, but Italy, and wicked Italian men in general? It’s not the fault of the illegal immigrants, but the problem is that “officials” who have focused on the “background of the alleged perpetrators.” That’s pretty clearly what Miss Nadeau wants you to believe. But next comes the money line, though I doubt that the CNN writer realized it:

The judge investigating the most recent case, Carlo Umberto Cannella, said the suspects were likely to reoffend because they were not “accustomed to civilization.”

Absolutely right! Islamic ‘civilization,’ if you can call it civilization at all, simply is nothing like Western civilization, and Judge Cannella told the truth. Islamic ‘civilization’ has produced, in the 21st century, an Iran which jails and occasionally beats to death women who don’t properly wear a headscarf, an Afghanistan where girls cannot be educated past the sixth grade, women are forced to wear head-to-toe burkas, and must be accompanied by a responsible male if they leave the home. Islamic ‘civilization’ has produced Hamas, which used murder and deliberate rape to terrorize Israeli civilians, and Da’ish, which throws homosexuals off of tall buildings.

They are not Westerners, and if we try to think of them as Westerners or expect them to behave as Westerners, we are deceiving ourselves and endangering actually civilized people.

Posted on by

It’s just not possible that Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa committed the crimes of which he has been accused, because gun control laws would have stopped him.

New York state and city have strict gun control laws, even after the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen 597 U. S. ____ (2022), and there is no way that a 15-year-old illegal immigrant ‘migrant’ could obtain a permit to purchase or license to carry a concealed weapon in the Empire State. Therefore, despite the credentialed media stories and accompanying photographs, there’s just no way that this story could be true!

‘Armed and dangerous’ teen migrant from Venezuela cries after arrest over chaotic Times Square shooting that injured tourist

By Joe Marino, Georgett Roberts, Steven Vago, and Olivia Land | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 7:35 PM EST

A 15-year-old migrant suspected of shooting a tourist and firing at a police officer in a robbery-gone-wrong in Times Square was arrested on Friday, authorities said.

The US Marshals Joint Regional Fugitive Task Force and the NYPD tracked Venezuelan teen Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa down in Yonkers less than 24 hours after Thursday’s mayhem at the Crossroads of the World.

Photos obtained by The Post showed the young suspect, wearing a dark T-shirt, jeans and a gold necklace, being taken into custody at around 3:30 p.m. at what sources said was the home of a relative on Saratoga Avenue.

“He was crying. When he was apprehended, he was crying… Here he is committing these adult acts, that’s something you don’t expect a child to do, and then when he’s apprehended, he’s brought out in handcuffs crying,” NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves told reporters.

At least the wannabe gangstas in Philly don’t cry when they get arrested. They do their best to present a tough guy look.

He will most likely be charged as a juvenile with attempted murder of a police officer, Nieves said, noting the case will then either go to criminal or family court.

Here’s where it gets bad: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is yet another of the liberal prosecutors who don’t believe in seriously prosecuting crimes. This kid needs to be charged as an adult, and locked up for decades, not stuck in the juvenile system, and out by 18. But, whenever he is released, he needs to be immediately deported back to Venezuela, or if Venezuela won’t take him, Antarctica.

Antarctica in shorts and flip flops!

Young Mr Rivas-Figueroa had arrived in September, and housed at a temporary shelter at the Stratford Hotel on West 70th Street. He’s also a suspect in an armed robbery in the Bronx on January 27th, and was involved in shots fired at a park on 45th Street in Midtown two days earlier.

There’s a lot more at the original.

But think about this. Venezuela under the ‘Bolivarian socialist’ Hugh Chavez banned private ownership of firearms in 2012, when this fine young gentleman was just 4 years old. He’s not coming from a culture in which people were able to own guns, and then he becomes a ‘migrant’ in a state in which firearms ownership is as restricted as the Constitution allows . . . if not more. He’s never known a life in which firearms were not restricted, yet he was (allegedly) carrying and using not just any pistol, but a .45. That’s not just falling into a life of crime, but actively planning it.

Posted on by

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! But don't you dare call him a 'groomer'!

Gerald Spoto, mugshot via Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News.

We reported, Friday afternoon, on the case of substitute teacher Rebecca Coddington of Brown Mills, New Jersey, who has been charged with aggravated sexual assault, among other crimes, for seducing and having a four-year-long affair with a 14-year-old girl. I expressed some surprise that the credentialed media, which have frequently tried to downplay or conceal the sex of victims of such crimes when that information would inform readers that the abuse was homosexual in nature.

Well, here we go again!

Former Bucks County after-school worker sexually assaulted a seventh boy, prosecutors allege

Gerald Spoto, 41, allegedly molested the boy starting in 2021 and recorded hundreds of pornographic images, prosecutors said.

by Robert Moran | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 5:48 PM EST

A 41-year-old Bucks County man already charged with sexually assaulting six boys while he worked for an after-school program and as a babysitter two decades ago now faces a slew of additional charges in connection with a seventh boy who allegedly was victimized just a few years ago.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said Friday that Gerald Spoto, of Bristol Township, was charged with an additional three felony counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and related offenses, including 274 counts of photographing or filming a child sex act, and 275 counts of possession of child pornography.

No, of course the Inquirer did not include the accused’s mugshot!

Spoto was arraigned Friday by District Judge Terrance Hughes, who denied bail, citing public safety concerns and Spoto being a flight risk because he is in the process of selling his home. Spoto has been in custody since his original arrest in December.

Last month, Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin McElroy argued against reducing Spoto’s bail because he allegedly attempted to adopt a child recently.

While the cited news report from The Philadelphia Inquirer continues to note that the police have found “hundreds of images” on computers belonging to Mr Spoto, of a nude boy who appears to be tween 11-and-13-years of age, and that some showed actual sexual abuse, it was a previous story in the newspaper which gave readers more detail:

All six men said they experienced a similar pattern of abuse at Spoto’s hands. He befriended them through the after-school program, and in some instances was hired by their parents to babysit them.

When left alone with Spoto, usually at his home in Langhorne or while he was driving them in his car, police said, he would grope the boys, perform sex acts on them, and force them to perform sex acts on him. The boys were preteens at the time, some as young as 10.

Emphasis mine.

Gerald Spoto, older photo, which Bucks Co. District Attorney’s Office said may more closely resemble the accused at the time of the alleged assaults.

One victim said Spoto threatened to kill him if he told anyone about the abuse, and said he would “move on” to his younger brother, whom police identified as one of the other victims in the case.

The victims also reported other abusive behavior, including being forced to drink alcohol and watch violent videos of people being mutilated. One victim told police that Spoto would invite other men to his home and force the boy to watch as they performed a group sex act.

So, it wasn’t ‘just’ pedophilia, which some quack psychologists tell us has nothing to do with an abuser’s sexual orientation, but Mr Spoto was, allegedly, engaging in some form of homosexual sex with adult men males.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office stated that some of Mr Spoto’s victims were as young as 7-years-old, and another victim reported around 50 encounters with the accused between 2000 and 2003, when he was 9-to-11-years old. Would you entrust your child’s care to someone who looked like that?

I apologize to any readers who felt an urge to vomit upon reading that, but Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella didn’t pull any punches, and I believe that readers really do need to know what is being done to children. If the charges are proven — and Mr Spoto is legally innocent until proven guilty — he needs to never again see the sun rise from outside of prison walls.