Mississippi rebuffs confession of murder carried out at direction of prison guards

For months, Chancellor Berrong, a 26-year-old in prison for assault and kidnapping, has been trying to tell the authorities that he killed a man in a Mississippi jail seven years ago, reported The New York Times.

He told a prison guard that he had information about the crime, attempted to confess to a detective and gave a written confession to a prison warden, he said, but agents with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the state agency that typically investigates in-custody deaths, took no action.

In interviews, Mr. Berrong said that he attacked William Wade Aycock IV at the request of a guard in 2018. That allegation is disputed by a former inmate, who told reporters he overheard Mr. Berrong and others planning the assault to stop Mr. Aycock from implicating a member of their gang in an unrelated crime.

Previous reporting on the Rankin County Adult Detention Center, where Mr. Aycock died, revealed that for years, guards relied on some inmates as an attack squad to help keep order and to retaliate against troublemakers.

A review of the initial investigation of the death reveals that the authorities took steps that could have hindered a full accounting of what happened. Guards and inmates cleaned the cell where Mr. Aycock died with bleach before the state investigators arrived, according to four witnesses. In addition, the M.B.I.’s investigation file contains no photos of the cell, no security camera footage and no notes from interviews with inmates.

Days after the death, M.B.I. agents and the state medical examiner determined that Mr. Aycock died by accident after falling off his bunk bed — without documenting the evidence that led them to this conclusion.

Mississippi Today and The New York Times have uncovered evidence that supports Mr. Berrong’s confession and suggests that the authorities ignored or destroyed evidence that could have helped solve the case. His account is the latest allegation of wrongdoing by law enforcement in Rankin County, a Jackson suburb where sheriff’s deputies have been accused of torturing suspected drug users.

Jason Dare, the spokesperson and attorney for the sheriff’s department, said he had forwarded reporters’ request for comment to the M.B.I. He declined to comment further.

The commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, Sean Tindell, said that the M.B.I. would reopen the case based on the new information.

Guards and inmates at the Rankin County Adult Detention Center cleaned up the scene of Mr. Aycock’s death before investigators arrived, according to four witnesses.Credit...Rory Doyle for The New York Times

Mr. Berrong, a member of the Latin Kings street gang with a long criminal record, said that in June 2018, he yanked a sleeping Mr. Aycock off the top bunk in his cell, slammed him to the floor and stomped on his head. He said he never intended to kill the man, just to send him a message to keep his mouth shut.

Mr. Berrong said he has come forward out of a sense of guilt.

For seven years, he said, he had gotten away with the crime, in part because of missteps in the investigation. Shortly after killing Mr. Aycock, he watched a group of inmates and guards soak up the blood, which had spread past the cell door, and douse the cell in bleach.

A former inmate named John Phillips said he cleaned the cell before the M.B.I. arrived and compared the scene to a horror film. Two former guards who spoke on the condition of anonymity witnessed the cleanup and confirmed the former inmates’ accounts.

When the investigators arrived, they were “angrily talking with each other about the fact that the whole cell has been bleached,” Mr. Berrong said. “They said, ‘There’s nothing here.’”

The M.B.I.’s investigative report on Mr. Aycock’s death, provided by Mr. Tindell, makes no mention of the cleanup.

Mr. Tindell said he spoke with the agent responsible for the report, who said he did not recall the cell being cleaned or seeing men enter Mr. Aycock’s cell in security camera footage. Mr. Tindell said the footage was not preserved by the M.B.I.

The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department declined to release investigative records related to the case, citing a state law that allows police agencies to withhold such materials.

The M.B.I.’s file on the case amounts to a two-paragraph summary of the investigation and the autopsy report. There are no photos or security camera footage and no interview descriptions, even though several inmates said they were interrogated by investigators.

“The reporting at the time obviously left some things to be desired,” Mr. Tindell said in an interview.

The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department declined to release records related to the case, citing a state law that allows police agencies to withhold such materials.Credit...Rory Doyle for The New York Times

In the years since he took over the department in 2020, the agency has improved its record-keeping practices by “making sure that we had witness lists, that we had narratives, that there was a narrative for everybody that you interviewed and that supervisors had to review their work,” he said. “In this report, there’s none of those things.”

Two days after the M.B.I. filed its report concluding that Mr. Aycock had died from an accidental fall, the Mississippi state medical examiner ruled his death an accident.

Local Investigations

This article was reported and edited as part of the Local Investigations Fellowship, a New York Times program where local reporters produce investigative work about their communities, and supported in part by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

Three pathologists who reviewed the autopsy at the request of reporters said that while it was reasonable to conclude he had died accidentally given what the authorities knew at the time, Mr. Berrong’s account aligned with the injuries recorded in Mr. Aycock’s autopsy.

Dr. Thomas Andrew, the former chief medical examiner of New Hampshire, said that he would have told the agents assigned to the case to investigate further before he could reach a determination.

Details missing from the report, like pictures of Mr. Aycock’s cell and security camera footage, could have led examiners to a different conclusion, he said.

The M.B.I. had an opportunity to reopen the case in 2022, when an inmate eyewitness told a Rankin County Sheriff’s Department detective that he had seen Mr. Berrong and another inmate leave Mr. Aycock’s cell moments before guards found him lying in a pool of blood.

The witness, who was being held in the jail in 2018, spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of retaliation from Mr. Berrong’s associates.

The detective relayed the information to an M.B.I. agent, the eyewitness said, but the authorities never contacted him again. The witness said that he also wrote a letter to the M.B.I. detailing what he had seen, and that his son called the Rankin County District Attorney’s Office to report the information, but they never heard back from the agencies.

To read more CLICK HERE

Western PA prosecutor responsible for 25% of the state's pending death penalty cases

 In February 2021, two men wearing masks entered a convenience store in Donora, Pennsylvania, and shot the clerk, Nicholas Tarpley, six times. Months later, police arrested Sidney McLean and Devell Christian, and charged them with murder. Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh announced that he would seek the death penalty against them should they be convicted, reported Bolt. 

Then that December, police arrested a third suspect, Jah Sutton. Video did not show her at the scene of the crime but investigators connected her to the killing by claiming she was dating McLean and saying they discovered her DNA on a bullet casing found at the store. Walsh announced that he would prosecute Sutton for capital murder and also seek the death penalty against her.

In a preliminary hearing, a state trooper admitted there was no additional evidence against Sutton, testifying that he had not found anything on her cell phone tying her to the killing of Tarpley. Sutton’s lawyer, Timothy Dawson, has insisted there was no connection, pointing out that Sutton was not in fact McLean’s girlfriend; she had previously admitted to an investigator that she knew him by a different name and that police had only seen her with him because she was a sex worker. “The location of DNA on a shell casing does not establish anything other than at some unknown point in time, this Defendant handled or touched that casing. Nothing more,” Dawson wrote in a court filing. 

In an interview, Dawson said that he thought Walsh had overstepped, telling Bolts, “There’s not sufficient evidence to even prosecute a murder charge against her, let alone a capital case.” 

Ryan James, a lawyer for Christian, Sutton’s co-defendant, filed a motion in May arguing that Walsh should be disqualified from prosecuting the case because “there is more than just suspicion that the death penalty is being sought by this [DA] for political gain.” In his motion, James alleged that Walsh chose to seek the death penalty against Sutton to pressure her into giving information about her co-defendants. “[M]onths before being charged, Ms. Sutton was detained, badgered, and threatened by law enforcement,” James wrote, claiming police told her that if she didn’t cooperate she would lose custody of her child and go to jail, where she’d be brutally killed by a drug gang.

Since taking office in 2021, Walsh has made a name for himself because of how frequently he decides to pursue the death penalty. In his first year, he sought the death penalty in five out of nine of the county’s murder cases. To date, his office is responsible for 12 capital cases that have yet to go to trial, making up approximately a quarter of the total pending death penalty cases in Pennsylvania. Washington County only makes up approximately two percent of Pennsylvania’s population. 

Walsh, a Republican who is seeking a full term on Nov. 7, has defended how often he seeks the death penalty, including in the case against Sutton. Last year he told KDKA News, “I’m very consistent and will seek the highest form of punishment for the most heinous crimes.” Walsh did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story, but this week his office filed a motion for a gag order to bar lawyers on the Christian case from speaking about it as well as another motion seeking to punish them with sanctions over their attempt to remove him from the case. His motions also cite the inquiries he received from Bolts.

At the same time, Pennsylvania has been moving away from the death penalty over concerns about the cost of capital cases, racial biases, and its overall ineffectiveness in reducing crime. There’s been a moratorium on executions in the state since 2015, meaning that anyone sent to death row won’t be executed until it’s lifted. Earlier this year, Governor Josh Shapiro called on the Pennsylvania legislature to abolish the death penalty. 

Marc Bookman, executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, an organization that works on death penalty issues, said that Walsh is “abusing his discretion by seeking the death penalty in every case he can,” and his use of the death penalty is straining Washington County’s resources. “Washington County doesn’t have qualified lawyers for these capital cases, and it’s terribly expensive to taxpayers,” he said.

The death penalty has emerged as a key issue in the local DA race this year as Walsh faces Christina DeMarco-Breeden, a prosecutor in nearby Somerset County who is from Washington County. DeMarco-Breeden says the death penalty should be used for the worst crimes and criticized Walsh for overusing the punishment for his own political gain while depleting taxpayer dollars to fund prosecutions. “It is my position that he’s politicizing the death penalty,” she told Bolts. 

Walsh took over as Washington County’s DA in 2021 after the death of his predecessor, Eugene Vittone. During Vittone’s nine years in office, he sought the death penalty just five times. Prior to Walsh’s role in the DA’s office, Walsh worked in private practice representing clients in criminal cases, DUIs, and white collar crime.

Walsh’s capital cases are primarily focused on infants who died under a variety of circumstances, with seven people facing the death penalty for such charges. In December 2022, he said he would pursue the death penalty against a couple after their baby died from fentanyl ingestion; one of their lawyers said that the poisoning was accidental, which would have disqualified them for the death penalty because the punishment requires the killing to be intentional. Another of Walsh’s death penalty cases involves a couple who were found to have hidden their baby in a wall after he died; they say he died naturally and hid him because they could not afford to bury him. Walsh is also prosecuting a man who said his baby died after he fell on top of him; child welfare investigators said that was likely not the case and that his injuries denoted physical abuse. 

As deputy DA in Somerset County, DeMarco-Breeden is currently seeking the death penalty against one defendant, Paul Kendrick, who is accused of killing a prison guard. DeMarco-Breeden said that she thinks the case warrants the death penalty because there’s strong evidence of the brutal killing. “I believe it’s the first degree case, it’s actually on, it’s on surveillance video. I think the jury is going to have a really hard time watching it,” she said. 

If elected Washington County DA, DeMarco-Breeden said she would review each capital case to see if the evidence is sufficient for a death sentence. “Ethically, I have to,” she said. “I think you know, as prosecutors we are bound by the law, we are bound by only proceeding on charges that we believe we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Washington County is located on Pennsylvania’s western border and is home to roughly 209,000 people, about one fifth the size of Allegheny County, which is home to Pittsburgh. Yet Walsh has sought the death penalty much more aggressively than his counterpart there; Allegheny County has just five pending death penalty cases, despite having a higher murder rate.

Critics have said that Walsh’s decisions to seek the death penalty will be costly to Washington County taxpayers. It costs much more to prosecute death penalty cases than other murder cases that are non-capital. Researchers haven’t studied how much death penalty prosecutions in Pennsylvania are but in Kansas, for example, it costs an average of $395,800 to take a death penalty case to trial and appeal, as opposed to $99,000 for non-death penalty cases. Indiana death penalty trials cost an average of $789,000, while the average cost of a life without parole case is $185,000, according to researchers. 

Compounding the problem, Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that doesn’t provide state funding for indigent defense. Instead, each county is responsible for budgeting for public defenders, and because the majority of capital defendants are indigent, or too poor to afford their own attorney, they rely on public defenders to represent them. There are 12 pending capital cases but only 10 lawyers in Washington County who are qualified to work on death penalty cases, a database tracking qualifications shows. 

Historically, Pennsylvania death sentences haven’t held up in appeals. More than half of the 408 people sentenced to death since the beginning of the modern death penalty era in 1976 have had their sentences reduced on appeal and six people have been exonerated.

New death sentences have declined over the years. Since 2015, just nine people have been sentenced to death. Of the 100 people currently on Pennsylvania’s death row, just one is from  Washington County. 

Bookman with the Atlantic Center says Walsh’s use of the death penalty will spark long and costly litigation. “It’s likely these cases will end up being reversed and retried years from now, opening up old wounds for the victims and costing even more money to the taxpayers.”

To read more CLICK HERE

PLW: ABA Report on Plea Bargains Reveals Need for Reform

Matthew T. Mangino
The Legal Intelligencer
May 11, 2023

More than a decade ago, in a case known as Missouri v. Frye, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that plea bargaining “is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system.”

Recently, the American Bar Association (ABA) released its 2023 Plea Bargain Task Force Report. Three years in the making, the report revealed that in 2018, only 2% of federal criminal cases ended in a jury trial. The task force examined how the emphasis on resolving criminal cases through plea bargains negatively impacts the integrity of the criminal justice system by creating “perverse incentives” for lawyers and judges to conclude cases quickly instead of justly.

The plea bargain, however unpopular or unseemly, is an important tool in the administration of justice. Plea bargains save the government time, money, and the trouble of actually proving a case beyond a reasonable doubt. If the plea bargain were to disappear the criminal courts would grind to a halt.

However, just because the plea bargain is needed doesn’t mean it is fair, just, and in line with some of America’s most fundamental constitutional rights.

The ABA report lays out a number of principles for reform—including that people should not be penalized with harsher sentences by exercising their right to a trial, and that people are often incentivized to plead guilty for reasons that have nothing to do with their actual guilt or innocence.

A 2018 National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ report found, “There is ample evidence that federal criminal defendants are being coerced to plead guilty because the penalty for exercising their constitutional rights is simply too high to risk. This ‘trial penalty’ results from the discrepancy between the sentence the prosecutor is willing to offer in exchange for a guilty plea and the sentence that would be imposed after a trial.”

The problem is best exemplified by the reality that one in four people exonerated by DNA in the United States confessed to the crime charged. It seems astonishing that a person would plead guilty to a crime they did not commit.

Here are some things to consider. In the United States of America, a police officer can lie to an accused about incriminating evidence during an interrogation and elicit a confession, and the U.S. Supreme Court has said there is nothing wrong with such conduct.

Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the potentially innocent pleading guilty. Henry C. Alford was indicted for first-degree murder, a capital offense in North Carolina. Although he proclaimed his innocence, he pleaded guilty to killing a man with a shotgun. He said in court, “I’m not guilty, but I plead guilty.”

The Supreme Court ruled in North Carolina v. Alford, “An individual accused of crime may voluntarily, knowingly, and understandingly consent to the imposition of a prison sentence even if he is unwilling or unable to admit his participation in the acts constituting the crime.”

Then there is the trial penalty—the act of accepting a plea bargain due to the fear of a harsh sentence if convicted at trial. There are reams of data to support the existence of the trial penalty. The trial penalty—and the need to have one—point to the dire state of the criminal justice system. The burden of proof—beyond a reasonable doubt—is rarely employed. The prosecution is rarely forced to prove anything beyond probable cause to make an arrest.

There is an incentive in the system to plead guilty to crimes that were charged but not committed. Police often over-charge defendants. The most serious charges are dropped and the defendant is expected, under oath, to make admissions to crimes he did not commit. The benefit of the plea bargain often comes at a high price to the defendant and to the system. The impact of race in plea bargaining cannot be overstated. The ABA report details significant racial disparities in the plea bargaining. Hannah Dean wrote in Jurist Magazine of Duquesne University School of Law, “Prosecutors’ decisions to drop or reduce charges as part of a plea bargain reveal stark racial bias. White defendants are 25% more likely than Black defendants to have their most serious charge dropped or reduced as part of a plea bargain, and Black defendants frequently receive higher sentences for the same charges as their white counterparts.”

For the most part, plea bargaining is not governed in detail by rules of court or established policy. What Kennedy called “the criminal justice system” has few safeguards and little oversight. A plea offer can be arbitrary and subject to the whim of the prosecutor. In fact, a prosecutor has no obligation to even negotiate a plea with a defendant.

In Pennsylvania if one is looking for guidance of plea bargains here is what is codified on the subject:

Plea Agreements

At any time prior to the verdict, when counsel for both sides have arrived at a plea agreement, they shall state on the record in open court, in the presence of the defendant, the terms of the agreement, unless the judge orders, for good cause shown and with the consent of the defendant, counsel for the defendant, and the attorney for the commonwealth, that specific conditions in the agreement be placed on the record in camera and the record sealed.

The judge shall conduct a separate inquiry of the defendant on the record to determine whether the defendant understands and voluntarily accepts the terms of the plea agreement on which the guilty plea or plea of nolo contendere is based.

The ABA report’s 14 principles for reform are a small step in a long journey toward fairness and transparency in the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, those accused of criminal conduct do not have a very strong lobby. One way to change this process is through the legislation. The prospect is daunting; there are 50 different legislatures and a Congress that needs convincing.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George. and the former district attorney of Lawrence County. He is the author of “The Executioner’s Toll.” You can follow him on twitter @MatthewTMangino or contact him at mmangino@lgkg.com. 

To read more CLICK HERE

Georgia, and soon Texas, seek power to remove elected prosecutors

Georgia Republicans have pushed through legislation that threatens to remove from office locally-elected prosecutors who won’t charge certain types of cases, such as abortion or marijuana, reported Bolts. 

Senate Bill 92, signed by Governor Brian Kemp on Friday, adds to the GOP’s nationwide crackdown against reform-minded prosecutors who have adopted such “declination” policies. Texas Republicans are in the process of passing a bill meant to force the hand of district attorneys who have ruled out enforcing abortion bans. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis removed Tampa’s prosecutor from office in August, pointing to statements he’d made about protecting abortion. Similar moves are underway in other states.

The bill sets up a new board with the authority to oust DAs who don’t fulfill their duties. It also redefines the duties of DAs—and so what counts as grounds for removal—to specify that they cannot “categorically” refuse to prosecute offenses that they are “by law required to prosecute.”

Criminal justice reformers have long aimed for increased oversight over DAs, frustrated that prosecutors routinely violate ethics and defendants’ rights with little consequence. In the wake of the shooting of Armaud Arbery and of allegations that a local DA blocked investigations into his death in 2020, Georgia Democrats proposed a bill that would have created a similar state disciplinary board. But their bill did not contain a mandate that DAs file charges based on all existing laws. Republicans added that language when they repurposed the proposal this year, motivated in part by the aftermath of Dobbs, and Democratic lawmakers opposed the resulting bill. 

One of Republicans’ prime target is Deborah Gonzalez, the Democratic DA of Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties. Gonzalez won on a progressive platform in 2020 and quickly rolled out reforms that included ending prosecutions over marijuana possession, a charge that has been used in Athens to target Black residents. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in June, Gonzalez joined other Georgia DAs in saying she would not prosecute abortion. 

Republicans have signaled that they want their new state board to kick Gonzalez out of her elected office over cases she is not charging. “What do we do about these prosecutors who won’t prosecute?” asked Ed Setzler, a GOP lawmaker from Acworth, two hours west of Athens.

Bolts talked to Gonzalez about SB 92 after the bill passed the legislature. She denounced it as antidemocratic and said her critics want to override an election because they dislike its outcome. She also made the case that it’s appropriate for DAs to not prosecute certain cases—including abortion. In fact, she said, this approach can be a boon for public safety. 

“Prosecutorial discretion has not been a problem for generations,” she said, “but because you have a new class of reform-minded prosecutors coming into power who can now use that same discretion to hold people accountable but in a fair and just way, now it’s a problem.”.

Gonzalez has survived other efforts to reduce her power. When she declared her candidacy, Kemp tried to altogether cancel the local DA race, part of a pattern of election cancellations in Georgia, but the state supreme court stepped in to restore the election, which Gonzalez won in a December 2020 runoff. Republicans then proposed a bill to cut her circuit in two. Gonzalez now also faces a lawsuit, filed by a business owner in Athens, that alleges that she is not doing her job and is refusing to prosecute certain offenses like drug cases.

Besides SB 92, Georgia Republicans proposed other bills this year that target prosecutors. One bill would have lowered the number of signatures people have to collect to force a recall election against a DA from 30 to 2 percent of registered voters; the bill died in the state House when the session ended. 

Fueling this trend in Georgia is Republican anger toward Fulton County DA Fani Willis, who is investigating former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Willis, who is Black, has denounced the GOP bills as a “dangerous” effort to overturn a series of wins by people of color in the state’s 2020 prosecutor races—a criticism that Gonzalez also echoed in her interview with Bolts.

More and more state officials interfere with prosecutorial discretion

 There’s pressure across the political spectrum to return to policies adjacent to the failed crime policies of the 1980s, said Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, told the Intercept. “It’s ironic that for decades no one has questioned the exercise of prosecutorial discretion when that discretion has been used to ramp up penalties or to look the other way in lieu of holding police accountable.” Now that some prosecutors are trying to embrace a more restrained and sensible approach, it’s causing pushback by those who feel threatened by those changes.

Some of the advocates targeted the governor directly. “You have tragically become part of a disturbing reactionary trend,” said a Sunday letter to Walz from the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, “and placed yourself in the company of the likes of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Missouri Governor Mike Parson by preventing a local progressive prosecutor from exercising her prosecutorial discretion in acting consistently with her principles — and the principles that she was elected to carry out. Your decision to play to the crowd does grave damage toward making reform a reality.”

IN MINNESOTA HISTORY, it’s extremely rare to have the governor assign a case to the attorney general. The last time it happened was in the 1990s. In the exchange of letters preceding the reassignment of the case to the attorney general, both Ellison and Walz acknowledged the rarity of such occurrences.

“I do not make this request lightly and I do not expect to have to make a request like this again,” Ellison wrote. (Ellison’s office referred questions about the case to its statement last week.)

Under Minnesota law, county attorneys can refer criminal cases to the attorney general, and the governor may assign cases to the office as well. Usually, when cases get transferred, it is because the elected county attorneys who would normally handle felony criminal cases are understaffed or lack experience — but transferred with the approval of the county attorneys themselves.

Over the last four years, the attorney general’s office has taken at least 50 cases that were referred from county attorneys in Minnesota, including the prosecution of the cops who murdered Floyd.

Nothing in Minnesota statute requires the attorney general to request the governor to reassign a case. “The governor’s hope here was that whatever criticism there might be would be focused on the attorney general,” Moriarty said.

Family members of Zaria McKeever, the 23-year-old woman killed in the juvenile case that Ellison took on, were outraged by Moriarty’s decision not to charge the two teenage brothers in the case as adults.

Erick Haynes, McKeever’s 22-year-old ex-boyfriend who she shares a 1-year-old child with, recruited the boys, ages 15 and 17, to break into her apartment and beat up her new boyfriend. Haynes drove the boys to McKeever’s apartment, where they broke in and shot her. Her new boyfriend escaped through a window and called 911.

In March, Moriarty’s office offered the boys a plea bargain in exchange for their testimony against Haynes, who had been harassing McKeever in the weeks leading up to her murder, according to court filings. The boys were offered two years in a juvenile facility and probation until their 18th birthdays. Haynes was charged in November with second-degree murder.

In a heated exchange with McKeever’s family during a press conference last week, Moriarty defended her charging decision and pointed to the failures of the adult criminal system in stopping juveniles from reoffending. Instead, adult charges would increase the likelihood that the boys went on to commit more crimes, she said.

“We know that when you send kids to prison, violence happens in prison. Everybody is traumatized by prison,” Moriarty told The Intercept. “What do we expect a 15-year-old to look like when they get out of prison in their 30s?”

Ellison’s request to take over the case was met with opposition before it was made. Though it did not mention the case by name, the Minnesota County Attorneys Association voted unanimously in favor of a resolution expressing that it did not support the attorney general asking the governor to involuntarily remove county prosecutors from cases.

After Ellison formally requested to take over, the county attorneys association followed up, stating its objections to the governor’s intervention in a case that was actively being prosecuted by a county attorney. “Without discussing the merits of any particular case, our Association is of the view that when a County Attorney is actively prosecuting a case and exercising the decision-making authority for which the County Attorney was elected, the Governor should not choose to exercise that statutory authority,” the group wrote. (The association declined to comment on Walz’s decision to reassign the case.)

Moriarty said media coverage often seizes on a single case but fails to address how out of step “tough-on-crime” approaches are with juvenile brain development and research on recidivism. “There are many in the community who do support our decision,” she said. “There are many in the community who want us to be doing something different with youth. I think that’s why I got elected by such a large margin. There is nothing new that I am doing that I didn’t talk about during the campaign,” she said.

“There is this perception that because of the nature of the act, a youth is irredeemable,” Moriarty said. “There’s a huge gap here in reporting on brain development, and how yes, it’s intuitive that somebody who pulls a trigger, even if they’re 15, is less likely to be rehabilitated, when the science says that’s not true.”

Critics of Ellison’s decision have pointed to examples where Walz denied requests to reassign cases to the attorney general when the accused were police officers or jail staff.

The National Lawyers Guild letter said, “Instead of promoting equal justice, you are reinforcing the status quo where prosecutions are not permitted against the privileged but are required to be harsh against people from marginalized communities.”

Ellison’s intervention in the case could have a chilling effect on future reformers as well as the plea bargaining process in general, Krinsky, of Fair and Just Prosecution, said. When Moriarty made her decision in the McKeever case, she was doing what she told the community that elected her she would do — and Ellison’s request and the governor’s compliance took that decision-making power away from the community.

“It sets a hugely dangerous precedent to create a starting point that undoubtedly is going to chill faith in the plea bargaining process, and chill the autonomy of local prosecutors, and chill the next prosecutor from making tough decisions around when to show restraint, and when to treat kids as kids,” Krinsky said. “And when compassion and mercy is the better result for the individual as well as the community.”

To read more CLICK HERE

Memphis DA is opposed to the death penalty when he is not for it

Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy announced his office's intent to seek the death penalty in the murder case against Ezekiel Kelly, who is accused of driving around Memphis and shooting people at random, reported the Commercial Appeal.

The announcement is the first time Mulroy has filed for the death penalty since he was elected to the office in August 2022. Mulroy has been a long-standing opponent of the death penalty.

"I've made no secret of my personal opposition to the death penalty as a public policy matter," Mulroy said at a Monday morning press conference. "Like I've said before, as a legislator, I'd vote against it. But I think that the people that voted for me understand that a DA has to follow the law, whether they agree with it or not... If this case isn't death notice worthy, then no case is."

Kelly, 19, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder, along with 23 additional charges. The Sept. 7 shooting spree left three additional people injured.

Officials say Kelly started his shooting spree in the early hours of the day, when he allegedly shot and killed Dewayne "Sosa" Tunstall, a Memphis resident, before allegedly killing Allison Parker, a nurse in West Memphis, Arkansas, and Richard Clark, a 62-year-old who police say was shot as he sat in his car outside a gas station.

Mulroy said four factors affected the decision to pursue the death penalty. He cited a previous aggravated assault conviction, along with alleging Kelly committed "mass murder" during the spree. Mulroy also said the murders were "committed in the course of an act of terrorism," and his fourth factor was the randomness of the shooting.

To read more CLICK HERE

State legislatures go after reform prosecutors

In January, the Local Solutions Support Center and the Public Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights and economic and environmental justice, released a report tallying bills introduced in legislative sessions between 2017 and 2022, reported The Intercept. The authors found that nearly 30 bills had been introduced in 16 states during that period.

“Although only five preemption laws have passed,” the report says, “this new trend is part of a larger movement by reactionary states to use preemption to thwart criminal justice reform and undermine the will of local constituents calling for this change.”

With at least nine additional bills have introduced this year, including one in a new state, Mississippi, totals rose to 37 bills in 17 states.

The federal system provides no legal protection for cities against state lawmakers who want to step in to stop a certain policy, leaving cities with progressive leanings at the mercy of conservative state officials.

In some cases, the power to recall an elected official serves a purpose — for instance, in North Carolina, which does not have a statute for recalling an elected official, an elected sheriff was indicted for attempted murder and refused to step down — but recalls can also be easily exploited for political purposes. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis removed an elected attorney, Andrew Warren, because he pledged not to prosecute women who sought abortions. This week, DeSantis moved to suspend another prosecutor over his handling of a criminal case.

Likewise, critics say that state legislatures are abusing their statutory authority by trying to rip power away from prosecutors.

Reformist prosecutors have come to office and undertaken policy changes like reducing or ending cash bail, declining to charge people in nonviolent drug possession cases, holding police accountable for misconduct, and addressing wrongful convictions. Conservative politicians, however, have painted these reformers as harbingers of lawlessness, blaming them for a spike in homicides — although that spike has also impacted areas with traditionally “tough-on-crime” prosecutors.

“This is clearly not a response to a failure of policy on the ground. This is a direct rebuke to voters saying what they want.”

The new rash of legislative efforts to strip prosecutors of their power has sometimes come before reforms are even enacted. The district attorney in Polk County, Iowa, has been on the job for eight weeks, and state lawmakers are already trying to give her powers to the attorney general.

“All of these changes seem to be in direct response to policy preferences before anything has even happened,” said John Pfaff, a scholar of criminal justice at Fordham University School of Law. “This is clearly not a response to a failure of policy on the ground. This is a direct rebuke to voters saying what they want.”

GOP lawmakers in Texas have introduced four bills that would prohibit prosecutors from declining to charge certain offenses or refusing to seek the death penalty in capital cases and would allow the attorney general to fine and seek removal of prosecutors who decline to pursue certain charges. One of the bills would prohibit elected prosecutors from adopting policies to limit criminal enforcement of laws related to voting and elections — laws that have become politicized following former President Donald Trump’s false claims of mass election fraud.

Another Texas bill would establish a council to monitor prosecutors and grant it the power to petition for prosecutors’ removal for “incompetency or misconduct.” The bills would apply to elected prosecutors across the state.

Georgia lawmakers have introduced two bills to take away power from prosecutors. One would make it easier to recall an elected prosecutor and another would prohibit prosecutors from using blanket policy guidelines, like declining to charge for drug possession or ending cash bail for nonviolent offenses. Another proposes an oversight commission for elected prosecutors appointed by the governor and grants the power to discipline, remove, and force elected prosecutors and solicitor generals to retire.

A bill in Iowa would give the attorney general power to prosecute any criminal charge without first receiving a request from the county attorney.

Mississippi is one place where conservative state-level officials are looking to rein in prosecutors from Democratic local officials, particularly in Hinds County, where majority-Black Jackson is located and Jody Owens holds the district attorney’s seat. One proposed bill would create a separate court system and police force for a district in Jackson, with prosecutors and public defenders appointed by the attorney general.

Jackson would become the only county in the state to not elect its own prosecutors and judges. The proposal has come under fire for giving white state officials the power to appoint officers and administer a separate judicial system for a heavily Black city. The bill passed the Mississippi State House last month largely along party lines.

Another bill in Missouri would allow the governor to appoint a special prosecutor to handle cases in any jurisdiction if the governor determines that “a threat to public safety and health” exists. The original version of the bill targeted the circuit attorney in St. Louis County, Kim Gardner, a reform-minded prosecutor who was elected in 2020 on promises to end cash bail and hold police accountable.

To read more CLICK HERE

Krasner: Impeachment an 'authoritarian attack to overturn elections'

Days after the Pennsylvania Senate set the stage for the first impeachment trial in nearly three decades, Philadelphia’s top prosecutor asked a state court to halt the proceedings, arguing that the process is politically motivated, unlawful, and outside the Legislature’s purview, reports the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat who easily won re-election last year, asked Commonwealth Court on Friday to stop the Republican-backed process that could remove him from office after GOP lawmakers launched an investigation into him earlier this year.

During a virtual press conference on Monday, Krasner said efforts to impeach him play into the “national context of attacks on reform prosecutors” and “a more generalized authoritarian attack” to overturn elections.

“The authoritarian movement in this country, at the moment, is losing, and the authoritarian movement in this country against reform prosecution is losing,” Krasner said. “I repeat — you don’t have to do this stuff when you’re winning elections.”

The legal challenge came days after lawmakers in the upper chamber voted to formally accept the articles of impeachment from the Republican-controlled state House, which accuse Krasner of misbehavior in office and obstructing a legislative investigation, and took an oath to uphold the state Constitution during a trial that could begin in January.

The lawsuit names interim Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, the House impeachment managers, and the senators who will serve on the committee overseeing the case  arguing that the impeachment efforts against Krasner “stands the Constitution and this commonwealth’s history on its head.”

The filing claims that the impeachment process should have expired on Nov. 30, when the two-year legislative session ended. The filing also argues that the Legislature does not have the constitutional authority to remove local officials from office, and alleges the charges against Krasner do not meet the standards for impeachment.

Krasner requested an expedited briefing in Commonwealth Court, citing a writ of summons formally notifying him of the charges approved by the Senate last week. Michael Satin, a lawyer for Krasner, said he does not know what the court will decide.

The writ of summons gave Krasner until Dec. 21 to file an answer to the upper chamber ahead of the trial.

Erica Clayton Wright, a spokesperson for Senate Republicans, told reporters in a statement that the caucus was reviewing the filing and would respond “once we have had time to evaluate the petition.”

The House Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order, which was formed in June to investigate and review rising crime rates in the state’s largest city, has focused on Krasner’s approach to prosecuting crime in Philadelphia. In September, the GOP-controlled panel conducted a series of public hearings with live testimony on gun violence.

Earlier this year, the House voted 162-38 to hold Krasner in contempt for refusing to respond to a subpoena issued by the GOP-controlled committee.

Krasner agreed to testify before the select committee. But there were conditions from the panel, including that the meeting would take place behind closed doors without a public live stream or audio recordings. While the committee would have a copy of the testimony, Krasner said he could not make a copy.

Krasner — who has urged lawmakers to focus on a statewide review of gun violence and increased crime through a public process — told reporters in October that Republicans were using impeachment as a “political stunt.” He added that lawmakers have not proven that his policies have contributed to increased crime in Philadelphia.

On Monday, Krasner said he “fully [intends] not to be silent” as the proceedings play out.

“We are proud of our policies. We are proud of our ideas. We are proud of our successes,” Krasner said. “We know some things about what is going on in the rest of the state that is, frankly, not flattering to their motivation to pursue all of this. We fully intend to respond.”

Removal from office requires a two-thirds majority vote, at least 34 lawmakers, in the Senate, meaning that some Democrats in the 50-member chamber would have to support the measure for it to succeed after what could be a lengthy and costly trial. Voters elected a Republican 28-22 majority during the November election, and a special election will take place next month to replace one GOP lawmaker who resigned.

Sen. Jimmy Dillon, D-Philadelphia, was the only member of his party to support the impeachment-related resolutions last week.

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, argued similar claims on the chamber floor, saying it would be “unconstitutional” to carry over impeachment proceedings from one session to the next two-year period. He also noted that voters elected a Democratic majority in the House during the Nov. 8 general election and said moving ahead with a trial would “undermine the voice of the people of this commonwealth.”

Only two officials in Pennsylvania have faced removal from office through the impeachment process. The most recent occurred in 1994.

To read more CLICK HERE

GOP legislators seek to impeach Democratic Philadelphia DA

Pennsylvania Republicans announced plans this week to impeach and potentially remove from office Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a national leader among progressive prosecutors who was overwhelmingly re-elected last year, reported NBC News.

Krasner is not accused of committing a crime. Nor do his critics allege corruption. Instead, they accuse him of dereliction of duty for what they say is a failure to adequately enforce criminal laws, leading to rising crime rates and declining quality of life for Philadelphians.

The extraordinary move — the state Legislature has impeached only two officials in its entire history, in 1994 and 1811 — comes just two weeks before a midterm election in which Republicans have focused on crime while Democrats have highlighted threats to democracy from politicians willing to defy elections.

It also comes as progressive prosecutors and recent criminal justice reforms have faced blowback due to rising crime.

“I recognize the unprecedented nature of what must be done and am confident our members are up to the task,” Republican Rep. Martina White said at a news conference Wednesday announcing articles of impeachment at the state Capitol in Harrisburg.

Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature, but White is the only GOP member from Philadelphia, which is on pace to break last year’s record-setting homicide rate. 

The rest hail from other, largely rural parts of the state.

“There should be a war on crime. But due to the failed vision and his idea of criminal justice, crime is allowed to wage war on the good people and the great beautiful city of Philadelphia," Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff said of Krasner at the news conference.

Pennsylvania’s Constitution gives the Legislature broad power to impeach “all civil officers” for “any misbehavior in office,” though it has almost never exercised that authority.

“It’s clear under the Constitution that 'misbehavior in office' is the standard,” said Republican Rep. Torren Ecker, when asked by reporters what impeachable offense Krasner had committed. “Failing to do his duty and uphold the law — that is the very definition of misbehavior.”

The Legislature is scheduled to recess the Wednesday before the Nob. 8 election, but Republican leaders said they will add extra days to the calendar if necessary to make sure an impeachment vote happens as soon as possible.

They insisted the move against Krasner and its timing is not about politics, but about the need to offer some relief to Philadelphians struggling against crime every day.

To read more CLICK HERE

San Diego DA pushes left-wing conspiracy theories involving George Soros

 A district attorney pressing an unusual slate of conspiracy charges against anti-fascist protesters previously had a campaign site accusing philanthropist George Soros of funding anti-fascists to increase crime, reported The Daily Beast.

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan has brought a sweeping new conspiracy case against left-wing protesters who counter-demonstrated at a pro-Trump rally in San Diego on Jan. 9. The result was a beachside brawl, during which rallygoers on the right flashed a knife and a BB gun and protesters on the left fired pepper spray. But rather than result in simple assault charges, Stephan is pressing conspiracy charges—and only against demonstrators on the left.

Stephan has a history of obsessing about the anti-fascist movement. In 2018, while running against progressive challenger Geneviéve Jones-Wright, Stephan’s campaign paid for a website that accused billionaire philanthropist Soros of supporting Jones-Wright because he “backs anti-law enforcement candidates over experienced prosecutors, trying to tip the balance to the criminals.”

The caption ran directly under a picture of black-clad anti-fascists—one of multiple such pictures that ran alongside photographs of Soros on the site.

The website, which has since been removed, drew backlash. Soros, a Holocaust survivor, is a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including those that accuse him of funding “antifa.” (“Claims that George Soros funds antifa or is otherwise involved in fomenting civil unrest related to Black Lives Matter protests are false and touch on longstanding, sometimes antisemitic conspiracy theories,” the Anti-Defamation League notes.)

When the Times of San Diego questioned Stephan about the website and antisemitism in 2018, she walked away from the interview without comment.

In September 2020, Stephan again appeared to suggest that leftist protests were secretly motivated by nefarious interests.

“We’ve seen where there’s the peaceful protest and all of a sudden another group shows up without license plates, with generators and water, and there’s not good things that are happening,” Stephan said in 2020, adding that untoward events were unfolding “behind the scenes.”

“Somebody talked about subverting the truthful nature of the protesters, and that is going on,” Stephan said. “There are movements that are not what you would think of.”

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Attacks on progressive prosecutors 'an affront to democracy'

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner won a hard-fought campaign in 2017 amid a rising wave of dissent over police shootings of unarmed people of color and calls to reform criminal justice policies that harm the nation’s most vulnerable communities.

Five years later, following a resounding reelection victory in 2021, Krasner is among progressive prosecutors across the country who face Republican-backed efforts to remove them from office, writes Peter Hall of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

Criminal justice experts call the attacks an affront to democracy and an effort to forestall the criminal justice reform movement that reached critical mass after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

“A key premise of our democracy is, let people decide what’s right for their community,” Akhi Johnson, director of the Reshaping Prosecution Initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, said.

District attorneys in California, New York, and Florida who advanced policies to end mass incarceration, cash bail and rethink the approach to prosecuting minor crimes have faced efforts by state lawmakers or Republican Party leaders to remove them from office. 

The majority-Republican state House passed a resolution in July to empanel a select committee to investigate the Philadelphia district attorney’s office with a goal of establishing support for Krasner’s impeachment.  

“For people who don’t live in those areas to come in and say, ‘No no no, we know better than you do,’ certainly raises concerns from a democratic perspective and further raises the question, why not let people vote on the issue,” Johnson said.

Fordham Law School professor John Pfaff said examining election results and crime data refutes the notion that those most affected by violent crime want progressive prosecutors removed from office. 

Pfaff compared support for the winners in the last two elections for district attorney in Philadelphia and Chicago, where pro-reform candidate Kim Foxx was reelected in 2020, with the locations of gun crimes. 

The resulting maps show the areas with the most support for the progressive candidates are also the areas with the highest concentrations of gun crime.

“The fact that Krasner’s support is the best where violence is worst … makes the idea that, ‘We’re stepping in for victims,’ just not true,” Pfaff said.

 “There are so many types of crime there will always be one that you can try to weaponize as a story,” Pfaff said.

John Holloway, executive director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania, said blaming a prosecutor for trends in crime is too simplistic.

“Gun crime in Philadelphia is an unbelievable problem and I get it, but I dont know of any study that says that is caused by the way Larry Krasner prosecutes crime,” Holloway said.

Kransner’s approach has been to redirect his office’s resources away from prosecuting low-level crimes such as shoplifting, marijuana and prostitution and to not request cash bail for offenses such as drunken driving. In his first year in office, that resulted in 20 percent fewer cases being filed.

Meanwhile, Krasner has focused on holding those in power, including police officers, accountable, preventing wrongful convictions, and promoting alternatives to jail for those with substance use disorders and mental illnesses.

“There are some areas that are getting more attention. There are some that are getting less. Whether that’s a good thing depends on your point of view,” Holloway said.

To read more CLICK HERE

Philadelphia on pace to surpass 2021 record homicide total

Philadelphia has reached a grim milestone, and could surpass the homicide toll of 2021 if things continue, reported WHYY-FM.

The city’s 300th homicide victim is an 18-year-old shot in West Philadelphia. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner admitted seeing the death toll hit 300 was “frustrating.”

“It is traumatic, not just for those directly affected, but for everybody who lives in the city, everybody who is indirectly affected,” he said. “We are all locally suffering through what is savage, heartbreaking, tragic. I mean, the fact that there are so many young people involved, and involved on both ends of the gun, is particularly heartbreaking.”

Krasner admits city residents are upset with the climbing homicide rate, which could exceed last year’s grim record of 562 killings.

“I do understand why people who are frightened and people who are concerned about their public safety rightly are frustrated with city leaders. But having said that, I don’t think it’s fair to say that our police commissioner is doing nothing. I think our police commissioner is doing a lot, and I think our police commissioner is doing a lot with our office after she came up with some ideas and we came up with some ideas, and we will continue to do that.”

At this time last year, the homicide number was at 304 killings. This year’s death rate is just 1% below 2021’s record setting pace.

Krasner said a good sign is that money is being spent on forensics, with $5 million in additional funding added in the most recent city budget. But that money is only a start. He said the city needs closer to $50 million to update labs and other tools forensic scientists need to solve hundreds of murders.

To read more CLICK HERE