IT'S SEDITION PERIOD

'Bordering on sedition’: Dem senator calls for sanctioning GOP lawmakers trying to overturn election


Published on December 18, 2020
By Brad Reed

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) on Friday had some sharp criticism for Republican lawmakers still trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

While being interviewed by CNN’s Jim Sciutto, Shaheen said it defied belief that so many GOP senators are still willing to throw Hail Mary passes to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win even after Trump lost the popular vote, the electoral college vote, and 59 different election-related lawsuits.

“Each of us serving as senators took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States,” she said. “One of the most fundamental principles of the Constitution is the peaceful transition of power.”

She then laid out how dangerous it is for Republicans to refuse to accept the reality of Biden’s victory even after all legal options have been exhausted.

“These senators and members of Congress who have refused to acknowledge that we had a free and fair election, in which Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by over 7 million votes, are bordering on sedition and treason in thinking that they are going to overturn a duly elected president,” she said. “It is just unfathomable to me how these elected representatives can be refusing to accept the peaceful transition of power. I think they should be sanctioned.”

Watch the video below.

‘I’m stuck’: Stimulus debacle pushes unemployed Americans to the edge

Published on December 18, 2020
By Agence France-Presse

Shuttershock/ By LightField Studios

First, they lost their jobs to the coronavirus pandemic, and now many of the more than 20 million people unemployed in the United States may lose something else: the government aid keeping them afloat through the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreak.

Congress could still act to extend the benefits provided under the CARES Act rescue package enacted in March, which will otherwise expire on December 26.

But for many of the jobless, lawmakers’ months of dithering — along with the indifference of the overstretched US unemployment systems — have already taken a toll:

– On hold –

Before the pandemic, Tamora Israel, 37, was a full-time goldsmith, part-time journalist and co-owner of an art gallery in Massachusetts who aspired to finish her degree and get into filmmaking.

Months later, she’s jobless, living in Georgia, sharing a house with her parents and younger brother and trying to figure out how a family of four can survive with only $2,000 a month and one licensed driver — which happens to be herself.

Her days once spent reporting community news or pursuing entrepreneurship are now filled with shuttling her mother to dialysis appointments and picking up groceries.

Then there’s the time spent on the phone with Massachusetts unemployment administrators to convince them to restart payments they stopped when she left the state — which Israel said should not have happened.

“I keep calling back everyday just to be annoying, and remind them I’m a person that needs money,” she said.

Life, she expects, will likely stay this way for a while. Her mother’s illnesses and need for care mean Israel can’t get another job right now.

A felony conviction on her father’s record means under Georgia law he isn’t eligible for food assistance that could ease the family’s financial stress.

“We’re all just spinning plates in the air because we don’t know what happens next. We’re ok for now, but if we get one unexpected bill, we’re screwed,” she said.

– Speaking up –

In a time of uncertainty, Grant McDonald is sure of one thing: he will be out of work for a long, long time.

A video director and designer for live events, McDonald, 31, figures the theaters and concert halls he works in will be among the last to reopen, meaning laid-off workers in his industry will need government aid for months more.

Believing Congress wasn’t hearing enough from unemployed persons like himself, he joined forces earlier this year with a colleague in the entertainment industry to create ExtendPUA.org

The group helps people lobby their representatives to renew the CARES Act’s provisions, including Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the program keeping McDonald from having to move out of his apartment in New York and in with his father on the other side of the country.

But despite more than 30 video meetings with lawmakers and even a trip to Washington — a self-financed effort that further dwindled his limited cash — the agreement Congress appears close to reaching will likely exclude some of the assistance McDonald hoped for.

“This is literally the least that they could do, and the latest they could do it,” he said.

– Dream delayed –

If she wanted to make the most of her art history degree, Alisha Negron, 29, figured Washington, the site of the Smithsonian Institution and 1,500 miles from her home in the US territory of Puerto Rico, was the place to be.

But finding employment at one of the iconic galleries in the shadow of the Capitol building wasn’t easy, and so she took other work, most recently serving breakfast and bartending at a hotel in a suburb until the pandemic struck and hospitality workers like herself became the first victims of the mass layoff that followed.

Negron considers herself lucky: her family in Puerto Rico supports her and her shared apartment is affordable.

Yet she can’t help but be astounded by how she’s been treated by the government unemployment system.

She received weekly jobless aid for months, but a mysterious issue with her blood pressure forced her to spend a good portion of it paying the expensive premium on a health insurance plan.

Then, she lost that aid in November, when the government determined the unemployment rate in Virginia, where she lived, was too low for the state to offer the Extended Benefit program that supported her.

A stimulus deal in Congress could restore her benefits under an extended program, but until then, she’s left with credit card debt north of $5,000 and only the approximately $200 in food aid she gets each month to spend.

“I’m stuck right here, now,” she said.

© 2020

Naked handcuffing of innocent Black woman sparks outrage in Chicago

Published on December 18, 2020
By Agence France-Presse

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (AFP)

The authorities in the US city of Chicago are coming under fire after a video was released of police handcuffing a naked Black woman after raiding her home in a case of mistaken identity.

The police raid took place on February 21, 2019 but the disturbing video was only released recently.

Police body cameras show officers using a battering ram to break down the door of the home of Anjanette Young and putting the 50-year-old social worker in handcuffs while she stands naked in her living room.

“What is going on?” a terrified Young is heard telling police in the video aired by CBS 2 Chicago. “What are you looking for?

“You’ve got the wrong house,” Young repeatedly tells officers.

“Oh my god, this cannot be right,” she says. “How is this legal?”

Young told the television network that she had just returned from work and was undressing in her bedroom when police broke in.

“It happened so fast I didn’t have time to put on clothes,” she said. “I’m just standing there terrified, humiliated.”

Police eventually left after determining they had the wrong address. One officer apologized to Young while others tried to fix her broken door.

According to CBS 2, the suspect the police were searching for lived in the same apartment complex and an informant had provided them with the wrong address.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters she was “appalled” after viewing the video and described the raid as a “colossal failure.”

“That could have easily been me,” said Lightfoot, who is African American.

“We can do better and we will do better as a city,” she said.

City attorneys had sought to block the release of the video and Lightfoot said she had ordered a review of the release policy.

Young’s attorney, Keenan Saulter, who is filing a suit against the police department, said a young white woman would not have received the same treatment.

“They viewed Miss Young as less than human,” Saulter told CBS 2.

Young’s case has been compared to that of Breonna Taylor, a young Black woman who was shot dead in Louisville, Kentucky, in March in a botched raid on her home.

Taylor’s name became a rallying cry during protests against racial injustice this summer following the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May.

Government refusal to protect wolverines sparks lawsuit from conservation groups

The wolverine population has dwindled to just 300 in the 

contiguous U.S.

ByJulia Jacobo
15 December 2020


A coalition of conservation groups has filed a lawsuit against the federal government over its decision to not protect the population of wolverines in the contiguous United States.

The wolverine, a mammal that resembles a small bear with a bushy tail, typically lives in the western mountains throughout Alaska and Canada, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but they have also lived in habitats in the contiguous U.S.

MORE: Monarch butterfly fate on threatened species list to be decided by Trump administration

Less than 300 wolverines now remain in the lower 48 states, where they used to roam as far south as New Mexico. Now, small, fragmented populations exist in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming and northeast Oregon, according to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to withhold protection for the wolverine population under the Endangered Species Act will impede the conservation efforts needed to prevent extinction of the species as a result of climate change, habitat fragmentation and lack of genetic diversity, according to the groups' lawsuit.


Universal Images Group via Getty Images
An aggressive wolverine shows its teeth on the subarctic tundra in Sweden.

The government "has stonewalled" federal protections for the wolverine for decades, said Dave Werntz, the science and conservation director at Conservation Northwest.
MORE: 31 species now extinct, according to ICUN's Red List of threatened species

A petition to include wolverines under the Endangered Species Act, which protects and recovers imperiled species and the ecosystems on which they depend, was filed in 2000. In 2007, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would review the status for the species.

Over the past 20 years since the petition was filed, the Fish and Wildlife Service has been sued five separate times, twice for inaction in decision-making and three times for failing to properly consider science when denying protection under the Environmental Protection Act, said Katie Bilodeau, attorney for Idaho-based conservation group Friends of the Clearwater. In each lawsuit, the court found the agency’s decision unlawful, or the agency chose not to defend its decision, Bilodeau said in a statement.

While the Fish and Wildlife Service did propose to list the wolverine species in the contiguous United States as "threatened" in 2013, the agency withdrew that proposal this October, saying the species does not face an imminent threat due to climate change.

"New research and analysis show that wolverine populations in the American Northwest remain stable," the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement that month.

MORE: Animal conservation groups to sue federal government over dwindling giraffe population

But the conservation groups say climate change is causing the mountain snowpack that wolverines rely on as their primary habitat to melt away.


Benoit Doppagne/BELGA/AFP via Getty Images
Two wolverine cubs look on in their enclosure ahead of the reopening of the zoo 

"The wolverine is a famously tough creature that doesn’t back down from anything, but even the wolverine can’t overcome climate change by itself," Amanda Galvan, an attorney for the nonprofit environmental law organization Earthjustice, said in a statement. "To survive, the wolverine needs the protections that only the Endangered Species Act can provide."

In addition, wolverine populations are at risk from trapping and human disturbance, according to the conservation groups that filed the lawsuit.

The lawsuit filed Monday also accuses the agency of ignoring and failing to utilize the "best available scientific information" in its decision, court documents show. The lawsuit seeks an order for the Fish and Wildlife Service to publish "a new final listing determination" within six months.

MORE: How advocates say Trump’s endangered species rules could threaten conservation

The other groups involved in the lawsuit include Defenders of Wildlife, Idaho Conservation League, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Sierra Club and Rocky Mountain Wild.

The USFWS defended its decision in a statement to ABC News.

"We stand by our decision to withdraw the listing proposal," the statement read. "The best available science shows that the factors affecting wolverine populations are not as significant as believed in 2013 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the wolverine found in the contiguous United States as threatened. New research and analysis show that wolverine populations in the American Northwest remain stable, and individuals are moving across the Canadian border in both directions and returning to former territories. The species, therefore, does not meet the definition of threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act."

Paris court convicts former Vatican envoy of sexual assault
A Paris court has convicted a former Vatican ambassador to France of sexually assaulting five men in 2018 and 2019, and handed him a suspended 8-month prison sentence

By MASHA MACPHERSON Associated Press
16 December 2020



PARIS -- A Paris court on Wednesday convicted a former Vatican ambassador to France of sexually assaulting five men in 2018 and 2019, and handed him a suspended 8-month prison sentence.

Retired Archbishop Luigi Ventura, 76 — who was not present in court — was “shattered” by the verdict, according to his lawyer, Solange Doumic. She said she was uncertain whether he would lodge an appeal because the procedure “has been extremely painful for him.”

Ventura has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. Sexual assault is punishable in France by up to five years’ imprisonment and fines in France.

The path for the prosecution of Ventura was cleared after the Vatican lifted his immunity in July 2019. His trial in absentia was held Nov. 10.

The sentence imposed Wednesday was more lenient than the suspended 10 months the prosecution had sought.

Doumic said her client had “explained himself multiple times," over what the defense has described as “minor" accusations.

But the court decision “shows he wasn’t heard, despite a 7-hour hearing on gestures which are simple, light,” she said after the verdict.

Five men alleged that they had suffered Ventura’s “hands on the buttocks” during his public diplomatic duties in France. The case erupted in February 2019 amid multiple sex scandals affecting the Catholic Church.

Among the accusers was a former seminarian, Mahe Thouvenel, who said he was grabbed repeatedly by the clergyman when they celebrated Mass in December 2018. Another, Mathieu De La Souchere, alleged that Ventura touched his behind repeatedly during a reception at Paris City Hall.

Thouvenel said his seminary kicked him out after he filed a police complaint. Under questioning from Ventura’s lawyer, he put his right hand on the top of his right buttock to show one of the spots where he was allegedly groped.

“It’s violent,” Thouvenel said during the trial. “It sticks in your memory.”

The judge said at the time that, during prior questioning, Ventura had explained his behavior by saying he had a “Latin” temperament and that there was nothing sexual about his gestures.

“These types of verdicts, when it involves a Vatican ambassador, can give other victims the courage to come forward in other cases potentially involving the church," said Antoinette Frety, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. "They know now that they will be heard no matter what the rank of the aggressor is within the church. And that’s very important.”

Another lawyer for the plaintiffs, Edmond-Claude Frety, said the verdict should encourage potential victims not to give up.

“It means that victims have to be brave, have to leave the silence and to talk," he said. Ventura "will not be in jail tonight, of course, but it’s quite an important conviction because it means that these facts are now considered very severely by the courts.”

The former envoy had produced a doctor’s note saying it was too dangerous for him to travel from Rome to Paris for the November trial amid France’s resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic.

———

Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this report.

Family of Tuskegee Syphilis Study participant say they’ll take COVID-19 vaccine but understand the distrust

The study charted syphilis progression in unknowing Black men.

WITH NO CURE 

ByAyanna Gill,Knez Walker, andAnthony Rivas
17 December 2020


COVID-19 vaccines recall decades of deception and pain for Black Americans
In 1932, 623 Black men were unknowingly recruited for a syphilis study but were kept from a cure

Lillie Tyson Head and her daughter, Carmen Head Thornton, have reason to be skeptical about the COVID-19 vaccine. After all, it was Head’s father, Freddie Lee Tyson, who was unknowingly recruited into the now-infamous Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.

A sharecropper in Alabama in 1932, Tyson was one of 623 Black men recruited for the U.S. Public Health study at the Tuskegee Institute. The study was meant to record the natural progression of syphilis infection in Black men, but the researchers didn’t tell those who signed on. Tyson, who had congenital syphilis, was only told he’d be receiving free health care.

“They did not tell them they had syphilis, and the only thing they told them was they had bad blood and they were treating the bad blood,” Head told “Nightline” co-anchor Byron Pitts. “But they were not. They were lying to the people about that. They were deceiving them.”


ABC
Lillie Tyson Head pictured with family photos.

The experiment lasted 40 years. During that time, the American government made efforts to ensure the participants in the study never knew the true intentions of the researchers. Even when they discovered penicillin was a reliable treatment for the infection, the participants were actively kept from receiving it.


ABC
Freddie Lee Tyson pictured on his wedding day courtesy of Lillie Tyson-Head.

Thornton says she was only a child when her grandfather answered the call from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to tell him what had really happened. Head said her father was a gentle, kind and wise man, but that call made him upset and disappointed.

“My father was a proud man and he was honest,” Head said. “For someone to call and tell him that he had been part of something for 40 years and had never been told the truth, and he was not aware of that, then that would also bring some shame. And you also have to understand that syphilis wasn’t something that people were proud of having.”

Although Tyson died in 1988, Head and Thornton have been carrying on his legacy in hopes that something like the experiment never happens again. In memory of the men who unknowingly contributed their bodies to the study, they started the Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation, which aims to change the narrative surrounding the experiment and its participants and connect their descendants across the generations.


Courtesy of Carmen Head Thornton
Carmen Head Thornton, the daughter of Lillie Tyson Head, said she remembers her grandfather...

“There is a desire and need for us, through our foundation and through my professional work, to want to move this story of the syphilis study to one that speaks toward being a victim to being a victor, for moving from trauma to triumph,” said Thornton, who works as the director of research, grants, workforce and development at the National Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

MORE: Minority communities’ distrust of COVID-19 vaccine poses challenge

Both women say they understand why there is skepticism among Black Americans to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Although 27% of the public say they probably or definitely would not get vaccinated, 35% of Black adults say the same, despite being disproportionately affected by the virus, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“History has not been kind to African Americans,” Thornton said. “It has not been kind, and because of misperceptions that are connected to what happened in the study … I think it helps to grow mistrust, and that’s one of the things that we deal with.”


National Archives via AP
A black man has blood drawn by a doctor during a syphilis in Tuskegee, Ala. in this 1950's file photo

Among the misconceptions surrounding the syphilis experiment, Head said many people believe the participants in the study were injected with the virus. “They were not,” she said, but rather given blood tests frequently.

Thornton said that to rebuild this trust, there needs to be more people of color in the medical field. Her mother said that while there are more people of color in these positions now, and that “things have changed, things have gotten better,” they could still improve more.

“I am committed to spending my life in public health and in working in the way that I do because we need that representation,” Thornton said. “That’s the reason why the syphilis study happened to begin with because there wasn’t that representation. There wasn’t those voices around the table. And so, we really do need to have that representation engaged in science, engaged in research and engaged in respectful health care.”

When asked if they’d take the COVID-19 vaccine themselves, they both said yes.

“Without hesitation,” Head said. “As soon as the vaccine is available for me, I’m taking it.”


ABC
Lillie Tyson Head said her father was an unwitting participant in the now infamous Syphilis study...

Citing other health disparities prevalent within communities of color, Head also implored people to take charge of their health.

“I want people of color to be able to look at situations, especially when it comes to protecting their health, and do their due diligence in finding out the necessary information so that they can make the right decisions and not be afraid,” she said. “We have to step forward and not be afraid to make our lives better.”

Possible break in theft of Canadian gold coin in Germany
Berlin police have raided homes and jewelry shops on suspicion they could be connected to efforts to fence a massive 100-kilogram (220 pound) Canadian gold coin that was stolen from a museum in the German capital

By DAVID RISING Associated Press
16 December 2020


The Associated Press
FILE -- In this Dec. 8, 2010 photo a 100-kilogram (221-pound) Canadian gold coin is displayed 

BERLIN -- Berlin police raided homes and jewelry shops Wednesday on suspicion they could be connected to efforts to fence a massive 100-kilogram (220-pound) Canadian gold coin — piece by piece — that was stolen from a museum in the German capital.

The coin, with an estimated value of 3.75 million euros ($4.45 million) was stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum in 2017 and has not yet been recovered.

The morning raids were focused on eight suspects, aged between 14 and 51, of various nationalities, police said.

They are alleged to have been part of a ring that obtained stolen gold to melt it down and forge collector coins, then sell them as genuine through jewelry stores operated by them or their relatives. Some of the counterfeits are already circulating, police said.

The searches led to the discovery of counterfeit coins, forgery tools and a “five-digit” sum of cash, police said.

“The evaluation of the evidence is ongoing,” police said. “Among other things, a possible connection to the theft of the gold coin from the Bode Museum is being be examined.”

Berlin prosecutors said there were no arrests but that the investigation was continuing.

The searches came just two days after the arrest of a key suspect in the spectacular theft of 18th-century jewels from a Dresden museum last year, who is from a crime family linked to the Canadian gold coin theft.

Mohamed Remmo, 21, was arrested by Berlin authorities in a car in the Neukoelln district of the city on Monday evening. His twin brother, Abdul Majed Remmo, remains on the lam.

Police and prosecutors would not comment on whether there was a connection between the arrest and the searches, but members of the same family were convicted earlier this year for the Canadian gold coin theft.

Cousins Ahmed Remmo and Wissam Remmo, along with a friend who worked as a security guard at the museum, were all convicted of that Canadian gold coin heist and sentenced to several years in prison.

Damage from border wall: blown-up mountains, toppled cactus

Government contractors are igniting dynamite blasts in the remote and rugged southeast corner of Arizona, forever reshaping the landscape as they pulverize mountaintops

By ANITA SNOW Associated Press
17 December 2020

The Associated Press
Crews construct a section of border wall in San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, Tuesday

GUADALUPE CANYON, Ariz. -- Work crews ignite dynamite blasts in the remote and rugged southeast corner of Arizona, forever reshaping the landscape as they pulverize mountaintops in a rush to build more of President Donald Trump’s border wall before his term ends next month.

Each blast in Guadalupe Canyon releases puffs of dust as workers level land to make way for 30-foot-tall (9-meter-tall) steel columns near the New Mexico line. Heavy machines crawl over roads gouged into rocky slopes while one tap-tap-taps open holes for posts on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property.

Trump has expedited border wall construction in his last year, mostly in wildlife refuges and Indigenous territory the government owns in Arizona and New Mexico, avoiding the legal fights over private land in busier crossing areas of Texas. The work has caused environmental damage, preventing animals from moving freely and scarring unique mountain and desert landscapes that conservationists fear could be irreversible. The administration says it's protecting national security, citing it to waive environmental laws in its drive to fulfill a signature immigration policy.

Environmentalists hope President-elect Joe Biden will stop the work, but that could be difficult and expensive to do quickly and may still leave pillars towering over sensitive borderlands.

The worst damage is along Arizona’s border, from century-old saguaro cactuses toppled in the western desert to shrinking ponds of endangered fish in eastern canyons. Recent construction has sealed off what was the Southwest’s last major undammed river. It's more difficult for desert tortoises, the occasional ocelot and the world’s tiniest owls to cross the boundary.

“Interconnected landscapes that stretch across two countries are being converted into industrial wastelands,” said Randy Serraglio of the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson.

In the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge near Guadalupe Canyon, biologist Myles Traphagen said field cameras have captured 90% less movement by animals like mountain lions, bobcats and pig-like javelinas over the past three months.

“This wall is the largest impediment to wildlife movement we’ve ever seen in this part of the world,” said Traphagen of the nonprofit Wildlands Network. “It’s altering the evolutionary history of North America.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1982 established the nearly 4-square-mile (10-square-kilometer) refuge to protect water resources and endangered native fish. Diverse hummingbirds, bees, butterflies and bats also live there.

Since contractors for U.S. Customs and Border Protection began building a new stretch of wall there in October, environmentalists estimate that millions of gallons of groundwater have been pumped to mix cement and spray down dusty dirt roads.

Solar power now pumps water into a shrinking pond underneath rustling cottonwood trees. Bullfrogs croak and Yaqui topminnows wiggle through the pool once fed solely by natural artesian wells pulling ancient water from an aquifer.

A 3-mile (5-kilometer) barrier has sealed off a migratory corridor for wildlife between Mexico’s Sierra Madre and the Rocky Mountains to the north, threatening species like the endangered Chiricahua leopard frog and blue-gray aplomado falcon.

The Trump administration says it's completed 430 miles (692 kilometers) of the $15 billion wall and promises to reach 450 miles (725 kilometers) by year’s end.

Biden transition officials say he stands by his campaign promise — “not another foot” of wall. It's unclear how Biden would stop construction, but it could leave projects half-finished, force the government to pay to break contracts and anger those who consider the wall essential to border security.

“Building a wall will do little to deter criminals and cartels seeking to exploit our borders,” Biden's transition team has said. It says Biden will focus on “smart border enforcement efforts, like investments in improving screening infrastructure at our ports of entry, that will actually keep America safer.”

Environmentalists hope for an ally in Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection.

Until construction is stopped, "every day, it will be another another mile of borderlands being trashed,” Serraglio said.

Environmental law attorney Dinah Bear said Biden’s administration could terminate building contracts, which would allow companies to seek settlements. What that would cost isn't clear because the contracts aren't public, but Bear said it would pale in comparison to the price of finishing and maintaining the wall. Military funds reappropriated under a national emergency declared by Trump are now funding the work.

Bear, who worked at the White House's Council on Environmental Quality under Republican and Democratic administrations, said she wants to see Congress set aside money to repair damage by removing the wall in critical areas, buying more habitat and replanting slopes.

Ecologists say damage could be reversed in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where thousands of tree-like saguaros were bulldozed, with some reportedly replanted elsewhere.

They say keeping floodgates open could help ease damage done by damming the San Pedro River, which runs north from just below the Mexican border through the central corridor of the Sierra Madre's “Sky Islands."

These high mountains have ecosystems dramatically different from the desert below, with 300 bird species, including the yellow-billed cuckoo, nesting along what was the Southwest’s last major free-flowing river. The white-nosed, racoon-like coati and the yellow-striped Sonoran tiger salamander also live there.

In the nearby Coronado National Monument, scientists are using cameras to document wildlife as crews prepare to start building. Switchbacks have been slashed into mountainsides, but 30-foot (9-meter) posts aren't yet up along where a Spanish expedition marched through around 1540.

The government plans to install the towering pillars 4 inches (10 centimeters) apart where there are now vehicle barriers a couple of feet high with openings large enough to allow large cats and other animals to cross to mate and hunt.

Biologist Emily Burns of the nonprofit Sky Island Alliance said construction will hurt elf owls, the world’s littlest at less than 5 inches (13 centimeters) tall. The birds are too small to fly over the fence and likely wouldn't know to squeeze through.

“This kind of large-scale disruption can push a species to the brink, even if they aren't threatened,” said Louise Misztal, alliance executive director.

———

Follow Anita Snow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/asnowreports

Minnesota juvenile lifer walks free after 18 years in prison
A Black man who was sentenced to life behind bars

 as a teenager has walked out of a Minnesota prison

By ROBIN McDOWELL and MARGIE MASON Associated Press
16 December 2020,


MINNEAPOLIS -- A Black man who was sent to prison for life as a teenager took his first steps of freedom to the sound of ringing bells and cheering family members and supporters, hours after a pardons board commuted his sentence in a high-profile murder case.

Myon Burrell’s prosecution and harsh punishment raised questions about the integrity of the criminal justice system that put him away nearly two decades ago for the death of a young girl killed by a stray bullet. Earlier this year, The Associated Press and APM Reports uncovered new evidence and serious flaws in the police investigation, ultimately leading to the creation of an independent national legal panel to review the case.

Last week, the panel published its findings, saying there was a “failure to investigate that illustrates tunnel vision” and that evidence that could have helped exonerate Burrell was either ignored or minimized.

The panel said it saw no purpose served by keeping Burrell locked up, pointing to his age at the time of the crime and his good behavior behind bars.

Burrell’s request for a pardon was denied and he will have to spend the next two years under supervised release. But it was the first time in at least 22 years that Minnesota commuted a sentence in a murder case, according the the Department of Corrections.

The release was swift. Just hours after receiving the news, he walked out the front door of Stillwater prison into below-freezing temperatures. Dozens of bundled supporters, some holding signs and balloons, surrounded Burrell while cheering “Myon’s free! Myon’s free!”

After jumping into a waiting car, he was soon home. Friends and relatives filtered into the living room, greeting him with gifts and hugs.

“It’s just a blessing,” he said, while standing outside on the street searching the sky for the moon and stars, which he said he’s been longing to see.

Burrell has always maintained his innocence in the 2002 killing of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards, struck in the heart while doing homework at the dining room table with her little sister. He told Minnesota’s Board of Pardons members Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison that his “heart goes out” to her family. The third board member, Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Skjerven Gildea, recused herself, citing prior involvement with the case.

Edwards’ death enraged the African American community in a city just emerging from some of the nation’s highest homicide rates, briefly earning it the nickname “Murderapolis.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who then headed the county attorney’s office, has used Burrell’s conviction over the years as an example of her tough-on-crime policies, most recently during a Democratic presidential primary debate last year.

The AP investigation that followed sparked national outrage and gave Burrell’s family and community organizers the ammunition they needed to get Klobuchar’s attention. She called for the creation of the independent panel of legal experts. Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, and Laura Nirider, of Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, oversaw that effort.

Klobuchar released a statement Tuesday saying the pardon board made the right decision. She also urged a conviction-review unit to continue investigating the facts.

The yearlong investigation by The AP showed there was no hard evidence — no gun, DNA or fingerprints — tying Burrell to the shooting. Among other things, police did not collect a corner store’s surveillance video, which Burrell said could have cleared him. And video footage showed the lead homicide detective offering a man in police custody $500 for Burrell’s name, even if it was just hearsay.

Officers relied heavily on a single eyewitness, who offered conflicting accounts, along with jailhouse informants, who benefited generously for testifying. Some have recanted. One had his 16-year prison sentence cut to three. Another said he had agreed to work with police on 14 other cases.

Burrell’s co-defendants said the teenager was not at the scene that day.

One of them, Isaiah Tyson, has been saying for years that he was the shooter, not Burrell.

“I will always carry the burden of what happened to an innocent child,” Tyson said Tuesday during a call from prison, where he’s serving a 45-year sentence for Tyesha’s killing. “But by him being let go, it’s a huge relief for me, because I’ve been holding that this whole time. ... He was locked up for something he had no idea about”

Burrell, who was 16 at the time of the slaying, appeared at his hearing via videoconference from inside the state’s Stillwater prison. He became emotional as the board voted, and put his hand on his head and said, “Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it.”

Burrell told the board about his time in prison, saying he did not know what was going on when he was sentenced, and that he converted to Islam and became a religious leader while behind bars.

“I tried to make the best of my situation,” he said. “I started going in and extracting medicine out of the poison. The trials and tribulations I was going through, I tried to get something out of it.”

His request was accompanied by testimony from community leaders and letters from young men in prison, who attested to his strong character and moral leadership.

Jimmie Edwards III, Tyesha’s brother, told the AP that he and his family were upset by the decision. He said the justice system failed his family, and media coverage and support for Burrell’s release overshadowed his sister’s death.

“She never got to go to her prom. She never got to go to college. She never got to go to junior high school or high school,” he said. “Her life was taken away at 11. Who’s the victim?”

Gov. Walz recommended the commuted sentence, saying science has found and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teenage minds work differently than those of adults, and that a life sentence for a teenager is too extreme.

“While this board is not a fact finder, it does have the power to determine when justice is served through the power of clemency and mercy,” he said. “We cannot turn a blind eye to the developments in science and law as we look at this case.”

Walz addressed the Edwards family during the hearing, saying: “We’re not here to relitigate the crime committed against your family that took your daughter away. There is nothing I can do to ease your pain, and it will not be made better. But we must act today to recognize the law in this area has changed. Justice is not served by incarcerating a child for his entire lifetime for a horrible mistake committed many years ago.”

New questions about Burrell’s case surfaced just before Minneapolis was thrust into the national spotlight after a police officer held his knee against George Floyd’s neck outside a convenience store as Floyd gasped for breath. It was the same Cup Foods store that Burrell said could have provided his alibi if surveillance tapes had been pulled.

Floyd’s death sparked racial injustice protests and put renewed focus on some law enforcement practices from the 1990s and early 2000s, when harsher policing and tougher sentencing led to the highest lock-up rates in the nation’s history. Those incarcerations hit minority communities the hardest.

Those same communities were victims of much of the gun, drug and gang violence.

Edwards III, Tyesha’s brother, said news of Burrell’s release is especially hard after the death of his mother last year.

“When she lost our sister, it took her away. She was never able to recover,” he said of his mother. “I’m glad my mom is not here to witness this, because it would just break her heart.”

———

Associated Press writers Amy Forliti and Mohamed Ibrahim contributed to this report.

Federal government in 2020 executed more prisoners than all 50 states: Death penalty research group

The incoming TRUMP APPOINTED acting attorney general has signaled support for the death penalty.

By Luke Barr
16 December 2020, 



The federal government in 2020 executed more people than all 50 states combined, a new year-end report from the Death Penalty Institute found.

The DPIC is a non-partisan, death penalty information center that tracks death row inmates and executions.

In July, the Trump Justice Department resumed federal executions after a 17-year hiatus, after now-outgoing Attorney General William Barr backed the issue.

“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system,” Barr said in a press release in July, after a brief holdup in the courts.


Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE
William Barr listens during a meeting with Republican State Attorneys General in the Cabinet Ro...

Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen has supported the ramp up in executions writing an op-ed in the New York Times in July arguing that executions are “legally justified.”

“The death penalty is a difficult issue for many Americans on moral, religious and policy grounds. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward,” Rosen wrote. “The United States Constitution expressly contemplates “capital” crimes, and Congress has authorized the death penalty for serious federal offenses since President George Washington signed the Crimes Act of 1790.”


Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE
Jeffrey Rosen, deputy attorney general, speaks during a news conference

Last week, the execution of Brandon Bernard drew widespread criticism from lawmakers to celebrities, including Kim Kardashian West.

The DPIC found that 60% of all executions that were carried out this year were by the federal government, and Texas which has traditionally been a place where executions are carried out regularly only saw three in 2020.


Overall, the DPIC concluded that executions have been trending downward at a state level, with only five states carrying out execution but not federally – and there are still more to come before Joe Biden’s inauguration.
MORE: Advocates push for police reform after summer of unrest




Michael Conroy/AP, FILE
A vehicle patrols that perimeter of the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind., July 17, 2020.

The DPIC also found that 73% of all executions were halted in some way.

“Of the 62 dates scheduled this year, only 17 were carried out. One execution – that of Jimmy Meders in Georgia – was halted by commutation. Nineteen executions were stayed. Sixteen executions were halted by reprieve, 14 of which were Ohio executions delayed because of problems with the state’s execution protocol,” the report said.

The other two reprieves came in cases in which Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee delayed executions as a result of pandemic-related concerns. Nine execution warrants were withdrawn, removed, or rescheduled.”

The DPIC also found that five innocent men were exonerated and taken off death row, two were executed who were likely innocent and “several others” were granted retrials.

“At the end of the year, more states and counties had moved to end or reduce death-penalty usage, fewer new death sentences were imposed than in any prior year since capital punishment resumed in the U.S. in 1970s, and states carried out fewer executions than at any time in the past 37 years,” said Robert Dunham, DPIC’s executive director and the lead author of “The Death Penalty in 2020: Year End Report.”

“What was happening in the rest of the country showed that the administration’s policies were not just out of step with the historical practices of previous presidents, they were also completely out of step with today’s state practices.”

The report highlights that every person executed this year committed the crime under the age of 21 and Colorado became the 22nd state to outlaw the death penalty.