CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
More than $7 billion of assets suspected of belonging to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich were just frozen by the Government of Jersey


Dominick Reuter
Wed, April 13, 2022

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.Clive Mason/Getty Images


Over $7 billion in assets suspected of belonging to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich were seized.


The Royal Court of the Island of Jersey froze assets located there or owned by entities incorporated there.


The amount could represent more than half of Abramovich's $13.9 billion fortune.

The Royal Court of the island state of Jersey has frozen more than $7 billion in assets suspected of being connected to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Law Officers' Department said it executed search warrants on Tuesday at locations believed to be related to Abramovich's businesses.

The freezing order, known as a "saisie judiciaire," covers assets either located in Jersey or owned by entities incorporated there.

Abramovich's fortune is currently estimated at $13.9 billion, according to Bloomberg, but it is unclear how these recently frozen assets factor in.

The steel and nickel tycoon's wealth tumbled by about $3 billion following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and in March he said he would sell the Chelsea Football Club, which he has owned since 2003.

In addition, Abramovich is believed to be the owner of several yachts, two of which appear to be avoiding ports where they might be seized, while another was reportedly transferred to a business associate just hours after the invasion started.

The UK and EU have levied sanctions against Abramovich, but the billionaire has so far escaped targeting by the US, possibly at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Abramovich was been seen attending peace talks in Istanbul in March.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Cryptocurrency mining rig found in NUS UTown Residence in Singapore


Staff Writer, Singapore
Tue, April 12, 2022,

A cryptocurrency mining farm. (PHOTO: Getty Images)

SINGAPORE — A cryptocurrency mining rig was discovered in a National University of Singapore (NUS) residence last week.

The rig was found in the UTown Residence, a dormitory located in NUS’ University Town, during a routine inspection, according to media reports citing an advisory from the UTown Residence Management Office on Monday (11 April).

In a reply to Yahoo Finance Singapore’s queries, an NUS UTown Residence spokesperson said that its residents were informed that “crypto mining rigs are strictly prohibited as these consume very high levels of energy and emit unusually large amounts of heat, posing a fire hazard and the risk of power outage”.

It added that it is currently investigating the matter and has ordered for the rig to be removed for the safety of residents.

Cryptocurrency mining involves deploying powerful and often costly specialised machines to solve complex mathematical problems in exchange for new cryptocurrency. As the process involves a high amount of energy, mining usually happens in giant data centres owned by firms or groups of people.

According to a New York Times report released last year, Bitcoin mining consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, which is more power than is used by Finland, a nation of some 5.5 million.

UK financial site Money Super Market calculated that every Bitcoin transaction consumes 1,173 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is enough to power a typical UK home for more than three months.

Inspector general says post office surveillance program exceeded legal authority

·Investigative Correspondent
March 31, 2022·

WASHINGTON — An inspector general probe into the U.S. Postal Service surveillance program, known as iCOP, concluded that the agency did not have the legal authority to conduct the sweeping intelligence collection and surveillance of American protesters and others between 2018 and 2021.

The Postal Service Office of Inspector General launched an investigation into iCOP — which stands for Internet Covert Operations Program — at the request of Congress in direct response to reporting from Yahoo News last year.

“We determined that certain proactive searches iCOP conducted using an open-source intelligence tool from February to April 2021 exceeded the Postal Inspection Service’s law enforcement authority,” the March 25, 2022, inspector general report stated.

A United States Postal Service truck in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Caballer-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

“Furthermore, we could not corroborate whether other work analysts completed from October 2018 through June 2021 was legally authorized.”

The audit of the program was prompted by Yahoo News’ reporting that revealed the existence of the secret program, as well as its use of facial recognition software and other sophisticated technology and software to compile and disseminate reports on Americans’ online speech and movements. A March 16, 2021, iCOP intelligence bulletin on American protesters was widely circulated by the Department of Homeland Security to state, local and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Yahoo News’ reporting on the program prompted outrage from lawmakers and constitutional experts, who questioned whether the post office had the legal authority to target and collect information on U.S. citizens not suspected of any crime and with no connection to the post office.

In April 2021, Yahoo News revealed the existence of the iCOP surveillance, which used analysts to trawl the internet looking for “inflammatory” posts about nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. A series of follow-up reports revealed further details about the program, which had been operating without the oversight or even the knowledge of Congress. (Yahoo News has filed its own lawsuit to obtain additional records related to iCOP.)

“The Oversight Committee requested this report because of our significant concerns about intelligence activities conducted by the Postal Service Inspection Service’s analytics team related to First Amendment activity," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, told Yahoo News in a Thursday statement. "The inspector general’s audit makes clear that the committee’s concerns were justified, and that the use of open-source intelligence by the analytics team ‘exceeded the Postal Inspection Service’s law enforcement authority.’"

A woman holds a Black Lives Matter flag during an event in remembrance of George Floyd on May 24, 2021, in St. Paul, Minn. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)

Using sophisticated technology and software, iCOP was running keyword searches like “protest” on social media to collect online speech about a host of different events that contained no threats and had nothing to do with the Postal Service’s work.

The inspector general report notes that in April 2021 Postal Inspection Service lawyers asked iCOP to remove “protest” from its keyword searches “to protect constitutional rights.”

Frank Albergo, president of the Postal Police Officers Association, told Yahoo News that the Postal Inspection Service had “lost their way.”

“At this point they might as well take their mission statement of protecting the Postal Service and its employees and throw it in the garbage,” Albergo said, arguing that not enough attention is being paid by the agency to the “mail theft epidemic” of postal property that was happening at the same time.

The 26-page report concluded that the post office did not have the legal authority to compile reports on Americans involved in Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the nation. The report also found across-the-board violations of statutory and legal authority ranging from lack of legal authority to noncompliance with federal records retention to use of facial recognition software. It also said there was no record-keeping policy or procedures in place to make sure the work was legal.

The report repeatedly stressed that the Postal Service’s surveillance efforts need a “postal nexus,” or a connection to the Postal Inspection Service’s work.

“The Postal Inspection Service’s activities must have an identified connection to the mail, postal crimes, or the security of Postal Service facilities or personnel (postal nexus) prior to commencing,” the report said.

“However, the keywords used for iCOP in the proactive searches did not include any terms with a postal nexus. Further, the postal nexus was not documented in 122 requests and 18 reports due to a lack of requirements in the program’s procedures. These issues occurred because management did not involve the Postal Inspection Service’s Office of Counsel in developing iCOP or its procedures.”

A USPS employee organizes packages in a mail truck in Houston. 

(Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

The inspector general made a series of recommendations, including a complete review and overhaul of the program and the analyst division under which it operates. Postal Service leadership responded to each recommendation, objecting to most of the report’s conclusions and arguing that it has the authority to conduct wide-ranging surveillance and intelligence collection on U.S. citizens — without needing a nexus to the post office. It agreed to review some of its policies after the completion of the internal review recommended by the inspector general.

“We strongly disagree with the overarching conclusion that the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (Inspection Service) exceeded its legal authority and conducted improper intelligence searches,” the Postal Inspection Service wrote in response to the recommendations and findings of the inspector general audit. The response was included in the report.

Maloney, the Oversight Committee chair, said: "I fully support the Inspector General’s recommendation that Postal Service management perform a full review of the Analytics Team’s responsibilities, activities, and procedures, and I look forward to reviewing its result.”

FIRE DEJOY

DeJoy says USPS will expedite midterm ballots, holds firm on electric trucks

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy talks with guests at an event where U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law H.R. 3076, the "Postal Service Reform Act of 2022" at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 6, 2022.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (Kevin Lamarque / reuters)


LONG READ 

Jacob Bogage
Tue, April 12, 2022,

WASHINGTON - Had the U.S. Postal Service incrementally made improvements over the years, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy says, Americans wouldn't know who runs their mail agency. And DeJoy, the controversial leader of the mail service, wouldn't be making "uncomfortable" changes at the Postal Service to make it fit for evolving consumer habits.

But when DeJoy, a former supply-chain logistics executive and conservative political donor, took over the Postal Service in June 2020, the agency was in dire shape. The coronavirus pandemic was on the verge of sidelining much of its workforce. Its complex transportation network was misaligned, a cardinal sin in DeJoy's logistics world. The postal chief's changes to fix what he saw as fundamental flaws cascaded into a mail-delay crisis before the 2020 presidential election that made DeJoy a household name.

"And despite all this stuff, I never really feel any stress about it," DeJoy told The Washington Post in an interview.

"We can be demonstratively the best-run agency in the United States government," he added. "Why? Because we do transactional things that are measurable, that are definable and we provide a service that is impactful."

President Joe Biden recently signed legislation into law to unburden the mail agency of years' worth of financial constraints. Its delayed service has begun to rebound. The Postal Service became a major part of Biden's pandemic response, shipping more than 320 million rapid coronavirus test kits to American households since late January.

And DeJoy has his first real opening to attempt to make the Postal Service more competitive with private-sector shippers FedEx, UPS and Amazon - companies that have used the pandemic to build out their own networks and decrease their reliance on the mail agency. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)

"All I want to do is run the place better," DeJoy said. "I'm not out there making this kind of policy or that policy. I want my trucks to run on time. I want my trucks to be full. I want my carriers to show up at the same address every day. I want my people to be safe and to like being here."

But top Biden administration priorities on climate change and voting rights are running into DeJoy's agency transformation - presenting fresh challenges in Congress, the White House and post offices across the country.

DeJoy sat down with The Post to discuss the state of the Postal Service and questions about its future. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: When you arrived at the Postal Service, what did it need in terms of logistics?

A: What this place needs from a logistics standpoint has not been solved yet. We have 500 different plants and 19,000 different delivery units, and that doesn't talk about the 31,000 retail centers. How do we optimize all that for different types of business? We got a lot of work there.

What I did do was identify that we're in a crisis and said we need to have a plan to get out of this. We were losing $10 billion a year, losing market share all over the place, burning out people, running empty trucks. Our plants are terrible. And there was no plan. It was metastasizing. And there was this false reality that existed that there was some way you could solve this thing just the way it existed.

Q: Was that difficult to do - to start telling people that you thought the Postal Service was in a much worse place than many were willing to admit?

A: From my standpoint, there was a lot of self-interest. In many ways in my head, I just called B.S. on it and looked right down the line what needed to be done. And management did have a role. I think management could have done more. The Postal Regulatory Commission had a role in taking years to find out that diminishing mail volume matters and letting us adjust our prices.

Congress had a role from unfunded mandates to letting the place run with an empty board of governors. All these things were metastasizing within the organization, and when I got here, there was no plan. The place, it just lacked definition everywhere. And that was what my 10-year transformation plan was about. There were three tenets. Number one, we're going to deliver six days a week to 161 million addresses. I wanted to get that off the table, cutting delivery days. I saw delivering six days a week as a ticket to the future - one way out.

Number two, we have to cover our cost. It's a good thing. It means that you can't do all things at all cost. And the fact of the matter is when we're losing money the way we are, we are satisfying unreasonable expectations.

Number three, make the place believe that we're a going concern, that we will meet our financial obligations when they come due, that we're going to be here 10 years from now.

Q: Was there doubt that the Postal Service would exist 10 years from now?

A: I came in, and they said, "We're going to run out of cash and we're going to lose $20 billion in the next year." The Government Accountability Office has put us on the high risk list for 10 years. The only way we survived was not paying employee health-care benefits. I was the person to take it seriously. Now you will read, "The Treasury Department will never let this happen." OK. I don't know. Maybe? What kind of carnage are we going to have here at the Postal Service and for the nation by testing that model to see if Treasury is going to jump in? I took it seriously.

Q: Let's talk about voting by mail. Will the Postal Service commit to using the same "extraordinary measures" - dedicated ballot-expediting procedures - in the 2022 midterm elections that it used in elections in 2020 and in 2021?

A: The answer is yes. It has never been in question. It's like you tie your shoes when you walk out the door and then you see a judge who says, "You must tie your shoes in the future." It was kind of a ridiculous accusation. And listen, that's not me. That was the organization that was here before. Now I may have aligned the network, had more meetings, done a little more stuff. And when you look at all the changes I'm making, I'm one person. I didn't bring in outside consultants. This is internal postal genetics. So we always use the extraordinary measures. We don't need a judge to tell us, we don't need a nonprofit to tell us. We use our best efforts to make sure every ballot that we get our hands on will get delivered. We have done it. It shows in the results. So we'll continue to do that.

Q: The Biden budget wants to give the Postal Service $5 billion for mail-in voting to make ballots postage free, reduce certain election-related costs and more. Do you want that money? Do you need that money?

A: We are interested in, to the extent that the states can standardize and use first-class mail and so on and so forth, I think it creates more reliability. We're the most consistent thing in voting by mail. Everybody else changes rules every year. We've been pretty stable in that regard. But we don't advocate for anything in that regard. This is the nation's policy.

Q:Let's move to the Postal Service's new fleet of delivery trucks. You recently ordered 50,000 trucks, 10,000 of them electric.

A: 10,019 electric.

Q: Yes, 10,019. Where do you see that headed in terms of more electric trucks? What's the trajectory on that?

A: When I got here, the truck procurement had been in a pile since 2015. We have people that can't put their trucks in reverse because they're in such bad shape. I needed to buy trucks. What we knew about electric vehicles was what an engineer would know about electric when I got here: the different type of transmission, this and that. You have a lot of information on infrastructure and so on, and we needed to move. And we almost got $6 billion, $7 billion from Congress for electric trucks in the Build Back Better Act. We were this close!

From my standpoint, my mission is delivering mail and packages. The policy of electrifying the fleet of the nation is a mission that I will support. But I would be negligent to spend all my money on doing that. So we didn't have the money, we didn't have the knowledge. We got 10,019 electric vehicles rather than 5,000 because we're in a better financial position.

I do think electrification of the vehicles is good. I'm a supporter. At this particular point in time, when I went to make the order, there's 10,019 specific routes that I know are a slam dunk that we will use them and it will work. And that is how I make decisions as we move forward. And I'm not buying 180,000. I'm buying 50,000. When I go to buy the next amount, we will reevaluate.

Q: The Postal Service's cash balance right now is somewhere between $20 billion and $24 billion. There will be people who will say you have enough money to buy electric vehicles already. Why are they mistaken?

A: Number one, whether I run out of cash tomorrow or I run out of cash three years from now -

Q: You've said this before. It's a matter of if you pay your bills.

A: Yes. Number two, I have a lot of other needs. I got 500 plants I need to address. I have 30-year-old IT. I have to spend a couple billion dollars to get my IT relevant. I have to spend a few billion dollars, at least, to get my plants relevant. Look, I made a decision on this batch. When it's ready for the next batch, I will evaluate. We're driving a lot of change and transformation, so I should expect that facts should be different for me two years from now than they are today. They're different for me from 18 months ago when I got here.

If fuel prices stay the way they are, if the technology evolves. We're still putting 10,000 electric trucks into service pretty quickly. I'm saying, we're buying 50,000 trucks and 10,019 of them are electric. And we've done it, right?

The next time when we do our next buy, we'll evaluate it under the circumstances of where we are in our transformation. We are a puppy as an organization right now. We don't know what we're going to be when we grow up. We have a direction, but that's it. I want to be able to be flexible. I appreciate everybody's interest in that, and I think it's a good interest. But that is not my total responsibility.

Q: So you see that electrification as social policy?

A: No, I don't see it as social policy. I see it as a national policy. And I mean, we have many green initiatives, but we also have lots of initiatives and only so-deep pockets. We have different needs for the vehicles. Even these 10,000, they didn't show a cost benefit in the 10,000 that we bought on the routes that we have. We're hoping long term that the economics continue to play out and in our favor in that regard.

Q: There will be people who will read what you just said and say, "That is complete nonsense."

A: Because of the cash that we have?

Q: Because of the cash. Because your competitors like Amazon, FedEx and UPS are buying EVs not because of the environment, but because they see the business sense in it. There are people who want the Postal Service to buy electric vehicles because of environmental concerns and others because they think EVs can save the agency money.

A: The service requirements that we have with these vehicles are far different than FedEx or all the rest. And the economics - people may not believe them - but the economics that my team has come up with demonstrate that at this particular point in time, these particular routes are beneficial and these particular routes are not for our application. And that is the math that we are going with.

And we have other needs for our capital. If I was buying 180,000 trucks right now, OK, I'd say everybody has a better discussion with me. I'm buying 50,000. Congress is still talking to us about other things. I don't have to make big statements about this, because we're making big statements about a lot of things.

Q: Let's move on to the more than 320 million at-home coronavirus test kits the Postal Service has shipped to Americans on behalf of the White House. Tell me about how that materialized.

A: We had a call from the White House, and the Department of Health and Human Services was partnering with them. We get lots of calls for lots of things, and I often felt that when we get involved with things, it's other agencies' glory and our cost. That's been my basic position. But this was starting to heat up in terms of being a real requirement. The team was looking at outsourcing it, and I sat down and listened to some of the plans. People were going to get 10 million square feet of buildings and 10,000 people, and I thought, this is not going to work. So I jumped in on the calls about two or three days before Christmas. I put our team together really quickly, and the day after Christmas and everybody worked nonstop.

Forty million orders came in. We have an inventory control system that we put in all the plants. Every plant was tied to Zip codes that it would deliver to. That's why the delivery was so quick; 60% of them got delivered within a day.

When I got my tests, by the time you all had inventory, it was there the next day.

Right now we're shipping a couple hundred thousand a day as we get the orders. It shows you the power of the organization. I told everybody, "Don't treat this like mail. This is inventory. This is deliberate." This is everything that I did in my previous career, and it was just phenomenal how - you know, the first days are always rough when we were making the change, but then once it clicks, the talent and the commitment, it was just fascinating to see. We were shipping 3 million orders a day, like within two weeks.

Synopsys Probed on Allegations It Gave Tech to Huawei, SMIC

Ian King and Jenny Leonard
Wed, April 13, 2022



(Bloomberg) -- Synopsys Inc., the biggest supplier of software used to design semiconductors, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Commerce for possibly passing key technology to banned Chinese companies, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investigators are looking into allegations that Synopsys, working with affiliates in China, provided chip designs and software to Huawei Technologies Co.’s HiSilicon unit for manufacture at Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., said the people, who asked not to be identified because details of the process haven’t been made public. U.S. companies are barred from selling some types of technology to Huawei and SMIC because they’ve been designated as threats to national security by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

Synopsys in December disclosed it had received a subpoena from BIS relating to “transactions with certain Chinese entities,” without specifying when it received the request or providing further details. At the time, the company said it was in compliance with all regulations and was working to respond to the inquiry. Synopsys declined to comment beyond that initial disclosure.

The company’s stock declined as much as 4.3% in New York trading Wednesday, wiping out earlier gains of as much as 3.6%.

Mountain View, California-based Synopsys and its rival Cadence Design Systems Inc. dominate the market for software used to design semiconductors. Their products are essential for Chinese chipmakers trying to lead Beijing’s push to make the country more self reliant in electronic components.

Like many other U.S. companies, Synopsys has done business with Chinese customers through joint ventures in China, the world’s largest market for chips.

That type of arrangement has been thrown into the spotlight by another owner of foundational technology in semiconductors, Arm Ltd. The SoftBank Group Corp.-owned company, whose designs are at the heart of most smartphone processors, is still trying to remove the head of Arm China, more than a year after the board fired him. That’s added to concern that overseas companies risk losing control of their technology in China when working through joint ventures there.

“While the Department does not comment on the potential existence of investigations, BIS vigorously investigates allegations of violations of the Export Administration Regulations, including attempts to transfer controlled items or technologies to or among parties on the Entity List,” BIS said in a statement. “Any enforcement action resulting from an investigation is made public after that investigation has concluded.”

The situation highlights the difficulties U.S. companies are facing amid the growing rivalry between their home country and China, which is the largest and fastest growing market for their technology. To keep investors happy, they need to tap that opportunity without running afoul of increasing restrictions from regulators.

Huawei, a maker of networking gear and once one of the world’s largest smartphone producers, was placed on the U.S. Entity list in May 2019. SMIC, China’s largest chip manufacturer, was placed under restrictions in December 2020. Both Chinese companies have denied any wrongdoing.

California Lawyer Quits Over Allegation Newsom Meddled in Activision Case

Jason Schreier
Wed, April 13, 2022


(Bloomberg) -- A top lawyer for the state of California has resigned, accusing the governor’s office of interfering with a discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard Inc.

Melanie Proctor, the assistant chief counsel for California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said in an email to staff Tuesday night that she was resigning to protest the fact that her boss at the agency, Chief Counsel Janette Wipper, had been abruptly fired by the governor. Both lawyers had already stepped down from the Activision lawsuit earlier this month without explanation. A representative for the two attorneys confirmed that Proctor had resigned and Wipper was fired.

The allegation and loss of the top two lawyers on the case raises questions about the fate of the Activision lawsuit, which accuses the Santa Monica, California-based video game publisher of sexual discrimination and misconduct. The case is currently pending in Los Angeles Superior Court. The lawsuit, which detailed Activision’s “frat boy” culture, led to employee walkouts, calls for the chief executive officer to resign, condemnation from its business partners and a stock plunge that culminated in Microsoft Corp.’s agreement earlier this year to purchase the company for $69 billion.

Proctor said in the email to staff that in recent weeks, California Governor Gavin Newsom and his office “began to interfere” with the Activision suit. “The Office of the Governor repeatedly demanded advance notice of litigation strategy and of next steps in the litigation,” Proctor wrote in the email, which was seen by Bloomberg. “As we continued to win in state court, this interference increased, mimicking the interests of Activision’s counsel.”

Erin Mellon, communications director for Newsom, said that “claims of interference by our office are categorically false” and the governor’s office “will continue to support DFEH in their efforts to fight all forms of discrimination and protect Californians.”

Proctor wrote that Wipper had “attempted to protect” the agency’s independence and was “abruptly terminated” as a result. “I hereby resign, effective April 13, 2022, in protest of the interference and Janette’s termination,” Proctor wrote.

Wipper is “evaluating all avenues of legal recourse including a claim under the California Whistleblower Protection Act,” said her spokeswoman, Alexis Ronickher.

A spokesperson for the governor’s office referred a Bloomberg request for comment to a spokesperson for the DFEH, who said they would not comment on personnel matters. “DFEH will continue to vigorously enforce California’s civil rights and fair housing laws,” a spokesperson said.

The shakeup comes just two weeks after Activision reached a settlement with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $18 million over a similar lawsuit. In a series of court squabbles, California’s lawyers had attempted to block that settlement but were ultimately rejected by a federal judge.

Critics pointed out that $18 million was low for a company of Activision’s scale, and that Wipper’s department had gotten Riot Games Inc., a far smaller company, to pay $100 million last year to settle its own discrimination lawsuit.

Wipper started at the DFEH in 2018 and was reappointed to her position last November. She cultivated a reputation as a legal bulldog, pursuing splashy cases against tech companies such as Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Riot and Tesla Inc. One member of the department, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said that Wipper was widely respected and that she had overhauled the agency for the better. Detractors accused her of being too aggressive at a public agency rather than deferring to civil rights plaintiff’s lawyers.

Jennifer Reisch, an attorney who has worked with Wipper, praised the agency’s transformation in recent years. “For the first time in its history, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing had a strong litigator who was actually flexing the significant muscles that statute and regulations provide to protect workers in its state,” she said in an interview.

In her resignation email, Proctor slammed the governor’s office, writing that “justice should be administered equally, not favoring those with political influence.” She encouraged staff to continue working on the agency’s ongoing litigation “to the best of your abilities.”

AMERICAN MISOGYNY

Oklahoma’s New Abortion Ban Shows How Precarious Reproductive Rights Are

"We don't really know what would happen to laws like this, but it could absolutely be the case that laws like this are legal post-Dobbs."


Stephanie K. Baer
BuzzFeed News Reporter

 April 12, 2022, 

Sean Murphy / AP
Abortion rights advocates gather outside the Oklahoma Capitol on April 5, 2022.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday signed into law legislation banning nearly all abortions at any point during pregnancy — a flagrant violation of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that made the procedure legal nationwide 50 years ago.

The Oklahoma law, one of the harshest abortion bans enacted since Roe, will likely be blocked by the courts — for now — because states cannot ban abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb. But it shows how precarious reproductive rights in the US have become and how emboldened anti-abortion lawmakers already are as the country waits for the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the biggest challenge to abortion rights in decades. In that case, which will be decided in the coming weeks or months, the state of Mississippi is calling on the justices to overturn Roe and uphold its previability ban. If the court does either — or both — even extreme laws like Oklahoma's could become constitutional.

"We don't really know what would happen to laws like this, but it could absolutely be the case that laws like this are legal post-Dobbs," Aziza Ahmed, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told BuzzFeed News.

Under Oklahoma's law, performing an abortion would be a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. The only exception to the ban is in the case of a medical emergency in which the life of the pregnant person is in danger.

If it is not blocked by the courts, the law will take effect 90 days after the state legislature adjourns at the end of May.

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Mississippi's last clinic in the Dobbs case, said on Tuesday that the organization planned to sue Oklahoma to stop this law from taking effect.

“Oklahoma’s total abortion ban is blatantly unconstitutional and will wreak havoc on the lives of people seeking abortion care within and outside the state," Northup said in a statement. "We’ve sued the state of Oklahoma ten times in the last decade to protect abortion access and we will challenge this law as well to stop this travesty from ever taking effect.”


Sue Ogrocki / AP
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt speaks during a news conference in Oklahoma City on May 17, 2021.

For years, laws like Oklahoma's and other previability bans have been struck down by the courts because under Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — the 1992 ruling that said restrictions cannot place an “undue burden” on access — states cannot ban abortion before the point of viability, which is usually around 24 weeks. In 2016, then–Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin vetoed a similar bill that would have made performing abortions punishable by up to three years in prison, saying it wouldn't survive a legal challenge.

But with Donald Trump's election in 2016, anti-abortion activists were able to get the issue back in front of the Supreme Court, which now has a 6–3 conservative majority. And since the justices allowed Texas's six-week ban to take effect last year and indicated during Dobbs arguments that they may be open to overturning Roe or at least chipping away at the viability line, conservative lawmakers have rushed to pass new abortion bans and restrictions.

Despite the wave of anti-abortion legislation making its way through statehouses across the South and the Midwest, the passage of Oklahoma's bill last week caught some observers off guard. The bill, which was passed by the state Senate last year, was added to the state House of Representatives agenda on April 4. It passed the next day in a 70–14 vote with no debate.

What makes Oklahoma's law so extreme is that it prohibits abortions "from conception," as its author, Republican state Sen. Nathan Dahm, proudly said in a tweet, and it also threatens severe penalties for performing the procedure.

"Even the Texas law allows abortions up to six weeks, and by outlawing it entirely and creating criminal penalties for physicians we're basically in the pre-Roe era," Ahmed said, adding that even with the exception, providers will likely be hesitant to perform the procedure out of fear of being criminally punished.

"Needless to say, this is not a good environment in which to provide reproductive healthcare," she said.

And although the law specifically states that a pregnant person cannot be charged "with any criminal offense in the death of her own unborn child," advocates and experts don't trust that officials won't arrest or prosecute people who self-manage their abortions. In Texas, a 26-year-old woman was recently arrested and charged for being involved in a "self-induced abortion." She was later released and prosecutors acknowledged she did not violate any laws.

"Maybe as the laws stand they won't criminalize people who have abortions, but that doesn't mean they won't add it later," said Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of the reproductive justice nonprofit group We Testify. "The anti-abortion movement also used to say we don’t want to criminalize abortion, we just want to make it safer. I mean, that was a fucking lie, right?"


Evelyn Hockstein / Reuter
Patient care coordinator Jennifer Reince answers nonstop phone calls at the Trust Women clinic in Oklahoma City on Dec. 6, 2021.

The signing of Oklahoma's law comes at a time when the state's four abortion clinics have been overwhelmed by patients traveling from Texas. Since SB 8 took effect in September, Oklahoma has provided abortions to 45% of Texans who have sought care elsewhere, more than any other state, according to a recent report by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

Bracey Sherman called the timing of Oklahoma's bill "super, super cruel" in light of the increased demand for abortion care from residents of its neighboring state.

"Oklahoma saw that they were becoming a place where Texans were seeking out abortions, and instead of welcoming and supporting them, just said, 'OK, great, we’re going to turn you away,'" Bracey Sherman told BuzzFeed News. "I'm sorry, what kind of anti-Christian ... being turned away at the end story is that? It's just wild."

Texas and Oklahoma are also among 13 states that have passed so-called trigger bans, which are designed to take effect immediately or through quick state action if Roe falls. But if the 1973 ruling isn't explicitly overturned, Oklahoma's new law gives legislators a chance to test how far they can go to ban abortion entirely, said Tamya Cox-Touré, executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma and cochair of the Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice.

"I can only assume it's a matter of them trying to do everything they can to ensure that abortion access is denied in Oklahoma," Cox-Touré told BuzzFeed News.


Stephanie Baer is a reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.
Contact Stephanie K. Baer at stephanie.baer@buzzfeed.com.

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PRISON NATION USA
Arizona death row prisoner's lawyers say clemency board stacked against him

Clarence Dixon was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002 for the 1978 rape and murder of 21-year-old Deana Bowdoin, an Arizona State University student.

 File Photo courtesy of the Arizona attorney general's office


April 12 (UPI) -- Attorneys for an Arizona death row prisoner have filed a challenge to the state's clemency board, which they say won't give their client a fair consideration because it includes too many former law enforcement officers.

Clarence Dixon, 66, is scheduled to be executed May 11 for the 1978 rape and murder of 21-year-old Deana Bowdoin, an Arizona State University student.

Dixon's attorneys said Monday that the makeup of the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency is stacked against him because three of the five members previously served as law enforcement officers. State law, however, requires that "no more than two members from the same professional discipline shall be members of the board at the same time."

According to the board's website, Sal Freni served with the Phoenix Police Department for 30 years, Louis Quinonez was a federal law enforcement officer for 27 years and Michael Johnson worked on the PPD for 21 years.

There is currently one vacancy and the other two members -- Mina Mendez and Frank Riggs -- are a former lawyer, and former businessman and U.S. congressman, respectively.

"Mr. Dixon is entitled to a fair clemency hearing before an impartial clemency board," Joshua Spears, Dixon's attorney, said in a statement emailed to UPI.

"If the board proceeds with three of its four members being law enforcement officers, it will violate Mr. Dixon's right to a fair hearing that complies with due process and the plain requirements of Arizona law."

Dixon's lawyers also filed a motion in court last week saying their client wasn't mentally competent enough to be executed. They said his execution would violate the 8th Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment, because he has a "well-documented history" of paranoid schizophrenia.

They said two court-appointed psychiatrists found Dixon to be incompetent as part of an unrelated assault case. Then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sandra Day O'Connor found Dixon not guilty by reason of insanity in that case.

They said delusions caused by the mental illness keep him from having a rational understanding of his punishment.

The motion filed Friday challenges Arizona's competency statute, which Dixon's attorneys say is in conflict with the federal constitutional standard.

Arizona officials announced plans to set Dixon's execution date in April 2021. At the time, his lawyer, Dale Baich, said his client experienced "chronic neglect" as a child and has had mental illness for decades. He said the murder case rested "almost entirely" on DNA evidence and that other evidence was inconclusive or excluded Dixon.

Arizona last carried out an execution on July, 23, 2014, that of Joseph Wood. It took 15 doses of a new combination of drugs -- midazolam and hydromorphone -- and 2 hours for Wood to die.

He was the second inmate to be given the two-drug cocktail after Arizona lost its European supplier of pentobarbital. The European Union voted in 2011 to prohibit the sale of the drug to the United States because of its use in executions.

After Wood's death, the state decided to no longer use the midazolam and hydromorphone combination of drugs, effectively implementing a moratorium on executions until an alternate drug cocktail could be legally secured.

PRISON NATION USA

Texas prosecutor may temporarily spare death row prisoner many believe is innocent

LONG READ 
By Jolie McCullough, The Texas Tribune

John Lucio (C) tears up as he speaks at a press conference at Dallas City Hall on Friday concerning the future of his mother, Melissa Lucio, who is on death row. The family is traveling the state and joining state representatives and supporters in fighting for her freedom.

 Photo by Shelby Tauber/The Texas Tribune

April 12 (UPI) -- At a combative legislative hearing, the Cameron County district attorney indicated Tuesday he may step in and stop Melissa Lucio's April 27 execution, creating a new level of uncertainty in what many believe is the case of an innocent woman facing lethal injection.

Although he was not district attorney when Lucio was convicted, Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz did request the execution date and has the power to withdraw the request. During a heated exchange with a bipartisan group of lawmakers pushing to halt Lucio's execution, Saenz initially stated he would not intervene.

As outrage has built to a crescendo over Lucio's case, Saenz has previously stated -- and reaffirmed in the hearing -- that he stood by the process that led to Lucio's conviction and the many court rulings since that have upheld her death sentence.

But after about an hour of urging from the lawmakers, Saenz's stance shifted. He said he believes his intervention will be unnecessary because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will likely stop Lucio's execution. If it doesn't, he said he would, though he didn't provide details.

"If defendant Lucio does not get a stay by a certain day," he said, "then I will do what I have to do and stop it."

Because of Saenz's conflicting statements, and without any court motions or rulings, it's still not certain Lucio's execution will be stopped. Lucio's lawyer, Tivon Schardl, seemed skeptical outside the committee room but said he would take Saenz at his word. Saenz's office did not immediately respond to questions following the hearing.

State Rep. Jeff Leach, a Plano Republican and chair of the interim Criminal Justice Reform Committee, said the lawmakers would hold Saenz to his word.

"My understanding of his remarks to the committee were that if we don't get a stay or clemency issued ... then he will step in and withdraw his request for an execution date," Leach said after the hearing. "That was unequivocal to the committee, and we got it on tape."

Reasonable doubts have lingered over Lucio's guilt since the day 14 years ago she was convicted of murdering her daughter, questions that will remain even if her April execution date is canceled.

It's widely debated whether the fatal head trauma that killed 2-year-old Mariah Alvarez was an accident, and, if it wasn't, who inflicted the injury. The case against Lucio was built almost entirely around an ambiguous "confession" obtained after hours of police interrogation, and the judge at her trial barred expert testimony that might have explained why she would admit to police things she didn't do.

For now, Texas plans to execute Lucio in two weeks. She would become the first Latina executed by the state in the modern era of the death penalty and the first woman killed by Texas since 2014.

As the 53-year-old's execution date nears, concerns about her possible innocence -- greatest among them whether Mariah's death was caused by abuse or an accidental fall down the stairs -- have only been amplified.

Forestalling Lucio's impending execution has become an international cause, her name and picture splashed across newspapers and websites around the world. An ever-growing lineup of her former jurors, foreign ambassadors, celebrities and more than half of the Texas House of Representatives has urged the state parole board and governor to spare Lucio's life.

There are too many unaddressed problems with the police investigation and her trial to carry out her death sentence without more investigation, her supporters insist.

State Rep. Victoria Neave Criado speaks at a rally organized at Dallas City Hall to free Melissa Lucio, a Latina mother on death row who's execution date is set to April 27, 2022. Photo by Shelby Tauber/The Texas Tribune

"The trial left me thinking Melissa Lucio was a monster, but now I see her as a human being who was made to seem evil because I didn't have all the evidence I needed to make that decision," Melissa Quintanilla, the foreperson on Lucio's jury, said in an affidavit to the parole board this week. "Ms. Lucio deserves a new trial and for a new jury to hear this evidence."

Four more of Lucio's 12 jurors have also asked the parole board and the governor to stop Lucio's execution.

Outside of court intervention or a motion from Saenz, Lucio's execution can be stopped if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends either changing her sentence from death to life in prison or postponing the execution date for up to 120 days. Gov. Greg Abbott would have to accept the board's recommendation, which is not expected until two days before Lucio's April 27 execution date. Abbott also has the power on his own to delay the execution for 30 days, but he has never exercised that authority in a death penalty case during his time in office.

Pressure has also been mounting on Saenz to withdraw Lucio's death warrant. Before Tuesday's hearing, he indicated he did not intend to halt the execution.

"Melissa Lucio has already thoroughly litigated the issues raised during her defense, including the theories that her statement was coerced and that her two-year-old daughter Mariah Alvarez fell down the stairs. The jury rejected both of these arguments," Saenz said in a statement to The Texas Tribune last week. "As officers of the court and servants of our community, we cannot allow the rule of law to be suspended and substituted by a court of public opinion."

State and federal courts have dismissed Lucio's petitions at almost every step of the appeals process, which is meant to minimize the chance of a wrongful execution. For the prisoner's lawyers, as well as a majority of judges on a conservative federal court, some of those rejections shine a light on broader problems with the death penalty and how hard it is for courts to overturn even weak convictions.

"To these eyes, this case is a systemic failure, producing a train of injustice which only the hand of the Governor can halt," Judge Patrick Higginbotham, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan to the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in a footnote of the court's latest denial for Lucio last month.

The "confession"

In 2007, emergency personnel rushed to a Harlingen apartment newly occupied by 38-year-old Lucio, her common-law husband and nine of her 12 children. The family had called 911 after finding Mariah unresponsive in the bedroom where she had been sleeping, according to statements given to police. The toddler wasn't breathing, and her body was covered with bruises and what police believed to be a bite mark. An X-ray revealed her arm had recently been broken.

The medical examiner later concluded that Mariah was severely beaten and ruled her death a homicide caused by blunt force head trauma. At least one other pathologist who has examined the evidence since disagrees with the definitive finding of abuse and homicide.

The signs of child abuse led police to believe Mariah was murdered, and her mother -- thought to be the person most often home alone with the child -- was the prime suspect. The night of her daughter's death, Lucio told police Mariah had fallen down the steps at their old apartment a couple days earlier. She said she only saw the aftermath, so didn't know how many stairs Mariah had fallen down. At first, the child seemed fine, she said, but over time became lethargic and would not eat. Under police interrogation, pregnant with twins, Lucio vehemently and repeatedly denied ever abusing her daughter.

Until she didn't.

After about three hours denying accusations hurled by multiple police investigators, Lucio began to agree with Texas Ranger Victor Escalon, who leaned in closely and spoke softly with reassurances, a video of the interrogation shows.

Lucio said she spanked Mariah but didn't think she could have caused harm to the extent shown in the pictures of her child's body that police kept pushing in front of her. When Escalon suggested Lucio bit Mariah, Lucio shook her head. When he pushed her again, she said she did. He asked her to explain.

"What do you want me to say? I'm responsible for it," Lucio said.

For about two more hours, Lucio conceded to Escalon. She said she guessed she spanked Mariah out of frustration, a word police repeatedly suggested to her. She strongly denied responsibility for what Escalon believed was a pinch mark on Mariah's vulva, but the Ranger insisted she "get it over with." She stared at the photo of her daughter's body and then commented.

"I guess I did it," she said. When he asked how, she shrugged and said "Probably pinched her or something."

Lucio consistently denied beating Mariah across the head, however, or knocking her head in any way. But police and prosecutors believed Lucio's admissions to other abuses would lead a jury to infer she had also caused the fatal injury. They were right.

John Lucio speaks at Dallas City Hall on Friday at a press conference concerning his mother's future. 

Photo by Shelby Tauber/The Texas Tribune

The conviction

At trial, Escalon told the jury he knew right away that Lucio was guilty. He saw a quiet woman, slouching her head down without asking for an attorney and arrived at his personal verdict.

"Right there and then, I knew she did something," he said from the witness box.

He could tell from her body language and demeanor that she wanted to confess, he said, adding that "if you get somebody that is being honest, they're going to be upset with you."

Escalon's testimony alarmed the lawyers who would later step in to handle Lucio's appeals. Some of the techniques used in the interrogation are known to be coercive, her lawyers said, especially with vulnerable people. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, about 12% of convictions later found to be wrongful stem at least in part from false confessions.

"You've decided the person is guilty and the whole purpose is to get a statement of admission," said Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at The Innocence Project, who said the idea of a "human lie detector" has also been renounced.

Escalon, now the South Texas regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, declined to comment for this story, instead referring questions to the Cameron County district attorney's office.

Dental molds, finger nail clippings and Lucio's ring were taken to seek matches to injuries on Mariah's body, but none of the evidence was ever tested, according to trial testimony. With Lucio's interrogation statements in hand, the prosecution didn't need to test for things like DNA, the district attorney, Armando Villalobos, said at trial.

Villalobos would later be sent to federal prison for corruption in his office that occurred around the time of Lucio's trial, found to have accepted bribes for lenient prosecutorial action.

Lucio has since recanted her admissions, and supporters have long argued they were false and coerced. Lucio's lawyers intend to file new appeals based on new expert analysis that they say shows Mariah's death, as well as much of the bruising on her body, could have been caused by a fall down the stairs and subsequent head injury.

"They just kept throwing so many words at me, and I just told them I'm responsible for Mariah's bruises," Lucio said in an interview for a documentary released in 2020. "They wanted to hear something."

Lucio's advocates also argue the jury never got to hear critical testimony that could explain why Lucio, a longtime victim of sexual abuse and domestic violence, might falsely confess. State district Judge Arturo Nelson refused to allow a social worker and psychologist to testify for Lucio's innocence defense at trial.

Nelson found the clinical social worker unqualified to analyze body language -- despite Escalon having done so without listed qualifications. And he said the psychologist's expected testimony to cast doubt on Lucio's statements wasn't relevant because Lucio never admitted in the interrogation to killing her child, only abusing her.

It was that decision that rattled one of the most conservative appeals courts in the nation.

"The trial court's conclusion was inconsistent with the reality of this trial," a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in 2019. The judges added "the State's argument that Lucio struck the fatal blow relied on an inference from the statements that she abused Mariah."

In the years that followed Lucio's convictions, Texas courts rejected her petitions alleging the witnesses' exclusion kept her from presenting a complete defense of her innocence. Testimony shedding light on Lucio's body language or explaining why an abused woman would behave a certain way under police interrogation, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found, had little relevance to how voluntary Lucio's statement was.

In the federal appellate process, it was the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that temporarily put the brakes on Lucio's sentence. In 2019, the three-judge panel determined the judge's decision was indeed harmful and intended to send the case back to lower courts to address the problem. But Texas asked for the full court to again weigh the case and, in a rare move, the judges accepted.

Ten of the court's 17 judges agreed to deny Lucio's appeal last year, with seven of those 10 joining an opinion that agreed with Nelson's exclusion of the witnesses. They wrote that the psychologist's report, which detailed what he was expected to testify, did "at no point ... come close even to hinting that any of these statements were false."

Three of the 10 denying judges, though, were still concerned with the trial judge's decision. But they believed their hands were tied by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a controversial 1996 federal law passed in a tough-on-crime era that limits both the allowable number of death penalty appeals as well as their paths to success.

"The [dissenting judges] express well their view that there was expert testimony that, if jurors had only heard it, could have impacted the verdict. We are all, though, working within the constraints of AEDPA," wrote Judge Leslie Southwick, a President George W. Bush appointee.

"This case, though, is a clear example that justice to a defendant may necessitate a more comprehensive review of state-court evidentiary rulings than is presently permissible," he added.

Federal appeals in death penalty cases are meant to be a check against constitutional errors by state courts, according to Rob Owen, a former death penalty law instructor at the University of Texas at Austin. Since AEDPA passed, however, federal courts can't rule independently on possible violations. Instead, Owen said, they must now defer to state courts' rulings and can correct them only if the state court has "gone wildly out of bounds."

"So ever since 1996, federal courts have been more limited in their power to correct errant state court judgements, and that's what really I think what you see in Ms. Lucio's case," he said. "There's a great risk in a case like this where a court seems to be saying there appears to be maybe an innocent person about to be executed, and we can't do anything about it."

John and his wife, Michelle, after a press conference in Dallas on Friday. 

Photo by Shelby Tauber/The Texas Tribune

A family in trouble

The life of Lucio and her family has never been without strain. She was raised by a single mother with five siblings, and her mother's boyfriend sexually assaulted her for years starting at age 6, her lawyer reported at trial.

She got married at 16 and had five children before she was 24. Her husband was reportedly abusive physically and emotionally, and Lucio became addicted to cocaine.

After her husband abandoned her at age 26, she moved in with a new man, Robert Alvarez. She had seven more children, with Mariah being the youngest. Lucio's older children reported Alvarez abused Lucio, and a school principal once reported he saw Alvarez punch her while the family was homeless, living in a park, according to court records.

Child Protective Services was routinely involved in the family's life, with reports of neglect sometimes resulting in mediation, according to trial testimony. Lucio's lawyers reported three of Lucio's children were born with cocaine in their system, including Mariah.

Lucio and Alvarez's children were removed by the state when Mariah was two weeks old. During Mariah's time in foster care, she was found to have a physical disability that hampered her walking. Mariah had reportedly fallen on her head and been knocked unconscious in foster care. Lucio's oldest son said the child's disability was never disclosed to the family.

After two years of visitations and Lucio's repeated negative drug tests, the children were returned three months before Mariah died. Lucio told police she had been clean for a year on the night her daughter died.

Multiple children told police shortly after Mariah's death that Lucio never abused them, but they did point suspicion elsewhere for potential abuse or causes of the child's death.

They said the boys were often violent with each other and sometimes the girls, including Mariah. Foster parents reported the boys bit and hit each other while they were in their care, according to Lucio's appellate briefings. Lucio's second-oldest daughter, 20 at the time of Mariah's death, said she told police and Lucio's lawyers that her 15-year-old sister would abuse Mariah when their parents weren't around, including slamming her head on the ground a week before the child's death.

"I can remember the noise it made to this day," Daniella Lucio said in a sworn affidavit in 2018. She added that her 17-year-old brother and mother had tried to intervene in the sibling abuse, and she believed her mother admitted to the bruises because Lucio didn't want her daughter to get in trouble.

One of the children, 9 at the time, told investigators that he saw Mariah fall down the stairs. Two months before Mariah's death, a CPS case worker reported during a home visit that two of the teenaged girls were in the apartment alone with Mariah and her 3-year-old sister, according to a court briefing. The case worker noted with concern that the 3-year-old had started to go down the stairs unsupervised.

The reports from the children and CPS employee did not make it in front of the jurors, causing Lucio's family to denounce her defense attorney, Peter Gilman. They faulted him for not calling the children, even those who were adults at the time, to testify on behalf of their mother. Their skepticism heightened when Gilman accepted a job to work for the prosecutor about a year after the trial. Gilman did not respond to questions for this story.

Aside from Saenz's potential action, Lucio's lawyers plan to file new appeals in court. But after years of rejections, they are also putting hope in the hands of the Texas parole board

Aaron Michaels hugs John Lucio at Dallas City Hall on Friday. Michaels is the husband of Kimberly McCarthy, who was executed on death row in 2013. 

Photo by Shelby Tauber/The Texas Tribune

The parole board typically votes two days before an execution. Though it rarely recommends a delay of execution, it did so in 2019 for Rodney Reed, whose guilt is also widely doubted. The Court of Criminal Appeals stopped Reed's execution hours later, however, leaving it unknown if Abbott would have accepted the board's recommendation.

Even with the cards stacked against them, Lucio and her family remained hopeful even before Saenz's change in position. John Lucio, the prisoner's oldest son, has visited his mother regularly, he said at a public showing of the documentary on Lucio in an Austin church last month. He has been steadfast in his hope that Lucio's execution date won't come to pass, but he still has to hide his fear in his now-weekly visits to prison.

"What makes it harder is knowing that she is an innocent woman," he said last month, surrounded by family members. "Knowing the fact that we have the evidence here to show and still we can't get no help from the court systems."

John Lucio cried throughout Tuesday's hearing. Afterward, he said he wanted to believe Saenz when he said he would stop Lucio's execution if need be, but he was still asking supporters to ask the parole board and governor to take action as well.

"I want to put that faith in him and believe that he's not going to allow it to happen," he said.

RELATED More than half of the Texas House wants to stop the execution of Melissa Lucio

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, non-partisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Kamala Harris announces OSHA program to protect workers from heat-related injuries


During a visit to Philadelphia Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a new program by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to begin nationwide workplace heat inspections in more than 70 high-risk industries for the first time. 

Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/UPI | License Photo

April 12 (UPI) -- Vice President Kamala Harris announced a new program by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to protect workers from heat-related injuries.

Speaking at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 in Philadelphia, Harris said OSHA was initiating the National Emphasis Program on heat, under which the agency will begin nationwide workplace heat inspections in more than 70 high-risk industries for the first time.

As part of the program, OSHA said it will proactively initiate inspections in indoor and outdoor work settings when the National Weather Service issues a heat warning or advisory for a local area. Also on days when the heat index is 80 degrees or higher, OSHA inspectors and compliance specialists will engage in outreach and technical assistance to keep workers safe.

"We're going to monitor to make sure that the workers aren't out there without us making sure that they are receiving all of the protections that they are entitled to receive," Harris said. "And we're not going to stop there.

In further remarks before the sheet metal workers union, Harris said that she and President Joe Biden strive "to lead the most pro-union administration in America's history," citing their efforts to protect and expand workers' rights to organize.

"Unions create stronger communities. They bring people together. And they, of course, protect workers from things like harassment and discrimination. And they give workers a voice," she said. "Put simply, unions move our nation forward. And the American people know it."

Harris cited her work on the White House Labor Task Force, which she chairs with Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, after it drafted a report in February including recommendations to make it easier for laborers to organize and bargain collectively, and called on about a dozen agencies to prioritize federal grants to create union jobs.

"This administration is not afraid to say the word union," said Walsh. "It's not afraid to say the words collective bargaining and talk about the importance of collective bargaining, about workers' rights, about health and safety protections, those things that you fight for, that you work for every single day."

Harris also touted the provisions for unions included in the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.

"It will put thousands of union workers, carpenters, and pipefitters, and plumbers and, yes, sheet metal workers, to work across the country," she said.