Greene County Democrat

Category: Crime

  • Emmett Till’s accuser admits it was all a lie

    emmett-till

    By Stacy M. Brown (The Washington Informer/NNPA Member)

    More than six decades after the horrific, racially-motivated murder of Emmett Till, the White woman who accused the Chicago teenager of verbally and physically accosting her in Money, Miss., in 1955, has admitted she lied, according to a new book.

    Till had allegedly whistled at and groped Carolyn Bryant, a 21-year-old White woman, while at a country store in the small town.

    After the encounter, Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, and J.W. Milam tracked young Emmett down, kidnapped him, tortured him, shot him, and then tied his battered body to a cotton gin fan using barbed wire and dumped him in the muddy Tallahatchie River. Later, the two men were acquitted of the murder by an all-White, all-male jury after an hour’s deliberation. Till’s brutal killing and photos of his open casket at his funeral helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.

    During the trial, Carolyn Bryant testified that Emmett, who was 14, had made physical and verbal advances toward her, a sensational claim that increased tensions surrounding the case. She testified that Emmett had grabbed and threatened her inside the store – and that he had used an “unprintable” word when he told her he had been intimate “with White women before.”

    But according to a 2007 interview, newly revealed in the book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” Carolyn Bryant admits that it never happened.

    “That part’s not true,” she told writer Timothy Tyson, according to “Vanity Fair,” though she claimed she could not recall what happened the rest of the evening at her husband’s country store, where Emmett stopped by briefly on Aug. 24, 1955, to buy two cents worth of gum.

    Till was shot in the head and was found with barbed wire wrapped around his neck; one of his eyes was gouged out. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she is quoted as saying. Bryant’s testimony was out of the earshot of the jury, but helped to frame the case publicly.

    “I was just scared to death,” she said in court. The two killers later admitted their guilt, after their acquittals.

    Emmett Till’s murder became the flashpoint in the American Civil Rights Movement. Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother, had even insisted on an open casket at his funeral, leading to photographs of his battered corpse being spread across the country, which helped focus public attention on what was happening in the heart of the country.

    In 2004, the FBI reopened the case to see if any accomplices could be hauled to court, but a grand jury decided three years later that there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges.

    The young Carolyn Bryant went into hiding after the murder trial — divorcing and marrying twice more — and remained mum on the case until she gave the interview with Tyson, the “New York Post” reported.

    Bryant is now known as Carolyn Bryant Donham. Donham told Tyson that she “felt tender sorrow” for Emmett’s mother, who died in 2003, but Tyson doesn’t mention if Donham expressed guilt or apologized.

    Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks has said she thought about Emmett when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., a few months after his death.

    The shocking crime was memorialized in the arts and literature; in Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s play “Dreaming Emmett,” a Langston Hughes poem, and a song by Bob Dylan.

    The whereabouts of the now-82-year-old Donham are unknown.

    The Washington Informer is a member publication of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Learn more about becoming a member at http://www.nnpa.org.

  • Obama cuts sentences of hundreds of drug offenders

     

    By Kevin Liptak, CNN White House Producer

       president-barack-obama   

    President Barack Obama on Tuesday, January 17, 2017 reduced or eliminated the sentences for hundreds more non-violent drug offenders.

    The move brings Obama well beyond his most recent predecessors, who used their commutation powers more sparingly. He’s now reduced sentences for 1,385 individuals, the vast majority of whom are serving time for crimes related to distribution or production of narcotics.

     

    Many of those whose punishments he’s reduced were incarcerated for crimes involving crack cocaine, which came with mandatory sentences that were longer than those for the powdered version of the drug. The discrepancy — a facet of a decades-long war on drugs — overwhelmingly affected African-Americans.

     

    Obama had hoped for legislation to permanently end the disparities in sentencing laws. While an unlikely group of activists have pushed in Congress for a bill that would alter mandatory minimums and reform the prison system, a rancorous political climate during last year’s presidential campaign prevented progress.

     

    Instead, Obama encouraged Americans serving lengthy terms to apply for clemency, prompting a flood of applications to his Justice Department. A group of legal aid groups established the Clemency Project to help screen applicants and complete the required paperwork.

     

    An onslaught of requests required Obama’s aides to establish a process for vetting applications, which began backing up in the Pardon Attorney’s office.

    At the beginning of 2017, 13,568 petitions for clemency were still pending. The Obama administration has received more than 30,000 petitions over eight years.

     

    The power to grant pardons and commutations is written into the US constitution as one of the president’s clearest unilateral prerogatives. With large batches often coming in the final weeks of an administration, an act of clemency cannot be challenged in court or overturned by Congress.

     

    President George W. Bush granted 189 pardons and 11 commutations, including reducing the prison term for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators in the probe of the leak of the name of a CIA operative.

     

    President Bill Clinton issued a flurry of pardons on his final day in office, including for financier Marc Rich and the president’s half-brother Roger Clinton. In sum, Clinton ordered 396 pardons and 61 commutations.

     

    No recent commander-in-chief, however, has used the powers as liberally as Obama to enact a criminal justice reform agenda. Writing in the Harvard Law Review earlier this month, Obama said his push toward eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and offering clemency to non-violent drug offenders was informed by his own history.

     

    “This is an effort that has touched me personally, and not just because I could have been caught up in the system myself had I not gotten some breaks as a kid,” Obama wrote, recalling meetings at the White House with recipients of his clemency grants who had turned their life around.

     

    “By shifting the narrative to the way clemency can be used to correct injustices in the system — and reminding people of the value of second chances — I worked to reinvigorate the clemency power and to set a precedent that will make it easier for future presidents, governors and other public officials to use it for good,” Obama wrote.

     

    While President-elect Donald Trump has yet to detail his planned use of clemency powers, there’s little optimism about criminal justice reform advocates that he’ll continue Obama’s efforts. Trump ran on a “law and order” platform, though rarely addressed issues of clemency or sentencing on the campaign trail.

     

    “I’m looking at various predictors to try and decide where he might go. He wants to make America safe again. We know based on data that locking up low-level offenders won’t make America safe,” said Jessica Jackson Sloan, the national director and co-founder of #cut50, a group committed to reducing the US prison population by half. “I’m hopeful that we’ll be surprised,” Sloan said.

     

  • Immigrant rights advocates hold rally against Jeff Sessions in front of his Birmingham office


    On Saturday, January 14, 2016, the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ACIJ) supported by other organizations held a rally on the steps of the Vance Federal Building in Birmingham, Alabama to protest Trump’s nomination of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to become the U. S. Attorney General.

    200 protestors gathered on the street in front of the building, which houses Jeff Sessions district office. The protestors held signs with quotes from Jeff Sessions showing his bias against immigrants, children were dressed with butterfly wings and a giant puppet of Trump with a red hat with the words “Make America Alabama Again!” on it.

    Several speakers, who were hard working immigrants, who had been in Alabama for many years spoke out about Jeff Sessions support for Alabama’s draconian HB56 anti-immigration law. Parts of the law have been challenged and beaten in the courts but the law was the strictest in the nation and forced many undocumented immigrants to flee the state. Speakers addressed their fears that if Sessions is confirmed as U. S. Attorney General that he will support policies that will lead to the deportation of many more immigrants and break up families who have been in this country for many years.

    Several of the speakers were young people who were brought to this country as children by their parents and who participated in President Obama’s DACA program which allowed them to go to college and to work without fear of deportation. These young people are often referred to as “dreamers” because they fought so hard for this program to grow up and become educated and productive U. S. citizens.

    One young lady on the DACA program said, “ I came to this country at three years old. I have lived in Alabama as long as I can remember. I am a participant in the DACA program. I am going to college here in Birmingham and I am fearful of the future if Jeff Sessions becomes Attorney General. I am an Alabamian and I want to live here and contribute to society and my community here. I am undocumented and fear what President Trump assisted by Attorney General Sessions will do to me to end my dreams.”

    Other speakers spoke to Senator Sessions voting record in the U. S. Senate in opposition to voting rights, civil rights, womens rights, labor rights and many basic rights enjoyed by people in this country.

  • Dylann Roof sentenced to death for Charleston Church Massacre

    JON SCHUPPE and JAMIE MORRISON

    An admitted white supremacist was condemned to death Tuesday for massacring nine black worshipers who’d invited him to study the Bible with them at a Charleston, S.C., church, ending a two-phase federal trial that exposed the killer’s hate-fueled motives and plumbed the chasms of grief left by the victims’ deaths.

                The jury, the same that convicted Dylann Roof in the murders last month, announced its verdict after deliberating less than three hours.

    170110-dylann-roof-mn-1406_4f73cdf611a47da154c8846f9d399b70-nbcnews-ux-2880-1000Dylann Roof speaks in the courtroom in Charleston on Jan. 10. Robert Maniscalco

    Roof, 22, who represented himself in the penalty phase, did very little to persuade the panel to spare his life. He declined to present any witnesses or evidence, blocked standby defense lawyers’ attempts to raise questions about his mental health, and suggested in his closing statement that arguing for life in prison wasn’t worth the effort.

    As the verdicts were announced, Roof stared straight ahead, or looked down. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gergel scheduled formal sentencing for Wednesday morning. Roof then asked for a lawyer to help file a motion for a new trial, which Gergel said he’d consider before the sentencing, but added that the request didn’t seem justified.

    Melvin Graham, whose sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd, was among the nine killed, said after the verdict that his family had received justice. But he added, “This is a very hollow victory because my sister is still gone.”

    Graham said he did not argue with the death penalty for Roof.

    “He just took them away from us because he wanted to. He decided the day, the hour, the moment, my sister was going to die. And now someone is going to do that for him,” Graham said.

    Graham also argued that if Roof had a Muslim sounding name, he would have been called a radicalized terrorist. “He was radicalized, but not in the way some people think. He radicalized himself to think he had to act on it just like any other terrorist.”

    Roof’s relatives said in a statement that they would “always love Dylann” but would “struggle as long as we live to understand why he committed this horrible attack, which caused so much pain to so many good people.”

    His defense lawyers, sidelined for much of the trial, said the sentenced meant that “this case will not be over for a very long time.” They also expressed dismay that the trial “shed so little light on the reasons for this tragedy.”

    Roof now becomes the 63rd person on federal death row, and the first to be put there since Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted in 2015.

    Nevertheless, it will likely be years before he is put to death; the federal government has put executions on hold out of concerns about lethal injection drugs, and appeals could put off the date even further. The last federal execution took place in 2003.

    And Roof still faces a second trial, by the state of South Carolina, where he also faces the death penalty. The date of that trial has not been determined.

    From the start of the trial, Roof’s guilt was hardly in doubt.It took the 12-person jury a little over two hours to convict Roof last month on all 33 counts, including two dozen that fall under federal hate crime statutes.

    During that phase of the trial, defense lawyer David Bruck put no witnesses on the stand and raised no objections when prosecutors played In it, Roof admitted he was guilty and that the motive was to spark a race war. He told the FBI men he was surprised he was able to kill as many people as he did with his .45-caliber Glock pistol.

    Witnesses included two women who survived the shooting, Felicia Sanders and Polly Sheppard, who testified that Roof told her, “I’m going to leave you here to tell the story.”

    For the penalty phase, a judge allowed Roof to represent himself, but only after conducting a competency hearing that remains under seal. Roof told the jury that “there is nothing wrong with me psychologically,” and that he chose to mount his own defense to prevent lawyers from presenting mental health evaluations.

     

  • Community pressure and legal action force State of Alabama to agree to re-open drivers licensing offices in the Black Belt counties

    According to a recent statement by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) the U.S. Department of Transportation the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), Alabama’s department of motor vehicles, entered an agreement that fully restores the hours of driver’s license issuing offices in nine predominately African-American counties in the Black Belt region of the state. This agreement is the result of community pressure and legal action against the policy limiting access to driver licensing offices in rural parts of the state, especially in the Alabama Black Belt.
    In addition, for the next two years, the agreement requires ALEA to seek pre-approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation before initiating any driver’s license office closures or other reductions in service.
    On September 30, 2015, ALEA announced that it would eliminate services at 31 driver license field offices in 30 counties throughout the State of Alabama. The following month, ALEA announced that it would reopen the closed field offices one to two days per month.
    On December 9, 2015, DOT informed ALEA that it had determined that these service reductions could potentially come into conflict with ALEA’s responsibilities to ensure non-discrimination as a recipient of Federal financial assistance under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. On that date, DOT further notified ALEA that it was opening a formal Title VI investigation into whether the reduction of driver license services discriminated against African Americans and/or other populations on the basis of race, color, or national origin.
    In October 2015 the Alabama New South Coalition and the SOS Coalition for Justice and Democracy held a caravan, which visited all Driver License offices in the Black Belt that were closed by Governor Bentley. The Governor says the offices, which were only open once a week to test and license new drivers, were closed in a budget cutting move to save money for the state. He closed 31 offices statewide in rural counties, which included 11 of 13 offices in the Alabama Black Belt counties.
    Since Alabama recently adopted a stringent voter ID law, which requires a state issued photo identification document to vote, many Black leaders considered this another attack on voting and an effort to suppress the Black vote in the state.

    In Greene County the Caravan attracted more than 60 people who demonstrated in front of the Greene County Courthouse mid-day holding signs and chanting “No Shutdowns.” Several local political leaders including County Commissioner Lester Brown and School Board member, Carol P. Zippert, addressed the crowd and urged that the offices be reopened on a weekly basis.
    The agreement states that the Counties of Greene, Bullock, Butler, Hale, Lowndes and Perry will have their drivers license offices open one day per week; Macon County 2 days per week; Wilcox County will open 3 days per month; and Bibb Counties will open 2 days per month.
    This important agreement with ALEA comes one year after the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), Covington and Burling, LLP, and local counsel Herman N. Johnson, Jr. filed a lawsuit on behalf of Greater Birmingham Ministries, the Alabama NAACP, and four individual voters challenging Alabama’s Photo ID Law and the ALEA office closings as violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the U.S. Constitution.
    The LDF noted that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s findings validate the necessity of this lawsuit and confirm the significant hurdles that our clients and other Black and Latino Alabamians face in getting the photo ID needed to vote. These findings also prove that Alabama was wrong in repeatedly arguing that the ALEA closures did not have a disparate impact on Black voters. LDF’s lawsuit will continue to press for the elimination the Photo ID Law, a discriminatory barrier to voting for thousands of people of color.
    “Alabama’s decision in 2015 to close driver’s license offices in most of its majority Black counties was an egregious act of racial discrimination,” said Sherrilyn A. Ifill, LDF’s President and Director Counsel. “The ALEA office closings severely limited Black people’s access to transportation and to the photo ID needed to vote in the 2016 elections. We commend the work of the U.S. Department of Transportation in thoroughly investigating this issue and welcome the restoration of services to these rural communities.”

  • Police arrest NAACP protesters at Senator Jeff Sessions’ Mobile office

    By Prescotte Stokes III, AL.com

    protestors-sitting-in-sessions-officeProtestors sitting in Sessions office

                Six people including NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks have been arrested during a sit-in staged at the Mobile office of Sen. Jeff Sessions. The group was protesting Sessions’ nomination by President-elect Donald Trump to be U. S. Attorney General.

    While there were about 30 protesters at the sit-in when it began around midday on Tuesday, many of them left before the arrests were made by the Mobile Police Department just before 7:00 p.m. The NAACP and other organizations held similar protests outside Senator Sessions offices in Birmingham, Montgomery, Huntsville and Dothan.

    The remaining members that were arrested were: Alabama State Conference President, Benard Simelton, Humanity in Action Fellow, Devon Crawford, the President of Mobile Chapter 5044, Lizzetta McConnell, National Director of the Youth and College Division of NAACP, Stephen Green and Joe Keffer.

    NAACP President Cornell William Brooks tweeted shortly before 6:30 p.m. that he believed he and others occupying the office were soon to be arrested.”The building manager has requested that we leave. And the police have just arrived. We are about to be arrested.”

    Earlier today, Brooks joined Alabama NAACP President Bernard Simelton to rebuke Sessions — President-elect Trump’s nominee for Attorney General. The national organization and the Mobile chapter said they would sit in Sessions’ office until he withdraws his attorney general nomination or they get arrested.

    “As a matter of conscience and conviction, we can neither be mute nor mumble our opposition to Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions becoming attorney general of the United States,” Brooks said in a statement.  “Sen. Sessions has callously ignored the reality of voter suppression but zealously prosecuted innocent civil rights leaders on trumped up charges of voter fraud. As an opponent of the vote, he can’t be trusted to be the chief law enforcement officer for voting rights.”

    Shortly after the press conference held by the NAACP at Sen. Sessions Mobile office located at 41 West I-65 Service Road North, Sarah Isgur Flores, spokeswoman for Sen. Sessions released this statement.

    “Jeff Sessions has dedicated his career to upholding the rule of law, ensuring public safety and prosecuting government corruption.  Many African-American leaders who’ve known him for decades attest to this and have welcomed his nomination to be the next Attorney General.  These false portrayals of Senator Sessions will fail as tired, recycled, hyperbolic charges that have been thoroughly rebuked and discredited. From the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Sheriffs Association to civil rights leaders and African-American elected officials, to victims’ rights organizations, Senator Sessions has inspired confidence from people across the country that he will return the Department of Justice to an agency the American people can be proud of once again.”

    According to Mobile County jail records all six of the arrested members have been charged with second-degree criminal trespassing. McConnell, the President of Mobile Chapter of the NAACP has a court date set for her charge on January 30 at 8:00 a.m.

     

     

  • Statement by Alabama New South Coalition (ANSC) and the Save Ourselves Movement for Justice and Democracy (SOS) opposing the nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as U.S. Attorney General

    Shown above : Albert Turner,  Albert Turner leading march across Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965; Turner is second row with Bob Mance behind Rev. Hosea Williams and John Lewis.. Albert Turner leading march across Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965; Turner is second row with Bob Mance behind Rev. Hosea Williams and John Lewis. Jeff Sessions, Albert Turner displays redistricting map of Perry County to his wife Evelyn and assosicaite Spencer Hogue, Jr. The Three were indicted, tried and found not guilty of 72 charges of voter fraud.,Alabama State Troopers give two minute warning to marchers on Bloody Sunday; Albert Turner is standing in second row with white cap.

    December 10, 2016

    The Board of Directors of the ANSC and the Steering Committee of SOS are issuing this joint statement in opposition to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to be the next Attorney General of the United States. We urge the United States Senate not to confirm the nomination of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to become Attorney General.
    We are compelled to issue this statement, because as citizens and residents of Alabama, we are intimately knowlegable and keenly aware of the harm that Senator Sessions has brought to our people and our state. We are issuing this statement as a warning to people in other states of the United States that Jeff Sessions is singularly unfit, manifestly unqualified and totally insensitive to serve as the chief law enforcement agent for our great nation.
    We are especially concerned that as Attorney General, he will be charged with enforcing civil rights, voting rights, and human rights laws, as well as being the primary caretaker of our criminal justice system. A criminal justice system and the policing mechanisms that support it are in urgent need of reform. By education, temperament and actions over the past 40 years, Jeff Sessions has shown himself to be unfit, unqualified and insensitive to serve in this critical position.
    Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (Jeff) III was born in Selma on December 24, 1946. He grew up and attended schools in Wilcox County, Alabama, before school integration. He attended Huntington College and University of Alabama law school, graduating in 1973. He was raised in one of the poorest counties in America, with an 80% Black majority population, during the time of “Jim Crow” and before the changes brought by the Civil Rights Movement. Nothing he has said or done in the 40 years of his professional life indicates any effort on his part to re-examine, reconsider or modify his cultural world view of “white supremacy” into which he was born, bred and operates, up to and including his current service in the United States Senate.
    We are especially concerned with his selective prosecution in 1985 of the “Perry County Three” – Albert Turner, Evelyn Turner and Spencer Hoage, for alleged voter fraud in connect with absentee ballots. Jeff Sessions was the U. S. Attorney in the Southern District of Alabama (Mobile). He indicted the three on 72 charges of voter fraud and mail fraud, since most of the absentee ballots were mailed in to the Circuit Clerk’s office.
    Albert Turner was an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King as State Director of the SCLC in Alabama. Turner also worked as the Manager of the Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative (SWAFCA). Turner can be seen in photos of Dr. Martin Luther King’s funeral, leading the mule train carrying the casket. Turner can also be prominently seen in the photographs of the Bloody Sunday 1965 Voting Rights March. He is in the second line of the march directly behind John Lewis. Turner helped to plan the March as a reaction to the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion (Perry Co.) Alabama a few weeks prior. Turner worked in Perry County and throughout the Alabama Black Belt registering people to vote, doing voter education and GOTV work, including encouraging the homebound to vote absentee.
    Sessions prosecution of the trio was an act of voter suppression directed at reducing the turnout and involvement of Black voters in elections throughout the Black Belt. The selection of Turner, his wife, and Spencer Hoage, outspoken advocates for civil rights, voting rights and economic justice for poor and Black people, was not an accidental but a calculated act by Sessions to intimate voters in the Black Belt and the state of Alabama. Federal prosecutors in other Alabama jurisdictions following Sessions lead initiated other similar selective prosecutions of civil rights and community leaders in Greene, Hale, Pickens and surrounding counties.
    Ultimately, because of dedicated lawyers and community support, the Perry County Three were acquitted of all 72 charges that Sessions tried to bring against them.
    Later in 1986, President Reagan nominated Sessions for a seat on the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. At Sessions’ confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, four Department of Justice lawyers who had worked with Sessions testified that he made racially offensive remarks. One of those lawyers, J. Gerald Hebert, testified that Sessions had referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” (Sessions said he was referring to their support of the Sandinistas) and that these organizations did more harm than good by trying to force civil rights “down the throats of people.”
    Hebert, a civil rights lawyer, said that he did not consider Sessions a racist, and that Sessions “has a tendency sometimes to just say something, and I believe these comments were along that vein. Hebert also said that Sessions had called a white civil rights attorney “maybe” a “disgrace to his race.” Sessions said he did not recall making that remark and he did not believe it.
    Thomas Figures, a Black Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified that Sessions said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I found out they smoked pot”. Sessions later said that the comment was not serious, but did apologize for it, saying that he considered the Klan to be “a force for hatred and bigotry.” Figures also testified that on one occasion, when the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, sent the office instructions to investigate a case that Sessions had tried to close, Figures and Sessions “had a very spirited discussion regarding how the case should then be handled; in the course of that argument, Mr. Sessions threw the file on a table, and remarked, ‘I wish I could decline on all of them,’” by which Figures said Sessions meant civil rights cases generally.
    Figures (who was the brother of the late State Senator Michael Figures, a founding member and officer of ANSC) also said that Sessions had called him “boy,” which Sessions denied. He also testified that “Mr. Sessions admonished me to ‘be careful what you say to white folks.” In 1992, Figures was charged with attempting to bribe a witness by offering a $50,000 to a convicted drug dealer who was to testify against his client. Figures claimed the charge was retaliation for his role in blocking the Sessions nomination. Sessions denied this, saying that he recused himself from the case. Figures was ultimately acquitted. We mention this to show that Sessions has a vindictive attitude to those who oppose his view of unbridled white supremacy.
    Albert Turner also traveled to Washington to testify in opposition to Sessions nomination to a Federal judgeship in Alabama because of his selective and unjust prosecution of voting rights activists.
    On June 5, 1986, the Committee voted 10–8 against recommending the nomination to the Senate floor, with Republican Senators Charles
    Mathias of Maryland and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania voting with the Democrats. It then split 9–9 on a vote to send Sessions’ nomination to the Senate floor with no recommendation, this time with Specter in support. A majority was required for the nomination to proceed. The pivotal votes against Sessions came from his home state’s Democratic Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama. Although Heflin had previously backed Sessions, he began to oppose Sessions after hearing testimony, concluding that there were “reasonable doubts” over Sessions’ ability to be “fair and impartial.” The nomination was withdrawn on July 31, 1986.
    Sessions became only the second nominee to the federal judiciary in 48 years whose nomination was killed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was quoted then as saying that the Senate on occasion had been insensitive to the rights and reputation of nominees.
    There are some who say in the thirty years since his work as a U. S. Attorney in Mobile that Jeff Sessions has mellowed and changed his views allowing him to be elected Attorney General of the State of Alabama and U. S. Senator. We do not think so and we list some of his recent actions during the past ten years in the U. S. Senate to show that he has not tempered and changed his deeply held white supremacist and white privileged views.
    Sessions supported the major legislative efforts of the George W. Bush administration, including the 2001 and 2003 tax cut packages, the Iraq War, and a proposed national amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He opposed the establishment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the 2009 stimulus bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act. As the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he opposed all three of President Barack Obama’s nominees for the Supreme Court.
    More specifically, during the second Obama term in office, Sessions:
    • Led opposition to a bipartisan effort in 2016 to ease sentencing guidelines for non-violent offenders;

    • Co-sponsored the Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act, which would prohibit the use of federal funds to implement, administer, or enforce HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule;
    • Voted against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor and called Justice Sotomayor unsuitable for the bench due to her past affiliation with a civil rights organization;
    • Voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell;
    • Voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act;
    • Voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act;
    • Voted against reauthorization of Violence Against Women Act;
    • Opposed President Obama’s 2012 Executive Action on immigration which granted deportation relief and work permits to thousands of undocumented immigrants (DACA); and
    • Described the Voting Rights Act as a ‘piece of intrusive legislation.’ in supporting the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby v. Holder, which ruled Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, which “gutted” the core enforcement of the VRA.
    We feel the nomination by President-elect Donald Trump of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General of the United States is a dangerous step, which will undermine the role of the U.S. Justice Department as the leading force for enforcement of civil rights, voting rights, womens rights, immigrant rights and all laws promoting justice in our nation.
    We, as fellow citizens of Alabama, call upon the Senate Judiciary Committee and the U. S. Senate to once again reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions as unfit, disqualified by his own deeply held beliefs and insensitive to the needs and aspirations of all Americans for non-discrimination and simple justice in their lives.
    We urge everyone who feels that Jeff Sessions should not be confirmed to be Attorney General of the United States communicate your views and concerns to Congress, the press and your fellow citizens, as we have done.
    For more information contact:

    • Ms. Shelley Fearson, ANSC State Coordinator, Montgomery, Alabama
    Phone 334-262-0932
    • John Zippert, ANSC State President, 205/657-0273
    • Senator Hank Sanders, SOS Steering Committee, : 205/526-4531

  • Alabama Supreme Court rules against electronic bingo in Greene County

    On Friday, December 23, 2016, the Alabama Supreme Court issued two rulings, which Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange states, “These rulings show that electronic bingo is illegal in the state of Alabama.”
    In the case State of Alabama v. 825 Electronic Gambling Devices et al (Greenetrack), the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in favor of the State, reversing a lower court judgment siding with the casino. As a result, the State of Alabama is allowed to destroy the electronic bingo machines it seized from Greenetrack in 2010.
    In its 29-page ruling released Friday, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its March 31, 2016 ruling in a similar case involving the legality of electronic bingo machines.
    “There is no longer any room for uncertainty, nor justification for continuing dispute, as to the meaning of [the term ‘bingo’]. And certainly the need for any further expenditure of judicial resources, including the resources of this Court, to examine this issue is at an end.
    All that is left is for the law of this State to be enforced,” the Supreme Court said.
    In a separate case (Macon County Greyhound Park, Inc., d/b/a Victoryland v Marie Hoffman), the Supreme Court ruled that individuals have a right to sue illegal gambling institutions.
    “Because the ‘contracts’ containing the arbitration provisions in these cases were based on gambling consideration, they were based solely on criminal conduct, and are therefore void. Consequently, the provisions of those ‘contracts,’ including arbitration provisions are void and unenforceable,” the Supreme Court ruled.
    Attorney General Strange emphasized that these rulings, combined with the Supreme Court’s March 31, 2016 ruling against Victoryland, remove any doubt that electronic bingo in all its forms is illegal in Alabama and that local law enforcement should do their duty to enforce the law.
    “Local sheriffs and police officers in most parts of the State are enforcing our gambling laws. The sheriffs in Greene and Macon counties must uphold their sworn duty to enforce the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court and not continue to sanction this illegal activity.
    “My office stands ready to render any required assistance to enable them to carry out their duties,” said AG Strange.
    The Alabama Supreme Court decision ignores the intent and support of the voters of Greene County to overwhelmingly approve Constitutional Amendment 743, which allows for electronic forms of bingo, say knowlegable observers in Greene County.
    The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled in previous decisions that bingo is a game played on paper cards, with five numbers across and five down. The players must mark their cards and call out a bingo when they have it on their cards. The Alabama high court decision overlooks the changing digitalizing and electronic adaptions of all devices in our society.
    “ I am sure that every member of the Alabama Supreme Court has a cellular phone in their pocket and they would not rule that the cellular phone is not a telephone, but they have ruled that electronic bingo machines are not bingo,” said a member of the Greene County school board, which is a major recipient of bingo funds.
    “This is a voting rights issue for us now in Greene County. The Alabama Supreme Court should not be allowed to overrule the voters of Greene County who approved electronic bingo. This high court should not be able to strip Greene County of revenues and jobs from electronic bingo,” said Lester Brown, Greene County Commissioner District 1.
    A countywide meeting will be held on Tuesday, January 3, 2017 at 6:00 PM at the National Guard Armory for citizens of Greene County to discuss the impact of this decision and plans for going forward to defend Constitutional Amendment 743.

  • Dylann Roof is found guilty in SC Federal Court

    By Frederick H. Low

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNewsToday.com

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    Dylan Root

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – A federal grand jury on Thursday convicted Dylann Roof of murdering nine Black churchgoers last year who were attending a Bible study at the historic Emanuel A.M. E. Church in downtown Charleston, S.C.

    The 12-member jury deliberated two hours before finding Roof, 22, guilty on all counts although he had admitted to the murders. He faces either life in prison or execution.

    Federal prosecutors charged Roof with the Hate Crimes Act Resulting in Death, the Hate Crimes Act Involving an Attempt to Kill, Obstruction of Exercise of Religion Resulting in Death, Obstruction of Exercise of Religion Involving an Attempt to Kill and Use of a Dangerous Weapon and Use of a Firearm to Commit Murder During and in Relation to a Crime of Violence, according to the 15-page indictment. Roof pled not guilty.

    In addition, he faces state murder charges bought by South Carolina, which is also seeking the death penalty. That trial is scheduled to begin in January.

    Roof sat for an hour with Emanuel parishioners on June 17, 2015, before firing his gun, a Glock .45-caliber pistol.

    Roof, 22, said he killed the churchgoers to incite a race war. The pistol was loaded with eight magazines of hollow-point bullets.

  • Trump fills Cabinet quota with Dr. Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

    By Lauren Victoria Burke (NNPA Newswire Contributor)

     

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    •  Dr. Ben Carson
      In 1984, at age 33, Ben Carson became the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Hospital. He pioneered a number of neurosurgical procedures and was even awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008.
      Carson is a skilled neurosurgeon and has earned a number of accolades during his storied career in medicine, but none of those accomplishments speak to the skills needed to craft policy for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency that President-elect Donald Trump has asked him to lead.
      Carson’s ability to run a federal bureaucracy with a $27 billion budget such as HUD is unknown. But Donald Trump has been consistent in selected unqualified millionaires and billionaires with no specific policy expertise to run the federal government. With that, Trump has selected Ben Carson to run HUD.
      HUD has traditionally been the cabinet department that Republican presidents have chosen African American nominees. It has been the predictable quota position for GOP presidents and Trump is carrying on that tradition. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan selected Sam Pierce as his HUD Secretary and, in 2004, President George W. Bush chose Alfonso Jackson. But whether they were picked in part, because of skin color or not, both Jackson and Pierce still had at least some experience in a government position before becoming Secretary of HUD. Jackson was the former executive director of the St. Louis Housing Authority and later ran the Dallas Housing Authority. “Silent Sam” Pierce had at least served in the Department of Treasury before being selected as Reagan’s only Black cabinet member.
      During Pierce’s tenure, a Congressional investigation revealed that, “Pierce’s aides, who said they had been acting on his orders, distributed millions of dollars in housing subsidies to prominent Republican consultants at a time when the Reagan administration was sharply reducing the agency’s budget,” according to “The New York Times.”
      The New York Times article continued: “Under President Ronald Reagan, annual spending on subsidized housing programs dropped to $8 billion from $26 billion, cuts that Mr. Pierce defended.
      Carson’s housing strategy is likely to be a mix of novice policy making and unproven theory. That’s how policy novices who think they know everything on subjects they have no expertise typically approach government. Given that, Congress is likely to be the entity truly in charge of the policy as Carson fumbles around with the details.
      Ben Carson has already shown a rugged disregard for plain fact since the time he retired from Johns Hopkins in 2013. That trait hasn’t gone unnoticed. On the day Carson was nominated, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) blasted Trump’s decision. “Dr. Carson’s nomination to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is frightening. He may be a brain surgeon but he is not qualified to run HUD. Donald Trump knows this,” Waters asserted in the statement. “During the Republican primary, [Trump] called him a liar, pathological and even violent. Dr. Carson himself has said he is not qualified to lead a federal agency. Now, we are expected to forget these disqualifying statements by both of them and entrust Dr. Carson with overseeing HUD, which has a budget of $47 billion.”
      The statement continued: “Millions of Americans rely on HUD assistance to help them access safe, decent, and affordable housing. And they are not all in the inner cities; they are in rural and suburban areas as well. HUD provides critical investments in these areas to spur economic development and house the most vulnerable. This is no easy task. The rural and urban Americans who benefit from HUD programs deserve a strong, qualified leader at the helm of this important agency. Dr. Carson is not this person. We know it, Donald Trump knows it, and yes, even Dr. Carson knows it.”
      The confirmation hearing for Carson should be quite long and entertaining. Just like Trump’s choice of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, the choice of Carson by Trump would indicate that the department is of little to no importance to the incoming President, but that there may be major change in federal housing policy on the horizon.