Life imitates art: ‘Sopranos’ actor goes on trial
November 18, 2008
Life imitates art:
Lillo Brancato Jr. was a young actor with a solid resume: He made his debut in 1993 in “A Bronx Tale” opposite Robert De Niro, went on to appear in more than a dozen movies and played a doomed mobster wannabe in HBO’s “The Sopranos.”
Guard shot during robbery attempt at Waldorf-Astoria
November 17, 2008
Guard shot during robbery attempt at Waldorf-Astoria
Gunfire erupted in the storied Waldorf-Astoria hotel during a brazen robbery attempt Saturday at a lobby jewelry store, wounding a security guard and sending guests diving for cover.
Jury awards $2.5 million to teen beaten by Klan members
November 16, 2008
Jury awards $2.5 million to teen beaten by Klan members
A jury awarded $2.5 million in damages on Friday to a Kentucky teenager who was severely beaten by members of a Ku Klux Klan group because they mistakenly thought he was an illegal Latino immigrant, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
Lawsuit seeks to bankrupt Klan group
November 13, 2008
Lawsuit seeks to bankrupt Klan group
It was a mismatch from the start: a 16-year-old boy, 5-feet, 3-inches tall and 150 pounds, against two reputed Ku Klux Klansmen, the biggest standing 6-feet, 5-inches and tipping the scales at 300 pounds.
When the blows stopped, Gruver had a broken jaw and left forearm, two cracked ribs and cuts and bruises.
Now, with the weight of the Southern Poverty Law Center behind him, Gruver is fighting back in a civil courtroom. Gruver and the center are suing the Imperial Klans of America, and they hope to win damages large enough to put the supremacist group out of business.
An all-white jury — seven men and seven women — was chosen Wednesday to hear Gruver’s lawsuit against the Klan and two of its members. They are identified in court papers as “Imperial Wizard” Ron Edwards, and Jarred R. Hensley, the Ohio Klan’s “Grand Titan.”
Two others — Joshua Cowles, the Klan’s “Exalted Cyclops,” and Andrew W. Watkins, the Klan’s “Imperial Gothi” and webmaster — have settled out of court, according to a pretrial brief.
The lawsuit identifies Cowles, Hensley and Watkins as the men who confronted Gruver and insulted him with ethnic epithets while on a recruiting mission at the fair. Hensley and Watkins, the suit alleges, knocked Gruver to the ground and repeatedly struck and kicked him.
The two men already have gone through the criminal courts, striking plea bargains and serving time in the Kentucky state prison system, according to court documents. The others were named as defendants because the Montgomery, Alabama-based center identified them as Klan officers at the time.
Opening statements began under tight security. The center’s co-founder, Morris Dees, alleged that Edwards “sent his agents out on a mission,” adding, “It was while that mission that Jordan was hurt.”
“I’ll prove that I teach them not to go out and commit violence,” he said in his opening statement. “I’ll prove I did not know they were there.”
He added, “I stay within the law. I don’t break the law.”
At an earlier court deposition, Edwards demonstrated his contempt for the center and its lawsuit by tattooing a profane reference to it on his freshly shaved head.
Hensley, who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, told CNN affiliate WAVE on Wednesday that he already has paid a price for something he didn’t do. He said the legal system was “corrupt,” but that he was at the trial “because the law told me.” He also is representing himself.
The lawsuit alleges that Edwards, the supremacist group’s founder, uses money from Klan dues, contributions and merchandise sales “as his own personal funds.”
He lives in a trailer on the Klan’s heavily guarded, gated compound in rural Dawson Springs, Kentucky. The compound is the site of the Klan’s annual white power rally and music festival, know as “Nordic Fest,” according to the suit.
It was at the compound, the suit alleges, that the Klan incited its members to use violence against minorities.
The center is seeking to win a judgment that would allow it to seize up to $6 million in assets.
“We want to win justice for Jordan to compensate him for his injuries and put this group out of business,” said center spokesman Booth Gunter. “We’ve won a number of these suits in the past.”
In 2000, for example, the center won a $6.3 million jury verdict that forced Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler to give up the group’s Idaho compound. In 1987, a $7 million verdict in Mobile, Alabama, targeted the United Klans of America.
Richard Cohen, the law center’s president, said, “The Imperial Klans of America is one of the largest Klan organizations in the country. It promotes violence and intimidation against racial and ethnic minorities, homosexuals and so-called ‘race traitors.’ While on a recruiting mission, members of this organization targeted and viciously beat our client solely because he has brown skin.
“Our lawsuit seeks justice and compensation for the victim of this brutal hate crime. We also hope that the monetary damages will be sufficient to put the organization out of business and send a strong message to other hate groups and their followers that this type of racial violence will not be tolerated.”
The center says the Imperial Klans of America is the second largest KKK group after the Brotherhood of Klans, based in Marion, Ohio.
Estimates of its total membership vary widely, but the center says it has about 23 chapters in 17 states.
Gunter said Edwards’ son, Steve, runs another group called the Supreme White Alliance, which has ties to two supremacists accused in a plot to don white tuxedos and assassinate Barack Obama.
Eight arrested in Klan-related killing, police sayStory Highlights
November 12, 2008
Chuck Foster is charged with second-degree murder in the woman
Eight people were arrested Tuesday, one on a charge of murder, in connection with the fatal shooting of a woman at a remote Louisiana campsite during what police say was an initiation ceremony for the Ku Klux Klan.
MySpace hoax jury may not hear about suicide
November 11, 2008
Megan Meier, 13, hanged herself in her bedroom after being targeted in a MySpace hoax.
Prosecutors in the trial of a woman accused of a MySpace hoax that allegedly led a 13-year-old girl to kill herself will likely be prohibited from presenting evidence of the suicide, a federal judge said Monday.
Armed guards keep watch over church services
November 10, 2008
Armed guards keep watch over church services
Lori Davis remembers a time when the doors were always open at her church — and not guarded.
Courthouse shooter guilty of murder, faces death
November 9, 2008
Brian Nichols was found guilty of murdering four people and now faces the dealth penalty.
Brian Nichols was convicted Friday of murdering four people in a shooting rampage that began at a courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia. The jury next must decide whether he should be executed for his crimes.
Nichols, 36, stood in silence as the 40-page verdict form was read. He was found guilty of all 54 counts, including murder, kidnapping, robbery and escape in the March 2005 rampage that began at the Fulton County Courthouse.
Jurors will return to court Monday morning for the trial’s death penalty phase, said Cobb County Superior Court Judge James Bodiford. Bodiford was brought into the case after a Fulton County judge was disqualified.
Some spectators in the courtroom dabbed their eyes, but all heeded Bodiford’s stern warning that any emotional outburst would bring contempt of court charges and up to 20 days in jail.
A judge, a court reporter, a deputy and a federal agent were killed in the shooting rampage.
The crime triggered panic throughout metro Atlanta and Nichols was arrested 26 hours after his escape following the largest manhunt in Georgia history. He was taken into custody in neighboring Gwinnett County, where he held a woman hostage in her apartment.
Nichols was accused of overpowering Fulton County sheriff’s deputy Cynthia Hall on March 11, 2005, as he was being led into a courtroom where he was facing a second trial on rape charges.
Officials say he took Hall’s gun from a lockbox and fatally shot three people at the courthouse: Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau and Fulton County sheriff’s Sgt. Hoyt Teasley, who attempted to apprehend him outside the building.
Nichols also was convicted of killing David Wilhelm, a federal customs agent, hours later at Wilhelm’s home in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.
Prosecutors have said Nichols confessed to the shootings shortly after his arrest. The defense did not dispute whether he was the gunman, focusing instead on his mental state and claiming he suffers from a disorder that “overmastered” his will to refrain from criminal acts.
The jury is made up of five African-American women, two white women, three African-American men, a white man and an Asian-American man, court officials said. Their options were to convict Nichols, find him guilty but mentally ill, acquit him or find him not guilty by reason of insanity.
In the penalty phase, jurors will hear impact statements from the victims’ relatives and decide whether to spare Nichols’ life.
Nichols’ trial has been plagued by delays. In October 2007, Judge Hilton Fuller of DeKalb County, who was appointed to hear the case, abruptly halted jury selection on what would have been its third day, accepting a defense motion to stop the trial until questions of funding for Nichols’ lawyers were resolved.
In January, Fuller recused himself from the case after a New Yorker magazine article written by Jeffrey Toobin, who is also a CNN senior legal analyst, quoted him as saying the “only defense” open to Nichols was insanity, “because everyone in the world knows he did it.”
Also in January, Nichols’ defense attorneys said in court filings that they intended to use a mental-illness defense, claiming Nichols suffered from a “delusional compulsion” at the time of the slayings.
They said he has been diagnosed with a disorder that involves delusions of persecution, as well as grandiose thinking. Those suffering from such a disorder may function normally and behave rationally, defense attorneys said, but when they encounter circumstances that “touch their delusions, the delusional disorder will preoccupy them and instruct their thinking and actions.”
Ashley Smith, the woman Nichols held hostage, has written a book and spoken publicly about how she kicked her addiction to methamphetamine after the ordeal. During their seven hours together, she has said, she gave Nichols drugs but refused to use them with him — and has not used them since.
Smith, who has married and is now known as Ashley Smith Robinson, testified at Nichols’ trial.
Source: cnn.com
Strangled teen left on Brooklyn curb with trash
November 5, 2008
Chanel Petro-Nixon, 16, disappeared in broad daylight and her body was found in a trash bag.
She was just 16 years old, a beautiful girl, straight-A student, with her whole life ahead of her. She hoped to become a nurse.
Friends say she never showed up. No one ever saw her alive again. Four days later, her body was found in another area of Brooklyn, several miles from her home. She’d been strangled and stuffed into a large garbage bag left to be collected with the morning trash on the sidewalk in front of a brownstone.
Chanel went missing in broad daylight in an extremely busy area of Brooklyn. Family, police and community members are certain that someone must have seen something, but no witnesses have come forward.
Also troubling to police: The coroner says Chanel died within 24 hours of her body being found on June 22. She went missing on June 18. So, where was Chanel for the 48 hours she was alive but missing?
She was strangled, but not sexually assaulted, according to police. Robbery does not seem to be a motive. But Chanel’s cell phone and the tennis shoes she was wearing are missing.
Chanel’s father, Garvin Nixon, insists that his daughter would not stay out after dark without calling home.
Nixon tried calling his daughter to check on her within an hour after she’d left the house. When he didn’t get a return call and couldn’t reach her, he and Chanel’s mother began calling her friends. Her friends had not seen or heard from Chanel either, even though they’d been calling her cell phone repeatedly and leaving urgent messages.
Authorities speculate that perhaps she went with someone she knew and trusted, which could explain why no witnesses observed any struggle between Chanel and her abductor.
Police have investigated Chanel’s MySpace page, searching for clues to whom she may have communicated with before leaving her home the day she disappeared.
One theory is that her slaying is linked to that of another local teenager, Jennifer Moore. Like Chanel, she was strangled and her partially-clothed body was found in a garbage bag. But unlike Chanel, Jennifer Moore was raped.
Jennifer Moore’s suspected killer, Draymond Coleman, was arrested and police have not ruled him out as a possible suspect in Chanel’s slaying.
A reward of $34,000 is being offered for any information leading to the arrest of the person or people responsible for Chanel’s death.
Source: cnn.com
Oscar trophy trend, fact or fiction?
November 3, 2008
Crime scene tape blocks off the home of Quentin Patrick, 22, who is charged with killing 12-year-old T.J. Darrisaw.
An ex-convict who said he thought he was being robbed gunned down a 12-year-old trick-or-treater, spraying nearly 30 rounds with an assault rifle from inside his home after hearing a knock on the door, police said Saturday.
The family attended a Halloween celebration in downtown Sumter, 45 miles east of Columbia, then stopped at Patrick’s house because the porch light was on, police said. Another sibling was with them but wasn’t hurt.
Police said at least two of the boys were wearing ghoulish masks when they knocked on the door. The boys’ mother and a toddler stayed in the car nearby.
Patrick emptied his AK-47, shooting at least 29 times through his front door, walls and windows after hearing the knock, Police Chief Patty Patterson said.
He told police he had been robbed and shot in the past year.
“He wasn’t going to be robbed again, and he wasn’t going to be shot again,” Patterson said Saturday at a news conference.
She said T.J., a bright young man, suffered multiple wounds, including a fatal shot to his head. No one answered the door at the family’s home Saturday.
“This is by far one of the worst tragedies that I have had to personally experience,” Patterson said. “It happened basically because kids were out doing what they would normally do on Halloween.”
Patrick has been charged with murder, three counts of assault and battery with intent to kill, and one count of assault with intent to kill.
Police said they also charged a 19-year-old in his home, Ericka Patrice Pee, with obstruction of justice when she was caught trying to run away after the shooting with $7,500 in cash. Patterson did not give an explanation for the money.
Pee’s 2-year-old daughter was inside during the shooting and is now being cared for by family members.
Patterson said Patrick had multiple drug convictions but police do not believe he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol during the shooting. Authorities did not know if Patrick or Pee had attorneys. Both are being held without bond.
A man who identified himself as Patrick’s brother but declined to give his name said in a call to The Associated Press that he believed Patrick was suffering from post-traumatic stress after a break-in last December. The man’s account matched the information police provided.
“We want to let his family know that this is a total tragic accident,” he said. “He was trying to protect his family.”
Patrick’s home is off a busy, two-lane road in Sumter, a city of about 40,000 people. On Saturday, shattered glass still covered the front stoop and about 20 bullet holes peppered the front door and a front-window casement.
The shooting shocked residents of a neighborhood where most people know each other well.
“I just hate it that that little kid got killed. It used to be the quietest place. I knew everybody and everybody knew me,” said Vivian Johnson, 81, who lives two doors from Patrick and Pee but said she did not know them.
County Councilman Charles Edens said he lives just a few blocks away and passed the crime scene on his way back from trick-or-treating with his 13-year-old daughter, who was upset by the news.
“It’s going to put a dampening on Halloween,” Eden said. “I would think twice about going to a door that we don’t know who lives behind.”
Source: cnn.com