ACLU PRESS RELEASE | Jessica Jones, WUNC. In a landmark decision, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks found intentional and systemic discrimination by state prosecutors against African-American potential jurors in capital cases and commuted the sentence of death-row prisoner Marcus Robinson to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Continue reading →By Staff (sc/jg/jsr/mgt/jf), Prensa Latina | By Rachel Rickard Straus, Daily Mail. Pedro Pimentel, a former instructor of an elite Guatemalan military force called kaibiles, extradited from the US last July, has been sentenced to 6,060 years in prison for his role in killing 201 indigenous people in the Dos Erres massacre of December 6 to 8, 1982.
Continue reading →By Marisa Taylor, McClatchy | By Law Professors, Sentencing Law and Policy | Al Jazeera, YouTube. Black and Hispanic men became likely to receive longer prison sentences than their white counterparts after the Supreme Court loosened federal sentencing rules, according to studies in 2010 and 2011 by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Continue reading →By Kanya D’Almeida, IPS. Metal detectors, teams of drug-sniffing dogs, armed guards and riot police, forbiddingly high walls topped with barbed wire: such descriptions befit a prison or perhaps a high-security checkpoint in a war zone. But in the U.S., these scenes of surveillance and control are most visible in public schools. Children as young as 6 years old have been arrested for ‘crimes’ like trespassing.
Continue reading →By Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity | Occupy Oakland. On Monday, February 20, 2012, over a dozen rallies and demonstrations for a National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners will be held throughout the U.S. including the San Francisco Bay Area’s Occupy San Quentin.
Continue reading →By Danilo Valladares, IPS. A Guatemalan court has ordered former dictator Efrain Rios Montt to stand trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. If convicted, he faces 30 years in prison. Hopefully the members of the army who perpetrated the crimes will also be brought to justice. (English | Spanish)
Continue reading →By Jourdon Anderson, with commentary by Jonathan Brown, The Independent | Letters of Note. Humorous response from an emancipated slave to his former owner’s request to return to work on a Tennessee plantation after the U.S. Civil War.
Continue reading →Courtesy of Tortilla con Sal, You Tube | Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Nicaragua and Haiti have shared the same history of repelling a U.S. occupation only to face the harder task of resisting the unpatriotic army the occupation left behind. Nicaraguans are reclaiming their country, with the youth leading the charge and being the living proofs that the smiles are well worth the process.
Continue reading →By Staff, Innocence Blog Opponents of capital punishment convened on January 25, 2012 to discuss Washington State Senate Bill 6283 to abolish the death penalty.
Continue reading →By Staff, The Innocence Project | YouTube. “These exonerations illustrate the causes of wrongful convictions that must be remedied.” Video testimonials and discussions by exonerated people.
Continue reading →Jesuit Refugee Service for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC SJR), AlterPresse | Translated by Dady Chery, Haiti | Centro de Direitos Humanos e Cidadania do Imigrante. Signatories to a manifesto for the human rights of Haitian immigrants recommend that the Brazilian government work with Latin-American governmental and non-governmental organizations to host the new Haitian immigrants in South America. (English | French | Portuguese)
Continue reading →By Martin Luther King Jr, In: Why We Can’t Wait (Harper & Row, N.Y., 1963) | Charles Moore, Photos | Estate of Martin Luther King Jr, Statement by Clergymen | Assembled by Haiti Chery. “Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.” – MLK
Continue reading →By Staff, Dominican Today. Thousands of Haitians who work in banana plantations, farms, and agro-companies in northwestern Dominican Republic traditionally cross the border to visit home for the holidays. This year, Dominican authorities are not guaranteeing the return crossing, and many Haitians say they plan to stay at home anyway.
Continue reading →By Edwin Musoni, The New Times. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has sentenced both Matthieu Ngirumpatse and Edouard Karemera, who were President and Vice-President of Mouvement Révolutionnaire Nationale pour le Développement (MRND) respectively, to life imprisonment for their roles in the 1994 Hutu Genocide against the Tutsi minority.
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