David Protess: The Death of Innocents

Shortly after noon on Friday, a gray van from Brown’s Funeral Home picked up the remains of a 53-year-old man in Dixon, IL and began the four-hour drive to his birthplace in Grand Rapids, MI. The driver headed south to I-88, then east to the Dan Ryan Expressway, crossing into Indiana before turning north to Michigan.

For the first time in 35 years, Anthony McKinney was no longer in the custody of the State. Since 1978, McKinney had been imprisoned at the Dixon Correctional Center despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. But death proved to be his only way out.

We did not think it was going to end this way, my journalism students and I, his lawyers and family members. We often talked about gathering at the gates of Dixon to watch McKinney stride to freedom into the welcoming arms of his brother Mike and sister Darlene.

It was easy to imagine the joyous scene outside the prison. The evidence demanded justice. McKinney’s confession to the murder of security guard Donald Lundahl had clearly resulted from beatings at the hands of a brutal cop. Two government witnesses swore they had testified falsely, and documents showed they indeed were miles away when Lundahl was shot. McKinney’s alibi had become airtight.

Most significant, an alternative suspect had confessed — on videotape. The suspect, convicted killer Anthony Drake, admitted in 2004 that he was present for the murder.

“You told us that Tony McKinney didn’t commit the crime of Donald Lundahl,” journalism student Evan Benn said to Drake, camera rolling.

“No, Anthony McKinney didn’t,” Drake replied.

“How do you know that?” Benn asked.

“Because I was there. That’s how I know that,” Drake nodded.

Drake went on to name the shooter, calling the crime an armed robbery gone bad.

The evidence was so strong that McKinney’s lawyers at the Center on Wrongful Convictions presented it to Cook County prosecutor Celeste Stack before filing an innocence petition, confident that Stack would recommend his release. But following the 2008 election, Stack had a new boss in State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, a career prosecutor committed to protecting the system against claims of wrongful convictions.

McKinney soon fell victim to a sideshow by Alvarez and her spokeswoman, Sally Daly, who launched a smear campaign against the students. His fight for freedom was also blocked by Judge Diane Cannon, an Alvarez crony whose entire career had been as a prosecutor until she was elected to the bench. Cannon ruled the State’s way on every key motion, approving repeated delays while blasting lawyers who dared to challenge her former employer, the state’s attorney’s office.

In the end, the State ran out the clock. “Anita Alvarez has my brother’s blood on her hands,” an anguished Mike McKinney told me. “How can she get away with this? We can’t let her get away with this.”

Alvarez’s flak would say only that McKinney’s case was now closed.

Not so fast. For one thing, the matter can be referred to the Attorney General’s Office for an investigation. For another, a petition for a posthumous pardon can land on the governor’s desk.

And, there are questions about McKinney’s death that must be addressed by the Illinois Department of Corrections. According to prison officials, McKinney was found alone in his cell with a mouth full of food and “no signs of foul play.” Did he choke? Was it a heart attack? An autopsy by the coroner was inconclusive, but ruling out an unnatural death seems oddly premature. The family wants an independent autopsy, for starters.

But the larger issue is the plight of countless innocents like Anthony McKinney who face one delay after another in seeking new trials. Stall long enough and defense witnesses vanish or prisoners give up — or die. The tragic truth is that the exoneration process in Illinois is fundamentally flawed and needs to be fixed. Time limits should be set on hearing cases, as they are for trials, and wrongful conviction claims should be expeditiously reviewed by merit-appointed magistrates. While it is not hard for a prisoner to bring an innocence claim to court under the present system, good luck getting action on it.

Take the case of Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez, also behind bars at Dixon. Back in 2006, the duo presented compelling evidence of their innocence, including a sworn statement by the State’s star witness admitting he had lied at the trial in exchange for favorable treatment in pending criminal cases. As soon as Judge Jorge Alonso approved a hearing on the evidence, he was replaced by Judge Maura Slattery Boyle, a family friend of ex-Mayor Richard M. Daley. Years later, the hearing has still not been concluded, with assistant state’s attorney Stack fighting to keep the men locked up.

And take the case of Stanley Wrice, imprisoned for 31 years at Pontiac. Tortured by Comdr. Jon Burge’s “Midnight Crew” in 1982, Wrice was finally granted a hearing this year when Judge Evelyn Clay acknowledged evidence of his innocence and official misconduct. The respected jurist even allowed Wrice’s lawyers to compel Daley’s testimony. She may have gone too far. On the eve of the hearing, Judge Clay inexplicably resigned from the case. A new judge will be appointed on Wednesday, restarting the arduous legal process.

Wrice will soon turn 60. Serrano and Montanez, locked up for 20 years, aren’t getting any younger. Are the authorities using actuarial tables to decide how best to deal with injustice? Is their new strategy simply to outlive the wrongfully incarcerated? After all, it is no secret that prison can be hazardous to your health: More than three thousand prisoners die each year, most from natural causes.

Anthony McKinney was 18 at the time of his arrest. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but McKinney got life without parole. He lost all of his twenties, all of his thirties, all of his forties and part of his fifties, until he lived no more.

Capital punishment was abolished by Illinois lawmakers in 2011, but has the justice system replaced it with de facto executions?

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the McKinney case is that a once-vibrant teen suffered an agonizingly slow death. He should have come home in a shiny limo to the cheers of loving supporters. Instead, his lifeless body was lifted silently from a gray van onto a metal slab.

Crime on HuffingtonPost.com

David Protess: The Death of Innocents

Out of Control NSA Agents Spy on Lovers, Thousands More Innocents

Those who sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither, Benjamin Franklin famously said.

That phrase seems particularly relevant since the first revelations broke about the National Security Agency’s extensive telephone and Internet spying programs.

From the first, there were many people who believed the NSA was not being completely honest about the extent of its activities, that the spying wasn’t confined to just a few phone calls that agents had warrants for, or to just a few email users whose providers had voluntarily cooperated during focused investigations.

Each revelation since those first has revealed a government tool that is closer and closer to the all-encompassing spy agency privacy and civil liberties advocates have feared.

According to the Telegraph, the NSA told the Senate Intelligence Committee about incidents in which NSA employees used the agency’s technology to spy on loved ones and significant others. There’s even a name for it: “love-int.”

According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has been a big supporter of the NSA spying on Americans, the incidents were “isolated.” But documents released by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor now hiding in Russia, show the NSA broke privacy rules more than 3,000 times in one year.

NSA chief compliance officer John DeLong said most of those breaches were unintentional, but “a couple” of breaches — in the past decade, of course — were willful violations.

NSA credibility factor: somewhere around zero.

Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, told Fox News that he doesn’t believe Congress has been given a clear understanding of the extent of NSA’s spying.

Corker said, “The American people want to know that those of us who are elected … understand fully what’s happening here. I don’t think we do. I would imagine there are even members of the intelligence committee themselves that don’t fully understand the gambit of things that are taking place.”

At this point, it’s clear that no one is safe from the prying eyes and ears at the NSA, which means the entire Obama Administration has access to any piece of information or dirty little secret you don’t want other people to know.

What’s more, it’s clear that if you get on the radar of a federal agent, many, perhaps most, of them have no qualms about abusing that power for their own personal gratification or to make your life miserable. The safeguards that are supposed to protect individuals’ Fourth Amendment rights apparently count for nothing in an Administration that has gone made with its own power.

Where’s the uproar?

Well, there can’t be one if the average person doesn’t realize he’s being x-rayed, stamped, filed and indexed every time he goes to the refrigerator. And the average person won’t ever know that, unless Big Brother comes knocking, because few in the mainstream media will even broach the topic.

Don’t believe in conspiracies? You should, because there’s one going on right in front of our eyes.

Tad Cronn is the editor in chief of The Patriots Almanac.

Godfather Politics

Out of Control NSA Agents Spy on Lovers, Thousands More Innocents

Leaks Reveal Drones Killing More Than Thought, Particularly Innocents

The CIA is lying to the American people and the world about drone attacks in Pakistan.

By Daniel G.J
Story Leak
July 24, 2013

A leaked document identified as a report from the Pakistani government indicates that the robotic warplanes have killed more people than the U.S. government has claimed.

The report claims that 746 people, including 94 children, have been killed in drone strikes. The report examined 75 separate drone strikes between 2006 and 2009 that occurred in the Federally Administered ‘Tribal Areas’ of Pakistan, a region along the Pakistani border used by the Taliban as a base area. And as Anthony Gucciardi recently reported, more drone deaths continue to come out with minor recognition from the media.

Real Casualty Numbers Unknown

These claims are probably too low because they don’t list all the drone strikes that have been carried out since 2009. Nor do they list drone strikes that might have occurred outside the Tribal Areas. Last year Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the press that between 2,500 and 3,000 people have been killed by drone strikes. Malik also said that there had been 336 drones in Pakistan.

Both Malik’s claims and the report contradict the CIA’s official story—in 2011 the agency claimed that 50 noncombatants had been killed in all of its drone strikes since Sept. 11, 2001. That claim seems very dubious, particularly since it is not clear that the CIA has been able to examine all of the drone attack sites.

The report itself is questionable because its source is not identified. The organization that uncovered and publicized it, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, did not identify which Pakistani government agency produced it. Although, the report indicates the Pakistani government has extensive details of the attacks. Instead, it simply says the document came from three sources—what three sources?

During the period detailed in the report, the Pakistani government was supporting the strikes because they got rid of its enemies. The drone attacks are unpopular in Pakistan, but the Pakistani army has tolerated them because they kill some of its enemies.

The Pakistani document indicated that a large number of Taliban militants and their commanders died in the attacks. That indicates the CIA has extensive knowledge of the militants and their operations, probably from agents inside the organization. It also means that the CIA itself is well aware of the true casualty figures.

Are Other Nations Carrying Out Drone Attacks in Pakistan?

There is also an intriguing mystery in the report that the Bureau uncovered. Its reporter, Chris Woods, noted that there were five attacks carried out by forces that the Pakistani government could not or would not identify. That is bothersome because it indicates that other governments, perhaps India’s or China’s, might also be carrying out drone attacks in Pakistan. Both India and China have been attacked by militants backed by the Pakistani Taliban in the past.

By carrying out such attacks, the United States sets a precedent for other nations and implies that such killings are a legitimate method of war. A government that claims that it has the right to carry out these drone attacks gives other governments that right as well.

The whole concept of drone warfare needs to be reviewed due to the true mass number of deaths and other devastating consequences that stem from it. We need to ask ourselves if we want to live in a world where drone attacks are an accepted everyday occurrence.  And what about predator drone attacks inside the US? After all, they seem to violate not only the Constitution but the Ten Commandments and basic Christian morality. Especially when it comes to shedding innocent blood.

Intellihub.com

Leaks Reveal Drones Killing More Than Thought, Particularly Innocents