Someone Who Needs to Stay in Prison

Joseph Gray (SILive)

Today I stumbled upon an article that elicited mixed emotions about the justice system. Yesterday the parole board of New York denied ex-NYPD officer Joseph Gray's request for an early release from his 5-15 year sentence. This case is similar to that of Kevin Freibott's, in which an off-duty police officer goes out boozing and kills someone on the roads.

What is worse about Joseph Gray's case, however, is the fact that he killed a whole family in Brooklyn - a mother, her son, the mother's sister and the mother's unborn child. What is even worse is that Gray had been drinking on NYPD property with another officer, then went to a strip club that had been forbidden by the NYPD for officers to patronize and drank some more with more officers. He then got behind the wheel of his minivan and struck the family.

Some sad reminders arise out of the recent parole decision. Joseph Gray should be in prison for a lot longer than 5-15 years. He called the police department's actions in firing or transferring other officers who were involved in the drinking or helped to try to cover up the incident as an "overreaction." Then, during the trial, he and his lawyer tried to argue that Maria Herrera's dead child was stillborn, despite the fact that it had been born via C-section after the accident and had been on life support for 12 hours. That's just heartless.

He was given a huge break when he received no bail for DWI and manslaughter charges, despite the DA's insistence on a $500,000 one. On top of all of this, it was found out that he denied that alcohol was a factor because he had drank earlier in the day, and then blamed the family for "darting out in front of" him on his way to work.

Between the statement of an "overreaction" and arguing that the baby he killed was stillborn and trying to blame the family for his irresponsibility, it is quite obvious that Gray does not have much remorse for what he did. Additionally, his request to get out of jail early shows that he does not want to take responsibility for what he did in a cut and dry case.

To end this post I will use a quote from Talib Kweli which is a reaction to the judge's denial of bail for Gray on his track "The Proud." "August 4, 2001. A drunken police officer mows down an entire family in Brooklyn. The judge lets him go with no bail. It reminds us of just how worthless our lives are to the justice system. I struggle to explain the situation to my son."

A Step Towards Justice?

Sean Bell memorial (Wikipedia)

It was announced this week that three of the five officers involved in the death of Sean Bell hours before his wedding day were indicted on criminal charges with two of the officers facing manslaughter charges and assault charges while the third man is facing only assault charges.

For those of you out of the loop, Sean Bell was out for his bachelor party at a club in Queens that was being investigated by undercover detectives for various violations, such as prostitution, underage drinking, and weapons violations. Bell and his party of two other men (all three black) got into an argument with some of the patrons of the club in the early hours of the morning and, according to the accused detectives, someone alluded to a firearm.

At that point Bell and his party walked back to their car and were shot by the detectives when the boys in blue apparently saw a passenger in the car reaching for a gun through the blackness of the pre-dawn hours and opened fire with 50 rounds, killing Bell and injuring his two passengers.

This caused outrage among New York City's population, as it brought back memories of the not-so-distant past of the NYPD and its murder of Amadou Diallo and the torture of Abner Louima. Now three of the five officers have been indicted for the crime that was committed and two of them face up to 25 years in prison.

However, reading the BBC news article I noticed something seemed awry. Detective Gescard Isnora, who, according to the article, fired the first shot, pulled his trigger 11 times and is charged with manslaughter and assault. Detective Michael Oliver discharged his weapon 31 times during the incident, which meant that he had to reload in the middle of his trigger-happy episode and empty a second clip and is also charged with manslaughter and assault. So the total between these two cops alone is 42.

The third man charged, Detective Marc Cooper, shot his weapon 4 times, which brings the total to 46 shots. That means that two detectives have gotten away with shooting 4 rounds at the unarmed men. There is no way to know whose bullets killed Sean Bell and injured his two friends. Sure, statistically Isnora and Oliver most likely shot the deadly bullets, but last time I checked the court requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

In order to make sure that Sean Bell's murderer sees justice, all of the police officers who discharged their weapons should be charged with murder, because if there were three civilians on a scene who shot at a person who died, I cannot imagine that the DA and a grand jury would pick and choose who to charge.

Giuliani for President?

Rudy Giuliani (Wikipedia)

While the hysteria around the presidential election is already getting old (and it's only March), I thought I would throw in my 2 cents about a candidate being talked about a lot by the media. While I hesitated at first to do this post because I feel that this man deserves little face time in the news (I thought he used up all of his 15 minutes after 9/11), I read an article today about him that really kind of summed him up.

CNN.com today reported that Giuliani's law firm is doing business on behalf of CITGO, the Venezuelan-owned (and thus controlled by Hugo Chavez) oil company. Now Giuliani insists that he has nothing to do with the deal, but his name is on the firm's letterhead, and thus he does have something to do with it.

So I guess that this means that Giuliani can talk a good game, but flash some green in his face (to the tune of about $250,000), and all of that rhetoric about how Chavez is not "a friend of the United States" is thrown out of the window. Now would be a time to type into Google define: hypocrite.

Additionally, Giuliani was not a good mayor, but people tend to completely forget this because of the final days of his term. Jack Newfield describes this in his excellent biography of Giuliani called "The Full Rudy" in which he goes through the mayor's terms in office and his policy decisions.

Through the Brooklyn Museum of Art debacle, the numerous police shootings and murders, and the downright bull-headedness of the man, it is apparent that he is not an appropriate choice to run a large city of 8 million, never mind a country of 300 million. The book describes Rudy's style of taking everything related to policy decisions personally, at one point quoting someone close to the mayor as saying that he has "to prove that he has the biggest dick in the room."

But don't take just one person's word for it. Let's look at the people who have been the closest to him throughout his life, such as his children. As CNN.com reported, Rudy is estranged from both of his children with former wife Donna Hanover. His son, Andrew, said that he must focus on his golf game and "even if he wanted to" help his father, he would not have the time. The man is a jerk.

I just want people to look at the facts - namely the man's performance before 9/11 as mayor of New York City. We cannot let (relatively) recent events cloud our memories when it comes to Rudolph Giuliani. The past two elections we have had less than mediocre candidates, and if Giuliani is selected as the Republican candidate, then this country has some major issues. Bush and the Republicans have politicized 9/11 and won the 2004 elections off of it, let's not let Giuliani do that in 2008.

Misplacing Blame?

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (Wikipedia)

This past week in Boston has seen an unusual turn of events in an old case of a man convicted of murdering a police officer back in 1991. First, though, some back story.

A man by the name of Alfred Trenkler built a bomb and placed it under the car of a friend's father, with the help of said friend, in order to cash in on dad's life insurance policy. The target of the bomb heard something hit the ground beneath his floorboards as he was pulling out of his driveway, saw the bomb and called the police.

While examining the device, it exploded and killed bomb squad member Jeremiah J. Hurley, Jr. and injured his partner Francis Foley. Trenkler and his friend were convicted two years later, but here's the catch: the judge presiding in Trenkler's case, Rya Zobel, threw the jury out of the trial upon conviction and sentenced him to two concurrent life terms himself. This was illegal at the time of the decision and should not have occurred. Federal law stated that a jury had to make the decision of life in prison, not a single judge.

So Trenkler wrote a letter in 2005 to the judge who had illegally sentenced him to life in prison, pointed out the error, and the judge called her own actions a "miscarriage of justice". So she attempted to make up for the blunder by ordering Trenkler re-sentenced.

The U.S. Attorney's office was told two separate times of the motion and Judge Zobel's decision to call for a new sentence and did nothing about it. So now on April 4 Trenkler will be re-sentenced and Michael J. Sullivan of the U.S. Attorney's office is trying to get a stay on the order so that he can argue against it.

Now it is obvious that Zobel screwed up big time, she even admits it, and is trying to fix it. Sullivan's team really dropped the ball on this one and I don't think that they really deserve a chance to re-argue the case. But the best part of this story comes with Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis' remarks concerning all that is happening. While Thomas Nee, the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association president, pointed the frustration that arises from this incident towards those responsible (the judge and the U.S. Attorney's office), Davis blamed Trenkler, claiming that this was all a ploy to re-victimize the families of the dead officer and the injured officer.

First of all, Trenkler did not mean to victimize the families of these two police officers in the first place, so why would he want to re-victimize them? Second of all, Trenkler is following the legal system's guidelines for appeals and had the mistake not been made by Judge Zobel in the first place and had Sullivan's office paid attention to their mail, maybe things would be a lot different. Because so much time has passed, the chance of Trenkler getting life again is slim, but had the jury who had convicted him had a chance to sentence him, they would have been more likely to give him life.