Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston Embroiled In Heated Custody Battle

Bristol Palin Seeks Full Custody Of 1-year-old Tripp She Had With Levi Johnston


Bristol Palin is demanding full custody of her son and even wants child support from beefcake baby daddy Levi Johnston.

The daughter of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accuses her former high school sweetheart of exercising only "sporadic visitation rights" for 1-year-old Tripp, court papers revealed Monday.

Bristol Palin, 18, asked an Alaska judge last month to keep her petition for custody and support secret.

The judge denied that request in a ruling dated Christmas Eve.

Johnston, 19, a hunky one-time high school hockey star, denies in court documents that he has avoided his responsibilities as a father.

He is seeking shared custody of the boy and argued against keeping the proceedings closed.

"I do not feel protected against Sarah Palin in a closed proceeding," Johnston said in an affidavit. "I hope that if it is open she will stay out of it."

Bristol Palin is also asking the judge to bar Johnston's mother from having unsupervised visits with the infant. Sherry Johnston is on home arrest on drug charges.

She also suggests Levi Johnston may have used marijuana, citing a Twitter posting. He denies the reports of drug use and says the Twitter account is a fake one.

Bristol is the eldest daughter of Sarah Palin, who resigned as Alaska governor in July.

Johnston has raised hackles with his catty accounts of life with the Palins.

He posed for a sexy spread in Playgirl, and Sarah Palin dissed him as an "aspiring porn" star.




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Sources: AP, NY Daily News, Youtube, Google Maps

Federal Court Limits Taser Use...Stopping Police Brutality

Federal Appeals Court Sets Limits On Police Use Of Tasers


A Federal Appeals Court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.

In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.

Sold as a nonlethal alternative to guns, Tasers deliver an electrical jolt meant to subdue a subject. The stun guns have become a common and increasingly controversial tool used by law enforcement.

There have been at least nine Taser-related fatalities in the Sacramento region, including the death earlier this month of Paul Martinez Jr., an inmate shot with a stun gun while allegedly resisting officers at the Roseville jail.

As lawsuits have proliferated against police and Taser International, which manufactures the weaons, the nation's appellate courts have been trying to define what constitutes appropriate Taser use.

The San Diego County case is the latest ruling to address the issue.

The court recounted the facts of the case:

In the summer of 2005, Carl Bryan, 21, was pulled over for a seat-belt violation and did not follow an officer's order to stay in the car.

Earlier, he had received a speeding ticket and had taken off his T-shirt to wipe away tears. He was wearing only the underwear he'd slept in because a woman had taken his keys, the court said without further explanation.

During his second traffic stop in Coronado, he got out of the car. He was "agitated … yelling gibberish and hitting his thighs, clad only in his boxer shorts and tennis shoes" but did not threaten the officer verbally or physically, the judges wrote.

That's when Coronado Police Officer Brian McPherson, who was standing about 20 feet away watching Bryan's "bizarre tantrum," fired his Taser, the court said.

Without a word of warning, he hit Bryan in the arm with two metal darts, delivering a 1,200-volt jolt.

Temporarily paralyzed and in intense pain, Bryan fell face-first on the pavement. The fall shattered four of his front teeth and left him with facial abrasions and swelling. Later, a doctor had to use a scalpel to remove one of the darts.

Bryan sued McPherson, the Coronado Police Department and the city of Coronado, alleging excessive force in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.

The officer moved to have the claim dismissed, but a federal trial judge ruled in Bryan's favor.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit affirmed the trial judge's ruling on Monday, concluding that the level of force used by the officer was excessive.

McPherson could have waited for backup or tried to talk the man down, the judges said. If Bryan was mentally ill, as the officer contended, then there was even more reason to use "less intrusive means," the judges said.

"Officer McPherson's desire to quickly and decisively end an unusual and tense situation is understandable," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the court. "His chosen method for doing so violated Bryan's constitutional right to be free from excessive force."

Some lawyers called it a landmark decision.

Eugene Iredale, a San Diego lawyer who argued the case, said it was one of the clearest and most complete statements yet from an appellate court about the limits of Taser use.

He said after Monday's decision that courts will consider all circumstances, including whether someone poses a threat, has committed a serious crime or is mentally troubled.

"In an era where everybody understands 'don't tase me, bro,' courts are going to look more closely at the use of Tasers, and they're going to try to deter the promiscuous oversue of that tool," he said.

That's especially true in the context of those who appear to be emotionally disturbed or mentally ill, said Johnny Griffin III, a Sacramento plaintiffs lawyer.

Griffin represented the family of a troubled Woodland man who died under police restraint after being struck multiple times with Tasers.

In May 2008, Ricardo Abrahams walked away from a voluntary care facility and disobeyed the orders of officers called to check on his well-being. They shot him repeatedly with stun guns.

The case against the city of Woodland and its officers was settled in June for $300,000.

"I think it confirms what I and other lawyers in this area have been saying: You can't treat a person with mental illness the same as someone without mental illness," Griffin said.

Law enforcement authorities in Sacramento said they don't expect Monday's ruling to prompt much change.

Sacramento Police Department and Sacramento County Sheriff's Department policies permit the use of force to gain control of a suspect or prevent harm to others.

"Certainly the officer should be able to articulate the reason the force (was used), and a mere resistance to comply may not be enough," said Sheriff John McGinness.

Sgt. Norm Leong, spokesman for the Police Department, said his agency's policy on the use of stun guns mainly covers safety considerations. It doesn't list behaviors or situations that warrant using the devices, he said.

"Ideally, in every circumstance, we try to gain compliance verbally, and force is the last option we ever want to use," he said.



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Sources: AP, McClatchy Newspapers, Huffington Post, Cops Out Of Control, Widgetbox, Youtube, Google Maps

NC Spends $11M Annually On Death Penalty Cases...Black Inmates

Study: End Death Cases, Save Money


If the state stopped trying to execute killers, it would free up $11 million a year, according to a study by a Duke University Economist published this month.

There is little return on the dollars spent on seeking the death penalty, says Philip Cook, an economist at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy. Of the 1,034 people charged with murder in North Carolina in 2005 and 2006, prosecutors initially sought the death penalty against about a quarter of them. Only 11, though, were sentenced to death for their crimes.

"The idea that the state could spend so much money on someone they think is completely undeserving is very interesting," Cook said. "I have to believe that there are some people that would find this cost issue irritating."

Cook's study was published this month in American Law and Economics Review. Cook's last study on the cost of the Death Penalty in North Carolina was published in 1993. In that study, he estimated an annual savings of $4 million if the death penalty were not an option.

Cook's findings will be presented to lawmakers, and opponents of the death penalty will likely use them to argue that it isn't cost-effective.

Death penalty debates typically focus on questions of morality and justice. Proponents argue that ending a life for taking a life is a punishment rooted in ancient religious philosophy. They also say that the mere threat of being executed is a strong deterrent to committing murder and cite studies suggesting that the murder rate has escalated in recent years, since the death penalty has been halted in North Carolina by a series of court challenges.

Cook argues that the rarity of death sentences undermines the deterrent factor. By his math, the odds of a killer getting the death penalty are less than 1 percent.

Rep. Paul Stam, a Wake County Republican, said criminals don't calculate odds and aren't swayed by them.

"Criminals pay more attention to TV and newspaper headlines than to statistics," said Stam, a proponent of the death penalty. "Maybe that is why many of them get caught."

Here and across the country, the death penalty is on the decline. No one has been lethally injected in North Carolina since August 2006, and the 163 inmates now on death row face an uncertain end.

Cook's $11 million figure is a net savings. He assumed everyone currently on death row would be imprisoned for all of their living days, and also factored the estimated costs of appealing convictions of life in prison. Cook did not, however, include savings by prosecutors being spared additional preparation and court time of a capital trial.

It's unclear what bearing, if any, a cost analysis of the punishment will have on its future.

"Whenever it comes to reducing or changing punishments, there's a lot of politics and public opinion involved," said Rep. Deborah Ross, a Wake County Democrat. "It's never, ever a dollar-and-cents issue."

At least two states, New Jersey and New Mexico, have abolished the death penalty in recent years, citing cost as a primary reason. Maryland, too, has considered eliminating the death penalty; officials there have significantly limited the number of murders that can be prosecuted capitally in hopes of reducing costs.

Capital trials cost five times more than first-degree murder trials in which the death penalty is not pursued. A trial averages $116,400 in costs for the defendant, Cook found, compared with $18,600 for a non-capital murder trial. Trials also hijack a prosecutor's office for weeks, a cost that's hard to estimate because it involves salaries for people who handle other matters besides capital murder trials. The average capital trial lasts nearly three weeks, compared to a week for murder trials without the death penalty.

"It's not an ideal use of resources to have so much time devoted to such a small number of cases if your goal is to reduce crime rates," Cook said.

Part of the expense is tied to protections that state and federal law offer those facing execution. Each defendant put on death row is guaranteed at least six layers of appeals to courts as high as the U.S. Supreme Court. Over 2005 and 2006, taxpayers paid at least $8.1 million toward these appeals.

To spend less or offer less scrutiny would be foolhardy, because juries sometimes put innocent people on death row, legal experts argue. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, seven people have been taken off North Carolina's death row since 1973 after courts found evidence of their innocence.

"We know how that story goes," said Tye Hunter, director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, a nonprofit focused on defending those facing the death penalty. "That is just a recipe for disaster. We can't have innocent people put to death."

Bargaining Chip

Prosecutors often argue that the option of pursuing the death penalty is a bargaining chip that allows them to secure a plea to the lesser punishment of life in prison without setting foot in a courtroom. Cook found, however, that it was cheaper to try a case in which prosecutors never sought the death penalty than to negotiate a capital case and avoid going to trial. That is due in part to a North Carolina law requiring defendants facing the death penalty to have at least two attorneys.

A savings of $11 million may not seem significant in the scheme of what the state spends each year. But, as revenues have plummeted and the need for social services escalated, legislators are scrutinizing every dollar.

"As lawmakers, we're not supposed to worry about costs when deciding what is the right thing to do," said Rep. Jimmy Love Sr., a member of the House Appropriations Committee. "But, really, you can't help but think about robbing Peter to pay Paul in these times. This is no different."



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, News & Observer, WRAL, American Law & Economics Review, Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy, Creepygif.com, Google Maps

Tiffany Wright's Killer Stays In Jail Thanks To Decent Judges & Sufficient Evidence

The first clip below shows Tiffany Wright's biological Grandmother Shirley Boston speaking out to the NY media about her granddaughter's death.

I also know that per Charlotte-Mecklenburg DSS Ms. Boston was not allowed to attend Tiffany's funeral, nor will Charlotte officials tell her where Tiffany is buried. This is a shame! I guess local Charlotte DSS and Law Enforcement Officials are desperately trying to hide Negligence in Tiffany's death.




(Remembering Tiffany Ranae Wright)







Judge: Tiffany's adoptive brother Mitchell to stay in jail

Royce Mitchell will stay in jail until a future hearing to determine if he violated a 2007 prison-release agreement that required him to stay out of trouble, a federal judge ruled this morning.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police call Mitchell a “person of interest” in the Sept. 14 shooting death of Tiffany Wright, a pregnant Hawthorne High School Junior.

On the day of her death, police arrested Mitchell on a charge of statutory rape and taking indecent liberties with Tiffany. The sex charges were dropped last week after a DNA test showed Mitchell was not the father of Tiffany’s baby.

But a Federal Warrant has kept Mitchell in Mecklenburg jail. It alleges he violated a Federal post-release agreement following a five-year prison term for his role in a drug trafficking conspiracy in Buffalo.

The alleged violation is the fact that he was charged with the sex crimes, even though they were dropped by the state. Mitchell, 36, is a potential danger to the community and a flight risk because of his past criminal history and the lower burden of proof required to convict him of violating the agreement, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Cayer ruled.

Mitchell’s defense attorney, Claire Rauscher, argued that he should be released under electronic monitoring because he had a job lined up as a truck driver and a landscaper and could stay with a cousin. She also noted that Mecklenburg District Attorney Peter Gilchrist dropped the sex charges against Mitchell.

“It’s extraordinarily relevant as to what the (local) prosecutor’s take is in this case,” Rauscher said. “Peter Gilchrist didn’t say it was a weak case; he said it was a no case.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimlani Ford outlined Mitchell’s past criminal history, which included “slashing a man with a razor knife at a rock concert” in 1996. “He is clearly a danger to the community,” she said.

Four supporters of Mitchell attended the hearing, including Hubert Jones, who was referred to in court as a “Masonic brother” to Mitchell. “He’s a friend of mine," Jones said. "You’re supposed to support your friends." The other supporters, including the cousin, would not speak to the press. A date for the next hearing has not been set.


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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, WIVB, Google Maps