Monthly Archives: August 2021

The August 27, 2021 decision by the California parole board to recommend parole for Sirhan Sirhan was a just, rational and criminal justice-serving decision.

Fifty-three years ago Sirhan assassinated former U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY). The year was 1968—one of the most violent political years in modern U.S. history.

Two of Kennedy’s sons—Douglas and Robert Jr.—supported Sirhan’s bid for parole.

After learning of the board’s decision, Robert Jr. issued this statement: “My father, I think, would be really happy today. My father believed in compassion. The ideals of our justice system are the possibility of redemption and the importance of forgiveness. He didn’t believe the justice system was just about revenge.”

Six of Kennedy’s children did not share those sentiments expressed by Robert Jr. They demanded more revenge. They vowed to fight Sirhan’s actual release “every step of the way,” by calling on the parole board reverse its decision, and failing that, by urging California Gov. Gavin Newsom to reject the board’s decision.

In their collective statement, the six Kennedy siblings stated: “We are devastated that the man who murdered our father has been recommended for parole. We adamantly oppose the parole and release of Sirhan Sirhan and are shocked by a ruling that we believe ignores the standards of parole of a confessed, first-degree murderer in the state of California.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Sirhan, did not oppose Sirhan’s parole. Reform-minded District Attorney George Gascon implemented a new policy after his 2020 election that prosecutors from his office would no longer appear at parole hearings to oppose parole for inmates. The new policy is based on Gascon’s belief that the district attorney’s role in a criminal case ends at sentencing.

The district attorney’s office issued this statement: “The role of a prosecutor and their access to information ends at sentencing. If someone is no longer a threat to public safety after having served more than 50 years in prison, then the parole board may recommend release based on an objective determination. Our office policies take these principles into account and as such, our prosecutors stay out of the parole board hearing process.”

Gascon is correct.

Crime victims and district attorneys have no legitimate penological interest in the parole decision-making process.  

If the law grants to an individual a right to parole eligibility, the decision by the parole board to either grant or deny parole should be based on one dominant factor: does the individual pose an immediate threat to public safety or presents a reasonable likelihood of future dangerousness.  Other collateral issues should be utilized in reaching that determination: the individual’s rehabilitation efforts, acceptance of criminal responsibility, and release plan.

Demands for revenge—either by victims or politically motivated prosecutors—have no place in the American penal system. These demands can be heard, and accommodated, at the front end of the system—investigation, charging, prosecution and sentencing. These demands have no place at the back end of the system: prison assignments, penal conditions, classification determinations, security interests, or release decisions.

An example of how corrupt politics worms its way into the parole decision-making process was evidenced by a letter sent to the parole board by the Los County Sheriff’s Department opposing Sirhan’s release.

Who really gives a fuck what the LA County Sheriff’s Department thinks. It has been reported in multiple sources that the department’s 170 year history has been riddled with corruption, racism, and unwarranted excessive and lethal force against the very public, especially in minority communities, it has a responsibility to protect and serve.

That is the responsibility of law enforcement, period—protect and serve, not stick their noses in the parole decision-making process.

Whether Gov. Newsom will approve Sirhan’s parole remains to be seen. Like all governors, he is a political creature who will stick his middle finger in the air to see which way the political winds are blowing.

Perhaps.

In August 2019, Larosa Waller-Asekere and Dwight Broom Palmer were high school basketball coaches at the Elite Scholars Academy in Clayton County, Georgia. Both are Black Americans.

70 percent of the students at Elite, which is located in Jonesboro, are Black Americans. The rest of the students are Hispanic or some other ethnic group, less 0.9 percent who are white (or roughly 6 students out of a total of 686 students).

In August of 2019, Imani Bell was a 16-year-old student at Elite. She was a member of the school’s basketball team. On the 13^th of that month she died after suffering a heat-stroke during an outdoor 97 degree practice session.

Last month a Clayton County grand jury indicted Waller-Asekere and Palmer for involuntary manslaughter and reckless cruelty in connection with the teenaged athlete’s death.

In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control reported that heat illness during practice and competition was the leading cause of death and disability among high school athletes. Between 1995 and 2018, an average of three football players died each year from heat stroke, most of whom were high school athletes. A more recent 2021 report by ther International Journal of Biometeorology nearly tripled between 1994 and 2009.

In other words, there was ample evidence in the public record that high or extreme heat during practice or competition was killing student athletes at an alarming, even unprecedented rate. Coaches, athletic directors, school administrative officials, and especially parents were aware of the deadly dangers of high school athletics in the summer time.

Many of these student athlete deaths, including in Georgia, were caused by white high school coaches engaged in intense practice and competition.

So, why were none of them indicted?

Just recently a 16-year-old white high school football player named Drake Geiger at Omaha’s South High School died on August 11, 2021 after practicing in a 91 degree and 105 degree session. Omaha is experiencing one of its more severe heat waves.

Will the white coaches involved in young Geiger’s death be indicted in Nebraska?

I doubt it.

The indictment of Waller-Asekere and Palmer attracted national media attention. A cursory Google search produces nothing about any white high school coach being indicted in connection with a heat-related death of one of their athletes.

I will not pass judgment on whether Waller-Asekere or Palmer should have been indicted for Imani Bell’s death. Most of the grand jurors were probably Black Americans since 72 percent of Clayton County are Black Americans.

Still, the social optics is not good. Two Black American coaches get indicted while white coaches under similar circumstances routinely get free passes.

This Gravette, Arkansas resident is one of the thousands of traitorous insurrectionists who stormed the nation’s Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

Loud-mouthed Bigo garnered international media fame as the as the moron sitting behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk with his booted left foot sitting atop of some of the Speaker’s official documents lying on her desk. His left finger was pointed at the two tiny balls between his legs that he later boasted about scratching while sitting at the Speaker’s desk.

Put simply, this redneck white supremacist, Richard “Bigo” Barnett, not only defiled the Capitol Building with his very presence but disgraced the history and purpose of its founding.

Barnett’s violent break-in of the Capitol Building also garnered him, and more than 500 of his co-conspirators, a host of federal criminal charges. They were all then placed in what is commonly referred to as the “D.C. jail. Some of the insurrectionists, like little “Bigo,” made bail after spending weeks or months in “protective custody” on lockdown tiers (also called “solitary confinement”) in the jail facility.

Barnett, one of the leaders of January 6 treason, recently decided to speak out about “conditions” at the D.C. Jail.

In a television interview, Bigo said he was frequently targeted for punitive treatment by DC Jail guards because he was outspoken about the way he and his fellow insurrectionists were being treated. He said the harsh treatment he received was made even worse when he informed the guards they were violating their own “rules.”

In this pearl of wisdom, Barnett told the television reporter:

“You can love me. You can hate me. You can love me and hate what I did. You can not like anything about me. But you have to put that aside because this isn’t about me. This is about our federal prison system in America.”

It is rather peculiar that not once in his miserable lifetime did Bigo ever offer a personal concern about “our federal prison system in America” for January 6. About the only imprisoned people he was ever concerned about may have been the Aryan Brotherhood. He was certainly never concerned about the roughly 40  percent of the black inmates in that prison system, although black people comprise only 13 percent of the general population.

Gator mouth Bigo, and some of his U.S. Congressional supporters, are particularly incensed that the Capitol insurrectionists are being held in “solitary confinement.”

Folks, there is no other place to house these white supremacist goons. 87 percent of the DC Jail population is black- Bigo, his legion of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and Three Percenters, would not fare too well in general population in the DC Jail. They would quickly learn lessons about “our federal prison system in America” they would never forget, not in this lifetime or the next.

Jails are not nice places. Most are actually worse than prison, especially the larger jails like New York’s “Rikers Island” or the Los Angeles County Jail.

But what did Mr. Bigo expect after he flopped his nasty ass in Speaker Pelosi’s chair and threw his dirty boot upon her desk?

That sight may have been charming to the Proud Boys or the remnants of the Arkansas Ku Klux Klan, but it certainly was not an endearing image for most law-abiding Americans.

The tragedy with the Capitol insurrection is that the insurrectionists themselves and their supporters think of them as “American patriots.”

When did it become American patriotism to storm the nation’s Capitol Building, urinate and defecate in its hallways, destroy government property, beat and injure and kill Capitol Police, try to lynch the Vice President of the United States, and seek out Democrats to kill or maim.

Is this the new American Patriotism?

Will this new “Jim Crow Order” personified in Richard “Bigo” Barnett really “Make America Great Again?”

Have the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys become America’s new symbol of the “rule of law?”

The Richard “Bigo” Barnetts may have wormed their way into mainstream America, and gained some political support along the way, but they are not “true Americans.”

They can best be described as “Putin Americans.”

The former Vice-President of the United States.

I don’t agree with most, if any, of his political, social or religious views.

But I admire that he is an honest Republican and a decent human being.

During the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the nation’s Capitol Building, a treasonous mob stormed through the house of freedom shouting “hang Mike Pence.” Some of the murderous white supremacists goons even brought the building supplies necessary to construct the gallows from which the Pence hanging would take place.

Some federal and state lawmakers, former disgraced political figures, and a legion of their gullible followers would now have the public believe that the Capitol insurrection was actually just “another tourist day” during which there were showers of “love and hugs and kisses” among the “white patriots” as they made their peaceful tour of the Capitol Building.

I guess the demand “hang Mike Pence” was a new form of tough love. That the people who brought the building supplies to the love picnic for the Pence Gallows were simply going to lynch the vice president as a new form of “time out.”

Truth and facts are rare commodities in the American market place these days.

But here is the truth, folks.

Some of the January 6 insurrectionists indeed shouted “hang Mike Pence.” They had every intention of lynching him if they could have laid hands on him. The fact is: these thugs had been given instructions to kill the vice president. Proof of this fact is the gallows construction material brought to the traitorous uprising.

Someone, somewhere, at some point, ordered the killing of the Vice President of the United States.

That is the truth. That is a fact.

Perhaps one day it will be revealed who ordered the killing and set it in motion.

Maybe in the QAnon World the lynching of the Vice President is a “love fest” but in the world where the rule of law and human decency prevail, it is a crime.

If nothing else is learned about the January 6 insurrection, those investigating the tragic event must not only identify the on-scene thugs who wanted to “hang Mike Pence” but identify the sick traitor who ordered the hit—that’s the motherf..ker who needs to be introduced to an orange jumpsuit.

Hopefully he will be placed on the same pedophile tier with Matt Gaetz where the two of them can receive regular “hugs and kisses” when Marjorie Green visits them.