NMissCommentor

A Proposed Stipulation in the Pardons Case?

NMC — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:18:56 +0000

A quick reminder for laypeople in the audience.

… a stipulation is an agreement made between opposing parties prior to a pending hearing or trial. For example, both parties might stipulate to certain facts, and therefore not have to argue those facts in court.

When Judge Norman Gillespie was a magistrate, and parties at a pretrial conference would start arguing to him that the other side should be made to stipulate to a fact because it wasn’t disputed, he’d give them a perplexed look and say, “But it’s not a stipulation unless everybody agreed.”

On February 1st, the day the Mississippi Supreme Court took the pardons case, Attorney General Hood sent Judge Green a stipulation. There were several odd things about the stipulation.

He doesn’t suggest anywhere in it that anyone else had agreed to it. As far as I can tell, the first the other (purported stipulators?) heard about it was when he told the judge.

He seems to be using it to tell the judge (or the world) a list of people who he conceded had met the advertising requirement (hint to remaining parties: I would certainly check and see if this effectively puts an end to the argument “They have to advertise every single day!”). But in any event, I’d be curious if this seems as strange to others as it does to me.

I’m also curious where sending this fell in the chronology of that days events (that is, before or after the Supreme Court took the case?).

Here’s the documents.

Another Headline: “Pardoned Murderer Lists Haley Barbour As Reference On Resume” (WREG Memphis)

NMC — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:52:31 +0000

Folks may remember Mr. Ozment, the murderer Haley Barbour pardoned who was last seen being served with process in Wyoming.

It seems a Memphis TV station has obtained his resume. The headline tells the best part of the story (and, if one calls the number listed for Gov. Barbour, you get the voicemail for Mrs. Barbour. I’m not kidding).

Ozment also tumpets his experience directing classes at the Marshall County Correctional Center, a commercial prison run by Wackenhut. He does not mention which side of the bars he was on while working in that capacity. It has lots about his college experience, but nothing about the two decades in stir).

h/t Razor in comments.

Pardonee David Gatlin has gone to Alabama to live with the AntiChrist

NMC — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:32:28 +0000

“It’s not safe. David is a cold-blooded murderer and he’s living with a self-proclaimed antichrist. That’s dangerous,” said Tammy Gatlin’s sister, Tiffany Ellis-Brewer.

The WLBT headline (to the story with the quote by family member of a murder victim, above) is hilarious:

Pardoned Trustee Living With “AntiChrist” in Alabama

This is a strange one. A TV reporter went to the house of one Ernest Jacks in Alabaster, Alabama to talk to David Gatlin, who had been given a pardon from a life sentence by Governor Barbour. Gatlin had moved to Alabaster to live with his friend, Jacks. While the reporter was there, Jacks talked on camera. The Birminham news reports:

Ernest Jacks Jr., 68, of 121 Kentwood Way, was arrested this afternoon after he threatened to bomb Arizona and Florida to rid those states of senior citizens on Social Security during a television interview. He also called himself the “anti-Christ” in the report that aired Wednesday on Fox 6. …

Jacks is being transported to the Shelby County jail, where he will be held on $15,000 bond.

“Threats of harming people is not something that’s acceptable in our society,” Rigney said. “He caused alarm and fear in the community, and he’ll have to answer for those statements.”

Will some intrepid reporter ask the AntiChrist if he roots for Alabama or Auburn?

William S. Burroughs imposes a curse on Truman Capote

NMC — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:44:31 +0000

Luc Sante, reviewing the second collection of William S. Burroughs’s letters, quotes a letter to Truman Capote, “prompted by his distaste for “In Cold Blood” and for the fact that Capote did nothing to save his subjects from capital punishment”:

You have betrayed and sold out the talent that was granted you by this department. That talent is now officially withdrawn. Enjoy your dirty money. You will never have anything else. You will never write another sentence above the level of ‘In Cold Blood.’ As a writer you are finished. Over and out.

If, as Sante and I read it, it’s a hex, it certainly seems to have worked; Capote never completed another book.

Joe York announces the big one: Pride and Joy: A Southern Foodways Film Project for Fall 2012

NMC — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:37:24 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

This hour long documentary for which Joe has spent years in the eating comes out this Fall. Folks like me who have enjoyed his great short films about food like Whole Hog have been looking forward to it.

It has a web page, too.

Anonymous targets defense law firm representing Srgt. who led Hadditha Massacre

NMC — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:07:06 +0000

The hacker collective (or whatever it is) Anonymous has taken down the website of the DC-area law firm Pucket Faraj (when I last checked it there was a default page there, and all the interior links to the site produced various “not found” messages) and stolen 2.6 gigs of emails from their servers, data related to the defense of Srgt. Frank Wuterich, who lead the Marines who killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Hadith in November of 2005. Wuterich entered a plea under which he was demoted to private and would serve no prison time. According to Gawker,

Anonymous promises the emails contain “detailed records, transcripts, testimony, trial evidence, and legal defense donation records” about the Haditha case, and other cases Puckett Faraj handles.

The data will apparently be posted to Pirate Bay. Anonymous left this message on the law firm’s website:

“As part of our ongoing efforts to expose the corruption of the court systems and the brutality of US imperialism, we want to bring attention to USMC SSgt Frank Wuterich who along with his squad murdered dozens of unarmed civilians during the Iraqi Occupation. Can you believe this scumbag had his charges reduced to involuntary manslaughter and got away with only a pay cut?”

h/t Lee, who, like me, would prefer to not ever draw Anonymous’s ire.

Thursday Morning Various

NMC — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:54:17 +0000

The Clarion Ledger ran an AP report on the Supreme Court’s decision to take the pardons case. In at least one way it’s a traditional C/L report, though: There are comments by Matt Steffey (According to the report, Steffey thought this a positive development. Interestingly, Jim Hood says that he thought so, too, saying: ”This is a good development.”). CNN– which has had a truck in Oxford and is apparently running a story on Anderson Cooper’s show tonight– reports the development along with details about Ozment, the pardonee served with process while in Wyoming. Reuters has a report that doesn’t add much other than confusing county court and circuit court (hint to Reuters: ”trial court” would have worked).
Mitt Romney, divider not a uniter: ”I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor.” Yep, Mitt Romney said that, yesterday morning to Soledad O’Brien. It was one of those moments that make one think that, as smart as Romney seems to be, his people ought not let him unscripted near a microphone. He went on to dig in further, I mean, to explain (and, no, I don’t think saying “the poor have a safety net,” or that he’d fix it if it tore made it all right. He said the poor are covered so he doesn’t worry about them). Gail Collins in a NY Times op ed has more.
Did you ever have the impression that Boar’s Head meats and cheese just came out of nowhere, sort of mysteriously? And they weren’t really as good as they were supposed to be? Well, you aren’t alone, and Slate has a bit of the story.
In 1865, Col. P.H. Anderson of Tennessee wrote one of his former slaves, asking him to return to work for him. He apparently got a pretty memorable reply that was run in contemporary newspapers. Hilarious and worth reading.
Clive Stafford Smith, the lawyer who handled death penalty cases across the south for years and is now at Reprieve in the UK, where he’s represented Guantanamo inmates and others, has written a new book (probably not available in the US yet) about the death penalty, focusing on a Florida case of his own. Here’s an interview.
Michael Hasting’s book The Operator (worked up from his time with Gen. Stanley McChrystal) is on my to-read-soon pile. Now his interview of Julian Assage is in my online cue. h/t Lee.

Mississippi Civil Rights Leader Cleve Donald has died

NMC — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:22:40 +0000

He was the second black student to graduate from Ole Miss in the 60s. He got his start as a student in the Jackson Movement led by Medgar Evers. Jerry Mitchell reports:

“Cleve was one of the student leaders,” [Leslie] McLemore said. “The movement gave Cleve the foundation for what he did later in life.”

He followed in the footsteps of his father, Cleveland Donald Sr., who although injured in World War II, helped to form a civil rights organization called the American Veterans Committee.

The younger Donald was among the young protesters that Jackson police put in the city garbage trucks and hauled to the stockyard buildings at the state fairgrounds in 1963.

After Evers was assassinated on June 12, 1963, Cleveland Donald made a vow to his family, his brother recalled. “He said, ‘They can have my life because I am not going to let this deter me from changing things in Mississippi.’ ”

He attended classes under the protection of federal marshals. Later asked how he reacted to those hostile to him, he was quoted as replying, “I was called to love them.”

After graduating from Ole Miss, he obtained degrees from Harvard University and Cornell University. He helped establish the first black studies program at Ole Miss and served as vice chancellor at the University of Massachusetts and chief administrator at the University of Connecticut at Waterbury.

The Mississippi Supreme Court just stayed the Pardons Case and set en banc hearing for 2/9

NMC — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:22:41 +0000

Briefs are to be filed by February 7th, en banc argument (that is, before the entire court) on February 9th, and the lower court proceeding before Judge Green is stayed.

I have never heard of an en banc argument set just over a week out!

Tom Fortner seems to have got their attention.

Update:

Here’s the order. The court takes all the petitions before it– from a number of cases, not just the ones before Judge Green– as interlocutory appeals, grants the interlocutory appeals, then yanks the cases from all of the trial courts, and sets it for briefing and argument as noted.

Kingfish, I think, misread the order. Here’s what I see: ”It is ordered that… that the Request for Immediate Stay for release from Custody filed by Kirby Tate…now considered petitions for interlocutory appeal, are hereby granted…” In other words, “we are reframing the petition for a stay, etc., as a petition for interlocutory appeal and granting that and setting a briefing and argument schedule.” No one is getting released by that order.

This is confirmed by the tag line, keeping the TRO in effect (a TRO that requires people in jail be kept there) “until further order of this Court.”

Massachusetts Chain Saw Massacre

NMC — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:03:08 +0000

So if you look up from sleep and see a chain saw cutting through your door, what are you rights? Can you start shooting this unseen, unknown, unannounced assailant?

At 6:04 last Thursday morning, just before Sanchez’ alarm was set to go off, she heard a pounding outside her second floor apartment.

“I just happened to glance over and saw this huge chainsaw ripping down the side of my door,” she explains. “And I was freaking out. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Within moments, the chainsaw had cut through most of her door, and someone on the FBI’s arrest team kicked the rest of it in.

“That’s when I heard the clicking of a gun and I heard ‘FBI, get down!’, so I laid right on down.

And they left Ms. Sanchez on the floor with her dog (they shouted that she was to get her dog) and her three-year-old daughter in the next room screaming for mommy for a half an hour until they figured out they had the wrong apartment.

Radley Balko (where I got this) has been documenting these outrages– police military-type invasions of homes, invariably part of a drug war that law enforcement has apparently come to think authorizes a literal war on the population.

I don’t know when we started down the road toward a country where this sort of thing was acceptable– not just that it was the wrong apartment, but that this sort of home invasion seems to be more and more common– but it’s terrifying and wrong.