I wish I were writing this week about how the TSA misses 95% of weapons when screeners are covertly tested, how they “reassigned” the TSA acting director as a result, or how the TSA hired people on its own terror watch list as screeners. But since apparently no one actually is targeting our skies anymore (as clearly the TSA is not stopping anyone), the TSA is now merely a joke.
What’s not a joke is that a 22-year-old man is dead in New York, a suicide spurred by a systematic violation of his rights by the courts, “New York’s Boldest” (The NYC Department of Corrections), and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office. Kalief Browder was arrested when he was just 16 years old, accused of stealing a backpack. He plead not guilty and asked for a speedy trial, but because of delays by the NYC DA’s office, he was held for 3 years without trial before a judge told the city they had to let him go. A total of 31 court dates were scheduled, most resulting in an adjournment at the DA’s office’s request.
If that’s not bad enough, he experienced significant abuse and neglect on Rikers Island, the notorious NYC jail. Video taped beatings by guards, absurdly long stints in seclusion in solitary confinement, and abuse by his fellow inmates were this man’s life for more than 1,000 days without being convicted of a crime. While there is evidence that he may not have committed the crime in the first place, he likely would have served months — or less — had he merely plead guilty. Traumatized by his experience and struggling to integrate back into society after having those pivotal years taken from him, he took his own life last Saturday.
What does it say about our justice system that asking for a trial can result in spending more time in jail than pleading guilty, even if the result of the trial is a not guilty finding? What kind of judge refuses to release this man on a reasonable bail (or on his own recognizance) once they realize, “Hey! He’s already been in jail longer than we’d keep him if he were tried and convicted?!” What kind of DA postpones a man’s fate dozens of times because he can’t manage to prepare for a simple trial over 36 months? And where did our constitutional right to a speedy trial go??
Amendment VI – “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”
I hope there will be protests — I will be there. In the meantime, if you’d like to express your thoughts on the matter: Robert T. Johnson, Bronx District Attorney, 198 East 161st Street, Bronx, NY 10451, ph: 718-590-2312, fax: 718-590-2198, angueirl@bronxda.nyc.gov
Professional Troublemaker ® 
Did you see John Oliver’s segment on Bail, (maybe) linked above?
Nope the Website link didn’t render. Maybe this:
(“The beatings will continue until morale is improved…”)
Reblogged this on RubinoWorld.
Twitter posts about TSA mostly negative:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tsa-twitter-posts-20150619-story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+%28L.A.+Times+-+Business%29
US again takes people off “no-fly” list to try to evade judicial review:
Four days before a Federal judge was scheduled to hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by four Muslim US citizens who were placed on the US government’s “no-fly” list to try to pressure them into becoming informants for the FBI, the government has notified the plaintiffs in the case that all of them have been removed from the no-fly list.
The plaintiffs in Tanvir v. Lynch are continuing to press their claims, as are other US citizens challenging their placement on the no-fly list in retaliation for declining to inform on their friends, families, communities, and fellow worshippers. But we expect that, as has been its pattern, the government defendants will now try to get the case dismissed as “moot“.
So far as we know, every other instance in which the US government has told anyone whether or not they are or were on the no-fly list, or that they have been removed from that list, has come after the victims of these no-fly orders have challenged them in Federal court.
Either (1) the government never had any reason to think any of these people posed a threat to aviation, but never bothered to assess the basis, if any, for belief that they posed such a threat until faced with the imminent need to defend their blacklisting to a Federal judge. Or (2) the government genuinely (although mistakenly and without any adequate basis) believed that they posed a threat, but saw the possibility of judicial review of no-fly decisions as a greater threat to the standard operating procedures of the TSA, DHS, and FBI. Or (3) both of the above.
http://papersplease.org/wp/2015/06/16/us-again-takes-people-off-no-fly-list-to-try-to-evade-judicial-review/