Category Archives: Legal News

Blog, Criminal, Legal News, Supreme Court

Jury will come from Charleston area in Dylann Roof’s federal trial

July 19, 2016 admin

BY SAM TYSON AND STACY JACOBSON MONDAY, JULY 18TH 2016

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — In what one attorney called a victory for jurors during a trial that is expected to last months – through the holiday season – and possibly into next year, a U.S. District Court judge agreed with Dylann Roof’s defense team to pick a jury from the greater Charleston area.

That means some 1,500 people will be called on jury duty in Roof’s federal hate crimes trial in November, and they will all come from an area of the state south of Georgetown.

“It’s a win for the jurors,” said attorney Andy Savage, who is serving as a counselor to the survivors and victims’ families during Roof’s state and federal trials.

“Everybody is going to have heard about this case,” Savage said. “The issue is if… they can set that aside in this case and look at facts and circumstances presented in the courtroom.”

Tyrone Sanders, the father of one of the victims and husband of one of the survivors of the Emanuel AME attack, said he’s satisfied with the decision.

“Since it happened here, I think people here would feel more inclined to make sure this guy gets what he deserves,” Sanders said.

The defense also agreed not to file for a change of venue later this year.

Judge Richard Gergel also settled several ongoing issues in the case, including how much access the government can have to Roof’s mental health history and the details of his mental evaluation.

Roof’s chief counsel David Bruck, who defended Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston bomber trial, asked to have the case-specific jury questionnaire handled by attorneys, but Gergel said in the South Carolina federal district it’s court-directed. That means Gergel will put together a list of specific questions that attorneys will use to disqualify potential jurors in November before arguments begin.

Still hanging out there waiting for a decision is whether the defense will be allowed to have someone in the room during Roof’s mental evaluation conducted by the government’s expert.

The defense wants to be present, but the U.S. government is pushing for something less, like an audio or video recording of the interaction.

Gergel said he wanted to hear more from the attorneys on the matter and told them to file more specific arguments within the next five days.

Read Full Article – http://abcnews4.com/news/emanuel-ame-shooting/jury-will-come-from-charleston-area-in-dylann-roofs-federal-trial

Blog, Business Law, Civil Rights, Legal News, Supreme Court

Lawsuit: White Prof Axed After Insisting Black Student Do Her Homework Properly

July 15, 2016 admin

Former City University of New York adjunct professor John Trujillo claims in a new lawsuit the school abruptly fired him after running afoul of a black student he insisted do her homework precisely as instructed.

Trujillo, who taught political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, part of the CUNY system, told the New York Post that despite multiple prior positive evaluations they just “threw me away like a piece of trash,” he tells the New York Post.

In his federal race discrimination claim ,Trujillo says that he was treated “differently from and less favorably than” non-white employees. In 2014, Trujillo upbraided a black student in class who turned in an assignment on a 3 X 5 index card instead of the required 4 X 6. The budding young scholar responded by calling him a “dick.”

After another confrontation Trujillo had her booted from the classroom by security. He says another black student then left in solidarity and vowed, “I’m going to write a letter, I’m going to take you down.”

And she did, complaining the professor was a racist who said all blacks are on welfare. Trujillo was suddenly given an “unsatisfactory” evaluation.

In the course of what sounds like a sham investigation, administrators refused to interview a black student who offered to defend him against the bias charges and explain that his detractors were outright lying.

He was fired from the $25,000 part-time job in February 2015. Trujillo’s lawyer, Marshall Bellovin, told the Post he “didn’t get a fair and impartial investigation and accounting of the facts. It was open and shut apparently from the start.”

But his legal battle is still uphill, according to one veteran civil rights lawyer with no liberal ideological axe to grind. Even though Trujillo was obviously railroaded he needs to offer specific evidence that similarly situated non-whites were treated differently and more leniently. In addition, he needs to prove that CUNY fired him solely for being white, as opposed to just the typical unwillingness of college administrators to offend loud and whiny students, especially when they make wild accusations of bigotry.

In fact, one administrator who investigated Trujillo said she found the charges of anti-black bias bogus.

But whatever the legal outcome Trujillo’s saga is good reminder that in Barack Obama’s America some allegations of racism are so serious innocence is no defense.

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Helen Mirren: My mafia connection – Mafia Documentary On Page

July 14, 2016 admin

The British actress explains why she decided to narrate the documentary A Very Sicilian Justice.

By Helen Mirren

Dame Helen Mirren is an award-winning British actress.

I am passionate about Italy – in particular the people and places of South Italy – and I have a much-loved home there.

Italy has a dark history of mafia violence and political corruption. But it also has many incredibly brave and brilliant public servants – police, magistrates and politicians – who risk their lives and careers day in, day out to fight this enemy within. The threats they receive also put their family life under terrible strain.

These largely unsung heroes need to be recognised and supported.

At the heart of the documentary A Very Sicilian Justice is the astonishing and shocking story of one man – a public servant – who lives in fear and whose freedom is severely restricted simply because he is doing his job.

I also have a personal connection to the events described in the documentary. A close friend – the architect we employed to build our house in Italy, Brizio Montinaro – lost his brother in 1992 in the explosion of mafia violence described in the film.

Antonio Montinaro was a police bodyguard who died alongside the famous anti-mafia prosecutor, Judge Giovanni Falcone, in a bomb attack as he escorted the judge along the Palermo motorway. Falcone’s wife and two other bodyguards were also killed.

Today, almost 25 years later, Judge Antonino Di Matteo is investigating the criminal and political context behind these and other killings and, incredibly, finds himself under tremendous threat for doing so.

The murder plot and threats against Judge Di Matteo show that these events from the past are still very much alive today.

As Di Matteo says in the film, unless Italy faces up to and uncovers the truth behind this tragic period in its recent history, the events of this terrible “season of terror” will continue to poison and polarise Italy’s body politic for ever.

In Italy, the ongoing trials and investigations into this period are little reported. Internationally, this story is virtually unknown.

I hope that A Very Sicilian Justice, by bringing these important events to a worldwide audience, will give added support and recognition to Judge Di Matteo and his colleagues.

Many think Italian organised crime and corruption are confined somehow within Italy’s borders, but this is a dangerous misunderstanding of what “mafia” is.

The proceeds of crime are not only invested abroad and hidden in international tax havens. According to Italian investigators, mafias worldwide have changed their modus operandi. They are increasingly sophisticated, work together and operate more quietly than before through political corruption and by infiltrating the business and financial worlds.

Despite the recent referendum result in the UK and the potential knock-on effect of a severely divided Europe, I passionately believe countries, now more than ever, need to be vigilant, cooperate and unite if we are to win the battle against organised crime and political corruption.

Full article – http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/07/helen-mirren-mafia-connection-160706080712820.html

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

How the Italian mafia’s top mobsters used a five-year-old girl to smuggle secret notes after taking her out for ice cream

July 13, 2016 admin

Matteo Messina Denaro, head of the Sicilian mafia, is Italy’s most wanted
He and his right hand man used Attilio Fogazza’s daughter to run memos
Notes were shoved in the five-year-old’s backpack and jacket after gelato
Cosa Nostra kingpin Messina Denaro on the run for more than 20 years

By GARETH DAVIES FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 10:22 EST, 11 July 2016 | UPDATED: 13:45 EST, 11 July 2016

Italy’s most wanted mobster used a five-year-old girl to run secret messages for him, a mafia informant has revealed.

Head of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra Matteo Messina Denaro used Attilio Fogazza’s young daughter to carry handwritten notes between himself and other mafia top dogs.

Kingpin Denaro has not been seen in public for 20 years, and is considered in the top 10 most wanted men in the world.

Fogazza, who himself is on a murder charge, said Messina Denaro’s second-in-command Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Scimonelli approached his daughter to run the memos, known as ‘pizzini’.

The right-hand man had taken his daughter for an ice cream and put the messages inside her jacket and backpack.

The daughter and the rest of Fogazza’s family have been living in a secret location under police protection while he co-operates with the prosecutors as they attempt to bring down the ‘boss of bosses’ in the Italian mafia scene.

Fogazza, 44, ran a car dealership in south-western Sicily and decided to collaborate with Palermo investigators after he was arrested last December for the murder of Salvatore Lombardo in 2009 who was killed after he stole a van from Scimonelli.

“One day my daughter said ‘Uncle Mimmo’ had taken her for a gelato and put the messages inside her jacket and her backpack,” Fogazza told prosecutors in Palermo according to Italian media reports.

Last year, a Palermo judge sentenced six men including Scimonelli from the hierarchy of the Cosa Nostra – meaning ‘Our Thing’ – to a total of 80 years in prison for racketeering, conspiracy and aiding and abetting the mafia.

Head honcho Messina Denaro, 54, has not been seen in public since the early 90s, but a new e-fit was created in 2014 with the help of another informant.

He is wanted for a string of offences, and a judge found him guilty in his absence in 1993 for his part in the bomb attacks that killed 10 people in Rome, Florence and Milan.

Blog, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Russian mafia ‘increasingly active’ in Germany

July 12, 2016 admin

The Russian mafia is becoming “increasingly active” in Germany, with networks recruiting in German prisons and groups bringing in billions of euros each year, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has warned.

“The Russian-Eurasian organized criminality is very dynamic” BKA President Holger Münch told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “They are already expanding in the west.”

One of the most dangerous groups, according to Münch, is the so-called ‘Thieves in law’ (Diebe im Gesetz) gang, founded in Stalin’s labour camps. The group from the former Soviet Union have their own ‘laws’ and a secret language, and is thought to be recruiting from within Germany’s prisons.

The BKA has previously linked 20,000 and 40,000 people in Germany to the group, and authorities believe that its members in Germany today represent “a five-figure number” – only rough estimates are possible due to the clandestine nature of the groups.

“Eight to ten percent of inmates in German penal facilities are Russian-speaking or of Russian origin; about 5,000 people,” explained Münch. “Not all of them are part of ‘Thieves in law’ but this figure shows the large potential for recruitment for these groups in Germany.”

The BKA President emphasized that organized crime may be operating in areas not traditionally associated with the mafia, for example apartment break-ins and shoplifting; Münch mentioned one Georgian shoplifter who had been able to earn €500 per day, and said it could be assumed “with certainty” that in 2015 criminality by these gangs had led to billions of euros worth of damages.

The mafia groups are also thought to operate in drug trafficking, tax fraud, economic offences, protection money and prostitution.

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is working closely with the BKA. Münch said: “When people use the asylum process to commit crimes, care must be taken to ensure that their stay is as short as possible and that they are quickly expelled.”

Full article – http://www.thelocal.de/20160711/russian-mafia-increasingly-active-in-germany

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