UPDATE: Guards Indicted for Negligence in Death of Nimali Henry

St. Bernard prison employees indicted for negligence in inmate death

A federal grand jury on Thursday (Dec. 3) indicted four St. Bernard Parish Prison employees in the death last year of inmate Nimali Henry. The indictment accuses Andre Dominick, Timothy Williams, Debra Becnel and Lisa Vaccarella of failing to provide proper medication and treatment to Henry, who suffered from a rare blood disorder.

All four defendants also are accused of civil rights violations, as well as making false statements to the FBI. They have been placed on indefinite administrative leave, St. Bernard Parish Sheriff James Pohlmann said.

The accused correctional officers have been named for the first time with the indictment, which came about eight months after the FBI intervened in a civil rights lawsuit against the St. Bernard Sheriff's Office.

The civil suit, filed by the father of Henry's baby daughter on the daughter's behalf, was put on hold pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.

None of the defendants could be reached Thursday evening at publicly listed phone numbers. Court records do not list their attorneys.

Henry was found face down in an isolation cell in April 2014. A coroner's report found she likely died of a blood clot. In addition to the civil rights charges, the indictment accuses all four defendants of providing false statements to the FBI, as follows:

• Dominick, a captain, told agents that Henry and another individual, "D.S.", were not aware of Henry's medical conditions. In fact, both Henry and D.S. informed Dominick of the condition, according to the indictment.
• Williams, a corporal, falsely told agents he'd spoken with another individual, J.C., about Henry's condition the weekend before her death, and that he had checked on her in the hours before her death, according to the indictment.
• Becnel, a deputy, falsely told agents that Henry, as well as other inmates, had not told her about her condition, according to the indictment.
• Vaccarella falsely told agents she saw Henry walk into a dorm, lie on the ground and stand up and walk on her own, without difficulty, according to the indictment, which also accuses Vaccarella of discussing her observations with a supervisor. In fact, prosecutors say, Vaccarella watched Henry fall to the dorm floor and left her there, without discussing the indicident with the supervisor. 

Pohlmann said he's still learning about the circumstances that led to Henry's death, as he hasn't spoken to any of the defendants since the FBI became involved in March. He declined to comment on whether the allegations might lead to any changes of procedure at the jail.

"I don't know a lot of the facts that resulted in the indictment today," Pohlmann said. "I'm hoping to meet with the U.S. Attorney's Office soon to maybe get briefed up on more of the detailed facts."

If convicted, the defendants face maximum lifetime prison sentences for the civil rights charges and five-year sentences for making false statements to the FBI, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Kenneth Polite's office.

Also read related article, FBI Launches Civil Rights Probe in St. Bernard Prison

Source: Nola

Photo credit to DeShawna Henry, sister of Nimali Henry

Peruvian Government Grants Reparations for Abortions

Peruvian Government Gives Monetary Reparations As Part of Historic United Nations Abortion Case

The Peruvian government has agreed to pay reparations as part of the first United Nations (U.N.) ruling on human rights violations in an abortion case.

Almost a decade after the U.N. Human Rights Committee declared that Peru’s denial of access to legal abortion services is a human rights violation, the government will provide reparations to K.L., a woman who was forced to continue with a pregnancy that put her physical and mental health at risk, even though abortion is legal in these circumstances under Peruvian law.

The Center for Reproductive Rights with local partners the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM) and the Counseling Center for the Defense of Women's Rights (DEMUS) brought her case to the U.N. Committee and negotiated the reparations agreement. This decision marked the first time in history that an international human rights body held a government accountable for failing to ensure access to legal abortion services.

To read the entire press release, click here.


Source: Center for Reproductive Rights

60 Years Later: Rosa Parks

According to history, Rosa was 42 years old and riding the bus home after work. She was a seamstress and a member of her local NAACP chapter who refused to 'move out of her seat so that a [white] man can sit'...that was her crime. She is a civil rights pioneer.

~Kesha Johnson-Clark

 

 Today marks the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks taking a stand.

The 42-year-old seamstress and secretary of her local NAACP chapter defied Jim Crow laws that called for the separation of the races by refusing to move to the back of a bus to allow a white man to have her seat.

That defiant act in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 was a pivotal point in the civil rights movement and transformed Parks into a symbol of the struggle. Social media marked the day and remembered her, with some taking note of the current plight of African-Americans.



Source: CNN

Photo: Essence

Alert: Assault at Spring Valley High

Spring Valley High School Student Flung By School Officer On Video

A South Carolina school officer grabbed a high school student from her chair, knocked her to the floor and dragged her across the classroom on Monday, a video shows.

The brief, shaky video shows an officer grab the student by her arms while she's sitting at her desk and flip her over, toppling the desk. The officer then yanks the girl to the front of the classroom.

The officer has been identified as Deputy Ben Fields. He has been placed on administrative duty, Richland County Sheriff's Department spokesman Lt. Curtis Wilson said, according to News19.

The video becomes blurry after the officer and the student reach the front of the classroom, but the officer appears to restrain the student by putting her arms behind her back. In a longer version of the video, the officer looms over the student before grabbing her.

Debbie Hamm, superintendent for Richland School District Two, said in a statement officials were "deeply concerned" about the incident.

"Student safety is and always will be the district’s top priority," Hamm said. "The district will not tolerate any actions that jeopardize the safety of our students. Pending the outcome of the investigation, the district has directed that the school resource officer not return to any school in the district."

The student had refused to leave class before the school officer became involved, the sheriff's office told the local TV station WIST.

James Manning, chairman of the school board, called the video "extremely disturbing" in an email statement Monday evening. He said the use of force appears "excessive and unnecessary." Fields, said Manning, has been banned from all school property.

"Staff are committed to the safety of all of our students and are taking immediate steps to ensure that our students are treated with the full respect and dignity that they deserve while in our care," Manning said.

The video, which spawned the trending hashtag #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh, has already drawn sharp condemnation around the country.

The ACLU called the event "outrageous." Victoria Middleton, the executive director of the civil rights organization's South Carolina branch, slammed the criminalization of students. "School should be a place to learn and grow, not a place to be brutalized," Middleton told The State.

Incidents of violence involving students and school or local law enforcement are not uncommon. Last November, a video emerged of a school resource officer punching a student in the face, supposedly to break up a fight. An incident earlier this month shows a cop grabbing a teen by the neck and slamming him to the ground. And another shows a man using what Fusion calls a "WWE wrestling move" on a 14-year-old student.

Spring Valley High School officials didn't immediately respond to inquiries. A spokesman for the Richland County sheriff's office was unavailable, according to someone who answered the department's phone, because the office had been "inundated" with calls.

Source: Huffunigton Post

Is Vagina Probing Sexual Assault???

In light of recent police brutality cases and suspicious deaths of Black [female] Americans while in police custody, is vagina probing sexual assault??? 21 year old Charnesia Corley says, "I felt like they sexually assaulted me." Please read about her case in Texas.

-Kesha Johnson-Clark, Founder of SisterHood Inc/Green Afro Honey
San Francisco, California



A woman has accused sheriff’s deputies in Texas of sexually assaulting her at a gas station by stripping her and conducting a body cavity search without her consent during a traffic stop.
Charnesia Corley, 21, who is African American, said officers with the Harris County sheriff’s department held her down in a Texaco parking lot and probed her vagina in a search for marijuana.

“They did a manual cavity search. It’s the most serious search you can do under our constitution and should be done in a sterile environment. You sure can’t do it in public by the side of the road. It’s unbelievable,” her attorney, Sam Cammack, told the Guardian on Tuesday.

Corley, who has no criminal record, will file a complaint to the Internal Affairs Division, her attorney said. “I’m doing it right now,” Cammack said, adding that he hoped there was video of the incident.

 

Corley was pulled over at around 10.30pm on 21 June near Ella Boulevard and Barren Springs Drive in Houston while driving to a store in order, she said, to fetch something for her sick mother.

According to the Harris County sheriff’s office, a deputy pulled her over for running a stop sign. Upon smelling what he believed to be marijuana he handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of his patrol car and searched her vehicle in vain for the drug.

Upon returning to the patrol car he then allegedly smelled marijuana, concluded Corley had it hidden on her person, and summoned female deputies. One was African American, the other white.

One ordered her on the ground and ordered her to pull her trousers down, Corley told ABC13. “I told her, I said: ‘Well ma’am, I don’t have any underwear on.’ She says: ‘Well that doesn’t matter. Pull your pants down.’”

Corley said she was ordered to open her legs but said she did not wish to do so. “So she says: ‘Well if you don’t open them, I’m going to break them,’” Corley said. “All I could do was just lay there. I felt helpless.”

She told KTRK she felt violated. “I feel like they sexually assaulted me. I really do. I feel disgusted, downgraded, humiliated.”

Corley was charged with resisting arrest and possession of marijuana after deputies allegedly found .02 ounces of marijuana.

The Harris County sheriff’s department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. But a spokesperson told local media the deputies did everything as they should and that Corley had assented to a strip search.

Cammack disputed that and said an officer’s report of the incident, which he had obtained, corroborated his client’s version. The attorney declined to say where the marijuana was found but said police claimed to have found it on Corley’s person. Police usually chose not to prosecute for such tiny amounts of marijuana, he added.

Regardless of what was found, the search violated privacy and the constitution, said Cammack. “They could’ve found a kilo of cocaine insider of her and still should not have done it.”

Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director of the ACLU of Texas, said a cavity search without a warrant was a “blatant” violation of the fourth amendment, and that an orifice probe was the most invasive search possible.

“A body cavity search without a warrant would be constitutionally suspect. But a body cavity search by the side of the road ... I can’t imagine a circumstance where that would be constitutional,” she told the Houston Chronicle.

She noted previous controversies over cavity searches in Texas. In 2013, the Department of Public Safety was forced to pay $185,000 to two women who alleged troopers had conducted cavity searches by the roadside, illuminated by patrol car headlights, in full view of passing traffic.

Police in Texas came under renewed scrutiny last month over the case of Sandra Bland, an African American woman found dead in her Waller County jail cell after being detained during a traffic stop.


Source: The Guardian

Psst...Planned Parenthood Is Not Selling Baby Parts!!!

http://youtu.be/DUT1u8ePmVY

It’s weird for those of us with two brain cells to rub together, that this is even a thing. Because first of all, obviously Planned Parenthood doesn’t sell BABY PARTS. Jesus fucking christ, get a hold of yourselves. Baby parts!

3% of all Planned Parenthood’s activities are abortions, and more than 90% of those are in the first trimester when it’s about size of a kidney bean, so they do see some pieces of fetal tissue. Which are just going to be thrown away in the garbage, but which the patient can instead choose to donate to important medical research.

HOW DARE THEY! How dare Planned Parenthood allow women to aid in the research and treatment of conditions like H.I.V. and Parkinson’s disease, when instead those women could just be throwing that tissue in the garbage!

So yeah, there’s the fact that Planned Parenthood obviously isn’t “selling baby parts.” And then there’s the fact that the group releasing this video are some of the same people who worked for the group Live Action, which is best known for…editing together misleading videos attacking Planned Parenthood.

So despite the fact that this is an obviously made up and ridiculous accusation, actual politicians are taking it seriously. If you live in the US, your tax dollars are now going toward Congressional Republicans calling for a formal investigation, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee has announced they’ll launch a probe. A probe for baby parts! Good luck, guys!

This all reminds me of a course I took in college on heresy. I remember learning about how multiple times throughout human history, various groups of people have been accused of the very specific act of gathering together and hosting orgies, and then taking the resulting babies from any past orgies and burning them into ashes, which are then formed into cakes, which are then eaten. Usually it’s supposed to be the Jews doing this but plenty of other marginalized groups have been accused as well. And it always baffled me to think that people could really, truly believe that their fellow humans were doing something so obviously stupid and made up.

Well, now it’s 2015 and an organization that is mostly responsible for making sure poor women have access to basic medical care including cancer screenings, checkups, and birth control, are accused of convincing women to abort their babies and then tearing them into parts and selling them on the black market.

And I realize, that if it helps you achieve your goals — whether they be persecuting people of a different faith or cutting funding for poor women’s health care — it becomes surprisingly easy to believe something unbelievable.


Source: Skepchick

Celebrating 50 Years of Legal Birth Control

Fifty years after the landmark Griswold decision, birth control has become a staple in the lives of American families, yet is still anchored in legal controversy.  As we celebrate Griswold’s powerful legacy and the important steps taken to make birth control access a reality, we must also hold our breaths that the courts do not undermine this tremendous progress. In the meantime, we also must continue to work to ensure that every woman in America has access to the birth control she needs. 

Source: Planned Parenthood