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Tag: law enforcement and corrections

  • Montana man sentenced to 18 years in prison for shooting at and threatening LGBTQ residents in his town, officials say | CNN

    Montana man sentenced to 18 years in prison for shooting at and threatening LGBTQ residents in his town, officials say | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A Montana man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after his conviction on federal hate crime and firearm charges related to a “self-described mission to rid the town of Basin of its lesbian, queer and gay community,” officials said.

    John Russell Howald was convicted in February for firing an AK-style rifle at the home of a woman who openly identified as a lesbian, the US Department of Justice said in a news release. The woman was inside the home during the March 2020 incident.

    Howald was armed with two assault rifles, a hunting rifle, two pistols and multiple high-capacity magazines that were taped together for faster reloading, the release said.

    “Hoping he had killed her, Howald set off toward other houses occupied by people who identify as lesbian, queer or gay,” the release said.

    Some residents who knew Howald spotted him and stalled him long enough for a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office deputy to respond, prosecutors said.

    Howald was recorded “yelling and firing more rounds with the same rifle, expressing his hatred toward the community’s gay and lesbian residents and his determination to ‘clean’ them from his town,” the release said.

    Howald pointed his rifle at a responding deputy, “nearly starting a shootout in downtown Basin,” before running into surrounding hills, according to the release.

    He was arrested the next day, armed with a loaded pistol and a knife. “In Howald’s car, officers found an AR-style rifle and a revolver. During a search of Howald’s camper, officers found an AK-style rifle, a hunting rifle, and ammunition,” prosecutors said.

    “Motivated by hatred of the LGBTQI+ community and armed with multiple firearms and high-capacity magazines, this defendant sought to intimidate – even terrorize – an entire community by shooting into the victim’s home trying to kill her for no reason other than her sexual orientation,” ATF Director Steven Dettelbach said in the release.

    Howald’s 18-year prison sentence, to be followed by five years of supervised release, was announced during Pride Month and comes as the Human Rights Campaign has declared a national state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community in the US.

    “The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived – they are real, tangible and dangerous,” the group’s president, Kelley Robinson, said. “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”

    Howald hoped to inspire similar attacks around the country, said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

    “The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend the rights of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, to be free from hate-fueled violence,” Clarke said in the release. “This Pride Month, we affirm our commitment to using the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act to hold perpetrators of hate-fueled violence targeting the LGBTQI+ community accountable.”

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  • Mississippi officer who shot 11-year-old is suspended without pay | CNN

    Mississippi officer who shot 11-year-old is suspended without pay | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The Mississippi police officer who wrongfully shot an 11-year-old after the boy called 911 for help has been suspended without pay effective immediately, according to a member of the Indianola Board of Aldermen.

    Alderman Marvin Elder tells CNN that on Monday night a motion was made at the Indianola Board of Aldermen meeting to suspend Sgt. Greg Capers without pay effective immediately. Elder said that the motion passed 4-1.

    Capers mistakenly shot and seriously injured Aderrien Murry in late May while the officer was responding to a domestic disturbance call at the child’s home, according to his mother, Nakala Murry, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. Capers was initially put on paid administrative leave after the shooting while it was investigated.

    The Indianola Police Department told CNN they would not comment about the case.

    Responding to Capers’ suspension without pay, his attorney Michael Carr told CNN they are still deciding whether to appeal.

    “We were not made aware of the meeting or given the opportunity to speak or give our side,” Carr said. “Let me be clear; the decision to change Officer Capers’ status from leave with pay to leave without pay is no reflection on the merit of the alleged criminal charges against him.”

    Last week, Murry filed a written affidavit in Sunflower County Circuit Court accusing Capers of bodily harm and aggravated assault to her minor son.

    “This affidavit is written by Ms. Murray, and the charge as written does not reflect the complete statute,” Carr told CNN. “Let me reiterate that this affidavit is not filed by any investigative agency at this time. Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating the case. They have not filed an affidavit or any charge.”

    Carr said that the Bureau of Investigation is in possession of Officer Capers’ body cam footage, adding, “I am certain once released, (it) will clear him completely from any criminal allegation in the shooting.”

    Capers has a scheduled probable cause hearing on October 2 at 10 a.m., according to Carr.

    The May shooting was captured on police body camera, but it has not been released to the public. The footage is in the possession of the Bureau of Investigation which is investigating the shooting. In a statement after the shooting, the MBI said the agency was “currently assessing this critical incident and gathering evidence” and would turn over its findings to the state attorney general’s office after the investigation is complete.

    The Murry family has made repeated calls for Capers to be fired and charged. As a result of the shooting, Aderrien was given a chest tube and placed on a ventilator at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson after developing a collapsed lung, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver, his mother said.

    He was released from the hospital days later and is continuing to recover, according to his family.

    The boy’s family has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking $5 million, claiming excessive force, negligence, reckless endangerment, and civil assault and battery, among other counts.

    Reacting to the lawsuit, Indianola Mayor Ken Featherstone said he looks forward to “making everyone whole,” but the city “doesn’t have $5 million in the bank.”

    Correction: A previous version of this story gave the wrong first name of Indianola Board Alderman Marvin Elder.

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  • New details emerge about the alleged search history of the Utah mom charged with her husband’s murder | CNN

    New details emerge about the alleged search history of the Utah mom charged with her husband’s murder | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    “What is a lethal dose of fentanyl” is one of many phone searches that investigators say were made by Kouri Richins, a Utah widow accused of killing her husband before she authored a children’s book about grief.

    The new details on the widow’s alleged search history emerged as part of the prosecution’s case against Richins, 33, who will be in a Park City, Utah, court Monday for a detention hearing. A judge is expected to decide if she should be released or remain in custody pending the outcome of her trial.

    Prosecutors allege she killed Eric Richins, her husband of nine years, with a lethal dose of fentanyl. She faces charges of criminal homicide, aggravated murder and three counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. She has not yet entered a plea.

    The documents released Friday also give insight into Richins’ defense. Her attorneys argue “there is no substantial evidence to support the charges” and say she should be released as she awaits trial.

    Among the details released in the documents are internet searches investigators say were found on Richins’ phone that were described by prosecutors as “incriminating.”

    Some of the articles pulled up through her searches focused on fentanyl, life insurance payments and others relating to police investigations and how data is collected from electronic devices.

    The searches found on Richins’ iPhone include the phrases: “can cops force you to do a lie detector test?” “Luxury prisons for the rich in America,” “death certificate says pending, will life insurance still pay?” “If someone is poisoned what does it go down on the death certificate as,” and “How to permanently delete information from an iPhone remotely.”

    Eric Richins was found dead at the foot of the couple’s bed in March 2022. His wife told investigators at the time that she brought her husband a Moscow Mule cocktail in the bedroom of their Kamas, Utah, home, then left to sleep with their son in his room and returned around 3 a.m. to find her husband lying on the floor cold to the touch.

    About a year to the day after her husband died, Richins published a children’s book, “Are You With Me?” about navigating grief after the loss of a loved one.

    Prosecutors say Richins withdrew money from bank accounts without her husband’s knowledge and tried to change a life insurance policy to make herself the sole beneficiary. They also point to various incidents where she allegedly may have attempted to poison him.

    Meanwhile, her lawyers argue in filings made Friday that Richins had the right to withdraw money from their joint accounts, claim “there is no evidence identifying the computer from which the login was initiated” when the life insurance policy change was attempted, and say she did not attempt to poison him.

    Investigators also detailed a series of illicit fentanyl purchases in the months leading up to her husband’s death, according to the documents. His death was six days after the latest alleged pill delivery, investigators say.

    An autopsy and toxicology report revealed that Eric Richins, 39, had about five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system, according to a medical examiner.

    The defense insists there is no proof their client gave her husband the lethal dose.

    “Law enforcement never identified or seized any fentanyl or other illicit drugs from the Family Home,” her defense lawyers wrote in a motion. Also, “the State has provided no evidence that there was fentanyl found in the home. Nor have they provided any evidence that Kouri gave Eric the fentanyl at issue.”

    Eric Richins is described as a “partier” and someone who “loved a good time,” in the defense motion. “He would consume alcohol and THC in any form,” the document said.

    The defense motion also points to discrepancies in witness testimony, adding that law enforcement told one witness that “if she gave them what they wanted, it would constitute her ‘get out of jail free card,’” the document says.

    Potentially previewing what may be presented in trial, another filing in the case includes allegations that some of Eric Richins’ financial documents may have been forged.

    The professional opinion of Matt Throckmorton – a forensic document examiner who looked at three specific documents relating to durable power of attorney and life insurance – is included in the filings.

    After comparing those documents with dozens of other documents Eric Richins authored, Throckmorton indicated that signatures on the three items in question appear to have been forged.

    “The forgeries in this case are ‘simulated forgeries.’ That is when someone tries to copy, draw or duplicate another person’s characteristics and habits and tries to create a fraudulent signature or set of initials with enough similarities they might get passed off as genuine,” Throckmorton explained.

    “Eric made and requested several unusual to highly unusual choices and provisions to his estate plan,” said attorney Kristal Bowman-Carter, who counseled Eric on estate planning, according to the documents.

    Those unusual requests included that his wife not be designated as his health care agent should one be needed and that his wife and children be provided for, but with the caveat that she should be unable to control the financials. Eric chose his father and sister to be trustees on his family’s behalf, according to the documents.

    Eric sought to “protect the three young sons he and Kouri had together in the long-term by ensuring that Kouri would never be in a position to manage his property after his death,” Bowman-Carter said.

    In a phone conversation the day after Eric’s death, Bowman-Carter explained the trust to Kouri. She said Kouri “became extremely upset. Her behavior (led) me to believe she was learning this for the first time.”

    In an email included in the filings, Richins wrote to police clarifying information about her previous testimony, including a reference to an affair her husband previously had. “Eric’s affair was the same year I ‘moved out,’ the trust was created as well as him looking into a divorce,” she wrote. “Eric and I figured things out like most couples do,” she added.

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  • Trump’s indictment divides 2024 Republican hopefuls | CNN Politics

    Trump’s indictment divides 2024 Republican hopefuls | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson Sunday articulated vastly different plans for how they’d approach the federal indictment against former President Donald Trump should either capture the White House in 2024.

    Contenders for the GOP nomination are grappling to strike the right tone on Trump, seen as the GOP front-runner to take on President Joe Biden next year, as they look to build their support among Republican primary voters.

    Trump is facing his first federal indictment for retention of classified documents and conspiracy with a top aide to hide them from the government and his own attorneys – a total of 37 counts.

    Ramaswamy, who vowed to pardon Trump if elected president before details of the 37-count indictment were revealed, doubled down Sunday, telling CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” that after “reading that indictment and looking at the selective omissions of both fact and law,” he was “even more convinced that a pardon is the right answer here.”

    Ramaswamy acknowledged that he “would not have taken those documents with me,” but the tech entrepreneur maintained there was a difference between “bad judgment and breaking the law.”

    Bash presses Ramaswamy on pledge to pardon Trump

    Those comments stood in contrast to Hutchinson, who called Ramaswamy’s vow to pardon Trump “simply wrong” in a separate interview on “State of the Union” later Sunday.

    “It is simply wrong for a candidate to use the pardon power of the United States of the president in order to curry votes, and in order to get an applause line. It is just wrong,” the former Arkansas governor told Bash.

    “We do not need to have our commander in chief of this country not protecting our nation’s secrets,” Hutchinson said, adding later, “These are things that should not be disclosed as entertainment value to a political contact that you’re speaking with.”

    Asked if he believes the indictment will help Trump in the 2024 race, Hutchinson said, “I suspect that he’s going to raise money on the indictment as he did before. And obviously with a lot of Republican leaders saying that this is selective prosecution, that this is unfair – there is a sympathy factor that is built in.”

    But, Hutchinson said, “The Republican Party stands for the rule of law and our system of justice. Let’s not undermine that by our rhetoric, by making up facts, and by accusing the Department of Justice of things that there is no evidence of.”

    Ramaswamy isn’t the only 2024 GOP contender to criticize the Justice Department in the days since Trump first disclosed the indictment.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused the DOJ of “weaponization of federal law enforcement” while vowing, if elected president, to “bring accountability to the DOJ, excise political bias and end weaponization once and for all.”

    DeSantis declined to comment on the indictment Saturday at a campaign stop in Oklahoma, but he repeated his vow to end the “weaponization” of government and clean house from top to bottom” as president.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to “stop hiding behind the special counsel and stand before the American people” to explain “this unprecedented action.”

    “We also need to hear the former president’s defense so that each of us can make our own judgment,” Pence told attendees at the North Carolina GOP convention in Greensboro, where Trump also spoke hours after addressing a similar gathering in Georgia.

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s United Nations ambassador, characterized the indictment as “prosecutorial overreach” in a statement Friday, adding that it was time to move “beyond the endless drama and distractions.”

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who entered the GOP race last week, vowed Sunday in an interview on CBS News to “follow every rule related to handling classified documents” after potentially leaving office as president. He told Fox News on Saturday that Trump’s mishandling of documents was not something that voters want to spend their time talking about.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a onetime ally and close adviser to Trump who has emerged as his chief critic in the 2024 race, however, described the details of the indictment as “damning.”

    “This is irresponsible conduct,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, adding that “the conduct that Donald Trump engaged in was completely self-inflicted.”

    Christie is scheduled to participate in a CNN town hall hosted by Anderson Cooper in New York on Monday.

    SOTU rep jim jordan full interview_00123522.png

    Full Interview: Dana Bash presses Rep. Jim Jordan on indictment

    Trump has maintained the reliable backing of hard-line conservatives in Congress, such as House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who fiercely defended the former president in an interview with Bash on Sunday.

    “The president’s ability to classify and control access to national security information flows from the Constitution,” the Ohio Republican said. “He alone decides. He said he declassified this material. He can put it wherever he wants. He can handle it however he wants.”

    But the laws under which the Justice Department said it was investigating possible crimes – statutes about the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of a federal investigation, and the concealment or removal of government records – do not require documents to be classified for a crime to have been committed, CNN previously reported.

    Bash also reminded Jordan that Trump, on tape, in a 2021 meeting admitted to having a document that wasn’t declassified, a detail first reported by CNN. But Jordan repeatedly countered, claiming that saying Trump “could have” declassified material as president was not the same as saying he “didn’t” already declassify the material.

    “He has said time and time again, he’s declassified all this material,” the congressman said.

    Asked if he had evidence of Trump declassifying any documents, Jordan said, “I go on the president’s word, and he said he did.”

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  • Randy Cox, who was paralyzed after being transported in a New Haven police van, reaches $45M settlement with city, attorneys say | CNN

    Randy Cox, who was paralyzed after being transported in a New Haven police van, reaches $45M settlement with city, attorneys say | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Randy Cox, the man who was paralyzed while authorities were transporting him handcuffed and without a seat belt in a police van, reached a $45 million settlement with the City of New Haven, his attorneys announced Saturday.

    The settlement marked the end of a civil lawsuit filed against the southern Connecticut coastal city after the June 2022 incident in which an abrupt stop in the back of a New Haven Police Department van caused Cox to be paralyzed from the chest down.

    The settlement marks the largest involving a police misconduct case in US history, according to Cox’s attorneys, Ben Crump, Louis Rubano and R.J. Weber.

    “The city’s mistakes have been well documented, but today is a moment to look to the future, so New Haven residents can have confidence in their city and their police department,” a joint statement from the attorneys read.

    “This settlement sends a message to the country that we know we must be better than this,” the attorneys said.

    New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said in a statement that the settlement was “an important and sobering part of this accountability process.”

    “While nothing can ever return Randy’s life to the way it was prior to this incident, we trust that this settlement will allow him to receive the support and medical care he needs to move forward,” Elicker said.

    Of the $45 million settlement funds, the city’s insurance will cover $30 million while the city will pay the remainder, according to a statement from Cox’s attorneys.

    The announcement came just days after four members of the New Haven Board of Police Commissioners voted to dismiss two of the five police officers – Jocelyn Lavandier and Luis Rivera – that were involved in the 2022 incident, which happened on Juneteenth – the annual celebration marking the end of slavery in the US.

    Cox’s attorneys said the decision on Wednesday to terminate Lavandier and Rivera “reflected a commitment to accountability and justice.”

    Lavandier’s attorney, Daniel Ford, called the dismissal “an absolute rush to judgment” in a statement to CNN.

    CNN has reached out to Rivera for comment.

    On June 19, 2022, the two officers, along with Oscar Diaz, Ronald Pressley and Sgt. Betsy Segui, transported Cox following his arrest on suspicion of illegally possessing a handgun, CNN previously reported.

    A handcuffed Cox can be seen in a video of the transport hitting his head on the van’s back wall as it came to a sudden stop.

    The charges against Cox were dropped in October 2022.

    The five officers involved pleaded not guilty in January and have not gone to trial, CNN affiliate WFSB reported.

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  • Trump hits campaign trail as indictment roils 2024 race | CNN Politics

    Trump hits campaign trail as indictment roils 2024 race | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump is set to return to the campaign trail Saturday, traveling to Georgia and North Carolina for speeches at a pair of state Republican conventions as news of his federal indictment roils the party’s 2024 presidential race.

    The pre-planned stops come the day after the Justice Department unsealed its indictment laying out the government’s case that Trump and aide Walt Nauta mishandled classified national security documents.

    Trump’s speeches will mark his first public outings since he was indicted for a second time in less than three months, with probes into election interference efforts in Georgia and his actions surrounding January 6, 2021, in Washington threatening to pose further legal troubles.

    The visits will give Trump a chance to respond to the charges in a campaign-style as he mounts battles on both the political and legal fronts. The former president is scheduled to appear Tuesday in a federal courtroom in Miami, where he will be read the charges against him.

    So far, Trump has cast his prosecution as a politically motivated effort to stop his bid for the presidency. He has described special prosecutor Jack Smith as “deranged” and the case against him as a “hoax,” while accusing President Joe Biden of similarly mishandling classified documents.

    “I had nothing to hide, nor do I now. Nobody said I wasn’t allowed to look at the personal records that I brought with me from the White House. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said Friday on his social media platform Truth Social.

    Trump released a four-minute video Thursday evening repeating many of his past claims, including that the Justice Department is being weaponized and that the investigations into him represent “election interference.”

    “I am an innocent man. I did nothing wrong,” Trump said in the video.

    News of the former president’s indictment Thursday was met at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey with a belief that he would benefit politically as conservatives rallied around him.

    Trump spent Friday morning in Bedminster playing golf with Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez as his allies made rounds of phone calls to shore up support for the former president.

    After the indictment was unsealed Friday, concern began to settle in, a source familiar with the mood at Bedminster told CNN, as Trump aides began to acknowledge the legal implications. His team still thinks Trump will likely benefit politically – at least in the short term – the source said, but aides have grown more wary of how the indictment will play out legally.

    Trump has long avoided legal culpability in his personal, professional and political lives. He has settled a number of private civil lawsuits through the years and paid his way out of disputes concerning the Trump Organization. As president, he was twice impeached by the Democratic-led House but avoided conviction by the Senate.

    But after leaving office, the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into the alleged retention of classified information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election cast dark clouds over the former president. Smith’s investigation into January 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn the election is still ongoing.

    In March, the Manhattan district attorney in New York indicted Trump on charges related to hush-money payments to a former adult star. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to announce in August whether there are any charges in her investigation into attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in the state.

    On the campaign trail, many of Trump’s Republican 2024 presidential rivals responded to the news of his indictment by attacking the Justice Department – another indication that they see advantage among conservative primary voters in defending a former president who remains popular with the party’s base.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused the DOJ of “weaponization of federal law enforcement” while vowing, if elected president, to “bring accountability to the DOJ, excise political bias and end weaponization once and for all.”

    Former Vice President Mike Pence had called on the Justice Department to release the indictment against his former boss. After it did so, he did not comment on its contents while campaigning in New Hampshire.

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s United Nations ambassador, characterized the indictment as “prosecutorial overreach” in a statement Friday, adding that it was time to move “beyond the endless drama and distractions.”

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who entered the GOP race earlier this week, said Saturday that Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents is not something voters want to spend their time on.

    “When we’re on the road in Iowa the last two days and here in New Hampshire talking about the economy, energy policy, national security – those are the things that are hitting every American every single day,” Burgum told Fox News.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another onetime ally and close adviser to Trump who has emerged as his chief critic in the 2024 race, described the details of the indictment as “damning.”

    “This is irresponsible conduct,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, adding that “the conduct that Donald Trump engaged in was completely self-inflicted.”

    “The bigger issue for our country is, is this the type of conduct that we want from someone who wants to be president of the United States?” Christie said.

    Another Trump critic, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, said the former president should drop out of the race “for the good of the country.”

    “This is unprecedented that we have a former president criminally charged for mishandling classified information, for obstruction of justice. This obviously will be an issue during the campaign,” Hutchinson told Tapper on Friday in a separate interview.

    “For the sake of the country, he doesn’t need this distraction. The country doesn’t need this distraction, as well.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Tennessee woman indicted for attempting to hire dark web hitman to kill wife of man she met online | CNN

    Tennessee woman indicted for attempting to hire dark web hitman to kill wife of man she met online | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A Tennessee woman was indicted on federal charges after allegedly attempting to hire a hitman to kill the wife of a man she met on a dating site.

    Melody Sasser, 47, of Knoxville, Tennessee, was taken into custody last month for allegedly trying to arrange the murder. She was indicted on “use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire” on June 7th, according to a news release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

    According to court documents, Sasser was upset when she found out a man she had met on a dating website got engaged – and she later sought to have his new wife murdered using an online market.

    Investigators in Alabama first learned of the alleged murder-for-hire plot on April 27 after receiving information from a foreign law enforcement agency, according to a criminal complaint filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee on May 11.

    The tip-off from the foreign agency contained messages between a user and administrator of a site on the “dark web” known as Online Killers Market, which “purports to offer ‘hitman for hire’ type services,” the complaint says. The site allows users to submit an “order” for specific services, including “full intended victim details,” according to the complaint.

    Screenshots taken from the site show that the order for the murder-for-hire in Sasser’s case was placed on January 11, according to the complaint.

    The user account “cattree,” which authorities believe belonged to Sasser, describes in detail how she wanted the murder to be handled. “It needs to seem random or accident. or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation,” the user wrote, according to the complaint.

    The user also uploaded a photo of the intended victim, identified only with by the initials J and W in the criminal complaint, and details about her home, vehicle, and work schedule. Authorities believe Sasser used the hiking app “Strava” to track the woman and her husband’s movements, even sharing details on the dark web about a two-mile hike the intended victim had taken. The woman was living in Prattville, Alabama, at the time, according to the complaint.

    Sasser paid for the order through Bitcoin purchases over the span of several months, totaling about $9,750, the complaint states. Authorities matched her Bitcoin purchases at a cryptocurrency ATM to the payments sent by “cattree.”

    As weeks went by after the order was submitted, “cattree” sent follow-up messages to administrators on the Online Killers market website asking why the job was still uncompleted, according to the complaint. She eventually sent more Bitcoin to the administrators to have another purported hitman assigned to the task.

    When authorities informed the victim that there was a threat to her life, she identified Sasser as a possible suspect, according to the complaint.

    The woman told law enforcement that her husband and Sasser were “hiking friends” in Knoxville before he moved to Alabama, the complaint said. The victim said Sasser traveled to the man’s Prattville, Alabama, home unannounced last fall after he told her he was engaged to be married, to which she responded, “I hope you both fall off a cliff and die,” according to the complaint.

    The woman also said that she began receiving “unpleasant phone calls” from someone disguising their voice through an electronic device after Sasser’s unannounced visit and that her car was keyed.

    The woman’s husband told police that he and Sasser met on Match.com. He also said Sasser had helped him plan to hike the Appalachian Trail.

    If Sasser is convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, restitution, and a maximum three-year term of supervised release, according to the US Attorney’s Office.

    CNN has reached out to an attorney listed for Sasser for comment.

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  • Missing children found after 40 days in Amazon survived like ‘children of the jungle,’ Colombian president says | CNN

    Missing children found after 40 days in Amazon survived like ‘children of the jungle,’ Colombian president says | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Four young children have been found alive after more than a month wandering the Amazon where they survived like “children of the jungle,” according to Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.

    “Their learning from indigenous families and their learning of living in the jungle has saved them,” Petro told reporters on Friday, after announcing on Twitter that they had been found 40 days after they went missing following a plane crash that killed their mother.

    Petro said the children were all together when they were found, adding they had demonstrated an example of “total survival that will be remembered in history.”

    “They are children of the jungle and now they are children of Colombia,” he added.

    Revealing their discovery earlier in the day, the Colombian president had tweeted an image that seems to show search crews treating the children in a forest clearing, along with the words: “A joy for the whole country!”

    Their grandmother, María Fátima Valencia, said she was “going to hug all of them” and “thank everyone” as soon as they were reunited in their home city of Villavicencio, where they live.

    “I’m going to encourage them, I’m going to push them forward, I need them here,” she said.

    The children, who appear gaunt in the photos, are being evaluated by doctors and will be taken to the town of San Jose del Guaviare. They are expected to receive further treatment in Bogota, the capital, according to Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez.

    “We hope that tomorrow they will be treated at the military hospital,” he said, while praising the Colombian military and indigenous communities for helping find them.

    Petro said the children were weak, needed food and would have their mental status assessed. “Let the doctors make their assessment and we will know,” he added.

    Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, age 13, Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 9, Tien Ranoque Mucutuy, 4, and infant Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy were stranded in the jungle on May 1, the only survivors of a deadly plane crash.

    Their mother, Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, was killed in the crash along with two other adult passengers: pilot Hernando Murcia Morales and Yarupari indigenous leader Herman Mendoza Hernández.

    The children’s subsequent disappearance into the deep forest galvanized a massive military-led search operation involving over a hundred Colombian special forces troops and over 70 indigenous scouts combing the area.

    For weeks, the search turned up only tantalizing clues, including footprints, a dirty diaper and a bottle. Family members said the oldest child had some experience in the forest, but hopes waned as the weeks went on.

    At some point during their ordeal, they’d had to defend themselves from a dog, Petro said.

    He called the children’s survival a “gift to life” and an indication that they were “cared for by the jungle.”

    The Colombian president said he had spoken with the grandfather of the children who said that their survival was in the hands of the jungle which ultimately chose to return them.

    The grandfather, Fidencio Valencia, said he and his wife had endured many sleepless nights worrying about the children.

    “For us this situation was like being in the dark, we walked for the sake of walking. Living for the sake of living because the hope of finding them kept us alive. When we found the children we felt joy, we don’t know what to do, but we are grateful to God,” he said.

    The children’s other grandfather, Narcizo Mucutuy, said he wants his grandchildren to be brought back home soon.

    “I beg the president of Colombia to bring our grandchildren to Villavicencio, here where the grandparents are, where their uncles and aunts are, and then take them to Bogota,” he said.

    Indigenous leader Lucho Acosta, the coordinator of indigenous scouts, credited the “extra effort” of search and rescue teams and local authorities to find the children in a statement on Friday.

    “They all added a little effort so that this Operation Hope could be successful, and we can hope the kids will emerge alive and stronger than before. We have been hoping together with the strength of our ancestors, and our strength prevailed,” he said.

    “We never stopped looking for them until the miracle came,” the Colombian Defense Ministry tweeted.

    During a press conference Friday evening, Petro said he hoped to speak with the children on Saturday.

    “The most important thing now is what the doctors say, they have been lost for 40 days, their health condition must have been stressed. We need to check their mental state too,” he said.

    Petro, who was previously forced to backtrack after mistakenly tweeting that they had been found last month, described the children’s 40-day saga as “a remarkable testament of survival.”

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  • Indiana man charged with stalking, harassing Taylor Swift after allegedly sending threatening messages and showing up at concert | CNN

    Indiana man charged with stalking, harassing Taylor Swift after allegedly sending threatening messages and showing up at concert | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    An Indiana man has been arrested and charged with stalking and harassing Taylor Swift for several months.

    Mitchell Taebel, 36, was booked into the LaPorte County Jail on June 2 on charges of stalking, intimidation, invasion of privacy and harassment, according to LaPorte County Jail records.

    Taebel has been accused of sending threatening messages from March to May of this year to Swift, her team and management.

    The affidavit from LaPorte Superior Court does not name Swift, but has multiple references to the singer throughout the document. This includes mentioning Swift’s management team, 13 Management; the Eras Tour, which is her current tour; Joe Alwyn, one of her recent boyfriends; and a song off Swift’s latest album.

    According to the affidavit, Taebel sent a voice message to Swift through Instagram on March 29 saying “he would happily wear a bomb if he cannot be with his soul mate.”

    He later sent messages to those closely related to Swift, including her father and dancers, the affidavit says.

    The affidavit says that on May 5, Taebel traveled from Long Beach, Indiana, to Swift’s home in Nashville and was escorted away from the property by security. He then went to Nissan Stadium, where Swift was performing that night.

    Before the show, Taebel was placed on a security threat/concern list so he wouldn’t be able to purchase any ticket for the show, the affidavit says. However, he was able to purchase a ticket through a third-party company and entered the stadium. He was recognized by security and was escorted off the site by security and venue personnel, according to the affidavit.

    A temporary restraining order, requested by 13 Management’s legal counsel, was granted on May 11 and served to Taebell on May 13.

    But the affidavit said Taebel violated the restraining order and continued to send messages to Swift through the month until at least May 18.

    A $15,000 bond was set on June 1 for the stalking charge. Online court records indicate his next court appearance will be July 27 at 8:30 a.m.

    CNN has reached out to 13 Management, Swift’s team and Taebel for comment.

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  • Biden set to project a business-as-usual attitude after Trump indictment | CNN Politics

    Biden set to project a business-as-usual attitude after Trump indictment | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The last time former President Donald Trump was indicted, his successor left the White House the next day intent on going about his schedule without wading into the matter.

    As Trump is indicted a second time, President Joe Biden is planning to do the same thing – an intentional demonstration of calm and normalcy amid the continuing chaos of his predecessor.

    He’ll probably get asked about the indictment throughout the day as he leaves the White House to visit sites in North Carolina. But there is little to suggest he’ll weigh in on the substance of the case.

    That’s because he and his aides believe doing so would only lend grist to Trump’s claim that he’s the victim of a political “witch hunt.” Biden doesn’t want to be baited into providing Trump any fuel for his allegations, people familiar with his thinking said. And he remains firmly of the belief that sitting presidents should not comment on legal matters.

    Those dynamics – already in play when Trump was indicted in New York – are only amplified now that former president has been handed a federal indictment by Biden’s Justice Department. It’s a situation Biden and his team know they must handle carefully.

    “You’ll notice, I have never once – not one single time – suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do on whether to bring any charges or not bring any charges. I’m honest,” Biden said at a news conference Thursday.

    Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden are set to travel to North Carolina on Friday to promote his job training agenda and sign an executive order meant to help military spouses remain in the workforce. The official trip is the type of activity Biden is planning a lot of over the coming year, as he works to sell his accomplishments to a skeptical electorate.

    Aides know Biden’s dutiful, there-and-back stops at community colleges, union halls and construction sites aren’t likely to generate the same level of headlines as those about Trump’s legal peril.

    Yet perhaps more than the accomplishments themselves, Biden is hoping to project an air of competence and authority as a contrast to the chaos that has accompanied Trump for years. That comparison could hardly be starker this week.

    There is another additional goal with Friday’s trip – kicking off a push to flip a state that has gone Republican in the last three presidential elections.

    The last time Biden traveled to North Carolina, Rep. Wiley Nickel offered a bullish outlook on his state’s political potential during the flight to Durham on Air Force One.

    “I talked to him a number of times about it. We have been pushing with folks from all over on why North Carolina is a must win and why it’s a state that’s set to have a great outcome in November,” the Democrat told CNN this week.

    The pitch may have worked. The trip is one of Biden’s first trips outside Washington to sell his agenda since he announced his bid for reelection in April.

    He won’t be the only 2024 contender in the state. A two-hour drive west, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to speak at the North Carolina Republican Party convention in Greensboro. Former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump are also expected to address the gathering over the weekend.

    The convergence of candidates in the Tar Heel State is hardly a coincidence. After narrowly losing there to Trump in 2020, Biden’s campaign said in a strategy memo this spring the state is among their top targets next year as they look to expand the electoral map.

    On the Republican side, North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes would be essential for a pathway back to the White House. The last Democratic presidential candidate win there was Barack Obama in 2008.

    Yet the 1.3% margin Trump won by in 2020 was the smallest of any state, a demonstration – at least in Biden’s mind – that it is well within grasp in 2024. The state’s demographics are becoming more urban and diverse. Biden’s campaign has already purchased television ad time there.

    On Friday, Biden’s stops are considered official business, not campaign-related. But they reflect his team’s strategy of working to promote his accomplishments in places up for grabs in next year’s election.

    He plans to visit a community college in Rocky Mount to tout job training programs before heading to Fort Liberty – recently renamed from Fort Bragg, removing the moniker of a Confederate general – to sign an executive order meant to help military spouses remain in the workforce.

    “We’re asking agencies to make it easier for spouses employed by the federal government to take administrative leave, telework and move offices. We’re creating resources to support entrepreneurs and the executive order helps agencies and companies retain military spouses through telework or when they move abroad,” said first lady Dr. Jill Biden, who’s accompanying her husband in North Carolina on Friday.

    Both stops will put a spotlight on the types of agenda items the president plans to use as the basis for his reelection argument next year, centering on job creation and the middle class. Biden has focused heavily on job training for those without college degrees as part of his effort to revive American manufacturing.

    Despite a strong job market and rising wages, however, Biden has struggled to convince Americans of his economic agenda, according to polls. The three Republican candidates speaking in Greensboro this weekend will undoubtedly hammer the president on issues like inflation.

    Events like the stops in Rocky Mount and Fort Liberty on Friday are meant to explain to Americans what Biden has done so far, an approach he’s expected to continue pursuing in the coming year as Republicans engage in a primary battle.

    Nash Community College, where the president is visiting, is part of a coalition of historically black colleges that has received around $24 million from Biden’s American Rescue Plan for training on clean energy careers, according to the White House.

    The executive order he’ll sign later at Fort Liberty is meant to allow military spouses to remain in the workforce through greater employer flexibility. The issue has been a main agenda item for the first lady.

    It wasn’t clear whether Biden would address the renaming of the base, which became official last week. Many Republicans opposed stripping the names of Confederate generals from bases, an effort that began under Biden. Trump has likened the moves to erasing American history.

    Biden’s aides have acknowledged that simply selling the president’s agenda isn’t likely to be enough to get him reelected. They have also worked to highlight what they say are extreme Republican positions on issues like education and abortion.

    In this, too, North Carolina also offers a backdrop for areas Democrats believe they have an upper hand. North Carolina Republicans passed a restrictive new law last month that would outlaw most abortions after 12 weeks, using their legislative supermajority to override a veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

    There are already plans by Biden’s campaign to focus on the ban as the campaign works to make inroads in the state.

    Nickel said Republicans’ abortion platform was the reason he was elected last year.

    “We focused almost exclusively two things. Rejecting far-right extremism and standing up for a woman’s right to choose. And that’s what folks understood our campaign was about,” he said.

    For Biden, whose time as a candidate will be carefully managed as he works to confront still-significant headwinds, Nickel had this piece of advice for winning in North Carolina: “I think he needs to show up a lot.”

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  • Right-wing media wages war on U.S. justice system after Trump’s historic federal indictment | CNN Business

    Right-wing media wages war on U.S. justice system after Trump’s historic federal indictment | CNN Business

    Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The attacks on the rule of law have begun.

    Moments after news broke on Thursday that disgraced former President Donald Trump had been indicted on federal charges, Fox News and the rest of the MAGA Media universe revved up into attack mode, denigrating the U.S. justice system and characterizing it as prejudiced against conservatives.

    The assault on the American justice system was swift and savage.

    On Fox, the historic legal action was portrayed as President Joe Biden weaponizing the Justice Department to target his political opponent.

    “BIDEN ADMIN INDICTS A PRESIDENTIAL RIVAL,” one on-screen banner read.

    “Yes, it is a dark day in America,” Sean Hannity declared. “We have said it often. There is no equal justice, there is no equal application of our laws. There is one set of rules for Democrats and another set of rules for Donald Trump and conservatives and anybody especially in his orbit.”

    Despite the indictment not being made public, Hannity went on to tell his audience that the “system of justice” in the U.S. has “been weaponized beyond belief” and that the country is “in serious trouble.”

    Throughout the night, Fox welcomed guests who echoed the Trump talking points and disparaged the justice system.

    In effect, Fox News is once again platforming those who are leading vicious and irresponsible attacks on the country’s criminal justice system.

    The defense of Trump, of course, was not just limited to Fox News.

    Across the right-wing media ecosystem, the narrative that a sinister deep-state was unfairly targeting Trump to knock him out of the 2024 presidential contest was pervasive.

    “PEAK WITCH HUNT,” the homepage banner on the right-wing Breitbart blared, adding “POLITICAL PERSECUTION INTENSIFIES.”

    Elsewhere, on the far-right Gateway Pundit blog, more than a half-dozen stories were published Thursday night defending Trump.

    The coverage harkened back to the years after the 2016 election, when Trump aimed to discredit and destroy institutions such as the FBI for investigating him.

    News organizations covered the story by delivering fact-based reporting and analysis, while propaganda outfits such as Fox News disseminated hyperbolic commentary to their audiences.

    Thursday night’s coverage did serve as a good reminder that outlets like Fox News can quickly fall under Trump’s hypnosis and snap into MAGA mouthpiece mode.

    While Rupert Murdoch might personally hold great contempt for Trump, documents revealed as part of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit showed that he is terrified that airing critical coverage of Trump will result in his supporters abandoning the channel.

    And at the end of the day, that is what motivates such outlets. Their business models are not designed to provide fact-based news to audiences.

    And that means giving voice to dangerous, dishonest commentary — despite knowing, after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the real-world violence that it has the potential to incite.

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  • Joran van der Sloot, accused in the US of defrauding Natalee Holloway’s mother, is expected to be flown from Peru to Alabama Thursday | CNN

    Joran van der Sloot, accused in the US of defrauding Natalee Holloway’s mother, is expected to be flown from Peru to Alabama Thursday | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    FBI agents are expected to transfer Joran van der Sloot on Thursday to the US, where he is accused of extorting money from the mother of Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teen who was last seen with the Dutch national and two others 18 years ago in Aruba.

    Agents arrived in Peru – where van der Sloot is imprisoned for the murder of another woman – on Wednesday afternoon, a law enforcement source familiar with the operation told CNN. The team is expected to return to Alabama with van der Sloot on Thursday after he is turned over to US authorities.

    Van der Sloot was indicted in 2010 on US federal charges of extortion and wire fraud in connection with a plot to sell information about the whereabouts of Holloway’s remains in exchange for $250,000, according to an indictment filed in the Northern District of Alabama.

    The missing 18-year-old’s mother, Beth Holloway, wired $15,000 to a bank account van der Sloot held in the Netherlands and through an attorney gave him another $10,000 in person, the indictment states. Once he had the initial $25,000, van der Sloot showed the attorney, John Kelly, where Natalee Holloway’s remains allegedly were hidden, but the information turned out to be false, the indictment states.

    Holloway’s remains have never been found and in 2012, a judge in Alabama signed an order that declared her legally dead.

    Peru initially agreed to extradite van der Sloot to the US to face those charges only after he serves his murder sentence. But last month, the country changed course and agreed to temporarily extradite him to face the US charges, after which he would be returned to Peru, the country’s judiciary said.

    Peru agreed to van der Sloot’s “temporary relocation to the United States, because he is condemned here and he must serve his sentence here,” Justice Minister Daniel Maurate said. “But since the US needs him in order to face trial, and the authorities told us that if he didn’t get there sooner, the case against him could be dropped because the witnesses are elderly.”

    On Wednesday, the superior court in Lima, Peru, ordered van der Sloot to be handed over to FBI agents, according to a statement published on social media on Tuesday.

    “With this resolution, the Judge has completed procedures for the transfer (passive extradition) of Joran Van Der Sloot, who will be prosecuted in the United States of America for the alleged crimes of extortion and fraud against Elizabeth Ann Holloway,” the statement concludes.

    The announcement comes a day after an attorney for van der Sloot filed a habeas corpus petition against his client’s temporary transfer from a Peru prison to the US. Maximo Altez, an attorney for van der Sloot, argued his transfer should be stopped as he had not been notified officially, according to court documents dated June 5.

    The petition seems to contradict previous statements by Altez. On May 30, he told CNN en Espanol his client had agreed to be transferred and he was not expected to submit a habeas corpus application. “I want to go to the US,” van der Sloot told Altez in a letter.

    CNN has tried to reach Altez for further comment.

    Van der Sloot has been held at the Ancón 1 prison in Peru after he was convicted in 2012 of murdering Stephany Flores, 21, in his Lima hotel room. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison.

    Holloway was last seen alive with van der Sloot and two other men leaving a nightclub in Aruba 18 years ago.

    Police in Aruba arrested and released the three men – van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe – multiple times in 2005 and 2007 in connection with Holloway’s disappearance. Attorneys for the men maintained their innocence throughout the investigation.

    In December 2007, the Aruban Public Prosecutor’s Office said none of the three would be charged and dropped the cases against them, citing insufficient evidence.

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  • Takeaways from CNN’s town hall with Mike Pence | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from CNN’s town hall with Mike Pence | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence staked out a series of clear differences with boss-turned-2024 rival Donald Trump, and needled other Republican contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a CNN town hall in Iowa on Wednesday night.

    Hours after he launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Pence broke with the former president on immigration policy, entitlement spending, US support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and more.

    He said he would not reinstate the policy of separating migrant families at the border – a widely criticized practice that Trump didn’t rule out reviving in his own CNN town hall last month.

    Pence also said that other Republican rivals were wrong to put changes to Social Security off the table, telling the crowd at Grand View University in Des Moines that seriously reducing federal spending will require changes to entitlement programs.

    He sharply rebuked Trump for describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “genius” for his invasion of Ukraine, while casting DeSantis as naive on the issue. And he continued to criticize the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    Pence said he and Trump don’t just disagree about the past; the two have “a different vision for our party.”

    “I’m somebody who believes in American leadership in the world. Our party needs to lead on fiscal responsibility and stand without apology for life. We’ll have those debates,” he said.

    Still, Pence said, he will “support the Republican nominee in 2024,” a pledge he said he felt comfortable making because he doubted Trump would win the primary.

    “Different times call for different leadership,” Pence said. “The American people don’t look backwards; they look forward. … I don’t think my old running mate is going to be the Republican nominee for president.”

    Here are six takeaways from Pence’s CNN town hall:

    Pence urged the Justice Department not to indict his onetime boss, saying such an indictment would fuel division inside the country and “send a terrible message to the wider world.”

    While Pence said that “no one is above the law,” he said the DOJ could resolve its investigation into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents without resorting to an indictment, just as the department informed Pence’s attorney last week that there would be no charges brought in the case of the classified documents discovered in his home.

    But in Pence’s case, the former vice president immediately contacted the National Archives and the FBI to return his documents, while Trump resisted handing over his classified material and failed to return all classified documents after receiving a subpoena last May.

    Pence’s response underscores the tightrope the former vice president is walking when it comes to the numerous probes into his former boss. CNN reported Wednesday that the Justice Department had informed Trump he’s a target of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents and possible obstruction, a sign that prosecutors may be moving closer to indicting the former president.

    While Pence criticized Trump for his actions on January 6 at his campaign kickoff Wednesday and at the town hall, he sought to distinguish those actions from the documents probe, protesting that there were “dozens” of better ways that the FBI could have handled Trump’s case before resorting to an unprecedented search the former president’s residence.

    So far, Pence’s sharpest criticism of Trump came when he was asked about the United States’ role in helping Ukraine in its efforts to repel Russia’s invasion.

    After arguing that the US should accelerate its support for the Ukrainian military, Pence pointed to Trump’s description of Putin in a February 2022 radio interview as a “genius” for his invasion of Ukraine.

    “I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win the war in Ukraine,” Pence said. “And it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty in Ukraine. And America – it’s not our war, but freedom is our fight. And we need to give the people of Ukraine the ability to fight and defend their freedom.”

    Pence’s comments align him with Nikki Haley, Trump’s United Nations ambassador and a 2024 rival, and against their former boss and DeSantis, who entered the GOP race last month. The former vice president echoed Haley’s veiled shot at DeSantis – who described the war as a “territorial dispute” – casting such characterizations as naive.

    “Anybody that thinks Vladimir Putin will stop if he overruns Ukraine has what we say back in Indiana, another thing coming,” Pence said. “He has no intention of stopping. He’s made it clear that he wants to recreate that old Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.”

    Pence participates in a CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall on Wednesday.

    Pence repeatedly highlighted his support for “parents’ rights,” especially when it comes to schools. But he said the judgment of those same parents should not apply to situations when a minor is seeking gender transition care.

    “I strongly support state legislation, including, as we did in Indiana, that bans all gender transition, chemical or surgical procedures, under the age of 18,” he said – even when parents support their child’s decision to go forward.

    Republican presidential candidates have all railed against what Pence on Wednesday described as “radical gender ideology,” language that by definition falsely suggests there is a movement of people seeking to convince young people to change their gender identities.

    “However adults want to live, they can live,” Pence said. “But for children, we’re going to protect kids from the radical gender ideology and say no chemical or surgical transition before you’re 18.”

    Pressed on the age question, Pence compared gender transition to body art, saying, “There’s a reason why you don’t let kids get a tattoo before they’re 18.”

    When Bash asked what he would say to children and families who feel targeted by his position and those of his ideological allies, Pence offered an olive branch of sorts.

    “I’d put my arm around them and tell them I love ‘em,” he said, “but (tell them) ‘Just wait.’”

    Pence speaks during a CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN's Dana Bash at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 7.

    Pence has been a fierce anti-abortion advocate his entire adult life. On Wednesday night, he made clear he would not deviate from that position.

    “I couldn’t be more proud to be vice president in an administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history,” Pence said, “and gave America a new beginning for life.”

    On the question of a federal ban on the procedure, Pence said he supported exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. But he did not tap dance around the fundamental question, even as voters around the country – in the midterms and in referendums – have registered their anger over the Supreme Court’s decision and the subsequent passage of state laws to sharply restrict abortion rights.

    “We will not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country,” Pence said.

    Still, the former vice president acknowledged that his side had a “long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the American people” and encouraged his allies to show both “principle and compassion.”

    To that end, he offered qualified support for social spending programs to help support newborns and new parents.

    “We have to care as much about newborns and mothers as we do about the unborn,” Pence said. But he stopped short of specifically endorsing paid family leave for all Americans or subsidized child care.

    Pence said he would “take a step back” from the approach of the Trump-era landmark sentencing reform law, known as the First Step Act.

    “We need to get serious and tough on violent crime, and we need to give our cities and our states the resources to restore law and order to our streets. And I promise you, we’ll do that, if I’m your president,” Pence told Bash.

    Under the First Step Act, thousands of federal inmates, most of them serving sentences for drug offense and weapons charges, were released from prison early, either for good behavior or through participation in rehabilitation programs. The law also eased mandatory minimum sentencing for certain drug offenders.

    Asked about DeSantis’ promise to repeal the First Step Act if elected president, Pence again conceded that he would take a different approach than the First Step Act.

    “We ought to be thinking about how we make penalties tougher on people that are victimizing families in this country,” he said.

    Pence repeated the criticism he has leveled at his former boss for more than a year, insisting that Trump was wrong to ask his second-in-command to overturn some states’ 2020 Electoral College votes in his ceremonial role presiding over Congress as it counted those votes on January 6, 2021.

    Pence said he “frankly hoped the president would come around” since early 2021. Though he said he agreed that some states inappropriately changed their election procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.

    “But at the end of the day, I think the Republican Party has to be the party of the Constitution,” he said.

    Pence also broke with Trump over the legal fates of those who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6 – and have since faced criminal charges and convictions. Trump said he would consider pardoning many of those rioters, who he said were being treated “very unfairly.”

    Pence, though, said the United States “cannot ever allow what happened on January 6 to happen again in the heart of our democracy.”

    “I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to answer to the law,” he said.

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  • FBI agents arrive in Peru for transfer of Joran van der Sloot, suspect in Natalee Holloway case | CNN

    FBI agents arrive in Peru for transfer of Joran van der Sloot, suspect in Natalee Holloway case | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    FBI special agents arrived in Peru on Wednesday for the temporary transfer proceedings of Joran van der Sloot, a law enforcement source familiar with the operation told CNN.

    US federal agents departed Birmingham, Alabama, for Lima on Wednesday morning on an executive jet used for foreign transfer of custody missions, the source said, and the team is expected to return to Alabama with van der Sloot on Thursday after he is turned over to US authorities.

    Van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, is to be temporarily transferred Thursday from Peru to the US to face extortion and fraud charges, Peruvian officials have said.

    The US extortion and wire fraud charges relate to allegations that he extorted money in 2010 from Holloway’s mother by offering bogus information about her daughter’s disappearance.

    Van der Sloot is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence in Peru for the 2012 murder of Stephany Flores, 21, in his Lima hotel room. He is currently being held at the Ancón 1 prison in Peru.

    Peru initially agreed to extradite van der Sloot to the US to face the extortion and wire fraud charges only after he serves his murder sentence. But last month, the country changed course and agreed to temporarily transfer him to the US to face the extortion and wire fraud charges, after which he would be returned to Peru, the country’s judiciary said.

    Peru agreed to van der Sloot’s “temporary relocation to the United States, because he is condemned here and he must serve his sentence here,” Justice Minister Daniel Maurate said. “But since the US needs him in order to face trial, and the authorities told us that if he didn’t get there sooner, the case against him could be dropped because the witnesses are elderly.”

    An attorney for van der Sloot argued Monday his transfer to the US should be stopped, but the Lima superior court ordered him to be handed over to FBI agents on Thursday.

    Holloway was last seen alive with van der Sloot and two other men 18 years ago leaving a nightclub in Aruba.

    Police in Aruba arrested and released the three men – van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe – multiple times in 2005 and 2007 in connection with Holloway’s disappearance. Attorneys for the men maintained their innocence throughout the investigation.

    In December 2007, the Aruban Public Prosecutor’s Office said none of the three would be charged and dropped the cases against them, citing insufficient evidence.

    Holloway’s body has not been found. An Alabama judge signed an order in 2012 declaring her legally dead. No one is currently charged in her death.

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  • Opening statements begin in the trial of Parkland school resource officer who stayed outside during shooting | CNN

    Opening statements begin in the trial of Parkland school resource officer who stayed outside during shooting | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The trial of the former school resource officer who remained outside a Parkland, Florida, high school five years ago while 17 people were gunned down inside started in earnest Wednesday, as prosecutors began presenting their opening statement.

    The state has accused retired Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputy Scot Peterson of failing to follow his active shooter training by staying outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, taking cover for at least 45 minutes while a former student carried out what remains the deadliest high school shooting in US history. Among the slain were 14 students and three staff members; 17 others were injured.

    The case highlights the expectations for officers responding to active shooters as the country faces a seemingly endless scourge of gun violence, with schools such as those in Parkland; Uvalde, Texas; and Newtown, Connecticut, etched in public memory as the scenes of some of the most devastating massacres.

    Peterson has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts – including seven of felony child neglect, three of culpable negligence and one of perjury – and maintains he did nothing wrong. The 60-year-old, who retired as criticism of his alleged failure mounted, has said he didn’t enter the unfolding scene of carnage in the school’s 1200 building because he couldn’t tell where the gunshots were coming from.

    Before the shooting, Peterson was a dedicated and decorated officer who had served for more than three decades, his attorney, Mark Eiglarsh, told CNN.

    “After a 32-year career, this loving husband and father of four went from hero, and in 4 minutes and 15 seconds, he went to criminal,” the defense lawyer said.

    Jury selection began last Wednesday, yielding a panel of six jurors and four alternates tasked with weighing the state’s unusual case, which experts have described to CNN as the first of its kind and a legal stretch.

    The Broward State Attorney’s Office charged Peterson under a Florida statute that usually applies to caretakers, arguing the then-deputy, in his capacity as a school resource officer, was a caregiver responsible for the protection of the high school’s students and staff.

    Peterson was at the school administration building on February 14, 2018, when the shooter opened fire on the first floor of the 1200 building, according to a probable cause affidavit. Peterson got to the building’s east entrance about 2 minutes later, per a timeline in the affidavit.

    Peterson moved about 75 feet away and “positioned himself behind the wall of the stairwell on the northeast corner of the 700 Building” – a third campus structure – the affidavit says, calling it a “position of cover” he held for the duration of the shooting.

    In a blow to both the state and the defense, the judge last week ruled jurors will not make a trip to the scene of the shooting, as the jury in the shooter’s trial did, CNN affiliate WPLG reported. Eiglarsh wanted the jury to see the exterior of the 1200 building, which has been preserved pending the trials of the shooter and Peterson, while prosecutors had wanted jurors to see the building’s interior, too.

    Beyond the child neglect and culpable negligence charges, Peterson was charged with perjury for telling investigators he heard only two or three gunshots after arriving at the scene of the shooting, the affidavit says, while other witnesses said they’d heard more.

    Peterson’s attorney intends to argue, in part, that his client’s confusion about the location of the shooter was reasonable and shared by others at the scene, including members of law enforcement, teachers and students, Eiglarsh told CNN. The lawyer also contends Peterson’s actions at the scene illustrate he was not negligent but reacting as well as he could with the information he had, he said.

    Additionally, Eiglarsh disagrees with the decision to charge his client under the caretaker statute, he told CNN, calling the choice “preposterous.”

    “He’s not a legal caregiver,” Eiglarsh said, acknowledging he understands the argument. “But he’s not a teacher, he’s not a parent, he’s not a kidnapper who’s responsible for the well-being of a child. He’s not hired by the school system.”

    In the past, Peterson and his attorneys have argued the caretaker statute does not apply to him, emphasizing one person is responsible for the deaths and injuries that day: the gunman, then-19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder and was sentenced last year to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury declined to unanimously recommend the death penalty.

    That outcome angered and disappointed many victims’ families, including some who see Peterson’s trial as another opportunity for justice.

    “We should not portray or allow the defense team or the deputy who failed to act properly to portray himself as a victim,” Tony Montalto, the father of 14-year-old victim Gina Montalto told CNN before jury selection. “He was charged with keeping the students and staff safe, and he failed to do so.”

    “Regardless of the outcome in the trial,” he said, “I hope he’s haunted every day by the fact that his actions cost lives.”

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  • A mass shooting after a high school commencement ceremony leaves 2 dead, including an 18-year-old graduate | CNN

    A mass shooting after a high school commencement ceremony leaves 2 dead, including an 18-year-old graduate | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A shooting after a high school commencement ceremony in Richmond, Virginia, killed two people Tuesday evening – an 18-year-old man on his graduation day and a man who’d attended the event – and wounded five others, spreading terror among hundreds who were celebrating, police say.

    The gunfire happened in Richmond’s Monroe Park, where graduates and guests were reveling and taking photographs after Huguenot High School held its commencement at a theater across the street, officials said.

    The shooting sent people running in all directions, and a 9-year-old girl was injured by a car that struck her during the chaos, the city’s interim police chief said in a news conference.

    A suspect – a 19-year-old man – was taken into custody after the shooting. Police intend to seek charges of second-degree murder against him, and other charges could follow, Edwards said. The names of the suspect and those killed and injured were not immediately released.

    “This should have been a safe space,” the interim chief, Rick Edwards, said Tuesday night. “It’s just incredibly tragic that someone decided to bring a gun to this incident and rain terror on our community.”

    It’s unclear what motivated the attack. The chief said it was unknown Tuesday whether the suspect is a student.

    “We think the suspect knew at least one of the victims,” the interim chief said, without elaborating.

    Huguenot High’s ceremony was the second Richmond high school commencement to happen Tuesday at Altria Theater, and a third graduation ceremony scheduled there that day was canceled after the shooting, school officials said.

    Though Edwards said the 18-year-old who died had graduated Tuesday, Edwards did not say from which school. The other man who died was a 36-year-old who’d just attended the ceremony, the interim chief said.

    The other gunshot victims were a 14-year-old boy and four men ranging in age from 31 to 58. The 31-year-old had life-threatening injuries as of Tuesday night and the rest did not, Edwards said

    The 9-year-old girl who was hit by a car was being treated at a hospital Tuesday night with non-life-threatening injuries, he added.

    The shooting marks one of at least 279 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.

    The violence added Richmond to a list of communities across the country to grapple with the terror of mass shootings in recent months, including shootings at a mall in Texas, a school in Tennessee, a bank in Kentucky and near a beach in South Florida.

    The shooting happened just before 5:15 p.m. ET, when three off-duty officers who were working security at the ceremony heard gunshots and reported them on their radios, and officers working traffic duty nearby responded, Edwards said.

    “The initial officers indicated there was a barrage of gunfire, but it was over quickly,” he added.

    The suspect fled on foot and was found and detained nearby by security officers with Virginia Commonwealth University, nearby, Edwards said. Monroe Park is part of VCU’s Monroe Park campus.

    Police initially announced detained two people but later said one of them was not involved in the shooting.

    Police seized several guns following the shooting, the interim chief said.

    Turmoil unfolded when the shooting happened, Edwards said.

    “I heard the call come over my radio, and you can hear the chaos and the screaming,” Edwards said.

    “People were having panic attacks, falling on the ground screaming,” Edwards added. “Some people fell. One child was hit by a car.”

    Naomi Wade was outside the Altria Theater selling flowers and teddy bears for the graduates, she told CNN affiliate WTVR. Images of smiling graduates in caps and gowns turned to scenes of panic as gunshots were heard, she said.

    “Everyone literally started running for their lives, trampling each other. Trampled me. Trampled our whole entire stand. It was scary,” Wade said.

    Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney decried the shooting Tuesday and promised whoever was involved would be brought to justice.

    “Is nothing sacred any longer?” Stoney said at a news conference.

    “This should not be happening anywhere,” Stoney said “A child should be able to go to their graduation and walk at their graduation and enjoy the accomplishment with their friends and families.”

    Richmond Public Schools is closing all its schools Wednesday out of an abundance of caution, the system announced on its website.

    The rest of this week’s high school graduations in the district also have been canceled.

    “We’ve been preparing for an event like this. We’ve prepared for it with our partners and hoping that this day would come,” Edwards said. “But it came to Richmond.”

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  • A Black mother of 4 was shot and killed by a neighbor. Her family wants the woman who shot her arrested | CNN

    A Black mother of 4 was shot and killed by a neighbor. Her family wants the woman who shot her arrested | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A mother of four was shot and killed in Florida following a longtime feud with a neighbor who had complained about the victim’s children playing outside, authorities and a family attorney said.

    Deputies responded to a trespassing call Friday night and found one woman suffering from a gunshot wound, Marion County, Florida, Sheriff Billy Woods said in a Monday news conference.

    The victim was identified by family attorneys as AJ Owens.

    The shooter, also a woman, “engaged” with Owens’ children and threw a pair of skates, hitting the children, the sheriff said.

    Following that interaction, one of the children went back inside their home and told their mother, who went to the neighbor’s home “to confront the lady,” the sheriff said.

    According to the shooter, there was “a lot of aggressiveness” from both sides, as well as threats being made, and Owens was ultimately shot through the door, Woods said. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital, authorities said.

    The woman who fired at Owens has been cooperating with law enforcement, the sheriff added. No arrest has been made in the case.

    Authorities have not named the shooter or shared any identifying information. But civil rights attorney Ben Crump, one of the attorneys representing the family, identified her as a White woman, according to a news release from his office Monday.

    In a separate news conference held by Owens’ family attorneys, the victim’s mother said the neighbor who shot her daughter had called the family, including the children, racial slurs.

    The neighbor’s door “never opened,” when Owens, who was Black, tried to confront her, and she was shot through the door, Pamela Dias, the victim’s mother said.

    “My daughter, my grandchildren’s mother, was shot and killed with her 9-year-old son standing next to her. She had no weapon, she posed no imminent threat to anyone,” Dias said.

    “What I’m asking is for justice,” she added. “Justice for my daughter.”

    In Monday’s news conference, authorities pleaded for calm and patience as they investigated the shooting, worked to recover possible video footage and interview the children who witnessed the incident. The sheriff also asked for anyone with information to come forward.

    While responding to criticism about how long the investigation and a possible arrest is taking, the sheriff referenced the state’s “stand your ground” law. The law allows people to meet “force with force” if they believe they or someone else is in danger of being seriously harmed by an assailant.

    “What a lot of people don’t understand is that law has specific instructions for us in law enforcement,” he said. “Any time that we think, or perceive or believe that that might come into play, we cannot make an arrest, the law specifically says that.”

    “What we have to rule out is whether the deadly force was justified or not before we can even make the arrest,” he said.

    Authorities had received reports from the two neighbors dating back to at least January 2021, the sheriff said. Those reports included calls from the shooter complaining about Owens’ children, the sheriff said, adding that it was “children being children,” either being on someone’s property or playing in front of the multiplex.

    “Here’s what I wish: I wish our shooter would have called us instead of taking actions into her own hands. I wish Ms. Owens would have called us, in hopes we could have never got to the point in which we are here today,” he said.

    “Pray for those children. Pray for each and every one of them,” Woods added. “Their life has changed.”

    The sheriff vowed to Owens’ family and friends that his office “is going to do everything to bring justice.”

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  • Mother of 6-year-old who shot teacher will plead guilty to federal felony charges in deal with prosecutors | CNN

    Mother of 6-year-old who shot teacher will plead guilty to federal felony charges in deal with prosecutors | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The mother of a 6-year-old boy who brought a gun to school and shot his first-grade teacher in January in Newport News, Virginia, will plead guilty to new federal felony charges as part of a deal with prosecutors, her attorney said Monday.

    Deja Taylor, the 26-year-old mother, was charged with unlawful use of a controlled substance while possessing a firearm and with making a false statement while purchasing the firearm, specifically a semiautomatic handgun, the federal complaint states.

    Her attorney, James Ellenson, said Taylor’s guilty plea was an “agreed procedure which eliminated the need for the government to take the case to a grand jury.”

    “Our action follows very constructive negotiations we had with federal authorities. The terms of the agreement, which we believe to be fair to all parties, will be disclosed when we enter the guilty plea,” Ellenson said.

    In addition to the federal charges, Taylor has been indicted on state charges of felony child neglect and one count of recklessly leaving a firearm to endanger a child.

    The federal charges come about five months after the shooting at Richneck Elementary School in which the 6-year-old shot his teacher, 25-year-old Abigail Zwerner. She suffered gunshot wounds to her hand and chest but survived.

    The gun was purchased by Taylor and kept on the top shelf of her bedroom closet, secured by a trigger lock, Ellenson told CNN in January. The child brought the gun to school in his backpack, police said.

    The child will not be criminally charged, Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn has said.

    Taylor has no criminal record and has cooperated since the shooting occurred, Ellenson said in an earlier statement.

    “As always, first and foremost is the continued health and wellbeing of all persons involved in the incident at Richneck Elementary School, to include both the teacher and Deja’s son,” the statement said.

    The Commonwealth’s Attorney said the office has asked the Circuit Court to assemble a special grand jury to investigate “any security issues that may have contributed to the shooting.”

    Zwerner filed a $40 million lawsuit in April alleging school administrators and the school board were aware of the student’s “history of random violence” and did not act proactively amid concerns over a firearm in the boy’s possession the day of the shooting.

    The boy has an “acute disability” and was under a care plan that required a parent to attend school with him, though he was unaccompanied on the day of the shooting, the family has said in a statement. “We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives,” the statement read.

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  • Kathleen Folbigg: Mother who served 20 years for killing her four babies pardoned | CNN

    Kathleen Folbigg: Mother who served 20 years for killing her four babies pardoned | CNN


    Brisbane, Australia
    CNN
     — 

    A woman condemned as Australia’s worst female serial killer has been pardoned after serving 20 years behind bars for killing her four children in what appears to be one of the country’s gravest miscarriages of justice.

    New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley intervened to order Kathleen Folbigg be freed, based on the preliminary findings of an inquiry that had found “reasonable doubt” as to her guilt for all four deaths.

    Daley told a news conference Monday that he had spoken to the governor and recommended an unconditional pardon, which had been granted, and she would be released from Clarence Correctional Center the same day.

    “This has been a terrible ordeal for everyone concerned and I hope that our actions today can put some closure on this 20-year-old matter,” said Daley, who added that he had informed Craig Folbigg, the babies’ father, of his decision. “It will be a tough day for him,” he said.

    Kathleen Folbigg was jailed in 2003 on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter following the deaths of her four babies over a decade from 1989. In each case, she was the person who found their bodies, though there was no physical evidence that she had caused their deaths.

    Instead, the jury relied on the prosecution’s argument that the chances of four babies from one family dying from natural causes before the age of 2 were so infinitesimally low as to be compared to pigs flying.

    They also noted the contents of her diary, which contained passages that in isolation at the time were interpreted as confessions of guilt.

    As recently as 2019, an inquiry into her convictions found there was no reasonable doubt she had committed the crimes. But another inquiry began last year after new scientific evidence emerged that provided a genetic explanation for the children’s deaths.

    In her closing submissions, Sophie Callan, the lead counsel assisting the inquiry, said that “on the whole of the body of evidence before this inquiry there is a reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt.”

    She also told the inquiry that in its closing submissions, the NSW director of public prosecutions had indicated she was also “open to the Inquiry to conclude there is reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt.”

    Folbigg was just 20 years old when she married Craig Folbigg, who she’d met in her hometown of Newcastle on the northern New South Wales coast.

    Within a year she fell pregnant with Caleb, who was born in February, 1989 and lived only 19 days. The next year, the Folbiggs had another son, Patrick, who died at eight months. Two years later, Sarah died at 10 months. Then in 1999, the couple’s fourth and longest lived child, Laura, died at 18 months.

    The police investigation into the deaths of all four children began the day Laura died, but it was more than two years before Folbigg was arrested and charged. By then, the couple’s marriage had fallen apart, and Craig was cooperating with police to build a case against her.

    He handed police her diaries, which prosecutors argued contained the deepest thoughts of a mother tortured by guilt for her role in her children’s deaths.

    Examination of the babies’ remains failed to find any physical evidence they’d been suffocated, but without another plausible reason to explain their deaths, suspicion focused on Kathleen, their primary carer.

    In 2003, as he sentenced Folbigg to 40 years in prison, Judge Graham Barr recalled her troubled past. Folbigg’s father had killed her mother when she was just 18 months old, and she had spent many of her formative years in foster care.

    According to court documents, Barr said Folbigg’s prospects of rehabilitation were “negligible.”

    “She will always be a danger if given the responsibility of caring for a child,” he said. “That must never happen.”

    The death of Laura Folbigg at 18 months triggered the police investigation.

    That initial conviction ruling now stands in stark contrast to the latest inquiry, which looks set to paint a far different picture of Folbigg as a loving mother who was devastated and confused by the successive deaths of her babies.

    As he ordered her release Monday, Daley distributed a memorandum of the findings by retired judge Tom Bathurst, who said after reviewing the evidence he was “unable to accept … the proposition that Ms Folbigg was anything but a caring mother for her children.”

    In the case of the two girls – Sarah and Laura – Bathurst found there was a “reasonable possibility” a genetic mutation known as CALM2-G114R “occasioned their deaths,” and that Sarah may have died from myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, identified during her autopsy.

    In the case of Patrick, who had an unexplained ALTE, an apparent life-threatening event, when he was 4 months old and died at 8 months, Bathurst found that it’s possible his death was caused by an underlying neurogenic disorder.

    During Folbigg’s 2003 trial, the prosecution used “coincidence and tendency” evidence to allege that Folbigg had also killed Caleb. In other words, that having been allegedly responsible for the deaths of three children, it was likely she killed him, too.

    However, Bathurst found that the reasonable doubt over Folbigg’s role in his siblings’ deaths meant that the prosecution’s case against her for Caleb’s murder “falls away.”

    Kathleen Folbigg walks into the New South Wales Supreme Court in Sydney May 19, 2003.

    In relation to her diaries, Bathurst said the “evidence suggests they were the writings of a grieving and possibly depressed mother, blaming herself for the death of each child, as distinct from admissions that she murdered or otherwise harmed them.”

    Bathurst also expressed doubts about evidence from Craig Folbigg, who had claimed his wife had been “ill-tempered” with their children and had “growled at them from time to time.”

    “The balance of evidence … (was) that she was a loving and caring mother,” wrote Bathurst, whose full report will be released at a later date.

    Folbigg’s case has been compared to that of Lindy Chamberlain, who swore a dingo took her baby Azaria from the family’s campsite at Uluru in 1980.

    The case polarized public opinion and Chamberlain was jailed before evidence emerged that she was telling the truth.

    In 1986, Azaria’s matinee jacket was found half-buried in the dirt, prompting officials to free Chamberlain, later known as Chamberlain-Creighton. Two years later, a court overturned her conviction, and in 2012 a coroner ruled that a dingo was indeed to blame for Azaria’s death.

    Like Chamberlain-Creighton, Folbigg’s release from prison could be the start of a long process to clear her name.

    Daley told reporters Monday that Folbigg’s pardon only meant she did not have to serve the rest of her sentence, and that it would be up to the Court of Criminal Appeal to quash her convictions.

    He said it was too early to talk about compensation, as that would require Folbigg to initiate civil proceedings against the New South Wales government, or to approach it seeking an ex-gratia payment.

    Daley acknowledged that after 20 years of believing Folbigg’s guilt, some people may not accept her innocence.

    “There will be some people who have strong views. There’s nothing I can do to disavow them of those views, (and) it’s not my role to do that,” he said.

    But he suggested the events of the past two decades should elicit some compassion for a woman who has lost so much.

    “We’ve got four little bubbas who are dead. We’ve got a husband and wife who lost each other. A woman who spent 20 years in jail, and a family that never had a chance. You’d not be human if you didn’t feel something,” he said.

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  • Overseas Hong Kongers carry Tiananmen’s torch as vigils to remember massacre victims are snuffed out back home | CNN

    Overseas Hong Kongers carry Tiananmen’s torch as vigils to remember massacre victims are snuffed out back home | CNN


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Hong Kongers living overseas are helping to keep the flame of remembrance alive for the victims of China’s Tiananmen massacre as authorities in a city that once hosted huge annual vigils continue to stamp out dissent.

    Until recently Hong Kong was the only place within China where large-scale gatherings each June 4 were tolerated to remember the moment in 1989 when the Communist Party sent tanks in to violently quell peaceful student-led democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

    But the annual candlelight vigils have been silenced the last three years in the wake of pandemic restrictions and Beijing’s ongoing political crackdown in Hong Kong, which was upended by its own huge democracy protests in 2019.

    This year is set to be no different. Victoria Park, the site that used to hold the vigils, is again open after three years of coronavirus pandemic closures.

    But it is hosting a fair put on by pro-Beijing associations whilst many of those who once organized the city’s Tiananmen commemorations languish in jail or have fled abroad.

    As a result, it is overseas where the most concerted commemorations were taking place for the 34th anniversary.

    Protests, vigils and exhibitions are planned in multiple cities around the world including in Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Europe, the United States and Canada bolstered by a growing cohort of Hong Kongers who have chosen to move overseas.

    “I think it’s sad to say that what Beijing and Hong Kong are doing is trying to erase history and the memory,” said Kevin Yam, a former lawyer in Hong Kong, who will be attending a ceremony in Melbourne, Australia, where he now resides.

    “For those who can still remember, we have the obligation to let the world know that we have not forgotten,” he told CNN.

    01 tiananmen sq museum

    A new museum in New York is a vivid example of how Tiananmen commemorations are going global.

    On Friday, Zhou Fengsuo and Wang Dan, two former student leaders who took part in the 1989 Tiananmen protests and now live in the United States, unveiled a June 4th Memorial Exhibit on 6th Avenue.

    The display includes items collected from those who survived the massacre including newspapers chronicling the event, a blood-stained shirt from a former journalist and a decades-old printer used by protesters that was sneaked out of China.

    Zhou said the idea to create a New York exhibition began five years ago but the closure of Hong Kong’s own June 4 museum by authorities in 2021 “added to the urgency”.

    “Hong Kong has been carrying the torch for commemorating the Tiananmen massacre, keeping the legacy alive. When the museum was shut down, with the Hong Kong alliance’s leaders in prison, we knew it was a critical moment,” he said.

    “We have to continue here in the United States.”

    The 2,200-square-feet venue in New York can host up to 100 guests at a time, with schools and universities already reaching to request for a tour, Zhou said, adding they have raised enough funding to keep it running for “many years”.

    The June 4 museum newly opened in New York displays a printer used by student protesters in 1989 prior to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

    Thirty four years ago, Beijing sent in People’s Liberation Army troops armed with rifles and accompanied by tanks to forcibly clear the square where students were protesting for greater democracy.

    No official death toll is available, but estimates range from several hundred to thousands, with many more injured.

    Authorities in mainland China have always done their best to erase all memory of the Tiananmen massacre: Censoring news reports, scrubbing all mentions from the internet, arresting and chasing into exile the organizers of the protests, and keeping the relatives of those who died under tight surveillance.

    The censorship has meant generations of mainland Chinese have grown up without knowledge of the events of June 4.

    But Hong Kong was different.

    Thousands gathered at a candlelit vigil in Hong Kong on June 4, 2017, to mark 28 years since China's bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown.

    Somber and defiant vigils were an annual political cornerstone, first under colonial British rule and then after the city’s 1997 handover to China. Every June 4, come rain or shine, tens of thousands of people would descend on Victoria Park with speakers demanding accountability from the Chinese Communist Party for ordering the bloody military crackdown.

    But Hong Kong’s political culture has changed drastically in the aftermath in 2019’s huge and sometimes violent democracy protests.

    Beijing responded with a sweeping national security law that outlawed most dissent. Leading democracy activists, including key Tiananmen vigil figures, have been jailed, critical newspapers shuttered and the political system overhauled to ensure only “patriots” are allowed.

    Authorities banned the vigil in 2020 and 2021 citing coronavirus health restrictions – though many Hongkongers believe that was just an excuse to clamp down on shows of public dissent.

    Last year, the park remained in darkness again, barricaded off on all sides with police stopping and searching passersby to “prevent any unauthorized assemblies which affect public safety and public order, and to prevent the risk of virus transmission due to such gatherings,” according to a government statement.

    The Hong Kong Alliance, the group behind the past vigils, has disbanded with three leading figures in jail facing national security charges.

    In the run up to this Sunday’s anniversary, authorities made clear commemorating Tiananmen this year would not be tolerated.

    Security secretary Chris Tang – a former police chief – said he expected some might use “this very special day” to advocate Hong Kong independence and subvert state power, acts banned by the new national security law.

    “But I want to tell these people that if you carry out these acts, we will definitely take decisive action,” he warned, adding: “You will not be lucky.”

    Hong Kong police maintained a heavy police presence around the park on the anniversary’s eve, deploying multiple police coaches and even an armored vehicle at one point.

    Police officers take away a member of the public into a police van in the Causeway Bay area on the eve 34th anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong.

    A handful of artists and activists defied warnings and turned up either at the park or surrounding streets on Saturday evening to make private commemorations with floral tributes and banners, only to be quickly intercepted and taken away by officers.

    A police spokesman said four people were arrested on suspicion of disorderly behavior in public or carrying out acts with seditious intent as of Saturday. Police said some individuals had protest props bearing allegedly “seditious” wording. Four others were brought in for further investigation, police added.

    Richard Tsoi, former secretary for the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance, said he planned to commemorate the event either at home or at a private location.

    “Definitely there will be not be large-scale commemoration activities. Whether one can mourn in public without breaking the law is also a question,” said the ex-organizer, who used attend every vigil in the past.

    Several hundred of 200,000 pro-democracy student protesters face to face with policemen outside the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square 22 April 1989 in Beijing.

    Throughout Hong Kong physical reminders of the Tiananmen massacre, including a famous “Pillar of Shame” statue that used to stand in the city’s oldest university, have been dismantled in recent years.

    Yet last month a replica of the “Pillar of Shame” was erected in Berlin, with the help of its original Danish artist Jens Galschiot and a prominent Hong Kong activist now living in Germany. The artist also provided more than 40 giant banners printed with an image of the pillar to 18 cities for their commemoration events, including Los Angeles and Boston.

    Another pillar was unveiled in Norway last year.

    “It is true that the commemorations around June 4th have expanded and become more global since it has become impossible to do anything in Hong Kong,” he told CNN.

    People hold candles as they walk near the Victoria Park after police closed the venue where Hong Kong people traditionally gather annually to mourn the victims of China's Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, in the Causeway Bay district on June 4, 2021 in Hong Kong.

    Hong Kongers, Zhou says, are playing a key role in keeping Tiananmen remembrance alive overseas,

    “Since last year, many places have seen record numbers in attendance largely because of Hong Kong immigrants,” he said.

    Many Hong Kongers have left for overseas with the city’s population dropping from 7.41 million to 7.29 million last year.

    In Britain – where more than 100,000 Hongkongers have since settled after London offered an easier pathway to citizenship two years ago – about a dozen marches and vigils are slated to take place throughout June 4 across the country, from Nottingham and Manchester, a popular destination for Hong Kong immigrants.

    In London, marchers will gather at Trafalgar Square before marching to the Chinese embassies, where a vigil will be held.

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