Ephemeral New York 'chronicles an ever-changing, constantly reinvented city through photos, newspaper archives, and other scraps and artifacts that have been edged into New York’s collective remainder bin.'
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 11, 2012 -
5 comments
In 1933, Anthony Marino, Joe Murphy, Frank Pasqua and Dan Kriesberg decided to make money by taking out life insurance on drunks and then letting the victims drink themselves to death.
Then they encountered Mike Malloy...
posted by reenum
on Nov 11, 2011 -
17 comments
In 1991,
Troy Davis was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of policeman Mark MacPhail in a Savannah, Georgia parking lot. Since then, seven of the nine prosecution eyewitnesses have
recanted all or part of their testimony, with some citing pressure from the police to make false statements. An exception is Sylvester "Redd" Coles, who made the initial report of Davis’s guilt, and is regarded by the defense as the chief suspect. New witnesses have sworn affidavits that Coles confessed the crime to them. An
array of figures have called for a stay of execution, including death-penalty supporters Senator Bob Barr and former FBI director William S. Sessions.
Today, the Georgia
Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency; barring
action from the District Attorney, Davis is
set to be executed by lethal injection tomorrow at 7pm. [
Previously]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94
on Sep 20, 2011 -
432 comments
TheDataWeb - a network of online data libraries on topics including census data, economic data, health data, income and unemployment data, population data, labor data, cancer data, crime and transportation data, family dynamics, vital statistics data
posted by Gyan
on Dec 26, 2007 -
10 comments
Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. This Saturday will mark this article's four year anniversary. Frankly, I was mildly surprised not to have found it mentioned before in MeFi. It's a good read about a sad state of affairs; how our government is turning its own people into outlaws, because freedom has been traded in for an illusion of security.
...but then we already knew that. Don't we?
posted by ZachsMind
on Aug 29, 2007 -
110 comments
In the "debate" over the War on Drugs, there's a lack of nice quantitative data presentation in one place.
Brian C Bennett aims to rectify
that. From
trends in alcohol initiation relative to legal age limits, to
investigation of the
deaths classified by CDC as marijuana-induced. There are lots of charts, as for
cocaine purity over the years, or treatment
admissions, or
arrest trends. The site map is your
quick guide to the 2000 charts & articles.
posted by daksya
on Feb 27, 2006 -
18 comments
Faith based prisons... Can Gov. Jeb Bush's new drive to introduce God to the inmates make a difference, or was Jesus 'dying for our sins' not enough already? Is Jesus a solution or an excuse?
"Night has fallen. He has died now.
A fly crawls over the still flesh.
Of what use is it to me that this man suffered,
If I am suffering now?" -
Jorge Luis Borges
posted by 0bvious
on Nov 25, 2005 -
36 comments
Lost Liberties? Salon has an interesting two part series on the tensions between antiwar protesters and law enforcement.
Part 1: "Outlawing dissent: Spying on peace meetings, cracking down on protesters, keeping secret files on innocent people -- how Bush's war on terror has become a war on freedom."
Part 2: "A thousand J. Edgar Hoovers: State and local police are taking it upon themselves to investigate antiwar activists -- and in the computer age, the threat to our civil liberties is even greater than it was in Hoover's day." Does
Protester = Criminal?
posted by homunculus
on Feb 20, 2004 -
2 comments
Janklow Gets 100 Days for Manslaughter
A career of willful and flagrant disregard for traffic laws and other people's safety that ended in the death of a motorcyclist.
Must be nice to be pals with the president. Although I'm sure that had nothing to do with his slap-on-the-wrist sentence. I was just saying that it must be nice to be pals with the president.
posted by fenriq
on Jan 22, 2004 -
41 comments
Man Pleads Guilty to Raping his own 2 month old Daughter But wait, that's just the beginning. This guy's daddy heads the state Corrections Department and part of his plea is to reduce the amount of time he's going to spend in jail for this most heinous act.
This guy is facing, if the judge agrees to the plea, only 6 months in jail! The standard sentence for first-degree child rape is seven to 10 years in prison.
He's admitted to molesting a 9 year old in Maine before and has also been convicted of orchestrating an armed robbery.
How in the heck he's going to get ANY leniency is beyond me.
posted by fenriq
on Oct 29, 2003 -
65 comments
The Exonerated Want to see some great theater and learn a bit about our great system of justice and capital punishment? Then
The Exonerated may be the show for you.
The other night I went to see The Exonerated, which has been playing Off Broadway since last fall and is also appearing in theaters around the country this year. Composed wholly from court records and interviews by playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, this documentary drama recounts true tales of horror from the American criminal-justice system. The actors sit downstage and read their parts as the stories of six innocent citizens condemned to death row unfold. If this sounds like a worthy endeavor, it is; if it sounds dull or didactic, it isn’t.
posted by nofundy
on Jul 3, 2003 -
2 comments
A crackdown in Texas. America - land of the free. And to guarantee that freedom, everyone has to be constantly watchful. Like the photo store clerk from
Eckerd who dutifully reported a Peruvian-born couple's lewd shots of their infants to the Richardson (Dallas/Texas suburbs) police. The photos showed the parents' two infants bathing naked, lying together in bed with their mother (again naked) and the 1-year-old Rodrigo suckling his mother's (naked) breast. So the couple was arrested -- the maximum prison sentence for the crime in question being 20 years -- and the children taken away. (verbatim
k5)
posted by The Jesse Helms
on Apr 20, 2003 -
77 comments
Three Strikes Laws May Increase Murder Rates A recent
article in the journal
Criminology & Public Policy suggests that the politically popular "three strikes" laws may have the perverse effect of causing more murders. Because the sentences for murders and "third strikes" are the same, criminals have an incentive to change their M.O. to murder witnesses and police officers. Maybe using baseball metaphors in determining crime policy isn't such a good idea after all.
posted by jonp72
on Dec 11, 2002 -
16 comments
Are we too tough on crime? "Nationwide, crime rates today are comparable to those of the 1970s, but the incarceration rate is four times higher than it was then. It's not crime that has increased; it's punishment." Yes, of course, people who do bad things should be punished. But is the current system worth the social and economic cost? Is there any better way to go about this? (Note: Lots of interesting internal links within the article.)
posted by edlark
on Jul 20, 2001 -
27 comments
U.S. reports steepest annual violent crime drop Incidents of violent crime plummeted nearly 15 percent in 2000, the steepest one-year drop since the federal government began keeping track in 1973. Last year's data continue a trend that began early in the last decade. From 1993 through 2000, rapes dropped 60 percent, aggravated assaults fell 52.5 percent and motor vehicle theft dropped 52.4 percent.
posted by frednorman
on Jun 13, 2001 -
32 comments
