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Blog and Media Roundup - Wednesday, Feb 18, 2009; News Roundup
Topic Started: Feb 18 2009, 06:00 AM (421 Views)
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http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/orange/10-1099941.cfm

Woman to go to trial in football player attack
BY BETH VELLIQUETTE : The Herald-Sun
bvelliquette@heraldsun.com
Feb 18, 2009

HILLSBOROUGH -- A Durham woman charged with kidnapping and sexual battery in a case in which three UNC football players were tied up and robbed in December 2007 plans to take her case to trial in July.

Monique Jenice Taylor, 29, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Orange County Criminal Superior Court to charges of first-degree kidnapping, felony conspiracy, sexual battery and resisting a police officer. The judge set her trial date for July 6.

Her co-defendant, Michael Troy Lewis, 33, is serving 16 to 22 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of kidnapping and assaulting two of the three football players in November.

The case is unusual because Lewis, Taylor and another women were accused to tying up three UNC offensive linemen and sexually assaulting them while Lewis gathered up the belongings of the football players to steal.

Police intervened after one of the football players, who was tied up, was able to call 911 on his cell phone.

Felony charges against the other woman were dismissed after the football player she was with that night did not show up to testify at a probable cause hearing against her, but the charges remained against Taylor and Lewis.

Taylor's attorney, Glenn Gerding, had no comment as to why she wants a trial rather than enter into a plea agreement with the District Attorney's Office.

During testimony in Lewis's trial, one football player said he entered a bedroom in the apartment and was immediately confronted by Taylor, who began to take his shirt off. He allowed her to remove his shirt, and she pushed him back on the bed, he said.

But he said when she removed his belt and began to tie him up and fondle him, he resisted.

Taylor may attempt to separate herself from Lewis during her trial by saying she was not aware that Lewis was attempting to steal items from the football players and that the football player willingly allowed her to tie him up.
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http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1100084.cfm

CRIME LOG

Feb 18, 2009

Probation officer turns suspect in

DURHAM -- Police on Monday took a fourth suspect into custody in a Feb. 10 shooting near a bus stop.

Rodney Oldham's probation officer turned him in to police Monday night, Durham police spokeswoman Kammie Michael said.

The victim told officers he was near the bus stop on Cook Road when four males drove up in a car. One got out, demanded money, chased him on foot and shot him in the back, police said.

Arrested earlier Monday were James Williams, 18, of South Alston Avenue and Mario Melvin, 17, and Andre Bond, 18, both of 2501 Glenbrook Drive.

Williams, Melvin and Bond were all charged with first-degree attempted murder and were each being held in Durham County Jail under $1 million bond Tuesday.

Oldham, 18, was charged with misdemeanor probation violation and was being held in Durham County Jail Tuesday under $50,000 bond.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1409611.html


Published: Feb 18, 2009 12:30 AM
Modified: Feb 18, 2009 05:44 AM

3 men get sentences in 2003 Durham shootings
Anne Blythe, Staff Writer Comment on this story
DURHAM - Richard Lamont Terry, one of three men accused in a 2003 shooting that left a woman dead and caused a toddler to lose an eye, will spend the next two decades in prison.

Terry pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder and three counts of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.

Judge Orlando Hudson sentenced Terry to 24 to 31 years in prison for his involvement in the June 25, 2003, shooting that ended the life of Corlette N. Moss when she was 22.

Kavonia Newman and her daughter, Jade Z. Hargett, who was 2 at the time, also were shot in the head, and the toddler lost an eye. Newman's sister, Brittany Huggins, 14 at the time, was shot in the neck and the side of the face.

Prosecutors have said the violence erupted when Terry, or "Meaty" as he often is called, showed up at a Markham Avenue apartment with Brian Keith Hargrove and his cousin Dennis Lamonte Hargrove to settle a drug debt.

The Hargroves, whom prosecutors initially described as the shooters, pleaded guilty in 2006 to second-degree murder under a plea arrangement in which they agreed to testify against Terry.

Sentencing for the Hargroves was delayed until resolution of the Terry case. On Tuesday, Brian Hargroves, who has been described by prosecutors as the driver, received a minimum of 10 years in prison. Dennis Hargroves, described by investigators as the planner of the retaliatory trip from Clarksville, Va., to Durham, was given at least 13 years behind bars,

The dispute that sparked the gunfire, prosecutors say, was over $20,000 worth of marijuana that detectives say Harold Garner, a drug-dealing associate on probation at the time, had stolen.

In earlier hearings against the Hargroves, prosecutor Tracey Cline, now the district attorney, has said that sometime before the shootings the Hargroves met Garner in a hotel to negotiate the sale of 35 pounds of marijuana and a half-kilogram of cocaine.

On June 25, 2003, according to prosecutors, Garner received a phone call in which witnesses reported hearing a loud argument.

After he hung up, prosecutors have said, he told people inside his East Markham Avenue apartment that if anyone showed up looking for him that no one should say he had been there.

Later that day, the Duke Park neighborhood was traumatized when gunmen fired a spray of bullets inside the Markham Avenue apartment. The two women and two children were inside.

Moss, the woman who was killed, was Garner's girlfriend at the time.

Terry was not charged immediately after the incident. It was not until three years later, after one of the Hargroves mentioned Terry in letters from jail, that police accused Terry of first-degree murder.

Prosecutors initially pursued Dennis Hargrove as the shooter, according to court documents filed by Michael Driver, Terry's defense counsel.

In accepting the plea Monday, Terry avoided a capital trial and the possibility of a death sentence.

anne.blythe@newsobserver.com or 919-932-8741
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http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2009/02/18/Columns/Fair-Is.Foul-3635632.shtml

Fair is foul
you tell me
By: Oliver Sherouse
Posted: 2/18/09
Fair: now there's a great word. Everybody loves things to be fair. Fair play is so ingrained in our cultural consciousness that our national leaders feel compelled to examine baseball players over the perceived lack of it. Fair is a good thing.

One would be excused, then, for thinking that something called the "Fairness Doctrine" would be rather uncontroversial. Unfortunately, what that phrase describes is one of the more unsettling ideas to come down the pike in recent years-not just bad, but downright disturbing.

So what exactly are we talking about here? The so-called Fairness Doctrine was a rule that the Federal Communications Commission used to apply to any medium in which channels were limited, especially radio. The rule mandated that when controversial issues of public interest were discussed on a station, that station had to make an effort to show both sides of the debate. Sounds harmless enough, but the legal terms were squishy and indeterminate enough that broadcasters often shied away from controversial issues altogether. Fear of a fine from a law one's never sure one's broken can work wonders in suppressing criticism.

This situation changed in the late 1980s, when the FCC decided that the doctrine was an unhelpful restriction on free speech and announced that it was no longer in effect. Talk radio exploded. All over the nation, pundits began to host their own shows, while the most skillful at blending opinion and entertainment built huge national followings via syndication. Hooray for public discourse, right?

Here's the catch: Talk radio skewed right, and hard. There's never been any clear explanation for why this occurred; it's apparently just one of those situations where a message perfectly fits medium, like President Barack Obama's did with Internet videos. It is clear, however, that it wasn't for lack of opportunity on the other side of the spectrum.

The textbook example is Air America, which launched in 2004 to great fanfare, and then failed so hard you'd think it was a bank. Although it had initially grown rapidly, building up a network of over 100 stations, by 2006 the company had to file for bankruptcy. The listeners just weren't there.

Why is this important now? Because the people who don't like the things that get said on talk radio have achieved more power in this country than at any time since the doctrine's revocation, and they're itching to get that particular thorn in their side removed. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois mentioned last year that he thought the doctrine needed to be revived, and, in recent weeks, he's been joined by his colleagues Debbie Stabinow of Michigan and Tom Harkin of Iowa. Former President Bill Clinton dropped the F-bomb just last week, calling for more "fairness" in broadcasting. The irony in the fact that each of the last three made their statements on talk radio seems to have been lost on them.

Now, I don't have any illusions that readers of The Chronicle are great fans of right-wing talk radio, or that they're chomping at the bit to oppose the Democratic Congress many of them voted for. I'm not asking you to shed tears for Rush Limbaugh. But I think the idea of a government using the law to silence its critics is repulsive enough to get a reaction, no matter what your stance on Proposition 8 or the stimulative effect of public works programs. And that is exactly what we're dealing with here.

It's tempting to draw an Orwellian picture where a huge "HOPE" poster hangs in the FCC Division of Fairness, just down the hall from the Ministry of Truth. The real effects of reinstating the doctrine, however, would be far more subtle, and in some ways almost more sinister for it. The stations that now broadcast talk would have to make a choice: Open their airwaves to left-wing ratings killers or close them to the right.

Radio stations aren't charities, and in most cases wouldn't be able to afford putting on shows for people not to listen to. And so, with the heavy hand of government grasping for their necks, they would have to reach for the turntable and stick on the latest single from Beyonce, and that would be that. The political chatter that so many millions of Americans have tuned into for the last two decades would fade into static and silence.

And nothing is louder than silence on the radio.

Oliver Sherouse is a Trinity senior. His columns run on Wednesdays.
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http://www.johnincarolina.com/

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Duke Chronicle’s Racial Insensitivity

Duke University’s student newspaper, The Chronicle(TC), has an editorial board of a dozen or so students including the current and previous year’s editors. While TC editorials are unsigned, we’re told they represent the thinking of all board members unless a tag line following an editorial identifies one or more member as having recused her- or himself.

Monday, TC editorial board noted the annerversary of the takeover of the Allen Building forty years ago by Duke African-American students demanding just treatment from the university.

TC called the takeover a “defining moment in the history of student activism at Duke [which] demands reflection on the current state of race at the University.”

I was with TC to that point. But the editorial reflection which followed was disapointing, most of all because of its smug racial insensitivity.

Here in italics are excerpts from the editorial after which I offer some comments concerning its racial insensitivity.

. . . Today, the problems of racial interaction on campus have little to do with overt racism. Instead, complacency, an unwillingness to engage with uncomfortable differences, are at the heart of the issue.

The students who occupied Allen were asking to be recognized as students in the first place: Today, the problem is a lack of interaction between segments of the student body.

Indeed, the University has made great strides since 1969. Our student body is at least as racially diverse as those of our peer institutions. Moreover, since the Black Faculty Strategic Initiative in 1993, and through the Faculty Diversity Initiative in 2003, the University has been at the forefront of nationwide attempts to find and retain minority faculty.

What racial tension there is on campus no longer derives from the slurs and public disrespect that the Allen students experienced.

But it is apparent to almost every student here that the self-segregation and easy complacency that characterize everyday life in America are reflected on this campus. . . .

[The] mission of a university is not only to grant degrees and force students to absorb knowledge in the abstract. As President Richard Brodhead announced when he arrived here in 2004, Duke should aim to be a community where students absolutely cannot shy away from "engagement." . . .

The University is a far cry from what it was on the day the Allen Building was taken, and for this we should be thankful. But we would be doing those students a disservice if we do not remember that their legacy is not only a few concrete changes. It is a call to give ourselves an honest look in the mirror and to always do better.

The entire TC editorial’s here.

______________________________________________________

My comments:

TC’s “reflection on the current state of race at the University” says nothing about African-American students on and about campus who were hounded and threatened by hate-full crowds waving CASTRATE and GIVE THEM EQUAL MEASURE and circulating VIGILANTE and WANTED posters.

The editorial says nothing about a group of 88 Duke faculty who took out a full-page TC ad which thanked angry crowds who hounded and threatened African-American students.

And there’s nothing in the editorial about a white hate-group which advocates violence shouting down at the Durham Courthouse threats, including death threats, at a black Duke student who was the victim of a gang rape frame-up attempt by a rogue DA abetted by others, including many at Duke.

No one can fault TC for failing to mention the banners, posters, crowds, faculty enablers, and a racist hate group which within the past three years all targeted African-American Duke students while most of Duke either joined in or said nothing.

TC didn’t mention any of the foregoing horrific events because none of them happened to African-American Duke students.

But everything I’ve described and much more happened on and about Duke within the last three years.

The Duke student victims of those horrific acts and the racism and hate which fueled them were, as TC's editorial board knows, white.

But that no excuse for TC’s editorial board treating their fellow students as invisible men and saying nothing about what happened to them in TC's relection on "the current state of race at the University.”

TC’s editorial was headed: Measuring The Good Of This Place

A more accurate head would have been: Revealing The Racial Insensitity Of This Editorial Board

No tag line naming any board member who recused followed the editorial.
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~J~ is in Wonderland
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~J~ is in Wonderland
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/4563940/


The president of the state chapter of the NAACP says that although a man jailed for three years on a murder charge won't spend more time behind bars, an injustice is still being fought.

At a news conference Wednesday, Rev. Dr. William Barber said more needs to be done to prevent prosecutors from wrongly targeting people not guilty of crimes.


WATCH VIDEO
James Johnson was a victim, NAACP says

Barber's organization filed a complaint with the North Carolina State Bar three years ago against the former prosecutor who handled the case of James Johnson.

Wilson County authorities detained Johnson, 22, for 39 months on charges of rape, murder, robbery and kidnapping in the June 2004 death of 17-year-old Brittany Tyler Willis.

The criminal case against Johnson ended Monday when he entered an Alford plea to a charge of attempted misprision of a felony, which means failing to notify authorities of a crime.

Johnson admitted to waiting three days to go to tell police about Willis' death and to turn in another man, Kenneth Meeks, who pleaded guilty to the crime. Johnson always maintained he was never involved in Willis's death.

Johnson's supporters, including the NAACP, say he was the constant victim of a broken justice system and that he should be considered a hero for turning in Meeks.

"Even when the system knew it had no case, James Johnson was offered plea deal after plea deal, trying to get him to plea so that it would cover up the system's mistakes," Barber said Wednesday.

Wilson County District Attorney Howard Boney and Assistant District Attorney Bill Wolfe, who initially handled the case, did not return phone calls Wednesday and have generally refused to comment about the case.

Also Wednesday, Johnson's defense attorney, Irving Joyner, noted that under the deal reached Monday, Johnson did not plead guilty but acknowledges the state had evidence that could have convicted him.

David McFadyen, the special prosecutor appointed to the case last January, however, said that according to the legal definition of an Alford plea, Johnson did plead guilty.

"The judgment will indicate the defendant entered a guilty plea. The facts speak for themselves. He has been convicted," McFadyen said.

The Alford plea stems from a 1963 North Carolina murder case that was finally stetled by a U.S. Supreme Court decision about the defendant's pleading guilty at the same time that he claimed he was innocent of the crime.

Superior Court Judge Milton Fitch issued a prayer for judgment in the case, meaning no sentence will appear on Johnson's record and that the case will be listed as pending indefinitely.

The Willis family said Monday they are satisfied with the deal reached Monday and that Johnson's plea allows them to now move forward.

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~J~ is in Wonderland
Feb 18 2009, 08:52 PM
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/4563940/


The president of the state chapter of the NAACP says that although a man jailed for three years on a murder charge won't spend more time behind bars, an injustice is still being fought.

At a news conference Wednesday, Rev. Dr. William Barber said more needs to be done to prevent prosecutors from wrongly targeting people not guilty of crimes.

<snip>

Superior Court Judge Milton Fitch issued a prayer for judgment in the case, meaning no sentence will appear on Johnson's record and that the case will be listed as pending indefinitely.

The Willis family said Monday they are satisfied with the deal reached Monday and that Johnson's plea allows them to now move forward.

~J~'s WRAL link contains two video's from 16 Feb 2009 which are well worth watching. WRAL Link

- Web only - James Johnson guilty plea (53 minutes)

- Web Only - Jame Johnson sentencing (5 minutes)

If anyone has watched them both, I would appreciate hearing your comments.
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