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San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump's National Guard deployment in L.A. is a move last seen in Civil Rights era
The last time a president deployed the National Guard without a request from a governor was an entirely different era in American history. President Donald Trump's order of 2,000 National Guard troops to quell what his administration described as 'insurrectionists' in Los Angeles drew strenuous objections from California Gov. Gavin Newsom. 'It's very much outside our constitutional norms and traditions for the military to be deployed under federal control in the United States,' said Laura Dickinson, a George Washington University Law School professor who specializes in armed conflict. 'It's particularly rare when a governor objects.' Sixty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson deployed the Alabama National Guard to protect a march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, the state's capital, after George Wallace, Alabama's segregationist governor, declined to provide Guard protection. The march followed 'Bloody Sunday' — March 7, 1965 — when Alabama state troopers brutally attacked marchers attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. They used clubs and gas canisters to force marchers, who had planned to walk to Montgomery, back to Selma. The marchers had been galvanized by the slaying of a young Black man from Alabama, Jimmie Lee Jackson, who had been shot as he attempted to prevent his mother from being further beaten by police. The civil rights era also saw numerous other instances of the federalization of the National Guard — to protect Black students integrating Southern schools and to quell unrest. On Sunday, the California National Guard began to arrive in Los Angeles after protests over wide-scale arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in recent days. Dickinson noted that what the federalized Guard will be doing is 'unclear': Will the troops be doing direct law enforcement, or will they be in a supportive role? What are their rules of engagement, and will they use force? It's also unclear how much training they have received, she noted. 'If they were to use force, this really could risk politicizing the military, which historically has enjoyed broad bipartisan support,' Dickinson said. It could also, she said, bring liability concerns. Newsom has called for calm, and, indeed, reports from Los Angeles suggested that the streets were quiet Sunday morning. 'Trump is sending 2,000 National Guard troops into LA County — not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis,' Newsom wrote on social media. 'He's hoping for chaos so he can justify more crackdowns, more fear, more control. Stay calm. Never use violence. Stay peaceful.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Death of 3 girls in Travis Decker's custody is a familiar tragedy
As authorities in Washington state search for a man accused of killing his three young daughters after taking them for a scheduled custody visitation, the tragedy rings all too familiar for the parents of murdered children and advocates who say courts allow this to happen. Travis Decker, 32, is wanted for the deaths of Paityn Decker, 9; Evelyn Decker, 8; and Olivia Decker, who were found dead on June 2 after their mother reported them missing. Authorities in Wenatchee in central Washington said Decker took the children for a scheduled custody visit and failed to return them to their mother on time. The parents were divorced, and Decker was homeless and staying primarily in his truck. A search turned up Decker's white 2017 GMC Sierra truck near a campground, and the girls' bodies were found nearby, but Decker has not been found, police said as of June 4. Courts are troublingly reluctant to believe mothers who say fathers are a safety risk to their children in custody disputes, and all too often put children at risk to satisfy their bias toward paternal rights, said Joan Meier, director of the National Family Violence Law Center at the George Washington University Law School. The particulars of Decker's custody arrangements are unclear, but Meier said the outcome is a tragic reality: The failure of judges to protect children has led to too many deaths. "What is it going to take for not only society, but especially professionals who practice in family courts, to recognize that one more child being murdered is one too many, and that we need to do something to change how we're adjudicating these cases?" Meier said. Since 2008, there have been nearly 1,000 children killed by a parent when divorce, separation or a custody dispute are at issue, according to data tracked by the Center for Judicial Excellence. Of those, about 140 were deemed preventable cases due to court failures. In those cases, the center found that a protective parent attempted to restrict an abusive parent's access to the victims, or that there were risk factors that should have been detected by a trained judge or child advocate. Some of the deaths are also attributed to failures by law enforcement or child protective agencies. Media reports of children murdered by a parent involved in a divorce, separation or custody issue can be found all across the United States. According to the Center for Judicial Excellence, fathers are the perpetrators in these cases 70% of the time, while mothers kill their children 18% of the time. More: A child dies every 6 days amid custody fights, family court lapses. Advocates want change. In recent years, the deaths have included: A 10-month-old infant in Tucson, Arizona, who authorities said was killed by his father Jimmy Torre McElroy in October 2024, the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. The month before the child's death, McElroy had been given temporary custody, according to KOLD-TV. Ellie Lorenzo, 3 years old, whose body was found in July 2024 at a recycling facility in San Jose, California, after going with her father, Jared Lorenzo, for a scheduled custody visit. Jared Lorenzo was also found dead in an apparent suicide, police said. ABC7 San Francisco reported that the child's mother had made repeated requests that court-ordered visits with the father be supervised because she feared for her safety, but the court continued to grant him unsupervised access. Rashawd Hines' 2-year-old son Jayden in 2021 in Florida. Hines sought full custody of Jayden and said he feared for the boy's safety while with his mother, but the court did not immediately act. The mother's boyfriend, Alegray Damiah Jones, was charged with the boy's murder and aggravated child abuse. The deaths of children at the hands of their parents have occurred under many different circumstances, including during custody disputes and after courts have ordered the children spend time with a parent accused of being unsafe. The Center for Judicial Excellence said domestic violence experts believe the most dangerous time for a victim of abuse and their children is in the days immediately following separation from the alleged perpetrator. Meier's research revealed a disturbing pattern, she said: When a mother alleges abuse by the father against the children or says she fears for the children's safety, courts may often end up giving more custody to fathers. In a review of about 2,000 court decisions from January 2005 through December 2014, Meier found that courts believed less than half (41%) of mothers who claimed any kind of abuse by the father, with an even lower rate when the allegation involved abuse of the children. "There's a very strong bias... – it's embedded and unstated – against believing that a father's dangerous to a child and believing a mother who's saying it or child who's saying it," Meier said. The Center for Judicial Excellence said on its website that court transcripts show that judges and other court officials were warned about a parent's violent history before placing child victims into their care unsupervised. "There is a crisis in the family court system that is putting children in danger,' said Kathleen Russell, executive director of the Center for Judicial Excellence, said in 2023. 'When a child is murdered, the system failed. It's irrefutable evidence that something went wrong.' Meier said a big red flag that a custody issue could end in tragedy include demonstrated behaviors of what's known as "coercive control," which many states consider a form of domestic abuse and is defined as "a pattern of threatening or intimidating behavior that interferes with the free will of another person," according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Coercive controllers sometimes take their children's lives as a means of controlling or retaliating against the other parent, Meier said. Other potential signs include prior threats to kill or threats of suicide, along with firearm ownership, she said. Advocates are hoping to pass legislation known as Kayden's Law in many states, which would require courts to consider past evidence of abuse in custody cases along with other requirements they hope will curb deadly and violent outcomes. The law is named after 7-year-old Kayden Mancuso, who was killed by her father during an unsupervised visit in 2018 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, before he also killed himself, the Bucks County Courier Times, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. The law passed in Pennsylvania last year despite initial opposition by groups including the ACLU of Pennsylvania which argued that while the measure had good intentions, it could end up harming mothers' contact with their children, especially within families of color, because it would require courts to consider any history of abuse, no matter how old, against any household member. The ACLU later withdrew its opposition after an amendment it said changed the focus to any "on-going risk of abuse." An important step forward is the education of family judges on the realities of domestic abuse and child abuse, Meier said, adding that serious change is needed in the culture of the family court system in the United States. "How many kids need to be murdered?" Meier said. Contributing: Ken Alltucker and Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY (This story was updated to add new information.) This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Death of Decker sisters is a familiar custodial tragedy
Boston Globe
03-03-2025
- Boston Globe
Lethal injection, electrocution, and now firing squads. A look at US execution methods.
Here's a look at how the U.S. executes people: Most US executions are by lethal injection Lethal injection has been the preferred method in the modern era, with 1,428 carried out since 1976. Texas has done the most, killing 593 inmates, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit center. Advertisement Twenty-eight states as well as the U.S. military and U.S. government authorize the use of lethal injection, in which an inmate has a deadly mixture of drugs injected into them as they are strapped to a gurney. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But throughout its use, lethal injection has been plagued by problems, including delays in finding suitable veins, needles becoming clogged or disengaged and problems with securing enough of the required drugs. 'A number of states are beginning to experiment with new methods of execution ... because of the problems with lethal injection,' said John Banzhaf, a professor emeritus of law at George Washington University Law School. Use of electrocution is down since 2000 Nine states authorize the use of electrocution, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee. Since 1976, 163 electrocutions have been carried out. But only 19 have been done since 2000. In this method, a person is strapped to a chair and has electrodes placed on their head and leg before a jolt of between 500 and 2,000 volts runs through their body. The last electrocution took place in 2020 in Tennessee. Texas used electrocution from 1924 to 1964, killing 361 inmates, according to the state's Department of Criminal Justice. The electric chair Texas used was nicknamed 'Old Sparky.' It is now displayed at the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, where the state's death chamber is located. Alabama resumes the use of lethal gas Lethal gas is authorized as the default execution method in eight states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Advertisement From 1979 to 1999, 11 inmates were executed using this method, in which a prisoner would be strapped to a chair in an airtight chamber before it was filled with cyanide gas. In 2024, Alabama revived this method when it became the first state to use nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith. A mask is placed over a prisoner's face and nitrogen gas is pumped in, depriving the person of oxygen and resulting in death. Alabama's last such execution took place in February. Firing squads are rarely used in the modern era Since 1977, only three inmates have been executed by firing squad and all were in Utah, with the last one in 2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states including Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah authorize its use, but it is not the primary execution method. For this method, an inmate is usually bound to a chair and is shot through the heart by a group of prison staffers standing 20 to 25 feet (6 to 7.6 meters) away. Idaho has had firing squad executions on the books as a backup if lethal injection drugs are unavailable since 2023. But in the wake of last year's botched lethal injection attempt on Thomas Eugene Creech, lawmakers are considering a bill to make firing squads the primary execution method. The bill's sponsor, Republican Sen. Doug Ricks, has suggested Idaho could use a firing squad machine, triggering the guns electronically to eliminate the need for additional execution team members. Hanging was once the primary execution method In the U.S., hanging was the main method of execution until about the 1890s, according to the Advertisement Data collected by researchers of U.S. executions from 1608 to 2002 found 9,322 people were put to death by hanging, in which a person was blindfolded and their hands and legs were secured before a noose was placed around the neck and they fell through a trap door. But in capital punishment's modern era, only three individuals in the U.S. have been executed by hanging in 1993, 1994 and 1996. New Hampshire's remaining death row inmate could be executed by hanging if lethal injection is not available. Associated Press video journalist Cody Jackson in Fort Pierce, Florida, and writer Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
The Independent
03-03-2025
- The Independent
Lethal injection, electrocution and now firing squads. A look at US execution methods
South Carolina is preparing this week to execute a man by firing squad, a capital punishment method that hasn't been used in the U.S. in nearly 15 years. Since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment in 1976, states have used five different execution methods: lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas, firing squad and hanging. Brad Sigmon is scheduled to die Friday in South Carolina. He was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat at their home in 2001. Here's a look at how the U.S. executes people: Most US executions are by lethal injection Lethal injection has been the preferred method in the modern era, with 1,428 carried out since 1976. Texas has done the most, killing 593 inmates, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit center. Twenty-eight states as well as the U.S. military and U.S. government authorize the use of lethal injection, in which an inmate has a deadly mixture of drugs injected into them as they are strapped to a gurney. But throughout its use, lethal injection has been plagued by problems, including delays in finding suitable veins, needles becoming clogged or disengaged and problems with securing enough of the required drugs. 'A number of states are beginning to experiment with new methods of execution ... because of the problems with lethal injection,' said John Banzhaf, a professor emeritus of law at George Washington University Law School. Use of electrocution is down since 2000 Nine states authorize the use of electrocution, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee. Since 1976, 163 electrocutions have been carried out. But only 19 have been done since 2000. In this method, a person is strapped to a chair and has electrodes placed on their head and leg before a jolt of between 500 and 2,000 volts runs through their body. The last electrocution took place in 2020 in Tennessee. Texas used electrocution from 1924 to 1964, killing 361 inmates, according to the state's Department of Criminal Justice. The electric chair Texas used was nicknamed 'Old Sparky.' It is now displayed at the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, where the state's death chamber is located. Alabama resumes the use of lethal gas Lethal gas is authorized as the default execution method in eight states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wyoming. From 1979 to 1999, 11 inmates were executed using this method, in which a prisoner would be strapped to a chair in an airtight chamber before it was filled with cyanide gas. In 2024, Alabama revived this method when it became the first state to use nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith. A mask is placed over a prisoner's face and nitrogen gas is pumped in, depriving the person of oxygen and resulting in death. Alabama's last such execution took place in February. Firing squads are rarely used in the modern era Since 1977, only three inmates have been executed by firing squad and all were in Utah, with the last one in 2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states including Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah authorize its use, but it is not the primary execution method. For this method, an inmate is usually bound to a chair and is shot through the heart by a group of prison staffers standing 20 to 25 feet (6 to 7.6 meters) away. Idaho has had firing squad executions on the books as a backup if lethal injection drugs are unavailable since 2023. But in the wake of last year's botched lethal injection attempt on Thomas Eugene Creech, lawmakers are considering a bill to make firing squads the primary execution method. The bill's sponsor, Republican Sen. Doug Ricks, has suggested Idaho could use a firing squad machine, triggering the guns electronically to eliminate the need for additional execution team members. Hanging was once the primary execution method In the U.S., hanging was the main method of execution until about the 1890s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Data collected by researchers of U.S. executions from 1608 to 2002 found 9,322 people were put to death by hanging, in which a person was blindfolded and their hands and legs were secured before a noose was placed around the neck and they fell through a trap door. But in capital punishment's modern era, only three individuals in the U.S. have been executed by hanging in 1993, 1994 and 1996. New Hampshire's remaining death row inmate could be executed by hanging if lethal injection is not available. ___ ___ Follow Juan A. Lozano on X at juanlozano70.
New York Times
20-02-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump's Push to Kill Congestion Pricing Faces Tall Legal Hurdles
President Trump and his new transportation secretary, Sean P. Duffy, made it sound as if their power to pull the plug on New York City's six-week-old congestion pricing program was absolute. Mr. Duffy, who has been on the job for less than a month, wrote to New York's governor on Wednesday that 'I have concluded' that the tolling program, implemented after a grueling, yearslong process, was not 'eligible' under the federal statute used to enact it. Mr. Trump's explanation was even less complex: He hit the caps-lock button and invoked his authority as 'king.' 'CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD, Manhattan,' the president wrote on social media, 'and all of New York is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!' The law, however, is far more nuanced. And legal experts say that in this case, it does not appear to be in the president's favor. 'Declaring 'I'm the king' is not sufficient grounds for reversing' the program, said Robert L. Glicksman, a professor of environmental and administrative law at George Washington University Law School. 'If the facts on the ground have not changed, then you have an extra high burden of justifying a reversal of position,' Professor Glicksman added. 'They can't just say: 'Sorry. We changed our mind.' They have to explain why.' The federal government granted final approval to the program, the first of its kind in the United States, on Nov. 21 — after Mr. Trump had been elected for his second term but before his inauguration. And on Jan. 5, New York City began charging most drivers a fee of $9 to enter streets south of 60th Street in Manhattan. The program is designed to generate needed revenue for mass transit improvements, reduce congestion on the city's traffic-choked streets and curb climate-warming vehicle emissions. While running for president, Mr. Trump said that he planned to halt the tolling program if elected, and it was clear that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had anticipated his effort to shut it down. The M.T.A., which runs the city's subways and buses, filed a 51-page legal challenge minutes after Mr. Duffy's letter became public. 'I think our commuters are the road kill on his revenge tour,' New York's Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, said of Mr. Trump soon after the M.T.A. had filed its request for a declaratory judgment from a federal judge. The M.T.A.'s filing includes a half-dozen legal arguments, many of which hinge on whether Mr. Duffy's effort to reverse course is 'arbitrary and capricious' under the law. The filing also implies that aborting a program that has resulted in decreased traffic in Manhattan would require the federal government to first assess whether shutting it down would cause harm to the environment. State officials said they had no intention of halting the tolls. 'Until a judge rules, these cameras are staying on,' Ms. Hochul's legal counsel, Brian K. Mahanna, said. 'And we expect a judge to rule in our favor.' Mr. Duffy argued in Wednesday's letter that the federal statute that authorized the new tolling program — the Value Pricing Pilot Program, or V.P.P.P. — did not permit a situation where the toll was 'inescapable' and where the primary reason for it was to upgrade transit, not roads. But David A. Super, a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Mr. Duffy's interpretation of the law was largely irrelevant because the statute itself does not grant him the authority to negate the program. 'There is really nothing in the statute that gives the secretary authority to stop these things,' Professor Super said. Some statutes, he said, grant federal officials the power to cancel authorized programs after providing a certain period of notice. 'But if you look at the text of this statute, there is no authority for this cancellation,' he said. John Reichman, a lawyer who supports congestion pricing and opposed New Jersey's unsuccessful attempts to block implementation of the new tolling program, likened Wednesday's effort by Mr. Trump to breaking a contract. 'You can't unilaterally decide to void a contract that the other party has relied on — and spent millions of dollars implementing,' Mr. Reichman said. The M.T.A. noted in its filing that the Federal Highway Administration, which Mr. Duffy controls as transportation secretary, had relied on the same statute to implement tolling programs in Texas and Florida, without similar objections. The agency 'has never attempted to unilaterally rescind tolling authority for any V.P.P.P. program or project,' lawyers for the M.T.A. wrote. Doing so, they wrote, would 'create uncertainty' any time there was a change in agency leadership or in the White House — 'uncertainty that may make it difficult to issue bonds for other projects and would clearly undermine the purposes of the V.P.P.P.' Professor Super said the proper venue for seeking a change to the tolling program would be Congress.. 'If he's right about his policy concerns,' he said of Mr. Duffy, 'Congress has already said what to do about that: Study it and return to Congress.'
