Latest news with #Sermons
Los Angeles Times
29-05-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
Who are the athletes to watch at this weekend's CIF State Track & Field Championships?
The 105th CIF State Track & Field Championships will take place Friday and Saturday at Buchanan High in Clovis and though the thermometer is expected to rise above 100 degrees both days, many Southland sprinters also will bring the heat. The absence of last spring's 100 and 200-meter dash winner Brandon Arrington, whose leg injury in a league meet May 9 forced him to miss the San Diego Section finals and denies him an opportunity to defend his state titles, opens lanes for the fastest athletes in the City and Southern Sections to take advantage. A junior from Mt. Miguel, Arrington broke the San Diego County record (20.35) in the 200 at Arcadia in April and one week later set a new section record (10.21) in the 100 at Mt. SAC. The favorite in the 100 is Concord De La Salle junior Jaden Jefferson, who enters with the best qualifying time (10.30, three hundredths of a second better than Arrington's winning time last year), but challenging him will be Antrell Harris of Birmingham (who clocked 10.92 to win the City title May 22), back-to-back Masters Meet winner Demare Dezeurn of Bishop Alemany (10.35), RJ Sermons of Rancho Cucamonga (10.47) and Servite's trio of Benjamin Harris (10.44), Robert Gardner (10.59) and Jorden Wells (10.63). In the 200, Masters champion Sermons (20.97) will be in the first heat along with Temecula Valley's Jack Stadlman (21.24), Dezeurn (21.04) has the fastest qualifying time in the second heat, Servite's Jace Wells (21.05) and Newbury Park's Jaden Griffin (21.36) are in the third heat and joining Jefferson (21.11) in the last heat are Santa Margarita's Leo Francis (21.14) and Harris (21.66). Sermons, who announced the day before the Masters Meet that he will skip his senior year of high school to play football at USC, clocked a career-best 20.88 at the Baseline League finals and will try to beat Arrington's winning time of 20.55 last year. Servite freshman Jaelen Hunter (46.91) heads a talented group in the 400, which includes Stadlman (47.91), City champion Justin Hart from Granada Hills (47.45) and City runner-up Nathan Santacruz of Venice (47.48). Servite's 4x100 relay was first at the Masters in 40.40 followed by Sherman Oaks Notre Dame (40.77), which will be in the same heat Friday as JSerra (41.44) and City champion Granada Hills (41.78), and Murrieta Valley (41.55) will be in heat four with Birmingham (41.80). Servite also has one of the faster foursomes in the 4x400 as the Friars figure to challenge for the team title, won last year by Long Beach Poly, which won the Masters race Saturday in 3:10.83. The loaded field also features Cathedral (3:12.20), Mira Costa (3:18.73), Long Beach Wilson (3:14.93), Culver City (3:14.80) and Granada Hills (3:24.15). For the girls, Redondo Union's Journey Cole and Chaparral's Keelan Wright are in separate heats but should they advance they would go head-to-head in the finals in a rematch of last week's epic 100 meter showdown (Cole prevailed by five hundredths of a second in 11.36), however not to be underestimated are Malia Rainey (11.57) and Marley Scoggins (11.60) from Calabasas (11.57) and Carson's Christina Gray, who ran 12.05 to win the City title. Wright (23.21) is the leading qualifier in the 200. Other contenders are Rosary's Justine Wilson (23.38), Scoggins (23.59) and Gray (24.62). Long Beach Poly carried the baton around the oval in 45.94 at Masters to avenge its loss to Oaks Christian at last year's state 4x100 final and the two schools could match up again Saturday alongside City winner Carson (46.84), which was third in Clovis last year. Long Beach Wilson, the state team champion in 2024, has the top qualifying time (3:43.71) in the 4x400 relay. In the distance events, Corona Santiago boasts two title contenders — Braelyn Combe in the 1600 and Rylee Blade in the 3200. Combe was second to Ventura's Sadie Englehardt last year and won the Masters four-lapper last week in 4:44.36 (more than two and a half seconds better than her winning time at the Southern Section Division 1 finals), second-best among all qualifiers behind Chiara Dailey (4:43.57) of La Jolla in San Diego. Blade ran 9:58.46 two weeks ago to break a Southern Section record that had stood since 1996 and cruised to the Masters win in 10:11.38. The Florida State-bound senior was third at state last year in 10:06.26 and she set a new meet standard of 15:20.3 at the Woodbridge Cross Country Classic in September. Stanford signee Evan Noonan of Dana Hills, winner of the Southern Section and Masters races the past two weeks, will try to defend his 3200 state title (he won in 8:43.12 as a junior). Aliso Niguel's Jaslene Massey and Sherman Oaks Notre Dame's Aja Johnson have the first and second best throws in both shot put and discus. Massey swept the events at Masters (49-7.50 shot put; 165-06 discus). Johnson is the defending state discus champion and won the state shot put title in 2023. In the boys high jump, Mission League rivals Matthew Browner from Chaminade and JJ Harel of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame both achieved 6-10 to finish first and second at Masters. Harel cleared that same height to take second at the state finals last year behind Birmingham's Deshawn Banks.
Los Angeles Times
25-05-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
RJ Sermons, on the fast track to USC, shows off his 200 speed at Masters Meet
One day after making a big announcement about his future, RJ Sermons concentrated on the present and rebounded from a disappointing effort in the boys' 100 meters to beat a loaded field in the 200 meters Saturday in the Southern Section Masters Meet at Moorpark High. 'Not having the best race in the 100 gave me more fire in the 200 and I feel like I understand that race all the way,' Sermons said after building a sizable lead around the turn and winning in 20.97 seconds — not quite matching his personal-best 20.88 achieved three weeks ago at Baseline League finals. 'The most important thing right now is to stay level-headed and prepare well for state.' A four-star cornerback from Rancho Cucamonga, Sermons declared on Friday he will forgo his senior year, reclassifying from the class of 2026 to 2025 in order to join his older brother Cameron at USC this summer. 'I was thinking about it for two months, finalized my decision about a month ago and announced it yesterday because Thursday was the last day of school,' said the 6-foot, 185-pounder who committed to USC in mid-December, fulfilling a lifelong wish to follow in the footsteps of his father, Rodney Sr., a running back for the Trojans from 1994-97. Before he turns his attention to college football, though, Sermons still has unfinished business on the high school track and has definite goals for the state meet on May 30 and 31 at Buchanan High in Clovis. 'For the 200, I can go 20.8 [seconds] for sure and my goal is 20.6,' he said, after finishing fourth in the 100 in 10.47 Saturday and finishing in 10.36 at the section finals last week. 'In the 100, I'll need to run high 10.1 or low 10.2 to win state. My focus [in the 100] will be the start. The key is getting out of the blocks fast.' Defending his Masters title in the boys' 100 meters before placing second to Sermons in the 200 with a personal-best 21.04 was Bishop Alemany sophomore Demare Dezeurn, whose winning time of 10.35 seconds bettered his Division 4 record-setting 10.42 and was one hundredth of a second faster than his wind-aided time at last year's Masters. 'My goal is to win next week and one day be able to tell my kids I was state champion,' Dezeurn said, who confirmed he is transferring to Palisades and wants to play football in the fall. 'This is just the beginning for me. I wasn't planning to win today, I just wanted to put a good time on the board.' Servite sophomore Benjamin Harris, second to Dezeurn last year in the 100 and fifth at state, stumbled and fell while crossing the finishing line in the 100 (he was third in 10.44) and had to scratch from the 200. Servite's depth makes it a state title contender in the boys' 4x100-meter relay. The team of Jace Wells, Jaelen Hunter, Kamal Pelovello and Robert Gardner, won Saturday in 40.40. Sherman Oaks Notre Dame was runner-up in 40.77. 'We're a whole new team from last year but none of us like to lose and we're going to practice getting the baton around better for next week,' said Gardner, who ran the anchor leg. Hunter later won the 400 meters in 46.91, one second faster than Jack Stadlman of Temecula Valley. Long Beach Poly got revenge on Oaks Christian in the girls' 4x100, as Leila Holland, Nevaeh Lewis, Aniyah Brooks and Brooklyn Lee won in 45.94 after finishing second to the Lions at state last year. 'This was very important and it feels good but we're going to state to redeem ourselves,' Lee said. Oaks Christian (46.12) was second and Redondo Union (46.96) third. After repeating as Southern Section champion in the 100 a week ago, Georgia commit Keelan Wright (11.41) from Chaparral was edged by five hundredths of a second by North Carolina A&T-bound Journey Cole of Redondo Union in the 100, but rebounded to win the 200 in 23.21. Corona Santiago's Braelyn Combe followed her second straight Division 1 section title with a winning effort of 4 minutes 44.36 seconds in the girls' 1,600 meters, improving her time from last week by more than two and a half seconds. Grant Miller of La Serna was the boys' 1,600 champion in 4:09.86. Stanford-bound Evan Noonan, who opted not to run the 1,600 (he won the section Division 1 title last week) to save his energy for the 3,200 meters, won the event in 8:55.76. University of Oregon commit and reigning girls' state long jump champion Loren Webster of Long Beach Wilson leaped 18 feet 11½ inches — the third-best mark behind only Ab Hernandez of Jurupa Valley (19-03½) and Kaylee Best of Norco (19-¾). 'I've been dealing with patella tendinitis the entire season but over the weeks the pain has decreased,' Webster said. 'I was confident I'd win state last year because I'd jumped over a foot better than anyone else. As for this year I'd say 20 feet should win.' Texas commit Brandon Gorski of Mater Dei qualified for state for the fourth time in the boys' high jump with a height of 6-6 to finish third behind Chaminade's Matthew Browner and Sherman Oaks Notre Dame junior JJ Harel (last year's state runner-up), who both cleared 6-10. Gorski also posted the third-best mark in the long jump with a 22-10½ effort. Long Beach Wilson won the girls' 4x400-meter relay in 3:43.71 and Long Beach Poly won the boys' race in 3:10.83. Aliso Niguel's Jaslene Massey won girls' discus (165-06) and shot put (49-07½). Reigning state discus champion and 2023 state shot put champion Aja Johnson of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame took second in both with marks of 158-08 (discus) and 45-08 (shot put).
USA Today
24-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Four-star USC cornerback commit RJ Sermons reclassifies from 2026 to 2025
Four-star USC cornerback commit RJ Sermons reclassifies from 2026 to 2025 USC adds to its 2025 football roster through reclassification. On Friday, USC's top-ranked 2026 recruiting class took a significant hit. However, it was for a reason most Trojans fans will be okay with: Four-star cornerback commit RJ Sermons reclassified to the 2025 cycle. Previously, Sermons was slated to graduate from high school in December and enroll at USC in January. However, he is now set to graduate a full year early and enroll at USC this summer, ahead of the 2025 season. Sermons is from Rancho Cucamonga, California. 247Sports Composite now ranks him as the No. 127 overall player and the No. 17 cornerback in the 2025 cycle. Adding Sermons a year early could turn out to be beneficial for USC. The Trojans are replacing the vast majority of their secondary production from last season, so Sermons could potentially earn playing time right away this fall. Sermons is one of two players in USC's 2025 class to reclassify from the 2026 cycle, joining defensive lineman Jahkeem Stewart. They are the first Trojans to enroll in college a full-year early since five-star quarterback JT Daniels in 2018. USC is hoping that the careers of Sermons and Stewart go better than that of Daniels, who spent six up-and-down seasons at four different schools before medically retiring from football in 2023.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A North Carolina Judge Just Acknowledged an Undeniable Truth: The Death Penalty Is Racist
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Sometimes, what is right in front of you is the hardest to see, and the truth is hidden in plain sight. For a long time, that has been the case with the role of race in America's death penalty system. It is by now well documented that from start to finish—from charging decisions to jury selection, decisions about sentencing, and decisions about who gets executed—race plays a key role in death penalty cases. Yet often, courts have found a way to ignore or dismiss those unpleasant facts in their capital punishment jurisprudence. Following a notorious 1987 Supreme Court precedent, McCleskey v. Kemp, judges have focused narrowly on the question of whether defendants in capital cases can provide proof of overt, intentional discrimination. They could do so if they could show that the prosecutor said that they were charging the defendant with a capital crime because of their race or the race of their victim. Or maybe if prosecutors make overt appeals to racial prejudice during jury selection or the trial? Or perhaps if jurors say anything about race in their deliberations or in explaining why they believed the defendant deserved a death sentence? These things happen rarely, though. Focusing on them means that judges will ignore context and patterns of racial prejudice and miss what is right in front of them. On Feb. 7, North Carolina Judge Wayland Sermons showed what happens when judges broaden the context and notice patterns. What he did made the realities of race in death cases come alive. His ruling has the potential to change the way Americans think about race and capital punishment. It is one of the most thorough and persuasive demonstrations ever recorded in this country of the way the death penalty serves as a form of legal lynching. Sermons made his ruling in the case of Hasson Bacote, who, as NBC News notes, was convicted of murder 'along with two others in the 2007 fatal shooting of Anthony Surles, 18, during a home robbery attempt when Bacote was 20. The other two defendants in the case were convicted on lesser charges and later released from prison.' The judge based his decision on a combination of 'statistical analyses, social science research, the historical and present-day influence of race in the administration of criminal punishment … as well as the words and actions of North Carolina prosecutors.' Judge Sermons also considered documents from the trial court, 'affidavits of prosecutors, voir dire transcripts and jury selection notes from the files of prosecutors around the state.' He drew together this evidence and was inventive in piecing it together. His willingness to do so helped him see what was right in front of him. Sermons did not have to insist that Bacote had to find a smoking gun showing evidence of intentional racial discrimination in his case because the same year Bacote was convicted, North Carolina enacted the Racial Justice Act. That act allowed judges in North Carolina to consider a wide range of evidence, including statistics, in determining whether race played an impermissible role in a criminal trial. Before its passage, judges in the Tar Heel State had only found racial discrimination in jury selection one time. Nonetheless, in 2013, a mere four years after its passage, as the Equal Justice Initiative notes, 'In the face of overwhelming evidence that racial bias had infected death penalty cases in North Carolina, the state legislature repealed the RJA … [and] made the repeal retroactive.' Seven years later, the North Carolina Supreme Court 'declared the repeal's retroactivity provision unconstitutional' and allowed people like Bacote to continue litigating RJA claims. Bacote was one of them, though from the time he filed his RJA claim, it took nearly 14 years for it to be heard. Bacote was given a death sentence by a jury composed of 10 white and two Black jurors. He contended that his trial was replete with racism. He offered evidence to suggest that the racial composition of his jury was not a coincidence. It included the fact that local prosecutors 'were nearly two times more likely to exclude people of color from jury service than to exclude whites, and in Bacote's case, prosecutors chose to strike prospective Black jurors from the jury pool at more than three times the rate of prospective white jurors.' Judge Sermons was convinced. He went out of his way to make clear that 'the RJA does not require proof of discrimination by a specific prosecutor or in a defendant's own case.' The judge also pointed out that a capital trial can be racialized when prosecutors denigrate 'Black defendants in thinly veiled racial terms.' Sermons took note of the fact that in an earlier trial, the person handling Bacote's case had 'described Black defendants as 'predators of the African plain.' ' And, in Bacote's case, the prosecutor referred to him as a 'thug,' a term Judge Sermons said 'has racial connotations.' For a long time such thinly veiled racial terms have played a role in capital trials across this country. They prod juries, as I wrote more than 30 years ago, 'to assert the value of white life against the devaluing acts of Black men.' And, if judges ignore those kinds of remarks, they will never understand the complex ways in which racism appears in the death penalty system. Finally, Bacote also offered statistics to show that Black defendants were much more likely to be sentenced to death in the county where he was prosecuted than were whites. Again, Judge Sermon was convinced. 'In Johnston County,' he wrote, 'Black defendants … have faced a 100 percent chance of receiving a death sentence, while white defendants have a better than even chance of receiving a life sentence.' The fact that Sermons' kind of analysis is not the usual fare in death penalty cases can, as I noted above, be traced back to the Supreme Court's McCleskey decision. In that case, a Black defendant introduced a sophisticated statistical study that demonstrated a very powerful race-of-the-victim effect. The study showed that Black people convicted of murder were much more likely to be sentenced to death if they murdered a white victim than if they murdered a person of color. The Supreme Court did not dispute the validity of the statistics. However, it ruled that they were irrelevant in proving that a particular defendant was subject to racial discrimination. As the court put it, 'The statistics do not prove that race enters into any capital sentencing decisions or that race was a factor in the petitioner's case. The likelihood of racial prejudice allegedly shown by the study does not constitute the constitutional measure of an unacceptable risk of racial prejudice. … At most, the Baldus study indicates a discrepancy that appears to correlate with race, but this discrepancy does not constitute a major systemic defect.' Since it was decided, McCleskey has helped blind judges to the realities of racial discrimination that were staring them in the face. Judge Sermons' decision cannot change that in one fell swoop. But it will have far-reaching effects. In the first instance, it will help 'many of the other 122 inmates facing the death chamber by paving the way for them to successfully challenge their sentences.' Beyond that, it offers a template through which Americans can see how race operates in capital cases. And in the long run of history, it will pave the way for the time when the United States Supreme Court gets around to overruling McCleskey.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Johnston County judge finds death sentences influenced by racial discrimination: Court Documents
SMITHFIELD, N.C. (WNCN) — On Friday, a Johnston County judge found that race played a significant role in the death penalty trial of Hasson Bacote, influencing the makeup of the jury along with the decision of the death sentence. Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons also found that racial discrimination extends beyond Bacote's case 'poisoning all death sentences in Johnston County' and districts that include Harnett and Lee counties. 'We are grateful that Judge Sermons carefully weighed the evidence and found that the administration of the death penalty in Johnston County remains deeply entangled with racism,' said Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, which along with the ACLU and the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund brought forward Mr. Bacote's Racial Justice Act claim. 'This decision is a damning indictment of the death penalty and should serve as a call for every North Carolina death sentence to be reexamined. North Carolina must never carry out another execution tainted by racial discrimination.' The ruling comes after former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper's grant of clemency to 15 people on death row, including Bacote. Judge Sermons' decision however will not affect Bacote's sentence as he is already resentenced to life without parole. PREVIOUS | Gov. Cooper commutes 15 death sentences on last day as North Carolina governor The ruling is still significant to 121 people remaining on the state's death row because of the findings in Bacote's case. 'I am deeply grateful to my family, my lawyers, the experts, and to everyone who fought for justice—not just in my case, but for so many others,' Mr. Bacote said in a statement made through his attorneys. 'When my death sentence was commuted by Governor Cooper, I felt enormous relief that the burden of the death penalty — and all of the stress and anxiety that go with it — were lifted off my shoulders. I am grateful to the court for having the courage to recognize that racial bias affected my case and so many others.' Sermons said that all evidence showed that Black people were denied a voice in the justice system and prosecutors often felt free to invoke racist tropes and slurs. In Bacote's case, court documents state that 'the prosecution struck qualified Black potential jurors at 3.3 times the rate it struck all other qualified jurors.' Documents also stated that patterns of discrimination against Black venire members proved to be consistent. Prosecutor Greg Butler also referred to Black defendants with terms including 'piece of trash' and 'predators of the African plain,' according to documents. Cassandra Stubbs, the director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project said that this case could lead to a significant impact on similar cases across North Carolina. 'We expect that there will be efforts from other defendants to bring their meritorious claims to justice, and I hope that the leadership in North Carolina finally sits down and wrestles with these facts. That we see a different way of selecting juries, that we can look at punishment differently, and that we finally try to take seriously the underlying goal of the RJA which is to try to stop race from playing a role in our criminal justice system,' Stubbs said. Stubbs said that overall she is satisfied with the outcome and the judge's decision and could be a path forward for other death row inmates who faced discrimination to bring their claims forward. 'I'm thrilled on behalf of Mr. Bacote and that there is a court after 14 years that has lived up to the Racial Justice Act,' Stubbs said, 'The promise for the law was to allow for a reckoning and an examination in the ways in which racial bias taint our death penalty system, and today's decision does that.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
