(WASHINGTON) — Four months after announcing it would allow a third-gender option for U.S. citizens on their passports, the State Department said Wednesday that it has issued one.
It is the first of its kind, denoted with an ‘X,’ for non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming U.S. citizens.
The agency is still preparing to make the option widely available for passports and other documents, such as the consular report of birth abroad.
“I want to reiterate, on the occasion of this passport issuance, the Department of State’s commitment to promoting the freedom, dignity, and equality of all people — including LGBTQI+ persons,” said State Department spokesperson Ned Price in a statement. He did not specify when the passport was issued or to whom.
In June, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that Americans could choose which gender is displayed on their passports, no longer needing medical certification if their preference contradicts supporting documents such as birth certificates.
Adding a third-gender option is “technologically complex and will take time for extensive systems updates,” Blinken said at the time. Price said Wednesday the agency is still working on the issue, which they expect to be an option for all regular passport applications early next year.
“The Department also continues to work closely with other U.S. government agencies to ensure as smooth a travel experience as possible for all passport holders, regardless of their gender identity,” he added.
Advocates say harassment by immigration and travel authorities for gender non-conforming people is common. Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, praised the announcement in June.
“Inaccurate IDs open transgender people up to harassment and discrimination. Reforming U.S. passports is a common-sense way to improve the lives of transgender people,” Heng-Lehtinen said, adding accurate documents are “necessary for travel, banking, starting a new job and school.”
President Joe Biden promised these changes during his 2020 campaign.
“Transgender and non-binary people without identification documents that accurately reflect their gender identity are often exposed to harassment and violence and denied employment, housing, critical public benefits, and even the right to vote,” his campaign website said.
The storm became a “bomb cyclone” when its pressure dropped 24 mb in less than 24 hours. In Nantucket, Massachusetts, the nor’easter set a record for the lowest pressure ever recorded in October.
The heavy rain will be ending in most of the Northeast on Wednesday but the winds will continue to roar up to 60 mph from Long Island to Massachusetts to Maine. On Wednesday morning, winds gusted near 80 mph in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
More power outages are possible Wednesday in New England. By 7 p.m., wind gusts could still reach near 50 mph in Massachusetts.
(NEW YORK) — This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.
Alex Schachter, a 14-year-old marching band member gunned down in the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting, would have graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School this year.
“All of Alex’s friends were able to walk across that stage,” his father, Max Schachter, told ABC News. “Since Alex wasn’t there, I did it and collected his posthumous diploma. It’s sad watching all of these kids go off and go to college and do everything that I hoped that Alex would do.”
Alexander, my sweetest little boy. I still can not believe this has happened. How? Why? I miss you every day.
The United States has over 20 million AR-15-style rifles legally in circulation, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a national trade association for the firearm industry. That accounts for a small percentage of the roughly 400 million guns in the country — but the popularity of AR-15-style rifles has been growing “exponentially” ever since the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, said Mark Oliva, the NSSF’s public affairs director.
Because AR-15-style rifles are so versatile, with the ability to add scopes and change both the length and size of the barrel, they became a desirable weapon for many Americans, especially people who like to hunt, ABC News contributor and former FBI agent Brad Garrett said.
But along with that rise in popularity, the use of these weapons in mass shootings is also climbing, according to Louis Klarevas, a research professor at Teachers College, Columbia University who specializes in gun violence and safety. From Sandy Hook to San Bernardino to Orlando to Las Vegas, “most of the deadly high-profile mass shootings in the past decade were perpetrated with assault weapons, particularly AR-15-style assault rifles,” Klarevas said.
The history
Sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” or “military-style rifles,” this class of firearm can encompass many different kinds of guns — not just the more well-known rifles, such as the AK and AR-15 series weapons. The term “assault weapon” generally encompasses a wide range of models, including the UZI rifle and pistol, the Beretta AR-70, the SKS rifle and more, according to the California Attorney General’s Assault Weapons Identification Guide.
AR-15 style rifles are rifles “modeled on the AR-15 platform and that fire the same caliber cartridges,” Klarevas said, such as the Smith & Wesson M&P15 and the Ruger AR-556.
Along with their use in hunting, for some Americans, AR-15-type weapons also connote patriotism, which can be traced back to the M16 military rifle that became prominent during the Vietnam War, according to Garrett.
“It didn’t hurt that Sylvester Stallone uses an assault-type weapon in ‘Rambo,'” the 1982 film about a Vietnam veteran, Garrett said.
But in 1989, an AK-47 was used to kill five children at a Stockton, California, elementary school, leading California to become the first state to enact an assault weapons ban, Klarevas said. That was followed by two other high-profile mass shootings with semiautomatic pistols — one in San Francisco and one on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train — in 1993.
Those shootings were the impetus for the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, signed into effect by President Bill Clinton in 1994, stopping the manufacture, sale, transfer and possession of these types of firearms.
The federal law led to a decrease in gun massacre incidents where six or more victims are killed, Klarevas wrote in a report he issued last year as an expert witness in a federal court case challenging California’s ban on assault weapons. When compared to data from 1984 to 1994, the U.S. saw a 43% drop in gun massacre deaths and a 26% decline in gun massacre deaths involving assault weapons in 1994 to 2004, according to his report.
The federal ban was not renewed by Congress and expired in 2004. Gun massacre incidents involving these weapons then skyrocketed from 2004 to 2014, jumping 167% compared to the 10 years the federal law was in effect, Klarevas’ report said, and active shooter incidents with different guns overall have been steadily climbing over the last two decades, according to FBI data, which does not break down murders by exact model of gun used.
While there’s no federal assault weapons ban now, Washington, D.C., and seven states — California, New Jersey, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York — have banned the possession of certain kinds of these firearms, and the rules vary state to state. According to Klarevas’ report, “In the past 30 years, accounting for population, states with assault weapons bans in place experienced 54% fewer gun massacres involving the use of assault weapons and 67% fewer deaths resulting from such attacks perpetrated with assault weapons.”
The pros and cons
In many rural and suburban areas, fully and semi-automatic rifles hold a practical value, such as for defending property, and a familial value, to pass down weapons to future generations, Garrett said.
AR-15-type rifles are also beloved as sporting rifles because they are accurate, versatile, light and easy to disassemble, Garrett said. They’re also simple to shoot — Garrett said anyone could be trained in a few hours.
Oliva and his wife, both Marine Corps veterans, shoot AR-15s recreationally.
“The way it’s designed, it is easily adaptable. It can fit my frame,” Oliva said, and with adjustments, “It can also fit my wife, and she can shoot that rifle just as easily.”
Oliva stressed that AR-15-style rifles are semi-automatic — and the automatic rifle he used in Iraq and Afghanistan “is not the same rifle that I have in my gun safe today.”
The rifle he carried in war was automatic and could fire three rounds without any other action, Oliva said, while the gun in his safe is semi-automatic and requires pulling the trigger every time you want to fire.
But according to Garrett, automatic and semi-automatic rifles can easily fall into the hands of those who want to commit murder.
Sometimes after a high-profile mass shooting, states will tighten up gun laws, such as by requiring background checks, reducing the sale of certain weapons or banning the sale of high-capacity magazines. But those looking to buy these items can often find another way, Garrett said.
In most states you must be 21 years old to buy a handgun from a federally licensed firearms dealer, but only need to be 18 to buy a rifle, he pointed out. That’s because, historically, rifles have been used by people in rural areas to hunt or defend property, Garrett said. But with the prevalence of private and black market sales, “none of these laws apply in reality,” he said.
Some guns are modified by bump stocks, which are used to make the weapons fire like machine guns. The perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, used a bump stock, leading them to be banned federally in 2019.
Since 9/11, the 10 deadliest acts of intentional violence in the U.S. have all been gun massacres, according to Klarevas. Of those 10 acts, the seven most recent — including Parkland — involved what he defined as an assault weapon. The other three shootings, carried out with handguns, were the oldest, one taking place in 2007 and two others happening in 2009.
In the 1980s, less than 20% of gun massacres involved assault weapons, while in the 2010s, that number went up to 35%, Klarevas said. In the last three years, those weapons made up 67% of gun massacres, according to his report.
The push and pull over bans
When Alex was killed in Parkland, “it left a huge hole in my family that could never be replaced,” his aunt, Gail Schwartz, told ABC News. Alex would have turned 18 in July.
Schwartz, along with other family members and survivors of the Parkland and Orlando mass shootings, launched Ban Assault Weapons NOW (BAWN), a grassroots initiative aiming to ban assault weapons in Florida through legislative and electoral efforts.
BAWN first looked to bring a constitutional amendment banning assault weapons before Florida voters, and collected signatures and donations across the state, she said.
“But when we took the amendment to the Florida Supreme Court — because we need to get their approval before appearing on the ballot — the … justices rejected the amendment,” Schwartz said.
Florida’s Supreme Court rejected the proposed constitutional amendment in June 2020 on grounds that the wording was misleading, The Miami Herald reported. The ballot measure summary, which was limited to 75 words, said assault weapons lawfully possessed before the new rule would be exempt; the ballot measure’s full text said the weapons could not be transferred, the Herald reported. The majority of the justices, however, said “the summary exempts the weapon itself. So, under that theory, the weapon, if it’s registered, could be transferred to someone else,” and since the justices’ “interpretation of the summary conflicts with the full text of the amendment,” they deemed that “the measure itself is misleading,” the Herald reported.
When BAWN lobbied the Florida legislature in 2020, 52 co-sponsors signed on, accounting for 90% of the state’s Democratic legislators, she said. But no Republicans — who hold the majority in Florida’s legislature — would co-sponsor the bills, Schwartz said.
Those numbers mostly match up with how members of political parties feel about a potential ban. When split by party, 27% of Republicans support an assault weapons ban and 70% oppose, while 88% of Democrats support the idea and 11% oppose it, according to an April poll from Quinnipiac University, a nationally recognized public opinion polling center.
Overall, 52% of Americans support and 43% oppose a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons, according to the poll.
Oliva is among those against a ban.
“It’s truly heartbreaking to hear the stories” of mass shootings, Oliva said, but he added that AR-15s tend to take the blame “for the evil that the individual has committed instead of holding those individuals responsible.”
“I don’t want to take away the ability for those who choose to defend themselves with a firearm of their choosing from that choice,” Oliva said. “I think when we start to look at bans on entire classes of firearms, what you’re doing is taking a tool away from those who would choose to defend themselves.”
(SHREVEPORT, La.) — When a series of fights at a Louisiana high school resulted in nearly two dozen students getting arrested, suspended or expelled in a span of 72 hours, a group of dads stepped up to help.
The five dads, all parents of students at Southwood High School in Shreveport, met on a Sunday night to brainstorm how they could help lessen the violence at their children’s school.
“After about three hours, we came up with the idea to have us be a presence on the campus,” said Michael LaFitte Jr., who hosted the meeting at his office, told “Good Morning America.” “We thought we could be a collective unit to be able to show them that there are strong men who are on the campus.”
The dads named their group “Dad’s on Duty USA.”
For the past six weeks, they have traded shifts so members of the group are always present on the Southwood High campus.
Wearing “Dad’s on Duty” T-shirts, the dads welcome students to school, share jokes with them and offer a helping hand and listening ear, according to LaFitte, whose daughter is a junior at the high school.
“Although we’re titled ‘dad’s on duty,’ we also serve as uncle’s on duty, we serve as men of the community on duty,” he said. “Because there are some folks who don’t have a father or don’t have such a great relationship with their father, and it’s our goal to let them see what the right relationship with a male figure is supposed to look like.”
The five dads who originally started the effort, as first reported by CBS News, have more than quadrupled in number, according to LaFitte, who works with an independent security company to vet the fathers who participate.
Working in shifts, there are six to 10 dads on campus at Southwood High every day, throughout the school day. They not only have a presence on the school campus, but also at extracurricular activities like football games and a recent homecoming dance.
“Some days we have long, long days, but we will be at school no matter what,” said Zachary Johnson, who has four children at Southwood High and, like the other dads involved, also works a full-time job. “When your heart is into whatever you’re doing, you make it work.”
David Telsee III said his son, a 15-year-old sophomore, was at first not sure about the idea of seeing his dad on campus every day, but now has “warmed up to it.”
“At first, mine was like, ‘What are you doing dad?'” said Teslee, who spends around three to four hours each day on campus, split between the morning and the afternoon. “He’s starting to warm up to it now, but at first he couldn’t believe it.”
The dads’ efforts have paid off, according to Kim H. Pendleton, Ph.D., the principal of Southwood High, a public school with around 1,500 students.
Pendleton said the school faced serious gang violence at the beginning of the school year, but that has tapered off since the start of the “Dad’s on Duty” effort.
“After the fights, there was a heavy police presence at the school and the kids told me they did not like that,” said Pendleton. “The dads are from the community.”
“They care and they’re committed to being present,” she said. “The kids see them as they’re walking in in the morning. They greet the kids. They tell corny jokes. When I do my rounds to classrooms, they walk with me. They’re making sure that kids are leaving school safely. People are able to talk to them.”
With the success of their effort, the dads said they are working to expand “Dad’s on Duty” to other schools in their school district and then hope to make the effort national.
“We just want people to know that it’s possible,” said Johnson. “We went with it hoping it would make an impact on the school, and now that we see that it’s working, we want to take it to other schools.”
“We’d like this to be the same as the PTA, something that is in every school in every county,” added LaFitte.
Pendleton said the dads have helped her fulfill her mission to make sure every student on campus feels seen and heard.
“My biggest charge to kids is to find one adult that you can interact with and you can trust and you can share information with and we can help you,” said Pendleton. “I want them to find one person on campus who knows who they are, and the dads help with that.”
To her, it’s a great demonstration that it takes a team “to make sure that a school works and works well.”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 4.9 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 738,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 67.2% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Oct 27, 3:41 am
Australia to lift ban on citizens leaving the country
After more than 18 months, Australia announced Wednesday that it will lift a ban on its own people from leaving the country without permission.
Starting Nov. 1, citizens and permanent residents of Australia who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer require an exemption to travel abroad. Australia has imposed some of the world’s strictest border rules amid the pandemic, which Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said has kept the country “free from widespread COVID transmission.”
“The easing of these restrictions is possible thanks to our impressive national vaccination rates, and I thank all those who have done the right thing and rolled up their sleeve,” Andrews said in a statement Wednesday.
While Australian citizens and permanent residents are currently the “first priority,” Andrews said, more travel restrictions — including for some foreigners — will be relaxed as the national vaccination rate “continues to climb.” As of Wednesday, nearly 75% of people aged 16 and over in the country are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data posted by the Australian Department of Health.
“I look forward to further easing restrictions over coming weeks and months as more and more Australians become fully vaccinated,” Andrews said. “Before the end of the year, we anticipate welcoming fully vaccinated skilled workers and international students.”
Oct 26, 8:53 pm
Immunocompromised may need 4th dose: CDC
Immunocompromised people may need a fourth dose of the vaccine, according to newly issued guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Those patients may end up needing an additional shot six months after their third dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, the CDC said. The fourth dose can be of any of the three available vaccines, according to the agency.
This is in line with what the CDC has said before regarding immunocompromised adults. A third shot is considered necessary to establish vaccination for those patients and a boost would need to come six months later, according to the agency.
Oct 26, 4:26 pm
FDA panel greenlights vaccines for kids
An advisory panel at the Food and Drug Administration voted Tuesday in support of the Pfizer vaccine for kids 5 ages 11.
Seventeen people voted “yes” and one person abstained.
Next, the FDA will make a decision. Then, the matter heads to the CDC’s independent advisory panel to deliberate and vote next week, and after that, the CDC director is expected to make the final signoff.
The earliest shots could be in arms is the first week of November.
Oct 26, 2:37 pm
Biden administration to ship vaccines for children as soon as FDA approves them
The Biden administration will begin shipping vaccine doses for kids ages 5 to 11 as soon as the Food and Drug Administration gives the green light in coming days, White House officials told governors on a private phone call Tuesday.
Doing so will allow children to begin receiving shots as soon as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signs off, which is expected around Nov. 4.
Jeff Zients, the White House coordinator on the federal response to COVID-19, said one big concern is the shorter shelf life for pediatric doses. In trying to make the vaccine easier for pediatricians to handle, the doses for kids 5 to 11 can be kept for only 10 weeks, compared with six to nine months for adult doses.
“We don’t want to have wastage, so we encourage you to build flexibility into your distribution systems you can move around within your state or territory,” he told the governors. Audio of the call was obtained by ABC News. “Just order what you need. We have plenty of supply. We can always get you doses on short notice.”
(WASHINGTON) — Vaccines for 28 million American children are on the way to authorization after an advisory panel at the Food and Drug Administration voted in support of the Pfizer vaccine for kids ages 5-11 on Tuesday afternoon.
The vote was the first step in a regulatory process for the two-shot Pfizer vaccine that could allow kids to get their first shots in early November and become fully immunized by early December.
Next, leaders of the FDA have the chance to officially sign off, potentially as soon as Tuesday night. If and when that happens, the White House will begin shipping doses, senior officials told governors on a call Tuesday afternoon that was obtained by ABC News.
But there are still more steps before shots go into arms: If authorized by the FDA, the process would move to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention next Tuesday, when a CDC panel meets to discuss the same data reviewed by the FDA advisers.
“If all goes well, and we get the regulatory approval, and the recommendations from the CDC, it’s entirely possible, if not, very likely, that vaccines will be available for children from 5 to 11 within the first week or two of November,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser for the White House, said in an interview on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Many parents are desperate to protect their children after the delta surge over the summer led to increased cases and hospitalizations among kids. Though the variant is not more deadly, it is more transmissible — and because kids are unvaccinated, the variant rocketed through schools and camps.
The most recent data from Pfizer’s clinical trials found that the vaccine for 5-11 year olds was nearly 91% effective against symptomatic illness.
For kids, the vaccine will be given at a smaller, one-third dose.
The vaccine also appeared safe. None of the children in the clinical trials experienced a rare heart inflammation side effect known as myocarditis, which has been associated with the mRNA vaccines in very rare cases, mostly among young men.
And in a review of the data that assumed the worst — that kids could experience myocarditis at the same rates as young men, which many experts don’t believe will be the case — the FDA’s senior adviser for benefit-risk assessment, Hong Yang, still found that in the majority of scenarios, kids will still be safer once vaccinated.
Dr. Matthew Oster, a pediatric cardiologist, told the panel during his presentation on myocarditis that one of the leading theories is that the heart inflammation is linked to testosterone and hormones, which is why it has occurred more often in teenage boys and young men. Oster also said people tend to recover quickly from the kind of myocarditis experienced after vaccination.
But he noted that long-term study of myocarditis is still needed.
“We really need to see what the long-term outcomes for these kids will be. So far, the data for follow-up results is sparse but ongoing follow-up is in progress,” Oster said.
Despite the near-unanimous vote, Oster and Yang’s presentations were among the most debated.
The FDA experts ultimately agreed all children should have the opportunity to get vaccinated, but many also voiced concern over the remaining unknowns about adverse effects, weighing that against the relatively low risk of hospitalization or death from COVID for kids.
Most FDA advisers felt very clearly that the benefits outweighed the risk.
“To me the question is pretty clear. We don’t want children to be dying in COVID, even if it is far fewer children than adults, and we don’t want them in the ICU,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, chief medical officer for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Although children are less likely to die of COVID-19 than older adults, nearly 2 million kids in the 5-11 age group have gotten COVID. Of those, 8,300 have been hospitalized, about one-third of whom have been in the intensive care unit, and almost 100 kids have died.
Cohn said if adverse events like myocarditis increase among kids, the safety systems in place will flag and address the problem.
Dr. Jeannette Lee, a biostatistician at the University of Arkansas, also agreed.
“Obviously, the adverse events are always a concern, but they don’t seem to be overwhelming really, at this point,” Lee said. “I will say that the school closures and the disruption, I think has been enormous.”
But some, though they voted in favor, also felt there should be caveats to the authorization.
“I’m just worried that if we say yes, that the states are going to mandate administration of this vaccine to children in order to go to school, and I do not agree with that. I think that would be an error at this time, until we get more information about the safety,” Dr. Cody Meissner, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Tufts Children’s Hospital, told his colleagues on the panel.
For his part, FDA’s vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks said the experts should trust that any adverse effects would be closely monitored and acted on if necessary.
The safety teams at the FDA and CDC “are incredibly committed and devoted to making sure that we understand the nature of the safety events and that we catch these signals as soon as we possibly can,” Marks said. “That’s what we’re here to do.”
The White House has purchased enough pediatric doses to vaccinate all 28 million children ages 5 to 11. If authorized, it will be distributed to thousands of sites, including pediatricians, family doctors, hospitals, health clinics and pharmacies enrolled in a federal program that guarantees the shots are provided for free.
Some states are planning to provide the vaccine through schools as well.
The 5-11 age group would be the youngest and latest to receive eligibility. The Pfizer vaccine has already been authorized for adolescents 12 and up, and everyone 18 and older is eligible for all three vaccines: Pfizer, Moderna and J&J.
Whether parents will embrace the vaccines for their kids is still a question. In a September poll, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about a third of parents with kids ages 5-11 were willing to vaccinate their kids right away, while another third wanted to “wait and see.” The figures represented a slight uptick in vaccine acceptance among parents of elementary-school-aged kids since July.
Trials for children 2 years and up, the next age group that could become eligible, are ongoing. Data from the clinical trials is expected sometime this winter.
(HOUSTON) — The boyfriend of the mother of an 8-year-old boy has been charged with murder after the child’s remains were discovered in a Houston home along with his three abandoned siblings, authorities said.
One of the children, a 15-year-old, called the authorities and said his brother had been dead for one year and his body was in the room next to his, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said Monday.
The Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office said the boy’s manner of death was a homicide, according to Houston ABC station KTRK.
His mother, Gloria Williams, 35, now faces multiple charges, including injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence (human corpse), Gonzalez announced Tuesday night.
Her boyfriend, Brian Coulter, 31, has been charged in the murder of her son, who was 8 years old at the time of his death in 2020, the sheriff said.
Both Williams and Coulter are in custody and additional charges are expected, he said.
The 15-year-old and the other two children — boys under the age of 10 — were found home alone on Sunday, the sheriff said.
Both younger kids “appeared malnourished and showed signs of physical injury,” he tweeted.
Deputies also “found skeletal remains of a small child,” the sheriff said.
All three children were taken to the hospital, he said. Their conditions were not released.
Authorities believe the parents hadn’t lived in the home for several months, Gonzalez said.
Prior to their arrest, the children’s mother and her boyfriend were found late Sunday night and had been interviewed and released, Gonzalez said Monday.
The investigation is ongoing, the sheriff said.
At a news conference Sunday, Gonzalez called it a “horrific situation.”
“I have been in this business for a long time and I had never heard of a scenario like this,” he said.
(GROVELAND, Fla.) — More than 70 years after four Black men were accused of raping a white woman in 1949, Florida State Attorney Bill Gladson has filed a motion to posthumously clear the “Groveland Four” of their criminal records.
“Even a casual review of the record reveals that these four men were deprived of the fundamental due process rights that are afforded to all Americans,” Gladson wrote in his motion filed Monday. “The evidence strongly suggests that a sheriff, a judge, and prosecutor all but guaranteed guilty verdicts in this case.”
Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin, all young Black men, were accused of raping a 17-year-old white woman in the central Florida town of Groveland. Following the accusation, an angry mob shot and killed Thomas before he could be arrested. Records show that the indictment against him was never dismissed by the court, according to Gladson’s motion.
Greenlee, Shepherd and Irvin were all put to trial and convicted.
Greenlee, who was 16 years old at the time, received a recommendation of mercy from the jury and received a life sentence. He did not appeal the verdict.
Irvin and Shepherd were sentenced to death and successfully made an appeal. In 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated their convictions and ordered a new trial for each. Following the new indictment, Florida Sheriff Willis McCall shot and killed Shepherd and attacked and injured Irvin. Shepherd’s indictment, like Thomas’, was never dismissed. Irvin was retried, convicted and again sentenced to death, but later had his sentence commuted to life in prison.
Gladson filed the motion to dismiss the indictments of Thomas and Shepherd, and set aside and vacate the judgments and sentences of Greenlee and Irvin.
Several pieces of troubling information highlighted the problematic nature of their charges and convictions. Gladson argues that the state never had Irvin’s pants tested for the presence of semen, even though they could have, and instead left the jury with the impression that Irvin’s pants contained evidence of the rape.
The qualification of the prosecution’s star witnesses, who made shoe and tire casts from the scene, has also been called into question. One of the defense’s expert witnesses stated in the second trial that one of the casts was manufactured to falsely link Irvin to the scene.
Gladson also noted an email from the grandson of the state attorney who prosecuted the Groveland Four case that says state attorney Jesse Hunter and trial judge Truman Futch knew at the time of the second trial that there was no rape.
Now, if the court grants the Gladson’s motion, the legal presumption of innocence for these four men would be restored.
“While we are thankful the Florida Legislature apologized and the Board of Executive Clemency granted pardons, full justice depends on action from the judicial branch,” Carol Greenlee said in a statement. “I hope this motion will result in that full justice for my father Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, and Ernest Thomas.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis granted posthumous pardons to the men in 2019.
This isn’t the first time Black men may have been falsely or unfairly convicted for similar incidents.
In 1972, Federal District Judge Charles R. Scott vacated the convictions of Robert Shuler and Jerry Chatman, two Black men who were convicted of raping a white woman in Florida. The retrial was ordered when the woman hinted the assault may never have been committed.
In the 1980s, the Exonerated Five, previously known as the Central Park Five, were a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers who were convicted and later exonerated in connection with the rape and brutal assault on a white female jogger in New York.
(ATLANTA) — A statue of a Confederate soldier holding a rifle in a park less than a mile from the Georgia courthouse where three white men are on trial for killing Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, has been hidden in plain sight, wrapped in sheets of plastic apparently to protect it from vandalism.
The monument that has stood for 119 years in the center of Hanover Square in Brunswick, Georgia, has become a lightning rod for discourse in the Glynn County community since Arbery was allegedly chased down and fatally shot in 2020 while, according to prosecutors, he was out for a Sunday jog.
Brunswick City Manager Regina McDuffie said the marble statue was wrapped in plastic by a local resident.
“A private citizen wanted to try to ensure the statue was not damaged since we just started the trial in the Arbery case,” McDuffie told ABC Jacksonville, Florida, affiliate WJXX. “It is not the city’s plan. We don’t have anything to do with it as far as how long it will stay [wrapped].”
The Brunswick City Commission voted in November 2020 to remove that statue, but no timeline was set. A Georgia Court of Appeals ruling in August that denied a motion to block the removal of Confederate monuments paved the way for the city to uproot the statue.
The statue was vandalized last year, spray-painted with the letters BLM (Black Lives Matter) on its pedestal.
The murder trial of the three men who prosecutors allege chased down and shot Arbery to death on Feb. 23, 2020, in the Satilla Shores neighborhood near Brunswick began last week with jury selection.
The accused are Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired police officer, his son, Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52.
The three men have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, aggravated assault and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
The jury selection phase of the trial went into its sixth day on Tuesday. No jurors have been selected yet for the high-profile trial, which is expected to last a month.
About 1,000 Glynn County residents received jury-duty summonses in the case. Attorneys are attempting to whittle that number down to a pool of 64 qualified prospective jurors, of which 16, including four alternates, will be seated to hear the case. As of Tuesday afternoon, 32 would-be jurors have been chosen for the qualified pool.
Bryan’s attorney Kevin Gough claimed in court on Tuesday that protests occurring outside the courthouse are having undue influence on potential jurors. Gough asked Chatham County Superior Court Judge Timothy R. Walmsley, who was appointed to preside over the Glynn County trial, to “ban all protest or First Amendment activity from this area until the conclusion of this trial.”
(NEW YORK) — A weekend storm that brought extreme atmospheric river and historic rain to Northern California has raised water levels in several water bodies, namely Lake Tahoe, Lake Oroville and Yosemite Falls.
Yosemite Falls, which was announced to be “dry” last week by the Yosemite National Park, is back in action with flowing water after receiving at least 5 inches of rainfall from the weekend storm. Webcam footage from the park shows that the falls have water flowing through them again.
Following suit, water levels at Lakes Tahoe and Oroville in California have also risen as a result of the historic rainfall. The water level at Lake Tahoe rose above its natural rim at 6,223 feet after having fallen to approximately 6,222.88 feet.
Water levels at Lake Oroville currently stand at 656.01 feet above mean sea level after this weekend’s storm. Over the summer the lake reached a historic low amid exceptional drought causing the state’s Department of Water Resources to take a hydroelectric plant offline.
While the storm brought heavy downpour to the West coast, it didn’t alleviate the region from its climate concern of droughts and wildfires.
Several counties in California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada faced flooding, power outages and property damage. The storm also caused the deaths of two people in Fall City, Washington.
The storm is now headed to the mainland and East Coast, where states have already declared a state of emergency over flash flood warnings. Severe weather is expected in the states of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Jersey and New York.
