March 11, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
March 11 is … Johnny Appleseed Day and Worship of Tools Day
The Dalai Lama has had enough. The 14th Dalai Lama plans to step down as the political leader of the Tibetan people, a move designed to strengthen the Tibetan government, he said. He will remain the spiritual leader of Tibetans and hopes to ultimately decide how his successor is chosen. Chinese authorities, however, have threatened to decide who will one day take over from him. The 75-year-old Nobel laureate said in a speech today in Dharamsala, India, that his decision was timed to coincide with the elections next week to choose a new prime minister for the Tibetan government in exile.
Following up on a story I wrote about in an earlier column about the Catholic Church in Philadelphia, Cardinal Rigali has actually done something but he did it on Fat Tuesday, the day before the solemn Lenten season starts, an obvious effort to demonstrate penitence. Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia on Tuesday placed 21 priests on administrative leave following a damning grand jury report last month -- the second investigation of sex abuse by priests in recent years -- that said up to 37 clerics suspected of abuse remained in ministry. Rigali suspended the priests on the eve of Ash Wednesday and the penitential season of Lent. In a statement, Rigali expressed his "sorrow" for the abuse of children by clergy. "I am truly sorry for the harm done to the victims of sexual abuse, as well as to the members of our community who suffer as a result of this great evil and crime," Rigali said.
The grand jury charged three priests and a parochial school teacher with raping and assaulting boys in their care, while a former official with the Philadelphia Archdiocese was accused of allowing the abusive priests to have access to children. Most of the cases were beyond the statute of limitations and could not be prosecuted. Several of the 37 priests cited by the grand jury had been suspended from ministry before Tuesday's action or were incapacitated and have not been in active ministry, the archdiocese said. Two other priests no longer serve in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and are members of religious orders, whose leaders have been notified of the accusations. Eight priests cited by the grand jury were cleared by an independent examination, the archdiocese said. The revelations have rocked the Catholic Church in Philadelphia and threaten to reopen the abuse scandal that the U.S. hierarchy has tried to put behind it. Shortly after the grand jury report was released, Rigali hired Gina Maisto Smith, a former Philadelphia assistant district attorney who has prosecuted child sexual assault cases for nearly two decades, to lead a review of the 37 cases.
The butcher won this game of slaughter in America. For 27 years, a heartbroken father turned victims' rights advocate penned hundreds of letters and newspaper articles, slamming the California judicial system that let his daughter's killer languish on death row with no execution date in sight. All the while, his nemesis, serial killer Dean Carter, churned out missives of his own in a blog that decried San Quentin's slow mail service, cramped conditions and restrictive visitation policies while commenting on social issues such as elections, budget deficits, school violence and O.J. Simpson.
George Cullins, 88, has fulfilled his long-held prediction that he would die before the man who murdered his daughter in 1984.Now Carter, 55, apparently has won the battle. Retired Marine Corps pilot George Cullins, 88, died in a Southern California hospital without seeing his daughter's killer executed. However, his tenaciousness was responsible for changes in two California laws benefiting the families of murder victims. "He was a fine gentleman. I'm sorry that he did not see this case completed," California Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Koch told AOL News. Koch handled Carter's many appeals spanning 20 years, including argument in front of the California Supreme Court. The case is now in the federal appeals process. Cullins died March 1 from complications of an auto accident that has also left his wife hospitalized with a broken neck. He is survived by three adopted children. Janette Cullins, 24, was his second-oldest child when she was strangled in her San Diego apartment in 1984 and her body stuffed into a closet, the North County Times reported.
The day before Janette's murder, Carter killed three women in Los Angeles. He also raped two others in a three-week crime spree brought on when women rejected his sexual advances, according to court records. Carter was convicted of all these crimes in a series of trials that ended in 1991 with a death sentence in Janette Cullins' case. Carter was charged with a fifth murder in Northern California, but that case was dropped after he was sentenced to death. California has a notoriously slow execution process, with 712 inmates on death row. Only a handful of executions have occurred since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977. Cullins' advocacy campaign began shortly after his daughter's death, when San Diego County billed him $65 for transporting Janette's body to the morgue. The following year the state passed a law doing away with such fees. In the 1990s, Cullins was responsible for enacting a law that quickened the court record certification process in death penalty cases, the first step in an appeal.
Janette Cullins, 24, was strangled in her San Diego apartment in 1984.He then began a letter-writing campaign to newspapers and elected officials, seeking speedy justice. The last one was two years ago. "When the punishment of execution was actually carried out, the murder rate had decreased, but now we are just warehousing killers," Cullins wrote to the North County Times in 2007. "By drawing out the appeals process, the murder rate has been constantly on the increase." That same year, he decried the press for not making an issue of the slow process when David Westerfield was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to death for murdering 7-year-old Danielle Van Dam. Cullins said Westerfield "has an almost 100 percent chance of dying of old age on death row than being punished as the court has assigned." Not to be outdone, Carter has been writing a series of columns since 1995 titled "Deadman Talking." In rambling essays composed on a typewriter and mailed to a friend who posts them online, Carter gives a detailed view of life on death row and how the outside world is passing him by.
More slaughter in America. The following information is from an AP story. A judge on Wednesday gave a former television executive the harshest punishment he could for beheading his estranged wife: 25 years to life in prison and a withering assessment of his character. Muzzammil Hassan, who'd claimed his wife abused him, stood with his head bowed as the judge told him that even his own children had nothing but contempt for him. He scoffed at the idea that Hassan stabbed Aasiya Hassan more than 40 times and decapitated her because he was afraid of her. "You bought two hunting knives, you tested them for sharpness, you laid in wait in a darkened hallway for your unsuspecting wife and you butchered her," Judge Thomas Franczyk said. "Self-defense? I don't think so." Neither do I nor did the jury.
A judge sentenced Muzzammil Hassan to 25 years to life for beheading his wife. Hassan, who killed his wife inside the offices of the Muslim-oriented television station the Pakistan-born couple started to dispel negative cultural stereotypes, kept his comments brief, in stark contrast to his trial testimony. Acting as his own attorney, always a good idea, Hassan, 46, spent four days on the stand, painting himself as a victim in an eight-year marriage filled with arguments and threats. He said God sent him the courage to kill his wife and that he felt as if he'd escaped from a terrorist camp afterward. Now you are going to Camp”So you’re a Muslim, Huh? Squeal like a pig.” Prosecutors countered with piles of medical and police reports showing it was Aasiya Hassan who was incessantly verbally and physically abused. The 37-year-old mother had filed for divorce a week before her death. Good timing with the murder you jackass.
"I deeply regret that things came down to what they came down to," Hassan said at his sentencing in Erie County Court. "I truly wish there would have been some alternative mechanism."
The judge said: "I'm sure there are more men than we can imagine who are victims of domestic violence and you have done them no favors. If ever there was a message lost on the messenger, this was the case." Cry me a river. Hassan's legal adviser, Jeremy Schwartz, said Hassan sincerely believes what he said at his trial. After three weeks of testimony, a jury spent just one hour deliberating before finding Hassan guilty on Feb. 7 of second-degree murder. Several jurors returned for the sentencing. "To see such brutality, what she went through, will be with us forever," juror Kelly Maccagnano said outside the courtroom. She and others said they'd kept an open mind when the burly Hassan claimed he was battered by his much smaller wife, and they waited for proof that never came. "All he wanted to do was trash her, which was really sick," juror Linda Janiga said.
At the sentencing, prosecutor Colleen Curtin Gable cited letters from the victim's family and friends "which speak to her kindness, her generosity and her optimism." Prosecutors asked for the maximum prison term.
"He got what he deserved. We hope he dies in prison," Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita said afterward. Sedita said members of the Muslim community asked him to stress that the killing was strictly a case of domestic violence and not an "honor killing" as some people speculated after the February 2009 murder. The practice is still accepted among some fanatical Muslim men, including Pakistan, who feel betrayed by their wives. "This case has nothing to do with religion," Sedita said. But there was no denying the irony in the case that involved a couple who made it their life's work to improve the image of Muslims in a post-Sept. 11 world and the worst possible stereotypes their television station was meant to counter. Bridges TV continues to broadcast, now under new management and with a broadened focus on bridging understanding among many cultures and religions. Just before his sentencing, Hassan brought in a new lawyer who indicated he would appeal. Earl Key is the fifth attorney to be hired by Hassan since he turned himself in to police about an hour after killing his wife. He fired three others and demoted the fourth to an advisory role during the trial. Key's request to postpone the sentencing so that he could familiarize himself with the case was denied.
The judge granted prosecutors' request that Hassan be barred from contacting his two oldest children from one of two previous marriages. Twenty-year-old Sonia Hassan and her 19-year-old brother, Michael, testified against their father on their stepmother's behalf. Hassan also has two younger children with Aasiya Hassan, who were 4 and 6 years old at the time. Hopefully they never have to see the father of the year.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011
VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.
Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com
Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ (do a quick search, Title, my name)
http://www.smashwords.com/ Do a Title or author search.
“Be moderate
in order to taste the joys of life
in abundance.”
in order to taste the joys of life
in abundance.”
No comments:
Post a Comment