WEATHER ALERT
Biden's Justice Dept. keeps hard line in death row cases
Read full article: Biden's Justice Dept. keeps hard line in death row casesAn Associated Press review of dozens of legal filings shows that President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is fighting just as vigorously as Donald Trump's did to uphold death row inmates' sentences, despite Biden's opposition to capital punishment.
Supreme Court rejects appeal from Dylann Roof, who killed 9
Read full article: Supreme Court rejects appeal from Dylann Roof, who killed 9The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Dylann Roof, who challenged his death sentence and conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation.
Mass shooters exploited gun laws, loopholes before carnage
Read full article: Mass shooters exploited gun laws, loopholes before carnageThe suspects in the shootings at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket were both just 18 when authorities say they bought the weapons used in the attacks.
22 mass shootings. 374 dead. Here's where the guns came from
Read full article: 22 mass shootings. 374 dead. Here's where the guns came fromThe suspects in the shootings at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket were both just 18 when authorities say they bought the weapons used in the attacks.
Authorities: Hate against Taiwanese led to church attack
Read full article: Authorities: Hate against Taiwanese led to church attackAuthorities say a gunman was motivated by political hatred against Taiwan when he chained shut the doors of a California church and hid firebombs before shooting at a gathering of mainly of elderly Taiwanese parishioners.
Buffalo shooting latest example of targeted racial violence
Read full article: Buffalo shooting latest example of targeted racial violenceThe shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, is the latest example of something that's been part of U.S. history since the beginning: targeted racial violence.
US to pay $88M to families, victims of SC church massacre
Read full article: US to pay $88M to families, victims of SC church massacreFamilies of nine victims killed in a racist attack at a Black South Carolina church have reached a settlement with the Justice Department over a faulty background check that allowed Dylann Roof to purchase the gun he used in the 2015 massacre.
Court upholds death sentence for church shooter Dylann Roof
Read full article: Court upholds death sentence for church shooter Dylann RoofA federal appeals court has upheld the conviction and death sentence of a man on federal death row for the racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation.
Biden's silence on executions adds to death penalty disarray
Read full article: Biden's silence on executions adds to death penalty disarrayActivists widely expected Joe Biden to take swift action against the death penalty as the first sitting president to oppose capital punishment, but the White House has been mostly silent.
On federal death row, inmates talk about Biden, executions
Read full article: On federal death row, inmates talk about Biden, executionsInmates on federal death row tell The Associated Press that a leading topic of conversation through airducts they use to communicate is whether President Joe Biden will keep a campaign pledge to halt federal executions. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)CHICAGO – On federal death row, prisoners fling notes on a string under each other’s cell doors and converse through interconnected air ducts. Everyone on federal death row was convicted of killing someone, their victims often suffering brutal, painful deaths. Some 40% of federal death row inmates are Black, compared with about 13% of the U.S. population. In December, 70% of the death row inmates had COVID-19, some possibly infected via air ducts through which they communicate.
Big challenge: Biden is pressed to end federal death penalty
Read full article: Big challenge: Biden is pressed to end federal death penaltyAction to stop scheduling new executions could take immediate pressure off Biden from opponents of the death penalty. But they want him to go much further, from bulldozing the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, to striking the death penalty from U.S. statutes entirely. In the 22 states that have struck the death penalty from their statutes, none succeeded in passing the required laws without bipartisan support. Q: WILL BIDEN GET PUSHBACK IF HE SEEKS TO END THE FEDERAL DEATH PENALTY? Biden may also feel an obligation to do something big on the death penalty, given his past support for it.
5 years after church massacre, S Carolina protects monuments
Read full article: 5 years after church massacre, S Carolina protects monumentsHe also left behind pictures of himself holding the gun used in the killings, posing at historic Civil War and African American sites and holding the Confederate flag. Outraged political leaders came together and overwhelmingly voted to take down a Confederate flag that flew near a monument to Confederate soldiers on the Statehouse lawn. The law protects all historical monuments and names of buildings, requiring a two-thirds vote from the state General Assembly to make any changes. The president of the University of South Carolina wants lawmakers to let the school remove the name of J. Marion Sims from a women's dorm. The time has come to take down the monuments that honor the evil that was done in the name of Charleston, in the name of South Carolina," Rivers said Tuesday at the foot of Calhoun's statue.
Families of Dylann Roof victims can sue US government, court rules
Read full article: Families of Dylann Roof victims can sue US government, court rulesRandall Hill - Pool/Getty Images(CNN) - The families of the nine people slaughtered in a South Carolina church in 2015 can sue the US government for negligence, an appeals court has ruled. The US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court's ruling that protected the government from liability under two federal laws. Roof had been arrested on a drug charge that would have blocked the gun sale had it been properly reported during the background check, the court found. Victims' families sued, alleging the government was negligent in its background check. If it had been performed properly, "no one disputes" it would have kept him from buying the gun, the appeals court wrote.