Matt Saldaña

[speakeasy] Liz Phair's new album

2010-07-21T11:29:00.010-04:00

Following Liz Phair's surprise release of 'Funstyle,' her first album of original material since 2005, I wrote a review of the album for The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog, then followed up with a previously unreported story on how she left her record label in the process of making it. Both articles are excerpted below.

Liz Phair, ‘Funstyle’: Rapping and Confessions
by Matt Saldaña
Photo courtesy Liz Phair
July 9, 2010

Liz Phair is expecting that record-company executives will hate her new record, a self-parodying mélange she posted on her Web site this week with little fanfare. Mockingly titled “Funstyle,” the surprise release is a schizophrenic, sample-heavy affair that alternates between crushing self-doubt and music-industry rancor.

[Read the entire review at The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog.]

Liz Phair: Why I Left My Record Company
by Matt Saldaña
July 13, 2010

Following last week’s surprise release of “Funstyle,” an online-only album that vents frustration at the recording industry, rocker Liz Phair has posted an instructive note on her website, titled “How To Like It.” In it, she announces that “Funstyle’s” songs have caused her to “lose” her record deal, management, and “a lot of nights of sleep.” “Love them, or hate them,” she writes of the new tracks, “but don’t mistake them for anything other than an entirely personal, un-tethered-from-the-machine, free for all view of the world, refracted through my own crazy lens.”

On one such un-tethered track, Phair imagines an agent telling her “Funstyle” amounts to “career suicide,” and that “ATO will never put this out.” According to Phair, the latter point at least appears to be true.

In an e-mail to Speakeasy, Phair insisted there are “no hard feelings, only circumstances” that led to her split—“almost a year ago”—with ATO Records. The label, co-founded by Dave Matthews, signed Phair in 2008 and re-released her acclaimed and influential debut album, “Exile in Guyville” later that year. Billboard reported at the time that a new studio album was “penciled in” for the fall of 2008, though “Funstyle” marked Phair’s first album of original material since 2005’s “Somebody’s Miracle,” released on Capitol Records.

[Read the entire article at The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog.]

[speakeasy] ‘The Orchid Thief’ Author Susan Orlean Becomes a Chicken Person

2010-03-11T23:55:00.003-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo Courtesy Museum of Science
March 4, 2010

Author Susan Orlean (“The Orchid Thief”) never fancied herself as a chicken person. But after moving from Manhattan to the Hudson Valley, she found herself craving her own flock, she writes, “with an urgency that exceeded even my mad adolescent desire to have a pony.” Orlean was surprised to find she was not alone; in a recent New Yorker piece, she describes the resurgence of “backyard chickens” in American cities: “Chickens seem to be a perfect convergence of the economic, environmental, gastronomical and emotional matters of the moment,” she writes. For a price roughly equal to a carton of eggs, one can purchase a chick that will lay hundreds of eggs over the course of five or six years—roughly one every 36 hours, and all, one can be sure, cage-free, local and organic.

This week at Boston’s Museum of Science, Orlean delivered her first-ever lecture on backyard chickens, in which she invoked both AMC’s “Mad Men” (“Can you imagine Don Draper with chickens? The whole point of the suburbs, in its darkest conception, was to deny any association with an agrarian past.”) and Martha Stewart (“You might not think of her as someone who wants to rip the veneer off of suburban living” but she “deserves credit” for making chickens glamorous).

Earlier, Speakeasy caught up with Orlean to talk about the sociology of chicken-keeping, her next book project (hint: it’s animal-related), and Meryl Streep’s bid for a third Oscar.

[View the entire article at The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog.]

[indyweek] After "soul-searching," Racial Justice Act passes

2010-03-11T23:49:00.003-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
August 12, 2009

After approving versions of roughly three dozen bills, hammering out a state budget and deliberating for more than three hours, the N.C. Senate had one item left on its agenda the night of Aug. 5: the Racial Justice Act. The Senate had passed a version of the landmark bill, which would prevent the execution of defendants on the basis of race. Yet it did so only after tacking on a controversial amendment—introduced by Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham)—that would simultaneously ensure the resumption of capital punishment in North Carolina.

When it came time for the Senate to concur with a "clean" House version that purged the controversial clauses, Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr. (D-Durham), the bill's sponsor, stood up, pointed his finger to the Senate chamber's door and left in a hurry. Later, the Senate recessed for nearly an hour while the Democrats held a private caucus on the bill.

At roughly 7:45 p.m., the Democrats emerged, and McKissick, who had delayed the vote twice in the past week to garner enough supporters, said, "I would simply ask my colleagues to concur."

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Homeland Security institutes new rules for 287(g) program

2010-03-11T23:36:00.004-05:00

This article was featured on Bender's Immigration Bulletin.

by Matt Saldaña
July 22, 2009

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is changing its controversial 287(g) program to encourage local law enforcement agencies, including those in Durham and Wake counties, to focus their energies on processing "criminal illegal aliens" for deportation, not those accused of petty crimes. However, the federal directive stops short of guaranteeing such deportations won't happen.

The 287(g) program—and a separate initiative, Secure Communities, which faces similar questions about its transparency and purpose—was the subject of a Spanish-language forum in Durham last week. While Durham Police Chief José Lopez calmed some immigrant advocates' fears about the department's enforcement of 287 (g), Durham Sheriff's Deputy Major Paul Martin could not answer basic questions about his office's involvement in federal programs.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] The high cost of the death penalty

2009-07-08T00:11:00.006-04:00

This article was featured on the Death Penalty Information Center Web site.

by Matt Saldaña
Illustration by J.P. Trostle
June 24, 2009

The cheapest part of executing a prisoner is the killing itself.

The state's procedure of lethal injection costs about $500: $168 in medicine and syringes, plus roughly $340 for the doctor, who is present for three to four hours, according to the N.C. Department of Correction. (See details at end of story.)

Yet court fees related to capital trials, those in which prosecutors seek the death penalty for murder, cost North Carolina millions of dollars. The costs are incurred even if the charges are reduced or dismissed. Given the state's budget crisis, which has forced lawmakers to cut funding for education, social services and children's health insurance, money spent on pursuing death penalty cases arguably could be better used. Nationwide, several states, including Colorado and Kansas, are considering abolishing the death penalty to save money.

In North Carolina, Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, recently told the House Ways and Means Committee, "We might want to, at some point, revisit whether the death penalty ought to be imposed, or whether we ought to impose a life sentence without parole, because it's a strong, persuasive and convincing argument when you talk about the astronomical expense of capital cases."

Between 2001 and 2008, N.C. Indigent Defense Services cost the state an additional $36 million when prosecutors sought the death penalty instead of life imprisonment for 733 people, according to the Indy's analysis of a 2008 IDS report. IDS is a publicly funded agency that provides private attorneys for defendants charged with capital crimes, but cannot afford a lawyer.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[Rockefeller Brothers Fund] Shared Prosperity: The New Voices in Civic Engagement

2009-06-27T20:55:00.007-04:00

This article was commissioned for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's 2008 Annual Review. From the review: "The 2008 Annual Review cover story, 'Democracy in Action, centers on the Fund's Democratic Practice program and examines the issues of elections reform, public financing, and immigration. It includes features by Lauren Foster and Matt Saldaña."

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Jeff Weiner
June 2009

On a cold day in January 2009, with the economy in freefall and the United States at war on two fronts in the Middle East, Barack Hussein Obama, a self-described "son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas," was inaugurated the country's 44th president.

"We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness," he said to a crowd of nearly 2 million, huddled together on the National Mall. "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth."

To many, that declaration would have seemed impossible just one year ago. Anti-immigrant rhetoric filled the airwaves for much of 2008 and threatened to upend support for a candidate who had spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. Ultimately, Obama's victory depended not only on the insolvency of such language but also on support by a new class of voters: a coalition of Asian Americans, Latinos, and so-called New Americans born to immigrants in the latter half of the 20th century. According to a study by Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos voted in unprecedented numbers in 2008, favoring Obama by a factor of two to one. Exit polls conducted by CNN show Asian Americans similarly favored Obama and suggest the Latino vote may have handed Obama a victory in several critical swing states, including Indiana and North Carolina.

"We've shown that we have the numbers to really shift the political calculus that goes into election strategy for generations to come. There is no question about the power of the immigrant vote," says Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC).

[View the entire article at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Web site.]

[indyweek] Raleigh's Cuban community: Their stories, their views on Obama's new diplomacy

2009-06-04T15:06:00.007-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
June 3, 2009

[...]

Over the past 50 years, the Cuban exodus to the U.S has swung elections, inspired academic studies, spurred CIA-led battles and provided both relief and anguish for Fidel Castro and the 10 U.S. presidents whose terms he has outlasted. Now President Barack Obama has begun the diplomatic dance with Cuba (the U.S. and Cuba have no official high-level relations) and rolled back some of George W. Bush's most ineffective stances toward Cuba, primarily related to the migration of Cubans.

More than 5,000 Cuban exiles live in North Carolina, and many of them settled in the Triangle. Alfonso Sama, who's lived in Durham for the past decade, escaped the country on a raft in 1962. Tony Asion was sent here by his parents in the early 1960s, as one of thousands of parentless "Pedro Pan" kids. Beba Rodriguez missed the 1980 Mariel boatlift, arriving in the U.S. two years later by obtaining an exit visa through Panama. Ezequiel Casamayor and Noelmis Sevila, political dissidents, were flown by the U.S. government to Raleigh as refugees in 2008.

They are united by their flight, but are nevertheless a loose confederacy of exiles. While some fled in the weeks after the 1959 Revolution, others stayed and supported Castro's vision, only to sour of it later. Still others were born into communism, and enjoyed the fruits of a Soviet-supported paradise (albeit one with no room for dissent) before succumbing to the poverty that its collapse left behind. The relative few who have earned priority refugee status in recent years tell stories of humiliation, and time spent in jail, for their political activities—some of them encouraged by U.S. efforts like Radio Martí.

"In no singular moment did I decide to leave Cuba," says Ezequiel Casamayor, 65, who arrived in North Carolina last year with his two sons, two granddaughters and daughter-in-law. "I was part of the opposition there, fighting for a change on the island. But every day was harder to survive in Cuba. If you aren't communist, there is no life for you there."

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Racial justice victory dimmed by possible resumption of executions

2009-06-04T14:53:00.006-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
May 20, 2009

On May 14, during the same week that North Carolina's death penalty cleared a significant legal hurdle, the state Senate passed a landmark bill that seeks to make capital punishment decisions more equitable. The Racial Justice Act, which passed by a 36-10 margin, would prevent the execution of defendants who can prove race was an underlying factor in the decision to seek or impose the death penalty at the time of their trial.

"Let's not be naïve. [Race] has been a factor at times in the past, and we need to recognize that," Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., D-Durham, the bill sponsor, said before the vote. "I'd much rather see a person end up in life in prison, without parole, because it may be fair and appropriate for the offense he committed."

A recent study (PDF) conducted by two UNC-Chapel Hill professors found that defendants in North Carolina are twice as likely to be sentenced to death for capital crimes if they are black; defendants whose victims are white are 3.5 times more likely to be sentenced to death than defendants who committed identical crimes against non-white victims, the study found.

The Senate vote is bittersweet for proponents of death-penalty reform, because it includes an amendment (PDF) intended to end the state's de facto moratorium on executions that has been in place for nearly three years. The amendment—introduced by Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, who voted against the bill—would prevent doctors from being disciplined for participating in executions and would exempt the N.C. Council of State from its role in approving execution protocol. That would resolve two issues hung up in the state's courts until recently that have effectively postponed execution of the state's 163 death-row inmates since August 2006.

"What they're trying to do is make this an execution bill, and this is not that," said Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, a sponsor of the bill on the House side. "This bill is about fairness, and opportunity, for both sides—the prosecutors and also the defendants. It's a fairness bill."

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] De facto death penalty moratorium may end

2009-06-04T14:49:00.004-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
May 13, 2009

Following a 4-3 decision by the N.C. Supreme Court, North Carolina is one step closer to ending a de facto moratorium on the death penalty, and supporters of capital punishment are clamoring for the proverbial guillotine to drop. But before the state can execute its 163 inmates on death row, it must first confront several legal and legislative challenges to the practice.

House Minority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake, announced last week that the "last significant hurdle has now been resolved" to resume executions and urged lawmakers to vote down any further death-penalty reforms.

"We really don't need any further legislative action," he said in an interview. "We've had the death penalty in our laws for the last 30 years, under what the Supreme Court says is constitutional procedures."

Yet activists and lawmakers say the death penalty is deeply flawed, and they support a host of bills that would protect defendants from being sentenced to death on the basis of race or for crimes they committed while suffering from a serious mental disability.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] O.C. waste transfer station site contains wetlands, says new county report

2009-06-04T12:45:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
April 21, 2009

A consultant's report on a proposed Orange County waste transfer station omitted critical information about the presence of wetlands on one of the sites, the Indy has learned.

A recent analysis, commissioned by Orange County, reveals that the proposed, 143-acre site in southwestern Orange County contains multiple streams and wetlands throughout the property. That analysis, conducted by soil and environmental scientist Hal Owen, is at odds with a February 2009 report (PDF, 1.8 MB), by Charlotte-based consultants Olver, Inc., that stated "site development will not result in the impact of wetlands in the vicinity of the project."

In the ongoing, 17-month site selection process devised by Olver, the consultants excluded potential sites that did not contain at least 25 acres "unencumbered" by wetlands and floodplains. However, Owen's report shows that the parcel on N.C. 54 is covered with wetlands and streams. At a Solid Waste Advisory Board meeting earlier this month, Olver announced that it was recommending the purchase of just 25 of the site's 143 acres—yet, according to Owen's report, this area alone contains three separate wetland areas, and two additional streams.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Public input sought on New Hill project

2009-06-04T12:40:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
April 20, 2009

Citizens have less than one week to comment on a draft Environmental Impact Statement on a controversial wastewater treatment plant proposed for New Hill, a primarily African-American community in unincorporated western Wake County.

"Why did they choose this site? When I get up in the morning and I look at myself in the mirror, I know why they chose it," said Louis Powell, an African-American resident of New Hill.

The controversial $327 million project has a long history. The towns of Cary, Apex, Morrisville and Holly Springs, and the Wake County portion of Research Triangle Park, formed an alliance, Western Wake Partners, to determine the best place for a sewage treatment plant. In 2006, they issued an Environmental Impact Statement concluding that the unincorporated town of New Hill was the best place to flush their waste—despite reasonable alternatives in underpopulated areas near the Shearon Harris nuclear plant.

However, that EIS elicited citizen outcry as well as criticism from state regulators. N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources officials wrote that the report should not be considered an "accurate, complete and adequate document" because it "does not appropriately evaluate the population directly impacted" in New Hill.

In 2007, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took on the report so that it would comply with state and federal environmental laws.

Yet, the Corps' draft EIS, written by consultants hired by Western Wake Partners, has arrived at many of the same conclusions as the Partners' original report. Though it does not explicitly argue for locating the plant at New Hill, the report appears to pave the way for the Partners' intended outcome.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] 'First step to do what's right' for Jordan Lake

2009-06-04T12:39:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
Illustration by V.C. Rogers
April 15, 2009

After months of carefully applied pressure from developers pushing a mega-project near Jordan Lake, the Durham County Board of Commissioners voted 3-2 Monday to reject their argument and require public hearings before redrawing the lake's protective boundary.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Trash Talk: Where should Orange County stick its garbage?

2009-04-01T23:26:00.004-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
March 11, 2009

Amber Kirby, who works from home for a database marketing company, lives in the heart of dairy farmland in southwestern Orange County. She and her husband are raising their two children on their homestead, which the Kirby family has owned for generations.

"One of the reasons we wanted to live back here is it's nice and peaceful," she said. "We have herds of deer we've named."

Yet the ancestral land in Bingham Township also has the distinction of being sandwiched between two sites the county is considering for a 250 ton-per-day waste transfer station. Six days a week, roughly 45 dump trucks from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough and the University of North Carolina would pass her house on the two-lane N.C. 54 en route to the station. From there, semi-trailer trucks would haul the trash to an undetermined landfill, as the Orange County landfill will be full in 2011. As Kirby put it, her family lives "between a rock and a hard place."

That phrase could also apply to Orange County, which like any government, has to wrestle with the sticky issue of where to put its trash.

Over the past 10 years, the commissioners' failure to solve the waste issue has spawned intense opposition in Orange County: Citizens' groups have formed to fight the landfill and waste transfer station, threatening to file an injunction against the county over the site. The federal government investigated racial discrimination claims over the landfill on Eubanks Road. And other town councils and appointed boards, alienated by the county's actions, or lack of them, are fighting to protect their turf.

As for the recent controversy, 16 months and $254,000 later—the amount the county paid to Charlotte-based consultants, Olver Inc., to search for the best location for the waste transfer station—the final two sites are, at best, imperfect solutions to the uglier problem of a county with nowhere to dump its garbage.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Durham's watershed protection leaks

2009-04-01T23:19:00.014-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
February 25, 2009

The City of Durham may soon be on the hook to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to curb pollutants that drain into Jordan Lake, but for now, thanks to a regulatory loophole that surfaced recently, a quarter of the city, including most of downtown, remains outside the protection of any water quality standards.

That means developers in the 25-square-mile no man's land can build without adhering to even the most basic stormwater protection measures, though the Neuse River basin covers the northern half of Durham and Jordan Lake reaches into the city's southwest corner—and both are critical yet heavily polluted water sources.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Raleigh leaders break long-held boundary on Falls Lake protections

2009-03-29T23:22:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
January 14, 2009

Raleigh's elected officials voted 6-1 earlier this month to allow a charter school to build inside a natural resource buffer designed to protect the water quality of Falls Lake. The decision marks the city's first-ever exemption to protections established in the 1980s to control stormwater flooding and protect the city's drinking source.

"This is not a good precedent," said Councilor Thomas Crowder, the only negative vote.

Natural resource buffers restrict development within 100 feet of dry channels and intermittent streams, which help prevent erosion and naturally filter dirt and pollutants—such as nitrogen—from water that eventually drains into Falls Lake. They provide an additional protection beyond the state's required 50-foot riparian buffers, which surround water sources within protected watershed areas.

Raleigh's city code allows such an exemption in cases where "strict adherence to the provisions of the chapter will result in unnecessary hardship or create practical difficulties." Yet, in more than 20 years, officials have never approved one.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[WUNC] Re-drawing Jordan Lake

2009-03-29T23:01:00.008-04:00

Durham and Chatham counties are facing off over a proposed mega-development near Jordan Lake. Chatham County Commissioners are appealing to North Carolina's Division of Water Quality to retain the lake’s current boundaries, but Durham County wants them redrawn. Matt Saldaña, staff writer at the Independent Weekly, joins host Frank Stasio to discuss the latest developments.

[Listen to the "The State of Things" episode on WUNC.]

[indyweek] Durham fails to hold the line on Jordan Lake

2008-12-06T21:11:00.008-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Illustration by V.C. Rogers
December 3, 2008

Durham businessman Neal Hunter drafted ambitious plans for developing 164 acres in southwestern Durham County into high-density housing and commercial space.

But besides the paperwork and political hurdles that normally accompany a proposal to change the zoning designation on a piece of land, there was one other big obstacle lying in the path of his vision: Jordan Lake, a drinking water reservoir whose shores are protected by stringent environmental regulations enacted and enforced by both the county and the state.

The property sits along N.C. 751 within a mile of the lake's shoreline. That means it falls inside the "critical watershed" where the high-density development proposed by Hunter is prohibited. That is, unless you disagree with where the lake ends.

In 2005, Hunter did just that. He commissioned a private survey that pushed the lake's 1-mile radius boundary westward by more than 100 acres. The new line conveniently excluded Hunter's property, clearing the way for the "751 Assemblage" project, which calls for 1,300 dwellings and 600,000 square feet of combined office and retail space.

Hunter submitted the new survey to Durham planning officials, along with a request to relocate the official boundary. In January 2006, they obliged him.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Hugh Webster's long-shot bid for Congress hinges on immigration

2008-12-06T21:01:00.004-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by D.L. Anderson
October 1, 2007

After finishing a plate of hot dogs and brownies, Hugh Webster addressed a small gathering of 30 supporters at a campaign fundraiser in East Raleigh. Wearing an olive-green safari shirt, khaki shorts and a bolo tie engraved with a buffalo, the Republican candidate for U.S. Congress walked to the center of the room.

In a brief speech, he rallied the crowd around one of the central tenets of his campaign.

"After my election, I will represent everybody," he said, pausing for dramatic effect. "Every citizen, every legal resident."

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] For its second album, Annuals found coming home best

2008-12-06T20:50:00.009-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
October 1, 2008

Holed up in their unfinished practice space beside a metal machine shop on Raleigh's Capital Boulevard, the six members of the band Annuals are deciding which songs to cram into a 30-minute set. In two days, they'll drive six hours north to Baltimore to play a showcase for industry executives, and they need to turn heads.

Kenny Florence, Annuals' lead guitarist, leans against his amplifier and pulls a notebook from his pocket, fielding setlist suggestions from the rest of his bandmates, huddled alternately behind a keyboard and a slide-guitar stand, two drum sets, a maze of quarter-inch cables and interlocked microphones. Adam Baker, Annuals' lead singer and songwriter, helps Anna Spence lift her keyboard stand, while Nick Radford and Zack Oden trade drum fills.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Ronnie Sturdivant's legacy of unrealized dreams

2008-12-06T20:39:00.004-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Jeremy M. Lange
September 10, 2008

Ronnie Sturdivant, who on Aug. 30 was found shot to death in one of the two landmark buildings he owned in downtown Durham, never quite fit within the inner sanctum of Bull City businessmen. It was appropriate, then, that his funeral was held at the edge of the city, past a country club on Cole Mill Road, not as a final rebuke to the councilmen, real-estate leaders and tenants with whom he publicly clashed, but to accommodate a standing-room-only crowd. More than 1,000 mourners paid tribute Saturday to the former life-insurance salesman and would-be real-estate maven's "dreams unmatched."

"Ronnie would look at a house and think about how marvelous it would become," the Rev. William A. Stephens, his minister at Southside Church of Christ, told an exuberant crowd at the Cole Mill Road Church of Christ. "And I would look at it and think how raggedy that house is."

Sturdivant's lackluster upkeep of roughly 30 rental properties and his stern measures with tenants—including a nasty habit of executing "self-help" evictions—earned him notoriety with city officials, who, in 1993, sought to prevent him from purchasing the Chapel Hill Street motel where he was found murdered. Police have charged one of his commercial tenants in connection with the crime.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Fall from grace: The two faces of Bo Lozoff

2008-09-07T00:16:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
August 27, 2008

For at least a decade, hundreds of people seeking spiritual guidance passed through Kindness House, headquarters of an interfaith prison ministry and an intentional community led by widely revered spiritual leader Bo Lozoff. Located on 69 acres off a country road 15 miles from Chapel Hill, the site of the former commune contains a pond, garden, outdoor pavilion, wood-paneled cabins, barn and chicken coop, hermitage, meditation hall and a ranch-style house, an ideal setting for spiritual reflection and simple living.

At the head of a dinner table stretching the length of five upright pianos, Lozoff, founder and former director of the Human Kindness Foundation, which operated Kindness House, regularly sat at group meals with volunteers wishing to live in a sacred, communal environment, and with ex-offenders fulfilling the commitments of their parole by working and living there.

In his 2000 book, It's a Meaningful Life: It Just Takes Practice, Lozoff describes "an almost ecstatic sense of gratitude" when he saw visitors at the table "holding the tattooed hand of a reformed murderer who spent many years in brutal prisons." He adds: "Gazing around at such a bizarre mix of human beings, I can almost hear Jesus cheering at the top of his lungs, 'Now this is what I had in mind!'"

But it was on these grounds that Lozoff, who, since 1973, has inspired thousands of prisoners through plainspoken correspondence and spiritual advice, allegedly bullied and intimidated ex-offenders paroled at Kindness House. He berated them for their personal failings and threatened to send them back to prison—which, unknown to the parolees, he could not do—if they violated a strict set of lifestyle agreements, many of which Lozoff himself did not follow.

Despite his teachings against harmful sexual behavior, several female volunteers and one female parolee also allege that Lozoff, who claimed to be celibate, had sexual encounters with them during one-on-one counseling sessions, in which he initiated kissing, touching, and oral and manual sex as a method of spiritual healing. While some of the sexual encounters were initially consensual, the women volunteers say others were not, and that his power over them and the Kindness House community prevented them from speaking out or rebuffing his advances.

These allegations, many of which Lozoff does not deny, prompted the self-styled mystic to close Kindness House, although he did not disclose to his supporters or donors—including an investor currently on trial in South Carolina for fraud—the reason.

Lozoff told the Indy that ultimately, his "unconventional" sexual behavior led to the Human Kindness Foundation's decision to sell the land and close the parole program.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Suspects get pass; victims to be deported

2008-09-06T23:11:00.004-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
September 3, 2008

Orange County prosecutors have dropped misdemeanor charges against two suspects who allegedly attacked two men—because many of the witnesses and victims are awaiting deportation and can't be found to help build the case.

In June, Yuliant Fernandez and Amilcar Tamayo, drivers for Transportes Tania, a Houston-based transportation company, were arrested in Hillsborough for allegedly assaulting two men who refused to pay an extra $500 in exchange for the release of a passenger. (See "Human smuggling in Orange County," July 16, 2008.)

According to Hillsborough Police Lt. Davis Trimmer, the two men who had arrived to pick up the passenger called police saying they allegedly had been assaulted. Police records show that Fernandez allegedly held a knife to the neck of one of the two men, and slashed his van's tires, while Tamayo and Fernandez pelted the van with rocks.

After reporting the incident to police, the victims later fled the scene. The passenger escaped from Tamayo and Fernandez by leaping out of the Transportes Tania van, according to police reports.

Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall said the assault victims—whose home addresses in Clinton are listed in the police report—have been processed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] The 'straight-up extortion' express: Human smuggling in Orange County

2008-07-20T20:47:00.006-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
July 16, 2008

When Hillsborough police officers responded to a knife fight in a McDonald's parking lot last month, they uncovered a network of van drivers delivering illegal immigrants to the East Coast—and allegedly extorting their passengers.

On two separate occasions in the past month, officers in Hillsborough and Camden, S.C., have arrested drivers working for Transportes Tania, a Houston-based company, for allegedly forcing passengers to pay higher prices than originally agreed. In both cases, according to police reports, the drivers were transporting more than a dozen clients—all illegal immigrants—to destinations throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, with planned stops in North Carolina.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Michael O'Connell's Mountain Top Removal raised awareness of coal mining practices

2008-07-20T20:41:00.006-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Jeremy M. Lange
July 16, 2008

When Al Gore presented Pittsboro, N.C., filmmaker Michael O'Connell with the award for best documentary at this year's Nashville Film Festival, he didn't just rattle off a prepared speech and smile for the photo-op. The former vice president, once berated for his lack of visible emotion, nearly choked up onstage as he recalled the plight of Ed Wiley, the protagonist in Mountain Top Removal, O'Connell's film about a devastating method of coal mining in Southern Appalachia.

I was telling Ed that his campaign to get a new school, because of the terrible impact of mountaintop removal, is really part and parcel of the same kind of struggle that I and others have been involved in, to try to get a solution to the global climate crisis," Gore said, before inviting Wiley onstage. "It's the same fight, really."

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] N.C. Governor's School under pressure from anti-gay group

2008-07-20T20:31:00.010-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by D.L. Anderson
July 2, 2008

Each summer, 800 of North Carolina's most talented high school seniors attend the country's oldest Governor's School, a prestigious six-week residential program with campuses in Winston-Salem and Raleigh. The 45-year-old program, which receives about $1.3 million from the General Assembly, eschews traditional teaching methods—including grades—in favor of exploring "the most recent ideas and concepts in each discipline." It asks students to adopt the motto "Accept nothing. Question everything."

This summer, one former Governor's School instructor is questioning the influence that a powerful "family values" group, based in Arizona, has had on a North Carolina institution that has fiercely guarded its academic independence.

Tanya Olson, a community college English professor who led the Human Sexuality Film Series at the Governor's School East Campus in Raleigh for four years, was not offered her position back for this year's session, which is now under way. She calls the loss of her job retribution for her criticism of school administrators and state officials after they suspended the film series and censored her course material—apparently in response to the threat of a lawsuit from the Alliance Defense Fund.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Choir Practice: Anti-immigration activists rally, preaching mostly to themselves

2008-06-25T16:51:00.006-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Matt Saldaña
June 25, 2008

On the Bicentennial Mall outside the legislative building last week, a dozen immigration activists and conservative lawmakers delivered a series of red-meat tirades against undocumented immigrants, blaming them for drunken driving, gang warfare, crowded emergency rooms—and even, some insinuated, the fall of civilization.

Their rhetoric was designed not only to inflame, but also served as code: In trumping up the social and economic threats allegedly posed by undocumented immigrants, groups such as the Minutemen and Americans for Legal Immigration are tacitly justifying violence among activists—should it erupt—as the cost of defending America.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Q&A: Author Julia Alvarez on Censorship

2008-02-12T23:59:00.004-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo courtesy Julia Alvarez
February 6, 2008

In December, the Johnston County School Board voted to ban How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, an account of sisters who immigrate to America from the Dominican Republic, from school libraries and classrooms, citing several scenes that acknowledged the imperfect, and sometimes explicit, existence of sex. According to The News & Observer, school administrators are "scouring library shelves for other potentially offensive books to remove." In a column, the newspaper later described book banning as a "touchy subject" with "strong feelings on both sides." Recently, the Indy interviewed Julia Alvarez about her critically acclaimed book and the touchy subjects of civil liberties, censorship and immigration. [cont...]

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] N.H. Primary: A Firecracker in Manchester

2008-01-10T01:44:00.003-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Matt Saldaña
January 9, 2007

As Elizabeth Edwards took the stage in a converted mill in Manchester, the unlikely campaign song of "Firecracker," by Ryan Adams, blared through speakers, across a stretch of flag-waving supporters, and into Wolf Blitzer's CNN Situation Room.

"Well, everybody wants to go on forever. But I just want to burn up hard and bright," the North Carolina native sang.

It wasn't the message Edwards wanted to convey—that he's in this for the long haul, from his days as a mill worker in Robbins, N.C., to the day he takes office in the White House. In his concession speech on Tuesday, he told supporters and television viewers that he was "in this race through the convention, and I intend to be the presidential nominee of my party."

But a song about going down in flames of glory might describe Edwards' shift of momentum from squeaking by Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus to landing at the bottom (of the top) of the Democratic heap in New Hampshire.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] The Final Hours in New Hampshire

2008-01-10T01:36:00.004-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Matt Saldaña
January 9, 2007

Twenty-eight hours into a blistering, 36-hour campaign tour of New Hampshire, John Edwards told a group of several hundred onlookers packed into a high school lobby in the southern coastal town of Hampton, that "we're going to surprise people tomorrow."

By the time you read this, tomorrow will have arrived, and the New Hampshire primaries will be over. Polls show Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with sizeable leads over Edwards in the Democratic field. But pollsters have a tricky time predicting behavior in New Hampshire, where more than 40 percent of the population is unaffiliated with a party, and many consider candidates until the final hour.

A CNN/WMUR poll released late Sunday, for example, placed Edwards at 16 percent—far behind Obama and Clinton—but it tallied a mere 6 percent of likely Democratic primary voters who were still undecided. According to many in New Hampshire, that number may be misleading.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] N.H. Day 3: The Undecided

2008-01-10T01:32:00.003-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Matt Saldaña
January 7, 2007

Nearly every candidate here has used the term “famously independent” to describe New Hampshire’s voters. Indeed, a majority of the state’s voters are unaffiliated and can cast ballots in either the Democratic or Republican primary. For the “undecided”—and there are still many in New Hampshire—these last few days of campaigning provide a final opportunity to make up their minds. Many will wait until Primary Day to do so, and the results may not reflect national trends or polls. In 2000, for example, John McCain—supported by 62 percent of the independent vote—defeated George W. Bush handily in New Hampshire.

At a town-hall speech in Portsmouth last Friday, John Edwards—trailing Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in national and local polls—appealed to the state’s culture of autonomy:

“We’re going to continue to be outspent. They’re going to spend all the money in the world in New Hampshire,” he said, referring to Obama and Clinton. “But what’s going to happen on Tuesday is you’re going to rise up and say, ‘We don’t want to be told what to do.’”

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] N.H. Day 2: Candidates have change in their pockets

2008-01-10T01:26:00.003-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Matt Saldaña
January 6, 2008

“One more,” John Edwards said, as he drained another shot from the free-throw line at a high school gym in Lebanon, N.H. The court was bare, except for a ring of supporters and photographers who dutifully remained outside the paint.

The Edwards campaign had over-booked the adjacent band practice room for a Saturday pre-debate speech—a modest accomplishment compared to Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who packed thousands into high school gyms in Nashua and Penacook earlier that day. (Clinton earned a moment of TV attention when she told the fire marshal in Penacook that there ought to be room for a few more attendees.) The fire marshal in Lebanon was less magnanimous, and the excess crowd at Edwards’ speech were forced to listen “in stereo” over the school’s P.A. system.

Before his speech, Edwards treated the gym-class rejects to an ad-hoc shooting clinic. After missing 10 in a row, he made just as many—refraining from political metaphor as he focused, intensely, on making just one more.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Day 1 in N.H.: Heat and light

2008-01-10T01:20:00.003-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Matt Saldaña
January 5, 2008

One day after Barack Obama’s resounding victory in the Iowa caucuses, the Illinois senator received a near messianic reception at a high school gym in Concord, while John Edwards told a more subdued convention room audience in Portsmouth that his nominal second-place victory proved he could “stand up to monied candidates.”

“We went into Iowa and finished between two $100 million candidates. The reason it worked is we took on the establishment. We took on power and we won,” Edwards said, adding new emphasis to his 0.3 percentage point edge over Hillary Clinton in the caucuses.

Edwards’ “town hall” speech in Portsmouth, delivered with precision and humor, was far from Obama’s frenetic performance in Concord. While both candidates largely stuck to their stump speeches, Edwards talked about his opponents more openly and carefully outlined their differences in policy. (Unlike Edwards, Obama did not mention his opponents by name.) Notably, Edwards acknowledged that his and Clinton’s health-care plans were nearly identical, while arguing that Obama’s plan, which would not require health insurance of all Americans, was not truly universal.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Champions, with an *: 11 former Bulls named in steroid investigation

2008-01-10T01:14:00.002-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
December 19, 2007

Four years ago, the Durham Bulls swept the Pawtucket Red Sox to become back-to-back International League champions, a feat that hadn't been accomplished in more than 10 years in Triple-A baseball.

But at least two Bulls players on the 2003 championship team purchased performance-enhancing drugs either shortly after or before that season, according to a scathing, 400-page report by retired U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell on the widespread use of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs in Major and Minor League Baseball.

Of the 89 Major League Baseball players named in the report, 11 passed through Durham.

One month after the Bulls' Jim Parque pitched Game Two of the Paw Sox series—giving up three runs over six innings—he wrote a $3,200 check to Kirk Radomski, the former Mets clubhouse attendant and the investigation's key informant. Radomski said with that check, and a subsequent payment of $1,600, Parque bought two supplies of human growth hormone.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] Three's a crowd: Energy interests fund Duke University's research on climate change policy

2008-01-10T01:10:00.002-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
December 5, 2007

Duke Energy and ConocoPhillips have donated $3.5 million to Duke University's Climate Change Policy Partnership, and that financial support may have influenced academic research.

In 2005, Duke Energy, which, by company estimates, ranks third among the nation's electrical utilities in carbon dioxide emissions and coal consumption, donated $2.5 million to help found the CCPP, tasked with evaluating potential federal climate policies. ConocoPhillips, the third-largest integrated energy company in the U.S., joined as a corporate partner in 2007 and contributed $1 million.

That money bought representatives from the utility and the energy company each a seat on the CCPP's advisory panel, but also the ability to vet climate policy research before it is released to the public.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] El Futuro: Helping to heal minds, building confianza with Latinos

2008-01-09T17:03:00.002-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Jeremy M. Lange
November 21, 2007

As a "white boy from Arkansas" who attended high school in the late '80s and early '90s, Luke Smith heard some then-unconventional wisdom from his father: "You're going to learn that, boy, because everybody's going to be speaking it one day."

Smith's father was referring to Spanish, the language—and accompanying culture—his son would later embrace as executive director of El Futuro, a nonprofit mental health center dedicated to treating the state's underserved, and largely uninsured, Latino population. In 2004, Smith founded the center, based in Carrboro, to pool the efforts of therapists and psychiatrists who were versed in the language and culture of area Latinos, many of whom had never sought treatment for serious addictions and psychiatric illnesses.

In the past three months alone, El Futuro has served 123 new patients and logged more than 750 visits to their Siler City and Carrboro offices, where staff members treat everything from immigration-related trauma and depression to sexual addiction and alcoholism. Smith credits the spike in treatment to his staff's ability to build confianza among Latinos.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[indyweek] That Empty Feeling

2007-11-15T19:11:00.005-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
November 14, 2007

On a recent afternoon, New York City entertainment executives, Swedish developers and local politicians descended on South Mangum Street to watch a construction crew install the final beam on the $46 million Durham Performing Arts Center.

Before the ceremonial "topping out" of the city-owned theater, crowds strolled down a gravel path, past the exposed concrete of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Atrium, and onto an unfinished stage. From the rare vantage point of a young Simba or the Wicked Witch of the West, business bigwigs gazed out over concrete terracing that will eventually hold 2,800 seats. After applauding the project's timetable—DPAC is scheduled to host its opening night one year from now—they were asked, repeatedly, whether they might like to place their company's name on Durham's most ambitious public arts undertaking.

"We still have the naming rights available if anyone wants to step up to the plate," City Manager Patrick Baker told the well-dressed crowd of roughly 150.

Securing naming rights, worth millions of dollars, is one of many hurdles DPAC faces. The theater's financial goals and ticket prices are stratospheric—beyond what some observers say is feasible. And if the New England-based production company over DPAC chooses not to renew its agreement, the city could lose millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[JFP] La Nueva Estrategia del Sur

2007-11-03T21:19:00.001-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
October 31, 2007

In Mississippi’s first elections since the explosive national immigration bill debate, candidates across the political spectrum are lining up to take their best shot at undocumented immigrants. It’s a no-holds-barred match. Public sentiment against “illegal aliens” is strong, and the targets are politically weak. Illegal immigrants—many of whom arrived to help rebuild the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina—cannot vote, and few dare to speak up for fear of deportation. Unscrupulous employers have long exploited this weakness. Now politicians are taking their crack at the state’s new straw men: undocumented Latinos.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[indyweek] The Hot Zone

2007-10-31T20:53:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
October 31, 2007

In June, Progress Energy released a statement heralding the failure of a local petition to shut down the company's Shearon Harris nuclear plant due to "claims of inadequate fire protection measures."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees the industry, rejected "all three portions of the petition, noting that the agency has granted the Harris Plant 'enforcement discretion' as it makes changes to its fire protection program," Progress asserted in the statement.

At first glance, the announcement seemed a victory for Progress, which has faced years of scrutiny from local and national advocacy groups for Harris' fire-protection violations.

[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]

[JFP] Mal Tiempo, Buenas Caras (Bad Times, Good Faces)

2007-07-19T11:39:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
July 18, 2007

José Bacallao stares into a boarded-up restaurant on the edge of a Highway 90 strip mall in Waveland, a tiny town in southwestern Mississippi that was the epicenter of one of the strongest, and deadliest, hurricanes in United States history. Nearly two years ago, Hurricane Katrina destroyed everything inside the building, along with a great stretch of the Mississippi Coast and New Orleans. The only evidence that the bare, gray building was once the site of Las Palmas, the traditional Cuban restaurant Bacallao opened two years before the storm hit, is a poster taped inside the glass door. On it, a dancing Cuban woman in a Tropicana nightclub dress swings her hips and shakes a pair of maracas, a bright flower perched in her hair.

Drops of sweat roll off Bacallao’s face as he stares at the woman on the poster and thinks.

“We never thought something like this would happen. Everything was lost,” he says in Spanish, laughing with Cuban wryness. “The money it had given us, the family portraits—everything was lost.”

He bends down and picks up a plastic tea-urn key out of a pile of shattered glass.

“Una memoria de Katrina,” he says.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] Dealing Racism in the Immigration Game

2007-07-19T11:33:00.001-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Stephen McDill
July 3, 2007

WJNT talk radio host Kim Wade, inflamed by Sen. Trent Lott’s support of an immigration compromise bill that failed last Thursday, partnered with NumbersUSA—a self-described “immigration-reduction organization”—to deliver a signed petition against immigration reform to Lott’s Jackson office on June 19. On June 28, 53 U.S. senators successfully voted to halt any reconsideration of the bill.

Wade described his association with NumbersUSA, which paid for TV advertisements promoting the petition, as one of “kindred spirits,” since they are both opposed to “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. That buzzword may have been key in derailing the compromise legislation, which included a provision for heads of households, after paying a fine of at least $5,000, to return to their native countries and wait up to 13 years before potentially qualifying for U.S. citizenship.

Wade told the Jackson Free Press in a phone interview that he believed “amnesty” referred not only to this path to citizenship but also to an amnesty of all crimes committed by immigrants in the U.S.

“If you look at the bill, they’re waiving all the felonies that they may have committed in their country of origin, or here in this country, and allowing them to become citizens,” he said. “What do you think all the uproar is about?”

An amnesty for all felonies committed by immigrants in the U.S. has never been a part of the bill.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] A Journey of Bones

2007-06-30T15:03:00.001-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
June 20, 2007

During her largely improvised closing argument, federal prosecutor Paige Fitzgerald stumbled upon one of the most poetic moments in the James Ford Seale federal kidnapping trial.

The two-week trial certainly had no shortage of poetry. Take, to begin, the battle of wits between Fitzgerald and Federal Public Defender Kathy Nester—each one listed beneath male lead attorneys on the criminal docket, but themselves the undisputed stars of a vigorous legal showdown (evidenced by each side’s decision to close with them).

Take U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, magnanimous to jurors and witnesses and grindingly scrupulous to jurisprudence. Take the color of his skin—black—and the stumbling attempt by Nester’s former lead attorney, Dennis Joiner, to suggest that it would bias his judgment against Seale. (This, after decades of an explicit bias that white Mississippi judges and juries held to the benefit of white defendants in racial hate crimes.) Take, then, the mostly white jury in 2007—eight out of 12—and the two hours it took for them to send a 71-year-old white man to jail for kidnapping two black teenagers in 1964.

Take the unexpected, blunt and apparently sincere courtroom apology of the prosecution’s star witness—confessed Klansman and co-conspirator Charles Marcus Edwards—to the families of the victims whose deaths he helped ensure. And finally, take the open rejoicing of a largely African American gallery—composed of the victims’ families, civil-rights heroes, activists and observers—when a court aide read aloud the final poetic act of justice: three guilty counts.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[seale trial] Day 12: Guilty On All Counts

2007-06-18T00:16:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldana
Photo by Matt Saldaña
June 14, 2007

After approximately two hours of deliberation, the jury in the federal kidnapping and conspiracy trial of James Ford Seale returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on all counts. The jury found Seale guilty of two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy in the abduction and murder of Charles Moore and Henry Dee.

"Mississippi spoke today," said Thomas Moore, brother of Charles Moore.

After the verdict was read, Seale turned to his wife, Jean Seale, and asked, "Are you OK?"

Family members of the victims embraced. Donna Collins, who is the daughter of Henry Dee's sister Thelma Collins, said: "I feel great. I feel like I could leap off the tallest building and fly because (her mother) can have some relief."

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press Road to Meadville blog.]

[seale trial] Day 9: 'Strange Bedfellows: The Prosecution Rests'

2007-06-18T00:09:00.001-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
June 13, 2007

Prosecutors in the James Ford Seale trial rested their case Tuesday, a case built primarily around the testimony of Seale’s confessed co-conspirator, Charles Marcus Edwards. In addition to Edwards’ statement, the prosecution presented corroborating details about Seale’s motive, the Klan’s search for guns on the day of the murder and the nature of Charles Moore and Henry Dee’s drowning. The final dagger, however, came from retired FBI Agent Edward Putz, who testified Tuesday about Seale’s infamous statement during a trip to Jackson after his arrest in Nov. 1964:

“We know you did it, you know you did it, the Lord above knows you did it,” FBI Agent Lenard Wolf told Seale, referring to the kidnapping and murder of Moore and Dee.

“Yes, but I’m not going to admit it; you are going to have to prove it,” Seale replied.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press Road to Meadville blog.]

[seale trial] Day 7: 'I Wasn't His Keeper'

2007-06-18T00:07:00.001-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
June 7, 2007

R. W. Middleton, who was James Ford Seale’s pastor at Bunkley Baptist Church for several months in 1963, testified today against his “close friend” and fellow “gun fanatic.” Later, two witnesses with ties to Seale’s son, "Junior," and one to alleged co-conspirator Ernest Parker, took the stand. Seale, who was more active and vocal today than he has been thus far in the trial, patted Federal Public Defender Kathy Nester on the back when, early in the day, she argued successfully to keep deceased FBI informant and former Klansman Ernest Gilbert’s statements out of the trial.

Middleton testified that Archie Prather, an alleged co-conspirator in the Dee-Moore murders, approached the pulpit at the church to address allegations in 1963 that a “car full of niggers” had followed a woman to her home.

“Let me ride in the trunk and keep it halfway open. I’ll shoot every last one of them niggers,” Middleton testified that Prather said.

“I told him I didn’t think that it was an appropriate place to have those kind of meetings and say those types of things. A church is no place to talk about killing people. A church is supposed to teach you to love people,” Middleton said on the stand.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press Road to Meadville blog.]

[seale trial] The Seale Trial, Day 3: 'Why People Felt Like That Then'

2007-06-18T00:06:00.001-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
June 2, 2007

After another 10-hour day of jury examination, air-conditioning and tears, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate reduced the jury pool in the James Ford Seale federal kidnapping trial to 34—two more than the minimum needed to begin the juror striking process on Monday. After completing that process at 10 a.m., Wingate will hear opening statements beginning at 1 p.m. on June 4 in the federal courthouse in Jackson.

On Friday, the individual voir dire process again revealed jury candidates’ dark secrets—about violence, racial hatred, and decades of repressed memory—as they spoke into a microphone from the corner of the jury box in a leather chair that began to resemble a therapist’s couch.

[View the entire article at The Jackson Free Press Road to Meadville blog.]

[blog] Tears, Pain, And History In The James Seale Voir Dire

2007-06-09T15:30:00.003-04:00

Thank you to Anne Reed, trial lawyer and jury consultant, who commented on my Seale trial coverage in her trial blog, Deliberations:

James Seale is on trial in federal court in Jackson, Mississippi, for kidnapping and murdering two black teenagers, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, in 1964. It's fitting that a trial so extraordinary has extraordinary local press coverage; the Jackson Free Press has reporters Matt Saldaña and Donna Ladd in the courtroom, and their blog is the best trial reporting I'm seeing right now.

Voir dire, Day 1

The voir dire was last week, Wednesday through Friday, and it was nearly as emotional as the trial promised to be. The first day was spent on the jurors who might not be able to serve -- the one who needs to tend to his six chickenhouses, the one who had plane tickets to accompany his wife for eye surgery. Even when the questioning was at that general level, though, it was dramatic, because people's lives often are. One juror "referred to her own chronic depression and anxiety," one was an alcoholic who "“wished (she) could be drinking,” and then there were these exchanges:

[View Anne Reed's entire article at Deliberations.]

[blog] Daily Seale Trial Coverage

2007-06-05T14:01:00.002-04:00

Please visit the two blogs to which I am posting daily on the James Ford Seale federal kidnapping trial in Jackson:

-The Jackson Free Press' Road to Meadville blog

-Nola.com's Building a New South blog.

I am also covering the trial for Reuters.

[seale trial] The Seale Trial, Day 2: ‘Things I Didn’t Want to Think About’

2007-06-02T14:17:00.002-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
May 31, 2007

After nearly 10 hours of group and individual juror examination in the James Ford Seale federal kidnapping trial in Jackson, Thursday’s last jury candidate capped an emotional, and often theatrical, day with tears. By then, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate had excused seven potential jurors (including one new jury candidate) for bias and mental state, and admitted one extra candidate, reducing the first jury pool to 49.

Juror No. 36, a white female, explained her continuous sobbing at the end of the night as a “problem with (her) nerves.” “I’m afraid that it will get like this again,” she said of her nervous condition.

When prompted, she revealed to the courtroom that her father had shot and killed her former boyfriend in 1982, one of the day’s many candid—and, at times, disturbing—revelations. U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, a district attorney in 1982, told the court that he had attempted to prosecute her father in the ensuing murder trial, but neither Lampton nor Juror No. 36 could recall one another. Immediately following his interrogation, Lampton moved to strike Juror No. 36 from the jury pool based on her emotional state, a ruling that U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate delayed.

When asked why she had indicated on her jury questionnaire that she disagreed with school integration, Juror No. 36 said that she grew up in a “prejudiced family.”

“You’re taught at home one thing, and you’re taught at school something different,” she said, referring to race.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press Road to Meadville blog.]

[seale trial] Day 1: 55 Left in the Chicken House

2007-05-30T21:11:00.001-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
May 30, 2007

In the first day of the James Ford Seale federal kidnapping trial, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate eliminated 21 jurors from a jury pool of 76.

Potential jurors were randomly selected from the southern district of Mississippi, which includes 45 counties across the width of the state, extending from the Gulf Coast as far north as Noxubee County on the Alabama border and Issaquena County along the Mississippi River. Tomorrow, Wingate will continue the process of eliminating jurors from the remaining 55 and, if necessary, examine additional jury pools. Throughout the jury selection process, Seale—dressed in a light blue oxford shirt and khaki Dockers slacks—listened quietly with a court-issued hearing aid.

Juror No. 68, a white male state trooper, qualified for the only automatic exemption, since he is a public officer actively engaged in official duties. The 20 other excused jurors successfully petitioned their release based mostly on financial and health considerations.

Juror No. 10, a white male rancher and logger who works a two-man crew with his brother-in-law, explained to Wingate that it would be too dangerous for his brother-in-law to work in the woods alone, or to leave his cattle unattended. Wingate acknowledged that he understood the juror’s ranching explanation, but then stopped himself.

“I said, ‘Uh huh,’ but I actually don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wingate said, eliciting laughter from the courtroom.

“See, you’re educating me,” Wingate told Juror No. 10, whom he later excused despite disagreement from the defense.

Wingate also excused Juror No. 75, a one-armed white male chicken farmer from Wayne County, after receiving another lesson in animal husbandry. The juror explained to Wingate his day-to-day process of tending to six chicken houses, which he does with the aid of one elderly, part-time worker.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press Road to Meadville blog.]

[JFP] Supes Play Musical Chairs

2007-05-30T21:08:00.001-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
May 24, 2007

Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps met with Hinds County and Jackson officials on Thursday to discuss plans for a new 250-bed regional jail in the county. After the meeting, Epps led a congregation of politicians, including county supervisors and members of City Council, to potential sites for the jail, including the penal farm in Raymond, which will be closed due to substandard facilities.

Epps said the jail—which, so far has not secured any funding—would generate $29.74 a day per out-of-county inmate. He told the supervisors that even though the cost of construction would be $160 per square feet for 15,000 acres, or $7.2 million, the overall cost would total “$11 to $12 million,” due to “architectural fees.”

The supervisors have already approved $8.5 million—part of the county’s $30 million 2007 bond—for a new penal farm on the Raymond lot. No money from that bond will go toward a regional jail, though $13 million will likely go toward a parking garage designed by Supervisor Doug Anderson’s ex-son-in-law, William McElroy.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] The Klansman Bound: 43 Years Later, James Ford Seale Faces Justice

2007-05-23T21:09:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
May 23, 2007

Shuffling behind a young black woman in an identical orange jumpsuit, James Ford Seale entered the fourth-floor courtroom of the James O. Eastland Federal Building in Jackson on Feb. 22 with shackles hanging loosely around his waist and ankles, and his hands cuffed in front of him. The 71-year-old retired cropduster from Roxie, Miss., wore thin wire glasses, orange sandals and thick white socks. The words “Madison County Jail” were printed across his slight, but well-postured back. He stood no taller than 5’8” and looked to weigh about 125 pounds, but he showed traces of his muscular past with a thick neck that recalled his open-collared mug shot from 1964—the year he was arrested and released weeks later for the murders of two black teenagers in Franklin County.

As a U.S. marshal led him to a seat next to his lawyers, Seale smiled at his wife, Jean Seale, who sat in the front row on the defense’s side of the court. One of his stepsons-in-law arrived late, scanning the half-empty room with his buzzed head held high as he placed his arm around Seale’s stepdaughter, a blonde woman in high heels who blew bubbles with her gum. Other than flashes of eye contact with his family, Seale sat upright and still. At one point, he turned to stare at a large security camera behind a glass plane, high in the back corner of the courtroom.

When U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate—the court’s black-robed, baritone-pitched voice of authority—granted the defense a 15-minute recess to review case history, Seale sat still and looked at the ground.

One month earlier, on Jan. 24, 2007, a federal jury had indicted Seale for two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy leading to the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, the 19-year-olds beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan in the Homochitto National Forest and then drowned in a backwater of the Mississippi River in 1964. The prosecutors believe that Seale chose Dee and Moore because they thought Dee, who had just returned from living in Chicago, was involved in civil rights activity in the area.

Five days later, in a packed courtroom on a lower level of the Eastland Building, U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson denied bond to Seale, stating, “Neither the weight of the crime nor its circumstances have been diminished by the passage of time.”

It had been 42 years and eight months since Dee and Moore died, the longest wait for a case to be successfully tried in a civil rights era killing.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] Recording the War

2007-04-28T14:36:00.003-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
Image courtesy William A. Thompson IV
April 25, 2007

William A. Thompson IV, the Clarkesdale-born U.S. soldier whose alphanumeric acronym (WATIV) became his musical nom de guerre in Iraq, may be one of the first musicians to write, record and release material directly from a theater of war. Thompson’s “Baghdad Music Journal” is simply that—a musical journal that documents the sights and sounds of war. Using iPod-recorded samples of Iraqi radio transmissions, U.S. military-sponsored Arabic language tutorials, leaking air conditioning units and machine gun reports, Thompson does on “Baghdad” what all great jazz musicians have done before him—compose order out of chaos, brilliance out of darkness, “Alabama” out of Alabama.

“It’s a disturbing album, but it’s supposed to be,” he says. “I was trying to write music about the war that I was perceiving. I didn’t want to make any political statements. I wasn’t trying to say, ‘This is wrong,’ or, ‘This war is good.’ I just wanted to record (the war) in music, for what it was.”

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] Seale Judge Sees Flurry of Motions

2007-03-24T11:23:00.002-04:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Matt Saldaña
March 22, 2007

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate denied a motion to recuse himself and U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson today in the federal kidnapping trial of James Ford Seale. Seale's defense attorneys had complained about Wingate's prior employment, 22 years ago, with the federal prosecutor's office and seemed to hint that, as African Americans, Wingate and Anderson might be biased against Seale. The judge also delayed a motion to move the trial out of Jackson due to coverage by the Jackson Free Press and The Clarion-Ledger, and indicated that the trial might be delayed a week or more from the scheduled April 2 start date.

In the motion to recuse, federal public defender Dennis Joiner noted that Anderson had also worked as a federal prosecutor. Trial attorney Eric Gibson, arguing for the prosecution, said that if judges had to recuse themselves based on former government employment, the entire justice system would collapse.

Joiner implied that Wingate would be the prosecution’s judge of choice. “Let's just say that, if I were a prosecutor in this case, I would pick Your Honor even though you've served for 20 years without bias,” Joiner told Wingate.

The public defender then said, in vague terms, that certain issues might affect Wingate in a certain way, and that these unique responses are the reason why we should have diversity at law schools.

“Maybe you're dancing around some issues,” Wingate replied. “Does the 'diversity' argument you made mean that you don't want two judges of minority status?”

[Read the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] Everything Is Illustrated

2007-03-08T22:57:00.002-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Image courtesy Danny Gregory
March 7, 2007

Whether momentary or century-long, tragedy has inspired artists to create their greatest works, and others to simply create. Breakup inspired Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” Ryan Adams’ “Heartbreaker” and countless other heartbroken albums. A grim history of slavery and oppression in the Mississippi Delta manifested itself into the blues. World Wars I and II led to the major modernist schools of art in Europe.

Perhaps not as earth shattering, after his wife suffered a crippling accident in New York City, Danny Gregory transformed himself from a “busy ad guy” into a graphic novelist. The accident that inspired “Everyday Matters” (Hyperion Paperback, $14.95), Gregory’s debut graphic memoir, happens in a flash on page three: Gregory’s wife stumbles onto a train track in Manhattan and is run over by three subway cars. She is paralyzed from the waist down, just 10 months after giving birth to their first son.

“What was the point of life? Was love worth it if the #9 train could come along and take it all away?” Gregory writes.

He devotes the rest of his memoir, a wonderfully semi-coherent sketchbook of drawings and stories, to his discovery of this raison d’être: illustrating everything. The spice rack, the New York City skyline, his son’s mini-cowboy boots, his dog pooping in the park, a dead yellow jacket, the clock tower where his wife Patti worked on one of her last photo shoots as a stylist before the accident. As he explains at the book’s beginning, Gregory had never drawn before his wife’s paralysis. His sketches are sloppy and exuberant, the product of one having just found his voice. This new craft becomes the lens through which he views his now altered life.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] Judge Keeps Seale in Jail

2007-03-07T16:39:00.002-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
February 28, 2007

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate denied several motions from lawyers representing James Seale, the 71-year-old former Klansman held in federal custody for his alleged role in the abduction and murder of Charles Moore and Henry Dee in 1964. Wingate denied a motion to dismiss all charges against Seale and a motion to revoke a Jan. 29 order for Seale to remain incarcerated without bond in federal prison.

Citing U.S. v. Jackson, a 1968 Supreme Court ruling that removed kidnapping from the list of crimes punishable by death, federal public defender Dennis Joiner argued that charges stemming from the 1964 murders are not capital offenses and thus would have exceeded their statute of limitations in 1969. Special litigation counsel Paige Fitzgerald, arguing for the prosecution, said that the 1968 ruling did not apply retroactively, and that in 1964 kidnapping was a capital offense unbound by statutes of limitation.

Seale is accused of kidnapping Moore and Dee, tying the 19-year-olds to a tree and ordering other Klansmen to beat them with long bean sticks, as he held a gun on them.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] Soothing Soul and Intimate History

2007-02-24T00:01:00.002-05:00

by Matt Saldana
Image courtesy Rob Sheffield
February 21, 2007

A friend of mine and I once tried to come up with a “Top 25 1990s Alternative Singles” list, but we were never able to resolve our differences over a pair of deal breakers: Veruca Salt’s “Volcano Girls” and PJ Harvey’s “Down by the Water.” My friend argued that “Volcano Girls” has a bouncy pop exuberance (in the 1997 video, the Chicago band strapped themselves into bungee cord harnesses and literally bounced off walls) that puts the song on par with other crunchy ‘90s guitar anthems like “Come Out and Play” by the Offspring and “Cannonball” by the Breeders. I thought PJ Harvey’s whispery, haunting song about a fish who has stolen her daughter was a more important contribution to “alternative” music—the ambiguously rebellious ‘90s version of the “indie rock” label. (It is a slightly more functional one, too, since PJ Harvey is signed to Island Records, and Nirvana was on Geffen.)

Rolling Stone pop guru Rob Sheffield has made his share of lists as a music critic—he wrote a particularly funny “Top Ten Worst Bands Ever” with Live at the top—but in his debut memoir, “Love Is a Mix Tape” (Crown Publishing, $22.95), he sticks to the less contentious art form of the spontaneously recorded, gloriously imperfect, memory-ingrained-in-the-magnetic-strip mix tape.

“The rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies. The cassette is full of tape hiss and room tone; it’s full of wasted space, unnecessary noise,” he writes in his totally natural, plainspoken poetry.

In 219 brisk pages, organized around 22 actual mix tapes, Sheffield writes wistfully about the arrival of “grunge” and the accompanying cultural apocalypse—whose first sign, Sheffield writes, was when Olympic ice skater Kristi Yamaguchi revealed on television that she prepared for competitions by listening to Nirvana on her Walkman. He takes us through the real excitement of earnest, inventive, underground bands like Pavement and Liz Phair “crashing through the boundaries,” and then the eventual sonic-boom collapse: the death of Kurt Cobain, the frenzied re-commercialization of music.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] Unholstered: A Greenwood Family Fights For Its Rights

2007-02-15T01:31:00.004-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
February 14, 2007

The bell rang for fifth period at Greenwood High School, and James Marshall walked to class. The 17-year-old wore his throwback Dave Wilcox jersey that his mom had bought him, a bright red 49ers uniform from 1964 with three-quarter sleeves that reached below his wrists. On the way, he spotted his friend Jarvis Williams, who was telling a group of boys about his tattoo.

“James, come over here and show us your tattoo,” Williams shouted across the hallway.

Marshall headed toward the group, and lifted the loose sleeve on his left arm up to his elbow, bunching the number four—one half of Wilcox’s 64—around his shoulder. In looping cursive letters stacked like a totem pole, the word “James” curved along his inner arm and stopped three-quarters of the way down, the spot where Wilcox’s sleeves would have rested on the linebacker’s body.

Marshall had never played football, though it was his childhood dream, because of chronic asthma and a weak chest. In eighth grade, a baseball to the sternum ended his brief encounter with sports. He had played baseball for three years, and after the injury his mother wouldn’t allow anything else. With his sleeve up, his inked arm looked slighter and more delicate than a football player’s. At 5’9” and 170 lbs., he could have played tailback or wide receiver, but not many other positions. He didn’t clench his hand into a fist but tucked his fingers back against his palm as he showed the other boys his tattoo.

He had no idea what would happen next.

‘Assaulting the Police’

Casey Wiggins, a 26-year-old white police officer of stocky build and slightly above-average height—about 5’11”, judging by video footage—was patrolling the hallways of the now-majority African American high school by himself on Dec. 6 when he saw Marshall and his friends. Wiggins had not completed police academy training, and was required to be under supervision by a fellow officer at all times, but today he was alone. As he approached the group of three boys, all black, he thought he saw Marshall try to hide something in his left hand.

A teacher making plans on a desk calendar inside the teacher’s lounge heard a thud outside the door. He walked over and opened it to see what had happened. As soon as he did, Wiggins stumbled backward into the lounge, grabbing at Marshall’s jersey and bringing him down with him, as captured by a security camera in the teacher’s lounge.

Stunned by the fall, Marshall tried to steady himself and stand up. He held his hands limp and to his side. Wiggins, balancing himself with one arm on the ground, unholstered and then aimed his gun at Marshall’s face. Wiggins would later report that he reached for his firearm because Marshall was grabbing him. Upon seeing Wiggins’ gun, Marshall put his hands up and backed out of the lounge. Students who had gathered at the doorway cowered away at point-blank range.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] Under Scrutiny, Supervisors 'Roadblock' Title Building

2007-02-06T21:37:00.004-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Feb. 6, 2007

The Hinds County Board of Supervisors killed a motion to hire an appraiser for the Mississippi Valley Title Insurance Building in a board meeting Monday, effectively halting its purchase—and endangering the controversial purchase of a parking garage next door. “We just put up a big road block to the Mississippi Title Building,” Supervisor Charles Barbour said.

The building comprises one part of a $30 million bond issuance brought to the board by Supervisor Doug Anderson last December. The bond issuance also includes a penal farm, road improvements and a proposed parking garage that would cost the county $14 million, a price Anderson received from exclusive negotiations with Central Parking Corp, as reported Jan. 24 by the Jackson Free Press.

Several county officials have begun to voice dissent toward purchasing the building and erecting a parking garage next door, a proposal that Anderson negotiated largely behind closed doors. During a meeting with Central Parking executives on Jan. 3, Anderson locked out Vice President Peggy Hobson Calhoun. Calhoun raised concerns over the source of the $14 million price tag for the parking garage at a board meeting on Jan. 2.

Sheriff Malcolm McMillin said that Anderson’s support for the bond issuance hinged on purchasing the Mississippi Title Building.

“(Anderson) had no interest in a new penal farm or jail expansion until the opportunity arose to purchase the Mississippi Title Building and the adjacent lot, and the proposed parking garage that would go on it. They are very much tied together,” McMillin told the Jackson Free Press last week.

Central Parking regional manager Bobby Stewart was one of the executives present when Anderson locked Calhoun out of the meeting on Jan. 3. In a memo, William McElroy, Anderson’s former son-in-law, asked Stewart to confirm that McElroy’s firm, M3A Architects, is Central Parking’s choice for work on the parking garage.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] The Ballad of Charlie Moore and Henry Dee

2007-02-01T00:00:00.003-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Image courtesy Marla Moore
January 31, 2007

We found Marla Moore’s freshly penned lyrics on her “Punk Rasta” myspace page this week and asked to publish them.

Matt Saldaña called and spoke with Moore Tuesday about the song she wrote for two fallen Mississippians.

What drew you to the Charles Moore and Henry Dee story?

I read (Donna Ladd’s) story and the song just came out of me. It’s not a logical process; it’s a supernatural process. A lot of people have that connection, because they don’t stand just for themselves. Between Maryland, where I live, and Mississippi, how many bodies are out there that will never be claimed? We have to explore them, and that’s what I do as an artist. That’s what your paper did: give them a voice.

You begin the song by saying, “This is the kind of song no one should ever write.” What did you mean?

No one should have to ever write this song, because it shouldn’t happen. Just as with songs like (Bob Dylan’s) “The Death of Emmet Till” and “Hurricane” and (Richard Farina’s) “Birmingham Sunday,” not every song is going to be a happy song. I’m also alluding to the fact that, at the time, no one really wanted to tell the story. Because of fear, they let them be buried.

You write, “Two graves remain unquiet, breaking 40 years of silence.” How did you react to the news that, after 40 years of silence, James Seale was finally arrested?

I feel that this is important because we have (the deaths of) iconic figures in pop culture, such as Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur and Jon-Benet Ramsey, in which the public seems to get caught up in the whys and wherefores, but we forget about the human cost. It’s an ongoing process of finding justice. No one can mourn fully until there’s justice. The community needs to know you can’t just do these kinds of things and get away with it. Right now we have the largest group of hate Web sites—racism and intolerance are at an all-time high right now. But when you see people banning together, it makes you more optimistic. Part of me thinks (Seale) is too old to suffer, for as much as he should, but I feel like—Henry and Charles—I feel like I know them. I feel like it’s what they wanted.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]

[JFP] No Bond for Seale

2007-01-29T23:34:00.005-05:00

by Matt Saldaña
Photo by Matt Saldaña
Jan. 29, 2006

At approximately 3:15 p.m. on Monday in the James O. Eastland Federal Building in Jackson, U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson denied bond to James Seale, the 71-year old former Klansman held in federal custody for two counts of kidnapping resulting in death and one count of conspiracy for his role in the abductions and murders of Charles Moore and Henry Dee in 1964. Forty-two years after the murders, on Jan. 25, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez announced grand jury indictment charges against Seale.

“Neither the weight of the crime nor its circumstances have been diminished by the passage of time,” Anderson said.

Anderson said she considered the violent and horrific nature of the alleged crime, which Special Litigation Counsel Paige Fitzgerald referred to as “so horrific it boggles the mind,” in denying Seale’s bail. She also took into account Seale’s concealment of his brother in Alabama during a pre-trial interview, and the chance that he could flee in his R.V.

Fitzgerald, who argued on behalf of the prosecution for a bond denial, referred to Seale—who, if convicted, would face life imprisonment—as “a man with nothing to lose.” Anderson agreed, saying Seale had “little incentive to stay” in Roxie, Miss.

Public defender Kathy Nester, arguing on behalf of Seale, objected several times, seeking to prevent Fitzgerald from presenting details of the crime at the bond hearing. Anderson overruled because those details had already appeared in the indictment report. Nester also objected when Fitzgerald referred to the Ku Klux Klan as a “terrorist organization,” though a federal grand jury first labeled the KKK a terrorist organization in 1869.

[View the entire article at the Jackson Free Press.]