See updates on South Bay Indictments.
Judge Ana Espana said that 24-year Sweetwater Union High School District trustee Jim Cartmill was among the "least culpable offenders" convicted in the South Bay school official scandal.
He and Bertha Lopez have decided to run for re-election.
It's fine with me. I don't think Jim or Bertha were more harmful to students than the average school official--which is not to say that Jim and Bertha aren't responsible for their support of business-as-usual behavior that keeps schools in failure mode.
Even if the bad behavior that got them in trouble were completely eliminated from every district, I don't think it would make much difference for students. The most serious problems in school governance were never addressed in the scandal. In fact, I think the reason there were no trials was that the District Attorney didn't want these small time crooks spilling the beans about how San Diego County Office of Education runs schools for the benefit of those in power.
Why Two Convicted Sweetwater Officials Can Run for Re-Election
Bianca Bruno
Voice of San Diego
July 22, 2014
Former [Sweetwater Union High School District] board president Jim Cartmill filed earlier this month for a
spot on the November ballot. Cartmill is running for a seat representing
District 3, which includes schools on the east side of Chula Vista.
Former trustee Bertha Lopez, one of 18 officials convicted in connection with the scandal, said at a hearing last week that she plans to run for re-election but has not yet filed the official paperwork, according to the Registrar of Voters...
San Diego Superior Court Judge Ana Espana initially ruled that
Cartmill and Lopez could continue to serve in their elected positions
until the end of their respective terms but later reversed that based
on a California code that suspends public officials from office after they’ve entered a guilty plea.
At Cartmill’s sentencing, the judge ruled he could run for
re-election.
Cartmill was sentenced in June to three years’ probation, 40 hours community service and just under $5,000 in fines.
See all posts re South Bay Indictments.
Showing posts with label charged with crimes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label charged with crimes. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Ex-city manager of Bell, California gets 12 years for corruption
Robert Rizzo
Ex-Calif. city manager gets 12 years for corruption
Michael Winter
USA TODAY
April 16, 2014
An astonishing case of small-city corruption ended Wednesday as the longtime administrator of Bell, Calif., was sentenced to 12 years in state prison for paying elected officials lavish salaries and using the public coffers as a piggy bank for himself and other employees.
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy said in sentencing Robert Rizzo and ordering him to pay $8.8 million in restitution. "That is the theme of what happened in Bell. There were no checks and balances to control Mr. Rizzo and those that were in power in the city."
On Monday, a U.S. judge sentenced Rizzo to 33 months in federal prison for income tax evasion. His state and federal terms will run concurrently, and he must surrender to U.S. authorities May 30 to begin his incarceration.
Rizzo managed the working-class city for 18 years before the graft was uncovered in 2010. Though nearly 25% of Bell's 36,000 residents live below the poverty line, Rizzo's pay and benefits totaled $1.5 million a year. Kennedy called his salary and those of council members and other officials "absolutely ridiculous."
"Nobody wanted to upset the apple cart because they were paid so well," she said, describing him as "a godfather of sorts."
The pay packages were part of a larger scandal. A state audit found that Bell had illegally raised property taxes, business-license fees and other sources of revenue to pay the officials' extravagance. By the time it was uncovered, auditors said, the graft had cost the city more than $5.5 million and pushed to the brink of bankruptcy.
At the time of his arrest,, Rizzo was the highest paid city official in California -- and possibly the nation -- and would have been the state's top earning public pensioner had he retired.
Before learning his fate Wednesday, he spoke publicly for the first time since the scandal broke.
"I'm very, very sorry for that. I apologize for that," he said in a soft voice. "If I could go back and make changes, I would. I've done it a million times in my mind."
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times as he walked to his car after his sentencing, Rizzo said he "should have realized the salaries were way out of whack and taken steps to bring them back in line, but it just got away from me."
"There's not much I could do after a period of time," he said.
Under a deal with prosecutors, five former City Council members pleaded no contest to misappropriating city funds, and Kennedy will begin sentencing them in June. Punishments range from probation to four years in prison, and all must make restitution and never again seek public office.
One council member, a preacher, was acquitted.
Last week, Rizzo's deputy, Angela Spaccia, was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in state prison for misappropriating public funds by giving herself enormous raises. When a jury found her guilty in December, her salary was $564,000.
On the witness stand, Spaccia acknowledged that she felt she was earning too much when her salary passed $340,000, but argued that it was not criminal.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Elementary School Principal Arrested for Gun, Drug Possession
Elementary School Principal Arrested for Gun, Drug Possession
The Lee Elementary School principal has been placed on administrative leave.
Khari Johnson (Editor)
September 11, 2013
Patch
Lee Elementary School Principal Rachel Yolanda Escobedo of La Mesa was arrested in the Rolando Park area on Saturday for possession of a stolen gun and drugs, according to San Diego police.
The principal of Lee Elementary School in Paradise Hills was placed on leave following her weekend arrest on suspicion of possessing illegal drugs and a stolen gun, authorities reported Wednesday.
Rachel Yolanda Escobedo of La Mesa was arrested in the Rolando Park area on Saturday, according to San Diego police. Popular Stories
Shortly before 8:30 that evening, an officer responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle in the 6800 block of Missy Court found Escobedo sitting in her parked 1993 Honda Accord with a 60-year-old man, SDPD public-affairs Lt. Kevin Mayer said.
The patrolman spotted an open vodka bottle inside the vehicle and a small amount of what turned out to be marijuana in an ashtray, the lieutenant said.
After getting permission to search the car from Escobedo, who was in the driver's seat, the officer allegedly found a loaded .22-caliber pistol in the trunk, along with about two dozen prescription pills that appeared to be hydrocodone and four small baggies containing a white crystalline powder, Mayer said.
The apparent drugs were submitted for lab testing to positively identify them, he said, adding that a computer check showed that the handgun had been reported stolen.
Escobedo, 45, was taken into custody without incident on suspicion of illegally possessing a loaded firearm and controlled substances. Her companion, whose relationship to her was unclear, was released.
The educator posted $25,000 bail the next day and was given a Sept. 17 arraignment date.
Escobedo worked her usual shift on Monday, as her supervisors had yet to learn of her arrest, said Jack Brandais, spokesman for San Diego Unified School District. She was suspended Tuesday pending the outcome of the criminal case.
Retired SDUSD principal Judy Fogel agreed to fill in for Escobedo on a temporary basis, Brandais said.
–City News Service
The Lee Elementary School principal has been placed on administrative leave.
Khari Johnson (Editor)
September 11, 2013
Patch
Lee Elementary School Principal Rachel Yolanda Escobedo of La Mesa was arrested in the Rolando Park area on Saturday for possession of a stolen gun and drugs, according to San Diego police.
The principal of Lee Elementary School in Paradise Hills was placed on leave following her weekend arrest on suspicion of possessing illegal drugs and a stolen gun, authorities reported Wednesday.
Rachel Yolanda Escobedo of La Mesa was arrested in the Rolando Park area on Saturday, according to San Diego police. Popular Stories
Shortly before 8:30 that evening, an officer responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle in the 6800 block of Missy Court found Escobedo sitting in her parked 1993 Honda Accord with a 60-year-old man, SDPD public-affairs Lt. Kevin Mayer said.
The patrolman spotted an open vodka bottle inside the vehicle and a small amount of what turned out to be marijuana in an ashtray, the lieutenant said.
After getting permission to search the car from Escobedo, who was in the driver's seat, the officer allegedly found a loaded .22-caliber pistol in the trunk, along with about two dozen prescription pills that appeared to be hydrocodone and four small baggies containing a white crystalline powder, Mayer said.
The apparent drugs were submitted for lab testing to positively identify them, he said, adding that a computer check showed that the handgun had been reported stolen.
Escobedo, 45, was taken into custody without incident on suspicion of illegally possessing a loaded firearm and controlled substances. Her companion, whose relationship to her was unclear, was released.
The educator posted $25,000 bail the next day and was given a Sept. 17 arraignment date.
Escobedo worked her usual shift on Monday, as her supervisors had yet to learn of her arrest, said Jack Brandais, spokesman for San Diego Unified School District. She was suspended Tuesday pending the outcome of the criminal case.
Retired SDUSD principal Judy Fogel agreed to fill in for Escobedo on a temporary basis, Brandais said.
–City News Service
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Sweetwater scandal: Ed Brand’s claims contradicted
Sweetwater scandal: Ed Brand’s claims contradicted
Did he or didn’t he ask for $40,000?
By Susan Luzzaro
San Diego Reader
June 2, 2013
On May 30, the U-T published the testimony of Sweetwater Union High School superintendent Ed Brand, given to the San Diego County Grand Jury late last year.
In November–December 2012, the grand jury conducted secret hearings to inquire into the alleged corruption of trustees, administrators, and contractors in three South County school districts. Ultimately, 15 trustees, administrators, and contractors were indicted as a result of the proceedings.
Brand told U-T reporter Aaron Burgin on May 30, “If I knew what I know when they asked me to come back [as superintendent of the Sweetwater school district], I wouldn’t have done it.” (Brand's first stint as superintendent spanned 1995–2005; he returned in 2011.)
Brand also complained to Burgin that there was too much contractor influence in the district and that three trustees had asked him to go to the president of Seville Group Inc, Rene Flores, for campaign donations. (Seville Group Inc, or SGI, managed the district’s $644 million Proposition O bond until January 2012.)
The U-T reported: “He [Brand] said that within the first six to eight days of his arrival, [Bertha] Lopez, [Pearl] Quiñones, and John McCann asked him to solicit campaign donations from SGI President Rene Flores and Jaime Ortiz, the company’s bond manager.”
In the grand jury transcripts, deputy district attorney Leon Schorr asked Brand: “Did you ask him [Flores] on behalf of McCann, [Jim] Cartmill, [Arlie] Ricasa, Quiñones, or Lopez for any contributions?” Brand answers: “No. Never.”
But in another volume of the transcripts that have been officially released to the public (Brand’s were not) Flores tells deputy district attorney Schorr:
“I want to say something very quick. Dr. Brand in December asked me to give an additional $20,000 to both John McCann and Jim Cartmill and I didn’t do it right away during December for tax purposes. And so I didn’t do it. So he suspended us [SGI] without any reason…and subsequent to that there’s been evaluations done and we have been cleared — my company has been cleared of any wrongdoing.”
So, it seems there is a contradiction in the sworn statements.
Did he or didn’t he ask for $40,000?
By Susan Luzzaro
San Diego Reader
June 2, 2013
On May 30, the U-T published the testimony of Sweetwater Union High School superintendent Ed Brand, given to the San Diego County Grand Jury late last year.
In November–December 2012, the grand jury conducted secret hearings to inquire into the alleged corruption of trustees, administrators, and contractors in three South County school districts. Ultimately, 15 trustees, administrators, and contractors were indicted as a result of the proceedings.
Brand told U-T reporter Aaron Burgin on May 30, “If I knew what I know when they asked me to come back [as superintendent of the Sweetwater school district], I wouldn’t have done it.” (Brand's first stint as superintendent spanned 1995–2005; he returned in 2011.)
Brand also complained to Burgin that there was too much contractor influence in the district and that three trustees had asked him to go to the president of Seville Group Inc, Rene Flores, for campaign donations. (Seville Group Inc, or SGI, managed the district’s $644 million Proposition O bond until January 2012.)
The U-T reported: “He [Brand] said that within the first six to eight days of his arrival, [Bertha] Lopez, [Pearl] Quiñones, and John McCann asked him to solicit campaign donations from SGI President Rene Flores and Jaime Ortiz, the company’s bond manager.”
In the grand jury transcripts, deputy district attorney Leon Schorr asked Brand: “Did you ask him [Flores] on behalf of McCann, [Jim] Cartmill, [Arlie] Ricasa, Quiñones, or Lopez for any contributions?” Brand answers: “No. Never.”
But in another volume of the transcripts that have been officially released to the public (Brand’s were not) Flores tells deputy district attorney Schorr:
“I want to say something very quick. Dr. Brand in December asked me to give an additional $20,000 to both John McCann and Jim Cartmill and I didn’t do it right away during December for tax purposes. And so I didn’t do it. So he suspended us [SGI] without any reason…and subsequent to that there’s been evaluations done and we have been cleared — my company has been cleared of any wrongdoing.”
So, it seems there is a contradiction in the sworn statements.
Monday, April 29, 2013
UCLA chemistry professor ordered to stand trial in fatal lab fire
See all posts re UCLA.
See all posts on UCLA from Thank Heaven for Insurance Companies blog.
Sheri Sangji
It isn't just the Medical Center at UCLA that hires lawyers to help it avoid responsibility for unnecessary deaths. The Chemistry Department does it, too.
UCLA chemistry professor ordered to stand trial in fatal lab fire
By Kim Christensen
LA Times
April 26, 2013
UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran has been ordered Friday to stand trial on felony charges stemming from a laboratory fire that killed staff research assistant Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji more than four years ago.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench denied a defense motion to dismiss the case, which is believed to be the first such prosecution involving a U.S. academic lab accident.
Harran is charged with willfully violating state occupational health and safety codes and faces up to 4 1/2 years in prison if convicted.
DOCUMENTS: Report finds fault in death of lab assistant
"We fully expect to vindicate Professor Harran,” his attorney, Thomas O’Brien, said after the hearing. “This was an accident, a tragic accident. We have always maintained that, as the University of California has, and we expect him to be vindicated.”
Sangji, 23, was not wearing a protective lab coat Dec. 29, 2008, when a plastic syringe she was using to transfer t-butyl lithium from one sealed container to another came apart, spewing a chemical compound that ignites when exposed to air. She suffered extensive burns and died 18 days later.
Harran, 43, is accused of failing to correct unsafe work conditions in a timely manner, to require clothing appropriate for the work being done and to provide proper chemical safety training.
From the outset, he and UCLA have cast Sangji’s death as an accident and said she was an experienced chemist who was trained in the experiment and chose not to wear a protective lab coat.
Harran’s lawyers sought to bolster those contentions during a preliminary hearing that spanned several days late last year and in a written motion to dismiss the felony charges or have them reduced to misdemeanors.
Among other things, they argued that Harran believed that Sangji, who had graduated just five months earlier from Pomona College in Claremont with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, was adequately trained by a previous employer and by a senior researcher in Harran’s lab.
Prosecutors countered that there is no evidence that Harran or anyone else trained Sangji in the handling of the chemicals that set her clothing ablaze, causing severe burns over nearly half her body.
“The bottom line with regard to the lack of training provided by defendant Harran is that, if victim Sangji had been properly trained ... victim Sangji would be alive today,” they wrote in court papers.
Deadly UCLA lab fire leaves haunting questions
Problems at UCLA went unfixed for two months before a young researcher was burned in a chemical accident.
By Kim Christensen
LA Times
March 1, 2009
UCLA's Molecular Sciences Building was mostly closed for the holidays on Dec. 29 as research assistant Sheri Sangji worked on an organic chemistry experiment.
Only three months into her job in the lab, the 23-year-old Pomona College graduate was using a plastic syringe to extract from a sealed container a small quantity of t-butyl lithium -- a chemical compound that ignites instantly when exposed to air.
As she withdrew the liquid, the syringe came apart in her hands, spewing flaming chemicals, according to a UCLA accident report. A flash fire set her clothing ablaze and spread second- and third-degree burns over 43% of her body.
Eighteen excruciating days later, Sangji died in a hospital burn unit.
"It is horrifying," said her sister Naveen, 26, a Harvard medical student. "Sheri wasn't out doing something stupid. She was working in a lab at one of the largest universities in the world. She gets these horrific injuries and loses her life to these injuries and we still don't know how it happened or why it wasn't prevented."
Sangji's death was more than a tragic workplace accident. It also raised serious questions about the university's attention to laboratory safety.
"It was totally preventable," said Neal Langerman, a San Diego consultant and former head of the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Health and Safety, whose members were given a detailed account of the incident by a University of California safety official.
"Poor training, poor technique, lack of supervision and improper method. This was just not the right way to transfer these things," Langerman said. "She died, didn't she? It speaks for itself."
Two months earlier, UCLA safety inspectors found more than a dozen deficiencies in the same lab, Molecular Sciences Room 4221, according to internal investigative and inspection reports reviewed by The Times. Among the findings: Employees were not wearing requisite protective lab coats, and flammable liquids and volatile chemicals were stored improperly.
Chemical Safety Officer Michael Wheatley sent the inspection report to the researcher who oversees the lab, professor Patrick Harran, as well as to the head of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department and a top UCLA safety official. The report directed that problems be fixed by Dec. 5.
But the required corrective action was not taken, records show, and on Dec. 29 all that stood between Sangji's torso and the fire that engulfed her was a highly flammable, synthetic sweater that fueled the flames.
Under scrutiny
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health is investigating, as are the Office of the State Fire Marshal, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. A spokeswoman for Cal/OSHA, the lead agency, said she could not comment on the investigation...
Patrick Harran
Facing felony charges in lab death of Sheri Sangji, UCLA settles, Harran stretches credulity
By Janet D. Stemwedel
Scientific American
July 31, 2012
There have been recent developments in the criminal case against UCLA and chemistry professor Patrick Harran in connection with the fatal laboratory accident that resulted in the death of Sheri Sangji (which we’ve discussed here and here). The positive development is that UCLA has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. (CORRECTION: UCLA has reached a settlement agreement with the prosecutors, not a plea agreement. Sorry for the confusion.) However, Patrick Harran’s legal strategy has taken a turn that strikes me as ill-advised.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Half of the felony charges stemming from a 2008 lab accident that killed UCLA research assistant Sheri Sangji were dropped Friday when the University of California regents agreed to follow comprehensive safety measures and endow a $500,000 scholarship in her name.
“The regents acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conditions under which the laboratory operated on Dec. 29, 2008,” the agreement read in part, referring to the date that Sangji, 23, suffered fatal burns.
Charges remain against her supervisor, chemistry professor Patrick Harran. His arraignment was postponed to Sept. 5 to allow the judge to consider defense motions, including one challenging the credibility of the state’s chief investigator on the case. …
UCLA and Harran have called her death a tragic accident and said she was a seasoned chemist who chose not to wear a protective lab coat. …
In court papers this week, Harran’s lawyers said prosecutors had matched the fingerprints of Brian Baudendistel, a senior special investigator who handled the case for the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, with the prints of a teenager who pleaded no contest to murder in Northern California in 1985.
The defense contends that the investigator, whose report formed the basis for the charges, is the same Brian A. Baudendistel who took part in a plot to rob a drug dealer of $3,000 worth of methamphetamine, then shot him. Another teenager admitted to pulling the trigger but said it was Baudendistel’s shotgun.
Baudendistel told The Times this week that it is a case of mistaken identity and that he is not the individual involved in the 1985 case.
Cal/OSHA defended the integrity of the investigation in a statement issued Friday by spokesman Dean Fryer.
“The defendants’ most recent attempt to deflect attention from the charges brought against them simply does not relate in any way to the circumstances of Ms. Sangji’s death or the actual evidence collected in Cal/OSHA’s comprehensive investigation,” it read.
Deborah Blum adds:
Should chemist-in-training approach hazardous chemicals with extreme caution? Yes. Should she expect her employer to provide her with the necessary information and equipment to engage in such caution? Most of us would argue yes. Should chemistry professors be held to the standard of employee safety as, say, chemical manufacturers or other industries? The most important “yes” to that question comes from Cal/OSHA senior investigator Brian Baudendistal.
Baudendistal concluded that the laboratory operation was careless enough for long enough to justify felony charges of willful negligence. The Sangji family, angered by those suggestions that Sheri’s experience should have taught her better, pushed for prosecution. Late last year the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office officially brought charges against Harran, UCLA, and the University of California system itself. …
[Harran's] lawyers have responded to the Baudendistal report in part by focusing on Baudendistal himself. They claim to have found evidence that in 1985 he and two friends conspired to set up the murder of a drug dealer. All three boys were convicted and although, since they were juveniles, the records were sealed, attorneys were able to identify the killers through press coverage at the time. Although Baudendistal has insisted that Harran’s defense team tracked down the wrong man, they say they have a fingerprint match to prove it. They say further that a man who covers up his past history is not credible – and therefore neither is is report on the UCLA laboratory.
I am not a lawyer, so I’m not terribly interested in speculating on the arcane legal considerations that might be driving this move by Harran’s legal team. (Chemjobber speculates that it might be a long shot they’re playing amid plea negotiations that are not going well.)
As someone with a professional interest in crime and punishment within scientific communities, and in ethics more broadly, I do, however, think it’s worth examining the logic of Patrick Harran’s legal strategy.
The strategy, as I understand it, is to cast aspersions on the Cal/OSHA report on the basis of the legal history of the senior investigator that prepared it — specifically, his alleged involvement as a teenager in 1985 in a murder plot.
Does a past bad act like this serve as prima facie reason to doubt the accuracy of the report of the investigation of conditions in Harran’s lab? It’s not clear how it could, especially if there were other investigators on the team, not alleged to be involved in such criminal behavior, who endorsed the claims in the report.v Unless, of course, the reason Harran’s legal team thinks we should doubt the accuracy of the report is that the senior investigator who prepared it is a habitual liar. To support the claim that he cannot be trusted, they point to a single alleged lie — denying involvement in the 1985 murder plot.
But this strikes me as a particularly dangerous strategy for Patrick Harran to pursue.
Essentially, the strategy rests on the claim that if a person has lied about some particular issue, we should assume that any claim that person makes, about whatever issue, might also be a lie. I’m not unsympathetic to this claim — trust is something that is earned, not simply assumed in the absence of clear evidence of dishonesty.
However, this same reasoning cannot help Patrick Harran’s credibility, given that he is on record describing Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old with a bachelor’s degree, as an experienced chemist. Many have noted already that claiming Sheri Sangji was a experienced chemist is ridiculous on its face.
Thus, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Patrick Harran lied when he described Sheri Sangji as an experienced chemist. And, if this is the case, following the reasoning advocated by his legal team, we must doubt the credibility of every other claim he has made — including claims about the safety training he did or did not provide to people in his lab, conditions in his lab in 2008 when the fatal accident happened, even whether he recommended that Sangji wear a lab coat.
If Patrick Harran was not lying when he said he believed Sheri Sangji was an experienced chemist, the other possibility is that he is incredibly stupid — certainly too stupid to be in charge of a lab where people work with potentially hazardous chemicals.
Some might posit that Harran’s claims about Sangji’s chemical experience were made on the advice of his legal team. That may well be, but I’m unclear on how lying on the advice of counsel is any less a lie. (If it is, this might well mitigate the “lie of omission” of an investigator advised by his lawyers that his juvenile record is sealed.) And if one lie is all it takes to decimate credibility, Harran is surely as vulnerable as Baudendistel.
Finally, a piece of free advice to PIs worrying that they may find themselves facing criminal charges should their students, postdocs, or technicians choose not to wear lab coats or other safety gear: It is perfectly reasonable to establish, and enforce, a lab policy that states that those choosing to opt out of the required safety equipment are also opting out of access to the laboratory.
See all posts on UCLA from Thank Heaven for Insurance Companies blog.
Sheri SangjiIt isn't just the Medical Center at UCLA that hires lawyers to help it avoid responsibility for unnecessary deaths. The Chemistry Department does it, too.
UCLA chemistry professor ordered to stand trial in fatal lab fire
By Kim Christensen
LA Times
April 26, 2013
UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran has been ordered Friday to stand trial on felony charges stemming from a laboratory fire that killed staff research assistant Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji more than four years ago.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench denied a defense motion to dismiss the case, which is believed to be the first such prosecution involving a U.S. academic lab accident.
Harran is charged with willfully violating state occupational health and safety codes and faces up to 4 1/2 years in prison if convicted.
DOCUMENTS: Report finds fault in death of lab assistant
"We fully expect to vindicate Professor Harran,” his attorney, Thomas O’Brien, said after the hearing. “This was an accident, a tragic accident. We have always maintained that, as the University of California has, and we expect him to be vindicated.”
Sangji, 23, was not wearing a protective lab coat Dec. 29, 2008, when a plastic syringe she was using to transfer t-butyl lithium from one sealed container to another came apart, spewing a chemical compound that ignites when exposed to air. She suffered extensive burns and died 18 days later.
Harran, 43, is accused of failing to correct unsafe work conditions in a timely manner, to require clothing appropriate for the work being done and to provide proper chemical safety training.
From the outset, he and UCLA have cast Sangji’s death as an accident and said she was an experienced chemist who was trained in the experiment and chose not to wear a protective lab coat.
Harran’s lawyers sought to bolster those contentions during a preliminary hearing that spanned several days late last year and in a written motion to dismiss the felony charges or have them reduced to misdemeanors.
Among other things, they argued that Harran believed that Sangji, who had graduated just five months earlier from Pomona College in Claremont with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, was adequately trained by a previous employer and by a senior researcher in Harran’s lab.
Prosecutors countered that there is no evidence that Harran or anyone else trained Sangji in the handling of the chemicals that set her clothing ablaze, causing severe burns over nearly half her body.
“The bottom line with regard to the lack of training provided by defendant Harran is that, if victim Sangji had been properly trained ... victim Sangji would be alive today,” they wrote in court papers.
Deadly UCLA lab fire leaves haunting questions
Problems at UCLA went unfixed for two months before a young researcher was burned in a chemical accident.
By Kim Christensen
LA Times
March 1, 2009
UCLA's Molecular Sciences Building was mostly closed for the holidays on Dec. 29 as research assistant Sheri Sangji worked on an organic chemistry experiment.
Only three months into her job in the lab, the 23-year-old Pomona College graduate was using a plastic syringe to extract from a sealed container a small quantity of t-butyl lithium -- a chemical compound that ignites instantly when exposed to air.
As she withdrew the liquid, the syringe came apart in her hands, spewing flaming chemicals, according to a UCLA accident report. A flash fire set her clothing ablaze and spread second- and third-degree burns over 43% of her body.
Eighteen excruciating days later, Sangji died in a hospital burn unit.
"It is horrifying," said her sister Naveen, 26, a Harvard medical student. "Sheri wasn't out doing something stupid. She was working in a lab at one of the largest universities in the world. She gets these horrific injuries and loses her life to these injuries and we still don't know how it happened or why it wasn't prevented."
Sangji's death was more than a tragic workplace accident. It also raised serious questions about the university's attention to laboratory safety.
"It was totally preventable," said Neal Langerman, a San Diego consultant and former head of the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Health and Safety, whose members were given a detailed account of the incident by a University of California safety official.
"Poor training, poor technique, lack of supervision and improper method. This was just not the right way to transfer these things," Langerman said. "She died, didn't she? It speaks for itself."
Two months earlier, UCLA safety inspectors found more than a dozen deficiencies in the same lab, Molecular Sciences Room 4221, according to internal investigative and inspection reports reviewed by The Times. Among the findings: Employees were not wearing requisite protective lab coats, and flammable liquids and volatile chemicals were stored improperly.
Chemical Safety Officer Michael Wheatley sent the inspection report to the researcher who oversees the lab, professor Patrick Harran, as well as to the head of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department and a top UCLA safety official. The report directed that problems be fixed by Dec. 5.
But the required corrective action was not taken, records show, and on Dec. 29 all that stood between Sangji's torso and the fire that engulfed her was a highly flammable, synthetic sweater that fueled the flames.
Under scrutiny
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health is investigating, as are the Office of the State Fire Marshal, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. A spokeswoman for Cal/OSHA, the lead agency, said she could not comment on the investigation...
Patrick HarranFacing felony charges in lab death of Sheri Sangji, UCLA settles, Harran stretches credulity
By Janet D. Stemwedel
Scientific American
July 31, 2012
There have been recent developments in the criminal case against UCLA and chemistry professor Patrick Harran in connection with the fatal laboratory accident that resulted in the death of Sheri Sangji (which we’ve discussed here and here). The positive development is that UCLA has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. (CORRECTION: UCLA has reached a settlement agreement with the prosecutors, not a plea agreement. Sorry for the confusion.) However, Patrick Harran’s legal strategy has taken a turn that strikes me as ill-advised.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Half of the felony charges stemming from a 2008 lab accident that killed UCLA research assistant Sheri Sangji were dropped Friday when the University of California regents agreed to follow comprehensive safety measures and endow a $500,000 scholarship in her name.
“The regents acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conditions under which the laboratory operated on Dec. 29, 2008,” the agreement read in part, referring to the date that Sangji, 23, suffered fatal burns.
Charges remain against her supervisor, chemistry professor Patrick Harran. His arraignment was postponed to Sept. 5 to allow the judge to consider defense motions, including one challenging the credibility of the state’s chief investigator on the case. …
UCLA and Harran have called her death a tragic accident and said she was a seasoned chemist who chose not to wear a protective lab coat. …
In court papers this week, Harran’s lawyers said prosecutors had matched the fingerprints of Brian Baudendistel, a senior special investigator who handled the case for the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, with the prints of a teenager who pleaded no contest to murder in Northern California in 1985.
The defense contends that the investigator, whose report formed the basis for the charges, is the same Brian A. Baudendistel who took part in a plot to rob a drug dealer of $3,000 worth of methamphetamine, then shot him. Another teenager admitted to pulling the trigger but said it was Baudendistel’s shotgun.
Baudendistel told The Times this week that it is a case of mistaken identity and that he is not the individual involved in the 1985 case.
Cal/OSHA defended the integrity of the investigation in a statement issued Friday by spokesman Dean Fryer.
“The defendants’ most recent attempt to deflect attention from the charges brought against them simply does not relate in any way to the circumstances of Ms. Sangji’s death or the actual evidence collected in Cal/OSHA’s comprehensive investigation,” it read.
Deborah Blum adds:
Should chemist-in-training approach hazardous chemicals with extreme caution? Yes. Should she expect her employer to provide her with the necessary information and equipment to engage in such caution? Most of us would argue yes. Should chemistry professors be held to the standard of employee safety as, say, chemical manufacturers or other industries? The most important “yes” to that question comes from Cal/OSHA senior investigator Brian Baudendistal.
Baudendistal concluded that the laboratory operation was careless enough for long enough to justify felony charges of willful negligence. The Sangji family, angered by those suggestions that Sheri’s experience should have taught her better, pushed for prosecution. Late last year the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office officially brought charges against Harran, UCLA, and the University of California system itself. …
[Harran's] lawyers have responded to the Baudendistal report in part by focusing on Baudendistal himself. They claim to have found evidence that in 1985 he and two friends conspired to set up the murder of a drug dealer. All three boys were convicted and although, since they were juveniles, the records were sealed, attorneys were able to identify the killers through press coverage at the time. Although Baudendistal has insisted that Harran’s defense team tracked down the wrong man, they say they have a fingerprint match to prove it. They say further that a man who covers up his past history is not credible – and therefore neither is is report on the UCLA laboratory.
I am not a lawyer, so I’m not terribly interested in speculating on the arcane legal considerations that might be driving this move by Harran’s legal team. (Chemjobber speculates that it might be a long shot they’re playing amid plea negotiations that are not going well.)
As someone with a professional interest in crime and punishment within scientific communities, and in ethics more broadly, I do, however, think it’s worth examining the logic of Patrick Harran’s legal strategy.
The strategy, as I understand it, is to cast aspersions on the Cal/OSHA report on the basis of the legal history of the senior investigator that prepared it — specifically, his alleged involvement as a teenager in 1985 in a murder plot.
Does a past bad act like this serve as prima facie reason to doubt the accuracy of the report of the investigation of conditions in Harran’s lab? It’s not clear how it could, especially if there were other investigators on the team, not alleged to be involved in such criminal behavior, who endorsed the claims in the report.v Unless, of course, the reason Harran’s legal team thinks we should doubt the accuracy of the report is that the senior investigator who prepared it is a habitual liar. To support the claim that he cannot be trusted, they point to a single alleged lie — denying involvement in the 1985 murder plot.
But this strikes me as a particularly dangerous strategy for Patrick Harran to pursue.
Essentially, the strategy rests on the claim that if a person has lied about some particular issue, we should assume that any claim that person makes, about whatever issue, might also be a lie. I’m not unsympathetic to this claim — trust is something that is earned, not simply assumed in the absence of clear evidence of dishonesty.
However, this same reasoning cannot help Patrick Harran’s credibility, given that he is on record describing Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old with a bachelor’s degree, as an experienced chemist. Many have noted already that claiming Sheri Sangji was a experienced chemist is ridiculous on its face.
Thus, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Patrick Harran lied when he described Sheri Sangji as an experienced chemist. And, if this is the case, following the reasoning advocated by his legal team, we must doubt the credibility of every other claim he has made — including claims about the safety training he did or did not provide to people in his lab, conditions in his lab in 2008 when the fatal accident happened, even whether he recommended that Sangji wear a lab coat.
If Patrick Harran was not lying when he said he believed Sheri Sangji was an experienced chemist, the other possibility is that he is incredibly stupid — certainly too stupid to be in charge of a lab where people work with potentially hazardous chemicals.Some might posit that Harran’s claims about Sangji’s chemical experience were made on the advice of his legal team. That may well be, but I’m unclear on how lying on the advice of counsel is any less a lie. (If it is, this might well mitigate the “lie of omission” of an investigator advised by his lawyers that his juvenile record is sealed.) And if one lie is all it takes to decimate credibility, Harran is surely as vulnerable as Baudendistel.
Finally, a piece of free advice to PIs worrying that they may find themselves facing criminal charges should their students, postdocs, or technicians choose not to wear lab coats or other safety gear: It is perfectly reasonable to establish, and enforce, a lab policy that states that those choosing to opt out of the required safety equipment are also opting out of access to the laboratory.
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat
It's ridiculous to say that teachers and administrators in Georgia and elsewhere committed crimes only because they had to give high-stakes tests to students.
The Georgia indictments are, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg of White Chalk Crime in schools.
The indicted educators tried to get rewards that they had no right to, and to take them away from those who deserved them. This happens all the time in schools. It's the reason the education system is failing. The wrong people are in charge of most districts, and too many of the wrong people are teaching kids.
If we had a system for correctly evaluating teachers, like this one, we wouldn't need to test kids so much, and we would save billion dollars a year. We could trust the teachers to do their job, and part of that job is to know exactly what each child knows and how each child learns best. Standardized testing could go back to its original purpose: to make an official determination of which kids are most advanced academically.
It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat
By Michael J. Feuer
Edweek.org.
April 9, 2013
News came down, or up, earlier this month about the indictment of the former Atlanta schools chief Beverly Hall and 35 other current and former officials for their alleged roles in a massive cheating scandal that has rocked the city for the past three years.
The best coverage of this story is by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Heather Vogell and her colleagues, whose fine journalism uncovered the muck.
There is nothing good to say about cheating on tests, which, in this extraordinary case, involves allegations of tampering with student answers, racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy, and making false statements. It’s wrong, period, and if Ms. Hall et al. are found guilty, they will hopefully use their time in jail to think about the damage they have caused to the kids, to the system, and to the public’s trust in schools and in the measures we use to gauge their quality.
Still, some of the reactions to the scandal have been surprising, if not scandalous in their own right. The most troubling response comes from people opposed to standardized testing generally and to current federal policy specifically. They somewhat gleefully use this sorry episode as the ultimate smoking gun, the perfect we-told-you-so case that clinches their claims about the evils of testing, and, by extension, the entire reform movement. It’s a big nail, they hope, in the coffin of test-based accountability.
"Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct?"
Among the more remarkable statements is one posted by William C. Ayers on Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post blog. For Bill Ayers, an education professor emeritus from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Atlanta story proves that “teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the ‘outcomes’ both incentivizes cheating and is a worthless proxy for learning.”
Mr. Ayers goes further. Not only does he attribute the alleged cheating to the testing policy, thereby essentially absolving Ms. Hall and her colleagues of their own ethical and professional lapses, but he uses the example to issue a sprawling condemnation of the U.S. Department of Education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and even the president. As he puts it, “the road to the massive cheating scandal in Atlanta runs right through the White House.”
I have four problems with this logic (echoed in other commentaries, such as Jason Stanford’s bold assertion in the Huffington Post that “high-stakes testing makes cheating inevitable”; and FairTest’s pronouncement in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed last year that “[t]hese scandals are the predictable result of overreliance on test scores”).
First, shifting the blame for egregious mischief away from the perpetrators and onto the system strikes me as morally and politically bankrupt. Here’s an analogy to consider: Do we react to the worst instances of tax evasion by condemning the concept of taxation rather than by prosecuting the evaders? I assume that Mr. Ayers would not call for abolition of the graduated income tax as a way to finance public goods and redistribute wealth just because the system has its imperfections and because some people lie on their tax returns. Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct? Banking executives accused of fraud will be delighted.
Second, even if one could make an evidence-informed case that testing “inevitably” leads to illegal behavior—as if high-stakes testing overwhelms the human capacity for moral choice—there is the added problem of guilt by association. Pinning the responsibility for the Atlanta disaster on the White House is an extravagant example of misdirected blame. Maybe current federal policies lead to unwanted outcomes, such as narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test, but that’s a far cry from the outright fraud of the sort listed in the Atlanta indictment. Nothing in the No Child Left Behind law requires states or districts to use test scores to fire teachers and principals or to protect and reward those who achieve targets by tampering with answer sheets. In any case, there’s no evidence that federal policy causes cheating, or that “cheating is inevitable.”
Third, indicting testing, rather than cheating, undermines the possibility for reform in the design and uses of tests. The compelling logic in Campbell’s Law—“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decisionmaking, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures ...” —is supported by abundant empirical evidence on the effects of overreliance on tests for accountability.
But what’s often ignored in the popular frenzy against testing, especially in the wake of cheating scandals, is the benefits side of the argument: Tests can help gauge individual learning, give teachers additional information about their students’ progress, provide objective indicators of student achievement, and expose inequalities in the allocation of educational resources.
We may never be able to completely “overturn” Campbell’s Law, but what’s needed is a sensible approach to assessing the ratio of benefits to costs and to the design of mechanisms meant to keep the ratio strongly positive.
Fourth, it turns out that in Atlanta there were schools, and kids, that actually did improve during Ms. Hall’s tenure, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics Sean P. “Jack” Buckley noted, “There were obviously rampant violations of testing integrity going on there, but there were also schools there that were legitimately improving.”
We shouldn’t allow score gains inflated from cheating to be misconstrued as evidence that any measured improvement in student learning—especially among poor and minority children—must always be the result of cheating or other mischief. This kind of smoking-gun logic saps the morale of educators, parents, and policymakers working in behalf of our most disadvantaged students and provides free ammunition to those who believe investments in public education are essentially futile. Just when we education researchers and social scientists are facing increasingly mean-spirited political challenges to our profession, Bill Ayers’ and others’ evidence-free diatribes further erode public confidence in the credibility of our work. One can only hope that the temptations of guilt by association won’t prevail, and that the research community as a whole won’t be blamed for the shoddy logic of some of its members.
Michael J. Feuer is a professor of education policy, the dean of the graduate school of education and human development at the George Washington University, and president-elect of the National Academy of Education.
The Georgia indictments are, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg of White Chalk Crime in schools.
The indicted educators tried to get rewards that they had no right to, and to take them away from those who deserved them. This happens all the time in schools. It's the reason the education system is failing. The wrong people are in charge of most districts, and too many of the wrong people are teaching kids.
If we had a system for correctly evaluating teachers, like this one, we wouldn't need to test kids so much, and we would save billion dollars a year. We could trust the teachers to do their job, and part of that job is to know exactly what each child knows and how each child learns best. Standardized testing could go back to its original purpose: to make an official determination of which kids are most advanced academically.
It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat
By Michael J. Feuer
Edweek.org.
April 9, 2013
News came down, or up, earlier this month about the indictment of the former Atlanta schools chief Beverly Hall and 35 other current and former officials for their alleged roles in a massive cheating scandal that has rocked the city for the past three years.
The best coverage of this story is by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Heather Vogell and her colleagues, whose fine journalism uncovered the muck.
There is nothing good to say about cheating on tests, which, in this extraordinary case, involves allegations of tampering with student answers, racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy, and making false statements. It’s wrong, period, and if Ms. Hall et al. are found guilty, they will hopefully use their time in jail to think about the damage they have caused to the kids, to the system, and to the public’s trust in schools and in the measures we use to gauge their quality.
Still, some of the reactions to the scandal have been surprising, if not scandalous in their own right. The most troubling response comes from people opposed to standardized testing generally and to current federal policy specifically. They somewhat gleefully use this sorry episode as the ultimate smoking gun, the perfect we-told-you-so case that clinches their claims about the evils of testing, and, by extension, the entire reform movement. It’s a big nail, they hope, in the coffin of test-based accountability.
"Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct?"
Among the more remarkable statements is one posted by William C. Ayers on Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post blog. For Bill Ayers, an education professor emeritus from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Atlanta story proves that “teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the ‘outcomes’ both incentivizes cheating and is a worthless proxy for learning.”
Mr. Ayers goes further. Not only does he attribute the alleged cheating to the testing policy, thereby essentially absolving Ms. Hall and her colleagues of their own ethical and professional lapses, but he uses the example to issue a sprawling condemnation of the U.S. Department of Education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and even the president. As he puts it, “the road to the massive cheating scandal in Atlanta runs right through the White House.”
I have four problems with this logic (echoed in other commentaries, such as Jason Stanford’s bold assertion in the Huffington Post that “high-stakes testing makes cheating inevitable”; and FairTest’s pronouncement in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed last year that “[t]hese scandals are the predictable result of overreliance on test scores”).
First, shifting the blame for egregious mischief away from the perpetrators and onto the system strikes me as morally and politically bankrupt. Here’s an analogy to consider: Do we react to the worst instances of tax evasion by condemning the concept of taxation rather than by prosecuting the evaders? I assume that Mr. Ayers would not call for abolition of the graduated income tax as a way to finance public goods and redistribute wealth just because the system has its imperfections and because some people lie on their tax returns. Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct? Banking executives accused of fraud will be delighted.
Second, even if one could make an evidence-informed case that testing “inevitably” leads to illegal behavior—as if high-stakes testing overwhelms the human capacity for moral choice—there is the added problem of guilt by association. Pinning the responsibility for the Atlanta disaster on the White House is an extravagant example of misdirected blame. Maybe current federal policies lead to unwanted outcomes, such as narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test, but that’s a far cry from the outright fraud of the sort listed in the Atlanta indictment. Nothing in the No Child Left Behind law requires states or districts to use test scores to fire teachers and principals or to protect and reward those who achieve targets by tampering with answer sheets. In any case, there’s no evidence that federal policy causes cheating, or that “cheating is inevitable.”
Third, indicting testing, rather than cheating, undermines the possibility for reform in the design and uses of tests. The compelling logic in Campbell’s Law—“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decisionmaking, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures ...” —is supported by abundant empirical evidence on the effects of overreliance on tests for accountability.
But what’s often ignored in the popular frenzy against testing, especially in the wake of cheating scandals, is the benefits side of the argument: Tests can help gauge individual learning, give teachers additional information about their students’ progress, provide objective indicators of student achievement, and expose inequalities in the allocation of educational resources.
We may never be able to completely “overturn” Campbell’s Law, but what’s needed is a sensible approach to assessing the ratio of benefits to costs and to the design of mechanisms meant to keep the ratio strongly positive.
Fourth, it turns out that in Atlanta there were schools, and kids, that actually did improve during Ms. Hall’s tenure, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics Sean P. “Jack” Buckley noted, “There were obviously rampant violations of testing integrity going on there, but there were also schools there that were legitimately improving.”
We shouldn’t allow score gains inflated from cheating to be misconstrued as evidence that any measured improvement in student learning—especially among poor and minority children—must always be the result of cheating or other mischief. This kind of smoking-gun logic saps the morale of educators, parents, and policymakers working in behalf of our most disadvantaged students and provides free ammunition to those who believe investments in public education are essentially futile. Just when we education researchers and social scientists are facing increasingly mean-spirited political challenges to our profession, Bill Ayers’ and others’ evidence-free diatribes further erode public confidence in the credibility of our work. One can only hope that the temptations of guilt by association won’t prevail, and that the research community as a whole won’t be blamed for the shoddy logic of some of its members.
Michael J. Feuer is a professor of education policy, the dean of the graduate school of education and human development at the George Washington University, and president-elect of the National Academy of Education.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Murder plot allegation against fifth-graders stuns Washington town
I am nonplussed, just like prosecutor Timothy Rasmussen and, I'm sure, the parents of the two boys in the story below. (I just looked up the meaning of the word "nonplussed", which I never quite managed to figure out. It turns out that the word has a standard meaning synonymous with "perplexed" and "confused"--that's the meaning I intend here. It comes from the French "no more", used when a person runs out of arguments and gives up. But the word is frequently misused to mean "unfazed", hence my confusion.)
A teacher with a gun would have been no help at all in this case. And as my prior post shows, some teachers have very bad judgment, and can not be trusted with guns.
It seems to me we need better mental health care for everybody in school: students, parents and staff members.
Murder plot allegation against fifth-graders stuns Washington town
Two fifth-graders in Colville, Wash., may be charged with conspiracy to commit murder after a knife and gun are found in a backpack at school.
By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times
February 14, 2013
SEATTLE — In what has become a chillingly familiar event across the country, school authorities in eastern Washington recently discovered a gun and a knife in the backpack of a student. But what stunned the small town of Colville was whom the backpack belonged to: a 10-year-old student at Fort Colville Elementary School.
School authorities said two fifth-grade boys planned to use the weapons to lure another student outside the school and kill her "because she was really annoying."
The boys last week confessed to plans to harm an additional six students at the school.
"This was a plan. And it was a plan to kill," Stevens County prosecuting attorney Timothy Rasmussen said Thursday.
Rasmussen said he would argue that the 10-year-old and his 11-year-old codefendant be held criminally responsible on charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and witness tampering — a charge filed after authorities said the boys promised to pay $80 to a student if he agreed not to tell anyone about the plot.
According to a court affidavit made public this week, the incident came to light shortly before 8 a.m. on Feb. 7, when a fourth-grader told a teacher he had seen an 11-year-old boy with a knife.
The teacher searched that boy's backpack and that of his 10-year-old friend and found the weapons in the friend's backpack. They included a knife with a 3¼-inch blade, a .45-caliber Remington 1911 semiautomatic handgun and an ammunition clip.
"My background is a high school counselor and psychologist, and quite frankly, in 30-plus years, I never heard of anything like this at this age level," said Colville School Supt. Mike Cashion.
Rasmussen was also nonplussed.
"To me, 10- and 11-year-olds do bad things," he said. "They throw rocks through windows. They shoot BB guns at people's cars. They hit people with sticks, they set a cat on fire. Those are things that children do. But this was a plot to kill."
When questioned separately shortly after the weapons were discovered, the boys admitted their plot, authorities said. "I was going to kill her with the knife and [the other boy] was supposed to use the gun to keep anyone from trying to stop me or mess up our plan," the older boy told detectives.
When shown a class list, the boy identified six other classmates who were targeted.
The older boy said he had been friends with the girl for several months "but that he hated her now." He said the girl "had recently become rude and would pick on him."
"The plan was nipped in the bud by other students who saw something and said something," Cashion said, adding that the school had been promoting a program that encourages students to report suspicious things.
Rasmussen said students younger than 8 were considered incapable of committing criminal acts in Washington state. For children between the ages of 8 and 12, the law presumes they are similarly incapable but calls for the court to hold a hearing to determine whether they had the capacity to commit a crime. That hearing is set for Feb. 20.
At a community meeting Wednesday night, Cashion said one parent expressed gratitude that because of the alertness of school staff, the gathering was a forum and not a funeral.
Another asked whether authorities would entertain the possibility of providing teachers with guns in the classroom. Cashion said he responded that the option was under consideration by the Legislature, but that most teachers weren't trained to use guns.
"I told them I can't imagine a teacher taking a gun out, leveling it at a fifth-grader and killing them," he said. "It's the antithesis of what we are."
A teacher with a gun would have been no help at all in this case. And as my prior post shows, some teachers have very bad judgment, and can not be trusted with guns.
It seems to me we need better mental health care for everybody in school: students, parents and staff members.
Murder plot allegation against fifth-graders stuns Washington town
Two fifth-graders in Colville, Wash., may be charged with conspiracy to commit murder after a knife and gun are found in a backpack at school.
By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times
February 14, 2013
SEATTLE — In what has become a chillingly familiar event across the country, school authorities in eastern Washington recently discovered a gun and a knife in the backpack of a student. But what stunned the small town of Colville was whom the backpack belonged to: a 10-year-old student at Fort Colville Elementary School.
School authorities said two fifth-grade boys planned to use the weapons to lure another student outside the school and kill her "because she was really annoying."
The boys last week confessed to plans to harm an additional six students at the school.
"This was a plan. And it was a plan to kill," Stevens County prosecuting attorney Timothy Rasmussen said Thursday.
Rasmussen said he would argue that the 10-year-old and his 11-year-old codefendant be held criminally responsible on charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and witness tampering — a charge filed after authorities said the boys promised to pay $80 to a student if he agreed not to tell anyone about the plot.
According to a court affidavit made public this week, the incident came to light shortly before 8 a.m. on Feb. 7, when a fourth-grader told a teacher he had seen an 11-year-old boy with a knife.
The teacher searched that boy's backpack and that of his 10-year-old friend and found the weapons in the friend's backpack. They included a knife with a 3¼-inch blade, a .45-caliber Remington 1911 semiautomatic handgun and an ammunition clip.
"My background is a high school counselor and psychologist, and quite frankly, in 30-plus years, I never heard of anything like this at this age level," said Colville School Supt. Mike Cashion.
Rasmussen was also nonplussed.
"To me, 10- and 11-year-olds do bad things," he said. "They throw rocks through windows. They shoot BB guns at people's cars. They hit people with sticks, they set a cat on fire. Those are things that children do. But this was a plot to kill."
When questioned separately shortly after the weapons were discovered, the boys admitted their plot, authorities said. "I was going to kill her with the knife and [the other boy] was supposed to use the gun to keep anyone from trying to stop me or mess up our plan," the older boy told detectives.
When shown a class list, the boy identified six other classmates who were targeted.
The older boy said he had been friends with the girl for several months "but that he hated her now." He said the girl "had recently become rude and would pick on him."
"The plan was nipped in the bud by other students who saw something and said something," Cashion said, adding that the school had been promoting a program that encourages students to report suspicious things.
Rasmussen said students younger than 8 were considered incapable of committing criminal acts in Washington state. For children between the ages of 8 and 12, the law presumes they are similarly incapable but calls for the court to hold a hearing to determine whether they had the capacity to commit a crime. That hearing is set for Feb. 20.
At a community meeting Wednesday night, Cashion said one parent expressed gratitude that because of the alertness of school staff, the gathering was a forum and not a funeral.
Another asked whether authorities would entertain the possibility of providing teachers with guns in the classroom. Cashion said he responded that the option was under consideration by the Legislature, but that most teachers weren't trained to use guns.
"I told them I can't imagine a teacher taking a gun out, leveling it at a fifth-grader and killing them," he said. "It's the antithesis of what we are."
Monday, January 21, 2013
Video games weren't cause of Nehemiah Greigo shooting his family
Apparently the link between mass murderer and video games isn't as strong as some people thought. Also, homeschooling doesn't seem to protect children from violent urges, especially when there are guns in the closet.
New Mexico homeschooled teen Nehemiah Griego accused of murdering family...
BY DAREH GREGORIAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
JANUARY 21, 2013
...Local media said the home schooled teen wasn’t allowed to play video games, and that his family never let him watch violent shows on television.
Sources told the paper the teen had long had murder/suicide fantasies.
New Mexico homeschooled teen Nehemiah Griego accused of murdering family...
BY DAREH GREGORIAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
JANUARY 21, 2013
...Local media said the home schooled teen wasn’t allowed to play video games, and that his family never let him watch violent shows on television.
Sources told the paper the teen had long had murder/suicide fantasies.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Former top lawyer for Murdoch newspaper arrested
News of the World's Former Top Lawyer Arrested
By PAUL SONNE And CASSELL BRYAN-LOW
Wall Street Journal
August 30, 2012
British police on Thursday arrested the former top lawyer at News Corp.'s News of the World tabloid on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, a person with knowledge of the matter said, marking one of the most high-profile arrests in a continuing police probe into wrongdoing at the shuttered tabloid.
London's Metropolitan Police confirmed Thursday that officers investigating illegal voicemail interception at the News of the World had arrested a 60-year-old man and brought him in for questioning at a South London police station, but the force declined to identify the suspect.
A person with knowledge of the situation, however, identified the person as Tom Crone, the lawyer who served as the News of the World's in-house counsel for more than 25 years until News Corp. closed the weekly tabloid at the apex of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011...
The 60-year-old lawyer became one of the phone-hacking saga's most visible figures last year when he and former News of the World editor Colin Myler broke ranks with their former employer to dispute an element of News Corp. executive James Murdoch's testimony to a parliamentary committee.
Messrs. Crone and Myler said they had informed Mr. Murdoch in 2008 of a controversial email whose contents suggested the practice of hacking mobile-phone voicemails went beyond what the company had initially admitted. But Mr. Murdoch said he hadn't been informed of the email's contents at the time and learned the scope of the wrongdoing at the paper only in late 2010, a position he reiterated upon further questioning.
A spokeswoman for News International, the U.K. newspaper unit of News Corp., declined to comment on Thursday's arrest. She didn't say whether the company is paying Mr. Crone's legal bills. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Crone was a veteran lawyer on Fleet Street. He often vetted the News of the World's raciest stories ahead of publication and went to court to defend the paper against high-profile libel claims brought by celebrities.
The longtime News of the World lawyer was one of three people the U.K. Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee censured in a May report for misleading Parliament during hearings on the phone-hacking matter...
By PAUL SONNE And CASSELL BRYAN-LOW
Wall Street Journal
August 30, 2012
British police on Thursday arrested the former top lawyer at News Corp.'s News of the World tabloid on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, a person with knowledge of the matter said, marking one of the most high-profile arrests in a continuing police probe into wrongdoing at the shuttered tabloid.
London's Metropolitan Police confirmed Thursday that officers investigating illegal voicemail interception at the News of the World had arrested a 60-year-old man and brought him in for questioning at a South London police station, but the force declined to identify the suspect.
A person with knowledge of the situation, however, identified the person as Tom Crone, the lawyer who served as the News of the World's in-house counsel for more than 25 years until News Corp. closed the weekly tabloid at the apex of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011...
The 60-year-old lawyer became one of the phone-hacking saga's most visible figures last year when he and former News of the World editor Colin Myler broke ranks with their former employer to dispute an element of News Corp. executive James Murdoch's testimony to a parliamentary committee.
Messrs. Crone and Myler said they had informed Mr. Murdoch in 2008 of a controversial email whose contents suggested the practice of hacking mobile-phone voicemails went beyond what the company had initially admitted. But Mr. Murdoch said he hadn't been informed of the email's contents at the time and learned the scope of the wrongdoing at the paper only in late 2010, a position he reiterated upon further questioning.
A spokeswoman for News International, the U.K. newspaper unit of News Corp., declined to comment on Thursday's arrest. She didn't say whether the company is paying Mr. Crone's legal bills. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Crone was a veteran lawyer on Fleet Street. He often vetted the News of the World's raciest stories ahead of publication and went to court to defend the paper against high-profile libel claims brought by celebrities.
The longtime News of the World lawyer was one of three people the U.K. Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee censured in a May report for misleading Parliament during hearings on the phone-hacking matter...
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Instead of laughing at sex doll prank, school has student charged with felony
Teen faces prison after sex doll prank goes awry
The Associated Press
July 5, 2011
When 18-year-old Tyell Morton put a blow-up sex doll in a bathroom stall on the last day of school, he didn't expect school officials to call a bomb squad or that he'd be facing up to eight years in prison and a possible felony record.
The senior prank gone awry has raised questions of race, prosecutorial zeal and the post-Columbine mindset in a small Indiana town and around the country, The Indianapolis Star reported in its Tuesday editions.
Legal experts question the appropriateness of the charges against Morton, and law professor Jonathan Turley at George Washington University posed a wider question about Morton's case on his legal blog.
"The question is what type of society we are creating when our children have to fear that a prank (could) lead them to jail for almost a decade. What type of citizens are we creating who fear the arbitrary use of criminal charges by their government?"
A janitor at Rushville Consolidated High School saw Morton run away from the school May 31, and security footage showed a person in a hooded sweatshirt and gloves entering the school with a package and leaving five minutes later without it, according to court documents.
Administrators feared explosives, so they locked down the school and called police. K9 dogs and a bomb squad searched the building before finding the sex doll.
"We have reviewed this situation numerous times," Rush County Schools Superintendent John E. Williams told the newspaper last week. "When you have an unknown intruder in the building, delivering an unknown package, we come up with the same conclusion. ... We cannot be too cautious, in this day and age."
Morton was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and institutional criminal mischief, a felony that carries the potential of two to eight years in prison.
"I know there has been plenty of pranks done at that school," said Morton's mother, Cammie Morton. "I went to that school. When I heard what they was charging him for, my heart just dropped."
Joel Schumm, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, questioned the validity of the charges.
"Their reaction is understandable, but use the school disciplinary process," he said. "Don't try to label the kid a felon for the rest of his life."
The Rush County Prosecutor Philip J. Caviness told The Associated Press that he doesn't intend to seek a prison term for Morton, but said school officials acted appropriately and that the charges are warranted.
"I'm pretty comfortable with the charges that we've filed," he said.
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts focused on Morton's case recently in his nationally syndicated column, suggesting that Morton's case was another example of unfair treatment for a black youth without a wealthy family.
Morton's father brushed off that suggestion when Pitts asked him about it, and Morton's mother declined to discuss that point with The Star.
Morton's attorney, Robert Turner, also downplayed race, suggesting that the size of the small blue-collar city an hour southeast of Indianapolis played a role.
"I don't think they do this sort of thing very often," Turner said. "Had this happened in Indianapolis ... they would not have had this kind of charge filed."
Morton's mother said Tyell Morton wants to attend college, but is worried about the case...
The Associated Press
July 5, 2011
When 18-year-old Tyell Morton put a blow-up sex doll in a bathroom stall on the last day of school, he didn't expect school officials to call a bomb squad or that he'd be facing up to eight years in prison and a possible felony record.
The senior prank gone awry has raised questions of race, prosecutorial zeal and the post-Columbine mindset in a small Indiana town and around the country, The Indianapolis Star reported in its Tuesday editions.
Legal experts question the appropriateness of the charges against Morton, and law professor Jonathan Turley at George Washington University posed a wider question about Morton's case on his legal blog.
"The question is what type of society we are creating when our children have to fear that a prank (could) lead them to jail for almost a decade. What type of citizens are we creating who fear the arbitrary use of criminal charges by their government?"
A janitor at Rushville Consolidated High School saw Morton run away from the school May 31, and security footage showed a person in a hooded sweatshirt and gloves entering the school with a package and leaving five minutes later without it, according to court documents.
Administrators feared explosives, so they locked down the school and called police. K9 dogs and a bomb squad searched the building before finding the sex doll.
"We have reviewed this situation numerous times," Rush County Schools Superintendent John E. Williams told the newspaper last week. "When you have an unknown intruder in the building, delivering an unknown package, we come up with the same conclusion. ... We cannot be too cautious, in this day and age."
Morton was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and institutional criminal mischief, a felony that carries the potential of two to eight years in prison.
"I know there has been plenty of pranks done at that school," said Morton's mother, Cammie Morton. "I went to that school. When I heard what they was charging him for, my heart just dropped."
Joel Schumm, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, questioned the validity of the charges.
"Their reaction is understandable, but use the school disciplinary process," he said. "Don't try to label the kid a felon for the rest of his life."
The Rush County Prosecutor Philip J. Caviness told The Associated Press that he doesn't intend to seek a prison term for Morton, but said school officials acted appropriately and that the charges are warranted.
"I'm pretty comfortable with the charges that we've filed," he said.
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts focused on Morton's case recently in his nationally syndicated column, suggesting that Morton's case was another example of unfair treatment for a black youth without a wealthy family.
Morton's father brushed off that suggestion when Pitts asked him about it, and Morton's mother declined to discuss that point with The Star.
Morton's attorney, Robert Turner, also downplayed race, suggesting that the size of the small blue-collar city an hour southeast of Indianapolis played a role.
"I don't think they do this sort of thing very often," Turner said. "Had this happened in Indianapolis ... they would not have had this kind of charge filed."
Morton's mother said Tyell Morton wants to attend college, but is worried about the case...
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Ohio Mom Jailed for Lying About Kids' School Residency
Is this judge admitting that many poor people are forbidden by law from obtaining a good education for their kids?
I have had personal experience of a school district (Chula Vista Elementary) tampering with records, but still it doesn't surprise me that school attorneys would try to put a parent in jail for doing the same thing that some school officials have done. I've come to accept the moral selectivity of school attorneys. The treatment of parents by school attorneys can be shockingly malicious, but those same attorneys work hard to protect school personnel from responsibility for violations of the law.
Ohio Mom Jailed for Lying About Kids' School Residency
Jan 26, 2011
Lisa Flam
AOL News
How far would you go to get your children into a better public school? The best intentions of one Ohio woman landed her in jail.
In a highly unusual case, Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single mother who lived in Akron public housing, was convicted of lying about her residency in order to send her two daughters to a highly ranked school. Her sentence, which inflamed emotions in the community, was 10 days in jail, according to reports, and is due to end this week.
"It's overwhelming. I'm exhausted," she told ABC News. "I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them."
Four years ago, Williams-Bolar, 40, sent her girls, now 12 and 16, to the Copley-Fairlawn school district that was outside her Akron district of residence, reports said. Her father lives in the Copley-Fairlawn district, and she said she lived with him part-time after her home was burglarized and she wanted her children safe.
"When my home got broken into, I felt it was my duty to do something else," Williams-Bolar said, according to ABC.
But the district accused the aspiring teacher of lying about her address, falsifying records and having her father file false court papers to circumvent the rules, ABC said. The school asked her to repay $30,000 in tuition, saying her daughters were getting a quality education without paying taxes to contribute to the cost. She refused and was indicted.
A jury convicted her Jan. 15 of two counts of tampering with records, and she was sentenced three days later, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. She was ordered to begin the sentence immediately and was taken from the courtroom sobbing loudly, the newspaper said.
Before she was sentenced, she told the judge "there was no intention at all" to deceive the school, the Beacon Journal reported, and she pleaded to be spared jail time.
Her father, Edward Williams, 64, went on trial with his daughter, but the jury deadlocked on the charge of grand theft, the paper said.
In a jailhouse interview with the paper last week, Williams-Bolar said she'd do it again if she had to.
"If I had the opportunity, if I had to do it all over again, would I have done it?" she said. After pausing, she answered: "I would have done it again. But I would have been more detailed. ... I think they wanted to make an example of me."
Presiding Judge Patricia Cosgrove seemed to agree.
"I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school districts," she said, according to ABC.
The school district spent about $6,000 to bring Williams-Bolar to trial, a sum that included hiring a private investigator to follow her and her children, Newschannel5 reported.
Copley-Fairlawn Superintendent Brian Poe said the district has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of children illegally enrolled in its schools. The cases are usually resolved by parents proving they live in the district, taking their kids out of the schools or paying tuition of about $800 a month, the station reported.
Williams-Bolar's case was the first residency challenge to reach a criminal courtroom, but Poe said it was to send a message. "If you're paying taxes on a home here ... those dollars need to stay home with our students," Poe said, according to the station.
The sentence puts Williams-Bolar's teaching career at risk. She is close to graduating with an education degree from the University of Akron and works as a special needs teaching assistant at a high school, the Beacon Journal reported.
"I'm not going to give up on my education," said Williams-Bolar, who plans to appeal the conviction.
But the judge said as of now, she can't become a teacher.
"Because of the felony conviction, you will not be allowed to get your teaching degree under Ohio law as it stands today," the judge said. "The court's taking into consideration that is also a punishment that you will have to serve."...
'A Rosa Parks moment for education'
By Kevin Huffman
Washington Post
January 31, 2011
Last week, 40-year-old Ohio mother Kelley Williams-Bolar was released after serving nine days in jail on a felony conviction for tampering with records. Williams-Bolar's offense? Lying about her address so her two daughters, zoned to the lousy Akron city schools, could attend better schools in the neighboring Copley-Fairlawn district.
Williams-Bolar has become a cause célèbre in a case that crosses traditional ideological bounds. African American activists are outraged, asking: Would a white mother face the same punishment for trying to get her kids a better education? (Answer: No.)
Meanwhile, conservatives view the case as evidence of the need for broader school choice. What does it say when parents' options are so limited that they commit felonies to avoid terrible schools? Commentator Kyle Olson and others across the political spectrum have called this "a Rosa Parks moment for education."
For me, the case struck an additional nerve. As a young teacher nearly two decades ago, I taught bilingual first grade in Houston. Some of my students were in this country illegally; by my third year, a number of them also lived outside the school and district zone. Given their substandard neighborhood options, some parents drove 30 minutes or more each way just so their kids could be in my class. I was supportive of, and flattered by, their efforts. These were good parents, doing the best they could for their families.
In this country, if you are middle or upper class, you have school choice. You can, and probably do, choose your home based on the quality of local schools. Or you can opt out of the system by scraping together the funds for a parochial school.
But if you are poor, you're out of luck, subject to the generally anti-choice bureaucracy. Hoping to win the lottery into an open enrollment "choice" school in your district? Good luck. How about a high-performing charter school? Sure - if your state doesn't limit their numbers and funding like most states do. And vouchers? Hiss! You just touched a political third rail.
ad_icon
Williams-Bolar lived in subsidized housing and was trapped in a failed system. In a Kafkaesque twist, she was taking college-level courses to become a teacher herself - a dream she now will never realize as a convicted felon. It's America's version of the hungry man stealing bread to feed his family, only to have his hand cut off as punishment...
I have had personal experience of a school district (Chula Vista Elementary) tampering with records, but still it doesn't surprise me that school attorneys would try to put a parent in jail for doing the same thing that some school officials have done. I've come to accept the moral selectivity of school attorneys. The treatment of parents by school attorneys can be shockingly malicious, but those same attorneys work hard to protect school personnel from responsibility for violations of the law.
Ohio Mom Jailed for Lying About Kids' School Residency
Jan 26, 2011
Lisa Flam
AOL News
How far would you go to get your children into a better public school? The best intentions of one Ohio woman landed her in jail.
In a highly unusual case, Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single mother who lived in Akron public housing, was convicted of lying about her residency in order to send her two daughters to a highly ranked school. Her sentence, which inflamed emotions in the community, was 10 days in jail, according to reports, and is due to end this week.
"It's overwhelming. I'm exhausted," she told ABC News. "I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them."
Four years ago, Williams-Bolar, 40, sent her girls, now 12 and 16, to the Copley-Fairlawn school district that was outside her Akron district of residence, reports said. Her father lives in the Copley-Fairlawn district, and she said she lived with him part-time after her home was burglarized and she wanted her children safe.
"When my home got broken into, I felt it was my duty to do something else," Williams-Bolar said, according to ABC.
But the district accused the aspiring teacher of lying about her address, falsifying records and having her father file false court papers to circumvent the rules, ABC said. The school asked her to repay $30,000 in tuition, saying her daughters were getting a quality education without paying taxes to contribute to the cost. She refused and was indicted.
A jury convicted her Jan. 15 of two counts of tampering with records, and she was sentenced three days later, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. She was ordered to begin the sentence immediately and was taken from the courtroom sobbing loudly, the newspaper said.
Before she was sentenced, she told the judge "there was no intention at all" to deceive the school, the Beacon Journal reported, and she pleaded to be spared jail time.
Her father, Edward Williams, 64, went on trial with his daughter, but the jury deadlocked on the charge of grand theft, the paper said.
In a jailhouse interview with the paper last week, Williams-Bolar said she'd do it again if she had to.
"If I had the opportunity, if I had to do it all over again, would I have done it?" she said. After pausing, she answered: "I would have done it again. But I would have been more detailed. ... I think they wanted to make an example of me."
Presiding Judge Patricia Cosgrove seemed to agree.
"I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school districts," she said, according to ABC.
The school district spent about $6,000 to bring Williams-Bolar to trial, a sum that included hiring a private investigator to follow her and her children, Newschannel5 reported.
Copley-Fairlawn Superintendent Brian Poe said the district has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of children illegally enrolled in its schools. The cases are usually resolved by parents proving they live in the district, taking their kids out of the schools or paying tuition of about $800 a month, the station reported.
Williams-Bolar's case was the first residency challenge to reach a criminal courtroom, but Poe said it was to send a message. "If you're paying taxes on a home here ... those dollars need to stay home with our students," Poe said, according to the station.
The sentence puts Williams-Bolar's teaching career at risk. She is close to graduating with an education degree from the University of Akron and works as a special needs teaching assistant at a high school, the Beacon Journal reported.
"I'm not going to give up on my education," said Williams-Bolar, who plans to appeal the conviction.
But the judge said as of now, she can't become a teacher.
"Because of the felony conviction, you will not be allowed to get your teaching degree under Ohio law as it stands today," the judge said. "The court's taking into consideration that is also a punishment that you will have to serve."...
'A Rosa Parks moment for education'
By Kevin Huffman
Washington Post
January 31, 2011
Last week, 40-year-old Ohio mother Kelley Williams-Bolar was released after serving nine days in jail on a felony conviction for tampering with records. Williams-Bolar's offense? Lying about her address so her two daughters, zoned to the lousy Akron city schools, could attend better schools in the neighboring Copley-Fairlawn district.
Williams-Bolar has become a cause célèbre in a case that crosses traditional ideological bounds. African American activists are outraged, asking: Would a white mother face the same punishment for trying to get her kids a better education? (Answer: No.)
Meanwhile, conservatives view the case as evidence of the need for broader school choice. What does it say when parents' options are so limited that they commit felonies to avoid terrible schools? Commentator Kyle Olson and others across the political spectrum have called this "a Rosa Parks moment for education."
For me, the case struck an additional nerve. As a young teacher nearly two decades ago, I taught bilingual first grade in Houston. Some of my students were in this country illegally; by my third year, a number of them also lived outside the school and district zone. Given their substandard neighborhood options, some parents drove 30 minutes or more each way just so their kids could be in my class. I was supportive of, and flattered by, their efforts. These were good parents, doing the best they could for their families.
In this country, if you are middle or upper class, you have school choice. You can, and probably do, choose your home based on the quality of local schools. Or you can opt out of the system by scraping together the funds for a parochial school.
But if you are poor, you're out of luck, subject to the generally anti-choice bureaucracy. Hoping to win the lottery into an open enrollment "choice" school in your district? Good luck. How about a high-performing charter school? Sure - if your state doesn't limit their numbers and funding like most states do. And vouchers? Hiss! You just touched a political third rail.
ad_icon
Williams-Bolar lived in subsidized housing and was trapped in a failed system. In a Kafkaesque twist, she was taking college-level courses to become a teacher herself - a dream she now will never realize as a convicted felon. It's America's version of the hungry man stealing bread to feed his family, only to have his hand cut off as punishment...
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Marjorie Cohn says George Bush, Dick Cheney and their lawyers should be tried for crimes
Morning Report: The Anti-War Warrior
If local law professor Marjorie Cohn had her way, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be on trial. And not just them.
Cohn wants to see some of the Bush Administration's attorneys face justice too. After all, she says, they helped the president to break the law.
It's a tough stand, and one that's helped her become one of the nation's leading leftist voices on war crimes and torture.
In this weekend's Q&A, Cohn talks about the nation's two "unlawful" wars, her work defending members of the military who seek to avoid service, and the value of international diplomacy:
Morning Report: The Anti-War Warrior
Voice of San Diego
by Randy Dotinga
September 26, 2009
Can someone be prosecuted for merely having a legal opinion?
They would be prosecuted for advising the president on how he can break the law and get away with it. There were lawyers who were prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity after World War II advising Hitler on how to deport people to secret camps "legally" and get away with it.
What do you think should happen to the lawyers in this case?
They should be investigated and prosecuted under U.S. statutes.
Should they go to prison?
If convicted, yes, they should go to prison...
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Robert Melvin Goode, Jr. pleads guilty to child abuse, sentenced to 12 years
Jodi Breton, assistant D.A., had a great comment regarding the dozens of North County residents who defended Robert Melvin Goode with an avalanche of letters to the D.A. "Everyone seems to hate child molesters unless it's someone they know," she said.
Melvin Goode Jr
UPDATE ON SENTENCING: Click HERE.
UPDATE:
School Official Pleads Guilty To Child Sex Abuse
CHANNEL 10 NEWS
March 19, 2009
VISTA, Calif. -- A 60-year-old former North County school administrator pleaded guilty Thursday to two felonies for sexually abusing a child over six years, beginning when she was 8.
Robert Melvin Goode Jr. will be sentenced to 12 years in state prison at a hearing May 18 before Vista Judge Daniel Goldstein...
ORIGINAL STORY:
Ex-school administrator sought for child-molesting turns himself in
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
February 4, 2009
OCEANSIDE – A former school administrator accused of molesting a child during a six-year period turned himself in to police Wednesday night.
Robert Melvin Goode Jr., 59, is accused of abusing the unidentified child since the age of 8, according to Oceanside police Sgt. Kelan Poorman. The child and parents recently talked to police.
Police said Goode worked as a senior administrator at the following schools: The Classical Academy in Escondido; The Classical Academy High School in Escondido; and The Coastal Academy in Oceanside. Goode was also the high school principal at Tri-City Christian School in Vista between 1983 and 2000, Poorman said.
Police did not say if the child was linked to one of the schools.
The Oceanside resident is expected to be booked into Vista jail on felony charges, according to police.
Melvin Goode JrUPDATE ON SENTENCING: Click HERE.
UPDATE:
School Official Pleads Guilty To Child Sex Abuse
CHANNEL 10 NEWS
March 19, 2009
VISTA, Calif. -- A 60-year-old former North County school administrator pleaded guilty Thursday to two felonies for sexually abusing a child over six years, beginning when she was 8.
Robert Melvin Goode Jr. will be sentenced to 12 years in state prison at a hearing May 18 before Vista Judge Daniel Goldstein...
ORIGINAL STORY:
Ex-school administrator sought for child-molesting turns himself in
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
February 4, 2009
OCEANSIDE – A former school administrator accused of molesting a child during a six-year period turned himself in to police Wednesday night.
Robert Melvin Goode Jr., 59, is accused of abusing the unidentified child since the age of 8, according to Oceanside police Sgt. Kelan Poorman. The child and parents recently talked to police.
Police said Goode worked as a senior administrator at the following schools: The Classical Academy in Escondido; The Classical Academy High School in Escondido; and The Coastal Academy in Oceanside. Goode was also the high school principal at Tri-City Christian School in Vista between 1983 and 2000, Poorman said.
Police did not say if the child was linked to one of the schools.
The Oceanside resident is expected to be booked into Vista jail on felony charges, according to police.
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