Thomas Hagan, the only man who admitted his role in the 1965 assassination of iconic black leader Malcolm X, was paroled Tuesday.
Hagan was freed a day earlier than planned because his paperwork was processed more quickly than anticipated, according to the New York State Department of Correctional Services.
Hagan, 69, walked out of the minimum-security Lincoln Correctional Facility at 11 a.m. The facility is located at the intersection of West 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.
Hagan had been in a full-time work-release program since March 1992 that allowed him to live at home with his family in Brooklyn five days a week while reporting to the prison just two days.
Last month, Hagan pleaded his case for freedom: To return to his family, to become a substance abuse counselor and to make his mark on what time he has left in this world...
Hagan was no ordinary prisoner. He is the only man to have confessed in the killing of Malcolm X, who was gunned down while giving a speech in New York's Audubon Ballroom in 1965.
"I have deep regrets about my participation in that," he told the parole board on March 3, according to a transcript. "I don't think it should ever have happened."
Hagan had been sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment after being found guilty at trial with two others in 1966. The other two men were released in the 1980s and have long denied involvement in the killing...
AP This undated photo provided by the San Mateo Sheriff's department shows Gregory Lee Giusti.
I'm beginning to wonder if tea partiers (or tea baggers) have any respect for American government. Apparently democracy is only acceptable to them if they get what they want. They want to flush it and create anarchy the minute their faction loses control of the apparatus of government. There seems to be no concept of a loyal opposition among many so-called Americans. It's sad that there is so little loyalty or allegiance to our government among those who oppose health care reform. It's a serious threat to our American way of life.
The San Francisco man arrested Wednesday for allegedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her support for health care reform spent five years harassing a local church - until its custodian helped break the case involving Pelosi, the church's lawyer said.
Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, made at least four dozen harassing and threatening phone calls to Pelosi's homes in St. Helena and Washington as well as her husband's San Francisco office, authorities said.
The torrent of calls, they said, occurred from Feb. 6 to March 25, with Giusti telling Pelosi that if she wanted to see her home again she would vote against the pending health care reform bill.
Giusti, who was arrested at noon at his Tenderloin apartment, is scheduled to appear this morning to answer charges at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The complaint against him is sealed, said FBI spokesman Joseph Schadler.
Giusti has a history of making threats. In 2004, he was convicted of threatening to kill a conductor after being booted off a train car in San Mateo County, prosecutors said.
He was linked to the Pelosi case with the help of members of the Hamilton Square Baptist Church on Geary Boulevard...
WASHINGTON – The FBI arrested a northern California man Wednesday for allegedly making threatening phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over health care reform, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
Charges against the man have yet to be disclosed, but they are expected to be filed in federal court in California.
Several federal officials said the man made dozens of calls to Pelosi's homes in California and Washington, as well as to her husband's business office. They said he recited her home address and said if she wanted to see it again, she would not support the health care overhaul bill that since has been enacted.
One official said the man is believed to have spoken directly with Pelosi at least once...
The skeletal remains of missing Escondido teenager Amber Dubois have been found more than a year after she vanished while walking to school one morning, authorities announced Sunday.
“The discovery was made in the early morning hours Saturday in a very rugged and remote area of Pala,” said Escondido Police Chief Jim Maher. “Escondido police and sheriff’s homicide detectives were following a lead in the case when they made the discovery.”
The remains, found north of the Pala reservation, were positively identified through dental records Saturday afternoon...
Her family said it was unlikely she ran away. She had no extra clothes, and she was excited to purchase a lamb she was going to raise through the school’s agricultural program. The $200 check she carried to school that day has never been cashed, police said...
San Diego County Sheriff's Department divers head towards a creekside area at Kit Carson Park in Escondido on Friday. Searchers found her remains in Pala late Saturday. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)
Escondido police announced Sunday the discovery of the remains of Amber Dubois in Pala.
The Escondido teen went missing on Feb. 13, 2009 and has been missing since. She was 14 years old at the time.
“The discovery was made in the early morning hours of Saturday in a very rugged and remote section of Pala,” Escondido police Chief Jim Maher said at a news conference.
Tthe San Diego County medical examiner’s office identified the body using dental records and Dubois’ parents were notified.
Officials did not give details on the investigation or whether it’s related to the arrest of John Albert Gardner III, who was charged in the death of 17-year-old Chelsea King last week...
Times Picayune photo Lance Madison is arrested by State Police and NOPD SWAT members on Sept. 4, 2005, after a confrontation with police near the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans. Ronald Madison, Lance Madison's brother, was shot to death that day.
Ex-Officer Pleads Guilty in Katrina Killing Probe Mary Foster and Mike Jenzelman AP Feb. 25, 2010 In Hurricane Katrina's chaotic aftermath, police shot six people -- killing two -- as they crossed a bridge in search of food. For years the case was a shocking symbol of the confusion and violence that swept through the flooded city. On Wednesday it became a mark of shame for the police department.
As victims' relatives watched from the courtroom gallery, a retired lieutenant who supervised the department's probe of the shootings pleaded guilty to orchestrating a cover-up to conceal that police gunned down unarmed civilians.
Michael Lohman, a 21-year veteran of the force, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Prosecutors said Lohman and other unidentified officers conspired to fabricate witness statements, falsify reports of the incident and plant a gun in an attempt to make it appear the killings were justified.
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said the investigation is continuing and would not say whether higher-ranking officials of the police department might be involved.
Lohman's plea brought at least some closure to families of victims in the best-known of several violent incidents that raised questions about police conduct immediately after Katrina. The shootings happened on Sept. 4, 2005, six days after the storm smashed levees and flooded 80 percent of the city.
Survivors have said the officers fired at unarmed people who were crossing to get food at a grocery store. The officers claimed they opened fire only after being shot at. Ronald Madison, 40 and mentally disabled, and James Brissette, 19, were killed and four others were wounded.
"We are very, very happy about the progress that the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department have made," said Romell Madison, Ronald's brother. "The people of New Orleans should be relieved that there is still justice for everybody here."
Lohman's plea marked the first conviction in the case. Seven officers were charged with murder or attempted murder but a state judge threw out all the charges. Federal authorities then stepped in to investigate...
"It looks like the blue code has been broken," former U.S. Attorney Harry Rosenberg said. "Remember, those officers stood shoulder to shoulder when it was in state court. Nobody said anything."
The "blue code" is likely to face further tests with Lohman's cooperation as federal prosecutors probe the fatal shooting by police of Danny Brumfield Sr. outside the New Orleans convention center; the death of Henry Glover, whom witnesses claim died in police custody; and the fatal police shooting of a Connecticut man, Matthew McDonald...
The University of Alabama biology professor accused of slaying three of her colleagues fatally shot her brother in an apparent accident in Massachusetts more than two decades ago, a local police chief said.
Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier confirmed the 1986 shooting in his town and slated a news conference this afternoon to discuss the incident.
The Globe reported at the time that Amy Bishop had shot her 18-year-old brother, Seth M. Bishop, an accomplished violinist who had won a number of science awards.
John Polio, chief of police at the time, said Amy Bishop, who was 20 at the time, had asked her mother, Judith, in the presence of her brother how to unload a round from the chamber of a 12-gauge shotgun.
Polio told the Globe that while Amy Bishop was handling the weapon, it fired, wounding Seth Bishop in the abdomen. He was pronounced dead at a hospital 46 minutes after the Dec. 6, 1986 shooting.
"Every indication at this point in time leads us to believe it was an accidental shooting," Polio said at the time.
In Friday's shooting, Amy Bishop, 42, a Harvard-educated neurobiologist, allegedly shot and killed three of her colleagues and wounded three others in an apparent tenure dispute at the Huntsville campus, the Associated Press reports.
DID AUTHORITIES COVER UP A MURDER? DID SHE HAVE CONNECTIONS?
...At a news conference in her former hometown of Braintree, Police Chief Paul Frazier said the biology professor had killed her brother in 1986.
It was reported as being an accident at the time, but he said officers who were serving then had told him that Ms Bishop shot the young man after an argument and fled the scene before being arrested at gunpoint.
Mr Frazier alleged she was never charged after the then police chief, John Polio, or someone acting on his behalf, intervened and told officers to release Ms Bishop. He added that detailed records of the incident had been missing for more than 20 years.
"It is a far different story than what was reported at the time," Mr Frazier said...
A woman opened fire during a meeting of teaching staff at the University of Alabama's Huntsville campus Friday, killing three faculty members and wounding three others, according to university spokesman Ray Garner.
A professor was in custody Friday night in connection with the shooting, but Mr. Garner said he couldn't yet name her or the victims, or provide a possible motive. Local television media reported that the shooter was a female faculty member who learned during a biology tenure meeting that she wouldn't receive tenure, and pulled out a gun and started shooting.
Mr. Garner said no students were involved.
The Huntsville Times reported that Amy Bishop, a Harvard University-trained neuroscientist was taken into custody without a struggle, and that her husband was also detained. They haven't been charged with a crime. The Huntsville police wouldn't name the people in custody.
Nov 30, 2009 Mike Huckabee's fatally bad judgment Brutality by another Huck-pardoned criminal suggests the 2012 GOP hopeful listened more to pastors than prosecutors By Joe Conason Reuters and AP
Maurice Clemmons, a person of interest in the killing of four Lakewood Police officers in Parkland, Wash., Sunday.
If clemency for Maurice Clemmons were the only fatal error committed by Mike Huckabee as governor of Arkansas, he might be able to shift blame to the state's law enforcement system and even run for president again in 2012. Yet the Clemmons commutation that he granted nine years ago is only one among several cases that raise serious questions about Huckabee's judgment.
[When] Clemmons, the fugitive suspect in the shooting deaths of four police officers, was hit in the torso by return fire from one of the cops who later died, he escaped...
The damage to his political future will hinge on how deeply news organizations now delve into those cases -- and the bizarre faith-based rationale behind his use of the clemency and pardon powers of the governor.
Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state's draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.
No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee's tendency to believe such pious testimonials...
Surely the most notorious instance of misplaced mercy involved Wayne Dumond, a rapist and murderer now deceased, who was originally sent to prison in Arkansas for raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. During Clinton's presidency the Dumond case became an obsession among certain right-wing pundits and politicians, who insisted that Dumond had been framed and brutalized by the "Clinton machine." When Huckabee became governor, he supported a parole for Dumond, winning applause from the Republican right -- until the former prisoner raped and killed a young woman in Missouri. Dumond later died in prison, under suspicion that he had murdered at least one other woman after his Arkansas release -- a tragic outcome for which Huckabee has repeatedly tried to blame others, including his two Democratic predecessors in the statehouse.
The real engine behind Dumond's release, however, was a Baptist minister and ultra-conservative ideologue named Jay Cole, who also happened to be a friend of Huckabee...
