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We’ve now moved to a new stage of the racist reaction to the police killing of Michael Brown: the largely overt assertion that he deserved to be killed. In the immediate aftermath of Brown, though unarmed, being shot “multiple times” after being stopped while walking in the middle of the street, the “ballad” being played in some quarters went like this: we don’t know all the facts so we shouldn’t rush to judgment. But, once the Ferguson police released the video of Michael Brown purportedly snatching a box of cigars from the convenience store and intimidating its clerk, that advice...

Report: Chicago To Fight Gun Violence With Letters Chicago police are going to hand deliver letters to people suspected of committing or being victims of gun crimes in an effort to stem violence in the city, according to a new report. Starting Friday, a district commander will be delivering letters warning certain targets in that district not to commit violent crimes, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The pilot program is targeting individuals off a “heat list” developed by a Yale professor, who studied murders on Chicago’s West Side between 2005 and 2010 and found a small network of people was responsible...

Oakland Residents Upset Over Lockpicking Workshop OAKLAND, Calif. -- City leaders in Oakland have been getting some angry e-mails lately from some of the people they serve. Mayor Jean Quan is the major target after her newsletter appears to promote a class designed to teach people how to pick a lock. In a city with a crime problem, it's easy to see why they're not happy. The name of the class appears among 40 others in the catalog for the upcoming "Workshop Weekend" in Oakland, right alongside things like "robot building." It's a 3-hour class called "Introduction to Lockpicking" and...

Mass killer's Norwegian prison cell has treadmill, computer access Accused mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's Norwegian prison cell is more spacious than most New York City apartments. The confessed killer, who will receive his sentence Friday for killing 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage at a youth camp, was transported Wednesday to Norway's Ila Prison, just outside Oslo. The high-security prison offers Breivik not one, but three 86-square-foot cells. One cell functions as a bedroom, another as an exercise room, complete with treadmill, and the third is a study, where Breivik can use a laptop computer. Officials at...

Welcome To The World's Nicest Prison BASTOY, Norway (CNN) -- Jan Petter Vala, who is serving a prison sentence for murder, has hands the size of dinner plates and shoulders like those of an ox. In an alcoholic rage, he used his brutish strength to strangle his girlfriend to death a few years ago. On a recent Thursday, however, at this summer-camp-like island prison in southern Norway, where convicts hold keys to their rooms and there are no armed guards or fences, Vala used those same enormous hands to help bring life into the world. The 42-year-old murderer stood watch...

700 gather outside San Quentin for Occupy protest As many as 700 peaceful Occupy demonstrators gathered outside San Quentin State Prison this afternoon as part of a nationwide effort to call for prison reform. "It's been an amazing day," said Crystal Bybee, a spokeswoman for the local Occupy 4 Prisoners group. "We've had hundreds of people out here reading messages from prisoners and speaking out about issues that are important to us." Among the reforms protest organizers are calling for are elimination of solitary confinement, a ban on the death penalty and an end to California's "three-strikes" law. The protest...

New Jersey to consider abolishing death penalty Tue May 8, 2007 2:43PM EDT By Jon Hurdle PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - New Jersey lawmakers will consider abolishing the death penalty this week, starting a process that could see the liberal state become the first to scrap capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. On Thursday, the judiciary committee of the state Senate will consider two bills calling for New Jersey to replace execution with life imprisonment without parole. Capital punishment in the state is already suspended under a moratorium passed by legislators in late 2005. Sen. Ray Lesniak,...

5-year term for investigator in forgery case - "I believe that the death penalty is illegal...It is barbaric and an atrocity...Any acts I committed are out of a firm belief against the state killing these people." Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau Tuesday, May 1, 2007 (05-01) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- A former criminal defense investigator accused of forging statements from jurors, witnesses and others in death penalty cases pleaded guilty to four charges Monday and accepted a five-year prison sentence. Kathleen Culhane, 40, said outside a Sacramento courtroom that she filed incorrect documents on behalf of five condemned inmates because...

California's troubled prisons are being investigated anew, this time for relying on violent felons to help keep order behind bars.The practice has led to two slayings in just over one year. The Associated Press has found that the killings of a guard and an inmate involved so-called ``peacekeepers.'' These are the high-ranking gang members and other influential prisoners entrusted with controlling fellow inmates, smoothing racial tension and cooperating with staff. The practice has drawn previously unreported scrutiny from federal investigators, who are probing a peacekeeper's role in the Sacramento-area shooting of a prisoner by a guard. Prison system investigators have...