Video Shows Woman Ignored While Dying in New York Mental Hospital

Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Article from Associated Press as reported by FoxNews

After watching the video I was in disbelief that someone actually let this happen with no conscience at all.  I guess by now I shouldn’t be shocked by what people allow to happen when they could have helped but something like this makes me feel ashamed to think there are people that can ignore a situation like this………flagranny2

 

BROOKLYN, N.Y. —  Stunning video from a surveillance camera at a Brooklyn hospital shows a woman dying on the floor of a psychiatric emergency room while staffers ignore her.

The video was released by lawyers suing Kings County Hospital alleging neglect and abuse of mental health patients at the medical facility.

Click here to watch the video.

(when you click on this vide it will take you to the one or several ones taken from different views however the one that was originally posted that I first saw closer resembels the 3rd one down on the list at the right where she was completely ignored.) …flagranny2

The video shows the 49-year-old woman falling out of her chair at about 5:30 a.m. June 19, then lying face-down on the floor and thrashing around before going still. The woman died.

People nearby, including two security guards, do nothing to help. An hour passes before a fellow patient finally gets the attention of a staffer.

The tape also suggests that staff at the hospital might have faked medical charts belonging to the victim, Esmin Green, to cover her lack of treatment, the New York Daily News reported.

Her medical chart claims the Jamaica native got up to walk to the bathroom when she was actually writhing on the floor, the News reported. The records also have Green sitting quietly in her chair when she was already dead.

“Thank God for the videotape because no one would have believed this could have happened,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily News.

The agency that runs the municipal hospital — the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp. — fired six staffers, including the two security guards.

Click here for more on this story from the New York Daily News.

Child killer Mark Dean Schwab faces execution Tuesday

June 29, 2008
Sun-Sentinel
Sarah Lundy|Sentinel Staff Writer

Is lethal injection cruel and unjust punishment?  I personally can’t even consider that the criminal/murderer would think they would have that right, a right they never gave their victim.  After he lead them to the body his only comment was if he could get something from Burger King to eat and drink, That showed such remorse, NOT that hearing that remark made me sick………..flagranny2

Child killer Mark Dean Schwab — who kidnapped, raped and murdered 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa — is set to die Tuesday by lethal injection.

His execution marks Florida’s first state killing since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the commonly used, three-drug lethal cocktail is not cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution.

That ruling ended a de facto moratorium on the death penalty that had swept the nation while the high court focused on the issue.

Since the ruling, nine condemned men have been put to death across the country — far fewer than the “bloodbath” death-penalty opponents had feared would follow the decision.

Now, eyes shift to Florida on Tuesday, when Schwab, barring any last minute legal moves, will become the 10th man to die since the ruling.

“There is no question of his guilt, and the law says [lethal injection] is an appropriate punishment,” said Wayne Holmes, a Seminole-Brevard assistant state attorney and prosecutor on the initial Schwab case.

Junny’s parents, Vicki and Braulio “Junny” Rios-Martinez, could not be reached for comment.

For the past 16 years, Schwab has lived in a 6-by-9-foot cell in Florida State Prison in Starke. He joined death row in 1992 after he was convicted of killing Junny, a little boy who loved surfing and baseball.

On April 18, 1991, Schwab called the 11-year-old’s school and identified himself as the boy’s father. He left a message for Junny to go to a baseball field after school. Witnesses said they saw Junny get into a U-Haul with Schwab.

Five days later, Schwab led investigators to the boy’s body, which he hid inside a footlocker in a palmetto thicket in Canaveral Groves, north of Cocoa.

Schwab was originally scheduled to die by lethal injection Nov. 15. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a last-minute stay that postponed the execution while it considered the lethal-injection issue in a case that originated in Kentucky.

Some had hoped the top court’s decision would quash many of the legal challenges to lethal injection. But the closely watched ruling did little to settle the debate, and some say it has actually sparked more on the issue.

“It’s really started the ball rolling,” said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and a death-penalty expert. The U.S. Supreme Court “hasn’t changed things that much, but there is a more heated discussion,” she said.

Some states — such as Georgia and Texas — are moving forward with executions this year. Texas has 16 scheduled to die before the end of the year.

Others — such as Ohio and Delaware — are examining the way they carry out capital punishment. Last month, a judge in Ohio became the first in the country to order authorities to stop using the three-drug cocktail and opt for a single, large dose of barbiturate, which is often used in animal euthanasia.

“This may have reverberations in other states,” said Ty Alper, associate director of the death penalty clinic at the University of California Berkeley school of law.

It doesn’t appear that Florida is headed toward the one-dose process yet.

Last year, Florida enacted new and detailed procedures for how to administer the three-drug cocktail after convicted-killer Angel Nieves Diaz needed a second dose of the fatal chemicals and took 34 minutes to die in 2006.

The state responded by requiring more staff training and better monitoring of proceedings in the death chamber.

Schwab will be the first condemned prisoner to enter the chamber since Diaz. There are no other executions scheduled in Florida. But there are 377 Florida prisoners waiting on death row.

Out of options
In 1992, Mark Dean Schwab was sentenced to death in the 1991 slaying of Junny Rios-Martinez, but the execution was delayed by appeals. On Nov. 14, Schwab’s execution was delayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decided whether lethal injection is constitutional. In April, the court ruled it is, and in May, Gov. Charlie Crist ordered that Schwab be executed.

Sarah Lundy can be reached at slundy@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6218.

Police: Man Confesses to Causing Death of Missing 7-Year-Old Utah Girl

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

SOUTH SALT LAKE, Utah —  A man confessed to causing the death of a missing 7-year-old girl who was found in the bathroom of an apartment in her family’s complex, police said.

Esar Met, 21, was being held Wednesday on charges of aggravated murder, kidnapping and evidence tampering. Police took five people into custody on suspicion of homicide Tuesday night.

Police on Tuesday night found the body of Hser Nay Moo, who disappeared Monday from the apartment complex after an argument with her 10-year-old brother.

Click here to read the probable cause statement (pdf).

Met admitted to authorities to confining Hser in the “residence by force, resulting in her death,” as well as to trying to conceal the body, according to the Salt Lake County jail document.

Police found Hser’s body in a South Parc apartment after obtaining a search warrant for three remaining units at the complex that had yet to be investigated, MyFOXUtah reported.

“Our hearts and our sympathies go out to the family,” South Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Snyder said at a press conference. “This has been a very tough case for all of us.”

Snyder called the discovery of Hser’s body a “tragic ending” to the case.

Cartoon Wah, Hser’s father, said through an interpreter that he was thankful to the public for their support.

“I have one daughter in this world, and I loved her the most,” Wah said.

Police took four suspects into custody on suspicion of homicide and later apprehended a fifth, Snyder said.

Hser’s body showed signs of “trauma” but authorities do not know how she died, and an autopsy will be performed, he said.

Click here for more coverage from MyFOXUtah.com.

US executions on hold awaiting Supreme Court ruling

by Fanny Carrier
Sun Oct 21, 4:46 PM ET 

I don’t know if it is me or what but I just don’t get how criminals on death row who have were proven guilty have the right to file a complaint that their executions by lethal injections are considered “cruel and unusual punishment”.  Do they not consider the reason they are there in the first place and the fact that they murdered someone and that their act of murder was considered not only “cruel and unusual” and that they murdered an innocent person for their own gains or in the process of saisfying their sexuality obsessions, etc.  Did they not take into consideration that taking someone’s life is also considered “cruel” to say the least.  Yet they have the nerve to say that they deserve a better and more civil execution procedure. 

What right did they give their victims? 

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A month after the US Supreme Court agreed to wade into the lethal injection debate, executions are effectively on hold across the nation as courts and politicians sit tight amid a legal limbo.

On September 25, the country’s highest court agreed to examine whether lethal injections — used in virtually all US executions — are “cruel and unusual” punishment, as banned under the US constitution.

Since it accepted to take up the case, all but one of the executions scheduled in the past four weeks around the country have been postponed, and only a handful are still due to take place before the end of the year.

“In effect we do have a moratorium. There is no determination by the US Supreme Court that no execution can happen. It’s more of a wait-and-see,” said Richard Dieter from the Death Penalty Information Center.

“This may not remove anybody from death row, it might just require some changes in lethal injection procedures and then executions might increase next year or so.”

Rights activists argue that lethal injections can be painful. During an execution, three drugs are administered to the condemned person: one to sedate him, one to paralyze him, and one to stop the heart.

However, this is not always done by a medical professional. While the prisoner may appear calm, several studies and botched executions have shown that death may in fact be prolonged and quite painful.

In Florida in December, Angel Nieves Diaz grimaced and shook for more than 30 minutes before finally suffering convulsions and dying.

Authorities later found that the needles were inserted too far and the lethal cocktail had been injected outside his veins.

In 2006, there were 53 executions in the United States, all but one through lethal injection.

Now though, executions appear to have been put on hold almost by default, apart from the controversial execution of Michael Richard in Texas, just hours after the Supreme Court’s decision.

This week the execution of a convicted murderer in Nevada was stayed at the 11th hour after an appeal by rights groups over the method of lethal injection to be used.

William Castillo had been due to be executed at 8:30 pm on Monday October 15 but was spared following a last-ditch legal bid by the American Civil Liberties Union to the Nevada Supreme Court.

In Virginia, Christopher Emmett won a reprieve late Wednesday just four hours before he was due to die for murdering a colleague.

The US Supreme Court ruled he could not be executed before his appeal had been considered by the federal Appeals Court. In fact, the federal court is unlikely to rule before the Supreme Court has delivered its own verdict on the constitutionality of lethal injections.

Amid such murky legal waters, the Supreme Court in Georgia on Thursday also postponed the scheduled execution of Jack Alderman, sentenced to death for murdering his wife in 1974.

And in other states the legal uncertainty has prompted governors and judges to stay all executions until the Supreme Court’s ruling.

But supporters of the death penalty say that this temporary suspension of the death penalty is likely to be short-lived, since the Supreme Court decision could lead to a resumption or even an acceleration of executions.

“The Supreme Court has never said that any form of execution was unconstitutional, and that includes firing squads and the electric chair,” said Michael Rushford, president of a victims’ defense group called the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

“This is a side-show, it has created delays in executions. The court will uphold, maybe they’ll make some suggestions in the decision about trained personnel doing the lethal injections.

“And the result will be that this tactic which has been used on and off for about at least 5 years to hold up executions will be gone, so in the future, once this method of execution is verified as not unconstitutional, there will be little to stop the states from going ahead and executing their worst murderers.”

Jury Finds Jose Padilla, 2 Co-Defendants, Guilty on Terrorism Support Charges

Thursday, August 16, 2007

MIAMI  — Jose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges Thursday after being held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration’s campaign to stop homegrown terror.

He was once accused of being part of an Al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the U.S., but those allegations were not part of his trial.

Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face life in prison because they were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas. All three were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts that carry potential 15-year sentences each.

The judge set a Dec. 5 sentencing date for all three defendants.

Click here to read the indictment (FindLaw pdf). 

Estela Lebron, Padilla’s mother, said she felt “a little bit sad” at the verdict but expected her son’s lawyers would appeal.

“I don’t know how they found Jose guilty. There was no evidence he was speaking in code,” she said, referring to FBI wiretap intercepts in which Padilla was overheard talking to Hassoun.

The three were accused of being part of a North American support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to groups of Islamic extremists. The defense contended they were trying to help persecuted Muslims in war zones with relief and humanitarian aid.

[The key piece of physical evidence was a five-page form Padilla supposedly filled out in July 2000 to attend an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, which would link the other two defendants as well to Usama bin Laden’s terrorist organization.

The form, recovered by the CIA in 2001 in Afghanistan, contains seven of Padilla’s fingerprints and several other personal identifiers, such as his birthdate and his ability to speak Spanish, English and Arabic.]

Padilla’s lawyers insisted the form was far from conclusive and denied that he was a “star recruit,” as prosecutors claimed, of the North American support cell intending to become a terrorist. Padilla’s attorneys said he traveled to Egypt in September 1998 to learn Islam more deeply and become fluent in Arabic.

“His intent was to study, not to murder,” said Padilla attorney Michael Caruso.  [Full Story]     

Alleged Child Rapist Goes Free Because Court Can’t Find Interpreter

Md. Judge Dismisses Sex-Abuse Charges

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 22, 2007

This is without a doubt one of the worst, if not THE worst case, that shows the quality or “lack of” in our judicial system to allow something as horrible as this to occur.  Not only did it allow this to occur but in my mind this may very well have set a precedent for anyone where English is not their native language. 

Washington Post – Full story 

A 7-year-old girl said she had been raped and repeatedly molested over the course of a year. Police in Montgomery County, acting on information from a relative, soon arrested a Liberian immigrant living in Gaithersburg. They marshaled witnesses and DNA evidence to prepare for trial.

What was missing — for much of the nearly three years that followed — was an interpreter fluent in the suspect’s native language. A judge recently dropped the charges, not because she found that Mahamu Kanneh had been wrongly accused but because repeated delays in the case had, in her view, violated his right to a speedy trial.

“This is one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make in a long time,” Katherine D. Savage said from the bench Tuesday, noting that she was mindful of “the gravity of this case and the community’s concern about offenses of this type.”

Loretta E. Knight, the Circuit Court clerk responsible for finding interpreters, said her office searched exhaustively for a speaker of Vai, a tribal language spoken in West Africa.

[Kanneh was granted asylum in the United States, according to State’s Attorney John McCarthy. A conviction could have led to deportation proceedings.]

[Kanneh was arrested in August 2004 after witnesses told police that he raped and repeatedly sexually molested the girl, a relative.

In a charging document, Detective Omar Hasan wrote that the girl “attempted to physically stop the behavior from the defendant, but was unsuccessful.” Hasan wrote that Kanneh threatened the young girl “with not being able to leave the apartment unless she engaged in sexual behavior with the defendant.”]                                                                                                          

Wanted Sex Offender, Mark Petersimes, Caught in Denver

Sunday, July 08, 2007

I can’t begin to count the number of articles I’ve read where criminals have cut off their GPS tracking ankle bracelet and are right back doing whatever it was that earned them the ankle jewerly to being with.  

You would think with all that is available today and so many skilled techies out there that someone couldn’t come up with a device that once it is locked around the ankle there would be no way to cut it off.   I just don’t understand how we can send someone into space yet we can’t make an ankle bracelet that stays on a criminal. – flagranny2

Just two hours before America’s Most Wanted was to air a profile on Mark Petersimes, the sex offender wanted by authorities was caught in Denver.

Petersimes, 47, was arrested Saturday night when an 11-year-old girl went into a Family Dollar store in Lakewood and told a clerk a man had attempted to rape her, according to MyFoxColorado.com.

Click here to see his profile page on America’s Most Wanted.

The clerk confronted Petersimes about the allegation and called police. He attempted to escape, but cops caught up to him and arrested him.

Petersimes had been on the run for more than a year after he escaped from a halfway house in Dallas. He cut off his GPS tracking ankle bracelet and disappeared on May 2, 2006, according to America’s Most Wanted.

His rap sheet extends back to 1981, when he was convicted of attempted rape in North Carolina and served two years.

Most recently, Petersimes was convicted in 1991 of sexually assaulting two young girls and served 12 years. In 2003, after release, he was put in a halfway house. He escaped, and had to serve more jail time. He was then put in another halfway house, but escaped again this past May.

He is being held in a Jefferson county jail on $1 million bond.

5 Injured in Vegas Casino Shooting After Man Opens Fire

Friday, July 06, 2007

LAS VEGAS —  A man on a balcony over the New York-New York casino floor opened fire on the gamblers below early Friday, wounding four people before he was tackled by off-duty military reservists, police said. A fifth person was hurt in a crush of people fleeing the casino.

“It was crazy, pandemonium,” said Jade Jacobson, 28, a tourist from Deland, Fla., whose cousin, a dance teacher from Pennsylvania, was wounded in the leg.

“People were running and jumping over slot machines and knocking over chairs,” Jacobson said. “All I was thinking was that I could die right now.”

Police said 16 shots were fired, and again revised the number of injured in the 12:45 a.m. shooting. All the injuries were described as minor, and none of the victims remained hospitalized Friday morning, authorities said.

Las Vegas police Capt. James Dillon said a woman and a teenage boy were wounded; a man was grazed by a bullet; a woman was hit by a bullet fragment or shrapnel; and a woman was bruised and scraped when she fell amid the crowd of people exiting the casino.

Steven Zegrean, 51, of Las Vegas, was arrested on felony charges including attempted murder, battery with a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm in an occupied structure, Dillon said.

“All we know so far is that he was emotionally distraught,” Dillon said. “I can say with absolute certainty that this has nothing whatever to do with terrorism.”

Zegrean emptied a semiautomatic handgun toward the casino floor before he was tackled by a U.S. Army reservist, a Navy reservist and others who held him for police, Dillon said. He said he did not know the names of the people who intervened.

Dillon said police have a casino surveillance video that shows the shooting.

Melody Zegrean, 43, a Las Vegas resident who identified herself as Steven Zegrean’s cousin, said he had been divorced for several years and estranged from most of his family since his ex-wife remarried.

“I love my cousin and everything,” she said, “but his temper and not being able to relate has really gotten worse recently. He’s been threatening the family for some time now. He’s been pushing everyone away.”

She described Steven Zegrean as a Hungarian immigrant and unemployed house painter who liked to gamble.

Troy Sanchez, a 13-year-old from Van Nuys, Calif., who was wounded in the left ankle, said he heard more than 10 gunshots from a balcony over an escalator that takes customers to the casino floor. He was with his mother and older brother, who works at the casino’s Manhattan Express roller coaster.

“We thought it was fireworks,” the teenager said. “I didn’t even see the guy at all.”

Police said they believed Zegrean entered the casino from a walkway connecting the New York-New York to the MGM Grand, and walked past a vendor and a shop before opening fire near the top of the bank of escalators.

“It seems like some local guy who snapped and went to the hotel to do it,” police Officer Ramon Denby said.

Sanchez and Jacobson’s cousin, who declined to be identified, were treated at University Medical Center in Las Vegas and released. Dillon said both people with graze wounds and the woman who was bruised in the crowd were treated at the scene and released.

Larry Ramos, 33, a tourist from Lansing, Mich., said he arrived at the front of the hotel to find people rushing out.

“There were flip-flops just laying all over the place like people were running out of their shoes,” Ramos said. “Within a minute and a half there were 30 to 40 police there. The cops just swarmed the place with M-16s and their guns out.”

Ramos said bystanders cheered for the wounded when they were wheeled out of the casino to ambulances, and later talked about the people who tackled the gunman.

“People don’t put up with stuff after 9-11 no more,” he said, adding that he was surprised that the casino never shut down.

“That’s what amazed me, Ramos said. “They locked down the tables, but they let people still keep playing the slots.”

The 2,000-room hotel-casino, which opened in 1997, features a facade replicating the New York City skyline, with a 47-story knockoff of the Empire State Building, a 150-foot Statue of Liberty and a Coney Island-style roller coaster. It is owned by MGM Mirage Inc.

Casino spokeswoman Yvette Monet said its operations had been fully restored Friday morning.

“Guests are being informed that it’s business as usual,” Monet said.

Patrick Bryan Knight – Dead man laughing execution no joke

Killer ‘not much of a comedian’ before execution

HUNTSVILLE, Texas
CNN.com POSTED: 9:17 a.m. EDT, June 27, 2007 Patrick Knight’s executions was carried out as planned June 26, 2007.  He had been charged and convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the 1993 killings of his neighbors Mary Ann Werner.During his time on death row he began collecting jokes, soliciting jokes in the mail and on a Web site, sometimes receiving as many as 20 a day saying he was going to use the time for his last words to be used telling a joke. He became known as “The Dead Man Laughing.” 
But when the moment came, Knight thanked God for his friends and asked for help for innocent men on death row. He named several he said were innocent. His voice shaking and nearly in tears, he said, “Not all of us are innocent, but those are.”After expressing love to some friends, he said, “I said I was going to tell a joke. Death has set me free. That’s the biggest joke. I deserve this.”“And the other joke is that I am not Patrick Bryan Knight and y’all can’t stop this execution now. Go ahead, I’m finished.”Prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons disputed Knight’s mistaken identity claim.“We fingerprint them when they come over,” she said.

University of Montana Cornerback Charged With Murder

Friday, June 15, 2007
Fox News

PALMDALE, Calif. —  A promising University of Montana cornerback was being held on $1 million bail Friday, charged with the shooting death of a man during a domestic dispute earlier this month.

Court officials said Jimmy Wilson, 20, of San Diego appeared at Antelope Valley Courthouse for an arraignment hearing but didn’t enter a plea. He is scheduled to be arraigned June 21.

“Attitude is probably the best word to describe Jimmy Wilson,” Montana coach Bobby Hauck said on the school’s team Web site. “He’s confident. He’s tough, and he’s an engaging young man to be around.”

Wilson is charged in the June 2 death of Kevin Smoot, 29, who was shot in the upper torso as he stood in his driveway, Sheriff’s Deputy Anthony Moore said. The gunman fled the scene.

Investigators later identified Wilson as a suspect, and Wilson surrendered to authorities with his attorney on Tuesday in Lancaster, Calif., which is about an hour northeast of Los Angeles, Moore said.

Officials believe Wilson was involved in an altercation between Smoot and Smoot’s girlfriend, who is apparently related to the football player.“It is in the California criminal courts, and we will continue to determine the facts over the course of the next few days,” Jim Foley, the executive vice president of the University of Montana, told FOXNews.com. He refused to comment further.The charges have shocked his high school football coach.“He was just your typical success story of what you would hope would happen for a kid in high school,” said Mike Hastings, the head football coach and athletic director at Point Loma High School in San Diego.Hastings coached Wilson for four years, watching the player grow from a skinny eighth grader to becoming a first team All-Western League selection as a senior in both football and basketball.Wilson, whose given name is James Leon Wilson, is a San Diego native who came to the University of Montana right out of high school. He will be a senior this fall.Wilson is majoring in business administration at the University of Montana.

Smoot’s mother, Leslie, said her son had two young children with his 27-year-old girlfriend. She did not know the relationship between Wilson and her son’s girlfriend.

She said she learned the news of the arrest Wednesday, the same day she buried her son.

“My heart went out to my son, and for a young man who has just messed up his life,” Leslie Smoot said. “It didn’t have to happen that way.”

Wilson’s arrest was the latest in a string of bad news for Montana collegiate football.

On May 18, Montana State football coach Mike Kramer was fired after another of his former players was arrested. Over the past year, five former MSU players and one current MSU player have been arrested on criminal charges, including a murder charge.

“Ultimately the justice system will do its due diligence, and we’ll see how it plays out,” Hastings said. “I’m just really surprised that this has happened.

“I feel bad for the victim in this case and I feel bad for Jimmy because — both of them — now their lives have been changed forever,” he continued. “One’s gone and one is unfortunately going to be facing things that we never thought he would face.”