The official website of investigative reporter author and investigative reporter Diane Dimond
Giffords, Five Months After Shooting
But what about the family of Jared Loughner? Did you stop to think about them? The pain and suffering of Jared’s parents makes them victims too. And, in the end, if Jared is declared fit to stand trial, Arizona’s death penalty might be used to take away their only son.
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Could Her Mother Have Killed Her?
We are presumed innocent until proven guilty in this country. We are guaranteed a fair trial by an impartial jury. That’s the bedrock of our justice system.
But what about the high profile defendant who lives through months and sometimes years of sensational media coverage before their case comes to trial? The potential jury pool in their community can become saturated with negative news about the accused, leaving people to justifiably ask how in the world a fair trial can be conducted.
The upcoming capital murder case of 25 year old Casey Anthony of Orlando, Florida makes my point. [click to continue…]
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America Locks Up Children Forever
Answer: They are the only countries to refuse to sign Article 37 of the 1989 UN document entitled, “Rights of the Child.”
What’s that mean? Translated, it means America stands shoulder-to -shoulder with a primitive east African nation in routinely refusing to acknowledge the rights of children. And, America is also the only known nation in the world that allows children under the age of 18 to be tried as adults and sentenced to prison forever – with absolutely no chance for parole. In a majority of U.S. cases the child is charged with murder but sometimes they have simply been in the company of someone else who committed murder.
Hey, wait a minute! [click to continue…]
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Thinking of Ways to Make a Safer and More Just World
Strictly adhered to that would be enough to curb crime in a big way. There would be no murder, assault, fraud, burglary … well, you get my drift.
But as this New Year dawns we all understand that we’re way past biblical pronouncement at this point. Today society must have laws and rules and regulations. But I often heave a big sigh and wish they worked better to get crime under control!
In years past I’ve used this first column of each New Year to list my wishes for the crime and justice system. For 2011 the list is pretty simple … [click to continue…]
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Marijuana as Cure - Not Crime
In November 2007 Steele Smith and his wife Theresa were arrested by federal DEA agents in Orange County, California for cultivating and selling marijuana. But the Smith’s aren’t your run of the mill drug dealers and the federal government has left them in legal limbo ever since.
The backstory: In the summer of 2001 Steele was a successful self-employed marketing man who was felled by a gut-wrenching mystery illness. He couldn’t eat and quickly dropped forty pounds from his already thin 6 foot 7 inch frame. His doctors were stymied about what caused the debilitating condition. After four excruciating months a rare-disease specialist diagnosed a condition called Zollinger-Ellison syndrome which pockmarks a victim’s upper gastrointestinal tract with multiple, painful ulcers. Morphine was prescribed for Steele’s constant pain and he lived in that legally induced drug dependent state for the next three years eventually becoming an opiate addict.
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Justice For Terrorists - At What Cost?
It is time for us to stop and reassess how we handle terror suspects. We just came close to the worst case scenario with a man who admitted his complicity in the murders of hundreds of people yet was nearly cleared of all charges.
Ahmed Ghailani was the first Guantanamo prisoner to be tried in a civilian court – in New York, no less, just a short distance from ground zero where other extremist Muslims killed thousands of Americans on September 11th – and it didn’t go so well. The Obama Administration had insisted on having the trial in civilian court as a sort of proof to the rest of the world of America’s moral superiority, our transparency and sense of fair play. But the end result to this test case was a near disaster.
To everyone’s shock Ghailani was found not guilty of 284 counts of murder and conspiracy to murder and he came T-H-I-S close to be acquitted altogether. [click to continue…]
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Anna Nicole At Her Peak
You may not give a darn about the late buxom sex-pot Anna Nicole Smith but the recent verdict in a Los Angeles criminal case stemming from her drug-overdose death has certainly captured the attention of doctors nationwide. I’ll bet insurance companies specializing in malpractice medical coverage have snapped to attention as well.
After Anna Nicole Smith died in February 2007 three of the people closest to her – her attorney and lover Howard K. Stern, her psychiatrist, Dr. Khristine Eroshevich and her personal physician, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor were criminally charged. Among the most serious of the original 23 charges was “providing controlled substances to a known addict.”
Interestingly, the trio was never accused of actually causing Smith’s death and along the way some of the other charges were dismissed. It came down to a trial about whether they’d engaged in a conspiracy to help the 39 year old former Playboy cover girl and TV personality obtain prescription drugs through the use of false names and misrepresentation.
During nine weeks the jury testimony boiled down to this: [click to continue…]
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Ahmed Ghailani, Enemy Combatant
He didn’t commit a crime. He committed an act of war against the United States of America. So why did the U.S. Justice Department decide to put him on trial in a civilian court of law? That’s what I’d like to know! Because, frankly, his trial is not going so well and this guy might walk free after helping to cause the deaths of a dozen Americans and the wounding of thousands of others.
This is the risk we run when we put terrorists on trial in civilian courts rather than in front of military tribunals where they belong.
“He” is Ahmed Ghailani, a baby faced thirty-something man from Tanzania who has already confessed his role in Al Qaeda’s bombing of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 that took the lives of 224 people. And, authorities say, after that carnage Al Qaeda rewarded Ghailani with a position as a bodyguard , cook and document forger for none other than Osama bin Laden himself. This Ghailani fellow had long term and daily knowledge of the activities of America’s #1 mortal enemy. [click to continue…]
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Help Right a Wrong
This criminal case breaks my heart. It wasn’t about justice, I believe it was about race based retribution against two sisters, young mothers, who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Gladys and Jamie Scott were just 19 and 21 years old respectively on the day they were arrested, the day before Christmas 1993. They lived in the tiny town of Forest, Mississippi. As you read this story remember – early 90’s, the state of Mississippi and all the players are black. The local Sheriff at the time was white.
After the sisters’ car conked out that night outside a local Mini Mart they began walking home. Two cousins in their 20’s, known as the Duckworth Men, offered to give them a lift. When it became clear the men wanted sexual favors in return for their good deed the sisters jumped out and resumed walking home. Gladys and Jamie say they heard a commotion behind them on the road but they kept walking. They would later learn that three other locals called the Patrick Men, ages 14 to 18, had robbed the Duckworth’s of between nine and 11 dollars.
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Words Matter - Words Hurt
Has the internet made us more vicious? I ask because it sure seems to me that we are quickly becoming a people who have forgotten how to empathize with others. With our computer anonymity many of us have decided we can “say” things over the World Wide Web that we would never ever say to someone’s face. Cruel comments can be lobbed without personal risk so we send them out like invisible hand grenades, set to explode when opened.
Read some of the remarks others leave behind at your favorite news web site. [click to continue…]
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