California
Coroner seeks to ID bones of 4 in Mojave graves
VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Deputies and coroner’s investigators digging through two shallow graves in Southern California’s Mojave Desert found the remains of four people whose identities remain a mystery.
Medical examiners planned to begin working Thursday, and possibly for the next several months, on determining who the bones belonged to.
Sheriff’s homicide detectives and coroner’s officials on Wednesday wrapped up the three-day excavation in barren scrubland on the outskirts of Victorville that began when an off-road motorcyclist reported near Interstate 15 found bones that turned out to be human, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
“There were two graves where remains were located as well as additional skeletal remains ... near the graves,” the statement said.
A third site that appeared to show some disturbed ground was also dug up but investigators determined it was unrelated to the gravesites.
Authorities went to the site near the Interstate 15 freeway on Monday after an off-road motorcyclist reported finding bones that coroner’s investigators later confirmed were human.
“It appears the remains have been there for an extended period of time. Age and gender are unknown pending examination by a forensic anthropologist,” the sheriff’s department statement said.
“It is difficult at this point to state how long it will take to determine the causes of death,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Jodi Miller said.
Victorville is in the high desert about 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles. No homes or businesses are near the gravesite.
New York
Court won’t hear from judge over stop-and-frisk
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court refused Wednesday to reconsider its order removing a judge from court cases challenging the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan had removed federal Judge Shira Scheindlin last month, saying she had misapplied a ruling that allowed her to preside over the stop-and-frisk cases and had made statements in media interviews that jeopardized the appearance of judicial objectivity.
Her attorney Burt Neuborne filed papers last week, asking the panel to reconsider the order and saying the appeals judges had offended due process by ousting her without letting her defend herself. Scheindlin ruled in August that police officers sometimes carried out stop-and-frisk unconstitutionally by discriminating against minorities.
On Wednesday, the panel denied Neuborne’s request, saying it lacked a procedural basis.
“We know of no precedent suggesting that a district judge has standing before an appellate court to protest reassignment of a case,” the judges ruled.
The decision said “the cases were reassigned not because of any judicial misconduct or ethical lapse on the part of Judge Scheindlin — as to which we have expressly made no finding” — but solely because of conduct codes that said judges should not be part of a proceeding in which “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
“Frankly, if that had been the language in the first order, I doubt we would have been in court,” said Neuborne.
Scheindlin found that stop-and-frisk discriminated against minorities and appointed a monitor and a facilitator to find better ways to employ the tactics.
Stop and frisk has been around for decades, but its use grew dramatically under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration to an all-time high in 2011 of 684,330 stops, mostly of black and Hispanic men. To make a stop, police must have reasonable suspicion that a crime is about to occur or has occurred, a standard lower than the probable cause needed to justify an arrest. Only about 10 percent of the stops result in arrests or summonses, and weapons are found about 2 percent of the time.
Stop and frisk drew further rebuke in a first-of-its-kind analysis by the state’s top prosecutor set to be released Thursday, which found that close to half of those arrests failed to result in convictions.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s report analyzed 150,000 stop-and-frisk arrests from 2.4 million stops between 2009 and 2012. It found that only 1.5 percent of arrests resulted in a jail or prison sentence — and a tenth of 1 percent led to convictions for violent crimes.
After being removed, Scheindlin issued a statement saying she had properly presided over the cases because they were related to a previous case she had heard. She also consented to interviews under the condition that she wouldn’t comment on an ongoing case.
“And I did not,” she said.
New York
Lawsuit over profiling seeks to be class-action
NEW YORK (AP) — An actor on HBO’s “Treme” (truh-MAY’) is seeking class-action status for his profiling lawsuit against Macy’s.
A lawyer for actor Robert Brown filed the papers Wednesday in federal court in New York City. The 29-year-old says he was stopped buying a $1,350 Movado watch and targeted because he’s black.
The lawsuit says many others have been targeted at the store because of race. Brown first filed the lawsuit last month.
The suit says Macy’s has not changed its wrongful security practices, even after a 2005 settlement with the attorney general over racial profiling complaints. A separate lawsuit against New York police says the department encourages the practices.
Macy’s didn’t comment on the suit but says it doesn’t discriminate. City lawyers say they haven’t yet reviewed the lawsuit.
A judge must approve class-action status.
Wisconsin
Bill shifts some juvenile cases from adult court
APPLETON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin lawmakers are considering a bill that would treat some 17-year-old offenders as juveniles rather than have them tried in adult court.
A Post-Crescent Media report says the bill has support from the State Bar of Wisconsin and the state public defender’s office. State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a Republican, opposes it.
In Wisconsin, 17-year-olds have been charged in adult court since 1996, even when they committed nonviolent crimes. The so-called “second-chance bill” would allow nonviolent offenders to be handled in the juvenile system.
That would allow 17-year-olds to avoid an adult prison setting. It would also keep them from having tarnished adult records, which could hurt them when they apply for college or jobs.
Wisconsin is one of 11 states where 17-year-olds are automatically treated as adults.
