Image: ©iStockphoto.com/CraigRJD

The fight over a proposed privately run federal immigration detention center in Illinois is raising thorny questions about the benefits and drawbacks of these facilities.

Since late last year, the Corrections Corporation of America has been embroiled in a stand off over the proposed center, slated for construction just outside of Chicago in the small, relatively affluent village of Crete. Bolstered by state and congressional lawmakers, local activists aim to beat back the proposed facility, citing CCA’s less-than-sterling track record on alleged prisoner abuses and its role in helping carry out what they perceive as the government’s anti-immigrant policies.

CCA has long cast its eye on Crete, securing a first-purchase option on the proposed detention center site roughly seven years ago, according to CCA spokesman Steve Owen. This means that the owner of the property — a private citizen who no longer lives in Crete — is barred from selling it to another party until the option expires.

In late 2010, CCA informed the town that it was the ideal place for a new federal immigration detention center. Town administrator Tom Durkin and his colleagues agreed to explore the idea without fully committing to the plan. Durkin says he and his colleagues were “interested in seeing what it would entail, what it would mean,” and what “some of the drawbacks” might be.

Though CCA had already offered its services to Crete, the town had yet to actually secure a contract with the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — meaning that CCA functioned as its own middleman, actively seeking out Crete and encouraging it to apply to host the federal facility.

Which is exactly what it did in November of 2010, firing off a white paper to Washington outlining how it planned to comply with ICE’s revised detention standards. The Obama administration laid out those new requirements in 2009 in response to complaints from human rights and civil liberties groups about the treatment of undocumented immigrants.

Crete’s 780-bed facility would, according to the white paper, be built to meet ICE’s requirements for “a wholly new generation of detention facilities uniquely suited to ICE’s civil detention authority” with “innovative and cost-effective designs … easy access to legal services, abundant natural light, ample outdoor recreation,” as well as “freedom of movement.”

Seven months later, Crete received a letter from ICE saying that the town had been “tentatively selected” to host the new facility.

As part of the deal, Crete would receive part of a per-diem fee CCA would collect for each detainee. And since the detainees would count as village residents for tax purposes, Crete would collect roughly $60,000 in additional revenue per year from the state, the Chicago Tribune reported in January. According to Crete Mayor Michael Einhorn, wages for detention center employees would be set by the Department of Labor and not by CCA.

Under CCA management, the facility is supposed to inject life into a stagnant economic bloodstream, creating some 250 new jobs, generating fresh tax revenue, and staving off potential cuts to police and municipal services.

Private corrections companies frequently seek out small towns angling for an economic shot in the arm. Doling out promises to “grow hair on bald heads and make money rain from the skies,” they present a lucrative pitch, according to Frank Smith, a private prisons expert with the Private Corrections Institute.

As part of its effort to court Crete, CCA took Einhorn and other Crete officials on a fact-finding tour of a pair of its facilities, one of which is a US Marshals detention center in Leavenworth, Kansas. Einhorn insists that the facility did not appear to be a blight on the community. The unit houses some 1100 federal inmates and is not marred by a troubled track record. Since the 1850s, Leavenworth has hosted a number of state and federal prisons; by the time CCA opened the Leavenworth Detention Facility in 1992, prison business had long-since become Leavenworth’s business.

Because the unit is located in an industrial park (as the proposed Crete unit would be) it has no discernable impact on surrounding property values, Leavenworth city manager Steve Miller says.

“It is a model facility in its location and its operations. They’re good neighbors to the city,” Miller says. “A lot of those that work at CCA, they live in the city. And we value them here.”

The people of Crete, meanwhile, appear concerned over what a detention facility would suggest about their town, its values, and its stance on undocumented immigrants.

“We’ve heard ICE’s promises regarding improvements to the way that detention was going to be handled,” says Fred Tsao, policy director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights policy director. “Having a company whose motivations are profit-driven is not the right way to go.”

Durkin is sympathetic to that view, but unconvinced. “You tend to have people who may be stopping at nothing to try to stop something like this,” Durkin says. “A lot of their concerns are at the federal level … that’s not going to be decided here.”

As the American Civil Liberties Union’s David Shapiro documented last year, the exploding market for private correctional services to run federal immigration detention centers has kept CCA flush, helping the company net some $1.7 billion in 2010. And with the Obama administration deporting undocumented immigrants in record numbers, the demand for building and operating immigration detention facilities has never been greater.

The case against CCA is strong. In 2009, a spate of allegations of sexual abuse at the CCA-run Otter Creek Correctional Facility in Kentucky prompted Hawaii officials to remove the 168 female inmates it was housing there. Last year, the ACLU of Texas sued CCA after an officer at one of its units was accused of allegedly sexually abusing several immigration detainees. And in 2011, reports surfaced of horrific violence at a CCA facility in Idaho, which inmates had dubbed the “Gladiator School.”

Emails obtained by the American Independent suggest that CCA appears to have been keenly aware of the negative perception surrounding its projects, and sought to reassure Crete officials from the outset. Representatives of both parties regularly traded links to news stories and PDFs of protest pamphlets and fliers, in an effort to track the rising tide of opposition to the facility.

In one exchange from late last year, town administrator Tom Durkin sent Brad Wiggins, CCA’s senior director for site acquisition, a thorough rundown of the major regional news outlets that were expected to report on the proposed project.

All of this could be for naught. On March 28, the Illinois Senate passed a bill, with bipartisan support, that would bar the state and its localities from contracting with private companies to operate civil detention facilities, including immigration centers. Now, it must pass the House before being signed into law by Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn.

CCA is leaving nothing to chance. On April 19, the company deployed two of its big guns — vice president and deputy chief development officer Lucibeth Mayberry, and Jeb Beasley, managing director of partner relationships — to meet with Crete’s residents in attempt to assuage their concerns. Six days later, Mayberry, Beasley, and two other CCA officials registered with the Illinois Secretary of State to lobby the governor’s office and members of the legislature on corrections and detentions issues. And just a day earlier, CCA secured the services of Dorgan-McPike & Associates, a high-powered Illinois lobbying firm.

CCA spokesman Steve Owen argues that the legislation restricts municipalities’ power while diminishing their competitive advantage in a still-volatile economic climate.

“Generally, we obviously oppose any sort of legislation that either prohibits or undermines our ability to conduct business and meet our government partners’ need,” Owen says.

Amid all this, Illinois Congressmen Jesse Jackson Jr. (D) and Luis Gutierrez (D) are teaming up to kill the Crete project. In February, Jackson requested that ICE officials come to Crete to hold a town meeting to hear concerns over the project; that meeting is set for May 21.

In an email to The American Independent, ICE says that it is “committed to building and maintaining constructive relationships with community stakeholders in an effort to foster public awareness.” Through the meeting, ICE hopes to “enhance [its] understanding of community concerns related to the proposed detention facility.”

“I don’t want the south suburbs to become famous for building prisons and breaking up families,” Jackson said back in February. “Regardless of your feelings about immigrants, Crete is a vibrant and charming small town. That image would change drastically with a prison.”

Image: ©iStockphoto.com/CraigRJD

Photo: Heath Brandon, via Fickr.

Every morning, several sheets of paper are posted to the walls outside the arraignment rooms of New York City’s Borough Courts. They list the names of the accused scheduled to appear before the judge and the legal codes of their offenses. On most days and across the city’s five boroughs, these lists include multiple names next to the numbers 221.10. This is the legal code for the misdemeanor charge of possessing small amounts of marijuana “open to public view,” meaning the public display or public smoking of pot. In 2010, more than 50,000 New Yorkers were arrested for violating 221.10. The number represented 15 percent of all arrests made by the NYPD and allowed the city to keep its crown of Marijuana Arrest Capital of the World.

Not that there is a credible challenger for the dubious honor. The high number of 221.10 arrests puts New York in a league of its own and has become a lightning rod in the national debate over race and the war on drugs. New York’s marijuana arrests, says a growing chorus of critics, are a prime example of how the nation’s drug laws disproportionately impact black and Latino communities.

This is decreasingly a matter of accusation and anecdote. Hard data are emerging that confirm what marijuana reform advocates and public defenders have long maintained: That the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy in high-crime neighborhoods — sold to the public as a way to find illegal guns and reduce violent crime — has instead resulted in racially uneven drug law enforcement practices that seem to violate the spirit and the letter of New York law as well as the United States Constitution.

This is the story of 22-year-old Hakim R., a resident of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights who I met one recent morning after his arraignment. He told me he had been walking to work near his home a little after 10 a.m. when two NYPD officers pulled up in a patrol car and stopped him.

“They just came up to me and started frisking me, making me take my shoes off, putting their hands in my pocket, before they even asked me my name [or] asked for ID,” says Hakim. “I was like, ‘You can’t do this, I know my rights.’”

According to Hakim, when the police found a five-dollar bag of marijuana in his back pocket, they charged him under 221.10 and brought him to the precinct station, where he was fingerprinted and locked in a cell for four hours. “I completely forgot I had the weed on me,” he says, shaking his head.

According to the law, it shouldn’t have mattered. New Yorkers have the right to forget about nickel bags in their pockets without risking jail time. But arrests for small amounts of concealed marijuana have grown so common in certain neighborhoods that the law de jure — only pot in plain view justifies arrest — is either not known, or understood not to matter.

The arrests often occur after police carry out a “Terry stop” — a stop-and-frisk procedure named for the 1968 Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio. Police are allowed to stop and briefly detain a person if they have “reasonable suspicion” that criminal activity is taking place. If police further suspect the person is carrying a weapon, they may conduct a pat-down search, which can lead to the discovery of marijuana.

Critics argue that police in New York and elsewhere are abusing the law by searching suspects regardless of whether they actually believe the suspects may be armed or committing a crime.

In April, the public defenders group The Bronx Defenders released a detailed study of more than 500 plain-view marijuana arrests. They found that in 41 percent of cases citywide (including the one retold in this representative video testimony), marijuana arrests resulted from unjustified stop-and-frisk encounters and/or cases where the drugs only entered public view as a result of a police search.

“These are manufactured misdemeanors,” says Scott Levy, an attorney and chief author of the Bronx Defenders report. “It’s not a crime to have marijuana in your pocket or your backpack. The police are creating crime where there was none before. The justification is to get guns off the street, but only one percent of these searches [find] a gun. In 600,000 searches last year, the most common outcome is the marijuana charge.”

The Bronx Defenders report reinforces research conducted by the Marijuana Arrests Research Project, an online database and analysis hub. In multiple studies, the Project has found overwhelming racial bias and illegality behind marijuana arrests in New York City and around the country. “Whites use marijuana at similar if not higher rates than blacks, yet blacks and Latinos make up nearly 90 percent of all arrests in New York City,” says Jesse Levine, a researcher with the Project. “This demonstrates clear, systematic racism at the heart of police policy.”

This week, the New York Civil Liberties Union released an analysis of NYPD data showing that 87 percent of stop-and-frisk searches last year targeted blacks and Latinos.

New York is emblematic of a national problem. Extreme racial skews are also reflected in the marijuana arrest statistics of major cities across the country, from Los Angeles to Chicago to the District of Columbia.

New York has emerged as America’s marijuana arrest capital only in the last 15 years. For nearly two decades after New York’s “public view” law was passed, the law was enforced more or less as intended. This changed with the mayoral election of Rudolph Giuliani in 1994. The former U.S. Attorney’s brain trust included advisors connected to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank whose fellows James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in the early 1980s developed the “broken windows” theory of policing and crime reduction. Backers of the theory posited that police should increase foot patrols in high-crime neighborhoods and focus on misdemeanors, as well as employ pre-emptive tactics such as stop-and-frisks instead of waiting for reported crime. The NYPD began stopping people and demanding they empty their pockets, or forcibly doing it for them. They found some guns, but many more small bags of marijuana that had not been in plain view before the search, and thus should not have been the basis for arrest. The number of pot arrests began a historic decade-long climb.

But it is under the supposedly “centrist” administration of Michael Bloomberg that the number of arrests has once again spiked. Critics allege that under Bloomberg and Giuliani-holdover police chief Ray Kelly, stop-and-frisk policies were maintained as a shortcut for meeting unofficial quotas, which occasionally surface in scandal. Because it has become so ingrained in police practice since the mid-1990s, attempts to end or curb the controversial policy must contend with the full weight of institutional and professional inertia within the NYPD.

“The aggressive policing is driven by Departmental requirements,” says Steve Wasserman, a veteran litigation attorney with the Legal Aid Society. “Officers are required to undertake and document enforcement activities on each tour of duty to keep their careers on track.” The precincts in turn use the numbers to meet their own requirements.

“The whole system relies on these arrests, which have been the most common arrest for NYPD for years,” says Jesse Levine. “It’s built into the system. Despite what [Police Chief] Ray Kelly may want us to believe, it’s not a superficial aspect of police policy, but their bread and butter up and down the chain.”

Though the precise reasons for the continuing surge in searches and subsequent marijuana arrests remain a subject of debate, the results are stark. According to the Marijuana Arrest Project, the NYPD has made 100,000 marijuana arrest in the last two years alone — substantially more than in the 20 years from 1977 to 1996.

Last year, the social impact of these numbers finally began to garner serious local and national media attention. In late September of 2011, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly issued a department-wide Operations Order instructing all of his officers to discontinue the practice of arresting people for concealed marijuana possession.

But little seemed to change. According The New York World, the number of marijuana arrests following police stops saw a slight increase in October following Kelly’s order and remained high through the end of the year.

The personal and social impact of New York’s marijuana arrests extend beyond the time the accused spend in jail waiting to see a judge, or the tens of millions spent prosecuting the cases. Most of those arrested enter a plea to avoid further court dates. Once convictions are entered on their personal record, they can be penalized in myriad ways. Students can become ineligible for a federal education aid for a year. Those employed by city and state agencies, such as the Department of Education, can be fired or suspended without pay.

“What people don’t understand is most of our clients are spending more than 24 hours in jail prior to seeing a judge,” says Scott Levy of The Bronx Defenders. “They’re missing work and school and they have little job security, so they are losing jobs even if the case is dismissed, which it rarely is. There’s an interwoven web of serious consequences. The multiplier effect, with 50,000 arrests concentrated in a few neighborhoods, is astronomical.”

There is currently a bill in the New York statehouse that would reduce plain-view charges to the status of a non-criminal violation. But observers say that while the move is welcome, it is not a complete solution. The change in law would do nothing to address the city’s runaway stop-and-frisk policy, and those charged would still suffer secondary consequences. The less serious violation version of New York’s possession charge — code 221.05, “unlawful possession” of marijuana — can still result in the loss of city and state job licenses for a range of professions, from barbers to private security guards. Others can lose custody of their children. And violations still show up on criminal record searches, which are increasingly used by employers and university admissions offices.

“At the moment there’s just no real functional system of erasing these charges,” says Jesse Levine of the Marijuana Arrests Research Project. “It’s evolved to the point where it’s impossible to just give people a slap on the wrist.”

In lieu of the legalization of marijuana, critics and activists are focusing on reigning in the stop-and-frisk practices that are behind both the marijuana arrests and the concomitant erosion of trust between communities and the police who patrol them. There are currently two stop-and-frisk-related federal class-action lawsuits working their way through the courts. On November 7, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed Floyd et. al. v. The City of New York et. al. on behalf of victims of what the suit alleges is “NYPD’s practices of racial profiling and unconstitutional stop-and frisks.” On March 28, a coalition led by the NYCLU filed a suit targeting the NYPD’s Operation Clean Halls program, which expands stop-and-frisks inside public and private apartment buildings. The City of New York, the Police Commissioner, and individual police officers involved in several allegedly unlawful arrests are listed as defendants.

“The pending class actions are forcing the police to be a little more reflective and restrained,” says Steve Wasserman, of the Legal Aid Society. “But to achieve the brand of policing that New York deserves, we need a new police chief with a different approach.”

Photo: Heath Brandon, via Fickr.

Photo Credit: By Ira Gelb/Flickr

While partisan politics has hijacked the debate over the Violence Against Women Act, victims rights advocates in Texas say it has been an invaluable resource for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The reauthorization of VAWA, which was originally passed in 1994 and reauthorized in 2000 and then again in 2005, has faced unprecedented Republican opposition. As the Texas Independent reported, Republicans claim their opposition to the reauthorization of VAWA is due to Democratic additions to the legislation, while Democrats have framed Republican opposition as a continuation of the “war on women.”

At the end of April the Senate passed a reauthorization which included expansions of its protections and benefits. Passing 68 to 31 with 15 Republicans in support, S1925 included a provision that expanded protections to gay, bisexual or transgender victims of domestic abuse. Also included in the legislation was an increase in the number of temporary “U visas” for undocumented immigrant victims of domestic violence.

This week the House Judiciary Committee voted to not include protections for the GLBT community that were included in the senate bill. An amendment that would have prohibited domestic violence programs receiving funds under VAWA from discriminating against someone based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity was voted down along party lines.

Most organizations around Texas said that they already serve all victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, and that they have nondiscrimination policies in place.

“We already serve that [GLBT] community and it’s very important to serve that community because they experience a significant amount of violence, and they are a very vulnerable population,” said Abeer Monem, director of programs at the Fort Bend Women’s Center. “We are committed to help all victims of domestic violence.”

Annette Burrhus-Clay, executive director of Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, said that she doesn’t think that there are any organizations in Texas that are intentionally not serving GLBT clients, however, she believes that there may well be programs that are either “neglecting” the community or not providing outreach to the community. “Having nondiscrimination protections in the legislation protects vulnerable populations. The intent of the legislation is to deal with the domestic violence regardless of who the perpetrator is,” said Burrhus-Clay.

Funding programs

The Office on Violence Against Women is, according to its website, the component of the U.S. Department of Justice that provides “federal leadership in developing the nation’s capacity to reduce violence against women and administer justice for and strengthen services to victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.”

OVAW currently funds 21 programs. Three of these programs are “formula” programs. This means that the enacting legislation also specifies how the funds are to be distributed. The remaining 18 programs are “discretionary” in that the Office has the responsibility to create the program parameters, qualifications, eligibility, and deliverables.

In fiscal year 2011, OVAW distributed more than $453 million in grants nationwide. Texas organizations received $15.8 million in grants, which went to 23 different organizations. Of that, the state received $8.8 million, which was distributed to different organizations either through the Office of the Governor or the Attorney General.

Much of the funding that organizations around Texas receive from VAWA goes directly into supporting victims of domestic violence or sexual assault. Typically it funds staff members who work directly with the women that need services. This can include advocates who help victims through the legal process, or to staff members who monitor 24-hour victim support phone lines.

In interviews with the Texas Independent, directors of multiple organizations around Texas said that their organizations receive VAWA funding through multiple channels. Some organizations receive funding directly from the federal level, while some receive grants that are funneled through local government organizations from the Office of the Governor.

Serving victims

The Sexual Assault Resource Center of the Brazos Valley receives VAWA funding from the Governors Office to help victims of sexual assault, which represents about 20% of the center’s total budget. Anna Chowdhury, the executive director of the center, told the Texas Independent that they employ a sexual assault response team that works with local entities to ensure victims access to the legal system.

“It is incredibly difficult to get sexual assault cases through the justice system,” said Chowdhury. “The team works with the local district attorney’s office as well as local law enforcement, and they work together to respond to individual cases to get the best outcome for the client and getting cases to move through the criminal justice system.”

Wendie Abramson, director of disability services at Safe Place in Austin, told the Texas Independent that the organization receives grants directly from the federal level and that several different programs are made possible because of VAWA.

Safe Place has used grants to support children who are victims of domestic violence and sexual violence, transitional housing assistance for victims of domestic violence in partnership with Goodwill. They have also received funding to support disabled victims of domestic violence, which included on outreach through social media to the deaf community.

In applying for grants, Safe Place always partners with another agency, and looks for grant programs that have emphasis on innovation. “There is a focus on creating innovative models, or expanding on those models, and we are always looking to expand our services for the victims of these horrific crimes,” said Abramson.

A 24-hour hotline that is operational seven days a week is funded at the Fort Bend County Women’s Center through a VAWA grant through the Office of the Governor. Monem told the Texas Independent that the crisis hotline is critical because it is the “entry point” for most victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The $100,000 grant, which represents 12% of the center’s budget, pays for case managers and staff. Much like with other organizations, VAWA funding is used to pay for the staff members that work with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Monem said that the funding received through VAWA grants is extremely important. “We need every dollar that we can get,” said Monem.

Organizations lobby for reauthorization

Burrhus-Clay told the Texas Independent, that TAASA has spent a significant amount of time working to assure the reauthorization of VAWA. “We’ve been working incredibly hard in support of the reauthorization of VAWA,” said Burrhus-Clay. “With the Texas delegation in particular. We’ve wanted to let them see the importance of VAWA and how it impacts their constituents.”

Burrhus-Clay acknowledged that the current political climate has made the reauthorization process more difficult than it has been in the past. “It’s been a more contentious issue than it was in the past,” said Burrhus-Clay. “It being an election year, there are economic issues, and lots of other hot button issues that are in VAWA.”

While Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison voted for the Senate version, her fellow Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn voted against reauthorization of VAWA. Cornyn recently proposed the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Registry Act which would reduce the backlog of untested rape kits, legislation that TAASA supports. Despite his lack of support for VAWA, Burrhus-Clay thinks it’s important to continue working with the senator on these issues.

“Rightly or wrongly, Sen. Cornyn believes that some of the tribal previsions are solutions that will not meet constitutional muster,” said Burrhus-Clay. “I’ve been very upfront with Sen. Cornyn about where we stand. But it did not make sense to me to hold a grudge when he supports legislation that is good for Texans.”

In Texas the funding is critically important says Burrhus-Clay because of the number of people affected by sexual assault and domestic violence. “What we know from studies is that specifically in Texas only 18% of rapes are reported,” said Burrhus-Clay. “There have been 2 million victims of sexual assault in Texas. It affects one out of every five Texas women.”

“The vast majority of sexual assault survivors are not in the system, and they need support from these services,” said Burrhus-Clay. “If they didn’t report to the police, they don’t get compensated for victims services such as counseling. If VAWA goes away we would have lots of agencies who wouldn’t be able to provide services for sexual assault. These programs have been doing so much for so little for so long that it is so frustrating that they are struggling to keep their doors open.”

Repercussions of failed reauthorization

While the reauthorization of VAWA in some form is considered by many to be assured, the funding is still subject to budget cuts just like any other government agency. Organizations often heavily rely on VAWA and other federal grants to continue providing services. Oftentimes multi-county areas are served by just one organization with a small staff.

According to Chowdhury, her organization is completely staff dependent and relies on VAWA funding to serve large swaths of Central Texas. The center is based in Bryan and serves seven counties throughout the Brazos Valley. “We start out with incredibly small staff, with just six positions serving seven different counties,” said Chowdhury.

Any disruption in funding would affect the “quality and continuity of services,” according to Chowdhury. “We stay with clients for as long as we can. This could be from the initial crisis at the ER or police station through the entire legal process. It could take anywhere from a week to two years,” said Chowdhury.

“I think some people might not understand how important it is – this funding allows us to keep going,” said Chowdhury. “I think there is a misconception that things like VAWA… are not doing as much as they actually are. Not having to deal with people face to face, critics probably don’t see all the good that they do.”

“We recently lost a couple of grants, and so it’s been a tight year,” said Monem. Like other organizations, at Fort Bend County Women’s Center the services they provide are predominantly staff oriented. “Case managers are the hub of our supportive services,” said Monem. “They help with housing applications, accompanying clients to courts, go through client service programs, helping the clients with the safety program.”

“These services are a matter of life and death,” said Monem. “Whatever the arguments are and whatever the political disagreements are it’s really important that we get this reauthorization passed and not cut any of the provisions.”

Keaton Fuller via Eychaner Foundation

The Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, said Monday that a foundation supportive of LGBT students cannot present a scholarship to a student at one of the Diocese’s schools because the foundation’s mission is “contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

The Eychaner Foundation, an anti-bullying group, awarded high school senior Keaton Fuller a $40,000 scholarship named after Matthew Shepard. The Prince of Peace Catholic School and the Eychaner Foundation had previously reached a written agreement to allow a foundation representative to attend the school’s award ceremony on May 20 and do a brief presentation.

That agreement, obtained by The American Independent, stated: “Please verify that the correct date and time are provided above with the correct name and contact information for the event coordinator and that the scholarship may be presented by a foundation representative if student is awarded a Matthew Shepard Scholarship.”

It was signed in mid-March by the school’s scholarship coordinator.

But last week, the school reneged, apparently after the Diocese intervened. Instead of a presentation by the Eychaner foundation, the Diocese says the award will be presented by a school staff member.

“On Friday, April 27th, my family and I were told by the school that a member of the foundation would not be permitted to present this award at graduation,” Fuller said in an open letter to school staff and students on Monday. “The scholarship committee has not been notified of this decision and my family has been put in the middle, so my family has asked for a reversal of the decision.”

He added, “I have never felt as invalidated and unaccepted.”

Prince of Peace referred questions to the Diocese of Davenport.

The Diocese forwarded a statement to TAI that said it had a “long-standing policy” regarding guest speakers at its schools. “We cannot allow anyone or any organization which promotes a position that is contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church to present at a diocesan institution,” the policy states.

“The mission of the Eychaner Foundation is to promote tolerance, understanding and anti-bullying policies. We help [LGBT] students survive and work to prevent teen suicide,” said Rich Eychaner, an Iowa businessman who started the foundation. “We’re shocked that Bishop Amos and the Diocese of Davenport find these positions ‘contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.’”

Diocese spokesman Deacon David Montgomery said in a statement, “Keaton will be presented the award by a member of the school staff at the awards assembly along with background information concerning the award.”

That doesn’t satisfy Eychaner.

“Why would we allow others to present an award we make possible?” Rich Eychaner said Monday afternoon in response to the Diocese’s statement.

“We were pleased that Prince of Peace promised to support all of their students,” added Eychaner executive director Michael Bowser. “We had faith that their written agreement would mean something.”

The Diocese of Davenport spokesperson declined a request for an interview.

Colorado state Rep. B.J. Nikkel (R-Loveland). Photo by John Tomasic.

Conservative state Rep. B.J. Nikkel of Loveland, Colo., voted last week to advance a civil unions bill that would recognize same-sex partnerships in large part because she had come to believe the legislature, not the ballot box, was the best place to weigh civil rights questions.

After joining the five Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to cast the deciding vote Thursday, Nikkel told the Colorado Independent that witness testimony bolstered arguments made to her by supporters of the bill in private conversations.

“Testimony made me further believe that granting legal rights [for gay coupes] is the right thing to do– and that we should do it in the legislature,” she said.

“It’s worth putting the bill forward to be heard from all my colleagues who represent all of Colorado.”

Last year’s version of the bill died in the same Judiciary Committee when Nikkel voted with fellow Republicans as a bloc against it.

One of the main arguments made by Republicans against Senate Bill 2 this year like last year has been that Coloradans in 2006 voted for an amendment banning gay marriage and against a referendum that would have established same-sex civil unions. In voting to pass civil unions now, the argument goes, lawmakers would be improperly overriding the will of the people.

But one of the people Nikkel has been discussing the matter with over the last half year is Mario Nicolais, a prominent Republican attorney in the state and the spokesperson for Coloradans for Freedom, a pro-civil unions coalition of similarly high-profile Republicans.

Nicolais told the Colorado Independent at the hearing that he doesn’t buy the “will of the people” argument and that he spoke with Nikkel twice over the last six months about the bill.

“We talked on the phone about conservative ideas. We talked about the merits of a ballot initiative versus a statute,” he said, reaching into his attache case and pulling out a worn paperback copy of the Federalist Papers.

“Look,” he said pushing his finger along a dog-eared passage highlighted in yellow and blue. It was a section of Paper Number 10, written by James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” as Nicolais put it.

“[This passage] is about the difference between a representative republic and a direct democracy,” he said as people moved and spoke all around him in the crowded Old Supreme Court chambers. He began slowly reading aloud.

“The purpose of a republic… is to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.”

Nicolais looked up from the page and shook his head.

“It’s right there. This is about civil rights. It’s not something you decide through a series of 30-second campaign commercials. It’s something for a deliberative body to consider. We live in a representative republic.”

Brad Clark, executive director of gay rights group One Colorado, told the Independent that the lobbying efforts of Republicans in favor of the bill has made an enormous difference this year. He called the formation of Coloradans for Freedom a “game changer.”

“I think [the coalition] signaled to lawmakers that now is the time for this bill in Colorado,” he said.

Indeed, of all the witnesses testifying Thursday, many of them sharing moving personal stories, Nicolais made perhaps the most persuasive case by speaking directly and in detail to Republican concerns. He cited sources like Madison revered on the right and marshaled evidence of deep Republican support throughout the state.

He argued that it was a mistake to dismiss conservative support for civil unions as a product of western “live and let live” libertarian ideology. There are many traditionally conservative reasons to support the bill, he said, explaining that members of Coloradans for Freedom were acting out of fealty to conservative ideas about religious liberty, civil rights, limited government, family values and sound public policy.

The bill promotes committed adult relationships, he said, and, more important, in the case of separation, it legally binds same-sex parents to their children through child support and visitation provisions currently nonexistent in state law.

“Why do Republicans promote traditional families?” he asked the committee. “We do so for the benefit of the kids. This bill supports kids… So the question is do we fight for couples who love each other or do we turn our backs on them?”

Nicolais noted that 1,477 Republican delegates, or 45.7 percent of the delegates at the party convention last month, voted to support civil unions as a plank of the party platform.

“These are the base of the Republican party, the true believers, the people walking the districts… that can not be ignored here,” he said.

The bill passed the Democratic-controlled Senate two weeks ago and it passed the House Finance Committee the day after it passed the Judiciary Committee. Yet the end of the legislative session on Wednesday is fast approaching.

The bill is scheduled to be heard by the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday morning. It reportedly has already won enough votes to pass that committee but only once it does can it be introduced for debate in the full chamber. Whether or not Republican leadership in the House will move the bill forward remains a matter of much speculation in the media and in the halls of the Capitol.

One Colorado is holding a rally at the capitol Tuesday morning.

“The Colorado Civil Union Act has passed the Senate and two House Committees with bipartisan support,” wrote spokesman Jace Woodrum in a Monday release. “But with only two days until the end of the legislative session, Speaker of the House Frank McNulty is threatening inaction on the bill in order to kill it.”

Image: Colorado State Capitol Building. Onetwo1, via Wikimedia Commons.

Just hours after an initial federal court ruling last Monday that deemed Texas’ controversial decision to block the centers from the WHP unconstitutional, a single judge quickly reversed the temporary injunction in a move being called “very rare” and “highly unusual.” The legal battle took another twist two days later when a three-judge appeals panel struck that order down and reinstated Planned Parenthood into the program, pending oral arguments and eventually a full trial.

In its May 4 briefing, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel–which includes the judge who granted the state’s emergency stay–slammed Texas for continually omitting “important precedent” in its attempt to enforce the ban. While the state is fighting to keep Planned Parenthood from participating in the federally subsidized low-income reproductive health services program because it provides abortions, the panel noted a significant 2007 Fifth Circuit case that makes clear Planned Parenthood abortion services operate as wholly separate operations from family planning services and is thus able to receive public funding– a case never mentioned by Texas officials in their court proceedings.

Our conclusion rests in part on the state’s continuing reluctance to address the obviously relevant opinion in [Planned Parenthood of Central Texas vs Sanchez]. Despite the plaintiffs’ and the district court’s having relied extensively on that authority, which binds this panel to the extent it is applicable, the state never mentioned it (as far as we can tell from the record) in the district court and did not refer to it in any way in its motion for stay pending appeal. Nor has the state sought leave to supplement its submission with a response to Sanchez the plaintiffs’ focus on the affidavit referred to above.

Blake Rocap, legislative counsel with reproductive rights advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice Texas says the state’s refusal to take Sanchez into account is significant and ushers in further criticism that the legal battle is fueled by ideology rather than concern for women’s health.

“The three-judge panel commented on the Attorney General’s failure to address this specific and relevant precedent in their briefing– another indication that this is not about upholding law or women’s access to health care but is much more about politics,” said Rocap.

Echoing plaintiff concerns, the panel also called into question the state’s need for an emergency stay to reverse the initial court ruling. Requested by Attorney General Greg Abbott, the stay was granted within 24 hours by Judge Jerry Smith, a former GOP county chair and Republican activist with a controversial history of disparaging women, the Texas Independent previously reported. The urgency of the stay relied on the claim that preventing the ban would force Texas to cease operating the WHP  “upon termination of federal funding.” But funding will continue until November 2012, the briefing points out, invalidating the state’s argument.

This supplemental filing undermines the State’s assertion of irreparable harm if the injunction is not stayed pending appeal. Regarding the balance of the merits, we cannot conclude, on the present state of the record, that the State has shown a great likelihood, approaching a near certainty, that the district court abused its discretion in entering the injunction.

An ‘emergency stay’ is normally reserved for situations that would cause irreparable harm, says Wayne Krause-Wang, legal director with the Texas Civil Rights Project. The cases must qualify as exceptional circumstances with severe time constraints– the state’s claim for such an emergency is questionable, he argues, considering its lack of proof of damage.

“It was certainly a tactic within the ability of the state of Texas to pursue,” said Krause-Wang. “It makes sense to apply for an emergency stay if you have the evidence to back it up, in this case it didn’t appear the state had the evidence, and that’s what the three judge panel ended up ruling at the end.”

“In retrospect the state’s argument of irreparable harm doesn’t seem to be viable. Ironically, it is a little disingenuous to say the state would be harmed by their own voluntary decision to cut off the Women’s Health Program, I think that’s turning the argument on its head,” he added.

Rocap called the emergency order “especially duplicitous.”

“Planned Parenthood has served as the largest provider of these services in the WHP since 2005 without incident, yet these anti-choice politicians are now declaring that it is an “Emergency” to exclude them because they exercise their First Amendment rights to affiliate with advocates of safe legal abortion,”  he said. “Given no injury has been shown over the past seven years of Planned Parenthood’s participation, it is clear that the true emergency is that this is an election year and again we are seeing politicians put the health of their political careers ahead of the health of women.”

The Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), which days earlier indicated it would shut out Planned Parenthood, is now prohibited from enforcing the ban. The district court will decide on a definitive trial start date on May 18. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments on the state’s appeal of the temporary injunction during the week of June 4.

“We will comply with the court’s order as the case proceeds,” said HHSC spokesperson Stephanie Goodman. “We also will continue to work toward a state program that provides women with access to vital family planning services and complies with the law that bans abortion providers from getting those funds.”

Read the court of appeals document here.

(Photo Source: Flickr/WeNews)

Open season for gun enthusiasts in Virginia begins July 1, as state residents will be allowed to purchase more than one handgun per month for the first time since 1993.

The General Assembly voted to repeal its 19-year-old restriction on gun sales that stemmed from Virginia’s days as a key cog in the “iron pipeline,” when about 40 percent of guns traced from New York City crimes originated in Virginia.

The one-handgun-per-month limit accomplished its goal of reducing the number of Virginia guns used to commit crimes in other states, according to a 1995 report by the Virginia State Crime Commission, but proponents of the repeal said mandatory background checks for gun buyers made the limit archaic and unnecessary.

Some family members of those killed or wounded during the shooting spree at Virginia Tech in 2007 lobbied Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to veto the repeal, but he signed it into law less than a week later.

“We find it shameful that Gov. McDonnell would chose to repeal Virginia’s landmark one-handgun-per-month law over the objections of some law enforcement officials and the objections of Virginia Tech families,” said Brian Malte, director of legislation for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

A Richmond Times-Dispatch poll from February showed that 66 percent of Virginians opposed repealing the one-gun-per-month law.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun group, said that repeal was based on a constitutional protection, not a public need.

“Why do you need to be a Jew or need to be a Catholic?” President Philip Van Cleave said. “You don’t need it, but you want it. That’s what we call freedom and liberty.”

Van Cleave said opponents of the repeal who argued that no reasonable person should need more than one handgun per month missed the point.

“We don’t limit that you can only go to church two times a month or only say 10 words per day,” Van Cleave said. “This was an artificial limitation placed on a right, and the repeal is way over due.”

But Malte disagreed.

“This is not a limitation on a right, “ he said. “It’s a law used to stop gun trafficking at the point of purchase.”

Since its inception in 1993, legislators added several exceptions to the one-handgun-per-month law to allow people to acquire multiple guns if they could pass enhanced background checks or earn a concealed carry permit. Opponents of the repeal said those provisions would accommodate any law-abiding citizen or collector who wanted more than one handgun in a 30-day period, thus making the repeal useless.

Malte noted that even with the one-a-month restriction, people could still purchase 12 handguns per year under the old law.

“If someone is going to buy 19 guns at once, they’re not going to be taking them home as Christmas presents,” he said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has long been involved in Virginia’s gun control debate, criticized the state legislature shortly after the one-handgun-a-month repeal became official.

“I just think that guns are a problem for everybody in America,” Bloomberg told Richmond’s CBS station. “The only one that’s going to buy that quantity of guns is somebody that plans to traffic them.”

Bloomberg donated a total of $150,000 to six Democratic Virginia Senate candidates during 2011, hoping to help strengthen the state’s gun laws. While several pro-gun bills failed during the 2012 session, Bloomberg said he would continue to scrutinize Virginia until the flow of guns stopped.

“Keep the guns from coming to New York, and you won’t hear from me in Virginia,” he said.

But Van Cleave said the gun smuggling issue had been misrepresented. Although he conceded that the problem existed during the early 1990s, he blamed New York criminals for causing it.

“It wasn’t some industrious Virginian smuggling guns to New York City, it’s people coming from New York to Virginia to get guns by some illegal means,” Van Cleave said. “It’s really their problem. They need to keep their criminals and drugs in New York. I’m not giving up my rights because New York can’t control its criminals.”

Other gun bills received mixed support during the 2012 General Assembly, as lawmakers passed a bill allowing state employees to keep firearms in locked cars at work and repealed fingerprint requirements for concealed-carry permits. But, legislators also rejected a repeal of Virginia’s background check laws and a bill to force colleges to allow students and professors to carry concealed weapons in campus facilities.

But Malte said that the one-handgun-per-month repeal — coupled with the refusal to close the so-called “gun show loophole” that allows people to buy guns from unlicensed dealers at gun shows without undergoing a background check — undermines Virginia’s ability to stop gun trafficking.

“We need background checks on all gun sales, and we need a one-gun-every-30-days limit,” Malte said. “Those two laws will ensure that dangerous people don’t get weapons.”

Image: Virginia State Capitol building. Anderskev, via Wikimedia Commons.

Image: ©iStockphoto.com/jml5571

To bring down the high chlamydia infections rate among Tennessee teenagers, an anti-abortion pregnancy center in Athens, Tenn., has proposed spending federal tax dollars on a life-sized version of the Game of Life.

The “Teen Life Maze” is just one of the ideas put forth by a cluster of crisis pregnancy centers that are receiving government grants to conduct abstinence education as part of President Obama’s health-care reform law.

Records obtained by The American Independent show that the government is paying for abstinence programs run by centers that promote dubious medical information. For example, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) receiving funding through the program claim that “reliable studies” have shown a link between abortion and breast cancer.

One of the centers says it seeks to help students understand “the lack of effectiveness of condoms/birth control in STD protection and pregnancy.”

TAI previously reported that a South Dakota anti-abortion CPC that requires its volunteers to be Christians received funding under a program created by Obama’s stimulus bill.

Between 1996 and 2009, taxpayers spent more than $1.5 billion on abstinence-only education, paid for by federal grants and state matching funds, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. In 2004, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) released a report that found that these programs often contained false or distorted information about sex and reproductive health, such as claiming that condoms have a high failure rate at preventing HIV and pregnancy, women who have abortions have a high risk of becoming sterile, and HIV can be transmitted through sweat and tears.

Shortly after taking office, Obama moved to cut off federal funding for most abstinence-only education.

However, during the intense negotiations over the health-care-reform bill in 2009 and 2010, Congress attached a $250 million grant program for abstinence-only instruction (granting up to $50 million annually, through 2014). Under the program, state health departments apply for abstinence funding and can then allocate sub-awards to various organizations across the state, including county health departments, schools, community groups, and faith-based nonprofits.

So far, at least three anti-abortion CPCs have received funding through this provision. They’re all in Tennessee, which has the nation’s 11th highest teen birth rate, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In January, the Tennessee Department of Health announced it was dividing $3.2 million in abstinence funding among 13 agencies through 2014 to “support comprehensive, evidence-based and medically accurate community-based education programs.”

A total of about $650,000 of that money was awarded to the three CPCs: Full Circle Women’s Services in Athens, Life Choices Pregnancy Support Center in Dyersburg, and Women’s Care Center of Rhea County, Inc., in Dayton. Per the terms of the grant program, each grant recipient has to match 75 percent of the award.

When they’re not teaching teens not to have sex, these centers are seeing women – sometimes teens – facing unplanned, and often unwelcomed, pregnancies. They seek to discourage abortion, offering women various services including counseling and free pregnancy tests. The websites of two of the centers – Full Circle Women’s Services and Life Choices Pregnancy Support Center – feature an array of misinformation about abortion, including claims that abortion causes breast cancer  and depression.

Despite widespread rejection of an abortion-breast cancer link from major medical institutions such as the American Cancer Society, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the National Cancer Institute, these CPCs imply that there is a connection, claiming on their websites that “a number of reliable studies have demonstrated connection between abortion and later development of breast cancer.”

According to the American Cancer Society, “At this time, the scientific evidence does not support the notion that abortion of any kind raises the risk of breast cancer or any other type of cancer.”

Both Full Circle Women’s Services and the Women’s Care Center are affiliated with Care Net, a national network of crisis pregnancy centers that prohibits its members from recommending, offering, or referring “single women” for contraception

Whereas proponents of comprehensive sex education encourage teaching teens how to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancy and diseases while acknowledging that condoms are not guaranteed to work 100 percent of the time, abstinence-education advocates often claim that teaching about proper condom use offers young people a “false sense of security.”

On their websites, Full Circle, Life Choices Pregnancy Resource Center, and the Women’s Care Center cite identical statistics emphasizing what they portray as the lack of effectiveness of condoms. These centers tell readers that “consistent” condom use during vaginal sex reduces the risk of “HIV by 85%”; human papillomavirus “by 50% or less”; and gonorrhea, Chlamydia, herpes, and syphilis “by about 50%.” The statistics come from various studies compiled by the Medical Institute, a nonprofit organization whose advice for preventing STDs is: “Avoid sexual activity if you are single. Be faithful to one uninfected partner for the rest of your life.”

Richard A. Crosby, a professor and chair at the Department of Health Behavior at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, told TAI that these statistics are misleading.

“These are not statistics that are widely supported by the literature,” Crosby said. “They are confounded by a lack of accounting for the correct use of condoms. Consistent use alone is not enough. … When you do not account for the correct use, you have an underestimate of the effectiveness.”

Crosby, who has received federal grants to research HIV prevention, is currently working on a “highly controlled, rigorous” study funded by the National Institutes of Health to determine the value of consistent and correct condom use in preventing three common STIs: Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis.

“All of these numbers are way low,” Crosby said, referring to the pregnancy centers’ statistics (with the exception of the rate of condom-use effectiveness at preventing HPV, which he said is supported by studies). He said the claim that condoms are 85 percent effective in reducing HIV infection is “really misleading” and not supported by many research studies that isolate for consistent and correct use.

‘Innovative Approaches’

Full Circle Women’s Services – awarded $154,200 – is the anti-abortion pregnancy center that proposed trying to curb teen sex with a giant “Teen Life Maze.” The center cited the game as one of its “innovative approaches” to abstinence instruction in a grant application submitted to the Tennessee health department in May 2011. The maze is described as a “large game board of rooms designed to let teens experience the consequences – both positive and negative – of life choices. It is effective in that teens get to play along in seeing firsthand the results of good decisions and bad decisions ranging from making trips to the doctor for a lifelong STD or the satisfaction in staying on course and graduating from high school.”

In a subsequent document, the center explained that inspiration for the game comes from Georgia, where life mazes have been hosted in several schools across the state, and that Full Circle was “in the planning stages of bringing this event to Athens.”

Other innovative approaches proposed by Full Circle include hosting a game show about the risks of having sex and screening the film Look Before You Leap, described in the proposal as “an adrenaline rush of drama, action, and humor that takes relationship education to extreme heights.”

Full Circle, founded in 1998, has been offering privately financed abstinence-education services to mostly elementary and middle schools in McMinn County for a few years now. In its grant proposal, the center explained that the extra cash would be used to hire more educators. Currently, the center’s program, called On TRAC (Teaching Teens Responsibility and Consequences), relies on abstinence curriculum called “Think on Point” and “Life on Point,” created by On Point, a youth-development group in Chattanooga, Tenn

“Think on Point” is a five-day program offered once a year to sixth- through ninth-graders during physical education class. According to the program description, “[t]he curriculum includes homework assignments, in-class handouts, role-playing activities, and focused small-group discussion. … Lessons at every grade level discuss the topics of abstinence, sexually transmitted diseases, media influence, and standards and boundaries; other more specific themes include pregnancy, pornography, abuse, value and self-worth, and the essence of real love.”

“Life on Point” is designed to dig deeper into risky activities. The center also proposed bringing five-day abstinence instruction to older teens in high school life skills and health classes.

All of the abstinence-only programs funded under Tennessee’s Affordable Care Act grant had to submit short- and long-term program objectives. Full Circle Women’s long-term goals include curbing rates of teen pregnancy, school dropouts, and STDs in McMinn and Meigs counties, and also a “decrease in percentage of children being raised by single mothers below the poverty line.” Short-term goals include “increased knowledge of STDS and pregnancy risks” and “understanding the lack of effectiveness of condoms/birth control in STD protection and pregnancy.”

To make the case for giving Full Circle money to target 10- to 17-year-olds in McMinn, Meigs, and Polk counties (in southeastern part of the state), Full Circle’s grant application cited statistics showing STD rates among teens are high in the area, including “Tennessee Department of Health reports that the number of reported cases of Chlamydia in McMinn County has increased a staggering 1200% from 1994-2007.”

Full Circle Women’s Services Executive Director Anne Montgomery turned down TAI’s request for an interview.

In line with the eight-point federal guidelines of abstinence education, the other two CPCs receiving Affordable Care Act funding similarly offer plans to educate teens about the repercussions of sexual activity and advocate abstinence as the only means to avoid those repercussions.

Here is part of how the Women’s Care Center promotes its abstinence program, called The Edge:

While “until marriage” may sound like practically forever, let’s get a little perspective on this. The average age of initial marriage in the United States is 26 years old. That gets even lower in more rural areas. And the payoff of sexual abstinence is that you have the rest of your married life to enjoy your sexuality without having to suffer the consequences of emotional baggage, crotch-crippling STDs, or teen pregnancy. That sounds to me like a pretty good deal.

Among the desired outcomes of Life Choices Pregnancy Resource Center’s abstinence-until-marriage program, Right Choices of West Tennessee, are “increased knowledge regarding the effects of teen sexual behavior and sexually-transmitted diseases” and “increased commitment to abstinence until marriage.”

The directors of Life Choices Pregnancy Support Center and the Women’s Care Center did not return requests for interviews.

Earlier this month, the CDC released new data showing that America’s teen birthrate is the lowest it has been since 1946. The Guttmacher Institute, a proponent of comprehensive sex education, credited that drop, in part, with improvements in contraceptive use.

But Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, said high rates of STDs among teens means the abstinence-only message is still necessary.

“While teen birth rates have reached historic lows, STD rates among teens are at historic highs, so condom-centered education is certainly not sufficient to deal with even the physical consequences of sexual activity since 2 of the 4 most common STDs are easily transmissible with a condom,” Huber told TAI in an email. “Sexual Risk Avoidance (SRA) abstinence education makes sense from a public health perspective and also as an approach that both resonates with teens and protects them from any of the consequences of sexual activity, not the least of which is pregnancy.”

CeCe McDonald broke down in tears as her lawyer grilled her on the witness stand. “Is it true that Molly Flaherty and Dean Schmitz started making racist remarks and slurs including ‘niggers’ and ‘faggots,’ and did Dean Schmitz say, ‘Look at that boy dressed as a girl and tucking her dick in?’”

McDonald replied, “Yes.”

McDonald was in the process of pleading guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the stabbing death of Schmitz. It’s a case that has enraged transgender advocates, who say McDonald was defending herself from a racist and transphobic attack.

McDonald is a person of color– she’s black – and she’s also transgender, two facts that her attorneys argued motivated Dean Alvin Schmitz and his friends to initiate a confrontation with her, resulting in an altercation that would leave Schmitz dead and McDonald in custody charged with murder.

McDonald’s attorney, Hersch Izek, asked her, “Is it a fact that Molly Flaherty yelled out, ‘I can take on all of you bitches’ and smashed a glass of alcohol in your face and a fight broke out with Ms. Flaherty?”

McDonald replied, “Yes.”

Izek continued, “Is it a fact that eventually the fight broke up and you attempted to leave the scene, attempted to get out of harm’s way, and got as far as the intersection, and Schmitz followed you? And you reached into your purse and pulled out a pair of scissors and held them in a way that posed an unreasonable risk to Schmitz?”

Yes, said McDonald.

“And are you giving up your claim that you legally attacked him in self-defense?”

“Yes, I am.”

For ten months, McDonald and her supporters have insisted she is innocent and acted in self-defense. But on Wednesday, she took a plea for a sentence of 41 months in prison. The prosecution had been seeking a conviction on charges of second-degree murder, which carries a sentence of up to 40 years.

McDonald’s sentencing hearing will be on June 4, one year from the incident that landed her in police custody.

Around midnight on June 5, 2011, McDonald and three of her friends were walking to the grocery store to get food. They left McDonald’s apartment, located a couple of blocks from the grocery store, and on the way walked past a rowdy bar known as the Schooner Tavern.

Schmitz, along with three others, was standing outside the bar holding two bottles of beer when McDonald and her friends walked down the sidewalk next to the bar.

As they passed the bar, Schmitz hurled epithets at McDonald and her friends, one of McDonald’s friends told police. According to that police report, McDonald’s friend, Larry Thomas, said that Schmitz yelled out to the group “nigger and faggot lover and said she is not a girl, she is tucking her dick.”

According the police report:

LARRY THOMAS also said that DEAN SCHMITZ had two beer bottles, one in each hand. At that point LARRY THOMAS said that he took off his belt and began swinging it around. LARRY THOMAS then said that he backed up to the middle of the street and dropped his belt like he was read to fight. LARRY THOMAS then recalled DEAN SCHMITZ say that he was done. At that point LARRY THOMAS said that MOLLY FLAHERTY began to fight with [McDonald] and all hell broke loose.

According to the criminal complaint filed by police, a woman (alleged elsewhere to be Flaherty) allegedly ”threw or pushed a glass” into McDonald’s face. The confrontation then devolved into a melee.

Witness accounts vary as to exactly what happened next. An employee of the Schooner told police that he “observed McDonald with the knife.”

According to a police report, Schmitz’s fiancée, Jenny Thoreson, stated that “she was outside and a altercation began with a group of ‘gay’ people walking by the bar it escalated to a physical level when a party later identified as McDonald took a knife out and ‘stabbed’ her fiancé after yelling she had a ‘blade.’”

A witness not affiliated with either side told police that he or she saw Schmitz pull McDonald off of the woman who had attacked McDonald. Then Schmitz grabbed his chest and said, “You stabbed me.” The witness said he or she heard McDonald say, “Yes, I did.”

According to police, another witness saw McDonald go to the parking lot across the street and throw a pair of scissors — not a knife — on the ground.

No weapon has been recovered from the scene, and prosecutors said in court Monday that there was no murder weapon in evidence.

According to a police report, McDonald told Officer David Garman that she “was walking along when a group of people began to make derogatory comments about her. A physical altercation ensued and McDonald stated that she was forced to protect herself.“

McDonald’s plea came after four days of evidentiary hearings and jury selection, and as the case wore on, it became increasingly clear that much of the evidence that the defense hoped to use in the case would never be shown to the jury.

McDonald’s defense tried, unsuccessfully, to get images of a swastika tattoo on Schmitz chest entered into evidence.

The prosecutors argued the tattoo was irrelevant to the case.

McDonald’s attorney disagreed: “His tattoo is a form of communication that intends to make a statement about his intent toward people of color.”

“The fact that Dean Schmitz had a swastika tattoo on his chest reflects his attitude — otherwise he would not have had it,” McDonald’s attorney told Judge Daniel Moreno on Friday. “It reflects what happened that night – he singled out Ms. McDonald because of her race and her gender. This is about how that swastika tattoo reflects his conduct that night.”

The judge ruled that no images of that swastika tattoo would be allowed in the courtroom.

McDonald’s defense also moved to have a toxicology expert testify as to the effects that methamphetamines, alcohol, and cocaine have on violent behavior. Those drugs showed up in Schmitz’s system when he was examined, according to toxicology reports.

The judge said the expert could only speak generally about those drugs and could not speculate that Schmitz was actually experiencing any specific effects.

Her lawyers also sought to have Schmitz’s lengthy criminal record – including convictions for assault and sale of cocaine — shown to the jury. But the judge ruled that his criminal history was sufficiently different from his actions on June 5 and therefore could not be shown to the jury.

McDonald’s lawyers tried to introduce a witness to speak about violence against the transgender community and to educate the jury about transgender issues.

Research has shown that transgender woman of color face very high rates of violence, and that has been borne out by new reports over the last few weeks. At least three transgender women of color were murdered just last month — one in Chicago, one in Oakland, and one in Detroit.

Judge Moreno told the defense that an expert witness may testify but that person could only provided the definition of ‘transgender’ and could not talk about the violence transgender individuals face.

Chrishaun CeCe McDonald

Chrishaun McDonald was born in Chicago in 1989 and came out as transgender in her early teen years. Her friends call her CeCe, or often affectionately by her nickname, Honee Bea. She was studying fashion design at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

Since her arrest, she’s been writing to her supporters about her life as well as her experience since that night in front of Schooner.

“I thank the lord everyday for keeping me here and giving me such a profound mouth and mind to share my experiences and the trials and tribulations I’ve overcame, because honestly, I never thought I would make it past my 16th birthday,” McDonald wrote last November. “To grow up and have that thought at a young age is unsettling.”

She has recounted experiences with racism and discrimination because of her gender identity.

“I grew up in a community that was predominately African-American people,” she wrote. “And with the fact of me just being a minority in this society was bad, being African American and trans is an ultimate challenge. I can remember having loaded guns being put to my head and being beat until bloody. Or walking down the street and being yelled ‘a faggot.’”

She said she’d escaped that situation and moved to Minneapolis, a city known for a large and visible transgender community. With her criminal case pending, McDonald wrote that her situation had again become precarious.

“With the recent incidents that involved me, involuntarily, I feel that once again a single situation has blocked me from further reaching my pursuit of happiness,” she wrote. “I am truly sorry for the loss of a person who also was involved in the incident, but how would my mom and family feel if she heard that I was killed by a group of racist, homophobic/transphobic people only for walking to the store and being at the wrong place at the wrong time, which luckily I wasn’t by myself. Or even looking at it in different aspects, would the situation have been the same. Would they have taken the same lengths to prosecute him if he had killed me? Or would they have even cared if it were a black on black crime. But once again not to many people care if it doesn’t involve them or is of their concern.”

McDonald’s blog posts and Facebook page postings would complicate her case. The prosecution moved to have the preceding letter as well as statements she made on Facebook about the incident in front of the Schooner introduced as evidence against her.

On the night of the stabbing, McDonald had told police that she had held out scissors in order to scare Schmitz and that Schmitz had then run into them.

But in a letter to the Star Tribune, she reportedly wrote that her confession was “a big mistake [for] trying to cover up for one of my friends who actually did it. I didn’t know exactly who, but I knew someone was defending me.”

During jury selection, the prosecution asked each potential juror if they could believe someone who told them two different stories about the same event. All the prospective jurors said it would make them trust someone less.

Dean Alvin Schmitz

Schmitz was the father of four boys, all teenage or younger. His family spoke to local Fox affiliate, KMSP-9, shortly after his death and praised him as someone always willing to lend a hand.

“He always used to go out of his way to help people,” his son, Jeremy Williams, told the station’s reporter. “He would give the shirt off his back to help people. He was, overall, a great person.”

“He was a great guy. He definitely didn’t deserve what happened to him,” said Josh Williams, another of Schmitz’s children. “I loved him very much. He’ll always be with me. He was my best friend.”

While he is remembered as a man who loved his family and was eager to help those in need, Schmitz’s brother, Charles Pelfrey, told the Star Tribune he wasn’t surprised to hear that his brother had been accused of making derogatory remarks.

“At times he can be like that, yes,” Pelfrey said. “It depends on his mood, unfortunately.”

Free Cece

In the months leading up to the plea deal, a committee of concerned citizens urged Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to drop the charges against McDonald.

Graffiti tags popped up in parts of Minneapolis that say “Free CeCe,” and the CeCe McDonald Support Committee raised funds for her defense and hosted events to raise awareness about the case. Supporters have showed up at hearings in the case wearing buttons depicting a swastika with a line through it and t-shirts that say “Free Honee Bea.”

Prosecutors filed a motion to prevent those t-shirts and buttons from being allowed in the courtroom during the trial, a motion the judge approved last week.

Last month, 14 national LGBT groups, including the national chapter of PFLAG, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) sent a letter to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman urging him to drop the murder charges against McDonald.

“NCAVP members know that transgender survivors of violence often face biased and discriminatory treatment from law enforcement, courts, and other first responders,” the letter stated. “We are concerned that McDonald could be facing discriminatory charges based on her transgender identity. While we do not have all the details about this incident, our experience tells us to strongly advocate that Hennepin County consider CeCe McDonald as acting in self-defense.”

Chuck Laszewski, media coordinator for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, sent a statement to TAI last month responding to those criticisms.

“Over the past several months, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office has received a number of comments from some members of the LGBTQ community criticizing our handling of a case,” wrote Laszewski. “Our role as prosecutors is to examine the facts provided by police investigators and determine if there is sufficient admissible evidence to bring a charge. It is our mission to serve justice and public safety. Gender, race, sexual orientation and class are not part of the decision-making process.”

He continued, “After looking at the facts, we feel that Chrishaun McDonald must be prosecuted for murder. We cannot, and do not, let popular opinion determine how we handle cases.”

Laszewski noted that the county attorney’s office has successfully prosecuted hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and that it had done trainings on LGBT issues and hired LGBT staff.

“We understand that some in the LGBTQ community may continue to disagree with us, as is their right, regarding the McDonald case,” Laszewski said. “When that case is behind us, sadly, there will be other transgender individuals who will likely be victims of crimes. We want to continue to work with the community to prosecute those crimes, to make everyone safer and to bring justice to all.”

Katie Burgess, executive director of the Transgender Youth Support Network, told reporters after McDonald pleaded guilty, “We know that this system is not designed to deliver justice to young trans women of color. We are going to continue to support CeCe as she goes through this process and continue to stand for justice for all trans people and people of color so that this is the last time a young trans woman of color has to go through this.”

Local transgender advocate, Andrea Jenkins, also addressed reporters. “So many of our trans brothers and sisters have been murdered just in the last two weeks in Oakland, in Chicago, all in their early 20s just like CeCe McDonald,” said Jenkins. “Please do not be disappointed with CeCe McDonald. The pressure of this oppressive system is more powerful than I could have withstood. We need to continue to struggle for a more just world for all our brothers and sisters, in particular our trans people of color.”

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman told the Twin Cities Daily Planet that he was satisfied with the plea deal. “My feeling is that this is an appropriate resolution to a tragic situation,” Freeman said. “One person is dead and another person going to prison for 41 months.”

Front-page image: Flickr/steakpinball

Story images via SupportCece.wordpress.com

The incident is the latest example of attorneys exercising peremptory challenges against LGBT jurors — an issue The American Independent reported on this week.

California — unlike most states and the federal government — bars attorneys from removing jurors on the basis of sexual orientation. LGBT activists believe the California law would apply to gender identity as well, even though it is not specifically mentioned.

Superior Court Judge Joan Weber reportedly said she found the prosecutors’ actions “shocking,” and dismissed the entire jury panel. She also said she was “heartbroken” over the situation, according to NBC San Diego.

The six defendants are part of the “Equality 9,” who were arrested on charges of refusing to disburse and interfering with the business a public agency when they protested a San Diego county clerk office after the passage of Prop 8. The protesters were demanding marriage licenses.

“There has been a fundamental violation of a constitutional right to a jury trial by my client’s peers,” attorney for the defense, Todd Moore, told the Union Tribune.

Hugh Moore, a community member who was observing the trial, said in a statement provided to TAI, “The only way for the city attorney to get a conviction in this case in San Diego would be to use an unfair jury and that [is] what they tried to do.”

Defendants in the case declined to be interviewed citing ongoing legal proceedings, but did forward a statement from the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality, the group that helped organize the protest in 2010.

“This incident marks a serious error on the part of the prosecution who has already
received copious criticism [for] its insistence that the City of San Diego pay for a criminal trial to take place,” the statement said. “This issue was not lost on the initial jury. Experienced members of the defense staff and the judge herself remarked about the unusually high number of potential jurors who said this was a waste of city resources.”

The charges were downgraded on Tuesday and a judge, instead of a jury, will issue a verdict in the case.

Currently, only California and Oregon have laws barring the removal of potential jurors because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. A similar law is pending in Minnesota. In the federal system, courts have thus far refused to view sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in terms of jury service. An attorney for the Department of Justice recently told a federal court that “the government’s ultimate position is that it takes no position” on whether case law that bars attorneys from dismissing jurors based on race and sex should be extended to cover the LGBT community.