An Ohio man has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to interfering with the performance of the duties of a flight crew.
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Six pro-life activists were found guilty of blocking access to an abortion clinic on Tuesday and could face a sentence of up to 11 years in prison, according to a press release from the Thomas More Society.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 11 pro-life activists in October 2022 with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services,” for blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in March 2021. A jury ruled that the six defendants were guilty after a six-day trial at the Fred D. Thompson U.S. Courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee, according to the press release.
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Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders signed a bill Tuesday to stop criminals in prison for rape, first-degree murder, human trafficking and some other felony offenses committed after 2024 from being released early.
The Protect Arkansas Act will make those who commit any of 24 felonies including rape, aggravated robbery and child pornography possession ineligible for parole and require people incarcerated for a variety of other felony crimes like manslaughter and fentanyl delivery committed in 2025 or later to serve at least 85 percent of their court-assigned sentences. Sanders signed the act surrounded by law enforcement personnel, and tweeted, “The failed public safety status quo ends today in Arkansas.”
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I must have seen “The Shawshank Redemption” at least a hundred times. It was an ubiquitous staple of college life in the late 1990s, like “Friends” or The Dave Matthews Band. It’s the story of a young banker, Andy Dufresene (Tim Robbins), who tries to preserve his humanity and his hope while serving a life sentence after being wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover.
In the middle of the movie an elderly prisoner, Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore), holds another inmate hostage at knifepoint. After Andy defuses the situation it is revealed that, after 50 years in prison, Brooks will be paroled. Brooks had spent his entire adult life in prison, and he didn’t want to leave, so he reasoned that by committing another crime he could remain in prison. While Brooks’ would-be victim surmises that Brooks is simply crazy, Andy’s best friend, “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), has a different explanation: “He’s just . . . just institutionalized.”
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Ohio plans to spend an additional $51 million to renovate and build jails across the state in an effort, Gov. Mike DeWine says, to create environments that reduce recidivism.
The money comes on top of $45 million the state handed out a year ago to six local jails for major construction projects. Also, another $5 million went to smaller projects at six other sites.
“Our continued investment in Ohio’s local jails is a public safety investment that benefits everyone involved,” DeWine said. “This funding will go a long way toward creating safer and more secure jails for Ohio’s communities.”
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Ohio plans to spend an additional $51 million to renovate and build jails across the state in an effort, Gov. Mike DeWine says, to create environments that reduce recidivism.
The money comes on top of $45 million the state handed out a year ago to six local jails for major construction projects. Also, another $5 million went to smaller projects at six other sites.
“Our continued investment in Ohio’s local jails is a public safety investment that benefits everyone involved,” DeWine said. “This funding will go a long way toward creating safer and more secure jails for Ohio’s communities.”
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A Democrat-appointed federal judge opened the door to allowing more males to be housed in women’s prisons Tuesday by ruling that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers people with gender dysphoria.
Kesha Williams, a biologically male former inmate who identifies as a transgender woman, sued several people associated with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center in Virginia for allegedly violating the ADA in their decision to house Williams with men, according to court documents. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, a Clinton appointee, sided with Williams and rejected a lower court’s dismissal of the initial lawsuit.
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The Department of Justice invested almost $1.5 million of taxpayer dollars into a “transgender programming curriculum” focused on transgender inmates’ needs.
The curriculum is designed to help transgender inmates with their gender “identity,” sexual health and safety, according to a summary of the government contract. Though it’s unclear if the curriculum has been implemented, the program could be available for up to 1,200 transgender inmates, according to Justice Department estimates.
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A judge on Monday sentenced Ghislaine Maxwell to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and other charges in connection with her recruiting and grooming minors for the pleasure of then-boyfriend financier Jeffrey Epstein.
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Attorney Michael Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for defrauding ex-porn star Stormy Daniels, a former client whose legal wrangling with then-President Trump made Avenatti a popular albeit brief cable news celebrity for bashing Trump.
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The Biden administration has allowed a more than eleven-fold increase in the number of illegal immigrant offenders let out of Texas prisons and into the general U.S. population, despite federal immigration law requiring ICE to take convicts into custody after serving their time, usually in advance of deportation.
The disclosure emerges from state-initiated litigation that is beginning to shed light on what critics call the administration’s secretive and lenient handling of immigrants beginning last year – treatment that is imperiling public safety, alarmed state authorities say.
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An Eastern Ohio man was sentenced in U.S. District Court Friday to 168 months (14 years) in prison for discharging a firearm during a drug-trafficking robbery and for cyberstalking a victim for a year, according to a press release by the Southern District of Ohio U.S. Attorney’s Office.
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As West Coast states deal with the fallout of putting anatomically male inmates in women’s prisons, the East Coast is looking to join the club.
Maryland is considering legislation similar to a California law that lets inmates choose their correctional facility based on self-declared gender identity, an option that concerned even transgender inmates in the Golden State.
A purported draft executive order by President Joe Biden would do the same to federal prisons, prompting GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas to introduce opposing legislation.
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Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) on Thursday said he thinks Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, should go to prison for five years for lying to Congress. The Kentucky senator has repeatedly sparred with the NIAID director over the funding of gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab.
“Fauci should go to prison for five years for lying to Congress. They’ve prosecuted other people, they’ve selectively gone after Republicans, but in no way will they do anything about him lying,” he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business.
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Democratic Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Gavin Newsom of California, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan shatter everything they touch. Ron DeSantis, conversely, seems to get everything right. The Florida Republican has emerged as America’s governor.
“We’re standing with our folks. We’re going to do the right thing. We leaned into it, and we stood strong,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently.
Rather than snip a tax, kill a regulation, and then doze off, as too many Republicans have done, DeSantis is a tireless, full-spectrum conservative. He has authorized a host of economic, cultural, and law enforcement initiatives that are buoying Florida and transforming him into the Great Right Hope.
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Disgraced former attorney Michael Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to 30 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for trying to extort millions from the sportswear company Nike.
The former media gadfly and anti-Trump resistance hero reportedly cried in court as he made a statement thanking his family. According to Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett, Avenatti admitted “I and I alone have destroyed my career, my relationships, my life, and there is no doubt that I deserve to pay, have paid, and will pay a further price for what I have done.”
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Advocates for incarcerated women are calling on California political and correctional leaders to halt and reverse the transfer of male-to-female transgender and nonbinary prisoners into the state’s women’s prisons.
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Song Guo Zheng, a former professor and researcher at Ohio State University, will spend 37 months in prison after being convicted of lying about his ties to the Chinese government on applications for NIH grant funding and failing to disclose his China ties to his employers. Zheng will also be required to pay roughly $413,000 to Ohio State University and $3.4 million to the National Institutes of Health.
“Zheng pleaded guilty last November and admitted he lied on applications in order to use approximately $4.1 million in grants from NIH to develop China’s expertise in the areas of rheumatology and immunology,” said the DOJ when it announced the sentencing.
Zheng’s teaching and scholarship were in the medical field, with emphasis on rheumatology and immunology at Ohio State University. Zheng’s researcher biography states that he has also taught at the University of Southern California and Penn State University.
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Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, once one of the most powerful politicians in the state, started his prison sentence Wednesday after years of fending off going behind bars.
Silver, 76, reported to a federal prison in Otisville, New York, according to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He was sentenced earlier this year to 6 1/2 years behind bars in a corruption case.
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Coronavirus-related deaths in prisons and correctional facilities have reportedly increased by nearly 75% since mid-May, according to The New York Times.
Coronavirus-related deaths in prisons increased 73% since mid-May totaling at least 607, according to the NYT’s database. The highest number of confirmed prison COVID-19 cases have been at Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio (2,439).
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Attorney Michael Avenatti might have violated terms of his temporary release from jail again, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of California said in a filing made Sunday that Avenatti, who represented porn star Stormy Daniels, might have used his friend’s computer to write and file five different documents, according to CNN.
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A federal judge on Wednesday ordered former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to be released from prison to home confinement amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
Manafort, 71, is serving a seven-year prison sentence on fraud and money-laundering charges. He was convicted in August 2018, sentenced to jail in March 2019 and scheduled to be released on Nov. 4, 2024.
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The execution of three death row inmates was delayed Monday by Governor Mike DeWine, who said the reprieve was due to “ongoing problems involving the willingness of pharmaceutical suppliers to provide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), pursuant to DRC protocol, without endangering other Ohioans.”
The move follows a decision in January, 2019 to delay the execution of Warren Henness, after a federal judge ruled that Ohio’s current three-drug execution cocktail was unconstitutional, which lead DeWine to postpone execution dates for other men and order a review of the state’s death-penalty method.
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Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters wants to see President Donald Trump locked up behind bars and in solitary confinement.
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A judge sentenced mail bomber Cesar Sayoc to 20 years in prison Monday after he pleaded guilty to sending pipe bombs last year to multiple high-profile Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump.
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by Todd DeFeo A bill to reclassify some low-level drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors aims to give Ohioans a chance at staying out of prison, but it could have the added benefit of saving the state money. Proponents of Senate Bill 3, which is pending before the Senate…
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Despite bipartisan calls for a reduction in the prison population and a slew of laws aimed at doing just that, a new report released this week has found that the prison population of Ohio has continued to climb over the past decade. Since 2011, the state has passed several new…
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