Is it time to allow in-person inmate interviews again? Distracted driver liability– the case of the texter and the textee. Ron Thomas, a man with a mission. Egypt's Indecision 2012. “Fifty Shades of Gray” induces cringes and giggles, but still has the ladies talking and talking. Plus, the latest news.
Is it time to allow in-person inmate interviews again?
A 15-year-old law, signed by former Governor Pete Wilson, restricts the press’s access to California’s prison inmate population. According to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, it’s time that law was repealed.
At the time the Wilson administration insisted that doing away with in–person inmate interviews was necessary because too many prisoners were using the media to promote themselves, becoming celebrities in their own right.
Since then, the law may have had some unintended consequences. Prison inmates are no longer calling radio shows and touting book and movie deals, but there’s also not a lot of sunlight being shed on what happens inside the prison system.
Right now, conditions in California prisons are so bad that the Supreme Court says it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Inmates are overcrowded, abused and holding hunger strikes in an effort to draw attention to their circumstances. Meanwhile, the media can’t get behind the iron curtain to get the story.
However, that could change if a new bill from San Francisco Democrat Tom Ammiano is passed by the legislature. AB 1270 would roll back the clock, allowing for members of the media to request interviews with inmates, including those housed in high-security facilities. The requests can be denied by the Department of Corrections as long as they provide a written explanation for the denial.
Will increased scrutiny change anything in California prisons? If some inmates become media darlings, but conditions improve, was the trade-off worth it? Is it ever appropriate to restrict the media’s access to sources?
GUESTS
Julie Small, KPCC's Sacramento Reporter
Jim Ewert, General Counsel and Legislative Advocate, California Newspaper Publishers Association
Distracted driver liability: the case of the texter and the textee
An unprecedented lawsuit that centers around texting while driving is being weighed by a New Jersey judge this week.
A college student could be held liable for texting her boyfriend when she knew he was driving. The tragic collision happened in 2009. Nineteen-year old Kyle Best's car swerved into the oncoming lane hitting a couple riding a motorcycle. David and Linda Kuber each lost a leg in the collision. Best admitted he had been texting with his girlfriend Shannon Colonna. She also admitted she knew Best was driving. Typical to a lot of teens, Best and Colonna had sent each other dozens of text over the course of the day.
The Kubers' lawyer, Skippy Weinstein, argues Colonna was "electronically present" in the car that day. Weinstein told the New York Post, "If you know somebody is operating a motor vehicle, if you know it is illegal to text and drive because it violates the law, if you know it's dangerous, if you know all this and knowingly send a text, then a jury should decide."
WEIGH IN
What does the "AirTalk" jury think of this case? Do you think Colonna is legally and/or morally liable? Do you worry about texting someone you know is behind the wheel?
GUEST
Todd Clement, Trial Lawyer, The Clement Firm based in Dallas; writes the DistractionLawyer.com blog; past national president of the American Board of Trial Advocates
Ron Thomas, a man with a mission
Nearly a year has passed since a severe police beating resulted in the death of a mentally ill man in Fullerton. Kelly Thomas was a 37-year-old homeless man with a history of schizophrenia when he was detained by police at a Fullerton bus depot, suspected of vandalizing cars.
A video shows six police officers piling onto the thin man as he calls for his father amid the sounds of taser fire. Not long after he was rushed, comatose, to a hospital. He died five days later, never having regained consciousness. Two police officers will soon go on trial for his death.
Throughout the tumultuous ten months since Thomas’ death, one thing has remained a constant: his father Ron Thomas’ unwavering fight to find justice for his son. It was Ron Thomas who released pictures of Kelly’s brutalized face to the media, sparking international attention. And it has been Ron Thomas who has continued to call for the arrests and prosecutions of the remaining four officers involved in the beating of his son.
Ron Thomas is a former sheriff’s deputy himself and he comes from a family of law enforcement officers. He told the L.A. Times he’s had trouble understanding that the police could have been involved in his Kelly Thomas’ death. It’s his tireless push for answers that has kept the name and face of Kelly Thomas in our collective conscious.
Ron Thomas joins Larry in-studio to discuss his feelings about the pre-trial hearing of the two officers charged with his son’s death, his thoughts on policing the mentally ill and how he and his family are holding up under the enormous strain of the last several months.
On Officer Joe Wolfe being possibly pressed for charges:
"[District Attorney Tony] Rackauckas told me that he is absolutely still looking at Wolfe, so he's not out of the picture by any means."
"[Wolfe] took the first strikes at Kelly, and then he delivered the two big elbows."
On whether it was hard for Ron Thomas to go against law enforcement after his extensive history with them. (3rd generation police officer, six years with Orange County Police Department):
"I don't care who may have done this. It certainly shocked me that they did it, but to go after them was no problem at all. These guys are not what I would consider police officers – what many of us would consider a police officer. They're murderers with badges, and that's how I'm going at them."
On what led to Kelly Thomas' beating:
"Kelly was clearly what's in what's called 'contempt of cop.' In other words, he didn't follow [Officer Manuel] Ramos' program to the letter. Well, with his schizophrenic mind, he couldn't, and appeared defiant to Ramos, defiant to Wolfe, and so they beat him."
On reports that Ramos, Cpl. Jay Cicinelli and Wolfe received letters terminating their employment:
"What I have is that – and this was put out by the city attorney even – the letters have been sent out ... They haven't been fired, they haven't been terminated, but these are letters of intent. And they have 30 days to appeal, and it goes to a Scully hearing, so there're a lot of things that can happen down the line still. But this is still progress. It's very, very positive progress."
"I've been in touch with [acting Chief Captain Dan Hughes]. By law he cannot mention officers' names and give their actual dispositions. I've have been of course insisting that Wolfe not only be terminated from the department, but also that Rackauckas charge him."
On whether other officers should be charged:
"One in particular, and that's Sergeant Craig, and he's next on my list. I'm going after Wolfe really hard, and then Craig is my next one."
On how Ron Thomas' views of Fullerton have changed, public support:
"I have a very poor liking for the way that the city has handled this, the way that they run their city, the way that the police department has handled this and still continues to handle it. They're trying to improve on all aspects. That's only because I've been there and Kelly's Army has been there, to force them to do this. The people are mad, and the people are going to take the city back."
"Especially in the beginning, it was extremely overwhelming. I've never done anything like this in my life, and I get correspondence from all over the world, whether it's through a Facebook page, or actual letters and cards. Documentary crews from several different countries have come down here just to do documentaries on Kelly and what Kellys' Army is doing. It's a true, tragic story, that our police officers can beat somebody so severely to where they die, and the whole time he's begging for his life and for forgiveness."
On Ron Thomas emotional coping:
"The last city council meeting, I was so emotional I could barely start speaking ... We had just come off of a preliminary hearing where the city video was played and all its audio again and again and again, so I sat through three days of that."
"My son and I had a very close relationship, certainly evident by him calling out for me the way he did, to save him."
"Anger doesn't play a part in what I'm doing. I push the anger aside. I'm angry at them for the asinine things they say, and the former Mayor, Dick Jones, his insensitivity at the time. Just so many of these people; unwilling to cooperate at all. It's the worst thing that's ever happened in Fullerton's history, and Orange County."
"They have a city attorney that's telling them to be completely quiet. Yeah, that's his job, I understand that. But they need to cooperate with me. Without cooperation, without talking with me, I have no other choice than to go at them with full speed."
"I don't care if Kelly was shooting at them. What a horrible, tragic thing that has happened here. Just show some compassion for human life."
On the importance of Ron Thomas actively getting publicity for Kelly's death:
"[The case] would have been swept right under the carpet, nobody would have even cared at all. I think channel 7, Eileen Frere, at time she was the only one interested in the story, and I didn't know what to do. When she came back on the 10th, when Kelly was pronounced dead, she was still the only one. A couple hours I was with Kelly, someone told me to take pictures, so I did. ... I showed her the picture, and she goes, 'Oh my god, that's horrid. We can't show these.'"
"On the internet, I found this guy running up and down this small little street taking pictures, and video for YouTube, and taking video of the city camera and talking about it. I thought, 'Who is this guy, I've got to find him, I've got to meet him.' I did and it was Tony Bushala, he runs the blog, Friends for Fullerton. I showed it to him, and he got sick to his stomach, and he goes 'Ron, we got to get this out.' He talked to me about the blog, and I knew nothing about the blog, and he guaranteed I'd get it out there. I had to get it out there. People had to understand what these people did to my son."
On Kelly's schizophrenia:
"I did everything I could, and unfortunately with the economy – I had to work 150 miles out of town for two years – he was here, more under his mother's control, supervision. I had him in a board and care, she took him out of there to share an apartment, and it just didn't go right for her. I always made him take his meds, his board and care always made him take his meds, but with his mother, he didn't take them."
"He was great [when he was on his meds]. And that was also a problem, because when he was great, like any of us, he wanted to get on with his life. ... He held some jobs even, but then he wanted to get on with his life, and so he did. He would just walk. No medications, I'd find him in a park or something, I'd have to get him back into treatment. It was a huge, vicious cycle."
Guest:
Ron Thomas, father of Kelly Thomas
How does Kelly Thomas' death change Fullerton? Answer here.
Egypt's Indecision 2012
Day one of polling has just closed in Egypt's presidential election, with another voting day tomorrow.
This race is the first chance for Egyptians to elect a new president since the stunning fall of Hosni Mubarak's regime more than a year ago. City streets boast billboards of the thirteen candidates. It's expected none of them will secure more than 50 percent of the vote in this round, which will trigger a run-off election in mid-June.
The long list of candidates is fairly wide-ranging in their views, but it's said there are really just four strong frontrunners. Two of them have ties to the former regime – Amr Moussa, former foreign minister & former head of the Arab League, and Ahmed Shafiq, former commander of the air force & briefly prime minister during last year's protests.
Then there are the leading candidates who rose from the long-established, Muslim Brotherhood – Mohammed Mursi and Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh. Even though Fotouh is labelled an Islamist, he is considered liberal and has built a broad coalition that includes secularists. Whoever wins faces a daunting term. From security to the economy to unity and diplomacy, Egyptians have been struggling since revolution shook their country. But the president won't even have a framework for his leadership. The efforts to write a constitution have faltered repeatedly. And there is still worry that the interim military leadership – the Supreme Council of Armed Forces – will not make the transition to civilian rule easy.
What type of leader does Egypt need at this juncture? What should be his top priorities in leading the country out of its struggle? When will a constitution be finalized? Who did Egyptian-Americans vote for?
GUESTS
Ms. Nile El-Wardani, works in public health and development here in Los Angeles, holds duel American and Egyptian citizenship
Osama Shabaik, local Egyptian-American with family on Cairo, hold a double bachelors in international studies and economics from UC Irvine
Dr. Maher Hathout, M.D. senior advisor, Muslim Public Affairs Council
'Fifty Shades of Grey' induces cringes and giggles, but still has the ladies talking
The ongoing buzz over the blockbuster erotic novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” has taken the publishing world by surprise and shows no signs of slowing down.
Sales have now topped 10 million, putting “Fifty Shades” well on its way to becoming one of the fastest-selling series of all time. Readers, mostly women, who don’t usually read romance books or erotica are the unexpected audience for this sexy trilogy. They’re reading it in book clubs and leaving it openly on coffee tables all over the country.
The book knows no demographic. It’s so popular among the Everywoman that it’s spawned its own genre: People are calling it “mommy porn.”
It has sparked a national debate over why women are suddenly so open about such a taboo topic and how it might affect their sexuality. Experts in the field of human sexuality say when women feel more comfortable and open about their sexuality, it can improve their mental and physical health.
Is this book a breakthrough in female sexuality? What could possibly account for its immense success, especially considering the book’s literary merits are few? How is it that women are so comfortable openly reading and discussing a book with a theme that has been one of the great taboos?
Guests:
Rachel Kramer Bussel, author, editor, and blogger; edited over 40 anthologies including Best Bondage Erotica 2011 and 2012, Best Sex Writing 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012
Julia A. Ericksen, PhD, Professor of Sociology, Temple University. Teaches courses on sexuality, gender and socialization.