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AP Was There: Martin Luther King Jr. sentenced to chain gang

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DECATUR, Ga. (AP) — EDITOR’S NOTE — The year of 1960 was a pivotal year for civil rights in America. Segregationist politicians insisted on upholding racist laws and policies that denied black people equal access to many aspects of public life. Legal challenges moved slowly. That year’s presidential candidates vied for the support of southern white voters amid the simmering frustrations of black people and their civil rights.

This dynamic changed after college students risked arrest by openly disobeying the race laws. Inspired by the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, and guided by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience, Atlanta’s students led sit-ins and boycotts that deeply cut into the profits of white businesses.

King joined them in October 1960, raising pressure that brought Atlanta’s leaders to negotiate an end to the campaign in exchange for desegregating public places. Everyone was freed but King, who faced probation after pleading guilty to a false charge of driving without a license months earlier, even though he carried a valid Alabama license. Judge J. Oscar Mitchell sentenced him to four months of hard labor.

Georgia’s segregationist politicians had sought to silence King, but it backfired when John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert got involved, just before Election Day. Mitchell agreed to free King on bond, prompting blacks to vote Democrat in an effort to end Jim Crow laws in the South.

Sixty years later, The Associated Press is making available some of its coverage of these events, including photographs from the AP’s archive and this article on King’s sentencing in Decatur, Georgia, that appeared under the headline “Negro Integration Leader Sentenced to Four Months.”

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Oct. 25, 1960

DECATUR, Ga. (AP) — A Negro leader who says integration is unstoppable was ordered Tuesday to serve four months in a Georgia public works camp on a minor traffic violation.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., holder of degrees from at least five colleges, may spend the time on a road gang if an appeal is denied.

King was among 79 people arrested Oct. 19 during mass picketing and sit-in demonstrations protesting against segregated eating places at Atlanta department and variety stores.

County officials in this suburban area of Atlanta called King’s part in the sit-ins a violation of his 12-month probationary sentence given him Sept. 23 on a charge of driving without a license.

Judge Oscar Mitchell of DeKalb County criminal court heard two hours of argument in a courtroom packed with Negro and white spectators. The court denied bond for the Negro minister pending appeal, and set a hearing on the appeal motion for 10 a.m. Wednesday.

King, leader of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, has been active in Southern sit-in demonstrations by Negro students. He has urged students to “fill up the jails of the South to arouse the dozing conscience of the nation.”

All of the recent Atlanta demonstrators except King were released on bond. King was held at the request of Dekalb County officials for violating the state’s recently-enacted trespass law, aimed at curbing lunch counter sit-ins, while on probation in the traffic case.

More than 200 white persons and 100 Negroes crowded into the small courtroom. In the confusion, the president of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was arrested and charged with interfering with the duties of a deputy sheriff.

King pleaded guilty in September to the traffic violation and paid a $25 fine. He said Tuesday he was not aware that he was on probation in the traffic case. But Mitchell interrupted his testimony by declaring the Negro signed the guilty plea and that an attorney had explained to King at the time that the 12-month sentence could be invoked in event of further law violations.

D.L. Hollowell, heading a staff of five Negro attorneys for King, contented the probationary sentence was null because state law limited such a sentence to six months. Hollowell also argued that the anti-trespass law, allegedly violated by King, is unconstitutional.

Jack Smith, Dekalb prosecutor, declared that King had pleaded guilty to the traffic charge and violated the law again in the Atlanta sit-ins. “By doing so,” Smith said, “he violated the terms of his probationary sentence.”

The four-month term was called shocking by Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP. Wilkins, a spectator at Tuesday’s hearing, commented:

“Its intent will be felt all over the country as a persecution rather than a satisfaction of a violation of a traffic rule.

“This incident and the picketing and the protest and other demonstrations are merely evidence of a problem to which the state of Georgia will have to address itself whether it wants to or not.”

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Black lives

Former Louisville Cop Pleads Guilty in Breonna Taylor Case

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FILE - This undated file photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar shows Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot by police in her Louisville, Ky., apartment in March 2020. A former Louisville police detective who helped write the warrant that led to the deadly police raid at Taylor's apartment has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge. (Courtesy of Taylor Family attorney Sam Aguiar via AP, File)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A former Louisville police detective who helped falsify the warrant that led to the deadly police raid at Breonna Taylor’s apartment has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge.

Federal investigators said Kelly Goodlett added a false line to the warrant and later conspired with another detective to create a cover story when Taylor’s March 13, 2020, shooting death by police began gaining national attention.

Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by officers who knocked down her door while executing a drug search warrant. Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot that hit one of the officers as they came through the door and they returned fire, striking Taylor multiple times.

Goodlett, 35, appeared in a federal courtroom in Louisville on Tuesday afternoon and admitted to conspiring with another Louisville police officer to falsify the warrant. Goodlett briefly answered several questions from federal judge Rebecca Jennings Grady.

Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, was in the courtroom Tuesday but did not speak after the proceedings.

Three former Louisville officers were indicted on criminal civil rights charges earlier this month by a federal grand jury. Goodlett was not indicted, but charged in a federal information filing, which likely means the former detective is cooperating with investigators.

Goodlett will be sentenced Nov. 22. Grady said there may be “extenuating circumstances” that may move the court to push back the sentencing date. Part of the plea hearing was also kept under seal and was not discussed in open court Tuesday. She faces up to five years in prison for the conviction.

She resigned from the department Aug. 5, a day after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced new federal charges in the Taylor case.

Former officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany were indicted on charges related to the warrant used to search Taylor’s home. A third former officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with using excessive force when he retreated from Taylor’s door, turned a corner and fired 10 shots into the side of her two-bedroom apartment. He was acquitted by a jury on similar state charges earlier this year. Jaynes, Meany and Hankison have all been fired.

The three former officers face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on the civil rights charges.

Federal prosecutors said in court records that Jaynes, who drew up the Taylor warrant, had claimed to Goodlett days before the warrant was served that he had “verified” from a postal inspector that a suspected drug dealer was receiving packages at Taylor’s apartment. But Goodlett knew this was false and told Jaynes the warrant did not yet have enough information connecting Taylor to criminal activity, prosecutors said. She added a paragraph saying the suspected drug dealer, Jamarcus Glover, was using Taylor’s apartment as his current address, according to the court records.

Two months later, when the Taylor shooting was attracting national headlines, the postal inspector told a media outlet he had not verified packages for Glover were going to Taylor’s apartment. Jaynes and Goodlett then met in Jaynes’ garage to “get on the same page” before Jaynes talked to investigators about the Taylor warrant, court records said.

They decided to say Sgt. John Mattingly, who is identified in the court records as J.M., told them Glover was receiving packages at Taylor’s home, according to prosecutors. Mattingly was shot in the leg during the raid at Taylor’s apartment.

Meany, who signed off on the Taylor warrant and was still a Louisville police sergeant when he was indicted on Aug. 4, was fired by Louisville Police Chief Erika Shields on Friday.

Shields said in a statement that Meany has not yet had his case heard by a jury, but “he is facing multiple federal charges after a lengthy investigation by the DOJ” and should not “expect continued employment under such conditions.”

Hankison was the only officer charged who was on the scene the night of the killing.

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Crime

Lawyer’s Group Text Causes 2nd Florida Murder Case Mistrial

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A prosecutor in a murder case complained about a judge’s ruling in a group text message that included the judge, resulting in a second mistrial for a man charged with killing his girlfriend’s young son. Now the defense wants the case dismissed altogether.

Broward County Judge Peter Holden refused to allow a 911 call as evidence against Corey Gorden, who is accused of killing the 3-year-old in 2015 and returning him in his car seat to his mother as if nothing had happened.

Assistant State Attorney Katya Palmiotto then sent a text complaining about the ruling to a group of current and former homicide prosecutors, the South Florida SunSentinel reported.

“Holden just sustained their objection and wouldn’t let us put the 911 call in as hearsay,” she wrote.

As a former homicide prosecutor who was appointed to the bench in 2018, the judge remained in the group chat. And lawyers are prohibited in criminal cases from talking with the judge if the defendant’s lawyers are not present.

Defense lawyer Michael Gottlieb filed for mistrial on Wednesday, saying in a summary that the 15-year veteran prosecutor had been overheard saying she messed up “real bad.”

“The judge was visibly upset and appeared angry,” Gottlieb wrote.

Holden grilled the prosecutor about the text message before declaring a mistrial.

In May, another judge declared a mistrial when prosecutors asked a witness about Gorden’s refusal to give a statement. Criminal trial jurors are not permitted to consider the defendants silence as proof of guilt.

Holden has not set a hearing on Gottlieb’s motion to dismiss the case.

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Crime

Uvalde Schools Look to Fire Chief Arredondo After Shooting

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FILE - Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, third from left, stands during a news conference outside of the Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas Thursday, May 26, 2022. The district’s superintendent said Wednesday, June 22 that Arredondo has been put on leave following allegations that he erred in his response to a mass shooting at an elementary school that left 19 students and two teachers dead. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills, File)

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Facing massive public pressure, Uvalde’s top school official has recommended the firing of the school district police chief who was central to the botched law enforcement response to the elementary school shooting nearly two months ago that killed two teachers and 19 students.

The South Texas city’s school board announced Wednesday that it will consider firing Chief Pete Arredondo at a special meeting Saturday. Arredondo has been accused by state officials of making several critical mistakes during the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

School officials have previously resisted calls to fire Arredondo. The announcement comes two days after a meeting where the school board members were lambasted for more than three hours by members of the public, who accused them of not implementing basic security at Robb, of not being transparent about what happened and of failing to hold Arredondo to account for his actions.

 

 

Confronted with parents’ vociferous demands to fire Arredondo and warnings that his job would be next, Superintendent Hal Harrell said Monday that the police chief was a contract employee who could not be fired at will. The agenda for Saturday’s meeting includes the board discussing the potential firing with its lawyer.

Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has faced blistering criticism since the massacre, most notably for not ordering officers to immediately breach the classroom where an 18-year-old gunman carried out the attack. If fired, Arredondo would become the first officer ousted from his job following the deadliest Texas school shooting in history.

 

 

Although nearly 400 officers from various agencies were involved in the police response that took more than an hour to confront and kill the shooter, Arredondo is one of only two known to have faced discipline. His attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The move to potentially fire the chief follows the release of a damning 80-page report by a Texas House committee that blamed all levels of law enforcement for a slow and chaotic response. The report found that 376 law enforcement officers massed at the school, with more than half coming from state and federal agencies, but that they “failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.”

According to the committee, Arredondo told lawmakers he didn’t consider himself the on-scene commander in charge and that his priority was to protect children in other classrooms. The committee report called that decision a “terrible, tragic mistake.”

Body camera footage released by the Uvalde officials shows Arredondo in the hallway trying multiple sets of keys on other classroom doors, but not the one where the massacre took place. The classroom door could not be locked from the inside, but there is no indication officers tried to open the door while the gunman was inside.

“Our thought was: ‘If he comes out, you know, you eliminate the threat,’ correct?” Arredondo told the committee, according to the report. “And just the thought of other children being in other classrooms, my thought was: ‘We can’t let him come back out. If he comes back out, we take him out, or we eliminate the threat.’”

Arredondo, 50, grew up in Uvalde and spent much of his nearly 30-year career in law enforcement in the city. He took the head police job at the school district in 2020 and was sworn in as a member of the City Council in a closed-door ceremony May 31. He resigned from his council seat July 2.

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