Word: conviction
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...took juicier stuff than that to convict four city officials in 1982 on a variety of charges involving tax evasion, bribery and extortion in connection with their city positions--convictions which gave momentum to an investigation of the White machine by U.S. Attorney William F. Weld '66 Quite simply, it was the blatant extortion of money from city employees, forcing them to contribute to the Kevin White Committee (the mayor's campaign fund) if they wanted to keep their jobs, which caused the scandal. The mayor can argue publicly that it's in their best interests to support the incumbent...
...court's decisions since have essentially been refinements and tidying addenda. Last January in Eddings vs. Oklahoma, for instance, the Justices ruled that the judge or jury must consider any mitigating factor the convict claims. Yet to many observers, that sounds like a return toward uncontrollable discretion, the very flaw the court prohibited in 1972. Says former L.D.F. Lawyer David Kendall: "We're right back to Furman...
...acceptance of punishment does not exactly constitute an admission of guilt. Although she was convicted last year of stabbing a 71-year-old woman motel keeper to death with a screwdriver during a holdup, Foster now says, "I couldn't have done it. And if I did, I would not do it with a screwdriver, not to some old lady." This declaration sounds less than ringing. Moreover, it was testimony from her husband Tommy, who had checked into the motel with her, that helped convict Doris Ann. Yet she seems to bear him no grudge...
Mills chooses to begin her biography of the man whose career Antole Broyard has described as "a brawl between his talent and his exhibitionism" with a dramatic retelling of Mailer's appearance at the murder trial of Jack Henry Abbot, the ex-convict whose writings Mailer had promoted. After recounting the antagonistic press conference, where obscenities and insults were exchanged--a typical situation for the author--Mills summarizes Mailer in a list of promotional headlines, from "Village Voice Co-Founder" to "Husband of Six Wives." One is prepared for a book that merely rehashes sensational events and doesn't delve...
Brooks was only the fifth convict executed since Gary Gilmore swaggered to his death before a Utah firing squad in 1977 and ended the de facto ten-year moratorium on capital punishment. Unlike all except one of those recent predecessors, Brooks had not waived his legal appeals, but waged a court fight to the end. In addition, he was the first black put to death since 1967 and the first U.S. prisoner ever legally killed by intravenous injection. With the death-row census now above 1,100 and rising annually by more than 100, it seemed that the pace...