Word: crimed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...dime in your pocket, do your shopping and come back to pay later," says City Councilman J. Brent Madill. "It's not faceless like L.A." In any town, the brutal killing of a teenage girl leaves a deep mark, but in Hanford the wound remains, 24 years after the crime. And now the U.S. Supreme Court has rubbed the wound open again all these years later...
...throat, her shorts and underpants slit open. Within hours police arrested Booker T. Hillery Jr., a local black ranch hand already on parole from an earlier rape conviction. Circumstantial physical evidence, including his belt and tire prints from his car, was found near the scene of the crime. Hillery insisted on his innocence, but a jury found him guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to death...
...Where's the justice?" asks Councilman Madill. "Is there any justice?" Most of Hanford believes little attention was given to deterring the larger evil. "It's an absolute shame that the Supreme Court has to take such a gruesome crime to make a social statement," says Deputy Kings County Planner Bill Zumwalt, who had been a member of Marlene's high school class. Joan Pegues, assistant city editor of the Hanford Sentinel, puts it more simply: "When you say 'Hillery' around here, people turn purple...
...deny him parole. An organist for the black congregation of the Second Baptist Church, she helped lead a drive in support of parole for Hillery, mustering 480 signatures. Minter believes that if a fair trial finds Hillery guilty, he should go back to prison. "If you do the crime, you do the time," she says, with the air of someone who has thought about what the words mean: her own stepson is serving time in San Quentin for rape. But the proceedings must be fair, she argues. "There's racism here now, and there was racism back then...
...Hillery is being held at Vacaville, where he awaits the next step. Within a few weeks, local authorities are expected to decide whether to charge Hillery again. Very likely, they will, despite the vexing problem of how to retry him nearly a quarter of a century after his alleged crime was committed. "It's a frustrating case for us," complains Kings County District Attorney Robert Maline. "For a jury to base credibility on old court transcripts is difficult." As many as nine key witnesses may have died since the original trial. Others have moved away. Old pieces of evidence, like...