John Brown's Body

     William Charles Franklin, 36, of Tennille, was convicted by a Macon jury of multiple federal felony and misdemeanor charges for his racist and violent attack on a postal carrier last winter. Franklin was convicted of the misdemeanor charge of obstructing mail and the felony charges of aggravated assault upon a federal officer, assault upon a federal officer, and retaliating against a witness. The most serious felony charges carry a maximum of 20 years in federal prison as well as a maximum fine of $250,000.      At a two-day trial this week, prosecutors were able to successfully prove that, in December 2024, Franklin rammed a postal carrier's vehicle with a green tractor before hitting a stop sign, fleeing the site, and abandoning the still-warm vehicle in a nearby field. This came after a June confrontation that Franklin had with the postal worker in which Franklin asked the worker to move his vehicle before launching into a verbal tirade laden with r...

     There's one thing the past few years have taught us: hate runs in the family. The men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery were a father and son named Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor, William Roddie Bryan, Jr.; all were convicted of a hate crime in federal court after being sentenced to life in prison on murder charges in state court. The text messages exchanged between the men and their family and friends were horrific, ranging from using the n-word to referring to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Parade as the "Monkey Day Parade," to sharing a video of a black boy dancing with a white supremacist song playing over it, to saying they did not like working with black people, to calling for violence against black people, to saying black people were "savages" who "ruin everything," to saying they were glad they weren't black, to saying Irish slaves were treated worse than anyone in America but "weren't asking for handouts," to say...

     It still remains the most shocking, least-reported instance of police brutality in the United States of America. An initial round of indictments in February and a second, much smaller round in May brought the total of officers indicted for their actions during the George Floyd protests in Austin, Texas, to 21. During these incidents, at least seven nonviolent protestors were severely injured by nonlethal beanbag ammunitions fired by Austin Police Department officers. Justin Howell was awarded $8 million in a civil suit after being shot in the head by one of these rounds left him permanently disabled by a traumatic brain injury. Maredith Drake, a volunteer medic, was awarded $850,000 after being shot in the hand while trying to carry Howell to safety, resulting in her losing a finger. Another such The city has approved five settlements totaling $13 million out of 18 lawsuits filed against the city this year, with more settlements expected in the coming months. One ind...

     The arrest of Karen Garner rightfully garnered outrage around the nation and around the world. The arrest of the septuagenarian with dementia on suspicion of shoplifting was not another case of an officer killing an unarmed black man, but it did highlight the danger bad cops pose to other vulnerable portions of the population. During the June 26th, 2020, arrest, over $13.88 worth of merchandise that she actually put back before she left, Officer Austin Hopp broke her arm, sprained her wrist, separated her shoulder, did not call for medical assistance, and then kept her in jail with this painful injury for hours, going so far as to manipulate her shoulder in her booking photographs to hide the injury. For context, Ms. Garner was 5'2" and 80 pounds. Hopp pleaded guilty and in May was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of parole for felony assault as part of a plea agreement in order to avoid the 10 to 30 years in prison he would have faced had he gone to...

     Originally, Judge Peter Cahill seemed like an average, respectable judge. That changed pretty quickly after the Derick Chauvin case. I won't get into Chauvin's sentence: 22.5 years is a fairly good sentence for a murdering cop to receive when compared to other sentences around the country. Still, earlier this month, with the trial of Chauvin's fellow officers Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng fast approaching, Cahill postponed the trial yet again, this time until January 2023. His reasoning? He believed the February federal conviction of the three officers on civil rights charges punishable by life in prison and the May guilty plea of Thomas Lane, who will be sentenced in September to three years in prison for accessory to manslaughter in the state case, would cause a jury to be unfairly prejudicial against the remaining two officers in their state trial. The officers are all set to be sentenced on federal charges by the end of the year.      This means ...

     This month, President Biden formally announced an executive order that has been in the works since at least January, an executive order signed on the second anniversary of George Floyd's death and one that makes sure, as Biden says, his name is "more than a hashtag." The four officers who murdered Floyd were all convicted of federal charges brought by Attorney General Merrick Garland while two have been convicted on state charges and two more await trial. Dozens of states and cities have passed hundreds of laws and ordinances reforming the police. Federal investigations, which were used only once by the Trump administration, were launched into the Minneapolis, Phoenix, Louisville, and Mount Vernon Police Departments in 2021 alone; the 2023 budget proposes more funding for investigations like these. The COPS Office has secured more than $125 million in new funding to build community policing, with much more expected in the coming years. Now, this executive order is th...