Without public records laws, police exercise unilateral control over body camera footage. They are responsible for making the recordings, archiving them, and deciding which footage to release to the public and which to keep under wraps. In many cases, their decisions are final. “I think it’s a fair concern and a fair criticism that people might cherry pick and release only the ones that show them in a favorable light,” said former Charlotte, North Carolina, police chief Darrel Stephens.   read more

The Cordele Circuit, said the lawsuit, has provided only “assembly-line justice” to juveniles. “For too long, the Supreme Court’s promise of fairness for young people accused of delinquency has gone unfulfilled in courts across our country,” said Eric Holder. “Every child has the right to a competent attorney who will provide the highest level of professional guidance and advocacy. It is time for courts to adequately fund indigent defense systems for children."   read more

Clinton used a commercial spam filtering service, MxLogic, now owned by McAfee, to monitor emails coming into her account. To be able to filter out spam, MxLogic had to be able to read the emails. Thus, anyone with access to MxLogic’s system, which could include someone from outside the company, could read emails meant for Clinton. Those emails would include communications coming from the White House and foreign governments.   read more

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) cites the failure to specifically address asbestos, deadlines for chemical review pushed far into the future, not allowing states to set tougher standards for chemical safety, and several other issues. All 17 senators who sponsored or co-sponsored the Vitter-Udall bill were among the current members of the Senate who received more than $1 million in donations from the nation’s top 10 chemical companies.   read more

• “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.” • “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.” • Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.”   read more

Bibler turned in a meeting summary that mentioned climate change, which is an undeniable threat to the low-lying state, and he inadvertently left the word “agenda” in the memo header, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Bibler was ordered to remove mentions of climate change and the word agenda. He sent the note back, minus “agenda” but with climate change mentions intact and with a logo that urged a stop to the Keystone XL pipeline.   read more

Judge William Garnett said the Legal Aid Society and others did not provide sufficient reason under the law to release the transcripts. A Garner family attorney blasted Garnett’s ruling. “I think it’s unfortunate given the great deal of public interest in this case that he’s refused to provide the public access to any of the materials in the grand jury,” he said. “Secret grand juries are an anachronism. The judge has essentially sanctioned the use of a secret trial for a very public matter."   read more

“The managers told me to put mustard on it, but I ended up having to get rushed to the hospital in an ambulance,” Berry said. The selection of condiment as a balm appears to be a matter of personal preference among McDonald’s managers. Martisse Campbell, who works at a Philadelphia McDonald’s, said that a co-worker who was badly burned was told by a manager to “put mayo on it, and he’d be good.”   read more

“Finally, the church in its constitutional documents fully recognizes that the love of gays and lesbian couples is worth celebrating in the faith community,” said Rev. Brian D. Ellison. “There is still disagreement, and I don’t mean to minimize that, but I think we are learning that we can disagree and still be church together.” The church has lost members and entire parishes in recent years following earlier pro-gay changes, such as ordaining gays and lesbians as pastors, elders and deacons.   read more

Machen claimed the omitted information uncovered so far was “minimal in quantity” and had, in most cases, already been provided to the defense through other means. But some defense attorneys were upset at the news and wondered just how big a problem the district has on its hands. They also questioned why prosecutors, as opposed to defense attorneys, are the ones who are deciding whether or not the missing data would have had an impact on the cases.   read more

“Those sentenced to death are almost three times as likely to see their death sentence overturned on appeal and to be resentenced to a lesser penalty than they are to be executed,” wrote the authors. “Regardless of one’s view of the death penalty in principle, these numbers raise questions about how the death penalty is applied in practice. The wide differences across states in the odds of carrying out a death sentence are potentially troubling from an equal protection standpoint."   read more

Inside S&P 500 companies, women of color make up 0.4% of CEOs, according to ThinkProgress. If you’re a Latina woman, there’s no one who looks like you in the top job—no S&P 500 company has a Latina chief executive. White women do much better than women of color; they make up 4.4% of CEOs. That’s still not saying much—they’re 31% of the workforce in general. Women of color hold just 3.1% of all board seats for S&P 500 companies, and 3.9% of all executive positions.   read more

Lawmakers have yet to embrace legislation that would allow service members to opt out of arbitration because the financial industry, which contributes millions to members of Congress, has lobbied hard to prevent new laws from being adopted. Some believe that if members of the armed forces get relief from onerous arbitration clauses, members of the general public will realize that they too are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to dealing with big corporations.   read more

Milke is suing the former detective who handled her case—as well as other law enforcement officials—claiming they wrongly helped put her away for the 1989 killing of her son, Christopher. The actual killers of Milke’s son, Jim Styers and Roger Scott, were friends of Milke. They were tried and convicted and are on death row for shooting the little boy execution-style in the desert. Arizona prosecutors were still hoping to retry Milke, who was being monitored with an electronic ankle bracelet.   read more

The endorsement is “a major coup for the Kraft Foods Group,” said the Times, despite Kraft being "a frequent target of advocates for better children’s nutrition, who contend that many of its products [have] too much fat, sodium, sugar...and preservatives.” Said Andy Bellatti: “You would think an organization that has come under fire for so many years for its relations with food companies might pick something other than a highly processed cheese product for its first endorsement."   read more

Officials in rural Jefferson County, Florida, have put into place an election map that includes one district in which nearly half the residents are ineligible to vote—because they’re in prison. Jefferson officials included about 1,157 inmates at the Jefferson Correctional Institution among the residents of District 3, comprising 43.2% of the voting age population in the district.   read more