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Maryland’s Highest Court Reinstates Murder Conviction In Teens’ Graduation-Eve Slayings

June 28, 2022 by baltimore.cbslocal.com Leave a Comment

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s highest court has reinstated the murder conviction of a man who helped kill two Montgomery County high school students.

The Maryland Court of Appeals issued its ruling on Monday in the case of Rony Galicia, of Boyds, Maryland.

The ruling reverses an opinion from the Court of Special Appeals, which is the state’s intermediate appellate court. It reinstates Galicia’s convictions on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder, two counts of first-degree felony murder, conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and armed robbery.

In June 2017, on the night before their graduation from Northwest High School, Shadi Ali Najjar, 17, and Artem Ziberov, 18, were shot multiple times while they sat in a parked car in Montgomery Village.

Four men, including Galicia, were convicted of the murders in three separate trials. The Court of Special Appeals reversed Galicia’s conviction in January 2021, on the basis of two evidentiary issues that arose during his trial, but the Court of Appeals has reached a different conclusion on both of those issues.

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A ‘Sad Kinship’ as Towns Build Memorials to Victims of Mass Shootings

June 22, 2022 by www.nytimes.com Leave a Comment

Sandra Mendoza picked a forest green panel to recall the S.U.V. her husband, Juan Espinoza, a car aficionado and restorer, proudly purchased before his life was taken.

Trenna Meins chose the phrase “Embrace the possibilities” to carve on a bench because her husband of 36 years, Damian Meins, was “always game for anything.”

Shannon Johnson, a county health inspector who died shielding a co-worker, is memorialized in an alcove bearing his searing last words: “I got you. Lord, have mercy.”

If design is a window on the culture, perhaps there is nothing more revealing than the Curtain of Courage Memorial unveiled last week in San Bernardino, Calif., a sculptural ribbon of patterned bronze and steel meant to enfold the Mendozas, Meinses and Johnsons, among the families who lost 14 loved ones killed in a mass shooting in 2015, in its sinuous communal embrace.

“We didn’t want a place of sorrow, but of light,” said the landscape designer and artist Walter Hood , who thought about the solace of cathedral chapels in his first work commemorating individuals lost to gun violence, and the survivors.

The opening of the Curtain comes on the unrelenting heels of recent mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., Uvalde, Texas, Orange, Calif., Indianapolis, Ind., Oxford, Mich. — and a phalanx of permanent memorials in progress has been spawned by the deaths. These reflect “a part of the cultural landscape in which violence is overtaking the public realm, with a loss of life from city to city,” said Hood, a MacArthur fellow and a professor at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2021 alone, there was an average of more than one active shooter attack a week, in which one or more shooters killed or attempted to kill multiple unrelated people.

The curving layers of chain in the new memorial are intended to evoke bulletproof vests. Near the employee entrance to the County Government Center, the $2.3 million work, paid for by the county, is the denouement of a community design process that began just months after the terrorist attack on Dec. 2, 2015, which also left 21 wounded when a radicalized couple with semiautomatic weapons burst into a San Bernardino County Environmental Health Services staff meeting at the Inland Regional Center.

At once public and private, the memorial is composed of 14 alcoves representing each family’s loss as well as the community’s collective strength. The spaces were personalized to reflect the spirit of the slain, beginning with the glass panels inserted into every niche that cast light and shadows in the manner of stained glass. A fitting quote is inscribed on concrete benches, which also contain hidden keepsakes chosen by the families.

Mendoza included an image of a miniature hot rod and a family photo plucked from her husband’s wallet, encased in a resin cube.

Tina Meins, the daughter of Trenna and Damian Meins, recalled traveling to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and eating street food together in Vietnam. “If people go to the alcove, they’ll know who my dad was and why he mattered,” Tina said.

The power of memory in the landscape has been a longstanding preoccupation of Hood’s, from a vertical sculpture at Princeton University representing positive and negative aspects of Woodrow Wilson’s legacy to Hood’s landscape for the International African American Museum , now under construction in Charleston, S.C., that recalls the enslaved Africans packed into the holds of ships and trafficked and warehoused on the site at Gadsden’s Wharf.

Designing for families stricken by gun violence was “quite a heavy burden,” Hood told the Dec. 2 Memorial Committee, which included survivors, emergency medical workers and public and behavioral health experts. “He gave each victim thought,” said Josie Gonzales , the committee’s chair and a retired county supervisor.

It did not take Gonzales and her colleagues long to realize that there were numerous communities from which to seek advice. They traveled to Aurora, Colo., for the dedication of a sculpture of flying cranes honoring the 13 dead and 70 wounded in the July 20, 2012, shooting at a movie theater. (Likewise, the chair of Aurora’s 7/20 Memorial Foundation attended last week’s ceremony in San Bernardino.)

“We know how each other is feeling,” said Felisa Cardona, a county public information officer. “It’s a very sad kinship.”

The number of memorials across the country is “innumerable,” said Paul M. Farber, director and co-founder of the Monument Lab , a Philadelphia-based nonprofit public art and history studio. “For every official site of memory dealing with gun violence,” he said, “there are the unofficial places, from T-shirts inscribed with names of gun violence victims placed outside churches to young people memorializing their friends on Instagram.”

Homegrown memorials can also speak volumes. Brandon and Heather O’Neill, of Richardson, Texas, set up 19 maroon school backpacks on their front lawn, in rows resembling a class photo, with two larger packs to represent the teachers who lost their lives at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

The outpourings of flowers, wreaths and stuffed animals after mass tragedies are joined by artists wanting to contribute. “You feel helpless,” said Abel Ortiz-Acosta , an artist and the owner of Art Lab Gallery in Uvalde. With the nonprofit Mas Cultura in Austin, he is in the midst of enlisting artists from across Texas to participate in “the 21 Mural project” to create portraits of the 19 children and 2 teachers massacred at Robb Elementary School last month.

Michael Murphy, the founding principal and executive director of MASS Design Group , was prompted to take on the issue of gun violence during the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., where he met Pamela Bosley and Annette Nance-Holt , two activist mothers from Chicago who had each lost sons to random shootings and told Murphy there should be a memorial to their children. “I began to ask the question, ‘What would it be like to memorialize an epidemic that we are in the middle of?’” he said.

The result is the Gun Violence Memorial Project , now on view at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. , in conjunction with “Justice Is Beauty: The Work of MASS Design Group.” Initially exhibited in Chicago, the design — a partnership with the artist Hank Willis Thomas and two gun violence prevention organizations — consists of four houses built out of 700 glass bricks, each brick representing the average number of American lives lost to gun violence in a given week. The project was inspired by the participatory nature of the AIDS quilt, with each brick a see-through repository for mementos — hundreds contributed by families nationwide.

“People want to give something of themselves to connect with someone lost,” Murphy said. “It’s a revelatory human act.” The project seeks to spark a dialogue about a permanent national memorial to gun violence victims.

The San Bernardino memorial has reached fruition, but in other traumatized communities the task continues. Nearly 10 years after 20 first graders and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, a $3.7 million memorial is nearing completion, including “sacred soil” from the thousands of flowers, letters, signs and photos that were eventually removed and cremated. It has been a long and emotionally fraught process. “People were upset about everything and anything,” said Daniel Krauss, chair of the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission.

Set in a forest clearing near the rebuilt elementary school and surrounded by flowering dogwoods, the design is intended to be “a walking meditation in a spiral” around a central body of water, with the victims’ names carved in granite, said the landscape architect Daniel Affleck of SWA Group . The memorial will open first to families and then more widely on the 10th anniversary of the massacre.

The staggering list includes a third commemoration of the 23 people killed at the El Paso Walmart on Aug. 3, 2019, this one by the artist Albert (Tino) Ortega and commissioned by the city , and the architect Daniel Libeskind’s reimagining of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, incorporating a new sanctuary, a memorial, a museum and an antisemitism center beneath a “Path of Light” skylight zigzagging its way across the structure’s length. The Vegas Strong Resiliency Center , a trauma support network established after the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival that killed 58 people and left at least 413 wounded, is collaborating with county and state officials on a memorial at the venue site.

“It’s rare to be part of a project that will be here on Earth when we’re no longer here,” said 26-year-old Karessa Royce, who was 22 when she sustained a critical gunshot wound and had subsequent surgeries to remove shrapnel from her throat and spine.

The most ambitious may be the onePULSE Foundation’s plans for a $45 million National Pulse Memorial and Museum at the site of the gay nightclub where 49 people died and 68 were wounded, the deadliest L.G.B.T.Q. attack in U.S. history. The design, by Coldefy & Associés , a firm based in Lille, France, brings to mind Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasília. It is essentially a district, with a reflecting pond, garden and parabolic canopy around the nightclub site, which was designated a National Memorial last year. The concept also encompasses a blocks-long “Survivor’s Walk” and a six-story museum. The plans have spawned a Community Coalition Against a Pulse Museum , which, among many issues, objects to “turning a mass shooting into a tourist attraction” — including “remembrance merchandise” currently for sale.

As Congress struggles to eke out a bipartisan deal on gun safety, these sobering monuments show no signs of abating. At the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where a white supremacist gunned down nine Black parishioners during Bible study, the architect Michael Arad — who describes his contemplative waterfalls and pools in the footprints of the Twin Towers at the 9/11 Memorial as “absence made visible” — has been absorbed with a memorial to the “Emanuel Nine.”

But before ideas for courtyards, gardens or Fellowship benches shaped like angel’s wings were even discussed, Arad, the Israeli American partner of Handel Architects , was asked about his understanding of forgiveness — an echo of the sentiment expressed by church members that stunned and impressed the nation during the bond hearing for the shooter, Dylann Roof. (Roof was ultimately sentenced to death.)

The reconceived grounds will be a place to grieve, to celebrate resiliency and to help others learn by the example set by the families of those killed in the racist attack, offering the possibility of transformation. The Rev. Eric S.C. Manning, the church’s senior pastor, said: “I pray that regardless of where we were when we come into the space, we can leave differently.”

In San Bernardino, Robert Velasco, who lost his 27-year-old daughter, Yvette, put it another way. “It was a very emotional time,” he said of that December day. “It still is.”

Letters: Conservatives must face the fact that their biggest problem is now Boris Johnson

June 26, 2022 by www.telegraph.co.uk Leave a Comment

SIR – The Wakefield and Tiverton by-election results , following on from the North Shropshire result last December, are the latest warning from voters that Boris Johnson must go if the Conservative Party is to avoid a 1997-style election disaster.

Only swift and decisive action by the Cabinet can save the party from annihilation – and the country from Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Terry Smith

SIR – The by-election losses for the Conservative Party were of such a scale that even Boris Johnson’s most loyal supporters must now realise how toxic he has become.

Oliver Dowden did the right thing by resigning, and it is time that the Prime Minister did the same – voluntarily or otherwise.

Kim Potter

SIR – It was interesting to watch the new MP for Tiverton, Richard Foord, followed by Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, on television on Friday.

Mr Foord gave Boris Johnson both barrels, effectively calling him a liar and announcing: “The Lib Dems are coming.”

Hmm. I may not live long enough for that. The Clegg/Cameron farrago was enough for me.

Meanwhile, the smug Sir Ed was at pains to tell viewers that this result was not a “protest vote,” which it obviously was.

This country is in the throes of what could be a long and difficult haul. We have had a succession of governments that have sat on their hands during relative good times, and are now discovering that there is not – and has never been – a contingency plan.

We have saddled ourselves with enormous debt, taxed workers and pensioners beyond reasonable bounds, taken in countless numbers of illegal immigrants, allowed unions to rule the roost, depleted our military to unacceptably low levels and let our police forces operate only from offices and cars. The solution? Find a PM with a plan. Might be tricky, that one.

Trevor Anderson

SIR – Former, unsuccessful leaders of the Conservative Party, such as Michael Howard, should not opine about the current leader.

Lord Howard’s call for Boris Johnson to resign was totally irresponsible. Amid a cost-of-living crisis, a war in Ukraine and various other demands, to hold a Conservative leadership contest would be nonsensical.

Simon Watson

SIR – The by-election results were not just punishing the Tories for partygate and other crises, but also for their destruction of the green belt.

I live in a village of some 2,300 people. Currently we have developments progressing that will double the population. They are to be built on green belt land, and will destroy old hedgerows and overwhelm the infrastructure of the village.

The Prime Minister pledged at last year’s party conference that no homes would be built on “green fields”, and our local MP says on her website that she wants to prevent this area from being “swamped by concrete”.

Some broken promises can be reversed – but building on the green belt cannot. Come the next general election, the Tories will find that their traditional supporters – myself included – have deserted them.

David Rands

SIR – I wouldn’t have voted for the Tories this week – not because of the way the Government has handled Covid, the economy or immigration, but because it has been sitting out the culture wars.

The toppling and vandalising of statues, the NHS refusing to talk about “women”, the rewriting of history in schools and universities, national institutions falling over themselves to claim they’re the racist beneficiaries of slavery and colonialism – all of this, and much more, on the Government’s watch, with barely a squeak from a minister.

It’s time the Tories put the small c back into “conservative”.

Paul Stephenson

Self-defeating strikes

SIR – I have seen strikes in shipbuilding, resulting in contracts going abroad and our own industry dwindling.

I have also seen strikes in coal mining. Today we have few – if any – working mines, although we are sitting on plenty of coal.

Now that rail workers are striking, I wonder if their industry will suffer a similar fate.

Annabel Burton

Public-sector pensions

SIR – While I understand why the Government took the economic measures that it did during the pandemic, all of which contributed to an inflationary period of recovery for the country, the news that public-sector pensioners are to receive an extra £2,000 is a kick in the teeth for those of us who worked in the private sector, as well as those who are currently working in it.

It is also a flaming torch for those striking workers demanding a pay award to match the inflation rate.

Ellie Coyle

SIR – I am a retired headteacher with an index-linked pension plus a small state pension (reduced following remarriage). I’m now apparently in line for a large increase in both.

I think this would be totally immoral: young people have had their lives thrust into chaos to protect older generations from a disease which generally didn’t affect them. Many cannot afford either a deposit on a house or the large rents now demanded. I realise there are pensioners who struggle, but many of us don’t: we have accrued large assets due to the appreciation of our properties, and enjoyed secure employment throughout our lives. Pensioners I know who rent receive large top-up supplements and actually save money.

Meanwhile the country is on its knees. There should be no pay rises and no pension increases for anyone until we start to recover from the ravages of lockdown.

Eve Wilson

Abortion in America

SIR – What is wrong with America ? A man can buy a firearm and gun down schoolchildren, but a woman’s right to terminate a birth has been curtailed.

Yet again American women are being treated as second-class citizens. They can give birth, and then a few years later their child can be blown away in a gun attack.

Valerie Threlfall

Let’s get fracking

SIR – For several years I lived in Chile, where I was occasionally disturbed by earth tremors. However, these were not unusual, and life carried on.

Now we live in England, less than two miles from the largest granite quarry in Europe. From Monday to Friday, at precisely 12.30 pm, a charge is detonated in the quarry that we – and many others in the surrounding district – feel. However, the only disturbance is that the odd picture hanging on the wall may move slightly. No one complains.

With the country facing an energy crisis – which seems unlikely to improve – it is time the Government got behind fracking and allowed exploration to go ahead, so that we can make use of all the resources available to us.

Martin Greenwood

The days when men didn’t wear the trousers

SIR – Trousers are gender-neutral (Letters, June 19) because women have been wearing them for over a century, but you won’t see the average male in a skirt or dress because it is largely perceived as cross-dressing. Skirts are used as symbols of women on changing room doors and lavatory signs everywhere.

It wasn’t always this way. From ancient times, both men and women wore skirts and other skirt-like garments, which are believed to be the oldest item of clothing after the loincloth. It was the French Revolution that sounded the death knell for elaborate aristocratic dressing – and put an end to men wearing skirts and dresses.

Emilie McRae

An inclusive NHS

SIR – Work to instill values and behaviours creating a more equal, diverse and inclusive health service that ensures fair treatment and opportunity for everyone is not “woke ideology” .

Lord Lilley acknowledges that “eliminating discrimination is important” – as does the constructive report by General Sir Gordon Messenger and Dame Linda Pollard, which highlights the importance of investing in people alongside operational and political priorities.

There must be zero tolerance of all forms of discrimination. Too often we see yet more evidence of terrible treatment suffered by ethnic minority staff. In a survey released last week, more than half of senior ethnic minority leaders said they were thinking about leaving the NHS due to workplace racism. Tackling deep-rooted health inequalities, made worse by the pandemic, is vital too for better patient care. People from ethnic minority communities have worse experiences of healthcare than other patients and that must change.

Leaders of NHS trusts – employers of more than a million people – are committed to ensuring that staff at every level, working flat out to clear care backlogs and look after patients, are treated with dignity and respect. Fighting discrimination helps to recruit and hold on to valued staff and fosters an environment where everyone feels safe and welcome.

The Messenger review underlines the importance of equality, diversity and inclusion to an NHS-wide culture that combats discrimination for the good of its staff and patients.

Saffron Cordery

Matthew Taylor

Legalising drugs

SIR – I agree with Richard Mountford (Letters, June 19) , who argues that it is time to legalise all drugs, but control and tax them.

However, I can’t envisage any government with the courage to legislate on this.

Dr P E Pears

Seafarers remembered

SIR – I would like to thank Captain Malcolm Farrow RN for his very thoughtful letter (June 17) regarding the loss of non-combatant merchant seafarers during the Falklands crisis.

Every year, on September 3, it is my great honour to be invited by Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant for the county of Rutland, Dr Sarah Furness, to raise the red ensign at Oakham Castle, in remembrance of the 17,000 seafarers in the First World War and the 37,000 the Second World War, as well as those who perished 40 years ago.

I spent 23 years in the Merchant Navy, ending up in command, and still wear my uniform with pride.

Captain Robert G E Strick

A novel technique

SIR – I have noticed an increasing tendency among novelists to shuffle the calendar and assign a date – sometimes a time, too – to each of their chapters.

I find I need a wall planner to work out how the events in the book relate to one another.

Michael Thomas

Wayne Rooney in huge TV chase with BT, Sky Sports and China wanting star

June 28, 2022 by www.express.co.uk Leave a Comment

Wayne Rooney reacts to Derby relegation

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Former Derby County boss Wayne Rooney is hot property after walking away from Pride Park, with multiple broadcasters looking to snap him up. Rooney has previously made appearances on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, but now companies are looking to tie him down for the new season.

Sky and BT are both desperate to get Rooney on the books for next season, with even broadcasters in China and America looking to land the former Manchester United man.

That’s according to The Sun , who claim that Rooney is in high demand to appear as a pundit next season after quitting Derby. It’s set to be the first season where Rooney is out of work, having taken over at Derby immediately after hanging up his boots.

Rooney is reportedly being eyed up by broadcasters abroad, with Chinese and American television stations both interested in him. Rooney spent time in the United States with DC United after leaving Everton, and was hugely popular with fans before leaving to return to England.

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Wayne Rooney has an empty calendar after leaving Derby

Wayne Rooney has an empty calendar after leaving Derby (Image: GETTY)

And according to the Sun , he is still adored in China for his heroics for United. But it is seemingly more likely than not that Rooney will stay in England. Part of his reasoning for leaving Derby was to spend more time with his wife Coleen and their children.

As previously mentioned, Rooney has been constantly involved in the footballing world his entire life, and is yet to have a break. And a source told the Daily Mirror : “Wayne’s always had pre-season tours, World Cups, Euros. He’s not had a summer off since he was a kid himself. He wants to spend the summer holidays with his boys.

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Wayne Rooney wants to spend more time with the family

Wayne Rooney wants to spend more time with the family (Image: GETTY)

“They break up from school soon and he just wants to spend a lot more time with them and Coleen. If he’d stayed at Derby then he’d have to be back at work in a week or so, preparing for the new season. That would have given him hardly any time with the children. He just wants to enjoy a full summer with his kids.”

But that doesn’t mean that he won’t be looking for work after the summer, and a relaxed punditry role beckons for Rooney. He could even follow a similar route to Carragher, who does Monday Night Football alongside working for American broadcaster CBS for Champions League games. Carragher partners Thierry Henry and Micah Richards on the punditry panel.