Summary: The California couple accused of keeping their 13 children captive are facing additional charges.

The California couple accused of locking their 13 children up in their home are facing additional charges. David and Louise Turpin were arrested for torturing 12 of their children after one of those kids, a 17-year-old girl, escaped and dialed 911 on an old cellphone.

Riverside County District Attorney spokesman John Hall announced that the Turpin parents are facing three additional counts each. Louise Turpin is facing an additional felony assault charge, according to CNN.

The next court hearing is set for March 23 with a May 14 start date for the preliminary hearing but David Turpin’s attorney, David Macher, noted that there is “a lot of evidence” so the preliminary hearing will likely be postponed. Much of the new evidence comes from journals that the children kept. They were allowed to do very little else in the home except write in journals in their rooms which resulted in numerous journals that the authorities are combing through.

The house the children between the ages of 2 and 29 were found in has been described by police as a “house of horrors” despite its cheerful façade as the private Sandcastle Day School. Some of the children were allegedly shackled to their beds for weeks at a time while all kids were only allowed to shower once a year, were beaten, were deprived of water, and given small amounts of food on strict schedules. The oldest child, a 29-year-old female, weighed 82 pounds at the time they were rescued.

The parents have pleaded not guilty to over 40 charges, which include false imprisonment, torture, child abuse, abuse of a dependent adult. David Turpin also faces one count of lewd conduct with a minor. Police accuse the parents of beating and choking some of the children, although the 2-year-old is not believed to have been tortured. All of the children are underweight, causing them to look much younger than they actually are.

Before the additional charges were added on, the Turpins were already facing up to 94 years or life in prison. A state court judge has banned any contact by the parents with the children or other witnesses in the case for the next three years. The parents are being held on $12 million bail each. The charges against them only cover the time the family lived in Riverside County, which began in 2010.

The children have a long road ahead of them. People from around the world have donated over $570,000 for the medical and educational expenses that the children will require, according to Riverside University Health System spokeswoman Erin Phillips. She said, “In cases like this there are long-term needs like behavioral health, housing, scholarships, educational support, tutors and medical needs.”

Do you think the Turpins should ever be released from prison? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

To learn more about abusive parents, read these articles:

• Texas Mom Arrested for Bringing 8-Year-Old Son to Hospitals Over 300 Times
• Police Find a Dozen Children Trapped in California Home
• Modern Family’s Ariel Winter Taken from Her Abusive Mother

Family Photo: independent.co.uk

Parent Photo: express.co.uk

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Summary: Police arrested a couple for allegedly torturing their 13 children.

Police arrested a Southern California couple after one of their children escaped the home and notified authorities that her siblings were being held captive.

Authorities raided the Perris home of David Turpin, 57, and Louise Turpin, 49, and they found twelve children locked inside, some shackled to beds. The kids’ ages ranged from 2-29, according to Fox News.

The Turpins are each being held on $9 million bails, and they are being accused of torture and child endangerment.

Riverside County authorities said they began an investigation after one of the children, 17, allegedly escaped and called 9-1-1 on Sunday. The girl looked like she had been starved, and police said that upon initially looking at her, they thought she was 10.

The girl said that her 12 brothers and sisters were imprisoned by their parents. When the police went to the Turpin house, they found children shackled to beds with chains and padlocks, and rooms that were “dark and foul-smelling.”

The police said that they believed all of the children were minors, but to their surprise, they learned that some were over 18. When questioned why the kids were kept in the way they were, police said the Turpin parents were unable to provide a logical reason.

After being rescued, the children were taken to two hospitals for treatment. The sheriff’s office said they all appeared “malnourished” and “dirty.”

The family lived 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and they had previously resided in Texas. The Los Angeles Times reported that the Turpin’s home address was listed as a private school and David Turpin was named the principle.

A neighbor told the New York Times that everyone assumed the kids were home-schooled and people didn’t see them out much.

“I thought the kids were home-schooled,” neighbor Kimberly Milligan told the Times. “You know something is off, but you don’t want to think bad of people.”

David and Louise Turpin had filed for bankruptcy in 2011, according to the New York Times, and they owed six figures. During that period of time, Turpin worked as an engineer and had a salary of $140,000. His wife was a homemaker.

According to CNN, the family often posted pictures of them going on outings such as a vacation to Disneyland. David Turpin’s mother said that the family liked to dress identically in order to keep track of the everyone.

“They all dressed alike when they went out,” Betty Turpin told CNN.

Betty Turpin said that the family was “respectable.” Their bankruptcy attorney said to CNN he thought the Turpins seemed to love their kids a lot.

• Porn Actress Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse 
• Child Abuse Case Against Denver Parents 

What do you think of the Turpin couple? Let us know in the comments below.

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Summary: China finally released a Chinese rights lawyer after detaining him since July 2015 on subversion charges.

Li Heping, a Chinese rights lawyer, was released after being sentenced to three years, with the sentence suspended for four years. The Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court found Li guilty of “subversion of state power” in a closed-door trial. Li was detained during a countrywide crackdown on rights lawyers.

Li’s wife Wang Qiaoling confirmed his release and arrival at home. She previously refused to meet him in Tianjin, fearing their entire family would end up trapped at a secret location under house arrest. She described his condition as “He is extremely thin and he has gone gray, although his mental state isn’t too bad but he seems to have some trouble expressing himself; he no longer sounds like a successful young lawyer.” He arrived at their Beijing home on Tuesday.

She added, “He was very closed in on himself, and I’m sure that there was torture involved. He was also force-fed medication that they said was for high blood pressure but he said it made his muscles ache and blurred his vision.”

Wang claims he was mistreated in jail because he would not incriminate himself or others during interrogations. She said, “They were seriously tortured in there.”

She blames this event on the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to eliminate rights lawyers and does not think they are done. “They wouldn’t release him and allow him to come home after the [suspended] sentencing, and they tried him in secret,” she said. “They wouldn’t allow him to meet with his own lawyer. They broke the law in a lot of places in the past two years, and I think that the local governments involved should give us an explanation, but instead they are trying to shut us up.”

The court justified a closed court through its Weibo account that they “decided not to proceed with an open trial, owing to the fact that the Li Heping case involved state secrets.” They accused him of using the route of foreign media interviews to attack and discredit “organs of the state and China’s legal system.” They also believed he used foreign funds and “hyped cases” to continually provoke people already upset with the country’s political system. Finally, the court said his “colluded with illegal religious activities to subvert the power of the state.”

The Chinese government alleges that Li and other lawyers and associates conspired to “jointly plan a strategy, steps, and methods to overthrow the socialist system,” which endangers national security and social stability. Families of over 200 lawyers, law firm staff and rights activists that were detained, questioned and banned from every leaving the country among other restrictions since the crackdown in 2015 plan to sue the government.

U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao explained that the Xi Jinping administration is apparently erasing the last touches of China’s emerging civil society. He said, “All of these crackdowns are connected. We are now entering the endgame, and the damage done to civil society has been huge but they don’t appear to have lost courage, and it looks as if China’s human rights lawyers are going to get braver and braver the longer they fight this.”

Do you think China has major problems? Tell us in the comments below.

To learn more about other human rights lawyers, read these articles:

• Turkish Human Rights Lawyer Tahir Elci Assassinated
• Human Rights Lawyer Sentenced in Saudi for Signing Protest
• Government Says Missing Human Rights Lawyer Living in Western China

To learn more about the case, read these articles:

• Prominent Chinese Lawyer Convicted of Subversion
• China Rights Lawyer Convicted with Suspended Jail Sentence

Photo: chinachange.org

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Summary: A teenager has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a girl on Facebook Live. 

On Sunday, Chicago police said that they arrested a 14-year-old boy in connection with the sexual assault of a teenage girl on Facebook Live. The Facebook Live attack was seen by 40 people who did not report the crime to authorities, the Huffington Post reported.

The victim, a high school freshman, had gone missing in late March. Her mother said she had gone to the store, and she grew nervous when the 15-year-old didn’t return.

Authorities believe the girl was assaulted on a Sunday, the same day she had gone missing. The assailants videotaped her rape and showed it on Facebook Live. In the video, six men or teenage boys attacked the girl while 40 viewers watched. None of the viewers reported the incident to the police.

“The video was upsetting not only because of its content, but because there were 40 or so live viewers and no one thought to call authorities,” Chicago police spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said to The Associated Press.

The males who had raped the high schooler on camera kept her hostage until Tuesday, when she was located and taken to Comer Children’s Hospital where she was reunited with her mother.  The girl’s uncle had learned of the Facebook Live rape, and he had showed the mother screenshots, which she took to the police.

Facebook removed the video after they were contacted by investigators. A company spokesperson told The Huffington Post that they would not allow content that glorified violence.

“This is a hideous crime and we do not allow this kind of content on Facebook. We take our responsibility to keep people safe on Facebook very seriously and will remove videos that depict sexual assault and are shared to glorify violence,” Facebook said.

After the incident, the appalled police urged its citizens to not look away when they witnessed crimes that were broadcast online.

“If you see a crime being committed on social media, please call the police immediately to report these crimes,” the Chicago police urged on their Facebook page. “As social media has no jurisdictional borders, call the police jurisdiction in which you live, to report what are viewing.”

At Sunday’s press conference, the police also said that were expecting to charge a second teenage in the near future and that other arrests will happen. He could not disclose details due to the sensitivity of the case and the age of the suspected assailants.

“The young men responsible, they should be ashamed of themselves,” Eddie Johnson, Chicago’s Police Superintendent, said. “Now they are going to be held accountable.”

Johnson said that at least one adult was involved.

The 14-year-old arrested faces felony counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, manufacturing of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography, NPR stated.

The victim and her mother have been moved to a safe space, according to NPR, because after the kidnapping and rape, they received disgusting threats and kids from the neighborhood were ringing their doorbell in search of the girl.

The post Chicago Police Arrest Teen for Facebook Live Sexual Assault first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: Four teens were arrested for torturing a special needs student in Chicago.

A horrifying torture video was posted on Facebook Live on Tuesday. By Wednesday, the video had gone viral. In the horrifying 30-minute video, four black teenagers appeared to tie up a white teen, verbally abuse him, and scalp him. Today, Chicago police arrested and charged the four assailants with hate crimes and other felonies.

Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Brittany Covington, 18,  and Tanishia Covington, 18, all of Chicago, and Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville, Ill., were charged with aggravated kidnapping, committing a hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential burglary.

The victim was a special needs student who knew one of his alleged attackers. The four had kidnapped him, tied him up, and covered his mouth with tape before torturing him with a knife and cigarettes. In the video, “Fuck Donald Trump, fuck white people” was chanted by one attacker. According to USA Today, the incident had lasted two days, and the video was uploaded to Facebook Live by the account of “Brittany Herring.”

The video was recorded by one female attacker, who often pointed the camera at herself and seemed to enjoy watching the torture. In the video, two of the males used a knife to cut the victim’s shirt and his scalp. The assailants could also be seen sticking their fingers in the victim’s wound and laughing, appearing to love their evil actions.

On Wednesday, prominent conservative pundits such as Tomi Lahren posted outrage over the video, and the topic trended under the hashtag “#BLMKidnapping.” BLM is a reference to Black Lives Matter, the social justice movement that arose after the murder of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. While the teens in the video shouted racial slurs and anti-Trump sentiments, there has not been any evidence presented showing the four’s connection to Black Lives Matters.

Police have released a statement that the victim is now in stable condition but “traumatized.” Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the Associated Press that police believe the victim was not targeted because of his race. Instead, they think he was attacked for being special needs. Guglielmi acknowledged the racial statements made in the video, but he said there was a possibility that the attackers were financially motivated and wanted to extort the victim’s family.

The victim’s family said that he had gone missing after they had dropped him off at a suburban McDonald’s. The victim voluntarily got into the van with the attackers because he knew one of them from school. The family said that they started to receive texts from a kidnapper while the torture took place.

The four will appear in Cook County Court in Illinois on Tuesday.

• Related: Participants in Torture Could Face International Legal Action
• Related: Fired Female Lawyer Pleads Guilty to Brutal Home Invasion
• Related: Charleston Shooter Found Competent for Trial 

What do you think of the teens’ horrible actions? Let us know in the comments below. 

The post Four Black Teens Charged with Hate Crime after Torturing White Student in Viral Video first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

The Constitution Project released a report today on what it describes as torture tactics used by the U.S. government against suspected terrorists in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. The report finds that torture has been used on more prisoners than has previously been admitted, and that the policy of torturing prisoners goes all the way up through the ranks to former President George W. Bush.

The report, which was compiled by the Constitution Project, a legal advocacy and research group, outlines several specific incidents of torture being used at a variety of secret and not-so secret U.S. run prisons around the world. It also suggests that the use of torture was approved by the highest levels of the American government, that the information gained from these tactics was not as useful as has been previously reported, and that the use of torture diminishes America both morally and in the eyes of the world.

The report is based on dozens of interviews with high ranking government officials, and though it is non-partisan, was published as part of a desire to see the previous presidential administration’s involvement in torture investigated. The New York Times reports that the Constitution Project includes two former members of Congress with experience in the executive branch, Republican Asa Hutchinson and Democrat James R. Jones. The group seeks to produce a stronger national consensus on the use of torture during wartime, and was inspired to create the report in 2009, when President Barack Obama decided not to investigate the previous administration.

Among the chief findings of the report is that two Libyan militants were subjected to the controversial “waterboarding” tactic, in which a detainee is held upside down and water is poured over his face in a simulation of the experience of drowning. The U.S. government had previously admitted to using the tactic, but said that it had only been used against three members of Al Qaeda. The report additionally found evidence of prisoners being handcuffed in uncomfortable positions, deprived of food and sleep, stripped naked, and subjected to physical injury by being thrown against brick walls. Whether or not these tactics were used is one issue, but the report also addresses whether or not these activities are even defined as torture.

More damning is the reports suggestion that the use of these tactics was approved by several high ranking defense, military, and governmental office-holders, including former President George W. Bush. Hutchinson indicated that while President Bush and others in his administration may have made bad decisions regarding the treatment and possible torture of detainees and prisoners, he believes that all involved acted in good faith and in what they thought was the best interests of national security in an effort to prevent immediate attacks.

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Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, the two contractors making the allegations, worked for Iraqi owned security firm Shield Group Security in Iraq in 2005 and were detained by the U.S. Military on suspicion that their firm was selling arms to insurgents. According to their suit, in 2006 they witnessed employees at Shield Group Security make payments to “certain Iraqi Sheikhs” and deal arms using methods not approved by the U.S. Military. Vance says he made contact with an FBI official in Chicago and voiced his concerns. Vance and Ertel supposedly also met with U.S. government officials at the embassy in Baghdad to discuss the matter.

Vance and Ertel’s employer became suspicious of their activities and coworkers seized the two men’s identity cards, which they needed to enter the “Green Zone”. The men allege that they locked themselves in a room, called the U.S. Embassy for assistance and were removed from the premises by U.S. Forces and taken into custody. The men were taken to two military camps in the Baghdad area. Ertel was released after a month but Vance remained in custody for over two months. While held in custody both men allege that they were tortured which included being subjected to sleep deprivation, long hours of interrogation, blasting music, threats, hunger and “walling” .

Vance and Ertel allege that Donald Rumsfeld personally took part in the decision making process that deemed such methods acceptable for use by the U.S. military.

Rumsfeld filed a motion to dismiss the case but the judge allowed one count of the lawsuit to proceed. Anderson believes the two men pleaded enough details to implicate Rumsfeld. Mike Kanovitz of Chicago firm Loevy & Loevy is representing Vance and Ertel and called the ruling “historic” according to The Legal Times Blog. The Department of Justice had no comment on the case except to say they were reviewing the decision.

The Legal Times Blog raised the question of how Judge Anderson came to his ruling in light of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, a Supreme Court decision that made it more difficult to sue high ranking government officials. The Legal Times quotes an excerpt of the Judge’s opinion,

“Iqbal undoubtedly requires vigilance on our part to ensure that claims which do not state a plausible claim for relief are not allowed to occupy the time of high-ranking government officials. It is not, however, a categorical bar on claims against these officials. When a plaintiff presents well-pleaded factual allegations sufficient to raise a right to relief above a speculative level, that plaintiff is entitled to have his claim survive a motion to dismiss even if one of the defendants is a high-ranking government official, the pleading requirements that apply to any defendant and any plaintiff are the same ones. And even though it requires a high amount of specific evidence for holding him liable, there’s enough evidence in the complaint that he did authorize this type of violence to be sufficient to force him to answer for these actions in a court of law.”

Summary:

U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen ruled out two men accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of complicity in their alleged torture in Iraq. Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, the two contractors making allegations for having worked with Iraqi owned security firm Shield Group Security were detained by the U.S. Military on suspicion that their firm was selling arms to insurgents. Mike Kanovitz of Chicago firm Loevy & Loevy is representing Vance and Ertel and called the ruling “historic.”

The post Illinois Judge Refuses to Dismiss Rumsfeld Lawsuit first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Initially the report stated that Bybee and Yoo violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they authored the 2002 memos approving the use of questionable tactics. David Margolis, a department veteran and the “reviewer” of the report, has reportedly downgraded the language of the report to say that the two lawyers showed “poor judgment”. Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct. The original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action, which could have led to an impeachment inquiry in Bybee’s case.

The report is still being declassified but will provide new details about how water boarding was adopted and the role top White House officials played in the process.

The post Former Bush Lawyers Will Not Face Sanctions for “Torture Memos” first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Sarah Palin recently posted her thoughts on the subject on her Facebook page. She titled the Post “It’s War, not a Crime Spree” and here’s what she has to say on the topic:

President Obama’s meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an “overseas contingency operation.” Acts of terrorism are just that, not “man caused disasters.” The system did not work. Abdulmutallab was a child of privilege radicalized and trained by organized jihadists, not an “isolated extremist” who traveled to a land of “crushing poverty.” He is an enemy of the United States, not just another criminal defendant.It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal. Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber. John Brennan, the President’s top counterterrorism adviser, bizarrely claimed “there are no downsides or upsides” to treating terrorists as enemy combatants. That is absurd. There is a very serious downside to treating them as criminals: terrorists invoke their “right” to remain silent and stop talking. Terrorists don’t tell us where they were trained, what they were trained in, who they were trained by, and who they were trained with. Giving foreign-born, foreign-trained terrorists the right to remain silent does nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats. It only gives our enemies access to courtrooms where they can publicly grandstand, and to defense attorneys who can manipulate the legal process to gain access to classified information.

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Cohn handled several high-profile assignments at Justice, including Arar v. Ashcroft, in which a Canadian citizen alleged that American authorities spirited him away to Syria, where he spent a year in confinement and was tortured. A decision is pending in the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

In 2007, Cohn argued the government’s case in Abigail Alliance v. Eschenbach in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, successfully defending the Food and Drug Administration’s position that terminally ill patients have no constitutional right to unapproved drugs.

Sidley Austin LLP , formerly known as Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, is one of the oldest law firms in the world. It is the sixth-largest US-based corporate law firm with over 1,800 lawyers, annual revenues of more than one billion dollars, and offices in 16 cities worldwide.

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