Month: October 2022

On Tuesday, the Baltimore City State Attorney’s Office announced they have dropped all charges against ‘Serial’ podcast subject Adnan Syed for the 1999 murder of his former girlfriend. The move comes weeks after Syed’s conviction was overturned on September 19th, and he was released without bail and placed on home detention with GPS monitoring while prosecutors were given 30 days to decide whether to move for a new trial or drop the case.

Syed was sentenced to life in prison in 2000 for the murder Hae Min Lee; his case gained national attention more than a decade later in 2014 as the subject of the podcast “Serial.” Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney and director of the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Baltimore Law School, said: “Finally Syed is able to live as a free man.”  

The Maryland Office of the Public Defender said in a statement that the decision to drop the charges was made after DNA testing “excluded Mr. Syed from the DNA recovered at the scene…the DNA results confirm what we have already known and what underlies all of the current proceedings: that Adnan is innocent and lost 23 years of his life serving time for a crime he did not commit.”

Syed, just 17 years old at the time of his arrest, has maintained his innocence in the killing of the 18-year-old Lee, his classmate and ex-girlfriend, who was strangled to death and found buried in a park in Baltimore County in 1999.  However after a yearlong investigation into the case, prosecutors said they had produced evidence suggesting the involvement of two alternative suspects.   One of the suspects threatened Lee, saying “he would make her disappear” and “would kill her.” and one of the suspects was described as a serial rapist convicted in a series of sexual assaults after Syed’s trial. Police also discovered Lee’s car near one of the suspect’s residences.

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On Monday, President of the Los Angeles City Council, Nury Martinez, resigned from her post after audio of her making repeated racist marks was leaked. In a statement, Martinez announced that she would resign effective immediately, and apologized for her off-color remarks. The leaked audio surfaced ahead of the Nov. 8 election in which several council seats are up for grabs; it was not immediately clear who recorded it.

First posted to Reddit, the audio containing Martinez’s remarks was obtained and published by the nonprofit community news platform Knock LA and the Los Angeles Times. The conversations also included council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de Leon, as well as the president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Ron Herrera.

Martinez can be heard saying in one of the recordings, regarding Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón: “[Expletive] that guy, he’s with the Blacks,” and in another recording, Martinez appeared to say that the adopted Black son of fellow City Council member Mike Bonin, who is white, “looks like a little monkey” in Spanish.  Bonin and his husband, Sean Arian, said in a statement: “We are appalled, angry and absolutely disgusted that Nury Martinez attacked our son with horrific racist slurs, and talked about her desire to physically harm him. It’s vile, abhorrent, and utterly disgraceful.  No child should ever be subjected to such racist, mean and dehumanizing comments, especially from a public official. It is painful to know he will someday read these comments.”

Martinez served as the president of the City Council since late 2019 and is the first Latina woman to hold the position. However despite her resignation, Martinez is expected to remain on the 15-member City Council, and in her resignation statement she did not mention leaving her seat as a council member.

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The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division — the country’s third largest freight rail union — has voted down a tentative agreement brokered by the Biden administration to avert a nationwide rail strike.  The union is the first labor group to reject the offer; according to a statement released Monday, 56% of its almost 12,000 workers turned down the agreement over a lack of time off.

Union President Tony Cardwell in a statement:  “Railroaders are discouraged and upset with working conditions and compensation and hold their employer in low regardRailroaders do not feel valued. They resent the fact that management holds no regard for their quality of life, illustrated by their stubborn reluctance to provide a higher quantity of paid time off, especially for sickness.”

Since four other unions have already approved the deal, so the rejection of the agreement does not signal a strike. However, seven more are scheduled to vote through the middle of November, and if one union were to strike, others could refuse to cross the picket line.

Last month, the Biden administration brokered the tentative deal which gives union members an average 24% pay increase over five years, improved working conditions and caps on what they have to pay for healthcare. The administration worked until the final hour to avert a rail strike that threatened to sever the supply chain, by cutting 40% of long-haul U.S. cargo, and cripple the economy.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/large-rail-union-rejects-deal-renewing-strike-possibility-91298002

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