Friday, February 7, 2014

Woody Allen defends himself, blames Mia Farrow for child sex abuse allegations

from nydailynews.com

Allen, 78, blasts Farrow in a New York Times opinion piece for coaching her daughter, Dylan Farrow, to fabricate sex abuse allegations in 1992. Allen was never charged, but Dylan wrote her side of the story on the New York Times website last week.

BY SASHA GOLDSTEIN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014, 9:10 PM

CHRISTOPHE ENA/AP

Woody Allen at the French premiere of "Blue Jasmine," in Paris. In an Op-Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof published on the New York Times website on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014, the author referenced a letter by Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, 28, that he posted on his blog, detailing how she was molested by Allen while growing up. Allen shot back with an opinion piece of his own Friday.

Woody Allen fought back against allegations he molested Dylan Farrow some 21 years ago in a scathing New York Times opinion piece where he vehemently denied the charges in a missive the newspaper posted on its website Friday evening.

The normally press and publicity shy Allen, 78, took several shots at ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow, who he says coached her then-7-year-old daughter Dylan on what to tell cops about the alleged incident at Farrow’s Connecticut home.

FRANCES SILVER/AP

Dylan Farrow recently wrote an open letter to The New York Times detailing alleged abuse by Woody Allen when she was 7-year-old. The abuse claims in 1992 were investigated but Allen was never charged with a crime.

“Twenty-one years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought,” Allen writes. “We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer to defend myself."

He continues: "Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary’s home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I’d go on to marry — that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive."

BILL KOSTROUN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Actress Mia Farrow and Woody Allen watch the Philadelphia 76ers and the New York Knicks battle on the court at Madison Square Garden in New York Saturday, April 30, 1983.

During the alleged abuse, Allen had recently begun dating Soon-Yi Previn, Farrow’s adopted, 19-year-old daughter. The two later married and have two adopted children of their own together.

Allen goes on to quote the report filed by a Yale-New Haven Hospital child sex abuse clinic, which concluded “Dylan was not sexually abused by Mr. Allen” and instead had been coached by Mia Farrow or made up the allegations.

CORKERY, RICHARD

Mia Farrow and daughter Dylan in New York City.

In the piece, Allen lashes out at Farrow, whom he dated for 12 years during the 1980s and early 1990s. He also takes several shots at her credibility, noting her relationship with a much older Frank Sinatra and the ongoing paternity question involving her son, Ronan Farrow, 26.

“Not that I doubt Dylan hasn’t come to believe she’s been molested, but if from the age of 7 a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her father because he is a monster who abused her, is it so inconceivable that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia wanted to establish had taken root?” he wrote. “Is it any wonder the experts at Yale had picked up the maternal coaching aspect 21 years ago?”

Allen, who waited a week to respond to the open letter Dylan Farrow wrote last week, said his scathing response would be “my final word on this entire matter.”

The allegations of child sex abuse came up last month after Mia and her son Ronan Farrow, tweeted about the two decades old allegations during the Golden Globes, when Allen was honored with a tribute.

sgoldstein@nydailynews.com or follow on Twitter

Thursday, February 6, 2014

The Philip Seymour Hoffman case: Are heroin death probes created equal?

from cnn

By Chelsea J. Carter and Ray Sanchez, CNN

updated 12:00 AM EST, Fri February 7, 2014

<a href='http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/02/showbiz/philip-seymour-hoffman-obit/index.html'>The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman</a> and his problems with substance abuse are a reminder that such struggles are not unusual in the movie business. Here are some other stars who have struggled with similar issues ...

The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman and his problems with substance abuse are a reminder that such struggles are not unusual in the movie business. Here are some other stars who have struggled with similar issues ...

HIDE CAPTION

Celebrity substance abuse confessions

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The investigation into the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman is raising questions
Out of thousands of heroin death investigations each year, how many yield results
"What makes his death more important than that of my 19-year-old son?" one mother asks
One expert says the difference is people appear to be willing to cooperate in Hoffman's death

New York (CNN) -- Within hours of finding Philip Seymour Hoffman on the floor of his bathroom with a needle in his arm, New York Police Department investigators were combing his apartment and the surrounding neighborhood for clues.

Investigators looked through video from ATM cameras and interviewed people who saw the actor, piecing together his final hours as they searched for anyone who might be linked to the drugs believed to have killed him over the weekend.

Three days later, authorities arrested four people in connection with the drugs found in Hoffman's apartment.

It was a lightning-paced investigation, raising the question that out of the thousands of heroin-related deaths in the United States each year, how many yield similar results?

Two suspects released in Hoffman search

"There are laws in most states now that say if you give drugs to somebody who kill themselves, you are responsible for their death," CNN legal analyst Mark O'Mara said.

But are all such investigations created equal? The answer depends on whom you ask, and where you ask.

'A victim is a victim'

The large law-enforcement response to Hoffman's death wasn't surprising to Mordecai Dzikansky, a retired NYPD homicide detective and intelligence officer with more than 25 years on the job.

"...That's part of the beast," he said. "Something happens in Midtown versus something happens in a corner of Staten Island, I don't think the detectives on the case feel any differently. A victim is a victim."

But add the actor's stature and the media attention, and it requires a few more "hands on deck," he said.

Everyone in law enforcement agrees there has been a spike in heroin use in the United States, spurred by a crackdown on abuse of prescription pills and an increase in heroin production in Mexico.

As a result, heroin-related deaths are on the rise. And so, too, are the investigations into the drug that serves as a cheap substitute for prescription drug abuse.

Quantifying the number of heroin-related investigations is difficult at best, given the sheer number of jurisdictions across the nation.

But Joseph Giancalone, a retired NYPD detective with more than 20 years of experience as an investigator, believes the police response in the Hoffman case was undoubtedly influenced by media attention surrounding an apparent overdose death of a celebrity.

The Manhattan district attorney's office declined to comment on the Hoffman case or discuss the number of heroin-related prosecutions it has carried out. The New York Police Department did not respond to repeated CNN requests to discuss the scope and pace of the Hoffman investigation compared to others in the city.

Spate of deaths

Giancalone said a spate of heroin-related deaths in the region also played a role in the police response.

In Allegheny County, a predominantly working class area of western Pennsylvania, the chief medical examiner says he typically sees three to four deaths a week from drug overdoses.

Rarely are they heroin deaths.

But in one week in late January, Dr. Karl Williams says he saw 15 -- all heroin users, all from an overdose of heroin laced with the powerful cancer painkiller fentanyl.

The drug did not discriminate. Among the dead: Men and women, young and old. None was a famous actor, though.

County and state law enforcement officials sounded the warning about the deadly drug, and Pittsburgh's mayor pleaded for people to come forward with information.

Within days, a 39-year-old Pittsburgh man was in custody charged with selling the heroin. Authorities seized more than 2,000 bags of the suspected heroin from the man's home, state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane said at the time.

"It is my highest priority to find and hold accountable those involved in the distribution of this deadly drug mixture," she said.

Authorities in Maryland sounded a similar warning after 37 people died between September and January after using heroin laced with fentanyl.

And in New York City, authorities have reported a dramatic jump in heroin-related deaths. From 2010 to 2012, heroin-related deaths jumped 84%, from 3.1 to 5.7 per 100,000 people, according to a New York City Health Department report released in 2013. That amounts to 382 deaths in 2012, more than one per day.

"The more attention that these things get in the media, the more likelihood there's going to be a strong police response," said Giancalone, who teaches criminal investigation at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

Celebrities vs. ordinary people

But the media doesn't pay close attention to an overdose death of an ordinary New Yorker, said Dzikansky, who spent years investigating drug overdoses.

"Most of the overdoses that I dealt with, I can't say all, but there was a significant amount where the person, in order to feed the habit, would burglarize apartments," he said.

"Here's an example of a person with a family who brought joy to many, many people and, unfortunately, his addiction killed him. Now there's more attention ... We have to get it [heroin] off the streets. Once it's off the streets, everybody benefits, even the burglar who does it to feed a habit benefits."

Hundreds of miles from New York City, Beth Vernau heard the news of Hoffman's death and the police investigation.

There has been no such law enforcement response looking into her son Andrew's heroin overdose last October, she says.

"What makes his death more important than that of my 19-year-old son?" Vernau, who lives outside Pittsburgh, asked of Hoffman's apparent drug overdose.

"(The police) get on it because it makes the news. But you have a 19-year-old who overdosed, and there could be an example made out there: We're going to go after these people. But no, because he's not a celebrity, that's the end of it."

'Families of ordinary kids struggle'

Andrew was hospitalized two days before dying from an addiction that started when he was 13, Vernau said. He started abusing alcohol and pot, then prescription drugs and, finally, heroin.

She said her son overdosed and the two people he was with put him in her car and drove him around for an hour and 45 minutes before taking him to a hospital. There was no prosecution, she said, no search for the dealer who sold him the heroin.

"Don't get me wrong, I feel bad for anybody who dies of an overdose. But the families of ordinary kids struggle just as much," she said.

Giancalone said some will unfairly criticize the rapid police response to the death of the celebrity.

"Family members of people who aren't famous will say, look at the police response because this guy was an actor, but that's not the case," he said. "The answer is that people were willing to cooperate and give out information to get this stuff. Usually family members are the last ones to know. And friends abandon them, too, because they're using heroin, too."

"It really comes down to the fact that in the very beginning of the investigation, they had people who were willing to help out the police. That rarely happens."

The day after Hoffman died the headlines in New York screamed: "Last Act" and "Death By The Needle."

There were no such headlines for Jose Juarez and Yvonne Valdez, both 18, who died last November of heroin overdoses blocks apart on the same day in Irving, Texas.

Authorities were looking into whether overdoses were related, according to CNN affiliate KNBC in Dallas.

How did it happen?

Celebrity deaths attract attention and, ultimately, questions: How did this happen? Why did it happen?

Those are the questions authorities are trying to answer about Hoffman.

Giancalone is hopeful some good might come out of the investigation.

"Maybe this death of this actor won't be in vain. Maybe they'll be a huge response with arrests of people putting heroin on the streets," he said.

And just maybe all this attention on Hoffman's death will save a few lives, Aaron Sorkin, the creator of HBO's "The Newsroom," wrote in Time magazine.

The two men first met on the set of the 2007 film "Charlie Wilson's War," and during a break in filming the two men shared their stories of heroin addiction with one another.

"If one of us dies of an overdose, probably 10 people who were about to won't," Hoffman told him, Sorkin wrote in Time magazine.

"He meant that our deaths would make news and maybe scare someone clean."

CNN's Ray Sanchez reported this story from New York; Chelsea J. Carter reported and wrote from Atlanta.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Push by prosecutors to find wrongful convictions leads to record number of exonerations in '13

from foxnews

Published February 04, 2014
Associated Press

ST. LOUIS – A nationwide push by prosecutors and police to re-examine possible wrongful convictions contributed to a record number of exonerations in 2013, according to a report released Tuesday.

The National Registry of Exonerations says 87 people falsely convicted of crimes were exonerated last year, four more than in 2009, the year with the next highest total. The joint effort by the Northwestern University and University of Michigan law schools has documented more than 1,300 such cases in the U.S. since 1989 while also identifying another 1,100 "group exonerations" involving widespread police misconduct, primarily related to planted drug and gun evidence.

The new report shows that nearly 40 percent of exonerations recorded in 2013 were either initiated by law enforcement or included police and prosecutors' cooperation. One year earlier, nearly half of the exonerations involved such reviews.

"Police and prosecutors have become more attentive and concerned about the danger of false conviction," said registry editor Samuel Gross, a Michigan law professor. "We are working harder to identify the mistakes we made years ago, and we are catching more of them."

Texas topped the state-by-state breakdown with 13 exonerations in 2013, followed by Illinois, New York, Washington, California, Michigan and Missouri.

District attorneys in the counties containing Dallas, Chicago, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Santa Clara, Calif., are among those to recently create "conviction integrity" units. The International Association of Chiefs of Police also is pushing to reduce wrongful convictions, joined by the U.S. Justice Department and The Innocence Project, an advocacy group that seeks to overturn wrongful convictions. The association's recommendations to local departments include new guidelines for conducting photo lineups and witness interviews to reduce false confessions.

Fifteen of the 87 documented cases in 2013 involved convictions obtained after a defendant pleaded guilty, typically to avoid a longer prison sentence. Forty of the cases involved murder convictions, with another 18 overturned convictions for rape or sexual assault.

The number of exonerations based on DNA testing continued to decline, accounting for about one-fifth of the year's total.

"It's extremely valuable to use," Gross said. "But most crimes don't involve DNA evidence. ... DNA has taught us a huge amount about the criminal justice system. Biological evidence has forced all of us to realize that we've made a lot of mistakes. But most exonerations involve shoe-leather, not DNA."

In Illinois, Nicole Harris and Daniel Taylor each received certificates of innocence from a Cook County judge in January after their respective murder convictions were tossed out in 2013 — a designation that allows both to receive financial compensation from the state. Harris had been convicted in 2005 of strangling her 4-year-old son, who had an elastic band wrapped around his neck. Taylor was released after spending more than 20 years in prison for a fatal robbery that occurred while he was in police custody for an unrelated incident.

In Missouri, former death row inmate Reginald Griffin went free in October 2013 after a small-town prosecutor declined to refile murder charges in connection with a 1983 prison stabbing for which Griffin spent nearly three decades behind bars. Griffin denied his involvement but was convicted after two inmates claimed to have seen him stab the prisoner. One of those inmates later recanted, saying he had not seen the attack. An appellate attorney also discovered that prosecutors had withheld a report that guards had confiscated a sharpened screwdriver from another inmate as he was attempting to leave the area where the attack took place.

Ryan Ferguson, convicted in 2005 in the beating death of a Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune sports editor, was freed in November 2013 after a state appeals court panel ruled prosecutors had withheld evidence from his attorneys and that he didn't get a fair trial. The state attorney general's office decided not to retry Ferguson, who had received a 25-year prison sentence.

Like their counterparts across the country, Missouri prosecutors are reviewing not just questionable individual convictions but also the broader issues that lead to exonerations, from coerced confessions to contaminated crime labs.

"It's the duty of police and prosecutors to protect everyone in the community, including victims and defendants," said Boone County Prosecutor Dan Knight. "We want the process to be as fair and transparent as possible."

___

Online: National Registry of Exonerations, bit.ly/LI3yEk

____

Follow Alan Scher Zagier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/azagier

Saturday, February 1, 2014

From 48 Hours - Like Amanda Knox, an imaginative over zealous prosecutor use's sex to convict

This Link will take you to the CBS site if the screen below doesn't display

Executive privilege fight may loom in Breitbart case

from politico

By JOSH GERSTEIN |

1/30/14 7:12 PM EST

A dispute over executive privilege appears to be looming in connection with fired Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod's lawsuit against late conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart.

In a letter filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, a lawyer involved in the case said the Justice Department had advised that it will assert executive privilege to block disclosure of information subpoenaed in the case from USDA and the White House.

"[T]he Government confirmed this week that it intends to assert 'executive privilege' and 'deliberative process privilege' objections as purported grounds for withholding at least some documents and information from both the USDA and the EOP [Executive Office of the President]," wrote Mark Bailen, an attorney for Breitbart employee Larry O'Connor.

However, a Justice Department spokesperson said Thursday afternoon that the government had not reached any conclusions about how to respond to subpoenas served in connection with the case.

"Contrary to what the letter asserts, the department has not made any decisions about what privileges to assert in this ongoing matter," the spokesperson said.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon said at a status hearing on the lawsuit last month that he was fearful that a White House privilege assertion might bog down the case.

"One of my biggest concerns, of course, would be if we found ourselves in a situation where I had to now have litigated in front of me claims of executive privilege that would in some way, you know, slow everything down to a halt," Leon said, after private lawyers involved in the case described their interaction with the government. "I am really happy to hear no one is rattling any swords of that kind and maybe the reason why is because there isn't any of that kind to deal with which would be great. I am not looking for more litigation. I have plenty to do around here."

Leon also suggested he might look skeptically on such a claim in a case where political sensitivities, rather than national security concerns, were at stake. "I am not sure the D.C. Circuit has ever recognized that as a sufficient basis for an executive privilege claim, political embarrassment, to spare the White House political embarrassment," he said.

Sherrod was forced to resign as a state rural development director for USDA in 2010 after Breitbart posted video clips online from a speech she gave earlier in the year at an NAACP event. The videos appeared to suggest that Sherrod was a racist. Within a matter of hours, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack dismissed her, acting in consultation with the White House.

However, allegations soon emerged that Breitbart had mischaracterized Sherrod's speech. He denied doing so and said he did not have access to the entirety of the USDA official's remarks. When the full video of Sherrod's remarks became public, her remarks appeared to many to be less inflammatory than initially portrayed. Within two days of forcing Sherrod out, the administration reversed course, with Vilsack and even President Barack Obama himself apologizing and encouring Sherrod to take another job at USDA.

Sherrod did not take the position, but in 2011 filed a defamation lawsuit against Breitbart, O'Connor and their then-unidentified source for the video of Sherrod.

Breitbart died unexpectedly in March 2012. Sherrod's lawyers later moved successfully to substitute Breitbart's wife, Susannah Bean Breitbart, as legal representative for her late husband.

It's not clear precisely what information is being sought from the USDA or the White House, but Bailen's letter indicates that both sides in the case have subpoenaed records from the Agriculture Department. In addition, O'Connor has subpoenaed the White House, seeking information about Sherrod's termination and subsequent job offer as well as Obama's call apologizing to Sherrod.

Whether Leon is correct about the state of the law on executive privilege is debatable. In 1997,the D.C. Circuit ruled in a case involving former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy (which implicated no national security concerns) that executive privilege applies to presidential decisions about hiring and firing of executive branch appointees, which the court called "a quintessential and nondelegable Presidential power."

"Confidentiality is particularly critical in the appointment and removal context; without it, accurate assessments of candidates and information on official misconduct may not be forthcoming," the D.C. Circuit panel wrote. It turned down some of Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz's request for records on such issues, but left the door open to giving the prosecutor more information if he could show greater need for it.

CORRECTION (Friday, 1:52 A.M.): The initial version of this post referred incorrectly to the business relationship between Breitbart and O'Connor.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Amanda Knox again found guilty in 2007 slaying of roommate in Italy

from latimes

Defendant Raffaele Sollecito, center, leaves the court in Florence, Italy, on Thursday. (Maurizio Degl'Innocente / European Pressphoto Agency / January 30, 2014)

By Tom Kington

January 30, 2014, 1:32 p.m.

FLORENCE, Italy -- American student Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend were found guilty on Thursday in the 2007 slaying of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher.

It was the third verdict in the case for Knox, 26, and Raffaele Sollecito, 29, who were found guilty in 2009 of killing Kercher. That conviction was overturned two years later on appeal, only to have the decision later overruled.

Knox was not in court Thursday when Judge Alessandro Nencini sentenced her to 28-1/2 years in prison, more than the 26 years she received at her first trial. She refused to attend the second appeal, which opened in Florence last year, writing to the court from Seattle that she feared being "wrongly convicted."

Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years. He was instructed to hand over his passport and forbidden from leaving the country before Italy’s supreme court confirms the sentence.

If the guilty verdict is upheld by the supreme court, Knox could face extradition proceedings. But under Italy’s slow-paced justice system, the supreme court is unlikely to hear the case until April or May 2015, said Francesco Maresca, a lawyer for the Kercher family.

Shortly before the jurors took the case Thursday, Knox's lawyers called on them to not overlook mistakes made by investigators. “We are anxious about your verdict,” lawyer Luciano Ghirga told the judge and jurors moments before they filed out to consider it.

Prosecutors had called for sentences of 26 and 30 years for Sollecito and Knox, the exchange student from Seattle who shared a house in the Italian town of Perugia with Kercher, then 21, who was found partially naked in a pool of blood with her throat slashed.

In his final summing-up, a second lawyer representing Knox, Carlo dalla Vedova, lambasted what he called "mistakes" made by forensic investigators. DNA found on a knife in Sollecito’s kitchen and attributed by prosecutors to Kercher could not be verified, Ghirga said.

Losing his customary cool, he said, "Italian sentences don’t depend on probability, but on certainty."

Knox and Sollecito spent four years in jail after their initial conviction before being acquitted on appeal in 2011. However, Italy’s highest court overturned the acquittal and ordered a new appeal, saying the first was riddled with “shortcomings, contradictions and inconsistencies.”

“Amanda has been in touch with us daily,” said Dalla Vedova. “She is very nervous and worried since her life is again jeopardized."

In an interview with Italian television Wednesday, Knox said she would be waiting at home with her family for the verdict with "my heart in my mouth."

"The proof is in the facts. There is no proof I was there when it happened," she said.

Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese barman who was briefly jailed when Knox accused him of the murder, took another view of her absence.

"She is guilty, and she is running away from Italian justice," he said on the sidelines at the Thursday hearing.

The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Kercher's sister, Stephanie, had refused to read a letter sent to her this week by Knox.

Sollecito vacationed in the Dominican Republic during the course of the trial, prompting suspicions that he planned to flee Italy, because the Caribbean island has no extradition treaty with Rome. But on Thursday morning, he was in court.

“He wanted to stay home in southern Italy, but we said, 'Everyone thinks you are going to flee,' and he said 'OK, I'm coming,'" said Giulia Bongiorno, a lawyer representing him.

"He has decided to face the situation. He is afraid of nothing, and his presence is a silent scream of innocence," said Luca Maori, another attorney for Sollecito.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-amanda-knox-verdict-20140130,0,177155.story#ixzz2rvFOFUzR