California mayor wants reporter’s death re-investigated

. Oakland Mayor Ronald Dellums said Monday he will ask for an outside investigation by either the state or federal Justice Department into city homicide Detective Sgt. Derwin Longmire’s handling of journalist Chauncey Bailey’s 2007 murder, the Chauncey Bailey Project reported early Tuesday. The lead detective assigned to investigate journalist Chauncey Bailey’s killing ignored evidence linking Yusuf Bey IV, former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, to a role in the killing and interfered in two other unrelated felony cases involving Bey IV, according to an investigation by the Project’s Thomas Peele, Bob Butler and Mary Fricker. The Chauncey Bailey Project is a joint venture between the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and more than 20 other news organizations that came together to complete the work of Bailey, an Oakland editor and writer who was gunned down in August 2007. The Bailey Project’s reporting has led to a police internal affairs investigation of that detective, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, and whether his close relationship with Bey IV may have compromised the case, according to InsideBayArea.com. Law enforcement officials said the investigation of the Bailey killing is in crisis. If Longmire is charged with administrative or criminal wrongdoing, the chances of convicting the one person charged, Devaughndre Broussard, might be jeopardized.

Pat Buchanan, a political pundit and highly visible commentator, is angry about media diversity.
Conservative columnist and political pundit Pat Buchanan’s “primal racial fears” have blinded him from recognizing the inequities that persist in America, the organization that represents African-American journalists said in a response to one of his recent commentaries. Find out more at BET.com/news.

Like the recent N.Y. case, Edith Rodriguez was ignored as she yelled in pain on the floor
Prosecutors in Los Angeles will not lodge criminal charges against workers at a predominantly Black hospital where a woman died screaming in pain as staff ignored her, The Associated Press reported. City officials said in a report released Tuesday that there was too little evidence to charge a nurse and other staff at the former Martin Luther King, Jr.-Drew Medical Center in the death of Edith Isabel Rodriguez, a 43-year-old mother of three, according to AP. Rodriguez died of a ruptured bowel on May 9, 2007. Los Angeles Police took her to the emergency room after finding her yelling for help in front of the hospital. She had been released from the emergency room just three hours before, given a prescription and told to see a doctor. Upon her return visit, a nurse told her, “…[T]here’s nothing we can do.” Rodriguez fell on the floor and writhed in pain for 45 minutes as hospital workers toiled at their desks and patients looked on. The case is eerily similar to a June 19 case at the Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, where 49-year-old Esmin Green died after falling to the floor and remaining there for about an hour as staff ignored her. In that case, Green’s family filed a $25 million lawsuit this week.

Famed death-row inmate wants another trial

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the journalist and former Black Panther member who is in prison for killing a Philadelphia police officer 27 years ago, is asking for a new trial. His attorneys argue that the federal appeals court that denied him a new trial in the killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner should have pondered the question of whether prosecutors deliberately denied Blacks the right to serve on the jury, which violates a later Supreme Court ruling. Robert R. Bryan, who represents Abu-Jamal, and Widener University law Professor Judith Ritter, asked the three-judge panel and the full Third Circuit court to review the case again. Convicted in 1982, the 54-year-old Abu-Jamal gained legendary status while on Pennsylvania’s death row. He is the author of several books, and his taped commentaries are aired on radio shows nationwide. He has maintained his innocence from the beginning.

Affirmative action haters want the program banned
Despite recent failures to get anti-affirmative action measures on ballots in Missouri and Oklahoma, supporters of such initiatives say they’ll reap success in Nebraska and Arizona this time around. They contend that they’ve gathered the necessary signatures, unlike in Missouri and Oklahoma. But opponents of efforts to ban affirmative action aren’t sitting still while the program they say is a needed to ensure equal opportunity for qualified minorities is held back by race. They are going after Arizona signature-gatherers in a lawsuit, alleging that they are using deceptive means to trick supporters of affirmative action into signing their petitions. They point to the name of the anti-affirmative action measure as an example – the American Civil Rights Initiative. Petitioners traditionally tell unsuspecting individuals that they are trying to ensure equal opportunity in hiring, knowing full well that potential signers will be duped into believing that they helping ensure the survival of affirmative action, critics contend. “There’s a significant difference between submitted signatures and valid signatures,” David Kramer, head of Nebraskans United, which opposes the measure, told The Associated Press. “We’ll wait to see the outcome of that process before litigation.” If the anti-affirmative action forces are successful, a constitutional amendment would make it illegal for public entities to give preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.