Suspect is sought in fatal N.J. church shooting. Police are looking for a New Jersey gunman who entered a Clifton church, fatally shot his wife and injured two other people. The gunman, who police identified as 27-year-old Joseph Pallipurath, drove from California to New Jersey and entered the St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya Church about noon on Sunday, police say. Read more here. 

Ex-husband of Atlanta mayor dies. David McCoy Franklin, the ex-husband of Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin who was a trusted adviser of former Mayor Maynard Jackson, died Sunday, according to a death notice issued by Murray Brothers Funeral Home in Atlanta . He was 65. No cause of death has been disclosed. Franklin had suffered a long illness, Angelo Fuster, former spokesman for Jackson , told The Associated Press. Fuster said that Franklin ’s political smarts were “quite valued,” AP reports.

Blacks are the target of choice for Taser-wielding Houston Police

Life can be shocking if you’re Black and life in Houston . A new study released Monday revealed that Houston Police officers have used their Tasers on African-American suspects more than any other group of people. Read more at BET.com/News.

Philly cops nab third suspect in cold-blooded murder. Philadelphia Police have netted a third suspect in connection with the slaying of a 78-year-old Korean War vet who was shot in the face last week by thugs who attempted to rob him outside a Veterans of Foreign Wars post. The murder of the “sweet and gentle man,” as neighbors described him, shocked the community and the police, which launched an intense investigation into the homicide. Last Thursday detectives arrested two 18-year-olds, Karl Jarmon and Terrell Bennett. Their alleged accomplice, 15-year-old Gary Autrey, is now under arrest, according to homicide Lt. Mel Williams. The trio is being held without bail, charged with murder, conspiracy and weapons charges, police said. “We are satisfied that we took these predators off the streets and we made an arrest in a timely manner, and we were able to give the family closure,” said Lt. Williams. “It’s a tragedy whenever people prey on the old.” Enor Williams had been married to Connie Williams nearly 40 years and, according to The Philadelphia Daily News, was a devoted volunteer at the post. “I hate that [the murder] was the last thing that happened to him,” his 59-year-old widow told the newspaper. “I knew they would find him,” she said of the suspected gunman. “I don’t know how, but I did.” *

An arrest is made in the attack on an Oakland Raiders player.
A Las Vegas man has been arrested in the robbery and beating of Oakland Raiders receiver Javon Walker, with a second suspect being sought. Arfat Fadel, 30, is charged with felonies including kidnapping, robbery, battery and conspiracy in the June 16 episode that left Walker unconscious on a street. He lost about $3,000 and $100,000 in jewelry. “Mr. Walker was in town to have a good time, as many of our visitors to Las Vegas do,” police Lt. Clinton Nichols says. “As he will readily admit, he probably had a little too much to drink and he did not pick up on the clues that Mr. Fadel was someone he probably should not have been with.” A casino videotape surveillance image of the second suspect has been released. Walker didn’t know either man, but got into a car with them, cops say. “He willingly got in the vehicle on his own,” Nichols says. “We’re unsure why.” Walker was treated at a hospital for a concussion.

The justices ruled that such a punishment is cruel and unusual
Those people who rape children can no longer be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. “The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority in the 5-4 opinion. Joining him in the decision that the executions for such a crime violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment were the four more liberal members of the court – John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. No one has been executed for a crime that did not involve the death of a victim for some 44 years. The landmark case revolved around the Patrick Kennedy, a 43-year-old Louisiana man who was sentenced to die for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Another Louisianan was also condemned to death for rape. Executions for adult female rape victims was banned 31 years ago. During the Jim Crow era, Black men – even those falsely accused – were frequently executed by lynch mobs after being charged with rape. All but five states ban the death penalty for rape; the rest allow death for child rapists. If you’ve been previously convicted of raping a child in Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas, you could be sentenced to death. Dissenting in Wednesday’s ruling were Clarence Thomas, Samuel Anthony Alito, Antonin Scalia and John G. Roberts, Jr. “The harm that is caused to the victims and to society at large by the worst child rapists is grave,” Alito wrote in the dissenting opinion. “It is the judgment of the Louisiana lawmakers and those in an increasing number of other states that these harms justify the death penalty.” But, Kennedy said, the fact that very few states allow execution for rape proves “there is a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape.”

Atlanta courthouse murder suspect wants the death penalty off the table
The Atlanta man accused of going on a killing spree during his daring courthouse escape three years ago is blaming the DA of covering up misconduct by the prosecutor and wants the death penalty taken off the table. Brian Nichols, whose defense is that his was mentally incapacitated when he allegedly snatched a deputy’s gun and shot to death a judge, court reporter, deputy and an immigration agent, is also asking that certain evidence be thrown out. Nichols was at a hearing on earlier rape charges when he managed the escape. He argues that the former prosecutor in that initial case, Gayle Abramson, who is likely to testify in the murder case, indulged in misconduct. Nichols’ defense team, however, has not divulged the alleged misconduct to the court, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. In a statement to the newspaper Tuesday, Abramson and her husband, Rand Csehy, also a Fulton prosecutor, said that Nichols’ attorneys are attempting to kill the case by smearing her with a wiretap conversation involving another murder investigation, the Journal-Constitution reports. “Not only is this document factually inaccurate and filled with intentional falsehoods, but it is incomplete,” the couple said of the complaint. Nichols accuses Abramson of socializing with a murder suspect and his friends while on a trip to California.