Australian drug smuggler Scott Rush Spared Death Penalty in Indonesia: Lawyer

'Bali 9' Scott Rush

Australian drug smuggler Scott Rush, one of a gang known as the Bali Nine, has won an appeal against his death sentence in Indonesia, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

“His judicial review has been accepted by the Supreme Court. His death penalty has been annulled and the sentence has been changed to life,” Frans Hendra Winata said.

“The reason is because he is still young, he expressed remorse and he has never been convicted of any other crime. And most especially, he was just a courier and not the mastermind.”

The 24-year-old was convicted and ultimately sentenced to death for his role in an attempt to smuggle some eight kilograms of heroin into Australia from the Indonesian resort island of Bali in 2005.

The two alleged ringleaders of the Bali Nine gang, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, are also seeking to have their death sentences reduced to life.

A spokesman for the Indonesian Supreme Court was unable to confirm that Rush’s appeal had been successful.

“I don’t know yet about that,” spokesman Djoko Sarwoko said.

Source: Agence France-Presse, May 10, 2011

Bali Nine member Scott Rush 'spared execution' in Indonesia

Scott Rush (center)

Rush, 24, had been facing execution for his part in a 2005 plot to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin from Bali to Australia.

But the Indonesian Supreme Court, which published the decision today, instead commuted his sentence to life, citing the fact that Rush had shown remorse for his actions while also taking into account his age.

His father Lee Rush said the family would continue fighting to free their son.

"It's a great relief, it's been a long time coming," he told reporters in Bali.

"The sentence was far too harsh from the beginning for the crime that he committed.

"We had hoped we could get a lighter sentence.

"We must continue to get Scott and the other Australians back home where they belong."

The court also cited the fact that he was only a courier, and not considered a ringleader of the group.

Rush, from Brisbane, was only 19 and on his first trip to Bali when he was arrested at Ngurah Rai Airport with 1.3kg of heroin strapped to his legs underneath his clothing.

The so-called ringleaders of the Bali Nine - Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran - are also waiting for the outcome of judicial reviews in the hope they will escape the firing squad.

If their appeals fail, they must also rely on President Yudhoyono granting them clemency.

Rush now joins a number of other members of the drug smuggling plot who are also serving life sentences in Bali's Kerobokan Prison, including Martin Stephens, Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen, Tan Duc Than Nguyen and Michael Czugaj.

Stephens had his final appeal against a life sentence rejected in January.

The final member of the drug ring, Renae Lawrence, is serving a 20-year sentence, which has already been reduced by almost two years.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said Australians would greet the decision with relief.

"The Australian Government welcomes this decision by the Supreme Court," he told Parliament.

The Federal Government remains in close touch with Rush's parents, who had been informed of the decision.

Mr Rudd said Rush's parents had shouldered a heavy burden, with years of waiting for the decision.

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said Rush was a young man, aged 19, when he was caught trafficking drugs and had a somewhat troubled past.

If there was ever a lesson for people to understand they must abide by the laws of other countries, Rush's was one, she said.

"This young man has learned a very, very harsh lesson," Ms Bishop told Parliament.

Source: Herald Sun, May 10, 2011


Scott Rush told life sentence is final

Bali Nine drug mule Scott Rush has been told the decision to commute his death sentence to life in prison is final.

Rush's Bali-based lawyer, Robert Khuana, said he had asked prison authorities to pass on the news to Rush that Indonesia's Supreme Court had granted his final appeal, sparing him from execution.

"I have asked the prison officers to tell Scott of the decision," Mr Khuana told AAP on Wednesday.

However, Mr Khuana wanted Rush to know the decision was final.

Mr Khuana will visit Rush in person at Kerobokan Prison on Thursday to discuss the decision in more detail.

Rush, 25, from Brisbane, had been facing the death penalty for his part in a 2005 plot to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin from Bali into Australia.

However, the Supreme Court on Tuesday revealed it had granted his final appeal, known as judicial review, and had commuted his sentence to life in prison.

While the result was not as good as the 15 years sought by Rush's lawyers, the decision did bring relief to his family, with his father Lee Rush saying it had been: "A long time coming."

It also comes after an earlier appeal delivered a much more shocking result.

Rush, the youngest of nine Australians convicted over the drug-smuggling conspiracy, was given life in prison when initially convicted, but had his sentence increased to death at his first appeal.

The panel of judges that presided over that decision were the same three that reversed it on Tuesday, sparing Rush's life.

While the written decision is not yet available in full, it is understood the decision was 2-1 in favour of reducing his sentence, with the judges citing the fact that Rush had shown remorse for his actions, and was only a minor player in the drug-smuggling plot.

His age was also taken into account.

Rush was only 19, and on his first overseas trip, when he was arrested at Ngurah Rai Airport with 1.3kg of heroin strapped to his legs and body underneath his clothing.

Rush's supporters expressed relief on Wednesday, however like Lee Rush they had been hoping for a lighter sentence.

Father Tim Harris, the family's former parish priest, said the decision to spare Rush's life was wonderful but also heartbreaking.

"It's sort of bittersweet, isn't it, where there's great news about Scott's situation on the one hand but ongoing pain continues by virtue of the fact that Scott continues to serve a life sentence." he told the ABC.

But the reaction from the man who tipped off the Australian Federal Police (AFP) about the Bali Nine plot showed there remains anger towards the role Australian authorities played in the saga.

Family friend and barrister Bob Myers tipped off the AFP weeks before the Bali Nine were arrested in Indonesia, in a bid to stop the smugglers before they committed the crimes.

He said the government was doing all it could to "right the wrong" of the past but he could not forgive the federal police for their role in the incident.

"These nine young Australians all faced the death penalty because of the actions of the federal police," Mr Myers told ABC radio on Wednesday.

"It was the federal police that really had these nine people incarcerated in the first place, so I'll never forgive them for that."

It is believed the Supreme Court carefully considered the testimony of former AFP commissioner Mick Keelty in deciding to grant Rush's judicial appeal.

Mr Keelty, who was also a lead player in the AFP investigation that led to the Bali Nine arrests, told the Supreme Court at Rush's final appeal that he was the lowest ranking among the members of the syndicate.

Source: AAP, May 11, 2011
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26th March Protests Across London: Why are windows and the olympic clock more important than people?

 

 

The Trojan Horse of the Apocalypse and the Big Society on Westminster Bridge.

 

Well, yesterday was the big march for the alternative which I almost made myself late for by blogging about before leaving the flat. As I mentioned in that, I was worried about being kettled by the police and having all manner of weird health problems, not to mention the risk of being hit, so I packed a bag full of food and drink, a scarf that could be used as a picnic blanket a nice warm hat as well as a medic alert bracelet and spare medication, just in case I needed to talk to medical staff about why I'd need to leave - although I'd decided that if I was trapped in, I was staying in, not playing a get-out-of-kettle-free card.

I got to Kennington at eleven to meet a group of people and while they assembled, chatted to strangers and gave directions to the park to a range of families, sweet old ladies, people who'd travelled in from very far out of London and a fairly noticeable contingent of young people who'd come in hoods and face scarves that matched my picnic-scarf, but with the idea of keeping their identity away from the police who were already filming people even as we were just gathering outside of Oval station. The presumption of innocence seems to be a thing of the past.

In the park, there was a really friendly mix of people (I have the sense I'm going to be repeating that again and again, but it bears emphasis). I got a few texts from friends asking where we might meet and when I'd said I was at Kennington, a couple replied that they'd heard it was where the big Anarchist lot were starting from, so I should be cautious. That might explain why the police were filming things, if their intelligence had picked up the same thing that friends of mine had heard, so there's a bit of common sense to it.

As we started moving off, the chatter was chirpy, mostly people surprised at the enormity of the march we were on and how this was just a small feeder march that the Police had tried to discourage, saying that it had seemed unnecessary to them (according to one person with a megaphone, anyway, I suspect this might have just been hubris) and people just really enjoying the wit of the banners, and those without them taking the ones handed out by Socialist Worker people, berating them for using bleached card, then tearing out the part that said "Socialist Worker" so they could just keep the slogan.

The horse was amazing. It was one of four horses of the apocalypse, but was the most impressive, and I think it was built at Camberwell, but I might be mistaken. If so, I'm proud. Either way, it was one of the things that gave the march a sense of procession and carnival that really focused the point around bringing people together rather than the horrible politics of division that we're relentlessly exposed to at the moment.

As the march got to Lambeth North, we were told to turn and cross at Blackfriars Bridge, not Westminster, with the argument being that we'd be detained if we kept to the original route, but the bulk of the march refused this and although the vanguard of the march (which I was in) had been moved around by the police and the TUC stewards, so we dashed back to join the main body as they stuck to the plan and pressed on towards Parliament.

There, the anarchists in hoods and scarves started shouting "Oh, 'cause standing around's going to cause a revolution? 'being polite's going to change a fucking thing? The police want you to turn left, oh, I mean right, um so you go right?" and everyone giggled. The megaphone went quiet after that.

By the time we were coming up to Trafalgar Square, the reported numbers were ranging from 250,000 to half a million people. I think that the counting point was along Embankment, so by crossing Westminster Bridge, the tens of thousands who came up from Kennington were not counted, and I wonder how many other feeder marches missed whichever counting point was used. There might be another counting method used, based on helicopter images and an assumption of three people per square metre, which is where I guess the half-million would come from, but by half twelve, when I was approaching Trafalgar Square, people were already solid from Hyde Park Corner all the way along the route along to Trafalgar Square (which was full), down Whitehall to Parliament Square, along the Embankment as far as opposite the National Theatre on the North Side and as far back as Lambeth North to the South. However many square metres that is in people, I don't think it really matters, but it's a lot of people, and that's not including the UK Uncut groups gathering in Soho as they prepared for the occupations in Oxford Street and Piccadilly.

What was really stirring about the march was the diversity of it; you had pensioners' groups marching next to families who were broken-hearted about the cuts to Sure Start services, you had Disabled People Against The Cuts next to youth sports groups. You had people whose focus was on elimination of the tax loopholes which cause the divisions between rich and poor to widen, next to anarchists who believe we should throw out the whole damn system and just start again.

I can't say I agreed with everything that everyone was marching for - the masked kids wanting to smash the state I kind of wished they could travel a bit more and get to have a bit more of an appreciation of what's actually brilliant about this country and the system we've got compared to how it works in other places, but I can empathise with the anger and frustration, but a fresh start needs a transition plan and a sense of what happens afterwards, which there just never seems to be.

These fliers irked me, though - I think to draw comparisons between England and Egypt, Trafalgar and Tahrir, while appealingly alliterative, is lazy and demeans the feat pulled off in the face of live ammunition by the Egyptians and it disrespects the history of political engagement we've got in this country, even though we've got a broken democracy that's at best an elective oligarchy which affords only the illusion of representation, where we get to pretend that our system somehow is something others should aspire to and risk their lives to attain. Oh, and while they're fighting to get there, maybe they might like to buy some British weapons to fight for their democracy against the awful dictator we armed a couple of years back when we thought he might get us some cheap petrol.

I forgot to take a picture as we passed the Ritz, but I remember thinking it odd that two men were shouting "Fuck the rich, smash the Ritz!" which just got a reply of "What's that got to do with anything?" from a woman near us. There was a Sky News camera crew just next to them, and the pair disappeared from the march just afterwards.

Now, I don't want to be suspicious or anything, but I also heard of people being offered money from reporters to throw bricks at windows (£25 was the going rate, allegedly), so the fact that the reporters just happened to be exactly at the perfect spots to get the perfect shots might not be entirely coincidence when those photos get them the front pages to net the outraged front pages.

The march was overwhelmingly, and I mean that in the sense that it was stirringly and heart-warmingly, peaceful and friendly. The chances of the reporters knowing to be at the exact spots where the 16 people who, during the day, engaged in criminal activity resulting in arrest out of a crowd of 500,000 beggars belief, frankly.

I mean, look - is this a bunch of mindless yobs intent on destroying London and Londoners?

No, it's a fucking enormous number of people in Hyde Park, milling around, chatting and being a bit twee, trying to put the world to rights over a picnic. This was the contents of my backpack:

Sure, that scarf could be used to cover my identity and I could douse it in water to protect me from pepper spray, and the oil content of that cheese dip could help to lift pepper from my skin if I were exposed to a chemical attack like that, but really, sometimes a picnic is just a picnic.

Here's what Oxford Street looked like - closed off to traffic because of the horrific threat of riots. And here's the tremendous damage done to BHS by the UK Uncut people:

Oh, some paint. The Police were reporting "Ammonia devices have been employed against officers." I think there's a world of difference between the kind of chemical weapon that implies and the likely truth of it, that they really mean a joke shop stink bomb. Sure, it's disruptive and nasty, but to say chemical weapons and a sustained assault of missiles from a hard-core of violent people intent on ruining everything for everyone is a bit of a diversion. I mean, this was the main target of UK Uncut:

There's a lovely irony about the slogan in the window, and the main flashing wasn't violence but the flash of people posting pictures up onto twitter. In the centre of Oxford Circus, there were the ashes from where the giant horse had been broken down and burned - now, I'm not sure if this was a genuine Trojan Horse to use as a weapon, or just because it was cold and people needed to warm up when they were being held without charge for hours and had no access to food, water or somewhere to go to the toilet.

Generally, though, the policing that I experienced, was very low-key, friendly and polite - the Met police were a little cowed, even, as though ashamed about how things had gone down in the past. One guy caught himself cruising me, we laughed at each other, then his role forced itself around him again like armour and he couldn't meet my eye as he became a policeman again, but the reminder that it's people who are generally motivated by a desire to do a job that involves a social conscience and a connection with people (maybe not just cruising protesters, admittedly) was important.

I have to admit, I'm confused by the attack on Fortnum and Masons, who give a large amount of their income to charitable ventures in the arts, education and other areas and have quite a clear corporate social responsibility policy which would, in my eye, imply they're taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but I'll freely admit to not knowing the full picture, and the UK Uncut people generally do their homework before picking their targets, so I'm not going to let my love of fancy cheese colour my opinion too much before I worry about it being a class war action rather than something more clearly about closing tax inequality.

Trafalgar Square was a party. We went there and there were people drumming and playing music and dancing around. It was a laugh. People were chatting to the police and drawing in chalk on the pavement outside the National Gallery. It was a party, and the people there were having fun and relaxing after a nice day. There was still stuff happening in Piccadilly, but the people in Trafalgar Square weren't the people who'd set out to smash things, they were there to dance around and have a laugh.

We left with a smile on our faces and even commented that the police had been really relaxed.

On the train back, I heard from other friends that I'd just missed madness. Someone had tried to put a sticker on the Olympic Clock, the police had tried to stop him, his friends pulled him away, the police arrested him and hit some of his friends, then released him, while others rallied around and shouted at them for being unreasonable - a couple of people threw their water bottles, by which point the riot police had been radioed in. The police by the Olympic Clock released the man and things eased off, but the riot team came in hard and attacked people, including an unarmed teenage girl who was already crying when she was hit, so the people who had been drinking and dancing fought to protect the people being attacked and it turned into a major situation, all because one man tried to put a sticker on the Olympic Clock.

The news reported it as a hard core of violent protesters intent on causing property damage throwing missiles at police officers. The policeman interviewed described them as "Mindless yobs" which seems more than a little off, as does the police twitter feed which said:

policeuk Police UK

Its nearly 0000 London is feed up of you it is time to go home without causing further violence to londoners #march26 #Trafalgar #Demo2011

I think that you can read all you need into the level of literacy displayed there. We need a much better education system in this country so we can have a much better civil society.

All the property damage stuff and the nonsense about how the BBC News woman interviewed Laurie Penny and refused to let her say anything other than "The people in the square are criminals" is a wild distraction.

We had an enormous number of people on the streets of London yesterday, uniting to express a shared sense of a need to address inequity in society across a wide range of issues. The march was dealing with complex issues, the mandate this gives to the unions and the wide range of groups marching to progress with arguing the case for a fairer society is a powerful one.

We need to move the discourse away from relentlessly attacking the undeserving poor and the mindless yobs, and instead perhaps question the solipsistic yahoos in power and the rich who lack the sense of humility, responsibility and grace we used to associate with wealth and then let's see where this movement can take us.

London: Half A Million In The Streets To Protest Massive Government Cuts

Our guest blogger is Erica Sagrans, a writer who has spent the last six weeks in the UK. You can follow her for more London protest updates on Twitter at @EricaS.
Fueled by anger at drastic government cuts, 500,000 protesters took to the streets of London yesterday in the largest protest since the city’s 2003 march against the Iraq war.
Few parts of British life will remain untouched by the massive $130 billion in cuts to public services now being rolled out by the coalition government. Local budgets are being slashed by up to 30 percent, leading to cuts in child care, public safety, programs for retirees, and library closures — and an increasing privatization of the popular, publicly-funded National Health Service.

“Women, parents, carers, disabled people, teenagers and elderly people” are likely to be hardest hit, reported the Guardian in a study of the cuts’ devastating impact. On top of services, the job losses are expected to be enormous. Amidst the UK’s current record 17-year unemployment high, the cuts will mean a loss of 490,000 public sector jobs.

The crowd at yesterday’s protest — the major march organized by the Trades Union Congress — was as diverse as the cuts people came out to rally against. On the streets, I stood next to firefighters wearing ‘Cuts cost lives’ shirts, a ‘book block’ of 20-somethings wielding large pink cardboard books as shields, kids on parents’ shoulders, and loads of homemade signs: ‘Give me back my future,’ ‘Stop teabagging the public sector,’ and ‘Hands off — the NHS is ours’ were just a few.

UK Uncut, the distributed effort that calls attention to corporate tax avoidance by taking over stores, used the march as a jumping off point for occupations throughout London’s major shopping areas. The spin-off group US Uncut also spent the day targeting more than 40 Bank of America branches across the United States.

UK Uncut peacefully took over London’s upscale Fortnum and Mason department store, whose owners they say have dodged more than 40 million pounds in taxes. Others climbed onto the store’s second-story roof, where they strung up tape saying ‘Closed by UK Uncut’ and sprinkled glitter on the crowd. Later in the evening protesters danced in Trafalgar Square when they were surrounded by riot police, who prevented them from leaving by using the harsh ‘kettling’ technique that was introduced during this winter’s UK student protests.

While the line that played out in the media focused on a small minority of protesters throwing paint and smashing windows, the vast majority were parents, students, health care workers, and union members there to voice their anger about the cuts. The real power of the day came from its dual nature: both the smaller groups ready to take more direct action combined with the strength in the numbers and stories of ordinary people standing up to say ‘no more.’ Their half-a-million strong presence in London’s streets yesterday gave rise to the feeling amongst many that this is just the beginning of something much larger.

Durbin: States should not impose death penalty

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — States should not impose the death penalty because of the difficulty in administering it fairly, although the federal government should retain that authority in cases involving terrorism or treason that endanger many lives, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said.

Durbin told The (Springfield) State Journal-Register that he had always supported the death penalty, but has come to believe that "life in prison is penalty enough." He said that view was influenced partly by those of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun and retired Justice John Paul Stevens.

"They both at the end of their careers came to the same conclusion: that after a lifetime of supporting the death penalty and trying to make it fair, that we had largely failed as a nation, and I cannot escape their wisdom on this issue," said Durbin, the second-ranking member in the Senate. "I really believe that on reflection, the burden is now on those supporting the death penalty to prove its fairness."

Although his comments come as Gov. Pat Quinn decides whether to sign a bill passed by the Illinois General Assembly that would end the death penalty in Illinois, Durbin said he is not trying to tell Quinn what he should do.

"I will not lobby him, because I think it's a matter of conscience," Durbin said.

Quinn supports the death penalty but has also kept in place the moratorium on capital punishment instituted in 2000 by former Gov. George Ryan, after the death sentences of 13 men were overturned and Ryan concluded the state's death penalty system wasn't working.

In some of those 13 cases, evidence showed the suspects were innocent. In others, the trials were deemed unfair or confessions were found to be coerced by abusive police. Since then, the number of overturned capital cases has risen to 20.

Prosecutors say significant reforms have been put in place since the moratorium was imposed, including more money and training for defense attorneys, videotaped interrogations and easier access to DNA evidence.

Source: Chicago Tribune, January 18, 2011

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Police officials argue death penalty doesn't make us safer

Over the past decade, executions have dropped by more than 50 percent and the number of death sentences has steadily declined, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. As police and law enforcement officers with decades of experience in fighting crime in the United States and Europe, we believe that societies are better off without the death penalty. We recently came together in Washington, D.C., for the 1st international dialogue among law enforcement professionals about the death penalty and found important areas of agreement.

Deterrence

Europe has abandoned the death penalty, but European countries have lower murder rates and higher rates of solving homicides than the United States. In the United States, states with the death penalty generally have higher murder rates than states without it. For example, southern states have the highest murder rates and account for 82 % of all U.S. executions. The deterrence argument is weak and it goes against our experience investigating serious crimes: the majority of offenders do not think through the consequences of their actions. In fact, they do not think they will ever be caught.

The death penalty, as it is applied, is too random to effectively deter potential offenders. If you execute a contract killer, for example, it would not deter a terrorist. If you execute a terrorist, it would not deter a young man who breaks into a house, gets startled, and shoots the owner.

Closure

U.S. politicians sometimes argue that the death penalty is needed to deter the killing of police officers. But if one of us were murdered, we would not want the perpetrator to receive the death penalty. The most important thing would be taking care of our families and helping them heal. We have seen how painful it is for families to go through years of death penalty trials and appeals and that would be the last thing we would want for our own families. The idea that the death penalty provides "closure" for victims' families is a myth.

Innocence

Another myth is that only the guilty are executed. We can tell stories about times experienced officers were certain they had the right guy, only to find out later they were wrong. Even when police do their jobs professionally and in good faith, mistakes will be made and innocent people will be convicted. It is hard to imagine a greater tragedy. At least with life without parole, there is a chance to reopen cases if new evidence becomes available. Death is irreversible.

Costs

Especially as budgets tighten in the United States and around the world, the death penalty may be a system governments can no longer afford. The death penalty costs far more than the alternatives. In California, for example, the death penalty costs $125 million more -- every year -- than life without parole, which also takes the offender off the streets permanently. All of the money that states spend on the death penalty could be used to hire more police officers, train them better, solve cold cases, and prevent crimes from occurring in the first place. We should spend our limited resources on programs that work.

Europe vs U.S.

Europe has the same violent offenses that the United States has, but has found ways to protect its citizens without capital punishment. For example, Portugal abolished the death penalty in 1864 and has never seriously considered reinstating it. Even when the country experienced political violence and organized terrorism during a revolution in 1974, the death penalty was not brought back. Had the terrorists been sentenced to death, they might have become martyrs and the violence might have continued.

Do some murderers deserve the death penalty? Maybe so, but that is an emotional reaction. It is not the basis for creating public policy or finding the best ways to keep citizens safe. More states should follow New Jersey's lead, and the example of 15 U.S. states, repeal the death penalty, and adopt life without parole in its place. As a growing number of Americans recognize, life without parole is a harsh punishment, protects the public, and eliminates the risk of an irreversible mistake, while freeing up funds for more effective crime-fighting programs. This is a better way to serve victims' families and prevent violence.

Source: James Abbott is the police chief of West Orange, N.J., and served on the state's Death Penalty Study Commission. António Cluny is the senior attorney general and public prosecutor in Portugal. Bob Denmark is a 30-year veteran of the British police force and a former detective superintendent of Lancashire Constabulary, England. Ronald Hampton is the executive director of the National Black Police Association International Leadership Institute and a 23-year veteran of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, Opinion, Mercury News, January 9, 2011

Framed for Murder?

Kevin Cooper

“California may be about to execute an innocent man.”

That’s the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police.

Mr. Cooper’s impending execution is so outrageous that it has produced a mutiny among these federal circuit court judges, distinguished jurists just one notch below the United States Supreme Court. But the judicial process has run out for Mr. Cooper. Now it’s up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to decide whether to commute Mr. Cooper’s sentence before leaving office.

This case, an illuminating window into the pitfalls of capital punishment, dates to a horrific quadruple-murder in June 1983. Doug and Peggy Ryen were stabbed to death in their house, along with their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old houseguest. The Ryens’ 8-year-old son, Josh, was left for dead but survived. They were all white.

Josh initially told investigators that the crime had been committed by three people, all white, although by the trial he suggested that he had seen just one person with an Afro. The first version made sense because the weapons included a hatchet, an ice pick and one or two knives. Could one intruder juggling several weapons overpower five victims, including a 200-pound former Marine like Doug Ryen, who also had a loaded rifle nearby?

But the police learned that Mr. Cooper had walked away from the minimum security prison where he was serving a burglary sentence and had hidden in an empty home 125 yards away from the crime scene. The police decided that he had committed the crime alone.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof, December 8, 2010