ELDERCARE NEWS: Top cities for senior living

from about.com

The Top 50 U.S. Cities for Senior Living

Ranked by Senior Living Needs: Health, Economics, Social, Crime and More

By Sharon O'Brien, About.com Guide

Bankers Life & Casualty Company, which specializes in insurance for seniors, gathered a panel of experts on gerontology and senior issues to determine which U.S. cities offer the best quality of life for older adults.

The panel rated the top 50 U.S. cites for senior living, based on a number of criteria.

Portland, Oregon offers the best senior living benefits in the U.S., according to a survey released by Bankers Life and Casualty Company.

Seattle, San Francisco, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh are also at the top of the list.

How Was the Best Cities for Seniors Survey Conducted?
Bankers says the survey, released in 2005, was designed to identify the top 50 metro areas in the U.S. that offer the best overall qualities for senior living.

A panel of experts on gerontology and senior issues was asked to identify the qualities that create optimal senior living, and the survey was conducted by Sperling's Best Places.

What Makes a City Good for Senior Living?
Here are the criteria that the panel chose, statistically weighted toward seniors and their needs:

·                        Health includes criteria such as physician-to-senior ratio, gerontologist-to-senior ratio, hospitals per capita, and the availability of adult day care, assisted living facilities, continuing care (CCRC) facilities, independent living facilities, nursing homes, and senior meals.

·                        Disease covers life expectancy, age 85 expectancy, and rates of depression, heart disease, and cancer.

·                        Economics includes consumer prices, sales taxes, unemployment rate, and recent job growth.

·                        Social identifies the percentage of seniors in the community, and availability of entertainment opportunities, the arts, museums, education, recreation, colleges, and libraries.

·                        Environment assesses the number of sunny days, measurements of clean air and clean water, risk of natural disasters, and the presence of ocean coastline, rivers and lakes, and national parks.

·                        Spiritual looks at the percentage of the population belonging to organized religions, and the number of religious congregations in the community.

·                        Transportation rates the availability of public transportation and special access transportation, along with commuting times.

·                        Housing includes cost of living, median home price, property taxes and monthly apartment rent.

·                        Crime ranks incidents of violent crime and property crime.

Bankers Life & Casualty Company’s Best Cities for Seniors 2005

1.               Portland, OR

2.               Seattle, WA

3.               San Francisco, CA

4.               Pittsburgh, PA

5.               Milwaukee, WI

6.               Philadelphia, PA

7.               New York, NY

8.               Boston, MA

9.               Cincinnati, OH

10.           Chicago, IL

11.           Cleveland, OH

12.           Salt Lake City, UT

13.           Detroit, MI

14.           New Orleans, LA

15.           Indianapolis, IN

16.           Kansas City, KS

17.           Los Angeles, CA

18.           Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

19.           Denver, CO

20.           Greensboro-Winston, NC

21.           St. Louis, MO

22.           Nashville, TN

23.           Providence, RI

24.           Houston, TX

25.           Washington, DC

26.           Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC

27.           Austin, TX

28.           Columbus, OH

29.           San Antonio, TX

30.           Orlando, FL

31.           Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL

32.           Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, VA

33.           Newark, NJ

34.           San Diego, CA

35.           Phoenix, AZ

36.           Atlanta, GA

37.           San Jose, CA

38.           Fort Worth-Arlington, TX

39.           Baltimore, MD

40.           Charlotte, NC

41.           Las Vegas, NV

42.           Fort Lauderdale, FL

43.           Oakland, CA

44.           Dallas, TX

45.           Sacramento, CA

46.           Riverside-San Bernardino, CA

47.           Orange County, CA

48.           Nassau-Suffolk, NY

49.           Miami, FL

50.           Passaic, NJ

NEWS: Another death penalty case

Lawyers Seek Reprieve for Inmate Based on Race Testimony  (credits and link follow story)
by Brandi Grissom
When Duane Edward Buck was on trial for capital murder in Houston in 1997, Dr. Walter Quijano told jurors that the fact he was black meant Buck was more likely to be violent in the future.
The same psychologist gave similar testimony in six other death row cases. In each, the defendants were given new trials to determine their sentences.
Buck, though, has not received a retrial and is scheduled to die Sept. 15 for the 1995 shooting deaths of Debra Gardner and Kenneth Butler. Today, Buck's lawyers asked Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to stop the scheduled execution to allow a new trial without racial references.
“If Mr. Buck is executed, not only will Texas have violated the constitution, it will have violated its citizens’ basic moral values by permitting an execution to be carried out that is based on an individual’s race,” Kate Black, a lawyer for Buck, said in a statement.
In 2000, then-Attorney General John Cornyn admitted the state had erred in seven death row cases — including Buck's — in which prosecutors elicited testimony from Quijano indicating that their racial or ethnic background made them more inclined to commit more violent crimes.
In the case of Victor Hugo Saldano, an Argentinian, Cornyn filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court in which he acknowledged the state’s mistake and agreed a new sentencing trial was needed. “Despite the fact that sufficient proper evidence was submitted to the jury to justify the finding of Saldano’s future dangerousness, the infusion of race as a factor for the jury to weigh in making its determination violated his constitutional right to be sentenced without regard to the color of his skin,” Cornyn wrote.
Saldano remains on death row after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reaffirmed his sentence. The other inmates — except one who has been executed — also remain on death row.
Cornyn’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Buck case.
Buck’s lawyers said that he has not received a new trial because of procedural stumbling blocks, and they asked Perry and the board to commute his sentence or grant a 120-day reprieve. “The State of Texas cannot and should not tolerate an execution on the basis of an individual’s race, particularly where this State’s highest legal officer has acknowledged the error, not only in similarly situated cases, but in this case,” they wrote in the petition filed today.
Buck’s lawyers also asked current Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and the Harris County District Attorney’s office to intervene and withdraw the execution date.
Abbott’s office did not immediately provide comment, but Roe Wilson, an assistant district attorney in Harris County, said that office would not intervene. “We are proceeding with this case as we would normally with any case,” she said.


This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at http://trib.it/mXtLPZ.

NEWS: Interesting stats on the death penalty

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/race-death-row-inmates-executed-1976

http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004087

NEWS: George Stinney Jr.

courtesy http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=print/news/the_black_diaspora_news/26616

A Facebook friend shared this during a period we are becoming more aware of the death penalty and Troy Davis:

Little-Known Black History Fact: George Junius Stinney Jr.

Date: Monday, March 14, 2011
By:

In 1944, George Junius Stinney Jr., 14, became the youngest person executed for a crime in the United States in the 20th century. The 5’1, 95-lb. African-American boy was sent to the electric chair for allegedly killing two young white girls - 11 year-old Betty June Binnicker and eight-year-old Mary Emma Thames - by beating them with a railroad spike and dragging their bodies to a ditch in South Carolina.

On March 23, 1944, the two girls disappeared while looking for flowers to put on their bicycles. As they passed the Stinney home, they asked the young seventh grader and his sister, Katherine, if they knew where to find "maypops," a type of flower. A day later, the girls were found dead with severe head wounds in a ditch of muddy water. Among the search crew was George Stinney, Sr.

After his son was arrested for the crime, George Stinney Sr. was fired from his job at the sawmill, and his family was forced to move away from the city for fear of lynchings from the angry mobs. Stinney Jr. would be left to face trial alone.

According to the police, George Stinney Jr. confessed to wanting sex with Betty June, admitting that as he tried to kill her friend, Mary Emma, they fought. He allegedly killed both girls with a 15-inch railroad spike, which was found near the crime scene.

The confession of George Stinney, Jr. was never recorded in police files. There were even rumors that he was offered ice cream by the police if he cooperated with the confession. During his trial, George Stinney Jr. was given a tax commissioner as a defense lawyer. He was convicted and sentenced in one day of court. There were no witnesses called to the stand. Blacks were not allowed inside the courtroom, and there is no transcript of the trial details.

George Frierson, a school board member, is now seeking a pardon for George Stinney Jr., though lack of sufficient evidence and transcripts make the case difficult. On a positive note, the prosecution’s argument was just as weak.

Little-Known Black History Fact: George Junius Stinney Jr.

George Stinney Jr. was given a tax commissioner as a defense lawyer. He was convicted and sentenced in one day of court

FACTS: courtesy NYCLU

http://www.nyclu.org/node/1598

Stop-and-Frisk Campaign: Stop And Frisk Fact Sheet

Stop & Frisk Campaign

About the Issue

The NYCLU Campaign

Stop-and-Frisk Fact Sheet

Charts of Data

Links and Resources

Trainings and Workshops

Palm Card: What to Do If You're Stopped by the Police (2004)

NYPD’s Over-reliance on Stop and Frisk

• The NYPD stopped, questioned and/or frisked over 508,540 people in 2006, an increase from just 97,296 in 2002.
• Even using "the most liberal assumptions" about the national average when it comes to the rate of the public's contact with police officers, the Rand Corporation’s study notes, New York should have had "roughly 250,000 to 330,000 stops rather than the 500,000 stops actually recorded."
• Only 10 percent of stops led to summonses or arrests. The overwhelming majority of New Yorkers questioned and frisked by the NYPD were engaged in no criminal wrongdoing.
• As compared to a 1999 study by then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, which reported that police stopped nine people for each arrest they made, twice as many people now are being stopped for each arrest.

Disproportionate Stops of People of Color

• 89 percent of those stopped in 2006 were people of color. 55 percent of the stops were of black people – more than double their percentage of the population – and 30 percent were of Latinos.
• Stops of whites, who number about 3.6 million according to recent census estimates, amounted to only 2.6 percent of the white population. By contrast, stops of blacks, who number about 2.2 million people, represented 21.1 percent of the entire black population.
• Residents of Brownsville's 73rd Precinct and Harlem's 28th Precinct had a 30 to 36 percent chance of being stopped and questioned by police in 2006. Citywide, the average was about 6 percent.
• A total of 2,756 cops filed 54 percent, or approximately 274,000, of all stop-and-frisk reports in 2006. Of that group, 15 percent, or about 413 officers, stopped no whites.

Disproportionate Outcomes of Stops for People of Color

• In 2006, 21.5 blacks were stopped for each arrest of a black person as opposed to only 18.2 whites stopped for each white arrest.
• Cops found guns, drugs, or stolen property on whites about twice as often as they did on black suspects.
• Whites were stopped on suspicion of possessing a weapon at a rate lower than their weapon-possession arrest rate. Blacks were stopped on suspicion of possessing a weapon at a rate greater than their weapon-possession arrest rate. These findings indicate that cops were more often unjustified in stopping black people on suspicion of having weapons.

Disproportionate Use of Force on People of Color

• Police used force – i.e. handcuffing, frisking, drawing weapon, restraining – about 50 percent more often on blacks than on whites in 2006.
• 45 percent of blacks and Latinos who were stopped were also frisked, compared with only 29 percent of whites.

Sources Used:
Gardiner, Sean. “Frisk Management.” Village Voice, 11 December 2007.
NYPD Stop, Question, and Frisk Reports, 2006 and 2007.
Ridgeway, Greg. Analysis of Racial Disparities in the New York Police Department’s Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2007.

WTF news

Man Rapes Cat Before Throwing It Out The Window

Published by Spencer Hawken on August 8, 2011 in Alternative

Read more: http://newsflavor.com/alternative/man-rapes-cat-before-throwing-it-out-the-window/#ixzz1YsVURnOf

A man’s pornographic afternoon pleasure leads to the death of his cat.

It seems that the levels of human depravity often know no bounds, while sex with animals offends us, we know it happens. The continuing soar of the Internet however ensures that what was once pushed under the carpet is out in the open for everyone to see.

This is Gerardo Martinez, a man who last Wednesday afternoon sat in his Iowa apartment, and like many decided to entertain himself with a pornographic DVD. But for Martinez it seemed that masturbation was not sufficient to exorcise his sexual needs. Instead Martinez picked up his grey cat and had sex with it! After the deed was done, Martinez picked up the cat, and the DVD and threw both from the 7th floor of his apartment building.
The cat was discovered on the sidewalk, bleeding heavily and unable to move, and when the police turned up someone was only too happy to point them in the right direction of the owner.
When the police knocked on the door of Martinez, he opened it with his trousers round his ankles, having asked him to pull his trousers up police interrogated about his cat. Martinez at first claimed that his boyfriend had thrown the cat out the window three hours prior, but finally crumbled to the admit the act a few seconds later.

It transpires that Martinez was high on crystal meth at the time he launched the cat, and porn DVD from the window.
Martinez who resides in Council Bluffs, has been charged with animal torture, bestiality, and indecent exposure; it is suspected that Martinez will face a prison term of five years for his crime. Sadly the cat died as a result of its injuries.


Read more: http://newsflavor.com/alternative/man-rapes-cat-before-throwing-it-out-the-window/#ixzz1YsVJQr3O

Read more: http://newsflavor.com/alternative/man-rapes-cat-before-throwing-it-out-the-window/#ixzz1YsUb0uAS

NEWS: courtesy CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/22/world/davis-world-reaction/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

NEWS: More on Troy Davis

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courtesy of Huffington News
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/schuster-institute-for-investigative-journalism/troy-davis-media_b_975052.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

 

September 22, 2011

 

Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism

at Brandeis University

Journalists: How You Can Localize the Troy Davis Story

Posted: 9/22/11 09:10 AM ET

Read more

Brandon Garrett , DNA Exonerations , Innocence Project , Criminal Justice , Criminal Justice System , Eyewitness Identification , Eyewitness Misidentification , Troy Davis , Troy Davis Execution , Wrongful Convictions , Media News

By Lindsay Markel, Assistant Director, Justice Brandeis Innocence Project, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University
In response to a last-minute appeal by attorneys representing Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, the Supreme Court refused to stay his execution. But the controversy over his case -- and the issues it has raised, particularly about the reliability of eyewitness identification -- will continue. Initially, nine eyewitnesses identified Davis as a cop killer, but seven of them have since recanted. There was no forensic evidence. Davis was convicted largely because of eyewitness testimony.
HOW RELIABLE IS EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATION?
Discover the science that says eyewitness identification is highly unreliable -- and write about DNA exonerations in your own state in which inmates were wrongfully convicted based on faulty eyewitness identification -- sometimes by several people who were simply wrong, as DNA tests have proved.

Earlier this week, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Troy Davis clemency in his death sentence, ending a hearing before eyewitness science expert Jennifer Dysart had a chance to testify about the failings of eyewitness memories and identifications.

What Dysart would have likely told the parole board is counterintuitive, but well documented: we don't always see what we think we saw.

"The Troy Davis case was staged--pure theater," wrote Virginia Law School professor Brandon Garrett, who has studied the first 250 cases of DNA exoneration. And he didn't mean 'staged' in the 24-hour news cycle sense -- "By 'staged' I mean that the eyewitness evidence at the core of [Davis's] original criminal trial was, quite literally, staged by the police," he wrote.

Experts who have extensively studied the reliability of memory and eye witness identification have concluded in a number of peer reviewed studies that eyewitness evidence is highly unreliable.

This is counterintuitive -- and most people, including some criminal justice officials, simply don't know enough about this research.
Experts say that the human memory is malleable, easily corruptible evidence, and that eyewitnesses' recollections should be treated with the delicacy of any other crime scene evidence. Around the country, that doesn't always happen.
Here, a resource guide for covering eyewitness misidentifications and wrongful convictions in your jurisdiction.

Mistaken eyewitness testimony is the single highest contributor in sending the wrong person away for someone else's crime. In fact, mistaken eyewitnesses have played a role in 75% of the 273 DNA exonerations we've seen pop up steadily around the country in the last couple decades since we've learned the power of DNA to exculpate the innocent--and put away the guilty. That means 187 men and women were put in prison for something they didn't do because someone -- a fallible human being -- made a mistake. In 36% cases, more than one person made the same mistake, identifying the same wrong perpetrator.[1]

But according to Garrett, what's perhaps most worrying is the fact that these criminal cases were perfectly normal -- there was nothing particularly extraordinary about most of them, and yet the system got it wrong.

"That makes these cases all the more troubling," Garrett wrote in his book Convicting the Innocent (Harvard University Press, 2011). "If there is no reason to think that anyone acted differently in these cases as compared to others, then similar errors may have convicted countless other innocent people and led to the guilty going free."

What this all suggests is that, despite best intentions on behalf of law enforcement, prosecutors, and especially eyewitnesses and traumatized victims, there's probably someone in your own area who has also been the victim of a fallible system -- and there's a story to be done.

With the nation's attention on Troy Davis, the 43-year old Georgia man convicted for murdering a police officer, was executed Wednesday night. He maintained his innocence from the beginning, and 7 of the 9 eyewitnesses who fingered him have recanted their testimony, and one of those eyewitnesses could possibly be the true perpetrator.

As in Davis's case, problematic witness identifications happen in jurisdictions all over the country.

Take Eric Sarsfield, who was wrongly convicted in Marlboro, Massachusetts after an unsure victim identified him as her attacker from one-man-lineup in which he was forced to wear the perpetrator's jacket, which had been left at the scene. Sarsfield was exonerated by a DNA test 9.5 years later.

Or there's Antonio Beaver, who was convicted in Missouri after a witness described a perpetrator wearing a baseball cap and with a "David-Letterman-like gap between his teeth." After a four-man lineup in which Beaver was the only man with any visible defects to his teeth (and one of two men with a hat) the witness identified Beaver. DNA showed him to be innocent after he served 10 years.

Reporters around the country can use the Troy Davis case not only as a catalyst to write about such cases in their own area, but also to inform the public about the dangers of tainted identification procedures.

Here's an example of bringing the Troy Davis story home to Michigan, by Detroit Free Press columnist Jeff Gerritt, who wrote that Davis' case is "an injustice Michigan should remember."

To aid in your reporting, below is a curated list of reliable resources that reporters can use to cover this story and others surrounding this phenomenon.

RESOURCES

Eyewitness reform factsheet:

The Innocence Project has laid out a set of "best practice" reforms for eyewitness identification procedures. These are based on decades of social and cognitive science research, as well as what the criminal justice system has learned from what went wrong in those 187 cases where a witness identified the wrong perpetrator. Here, the experts explain the science behind how witnesses can get it wrong.

Factors to be taken into consideration when evaluating eyewitness statements, according to Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: witness confidence at the time of the identification (not at trial), opportunity to view the attacker, degree of attention paid to the perpetrator, the passage of time since the crime, cross-racial identification which increases the likelihood of a mistaken identification, suggestive remarks from those administering identification procedures, stacked lineups which single out any particular suspect, and the age of the witness (children are especially vulnerable to suggestion).

Eyewitness reform in your state:

Enter your state name in this Google search to see how up-to-date on best practices your state or jurisdiction is, or if they're paying attention at all.

Innocence projects in your area:

For experts in your area, see this state-by state listing of innocence efforts. The directors of those projects will be able to give you more information about the biggest issues in your in your city, state or region.

There is a listserv for innocence project directors. To contact the list, email schusterinstitute@brandeis.edu and we will forward your request to this list ASAP.

Eyewitness misidentification in your state:

The Innocence Project has a map function which will allow you to isolate the DNA exonerations in your state, organized by the underlying cause.

For example, here's a listing of Massachusetts exonerees who were wrongly identified by eyewitnesses:
Cases (8)

Ulysses Rodriguez Charles
Stephan Cowans
Dennis Maher
Neil Miller
Marvin Mitchell
Anthony Powell
Eric Sarsfield
Eduardo Velasquez

The data on eyewitnesses:

Gary Wells is a leading expert in the area of eyewitness identification. His federally funded studies explore the relationship between memory and errors in identifications. Wells's website is a treasure trove of information on eyewitness science, and he has written prolifically on the subject.

Federal guide on eyewitness procedures:

The Justice Department, through the National Institute of Justice, published a trainer's manual for law enforcement dealing with eyewitness identifications: "Eyewitness Evidence: A Trainer's Manual for Law Enforcement" (Sept. 2003).

Their general manual, "Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement" was published in Oct. 1999. Both guides were developed by the Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence (TWGEYEE), a multidisciplinary group of content-area experts from across the United States and Canada created to develop recommended procedures for law enforcement use in investigations involving eyewitness evidence.

A case study: The Ronald Cotton case:

One of the better known, but most poignantly told victim misidentification stories is that of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton. In 1984, a man broke into then-college student Jennifer Thompson's apartment. While he raped her, she focused all her energy on noticing everything about her rapist so she could escape and help put him away.
"I would do everything in my power to memorize my attackers' face," she said. "Throughout the course of the rape, I struggled to look into the face of the person who was destroying my life. I needed to know what his hair looked like, was his skin dark or light. Did he have any scars, tattoos, piercings, things he could not alter later? His voice, his age, weight and height all mattered."[2]

Then she identified Ronald Cotton, and he went to prison. But Cotton didn't do it, and DNA proved it 10 and a half years later. In an amazing example of forgiveness and compassion, Thompson and Cotton are now friends, co-authors of the book Picking Cotton, and vocal advocates of eyewitness identification procedure reform.

[1] That's 36% of the first 250 exonerations which Brandon Garrett examined in depth in his book Convicting the Innocent. In real numbers, that means that about 90 innocent people were wrongly identified by at least two mistaken eyewitnesses.
[2] Testimony of Jennifer Thompson to the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment September 5, 2008
CONTACT: Lindsay Markel
Assistant Director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism
and the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project at Brandeis University
lmarkel@brandeis.edu
781-736-3873

Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University

 

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