Water boarding chickens come home to roost

Since my dip into what I call adult blogging (I consider my previous attempts at blogging practice runs and not really informational) one thing I have discovered especially with my Afro Spear brethren is that everyone has that one thing, that one subject that grinds their ass only the daily basis. The thing they have news alerts for and have become in my opinion experts at.

For Wayne over at Electronic Village that subject is tasers. For those not sure what that is tasers are the non lethal weapons several police departments have been using the last few years which have resulted in quite a few deaths of brown people on the streets of America. Yeah I know I just said non lethal but clearly there are still a few flaws that need to be worked out and thank heavens all these brown folks are walking the streets waiting to be test subjects….but I digress.

Today Wayne posted a blog about a judge who allowed tasering to be used on a suspect who declined to submit to a DNA test. Well actually to be fair he declined to submit to a second DNA test. You see the first sample of DNA which was obtained with his consent got sent to the wrong lab and was improperly handled and tainted and such. So a second sample was required since someone on the side of Law and Order had messed up . Well the suspect, a Mr. Ryan S. Smith, said thanks but no thanks to that swab to nowhere. For which after stern protest and a statement of he would stay locked up before submitting to the test, the police sat the handcuffed Mr. Smith on the floor and tasered him in the shoulder until he had a change of heart.

Yesterday Judge Sara Sheldon Sparrazza ruled that It is legally permissible for police to zap a suspect with a Taser to obtain a DNA sample, as long as it’s not done “maliciously, or to an excessive extent, or with resulting injury”. So the DNA sample obtained through “enhanced interrogation techniques” is legal and admissible in court.

There you have it folks. We are now allowed to legally torture suspects in custody until they give us the answers we want and we don’t even require the “ticking time bomb” scenario that is being sold to enhance interrogate suspected terrorist.

God Bless America!!!!

Full story here.

National day of blogging! This legal misjudgment of Troy Davis

I have not made a huge deal of this but I have recently been admitted into the “Afro Spear” a group of openly progressive black bloggers. For more first unity blog from the group I am participating in the Day of blogging for Troy Davis.


Davis is an black man, who was convicted of the 1989 killing of a white police officer, Mark Allen McPhail. However, since his conviction, seven of the nine witnesses to the crime have recanted their testimonies, and now claim they were intimidated into making their initial statements against Davis. There is no physical evidence tying Davis to the scene. There is no murder weapon. Three witnesses now claim they overheard another man confessing to the crime.

I don’t know if Troy is guilty or innocent as I was not there when this cop was killed. I will say that there is enough doubt that perhaps we don’t need to be injecting him with anything or pushing any buttons that might electrocute him. In fact until our legal system is fixed and every defendant is treated as though they are the CEO of a fortune 500 company perhaps we need to put the death penalty on hold.

Troy has already had one stay of execution which expired on the 15th of May and Amnesty International is hard at work on his case. Please lend your support through word, or act, or just in getting the word out to others, as it seems this story is not juicy enough for the network news outlets.