Page 19 - 5-19-15 Tuesday's Edition

National
N.Y. Mom Sentenced To 12 Years For Killing Disabled Daughter
Arizona Mom Who
Truth About Race Hurts
PLANVIEW, NY -- Veron- ica Cirella, from Plainview, N.Y., pleaded guilty to manslaughter last Thursday for asphyxiating her 8-year-old disabled daughter in July 2011, the New York Daily News re- ports. Cirella’s daughter, Julie Cirella, had cerebral palsy and was supposed to be the flower girl in a wedding on the day she died.
Her mother originally told authorities that Julie died as a result of an allergic reaction after being fed peanut M&M’s, but an autopsy found that there was no peanut residue in Julie’s body. Last month
prosecu- tors re- vealed that they believed Cirella killed her own daughter by asphyx- iating her.
Sentenced To
Mother Of 3 Arrested For Breaking Into A Man’s Apartment And Raping Him While He Slept
SAIDA GRUNDY
She has continued to face vi- cious backlash for her state- ment, mostly from white Twitter users directed to her page by various conservative news organizations, and sparks from the fire she inad- vertently started have even burned other people. Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein, an MLK postdoctoral fellow in physics at MIT, also says that expressing support for Grundy has proved problem- atic for her over the past week.
Veronica Cirella and her daughter, Julie.
PHOENIX,
AZ--A
Phoenix,
Arizona,
woman, who
attained na-
tional noto- lor’s
riety last went
year after 2014..
leaving her
children in a hot car during a job interview, was sentenced last Friday to 18 years super- vised probation by a Maricopa County judge.
Shanesha Taylor, 35, may apply for interstate travel in a case that achieved widespread attention after her weepy mugshot went viral, sparking online donations of over $100,000.
The incident occurred when she was arrested in March 2014 for leaving her sons ages 2 and six months alone in an SUV while she interviewed for a job at a State Farm Insurance in Scottsdale.
But after Taylor missed two deadlines to contribute money to her children's trust fund as part of a deferred prosecution agreement, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office last fall reinstated the initial prose- cution. Besides the sentence, she will have to complete par- enting classes and a treatment program.
George Zimmerman’s Alleged Shooter
Is Arrested
LAKE MARY, FL -- -- A Florida man was ar- rested Fri- day on charges of attacking
George GEORGE Zimmer- ZIMMERMAN man, the
man acquit-
ted of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the 2012 shooting death of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin.
Matthew Apperson was charged with aggravated assault and battery with a deadly weapon, as well as with firing a deadly missile into an occupied vehicle, the Lake Mary Police Department said in a statement.
The shooting occurred last Monday on a bustling road in the Orlando suburb and left Zimmerman slightly injured from shards of flying glass after he was shot at through his car window, police say.
But lawyers for Zimmerman and Apperson have provided different accounts of what hap- pened, the report says.
Apperson’s lawyer, Mark NeJame, said that Zimmer- man brandished a gun, provok- ing Apperson to fire his weapon. Zimmerman’s attor- ney, Don West, said the shoot- ing was unprovoked.
It was Zimmerman’s latest brush with law enforcement since his acquittal in Martin’s shooting, which Zimmerman argued was self-defense.
African-American scholars at predominantly white insti- tutions are faced with a chal- lenge. Tiptoe lightly around white supremacy or face con- sequences.
Saida Grundy, an incom- ing associate professor of soci- ology and African-American studies at Boston University, faced swift condemnation this week for her tweets about slav- ery and the generations of self- entitled white men that the peculiar institution spawned, proving that social media is riddled with land mines for young, black academics.
Despite her widespread sup- port, organized with the hash- tag #IStandWithSaida, Robert A. Brown, president of Boston University, released a statement condemning Grundy’s tweets as racist and bigoted, followed by Grundy’s releasing a state- ment expressing regret that she expressed herself “while not walking back the sub- stance of her critique.
Cirella received 12 years in prison for pleading guilty.
According to relatives, Cirella never complained about taking care of Julie, and the mother gave no reason for killing her child.
Left Children In Car
Black Professors
18 Years Probation
At White Institutions
Shanesha Tay- mugshot viral in
SEATTLE, WA -- A woman accused of breaking into a man’s apartment, and raping him while he slept – plead guilty to the attack and will serve nine months in jail.
Mother of 3, Chantae Marie Gilman, 28, is ac- cused of climbing into bed with a 31-year-old man and having intercourse with him while he slept. According to the charges, the alleged victim, wokeupat2a.mtofindheron top of him. She also had his hands pinned over his head.
When he asked her to get off of him during the attack in June 2013, she refused, telling him ‘to be quiet.’ The man was eventually able to push her off of him, but when he told her to get out of his house she de- clined and asked him for a cig- arette.
He then claims he dragged her out of his house and threw a cigarette at her before slam-
ming the door shut.
The victim
did not know
Gilman
personally,
‘but recog-
nized her as
a drug user
in the area,’
who was
friends with
a neighbor in his duplex. He had attended the birthday party of their mutual friend earlier that same evening.
Gilman will be sentenced on June 19 and will now be registered as a sex offender. Her plea deal requires her to serve two years probation and stipulates that upon release from custody she is forbidden from contacting the victim (who is only identified by his initials, “M.O.,” in court pa- pers) ever again.
CHANTAE M. GILMAN
Time For Change: Thousands
MADISON, WI --- In 1996, then 17-year-old Jarrett Adams told his parents he was staying at a friend's house. Adams and two friends ended up at a campus party at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.
The three friends ended up in the dorm of a woman they met at the party. She accused the three young men of rape.
Adams knew he didn't com- mit any crime, his lawyer told him the evidence was thin. But with barely any witness testi- mony and no evidence to sup- port his guilt, he was sentenced him to 28 years in prison.
His days behind bars were filled with basketball and chess until one day his cellmate chal- lenged him to fight his case.
"He was like, 'Sit down. I'm in here for the rest of my life for something I did do. You are here for some absolute bull- crap with no evidence, and you’re not going to fight to get out.
With the help of the Wiscon- sin Innocence Project Adams fought the case and in 2006 after spending 10 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, an appeals court threw out his conviction.
To Brutality March On Washington
WASHINGTON, DC — Mothers of children who were killed by police officers con- vened in Washington, DC re- cently to march and bring attention to a nationwide epi- demic of police brutality, racial injustice, and what they call “white privilege”.
The march was called “The Million Moms March”, and al- though they did not number to anywhere near a million moms, there were definitely thousands in attendance. Sponsored by Mothers for Justice United, the march started at the U.S. Capitol and ended at the U.S. Department of Justice, where demonstra- tors peacefully protested de- manding changes in the way police make arrests.
The moms in attendance represented many nationali- ties, and many were holding up photos of their children that were killed by law en- forcement officers. Others had flowers and balloons, and oth- ers were holding hands in
March organizer Maria Hamilton speaks to the Moth- ers.
unity.
Maria Hamilton, founder
of the organization, com- mented, “This is a call for everybody to wake up. We are here on behalf of our babies to tell the United States govern- ment that we aren’t going any- where. We aren’t going to continue to keep burying our babies. Do something and do it now.”
Hamilton’s 31-year-old son, Dontre Hamilton, was shot 14 times and killed by a former police officer in Mil- waukee, Wisconsin.
Jarrett Adams was convicted at the age of 17 and spent 10 years in prison for something he did not do.
Since then Adams has been working hard to make up for lost time and last week he re- ceived his law degree from Loyola.
But Adams isn't stopping there, in August he will serve as a Public Interest Fellow to Judge Ann C. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit—the same court that reversed his wrong- ful conviction.
Because the position is not paid, Adams has set up a Go- FundMe page in the hopes of raising enough funds to pay for his expense and health insur- ance during the fellowship.
Wrongfully Accused Man
Graduates Law School After
Spending 10 Years In Prison
Of Moms Who Have Lost Children
MONDAY, MAY 18, 2015 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 19