Issue - 722 (7)
6 - 12 June, 2017
New York officer pleads not guilty
in mentally ill woman’s death
New York A police sergeant was charged with murder Wednesday in the shooting of a 66-year-old mentally ill woman wielding a baseball bat, a death the mayor called tragic and unacceptable. Sgt. Hugh Barry pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Wednesday to charges that also included manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Deborah Danner’s October death. He was released on bail. Police were responding to a 911 call about an emotionally disturbed person when Barry, who has been with the New York Police Department for eight years, encountered Danner in her Bronx apartment. Danner had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Officers had been called to her home several times before to take her to the hospital during psychiatric episodes and had been able to take her away safely, Mayor Bill de Blasio
Man shoots self, bullet goes through head, kills girlfriend WASHINGTON: A man attempted suicide by firing a bullet to his head but it went through him and fatally struck his girlfriend while leaving him severely wounded, according to US prosecutors. Victor Sibson, 21, from Anchorage, Alaska, has been accused of killing his girlfriend while attempting to kill himself. He appeared in court on Sunday and a grand jury indicted him on a charge of second-degree murder. Police responded to a 911 call in at a club at an apartment complex in Midtown last month, and found Sibson, and 22-yearold Brittany-Mae Haag suffering from critical gunshot wounds. First responders transported both to a local hospital, but Haag died later in the day.Prosecutors believe the incident involved a single bullet. “He had an entry wound on the left side of his head, he had an exit wound on the top of his skull,” assistant district attorney James Fayette told KTVA.He said evidence shows the bullet likely hit Haag, striking her vital organs, after it exited Sibson’s skull.A month after the shooting, Sibson turned himself in to Anchorage police.
said at the time. On Oct. 18, Barry persuaded Danner to drop a pair of scissors she had been holding, police said. But after she picked up a
baseball bat and brandished it toward him, he shot her twice in the torso, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark’s office said. Danner was black. Barry is white. Assistant District Attorney Wanda PerezMaldonado said Barry had disregarded his training on handling people with mental illness. He had a stun gun, but did not use it.His lawyer, Andrew Quinn, said that the sergeant confronted a woman “armed with a deadly weapon, a bat.” Sgt. Ed Mullins, the head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said Barry “did not go to work intending to kill anyone.” Mullins called the murder charge “obscene.” “Officers risk their lives going into these situations. It’s a split-second decision,” the union leader said, predicting Barry would be acquitted. But a relative of Danner’s said the indictment marked a start
toward getting justice. Still, the family is watching to see how the case plays out in court, cousin Wallace Cooke Jr. said. “If he’s guilty _ which he is
_ of killing Debbie, he should serve time,” Cooke said, adding that he himself is a retired police officer. “It was totally unnecessary for him to shoot her.” Barry, 31, who had never fired his weapon before, has been suspended from the force while the criminal case plays out. He was suspended without pay for 30 days. New York City police respond to tens of thousands of calls about emotionally disturbed people each year. Officers and commanders, including sergeants, have been gradually getting training on how to deal with mentally ill people that includes instruction in techniques to “deescalate” a situation, rather than resort to force. Danner’s shooting sparked protests and a rebuke from the mayor. “Our officers are supposed to use deadly force only when faced with a dire situation. It’s very
hard to see that standard was met,” de Blasio said the day after the shooting. “Something went horribly wrong here.” New York police Commissioner James O’Neill, meanwhile, said at the time that his department failed by not using means other than deadly force. Officials and police reform advocates who had condemned Danner’s killing commended Barry’s arrest, which followed a two-month grand jury investigation. “We have full faith in the district attorney to lead a fair and thorough prosecution,” said de Blasio. He and the DA are Democrats. The head of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, Hawk Newsome, praised the DA for prosecuting the sergeant “like any other citizen” accused of a crime. Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton called the arrest “a good step in a long walk toward justice.” Danner’s death evoked memories of the 1984 police killing of another black Bronx woman, Eleanor Bumpurs, who was shot after waving a knife at officers while being evicted from her apartment. Danner had been ill since her college years, Cooke said. She had done some computerrelated work at one point and was a book-lover and artist, often sketching the people around her, a former lawyer of hers has said.
Donald Trump appoints Amul Thapar as Judge on the US Court of Appeals
WASHINGTON Amul Thapar, an IndianAmerican legal luminary, has been appointed a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Donald Trump, the White House has said. Before his appointment to the Court of Appeals, Judge Thapar served on the District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.Thapar, 48, was confirmed last week by the Senate 52-44 in a vote on party lines.The son of Indian-American immigrants, Thapar was the Nation’s first Article III judge of South Asian descent.In addition to his career on Federal bench, Thapar has served as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky and as an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of Ohio and the District of Columbia.Trump has nominated 10 judges to lower courts, including Thapar, who is Trump’s first judicial nominee to be confirmed by the Senate, apart from Judge Neil
Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.Thapar began his legal career in private practice, after clerkships with Judge S Arthur Spiegel of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio and Judge Nathaniel R Jones of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.He received his BS from Boston College in 1991 and his JD from the University of California, Berkeley.Thapar is a member of The South Asian Bar Association of North America’s (SABA) National Advisory Council, and has served as a keynote for the Annual Convention and for many of our chapters. SABA awarded him it’s Pioneer Award in 2010. He has also taught at the University of Virginia School of Law, Vanderbilt Law School, and the Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law. Thapar received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.