Second suspect in shooting death of Algiers child charged
The New Orleans Police Department reported on Tuesday, May 20 that 22-year-old Devonte Traylor was charged with second-degree murder and illegal use of weapons.
OPSO maintenance worker allegedly aided in prison break arrested
Traylor and 19-year-old Evans Rogers were arrested following a stand off with Jefferson Parish deputies at a Terrytown hotel on May 13. Rogers is facing the same charges.
On May 12, the New Orleans Police Department responded to a shooting in the 1600 block of Elizardi Boulevard where they learned a child had been shot in the head.
Lee' Lani Brooks was taken to a hospital where she remained in critical condition until her death on May 16.
Man found shot, killed in Gentilly neighborhood
Both Rogers and Traylor are currently booked into the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center but will be extradited to Orleans Parish in the near future, according to deputies.A family affair: Mom graduates alongside her 3 kids in Rhode Island
Second suspect in shooting death of Algiers child charged
Trump administration set to limit COVID-19 shot approvals to the elderly, highest-risk
Trump pitch fails to move GOP holdouts on agenda megabill
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The Hill
22 minutes ago
- The Hill
Executions are up in 2025 — should death penalty abolitionists change their tactics?
Earlier this month, Florida executed Michael Bell for murdering two people in 1993. He was the eighth person put to death there this year. Bell's execution would have attracted little attention but for the fact that it was the 26th of this year so far — one more than the total number executed all last year. For death penalty abolitionists, this is a discouraging milestone. What's more, there are 10 more executions currently scheduled to occur before Dec. 31. That would make 2025 the year with the most executions since 2015, when 28 people were put to death. This year is also on pace to be the fourth in a row in which the number of executions has risen since the low point during the COVID-19 pandemic, when only 11 people were executed. For the last decade or so, those opposed to capital punishment have been repeating the same mantra as a way to mark the progress of their campaign to end state killing in this country: The number of executions is down. The number of new death sentences is also down. And public support has fallen sharply from historic highs 30 years ago. Each of those developments has been fueled by what I have called 'the new abolitionism.' Instead of emphasizing abstract moral arguments against capital punishment, new abolitionists focus on the death penalty's unreliability as a deterrent and the prospect of executing innocent people. They highlight the pervasive racial discrimination that marks every stage of the death penalty process and the frequency with which executions are botched. So, the question naturally arises: Is the spike in executions so far this year a sign that the abolitionist campaign is running out of steam? If so, is it time for a change in tactics? The answer to both questions is no. We can see why by probing more deeply into the reasons executions have increased this year, as well as examining trends in death sentences and public opinion. We also have to understand that the road to the abolition of capital punishment will not be uniform or smooth. Like other political and legal campaigns, it will move toward its goal in an irregular pattern: two steps forward, one step back. This year's increase in the number of executions is one of those backward steps. Almost half of them have occurred in just two states, Florida and Texas. Driven by a pro-death penalty governor, who has made the death penalty a top priority, Florida executed six people in 2023 but only carried out one execution last year. Texas led the way in 2023 with eight executions, and followed up by putting five more people to death in 2024. But this year, other states, like Indiana, which had paused executions because they have been unable to secure reliable supplies of the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections, rejoined the group of states carrying them out. Some revised their lethal injection protocols or even authorized other execution methods. However, in the Hoosier State, officials do not seem anxious to open the execution floodgates. Republican Gov. Mike Braun has said about capital punishment, 'There are legislators that wonder if it's still relevant. … I'm going to listen to them, the courts, and the broader discussion in general.' And even as Indiana resumed executions, its prosecutors are not pursuing new death sentences. In fact, no one has been sentenced to death there since 2013. That is an increasingly common pattern in states where capital punishment is still an authorized punishment. It is important because the number of new death sentences is a better indicator of capital punishment's status and future than is the number of executions. And new death sentences remain at historic lows. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been only ten new death sentences concentrated in just six states — Alabama, California, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana and Oklahoma. That total is down nearly 30 percent from the same period last year, when there were 14 new death sentences. Abolitionists can also take heart from the fact that surveys of the American public, which indicate that support for the death penalty, at just 53 percent, is at a 50-year low. Abolitionists have shone a spotlight on the grim realities of the death penalty's day-to-day administration, and this has paid dividends in changing the national conversation about capital punishment. And in spite of the increase in the number of executions this year, it remains true that the more people learn about the death penalty, the less they like it.
Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
These L.A. moms solved a cold case murder. It ‘revolutionized' their lives
'The Carpool Detectives,' a true crime mystery that reads like a novel, begins in the liminal moment before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the country and concludes on an upbeat note two and a half years later: Four L.A. moms with no law enforcement training have solved an icy cold case and moved on to their next, buoyed by newfound purpose. But as Chuck Hogan's book and conversations with the unlikely crime solvers today make clear, there were plenty of bumps along the way — from dead ends to a potential intruder at one of their homes mid-investigation. 'We went through phases where we felt like we hit a wall,' says Marissa Pianko, a former forensic accountant. Pianko first learned about the stalled investigation into an older couple's death during a journalism class and became determined to get to the bottom of it, inviting three acquaintances to help solve the case. 'I think each one of us had a time by which we were like, 'OK, are we really continuing with this?'' 'There were lots of ups and downs,' concurs Nicole Landset Blank, a political opposition research pro turned book researcher who is seated at the very same table in Pianko's backyard where the team figured out the perpetrator of a double homicide. Samira Poulos, a puzzle-loving digital advertising project manager who stepped back from her career when she became a mom, and Jeannie Wilkinson, a former entertainment industry research exec, both nod their heads in agreement as their fellow sleuths describe the sometimes-fraught nature of their first investigation. The quartet is still a bit apprehensive about solving a case that involved organized crime and is worried that the book might expose their families to harm. To get around their concerns, some of the details about the case have been changed in 'The Carpool Detectives' and each of the four detectives is referred to by first name, like a character in a novel. Reading along, it can be easy to forget that the underlying case is based on real, not fictional, murder. The basic details of the cold case at the heart of 'The Carpool Detectives' are this: An older couple living a seemingly comfortable life in the L.A. suburbs mysteriously disappeared a couple decades ago. Victims of an apparent road accident, their bodies were found a few months later near their wrecked SUV in a mountainous area. After more than a year, the L.A. County Sheriff's Dept. moved the vehicle due to evidence that the couple's death was suspicious. Although the investigation was covered in the media, it soon faded away. Until, that is, four moms — who became such close friends that they now can finish each other's sentences — started looking into the case a decade later. As 'The Carpool Detectives' recounts, the women sought out the help of sometimes-reluctant police officers and the victims' family members, bumbling at times as newbie investigators. Many dead ends and a visit to the crime scene later, the women finally figured out whodunnit. 'It was two and a half years before we really broke it, and it was completely different than we thought it was going to be in the beginning,' Pianko says. 'And how law enforcement thought it would be,' Landset Blank says. For Wilkinson, the biggest surprise was law enforcement's reaction upon hearing that the mom squad had cracked the case. 'I feel like we really did truly earn respect,' she says, exuding pleasure at the thought. The book chronicling their investigation grew out of another pandemic dynamic: socially distanced get-togethers with pals. 'We had a friend who, during the COVID time, we would meet in the driveway for drinks or whatever, and she said, 'This would make an amazing story,'' Poulos recalls. This being L.A., that friend mentioned the quartet's investigation to her boss at the production company 3 Arts Entertainment, and a podcast was discussed before a book deal was put together. The challenge: finding an author who could nail the crime-solving narrative while changing some of the details for privacy and security reasons. The women met with some writers, but nobody clicked until Hogan. Hogan was at a cocktail party before the 2023 Edgar Awards, where he was nominated for his last novel, 'Gangland,' when his literary agent told him about the project and stipulations associated with it. 'I said, 'You need someone like me, who knows crimes and can get creative,'' recalls Hogan, who co-created FX's 'The Strain' with Guillermo del Toro and wrote the book that inspired the Ben Affleck film 'The Town.' Though he had never written nonfiction before, he was looking for a challenge, and the project intrigued him. After meeting with the women in L.A., he realized the underlying story about the women that solved the case was more resonant than the crime itself. 'It's a story of four women who really found themselves at a crossroads in life — as many people do — and this search for identity that manifested itself in this cold case investigation that they then went on to incredibly solve, a case that the police hadn't been able to crack,' Hogan says in a Zoom conversation from his home in the Boston area. 'This is a one-of-a-kind story.' To do it justice, he met with the women and their families, retracing some of their investigative steps during a one-week visit. 'We took him to the scene of the crime,' Pianko says. 'Took him to a couple of different locations where we went looking for blood splatter—' 'Our favorite seafood restaurant,' interjects Landset Blank with a less bloody location. Next, the women 'gifted' Hogan all their information about the case. That included extensive research and saved texts, but no recordings or social media documentation. Their copious documentation proved invaluable to Hogan, who could get incredibly specific in some places and lean on creativity as needed elsewhere. 'I had literally reams of information and rough timelines via text messages that they had saved, and all sorts of things,' says the author. Then it was a matter of shaping all that information — about the case and the individual women — into a compelling narrative. 'There were a lot more dead ends and red herrings that would bog down readers,' Hogan observes. The newbie crime solvers — and their families — undeniably experienced some rough patches over the course of their sleuthing, but none of them were daunting enough to deter them from diving into another investigation when a detective they had been working with brought over a trunk full of possibilities. Now, with 'The Carpool Detectives' arriving Tuesday in bookstores, the crime solvers are closing in on a suspect for an even bigger case — this one involving a potential serial killer of around 20 women during the 1970s and '80s. The choice of time frame and the victims' gender were both deliberate. 'Let's take this case that's about women and try to get some closure and justice for them,' Poulos says they decided. Victims being unidentified was another reason why the women wanted to take on the case, Wilkinson continues. Beyond that, 'it felt safe,' due to the potential age of the killer this many decades later. Whatever happens with their second case, Pianko is glad she saw that news clip about the missing couple in her journalism class pre-COVID. Solving the case 'really revolutionized my life,' she says, admitting to being simultaneously excited and nervous about the Random House book's impending release, given some personal details included in it. 'It changed the entire trajectory of my life — it gave me meaning in a way that I hadn't had meaning in a long time.' 'These three women have become like family,' notes Landset Blank, who earlier this year leaned on the trio when her family's house burned down in the Palisades fire. 'We went through a lot more than just solving the case.'
The Hill
3 hours ago
- The Hill
Republicans stop short of endorsing Trump's call to arrest Obama officials
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's document releases about the Obama administration's review of the 2016 election are leading President Trump to call for prosecution of former officials, including his predecessor. But many Republicans in Congress aren't ready to go quite that far. While Trump's GOP supporters in Congress have united in expressing outrage, they have varying ideas of what accountability looks like. And Democrats say the Trump administration is completely misrepresenting the facts while abusing intelligence and the justice system. They also see it as a bid to distract from growing pressure on the White House to release more information about deceased financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The files reveal little new information about Russia's much-studied efforts to influence the 2016 election, but Republicans have nonetheless claimed the intelligence reviews were designed to cast doubt on Trump's victory. The documents do not undercut a central conclusion: that Russia lunched a massive campaign with the hopes of influencing the contest. House GOP leaders are vowing Congress will investigate, but are stopping short of calling for prosecutions, as Trump has, or proposing any tangible consequences for those named in the newly released documents. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) called Gabbard's disclosures 'pretty earth-shattering.' But Scalise declined to call for arrests or prosecutions. 'There needs to be accountability,' Scalise said. 'But now our committees are going to go to work. There's a lot of work to do to find out more …. You follow the evidence wherever it leads, and then if somebody broke laws, you take action. We're at the beginning stages of this. So let's find out where it leads.' Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Fox Business Network last week that 'it would appear that laws have been broken by any number of people,' also alluding to congressional action. 'We will use every tool within our arsenal to bring about accountability here. And if we have to create and pioneer new tools, we'll do that as well,' Johnson said. The reaction showcases yet another fracture between congressional Republicans who are normally in lockstep behind Trump — though a much smaller one than the split over files relating to Epstein, which many Republicans have continued to seek despite Trump's calling interest in the matter a 'hoax.' If the administration did pursue charges against Obama, it would likely be hamstrung as a result of Trump's own legal battles. The Supreme Court in 2024 sided with Trump in determining that former presidents retain immunity from criminal prosecution even after they leave office for actions within the scope of their executive power. Further dissection of the limits of that immunity went unexplored when the underlying case was dismissed after Trump's reelection. But Democrats argue the biggest roadblock would be that the GOP claims don't align with the facts — and some are eager for the courts to tell Republicans just that. 'Tulsi Gabbard has leveled some of the most serious charges ever leveled against an American at a former president. Bring charges. Bring charges,' said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. 'And the reason I want her to bring charges is that there is not a court in the United States that will do anything other than to laugh hysterically over the bulls— that Tulsi Gabbard is peddling right now.' 'They're not dumping documents. They're making up lies,' Himes added. Gabbard earlier this month released a report she said unearths a 'treasonous conspiracy' against Trump when it comes to the 'Russia hoax.' In fact, what she released shows intelligence leaders discussing how the Russians were never able to alter vote tabulations — something that was never in dispute and aligns with what Obama officials said publicly at the time. What intelligence did find, and which several reviews have since backed, was that Russia embarked on a massive social media campaign in the hopes of sowing division in the U.S. Last week, Gabbard released another report, this time a classified review led by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. That report cast doubt on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed to aid Trump as opposed to sowing discord within the U.S. (In the process, she infuriated Democrats, who argued she exposed sources and methods for gathering intelligence.) However, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, a panel led at the time by now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, blacked the conclusion Russia favored Trump. 'Moscow's intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process,' that report concluded. Nonetheless, Trump this week said the new files 'have [Obama] stone-cold,' saying he needs to be investigated. 'They tried to rig the election, and they got caught. And there should be very severe consequences for that,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week. On his website Truth Social, Trump posted what appeared to be an AI-generated meme of Obama administration officials — including the former president himself — posing for mug shots in orange jumpsuits. And he shared an AI-generated video of Obama being handcuffed and arrested. Obama's team issued a rare public statement, calling the claims an effort at distraction. 'Our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,' an Obama spokesperson said. 'But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.' Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) signaled that she would like to see arrests in light of the releases from Gabbard. 'If they don't arrest people, this systemic corruption will just continue,' Luna told The Blaze. In the upper chamber, meanwhile, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) last week called for a special counsel to be appointed, saying there must be 'an immediate investigation of what we believe to be an unprecedented and clear abuse of power by a U.S. presidential administration.' Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who is normally a staunch supporter of Trump, said that calls for indictments over Gabbard's releases are 'way too premature.' 'Let the facts determine what happens,' Norman said.
