Judge gives Racine man probation for shooting his mother's ex-boyfriend
RACINE — A Racine man who claimed he was defending his mother when he shot her then-boyfriend will serve the next five years on probation.
Damian Mason's family members hugged one another and cried tears of joy moments after Racine County Circuit Court Judge Jon E. Fredrickson handed down his sentence on Friday, June 27.
Seated in the gallery a few feet behind the defendant's table, Erika Mason buried her face in her other son's shoulder, relieved by word that Damian Mason would soon be released from jail.
"God is good!" she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel outside the Racine County Courthouse. "Damian saved my life that day. He was a hero .... and he didn't deserve any of this to happen to him.
"I'm just so glad my son is coming home."
Mason was 17 years old when prosecutors say he intervened with a gun during a violent confrontation on the 1100 block of Racine Street between his mother and her then-boyfriend on June 19, 2022.
The man was shot five times as he tried to drive away. He survived, but suffered permanent damage to his one of his arms.
Mason's family and defense team promoted the theory Mason, now 20, acted to defend his mother.
A jury in May found Mason guilty of attempted second-degree intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon and of being in possession of a dangerous weapon while under 18.
Mason faced up to 60 years behind bars as punishment for attempted second-degree intentional homicide alone. The gun charge carried a maximum penalty of nine months.
More: Milwaukee woman recorded on jail tapes arranging hit on ex-boyfriend is headed to prison
Mason's conviction sparked demonstrations in Racine from supporters, who claimed Mason should have been shielded by Wisconsin's self-defense law, which allows citizens to use deadly force to protect a third party.
Defense attorney Carl Johnson pushed for probation, noting his client had no prior criminal history and acted in defense of another person, which is legally permitted.
"He didn't set out to kill anyone ... He was trying to protect his mother," said Johnson, of Racine. "This was a chaotic, stressful situation that he didn't create."
Mason had been in custody at the Racine County Jail since his conviction. Fredrickson ordered his immediate release.
When calculating his sentence, Fredrickson had to weigh the victim's injuries and the threat to public safety, against Mason's character clear record and his willingness to improve himself.
Evidence of that included his graduating from J.I. Case High School while on house arrest for 34 months after the shooting.
In a packed courtroom, Mason told the judge he felt he was a good person, despite having been convicted, adding that he planned to "continue to work on myself," no matter the outcome of his 34-month legal odyssey.
"What happened that day, I just felt I had no other choice," he said.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Racine man gets probation for shooting his mother's ex-boyfriend
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
As Trump celebrates military, Texans protest president's aggressive immigration enforcement
McALLEN — Hundreds of people lined up near this border city's federal courthouse Saturday, waving American flags and holding signs criticizing President Donald Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It was a loud scene as anti-Trump chants were often drowned out by drivers honking to show support for the protesters' cause. Protests, marches and rallies are happening across Texas and the country Saturday in condemnation of the Trump administration's policies, including its aggressive immigration enforcement, and what many participants consider to be authoritarian actions. Angeline Garza, a 36-year-old elementary school teacher from Mission, said the protest was a way for her to advocate for the undocumented children and the kids of undocumented parents. 'Now more than ever, [deportations] are affecting a lot of people and they are seeing what the Trump administration wanted to do from the beginning, that it was not just about deporting criminals,' she said. The 'No Kings' protests, expected to last throughout the night Saturday, coincide with the Trump administration's planned military parade in Washington, D.C., which falls on the president's birthday and the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary. But the demonstrations also began hours after two Democratic Minnesota legislators and their spouses were shot at their respective homes Saturday. One of those legislators, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, were killed. [Texas DPS makes arrest after warning state lawmakers of 'credible threats' tied to Capitol protest] The Texas Department of Public Safety later Saturday warned Texas lawmakers and legislative staffers of 'credible threats' to legislators planning to attend the anti-Trump rally at the state Capitol in Austin. (DPS later announced it had made an arrest in relation to the threats.) Despite the Department of Public Safety's warning that they knew of 'credible threats' against speakers at an Austin protest, thousands of people gathered on and around Capitol grounds in a playful but at times tense gathering. The first hour of the protest was capped with a drag performance to a Rage Against the Machine song — encapsulating the protest's satirical tone. Organizers dressed as circus ringmasters blew bubbles, guided gatherers through a band-accompanied chicken dance and chanted in between speakers' remarks. Austin resident Charlotte Lichtenheld, adorned in clown makeup and a frill collar, said the outfit had a twofold purpose: to bring levity in the face of continuous stress caused by the issues she's concerned about, and to manifest a peaceful conclusion to the protest. 'While some of my friends chose to dress more incognito and have their identities less visible in case things took a bad turn, I chose to do the opposite,' Lichtenheld said. 'I wanted to embrace the more lighthearted side of protests and remind people that things don't always have to be so serious, and hopefully don't necessarily get so serious in that sense.' The fears of threats — and the politically motivated shooting of two Minnesota lawmakers earlier in the day — did not go unaddressed by speakers. State Rep. John Bucy III, D-Austin, pointed the blame at Trump for allegedly enabling those threats and the attack in Minnesota. 'I'm worried about my colleagues, I'm worried about their families, and I'm pissed off that we have a president whose rhetoric encourages acts of violence against elected officials across this country,' Bucy said during his speech on the Capitol's steps. Among the speakers were state and federal elected officials, such as Bucy and U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, as well as drag queens and local advocates, all echoing a similar sentiment: Trump's actions were more aligned with a monarch than with an elected president. In Midland, more than 100 protesters marched on a city park downtown, lambasting Trump's forceful immigration policies and the agents who enforce them. At the evening demonstration, which was largely peaceful, a small group of counterprotesters joined the crowd to mock the chants and engage other protesters. Jorge Pando, a 47-year-old oil field worker and Midland resident, said he joined to protest Trump's deportation methods, hoping his voice will inspire reform of federal immigration policies. 'I want to change the country for immigrants,' Pando said. Daina Patton, a 35-year-old Odessa resident, said her fiancé, Ramon, had been detained while fetching tools for his work. The 35-year-old roustabout worker, who had moved to West Texas as a teenager, was undocumented. His work in the oil field, Patton said, kept the family afloat. Patton, who attended the protest with Ramon's brother and nephew, said Trump was targeting people who come to the country for work. 'They're attacking businesses, the working man, the people that actually came over here for opportunity,' Patton said. A small group of counterprotesters attempted to provoke the pro-immigrant rally in Midland, but their chants were drowned out by the pro-immigrant rally's response, which included the slogan, 'We fight with love, we fight with peace.' In McAllen, very few people in support of the president appeared, though one man waving two large black Trump flags paraded through the crowd. As he walked, about half a dozen people began following him and protesters chanted anti-Trump expletives at him. The man, who declined to give his name, eventually left the protest area without incident. In Odessa, more than 150 people gathered on the northeast side of the booming oil field city. Families, veterans and oil field workers lined up in front of a main roadway on Saturday, facing a heavily trafficked part of town. The protesters waved flags from the U.S., Mexico and El Salvador and recited the pledge of allegiance. They decried what they said was Trump's authoritarian and monarchical approach to the presidency. Protesters told The Texas Tribune that Trump and his Cabinet had abused legal proceedings and due process for immigrants and women. Suzanne Pack, a 62-year-old retired dietitian, said the Saturday protest was the first time she had ever been part of such a demonstration. She said she decided to attend after seeing the event advertised on social media. "I believe that the government is not taking seriously the importance of due process, and I also believe that women's rights are being tread upon, especially in Texas," Pack said. "I have a daughter of childbearing age. She's seven months pregnant today, and she's scared to death because of the challenges against fetal maternal health." Texas' 'No Kings' protests were planned primarily by progressive groups 50501, Women's March and Indivisible. The national groups are supported by dozens of smaller grassroots organizations and volunteers. This blitz of demonstrations throughout Texas and country are intentional, said 50501 San Antonio representative Alex Svehla, and highlight the movement's core message of 'executive overreach.' 'It's a whole wraparound regarding what Trump is doing,' Svehla said. As planned demonstrations across the U.S. grew in number this week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were told to 'largely pause' enforcement in the agriculture and hospitality industries, The New York Times reported Saturday. Earlier this month, Trump deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to protests against immigration enforcement sweeps there. That deployment came without permission from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and frequent political foe of the Republican president. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Thursday he would be deploying over 5,000 Texas National Guard members across the state in anticipation of Saturday's protests. Roughly 2,500 of those are being diverted from Operation Lone Star border assignments, according to the Austin American-Statesman. 'It does not do any good to have the National Guard not deployed and have a city catch on fire, have crime and chaos break out, and take a day or two to get them there,' Abbott said in a Fox News interview on Thursday. Abbott has acknowledged in several statements that peaceful protesting is a constitutional right, but that officials 'will not tolerate the lawlessness we have seen in Los Angeles.' Abbott's comments have drawn criticism from protest organizers, who have said a crucial element of their events is their nonviolent nature. 'I think that we have seen some very irresponsible comments from Greg Abbott, unfortunately, that are in line with his authoritarian tendencies and certainly Trump's, which is of course the very thing that people are protesting about,' said Rachel O'Leary Carmona, executive director for Women's March. In Odessa on Saturday, the demonstrations were largely amicable, with many of the event's organizers communicating with law enforcement officials as the day progressed. The protest's organizers told the Tribune they had been in touch with local law enforcement officials for weeks before the event. Drivers honked their horns in support, but some of the marchers faced hecklers who shouted vulgarities at them. Leon Fowler, an 82-year-old Navy reserve and Air Force veteran and retired teacher of history and government, said Trump undermined democracy with his actions in the oval office. "I believe in following the law," Fowler said. "And what I've seen shows no respect for law and no respect for the Constitution." Uriel J. García contributed to this report. Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
WIRED
28 minutes ago
- WIRED
ICE Rolls Facial Recognition Tools Out to Officers' Phones
Photo-Illustration:WIRED published a shocking investigation this week based on records, including audio recordings, of hundreds of emergency calls from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. The calls—which include reports of incidents of staff sexual assaults, suicide attempts, and head injuries—indicate a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding. In a 6-3 decision on Friday, the US Supreme Court upheld a Texas porn ID law, finding that age verification for explicit sites is constitutional. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan warned that this determination ignores First Amendment precedent and will have privacy implications for adults. Looking at the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites last weekend, President Donald Trump posted initial announcements of the strikes on the social Network Truth Social, which then began suffering intermittent outages. And WIRED reported on assessments of the damage to the nuclear sites based on satellite photos taken before and after the bombing. Meanwhile, Taiwan is scrambling to make its own unmanned aerial vehicles domestically as drones increasingly become a crucial weapon of war. The urgency comes as a potential conflict with China looms. And Telegram launched a purge of Chinese cryptocurrency markets last month, banning black markets that sold tens of billions of dollars in crypto-scam-related services. Now, though, the markets are rebranding and bouncing back with no further action from the communication platform. But wait, there's more! Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn't cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now using a mobile app called Mobile Fortify that allegedly allows agents to identify individuals by pointing a smartphone at their face or capturing contactless fingerprints, 404 Media reports. The app reportedly taps into government databases, including Customs and Border Protection's Traveler Verification Service and a DHS biometric intelligence system, in an attempt to match facial images taken in the field against prior government-collected records. ICE says the tool is intended to help officers identify 'unknown subjects,' but civil liberties advocates tell 404 Media that it may open the door to surveillance-driven profiling and wrongful arrests. Nathan Freed Wessler of the ACLU told the site, 'Face recognition technology is notoriously unreliable, frequently generating false matches and resulting in a number of known wrongful arrests across the country. Immigration agents relying on this technology to try to identify people on the street is a recipe for disaster. Congress has never authorized DHS to use face recognition technology in this way, and the agency should shut this dangerous experiment down." US Feds Charge Group of Alleged Hackers Behind a Notorious Cybercrime Forum Global law enforcement this week announced the bust of a group of alleged cybercriminal hackers accused of carrying out years of profit-focused data breaches and running a notorious cybercriminal forum and market known as Breachforums. French authorities arrested four members of the group who went by the names 'ShinyHunters,' 'Hollow,' 'Noct,' and 'Depressed,' though the police sources who shared the news with the French newspaper Le Parisien didn't reveal the suspects' real names. The US Justice Department, meanwhile, criminally charged Kai West, a young British man, with carrying out a broad, years-long hacking spree under the handle 'Intelbroker' that inflicted $25 million total damage against victims before he was arrested in February. In addition to hacking and selling vast troves of stolen data, the group—or at least some subset of its members—appears to have served as administrators for Breachforums, a notorious sales forum for cybercriminal information and tools that was shut down in a law enforcement operation in 2023 but was later relaunched by its staff. Scattered Spider Hackers Shift Their Targeting to the Airline Industry The loose cybercriminal gang known as Scattered Spider has carried out data theft and ransomware incidents for years, most recently targeting the grocery industry, other retailers, and the insurance industry in the US and the UK. Now cybersecurity analysts at Mandiant and Palo Alto Networks say the group is turning their attention to the aviation and transportation sector. Specifically, hackers were behind a cybersecurity incident last week that took down some IT systems and the mobile app for Canadian airline WestJet, Axios reports. Now Hawaiian Airlines has said it's experiencing a 'cybersecurity incident' affecting its network, though it hasn't yet revealed more details or any evidence that Scattered Spider is responsible. Cybersecurity firms tracking the group warn that other potential aviation and transportation industry targets should be on the lookout for the group, which often uses sophisticated social engineering to trick staff into letting them bypass multi-factor authentication and gain a foothold on target systems. Hackers Breach a Norwegian Dam to Open Valve Here's a curiosity that we missed a couple weeks ago: A rare industrial control system hijacking incident in which an unknown hacker appears to have messed with the computer systems that control the Lake Risevatnet dam in southwest Norway, opening a valve to its maximum setting. The tampering, the motivation for which was far from clear, increased the dam's water flow by nearly 500 liters a second, but didn't come close to approaching a dangerous level. No one appears to have spotted the change for close to four hours. Officials told the Norwegian energy news outlet Energiteknikk, which broke the story, that a weak password on a web-accessible control panel allowed the unauthorized access.
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'Deceit, dishonesty, betrayal': The wrongful conviction that haunted Johnnie Cochran
He was an uncommonly dangerous man, in the FBI's eyes, a combat-toughened killer who had returned from Vietnam to wage war on the Establishment. "We are going to drive the pigs out of the community,' Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, the 21-year-old leader of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles, told a reporter in 1970. Pratt was stout, compact and level-eyed, with a raspy drawl bespeaking his childhood on the Louisiana bayou. He envisioned a violent end at the hands of police, whom he cast as an occupying army in African American neighborhoods. "The next time you see me, I might be dead.' When he went on trial in 1972 — on charges he murdered a white schoolteacher, execution-style, during a robbery — he insisted he was being framed. His defense attorney, a young Johnnie Cochran Jr., initially dismissed Pratt's talk as paranoia. But Cochran would later describe the case as 'a twilight zone of deceit, dishonesty, betrayal and official corruption.' Pratt's conviction kept him behind bars for 27 years, and the case haunted Cochran, who believed Pratt was innocent and who had made a mistake at trial that prosecutors skillfully exploited. In the authorities' war against perceived subversives, it would be years before it became clear how brazenly they had cheated. 'It looked on the surface like a really straightforward murder case,' said Stuart Hanlon, now 76, the radical San Francisco defense attorney who took up Pratt's appeal as a law student and pursued it doggedly for decades. The victim was Caroline Olsen, 27, who was with her husband on a Santa Monica tennis court in December 1968 when a pair of gunmen approached demanding money. The men ordered the couple to lie face down, then began opening fire. She was fatally wounded; her husband was struck but survived. The robbers got $18. The investigation stalled, and Pratt was not a suspect until 1970, when Julius "Julio' Butler, a beautician and former police officer, implicated him. Butler had been a Panther himself, and had resented Pratt's elevation as Los Angeles leader. The state's star witness, Butler testified that Pratt had dropped by his beauty shop and announced he was going on a 'mission' and later pointed to an article about the Santa Monica shooting to confirm it was his doing. Cochran asked Butler if he had ever been a police informant. Butler flatly denied it. Devastatingly for the defense, Olsen's widower pointed to the defendant and said: "That's the man who murdered my wife.' Cochran argued against the reliability of cross-racial witness identification, particularly under conditions of stress, and put on the stand a witness who had seen Pratt in the Bay Area around the time of the killing. He also put on Pratt, who had been decorated for heroism during two tours in Vietnam with the Army, and who showed what Cochran called a 'soldier's contempt' for whomever shot the helpless Olsen in the back. Cochran thought it was a winnable case, but he introduced an exhibit that backfired terribly. It was a Polaroid, given to him by Pratt's brother, who insisted it had been taken a week after the shooting. It showed Pratt with a beard, which contradicted the widower's initial description of the shooter as "a clean-shaven black man.' Prosecutors countered with a Polaroid employee who said the film had not even been manufactured until five months after the crime, a blow to the defense's credibility that left jurors doubting Pratt's other claims. It took jurors 10 days to find him guilty of first-degree murder. The sentence was 25 years to life. "You're wrong. I didn't kill that woman,' Pratt erupted. "You racist dogs.' Pratt spent the next eight years in solitary confinement. He was shuttled among prisons, and eventually allowed conjugal visits; his wife gave birth to two children. At a series of unsuccessful parole hearings, the panel waited for him to say he was sorry. He insisted he hadn't done it. 'The last person I killed,' he would say, 'was in Vietnam.' There was much the authorities had not shared with Pratt's defense team. They did not reveal that Olsen's widower had previously identified another man as the shooter. (The man had been in jail at the time and could not have done it.) Nor did they reveal the scope of the star witness' work as an informant for law enforcement officials. Based on FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Pratt's lawyers pieced together a picture of Butler's intimate involvement with the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department and the L.A. County district attorney's office in dozens of cases. To FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the Panthers had been the most dangerous group in the country, homegrown terrorists with stockpiles of weapons and alarming Maoist rhetoric. His secret COINTELPRO program was a campaign of spying, wiretaps and sabotage aimed at crushing perceived subversives and thwarting 'the coalition of militant black nationalist groups.' 'Geronimo was targeted by the FBI because he was a natural leader,' Hanlon said. As Hanlon pieced together documents, it became clear that Butler had been helping. Rejecting appeal after appeal, however, courts ruled that Butler had not been an informant — he had been 'a contact and nothing more,' according to one judge — and that Pratt did not deserve a new trial. He was still considered dangerous. 'If he chooses to set up a revolutionary organization upon his release from prison, it would certainly be easy for him to do so,' a prosecutor said at one parole hearing. 'He does have this network out there.' When defense lawyers brought their evidence to then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti in 1993, they presented it as a chance to undo the injustice his predecessors had sanctioned two decades earlier. But Garcetti's review dragged on for years, and the attorneys turned again to the courts. This time, the courts granted a hearing. Because the L.A. County Superior Court bench was recused — the original prosecutor was now an L.A. County judge and a probable witness — the case was transferred to Orange County Superior Court. For Pratt's supporters, this provoked a chill. What hope did they have in a staunchly conservative county? But Judge Everett Dickey surprised them. "It's clear that this is not a typical case," Dickey said. "It cries out for resolution.' This time, Pratt's team was armed with evidence never heard at the original trial. They had the testimony of a retired FBI agent who supported Pratt's claim that he had been in Oakland during the killing. They knew that the D.A.'s office had allowed Butler to plead no contest to four felonies in exchange for probation, around the time he testified against Pratt. And they had an index card, recently discovered by one of Garcetti's investigators in the office files, that listed Butler as a D.A. informant. It was filed under B; it had been there all along. "It had never been turned over to the defense. How could they have not turned this over?' Garcetti said in a recent interview. 'I couldn't find anyone who would fess up to the fact that, 'Yeah, we had that document in the files.'' Still, Garcetti's prosecutors downplayed the card's importance. Butler was not an informant, they argued vehemently, but merely a 'source.' In late 1996, Cochran finally got a chance to confront Butler. He had waited years. Butler had become an attorney and an official at a prominent Los Angeles church. He insisted he had been merely a 'liaison' between law enforcement and the Panthers. Cochran asked him his definition of informant. He admitted he had told the FBI that Pratt had a submachine gun. He said his definition of an informant was someone who supplied accurate information. "So under your own definition, you were informing to the FBI?" Cochran asked. "You could say that," Butler said. Dickey threw out Pratt's conviction, concluding that Butler had lied and that prosecutors had hidden evidence that could have led to Pratt's acquittal. Pratt was released on bail in June 1997, to the cheers of his supporters. "The greatest moment of my legal career,' Cochran called it. Pratt flew home to Morgan City, La., 'to see my mama and my homefolks,' he said. "It wasn't easy getting here.' He said he wanted to hear rain on the tin roof of his childhood home. Pratt's legal ordeal was not over, however. Garcetti appealed, saying he had found no evidence pointing to Pratt's innocence. He did not drop the case until an appeals court sided with Pratt in February 1999. The following year, Pratt won $4.5 million in a false-imprisonment lawsuit against the city of L.A. and the FBI. He bought a farmhouse in Imbaseni, Tanzania, where he enjoyed the companionship of Pete O'Neal, a former Black Panther who had fled the U.S. in 1970. O'Neal found him dead at home in May 2011. Pratt had been hospitalized with high blood pressure, a condition that had plagued him for years, but had torn out his IVs and gone home. He hated confinement. He was 63. "We always say, 'The system works,' but no, the system only produced the right result because Geronimo and the community and a band of lawyers fought the system. The system doesn't work by itself,' said Mark Rosenbaum, one of the lawyers who helped with Pratt's appeal. "They took away half of his life. And they couldn't break him.' So, who killed Caroline Olsen? Hanlon believes the killers were other Black Panthers — a pair of heroin addicts known to feed their habit with armed robbery. They died violently in the 1970s, one by gunfire, the other impaled on a fence during a burglary. In a recent interview, Garcetti, one of the defense team's primary antagonists for years, said that his views on the case have evolved. In retrospect, he regrets fighting to keep it alive. "He was more likely framed than he was the person who actually committed the crime,' Garcetti said. Since leaving office, he said, he has learned more about the U.S. government's tactics against disfavored groups in the 1960s and '70s. 'I have read enough to know the FBI, from the top down, were working to isolate any quote-unquote leader in the Black Panther movement, and it wouldn't shock me to learn that they went after people who really hadn't committed a crime that they were bent on removing from the scene." Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
