Robbie Tolan Shooting Incident
The Robbie Tolan shooting incident took place in Bellaire, Texas, on December 31, 2008, when ten-year Bellaire police veteran Jeffrey Cotton shot unarmed Robbie Tolan, son of major league baseball player Bobby Tolan, in his parents' driveway. Tolan sustained serious injuries in the shooting and charges were pressed against Cotton. On May 11, 2010, a jury reached a verdict of not guilty and Cotton was acquitted. Minority leaders and critics around the country cite the case as an example of racial profiling and institutional racism. A federal civil lawsuit was also filed by the Tolan family. The suit was later settled for $110,000. Background Robert Tolan (born July 15, 1985) is the son of Major League Baseball player Bobby Tolan of the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds. He himself played professional baseball for the Washington Nationals organization. Since the shooting incident, he has not played in professional baseball, he last played for the Bay Area Toros. Robbie wa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Bellaire, Texas
Bellaire is a city in southwest Harris County, Texas, United States, within the metropolitan area.. Retrieved on January 24, 2010. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city population was 17,202. It is surrounded by the cities of Houston and West University Place. Bellaire is known as the "City of Homes", owing to its mostly residential character; but it has offices along the I-610 Loop within the city limits. History Bellaire was founded in 1908 by William Wright Baldwin, who was the president of the South End Land Company. Baldwin, a native of Iowa, was well known as the vice president of the Burlington Railroad. Bellaire was founded on what was part of William Marsh Rice's ranch. Baldwin surveyed the eastern of the ranch into small truck farms. He named them "Westmoreland Farms". Baldwin started Bellaire in the middle of "Westmoreland Farms" to serve as a residential neighborhood and an agricultural trading center. South End Land Company advertised to farmers in the Midweste ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Melinda Harmon
Melinda Sue (Furche) Harmon (born November 1, 1946 in Port Arthur, Texas) is an inactive Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, best known as the lead judge in the subsequently overruled Arthur Andersen trial. Civil lawsuits against Enron were consolidated in her court; she oversaw class action lawsuits on behalf of both Enron shareholders and its employees. Education and career Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Harmon attended high school in Justin, Texas, then received an Artium Baccalaureus from Radcliffe College in 1969, followed by a Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law in 1972. She served as a law clerk for Judge John Virgil Singleton Jr. of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas from 1973 to 1975. Harmon worked as a trial lawyer for Exxon Company, USA for 12 years during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1986 she ran unsuccessfully for election to a state district court ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
December 2008 Crimes
December is the twelfth and final month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is also the last of seven months to have a length of 31 days. December got its name from the Latin word ''decem'' (meaning ten) because it was originally the tenth month of the year in the calendar of Romulus which began in March. The winter days following December were not included as part of any month. Later, the months of January and February were created out of the monthless period and added to the beginning of the calendar, but December retained its name.Macrobius, ''Saturnalia'', tr. Percival Vaughan Davies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), book I, chapters 12–13, pp. 89–95. In Ancient Rome, as one of the four Agonalia, this day in honour of Sol Indiges was held on December 11, as was Septimontium. Dies natalis (birthday) was held at the temple of Tellus on December 13, Consualia was held on December 15, Saturnalia was held December 17–23, Opiconsivia was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
2008 In Texas
8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of the form , being an integer greater than 1. * the first number which is neither prime nor semiprime. * the base of the octal number system, which is mostly used with computers. In octal, one digit represents three bits. In modern computers, a byte is a grouping of eight bits, also called an octet. * a Fibonacci number, being plus . The next Fibonacci number is . 8 is the only positive Fibonacci number, aside from 1, that is a perfect cube. * the only nonzero perfect power that is one less than another perfect power, by Mihăilescu's Theorem. * the order of the smallest non-abelian group all of whose subgroups are normal. * the dimension of the octonions and is the highest possible dimension of a normed division algebra. * the first num ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Crimes In Texas
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane and Conoghan (editors), '' The New Oxford Companion to Law'', Oxford University Press, 2008 (), p. 263Google Books). though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence (or criminal offence) is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society, or the state ("a public wrong"). Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law. The notion that acts such as murder, rape, and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is a criminal offence is defined by the criminal law of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Law Enforcement In Texas
This is a list of law enforcement agencies in the U.S. state of Texas. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics' 2008 ''Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies,'' the state had 1,913 law enforcement agencies, the most of any state. These agencies employed 59,219 sworn police officers, about 244 for each 100,000 residents. Federal agencies There are over 150 federal law enforcement offices in Texas. including those for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Customs and Border Protection; Drug Enforcement Administration; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Secret Service; Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Office of Inspectors General and U.S. Marshals. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a federal law enforcement agency is "an organizational unit, or subunit, of the federal government with the principle (sic) functions of prevention, detection, and investigation of cr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Police Brutality In The United States
Police brutality is the repression by personnel affiliated with law enforcement when dealing with suspects and civilians. The term is also applied to abuses by "corrections" personnel in municipal, state, and federal prison camps, including military prisons. The term ''police brutality'' is usually applied in the context of causing physical harm to a person. It may also involve psychological harm through the use of intimidation tactics that often violate human rights. From the 18th-20th centuries, those who engaged in police brutality have acted with the implicit approval of the local legal system, such as during the Civil Rights Movement era. In the contemporary era, individuals who engage in police brutality may do so with the tacit approval of their superiors or they may be rogue officers. In either case, they may perpetrate their actions under color of law and, more often than not, the state apparatus engages in a subsequent cover-up of their repression. In the 2000s, t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Hearst Newspapers, LLC
Hearst Communications, Inc., often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, television channels, and television stations, including the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', the ''Houston Chronicle'', '' Cosmopolitan'' and ''Esquire''. It owns 50% of the A&E Networks cable network group and 20% of the sports cable network group ESPN, both in partnership with The Walt Disney Company. The conglomerate also owns several business-information companies, including Fitch Ratings and First Databank. The company was founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, and the Hearst family remains involved in its ownership and management. History The formative years In 1880, George Hearst, mining entrepreneur and U.S. senator, bought the '' San Francisco Daily Examiner.'' In 1887, he turned the ''Examiner'' over to his son ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
SCOTUS
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." The court holds the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones, but has ruled that it does not have power to decide non-justiciable political questions. Established by Article Three of the United States Con ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
En Banc
In law, an en banc session (; French for "in bench"; also known as ''in banc'', ''in banco'' or ''in bank'') is a session in which a case is heard before all the judges of a court (before the entire bench) rather than by one judge or a smaller panel of judges. ''En banc'' review is used for unusually complex or important cases or when the court feels there is a particularly significant issue at stake. United States Federal appeals courts in the United States sometimes grant rehearing to reconsider the decision of a panel of the court (consisting of only three judges) in which the case concerns a matter of exceptional public importance or the panel's decision appears to conflict with a prior decision of the court. In rarer instances, an appellate court will order hearing ''en banc'' as an initial matter instead of the panel hearing it first. Cases in United States courts of appeals are heard by three-judge panels, randomly chosen from the sitting appeals court judges of that c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Qualified Immunity
In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle that grants government officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from civil suits unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known". It is a form of sovereign immunity less strict than absolute immunity that is intended to protect officials who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions", extending to "all fficialsbut the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law". Qualified immunity applies only to government officials in civil litigation, and does not protect the government itself from suits arising from officials' actions. The U.S. Supreme Court first introduced the qualified immunity doctrine in ''Pierson v. Ray'' (1967), a case litigated during the height of the civil rights movement. It is stated to have been originally introduced with the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Public Servant
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil servant, also known as a public servant, is a person employed in the public sector by a government department or agency for public sector undertakings. Civil servants work for central and state governments, and answer to the government, not a political party. The extent of civil servants of a state as part of the "civil service" varies from country to country. In the United Kingdom (UK), for instance, only Crown (national government) employees are referred to as "civil servants" whereas employees of local authorities (counties, cities and similar administrations) are generally referred to as "local government civil service officers", who are considered public servants but not civil servants. Thus, in the UK, a civil servant is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |