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rubyjcat · 3 years

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[Behind-the-Scenes] HELIOS Rising Heroes: Animation Showcase

“HELIOS Rising Heroes: Animation Showcase” is an English voice fan project I worked on all by myself (barring voice actors) that took five months to make.

The original plan was to make just one video, but it ended up being eighteen of them!

Link to YouTube playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0UbdFyWSx0n_ewcd-t0iAB0adGe5lghH

In this write-up, I’ll be discussing details about the response to the project, recording all the footage, video editing, voice acting + audio processing, script translations + rewriting, which fonts were used, and even the emulator used. I’ve organized it into sections to make it easier to find certain things. Also, this is directed to English-speaking readers since I’m not gonna bother translating the entire thing to Japanese.

THE DREAM

I wanted to make this fandub ever since the game was released (in Aug 2020). I just knew that English voices would be extremely fitting to the world of HELIOS with a setting inspired by America and characters, places, and terms mostly in English. I was disappointed to hear that the studio behind the game, Cacalia Studio of Happy Elements K.K., had no interest to localize their games outside of Asia, which meant the chances of an English dub, let alone a global release were close to zero.

I was able to understand how to play the game thanks to the fan translators, some of which came from other Cacalia Studio games, and got inspired to continue learning Japanese (there was a previous attempt to translate Japanese lyrics years back).

What I thought was just the silly dream of one overseas player’s became something much more!

THE TIMELINE (BRIEF OVERVIEW)

I played the game for about two months prior to working on the project. Before starting the project, I had to sort out graphical and technical issues on my end first as I was unable to play the game smoothly until November.

November 2020

Finding all the in-game battle lines

Writing transliterations (romaji) of lines by ear

Learning and translating lines to Japanese

Started recording footage

December 2020

Further translation revisions

Held a casting call

Script rewriting and finalizing

January 2021

Completed casting

Started video editing (learning process)

Started audio processing

Recorded more footage

February 2021

Recorded more footage

Japanese script revisions

Finished working with VAs

Finished audio processing

Continued video editing

Published Preview video

March 2021

Recorded the last of the footage

Japanese subtitle revisions

Finished Showcase video

Finished Individual battle clips

Gave recommendations to VAs

The exact start and end dates were Nov 1st, 2020 to March 31st, 2021. Pretty neat.

RESPONSE TO THE PROJECT

I was absolutely shocked with the response to the preview video, which at the time of writing has just hit 10K views and almost 600 likes on Twitter and YouTube combined. Not bad for an unpaid hobby fandub (a joke only I find funny...) of an otherwise “niche” Japanese-only mobile game.

As of Apr 4th, 2021 - Thank you so much. This is more than I could’ve asked for.

The preview video blew up way more than anticipated, setting up for a bit of disappointment when the Showcase video was released.

The amount of views I expected for this project within its prime were a couple hundred views, so I’m content that the Showcase video reached that amount (it had ~500 by the end of March).

The expectations for the battle clips were an average of 100 views and a handful of likes - and each one got roughly that amount (or more) - so I’m also content with that, especially for something that’s just “bonus material”.

I tried my best to promote this project on Twitter with three main tweets. My one regret with promoting the project was making the second tweet after publishing the Showcase because the Japanese I wrote there was pretty terrible (as I was all worn out from editing and was in a haste to tweet about it). I tried to make up for it in a follow-up reply the next day, but it was too late. I was satisfied with how my third and final tweet and thread of battle clips turned out, but it sadly didn’t garner much attention. A reason for this was probably due to bad timing. I knew that the timing of the last tweet was awful as HeliosR did something special for April Fools’ day, plus the Easter event was being hyped around the same time, but I really wanted to finish up the project within March (my timezone, at least. It was already April 1st in Japan).

It was important to also make the videos accessible to the Japanese audience as they were a large portion of the viewers. This proved to be a challenge as my knowledge of Japanese is limited - at least for me, it’s easier to translate grammar-correct Japanese than it is to write my own sentences.

I ultimately decided against posting any of the videos on NicoNico because I wasn’t sure about Japan’s laws regarding copyrighted material. I knew it was already risky enough posting on social media and didn’t want to take any additional risks.

ABOUT THE FOOTAGE (1) – HEROES & ATTACK ORDER

HeliosR uses a gacha system, so to be able to even make something like this, you’d first need access to all 16 ★4 OG Heroes in the game.

I had them spread across five different accounts, four of which were reroll accounts. Asakou from the Cacalia RPG server gave me two of those accounts, and I rerolled myself for Keith and Ren during their Birthday Orders (one free 10-pull per account). Every account is also given a free ★4 selector ticket which I made good use of.

3,000 rubies (in-game currency) were sacrificed to pity the ★4 OG Dino when he was released in December just for the sake of the fandub!

Besides covering all of the Heroes, I also needed to play through each account to unlock certain story chapters, event stages, and evolve the Heroes for their shiny evolved CG art. Some of the Expert event stages (that had the Nighttime backgrounds) proved difficult to clear with a new account.

When using skills, the order of the Heroes were edited such that everyone was able to have the majority of their lines used at least once. All Heroes had two “receiving support” lines, two or three “supporting” lines, and two or three “skills against the enemy” lines. Some of the extra lines didn’t make it into the Showcase, so they were used for the individual clips instead.

I should’ve used Gray instead of Marion for the account that had Billy because you can see Marion’s sprite in Billy’s image. xD

In the Showcase, you may notice that the "Union Attacks" consist of all the ★4 CG images. These were spliced together; I never had all four Heroes of the same sector on the same account. For example, I would have Gray, Asch, and Jay on one account and Billy on another account, recorded their ★4 Bursts separately using the same background (from unlocking the Expert stages on both accounts), and then edited all the footage together.

Jay’s Burst was later re-recorded with a different attacking order so that he wouldn’t link to Billy.

It was also important to keep the same order of Bursts as well as use all four Bursts in the same turn. The ★4 Burst order was usually determined by who didn’t link skill with one another (with the exception of East sector as I was still figuring things out) because I didn’t want the link skill activation getting in the way of the animations.

As a little bonus, I also showed off the exclusive damaging skills of the Chapter 6 and 7 ★4 frames that I was lucky enough to pull from the gacha: Marion’s "Invitation To The Dance“ (roses), Faith’s “Synthetic Vibes” (beats), and Dino’s “Crow Mark Dead End” (claw marks).

ABOUT THE FOOTAGE (2) - BACKGROUNDS

Since I didn’t want to use the same battle music and backgrounds for all of the videos, I decided to use some of the themes from the limited-time events which went as far back as Nov 2020.

Each background has three variants (Daytime, Afternoon, Nighttime) and so I carefully picked them based on the colours. I ended up using mostly Expert stages - or Nighttime backgrounds, since Daytime versions were only used for Normal difficulty stages (which are too easy to clear).

The backgrounds used for the Showcase, all from limited-time events.

I decided to mix up some of the Heroes from other sectors in the individual clips for fun, basing it off of their relationships with each other. Using South sector’s background for Gast’s clip was a purposeful choice because I already used the North sector’s background for the other three North sector Heroes. I made sure to include Akira and Will of the South sector in Gast’s clip so it didn’t feel too random!

The only default background I didn’t use was Chapter 2’s because I already made use of the Casino theme for OG West sector’s individual clips. (...Plus I didn’t really like that background :p)

Here’s a list of all the backgrounds I used:

Escape the Prison (Nov 2020) - used for Showcase [EAST]

Mission of CASINO (Nov 2020) - used for Junior, Faith, & Keith clips

HAPPY NEW YEAR SHOW! (Jan 2021) - used for Showcase [SOUTH]

Help! Cooking Hero! (Jan 2021) - used for Will and Oscar clips

A Sweet Spell Garnished With Chocolate (Feb 2021) - used for Showcase [WEST]

Grandiose Chinoiserie (Mar 2021) - used for Showcase [NORTH]

The Hero Is A Detective!? (Mar 2021) - used for Billy and Jay clips

Default backgrounds: Chapters 1, 3, 4 (shared with 7), 5 (shared with 6) - used for all other clips

The Christmas event was the only event that went unused during the Nov 2020 - Mar 2021 period.

I didn’t record the East sector event (Christmas) in Dec 2020 because I was actually too busy with the casting call! I also didn’t think I would make use of it after already recording the Prison event intended for East sector. The project ended up taking so long that it actually benefited from having a wider selection of events over the months, which also showcased the beauty of the game.

ABOUT THE WORK & VIDEO EDITING

Hardware:

A decent computer.

A pair of no-name earbuds I found while cleaning out some junk.

Software:

All FREE!

*There’s a catch

NoxPlayer* emulator (debloated, read more about in its own section) and Open Broadcast Studio were used to record game footage and sounds.

Davinci Resolve was the main tool I used to edit the videos. A very demanding program that I only recommend using if you have a mid to high end computer.

MediBang was used to edit some of the art like the logos, but I ended up using Resolve for the majority of the graphics, including the thumbnails.

Audacity and Cakewalk were used to edit audio.

Many aspects for this project took longer than I had hoped because there was a learning process with using Resolve for the first time. I’m also a bit of a perfectionist, re-exporting videos tons of times just to fix small mistakes. Lastly, the time it took to make all the fancy effects was longer than I’d estimated. As the project dragged on, there was pressure to not delay the release of the videos any longer than I had to. A lot of this was self-imposed though.

There were days where I just did something else other than work on the project, which helped re-fuel my motivation when I decided to pick it up again.

Pretty much everything in the videos were taken from the game itself. The only graphics that were taken from the official website instead were the Substance symbols (the pictures with HERO at the bottom).

Additional overlay graphics were custom-made. It took two whole days to make the 3-second long sector intros and another two days to create and animate the arrow graphics for the credits. These were made using Resolve’s fusion and colour features. Much of the edit was inspired by the official HeliosR designs.

Left: Official in-game graphics // Right: My fanmade video (sector intros)

Sector intros were inspired by the four Heroes version of Union Attacks in-game.

Left: Official HeliosR video // Right: My fanmade video

The Preview video took after the ★4 Burst mini-previews as part of HeliosR’s promotional campaign, uploaded before the game was released.

Left: Official HeliosR video // Right: My fanmade video

The credits at the end of the Showcase were inspired by a different video, this time being the Half-Anniversary video.

The Showcase - which had a duration of 29:07 - was 11.5GB large in size. It took almost three hours to render (which I re-rendered to fix things) and two DAYS to upload to YouTube because I experienced multiple uploading interruptions. It’s a good thing you can re-upload the same video to continue where you left off without having to restart the entire process.

The individual hero clips didn’t take as long to make (but they took a while anyway as I re-uploaded some of them to fix minor mistakes). The recommendations for the VAs that were given alongside the publishing of each clip also spanned over another five days as I wanted to personalize and think about each one carefully.

A pretty frustrating part of the project was the prevalent lag when recording footage, which may have been due to the emulator and/or some technical things on my end. The Prison event used for the Showcase was the very first one I recorded when I wasn’t as aware about the lag, and so it suffered a bit as a result. The Union Attacks were the worst offender. I re-recorded the same battle scenes several times each just in case, then went through the footage frame-by-frame in Resolve and chose the ones with the least amount of lag. If all of the recorded footage suffered lag at different parts, I would even compare and splice together parts of them that didn’t lag. There was also audio lag (a known issue of NoxPlayer) so I had to move all of the audio forward by 1/3 of a second.

By the end of the project I had over 200 videos of game footage with a total size of over 24GB and a total duration exceeding 9 hours, not even counting all the ones that went unused.

The Heroes weren��t the only ones who evolved. MS Paint not recommended for thumbnails.

Overall, (despite the few mistakes here and there that nobody other than me would notice) I was happy with how everything turned out, down to the gorgeous thumbnails! I am an artist, after all~ :^)

I also have much more respect for video editors. They should be called VIDEO ANIMATORS!

ABOUT THE VOICES & AUDIO PROCESSING

When making a dub, it doesn’t mean we want to replace or best the original language, we just want to give it a new interpretation. In fact, the characters’ voice descriptions and direction provided in the scripts were heavily inspired by the seiyuu (Japanese VAs) and how they performed their lines.

Honestly, this was THE dream cast!! Some of the VAs had comparably similar voices to the Japanese ones which was an amazing coincidence. The ones that may not have sounded as similar had unique interpretations that I felt still suited their characters well. I also chose actors based on their performance, and everyone delivered!

Voice actors were not expected to imitate the Japanese voices and lines. They were provided direction and reference videos to help time their lines, but were otherwise given liberty when it came to their own interpretations.

You shouldn’t hear any jarring differences between the voice actors’ microphones and setups. That’s because I took the time to process the audio. Faith’s audio was submitted to me post-processed so it was used as a guideline for what the audio quality should sound like. Some of the others had comparable quality to Faith’s, so I only added compression to balance their volumes. Most of them benefited from equalization of various levels - this took some experimenting back and forth with the frequency spectrum. Lastly, a couple more benefited from clip fixing, noise gate, de-essing and/or click removal. It was very important for VAs to have at least decent room treatment; while small differences between mic frequencies can always be altered, echoes are difficult if not impossible to remove completely.

I feel that audio engineering is highly underrated and more important than ever as voice actors continue to record from home studios.

And in case it wasn’t already clear, this was purely voluntary work. No VAs or myself were paid to contribute anything for the project. Though, the experience alone was worth more than any amount of money.

ABOUT THE SCRIPT & TRANSLATIONS

HELIOS Rising Heroes「エリオスR」English Translation - Battle Lines

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ImWrAfvS_hgp6qr5qt30vCP63uHEk2o79uqY0h-3wL4/edit?usp=sharing

This spreadsheet consists of the literal translations for all the battle lines I could find in the game (it still isn’t done -yet-, plan to finish it when I get the chance). These are only fanmade and are not guaranteed to be accurate, especially as I wasn’t able to find another translator to help or proofread it.

After translating the lines, I made many additional revisions from the literal meanings such as changing the intention of the line slightly to flow better, having extra words added in to provide more context, or changing them completely. Thus, the lines used in the video are NOT literal TLs!

Another thing of note that may not seem apparent, but is what I feel an important aspect of character writing, is to remain completely unbiased towards all the characters. Personal favourites aside, I ensured that every Hero had their own spotlight as well as lines written in a way that remained faithful to their personality, no matter how unlikeable they were (looking at you, Asch Albright).

Even after giving voice actors their scripts, I made another revision in February after the release of the aforementioned Half-Anniversary video with the transcriptions for the ★4 Bursts, which is when I discovered a couple of mistakes with my transcriptions. This resulted in me having to edit out a part of one of the voice actors’ lines (Billy’s “String Show” line in his ★4 Burst) because of a translation mistake! I’m really glad I was able to double-check the correct lines before releasing the Preview video, or it would’ve looked pretty silly to Japanese viewers.

The last set of revisions were just minor edits to the subtitles (such as using kanji instead of kana) while I was working on subtitling all the videos.

Notable changes included:

WILL SPROUT

During attacking combo

Original line:

tanonda zo... ike! / “Counting on you... Reach!”

Rewritten line:

“I’ll become stronger... For everyone!”

The rewritten line is a condensed version of one of Will’s ★4 Evolved CG lines (“For everyone... I’ll become more and more stronger!”). He had “Reach!” in both his attacking combo and regular Burst, so I gave him an extra unique line.

★4 Burst

Original line:

warui kedo... kore de oshimai da! / “Sorry, but... it ends with this!”

Rewritten line:

“I’m sorry, but... it’s over for you! HAAAH!”

There were a couple of oversights I made with the script, and this was one of them that didn’t fit the animation properly. Props to Ryan for coming up with the extra shout at the end! So yeah, we kinda winged this line.

OSCAR BALE

When using skills against the enemy, during attacking combo, and in the ★4 Burst (repeat line)

Original line:

osoi! / “Slow!”

Rewritten lines:

“Too slow!” / “You’re slow!” / “Over here!”

Rewritten simply because I wanted to minimize repeated lines and change things up.

GAST ADLER

When supporting an ally, and during attacking combo

Original lines:

tetsudau ze / “I’ll help (you).”

itchouagari / “All done.”

Rewritten lines:

“I’ve got your six.”

“Target eliminated.”

I wanted to add in a few military terms to reflect Gast’s background.

FAITH BEAMS

★4 CG line (for the credits)

Original line (literal TL):

“It’s not terrible or evil, right? Surely this isn’t punishing... I guess?”

Rewritten line (with “mistake”):

“I’m not doing anything horrible or evil, alright? This is just business as usual... I suppose?”

Faith’s CG line had a mistake when I first translated and handed it off to his actor. I accidentally wrote “oshigoto” (work/business) instead of “oshioki” (punishment). The original has him pretty much saying the same thing twice anyway, so I would say the intention was still retained.

KEITH MAX

When supporting an ally

Original line:

gambare yo~ / “Do your best~.” or “Hang in there~.”

Rewritten line:

“Stay alive, would ya~?”

I know Keith’s meant to say “serious” things in a sarcastic or snarky way, but I just had to add in this fun line!

DINO ALBANI

Using skills against the enemy

Original lines:

haa! / “Haah!”

hei! / “Hey!”

Rewritten lines:

“I can do this!”

“Leave it to me!”

The Japanese lines for Dino’s offensive skills were rather basic, with the third and unchanged line “Here goes!” being a repeat line Dino also says when attacking. I wanted to give him some more lines - as standard as they are - to show his personality a bit more, along with having an additional fun West sector interaction. The changes fit the animations better too. (I actually had his VA say the "Haah!" line, but ended up using a different take of “Here goes!” in place of it.)

ABOUT THE FONTS

Fonts were taken from various sources and were either FREE for personal use or had an open font license. I didn’t have access to the commercial fonts (such as Futura) used in-game, so these were the following fonts I made use of:

Techna Sans looked similar enough to Futura when capitalized, and still looked decent in lowercase.

Jost* is a font that was derived from Futura. Some of its uppercase letters are sharper than Futura's, but it worked pretty well for the text in the credits.

Gau Font Over Drive was used for the ANIMATION SHOWCASE text.

Gen Jyuu Gothic LP was used for the majority of the Japanese text and its English letters were also used for the battle clip subtitles on Twitter.

Meiryo UI (default font) was used for the Preview videos’ subtitles.

Noto Serif JP (default Google font) was used for the serif Japanese text in the credits.

ABOUT NOXPLAYER ANDROID EMULATOR

ETA: AS OF VERSION 1.1.18 (04/23/21), EMULATORS NO LONGER WORK WITH HELIOSR (AS WELL AS OTHER CACALIA STUDIO GAMES). THE BELOW INFORMATION IS OUTDATED.

If, for whatever reason you’re interested in using NoxPlayer, you should take caution when installing it onto your machine. I don’t advocate for or recommend installing Nox. I had to resort to emulation so that I could record the footage and sounds directly from my computer using OBS. The reason why I used Nox specifically is because Cacalia Studio doesn’t like emulators, blocking most of them from running their games. I found further instructions on how to run the game in Nox from the Cacalia RPG Discord (via Twitter @HeliosR_en).

First, not all Nox versions are safe. It should only be installed from the official website, Bignox. More recent versions (I believe from 6.3.0.6 and up) may contain malware such as Segurazo and Chromium packaged with the installer which can be annoying to remove. The version of Nox I used was 6.3.0.0 (you can install older versions, then just don’t update it), which has Android 7 and doesn’t contain packaged malware (AFAIK).

Second, NoxPlayer may be “free” to use, but it comes with bloatware and profits off of its users’ data by collecting and sending it to many different servers. The below guide is what I used to debloat Nox and minimize communication to these servers. Scroll down the comments for additional domains to add to the hosts file.

Debloating & Optimizing Nox:

https://gist.github.com/Log1x/12d330ef7685d6fbc611d1d57efb5c29

This is another good guide that makes use of command prompt to remove additional bloatware from the emulator.

How to Remove Bloatware on Nox and LDPlayer Emulator:

https://codefaq.org/emulator/how-to-remove-bloatware-on-nox-and-ldplayer-emulator/

ENDING NOTES (TL;DR)

Images of the first and last video for the HeliosR project. We’ve come full circle!

One very tired and average person decided to translate, script, cast, direct, and edit an ambitious project all by herself using only FREE tools, and ended up taking too long to finish it. But at least she finished it, right?

Translators = RESPECT

Voice actors = RESPECT

Video editors = RESPECT

Audio engineers = R E S P E C T (their work is especially behind-the-scenes)

Hell, I even like Asch now.

During my time working on this, there was one question I always had in mind: “What would the fans want?”

I hope this follow-up has given you a bit of insight into the makings of the HeliosR project. Thank you for reading!

~RubyJCat

#heliosr #helios rising heroes #animation showcase #english #fandub #dub #voice #voices #voice acting #fanmade #fan #behind the scenes #my projects #english translation

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guildedlily6 · 4 years

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You Plus Me Equals Soulmates Part 4 (Peter Parker x Reader Soulmate!AU)

Summary: Things continue to grow tense between Liz and Y/N after the results of the house party. Meanwhile, things heat up between Y/N and Peter Parker. Is Y/N Peter’s soulmate? Or will Liz interfere?

Author’s Note: Hey, you may have noticed I’ve been posting parts for this imagine every day for the past three days, but I’m sorry to say don’t get too used to it. I am writing mainly at night due to me having online school during the day (yay quarantine) which usually ends in me up until 4 or 5am. There is a Part 5 in the makings because of the unresolved things in this part with Liz and more that I’m not going to spoil for you right now. Click on the links below to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Word Count: 2,824

Warnings: swearing, fluff (if that counts as a warning)

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So it’s official. My former best friend, Liz Allen, and Peter Parker are no longer going to homecoming together. Partially because of me. But maybe Liz and Peter were never meant to go to homecoming together in the first place.

It’s been about two weeks since the mortifying incident at Liz’s house party that ended up all over social media. I was a school-wide meme for about two weeks before the Principle got involved and started handing out detentions and even suspensions to anyone who even mentioned the party or posted about it on some social platform. Out of anyone in the school, though, Liz chats about it the most. She won’t talk to me directly, but word travels fast when you’re 16 and the gossip of the school, so I hear every little thing she has to say about me. So far, I’ve ignored it. I have other things on my mind.

Peter Parker is sitting across the room from me in 7th period, writing something in his chemistry journal. I do have to admit, things were extraordinarily awkward once he found out about the drama, pictures, and videos of me yelling “I don’t care about Peter Parker!” in front of everyone to see, but unlike Liz, I talked things out with him and we’re actually friends now.

Friends. Do people really think about their friends the same way I think about Peter?

The answer is no. Ever since the party, I couldn’t stop thinking about brown curls, eyes that hold such softness, and the familiar smile.

I’ve accepted the part of me that wishes to see a matching equal sign tattoo on Peter’s wrist, by now. What I haven’t accepted is that confronting Peter about my newfound feelings is necessary in order to discover if he feels the same way and with the same intensity as me.

“That wraps up today’s lesson. Homework is due tomorrow and if it is not turned in, it will be entered as an automatic zero,” rings the usual monotonous voice of my chemistry teacher. I tuck papers and folders into my backpack, packing up just before the bell rings.

Slinging the backpack around my shoulders, I stand up only to notice someone is waiting for me.

Peter smiles gently. “We have a Decathlon meeting today,” he reminds me. Right. Liz is also in our Decathlon club, which is a small problem, but “everyone is a necessary member of our team” as Mr.Harrington would say.

“So are you and Liz going to fight or something? I mean, you didn’t last week or the week before that in Decathlon club or in the hallways… or in any of your classes together, but if you do plan to fight, tell me,” Ned says eagerly, rushing to catch up with Peter and I.

“Liz and I are not going to fight, Ned.” For the past week, Ned has been trying to convince me that the only way to settle things once and all for Liz and I is to throw down in the middle of the hallway, or something along the lines of that. Two weeks ago, I totally would’ve been up to forcefully shove my fist into Liz’s face, but now I’m not in the mood to get expelled. Honestly, the whole mess shouldn’t be as big of a deal as it is. I feel like I’m back in preschool, fighting over a toy. Not only is Peter not a toy, but he’s also made it perfectly clear that he wants nothing to do with Liz.

However, Peter hasn’t exactly made a move to ask another person to homecoming yet.

Peter, Ned, and I walk into the gymnasium, other members of the Decathlon club already sitting in chairs.

“Just get seated please! Today we’re going to figure who’s going to Washington with everyone for the National Decathlon,” Mr.Harrington announces while unfolding chairs.

MJ sees us and greets us with a nod that says ‘sup’, Flash looks at Peter and laughs, whispering something to his friend, and Liz regards the three of us with a yawn.

I sit down in between Peter and Ned.

“Alright, so all of you have paid the club dues which means you’re all technically allowed to go to Washington with us. Who thinks they may have a conflict with the trip from April 30th-May4th?” Mr.Harrington takes a seat, spreading out some papers before him on a fold-able table.

Peter’s the only one to slowly raise his hand in the silence. I glance over at him with a questionable look.

Mr.Harrington raises his eyebrows. “What is your conflict, Mr.Parker?”

“Well, you know I have the Stark Internship, and well, uh… Mr.Stark said that I should always be prepared for someone to call me so-”

“Hold on, lemme get this right. Parker gets to miss out on the trip because of his ‘Stark Internship’?” Flash raises a single eyebrow, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.

“Peter, you understand this trip is mandatory. The conflicts are only for… well, only for serious things,” explains Mr.Harrington, peering over his glasses at Peter.

Peter blushes slightly, embarrassed. “Well I- I don’t want you to… Uh, make Mr.Stark angry…”

He’s still pretending to have a Stark Internship? Seriously, Peter, drop the act. You can’t quit the team.

Our Decathlon leader sighs. “Peter I’m afraid you have to go on this trip. You’re extremely valuable to this team. Unless you wish to leave the team…”

“I- I understand Mr.Harrington.”

“So he’s off the team?” Flash speaks up again, obviously excited by the possibility of Peter getting kicked out of the club.

“What’s your decision, Peter?” Mr.Harrington asks.

“I… I guess I can’t do it,” Peter admits quietly.

I turn my head to look at him.

Really? What are you doing?

“Well, okay. If you change your mind, just email me, Mr.Parker.” Mr.Harrington crosses something out on his paper before pushing his glasses back up on his nose and looking at Peter.

The rest of the meeting goes on as it does normally; reciting facts and sitting around listening to Flash and Mr.Harrington argue over whether ‘fergalicious' is a word or not.

__________Liz’s POV__________ I plan to get Peter back. It sounds dumb and childish, but if I want to prove that I wasn’t humiliating myself in front of the school for nothing, this is how to do it.

Unfortunately, there’s some minor obstacles. The first problem is that somehow Peter found it in him to forgive Y/N for saying she doesn’t care about him and now they’ve grown to be close friends within the past two weeks. The second problem would be that Peter most definitely hates me. Part of that may be my fault, though, since I haven’t bothered to try and communicate with him in any way in the last couple weeks. The third problem is that I wish Y/N wasn’t mad at me. Yeah, I’ve done some pretty mean things in the past, but none this bad.

My chin resting on the palm of my hand, I gaze at Peter from a few seats away. Either he doesn’t notice or he’s ignoring me on purpose. To be fair, I did say that I didn’t want to talk to Y/N or Peter ever again.

I shift my eyes to focus on Y/N.

I want my best friend back.

Was it really worth it? No, it wasn’t. But I guess it’s too late now. I’ve already formed my plan, so no going back.

“Liz? Hello? Do you have an answer?” Mr.Harrington waves a hand in front of my face.

I snap back into reality.

Was everyone watching me gaze longingly at Peter and glaring at Y/N? “Can you repeat the question?”

Mr.Harrington hits the table a few times with his baby toy hammer, signaling I answered wrong. “I’ve already repeated the questions 3 times, and if you were paying attention, Miss Allen, maybe you would know that.”

In the corner of my eye I see Y/N smirk and shake her head with a look that reads ‘dumb ass’.

Whatever.

Anyway, my plan is to slowly release every single secret Y/N has ever told me out into the school until almost everyone knows everything about her. At that point, Peter might be so embarrassed to be seen with her that he completely abandons her. Next, I’ll make my move on Peter.

Obviously, I have some details to fix, but it’s coming together. However, Peter not going to Washington affects a lot of my plan. If he does end up going, every part of my plan will fall into place.

_________Y/N’s POV_________ After the Decathlon meeting ends and everyone is dismissed, I pull Peter out into the hallway.

“What’s the real reason for not going to the National Decathlon?”

“What? I told everyone it was because of the Stark Internship-” but Peter doesn’t get to finish his sentence before I cut in.

“Yeah that’s what you told people. But, like, a 16 year old kid doesn’t have a Stark Internship.”

Peter’s expression displays a bit of hurt from my words. “You don’t believe me.” “No. I don’t. Sorry, I don’t believe you have an internship with one of the richest people in the world.”

“Well, I- I can’t tell you.”

Now it’s my turn to be hurt.

He can’t tell me? Why not?

This slight pause gives me enough time to realize how close we’re standing. There’s plenty of hallway outside of the gym for the both of us, but we choose to stand so close that if I leaned in eight more inches we would-

I dart my eyes back up to meet his eyes.

“Fine. Okay,” I say.

“Did you want me to come or something?” He questions.

“I- yeah. I mean you’re my friend, right? Why wouldn’t I?”

Friend.

He looks down, slightly disappointed. Is he disappointed? Why?

“Yeah, I guess,” he responds, shifting his backpack straps and taking a few steps back. “I don’t know why there would be another reason,” he mutters under his breath.

“Hey guys what are you- did I interrupt something?” Ned busts through the gym doors and pauses after seeing our faces.

“No, you didn’t, Ned.”

“Oh, okay. So Peter, are we still going to your place after school for our Star Wars movie marathon? My mom bought popcorn for me to take,” Ned continues, oblivious to the uncomfortable tension.

“Yeah,” answers Peter.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Y/N. Do you want to come?” Ned smiles warmly.

I say “Yeah sure, Ned,” the same time Peter cuts in with “I don’t really think-”

“Great! You remember where Peter's apartment is, right? If you don’t just, text one of us.” Ned starts walking away, leaving Peter to glance apologetically at me.

“I’ll see you soon,” I say to Peter before walking away.

_______(Time skip)_______ I click send on a text telling Peter I’m at his apartment.

Was Peter actually disappointed when I said we were friends? Aren’t we friends? I think back to earlier. How close we were standing. Peter’s lips had looked soft and his eyes were inviting, but I hadn’t done anything. Anything about what? What even is my goal?

Soon enough, the door to the apartment opens and I’m greeted by Peter’s aunt May.

“Oh, hey Y/N. Come on in,” May says while stepping aside. “Peter and Ned are in Peter’s bedroom.”

“Thanks, Miss…” I stop myself, unsure of what to call her.

“May. You can call me May,” she says, beaming.

“Thanks, May,” I say. I walk past May and up to Peter’s bedroom, slowly opening the door.

“Hey Y/N,” Peter and Ned greet at the same time. I take a seat on the floor, leaning against Peter’s bed.

“Hey guys. When are you going to start the movies?”

“Oh we were waiting for you. Do you want some popcorn?” Ned holds out a bag of popcorn and I grab some, eating a few.

I get up and we all make our way to the living room. May announces she’s going out and then leaves. I take my seat on the couch. Peter sits down a small distance away from me and Ned sits on a different couch.

All throughout the night, Ned munches on popcorn while the movies play and I slowly get drowsy. I find myself leaning more and more to one side before I completely fall asleep, and so does Peter.

_________(Time skip)_________ I wake up to something moving beside me.

Why is the couch moving? My mind is a big groggy. I open my eyes.

I’m lying nestled into Peter, our limbs tangled in mess. My eyes drift up and meet Peter’s, which are very much awake and very much flustered.

“I- I’m sorry… I just woke up and-”

“It’s okay,” I say, chuckling softly and quickly moving away. At the loss of contact, I feel my heart sink sadly.

“Soulmates are usually naturally attracted to each other if seated or lying near one another.” Where do I remember that from? Right. History Of Soulmates textbook I had to read in my psychology class.

I sit up straight and look at Ned, who’s still asleep on the couch. Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi is playing on the TV. I grab my phone from the table beside me. It reads 8:35am.

I turn to look at Peter and realize I’m still practically draped over his lap. I blush a bright red and once Peter notices, his blush matches mine. Hastily, I scoot away from him and then stand up.

“Uh… where's your bathroom?” I ask timidly.

“It’s down that hall and to the right,” Peter says, his voice still slightly raspy from sleep.

My feet carry me away, padding down the hall and then into the bathroom. I close the door and look in the mirror, fixing my hair and straightening up my shirt. After I finish touching up, I open the bathroom door, only to be surprised by Peter standing right outside.

I bump directly into his chest and he laughs gently. I smile faintly and step to go past him, only for us to bump into each other again. He tenderly grabs my shoulders and leads me to go past him.

I look up at him and admire his messy bed head and the adorable blush still on his cheeks. He looks down at me with an expression similar to mine and then lets go of my shoulders, still smiling. “Sorry,” he apologizes, turning to go into the bathroom and then closing the door.

Since when did you get so mushy, I think to myself.

I walk back out to the living room where Ned has now woken up.

“What were you two doing?” Ned asks the question suspiciously, looking me up and down.

“Peter and I? Nothing I- we… I just went to the bathroom and-”

“Together?”

“No! I- I mean no.” I look at my phone to see a text from my mom: when are you coming home?

“If you did, I mean I don’t judge, I personally was waiting for it to happen, it was just a matter of time before-”

“What are you two talking about?” Peter walks in, running a hand through his curls. My heart flutters at the sight.

Stop it.

“Congratulations on you and Y/N finally getting together,” Ned says and I think I’m ready to crawl into a hole and die.

Peter looks at me with an unreadable look on his face. “What?”

“Peter and I aren’t together, Ned, we just- I just went to the bathroom and he happened to be outside. Nothing happened-” I quickly try to explain it all. But Peter had a different idea.

“We could be together…” interrupts Peter. I look at him, shocked. “I mean, I was just saying- we’re not together- I was just suggesting…”

“Yeah. Um…” I try to find a response in myself.

Together? Really? Does this mean he feels the same way?

“Right. This is a bit awkward… So I’m going to go. Thanks for the marathon, Peter.” Ned gets up, grabs the popcorn bag, and leaves through the front door. I pretend to be interested in the lamp sitting on a table.

“So…” Peter starts off. “I guess I should tell you this now. That day when I asked Liz out, I had actually meant to ask you to homecoming. I really like you, Y/N. Extremely. It’s like nothing I’ve felt before. Like-”

“I’m naturally attracted to you,” I finish for him.

He grins with so much happiness it’s almost contagious. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”

“Can I- your tattoo. What is it?”

He rolls up his right sleeve, showing his bare wrist with one simple tattoo. An equals sign.

We’re soulmates.

------------------------------

Hey so here’s some fluff, but the first kiss is yet to come. Things will escalate from here, so make sure to keep reading. Or don’t. I can’t really control what you do. Thanks for reading!

@disfunctionalcellmembrane @marvel4geeks

Part 5

#imagine #peter parker imagine #peter parker x reader #peter parker x reader soulmate!au #part 4 #fluff #smut is yet to come #fanfiction #marvel #marvel universe #spiderman #tom holland #liz the crazy best friend

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Rubin Carter

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (May 6, 1937 – April 20, 2014) was an American-Canadian middleweight boxer who was wrongfully convicted of murder and later released following a petition of habeas corpus after serving almost 20 years in prison.

In 1966, police arrested Carter and acquaintance John Artis for a triple homicide committed at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. Police stopped Carter's car and brought him and Artis, also in the car, to the scene of the crime. Carter and Artis were tried twice for the murders in 1967 and 1976 and convicted; both served time in Rahway State Prison. After the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time.

Carter's autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round, written while he was in prison, was published in 1975 by Warner Books. The story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane (with Denzel Washington playing Carter). From 1993 to 2005, Carter served as executive director of Innocence Canada (Formerly the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted).

Early life

Carter was born in Clifton, New Jersey, the fourth of seven children. He acquired a criminal record and was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for assault, having stabbed a man in self defense when he was 11. Carter escaped from the reformatory in 1954 and joined the United States Army. A few months after completing infantry basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he was sent to West Germany. While in Germany, Carter began to box for the Army. He was later discharged in 1956 as unfit for service, after four courts-martial. Shortly after his discharge, he was convicted of two muggings and sent to prison.

Boxing career

After his release from prison in September 1961, Carter became a professional boxer. At 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m), Carter was shorter than the average middleweight, but he fought all of his professional career at 155–160 lb (70–72.6 kg). His aggressive style and punching power (resulting in many early-round knockouts) drew attention, establishing him as a crowd favorite and earning him the nickname "Hurricane." After he defeated a number of middleweight contenders—such as Florentino Fernandez, Holley Mims, Gomeo Brennan, and George Benton—the boxing world took notice. The Ring first listed him as one of its "Top 10" middleweight contenders in July 1963. At the end of 1965, they ranked him as the number five middleweight.

He fought six times in 1963, winning four bouts and losing two. He remained ranked in the lower part of the top 10 until December 20, when he surprised the boxing world by flooring past and future world champion Emile Griffith twice in the first round and scoring a technical knockout. That win resulted in The Ring's ranking of Carter as the number three contender for Joey Giardello's world middleweight title. Carter won two more fights (one a decision over future heavyweight champion Jimmy Ellis) in 1964, before meeting Giardello in Philadelphia for a 15-round championship match on December 14. Carter landed a few solid rights to the head in the fourth that left Giardello staggering, but was unable to follow them up, and Giardello took control of the fight in the fifth round. The judges awarded Giardello a unanimous decision.

After that fight, Carter's ranking in The Ring began to decline. He fought nine times in 1965, winning five but losing three of four against contenders Luis Manuel Rodríguez, Dick Tiger, and Harry Scott. Tiger, in particular, floored Carter three times in their match. "It was", Carter said, "the worst beating that I took in my life—inside or outside the ring". During his visit to London (to fight Scott) Carter was involved in an incident in which a shot was fired in his hotel room.

Carter's career record in boxing was 27 wins, 12 losses, and one draw in 40 fights, with 19 total knockouts (8 KOs and 11 TKOs). He received an honorary championship title belt from the World Boxing Council in 1993 (as did Joey Giardello at the same banquet) and was later inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame.

Homicides

At approximately 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1966, two men entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill at East 18th Street at Lafayette Street in Paterson, New Jersey, and began shooting. The bartender, James Oliver, and a customer, Fred Nauyoks, were killed immediately. A severely wounded customer, Hazel Tanis, died almost a month later, having been shot in the throat, stomach, intestine, spleen and left lung, and having had her arm shattered by shotgun pellets. A third customer, Willie Marins, survived the attack, despite a gunshot wound to the head that cost him the sight in one eye. During questioning, both Marins and Tanis told police that the shooters had been black males, though neither identified Carter or John Artis.Petty criminal Alfred Bello, who had been near the Lafayette that night to burgle a factory, was an eyewitness. Bello later testified that he was approaching the Lafayette when two black males—one carrying a shotgun, the other a pistol—came around the corner walking towards him. He ran from them, and they got into a white car that was double-parked near the Lafayette.

Bello was one of the first people on the scene of the shootings, as was Patricia (Patty) Valentine, a resident on the second floor (above the Lafayette Bar and Grill). Valentine told the police that she saw two black males get into a white car and drive off. Another neighbor, Ronald Ruggiero, also heard the shots, and said that, from his window, he saw Alfred Bello running west on Lafayette Street toward 16th Street. He then heard the screech of tires and saw a white car shoot past, heading west, with two black males in the front seat.Both Bello and Valentine gave police a description of the car that was the same. Valentine's testimony, in which she initially stated that the car had rear lights which lit up completely like butterflies, changed when she testified during the second trial to an accurate description of Carter's car, which had conventional taillights with aluminum decoration in a butterfly shape. The prosecution theorized that the dissimilarity in Valentine's description was the result of a misreading of a court transcript by the defense.

Investigation, indictment and first conviction

Hours before the triple murder, Carter was searching for guns that he had lost a year earlier. Carter was driving a white Dodge Polara, which was notable for its out-of-state license plate with blue background and gold lettering and taillights with butterfly-shaped aluminium decoration. Ten minutes after the murder, police stopped Carter's car. The police, who were searching for a vehicle with three occupants, let Carter go.Minutes later, the same police officers solicited a description of the getaway car from eyewitness Al Bello. He described the car as white with "a geometric design, sort of a butterfly type design in the back of the car", and as bearing out-of-state license plates with blue background and orange lettering. On hearing this description, the police realized that Al Bello was describing a car similar to the one that they had only moments earlier let go.

When police found Carter's car they stopped it and brought Carter and another occupant, John Artis, to the scene about 31 minutes after the incident. The police took no fingerprints at the crime scene, and lacked the facilities to test Carter and Artis for gunshot residue.

On searching the car about 45 minutes later, Detective Emil DiRobbio found a live .32 caliber pistol round under the front passenger seat and a 12-gauge shotgun shell in the trunk. Firearms Identification later established that the murder weapons had been a .32 caliber pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun. The defense later raised questions about this evidence, as it was not logged with a property clerk until five days after the murders. The prosecution responded to this line of questioning by producing a report lodged 75 minutes after the murders that documented the presence of the .32 caliber pistol round and 12-gauge shotgun shell. The defense was able to show that the bullet found in the Carter car was brass cased, rather than copper coated like those found at the Lafayette Bar, and that the shotgun shell found in the Carter car was an older model, with a different wad and color. In response, the prosecution argued that the metal and make of the retrieved ammunition was meaningless because the ammunition found at the crime scene was also dissimilar. Furthermore, the ammunition found in the car was usable by the murder weapons.

The police took Carter and Artis to police headquarters and questioned them. Witnesses did not identify them as the killers and they were released. Carter and Artis voluntarily appeared before a grand jury, which did not return an indictment.

Several months later, Bello disclosed to the police that he had an accomplice during the attempted burglary, one Arthur Dexter Bradley. On further questioning, Bello and Bradley both identified Carter as one of the two males they had seen carrying weapons outside the bar on the night of the murders. Bello also identified Artis as the other. Based on this additional evidence, Carter and Artis were arrested and indicted.

At the 1967 trial, Carter was represented by well-known attorney Raymond A. Brown. Brown focused on inconsistencies in some of the descriptions given by eyewitnesses Marins and Bello. The defense also produced a number of alibi witnesses who testified that Carter and Artis had been in the Nite Spot (a nearby bar) at about the time of the shootings. Both men were convicted. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but jurors recommended that each defendant receive a life sentence for each murder. Judge Samuel Larner imposed two consecutive and one concurrent life sentence on Carter, and three concurrent life sentences on Artis.

In 1974, Bello and Bradley recanted their identifications of Carter and Artis, and these recantations were used as the basis for a motion for a new trial. Judge Samuel Larner denied the motion on December 11, saying that the recantations "lacked the ring of truth."

Despite Larner's ruling, Madison Avenue advertising executive George Lois organized a campaign on Carter's behalf, which led to increasing public support for a retrial or pardon. Muhammad Ali lent his support to the campaign (including publicly wishing Carter good luck on his appeal during the airing of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on September 7, 1973). Bob Dylan co-wrote (with Jacques Levy) and performed a song called "Hurricane" (1975), which declared that Carter was innocent. On December 7, 1975, Dylan performed the song at a concert at Trenton State Prison, where Carter was temporarily an inmate.

However, during the hearing on the recantations, defense attorneys also argued that Bello and Bradley had lied during the 1967 trial, telling the jurors that they had made only certain narrow, limited deals with prosecutors in exchange for their trial testimony. A detective taped one interrogation of Bello in 1966, and when it was played during the recantation hearing, defense attorneys argued that the tape revealed promises beyond what Bello had testified to. If so, prosecutors had either had a Brady obligation to disclose this additional exculpatory evidence, or a duty to disclose the fact that their witnesses had lied on the stand.

Larner denied this second argument as well, but the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously held that the evidence of various deals made between the prosecution and witnesses Bello and Bradley should have been disclosed to the defense before or during the 1967 trial as this could have "affected the jury's evaluation of the credibility" of the eyewitnesses. "The defendants' right to a fair trial was substantially prejudiced", said Justice Mark Sullivan. The court set aside the original convictions and granted Carter and Artis a new trial.

Despite the difficulties of prosecuting a ten-year-old case, Prosecutor Burrell Ives Humphreys decided to try Carter and Artis again. To ensure, as best he could, that he did not use perjured testimony to obtain a conviction, Humphreys had Bello polygraphed—once by Leonard H. Harrelson and a second time by Richard Arther, both well-known and respected experts in the field. Both men concluded that Bello was telling the truth when he said that he had seen Carter outside the Lafayette immediately after the murders.

However, Harrelson also reported orally that Bello had been inside the bar shortly before and at the time of the shooting, a conclusion that contradicted Bello's 1967 trial testimony wherein he had said that he had been on the street at the time of the shooting. Despite this oral report, Harrelson's subsequent written report stated that Bello's 1967 testimony had been truthful.

Second conviction and appeal

During the new trial in 1976, Alfred Bello repeated his 1967 testimony, identifying Carter and Artis as the two armed men he had seen outside the Lafayette Grill. Bradley refused to cooperate with prosecutors, and neither prosecution nor defense called him as a witness.

The defense responded with testimony from multiple witnesses who identified Carter at the locations he claimed to be at when the murders happened. Investigator Fred Hogan, whose efforts had led to the recantations of Bello and Bradley, appeared as a defense witness. Hogan was asked on cross examinations whether any bribes or inducements were offered to Bello to secure his recantation, which Hogan denied. His original handwritten notes on his conversations with Bello were entered into evidence. The defense also pointed out the inconsistencies in the testimony of Patricia Valentine, and read the 1967 testimony of William Marins, who had died in 1973, noting that his descriptions of the shooters were drastically different from Artis and Carter's actual appearances.

The court also heard testimony from a Carter associate that Passaic County prosecutors had tried to pressure her into testifying against Carter. Prosecutors denied the charge. After deliberating for almost nine hours, the jury again found Carter and Artis guilty of the murders. Judge Leopizzi re-imposed the same sentences on both men: a double life sentence for Carter, a single life sentence for Artis.

Artis was paroled in 1981. Carter's attorneys continued to appeal. In 1982, the Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed his convictions (4–3). Although the justices felt that the prosecutors should have disclosed Harrelson's oral opinion (about Bello's location at the time of the murders) to the defense, only a minority thought this was material. The majority thus concluded that the prosecution had not withheld information the Brady disclosure law required them to provide to the defense.

According to bail bondswoman Carolyn Kelley, in 1975–1976 she helped raise funds to win a second trial for Carter, which resulted in his release on bail in March 1976. On a fund-raising trip the following month, Kelley said the boxer beat her severely over a disputed hotel bill. The Philadelphia Daily News reported the alleged beating in a front-page story several weeks later, and celebrity support for Carter quickly eroded, though Carter denied the accusation and there was insufficient evidence for legal prosecution. Mae Thelma Basket, whom Carter had married in 1963, divorced him after their second child was born, because she found out that he had been unfaithful to her.

Federal court action

In 1985, Carter's attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court. Later that year, Judge Haddon Lee Sarokin of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey granted the writ, noting that the prosecution had been "predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure," and set aside the convictions. Carter, 48 years old, was freed without bail in November 1985.

Prosecutors appealed Sarokin's ruling to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and filed a motion with the court to return Carter to prison pending the outcome of the appeal. The court denied this motion and eventually upheld Sarokin's opinion, affirming his Brady analysis without commenting on his other rationale.

The prosecutors appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.

Prosecutors therefore could have tried Carter (and Artis) a third time, but decided not to, and filed a motion to dismiss the original indictments. "It is just not legally feasible to sustain a prosecution, and not practical after almost 22 years to be trying anyone," said New Jersey Attorney General W. Cary Edwards. Acting Passaic County Prosecutor John P. Goceljak said several factors made a retrial impossible, including Bello's "current unreliability" as a witness and the unavailability of other witnesses. Goceljak also doubted whether the prosecution could reintroduce the racially motivated crime theory due to the federal court rulings. A judge granted the motion to dismiss, bringing an end to the legal proceedings.

Post emancipation

Carter lived in Toronto, Ontario, where he became a Canadian citizen, and was executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) from 1993 until 2005. Carter resigned when the AIDWYC declined to support Carter's protest of the appointment (to a judgeship) of Susan MacLean, who was the prosecutor of Canadian Guy Paul Morin, who served over eighteen months in prison for rape and murder until exonerated by DNA evidence.

Carter's second marriage was to Lisa Peters. The couple separated later.

In 1996, Carter, then 59, was arrested when Toronto police mistakenly identified him as a suspect in his thirties believed to have sold drugs to an undercover officer. He was released after the police realized their error.

Carter often served as a motivational speaker. On October 14, 2005, he received two honorary Doctorates of Law, one from York University (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and one from Griffith University (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), in recognition of his work with AIDWYC and the Innocence Project. Carter received the Abolition Award from Death Penalty Focus in 1996.

Prostate cancer and death

In March 2012, while attending the International Justice Conference in Burswood, Western Australia, Carter revealed that he had terminal prostate cancer. At the time, doctors gave him between three and six months to live. Beginning shortly after that time, John Artis lived with and cared for Carter, and on April 20, 2014, he confirmed that Carter had succumbed to his illness. He was afterwards cremated and his ashes were scattered in part over Cape Cod and in part at a horse farm in Kentucky.

In the months leading up to his death, Carter worked for the exoneration of David McCallum, a Brooklyn man who has been incarcerated since 1985 on charges of murder. Two months before his death, Carter published "Hurricane Carter's Dying Wish," an opinion piece in the New York Daily News, in which he asked for an independent review of McCallum's conviction. "I request only that McCallum be granted a full hearing by the Brooklyn conviction integrity unit, now under the auspices of the new district attorney, Ken Thompson. Knowing what I do, I am certain that when the facts are brought to light, Thompson will recommend his immediate release ... Just as my own verdict 'was predicated on racism rather than reason and on concealment rather than disclosure,' as Sarokin wrote, so too was McCallum's," Carter wrote. On Wednesday, October 15, 2014, McCallum was exonerated.

In popular culture

Carter's story inspired:

The 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" proclaimed that Carter was innocent. Carter appeared as himself in Dylan's 1978 movie Renaldo and Clara. In the 2019 film Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, Dylan talked about his involvement with the Carter case and Carter was also interviewed in the film, describing his relationship with Dylan.

Norman Jewison's 1999 feature film The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington in the lead role. The film is about Rubin Carter's accusation, trials, and time spent in prison. Carter later discussed at a lecture how he fell in love with Washington's portrayal of him during auditions for The Hurricane, noting that boxer Marvelous Marvin Hagler and actors Wesley Snipes and Samuel L. Jackson all vied for the role. Washington was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance at the 72nd Academy Awards.

#05/06 #04/20

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fyrapartnersearch · 5 years

Text

~ will you let me deceive you ~ (fandom cravings search)

greetings be careful who you trust, the devil was once an angel. ~ lowercase is purely for aesthetic purposes

~ feel free to call me deviation, dev, d, or lexi

~ i am a 22 year old female, meaning that i'd prefer to rp with people 18+ not only to be closer in age to me but also because my rps can venture into dark topics

~ central standard time

~ you can expect an average of four responses a week although i strive to daily respond, if possible.

~ my replies range from 400 - 4000 words, and i try to mirror my partner

~ third person, present tense although i will rp with people who write past tense (to each his own)

~ doubling is required for all fandom roleplays to keep everything fair. please do not contact me, asking if i can just play who you would like.

~ sucker for ooc chat although it is not required what I want in a partner (yes, we like to break the rules, but these aren't meant to be broken) it is not a shame to be deceived; but it is to stay in the deception 1| activity is fairly important to me because if i go two-three weeks without a response, i will likely lose interest which I don’t want to do! i would prefer if my partners could get me, at least, two responses a week.

2| because i am literate, i am looking for partners of the same! i would prefer, at least, two hearty paragraphs per response, although i am more than happy to receive more. would you like to basically create a book with me? i'm totally down!

3| please help me build our universe, and our story. i don’t want to do it all by myself. i want to make sure that we both enjoy it.

4| please don’t godmod my characters, and no mary sues or anything like that! nobody is perfect or without weakness. we love originality!

5| please be able to write in third person because first person makes it a bit weird for me, and way more personal than i'd like to go. i write in present tense myself although i am more than welcoming to those who write past tense.

6| i am ghost friendly, just please let me know if you decide to drop the rp, if you can, so i don’t find myself waiting for a response that will never come.

7| please let me know if you will be unable to respond for a week or longer, just so that I am aware and don’t think you have dropped the rp.

8| this isn’t a rule, but a preference. i love to get to know my rp partners, so ooc chatter is always welcome!

9| please have a good grasp on grammar and spelling. no text talk.

10| be willing to double if you decide to do canon x oc just so that it makes it fair to everyone.

11| please do NOT (see the caps) just send me a message, asking whether or not I’m still looking, or giving a measly sentence about yourself. i would prefer if you would tell me about your writing style, what you want to write with me, etc. give me something to go off of! let me see who you are!

12| i will rp smut, but it needs to be apart of the story and not overtaking it

fandoms belief is the deception you play upon yourself now, let's move on to the fun part, and what i'm sure you guys are waiting on... the fandoms! because of all of the television i watch (is that a bad thing...?) i have fandoms all over the place that i'd love to rp! unless it is crossed out then i am still looking to do it, so feel free to contact me about it! i will have the fandoms divided up and under each, i will include characters i'm willing to play, and who i'd like to play against. again, just a reminder that doubling is mandatory although it doesn't have to stop there. i'm down to double/triple/quadruple, whatever you want. i also am down for au's and using the universe but using ours ocs. just shoot me ideas of what you want. tv shows we often shed tears that deceive ourselves after deceiving others 1| arrow i'm currently in season five of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: oliver)

2| flash i'm currently in season three of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: barry)

3| vampire diaries i'm currently in season five of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except enzo, kai, vicki, april, kol) (characters i'm looking for: kol, damon, elijah, klaus)

4| glee i'm completely caught up with this show! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: noah (puck), Jesse, brody, jake, ryder)

5| game of thrones i'm currently in season six of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except gregor, eddard, sandor, oberyn, brienne, melisandre, jorah,) (characters i'm looking for: gendry, ramsey, joffrey, khal drogo, jaime)

6| pretty little liars i'm currently in season three of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: wren, alex, ezra)

7| outlander i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: jamie)

8| 13 reasons why i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except hannah baker, tony, sheri, skye) (characters i'm looking for: bryce, zach, tyler)

9| elite i'm currently caught up with this television show (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except valerio, fernando, christian, marina, omar) (characters i'm looking for: polo, ander, guzman)

10| shadowhunters i'm currently caught up with this show and have read the books! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except lucian, jonathan) (characters i'm looking for: jace, magnus, sebastian)

11| the fosters i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: brandon) movies it is more tolerable to be refused than deceived 1| mcu (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except strange, peter parker, peter quill, thanos, ant man)

(characters i'm looking for: tony stark, thor, loki, steve rodgers, clint barton, bruce banner) 2| after (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: hardin, jace)

3| twilight (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except emmett, james, sam) (characters i'm looking for: seth, embry, paul)

4| matched (not a movie, technically, but it is in my heart) (characters i'm willing to play: ky, xander) (characters i'm looking for: ky, xander)

5| divergent (only the first one) (characters i'm willing to play: al) (characters i'm looking for: four, eric, peter)

6| the host (characters i'm willing to play: jared, ian) (characters i'm looking for: jared, ian)

7| disney (special plot, shh, it's a secret. message me if you're interested) asian dramas it is amazing how complete the delusion that beauty is goodness 1| crash landing on you (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: junghyuk, seung-joon, kwang-beom)

2| boys over flowers (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: jun-pyo)

3| i need romance 1/2/3 (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: sung-hyun, seok-hyun, joo wan)

4| heirs/inheritors (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: kim tan, choi young-do)

5| good morning call (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: hisashi uehara, daichi shinozaki) anime time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies; history has no place for them 1| devil’s line (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: anzai)

2| vampire knight (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: zero, kaname)

3| amnesia (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: toma, shin, kent, ikki)

4| dragon ball z (characters i'm willing to play: goten, gohan, krillin, android 17, yamcha) (characters i'm looking for: trunks, vegeta)

5| kuzu no honkai (scum's wish) (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: mugi) cartoons life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted 1| teen titans (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: robin)

2| young justice (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: superboy)

3| adventure time (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except ice king, lsp) (characters i'm looking for: marshal lee)

4| avatar: the last airbender/legend of korra (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except toph) (characters i'm looking for: zuko, bolin, mako, iroh (younger)) last words deception may give us what we want for the present, but it will always take it away, in the end thank you for reading through to the end of my thread, and i do hope that you found something you liked. just a reminder that all fandoms can be changed to use ocs or au's, i'm very open to those kinds of things! in addition, if you would like to contact me about a fandom, please send a message as opposed to posting on this thread (so i can keep it clean). i am only looking for a few partners, but i'd love to hear from as many of you as possible! thank you lovelies!

contact me

feel free to email me ([email protected]) to talk about rping with me!

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #email #messenger #marvel rp #avengers rp #tvd rp #smut rp #mcu rp #dc rp #submission

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cristinablackthornkingson · 5 years

Text

Shadowhunters Short Story #48. Teenage Haline babies.

It is a mild spring morning in May of 228 and The Los Angeles Institute is filled with the sound of arguing. Helen and Aline are sitting at the kitchen table with Emma and Julian who have come to visit, paying hardly any attention to the shouting and screaming. Their two children, Ivy and Andrew are always fighting and bickering, just as Helen and her siblings fought when they were younger. Ivy is the elder by 2 years, she is Helen’s biological daughter, 16 years ago she was conceived via IVF. Andrew is 14 and was adopted at birth

. Despite their fighting, Andrew and Ivy are actually very close and protective of one another, though Ivy will torture her brother, the minute she sees someone else picking on him, she will fly into defensive older sister mode, just like Helen.

Last night after Ivy and Andrew had gone to bed, Emma and Julian had called around to visit and ended up staying the night. They have two children themselves, Eleanor and Jonathan who are just a few years younger than Ivy and Andrew, and Emma is currently pregnant with their third child.

“Do they always fight like this?” Emma asks in an amused tone, shifting in her seat. Eleanor and Jonathan fought sometimes but not very much, usually their arguments were just Eleanor shouting at her brother to stop following her everywhere. Ever since he was born 10 years ago, Jonathan has clung to his sister and followed her everywhere. At first Eleanor didn’t mind, but now that she’s getting older and growing up, she finds it annoying and embarrassing, Emma and Julian are certain though that the arrival of the new baby will calm Eleanor down and make her less angry toward her little brother.

“This is nothing compared to usual, and it’s the first fight they’ve had in almost two weeks.” Aline says in a nonchalant tone. She and Helen are use to their children’s arguments, they usually calm down in a few hours and forget all about their argument.

Just then they hear footsteps on the stairs and a few seconds later Ivy bursts into the room with Andrew not far behind her.

“Mom, mama, Andrew_ Uncle Jules! Aunt Emma!” Ivy breaks off, her blue-green Blackthorn eyes lighting up in delight when she sees her Aunt and Uncle.

“What about Andrew?” Helen calmly asks, as Ivy embraces her aunt and uncle.

“He wants to come to Devon with me today to train with Cordelia.” Ivy says in a tone of anger, as if this is the most heinous crime ever committed.

“Oh how very dare he.” Aline dryly says, taking a sip of her coffee.

“I don’t want to train with you and Cordelia, I just want to portal there with you, me and Will are going to Faerie to see Uncle Mark, Uncle Kieran and Aunt Cristina, Uncle Kieran and Uncle Mark are going to let us ride their horses and then we’re going to see grandpa Gwyn and nana Diana.” Andrew hurriedly explains.

“Why can’t Will come here and then you go to Faerie from here?” Ivy asks her brother.

“It makes more sense for me to go to him, since you’re already going to Devon, I’ll leave you alone the minute we get there, I promise!” Andrew says, begging his sister with his eyes, to let him go with her.

“This is the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever heard.” Emma quietly says to Julian, in an amused tone. Julian laughs lightly and says

“I dunno, once Mark and I had a fight because he didn’t want to be in the same room as me, he said it was because my face was annoying.”

“Ivy you’re just being petty, Andrew isn’t trying to interrupt your time with Cordelia, we all know how well you two work together and how important it is for you both to train with only each other, you and Cordelia will be going with Jem straight to the London Institute and Will and Andrew will be staying with Tessa to wait for Cristina to take them to Faerie, anymore fighting and you can forget about going on a tour of The Scholomonce with your Uncle Ty next week.” Aline firmly says. “Understood?”

“Yes mom.” Ivy quietly says in a subdued tone. She knew there is no point in arguing with her mom, she is relentless and never gives in and never puts up with their fighting.

Half an hour later, Ivy steps out of the portal into the Carstairs’ living room, with Andrew right behind her. Cordelia and Will along with Tessa are already waiting, in the living room.

“Cordy can we swap siblings? Andrew is such a pain.” Ivy lightly says, greeting her friend with a hug.

“You can’t have Kit, but by all means you can have Jade and Will, especially Will.” Cordelia says in an amused tone, making a face at her little brother over her best friend's shoulder.

“Leave him alone Delia.” Kit says, walking into the room and putting his arm around his little brother.

“Yes Prince Christopher.” Cordelia mockingly says, smirking at her older brother, who she always teases about his royal heritage.

“You know technically you’re royalty too Cordelia, your grandfather on mum’s side is a prince of hell, so technically that makes you a princess, I could start calling you Princess Cordelia.” Kit retorts, returning his sister’s smug smile. Instantly the smile drops from Cordelia’s face and she turns to her father, who has just walked into the room.

“Can we go now dad?” She asks, eager to get to the training room and spend some time with Ivy, who she has a very important question for.

“Have you got everything?” Jem asks, knowing how forgetful his eldest daughter can be.

Cordelia nods enthusiastically and says

“Yeah, and Emma said she’ll meet us in London and let me use Cortana for a while!” Emma and Jem had explained all about the family heirloom to Cordelia and the other two, and told Cordelia that she may one day inherit Cortana, and ever since then she has been itching to get her hands on the sword and try it out.

“Alright then, come on.”

An hour later Cordelia and Ivy are on their own in the training room, working on target practice. Jem brought some gifts for Emma’s new baby, and they are currently downstairs looking through them.

“Ivy... can I talk to you for a bit?” Cordelia quietly asks, as her dagger lands right on target.

“Sure, is everything okay?” Ivy asks, brushing her blonde hair back and turning to look at her friend.

“Yeah fine. I-I don’t really know how to go about this but well... we work so well together and I always feel better and stronger when you’re around, you’re my best friend and I couldn’t cope without you. Ivy I want to be parabatia.” Cordelia hurriedly says in a panicked tone, fearful that Ivy won’t want to be parabatia with her. Maybe she wants to go to the Scholomonce like her Uncle Ty, who Cordelia’s brother Kit is married to.

Ivy’s jaw drops open and she can’t help but stare at Cordelia in disbelief. Being Parabatia is a massive deal and commitment, it is not something to take lightly. Ivy’s Uncle Jules and Aunt Emma had been parabatia and then fallen in love and were almost killed by the parabatia curse. Not that Ivy is in love with Cordelia, or thinks she ever will be, but it’s still a big deal.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to.” Cordelia quietly says, her gaze flickering from Ivy to the floor.

“I... no Cordy of course I want to be parabatia, it’s just... such a big deal, we both know that.” Ivy gently says, grabbing her friend’s hands.

“I know but I listen to my dad’s stories about my Uncle Will and how amazing it was for them, and I see Uncle Jace and Uncle Alec together and Aunt Clary and Uncle Simon, that bond and love is just so amazing and unbelievable and something I want more than anything. But I only want it with you Ivy, and this is my last year of being able to have a parabatia, I’ll be nineteen in April, so I had to ask you now.” Cordelia explains, looking at her friend with wide brown eyes full of hope.

“Are you sure about this?” Ivy quietly asks, silently fearing that maybe Cordelia is only asking her because in a few months she’ll be past the cut off age for having a parabatia.

“Yes absolutely, I’ve thought long and hard about it and talked about it with dad, I’m sure about this.” Cordelia firmly says.

Ivy grins widely at her friend and grabs her into a tight embrace.

“Then yes, yes of course I’ll be your parabatia.”

*That evening*

It is now 6 O’Clock in the evening, and Helen and Aline are sitting alone in the kitchen after tidying up after dinner. They often sit and talk with each other in the evenings, when Ivy and Andrew are usually in their rooms doing their own thing.

“It all feels so surreal, when we were on Wrangle Island all those years ago I never thought we’d get to have a beautiful life like this, before Alec became Consul and we were allowed to come back to LA, I was always so terrified that if we tried to have a baby, one way or another, The Clave would stop us, Ivy and Andrew are miracles, my beautiful miracles.” Helen quietly says in a tearful tone, gripping her wife’s hand tightly. Sometimes she still has to convince herself that this is all real, she’s back in LA with all her siblings around her, her wife at her side and two beautiful and amazing children to call her own.

“I know love, I hated seeing you so miserable and upset, if I could get my hands on the little bastards who decided to exile you...” Aline says in a tone of anger, rage bubbling up in her chest at the thoughts of The Cohort and the other idiots who agreed to The Cold Peace and sentenced Helen to exile, only allowed her to get married in Idris if she agreed to be paraded around The Academy like a Show Pony and talk dirt about her birth mother, who she has hardly any memories of.

“Aline my love let go of that anger, it does you no good to hold on to it, we have a beautiful and amazing life now, we don’t need to think about all that now.” Helen softly says, rubbing her wife’s back soothingly.

“Mom, mama is everything okay?” A soft, familiar voice asks in a concerned tone, from the doorway. They look up to see Ivy standing in the doorway looking concerned, with Andrew lingering behind her.

“Hi babies, everything’s fine, your mom and I were just talking about my exile during The Cold Peace and it still makes us angry and upset. Are you guys okay?” Helen calmly asks, as Andrew and Ivy come in and sit beside their parents.

“Yeah it’s just... well I was wondering if you could tell me about my dad.” Ivy quietly says in a hopeful tone.

“I’m afraid there’s not much to tell you about babe, your father was an anonymous sperm donor, we kept the information his file gave us, but it’s not very much.” Aline gently explains, not wanting to upset her daughter.

“Oh, well can I have that little bit of information you have? I’d like to know something about him, anything.” Ivy warily asks.

“Of course sweetheart, that’s why we kept it, we knew you’d likely ask about him at some stage.” Helen lovingly says, brushing her daughter’s hair back from her face.

“Do you know anything about my birth parents?” Andrew quietly asks.

“I’m afraid not baby, when we adopted you we were told that your birth parents wanted a closed adoption, we didn’t mind, we just wanted you so badly and loved you so much. Though once you’re over 18 you can legally seek them out, and we will help if that’s what you want.” Helen explains, hoping that Andrew won’t be angry or upset.

“Maybe, but you and mom are my parents, always have been and always will be, you’re the ones who raised me and loved me all my life, that’s what matters to me.” Andrew firmly says. Ivy nods her agreement.

“I agree, I don’t really care about knowing my dad, I’m just curious about him. You guys are my parents, I don’t need a dad, never had, I have the two best moms in the world, I’m really lucky to be your daughter.” Tears of joy well in Helen’s eyes and she pulls her daughter and son into a tight hug.

“Oh my babies, I love you so much and I am so so proud of you, Ivy you said that you’re lucky to be our daughter but believe me, we are the lucky ones, to have you two as our children.” Helen says in a tight tone.

“Your mama’s right, we are the luckiest people alive to have you two beautiful, amazing kids as our own, you completed our family and made our lives amazing.” Aline quietly says, putting her arms around her wife and children.

Helen rests her head on Aline’s shoulder and holds her babies tightly, revealing in amazement at how drastically her life has change, and how amazing and perfect it is.

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ericfruits · 6 years

Text

Unauthorized Practice Contempt Conviction Reversed

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed the criminal contempt conviction of an alleged unauthorized practitioner of the law

Over thirty years ago, in 1986, appellant Benoit Brookens was found guilty of criminal contempt based on his unauthorized practice of law and was permanently enjoined from engaging in specified activities. In 2011, he was charged with nineteen counts of criminal contempt for violating the 1986 injunction and was ultimately convicted on four counts. We now reverse. Two of the four contempt counts are barred by the three-year catchall statute of limitations set forth in D.C. Code § 23-113 (a)(5), which we now hold applies to criminal contempt charges brought under D.C. Code § 11-944. The remaining two contempt counts cannot stand because, although the evidence may indicate that Mr. Brookens violated District of Columbia Court of Appeals Rule 49 as amended in 1998, the evidence fails to establish that Mr. Brookens engaged in the contemptuous conduct with which he was actually charged—conduct prohibited by the 1986 injunction.

The story

Mr. Brookens has been a member of the bar in other states but has never been licensed to practice law in the District of Columbia. In 1986, he was convicted after a bench trial of criminal contempt based on his unauthorized practice of law in violation of Rule 49.

He was "permanently" enjoined from practice

Both Mr. Brookens and the Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law (CUPL) appealed—Mr. Brookens seeking to overturn the determination that he had violated Rule 49 in any way; the CUPL seeking "reversal of the finding that [Mr.] Brookens‘[s] activities before a District of Columbia agency did not constitute the unauthorized practice of law." Brookens, 538 A.2d at 1122. This court affirmed the challenged judgment and order "in all respects."

Fast forward

In April 2011, twenty-five years after the issuance of the 1986 injunction and thirteen years after the revision of Rule 49, the government charged Mr. Brookens with nineteen counts of contempt under D.C. Code § 11-944 (a) (2001), for violating the 1986 injunction. Every count in the information related to his continued representation of Dorchester tenants before two District of Columbia agencies: the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) and Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH). Ultimately, the government proceeded on only four counts. Two (counts fifteen and sixteen) alleged that Mr. Brookens violated the 1986 injunction by holding himself out as an attorney by signing "Esquire" on two 2005 pleadings he filed with the DCRA. A third (count eighteen) alleged that, "[o]n at least one occasion‖ between January 1996 and June 2008, Mr. Brookens violated the 1986 injunction by ―engaging in the unlawful practice of law in violation of Rule 49 (b)(2)." And, a fourth (count nineteen) alleged that, during the same twelve-year time period, Mr. Brookens violated the 1986 injunction by "representing a person other than himself (specifically Dorchester Tenants and Dorchester Tenants‘ Association) in the District of Columbia without being a member of the District of Columbia Bar."

At the trial

The trial court found Mr. Brookens guilty on all four counts of contempt, sentenced him to four concurrent sentences (suspended) of 180 days‘ incarceration, and enjoined him from holding a job "in any capacity, in a District of Columbia law office." This appeal followed.

Here the court held

The government may be technically correct that whether criminal contempt under D.C. Code § 11-944 (a) is a "crime" within the meaning of D.C. Code § 23- 113 is an open question. But in light of the foregoing, there is only one permissible answer. Criminal contempt charges prosecuted in Superior Court are "crimes" subject to the jurisdictional limitations of the District‘s statute of limitations. We now so hold and thereby align our law with the law in federal court where, for over a century, individuals charged with criminal contempt have been "entitled to the protection of a statute of limitations."

...Mr. Brookens‘s convictions for contempt under counts eighteen and nineteen were premised on his violation of the 1986 injunction, but the evidence within the limitations period did not substantiate a violation of the 1986 order. Because the evidence was legally insufficient to support his convictions on counts eighteen and nineteen, these convictions must be reversed.

Associate Judge Easterly authored the opinion. (Mike Frisch)

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/04/the-district-of-columbia-court-of-appeals-over-thirty-years-ago-in-1986-appellant-benoit-brookens-was-found-guilty-of-crim.html

#IFTTT #Feedly

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newstechreviews · 4 years

Link

(NEW YORK) — Herbert Stempel, a fall guy and whistleblower of early television whose confession to deliberately losing on a 1950s quiz show helped drive a national scandal and join his name in history to winning contestant Charles Van Doren, has died age 93.

Stempel’s former wife, Ethel Stempel, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he died at a New York nursing home on April 7. She cited no specific cause of death.

Stempel’s long life was changed and defined by a TV face-off late in 1956, when he and Van Doren smoothly executed a fraudulent display of knowledge, gaps in knowledge and sportsmanship on “Twenty-One,” part of a wave of programs that offered big prizes for trivia experts. Confessions by Stempel and others badly tainted the young medium, helped lead to Congress’ banning what had been technically legal — rigging game shows — and to the cancellation of “Twenty-One” among others.

Interest was revived by the 1994 movie “Quiz Show,” directed by Robert Redford and starring John Turturro as Stempel and Ralph Fiennes as Van Doren, who died last year.

The undoing of “Twenty-One” was set off by declining ratings, and a producer’s refusal to uphold a dirty bargain.

Stempel, born in New York City and the son of Jewish immigrants, would boast of a “retentive memory” that had made him a quiz show star since childhood and a natural for “Twenty-One.” Hosted by Jack Barry, the program placed two contestants in isolation booths on opposite sides of the stage and challenged them on everything from modern sports to Civil War history. Stempel, identified by Barry as a 29-year-old G.I. Bill college student from Queens, had prevailed for six straight weeks and accumulated $69,500. But audiences were apparently bored and advertisers worried. Producer Dan Enright’s solution was to have Stempel lose to a more charismatic opponent, Van Doren, scion of a prominent scholarly family and himself a rising star at Columbia University. Stempel later said he agreed when Enright promised to make him a question consultant for “Twenty-One,” get him an appearance on “The Steve Allen Show” and allow him to compete on a future quiz program.

Stempel and Van Doren were an obvious contrast: The fair-haired and handsome Van Doren, and the relatively plain Stempel, a stocky, dark-haired man with glasses and a flat, nasally accent. Each duly played their parts: looking down, blinking nervously, wiping their foreheads and pretending to think out loud as they responded to such challenges as “Name the three heavyweight champions immediately preceding Joe Louis” and “Name the second, third, fourth, and fifth wives of Henry VIII and describes their fates.”

Stempel retained a wry sense of humor, responding “They all died” when asked about Henry VIII’s wives. But one wrong answer was personally painful: Which movie received the Oscar for best picture in 1955? As Stempel would explain, he knew the winner was “Marty,” the low-key drama starring Ernest Borgnine. He had seen it three times and related to its story of a lonely butcher in New York City. But he was told to guess “On the Waterfront,” the Oscar winner of 1954, and a film, ironically, about a boxer who throws a fight.

With tens of millions looking on, Stempel muttered “I don’t remember” three times, shook his head and weakly guessed, “On the Waterfront?” Upon Van Doren’s eventual victory, the contestants smiled and shook hands at center stage. Stempel, who still had nearly $50,000 in winnings, thanked Barry and the show’s staff for their “kindness” and “courtesy.” Barry in turn praised Stempel’s “courage” and “fighting spirit.”

Van Doren would continue winning for months, and was celebrated in a Time magazine cover story as “TV’s own health-restoring antidote to (Elvis the Pelvis) Presley.” Stempel, meanwhile, found himself shut out entirely. He would acknowledge his decision to speak out wasn’t a matter of conscience, but revenge. When he tried to get back in touch with Enright, he realized that the producer no longer was interested.

“He just completely forgot I ever existed,” Stempel later told the Archive of American Television. “He had a picture of Charles Van Doren in his office when I walked in there and all he could do was praise Charles Van Doren, tell me what a great contestant is.”

Stempel’s public declarations were initially dismissed, but as contestants on other shows made similar statements, authorities began to take action. A grand jury was convened in New York in 1958 and Congressional hearings began the following year, with Stempel and Van Doren both testifying and acknowledging their complicity. Van Doren, who had no further comment on the scandal until a 2009 essay in The New Yorker, was among those given suspended sentences for lying to the grand jury. Stempel would endure being “treated like a pariah” by his relatives and losing much of his prize money in an investment scam.

For years, he lived quietly in Queens with his second wife, Ethel (his first wife, Toby, died in 1980), working as an office manager, public school teacher and on the litigation support unit of the New York City Department of Transportation. He reemerged as a public figure in the 1990s, when “Twenty-One” was featured in a Julian Krainin documentary and in Redford’s movie, for which Stempel served as a consultant. He would say “Quiz Show” distorted his life and personality.

“I was a little miffed at the portrayal. I was showed to be a nerd, a square and a hyper little guy,” he told the Television Academy archive, remembering a humorous encounter with Turturro at a screening. “John walked over to me and he said to me, ‘If you punch me in the nose I would understand why. … And I didn’t want any trouble. I realized he played me over the top and so forth. He’s an actor. He’s told by the director, Redford, to play me in a certain way, and that’s how he played it. And I said, ‘No, John, everything’s cool.’

“And my wife, Ethel, is a very feisty woman, and she said, ‘Step aside, Herb, I want to take a crack at him.’”

#Blogger

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ultimateseoorg · 5 years

Link

Visit Cloud Computing: Digital Ocean vs Google Cloud vs AWS for the whole story

This post originally only focused on cost and user experience but after a real world case study and experiment I have some performance data and it is actually surprising.

Teaser here … in a head to head test between AWS and Digital Ocean one of these two out performed the other in

rate of requests handled

number of requests processed

time it took to process each request.

The same winner of those won 10 / 10 speed tests and the results were not close.

The results of these tests convinced a previously skeptical client’s IT team into switching cloud providers.

Scroll down to the section “VPS Performance” to see more about that specific use case scenario. Ultimate SEO has accounts on all but Azure and has powered its servers from AWS, Google Cloud and Digital Ocean at some point. We’ve consolidated to one provider and its the same one who performs best in these tests.

Want to see a spoiler (the answer)? Here is a summary sentence of our tests, or read on and learn why and how they win.

Testing Sites Used

Spoiler

Testing Sites Used

Server Load Testing: Loadimpact.com

Page Speed Testing: GTMetrix.com

Spoiler

Summary

The AWS server costs twice as much and delivers one tenth of the capacity and is the slowest page load in all 10 page speed tests.

The AWS server is unable to complete the full server load testing.

In every instance Digital Ocean out performed AWS.

Comparing Digital Ocean Droplets and AWS EC2 VPS

How Is This SEO?

This may seem off topic but its on topic, technical SEO is imperative … you’re not going to rank number one on Google using Shopify or Wix. It just isn’t going to happen.

Those platforms are not serious enough to deliver the configurability one needs to out perform a competitor.

It’s also apparently difficult to get solid advice on SEO Hosting from “experts” Best Blog Hosting for SEO is junk … reciting features doesn’t make a hosting plan the best…one quote notes that WordPress is already installed with InMotionHosting.com … so what!

Our web servers are preconfigured to install WordPress in every new account as well…it only saves maybe 5 minutes per user but for a web host that time adds up very quickly. So thats not a benefit for the client as much as it is for the host.

You aren’t a web host so it’s not that big of a deal. I’d like to hear about benchmarking tests they may have run to decide who is the best. And we do … but thats later.

I only mention these to point out typically articles covering which ibetter focus on the irrelevant because the author lacks a technical SEO understanding. Well, this isn’t one of those articles.

Features Aren’t Technical Specs

Unlimited bandwidth…sounds great but what are the limits? There are limits, the infrastructure that a site sits on has limitations. If someone uses a CAT5 cable instead of a CAT6 everything will be slower and you’ll find a speed limit there. Bottlenecks are designed into infrastructure by error and these can limit it. Unlimited bandwidth means nothing because there are limits … physical limits exist and can’t be avoided. So “unlimited” is a term being misused a lot in hosting today.

WordPress preinstalled saves someone 5 minutes but nothing else. These aren’t important to the Hosting performance and way too many top articles on SEO hosting confuse WordPress’s selling points with the web host’s infrastructure. That’s what this is all about after all, infrastructure and how it directly impacts a site’s Google ranking.

Google says that over half of all searches are now mobile. Mobile is extra sensitive to speed and technical SEO matters. Thats why its so important to set yourself up with the best infrastructure to build on.

Cloud Computing: Be Your Own Host

The industry standard in web hosting is cPanel. No way around it with cPanel your support opinions are bountiful where as dreamhost.com has its own proprietary server software … its no better in actuality its just far less supported by third parties. Ultimate SEO is hosted on a variety of cPanel servers that were easy to build and deploy, I made them from scratch and with templates but all in all there are 4 AWS servers, 2 Google Cloud Platform and 4 Digital Ocean currently powering hundreds of sites including this site. Cost varies wildly…

Its important to note that your web host is honestly likely run on one of these three services. Godaddy is … if you have their shared hosting your running on this environment. You’re sharing their share of the cloud environment.

Why not just skip ahead and be the master of your domain….sure it will cost more than $3 a month … but that $3 a month hosting plan is shit. You can have a decent VPS server for $5 a month with better performance.

We’re not going to mix apples with oranges though, this isnt about shared hosting plans and a VPS. The VPS will win. A good review between AWS and a traditional hosting provider is AWS vs Blue Host

Amazon Web Services

I don’t even know what I am spending, where and how it is being spent. AWS charges you for everything little thing and no matter what steps you might take it may seem like rising project costs are simply unavoidable.

Their platform to work within is NOT intuitive and it will require some play time to remember that you have to leave the virtual server’s configuration area to select an IP address to then assign it to the server. Then go back to the server and keep working. ( that will cost you money too…each ip address, not talking about bandwidth that’ll cost you too … I’m just saying the ip number ) and then return to that original area to associate it.

Don’t even think about swapping hard drives and knowing what is attached to what unless you are prepared to write down long strings of numbers and letters.

AWS does provide greater flexibility than the others on options beyond just a virtual server…but unless you plan to send 100,000 emails a day to people you won’t benefit from their email service … as an example.

Technical SEO wise I’d give AWS a D overall. Infrastructure and computing power is an obvious A+, but it’s how you interact with that that weighs the grade. More so AWS limits your resources with Throttling and Burstable CPUs … these sound good but the mean we’re only giving you part of the resource not all of it.

Poor navigation and the nickle and dime pricing is absurd. Want to monitor your usage so you can understand your bill? Monitoring costs more…its ridiculous.

They do offer reserved instances and I loaded up on those but still my costs never decreased. AWS is so hard to understand billing wise that IT Managed Service Providers will offer free excel templates to figure out your AWS monthly costs. Think I’m being over the top? Check out this calculator form sheet by AWS to forecast your expenses. It is never simple when you ask how much and are handed a spreadsheet to calculate the server costs.

Heres something crazy…why my April bill was $167 but AWS forecasts it will be $1020 in May I have no idea. I’m not adding servers…

Google Cloud Platform

Is easier to use and wrap your head around but it is considerably more expensive than either of the other options. For this simple reason…they receive an F. The additional costs come with less options and less features than AWS.

Billing is more transparent and you can understand why your bill is what it is at least. But Google also makes unilateral decisions for you like blocking smtp and ssh access. Sure its more secure but it makes email and server maintenance a nightmare. You can add those to nonstandard ports in the firewall but then you have to keep up with an oddity.

Documents like this Connecting to Instances make it seem like not a big deal, but these will not allow you to move a file from your computer to the server like SFTP would.

They are expensive, offer less and needlessly shot you in the foot with their restrictions. Thats why I stand by the F as an overall grade. Now infrastructure capabilities … A+ no doubt about it…but you’re paying a premium and placed into a box.

Digital Ocean

I received no compensation or thank you from anyone for writing this … Digital Ocean is my B+ graded cloud solution. It’s the cheapest, and they don’t seem to charge you a fee for tools that are required for the main product to function, unlike AWS and their static ip addresses.

They have the least ability and options outside of a virtual server. If you want a database server that’s in the works unless you can use Postgres. UPDATE Sept 2019: SQL Databases are now fully supported and available. That’s limiting, but it is also not important if you’re just running a few web servers that will already have MySQL installed on them anyhow (if a LAMP server template is utilized).

Digital Ocean is the no frills, no surprises, cloud computing option. The reason I have so many servers is because I am migrating everything off AWS and Google Cloud to Digital Ocean…it’ll be cheaper. A lot cheaper…we’ll discuss performance in this article.

That’s right… $20 vs $121, $177 and $120 from AWS, GCP and Azure. I didn’t really consider Microsoft Azure just because I have reservations moving into their sphere or control where every thing you need to do is addressed by yet another Microsoft product that usually has little imagination in it.

Test out a server in each environment and I think you’ll quickly take to the Digital Ocean option.

But in deciding the winner of this debate I figure a more scientific method could be used….so let’s divide the debate into areas that can be scored and assessed.

Amazon Web Services vs. Digital Ocean

Ease Of Use

As previously noted, the Digital Ocean’s dashboard is very streamlined compared to AWS. With AWS you have to configure your network, and several other parts such as the keys before you can make a server that’s accessible to the internet. Digital Ocean you can literally have a server running in less than a minute from a single screen.

Base Cost

Digital Ocean’s costs are inclusive of bandwidth, hard drive size, ip addresses and more. Everything you need to have a server is right there in one easy package. Their packages include:

RAM CPUS BAND SSDHD PRICE 1 GB 1 vCPU 1 TB 25 GB $5/mo $0.007/hr 2 GB 1 vCPU 2 TB 50 GB $10/mo $0.015/hr 3 GB 1 vCPU 3 TB 60 GB $15/mo $0.022/hr 2 GB 2 vCPUs 3 TB 60 GB $15/mo $0.022/hr 1 GB 3 vCPUs 3 TB 60 GB $15/mo $0.022/hr 4 GB 2 vCPUs 4 TB 80 GB $20/mo $0.030/hr 8 GB 4 vCPUs 5 TB 160 GB $40/mo $0.060/hr 16 GB 6 vCPUs 6 TB 320 GB $80/mo $0.119/hr 32 GB 8 vCPUs 7 TB 640 GB $160/mo $0.238/hr 48 GB 12 vCPUs 8 TB 960 GB $240/mo $0.357/hr 64 GB 16 vCPUs 9 TB 1,280 GB $320/mo $0.476/hr 96 GB 20 vCPUs 10 TB 1,920 GB $480/mo $0.714/hr 128 GB 24 vCPUs 11 TB 2,560 GB $640/mo $0.952/hr 192 GB 32 vCPUs 12 TB 3,840 GB $960/mo $1.429/hr

Amazon Web Services doesn’t allow an easy comparison. Everything is charged individually it would seem. They have a tool called Simple Monthly Calculator, its a spreadsheet basically … first off if you need a calculator it’s obviously not simple.

To compare something with the $5 option from Digital Ocean I used the calculator and a t2.micro which is 1cpu and 1g ram with a 25 GB SSD drive, with 2 ips and 1 TB of data transferred to the world costs about $21.49 but that’s also after a -11.00 discount … without the discount it was 32.49.

So at $5 to $32

Digital Ocean Wins

But wait there’s more and this is the why you’ll switch to Digital Ocean.

Options

Monitoring and alerts can be configured on both platforms .. both allow scaling up and adding additional storage as well as internal networking. AWS though has an expansive offering of options and wins out in this area.

AWS Wins

Billing Options

Digital Ocean allows for credit cards as well as paypal. AWS allows credit cards and bank accounts. The difference then is Paypal vs Checking Accounts and since this is a cloud computing, tech product … Im going to prefer Paypal to a tool that has been around for hundreds of years. So we’re going to hand it to Digital Ocean.

Digital Ocean Wins

Freelancer Friendly

Each can transfer servers to other accounts. I’ve only been successful in doing this with Digital Ocean and not AWS. The AWS process is more tedious and you can give a server away that you aren’t an admin of anymore but still are responsible for billing somehow. That sucks!

Digital Ocean Wins

Support

AWS only offers free billing support…although if you ask them a tech question they do tell you “as a courtesy” here is an article that might help…but tech support itself is out of your reach for free. Digital Ocean allows you to message them and I’d assume some tech level of support for their platform without charging.

Digital Ocean Wins

So all in all…

The winner is Digital Ocean over GCP and AWS.

but … now an added update to question these assertions…

VPS PERFORMANCE

Testing Digital Ocean to AWS head to head.

Two test servers with the same site exact site tested at the same time on the same tools. In these tests we’re trying to speed up a client’s slow page load speeds. We’re at 97% optimization of the site, we’ve unloaded some sliders but still 5 second homepage loads. We are determined to be at 3 seconds…and we think we have the answer in addressing the client’s hosting infrastructure.

But before we can make the switch, testing had to be done and we had to convince the IT team to look at more than just AWS. As technical SEO “experts” we have to get their buy in to ensure the projects success isn’t discounted because we get viewed as just marketing people.

Below is adapted from communication between Ultimate SEO and the client.

Two Part Question, then price considered.

How many users can the server handle?

EC2 Unlimited – Expensive but it’s just a checkbox away in availability.

Same test on each by loadimpact.com. Simulates 25 users for 3 minutes. Detailed results included after this summary.

Server: Test2 On Digital Ocean

The average response time of the system being tested was 36ms, and 10497 requests were made at an average request rate of 59 requests/second.

Server: Test3 On AWS

The average response time of the system being tested was 481ms, and 4401 requests were made at an average request rate of 25 requests/second.

Findings From Server Load Testing

The AWS Server takes more than 10 times longer to server half the pages requested, at half the rate given to the Digital Ocean server. So it failed before reaching full capacity of the test.

How fast can a typical page be delivered?

For this test we’ll use GTMetrix.com with 1 user 7 tests per server and then an average with the lowest score and highest noted.

Test Run

Test2

Test3

7.0s

7.4s

3.8s

6.2s

4.1s

5.7s

4.2s

4.9s

4.3s

4.7s

2.9s

5.6s

2.7s

5.3s

3.6s

5.1s

3.5s

4.5s

3.4s

4.4s

AVERAGE

3.95

5.38

Ultimate SEO ran the GTMetrix.com tests at the same time, that way it was similar network traffic and each one in its own browser tab. * These tests are not reliant upon our local machine and are just between GTMetrix and the target.

Conclusion

In this test the AWS server adds an average 1.43 seconds over 10 tests. In no test was AWS faster than Digital Ocean. The fastest test for Digital Ocean was 2.7s with AWS at 4.4s. Digital Ocean’s fastest is below our goal, AWS is 1.4 seconds above or 45% more than our goal. GTMetrix gives both servers an A for optimization, meaning neither can be optimized more … its infrastructure and content now. Each site has the same content.

AWS could do better but they appear to “throttle” performance much tighter. Even using C class servers instead of T class resulted in lack luster performance.

If there is anything wrong with my methodology let me know and you’re free to repeat these tests.

Want $50 Credit To Test Digital Ocean? Here is a link, it also gives me a credit full disclosure. Test Digital Ocean Out And Receive A $50 Credit × Dismiss alert

How Does Performance Change When We Test A Web Server that has a separate dedicated Database server

Server + Database Server Configuration VPS

Now that we’ve tested and found Digital Ocean to be the cheapest and fastest VPS lets try some optimizations and see if they provide real world benefits. The easiest to test is the offloading of the database to its own separate server. Since this creates a dedicated database server I choose to build the database on a very small machine. A $5 1 CPU 1 GB Ram server was created from a LAMP server and it was given an internal ip address and placed within the same firewall as the site server which also had an internal ip address. Internal addresses did appear to save connectivity time and avoid firewall involvement.

This shows the blue line … response time as steady and unaffected by the growing requests and users on the site.

The average response time of the system being tested was 33ms, and 8716 requests were made at an average request rate of 49 requests/second.

This wasn’t remarkably better than the original server but that server did show a couple brief spikes where this has none. It would likely only be of real value when large amounts of traffic are experienced.

GTMetrix shows individual page loads are unaffected by the SQL off loading. So the benefit is again only pronounced when many requests are made.

The post Cloud Computing: Digital Ocean vs Google Cloud vs AWS appeared first on Ultimate SEO | Backlinks, Audits & More.

#IFTTT #WordPress #SEO #Ultimate SEO #Ranking #Backlinks #Audit #Keywords

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reneeacaseyfl · 5 years

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What Separates the Hacks and the Hack-Nots—Cyber Saturday

In the latest issue of Fortune, which features our Global 500 list, I penned an essay about whether American corporations are equipped to defend themselves in cyberspace. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer to that question increasingly appears to be, “Yes.” At least that’s according to the experts I consulted. In lieu of a newsletter column today, below is an excerpt from that piece.

Attend any cybersecurity confab, and you’ll encounter some version of the following refrain. “There are two types of companies in this world: those that have been hacked and those that don’t yet know they’ve been hacked.”

The phrase that launched a thousand quips was coined by Dmitri Alperovitch, a Moscow-born entrepreneur and one of the world’s foremost hacker-sleuths. In 2011, as head threat researcher at antivirus pioneer McAfee, he created the classification while investigating—and publicly revealing—half a decade’s worth of (likely Chinese) cyberattacks on more than 70 organizations, including defense contractors, tech companies, and the United Nations.

Now the huff of resignation is due for an update. “I’ve since modified that phrase,” Alperovitch tells Fortune. “The first two companies still exist, but now there’s a third type that’s able to successfully defend itself against intrusion.” Ah, hope yet!

One could write off Alperovitch’s addendum as a savvy sales pitch. As the cofounder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company that stunned investors with a share price–popping IPO in June, there’s no wonder he’s feeling a bit of good cheer.

But there’s something to Alperovitch’s revision. Richard A. Clarke, former White House security adviser to both Bushes and to Clinton, agrees with the new, tripartite framing. He says as much in his just-published book, coauthored with Obama cyber lead Robert K. Knake, The Fifth Domain—a reference to cyber as the newest theater of war, after land, sea, air, and space.

Consider NotPetya. The devastatingly global computer-wiping attack, which Russia released on the world in 2017, caused billions of dollars of damage to corporations such as FedEx, Maersk, and Merck.

But not all firms succumbed. “What you don’t hear about is the list of American companies that were there doing business in Ukraine”—ground zero for the attack—”that didn’t get damaged,” Clarke says. Firms like Boeing, DowDuPont, and Johnson & Johnson “were the dogs that didn’t bark, and in our book, we tried to figure out why.”

So, what separates the hacks from the hack-nots? At a technical level, the unharmed firms had patched their machines against the vulnerability exploited by NotPetya. But a more fundamental question is, Why did some companies patch, while others neglected to?

In a word: prioritization. The most resilient organizations have buy-in across the—literal—board. Any executive who blocks a chief information security officer better have a damn good reason. Else the CEO will surely hear about it.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Robert Hackett | @rhhackett | [email protected]

THREATS

From Russia With Love. In 2016 Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states, the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded in a new report. Despite this and recent warnings from special counsel Robert Mueller about attempted interference in the next presidential race, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is blocking two election security bills that would provide $775 million in grants for states to secure their voting systems. Newsweek reports that McConnell has been receiving campaign donations from top voting machine lobbyists, while the Washington Post has gone so far as to label McConnell “a Russian asset” for standing in the way of greater protections.

An Apple a day. A whistleblower working for Apple has told the Guardian that contractors tasked with grading quality control for Siri, the company’s voice assistant, regularly hear people’s sensitive information. “There have been countless instances of recordings featuring private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, seemingly criminal dealings, sexual encounters and so on,” the source said, noting that the recordings also show location, contact details, and app data. The whistleblower believes Apple should offer consumers more clear data privacy policy disclosures.

Passing the bar. U.S. Attorney General William Barr gave a keynote speech about the threat of “warrant-proof” encrypted communications at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University this week. “We must ensure that we retain society’s ability to gain lawful access to data and communications when needed to respond to criminal activity,” he said. Cybersecurity experts warn that any legally mandated backdoor will be unavoidably abused by hackers and spies.

Off the hook. Marcus Hutchins, better known by his online alias “MalwareTech,” the so-called accidental hero who stopped a global ransomware infection called WannaCry from spreading in 2017, has been sentenced to one year of supervised release on charges of developing and selling banking malware. When I wrote about his case in April, I argued that Hutchins should receive a light sentencing to be further reduced through public service. I’m glad to see the justice system recognize Huthins’ unusual talents. As the judge said, per TechCrunch, It’s going to take people like Hutchins “to eliminate this entire subject of the woefully inadequate security protocols.”

Share today’s Cyber Saturday with a friend: http://fortune.com/newsletter/cybersaturday/

Looking for previous Data Sheets? Click here

ACCESS GRANTED

Settling the score. Equifax is paying at least $650 million in a settlement related to its 2017 data breach affecting nearly 150 million people. Of that sum, $425 million is earmarked for consumers. Here’s Slate with an exhortation urging victims of the breach to go claim what’s theirs. And here are step-by-step instructions for doing so.

Go claim your $125 from Equifax. Right now. Even if $125 isn’t a sum of money that matters to you, even if you don’t feel you were really directly affected by the breach. Even if the prospect of filling out a relatively brief online form fills you with more dread than the theft of all your personal data.

Consider it a part of your civic duty: driving up the costs of data breaches for corporations so they have an incentive to invest more heavily in security. The payouts to individuals are part of the $575 to $700 million settlement that Equifax reached with the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 48 states. (Indiana and Massachusetts are still pursuing their own lawsuits against Equifax.)

FORTUNE RECON

FaceApp’s Russia Link Is the Latest Alarm in an Ongoing Digital Red Scare by Alyssa Newcomb

Fighting Deepfakes Gets Real by Bernhard Warner

160 Million Government Records Exposed in Data Breaches Since 2014, Study Finds by Natasha Bach

The FBI Is Still So White by Ellen McGirt

Senate Confirms Army Veteran Mark Esper as Secretary of Defense by Robert Burns

Financial Data Privacy? Consumers ‘Could Care Less’ by Jen Wieczner

Brexit is Jeopardizing the U.K.’s Cybersecurity—And Fueling the Rise of the “Splinternet” by Jeremy Kahn

Apple Card: Are the Limited Rewards Worth It for the Privacy? by Xavier Harding

ONE MORE THING

Starting over. Let us not forget how data breaches affect lives. A couple who adopted a child had to relocate and change their names after their personal information was accidentally leaked to the birth parents, reports the Hackney Gazette, a local British newspaper. The family received £106,000 for its troubles.

Credit: Source link

The post What Separates the Hacks and the Hack-Nots—Cyber Saturday appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/what-separates-the-hacks-and-the-hack-nots-cyber-saturday/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-separates-the-hacks-and-the-hack-nots-cyber-saturday from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186588548852

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velmaemyers88 · 5 years

Text

What Separates the Hacks and the Hack-Nots—Cyber Saturday

Consider NotPetya. The devastatingly global computer-wiping attack, which Russia released on the world in 2017, caused billions of dollars of damage to corporations such as FedEx, Maersk, and Merck.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Robert Hackett | @rhhackett | [email protected]

THREATS

Share today’s Cyber Saturday with a friend: http://fortune.com/newsletter/cybersaturday/

Looking for previous Data Sheets? Click here

ACCESS GRANTED

FORTUNE RECON

FaceApp’s Russia Link Is the Latest Alarm in an Ongoing Digital Red Scare by Alyssa Newcomb

Fighting Deepfakes Gets Real by Bernhard Warner

160 Million Government Records Exposed in Data Breaches Since 2014, Study Finds by Natasha Bach

The FBI Is Still So White by Ellen McGirt

Senate Confirms Army Veteran Mark Esper as Secretary of Defense by Robert Burns

Financial Data Privacy? Consumers ‘Could Care Less’ by Jen Wieczner

Brexit is Jeopardizing the U.K.’s Cybersecurity—And Fueling the Rise of the “Splinternet” by Jeremy Kahn

Apple Card: Are the Limited Rewards Worth It for the Privacy? by Xavier Harding

ONE MORE THING

Credit: Source link

The post What Separates the Hacks and the Hack-Nots—Cyber Saturday appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

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weeklyreviewer · 5 years

Text

What Separates the Hacks and the Hack-Nots—Cyber Saturday

Consider NotPetya. The devastatingly global computer-wiping attack, which Russia released on the world in 2017, caused billions of dollars of damage to corporations such as FedEx, Maersk, and Merck.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Robert Hackett | @rhhackett | [email protected]

THREATS

Share today’s Cyber Saturday with a friend: http://fortune.com/newsletter/cybersaturday/

Looking for previous Data Sheets? Click here

ACCESS GRANTED

FORTUNE RECON

FaceApp’s Russia Link Is the Latest Alarm in an Ongoing Digital Red Scare by Alyssa Newcomb

Fighting Deepfakes Gets Real by Bernhard Warner

160 Million Government Records Exposed in Data Breaches Since 2014, Study Finds by Natasha Bach

The FBI Is Still So White by Ellen McGirt

Senate Confirms Army Veteran Mark Esper as Secretary of Defense by Robert Burns

Financial Data Privacy? Consumers ‘Could Care Less’ by Jen Wieczner

Brexit is Jeopardizing the U.K.’s Cybersecurity—And Fueling the Rise of the “Splinternet” by Jeremy Kahn

Apple Card: Are the Limited Rewards Worth It for the Privacy? by Xavier Harding

ONE MORE THING

Credit: Source link

The post What Separates the Hacks and the Hack-Nots—Cyber Saturday appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

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flauntpage · 7 years

Text

Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.)

Three stars of comedy

The third star: This Predators fan—We'll get to the whole P.K. Subban dancing controversy in a bit, but let's just say that Nashville fans get it.

— Preds Warmup Signs (@PredsSigns) April 30, 2017

In related news, the Rangers can do stuff like this in the warmup and apparently nobody cares.

The second star: Chris Pratt—OK, technically, this is from three years ago. But Pratt just reposted it on Twitter recently, and it was the first time I'd ever seen it, so we're grandfathering it in.

Sudden Death really is just about the greatest movie ever made. We broke down the mascot fight in the YouTube section four years back, but that's not really enough. We should probably do another scene from that movie some time soon. Hmmm...

The first star: Taylor Hall—Apparently he listens to the podcast.

Officially adding

— Taylor Hall (@hallsy09) April 30, 2017

My favorite part of that joke is that it's still only the second funniest lottery-related tweet of Hall's career, trailing this one from two years ago.

Outrage of the week

We're three weeks into the playoffs, and you know what that means. We've reached outrage overflow mode, that inevitable point in the postseason where everyone is on edge and there's so much happening that our capacity to rationally discuss anything just disappears completely. We're going to have to break out the lightning round this week.

The issue: Sidney Crosby has another concussion after an ugly collision with Matt Niskanen, one that was helped along by a nasty Alexander Ovechkin slash.

The outrage: The play was dirty!

Is it justified: Seeing Crosby down and out like that was awful, just about the worst-case scenario for any hockey fan. It doesn't matter who you cheer for—hell, even if you're a Capitals fan—you don't want to see the league's most important player out with another head injury.

That said, the play itself was anything but black-and-white. I'm pretty sure I've watched it hundreds of times so far, and I'm still not sure if it was dirty. I didn't like the Ovechkin slash, which should have been at least two minutes. But Penguins fans just finished spending the last few weeks telling us that a hard slash on a puck-carrier is a hockey play, so that outrage only goes so far. The Niskanen half was the tough one, and I still see a player realizing that a falling opponent is about to crash into him and putting his hands up to protect himself.

Not everyone agrees. Maybe Niskanen really did sense an opportunity to target Crosby's head. But I'm still not sure, and I lean towards it ultimately being careless and maybe even reckless, but not dirty.

The issue: The Department of Player Safety didn't suspend Niskanen, or even hold a hearing.

The outrage: The DoPS never suspends anyone during the playoffs!

Is it justified: We've been over this before. If you want tougher sentences during the playoffs, have the GMs and owner instruct the DoPS to call it that way. But based on the standards that have been established over the years, it's no surprise that Niskanen didn't get anything beyond the game he'd already missed as a result of being ejected. It would have been unusual if he had.

The issue: Pittsburgh reporter Rob Rossi challenged Washington coach Barry Trotz about the play, wrote a column accusing the Capitals of intentionally targeting Crosby, and then made the media rounds to push the theory.

The outrage: That take is nuts. Let's spend the next two days talking about it!

Is it justified: The accusation about Capitals players planning Crosby's demise was out of bounds, especially in a post-Todd Bertuzzi league. He was widely criticized and mocked, and rightly so. Rossi's done some good work over the years, but there's no defending that take.

That said, as Elliotte Friedman pointed out this week, this seems to be the direction that a lot of sports journalism is headed. Lots of people wrote measured, thoughtful takes on the Crosby injury. If you ended up talking about Rossi instead, well, that tells you all you need to know. Attention is the currency of today's media, and now more than ever, you get what you pay for.

The issue: Nick Bonino drew a crucial penalty on Wednesday by embellishing a high-stick from T.J. Oshie.

The outrage: Hockey fans hate this stuff.

Is it justified: Sure, but the problem is that this is how the game works now, diving and embellishment works. There's a good chance you get the call. Every now and then, you'll get called for faking, but most of the time the ref will still take the other guy too. Unless you're completely obvious, they'll almost never take just the diver. Lots of players do this stuff, Oshie included.

Could the league fix it? Not totally, although encouraging refs to just take one guy more often would help. So suggest cranking up the post-game fines—drop five figures on someone who pulls a Bonino and at least a few guys might think twice. But you can never get rid of this stuff entirely, short of making everything open to review. And it's hard to think anyone wants even more reviews.

The issue: There aren't enough bathrooms in the new Edmonton arena and now their media want everyone to start peeing in the sinks.

The outrage: That's... wait, what?

Is it justified: Yeah, I don't get this one either. Let's just keep moving.

The issue: Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs says he doesn't think the NHL will go to the Olympics because it's not worth the effort for "the four people that watch it".

The outrage: The NHL really does hate its fans.

Is it justified: I'm sure the league's key television partner was thrilled to hear Jacobs trash-talking the viewership potential of an event it pays billions to broadcast. Just a thought, but the NHL might want to ease up on side-eying anyone else's ratings. But it was certainly interesting to see an owner as influential as Jacobs say "I don't think it's going to happen" about something we've already been told definitely won't happen. Gosh, it's almost as if the league is still posturing here.

The issue: P.K. Subban danced during a warmup and Mike Milbury called him a clown.

The outrage: Nobody likes Mike Milbury.

Is it justified: The clown take was terrible and pretty much everyone knows it, including Milbury, who backed off the comments fairly quickly. The NHL needs a lot of things, but more lectures from the fun police isn't on the list. Here's hoping Subban dances all the way to the Stanley Cup final.

The issue: This is too much outrage.

The outrage: Seriously, we're all exhausted.

Is it justified: Pace yourself, we still have five weeks of this stuff to go.

Obscure former player of the week

Earlier this week, Ottawa's Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored four goals in a game, becoming only the 12th player to do so in the last 30 years. So who's the most obscure player in that group? Well... it's probably Pageau, to be honest. But it seems a little early to hand him those honors, so let's go with Tony Hrkac.

Hrkac was taken in the second round of the 1984 entry draft when the Blues decided to show up for a change. He made his NHL debut in 1987, and played part of three seasons with St. Louis before being traded to the Nordiques. That would be the first of many moves over the course of his career; he'd go on to be traded six times, sign five free agent deals, get claimed on waivers once and be picked in the 1998 expansion draft.

All in all, he played for nine NHL teams over his career, despite spending several years in the IHL in the mid-90s. He appeared in his last NHL game for the Thrashers in 2003, although he continued playing off and on in the minors until 2010.

There are two things most fans of the era remember about Tony Hrkac. First, his last name was pronounced "hur-kuss", so everyone called him "the Hrkac Circus". And more importantly, he had one of the best playoff games ever as a rookie in 1988. That night, in game five of their first-round series, Hrkac lit up Chicago's Darren Pang for four goals including a short-handed winner in a 6-5 Blues win.

Hrkac's four-goal playoff game was the first that the NHL had seen in almost 24... hours. Buffalo's John Tucker had done it the night before against Boston. But the feat wouldn't be matched again for 12 whole days, when Mark Johnson pulled it off against the Capitals. What can I tell you, the late-80s were fun.

Be It Resolved

Saturday's draft lottery resulted in three longshots moving into the top three picks, including the Flyers, who had the 13th worst record but will pick second. Meanwhile, terrible teams like the Avalanche and Canucks and the expansion Golden Knights all dropped way down.

Is that fair? Not really. The lottery is kind of a mess. But if that's news to you, then you haven't been paying attention over the years. And you can't start complaining now just because your team was the one that got screwed.

First things first: We shouldn't even have a lottery. There's a far better system for determining draft order while still weighting everything in favor of the worst teams. It's called the Gold Plan, I've written about it a ton, and you're probably sick of me mentioning it. But it's roughly a million times fairer than random ping pong ball drawings, and a lot more exciting to boot. If you're not already on board, now's a good time to join us.

But let's assume that the league wants to keep a lottery system. After all, this is the NHL, the league where everything is fine and nothing should ever change. If you want to keep the ping pong balls and the weighted odds, then sometimes, the longshots will win. That's a feature, not a bug.

This whole thing is classic NHL. Design a system that we all know could result in a specific scenario; appear to be totally fine with that possibility; wait until that scenario inevitably plays out; then demand the system be changed because the thing you always knew might happen finally did.

We already did it with the Connor McDavid lottery a few years ago, when the Oilers won for a third time and everyone complained even though we knew Edmonton had decent odds going in. We did it with the skate-in-the-crease rule that everyone insisted was just fine right up until it showed up on a Cup-winning goal, at which point it was immediately scrapped. We're doing it right now with the offside review and puck-over-glass, badly implemented rules that won't be changed until they cost some team a playoff series. Which they absolutely will. We just need to wait long enough.

Should teams like the Avalanche have better odds? Maybe. Should teams like the Flyers have any odds at all? Maybe not. But these were all questions to be asking before Saturday's drawing. If you didn't have a problem with the system then but do now, you're either being disingenuous or you don't understand how probabilities work.

Either way, it would be nice for this league and its fans to want to solve a problem in advance for once, instead of slipping into knee-jerk reaction mode whenever the inevitable happens.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

So the Washington Capitals are peppering the Penguins with shots, but can't score because Marc-Andre Fleury is playing like some sort of mid-90s action hero. You know what other Penguins' goalie played like a mid-90s action hero?

Oh hell yeah.

If you're not familiar with Sudden Death, you should a.) acknowledge that you have fundamentally failed as a person somewhere along the line and b.) head over to this excellent SB Nation tribute. But if you need the short version: The Blackhawks and Penguins are facing each other in game seven of the Stanley Cup final, terrorists are trying to blow up the arena, and Jean Claude Van Damme is here to karate fight everyone in the building.

At this point, we're well into the move. We've already seen Luc Robitaille swear and Van Damme use a supersoaker full of lighter fluid to end a dude, but have not yet seen a helicopter crash at center ice.

Also, Van Damme has already killed the Penguins' mascot with a dishwasher. Have I mentioned this is the greatest movie ever made? It totally is.

So at this point, we're late in the game and the Blackhawks are leading. Even worse, Penguins' starting goalie Brad Tolliver has left the game with the flu. Fun fact: Tolliver was played by former Penguin Jay Caufield, even though Caufield wasn't a goalie. I'm starting to think this movie might not be very realistic, you guys.

Van Damme has stolen Tolliver's uniform because of reasons, and he returns to the game. Well, he returns to the bench, where he sits in the middle of all the players, the way goalies do. His coach comes over and orders his unhealthy player back onto the ice, because this was 1995.

By the way, the two announcers are the Penguins' real life duo of Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald. I love that Mike "Scratch My Back With a Hacksaw" Lange has his own IMDB page.

Brad Tolliver wasn't a real player. But as we hear from the arena announcer, the guy he's replacing is: It's Ken Wregget, playing himself. This game is going to end with the arena getting blown up by a helicopter, making it the second biggest hockey-related disaster Wregget has ever been a part of, behind the 1984-85 Maple Leafs.

"I don't know what he did back in the locker room." Uh, he has the flu, guys. I'm pretty sure we can narrow it down to a couple of options.

We get an extended sequence of Van Damme trying to figure out where to look and how to stand while praying the puck won't come near him, aka "the Brian Elliott". He eventually responds to a breakaway by charging out and flipping his opponent into the air, which is completely ridiculous because only a psychopath would ever do that.

"He hit his head on the ice... he hit it so hard his kids will be born dizzy." In the modern remake, this is the point where the concussion spotters will call down and the movie will end.

Tony Amonte gets his second breakaway of the shift because apparently the Penguins are being coached by Jared Bednar. Still woozy from his brain injury, Van Damme drops down and makes a highlight reel glove save. In what stands as easily the worst part of the movie, his Penguins teammates celebrate by raising their sticks in the air like they just scored. This is so stupid that I'm amazed The Love Guru didn't think of it.

This is the point where our clip ends, but it's not the end of Van Damme's goaltending adventures. He realizes that he can't save the world if he's stuck on the ice, so he does the only reasonable thing: Grabs a random Blackhawks player and sucker punches him to start a line brawl. Because the script writers have never actually seen playoff hockey, this results in the referees actually giving him a penalty, getting him out of the game and back into the terrorist-murdering business.

Sudden Death came out in December 1995, because the world had been good and deserved a Christmas present. It made several billion of dollars and won every Academy Award, but ushered in the Dead Puck Era of the NHL because the league's goalies now had access to Jean Claude Van Damme game film while coaches started focusing on defending the neutral zone in case a helicopter crashed there.

There have been 20 Stanley Cup finals since this movie came out, and the Blackhawks and Penguins have combined to win 25% of them. You do the math.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected].

Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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newstfionline · 7 years

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He robbed banks and went to prison. His time there put him on track for a new job: Georgetown law professor.

By Susan Svrluga, Washington Post, April 21, 2017

During a break in a basketball game to raise money for charity, Shon Hopwood told some of his Georgetown law students it felt different than the last time he was on a court: When he played basketball in federal prison, he had to carry a shank in case his team started to lose.

Hopwood’s new job as a tenure-track faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center is only the latest improbable twist in a remarkable life: In the last 20 years, he has robbed banks in small towns in Nebraska, spent 11 years in federal prison, written a legal petition for a fellow inmate so incisive that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, done that again, earned undergraduate and law degrees and extremely competitive clerkships, written a book, married his hometown crush and started a family.

But this could be his most compelling role yet. His time in prison gave him an unusual perspective on the law that allows him to see things other lawyers overlook, and a searing understanding of the impact of sentencing and the dramatic growth in incarceration in the United States.

“It’s one of the big social-justice issues of our time,” he said. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. “Between prison, jail, home confinement, probation, parole, combined it’s about 10 million people. It’s a big number.” And almost three-quarters of released prisoners are back in custody five years later. He hopes to change some of that.

“The story’s still writing itself,” he said in his office recently, marveling while students hurried to class outside. “I feel like I’m living someone else’s life quite often these days.”

Shon Hopwood’s life didn’t start out as remarkable. It began with a happy childhood in a town of 2,500 people in Nebraska. His dad managed a cattle feed yard, and his parents helped found a church. He was friendly and well-liked, uninterested in school, and best known for his skill on the basketball court.

An athletic scholarship to college ended when he got kicked out for not going to class. After two years in the U.S. Navy, he drifted back to Nebraska, depressed, drinking, doing some drugs, living in his parents’ basement and working 12-hour shifts on a cattle farm, shoveling manure.

One night his best friend turned to him in a bar and suggested that they rob a bank.

In August 1997, Hopwood walked into a bank, sweating, heart racing, dropped a metal toolbox to the floor with a bang and pulled a rifle from his coveralls. With the terrified customers and tellers locked into a vault, he sped away with $50,000 of other people’s money and his friend, who knew every bit as well as he did that what they had done was horribly wrong.

His friend suggested sending the money back, with a note. Instead, Hopwood went on to rob four more banks.

At his sentencing, 30 family members stood behind him, most of them crying. He was 23 years old. Judge Richard Kopf thought he was a punk. He had not forgotten Nebraska’s history of violent bank robberies. When Hopwood told him he was going to turn his life around, Kopf said something disdainful like: I guess we’ll see in about 13 years.

His first morning in federal prison, Hopwood got up early to work out and watched as two inmates yanked another one from a pullup bar, knocked him to the ground and stomped on the man with steel-toe boots leaving bits of teeth in pools of blood.

Working in the prison law library sounded like a good idea.

At first, he just checked books out. But in the summer of 2000, a Supreme Court decision caught inmates’ attention: Essentially, Hopwood explained, “things that can increase your sentence need to be proven to a jury, or you need to plead guilty to them.” He had been sentenced based on guidelines for armed robbery, even though he had pleaded guilty to unarmed robbery. A technicality, maybe, but he began dreaming of getting out early. Among all the other reasons to leave, he had begun a friendship, by mail, with a girl from back home.

After two months of research, he mailed off a brief and quickly got a response: He had filed it to the wrong court.

And when he redirected his appeal, Kopf denied it; the new decision did not apply retroactively in his case.

Still, something had clicked. Trying to figure out a solution to the legal puzzle was the first academic thing Hopwood had ever enjoyed. And it came easy. Soon he was sending memos to other inmates’ lawyers, suggesting strategies. Then he was writing briefs.

He was finding errors, often from overworked public defenders, like a young man sentenced to 16-and-a-half years for possessing less than a handful of crack cocaine because he had mistakenly been labeled a career offender. With Hopwood’s help, his sentence was reduced by more than 10 years.

The third brief he ever wrote was for a friend whose appeal had been denied. Hopwood spent months learning about the Supreme Court and habeas petitions, and one night he realized how he could frame an argument using the Sixth Amendment rather than the Fifth. After many drafts, honed by conversations with fellow inmates that forced him to distill the legal issues into simple, compelling logic, he typed out a petition for certiorari and mailed it off.

Months later, he was working out early one morning when a prisoner came running toward him, screaming that Hopwood was going to die. He tensed for a fight; he had recently survived a situation in which he fully expected to be stabbed to death by gang members.

But the man was holding a newspaper, with the story of the Supreme Court accepting a petition from a federal prisoner.

The odds of that happening are maybe 1 in 10,000, said Seth Waxman, the former solicitor general of the United States who agreed to argue the case for free. He read the petition with amazement. “It was incredibly good. It really identified, in sort of a crystalline form, the questions presented. It explained the conflict, it explained the importance.”

He immediately wanted to talk to the bank robber who could write such a thing, and thus began a friendship that would help change the trajectory of Hopwood’s life.

Now Hopwood was spending his time doing things such as reading a 1,650-page textbook on criminal procedure. Twice. He was taking college classes, and paralegal studies. And with new sentencing guidelines, he was busy churning out work for other inmates, taking on 10 or more cases at a time. “I was running a law firm in prison,” he said lightly. Because he was now convinced that sentences beyond about five years didn’t make sense for any but the most dangerous criminals, because he was upset by the disparities in sentences, because he saw prison more often hardening people or cutting off their chances for reform than turning their lives around, he enjoyed seeing people packing for home. He had another petition granted by the Supreme Court.

When he walked out of prison in October 2008, he was 33 and overwhelmed with anxiety about rebuilding his life. He knew no one was clamoring to hire felons. He wanted to get married and go to college, and he had no money. He was working at a carwash when he had another moment of grace: A family-run legal printing business in Omaha agreed, after getting some reassurance from Waxman, to hire him to help with their Supreme Court briefs. “If that doesn’t happen, none of this does,” he said.

A story in the New York Times unleashed a flood of invitations to speak, and a book deal. Still it was difficult, given his résumé, to get into law school. But the University of Washington granted him a full scholarship that made it possible--even with a little boy at home, and a girl born on the first day of law school--to attend.

He startled his former probation officer in the elevator of the courthouse one morning two months after his supervised release ended. He was not there for his mandatory check-in this time. He was arriving for work, clerking for a federal judge.

As he was studying 12 hours a day, he was wondering: Would he be granted a law license at the end of all this, or would they reject him because of his criminal record? The hearing was long, but in the end, the vote was unanimous. And in April 2015, after he passed the bar exam, he was sworn in as a lawyer by the D.C. Circuit judge who had chosen him for a prestigious clerkship.

He joined Georgetown on a teaching fellowship about a year and a half ago, working with students on cases in the appellate clinic. He sees issues others don’t, strategies that others don’t, said Steven Goldblatt, director of appellate litigation.

“He understands the problems of incarceration in a way that somebody who just studies them as an academic is not able to get,” said William Treanor, the law school’s dean.

Many colleagues were struck by his academic writing, Goldblatt said. Hopwood wrote about the rule of lenity, which he described as designed to protect citizens from getting caught in vague laws, and argued it must be revitalized to push Congress to write with more precision when drafting laws that take away liberty.

It’s not a theoretical issue, Goldblatt said. It’s fundamental. “It symbolizes what Shon is all about,” he said. “Why wasn’t there more written about it? Damned if I know.”

The surreal moments continue. Recently Hopwood helped his former criminal defense attorney practice a case to be argued in front of the Supreme Court. He also spoke on an academic panel with Kopf, the judge who sentenced him. It was an emotional meeting for both. Kopf gave Hopwood a gift that had great meaning for him, a leather briefcase Kopf had received from a former prisoner whom he had defended. It was a recognition, Kopf said, that he and Hopwood were both trying to emulate justice.

“I don’t know if it was atonement as much as it was, ‘Carry on--keep doing what you’re doing,’” Kopf said, thinking out loud. “I would do anything for Shon.”

Hopwood is still, at 41, haunted by guilt and regret for his crimes. But he is an optimist by nature, and he has accepted that he can only change the future. Now his primary goal is to help people, whether by serving as a reminder that you can turn your life around, by giving students an understanding of the real impact of the law, or, he hopes, by influencing the criminal justice system.

So while he kept the letter from a law firm offering him $400,000 a year, it was just as a curiosity. The money would be nice, but influence is what he wants. The Capitol dome is literally in view from campus, and most days he walks right past the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ headquarters.

Even now, preparing to start a new position at Georgetown on July 1 as an associate professor of law, with a young family, and all the gratitude he has for the friends along the way, he doesn’t feel like he’s made it.

“I’ll feel that way when the federal government passes a bill that gets rid of federal mandatory sentences,” he said. “That will be the moment for me.”

#Shon Hopwood #ex-con law professor

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justincharlacher · 8 years

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My Favorite Stuff of 2016

I was asked today if I had any favorite records of 2016, and after some consideration, the answer is no. I just didn’t listen to much music this year, and I’m actually relying on the year end lists of others to rectify that. I did watch a bunch of stuff and listen to a bunch of podcasts this year, so here is a list of stuff that moved me in those media, as well as two live music events that rocked me to bits in 2016.

Live music

The Local H reunion with original drummer Joe Daniels for a tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of their second record, As Good As Dead, kicked off in Chicago at the Metro on the anniversary weekend, April 15 and 16. I was there, and it was huge for me. Folks who know me know that Local H has been the band I’ve most consistently followed ever since seeing them touring for AGAD opening for Stone Temple Pilots in Philadelphia in November of 1996. So to be in their hometown for two sold out shows with Joe behind the kit for a set comprised of the entire AGAD record was amazing. It was made only better by the fact that current drummer Ryan Harding and singer/guitar/bass lunatic Scott Lucas kicked off the proceedings with a blistering set, and Lucas was then flanked by both drummers beating the ever-loving fuck out of a pair of quivering drum kits for a finale heavy on tunes from my favorite H record, 1998′s Pack Up the Cats. I would catch up with the tour a few weeks later in DC and Philly, a night that ended with a cheesesteak outing with the band and began with the fellas even tighter and more comfortable playing together. These dates were the highlights of my crappy 2016.

Nearly as awesome was seeing New Oreans sludge weirdos eyehategod in a tiny club in New York City in the fall. I’ve certainly seen EHG in tiny clubs before, but on this tour Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe was filling in for the ailing Mike Williams, and he was insane. I haven’t been into LoG for many years, and they long ago grew out of playing clubs, but this was a reminder of why I loved them so much. Blythe was a force of nature, a wild animal unleashed on a stage to a small room 2/3 full. Dude is the truth. Williams had a successful liver transplant at the end of the year, so hopefully he’ll back out croaking his unearthly vocals for the band soon enough, but catching the Blythe version was a real treat.

Podcasts

Extra Hot Great remains my favorite podcast. The crew who brought you Television Without Pity and Fametracker brave tech issues and thousands of miles of distance to bring discussion of television and ridiculous games. David T. Cole, Sarah D. Bunting, and Tara Ariano are the best thing I pipe into my earholes every week.

Slate’s Panoply network has expanded to include a wealth of great content, but I still gravitate to the OG lineup of The Culture Gabfest, Hang Up and Listen, and The Political Gabfest, which I turn on as soon as I wake up on Friday mornings. Each of these has three hosts with unique points of view and awesome chemistry, though they aren’t afraid to disagree.

The Read is Kid Fury and Crissle. Angry. Black. Queer. Put on your helmet!

The Film Pigs have the only podcast about movies on the internet, and certainly the only one that Chuck D. composed theme music for. Just ask them.

The Cracked Podcast often retreads ground covered in the articles on the site, but it’s worth it to hear Jason Pargin aka David Wong talk about anything. Dude is smart, thoughtful, and the kind of voice that needs exposure behind a humor site.

We Hate Movies. Start with the Boondock Saints II episode. You’ll thank me.

Television

Fleabag (Amazon Prime): This show you guys! Six episodes. Three hours. I dare you not to do it in one go. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a revelation as the eponymous hero with a foul mouth and the need to nervously chat with the audience throughout her adventures. To say too much would be doing disservice to the fantastic narrative that Waller-Bridge, who also created and wrote the show, has constructed. Just brace yourself for a wallop of an ending--and the urge to start over again as soon as you’ve finished. This was my favorite tv thing in 2016.

Catastrophe (Amazon Prime): Season two. Rob and Sharon are parents. What could go wrong?

Banshee (Cinemax): This show aired its fourth and final season in 2016, though I only caught up with the first three seasons earlier in the year. It’s the show for folks (like me) who love the kind of R-rated, big dumb action pictures that Hollywood doesn’t make anymore. An unnamed thief gets out of prison after 15 years and hauls ass to small town Pennsylvania to meet up with the woman he left behind. By chance, he witnesses the death of the town’s new sheriff, and using quick thinking and a hacker best friend dressed in drag, assumes the sheriff’s identity. As sheriff Nate Hood, our hero fights crime and corruption, and an apostate Amish kingpin. The action is filmed spectacularly, the violence would make Kurt Sutter blush, and it’s Cinemax, so you know the sex is sultry and plentiful. This show is an underrated gem.

Rectify (Sundance Network): Like Banshee, this one wrapped a four season run in 2016, and I had only just caught up with it. The tale of Daniel Holden, a man sentenced to death at 18 and released nearly twenty years later on a technicality (the show is cagey about his guilt), this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen on television, full stop. With standout supporting performances from Abigail Spencer and Clayne Crawford so powerful that I followed the actors to lesser network dramas, this show creates a portrait of people just trying to work through an emotional bomb that as been dropped as the shattered son, brother, friend, and step-brother they thought they’d never see again walks among them. Powerful stuff from Ray McKinnon, who I still think of as Reverend Smith on Deadwood.

Better Call Saul (AMC): Season two finds Jimmy with the opportunity to settle in as a legit lawyer and partner to Kim. Watching him willfully blow it is agony.

Search Party (TBS): So yeah...TBS is making quality dramedies now. Alia Shawkat leads a group of painfully self-involved friends as they search for a missing girl who they sort of maybe knew in college. Being lost in life is the real thematic game here, and the show finds a fresh way to engage this age-old trope.

Bojack Horseman (Netflix): I’m not sure that there has been a show as depressing as this one. Bojack Horseman wraps the self destructive tendencies of Walter White, Don Draper, and James McGill together and multiplies them. It’s made worse because he also really feels things, kind of. The third season dropped on Netflix in 2016, but you have to start from the beginning and give the show some time to hook you. It’s well worth it.

The People V. O.J. Simpson (FX): Never in a million years did I think I would even like this, but boy howdy... I loved it. Sarah Paulson is jaw-dropping in bringing Marcia Clark to life and her chemistry with Sterling K. Brown’s Christopher Darden is scorching. Whether or not Darden and Clark hooked up in real life, I can’t imagine many folks who didn’t want these two characters to just get busy already. Courtney B. Vance crushed the role of Johnnie Cochran. And what in God’s name was Travolta doing?! I hate Ryan Murphy products. I loved this show!

Finally, I’m going to toss out a group of good but not great shows that also watched intently in 2016. The Girlfriend Experience on STARZ expands on Soderbergh’s film with a real actress this time (though I think Sasha Grey did what was asked of her in the film). Quarry on Cinemax tells the story of a man who returns to Memphis after two tours in Vietnam and finds himself drawn into a mysterious underworld as an assassin. Lethal Weapon on FOX is far better than it has any right to be, and casts Rectify’s brilliant Clayne Crawford as Riggs to Damon Wayans’s Murtaugh. And Timeless on NBC tells the story of a hijacked time machine and the ragtag crew sent to chase it through American history. Abigail Spencer shows up in this one, so score another extension of Rectify. None of these shows is going to compete with greats like Rectify or Breaking Bad or The Wire, but even in a crowded tv market, I think they are worth a look. They are solid.

Movies

This is a short one as I saw very few new movies in 2016.

Green Room: Jeremy Saulnier brings the hurt with this tale of a hardcore band touring the Pacific northwest who get caught up with group of violent skinheads after a gig. Practical gore. Psychological horror. Patrick Stewart bringing soft-spoken menace as the cool leader of the neo-Nazi group. Also, one of Anton Yelchin’s final performances before his tragic death. This one had me watching through my fingers in the theater.

Brand: A Second Coming: This documentary chronicling the ups and downs of Russell Brand was probably the most thought-provoking film I saw all year. Directed by Ondi Timoner, who has made a career of examining male hubris, this film depicts a man who seems to truly mean well but simply cannot get out of his own way. I found it to be a very powerful character study.

The Nice Guys: I’m in the bag for Shane Black. He still makes the big dumb action pictures. I even liked Russell Crowe in this one.

The Conjuring 2: Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are terrific. These films are legit scary. James Wan expertly uses his camera for maximum tension.

Blue Jay: Sarah Paulson again. I love her. And I’ve also become very fond of Mark Duplass the actor. I’ve mentioned this film before. A lovely two-hander about what could have (and maybe should have) been.

So that’s it. On to 2017! Thanks for reading.

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