Cross Country
Juvenile Justice Troubles in Texas
The Texas Youth Commission states that its mission is to "fix broken children." But the agency, which runs the state's juvenile prisons, seemed completely broken itself as police fanned out statewide to investigate numerous claims of sexual abuse. The scandal has centered on a prison in Pyote where a 2005 Texas Rangers probe found that administrators ignored charges that top officials molested male inmates. Allegations have surfaced from other facilities since state legislators and newspapers learned of the Rangers' report last month. Both the head of the TYC's board and its executive director stepped down in the wake of the scandal, but the commission's board has so far refused to resign. Gov. Rick Perry appointed former prosecutor Jay Kimbrough to look into the allegations. "If you are part of this gig, you need to move on or we're going to find you and prosecute you," Kimbrough warned. However, inmates at TYC facilities have filed more than 750 abuse claims since January 2000, and only a handful have led to convictions.
A Procedural Fight to the Death
Dying in Dixie has proved complicated for Allen Holman, whose execution in Raleigh, N.C., was delayed last week when the state failed to find a doctor to supervise it. In February, following a ruling in federal court, the state mandated that a doctor must monitor vital signs to ensure that the condemned is sedated before the lethal drugs are injected. But that conflicts with a January state medical board decision that physicians cannot monitor executions. With no doctors willing to risk their medical licenses by participating in Holman's death, a judge ruled it could not go forward. The impasse makes North Carolina the second state, after California, in which failure to find willing doctors has derailed capital punishment. But North Carolina prison officials are determined, filing a lawsuit last week arguing that executions are not medical procedures and seeking to bar the medical board from disciplining doctors who monitor them. They have an unusual advocate on their side-Holman, who has fired his lawyers and is not contesting his execution.
Cooling the Jets in the Golden State
The F-14 fighter jets were supposed to be junked in the late 1990s, but instead, a Navy official improperly approved them for sale. Eventually, three of the craft found their way to a California museum and another to a firm that supplies military props to Hollywood; that plane was used in the television drama JAG. The birds had been stripped of much of their hardware, but that wasn't enough for federal investigators, who seized the planes; by late last week, military technicians were dismantling them at airports in Chino and Victorville. U.S. officials worry that the jets' spare parts could end up in Iran, which is the only remaining country with an F-14 program. In January, the Pentagon suspended sales of spare parts from retired F-14s. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, is pushing for a bill that would permanently bar such sales. "Parts now find their way," Wyden says, "into all kinds of hands."
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