After Ignoring Complaints for Years, New York City Agrees to Pay $12.5 Million to Department of Corrections Visitors Subjected to Invasive Searches

After years of subjecting jail visitors to invasive searches, New York City has agreed to resolve the matter by coughing up $12.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit.

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A $9 theft has imprisoned a man since 1982, now a journalist is calling out the injustice

A 62-year-old man’s tragic story has gone viral after it was revealed that he had spent most of his adult life in prison for stealing a paltry $9.

On Saturday, journalist Beth Shelburne shared the story of Willie Simmons Jr. on Twitter in a series of tweets after speaking with the Alabama man about his story. To date, her tweets have been retweeted more than 100,000 times.

READ MORE: Report says racial disparity in prisons narrows across U.S.

Shelburne’s viral thread reveals that in 1982, Simmons was convicted of first degree robbery after wrestling a man to the ground to steal his wallet, which only contained $9, and sentenced to life without parole.

THREAD: Today I talked to Willie Simmons, who has spent the last 38 years in prison for stealing $9. He was convicted of 1st degree robbery & sentenced to life without parole in 1982, prosecuted under Alabama's habitual offender law because he had 3 prior convictions. 1/12 pic.twitter.com/s5BNK2Ejyd

— Beth Shelburne (@bshelburne) December 22, 2019

“I was just trying to get me a quick fix,” Simmons said admitting that he was high on drugs at the time of the incident.

He was arrested just a few blocks away.

What Shelburne described next was a tragedy:

“He remembers his trial lasting 25 minutes and his appointed attorney calling no witnesses,” she wrote. “Prosecutors did not offer him a plea deal, even though all of his prior offenses were nonviolent. ‘They kept saying we’ll do our best to keep you off the streets for good,’ he said.”

READ MORE: How the First Step Act helped one Black man go from an incarcerated, former drug dealer to thriving MBA candidate

He remembers his trial lasting 25 minutes and his appointed attorney calling no witnesses. Prosecutors did not offer him a plea deal, even though all of his prior offenses were nonviolent. "They kept saying we'll do our best to keep you off the streets for good," he said. 6/12

— Beth Shelburne (@bshelburne) December 22, 2019

Simmons was prosecuted under Alabama’s controversial habitual offender law because he had three prior convictions, all of which were nonviolent offenses.

“Mr. Simmons is incarcerated at Holman, one of the most violent prisons in the country,” Shelburne wrote. “He is studying for his GED and “tries to stay away from the wild bunch.” He got sober in prison 18 years ago, despite being surrounded by drugs. “I just talked to God about it,” he said.

Mr. Simmons is incarcerated at Holman, one of the most violent prisons in the country. He is studying for his GED and "tries to stay away from the wild bunch." He got sober in prison 18 years ago, despite being surrounded by drugs. "I just talked to God about it," he said. 4/12

— Beth Shelburne (@bshelburne) December 22, 2019

According to her tweets, Shelburne was Simmons’ first visitor since his sister died in 2005 and after filing appeal after appeal, he had been consistently denied. In 2014, lawmakers made it impossible for inmates sentenced to life without parole under the habitual offenders law to appeal their case, but Simmons has hope.

“Yes, I’ve been hoping and praying on it,” he said. “I ain’t giving up.”

Shelburne argues that though Simmons is not innocent, he does not deserve to be thrown away in the prison system without being given a change to redeem himself.

“He has paid for his crimes with his entire adult life, cast away like he wasn’t worth redemption. It sickens me to think about how many other people are warehoused in prison, forgotten,” Shelburne wrote.

Mr. Simmons did not deny his crimes & I am not writing this to argue that he's innocent. He has paid for his crimes with his entire adult life, cast away like he wasn't worth redemption. It sickens me to think about how many other people are warehoused in prison, forgotten. 11/12

— Beth Shelburne (@bshelburne) December 22, 2019

She also called for people to question the prison system and its true intentions to deter crime.

“When tough on crime people say everyone in prison deserves to be there, think of Mr. Simmons,” she continued. “We should be ashamed of laws that categorically throw people away in the name of safety. We should question anyone who supports Alabama’s habitual offender law. It needs to go.”

When tough on crime people say everyone in prison deserves to be there, think of Mr. Simmons. We should be ashamed of laws that categorically throw people away in the name of safety. We should question anyone who supports Alabama's habitual offender law. It needs to go. 12/12

— Beth Shelburne (@bshelburne) December 22, 2019

The post A $9 theft has imprisoned a man since 1982, now a journalist is calling out the injustice appeared first on theGrio.

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Nigerian taken into ICE custody dies after less than a day in apparent suicide

A 56-year-old Nigerian man was found unresponsive in his cell while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Saturday morning and his cause of death is believed to be suicide.

According to the New York Daily News, Anthony Oluseye Akinyemi had been in the custody of ICE at the Worcester County Jail in Snow Hill, Md. In a statement released by ICE, officials claim Akinyemi had been in custody for less than 24 hours after being convicted of sexually assaulting a minor in Baltimore on Friday.

READ MORE: 21 Savage: Young undocumented immigrants should be ‘exempt’

ICE’s statement went on to say that they had initially lodged a detainer against Akinyemi back in July when he was initially arrested. They also claimed that he came to the U.S. in December 2017 on a non immigrant visa, but did not comply with the terms of his admission.

Even though officials would not confirm a cause of death, it was apparently a self-inflicted strangulation. However, they did address concerns over the string of fatalities among individuals in ICE custody.

“ICE is firmly committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody and is undertaking a comprehensive agency-wide review of this incident,” the statement read, “as it does in all such cases. Fatalities in ICE custody, statistically, are exceedingly rare and occur at a fraction of the national average for the U.S. detained population.”

Though Akinyemi was being held in Maryland and had been convicted of a crime, a recent report revealed that the amount of African migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border has drastically increased over the last year. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the amount has more than doubled to 5,800 compared to around 2,700 from 2018.

READ MORE: ‘My soul is tired’: I am young, Black and undocumented in Trump’s America

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) visited African migrants in November and found that many migrants have died because of mistreatment based on their race, and a denial of needed medical services.

“There are record numbers of African immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S. border, particularly as Europe closes its doors to migrants,” the CBC wrote in a statement.

The post Nigerian taken into ICE custody dies after less than a day in apparent suicide appeared first on theGrio.

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Monday's Best Deals: Mario Red Joy-Con Switch Bundle, Anker Charging Accessories, Cole Haan, and More

A Mario Red Joy-Con Nintendo Switch Bundle, an Anker sale, and a Cole Haan sale lead off Monday’s best deals from around the web.

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The U.S.D.A. Takes Wakanda Off of the Free Trade Agreement Partners List

Having Donald Trump as a president, we are used to seeing things never done before, but listing Wakanda as a Free Trade Agreement Partner? Well, that’s another first for this presidency. According to The Grio, the United States Department of Agriculture, which initially listed the fictional country from Marvel’s Black Panther on their free trade agreement partners list, has taken Wakanda off the list.

The USDA claimed they had used Wakanda as a placeholder while testing their system behind the tracker and had inadvertently forgotten to remove the black superhero country. “Over the past few weeks, the Foreign Agricultural Service staff who maintain the Tariff Tracker have been using test files to ensure that the system is running properly,” Mike Illenberg, a USDA spokesman, said in an email to NBC News. “The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”

The mistake was first noticed by Francis Tseng, a fellow at the Jain Family Institute, last week while researching how trade deals can affect food distribution in countries listed as U.S. trade partners. Under the Wakanda listing, the site stated that Wakanda’s exports to the U.S. included horses, sheep, goats, and turkeys. Tseng showed the glaring error on his Twitter account, “Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website??”

“I definitely did a double-take,” he said. “I Googled Wakanda to make sure it was actually fiction, and I wasn’t misremembering. I mean, I couldn’t believe it.” Tseng told NBC News. According to the Internet Archive, Wakanda was listed as a free-trade country with the U.S. sometime after June 10 this year. “I was trying to figure out whether this is someone at the USDA making a joke or if it’s a developer who accidentally left it in, but I’m not sure.”

Wakanda was brought into popularity after the theatrical release of Black Panther in 2018 but has been mentioned as a fictional country as far back as July 1966 when it first appeared in the Marvel comic “Fantastic Four #52.”

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