I took a break last week and I collected the links readers sent me. I also took as much of a news break as I could.
So in real time I missed the literal rolling out of a red carpet for a homicidal war criminal. I also missed a jury awarding ex-cop Sean MacMaster $58.5 million in his civil rights case against an assistant Michigan attorney general and a MSP lieutenant who pursued sexual assault charges against him. He alleged malicious prosecution and excessive pretrial punishment for his 151 days in mostly solitary confinement in the Oakland County jail.
What a clusterfuck. This week there has been other news in this case concerning Michigan Attorney General’s Office attempted to limit the testimony of a MSP detective in the case. I’m not resubscribing to The Detroit News, so you will have to check it out for yourself.
Just as a comparison, Richard Phillips was wrongfully convicted of a 1971 murder in Wayne County and a 1971 armed robbery in Oakland County. He received a $1.5 million settlement from the state of Michigan for wrongful imprisonment on the murder charge in 2019. In 2023, he filed a separate claim with the state for this wrongful conviction in Oakland County and was awarded $735,088. He spent 45 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted. Forty. Five. Years. But his skin is a different color and he wasn’t an ex-cop.
I will keep an eye on Lavone Hill’s civil rights case as well. He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit last month for his wrongful conviction against the city of Detroit and multiple police officers. The civil action was filed after his October 2024 exoneration, when he was released from prison after serving 22 years for a double murder he did not commit. The complaint alleges that Detroit police officers engaged in misconduct, fabricated evidence, and coerced a false witness statement that led to Hill’s conviction in 2002. Shocking, I know.
Different skin color and suing Detroit Police. We’ll see.
And last week “Pastor Tommy,” age 52, formerly a youth pastor at a Pentecostal church in Maryland, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting at least six teens. Authorities believe there are other victims and are asking them to come forward.
A 55-year-old Michigan man who fled to Florida was returned and sent to prison for sexual assault of minor. The article does not contain a lot of information, but it does report the 58 year prison sentence, which sounds about right for a change.
An Illinois State Police trooper, who is also a youth hockey referee, was arrested last week on federal child pornography charges.
A Utah gymnastics coach was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after admitting to filming minors with a hidden camera.
Here’s a former cop from the U.P. (Norway, Michigan) who will stand trial for allegedly misusing his position to access the personal contact information of women through police databases. It is alleged he then used the information to “flirt and curry favor” with the women, which led to one sexual encounter with a woman while on duty in the police station.
A former Western Michigan exchange student was bound over for trial on multiple sexual assault charges from March 2010. He was extradited from Miami and arraigned last month. The Kalamazoo SAKI (Sexual Assault Kit Initiative) Team is in the process of investigating more than 200 cold-case sexual assaults that occurred in Kalamazoo County between 1976 and 2015. Good. Keep looking over your shoulders, unindicted rapists.
More about the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative:
Today a 28-year-old trainee surgeon was released from custody on bail after he was accused of secretly video recording hundreds of medical colleagues in the restrooms of Australian hospitals. Police allege he recorded intimate images of at least 460 women.
I’ll end with this story from The Daily Mail about a Kentucky judge. Karma’s a bitch, Your Honor:
And in the wake of these arrests and convictions (and even a 58 year prison sentence), society at large seems content to enable the next Jeffrey Epstein and the next Frank Shelden. That’s what happens when the men who use these “playgrounds” run by wealthy freaks are not outed and charged with the crimes they have committed. Demand transparency and equal treatment for these criminals. We should be reading about them in a litany of links.