Murdered Rappers

Since 1987, 70 rappers, also referred to as hip-hop artists, have been murdered. While nationally, about 64 percent of murder cases lead to an arrest, only a handful of perpetrators have been taken into custody in these cases. The vast majority of these homicides remain complete mysteries. Perhaps the principal reason for the low solution rate in rapper killings involves a cultural reluctance to cooperate with the police. Moreover, witnesses, in this gangster culture, are afraid to come forward. 

The Attica Prison Riots

     In the 1970s, the Attica Prison riots drew national attention to horrible prison abuses. The takeover of Attica by inmates allowed the country to learn about cruel practices within prisons such as solitary confinement, where inmates were isolated in a small confined space for weeks or months. Prisoners in some facilities would be placed in a "sweatbox," a casket-sized hole or a box situated where the inmate would be forced to endure extreme heat for days or weeks. Some prisoners were tortured with electric cattle prods as punishment for violations of the prison's rules. Inmates at some facilities would be chained to "hitching posts," their arms fastened above their heads in a painful position where where they'd be forced to stand for hours. The practice, which wasn't declared unconstitutional until 2012, was one of many degrading and dangerous punishments imposed on incarcerated people. Terrible food and living conditions were widespread.

     The death of forty-two people at the end of the Attica standoff exposed the danger of prison abuse and inhumane conditions. The increased attention also led to several Supreme Court rulings that provided basic due process protections for imprisoned people. Wary of potential violence, several states implemented reforms to eliminate the most abusive practices.

Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, 2014

Unequal Law Enforcement

You may not like what I'm saying, but the cops have sort of a code. So long as the rich and powerful don't go overboard, cops give them the slack that people who live in the barrios or Third Ward [Houston] or the trailer parks don't get.

Marc Grossberg, The Best People: A Tale of Trial and Error, 2019

Writing Your Life Story? A Discouraging Word

Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her life and expecting anyone to read it. Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill or Bond--James Bond--you best spend your time finger painting or playing shuffleboard, for no one, with the exception of your mother, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which will end as it began--with a wheeze. 

Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, 2006

Nelson Algren On F. Scott Fitzgerald

The struggle to write with profundity of emotion and at the same time to live like a millionaire so exhausted F. Scott Fitzgerald that he was at last brought down to the point where he could no longer be both a good writer and a decent person.

Nelson Algren (1909-1981) His 1949 novel The Man With the Golden Arm won the National Book Award

The Timothy E. Francis Murder-Suicide Case

     In 2020, 50-year-old Timothy Eugene Francis and his wife Christina Lynn Francis resided in an upscale suburban neighborhood in Waldorf, Maryland, an unincorporated bedroom community of 67,000, 23 miles southeast of Washington, D.C. Mr. Francis was a homicide detective with the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Having followed his father into law enforcement, Mr. Francis had been on the job 20 years.

     Timothy and Christina, the 41-year-old mother of two teenage children from a previous marriage, had been together for six years. They were married in 2017.

     On Friday November 27, 2020, Christina Francis' father was unable to get in touch with his daughter and son-in-law by phone. At six o'clock that evening, he knocked on the door to their house in Waldorf, and when no one answered, entered the dwelling. A few minutes later the father called 911.

     When deputies with the Charles County Sheriff's Office entered the Francis home, they found two bodies identified as Timothy Francis and his wife. They had both been shot to death with a handgun. Based upon the nature of the death scene, the officers concluded that Timothy Francis had been shot by his wife who had turned the gun on herself. 

     On November 26, 2020, the day before she and her husband were found dead in their home, Christina Francis, on her Facebook page, had posted a video of the couple's wedding. She had written: "This day meant everything to me...We had 6 years of experience and memories that should have taken precedence over everything in everything we did got lost in petty shit. My children are my pride and joy."

     As of this writing, investigators have not disclosed a specific motive behind the murder-suicide.

The Waltham Baseball Bat Assailant

     In Waltham, Massachusetts, a city of 62,000 11 miles west of Boston, an unidentified black male between five-foot-six and five-foot-nine, weighing 160 to 190 pounds and wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and a dark hooded coat, used a baseball bat to bludgeon ten men over a period of ten days. The unprovoked assaults, committed in the evening between 5:30 and 8:30, took place from November 10 to November 20, 2020

     Five of the men were struck from behind while walking in downtown Waltham. The other five victims were attacked outside an apartment complex north of the downtown district. The attacker hit David Cameros in the head as he smoked a cigarette outside his apartment. The baseball bat fracture Mr. Cameros' skull. Another victim was attacked nearby while taking out the trash. He was also severely injured and hospitalized.

     As of December 1, 2020, the Waltham Police have not identified the baseball bat wielding man. The best lead they have is a surveillance camera video of the assailant running down the street.

Sadomasochism In The Ancient Church Of Rome

     The submission to discipline as a punishment for various misdemeanors in monasteries and convents, and by members of the Church as an atonement, led, not unnaturally, to priests prescribing flagellation as a penance for those confessing their sins. The penitents were told to strip, and to allow themselves to be beaten. Rarely did anyone, rich or poor, refuse the priest's command.

     The practice was no means restricted to male penitents. Females similarly were ordered to strip themselves and prepare for the discipline.

     As was to be expected, the flogging of female penitents, especially if they were young  and not without charm, led to abuses. The priests were eager and ready to prescribe whipping for the remission of all sins and of every sin, and they were even more eager and even more willing to wield the rod themselves upon the naked bodies of the penitents. So much so was this the case, and so keen were priests of the confessional to use the whip, that again and again was it found necessary for the Church to issue regulations designed to curb these appetites and to provide some sort of safeguard. As early in the history of the Church as the time of Pope Adrian I [Pope 772-795 AD], bishops, priests and deacons were actually forbidden to beat their penitents.

George Ryley Scott, The History of Corporal Punishment, 1968

Getting Out Of Jury Duty

Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people.

George Carlin (1937-2008) comedian 

Words Matter

There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language.

George Orwell (1903-1950)