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News Clips 12-19-2019¶
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| Date | 2019/12/19 09:22 |¶
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Subject: News Clips 12-19-2019¶
Attachments: TEXT.htm¶
Federal Bureau of Prisons loosens limits on Muslim inmates’ prayer¶
Religion News Service¶
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has issued new national guidelines recommending accommodation of group prayer for Muslim prisoners after an inmate’s lawsuit challenging restrictions at a Kentucky prison. The agency has recommended that all federal prisons should accommodate inmates’ requests for Muslim congregational prayer services unless there is a security concern, after the civil rights organization Muslim Advocates appealed a court decision upholding a federal prison’s right to limit such services to three people.¶
New York fraud charges against Paul Manafort, ex-Trump campaign chairman, dismissed by judge CBS News¶
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-fraud-charges-against-paul-manafort-ex-trump-campaign-chairman-dismissed-by-judge-2019-12-18/¶
New York Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed state charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort Wednesday on double-jeopardy grounds. Manafort had been scheduled to appear in criminal court Wednesday on charges of mortgage fraud and other financial crimes filed in New York state court by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.¶
Jail video surveillance from Jeffrey Epstein’s first suicide attempt in July is missing, prosecutor says¶
CNBC¶
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/18/jeffrey-epsteins-first-suicide-attempt-video-is-missing.html Video surveillance footage of the jailhouse area outside of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s cell from the time of his first reported suicide effort in July is now missing, a lawyer for Epstein’s former cellmate said Wednesday night.¶
Behind the razor wire: A look at the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute WIRO¶
https://wibqam.com/news/articles/2019/dec/18/behind-the-razor-wire-a-look-at-the-us-penitentiary-interre-haute/967786/¶
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — The U.S. Penitentiary has been part of Terre Haute’s landscape since 1940.¶
It’s much larger than it was 80 years ago, and is now the only federal prison were executions take place. Former prison guard, Kevin Beaver described death row as “a very choreographed area.”¶
Bernie Ebbers, WorldCom Chief Jailed for Fraud, Will Leave Prison Early¶
The New York Times¶
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/business/bernard-ebbers-prison-release.html¶
Bernard J. Ebbers, who was imprisoned in 2006 after his conviction in one of the biggest American frauds of the 20th century, will soon be free after serving a little over half of a 25-year sentence.¶
Mr. Ebbers, also known as Bernie, was sent to federal prison after carrying out an $11 billion accounting fraud as chief executive of the telephone company WorldCom. He was granted a compassionate release by a federal judge in New York, Valerie E. Caproni, a spokesman for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan said on Wednesday. The spokesman did not know when Mr. Ebbers would be freed.¶
“We are grateful for the ruling and hope Bernie gets some peaceful and loving time with his friends and family,” one of his lawyers, Reid H. Weingarten, said in an email.¶
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Mr. Ebbers, now 78, steered WorldCom through a series of acquisitions that took it from a small telephone company in Mississippi to a juggernaut competing with AT&T and other national long-distance carriers. But the company’s apparent success, which drove its stock price to Olympian heights and contributed to a bubble in telecommunications stocks, was a fantasy.¶
Former WorldCom employees said Mr. Ebbers told them to rearrange the company’s expenses to make it look like WorldCom was making far more money than it really was.¶
WorldCom eventually went bankrupt, wiping out billions of dollars in value from the stock market and calling into question the system Wall Street analysts and investment bankers used to evaluate public companies and try to raise money for them. A jury convicted Mr. Ebbers of securities fraud, conspiracy and filing false reports in 2005. His prison sentence, which he began serving in 2006, was among the stiffest handed out to a corporate executive.¶
Mr. Ebbers started out in federal prison in Louisiana but was later transferred to Texas. Over time, his health began to fail, his lawyers said in court filings.¶
Earlier this year, Mr. Ebbers’s lawyers began asking for a reduction in his sentence, citing his frailty. In a court filing in late October, his daughter Joy Ebbers Bourne said her father was “experiencing full-blown dementia.”¶
“In my recent phone calls and visits, he is unable to carry on a conversation,” she wrote.¶
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