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Live a Little!
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The Sand Pail
A bucket list for kids.Become a LEGO Champion
Conquer your challengers during Legoland's Ultimate Build Off Competition (Jan. 18), where kids with one hour and piles of bricks vie for the 'Ultimate Builder' title, trophies and Legoland annual passes. florida.legoland.com
Get Pickin'
Ride dragons, send a postcard at the Owl Post and enjoy a sweet butterbeer at Hogs Head Pub, all at Universal Orlando's Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a must-see for local and tourist families alike. universalorlando.com/harrypotter
Go Wild
Alternate between lost and found for an hour or two each fall in the 6-acre corn maze at Long & Scott Farms in Lake County, where thousands of strategically grown corn stalks make locating the elusive escape routes no easy feat. longandscottfarms.com


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I asked this once before direct to tech support and never got a response...I'll try here.
I frequently like to look at campgrounds in Google Earth and/or Google maps. The easiest way to do this is to use the GPS coordinates shown in the campground info. However, I cannot copy and paste text from this area. It just does not conform to normal Windows functions. Am I missing something? Is there a way to select and copy text to my clipboard in RTN that I have not discovered

subset: commoncrawl


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The End Of An Era In Terms Of Styling
The new-for-1959 Sport Fury was a logical outgrowth in Chrysler Corporations vehicle line of the late 1950s. After all, Chrysler/Plymouths new 1957 version of the Fury had been well received by the media and the public. The new model would incorporate the best options, with the top-of–the-line being the convertible coupe.
Fully optioned, a convertible like this one owned by Arnold Poteet of LaFollette, Tennessee, was a pretty serious acquisition. In 1959, it came with a price tag of almost $3,200. Base engine in the car was a poly-head 318 rated at 260 horses, but most buyers who wanted it as a fun driver were moved to option the big 361cid mill, which had a factory horsepower rating of 305. Despite its name, the Sport Fury of this introductory year was no drag strip spcial; it was built to compete with the similar sporty offerings from Ford and GM.
In 1959, Poteet was one of the 17,000 plus buyers to get a new Sport Fury hardtop. While that car has long since disappeared, he decided to go back to the past with this convertible version of the car, of which only 5,990 examples were built.
Originally found in rough shape, the scarce, high mileage body was turned over to Pro Fab Auto in Knoxville, Tennessee, where it was subjected to a complete frame off restoration. The guys at Pro Fab scrounged the nation, securing parts to put the body back into shape before applying its brilliant hue.
The original 361 cid power plant was given to noted Mopar builders Hensley Enterprises in Knoxville. There, Matt Hensley machined the block and prepared it for several more decades of pleasure driving. While the internals are stock in terms of their performance levels, some things were upgraded. Hensleys machine work included an align bore, a fully balanced reciprocating assembly, and completely rebuilt cylinder heads. Where possible, heavy-duty parts like a Cloyes timing chain were used in place of the stock units. An Edelbrock four-barrel carb and the original 1959 air cleaner sit on top of the engine. The rest of the driveline, from the push button automatic to the rear end, was rebuilt to as-original specifications.
The interior features swiveling front seats, a dash-mounted rear-view mirror (to aid visibility when the top is up) and the addition of some aftermarket gauges to monitor the engine. Otherwise, this is just what you got from the factory to go running around with the top down that year.
As one of the final models introduced in the 50s, the 1959 Sport Fury heralded the end of an era in terms of styling. The next ten years would bring about significant changes to Chryslers product line and the automobile market in general. The Sport Fury would change with it, and in some ways lose the personality built into its inaugural year. But thanks to efforts like this one, you can go back again.


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Camera image sensor
Compare Digital Camera Sensor Sizes
With this web app you can compare the relative size and specs of a camera's image sensor to other sensors from various camera manufacturers. First choose a camera model from the list and you will be represented with its sensor technical specifications. You can compare the relaive size of the sensor to other image sensors side by side and in a stack (align to right or cernterlized). This will give you a good visual view of the size differences between one sensor vs others.
What is an Image Sensor?
Image sensor chip connected to electric circuit board An image sensor is an electrical device that converts an light (photons) to electronic signal form. The first digital camera used a charge-coupled device was invented by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Kodak Company. First digital cameras used a charge-coupled device (CCD). Silicon based Image sensors are embedded in many types of devices, including digital cameras, scanners, webcams and mobile phones.
Most of today's digital cameras (ie. Compact, Digital SLR, Medium format) use a two-dimensional Bayer arrangement of RGB color filters on top of a pixel array, with each pixel contains, among others, a photodetector (or photosensor). Each pixel site absorbs filtered light for either Red, Green or Blue colors. Earlier sensors had different patterns like RGBW or CYGM (cyan, yellow, green, magenta). However, some digital cameras utilize different color array (for example, Fujifilm "EXR" color filter array).
larger sensor equals better image quality
In CCD, After the light has been collected by the light-sensitive photodiodes and converted into electrons, the accumulated charge for each pixel is being transported to a serial shift register, capacitor, amplifier and finaly to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that transforms each electric charge (Voltage) for each pixel into a digital value (binary), ready to be written to a storage device. This type of sensor is also referred to as active-pixel sensor (APS) or active-pixel sensor imager.
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There are various types of sensor manufacturing technologies, the most popular ones are CMOS sensors (Complementary Metal Oxide Semi-conductor). CMOS sensors allow for each pixel data to be read individually. Each pixel has several transistors next to it, that actually reduce the light sensitivity of this chip, however CMOS sensors consume less power and are cheaper to make. There is also the Foveon X3 sensor that utilizes 3-layers of photodiodes, each layer responds to different wavelengths of light, resulting in a full-color image without the artifacts that are common in Bayer sensors due to Bayer interpolation algorithms.
Some manufacturers have designed unique sensors that innovative and very different by design. For example, Fujiflm has created the Super CCD sensor that uses octagonal shaped pixels in order to increase resolution. Fujifilm also released its SuperCCD HR and SuperCCD SR sensors that benefit innovative technologies to improve the image dynamic range and resolution.
Camera CMOS sensors have been upgraded and improved a lot over recent years and are widely being used in camcorders, compact cameras, professional DSLR and Medium format cameras. Image sensors are manufactured in various sizes and resolutions (measured in megapixels or MP which represents a number of pixels in millions). In point-and-shoot cameras and mobile phones you can find relatively very small sensors, while in digital SLR and Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens cameras (MILC) you can find large sensors (ie. Full Frame, APS-C, Micro Four Thirds, Four Thirds, etc.).
In recent years we can see a new trend of compact cameras with large sensors (ex. Sony RX100, Canon G1 X). With large sensors you get to have larger pixels (size depends on the technology used, sensor size and number of pixels) which eventually leads to improved light gathering capability (better low light and high ISO performance), higher dynamic range and result in less noise, better color accuracy and image quality.
In recent years, we have seen new sensor design technologies that find themselves in many digital cameras. One of the most popular technologies is back-illuminated sensors or BSI (in contrast to front-illuminated). Those sensors are specifically designed to boost the amount of light captured by the sensor and improve the camera's low-light performance and image quality. Camera image sensors are becoming better and better, and more people are aware of the sensor's importance in providing better image quality with digital cameras.
The size of the sensor does play a lead role in leading to better image quality. Using CameraSizeSensor.com you will be able to compare the size of different camera sensors and view their technical specs as well. We have a long list of digital cameras made by various manufacturers, including Nikon, Canon, Pentax / Ricoh, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, Leica, Fujifilm, Sigma, Casio, Phase One, Mamiya, Hasselblad, Kodak, and others.


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Shun Knives
Shun knives are the blade of choice for chefs who demand the most from their Japanese cutlery. The company is known for its enduring and fine edge, and for producing a knife of exceptional strength. You can find a Shun knife perfect for every task in the kitchen, from slicing tomatoes paper thin to butchering whole sides of beef. There are also Shun cutlery series to fit your style, including blades made with Damascus steel and handles crafted of exquisite wood.


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FORT STEWART, Ga. - An Army soldier confessed that he killed his pregnant wife by persuading her to wear handcuffs during sex and then suffocating her with a plastic bag, a former Army buddy testified before a court-martial Monday.
Prosecutors at Fort Stewart used testimony alleging the confession to open their case against 22-year-old Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, who is charged with murder as well as killing an unborn child. He faces an automatic life sentence if a military judge convicts him in the July 17, 2011, death of Sgt. Deirdre Aguigui.
Capt. Janae Lapir, an Army prosecutor, said in her opening statement Monday that Isaac Aguigui wanted to be free from a rocky marriage and coveted the $500,000 in life insurance and benefit payments he received from the Army after his wife was found dead in their apartment on the southeast Georgia Army post. She called him "a schemer" who tricked his wife into letting him handcuff her.
"Sgt. Aguigui never had a chance to fight back because she never saw it coming," Lapir said.
Civilian prosecutors say Aguigui used the insurance money to buy guns and bomb components for an anti-government militia group he started by recruiting other disgruntled soldiers. Aguigui pleaded guilty in a civilian court last summer to murder charges in the slayings of a former soldier and his girlfriend eight months after his wife died. Civilian prosecutors say he ordered their slayings to protect the group.
Aguigui is already serving a sentence of life without parole at a Georgia prison.
Testimony in pretrial hearings showed the Army was delayed in bringing charges because the military's autopsy failed to identify a cause of death for Deirdre Aguigui. Last year, a Georgia state medical examiner reviewed the case and gave a second opinion, saying she must have been choked or suffocated because every other potential cause could be ruled out. He noted marks on her wrists indicated she struggled violently as her hands were cuffed behind her back.
The defendant's mother, Annette Aguigui, said she spoke by phone with her daughter-in-law the night before she died. The pregnant soldier said she was upset that her husband and his friend Michael Schaefer were making plans to start a security business in another state.
"I did tell her, 'You know Deirdre, it's no longer just you. You have a baby and you have to make decisions for yourself and the baby,'" said Annette Aguigui, who barely looked toward her son and seemed on the verge of tears. "She was crying by the end of the conversation."
Schaefer testified that Aguigui at first told him his wife died from a blood clot. About a month later, after they had been up all night using cocaine, they got into an argument. Schaefer said he asked his friend point-blank what really happened to his wife.
"He told me he had strangled her with a bag," Schaefer said. "He handcuffed her, put a bag over her head and strangled her" while also sexually assaulting her.
Capt. Scott Noto, one of Aguigui's defense attorneys, noted that Schaefer never mentioned a confession during several previous interviews with Army investigators or when he testified at a pre-trial hearing for Aguigui last summer.
Schaefer said he was afraid to speak up until Army prosecutors granted him immunity from prosecution in Deirdre Aguigui's death.
On Dec. 5, 2011, fishermen found the bodies of former Army Pvt. Michael Roark and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York, in the woods of rural Long County near Fort Stewart. Both had been shot in the head.
Investigators arrested Aguigui and three other soldiers - Sgt. Anthony Peden, Pvt. Christopher Salmon and Pfc. Michael Burnett - and charged them in the deaths about a week after the bodies were found. Aguigui pleaded guilty July 19. Salmon and Peden, who prosecutors say fired the killing shots, are still awaiting trial.


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Sheet music downloads have become the preferred method of acquiring classical music repertoire. Created by professional musicians, EveryNote.com presents classical sheet music download of over 20.000 popular and hard-to-find music scores over 1000 composers. A major Internet provider of classical sheet music files download online, EveryNote.com offers the largest and most complete digital sheet music download library on the Web in the world. Instantly download, view and print your favorite classical music score. Everynote.com currently offers thousands of classical music compositions for Piano, Violin, Cello, Flute, Clarinet, Classical Guitar, Voice, Chamber and Choral music.Many more instruments, composers, genres added every day! EveryNote.com has been featured in The New York Times, Globe and Mail, Musical America and many other publications.
Josef Suk
1874 – 1935
An important Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk had his music education at the Prague Conservatory. One of his teachers was Antonin Dvorak. Josef Suk was the founder of the famous Czech Quartet performing all over the world. In 1922, Suk became professor of the Prague Conservatory. Bohuslav Martinu and Rudolf Firkusny were among his students. Suk's early compositions exhibit the influence of Brahms and Dvorak. Suk's later works are written in a more complex style. In 1932, Josef Suk won the Silver Medal at the Olympic Games Art Competition for his composition Into a New Life.
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Highlights of the Week from my Blogroll #10
Beru has said something that I was thinking just the other day - Firelands may have taken the challenge out of an encounter but that doesn't mean that it can take the challenge out for YOU. Set your own challenges. I was thinking of going DPS for Firelands (though my gear level won't let me in - LOL or perhaps my skill level!) or even trying to 1 or 2 heal an encounter just for kicks. Just to make my life interesting. Of course, we haven't done heroics yet (not like Beru who got to heroic Rag in 2 hours) so we are on a different page, but I guess my challenge next will be getting these heroics down.
I like seeing what other people think of tier sets. And I really like how Vid likened it to Heimdall in Thor (since I really liked the movie!). Which reminds me that I should add the Paladin Tier set to my other post so I can make some comments on it. Which will now pale in comparison to anything that Vid has said!


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LONDON (MarketWatch) — The Australian and Canadian dollars, the world's leading commodity-rich currencies, are being formally classified as official reserve assets by the International Monetary Fund, marking the onset of a multi-currency reserve system and a new era in world money.
In a seemingly innocuous yet highly portentous move, the IMF is asking member countries from next year to include the Australian AUDUSD, -0.0721% and Canadian dollars USDCAD, +0.0223% in statistics supplied by reserve-holding nations on the make-up of their central banks' foreign exchange reserves. The technical-sounding measure, reflecting growing diversification of the world's $10.5 trillion of reserves, is likely over time to exert wide-ranging impact on world bond and equity markets.
Expanding by two the list of officially recognized reserve assets from the present five — the dollar, euro, sterling, yen and Swiss franc — signals a new phase in the development of reserve money. For most of the past 150 years, the world has had just two reserve currencies, with sterling in the lead until the First World War, and the dollar taking over as the prime asset during the past 100 years.
Sterling — although still the world's third reserve currency on IMF figures, just ahead of the yen — has been in relative decline since the Second World War. The birth of the euro in 1999 has turned the European single currency into the world's No. 2 reserve unit, but it is now officially accepted that the dollar and the euro share their role with smaller currencies.
Enshrining in official thinking a development already evident among reserve managers and on private markets, in a sense, does no more than catch up with reality. However, the IMF step has both practical and symbolic importance and will likely promote further asset diversification among official and private asset managers.
The popularity among central banks of the Australian and Canadian dollars, which have been relatively strong even against the firm U.S. dollar during the past few years, reflect their stable economic growth and intact banking systems since the financial crisis, as well as the influence of Australian and Canadian commodity resources. On informal estimates, worldwide official foreign-exchange holdings in each of the two currencies probably are around $60 billion.
The Chinese renminbi, the Korean won and the Singapore dollar are being held by a relatively small number of central banks. There are no Asian currencies (apart from the yen) on the new IMF list, reflecting their still very low use as official assets.
The renminbi has attracted widespread attention as a possible future reverse currency. But it's still some years away from attaining that status, primarily because it is not fully convertible. Although held in appreciable quantities by 10 to 15 central banks around the world, the Chinese money lags as a reserve currency behind not just the Australian and Canadian units but also some Scandinavian currencies.
People's Bank of China Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan said at the weekend: "For the central bank, the next movement related to the yuan [renminbi] is going to be reform of convertibility … We are going to realize it, we are moving in this direction, we need to go further, we will have some deregulation."
Zhou, who will have completed 10 years at the central bank next month, is widely expected to retire shortly. The focus will be on how much scope the Chinese Communist leadership gives his successor to pursue further financial liberalization.
The reserve data revamp forms part of a wide-ranging effort by the IMF, working closely with the Group of 20 leading economies and the Basel-based Financial Stability Board, to expand and deepen its overall statistical coverage of the world economy.
Recognizing that insufficient warning was given of the 2007-08 financial eruption, the IMF and its members say that statistics on different components of countries' asset and liabilities and general cross-border financial linkages can provide valuable early indications of economic perturbation.
Extending the scope of the IMF's so-called COFER data base — standing for "composition of foreign exchange reserves" — marks the culmination of 18 months of highly sensitive preparations, reflecting the secrecy with which some leading countries habitually cloak their foreign-exchange holdings. The IMF has pledged to continue to maintain total confidentiality on the composition of individual countries' reserves, even though many previously publicity-shy countries including Switzerland, the U.K. and Russia are now giving details.
Since COFER was started in 1995, world foreign-exchange reserves have risen more than sevenfold, from $1.4 trillion to $10.5 trillion by the second quarter of 2012, mainly reflecting increased holdings by emerging market and other economies in Asia.
The importance of the dollar has diminished, from a peak of 71.5% of declared reserves in 2001 to just under 62% by 2012. Outside the five standard reserve currencies, the importance of "other" currencies has risen, from a low of 1.3% in 2001 to 5.3% by end-June 2012, amounting to $310 billion.
Acknowledging that the COFER data base only inadequately captures currency diversification, the IMF contacted a total of 191 countries over the past year to try to refashion its statistical coverage, including important reserve-holders led by China, which do not report their currency breakdowns to the IMF. Of this total, 63 took part in a subsequent survey. Along with the five main reserve currencies, the survey revealed the identities of 10 other currencies among reserve holdings, of which the Australian and Canadian units are by far the most important.
The IMF's attempts to persuade a significant number of COFER non-reporters such as China to open up on their currency composition have failed for the time being. So-called unallocated reserves held by more than 40 countries, where holders do not provide individual currency composition, amounted to $4.7 trillion, 44.5% of the total, as of June 2012. At present, the IMF does not reveal the names of countries that report under COFER, but this may change in future.
China believes that giving data to COFER would breach secrecy over the composition of its foreign-exchange holdings and, crucially, how its preferences change over time.
However, partly lifting the veil over Chinese holdings (which now total $3 trillion), the China Securities Journal, an official publication, reported in 2010 that 65% of China's reserves were in dollars, 26% in euro, 5% in sterling and 3% in yen. Since then, observers have expected the Chinese may go further in increasing transparency — although this has yet to happen.
The Reserve Bank of Australia has already provided insights in holdings of the Australian dollar. It has published data based on a survey of central banks. which show 15 of them definitely holding Australian dollars, with another eight possibly doing so.
Some countries — such as Finland, Brazil and Switzerland — provide information on their own Australian dollar holdings. Based on the Reserve Bank of Australia data, definitive official holdings of Australian dollars are slightly less than $40 billion. Including other countries that hold Australian dollars (such as Malaysia and Hong Kong), but don't give a breakdown, total central bank Australian dollar holdings may be around $60 billion. Reserve holdings of Canadian dollars may be of a similar order of magnitude.


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Former North Carolina Death-Row Prisoner Charles Ray Finch Freed After 43 YearsPosted: May 24, 2019
A North Carolina man wrongly convicted and sentenced to death based upon false forensic testimony and an eyewitness identification manipulated by police misconduct has been freed from prison after 43 years. On May 23, 2019, federal district court judge Terrence Boyle ordered North Carolina to release former death-row prisoner Charles Ray Finch (pictured with his members of his legal team) from custody, five months after a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found Finch "actually innocent" of the murder. Finch, now 81 years old, was freed from Greene Correctional Institution in Maura, North Carolina, that afternoon. Finch's daughter, Katherine Jones-Bailey, was two years old when he was convicted and sentenced to death. "I knew the miracle was going to happen," she said about her father's release. "I just didn't know when."
Following the appeals court ruling, Finch's lawyers from the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic filed a motion in federal district court seeking his immediate release. The North Carolina Attorney General's office joined in the motion. The district court formally overturned Finch's conviction and gave Wilson County prosecutors 30 days to decide whether to retry him. With no credible evidence of guilt, a retrial is considered unlikely. If charges are not refiled, Finch will become the 166th former U.S. death-row prisoner to have been exonerated since 1973. He will be the second death-sentenced prisoner to have waited more than four decades to be exonerated. In March 2019, Clifford Williams, Jr. was exonerated in Florida 42 years after his wrongful conviction and death sentence.
Finch was convicted in 1976 of murdering a grocery store clerk during an attempted robbery. He was sentenced to death under the mandatory death-sentencing statute then in effect in North Carolina. A state forensic witness testified at the trial that the victim had died from two shotgun wounds, and a shotgun shell was found in Finch's car. A store employee who saw the killer flee the scene told police that the killer had been wearing a three-quarter length jacket. An eyewitness later identified Finch in three different lineups. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the sentencing statute and, in 1977, the North Carolina Supreme Court vacated Finch's death sentence and resentenced him to life in prison.
In 2013, testimony by Dr. John Butts, then North Carolina's Chief Medical Examiner, revealed that the victim had been killed by a pistol, not a shotgun and North Carolina State Crime Laboratory Special Agent Peter Ware, the forensic scientist manager for the lab's firearm toolmark section, testified that the bullet found at the scene and the shell found in Finch's car did not come from the same firearm. Finch also presented testimony that the eyewitness identification procedures had been unduly suggestive. In an interview, Finch told WNCN-TV, "[w]hen I was picked up, they didn't question me or nothing. They put me there in a line-up. Straight in a line-up. And they put me in a line-up with a black leather coat on." Chief Deputy Tony Owens claimed that he had put the jacket on another man in the lineup, but photos the defense had discovered showed that Finch was the only person in the three lineups wearing a coat. "That's one of the highlights at the evidentiary hearing," said Jim Coleman, Finch's long-time lawyer and the director of the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic. "[W]e were able to expose that [Owens] had lied about the line-up and he had dressed Ray in a coat and he was the only one wearing a coat in the line-up."
Coleman and the clinic have represented Finch for fifteen years, and Finch was the clinic's first client. "We have students who work their hearts out on these cases," Coleman said. "We feel an enormous sense of vindication."
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Florida Executes Mentally Ill Vietnam Veteran Diagnosed with "Traumatic Brain Disease"Posted: May 23, 2019
Florida has executed Bobby Joe Long (pictured), a mentally ill Vietnam veteran with service-related traumatic brain injuries, after the U.S. Supreme Court on May 23, 2019 declined to review his case. Long had asked the Court to halt his execution to address "[w]hether an individual who suffers from severe mental illness is exempt from execution under the Eighth Amendment. In 1980, Long received a diagnosis of "Traumatic Brain Disease" from the Veterans Administration as a result of injuries sustained during his military service. He also had a history of several traumatic head injuries during his childhood. Following his diagnosis, he was discharged and given a "service-connected disability rating," but received little or no treatment from the military or the VA for his brain damage. Four years later, he killed eight women in an eight-month span, including the murder for which he was sentenced to death. At Long's trial, medical experts testified that his injuries had damaged the areas of the brain responsible for judgment and behavior control.
Long's petition for review—one of three he filed in the Court during the pendency of his death warrant—urged the Court to prohibit the execution of people with severe mental illness, saying, "[t]he same lessened moral culpability cited by Atkins [which prohibited the execution of people with intellectual disability] and Roper [which prohibited the execution of juvenile offenders] in finding the intellectually disabled and juveniles ineligible for execution applies with equal force to individuals with severe mental illness." His lawyers argued that "[s]evere mental illness, like intellectual disability, is a persistent and frequently debilitating medical condition that impairs an individual's ability to make rational decisions, control impulses, evaluate information, and function properly in society. Because severely mentally ill defendants have a lessened moral culpability, because their impairments 'jeopardize the reliability and fairness of capital proceedings,'... and because their diminished capacity negates the retributive and deterrent goals of capital punishment, they should be held categorically ineligible to receive the death penalty."
Florida's Catholic bishops had called on Governor Ron DeSantis to grant clemency for Long, citing both Long's mental illness and the Church's teachings against capital punishment. In a letter to the governor, the Florida Catholic Conference wrote that, "[a]lthough [Long] caused much harm, society has been safe from his aggressive acts in the decades of his incarceration. Without taking his life, society can be protected while he endures the alternative sentence of life without the possibility of parole." The letter called attention to "the multiple traumas [Long] experienced throughout his life," including a motorcycle accident he suffered in 1974. "That incident profoundly affected him and his behaviors," the Florida conference said, and "contributed to his receiving a disability rating from the military, from which he was honorably discharged."
Long was the eighth person executed in the United States in 2019 and the first in Florida. He is the 1498th person put to death in the U.S. since executions resumed in 1977.
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Two Foreign Nationals Receive New Trials as U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear State Death-Penalty AppealsPosted: May 22, 2019
Two foreign nationals who were sentenced to death in unrelated cases will receive new trials after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of lower court rulings overturning their convictions. Jose Echavarria (pictured, left), a Nevada prisoner originally from Cuba, and Ahmad Issa (pictured, right), an Ohio prisoner originally from Jordan, each were awarded new trials by federal appellate court decisions in 2018. The states petitioned the Supreme Court seeking review of the cases, but on May 20, 2019, the Court denied the petitions, allowing the lower court rulings to stand. Echavarria and Issa were among 130 foreign nationals from 35 countries under sentence of death across the United States.
Echavarria, who was sentenced to death in Clark County, Nevada for the 1990 killing of FBI agent John Bailey during an attempted bank robbery, was granted a new trial on his claim that his trial had been tainted by judicial bias. Echavarria fled to Mexico after the crime, and later alleged that he had been tortured and beaten by Mexican police until he confessed. He moved to suppress the confession, but the trial judge, Jack Lehman, denied the motion. Unknown to the defense, Lehman had been the subject of an FBI investigation into issues of possible corruption, fraud, and perjury and that investigation had been conducted by Agent Bailey. The FBI ultimately referred the case to state authorities in 1988, who brought no charges against the judge. Lehman met with the prosecutor and the lawyer representing Echavarria's co-defendant prior to trial, asking whether they wanted him to recuse himself. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, "Judge Lehman did not fully explain … the nature and extent of the FBI's investigation," and neither party requested recusal. Echavarria's counsel did not learn about the FBI investigation until well after trial and sentencing.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that Judge Lehman's participation in the trial created "a constitutionally intolerable risk of bias" that violated Echavarria's right to due process. It wrote that "[a]n average judge in [Lehman's] position would have feared that rulings favoring Echavarria, tipping the outcome towards acquittal or a sentence less than death, could cost him his reputation, his judgeship, and possibly his liberty." The court found that "the risk of bias was extraordinary in both its nature and severity … [and] was obvious to all who had complete information about Agent Bailey's investigation." It upheld a federal district court ruling that vacated Echavarria's conviction and death sentence and required the state to retry or release Echavarria. This was the second case in two years in which the Supreme Court had been asked to intervene in a Clark County case alleging judicial bias. In 2017, the Court reversed a Nevada court ruling that had upheld the capital conviction of Michael Rippo after a judge who was the subject of a federal bribery investigation in which Clark County prosecutors were playing a role refused to recuse himself from the trial.
Issa was granted a new trial by the Ohio federal courts based on Hamilton County prosecutors' improper use of hearsay evidence. Issa was convicted of capital murder for allegedly hiring Andre Miles to kill Maher Khriss, Issa's boss, at the behest of Khriss' wife, Linda. Miles also killed Zaid Khriss, Maher's brother, when he shot Maher. Miles, Issa, and Linda Khriss were all charged with aggravated murder. Linda Khriss was acquitted in a trial in which Miles—who had received a life sentence in his trial—testified against her. Miles subsequently refused to testify at Issa's trial and the trial court allowed Cincinnati prosecutors to instead present testimony from two friends of Miles, who said Miles had told them that Issa had hired him to kill someone. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that this testimony violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which states, "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him."
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Supreme Court Denies Review in Death-Penalty Case Where Texas Judge Rubberstamped Prosecution's FindingsPosted: May 21, 2019
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a case in which the Texas courts decided a death-row prisoner's appeal by adopting the prosecution's fact findings and legal arguments word-for-word without providing the defendant's lawyer any opportunity to respond. In a May 20, 2019 ruling, the Court without comment denied the petition for writ of certiorari filed by Ray Freeney (pictured), thereby permitting the Harris County prisoner's conviction and death sentence to stand. The decision was the latest in a series of cases in which the Court has refused to take up the issue of state-court rulings that are verbatim copies of proposed orders written entirely by the prosecution. In June 2018, researchers at the University of Texas School of Law Capital Punishment Center exposed the systemic rubberstamping of prosecutors' pleadings in Harris County capital cases. The researchers found that county judges had adopted prosecutors' proposed findings of fact verbatim in 96% of 191 capital cases in which factual issues had been contested. Harris County has executed 129 men and women, more than double the number executed in any other county in the United States and more than have been executed in any state in the country other than Texas.
In a Washington Post op-ed, columnist Radley Balko said Freeney's case not only raises questions about the practice of judges rubberstamping prosecutorial findings, but also "test[s] the absurd, outer limits of AEDPA's deference to state courts." AEDPA is the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the habeas corpus amendments passed by Congress in 1996. Those amendments have significantly reduced federal courts' ability to review and redress violations of a state defendant's right to a fair trial and sentencing by requiring federal judges to give a high level of deference to state court findings. Balko explains, "to get a federal court to review a state court's ruling, a defendant must show not only that the state court (and the state courts that upheld the ruling) were wrong, but that the prevailing ruling was either 'contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law,' or an 'unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented.' Put plainly, you must convince the federal courts not only that the state courts were wrong, but also that they were unreasonably wrong."
When Ray Freeney's case came before Texas District Court Judge Renee Magee, his appeal lawyers sought a new sentencing hearing because his trial lawyers had failed to investigate and present to the jury evidence that Freeney suffered from mental illness and had been the victim of chronic child abuse. Judge Magee, who had spent 19 years as a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney's Office, asked for briefs, and received 204 proposed findings of fact from the prosecution, based on over 800 pages of testimony. The next day, she adopted the factfinding verbatim. Freeney's defense attorneys were never given an opportunity to respond, or to submit their own brief containing new evidence to support their claim that his trial attorneys had provided inadequate counsel. The University of Texas study has demonstrated that "rubberstamping" of prosecutors' proposed orders is common in Harris County, particularly in cases in which the judge was a former county prosecutor. But Feeney's case stood out even more in that Judge Magee provided his lawyers no opportunity to respond to the prosecution's proposed disposition of the case. "When you have such egregious inattention to facts and lack of stewardship of constitutional rights as we've seen in Harris County," Balko said, "the entire system begins to look like a farce."
Under AEDPA, rubberstamped findings are routinely treated with the same level of deference as findings that judges wrote themselves. Balko explains that, "under the controlling case law for the [Texas federal courts], 'a full and fair hearing is not a precondition to presumption of correctness to state habeas court findings of fact.'" "The message sent to state judges by the Fifth Circuit in Mr. Freeney's case was clear," says Richard Bourke, one of Freeney's attorneys. "You don't need to consider the defense's legal arguments. You don't need to consider the defense's evidence. You don't even need to wait until the defense has presented either. You can just rubber stamp the state's brief. And you needn't worry about the Fifth Circuit overruling you."
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Alabama Governor Calls Life "Precious" and "Sacred," Then Denies Clemency to Michael SamraPosted: May 20, 2019
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has drawn criticism for denying clemency and presiding over the execution of Michael Samra (pictured) on May 16, 2019, one day after issuing a statement calling Alabama a pro-life state and declaring life "precious" and "sacred." On May 15, Ivey signed into law a bill that criminalizes abortion, saying that the new law "stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians' deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God." After Samra's execution the following evening, her office issued a statement that "Alabama will not stand for the loss of life in our state, and with this heinous crime, we must respond with punishment. ... This evening justice has been delivered to the loved ones of these victims, and it signals that Alabama does not tolerate murderous acts of any nature."
Ivey's actions prompted rebukes from liberal and conservative quarters and renewed the question of whether one who supports capital punishment can be considered "pro-life." "It's a contradiction that I always observed," said Hannah Cox, the national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. Supporting the death penalty, Ms. Cox told The New York Times, is "a stance that cheapens the pro-life argument." Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, an anti-death penalty advocacy group, said "[p]ro-life values are meaningless when they are inconsistent." She said that "[t]he sanctity of human life applies to each and every person, innocent and guilty," and that a person's dignity "is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes."
Ivey's actions also were criticized in articles in The Los Angeles Times and CNN. Los Angeles Times opinion writer Scott Martelle highlighted some of the seven executions Ivey has overseen, including Walter Moody, the oldest person executed in the U.S., and Domineque Ray, a Muslim prisoner who was denied the presence of his imam during his execution. "Apparently, Ivey's not averse to returning some of God's sacred gifts," Martelle wrote. "If Ivey had the courage of her convictions, she would use her authority as governor to grant clemency to [the] 181 people facing execution in Alabama. That act would … remove the cloud of hypocrisy hovering over Montgomery." In a CNN commentary, Jay Parisi wrote: "The anti-abortion movement raises a question about capital punishment that must be answered. If the 25 white men who voted in the Alabama senate for a near-total ban on abortion were really serious about the 'right to life,' would they not have simultaneously banned capital punishment? The death penalty is a clear violation of this right …." Parisi called it "deeply ironic that the seven states that have passed tighter abortion laws are also actively open to killing live human beings by lethal injection or electrocution."
The week before Samra's execution, Cox authored a commentary for Newsmax in which she critiqued the "inconsistency" and "hypocrisy" of arguments by people who identify themselves as pro-life, yet support capital punishment. "[A]s a Christian," she wrote, "I believe that all life has inherent value that cannot be won or lost by anything we do, but rather that is based on all being created in the image of God." She addressed the oft-repeated reasoning that only innocent life deserves to be protected, explaining, "there are countless innocent people caught up in the criminal justice system, and certainly on death rows. To date, one person has been exonerated from death row for every ten executions. You cannot buttress your belief in capital punishment with the reasoning that you only think innocent life should be protected." Cox said, "The vast majority of people who commit harm were first victimized numerous times — often as children — before they became violent. ... You cannot say you care about the lives of young children and want to protect them from harm, and then believe they should be executed when they are harmed and end up perpetuating the cycle of violence."
Cox told The New York Times that the pro-life dialogue about the death penalty continues to shift, notwithstanding the events in Alabama. Growing conservative opposition to capital punishment, she said, is evidenced by the introduction of Republican-sponsored bills to repeal the death penalty in 11 state legislatures in 2019.
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New Podcast: Emmy- and Oscar-Award Winning Director Edward Zwick on His New Film, Trial By FirePosted: May 17, 2019
In the latest episode of the Discussions with DPIC podcast, Emmy- and Oscar-winner Edward Zwick speaks about his new movie, Trial By Fire. The film, which Zwick co-produced and directed, tells the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1992 for the deaths of his three children in a house fire that prosecutors wrongly claimed had been intentionally set. As Willingham's execution approached in 2004, evidence came to light that arson investigators had relied on flawed and outdated methods. The trial prosecutor also withheld evidence that a jailhouse informant who claimed that Willingham had confessed to him had been provided favorable treatment in exchange for implicating Willingham.
Willingham's case featured what Zwick called a "catalog" of problems: "it had the withholding of exculpatory evidence, it had junk science, it had jailhouse snitches who would testify in exchange for reduced sentences, [and] it had a piss-poor public defender." In an interview with DPIC's Managing Director, Anne Holsinger, Zwick describes why he decided to tell Willingham's story, what he learned from the experience, and how he hopes the film will affect audiences. Trial By Fire opens on May 17, 2019.
Trial By Fire is largely based on an investigative article of the same name written by David Grann and published in The New Yorker in 2009. Zwick called Grann's account of the case a "categorical denunciation of everything that was wrong with the prosecutions in death-penalty cases." The movie focuses on the relationship between Willingham (Jack O'Connell) and his penpal, Elizabeth Gilbert (Laura Dern). Gilbert worked with the filmmakers and offered them access to her correspondence with Willingham. Zwick said he chose to portray that relationship because it was a "beautiful juxtaposition to the horrors of the case." He expressed gratitude to Gilbert for sharing the letters, which he said showed the "internal workings and the value of a man's life, so he was more than just a statistic." He also said that the friendship between Willingham and Gilbert humanized the story and helped the film avoid being didactic. "People go to the movies because they want to invest in the characters and in the relationships. They don't go to the movies to learn about issues, but that doesn't say that they can't have both."
Zwick characterized Willingham's story as embodying the systemic problems in the way the death penalty is carried out in the United States. "In a system that cannot be guaranteed to be infallible, if a single innocent person has been put to death, that more than justifies getting rid of the death penalty," he said. Capital punishment, he said, is emblematic of the inequities in the criminal justice system at large: "The death penalty sits on top of the pyramid of charging and sentencing and trials, and that if it is so flawed and revealed to be unjust and if its absurdities can be so accepted, how then can we reform the rest of the system, before dealing with it?" The interview concluded with a discussion of the filmmaker's hopes for how the audience will respond to the movie. "I know that it's a Pollyanna-ish notion that a single film can do anything that affects policy itself. What it can do is add a set of images and a warm-bloodedness and a personal understanding of something that an audience might have only understood in more philosophical or political terms." Storytelling can be part of cultural "paradigm shifts," he said, noting that pop culture depictions of same-sex relationships helped shape public opinion on same-sex marriage. "Change happens," Zwick said, "but how it happens and when it happens, and the rate at which it happens is unpredictable, and all that one can do in any kind of activist cause is to keep your head down and keep doing the work that you do because you are committed to that change."
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Department of Justice Asserts That Food and Drug Administration 'Lacks Jurisdiction' Over Lethal-Injection DrugsPosted: May 16, 2019
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued an advisory memorandum declaring that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "lacks jurisdiction" to regulate execution drugs, including enforcing federal laws that prohibit the import of such drugs from abroad. The memorandum, authored by Assistant Attorney General Steven A. Engel (pictured) for the Department's Office of Legal Counsel, places the administration squarely in conflict with a 2012 federal district court order requiring the FDA to enforce federal laws barring the importation of unapproved or misbranded drugs or drugs that come from unregistered facilities. The ruling, which came in a case brought by death-row prisoners to force the agency to comply with federal law, was upheld by a federal appeals court in 2013, and the FDA is still permanently enjoined by the ruling from allowing the illegal importation of execution drugs.
The DOJ legal opinion — which is binding on federal agencies — is apparently a response to the FDA's seizure and impoundment of lethal-injection drugs that prison officials in Texas and Arizona had attempted to import in 2015 for use in executions. After the drug seizure, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sued the FDA, and in April 2017, the agency issued a final order refusing to release the drugs. The FDA's order stated: "The [2012] court order requires the FDA to refuse admission to the US any shipment of foreign manufactured sodium thiopental being offered for importation that appears to be an unapproved new drug or a misbranded drug." Several states have attempted to illegally import sodium thiopental, an anesthetic once commonly used in executions, after its U.S. manufacturer ceased production in 2009.
Engel's memorandum bases the DOJ's opinion on a U.S. Supreme Court case addressing whether the FDA can regulate tobacco products. In FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. (2000), the Court found that the FDA could not regulate tobacco products because "they cannot be used safely for any therapeutic purpose," but "they cannot be banned" because Congress had clearly intended for tobacco to be available. Engel wrote that the situations were analogous: "Congress has repeatedly authorized the death penalty on the assumption that there are lawful means to carry it out, but the regulation of such articles under the [Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938] would effectively require their prohibition because they could hardly be found 'safe and effective' for such an intended use."
Fordham University Law Professor Deborah Denno said the opinion "is intended to allow departments of corrections to access drugs outside the country because they're having so much difficulty doing so," but, according to The Washington Post, "The Justice Department's opinion is unlikely to have any immediate effect … because the FDA is still operating under the 2012 injunction." The Justice Department has not taken any steps to have the injunction lifted. As long as the injunction remains in place, the opinion represents only the views of the Department of Justice, and does not have the force of law.
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Death-Penalty Opinions Expose Deep Divisions on U.S. Supreme CourtPosted: May 15, 2019
In the wake of sharp criticism of several controversial death-penalty decisions, the five conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court issued three opinions on May 13, 2019, explaining their votes in those earlier cases. The opinions, issued in connection with the apparently inconsistent orders in religious discrimination claims brought by two death-row prisoners and a decision declining to review the case of an Alabama death-row prisoner who had challenged the state's execution process, highlighted growing friction and fissures within the Court.
In a pair of opinions issued five weeks after the Court halted the March 28 execution of Buddhist death-row prisoner Patrick Murphy, the Court's three far-right justices dissented from the order granting him a stay and Justice Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts issued a statement seeking to explain why they voted to spare Murphy from execution while permitting the execution of Muslim prisoner Domineque Ray to go forward. The Court's disparate treatment of Murphy and Ray—both of whom claimed religious discrimination because their states denied their requests to have non-Christian spiritual advisors present in the execution chamber—had generated widespread condemnation across the political spectrum. In a second contentious case, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote to "set the record straight" in response to criticism from Justice Breyer and the Court's other moderate and liberal justices regarding a 5-4 late-night ruling on April 12 to vacate a lower court stay of execution for Alabama death-row prisoner Christopher Price.
In Murphy's case, Justice Alito, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, accused defense lawyers of "inexcusably dilatory litigation tactics" and complained that "the great majority" of applications for stays of execution "are almost all filed on or shortly before the scheduled execution date … [with] no good reason for the late filing." Staying Murphy's execution, Alito wrote, "countenance[es] the dilatory litigation [and], I fear, will encourage this damaging practice." While acknowledging that "[t]he claims raised by Murphy and Ray are important and may ultimately be held to have merit," Alito said that "[p]risoners should bring such claims well before their scheduled executions so that the courts can adjudicate them in the way that the claims require and deserve and so that States are afforded sufficient time to make any necessary modifications to their execution protocols."
Justice Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts defended the stay, saying that Murphy had not been dilatory. Murphy had made his request to have his spiritual advisor in the execution chamber 30 days before his scheduled execution, they wrote, and the delay in filing his court appeal was attributable to "the State's footdragging" in response to his request. Kavanaugh also disagreed that the stay encouraged additional litigation, noting that within five days of the order Texas had revised its protocol to "allow religious advisers only into the viewing room." The stay, he wrote, "facilitated the prompt resolution of a significant religious equality problem … [and] should alleviate any future litigation delays or disruptions that otherwise might have occurred." Kavanaugh justified granting Murphy a stay while allowing Ray's execution to proceed by saying the two had presented different legal claims to the courts. Murphy, he wrote, had argued that Texas treated prisoners of different religions unequally, permitting Christians and Muslims to have ministers in the execution chamber, while limiting other prisoners to "hav[ing] ministers of their religions only in the adjacent viewing room." By contrast, he said, Ray had raised a claim under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and the religious discrimination claim had been raised on its own by a federal appeals court.
In his statement concurring in the Court's denial of review in the Price case, Justice Thomas—joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch—accused death-row prisoners of attempting to manipulate the legal process by "gamesmanship" by "bring[ing] last-minute claims that will delay the execution, no matter how groundless. The proper response to this maneuvering," he wrote, "is to deny meritless requests expeditiously." Price had challenged the constitutionality of Alabama's lethal injection practices, offering execution by lethal gas as an alternative. However, the state argued he had missed the statutory deadline for electing that option and that his request was untimely. As the warrant to execute Price on April 12 was expiring, Justice Breyer urged his colleagues to leave the lower court stay in place until the Court could meet in person to discuss "substantial" procedural and substantive issues presented by the case. When the Court then lifted the stay with no discussion even after the execution had been called off, Breyer wrote: "To proceed in this way calls into question the basic principles of fairness that should underlie our criminal justice system. To proceed in this matter in the middle of the night without giving all members of the court the opportunity for discussion tomorrow morning is, I believe, unfortunate."
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Alabama Prisoner Seeks Stay, Reprieve to Challenge the Death Penalty for 19-Year-Old OffendersPosted: May 14, 2019
Facing a May 16, 2019 execution date, Alabama death-row prisoner Michael Brandon Samra (pictured) has asked the United States Supreme Court and Governor Kay Ivey to halt his execution and for the Court to consider the constitutionally of imposing the death penalty upon 19-year-old offenders. In a petition filed on April 27, Samra—a teenage offender with borderline intellectual functioning—asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the appropriate age cutoff for banning the execution of youthful offenders. He also has asked Ivey for a reprieve to permit courts to rule on the issue.
In 2005, the Supreme Court barred the execution of people for crimes committed before age 18. That decision, in Roper v. Simmons, extended the Court's prior age prohibition on the application of the death penalty to offenders younger than age 16. Samra's attorneys argue that new research in neuroscience shows that key areas of the adolescent brain continue to mature through a person's early twenties. Although the question Samra's lawyers formally presented to the Court is whether the Eighth Amendment "permit[s] the execution of youthful offenders who … were 19 years old at the time of their crime," the petition urges the Court to forbid the execution of offenders younger than age 21. "Compared to adults, persons in their late teens and early 20's [sic] are: (1) more likely to poorly assess risk, (2) more likely to engage in sensation-seeking, (3) less able to control their impulses and consider the consequences of their actions, (4) have underdeveloped basic cognitive abilities as compared to emotional abilities, (5) are more affected by peer pressure," Samra's petition explains. His attorneys wrote, "This Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence should reflect the reality that a person's neurological and psychological development does not suddenly stop on his 18th birthday."
Samra's petition to the high court cites a 2017 decision by a Kentucky trial court, which held that "the death penalty would be an unconstitutionally disproportionate punishment for crimes committed by individuals under 21 years of age." That case is currently under appeal to the Kentucky Supreme Court and Samra's attorneys have asked Governor Ivey to grant a reprieve until it is decided. "To prevent a miscarriage of justice and ensure that Alabama does not carry out an unconstitutional execution, Samra respectfully requests a reprieve until the Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled on the question that would determine whether Samra is categorically eligible for the death penalty," Samra's attorney wrote. The plea for a reprieve also notes that Samra was less involved in the planning and carrying out of the crime, compared to his co-defendant, Mark Duke. It says that Samra helped Duke kill Duke's father, his father's girlfriend, and her two daughters, but that Duke planned the killings and killed three of the four victims. Duke, who was 16 at the time of the crimes, was sentenced to death. However, his death sentence was overturned when the Supreme Court decided Roper in 2005.
If the Supreme Court and the governor allow Samra's execution to proceed, it will be the sixth in the United States in 2019, and the second in Alabama. Tennessee has scheduled the execution of Donnie Edward Johnson for the same night, May 16. [UPDATE: The U.S. Supreme Court denied Samra's petition for review on May 14. Gov. Ivey denied his clemency application May 16 and he was executed that evening.]
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Science Challenges Myth that Death Penalty Brings Victims' Families ClosurePosted: May 13, 2019
Proponents of capital punishment have long argued for the death penalty on the grounds that it brings closure to family members of homicide victims. But science suggests that achieving closure through execution may be a myth, says family and child therapist Linda Lewis Griffith (pictured) in a May 6, 2019 column in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and that capital punishment may actually make matters worse.
To underscore that point, Griffith cites studies in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that found "subjects who were given the opportunity to vent their hostilities had higher levels of aggression and anger than those participants who did nothing at all" and "people who punish others in the hopes of making themselves feel better actually feel worse." The death penalty, she says, "keeps victims involved in the tragedy for years, even decades, as multiple hearings, appeals and trials drag on." As a result, family members "feel stuck in a time warp, being repeatedly re-traumatized by the legal system and accompanying media coverage." In cases in which the death penalty is eventually carried out, "[e]xecutions do not offer emotional catharsis as many would suggest." Instead, Griffith says, "executing perpetrators actually increased family members' feelings of emptiness because it didn't bring back their loved ones."
A University of Minnesota study published in 2007 attempted to quantify the extent to which victims' family members achieved closure as a result of capital punishment. The study found that only 2.5% of victims' family members—roughly one in 40—reported achieving closure, while 20.1% said the execution did not help them heal. A 2012 study published in the Marquette Law Review compared the emotional well-being of survivors in Texas, a death penalty state, and Minnesota, a life without possibility of parole state. The study found that "victims in Minnesota experienced greater control over the sentencing process," while the "drawn out, elusive, delayed, and unpredictable" capital appeals process in Texas "created 'layers of injustice, powerlessness, and in some instances, despair'" for family members.
Given these studies, Griffin believes that life without possibility of parole offers "[a] more emotionally satisfying solution" for victims' families than does the death penalty. "Instead of proceeding with archaic and inaccurate information, let's consider the data and do what really works best" for victims' families, she says.
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Phoenix, city, seat (1871) of Maricopa county and capital of Arizona, U.S. It lies along the Salt River in the south-central part of the state, about 120 miles (190 km) north of the Mexico border and midway between El Paso, Texas, and Los Angeles, California. The Salt River valley, popularly called the Valley of the Sun, includes not only Phoenix but also nearby cities such as Mesa, Scottsdale, and Tempe. Phoenix plays a prominent role in the economy of the Mountain West region of the country, serving as a financial, communications, and transportation hub. Area 450 square miles (1,165 square km). Pop. (2000) 1,321,045; Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale Metro Area, 3,251,876; (2010) 1,445,632; Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale Metro Area, 4,192,887.
Character of the city
With its broad, tree-lined avenues, Spanish-style architecture, and surrounding mountains, Phoenix bears much resemblance to Los Angeles. Like its California counterpart, Phoenix is a metropolis with not one but many centres, all at considerable distances from one another. From its historic heart to the west of Sky Harbor International Airport, the greater metropolitan area—of which Phoenix is only a small part—has grown to take in a vast expanse of land that stretches nearly from the Gila River far to the south to the tall plateaus and volcanic mountains of the north and east and out into the broad desert valley to the west. Growth is a constant in Phoenix life as thousands of new residents and millions of visitors find their way there each year.
City site
Phoenix lies near the confluence of the Gila and Salt rivers and is situated at the extreme northern part of the Sonoran Desert, an arid ecological zone whose characteristic plant is the nationally protected saguaro cactus. To the east of Phoenix are the rugged Superstition Mountains, a large complex of volcanic calderas that formed about 305 million years ago; the mountains reach to about 3,000 feet (900 metres) at their highest point. The Mazatzal Mountains rise to the northeast; the Verde River flows to the west of the mountains, entering the Salt River east of Phoenix.
The broad valley in which the city lies extends west to the Colorado River and south to the mountain chains north of Tucson, although the geographic borders of Phoenix end far short of those natural barriers. The Phoenix metropolitan area—the Valley of the Sun—stands at an elevation of 1,100 feet (335 metres) above sea level. The northern and eastern ends of this valley rise into the surrounding volcanic peaks; the remainder is level terrain, dotted with small volcanic mountains of granite and schist. Camelback Mountain, Squaw Peak, and South Mountain are the most prominent of these urban peaks, reaching elevations of about 2,600 to 2,700 feet (790 to 820 metres).
The desert soil is alkaline, and the water in the river and in local wells is saline and contains other minerals. Many irrigated areas in the Phoenix area are encrusted with dried mineral deposits, which accumulate and reduce the productivity of the soil. Water is strangely abundant, given the fact that the city lies in one of the most arid regions on the continent; the valley overlies a subterranean sedimentary bowl that can hold vast quantities of groundwater. However, these stores have been substantially depleted, and Phoenix increasingly has come to depend on water from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project (CAP), an artificial waterway 336 miles (541 km) long extending from Lake Havasu on the California border to Tucson. In addition, water from subterranean stores is piped into the valley from outlying areas. In the past, virtually all of the region's water was used for agricultural purposes, although an increasing share is now apportioned for municipal use.
Phoenix has a dry, warm climate that in the winter months attracts tens of thousands of visitors. The average daily high temperature in the winter approaches 70 °F (21 °C), but summer highs typically rise to more than 100 °F (38 °C). It is almost always sunny throughout the year.
Precipitation averages less than 8 inches (200 mm) annually, divided almost evenly between the winter and summer months. In summertime, the so-called monsoon season, much of this precipitation returns to the atmosphere almost immediately through evaporation or transpiration.
None of the mountains ringing Phoenix to the north and east reaches an elevation high enough to attract much moisture. The city depends almost wholly on groundwater that flows from the Salt and Gila rivers, as well as supplemental water brought in by aqueducts via the CAP.
City layout
Until relatively recently, some three-fifths of the land within the Phoenix city limits was undeveloped. In the mid-1970s a plan was proposed to develop these vacant lands through a program of "infill" construction, taking advantage of the infrastructure that was already in place. Instead, however, the city pursued a policy of annexing surrounding communities, expanding outward to accommodate its growing population.
Phoenix has grown to absorb many satellite communities, and it is surrounded by other independent municipalities that have boomed on their own. These include Scottsdale, an affluent area known for its shopping and art districts, to the northeast; Fountain Hills, an exclusive community in the hills east of Scottsdale; Tempe, a middle-class suburb that is home to Arizona State University, to the east and Mesa, the "Mormon capital of Arizona," farther east; Chandler, where a high-technology centre has emerged, to the southeast; the once-small agricultural communities of Gilbert and Queen Creek east of Chandler; Glendale, Goodyear, and Avondale to the west; and Sun City, one of the first retirement communities in the country, to the northwest.
The population of Phoenix is predominantly white (i.e., generally of European ancestry); the site was settled largely by Midwesterners in several waves of migration. More than two-fifths of the people identify themselves as Hispanic. A large proportion of the city's Hispanic population is from Mexico, and Hispanics constitute a significant segment of the unskilled labour force. Other minorities in the city are Asians, African Americans, and Pacific Islanders.
The Hohokam were the earliest permanent Native American inhabitants of the Phoenix area. After them came the Akimel O'odham (Pima), Maricopa, Yavapai, and Yaqui groups. The U.S. government sent many of these peoples to nearby reservations in the 19th century. Although only a fraction of the city's population is Native American, Phoenix still has one of the largest urban concentrations of Native Americans in the country. Several reservations are located to the south and northeast of the metropolitan area.
African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans live primarily in the southern portion of the city, below the downtown district. Open ethnic conflict is rare, except as it is played out by rival gangs of mostly young inner-city residents.
Despite the large number of retirement communities in the area, the overwhelming majority of the population is under the age of 45. The majority of the people also tend to be relatively new to the region, many residents having lived in Phoenix for less than a decade.
Phoenix's economy was once dominated by ranching and farming, but it shifted in the mid-20th century to one based on services, technology, and, more notably, tourism. Maricopa county was one of the top urban agricultural producers in the country in 1980, but farming has since steadily lost ground to urban growth; now only a small portion of the labour force is engaged in food production.
About three-fourths of the state's manufacturing jobs are located in the Phoenix area. Light industry is predominant, especially the manufacture of electronics, transportation equipment, aerospace technology, foodstuffs, and cosmetics. The principal crops are cotton, durum wheat, fruits, and vegetables. Only a small proportion of the workforce in the private sector belongs to labour unions, which, along with tax incentives, has made Phoenix attractive to relocating corporations, many of them engaged in the manufacture of semiconductors and other electronic components. The region has thus emerged as a centre of high-technology production. A well-developed electronics infrastructure also has made Phoenix a capital of the telecommunications industry. More than half the labour force works in banking, finance, and other service activities. For the most part, however, the city's economy still depends on tourism, especially in the winter months.
Phoenix is well served by roads, railways, and airlines. Automobiles are the most popular method of transportation, which has led to severe air pollution. All streets within the city limits were paved by 1920, far ahead of many metropolitan areas in the country. Phoenix is served by a system of freeways, most of which were built in the last two decades of the 20th century to alleviate congestion. Construction of a light-rail system began in 2006. A branch line of the Union Pacific Railroad connects the city to the main line between Los Angeles and El Paso. Regular airline connections to Phoenix began in the late 1920s. Several airports serve the metropolitan area; the most important of these is Sky Harbor International, southeast of downtown.
Administration and society
Phoenix has operated on a council-manager system since 1914; it was one of the first cities in the country to adopt this now-common method of governance. Until the late 1940s, powers were evenly divided between the two entities, with council members able to reward political patronage. Vulnerable to corruption, this system ended when the Charter Government Committee—led by department store executive and later Republican Party presidential nominee Barry M. Goldwater, who became a member of the city council in 1949—implemented several key organizational reforms.
By the late 1990s, Phoenix had developed a business-oriented city government headed by a city manager appointed by the city council. The council, made up of eight elected members, sets city policy, enacts ordinances, and appropriates funds for long-term city projects. The mayor, elected at large, serves as the head of the council for a four-year term. Individual members are elected by district; they initially serve two-year terms and can be reelected to serve subsequent four-year terms.
Municipal services
Phoenix, in concert with the Maricopa Association of Governments and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, provides a range of services for its citizens. The city has an extensive network of public parks, notably Encanto and Papago parks and the Phoenix Mountains Preserve, a 6,000-acre (2,400-hectare) natural park in a desert-foothills setting. The 17,000-acre (6,900-hectare) South Mountain Park, one of the largest city parks in the country, lies on the south side of the city.
The system of health care in the Phoenix area has experienced severe setbacks, especially since the 1980s. Managed-care corporations have assumed control of most medical facilities and imposed cutbacks on services. Residents may receive care at the area's public hospital, the Maricopa County Medical Center. The Arizona State Hospital provides inpatient mental health care. The Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale (opened 1987) includes medical research facilities.
Until the mid-1980s the educational system was characterized by inadequate funding, overcrowding, and poorly trained staff. In later years additional funding, stricter requirements, and the development of specialized magnet schools yielded some positive results, with students scoring well above national averages on several standardized tests.
Several public and private institutions of higher learning are located in and around Phoenix. Arizona State University (1885), a state land-grant institution, has three campuses in the Phoenix-Tempe area. Other institutions include the University of Phoenix (1976), Grand Canyon University (1949), Southwestern College (1960), Western International University (1978), and Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management (1946), in Glendale. The Maricopa Community College District is one of the largest community college systems in the country.
Cultural life
In the late 1940s several organizations, including the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and the Phoenix Art Museum, introduced a notable program of visiting artists and touring exhibits. Today the area is home to several fine art facilities, with the flagship Phoenix Art Museum holding a collection of more than 13,000 pieces, including a major collection of Southwestern art. The Heard Museum houses more than 75,000 Southwestern Native American works of art. The Arizona Science Center, a complex including exhibit halls, a planetarium, and a big-screen cinema, opened in 1997. The Pueblo Grande archaeological museum studies and preserves the ruins of the area's most prominent settlement of the Hohokam people.
In Papago Park are the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden, which has a collection of some 20,000 desert plants, and the 125-acre (51-hectare) Phoenix Zoo, which opened in 1962. Founded by appliance magnate Robert E. Maytag, the zoo is the largest privately owned nonprofit zoo in the country, although it receives some funding and support from the city. It participates in scientific research on the ecology of the Sonoran Desert, breeding programs for endangered and threatened species, and other ventures and has a highly regarded program of education and public outreach.
Since the late 1980s, civic leaders have approved several costly improvements to the area's downtown arts and museum district, which includes the city's convention centre, one of the largest municipally operated facilities of its kind in the country. Originally constructed in the early 1970s, it has undergone subsequent renovation and adjoins a complex of museums, performing arts venues, and sports facilities, including a baseball stadium and a basketball arena.
Sports have a central role in the cultural life of Phoenix. Baseball is particularly popular. The local professional team is the Arizona Diamondbacks, and many other Major League Baseball teams hold their spring training camps (known as the Cactus League) in areas surrounding the city; several others train in the Tucson area. The area's other professional sports teams include the Cardinals (gridiron football), the Suns (men's basketball), the Mercury (women's basketball), and the Coyotes (ice hockey). There are also tracks for automobile, horse, and dog racing. Tennis and golf are widely played, and running, walking, and biking along the banks of the CAP aqueducts are popular recreational activities.
The metropolitan area's chief daily newspaper is the Arizona Republic. The Phoenix New Times is a weekly covering arts, culture, and politics. The Business Journal Phoenix, a weekly, provides economic and financial news.
Nearby Scottsdale is the site of Taliesin West, the Arizona home and studio of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the winter campus for the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Scottsdale is also the site of the Cosanti Foundation, founded by the Italian architect and builder Paolo Soleri. Located in Tempe is Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium, a theatre designed by Wright that has a 2,900-pipe organ. Tonto National Monument is about 60 miles (95 km) east and Casa Grande National Monument some 50 miles (80 km) south of Phoenix.
The early period
Archaeological excavations in the mid-20th century by Emil W. Haury at Ventana Cave, southwest of Phoenix, uncovered human and animal remains and stone tools dating to about 10,000 years ago. Possibly as early as 300 bc, the Hohokam people arrived in the area and remained until about ad 1400. A farming people, the Hohokam developed an elaborate system of irrigation canals extending far from the banks of the Salt River. Hohokam culture collapsed in the 15th century for reasons that are not entirely known. The Akimel O'odham (Pima) were the successors to the Hohokam in the Phoenix area.
European arrivals
Spanish explorers arrived in what is now Arizona in the 16th century. A chain of missions and small forts extending northward from Mexico along the Santa Cruz River valley was established by 1700. In that period the Spanish made contact with the Akimel O'odham and Maricopa Indians, whose settlements along the Salt and Gila rivers were in close proximity to the northernmost mission.
In 1846, following the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, a detachment of Mormon volunteers entered the region and made its way to the villages of the Akimel O'odham. There they traded goods for fresh produce and grains. After the war, some of the Mormons returned to the area, established small farms along the Gila and Salt rivers, and founded the towns of Mesa, Florence, and Safford.
The Mormons gave the name Pumpkinville to what is now Phoenix. In 1867 Jack Swilling, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, began a grain-milling business near the site of the present Sky Harbor International Airport to provision the federal garrison at Camp McDowell. Two years before Swilling's arrival, a local farmer named John Y.T. Smith, the first person of European descent to settle in the Salt River valley, had planted grain in the area. The renaming of the town was left to an Englishman and early town civic leader, Darrell Duppa. He chose the name Phoenix, giving the explanation, "A new city will spring phoenix-like upon the ruins of a former civilization."
From a town to a city
Pioneers came to the valley in increasing numbers throughout the late 1860s, and on October 20, 1870, Phoenix was officially established as a town. A county building and the area's first schoolhouse were completed in September 1872. A telegraph line, operated by the pioneer prospector and merchant Morris Goldwater, was established in 1874, and a national bank opened in 1878.
After Phoenix became a city in 1881, civic leaders began to lobby for the construction of a railroad. In July 1887 a secondary line of the Southern Pacific Railroad (now Union Pacific Railroad) connected Phoenix to the main line leading east to El Paso and west to Los Angeles, providing a large and accessible market for the valley. With increased prosperity, the city began to modernize. Having already opened one of the first electric-power generating plants in the West in 1886, the city installed a streetcar system that soon traversed much of the valley. Within a few years Phoenix also had a hospital, a public library, and other municipal facilities.
Those leaders also worked to bring the Arizona territorial capital to Phoenix. Since the establishment of the territory in 1864, the legislature had relocated from Prescott to Tucson, then back to Prescott again. After extensive lobbying on the part of the city's emerging business elite, the legislature moved to Phoenix in 1889. A local farmer donated a 10-acre (4-hectare) site for the territorial capitol, and the new building was dedicated on February 25, 1901. When Arizona attained statehood on February 14, 1912, the building became the state capitol.
The boomtown years
In the first years of the 20th century the people of Phoenix recognized that the region's potential was limited by its unreliable water supply. They formed the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association to lobby for the creation of a large-scale project to control the flow of the river and harness its water for irrigation. The National Reclamation Act of 1902 had made government funding available for such public works. In 1905 construction began on the Roosevelt Dam, the first such structure on the Salt River; it was finished in 1911, making it possible to irrigate the surrounding desert and thus use it as farmland. In following years three more dams were added on the Salt and two on the Verde River.
With a network of reservoirs in place, Phoenix grew as an important agricultural centre in the early 20th century, providing winter vegetables and grain for much of the West. During World War I many of the city's farms shifted to the production of Egyptian (pima) cotton, which was needed for use in clothing, tires, airplane fabrics, and munitions. Russian, Japanese, and Mexican migrant workers traveled to Phoenix to work in the cotton fields, and by the 1920s the city underwent a cotton boom. A decade later the Great Depression put an end to such prosperity. Facing that unexpected downturn in the agricultural economy, Phoenix's business community—led by Dwight Heard, John Orme, William Murphy, and other prominent citizens—worked to diversify the city's economy, especially by encouraging the development of tourism.
During World War II Arizona's deserts served as military bases. Many of the soldiers who passed through Arizona liked what they saw and returned at the end of the war. Several hundred German and Italian prisoners of war who had been interned in camps in and near Phoenix chose to remain rather than return to their homelands after 1945.
Postwar growth
The population grew substantially in the decade following the war, as affordable home air-conditioning became available. During that time hundreds of manufacturing firms relocated from other parts of the country. By 1960 half of the state's population lived in the Phoenix area.
Another factor in Phoenix's growth was the arrival of another source of water. Arizona Senators Carl Hayden and Barry Goldwater lobbied for a massive public works project, and in 1968 the Colorado River Basin Project Act was passed. The act authorized the CAP, which involved constructing a series of dams along with a canal that would divert water from the Colorado River to be used by many communities, including Phoenix and Tucson.
The military presence in the Phoenix area also contributed to the city's rapid growth. Until the 1930s, Camp McDowell was the sole military outpost in the region; in the years preceding World War II, however, Phoenix's business elite, led by Goodyear Tire chairman Frank Littlefield, successfully lobbied for the relocation of several U.S. Army Air Corps detachments to the area. Two important air bases, Williams and Luke, were established, and the military brought in thousands of personnel, many of whom remained or returned after completion of their service. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the military presence was reduced somewhat, but the U.S. Air Force has continued to figure prominently in the local economy and be an important employer of civilians.
Corruption and conflict
In the late 1960s and early '70s corruption was an impediment to convincing nonmilitary employers to move into the Phoenix area. Bruce Babbitt, who in the mid-1970s was the state attorney general, warned that not only the Phoenix area but the entire state had earned reputations beyond their borders as dens of vice and crime. Land fraud was common, as was the illegal use of undocumented workers—mostly from Mexico and Central America—in factories and farms at extremely low pay rates. In 1976 Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was murdered while investigating the connections between organized crime and agriculture and banking within Arizona; public outcry brought on several criminal conspiracy trials and the imprisonment of such crime figures as Ned Warren, locally known as the "Godfather of land fraud." The spectre of corruption emerged again in the late 1980s, when Phoenix financier and developer Charles Keating was convicted on the charge of having stolen more than $1 billion from a financial firm that he controlled. The institution's demise was one of the largest bank failures in the country's history.
Into the 21st century
With increased prosperity in the 1990s, many of the city's social ills, notably crime, lessened, and material conditions improved. In 1993 the CAP, construction of which began in the early 1970s, was officially completed. The city continued to grow through policies of annexation and promotion to bring businesses to the area. By the early 21st century Phoenix and the once-distinct cities that surround it had emerged as one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country in terms of both area and population.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
ArizonaPhoenix, situated in the south-central part of the state, is the capital and largest city. Area 113,990 square miles (295,233 square km). Population (2010) 6,392,017; (2018 est.) 7,171,646.…
Salt River
Salt River, tributary of the Gila River, east-central Arizona, U.S. The Salt River is formed at the confluence of the Black and White rivers on a plateau in eastern Gila county. It flows 200 miles (320 km) in a westerly direction and empties into the Gila River 15 miles (24…
Mexico, country of southern North America and the third largest country in Latin America, after Brazil and Argentina. Mexican society is characterized by extremes of wealth and poverty, with a limited middle class wedged between an elite cadre of landowners and investors on the one hand and masses of rural…
El Paso
El Paso, city, seat (1850) of El Paso county, extreme western Texas, U.S. It is located on the Rio Grande, there bridged to Juárez, Mexico, just south of the New Mexico line. The largest of the U.S.-Mexican border cities, it lies at the foot of the Franklin Mountains (at an…
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, city, seat of Los Angeles county, southern California, U.S. It is the second most populous city and metropolitan area (after New York City) in the United States. The city sprawls across a broad coastal plain situated between mountains and the Pacific Ocean; the much larger Los Angeles…
More About Phoenix1 reference found in Britannica articles
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No one expected internet marketing to grow into a billion dollar industry, but that's exactly what it has become. The ready availability of internet access and people's growing dependence on it has made internet marketing and industrial web design a crucial aspect of businesses, both large and small. These days, people turn to the internet to look for products and services which means that whoever rules the online community rules the market.
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Having a reliable and experienced industrial website designer company to create an online presence for a service or product is becoming the norm for both large and small businesses. Having website and an internet marketing campaign has become a mark for success, simply because it gives a business the ability to reach more people. It also gives their potential consumers a fast and convenient means of reaching them in return. But like any investment, the key to getting a good return is by finding an industrial web designer that understands how internet marketing works and includes all of its different facets in his designs.


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Restoring path of true democracy
Last November, Americans got a glimpse of what can happen to our representative democracy when wealth determines our degree of participation in the electoral process. As we enter the new year, the vast majority of us would now agree that unlimited spending by wealthy individuals and corporations is bad for the American electoral process and that unlimited secret spending is even worse.
Unfortunately, the 2012 election was just the beginning. In a decision last summer — American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock — the Supreme Court struck down a ban on independent expenditures in state and local elections, so now races for judge, sheriff and district attorney are the targets for massive independent expenditures, despite the obvious risk of corruption that this entails.
Story Continued Below
Money in politics has rarely incited the level of voter indignation necessary to win reforms, as many voters have become acclimated to the system of legalized bribery that is corroding America's democratic process.
This year's elections changed that. The Supreme Court's decisions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, and the orgy of election spending they have unleashed, have provoked unprecedented public revulsion. Advocates in every cause who have seen sensible legislation derailed by backroom influence peddling can't afford to let this moment pass without galvanizing a new movement to clean up our electoral system.
Fortunately, there seems to be strategic activity in three distinct areas that could provide the framework for such a movement. First, we need to develop a long-term strategy to overturn Citizens United. Second, we must demand total transparency and make it easy for all to know where campaign cash comes from and where it goes. And third, we need to mitigate the effects of Citizens United with public campaign financing systems, such as our successful program in New York City.
In the long run, reformers need to overturn Citizens United. An increasing number of lawyers and public officials across the country believe it will soon be vulnerable to a challenge. Its unsupported assertion that independent expenditures "do not give rise to corruption or appearance of corruption" defies common sense and our actual experience in the 2012 election. A few more elections, and the flaws in this absurd argument should be clear to all.
In a July Gallup Poll, Americans ranked reducing the corruption of government as the second-highest priority for the next president — right behind job creation. Fully 87 percent said it is extremely important or very important. Clearly, those Americans are concerned about corruption and the appearance of corruption in our electoral system. With a smart, focused litigation strategy, Citizens United will go the way of Plessy v. Ferguson.


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Power Rangers Dresses Are Making Us Morph in Our Pants
If an ironic retro T-shirt isn't doing it for you anymore, why not dress your girl up in one of these totally rad 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' mini-dresses.
It's kind of amazing how iconic the costumes for the classic 90′s superhero series are – a solid color interrupted by three white diamonds and a white belt always gets us in the mood for giant monster butt-kicking.
These mini-dresses, available from Amazon, come in all of the classic Ranger colors – not only the traditionally feminine yellow and pink, but also red, blue, green and black. Sadly, Megazords are not included.
They also make a set of four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mini-dresses if you want to get more reptilian.
[Via Geekologie]


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For the month of February, I participated in the 2013 Family History Writing Challenge. I did write every day and accomplished my mission. I only pledged to write 250-300 words per day since I wanted to be sure I completed the challenge. I actually wrote 13,619 words for an average of 486 words per day.
Participating in the challenge helped me find holes in my research. As I wrote about a topic, there was a need to research for other information. I also found new ways to use the census records. I had never before explored the non-population census returns. Using these helped me find out what crops were grown in southern Illinois in the 1850s-1880s. When I found that they grew Irish or sweet potatoes, I understood that Irish potatoes referred to white potatoes and Indian corn has now evolved as a reference to corn. Today when we think of Indian corn, the image of the tri-color corn sold as a fall decoration comes to mind.
There are still naturalization records to find as I realized when I wrote about Becoming Americans. I did find one for my paternal great-grandfather Georg Burbach. It gave me the month he and his family arrived in the United States and established the port of New York as the point of entry in July 1856. Now for a visit to the Castle Gardens records.
My research is far from over but the Family History Writing Challenge helped my realize what areas need more attention.