A young Rayful Edmond, draped in expensive jewelry

An entrepreneurial prodigy, Edmond controlled most of the drug trade within the city by his early twenties, importing millions of dollars in Columbian cocaine every week. His arrest at the age of 24 in 1989 and his subsequent trial created a media circus to rival Casey Anthony’s. Jurors were kept anonymous before, during, and after the trial, and the jury box was kept behind bulletproof glass. Edmond was transported to the court everyday from the Quantico maximum-security facility (also the location of the FBI Training Academy) via helicopter. Although these measures may seem extreme, authorities fears were far from unfound.

Edmond’s gang was notoriously violent. In one year, Edmond’s “employees” committed 30 murders. At his peak, Edmond moved 2,000 keys of cocaine a week, and brought in $70 million a month. Overall, the gang is believed to have committed over 400 murders over the course of their run, not including the attempted murder of a local pastor during an anti-drug march.

Edmond was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Several members of his family also received sentences, including his mother, several of his sisters, and some of his cousins. Being incarcerated did not stop Edmond at first, however, and, along with his new contacts in prison, Edmond conducted his drug business via phone privileges. He received another 30 years sentence after his misconduct was found out. Since his second conviction, Edmond has become a government informant, and is now a part of the Federal Witness Protection Program. His current location is confidential.

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January 30, 2014
Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty by an Italian appeals court for the 2007 murder of Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher.

They were first convicted of the murder in 2009 and each served four years in Italian prison; however, in 2011, an appeals court acquitted them of these charges due to a lack of evidence, and Knox returned to her hometown of Seattle.

In 2013, Italy’s Supreme Court dismissed the 2011 acquittal believing that during the appeal the court did not “consider all the evidence and discrepancies in testimony needed to be answered.” Italy’s Supreme Court designated a Florence appeals panel to further examine and reopen the case.

The retrial began on September 30th, 2013 in Florence, Italy. However, neither Knox nor Sollecito, were present at the start of the trial. Knox remained at home in Seattle throughout the entire trial, while Sollecito returned to Italy in November to defend his innocence.

After 12 hours of deliberations, the jury reinstated the original guilty verdicts against Knox and Sollecito that were given to them in the 2009 trial. The judge has sentenced Knox to 28 ½ years in prison and Sollecito to 25 years.

Knox watched the verdict live on television from her home in the U.S. and when the guilty verdict was read she said that she was “frightened and saddened” by the verdict, further commenting that “Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system… There has always been a marked lack of evidence. My family and I have suffered greatly from this wrongful persecution. This has gotten out of hand.”

So what happens next? The presiding judge has 90 days to write his arguments behind the jury’s guilty verdict and then the lawyers of Knox and Sollecito will have 90 days to appeal. Ted Simon, Knox’s attorney, said there will definitely be an appeal and that Knox’s extradition should not even be discussed at this time.

November 5, 2012
The past year of Amanda Knox’s life may have been better than the previous four years, but it was still far from normal.

Freed from Italian prison for now a little over a year, Amanda Knox is currently living in Seattle, lying low in a “seedy” part of town, and working on her memoir. She is dating a former boyfriend, James Terrano, a classical guitarist, and spends most of her time alone.

In September, her previous boyfriend and supposed-accomplice, Raffaele Sollecito, just completed his memoir, Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox. While Knox still hasn’t given her first formal interview, considered “one of the most coveted ‘gets’ being fought over by the American networks,” Sollecito has commented on his experience extensively, even admitting to being jealous of the attention that she got. Sollecito and Knox recently met up at Knox’s grandmother’s birthday party, which helped him come to terms with the girl he once dated. Says Sollecito, he realized almost immediately after seeing her after their release that she was not the she-devil that the media played her out to be, but instead “the Amanda that [he] loved for one week.”

Knox’s book is expected to come out in spring of 2013 and will supposedly net $4 million, most of which will go towards Knox’s staggering legal fees. Until then, Knox seems content to pass unnoticed through the ethnic neighborhood of Seattle in which she lives. Not surprising, considering her nightmarish four years spent in an Italian prison. As Sollecito explained, after getting out of prison, “everything was new…[it makes you] feel like a kid inside, just discovering.”

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Shirley Ree Smith was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in December 1997 for the murder of her 7-week-old grandson. In 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned her conviction by stating the case was a “miscarriage of justice.”

In November 2011, the Supreme Court Justices voted 6-3 to reverse the ruling in favor of Smith and to reinstate her conviction. Although the high court agreed that the doubts of Smith’s guilt are “understandable,” they believe the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals should have upheld the state’s conviction.

These “understandable” doubts about the guilt of Shirley Ree Smith are the result of an ongoing controversy about the existence of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). SBS is a phrase used to describe child abuse involving head trauma that could be the result of shaking. The three main symptoms of SBS include subdural hemorrhage, retinal hemorrhage, and brain swelling or damage. These symptoms are believed to be caused by an adult holding a child by their body and shaking them rigorously back and forth, causing their head to rock as well. This theory is generally accepted due to the lack of evidence of an impact-induced injury.

Those who disregard the existence of SBS believe that shaking alone is not enough to cause such injuries that lead to death. They believe some sort of impact against a surface is necessary to cause this sort of damage. Many people have their own beliefs about the existence of SBS. An autopsy has proven that there was enough damage done to Smith’s grandson to tear his brainstem. Also, there was bleeding into his optic nerves as a result of contusions to the brain. These contusions are the result of “violent shaking.”

As you can see, there is a lot of evidence supporting the existence of SBS especially in the Smith case. However, the Supreme Court did not reinstate her conviction as a matter of opinion concerning her guilt or the existence of SBS. They reinstated her conviction on the basis that it is not their job, nor the job of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, to determine whether the state was correct in their theory about Smith’s guilt. That was the jury’s job.

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The number of cell phones inside prisons has quadrupled over the past three years. Prisoners are under secure monitoring, so how are they getting that many phones past security? These inmates, essentially these criminals, are making unmonitored phone calls while supposedly having their rights restricted while in prison.  

Former New York City Correction Commissioner Martin Horn argues that prison is used as punishment by separating the inmates from society. How does this punish them if they still have access to the outside world through the possession of cell phones? Horn believes these efforts are useless.

Facebook applications such as Farmville might not be the only thing they are working on using their Smartphones. As far as we know, they could be planning the same sorts of crimes for which they were sent to prison. The best example of an inmate continuing the criminal life through prison doors using a cell phone is Anthony Kidd. Kidd arranged the murder of his girlfriend from inside a prison in New Jersey. As technology improves and time passes, criminals get smarter. They think of new ways to get around the security systems the same way they think of other ways to commit crimes.

Since these inmates are getting smarter, how can the prisons keep these cell phones out? The security officials monitor the activities of the inmates to the best of their abilities, but they can’t watch the entire facility every second of the day. There has been talk of employing K-9 units to sniff out the cell phones inside the prisons. The dogs would be able to detect the ionization in the cell phone batteries. This may be effective in recovering some of the phones, but will it be available for use in all prisons?

Even the most watched inmates are finding ways to sneak phones in. Charles Manson had access to a cell phone. This man orchestrated several murders by simply convincing other people to commit them. Imagine what sorts of things he could be working on with this access to unlimited unmonitored calls.

For information on cell phones in prisons in general, go here or here.

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