DOJ: Federal Government to Resume Capital Punishment After Nearly Two Decade Lapse - Crimes Against Wellbeing Of Children

We begin the descent.

It gets much darker because they do it in the name of the Lord.

Attorney General William P. Barr Directs the Federal Bureau of Prisons to Adopt an Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol and Schedule the Executions of Five Death-Row Inmates Convicted of Murdering Children

Attorney General William P. Barr has directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt a proposed Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol—clearing the way for the federal government to resume capital punishment after a nearly two decade lapse, and bringing justice to victims of the most horrific crimes.  The Attorney General has further directed the Acting Director of the BOP, Hugh Hurwitz, to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society—children and the elderly.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Attorney General Barr said.  “Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding.  The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

The Federal Execution Protocol Addendum, which closely mirrors protocols utilized by several states, including currently Georgia, Missouri, and Texas, replaces the three-drug procedure previously used in federal executions with a single drug—pentobarbital.  Since 2010, 14 states have used pentobarbital in over 200 executions, and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly upheld the use of pentobarbital in executions as consistent with the Eighth Amendment.

Upon the Attorney General’s direction, Acting Director Hurwitz adopted the Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol and, in accordance with 28 C.F.R. Part 26, scheduled executions for the following individuals:

• Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, murdered a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl. After robbing and shooting the victims with a stun gun, Lee covered their heads with plastic bags, sealed the bags with duct tape, weighed down each victim with rocks, and threw the family of three into the Illinois bayou.  On May 4, 1999, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas found Lee guilty of numerous offenses, including three counts of murder in aid of racketeering, and he was sentenced to death.  Lee’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 9, 2019.
• Lezmond Mitchell stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forced her nine-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30 to 40-mile drive. Mitchell then slit the girl’s throat twice, crushed her head with 20-pound rocks, and severed and buried both victims’ heads and hands.  On May 8, 2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona found Mitchell guilty of numerous offenses, including first degree murder, felony murder, and carjacking resulting in murder, and he was sentenced to death.  Mitchell’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 11, 2019.
• Wesley Ira Purkey violently raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl, and then dismembered, burned, and dumped the young girl’s body in a septic pond. He also was convicted in state court for using a claw hammer to bludgeon to death an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio and walked with a cane.  On Nov. 5, 2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri found Purkey guilty of kidnapping a child resulting in the child’s death, and he was sentenced to death. Purkey’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 13, 2019.
• Alfred Bourgeois physically and emotionally tortured, sexually molested, and then beat to death his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. On March 16, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found Bourgeois guilty of multiple offenses, including murder, and he was sentenced to death.  Bourgeois’ execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 13, 2020.
• Dustin Lee Honken shot and killed five people—two men who planned to testify against him and a single, working mother and her ten-year-old and six-year-old daughters. On Oct. 14, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa found Honken guilty of numerous offenses, including five counts of murder during the course of a continuing criminal enterprise, and he was sentenced to death.  Honken’s execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 15, 2020.

Each of these inmates has exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies, and currently no legal impediments prevent their executions, which will take place at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana.  Additional executions will be scheduled at a later date.

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Foster Care Death of The Day: August 15, 2015

Since the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refuses to keep track of the numbers of deaths and the means of death of children in foster care, Legally Kidnapped and I have decided to do it for them.

This death was paid via your taxpayer dollars.

The secret investigation into this death will be paid, report redacted, and findings censored, also, with taxpayer dollars.

Family of dead foster girl wants DCF probe

Family of dead foster girl wants DCF probe

The heartbroken mother and grandparents of a 2-year-old girl who died in foster care in an Auburn home where another toddler was hospitalized in critical condition are demanding a full-scale investigation of the Department of Children and Families by Gov. Charlie Baker — a call echoed by child welfare advocates and watchdogs yesterday.

• No arrests in death of Auburn foster child; 'breathing problems' reported
• Child in Auburn foster care case still struggling for life; cause of death for second child is pending
• DCF visited Auburn home days before child’s death
• 'I’ll never see my precious baby again': Mom of two-year-old girl found dead at foster home speaks out as another toddler fights for her life in hospital

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Death, Torture and Rape in Foster Care Are Never On The Public Agenda

It is such a delight to see a children's organization actually advocate for the well-being of children...in foster care.

Most, if not all the time, children's organizations will jump on the child abuse propaganda bandwagon for the months of April, May and November enticing fear if one does not pick up the phone and make an anonymous call to Child Protective Services to protect a child from the crimes as living in poverty or what some personally consider as moral turpitude.

Children's Rights is giving voices to the children who are damned behind the iron curtain of the secrecy of child welfare.

The story you are about to read is horrible, but the stories I have to tell will make any human fall to the ground in a twisted pain of a perpetual torment envisioning the screams of a child taking a last agonal gasp in hopes of the freedom by death to escape foster care.

Some kids survive foster care.  Some kids do not.  Death, torture and rape in foster care are never on the public agenda because it is paid by Medicaid.

Your tax dollars at work.

Inspired by the Children We Serve

On May 1, Children’s Rights launched its third annual Fostering the Future public awareness campaign. Each day throughout the month, CR is sharing a new blog from someone affected by foster care on the Fostering the Future website.

In this piece, CR Staff Attorney Kate Wood recounts traveling to South Carolina to meet brave young people who opened up about their traumatizing experiences in state care. They would eventually become named plaintiffs in Michelle H. v. Haley, a lawsuit highlighting South Carolina’s dismal record of recruiting enough loving, safe and supportive foster families.

I arrived at a row of rundown white single-story buildings surrounded by an old chain fence with overgrown weeds. It was strangely quiet for a place where dozens of children were supposed to be housed. After entering the gate, I crossed an open courtyard with nothing but a lone picnic table and then went into a small room in one of the buildings where Michelle was waiting. [Note: Michelle is the girl's pseudonym.]

Sitting on an old couch and staring at the floor, she didn’t even raise her head when I entered the room. At 16, Michelle has been in foster care most of her life. In a quiet voice, she explained that she had been in at least 12 foster placements and had suffered abuse in some of the homes. One foster parent choked her and threatened to return her to the foster care agency if she acted up.

Now, at this group facility where children are placed in solitary confinement if they misbehave, all Michelle can talk about is how much she just wants soap that won’t aggravate her eczema, but the facility staff refuses to provide any.

Since being at the group home, she has lost weight and desperately wants to be with a family. But her social worker — her third since entering state care — has told her there are not enough foster homes and there is no other place for her.

Unfortunately, while investigating the child welfare system in South Carolina, I found that stories like Michelle’s are not uncommon. I have heard stories of young people who were hit with belts, punched and sometimes sexually assaulted, all while in state custody. Many of these children are moved through an unthinkable number of placements and institutions, never forming lasting relationships with any adults or finding permanent families.

One young man had been in an astounding 28 placements throughout the entire state of South Carolina. Another described being moved between so many different homes that he felt unwanted and compared himself to “trash,” thrown away and forgotten.

Because there are so few foster homes, children are often inappropriately placed in group care placements. One young woman I met — we will call her A.R. — described in heartbreaking detail the abuse and neglect she suffered at the group facility where she languished for almost a year because, as her social worker said, there were no homes available for her.

A.R. rarely had enough food and she and other residents would hoard it when possible. The physical conditions of the facility were unsanitary and in disrepair. There were feces on the floor of the shower for over a month during her time there. Adults at the facility inappropriately touched A.R., and one made sexual advances while she was housed at the facility.

She reported this and the other conditions to anyone who would listen but no action was taken. It got so bad that she ran away to her physically abusive mother’s home. She would rather risk further harm by her mother than stay at the facility.

Even though this was the first time I was meeting her, A.R. shared with me that she felt so desperate and rejected that she resorted to self-harm. Despite being evaluated as needing therapeutic services in February, the facility did not take her to receive any treatment until October, even after being hospitalized for cutting her wrists.

As she described what she had lived through, you could hear the disbelief in her own voice. Too many of these children, just like A.R., go years without adequate medical and mental health care. Children are hurt physically, psychologically and emotionally, and are placed at constant risk of such harms while in state custody.

For all of these reasons, Children’s Rights decided to take action and hold the South Carolina Department of Social Services accountable for these longstanding systemic failures. We are calling on the child welfare agency to build the infrastructure necessary to support a sufficient number of good foster homes, and ensure reasonable caseload levels so social workers can be effective in their work to keep kids safe. And we are demanding that kids in foster care get the medical, dental and mental health services they desperately need.

I became a lawyer to advocate for vulnerable youth, and there is no population more vulnerable than children torn from the only families they have known, then placed into a system that treats them like they have been thrown away and forgotten.

At Children’s Rights, our work across the country allows children in foster care to have a shot at secure, safe futures. After spending over an hour describing her harrowing history in foster care, Michelle, without hesitation, agreed to be a part of our lawsuit against the child welfare agency. She even chose her own pseudonym.

Along with our other brave plaintiffs and dedicated advocates on the ground, I know we can make a difference. And years from now, the reform we believe is possible in South Carolina will be known by the name of the courageous young woman who shared her story so that many other young people could have a better future.

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State Secrecy Of Child Welfare Deaths In The U.S.

This report eludes direct mention of children in foster care, juvenile justice and mental health programs who die or who come close to dying from abuse and neglect but it does so in a very cunning manner by raising the question of secrecy.

Still, the Children's Advocacy Institute has taken on the daunting task of questioning the archaic institution of child welfare.  I encourage everyone to read this brilliant report.
State Secrecy And Child Deaths In The U.S.

This is why there is secrecy.Stop Child Medicaid Fraud Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

16-year-old restrained at treatment center dies

MANVEL, Texas — Brazoria County authorities and state child welfare officials Monday were investigating the death of a 16-year-old boy at a residential treatment center that's been under state scrutiny because of allegations of abuse.

Emergency medical technicians were summoned Friday evening to the Daystar Facility in Manvel, about 25 miles south of Houston, where CPR already had been started on the boy. He then was taken by ambulance to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, the Brazoria County Sheriff's Department said.

In a brief statement issued Monday, the department said a preliminary investigation showed "restraint techniques were used to subdue the child."

The nature of the techniques was not detailed but the preliminary cause of death "is thought to be asphyxiation," the department said. The Harris County Medical Examiner's office will provide a more specific cause later, the sheriff's department said.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services assigned a state monitor to Daystar and refused to send foster children there after reports surfaced in June that some developmentally disabled girls at the center in 2008 were provoked into fighting to win after-school snacks. The fight, in April 2008, resulted in the firing of a supervisor and at least one other worker.

The boy who died was from Howard County in West Texas, was in the conservatorship of Child Protective Services and had been in state custody since June 4, 2008, agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins said Monday.

The death came a few days after the Department of Family and Protective Services informed Daystar management Nov. 1 its facility would be placed on probation because of "persistent concerns about the facility and the children in its care," Crimmins said.

Since June 11, the department has withheld placing foster children at Daystar. A special monitor was hired to work at the facility from June 21 until Sept. 30.

"We are going to do everything we can to find out exactly what happened, and if this death was, in any way, preventable," Anne Heiligenstein, the agency's commissioner, said. "We also are disappointed to be looking, yet again, at Daystar.

"We are going to ensure that this facility improves, quickly. Or, we are going to close it."

In a Nov. 5 letter to Daystar outlining the probation, Heiligenstein said Daystar "has a history of being placed on corrective action and then declining after it is lifted."

Daystar did not immediately return a telephone call Monday seeking comment.

Daystar Residential Inc. describes itself as an alternative to institutionalization. It offers services to "clients" between the ages of 3 and 22 who have pervasive developmental disorders, emotional disorders, are hearing impaired or mentally impaired.

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Fancy Way To Say Murder Of A Kid

When a man dies from unnatural causes, it is called homicide.

When a child dies from unnatural causes, it is called Child Maltreatment Fatality (CMF) and it does not cross the line when it comes to police intervention.

This is a study by Emily Douglas, Ph.D. of Bridgewater State University, Massachusetts entitled: Child Maltreatment Fatalities - Perceptions of Child Welfare Professionals Study.

It is biased as it takes no consideration in dealing with immediate family members of the child.

The questions are loaded, leaving you no other option but to answer in the affirmative.

Assumptions are made that there are no deaths in residential institutions.

Perception of the survey is skewed by failing to provide consideration of foster parents as custodians/guardians.

I could go on, but I have a much better idea....

There was only one purpose in this study and that was to create billable training programs to incite a massive hysterical propaganda campaign that if workers do not get the Bridgewater special on CMF, then it will be the end of the world for all children.

My purpose of posting this study is to provide transparency to the world of what goes on behind the iron curtain of child welfare.  Universities are major players.  Workers of society are just that, workers who take direction from the major players.

This study is nothing more than a fancy way of making someone feel good about murder of a child.

Child Maltreatment Fatalities - Perceptions of Child Welfare Professionals Study

I encourage everyone to take this survey to distort her findings.

Fraud, Lies & Legislative Cover Ups In California Child Welfare

It's a compliance issue.  The incentives are financial.  Producing the records would uncover a pattern of pervasive false claims, jeopardizing significant levels of federal funding to the state.

Here is a federal review of Medicaid payments for services claimed for deceased beneficiaries.  The probability that there were foster care billing after the deaths of these children is plausible.

Review of Medicaid Payments for Services Claimed for Deceased Beneficiaries in California

L.A. County Children And Family Services Might Have Had Incentive To Withold Information About Child Abuse Deaths

An examination of how Los Angeles County officials have restricted information about the controversial, abuse-related deaths of children under the jurisdiction of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) found on Monday that in many cases "there may be either conscious or unconscious incentives for child protective service officials to adopt a narrow" view of what documents need to be released under state law.

The county Office of Independent Review examination also found that, in the last year or so, law enforcement almost uniformly objected to the release of such information, making it difficult for county supervisors and media outlets alike not only to get to the bottom of the juvenile deaths, but in some cases to even be aware that abuse might have been a factor in their demise.

Release of public files in the deaths "have largely been forestalled by the 2009 and 2010 blanket objections lodged by law enforcement," according to the review.

California SB39 Implementation Status on Releasing Information on Child Deaths

Los Angeles County didn't report child deaths

Officials failed to publicly disclose fatalities resulting from abuse or neglect, an audit finds.

Los Angeles County officials have failed to follow state law that requires them to publicly disclose child fatalities resulting from abuse or neglect, according to an independent audit released Monday.

The violations involve "potentially dozens" of child fatalities, County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said.

"The board has been misled, but more importantly the public has been misled and that is really inexcusable," Yaroslavsky said. "There is only one possible motivation here, other than the right hand not doing what the left hand is doing, and that is an intent to withhold information from the public."

Audit: Los Angeles Co. underreports child deaths

County withheld files on foster-child deaths

Gennaco described many of the documents in question as benign - they contained information that would not have jeopardized any legal proceedings.

Tuesday's public discussion of the investigation was in many ways reflective of the reluctance by some officials to talk publicly about the deaths of children in foster care. The county's attorney, Andrea Sheridan Ordin, interrupted at times, urging board members to discuss specifics of cases in closed session.

L.A. County orders disclosure of all child deaths from abuse or neglect

Los Angeles County supervisors ordered child welfare officials to disclose deaths resulting from abuse or neglect, amid questions Tuesday about why dozens of such fatalities apparently were not made public.

Supervisors told county staff to come up with a plan to implement a series of recommendations proposed by Michael Gennaco, chief attorney for the county's Office of Independent Review. Gennaco, who was asked by the board to conduct an independent audit, reported that the inquiry uncovered at least 22 cases in the last 2 1/2 years in which the county had not disclosed the deaths of children under the scrutiny of the child welfare system.

Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn told supervisors "there is no excuse" for how the department had handled the disclosures.

Gennaco said the failure to publicly disclose those deaths violated state law. Among his recommendations:

• The release of all records inappropriately concealed. 
• An end to the department's practice of asking law enforcement agencies to issue any objections to the disclosure of records without first giving investigators an opportunity to review them.
• An independent auditor to regularly evaluate the department's decisions about which fatalities to disclose to the public.

Murdered kids' info should be sealed, votes Assembly/Senate

Sparked by a recent leak to the Los Angeles Times from the LA County Department of Children and Family Services, legislation landed on Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk yesterday that will, if signed, result in the permanent sealing of autopsy reports of murdered children. The bill, written by Senate minority leader Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Temecula, (at right), passed a 60-1 vote in the Assembly and a 33-1 vote in the Senate Monday.

The legislation, SB5, allows family members to request that autopsies and other evidence be kept private if a child was killed during a crime. The request can be made only after a conviction.

The California Newspaper Association, which says the reports are important public documents, was the only opposition to the bill.

Reporting duties: Child protective agency must begin accurately reporting child deaths

THE county's reporting of child abuse deaths raises a serious question: Namely, who is the Department of Children and Family Services protecting? The children, or itself?

The background is that the rules for reporting the death of children from abuse or neglect changed under Senate Bill 39. Starting in 2008, protective service agencies were required by state law to make public information about child abuse or neglect death. The idea was that more transparency might increase the efforts that protective services agencies made to ensure children did not die in protective custody.

While he stopped short of saying it was a cover-up, Michael Gennaco, who heads the OIR, wrote in the report: "There has been some voiced concern about whether DCFS has interpreted child fatalities too narrowly in determining what qualify for purposes of SB 39." Later, he notes that "it stands to reason that the information provided by the disclosure of provisions of SB39 might ultimately cause criticism of the child protective services to occur. Accordingly, there may be either conscious or unconscious incentives for child protective service officials to adopt a narrow rather than broad view of whether, in a particular case, the SB 39 connectivity requirements for disclosure exist." He also noted that it's a lot of work for the agency to meet the reporting requirements for cases subjected to SB 39.

What's even more disturbing is that this mislabeling may have put more kids in danger if the failure to make that report meant other kids were left in homes where siblings died of abuse or neglect.

This is totally unacceptable. The reporting rules were adopted precisely to shine a light on the needless death of each and every child in the hopes of preventing future deaths. DCFS, either through intent or criminal ignorance, subverted that rule. And it makes one wonder if the organization thought there was something to hide.

Here are $88 million more reasons to hide what is going on in California's child welfare system:

California Title IVE Audit 2009



Special recognition to the investigative monitoring of Legally Kidnapped and their affiliates at Drugging Children.  Without their dedication and databases, transparency of this magnitude would not happen.

LA Child Welfare Does Not Like Transparency and Accountability

Secrecy in Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services is upset about its dirty laundry being thrown on the front lawn.

If you have nothing to hide, then why get mad? There is much more secrecy to this story.

Los Angeles County investigating leaks of child death cases

Los Angeles County officials are investigating the release of information regarding a string of child death and neglect cases involving the Department of Children and Family Services. The information appeared in a series of Los Angeles Times stories.

On Tuesday, county Chief Executive William T Fujioka will ask the Board of Supervisors to direct all departments to aid an "inquiry related to the inappropriate disclosure of confidential child welfare information, and, in consultation with the county counsel, report back on the findings."