Tuck Convicted in the hate crime

Tuck Convicted in Brutal Pipe Attack"

Lee McGuire's 11 News at Noon report Wendell Edwards 11 News at 5 report
HOUSTON -- A Houston jury Thursday convicted the teen described as a neo-Nazi of savagely beating and sodomizing a teen at a party in Spring.

David Henry Tuck, 18, showed no emotion when the verdict was read.

He faces up to life in prison for aggravated sexual assault.

The jury of 10 women and two men took about five hours to reach a verdict.

The victim's family was relieved.

"It's a great uplifting situation today. I mean I think it's just step one," said Carlos Leon, the victim's family attorney. "I mean we're excited, we're happy, but we still have punishment phase. We still have another trial in a month so it's a good first day."

Tuck’s defense attorneys said in closing arguments that their client was innocent and blamed a 16-year-old boy and his 13-year-old sister for the attack. The prosecutor said racial hatred fueled the four- to five-hour attack in which the victim was beaten, kicked and sodomized with the plastic pole of a patio umbrella.

During the trial, 16-year-old Gus Sons and his 13-year-old sister Danielle offered graphic testimony about the attack a party at their home in the Houston suburb of Spring. The youths at the party were drinking, smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine and taking Xanax, according to testimony.

They said the attack was triggered by the victim’s drunken pass at Danielle Sons, then 12, and by an alleged attempt to steal drugs from Gus Sons.

“That day, who had the motive to want to hurt (the victim)? All he is doing is putting Mr. Tuck’s name on what he did,” defense attorney Ken Goode said.

The defense called Gus Sons a "lying scumbag" and said his testimony isn't nearly enough to convict Tuck.

An earlier defense witness testified Danielle Sons told her she participated in the attack.

Trent told the jury of six white people, five black people and one Hispanic that the Sons siblings were not likable but they were telling the truth. He also reiterated earlier comments about Tuck being a skinhead and a neo-Nazi.

“They wanted to kill him, violate him in any way they could,” Trent said of Tuck and 17-year-old Turner, who will be tried separately in the attack. “This man is guilty of about the most heinous crime you will ever see where the victim survived.”

Hinton told jurors the attack was not racially motivated, despite testimony referring to swastikas on Tuck’s possessions.

“You’ve heard about the swastikas and all that stuff; that’s not what this case is about,” he said. “It’s about a bunch of guys all messed up on drugs and someone wound up getting hurt.”

Defense attorneys said there was no physical evidence linking the pole to Tuck or Turner, who is being tried next month.

They said authorities didn’t find any of the victim’s blood on Tuck’s knife, and that they never tested a knife that Sons had.

Trent said Tuck and Turner probably cleaned the knife while pouring bleach all over the victim’s body. He also told jurors the victim’s blood was found all over Tuck’s clothing.

The victim, who was seated with his family near the front row during closing arguments, testified Wednesday he remembered nothing of the assault. He glared at Tuck while sitting on the witness stand.

The victim is a high school senior who spent more than three months in a hospital recovering from his injuries. He initially was not expected to survive. He told jurors he has undergone 20 to 30 surgeries.

The victim’s family has said it believes the attack was a hate crime and law.

Authorities have said they didn’t prosecute it as a hate crime because it wouldn’t affect the possible punishment.

The punishment phase of the trial begins Friday at 10 a.m.

link:

http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/khou01116_ac_tuckclosingarguments.41a3e5dc.html

Hate Crime in Houston

This came to me from Ann via e-mail. Please take a look at this video of a racially-motivated hate crime by two skinheads in Houston several months ago. Please view the video and please don't tell me that these are exceptional. They're not. They're part of the climate of intolerance and bigotry that is curren

From 11 News Staff Reports

Click to watch video

It is up to a judge to decide whether jurors will be allowed to see a videotaped confession from a teen accused of a brutal sexual assault of a schoolmate.
Prosecutors showed David Tuck's videotape in court Friday.

Tuck, 18, and his friend Keith Turner, 17, are accused of attacking and sodomizing a teenager at a party last April.

Friday Tuck’s attorneys asked the judge to stop the video from being shown next week when his client's trial gets underway.

HCSO
David Tuck's videotaped confession
Tuck’s trial on aggravated sexual assault charges.

Friday's reveal of the tape showed Tuck sitting down and saying he wanted to tell his side of the story.

Tuck tells detectives that he just started swinging and didn’t know what he was doing.
"All I know is I started swinging. I blacked out. I didn't know what I was doing and that's why I had blood on my pants," said Tuck in the video.

Tuck said all he did was use his fists and that's why he was sore.
He also told detectives he didn't use a weapon.

When one of the detectives asked about a pike and whether Tucker and Turner used it on the victim, Tuck asked to see a lawyer.

Authorities said that during a gathering last April, the two white suspects attacked the Hispanic teen, stomping him in the head with steel-toe boots. They then sodomized him with the plastic pole from a patio-table umbrella into which they had poured bleach, then doused the boy’s body in bleach.

Through the attack, Tuck and Turner shouted racial slurs, authorities said, prompting a push for tougher hate crime laws.

They nearly killed the teen who suffered severe internal injuries, cuts on his chest and head injuries.

KHOU-TV
Police said David Henry Tuck and Keith Robert Turner showed no remorse.


He was hospitalized for weeks, but is now recovering and has returned to school.
Some youths who were at the home where the boy was attacked later that night have said they smoked marijuana and took Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, while there.

Tuck and Turner have told investigators they beat the boy because he kissed a 12-year-old girl at the home.

Neighbors and schoolmates of Tuck described him as a skinhead with Nazi tattoos who had terrorized the neighborhood.

In one instance, David Tuck angered families in his subdivision when he trained young children to bow down and praise Hitler, said Richard Rogers, Tuck’s next-door neighbor.

Alvaro Rivera, who lives near Tuck, said he once had to stop his car because Tuck was frozen in a Nazi salute, blocking Rivera, whose and wife and children were in the car. Rivera said Tuck and his friends laughed at the family as they drove by.

Two years ago, Tuck hung a swastika flag above the family’s garage but it was later taken down on subdivision officials’ orders, Rogers said.

KHOU-TV
David Henry Tuck's trial is scheduled to begin Monday.

On Martin Luther King Day about two years ago, Tuck paraded in his neighborhood with a swastika flag, said high school classmates Jason Savage and Tommy Peterson.

Tuck’s mother, Sharon Tuck, 54, has denied her son has Nazi sympathies.


"Savage beating suspect wants taped confession out of trial"

http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/khou061110_jj_sodomizesuspectincourt.22ba052b.html


Thanks Ann for the article and the accompanied links.

Gerald Levert, R.I.P.

Gerald Levert Dies at age 40.

Another great has passed from this good earth. This time the talented singer Gerald Levert, the son of Eddie Levert of the legendary O'Jays.

He left a legacy of hits, starting with Casanova and (Pop Pop Pop Pop) Blows My Mind back in 1987. Also the hit 1991 duet with his dad, Baby Hold On To Me. His latest songs include Thinking About It on his last CD.

More on Mr. Levert, please click here.

Also, leave your condolences at Gerald Levert .com

My heart goes out to the Levert family. May he rests in peace!

Gerald Levert (1966-2006)

Teena Marie

Soulful after all those years in the music business. She has a beautiful, talented daughter, Alia Rose, following her footsteps. She even have a part in both of her mother's latest CDs, La Dona and Sapphire, respectively.

Here's an article on Teena Marie back in 2004 at:

http://www.soulshine.ca/news/newsarticle.php?nid=579

Ed Bradley, R.I.P.

Ed Bradley dies at 65.

Ed Bradley of CBS Dies by Louis Hau, Forbes.com

Ed Bradley, the veteran CBS News correspondent, died Thursday of leukemia at the age of 65, CBS reported.
Bradley, who was with the television network for 35 years, was best known for his long tenure as a correspondent for the CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people ) news magazine show 60 Minutes, which he joined in 1981.
In contrast to the confrontational style of his 60 Minutes colleague Mike Wallace, Bradley approached his interviews with sensitivity and empathy, which served him well whether he was speaking with Muhammad Ali, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak or Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who granted Bradley his only TV interview.
A particularly memorable example of Bradley's deft touch was his 1981 interview with Lena Horne, during which the singer opened up about the pain she endured early in her career trying to succeed in a white-dominated entertainment industry.
The interview snared Bradley an Emmy Award, one of 19 he would eventually win. Bradley also garnered the George Foster Peabody Award, the George Polk Award and the Overseas Press Club Award during his career.
Bradley was a native of Philadelphia, where started his broadcasting career in 1963 as a reporter for WDAS Radio, a focal point for the local African-American community.
Last year, the National Association of Black Journalists honored Bradley with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, Bradley recalled how much things had changed for minority journalists during his career.
"It doesn’t seem like it was a lifetime ago when we held the first [NABJ] meetings in New York – just a small band of brothers and sisters new to this business of journalism,'' he said. "There weren’t many of us then but we knew we needed to be together…I look around this room tonight and I can see how much our profession has changed and our numbers have grown…All I have to do is turn on the TV and I can see the progress that has been made.”

More on Ed's untimely passing at:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/11/09/obit.bradley/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Love on Trial: The Alice Rhinelander Story

In the 1920s, interracial marriages were at the center of controversy. None of them compare to the controversy involving the Jones and Rhinelander families of NY.

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/04needs/sex05.htm

Here's an article written by Seattle Weekly on the 1925 case:

Skin-crossed lovers
A failed interracial romance can't escape scrutiny.
By Judy
Lightfoot
LOVE ON TRIAL: AN AMERICAN SCANDAL IN BLACK AND WHITEby Earl
Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone (W.W. Norton & Company, $26.95)
AT THE HEIGHT
of the Roaring Twenties, Kip Rhinelander, the wealthy son of white New York
plutocrats, fell in love with Alice Jones, an attractive young woman of
mixed-race ancestry who occasionally worked as a domestic. In 1924, after a
three-year romance that included the exchange of nearly a thousand love letters,
they married. Almost immediately, a court battle began that gave newspapers
throughout the nation front-page stories for more than a year: Rhinelander
sought an annulment, alleging that Jones had deceived him into thinking she was
white.
Could a member of the elite class in a racist society have failed to
notice, after spending countless hours with the Jones family, the dark skin of
his lover's father and brother? Prior to the marriage, hadn't Rhinelander told a
friend that he didn't care what race Jones belonged to? Was Rhinelander's
father, a bigoted real-estate magnate worth millions, secretly forcing his son
to seek an annulment so the family name would stay "pure"? What did Jones'
racial identity mean, anyway? Did the fact that her father was born in England
give his skin color a different significance?
Historians Earl Lewis and Heidi
Ardizzone address such questions in Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black
and White, a well-researched social history aimed at a general audience. It's a
fascinating, suspenseful (if sometimes redundantly told) tale of interracial
love in an era of radical change. The book alternates dramatic episodes in the
lives of the main characters with lively commentary on race, immigration, class,
female sexuality, and popular media during the Jazz Age.
Especially
interesting is the theme that American ideas about race have always been
shifting social constructions. Sometimes a drop of blood in the veins made a
person black; sometimes people were categorized as octoroons, quadroons,
coloreds, Negroes, and mulattoes; sometimes those with a black ancestor came to
be considered white if they had pale skin, European parents, and no connection
to the black community. But, as this book vividly shows, all such definitions
had a common purpose: to maintain clear boundaries between the races, even after
blacks and whites were made equal under law throughout the U.S., and mixed-race
marriages were legalized in many states, including New York.
AMERICA'S
NEWSPAPERS and judicial system supported this policing of racial lines. During
the Rhinelander trial, reporters described Jones as "dusky," a "tropical
beauty," or "of a Spanish complexion," and photos of her face were captioned
with the question that readers were expected to agonize over: "Does she look
like a Negro?" The judge actually approved a motion by attorneys to have Jones
disrobe before the jury and reveal her true color.
The trial was an ordeal
for both parties. Sometimes the press and the court made Rhinelander appear to
be "an example of what wealth and privilege produced: inarticulate,
self-centered, powerful, frivolous, and carnal." Sometimes they painted him as
stupid and gullible, seduced by a lascivious, dark-hearted vamp whose sole
desire was to enter the upper class.
Yet Jones told reporters she felt
indifferent about questions of social status and didn't see "a single wholesome
thing in the life of the so-called 400 [best families]." She quietly insisted
that she married Rhinelander because she loved him. Rhinelander's physician
testified at the trial that Jones' tender affection for her lover had begun to
heal his chronic stammer and other nervous afflictions. We'll never know the
true quality of this relationship or the true motives of either partner. These
stories were destroyed, along with the marriage itself, by the one told in court
and by the national media.
Love on Trial unforgettably dramatizes the
American use of race to define the self, decide what others are like, and draw
lines that separate or connect the self and others. Even now, 75 years after the
Rhinelander scandal, the habit is hard for many of us to shake.

A Hard-Hitting Essay On the State of Hip Hop

James Lamb Jr. delivers a hard-hitting essay on the state of Hip Hop today. He contends that today's Hip Hop culture resembles the slave past when Black bodies are up on the auction block for sale and profit. Here's the link to the article at:

http://www.jameslambjr.com/2006/10/revenge-of-c-delores-tucker.html

Read the article. Then discuss it with a friend or a fellow blogger.

The Latoyia Figueroa Trial

Finally, Latoyia's family is receiving justice. The murder trial of Mr. Poaches began on October 13th. This man is responsible for the disappearance and murder of Latoyia Figueroa, 25, last July. She has been the focus of the media's inattention to missing women of Color.

Here are the links:'

Trial Opens in Slaying of Latoyia:

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15747395.htm?
source=rss&channel=dailynews_local

Latoyia's Dad: He Deserves What He Got:

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15785307.htm?
source=rss&channel=dailynews_local

Defendant unfazed by Figueroa's rotting corpse:

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15777208.htm?source=rss&channel=dailynews_local

Guilty in death of pregnant girlfriend:

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061017/NEWS/61017041


Man Guilty Of Slaying Girlfriend Who Refused Abortion:

http://www.wgal.com/news/10101859/detail.html?rss=lan&psp=nationalnews

Sailerfraud gave me the article on how mainstream media almost always focus on beautiful young white middle class women who are missing. Latoyia's case is the exception. Even that came about because of the pressure from bloggers and concerned people around the world.

http://www.latoyiafigueroa.faithweb.com/

Latoyia, Rest in peace always.

A Counter-Yeagley Website

Finally, a website written by a thoughtful academic that counteract all the lies of David Yeagley. Mr. Yeagley's hatred of humanity must be challenged by all good people around the world.

http://www.davidyeagley.org/

The Subversiveness of BF/WM Marriage

Black women. White men. Now that’s subversive.
Posted by marthasouthgate on Sunday, April 24th, 2005 at 12:35 pm


Nicholas D. Kristoff sounds off on Hollywood’s refusal to feature an interracial on-screen romance, despite the explosion of interracial marriages.
As of the 2000 census, 6 percent of married black men had a white wife, and 3 percent of married black women had a white husband — and the share is much higher among young couples.
Yet …
… When will Hollywood dare release a major movie in which Denzel Washington and Reese Witherspoon fall passionately in love?
For all the gains in race relations, romance on the big screen between a black man and a white woman remains largely a taboo. Americans themselves may be falling in love with each other without regard to color, but the movie industry is still too craven to imitate life.
I agree wholeheartedly with Kristof. Hollywood is behind the curve on reflecting how race is lived in America. That goes for movies and television.
But one thing keeps hanging me up in this discussion of portrayals of race in mass media. Why is the black man-white woman relationship seen as the epitome of racial progress in America?We’ve had this discussion before.
The simple answer is that black men and white women elicit angry stares and death threats.
Don’t be fooled: White women deliver stares that are just as angry — I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Ironically, the white dude involved was a multi-racial Nuyorican who just came out looking white. And black men? They assume that black women who date white men are are just out for dough.
But the truth is more complex (and I posted this same thing a few minutes ago in the comments of a previous post).
As Rajen Persaud explained in an MLive.com article last month:
The stereotypes, especially that of the hypersexual and aggressive black male and the virtuous, pure white female, are a result of social engineering by slave owners of old. They desired a society that would condone slavery, so they created images that would dehumanize blacks and exalt whites.
In other words, the reason why black woman-white men relationships don’t get the hype is because black women have been deemed inferior. We’re either overweight, asexual, undesirable mammies, or hypersexual, always ready never-say-no Jezebels.
That’s why white men get so upset about seeing “their women” with black men (What? Dating down? Couldn’t find a white man who’d want you?). It’s why white women get so upset about seeing a white man with a black woman (Why would you want her? I mean, she’s not as good as a white woman.)
And here’s the kicker: it’s the same reason why black men get so upset about seeing a black woman with a white man (I’m sayin: I’m cool. I got a big dick and e’erythang. Why does she want ol’ lil dick Oppie? It must be the money.)
So to me, the true sign of racial equality in society and Hollywood would be black women being loved (by folks generally, but whites in particular) — and not as rescue projects, prostitutes, or struggling single mothers who have just lost their children and wind up sacrificing their dignity and self-worth trying to change the hearts and minds of racist cops (*cough* “Monster’s Ball” *cough*) — but as equals.

An Interesting Debate on Slavery and Rape

There's an interesting debate on DarKush regarding slave rapes of Black women during slavery and beyond:

http://darkush.blogspot.com/

As usual, Ann nailed it down to a T! Please read and meditate on her comments to Steve Barnes at:

http://www.haloscan.com/tb/sebarnes/116051650881522459

I hope he gets it this time around.

Tamara Dobson, R.I.P.

Tamara Dobson(1947-2006)

Star of Cleopatra Jones Films Dies By Associated Press

Tamara Dobson, the tall, stunning model-turned-actress who portrayed a strong female role as Cleopatra Jones in two "blaxploitation" films, has died. Dobson, 59, died Monday of complications from pneumonia and multiple sclerosis at the Keswick Multi-Care Center, where she had lived for the past two years, her publicist said. At 6 feet, 2 inches tall, Dobson was striking as the kung-fu fighting government agent Cleopatra Jones in 1973. She reprised the role in 1975's "Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold." "She was not afraid to start a trend," said her brother, Peter Dobson, of Houston. "She designed a lot of the clothing that so many women emulated." Dobson also appeared in "Come Back, Charleston Blue," "Norman, Is That You?" "Murder at the World Series" and "Chained Heat." She had TV roles in the early 1980s in "Jason of Star Command" and "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century." Dobson lived most of her adult life in New York, her family said. She was diagnosed six years ago with multiple sclerosis.

More on Tamara Dobson at:

FOX News.com: Tamara Dobson Dies