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How Two Newspaper Reporters Helped Free an Innocent Man

Posted on August 30, 2013 by The Soul Brother

Stateville Correctional Center (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Maurice Possley

During nearly 25 years as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune, I received hundreds of requests for help from convicted defendants. None was more compelling than the hand-printed letter from Daniel Taylor, a 25-year-old inmate at Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois. In neat block letters, Daniel explained that he was serving a life sentence without parole for a double murder in Chicago in 1992. Even though Daniel had given a court-reported confession, he said he was innocent and he had police records that proved it.

The letter was addressed to Steve Mills, my reporting partner on numerous stories about wrongful conviction. When Steve brought it to my desk, I was as intrigued—and skeptical—as he was. Why had this man confessed? How had he been convicted? Was he delusional about what the police records really showed?

But Daniel’s timing was fortuitous. It was the summer of 2001, and Steve and I, along with fellow reporter Ken Armstrong, were deep into an investigation of false and coerced confessions in the city of Chicago. Perhaps, we thought, Daniel’s case would provide a window into a world we suspected—and later proved—existed: a world where defendants were said to have confessed to crimes they did not commit.

And so, in December 2001, the Tribune published our five-part series, “Cops and Confessions,” Daniel’s case was the subject of an entire installment. We had uncovered strong evidence of Daniel’s innocence—evidence that he was actually in jail at the time of the crime and that his confession was false.

I had never been so confident of a convicted defendant’s innocence. And I never imagined nearly 12 years would pass before Cook County prosecutors would admit the truth and dismiss his conviction. But it finally happened. On June 28, 2013, Daniel, who was arrested at age 17, was released at age 38, having spent more than 20 years behind bars.

Posted in News from the Soul Brother | Tagged Chicago, Chicago Tribune, Daniel Taylor, false incarceration, Illinois, incarceration, innocent, Ken Armstrong, prison, Stateville Penitentiary, Steve Mills | Leave a comment

Mall developers feel the pull of Africa’s consumer boom

Posted on August 30, 2013 by The Soul Brother

Village Mall (Photo credit: tom$)

By Matthew Bigg and Tiisetso Motsoeneng

When Wal-Mart Stores (WMT.N), the world’s top retailer, bought control of major South African discount chain Massmart Holdings (MSMJ.J) in 2011, American shopping mall developer Irwin Barkan had an epiphany.

An industry veteran of 30 years, Barkan’s U.S. home market was “graying”, while the youthful, underdeveloped African continent offered a sweet spot, with a rapidly expanding middle class and no competition from online retailers.

“When Wal-Mart announced it was buying 51 percent of Massmart, I knew that if I was going to stay in business, Africa was where I had to go,” he said.

He moved last year to Ghana, one of the continent’s brightest economic hopes, and his company, BG International #BGI#, has broken ground on what will be an 18,400-square-metre #200,000 sq feet# enclosed mall in West Accra. Another mall planned for Ghana’s second city of Kumasi is at a similar stage.

Barkan is not alone. Across Africa, commercial real estate developers are responding to the lure of one of the world’s fastest-growing consumer markets and rushing to build malls for eager retailers.

Consumer spending accounted for more than 60 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s buoyant economic growth, the World Bank said in its Africa Pulse report in April, adding economic growth would accelerate to more than 5 percent over the next three years, far outpacing the global average.

Posted in News from the Soul Brother | Tagged Africa, consumer, Economic growth, Ghana, malls, Massmart, retail, South Africa, Walmart, World Bank | Leave a comment

Merrill Lynch Set To Pay Largest-Ever Racial Discrimination Settlement

Posted on August 30, 2013 by The Soul Brother

Wall Street (Photo credit: photographerglen)

By Alan Pyke

Eight years after a group of black financial advisers filed a lawsuit alleging their bosses systematically steered the most profitable business to white employees, Merrill Lynch is preparing to pay the largest racial discrimination settlement ever.

In addition to distributing $160 million among all black investment brokers and trainees who worked at the firm from mid-2001 to the present, the proposed settlement would create a council of black employees within the company to advise executives on how to improve the firm’s internal culture around race. Merrill Lynch spokespeople have not confirmed the proposal, which a lawyer for the plaintiffs shared with the New York Times on Tuesday, but did say the company is “working toward a very positive resolution of a lawsuit filed in 2005.”

The suit accused the company of “steering black brokers away from the most lucrative business,” thereby shrinking black employees’ share of commission-based pay such that white workers made 43 percent more on average in 2006. The lawyer who shared the settlement with the times estimates as many as 1,200 people will share in the payout. Yet when the suit was filed, black traders made up so little of the firm’s staff that Merrill branches in more than half of U.S. states didn’t have a single black broker.