Judge declares mistrial in case of SC police chief who killed black man

A South Carolina judge declared a mistrial early Tuesday in the case of a white ex-police chief charged with murder in the shooting death an unarmed black man.

The jury deliberated for 12 hours before telling Circuit Judge Edgar Dickson early in the morning they were deadlocked.

Prosecutor David Pascoe said he will evaluate his case but plans to try Combs again.

"I'm going to take a little time, but we're going forward," Pascoe said.

Pascoe said nine jurors had voted to convict Combs.

"We just had three jurors we couldn't convince," he said.

Defense attorney Wally Fayssoux, who maintains that Combs is innocent, said it had been a long week.

"We're disappointed we didn't get a result, but I think both sides feel that way," Fayssoux said.

The shooting happened after Combs was trying to arrest Bailey on an obstruction of justice warrant prosecutors contended was trumped up.

The defense said the shooting had nothing to do with race and argued Combs fired in self-defense when he was caught in the door of Bailey's moving truck.

During closing arguments, Pascoe said Combs frequently changed his story to match the evidence and was confident he would never be held responsible for killing Bailey because he was a police officer.

"He thought he got away with it because he wears a badge. Prove him wrong," Pascoe said in a passionate, hour-long argument during which he slammed the gun used in the killing on a table and had an assistant sit in the witness chair so he could carefully recreate the shooting.

Fayssoux said the case hinges on the three seconds in which Combs was trapped in the door of Bailey's pickup as it rolled in reverse, not the seven weeks it took Combs to serve a warrant on Bailey.

"Does he want to go home to his family?" Fayssoux said of Combs. "Or does he hope the truck doesn't roll over the top of him?"

Jurors had the choice between murder and voluntary manslaughter. Murder carries 30 years to life in prison without parole. Voluntary manslaughter carries two to 30 years in prison, and would have meant Bailey's killing was illegal but happened in the heat of the moment.

Judge Dickson authorized the voluntary manslaughter option Monday.

The seeds of the fatal confrontation were sown seven weeks earlier when Combs stopped Bailey's daughter for a broken taillight. The daughter called her father and Bailey came to the side of the road.

Sometime later, the chief secured a warrant for obstruction of justice, but waited several weeks to serve it until Bailey came to Town Hall the day before his daughter's trial. Pascoe asserted that Combs wanted to make a display of arresting Bailey, when he could have instead asked for help from sheriff's deputies.

After Combs told Bailey he was being arrested for obstruction of justice, witnesses said Bailey left Combs' office and went for his truck. Combs followed.

Pascoe said Combs could have stepped away from the truck door, but instead stood there and fired three shots into Bailey. The prosecutor said several things made it clear the truck was stopped and Bailey was trying to give up: The victim's foot was on the brake, and three shell casings were found close together along with Combs' dropped handcuffs.

But Combs' lawyer said all that mattered was that the chief feared for his life during the three seconds it took to shoot. He said Combs had no pepper spray or Taser and had no option but his gun.

Eutawville suspended Combs after the shooting and dismissed him several months later. The town reached a $400,000 wrongful death settlement with Bailey's family.

Although Combs was white and Bailey was black, race hasn't been front and center of the case. Pascoe contends Combs was angry at Bailey for just trying to show him up.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/

French policewoman killed in shoot-out, hunt deepens for militant killers

A call for witnesses released by the Paris Prefecture de Police January 8, 2015 shows the photos of two brothers, who are considered armed and dangerous, and are actively being sought in the investigation of the shooting at the Paris offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.

A policewoman was killed in a shootout in southern Paris on Thursday, triggering searches in the area as the manhunt widened for two brothers suspected of killing 12 people at a satirical magazine in an apparent Islamist militant strike.

Police sources could not immediately confirm a link with the killings at Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper which marked the worst attack on French soil for decades and which national leaders and allied states described as an assault on democracy.

Montrouge mayor Pierre Brossollette said the policewoman and a colleague went to the site to deal with a traffic accident. A car stopped and a man got out and shot at them before fleeing.

Witnesses said the shooter fled in a Renault Clio car. Police sources said he had been wearing a bullet-proof vest and had a handgun and assault rifle. However, one police officer at the scene told Reuters the man did not appear to fit the bill of the Charlie Hebdo shooters.

Live French television showed around a dozen police dressed in protective wear and helmets massed outside a building near the scene of the shoot-out.

The new incident came as France began a day of mourning for the journalists of Charlie Hebdo weekly and police officers shot dead on morning by black-hooded gunmen using Kalashnikov assault rifles. French tricolour flags flew at half mast.

Charlie Hebdo is well known for lampooning Islam, other religions and political figures. Tens of thousands took part in vigils across France on Wednesday to defend freedom of speech, many wearing badges declaring "Je Suis Charlie" (I Am Charlie) in support of the newspaper and the principle of freedom of speech.

Newspapers across Europe on Thursday either re-published its cartoons or mocked the killers with images of their own.

Britain's Daily Telegraph depicted two masked gunman outside the doors of Charlie Hebdo saying to each other: "Be careful, they might have pens". Many German newspapers republished Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Police released photos of the two French nationals still at large, calling them "armed and dangerous": brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, aged 32 and 34, both of whom were already under watch by security services.

The attack has raised questions of security in countries throughout the Western world and beyond. Muslim community leaders have condemned the attack, but some have expressed fears of a rise in anti-islamic feeling in a country with a large Muslim population.

In a separate incident, police sources said the window of a kebab shop next to a mosque in the central town of Villefrance-sur-Saone was blown out by an overnight explosion. Local media said there were no wounded.

Security services have long feared that nationals drawn into Islamist militant groups fighting in Syria and Iraq could return to their home countries to launch attacks - though there is no suggestion that the two suspects named by police had actually fought in either of these countries.

Britain's Cobra security committee was meeting on Thursday morning. London's transport network was target of an attack in 2005, four years after 9/11. There have been attacks in Kenya, Nigeria, India and Pakistan that have raised fears in Europe.

Islamist militants have repeatedly threatened France with attacks over its military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa, and the government reinforced its anti-terrorism laws last year.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France faced a terrorist threat "without precedent" and confirmed the two brothers were known to security services. But he added it was too early to say whether authorities had underestimated the threat they posed.

"Because they were known, they had been followed," he told RTL radio, adding: "We must think of the victims. Today it's a day of mourning."

A total of seven people had been arrested since the attack, he said. Police sources said they were mostly acquaintances of the two main suspects. One source said one of the brothers had been identified by his identity card, left in the getaway car.

Late Wednesday an 18-year-old man turned himself into police in Charleville-Mézières near the Belgian border as police carried out searches in Paris and the northeastern cities of Reims and Strasbourg. A legal source said he was the brother-in-law of one of the main suspects and French media quoted friends saying he was in school at the moment of the attack.

COURTING CONTROVERSY

Cherif Kouachi served 18 months in prison on a charge of criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005. He was part of an Islamist cell enlisting French nationals from a mosque in eastern Paris to go to Iraq to fight Americans in Iraq and arrested before leaving for Iraq himself.

Video captured during the Wednesday attack showed one of the assailants outside the Charlie Hebdo offices shouting "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) as shots rang out.

Another was seen calmly walking over to a wounded police officer lying on the street and shooting him with an assault rifle. The two men then climbed into a black car and drove off.

In another clip, the men are heard shouting in French: "We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad."

Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) has courted controversy in the past with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders of all faiths and has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad. Jihadists online repeatedly warned that the magazine would pay for its ridicule.

Around France, tens of thousands of people joined impromptu rallies and vigils on Wednesday night in memory of the victims - among them some of France's most prominent and best-loved political cartoonists - and to support freedom of speech.

Both the magazine's founder and its current editor-in-chief were among those killed in what emergency services called to the scene described as executions carried out at point-blank range.

Satire has deep historical roots in Europe where ridicule and irreverence are seen as a means of chipping away at the authority of sometimes self-aggrandising political and religious leaders and institutions. Governments have frequently jailed satirists and their targets have often sued, but the art is widely seen as one of the mainstays of a liberal democracy.

French writer Voltaire enraged many in 18th century France with his caustic depictions of royalty and the Catholic Church. The German magazine Simplicissimus in its 70-year existence saw cartoonists jailed and fined for ridiculing figures from Kaiser Wilhelm to church leaders, Nazi grandees and communist activists.

"Freedom assassinated" wrote Le Figaro daily on its front page, while Le Parisien said: "They won't kill freedom".

On Thursday the highest state of alert was still in place, with tightened security at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and department stores.

The last major attack in Paris was in the mid-1990s when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks, including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight people and injured 150.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/

Live: Deadly shooting at Paris HQ of French satirical magazine

Shots have been fired at French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in the heart of Paris Wednesday, with Paris officials reporting at least 10 fatalities. Witnesses at the scene reported seeing multiple masked gunmen. Follow FRANCE 24’s live blog.

Watch Live: http://www.france24.com/en/20150107-live-blog-gun-shots-french-paris-charlie-hebdo-satirical-magazine/#

source: http://www.france24.com/

National Guard officer and biker die in shooting eastern Caracas

At 10:00 in the morning of Thursday clashes began between a group of armed bikers and residents of Street A at Los Ruices, eastern Caracas. Members of a collective arrived in the area and tried to remove a barricade. During the action, a National Guard officer was injured and eventually died as soon as he was admitted to the emergency room.

A biker was also injured and admitted to hospital. He was identified as José Gregorio Amaris (25), who died in hospital, according to the speaker of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello.

Local residents would bang pots as the armed groups showed up and shot at apartments. In reply, residents hurled bottles at them. It was a strained situation for over two hours. Last, collective members entered some of the buildings of Street A.

At 1:49 in the afternoon, Sucre Mayor Carlos Ocariz reported that the National Police detained several people. "At this moment, there are 25 armored vehicles of the National Guard in Los Ruices," he said.

Source: El Universal
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