"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Amendment VIII, U.S. Constitution Bill of Rights
The United States prison system has become a modern-day concentration
camp for people of color. In the state of California Chicanos can now
be sentenced to prison only for being part of a "street gang."
According to local law enforcement, Mexican gangs are "street
terrorists" that must be treated as enemies of the state and taken off
the streets by any means necessary.
In order to accomplish this, crooked police, attorneys and judges can
and will infrige upon our rights as American citizens and conduct
race-based searches and seizures with no probable cause. The August 5,
2005 edition of the Modesto Bee states, "Ten people have filed claims
alleging that Ceres police violated their rights in gang
sweeps...accused police of improper searches and arrests, sometimes at
gunpoint, as well as discrimination against Latinos and excessive
force."
I will not go into too much detail about this right now. I will save my
comments for future articles, as this page is ONLY meant to show the
difference in the severity of prison sentences between whites and
people of color. Please send other articles related to the harsh prison
sentences for people of color as compared to short prison sentences of
Europeans to
'Green River Killer' sentenced to life in prison
Judge tells Ridgway he hopes victims will haunt his dreams
Friday, December 19, 2003 Posted: 11:12 AM EST (1612 GMT)
SEATTLE, Washington (CNN) -- Saying the time has come for "your reign
of terror" to be punished, a judge sentenced Gary Leon Ridgway -- the
most prolific serial murderer in U.S. history -- to life in prison
without the possibility of parole Thursday.
King County Superior Court Judge Richard Jones told Ridgway he hoped
the 48 women he killed would show up in his dreams and haunt him while
he sits in prison.
He called the 54-year-old former truck painter a man with
"Teflon-coated emotions" who had been driven only by a "demented,
calculating, lustful passion of being the emissary of death."
Jones began his speech from the bench with a 48-second moment of silence to honor each victim.
"As you spend the balance of your life in that tiny cell, surrounded
only by your thoughts, please know the women you killed were not
throwaways -- pieces of candy in a dish placed upon this planet for the
sole purpose of satisfying the murderer's desires," the judge said.
"While you could not face them as you took their lives, if you have a
drop of emotion anywhere in your existence, you will face those women
in your dreams and private thoughts of your grisly deeds. And, sir, if
you have that drop of emotion, you will be haunted for the balance of
your life."
Moments earlier, Ridgway fought back tears and sniffled as he told the
court, "I'm sorry for causing so much pain for so many people."
Of his victims who were never found, Ridgway said, "May they rest in peace. They need a better place than where I gave them."
Afterward, the mustachioed killer with horn-rimmed glasses, dressed in
a white prison suit with a maroon, long-sleeve shirt beneath it, used a
tissue to wipe his eyes and nose.
But he showed little emotion as Jones sentenced him to 48 life terms and fined him $10,000 for each victim.
'You're a coward'
The court was crowded with relatives of Ridgway's victims who testified during the sentencing hearing.
"I truly think that you're a coward," said Sarah King, whose mother's body was discovered when she was 5.
"You have useless excuses for what you've done and no remorse," King
said at the hearing. "You're going to wake up every day alone, and then
one day you'll miss the life that you had, because it's over now."
"Shame on you, Gary Ridgway. May God have mercy on your pathetic soul,"
said Virginia Graham, whose sister, Debra Estes, was one of Ridgway's
victims. "I'm content to know that your hell is constant and
never-ending through eternity."
But Kathy Mills, whose 16-year-old daughter Opal was among Ridgway's
first victims and found in 1982 on the banks of the Green River,
forgave Ridgway.
"Even if you may say you're sorry, Mr. Ridgway, it won't bring back
Opal," Mills told the court. "You've held us in bondage for all these
years because we have hated you. We've wanted to see you die. But [it]
is all going to be over now, and that is providing we can forgive you.
"Gary Leon Ridgway, I forgive you, I forgive you," Mills continued.
"You can't hold me anymore, I'm through with you. ... If this event
today does not break your evil spirit, I don't know what would."
'Dreams, hopes, aspirations'
Jones said each victim should be remembered as an individual.
"For the past 20 years, each of the young women who has died has been
grouped, labeled and characterized as if the circumstances of their
deaths was representative of their entire existence," Jones said.
"I ask every family member, friend and every member of our community to
eliminate such stigmas. I ask that you remember those 48 young women as
people who had unexplored dreams, hopes, aspirations and families that
loved them deeply."
Ridgway pleaded guilty November 5 to 48 counts of aggravated
first-degree murder and offered to help investigators find the
undiscovered remains of his victims. The bodies of four women Ridgway
admitted killing have yet to be found.
In exchange for the confession, prosecutors agreed to not to seek the death penalty.
The case takes its name from a river south of Seattle, where Ridgway
began dumping his victims in 1982. Most of the women were prostitutes,
whom he said he targeted "because I thought I could kill as many as I
wanted without getting caught."
In his confession, Ridgway said he killed because he hated prostitutes
and didn't want to pay them for sex; that he dumped their bodies in the
Green River and other inconspicuous parts of King County; and that he
killed so many women he had a hard time keeping them straight. (Full
story)
Ridgway was arrested November 30, 2001, after detectives linked his DNA to sperm found in three of the earliest victims.
By spring 2002, prosecutors had charged him with seven murders, but
they had all but given up hope of linking him to the dozens of other
women, most of whom disappeared during a terrifying stretch from
1982-84.
Washington state Department of Corrections officials said Ridgway will
likely end up in a facility that will offer few cellmates, or separate
him from other inmates altogether.
Multicrime guilt nets 114 years in prison
BEE STAFF REPORTS
Last Updated: January 25, 2006, 06:08:34 AM PST
A man who was caught driving a stolen car — after he led the California
Highway Patrol on a chase through a neighborhood — has been sentenced
to 114years in prison.
Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Nancy Ashley said Thursday that
Jose Benito Saldivar must serve four consecutive prison terms of
25-years-to-life, plus an additional 14 years.
Saldivar, 34, of Modesto was convicted of a string of crimes after a
Dec. 8 jury trial. The judge lengthened his sentence because he had two
felony convictions on his record.
According to a statement from the district attorney's office, members
of the Stanislaus County Auto Theft Task Force spotted Saldivar driving
a stolen car on April 14, 2004.
CHP officers gave chase and eventually pulled Saldivar over near
Shackelford Elementary School in south Modesto. Saldivar was armed with
a semiautomatic firearm, ammunition and paraphernalia associated with
drug use.
Saldivar acknowledged that he had been a member of a gang for 20 years, prosecutors said.
Saldivar was found guilty of auto theft, receiving stolen property,
evading a peace officer, being a felon in possession of a firearm and
ammunition, possessing a needle and syringe and narcotics pipe, and
committing crimes to benefit a criminal street gang.
By MERRILL BALASSONE BEE STAFF WRITER Last Updated: May 26, 2006, 04:27:04 AM PDT http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12234912p-12974784c.html
A judge Thursday sentenced a Modesto man to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing a contractor to steal his car stereo.
A jury on March 15 convicted Salvador Guzman Alvarez, 22, of the murder and robbery of Richard M. "Rick" Lopez, who owned a concrete construction business.
The two men met at the home of a mutual acquaintance on May 16, 2003, and Lopez offered Alvarez a ride home. Investigators believe Lopez was shot at close range while he was in his truck, then dragged a short distance and left for dead. His car stereo was gone, ripped out of the dashboard.
Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Nancy Ashley sentenced Alvarez to life in prison because jurors found two special circumstances to be true: murder during the commission of a robbery, and murder for the benefit of a criminal street gang.
Alvarez also received a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for the use of a firearm in the killing.
As the victim's father, Rick Lopez, stood to address the court, he criticized Ashley for allowing the jury's guilty verdicts to be read when his family wasn't there. Lopez said his family had returned to court before the jury was scheduled to read the verdicts, but jurors were leaving the courthouse.
Found out on the street
"That's how we found out, standing on the street," said Lopez, a Los Angeles Police Department narcotics detective, after the sentencing. "I know the system quite well. I've (testified) in murder trials before and I do know what she did was very wrong."
Ashley apologized to Lopez's family but said she felt the timing was "appropriate."
More than two years ago, Lopez's sister, Yvonne Lopez, was the only spectator in court when Alvarez stood before Ashley in a preliminary hearing. As Alvarez was sentenced Thursday, about a dozen family members, along with investigator Kirk Bunch of the district attorney's office, sat watching in the audience.
"I was waiting for this big bad monster to come through and I saw a cowardly mouse," Yvonne Lopez said of the first time she saw Alvarez.
She said the victim's 10-year-old daughter asked her every day of the trial if her father's killer had been brought to justice.
"Today we get to tell her we won," she said.
During the trial, gang experts said Alvarez killed Lopez to gain status with his street gang.
The authorities said Alvarez was a member of the Deep South Side Modesto Norteños. They found the letters DSSM on a sidewalk in front of Alvarez's house, carved into a tree on his lawn and on a trash can at his home on a street adjacent to where Lopez's body was found.
The police found shell casings, a bullet and blood spatter in Lopez's truck. They also found similar ammunition hidden in a wall in Alvarez's bedroom.
Alvarez was arrested eight months after the murder after he drove past two sheriff's deputies in a stolen car with no lights on.
The deputies gave chase and found Alvarez after he slipped into the home of a stranger and hid in a bed. The homeowner confronted Alvarez, then flagged the passing deputies down.
Alvarez was sentenced to nearly six years for the unrelated carjacking of an ice cream truck driver, the theft of guns from a Modesto home and stealing the Ford Tempo.
Bee staff writer Merrill Balassone can be reached at 578-2337 or
Mendoza sentenced to death in killings
Mother-in-law slain with two others in December '01 attack
By MERRILL BALASSONE
BEE STAFF WRITER
Last Updated: April 27, 2006, 04:17:46 AM PDT Source: Modesto Bee
A Stanislaus County Superior Court judge sentenced Huber Joel Mendoza
to death Tuesday for killing three people in a south Modesto shooting
rampage.
Judge John G. Whiteside ordered that Mendoza, 41, be transported to
death row at San Quentin State Prison after jurors recommended that
Mendoza die by injection.
On Nov. 9, jurors found Mendoza guilty of murdering his mother-in-law,
Alicia Martinez, 54, his estranged wife's cousin Carlos Lopez, 37, and
a man his wife was dating, Camarino Chavez, 24.
Deputy District Attorneys Annette Rees and Doug Raynaud said Mendoza
was in a jealous rage when he donned a bullet-proof vest, loaded three
guns and crashed through the picture window of his in-laws' Pelham
Place home near Hanshaw Middle School about 3 a.m. on Dec. 12, 2001.
At Tuesday's sentencing, Mendoza slumped in his chair and stared into
his lap. He then spoke to the court for the first time, turning to
address surviving family members. At first he sounded tearfully
apologetic, but then called the survivors "common murderers."
"There's no difference between me and you," Mendoza said. "You're
blinded by the pain you have, and that's what happened to me I guess."
Mendoza blamed the family for supporting a relationship between Chavez
and his estranged wife, Cindy Martinez, prosecutors said. Defense
attorneys said Mendoza had delusions about protecting his three sons
from Martinez's new relationship.
"You knew from the beginning what you were doing," Mendoza said,
looking over at the family. "I just wanted the pain my kids were going
through to stop."
In the courtroom, Cindy Martinez spoke through tears as she described
the pain she has endured since losing her mother more than four years
ago.
"She has missed so much, all the activities my kids do every day,"
Martinez said. "And I have to be in the middle, missing my mother and
helping my kids who don't have their grandmother or father in their
lives."
Martinez's sister, Patty Gonzalez, looked at Mendoza and said she hopes
the sounds of her mother begging for her life never leave his head.
Deputy Public Defenders Kent Faulkner and Greg Spiering said Mendoza's
killing spree coincided with the onset of mental illness. They noted
that Mendoza wrapped $10,000 in a diaper and dropped it off at his
brother's house shortly after the murders. Hours earlier, Mendoza told
a school principal that he had been suicidal for years.
Several psychiatrists said Mendoza suffers from depression, but they
disagreed about the severity of his problems and his ability to know
right from wrong. On Dec. 1, the jurors rejected Mendoza's plea of not
guilty by reason of insanity.
Searched for in-laws
On that early December 2001 morning, Mendoza wore a helmet as he began
the shooting spree. After finding the front door locked, he crashed
through the front window and attacked Lopez, who was sleeping in the
living room. Mendoza then found Chavez asleep in a bedroom and screamed
"you're messing with the wrong guy" as he shot him multiple times,
according to testimony.
Mendoza searched the house for his mother and father-in-law. Jose and
Alicia Martinez escaped out a back door, but Alicia Martinez returned
to the home when she heard her teenage daughter, Guadalupe Martinez,
screaming. The girl, then 16, watched as her mother died.
By the time he was done shooting, Mendoza had fired 72bullets, emptying
an assault rifle and two handguns, police said. Afterward, Mendoza took
Guadalupe Martinez to Memorial Medical Center, where he surrendered to
a guard.
Mendoza will join 648 others awaiting execution at San Quentin,
including 30 men from the San Joaquin Valley and nearby foothills,
according to the latest numbers from the Department of Corrections.
It may take decades for the sentence to be carried out. All death
penalty cases are automatically reviewed by the California Supreme
Court and can proceed to the federal court system if they lose at the
state level.
Mendoza's three sons wrote letters in December begging the court to
spare their father by not imposing the death penalty. They did not
speak in court.
"I love my father and need him in my life, just like any kid needs his father," wrote Hubert Mendoza Jr.
Bee staff writer Merrill Balassone can be reached at 578-2337 or
Gary Ridway plead guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree
murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Jose Benito Saldivar was
convicted of auto theft, receiving stolen property, evading a peace
officer (all three basically dealing with stealing a car and running
from police), being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition
(protected by the bill of rights), possessing a needle and syringe and
narcotics pipe (but no drugs), and committing crimes to benefit a
criminal street gang and was sentenced to four consecutive life-terms
plus an additional 14 years in prison. Sounds fair to me...
Last Updated ( May 28, 2006 at 07:29 PM )
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