Tag: alabama

Video shows high school band director shocked with stun gun, arrested after refusing to stop music

Police body camera video shows an Alabama high school band director being shocked with a stun gun and arrested by officers in front of screaming students, in a chaotic scuffle that broke out after he refused to immediately stop the band as it played in the bleachers following a football game.

State Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who is representing band director Johnny Mims as his attorney, said Tuesday that the incident is an “alarming abuse of power” that instead “should have been should have been deescalated.”

The Birmingham Police Department said it remains under investigation but the band director resisted arrest and allegedly pushed an officer.

The altercation erupted after the game last Thursday between Minor and Jackson-Olin high schools.

In the body camera video released by police Monday night, officers are seen approaching Mims, the band director at Minor, as the band plays in the stands. They ask him several times to stop the band and clear the stadium. Mims continues to direct the band and replies to the officer, “Get out of my face.”

“We’re fixing to go,” he continues. “This is their last song.”

As the music continues, an officer tells Mims he will go to jail. and another says she will contact the school. Mims flashes two thumbs up and says, “That’s cool.”

“Put him in handcuffs,” an officer is later heard saying.

The video shows that the band played for about two minutes after officers approached Mims.

After the music stops, officers are seen on the video apparently trying to arrest him, in a scrum of bodies. One says Mims swung at an officer and must go to jail, and Mims denies doing so. An officer then shocks Mims with a stun gun.

Students — more than 140 were present, according to Givan — are heard screaming in the night as the arrest plays out.

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Alabama Says Helping With Out-of-State Abortions Is ‘Criminal Conspiracy’

Alabama’s attorney general is insisting that he has the right to prosecute people who help pregnant women obtain out-of-state abortions. In a court filing earlier this week, Steve Marshall said such actions amount to criminal conspiracy.

Marshall’s filing comes as part of a case involving the Yellowhammer Fund, a nonprofit that bills itself as an “abortion advocacy and reproductive justice organization.” The group and two women’s health centers—the West Alabama Women’s Center and the
Alabama Women’s Center—sued Marshall in July over the attorney general’s suggestion he could go after groups that help pregnant Alabamans get out-of-state abortions.

Marshall first made this suggestion last summer on a local talk radio program, The Jeff Poor Show. “If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortion out of state, then that is potentially criminally actionable for us,” Marshall said, according to the Yellowhammer Fund’s complaint. “And so, one thing we will do in working with local law enforcement and prosecutors is making sure that we fully implement this law.”

“There is nothing about that law that restricts any individual from driving across state lines” and seeking an abortion, Marshall continued. But an “entity or a group that is using funds…to facilitate” out-of-state abortion travel “is something we are going to look at closely.”

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Triggered: Woke Alabama School Suspends 6-Year-Old Over ‘Finger Guns’ During Cops And Robbers Game

A six-year-old Alabama boy was suspended from school and had his “permanent record” threatened for making ‘finger guns’ during a game of cops and robbers.

“They labeled my six-year-old as a potentially violent and dangerous student because he was being a little boy and playing cops and robbers with another student (who was also suspended) and using his fingers like a gun,” said the boy’s father, Jarrod Belcher, in a statement released on Friday, Sept. 8.

According to the Epoch Times, a Jefferson County Board of Education “Due Process Referral for Class III Infractions” form released by Gun Owners of America (GOA) reads that Belcher’s son was “using gun fingers to shoot at another student.”

The boy was subsequently suspended from school pending a hearing with his parents.

According to the letter, on Sept. 1, 2023, two boys were playing “cops and robbers” during recess at Bagley Elementary School.

“During the course of their play, the children reportedly extended their index fingers and thumbs and said ‘bang-bang’ at each other,” the letter reads.

The child, identified as J.B., was suspended and accused of committing a Class III infraction. This is the district’s most serious infraction. According to the Jefferson County School District’s Student Parent Handbook, Class III infractions include possession of guns or explosives, sexual battery, battery of a school district employee, and robbery, among others.

The boy would only be allowed back in school after a hearing with his parents and the district. -Epoch Times

Following a complaint from the Belchers, the disciplinary action was downgraded to a less severe Class II infraction, however Belcher is still calling BS.

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Alabama Set To Try New, Untested Execution Method

Alabama wants to execute a man so badly that they’re likely to become the first state in the nation to kill someone by nitrogen hypoxia. 

Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, who was sentenced to death for a 1988 murder-for-hire killing, has already survived one execution attempt from the state. Last November, he won a court case allowing him to demand to be executed specifically by nitrogen hypoxia, a method that has been approved in Alabama since 2018 but has remained untested.

Nonetheless, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall still asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for Smith last week, with plans to use the method.

While four states in addition to Alabama have approved execution by lethal gas, no one has been executed using this method since 1999. While 20th-century gas chambers typically killed inmates using cyanide gas, death by nitrogen hypoxia is a completely untested method. Under the proposed process, an inmate would be placed in a gas chamber, where they would be forced to breathe pure nitrogen, ultimately causing death by suffocation due to the lack of oxygen.

After long arguing that they should be allowed to kill Smith by lethal injection because the state had not yet developed a nitrogen hypoxia protocol, state officials unveiled a formal nitrogen hypoxia process in conjunction with their motion to set Smith’s execution date. Under the process, the inmate will wear a mask, which will force them to breathe pure nitrogen gas “for 15 minutes, or five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” resulting in death by suffocation.

Smith won the right to be executed by this method in a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit last November. Smith argued that a lethal injection attempt would expose him to “an intolerable risk of torture, cruelty, or substantial pain,” citing the state’s previous botched executions.

The same day as the 11th Circuit’s ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay of execution for Smith. Alabama officials attempted to kill him by lethal injection that day, but they abandoned their attempt after they tried unsuccessfully for several hours to place IV needles in Smith’s arms.

While nitrogen hypoxia has been touted as a more humane method for killing death-row inmates—it’s simply unknown how much suffering death by nitrogen hypoxia causes.

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Alabama Judge Halts Medical Marijuana Licensing Again, This Time Over Alleged Open Meetings Violations

A Montgomery County Circuit Judge Thursday put a hold on Alabama’s medical cannabis program amid a lawsuit alleging the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC) violated the state’s Open Meetings Act at its most recent meeting.

The stay, issued by Judge James Anderson, followed a heated hearing where an attorney for the AMCC suggested the commission would air applicants’ “dirty laundry.”

Applicants denied a license won’t be able to request an investigative hearing until after the stay is lifted, and the commission will have to put site visits and evaluations on hold. AMCC Director John McMillan said that it will be “impossible” to issue licenses at an August 31 meeting.

“We’ll most likely have to schedule another meeting,” McMillan said after the hearing, and added that they would have to complete site visits.

Alabama Always, which sued the commission last month over the appointment of former chair Steven Stokes, filed a lawsuit against the AMCC, alleging the commission violated the state’s open meetings law at its August 10 meeting. The company, which applied for but did not receive a license, alleged that commission members privately nominated companies for public votes on license awards during an executive session.

The lawsuit alleges that commission members were instructed to seal their nominations in an envelope during the executive session, and the companies with the most nominations received a public vote in the August 10 meeting.

The AMCC re-awarded licenses for the production and distribution of medical cannabis at the August 10 meeting, two months after stopping earlier awards amid questions about the evaluation of applications.

The judge allowed other parties to join the suit by the end of the week. Alabama Always and other companies suing AMCC will have to prove that the commission violated state law.

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Black Woman Who Claimed She Was Kidnapped By White Man With ‘Orange Hair’ Admits She Made It All Up

A black woman who sparked a nationwide manhunt by claiming she was kidnapped in Alabama by a white man with “orange hair” admitted through her lawyer on Monday that she made it all up.

From The Independent, “Carlee Russell claimed she was kidnapped by a man with orange hair. It was all a lie”:

Carlethia “Carlee” Nichole Russell seemed to vanish on 13 July after calling 911 to report she had seen a toddler walking on the side of Interstate 459 in Alabama.

The 25-year-old told dispatch she stopped her car to check on the child, and called a family member before losing contact, according to the Hoover Police Department.

By the time officers arrived five minutes later, Ms Russell had seemingly disappeared, with her car engine still running, and the toddler was nowhere to be found.

Law enforcement and family members mounted a desperate search for the missing woman and pleaded with the public for help.

Then just over 48 hours later, police were notified that Ms Russell had returned home on foot.

She told detectives that she had been kidnapped by a white man with “orange hair”, and held captive in a semi-truck trailer and house before escaping.

However, less than two weeks after making headlines for a harrowing tale of disappearance, child neglect, and kidnapping, the Alabama woman admitted on 24 July it was all a lie.

NBC News reported that police said “Russell told them she was forced into an 18-wheeler truck and taken to a home where a man and a woman told her to get undressed and then took photos of her.”

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Innocent Woman Facing Life in Prison for Legally Purchasing Kratom & Driving 200 Feet Into Alabama

In a disgusting display of what’s fundamentally wrong with America’s drug war, Shaina Brown, an entirely innocent woman, who harmed no one, finds herself locked up behind bars, slapped with an egregious $1,000,000 bail, later lowered to a still absurdly high $250,000, all for the mere possession of a plant she bought legally, just 200 feet away from where she was arrested. The plant in question? Kratom, a botanical supplement that has been vilified by a select few states and the federal government, despite it being perfectly legal in the majority of the US, including where Brown had initially bought it. It is also extremely safe when consumed properly.

To show just how insidious the state’s war on kratom actually is, we compared some of the recent bail amounts in Escambia County to Shaina’s case. Folks with crimes like strangulation, assault, battery, murder, and sexual abuse all have lower bonds than Shaina.

According to local law enforcement, the arrest happened in the dead of night on April 1, 2023, after Brown crossed over the unmarked state line from Florida, where Kratom is legal, into Alabama, where it is not. For those who may be unaware, kratom is ground-up tea leaves that are consumed by millions worldwide for its therapeutic benefits. Shaina’s mistake? Unknowingly bringing it into a state that has criminalized it.

Now, Brown faces the grim reality of the drug war in America. A plant purchased legally turns into a Schedule 1 substance the moment she crosses that imaginary line drawn on a map, transforming her, in the eyes of Alabama law, from a law-abiding citizen to a felon, with potential charges carrying a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.

The charges are shocking, especially considering Shaina’s history of minor offenses: a solitary speeding ticket and a cold check written in 2014 for under $500. A woman who isn’t a hardened criminal is now facing the prospect of losing years of her life, all for unknowingly “trafficking” tea powder in Alabama.

What’s most chilling about these proceedings is the manner in which they’re carried out. Juries are informed that the defendants are charged with possession or trafficking of a Schedule 1 substance, but they’re not told that this substance is Kratom. This omission paints an unfair picture, aligning defendants like Shaina with the likes of hardened criminals involved in the trade of far more dangerous and illicit substances like fentanyl.

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Carlee Russell fired from spa job, co-workers ‘pissed’ about increasingly suspicious kidnapping story

Carlee Russell has officially disappeared — from the payroll of her Alabama job.

The owner of the Woodhouse spa in Birmingham told The Post that she’s been canned, and that her steaming co-workers are “pissed” about their former colleague’s increasingly suspect kidnapping account.

Owner Stuart Rome said his staffers were stunned after hearing of Russell’s purported disappearance and did everything in their power to help bring her home.

“It was really devastating for them thinking a co-worker was abducted,” he said. “The following day, Saturday, it was the busiest day of the week, and they had to plug along and work and in the off times pass out flyers and other things.”

But since Russell abruptly resurfaced police have revealed she had searched for bus ticket prices and movies about kidnapping on the day she disappeared, drawing mounting skepticism over her account.

Her co-workers’ concern also started to turn to anger.

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No evidence of toddler on highway when Carlee Russell disappeared: Police

New details were released by police Tuesday night about the mysterious disappearance and return of Carlee Russell in Alabama.

The Hoover Police Department said the night she went missing she went to Target after leaving her job and purchased some snacks and food items.

Police added these items were not located inside her abandoned vehicle or with her cell phone and wig at the scene of her disappearance on I-459.

Russell disappeared shortly after reporting she’d seen a toddler walking along the interstate to 911.

However, police said they have not located any evidence of a toddler walking down the interstate, nor received any additional calls about a toddler walking down the interstate, despite numerous vehicles passing through that area as depicted by the traffic camera surveillance video.

The police department said it has also obtained surveillance footage from the night Russell returned to her parent’s home.

The footage is from Russell’s neighborhood and shows her walking down the sidewalk alone before she arrived at her residence, according to police. Fire department radio traffic obtained by several media outlets shows that medics were dispatched to her residence on an “unresponsive but breathing” person.

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Woman returns home after she mysteriously disappeared calling 911 about wandering toddler

A missing woman came back home in a return just as puzzling as her disturbing disappearance. The Hoover Police Department in Alabama announced that their 911 center received a call at 10:45 p.m. on Saturday about Carlethia “Carlee” Nichole Russell, 25, reappearing.

“She walked up, banged on the door, and that was her,” Hoover Police Chief Nicholas Derzis told WBRC.

He said he was unsure how she got there. Police still had to determine what happened after she went missing while reporting that she saw a toddler wandering alongside a local interstate. Investigators will sit down with her, but not yet.

“The first thing is to give Carlee and family a little time to get themselves back together,” the chief reportedly said. “I know it’s been a tough experience for them. When we think it’s time to sit down and have a conversation with Carlee and try to get some facts, we’ll do that.”

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