Five teenage boys who painted graffiti on a historic black school in Ashburn, Virginia, in September have received an unusual sentence. The boys, all 16 or 17, wrote racist slurs on the exterior of the old school, as well as swastikas, the words “white power,” and vulgar images. But Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Alex Rueda is the daughter of a librarian and understands power of education. She recommended sentencing the boys to read books by some prominent black, Jewish, and Afghan writers, write a paper on hate speech, visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and listen to an interview with a former student of the school they vandalized.

The school, Ashburn Colored School, taught black children from 1892 until the 1950s. The boys will listen to the words of former student Yvonne Thornton Neal, which is a fitting sentence, said Deep Sran, founder of the Loudoun School for the Gifted. “We thought it would be good to really understand the story of Ms. Neal and the local community and why it was so important to them,” Sran said.

Five white teenagers who sprayed racist graffiti were sentenced to visit a Holocaust museum and read black authors: https://t.co/zKa8qUTMgn pic.twitter.com/Oi5PKtB0ja

— Fusion (@Fusion) February 3, 2017

Students at Sran’s school, which one of the boys had previously attended, have been working on restoring the old school, raising money with bake sales and yard sales. The students were devastated by the vandalism. Their school owns the property that the old institution stands on and the plan was to turn it into a museum. Sran said it stood there for 40 years without any incidents like this. “The moment you bring attention to what it is and that it’s being restored somebody decides to deface it,” he said.

Rueda said the vandals didn’t seem to understand the gravity of their actions at the time of the crime. Three of them are also members of minority communities according to the Washington Post, and one had written “brown power” next to the other racist remarks. “It really seemed to be a teachable moment. None of them seemed to appreciate — until all of this blew up in the newspapers — the seriousness of what they had done,” Rueda said. Now the boys have some reading to do, and if they manage to write reports on all the books they read as well as complete the research paper on hate speech within a 12-month period, their cases will be dismissed.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Over 40 years after he reportedly sexually abused young athletes he coached, former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert reported to prison in a wheelchair. He wasn’t convicted on charges of abuse, but rather his recent violation of banking laws when he payed a victim to keep quiet.

Hastert is one of the most recognizable politicians in U.S. history to serve jail time. And he might never have been caught, had the FBI not noticed how he withdrew large amounts of money from several different banks three years ago. According to the Washington Post, he initially claimed he was being blackmailed, but officials soon realized he was lying.

Read Law Street’s previous take about the charges against Hastert here.

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert to report to prison today https://t.co/NVGLCLKV9n pic.twitter.com/iiwqiTOobi

— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) June 22, 2016

The Background

Dennis Hastert was a wrestling coach and high school teacher in the 1970s and molested five teenagers that he coached. In court in April he stood face to face with his victims and admitted that he “mistreated some of my athletes that I coached.” The judge called him a “serial child molester.”

Jolene Reinboldt testified about Hastert’s four year sexual abuse of her brother Steve when he was in high school. She told ABC:

He took his belief in himself and his kind of right to be a normal person. Here was the mentor, the man who was, you know, basically his friend and stepped into that parental role, who was the one who was abusing him… He damaged Steve I think more than any of us will ever know.

Steve Reinbolt told his sister about Hastert in 1979. He died from AIDS eleven years ago.

John Lewis holds a congressional sit-in for gun control while Dennis Hastert reports to prison for serial child molestation. #ProudToBeADem

— Dusty Huskey (@huskydusty) June 22, 2016

The sentence

The court couldn’t charge Hastert with sexual abuse since the statute of limitations had run out. He was instead charged with breaking federal banking laws by withdrawing money from several different banks in amounts small enough to not have to report them. He also lied to the FBI about his banking activity.

Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in a medical federal prison in Minnesota. But since he is now old and in poor health he is likely to get out after 12.5 months. He will not stay in a locked cell, his guards are not armed, and he will have access to recreational activities. It seems like a lenient sentence for someone who allegedly destroyed the lives of at least five young boys. But a man who was once so well-respected in U.S. politics will never be looked at in the same light again.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post First Day in Prison for Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert appeared first on Law Street.

The jury tasked with determining the fate of Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev decided on the death penalty last Friday, May 15, 2015. The jury found Tsarnaev guilty earlier this spring. Last week, the jurors determined that for six of the 17 counts for which he was found guilty, the death penalty should apply. That being said, how long it will take for the death penalty to actually be enacted remains unknown. Given the lengthy appeals process that is sure to follow, it may be many years.

Tsarnaev, along with his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was responsible for making the bombs that went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013. The bombs killed three people and injured hundreds more, and sparked a lockdown while the two perpetrators were found. While during the manhunt that followed other significant crimes were committed, including the death of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, those six counts all related to the planting of the pressure-cooker bombs.

One of the most compelling grounds for appeal would appear to be the location of the trial–it was in Boston, where the atrocious events happened in the first place. The trial moved forward in this location despite the fact that the defense attempted to have the trial moved before it even began. The defense, led by notoriously anti-death penalty attorney Judy Clarke, argued that the case should not have been tried in Boston because it would be too difficult to find an unbiased jury there–after all, the events of the bombing were seriously disruptive and traumatizing to a city where the marathon is tantamount to a holiday. But the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr., denied the move. That decision will most likely be one of the ones that Tsarnaev’s defense attorneys asks a higher court to examine.  Another likely avenue for appeal indicated by Tsarnaev’s defense team will be that they did not have sufficient time to present an argument against the death penalty.

Besides just the particularities of Tsarnaev’s case, such as the location and the timeline, there could be other grounds for appeal, including arguments over the constitutionality of the death penalty.

Any appeal arguments will be reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, also located in Boston. Depending on that decision, the case could end up being appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Given that the appeals process is such a long road, Tsarnaev most likely won’t receive the sentence he’s been given–to die by lethal injection–for many years. As the Guardian summed it up:

Though the Justice Department could attempt to fast-track executions in the name of public interest, death penalty experts expect the very quickest timeframe from Friday’s sentence to Tsarnaev actually being put on a gurney and injected with lethal chemicals would be at least ten years.

So, while Friday’s decision may have seemed to have an air of finality, it’s far from over. Tsarnaev’s legal battle will probably be in the works for years to come, whether he’ll ever actually be put to death is certainly questionable.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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