Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. BlueSky: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
The women, lesbians wrongly convicted of rape, were victims of “satanic panic” and pervasive homophobia in the 1990s, as an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The San Antonio Four, four Latina lesbians who were falsely accused of sexually assault, have finally been exonerated after 20 years.
Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, Anna Vasquez, and Elizabeth Ramirez were wrongfully accused of raping two young girls in a “satanic ritual” that, in the 1990s, a pediatrician claimed was “commonly practiced among lesbians.”
Now, after serving more than 10 years each in prison, the women have been fully cleared of all charges.
After being convicted in 1997, Ramirez received a 37-year sentence, but she was released in 2013. The other women were convicted a year later and sentenced to 15 years each. Mayhew and Rivera ended up serving 14 years, Vasquez 12. The women were freed because in 2012 one of the alleged victims recanted her earlier story, saying that she had been pressured into lying about the assault by her father.
That might have been the end of the case if not for the passage of a 2013 law in Texas allowing those who have been convicted to “challenge their rulings if there is new or different scientific evidence available,” as Rolling Stone reports. The women lobbied the court system for a new trial, and the district attorney felt there were sufficient grounds for an appeal.
The long fight for vindication was chronicled in Southwest of Salem, a documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016. Wednesday’s ruling was their final victory.
In addition to their records being expunged, the San Antonio Four could earn millions in reparations from the state, the Los Angeles Times reports.
This is single handedly the best sentence I have ever read in my entire life, I’m so pleased with and proud of myself right now. My favourite part is that the fact that they picked just one picture means they sat down and discussed which picture of a banana peel they liked best.
I ended up submitting these five haikus:
And this is Banana Peel #6 (out of ten):
They were apparently very enjoyable because the haikus were vindictive and the banana peel has personality. I can’t wait for the issue to come out.
Muslim refugees in Utah will not be defenseless under Donald Trump’s presidency.
The Refugee Justice League of Utah, a newly established coalition of lawyers, announced on Tuesday they will be representing and providing legal services for free to any of the 40,000 Muslim refugees in the Beehive State.
The group, founded by civil rights leader James McConkie, is made up of 50 lawyers from diverse religious backgrounds
They have pledged to represent and defend Muslim refugees from harassment and intimidation, and will pursue legal action against any laws calling for a refugee database.
The group will also be working with local imams to collect complaints and will also offer a complaint form on their website. Read more
The AP’s standards blog just posted a piece about how to use the term ‘alt-right’ when writing articles. Considering the Associated Press provides the style guidelines for newspapers and magazines nationwide, this clarification is a big deal. Here’s...
“Alt-right” (quotation marks, hyphen and lower case) may be used in quotes or modified as in the “self-described” or “so-called alt-right” in stories discussing what the movement says about itself.
Avoid using the term generically and without definition, however, because it is not well known and the term may exist primarily as a public-relations device to make its supporters’ actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience. In the past we have called such beliefs racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist.
The Associated Press is ready to call a duck a duck and so should you.
