Florida Sentinel Bulletin

Forty year ago to the day, Assata Olugbala Shakur, who was then known as Joanne Chesimard, was involved in a gun battle that left a New Jersey state trooper dead. Today, Shakur has been placed on the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list, the first woman to earn the distinction, with a reward of $2 million being offered for her capture.

“She continues to flaunt her freedom in the face of this horrific crime,” State Police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes said at a news conference Thursday. Fuentes called the case “an open wound” for troopers in New Jersey and around the country.

The Justice Department has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to her capture. The additional money is being put up by the state of New Jersey through civil and criminal forfeiture funds and won’t fall on taxpayers, state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa said.

The Labor Department released its April jobs report last Friday, highlighting a slight drop in the overall unemployment rate. With the rate dropping to 7.5% from 7.6% in March, jobless numbers for the African-American community remain at a sobering 13.2%.

In April, 165,000 jobs were added to the economy, a small improvement over the 138,000 jobs added a month prior. While this figure shattered economic predictions, hiring only seems to be happening for just one segment of the overall population: Women workers, with their unemployment rate at 6.7%, were the largest number of job seekers to become employed in April.

Sequestration also played a factor in this most-recent jobs report, with 11,000 federal, state, and local government workers losing their jobs due to budget constraints and other factors.

In all, 11.7 million people are out of work, a staggering rate when compared to the unemployment rate sitting at 4.5% before the recession shattered the economy.

MISSISSIPPI – Test the evidence.

That’s what Willie Jerome Manning and his legal team has been asking the state of Mississippi to do for the past 10 years, since being sentenced to death in 1994 for killing two white Mississippi State University students.

Jon Steckler’s and Tiffany Miller’s bodies were found Dec. 11, 1992.

Both were shot to death.

Miller’s car was missing but was located the next day. Manning was arrested after allegedly trying to sell the victims’ items. The evidence used to convict him was incriminating but not exact.

While hairs from an African-American male were found in Miller’s vehicle, DNA analysis was not sophisticated enough at that time to determine if they actually belonged to Manning.

It didn’t matter.

Manning was convicted for both murders and sentenced to death, even though he maintained his innocence throughout the case.

And after nearly 20 years, Manning is set to be executed on today (May 7^th) even with new testing technology that could exonerate him and point to the real killer if he is indeed innocent as he claims.

Unfortunately, Manning’s case is tragic but not uncommon.

Amnesty International reports that since 1977, the overwhelming majority of death row inmates have been executed for killing whites, even though Blacks make up about half of homicide victims.

WASHINGTON — It’s bad enough that there are 82 vacant federal judge slots around the country, a level so high that many observers have deemed it a crisis situation.

But perhaps even more startling is the fact that of those 82 vacant slots, 61 of them don’t even have a nominee.

On its face, the absence of nominees would appear to be a sign that President Barack Obama is slacking. After all, he is responsible for nominating judges, and he did put forward fewer nominees at the end of his first term than his two predecessors. But a closer look at data on judicial nominees, and conversations with people involved in the nomination process, reveals the bigger problem is Republican senators quietly refusing to recommend potential judges in the first place.

The process for moving judicial nominees is simple enough. A president takes the lead on circuit court nominees, while, per longstanding tradition, a senator kickstarts the process for district court nominees, which make up the bulk of the federal court system.

BOSTON  — Three more suspects have been taken into custody in the marathon bombings, city police said Wednesday.

The police department made the announcement in a tweet Wednesday morning, saying more details would follow. Police spokeswoman Cheryl Fiandaca confirmed the tweet but referred all other questions to the FBI.

Three people were killed and more than 260 injured on April 15 when two bombs exploded near the finish line.

The man carjacked by former LAPD officer, Christopher Dorner, wants the $1 million reward up for grabs. Prior to the rogue cop’s demise, the hefty reward was put up, and has yet to be dispersed.

Richard Heltebrake, is the latest of 11 people seeking payment. He filed a lawsuit in L.A. Monday (April 29), to get his hands on the money.

OAKLANDC — The Oakland Unified School District is getting some unwanted attention after a video surfaced of a fight between a 7th grade female student and a male substitute teacher at the Alliance Academy.

With 360 students, and an extraordinarily high teacher turnover rate, 5 students have been expelled from Alliance this school year and several of the teachers aren’t planning to come back next year.

So far this school year, police have visited the campus 13 times, but the fight between the female 7th grader and male substitute teacher, caught on a cellphone camera before Winter break, has gotten national attention.

“They destroyed the whole classroom. They broke the desk. They threw the computers on the floor,” said Jose Barajas, an eighth grader.

NEW YORK — Authorities have charged 19-year-old Ariel Devonish-Francis of the Bronx with unlawful disposal of a cadaver for allegedly throwing her newborn down a garbage chute.

On Saturday, Devonish-Francis reportedly gave birth to a baby boy in her bathroom at the West Farms Road Rehabs projects. Her brother was reportedly home at the time, but wasn’t aware that she was pregnant.

After reportedly delivering her stillborn, Devonish-Francis visited the Albert Einstein University Hospital for medical treatment.

There, she reportedly told hospital staff that she dumped the baby down her building’s garbage chute.

And on Sunday, the medical examiner’s office ruled the fetus a stillborn once they conducted an autopsy.

TALLAHASSEE — Former Florida lieutenant governor Jennifer Carroll is getting a new job.

Global Digital Solutions announced it was hiring Carroll as a senior advisor. A spokesman for Carroll confirmed Wednesday that she accepted the job. A company press release added that Carroll is expected to become president and company chief operating officer once a planned merger with Airtronic USA, Inc. has been completed.

Carroll abruptly resigned from her post last month after she was questioned by law-enforcement authorities about work she did for Allied Veterans of the World. The charity has been accused of running an illegal gambling ring. Carroll has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Global Digital Solutions does engineering and technical consulting work. Airtronic is a design and manufacturing company that makes small arms such as grenade launchers.