Complaint filed against LMPD officers involved in troubled boy's summer camp

You can blame others for your lack of success or you can use your own brain and hard work to elevate yourself. Everyone who plays a blame game ends up a loser.

Shut up...you are not black. You are whiter than the fluid that comes out my ball sack.

-Here's another heartbreaking story of an underprivileged minority, ruthlessly persecuted by the white man...(sarcasm off)

Missouri Executes Man Convicted of Killing Gas Station Attendant in Front of Worker’s Young Stepdaughter

Nov. 19, 2014 1:40am Oliver Darcy

Story by the Associated Press; curated by Oliver Darcy.

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — A man who killed a suburban Kansas City gas station attendant in front of the worker’s young stepdaughter in 1994 was put to death early Wednesday — the ninth execution in Missouri this year.

Leon Taylor, 56, was pronounced dead at 12:22 a.m. at the state prison in Bonne Terre, minutes after receiving a lethal injection. With Taylor’s death, 2014 ties 1999 for having the most executions in a year in Missouri.

Taylor shot worker Robert Newton to death in front of Newton’s 8-year-old stepdaughter during a gas station robbery in Independence, Missouri. Taylor tried to kill the girl, too, but the gun jammed.

Taylor’s fate was sealed Tuesday when Gov. Jay Nixon declined to grant clemency and the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his appeal.

In this Feb. 12, 2014 photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections is convicted killer Leon Taylor who was sentenced to death for killing gas station attendant Robert Newton in Independence, Mo., in 1994. (AP Photo/Missouri Department of Corrections)

According to court records, Taylor, his half brother and half sister decided to rob a gas station on April 14, 1994. Newton was at the station with his stepdaughter.

Taylor entered the store, drew a gun and told Newton, 53, to put $400 in a money bag. Newton complied and the half brother, Willie Owens, took the money to the car.

Taylor then ordered Newton and the child to a back room. Newton pleaded for Taylor not to shoot him in front of the little girl, but Taylor shot him in the head. He tried to kill the girl but the gun jammed, so he locked her in the room and the trio drove away.

“She had the gun turned on her,” said Michael Hunt, an assistant Jackson County prosecutor who worked on the case. “It didn’t fire. If it had fired, we’d have had a double homicide.”

Hunt said the child’s testimony at trial was pivotal in the death sentence.

“You can imagine what a horrible crime this was, but when you see it coming out of a young person like that, it was hard to listen to,” Hunt said.

Taylor was arrested a week after the crime when police responded to a tips hotline call.

Court appeals claimed the death penalty for Taylor was unfair for several reasons.

Taylor’s original jury deadlocked and a judge sentenced him to death. When that was thrown out, an all-white jury gave Taylor, who was black, the death sentence.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only a jury could impose a death sentence. Taylor’s lawyers contended that a Missouri Supreme Court ruling after the U.S. Supreme Court decision led the state to commute at least 10 other death sentences for inmates sentenced by a judge to life in prison — everyone except Taylor.

Attorney Elizabeth Carlyle said Taylor essentially was penalized for successfully appealing his first conviction.

The clemency request to Nixon said Taylor turned his life around in prison, becoming a devout Christian who helped other prisoners. The petition also cited abuse Taylor suffered as a child, saying his mother began giving him alcohol when he was 5 and that he later became addicted to alcohol and drugs.

Nov 18 (Reuters) - A suspect has been arrested and charged with murder for allegedly pushing a man to his death in front of a New York City subway train, police said, adding that the same man was wanted for an earlier pushing incident.

Kevin Darden, 34, was arrested on Tuesday evening local time near his mother's home in the Bronx and charged with second-degree murder over the death of 61-year-old Wai Kuen Kwok, the New York Police Department said.

Officers found Kwok, also of the Bronx, dead on the tracks at the 167th Street and Grand Concourse station after being pushed from the platform on Sunday morning. His death sparked a huge manhunt in the city.

Darden was also wanted in connection with a Nov. 6 incident in a Manhattan subway station, where a 51-year-old man was shoved, injuring his hand and back, police said.

It was not immediately clear if Darden had an attorney. (Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Crispian Balmer)

If you are working for 10 dollars a month blame nobodys to blame but yourself. Instead of getting on here and blaming everyone but yourself which is where the fault lies go back to school, get a education and catch up with the real world. There are opportunities out there, this is not the 18th century anymore and slavery went out a long time ago. Also I don't believe a whole lot of what you say especially about being black. Looks like your a racebaiter but I won"t take the bait sorry.

True