“He would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught.”
— Ian Rushton, a deputy chief crown prosecutor for the northwest of England, in a statement about Reynhard Sinaga, who was sentenced in early January to life in prison for nearly 200 sexual assaults over a 21⁄2-year period. Detectives are still trying to identify 70 victims who are depicted on Sinaga’s cell phone, which he used to record the assaults. Prosecutors called him “the most prolific rapist ever tried in a British court.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/world/europe/reynhard-sinaga-rape.html
“Someone asked earlier, who’s responsible for what’s happening at Parchman [prison]? The inmates. The inmates are the ones that take each other’s lives. The inmates are the ones that fashion weapons out of metal.”
—Phil Bryant, outgoing governor of Mississippi, commenting on a prison uprising that left at least five inmates dead. Mississippi prisons have long been underfunded and understaffed, and a veteran Department of Corrections employee, Christopher Epps, warned legislators in 2012 that trouble would come if more money was not appropriated to hire additional guards. Epps himself went to prison for collecting more than $1 million in bribes. https://www.easttexasmatters.com/news/national/foretold-uprising-hits-cash-starved-mississippi-prisons/
“I had seen him. I had visited with him. I had given him food.”
—Britt Farmer, senior minister at West Freeway Church of Christ in Fort Worth, speaking of the gunman who opened fire during a late December service, killing two congregants before being shot and killed himself. Though the motive for the murders is still unknown, the shooter had demanded money from the church in the past and had become enraged when told no. https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/30/us/texas-church-shooting-monday/index.html
“That’s the baby in my house.”
—The unnamed ex-boyfriend of Magen Fieramusca upon seeing a flyer with Margo Carey’s picture. Margo was weeks old when she and her mother, Heidi Broussard, were kidnapped by Fieramusca, and Fieramusca passed off the child as her own while living with the ex-boyfriend. Broussard’s body was later found in a car parked in Fieramusca’s driveway, and baby Margo was recovered and reunited with her family. Fieramusca was arrested and is in the Travis County Jail. https://www.easttexasmatters.com/crime/woman-charged-with-kidnapping-austin-mom-and-baby-pretended-child-was-her-own
“Fixating solely on whether bail is affordable for the defendant is unacceptable. Such a myopic analysis leaves out an important part of the story; it critically undermines the victims of crime and could easily put the community at risk of further violence.”
—U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox of the Northern District of Texas, in an editorial in the Dallas Morning News. Cox cites several examples of Dallas County defendants granted bail only to be re-arrested days or weeks later for new offenses. https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/01/05/bail-is-a-revolving-door-for-violent-criminals-to-quickly-leave-jail-and-hurt-more-people/