This is the first of two parts. By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Stephen Simmons slowly walked up the steps to the scaffold in Library Park in Detroit. It was September 24, 1830, his last day on Earth, and he looked out at the festive crowd of 2,000 celebrating spectators. Men had brought their wives…
By Allan Lengel For Deadline Detroit During my visits to Israel, the idea of security was never far off. At the train station, at the bus stop, I went through a metal detector. An armed guard checked through packages and asked if I was carrying a gun. After Sept. 11, 2001, I thought the U.S….
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com This is a Christmas story, but it really began just before Thanksgiving in 1987, at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. The Cuban inmates had rioted and had taken control of a sizeable portion of the penitentiary. The catalyst for the riots happened years before that in 1980. The Mariel boatlift,…
By Steve Levin For ticklethewire.com In 2004, the then-US Attorney for the District of Maryland famously wrote in a leaked email that he wanted three front-page indictments by November of that year. Though open to interpretation, the impression left by the poorly-drafted missive is that prosecutors should seek headlines rather than justice. Let’s give credit…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The legal battle between the defense and prosecution is heating up in an undercover FBI sting into gun trafficking in the Philippines. The battle began when deputy Federal Defender John Littrell in Los Angeles accused a a California undercover FBI agent of using taxpayer dollars to pay for prostitutes in the…
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com In the summer of 1988, Vincent Loonsfoot, an American Indian, drove to the Hannahville Potawatomi Reservation near Escanaba, Mich. There he ambushed and shot to death four members of his wife’s family and kidnapped his estranged wife. Loonsfoot then set off into the woods – beginning a highly publicized manhunt through…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The question is: Were the text messages sent by an undercover FBI agent to defendants in an 18-month gun trafficking sting in the Philippines destroyed by the government or was there merely a technical glitch that prevented them from being saved? Deputy Federal Defender John Littrell suggests in a court…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com What the heck is going on in Reno, Nevada? The Reno-Gazette Journal reports that the U.S. Attorney there have refused for nearly the past year to take any case submitted by ATF. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the dispute has forced the transfer of four full-time agents from the Reno, according…
