Spain prosecutors call for 8-year sentence for Shakira

BARCELONA -- Prosecutors in Barcelona said Friday that they would seek a prison sentence of more than eight years against global music superstar Shakira, after she rejected a plea deal on accusations of tax evasion.

Prosecutors are demanding a fine of nearly 24 million euros on the 45-year-old "Hips Don't Lie" songstress, who is accused of defrauding the Spanish tax office out of 14.5 million euros ($14.7 million) on income earned between 2012 and 2014.

The court will now need to decide on holding a trial and set a date. 

Prosecutors say Shakira moved to Spain in 2011 when her relationship with FC Barcelona defender Gerard Pique became public but maintained official tax residency in the Bahamas until 2015.

Shakira has slammed the "complete violation of her rights" and "abusive methods" by the prosecutors and say they were "insisting on claiming money earned during my international tours and the show 'The Voice'" on which she was a judge in the United States, when she was "not yet resident in Spain."

Shakira was on the singing competition show between 2013 and 2014.

Shakira's defense team argues she moved to Spain full time only in 2015 and has met all tax obligations.

She says she has paid 17.2 million euros to the Spanish tax authorities and she has "no debt to the treasury for many years."

Agence France-Presse

Michael Cohen, Trump's one-time aide who turned on him, goes to jail

NEW YORK -- After dramatic appeals and testimony in Congress, Donald Trump's one-time personal lawyer Michael Cohen is due to report to jail Monday to serve a sentence he deems unjust because he was simply following his boss's orders.

The longtime Trump admirer who once said he was ready to "take a bullet" for Trump is awaited at the federal prison in Otisville, New York by 2:00 pm. 

He was sentenced to 3 years in prison in December, after admitting to having paid hush money during the 2016 election to 2 women who said they had had affairs with Trump -- in violation of electoral laws -- having committed tax fraud, and having lied to Congress.

The father of 2 children in their twenties, Cohen had hoped until the last moment that his sentence would be reduced, offering information to investigators that could compromise Trump and his family, including over the Russia investigation.

But even if Special Counsel Robert Mueller referred to the ex-attorney more than a hundred times in his report on Russian meddling in the US elections, prosecutors have not budged on Cohen's sentence.

WHY COHEN? 

The child of a Holocaust survivor and a nurse will become one of just 2 close aides of the president jailed for a lengthy period of time after Paul Manafort, Trump's ex-campaign manager who was sentenced to 7.5 years of prison.

Cohen worked for the Trump Organization for a decade and insists that all reprehensible acts took place at the behest of the president, who the ex-attorney claims would be ready to cling to power even if he loses his bid for a second term in 2020.

"How come I'm the only one?" Cohen asked in an interview with The New Yorker.

"I didn't work for the campaign. I worked for him. And how come I'm the one that's going to prison? I'm not the one that slept with the porn star," he added, referring to Stormy Daniels, one of the women who received hush money.

Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis said Friday that the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, should have gone to prison since he "signed hush money checks."

For the American president and his allies, Cohen's prison sentence has the taste of payback after the one-time attorney turned on his boss.

Trump called him "weak" and a "rat" ready to make up any lies necessary to avoid prison.

FINAL STATEMENTS 

Cohen, who has been disbarred and is running out of cash, has not said his last word.

This weekend, he told reporters following him in Manhattan as he spent his last moments of freedom with his son Jake, a student in Miami, that he would make some final statements Monday before going behind bars.

When he spoke to lawmakers earlier this year, Cohen mentioned plans to write a book and have his experiences made into a film.

In doing so, he would be following the example of Richard Nixon's ex-lawyer John Dean, who pleaded guilty for having bought the silence of the Watergate scandal burglars, and then wrote a book about his experience.

The Otisville prison conditions should allow Cohen to spend at least some time on such projects.

He is due to be held in the detention center's low-security "camp," which holds detainees who are not considered to be dangerous, including many other white collar criminals.

Practicing Jews who are sentenced often request to be placed at Otisville because it provides kosher meals and detainees are allowed to follow the Shabbat day of rest.

The 120-some prisoners of this wing of the center can use libraries, as well as basketball and tennis courts while wearing their beige uniforms.

Can Cohen hope for an expedited release for good behavior?

"Because Congress eliminated parole in 1987, the best he can hope for is a 15 percent reduction off his sentence for 'good behavior,'" said criminal defense attorney Harlan Protass.

"He'll also likely spend the last 6 months of his sentence in a halfway house, like where former Congressman Anthony Weiner is now."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Rappers Jay-Z, Meek Mill launch effort to slash US prison population

NEW YORK - Rappers Jay-Z and Meek Mill announced Wednesday they are launching a new criminal justice reform organization aimed at dramatically reducing the number of people in the US prison system.

The group's creation comes less than a year after Mill, 31, was released from jail after his unexpectedly heavy sentence for a parole violation sparked protests over racial biases in US probation laws.

REFORM Alliance is putting an initial $50 million toward "disabling the revolving door of probation and parole," by "changing the laws, policies, and practices that perpetuate injustice," according to its mission statement.

"We want to be very clear -- if someone commits a crime they should go to jail," hip hop superstar Jay-Z said. "But these things are just disproportionate and the whole world knows it."

Black people are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of white people in the United States, according to the NAACP civil rights organization.

"We come from the bottom," said Jay-Z, who grew up in Brooklyn public housing. "We're all prisoners to this, because until everyone is freed, no one is freed."

Well before he ascended to rap stardom, Mill was jailed on drug and possession charges in 2008 -- and re-imprisoned in 2017 after a Philadelphia judge handed down a term of two to four years for a parole violation.

His incarceration triggered public outcry, and Mill's case became a flashpoint in the national conversation over the US criminal justice system's treatment of black people.

CAUGHT IN THE SYSTEM 

"I'm here to speak for all the people who don't have a voice," said Mill, who was born Robert Rihmeek Williams and raised in North Philadelphia, an area notorious for drug violence, by a single mother after his father was killed.

"Being from the environment I'm from, I don't even think it's possible for you to be an angel," he said. "You grow up around murder on a daily basis, you grow up in drug-infested neighborhoods on a daily basis."

"I got caught up in the system," said Mill, who ultimately was ordered out on bail last year by Pennsylvania's Supreme Court.

"And every time I started to further my life with the music industry," he said, "there was always something that brought me back to ground zero."

REFORM's current goal is to free one million people from the system in the next five years, with an initial focus on parole and probation.

There are some 6.6 million people in the US criminal justice system, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 4.5 million of them on parole or probation.

An analysis by the Marshall Project, a news organization focused on criminal justice, found that at least 61,000 people are imprisoned for minor parole violations like failing a urine test or missing curfew.

Along with Mill and Jay-Z, founding partners of the group include CNN commentator and justice advocate Van Jones, who will serve as the organization's CEO.

"This is not a right or left issue, it's a wrong or right issue," Jones said. "We're going to free a country to be its best self."

The billionaire owner of the National Football League's New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, along with National Basketball Association team co-owners Clara Wu Tsai (Brooklyn Nets) and Michael Rubin (Philadelphia 76ers) have also put their weight behind the cause.

Jones had praised last month's criminal justice reform measure that cleared Congress with bipartisan support.

The act includes provisions to ease heavy sentences for certain offenders and gives judges more discretion in sentencing low-level criminals.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Bill Cosby sentenced for up to 10 years in prison for sexual assault

NORRISTOWN, Pa. - Bill Cosby was sentenced to between three and 10 years in prison on Tuesday for sexually assaulting a woman, capping the once-beloved comedian's downfall from "America's Dad" to convicted felon.

Cosby, 81, was found guilty in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for the drugging and sexual assault of his one-time friend Andrea Constand, a former Temple University administrator, at his Philadelphia home in 2004.

He was the first celebrity to be convicted for sexual abuse since the start of the #MeToo movement, the national reckoning with misconduct that has brought down dozens of powerful men in entertainment, politics and other fields.

His lawyers have already vowed to appeal the conviction.

Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge Steven O'Neill also decided to designate Cosby a "sexually violent predator" under Pennsylvania law.

Under that designation, Cosby will have to undergo monthly counseling and register as a sex offender with police for the rest of his life. Neighbors and schools will be notified of his address and crimes.

More than 50 other women also have accused Cosby of sexual abuse going back decades, with most complaints too old to prosecute. The Constand case was the only allegation that led to criminal charges.

On the first day of the sentencing hearing on Monday, Constand said in a written statement submitted to the court that the attack had turned her into a woman who was "stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward."

"Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it," she wrote.

Prosecutors had asked for the maximum prison sentence of between five and 10 years, citing the nature of Cosby's crime as well as his alleged history of misconduct. They had also asked the judge to levy a $25,000 fine on Cosby and make him pay court costs. If ever he came up for parole, prosecutors wanted him to submit to a "psycho-sexual evaluation" that he had refused prior to sentencing.

Citing Cosby's frailty and blindness, Cosby's lawyers had asked for house arrest rather than prison time.

Cosby's first trial in 2017 ended in a mistrial when jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict. Soon after that proceeding, a series of women began leveling sexual misconduct allegations against influential men, launching the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements that have encouraged victims to speak up about their experiences.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Trump vows to keep Guantanamo Bay prison open

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he would keep Guantanamo Bay open, breaking from his predecessor Barack Obama's lengthy and ultimately failed efforts to shutter the maligned detention facility.

"I just signed an order directing Secretary Mattis to reexamine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay," Trump said, in his State of the Union address to Congress, in keeping with a campaign promise.

Under president George W. Bush, the US military hastily constructed a prison camp on Guantanamo Bay, located on the US naval base on the eastern tip of Cuba, in the months following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

At first, inmates were held in cages and fenced in with razor wire, and conditions for the orange jumpsuit-clad detainees provoked a global outcry in 2002.

That early facility, known as Camp X-Ray, was soon replaced with more permanent structures and today, Guantanamo Bay consists of numerous high-security prison buildings.

At the height of its operations after 9/11, the facility held 780 people, detained mostly for their alleged ties to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Since then, hundreds have been transferred back to their home countries or other places.

Some of the most notorious inmates, including several alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, among them accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are still awaiting trial.

Their cases have been beset by legal woes at Guantanamo, where a bespoke criminal justice system grants detainees -- who are considered "unprivileged enemy belligerents" -- only some of the legal rights that US federal courts guarantee.

Of the 41 inmates remaining at Guantanamo, about 26 are trapped in legal purgatory.

These so-called "forever prisoners" have never been charged -- yet they have been deemed too dangerous to release.

Some were cleared for release under Obama, but have been stranded at Guantanamo under the Trump administration.

'BAD DUDES' 

On the campaign trail, Trump famously vowed he would load Guantanamo with "bad dudes," and said it would be "fine" if US terror suspects were sent there for trial.

In 2009, soon after he was sworn in, Obama ordered the prison to be closed within a year, and no new inmate has been sent there since early 2008.

Political bickering, vehement Republican opposition and foreign allies' reluctance to take in the prisoners meant Obama could not close Guantanamo, though the population dropped from 242 to 41 under his watch.

Since becoming president, Trump has toyed with the idea of sending Americans to Guantanamo, though federal judges would likely bar any such attempt.

In October, he suggested that the man accused of carrying out a deadly truck attack along a bike path in New York could be sent to Guantanamo, but he later backed off the idea.

Another case that could potentially bring Guantanamo into legal focus is that of a US citizen who was captured in Syria and had allegedly been fighting for the Islamic State group.

The man, whose name has not been released, is apparently being held in Iraq.

The American Civil Liberties Union has taken up his case and a federal judge has ruled that the US must give it advance notice before transferring the man overseas.

That would allow time for the ACLU to mount a legal challenge.

bur-oh/dc

source: news.abs-cbn.com

How Hubert Webb found love in prison

MANILA, Philippines – Despite being in prison for 15 long years, Hubert Webb was still able to find love.

In fact, four women became part of Webb’s life at the time, either his pals or family friends who came to visit him at the New Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa City.

“The first one was a good friend of my mom, the daughter. Mga three years [naging kami],” Webb said in an interview on the ABS-CBN morning talk show “Kris TV,” where he and his father, former senator Freddie Webb, made a guest appearance.

“The second and third, most of the time they just visit and we got to know each other through the course of time,” he added.

Things began to get serious, however, when Hubert met his fourth girlfriend while in prison. While her name was not mentioned just like the others, the woman was described as a chef who is six years younger than he is.

“It’s like meeting someone you know you can spend the rest of your life with,” said Hubert, as “Kris TV” flashed pictures of him with his girlfriend.



His father said Hubert initially kept their relationship a secret from the family, explaining that the girl was “shy.”

“’Yung number four na ‘yan, matagal niyang tinago sa amin. ‘Pag dadating kami [sa kulungan], wala siya doon. Sabi ko, ‘Hubert, balita ko meron kang nililigawan and she comes here when we’re not around,’” the elder Webb shared.

“Mahiyain ‘yung girl. It took time, like maybe a month, and then sumasama na sa pagkain namin.”

The ex-senator praised the girl for being serious about the relationship despite his son’s situation. But Hubert, who was still in prison at the time, would rather not tie the knot just yet.

“Ang gusto ng girl magpakasal na sila. Ayaw ni Hubert kasi ang iniisip ni Hubert, ‘paano tayo magpapakasal, hindi ko alam kung kailan ako lalabas dito sa kulungan?’ And ayaw ko na magkaanak ako na dadalhin dito na nasa kulungan ako. Maghintay ka ‘pag nakalaya na ako, at saka tayo mag-usap ng kasalan,’” the older Webb explained.

“And the girl could not wait that long. They were together for four and a half to five years.”

Now, two years since getting his freedom back, Hubert is still hesitant about getting married, saying that he is only concerned about his future family.

“For now, my principle has always been the same. You have to be able to provide for the girl, etc. While I’m still looking for something to provide for my future family, ganoon na rin ang situation namin,” he said.

Aside from being thankful to his girlfriend for loving him for who he is, Hubert also expressed happiness that her family has accepted him as well.

“Yes, they’ve accepted me na rin. Of course, it takes time. I can’t blame them,” he said.

In 2010, Hubert and five others were acquitted on the much publicized Vizconde massacre case that took place in June 1991, ending years of their burden of being incarcerated.

source: abs-cbnnews.com