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A man pleaded guilty Thursday for his role in a 2015 boating mishap in the Boston Harbor that severed a young womans arm.

Alexander Williams, 26, admitted to negligent operation of a boat, furnishing alcohol to minors and tampering with evidence.

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He's incredibly sorry for what happened out there, it was a tragic accident, said Rob Goldstein, Williams attorney.

Williams, a former law intern, and his boss at the time, Ben Urbelis, were two of 13 people aboard the 30-foot vessel Naut Guilty on May 30, 2015. Prosecutors said that Williams brought along enough liquor to kill a horse, a direct quote from the defendant. Six of the passengers were women under 21, including the then-19-year-old victim, Nicole Berthiaume.

The district attorney says that while on the boat Berthiaume and others jumped into the waters near Spectacle Island. Williams, who prosecutors said didnt know how to drive boat started the engine, but didnt place it in neutral. Berthiaume was pulled underwater by the propeller, cutting off her right arm and lacerating her left arm, legs, abdomen and back.

Berthiaume spoke to the court last week and Suffolk Superior Court Linda Giles said it was among the most moving impact statements I have ever heard in my 25 years as a judge.

I am a strong independent person; thats something that has not and will never change. I dont want help from other people, I dont want people to think I am incapable of anything. I would rather struggle putting on a coffee coozie at Starbucks for 10 minutes and spill it everywhere when I open my car door than have anyone over me help. But to the world I am a damaged disabled person, so most times I will sacrifice my own pride and kindly accept the unwanted help, even though that itself is the most debilitating part, Berthiaume said.

You will rarely hear me complain about the incident, and you will almost never hear me complain about my disability, but that does not mean that it doesnt kill me every time I look in a mirror, drop something, or accept help from someone.

Williams struck a deal, pleading guilty to three charges in exchange for the case being continued without a finding for a two-year probationary term. Judge Giles ordered him to pay $5,000 for restitution, complete a certified drug and alcohol awareness program and perform 200 hours of community service at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center or similar facility.

Berthiaume said she didnt want to comment further after court.

Urbelis, who also owns nightclubs, is charged related to the incident and the case is expected to go to trial later this year.

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George Zimmerman granted new judge by Appeals court - WHIO.com - WHIO

Gov. Rick Scott stripped the newly elected prosecutor of 23 death-penalty cases after Ayala announced she would not seek capital punishment during her time in office.

TALLAHASSEE A coalition of national left-leaning groups including the Advancement Project, Color of Change and Dream Defenders are painting Central Florida State Attorney Aramis Ayala as an embattled civil-rights and criminal-justice reformer.

Lawyers for the organizations, which also include the Florida Immigrant Coalition and Florida branches of the NAACP and the Service Employees International Union, filed a friend-of-the-court brief Thursday in Ayala's Florida Supreme Court lawsuit against Gov. Rick Scott.

Scott stripped the newly elected prosecutor of 23 death-penalty cases after Ayala announced she would not seek capital punishment during her time in office, including in the high-profile case of accused Orlando cop-killer Markeith Loyd. The governor assigned the cases to Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Brad King.

Ayala Florida's first black elected state attorney is challenging Scott's legal authority to remove her from the cases, arguing that prosecutors have broad discretion over charging decisions.

But the state and national groups contend that Scott's treatment of Ayala is a reflection of Florida's ugly history of discrimination against blacks in elections as well as in the criminal justice system.

"This has become an all-out attack from the Florida GOP on black voters, black communities and black leadership," Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson, whose group backed Ayala's campaign last year, told reporters during a conference call Thursday prior to the filing of the friend-of-the-court brief.

In the 27-page court document, the group's lawyers argued that Scott's treatment of Ayala, who ousted incumbent State Attorney Jeff Ashton in an August primary, thwarted the will of the voters in her 9th Judicial Circuit region "particularly black voters" who supported changes to the criminal justice system by electing the "upstart reformer."

"While political analysts did not expect her to prevail, her reformist message was unsurprising given the political climate and Florida's recent embroilments with criminal justice issues," the lawyers wrote. "This includes the prosecution of several high profile legal cases that highlighted racial disparities in the state's criminal justice system; clear data on the ongoing and disparate targeting of black Floridians for arrest and incarceration; and even the invalidation of the state's death penalty law last year."

The lawyers noted that voters also ousted Northeast Florida State Attorney Angela Corey, who was in charge of prosecuting high-profile cases involving the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis.

The brief highlights the 2012 death of Martin an unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed in Sanford by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman as the impetus for communities of color in Florida to pursue criminal justice reforms.

During the telephone call, representatives of the groups blasted Scott for his actions and also pointed the finger at the Republican-led Legislature, which last week proposed cutting $1.3 million from Ayala's budget.

The Service Employees International Union has about 3,000 members in the Orange and Osceola County areas, the union's state president Monica Russo said, including many "black and brown women."

Many of the women "sleep with one eye open at night listening for footsteps of their sons and daughters to come home in one piece," she said, adding that the union members in the 9th Judicial Circuit "love and revere" Ayala.

"We've got her back, and we're ready to stand in support of our sister and whatever needs to be done," she said.

Continued here:
Ayala supporters have 'her back' - Gainesville Sun

One of my favorite parts in the movie, Casablanca, is at the very end, when Rick, the Humphrey Bogart character, shoots Gestapo officer Major Strasser in the presence of the local police captain.

Captain Renault is standing there as Rick kills the Nazi officer to prevent him from stopping the airborne escape of Victor Laszlo, a Czechoslovakian freedom fighter, and Ricks old flame, Ilsa, from Casablanca.

Other police officers arrive at the airport momentarily after the shooting while Rick and the police captain are standing at the edge of the runway with the dead Nazi officer on the tarmac.

Major Strassers been shot, the police captain announces to his underlings.

Then he exchanges a look with Rick, a look that says he intends to cover up what happened.

Round up the usual suspects, the police captain tells his men.

I was thinking of that scene after reading the way-too-brief Report of the Governors Task Force on Citizen Safety and Protection, the product of the make-believe evaluation of the states Stand Your Ground gun law.

When Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager was shot and killed in February by George Zimmerman, an over-zealous community watch volunteer in Sanford, state officials scrambled to tamp down the well-deserved furor that erupted over the states seven-year-old reckless gun law, which Zimmerman cited as his rationale for killing Martin.

And Gov. Rick Scott, playing the role of Captain Renault in Casablanca, arrived at a quick solution to the mess.

Round up the usual suspects.

The state task force looking into the wisdom of the NRA-inspired 2005 law would be led by Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, the lifetime NRA member who also co-sponsored the shoot-em-up law when she was in the legislature. And her fellow panel members would include Sen. David Simmons, the legislator who wrote the bill and Rep. Dennis Baxley, a professional mortician with a 100 percent rating by the NRA, who sponsored the bill in the house.

(By the way, shouldnt it be a conflict of interest for an undertaker to advocate reckless gun laws?)

And thats not all. Another usual suspect that got a seat on the panel was Rep. Jasper Brodeur, who has the honor of having sponsored the NRAs must ludicrous legislative stunt in Florida: the short-lived unconstitutional law that prevented pediatricians from asking young parents if they had any guns in their homes.

The 17-member panel was guided by leaders who could be counted on to go through the charade of a public inquiry while not actually doing much second-guessing of the law they wrote, promoted and voted for. And Scott, in announcing the panel, framed his idea of the panels mission in a way that hinted at the result it would yield this month.

I am a firm supporter of the Second Amendment, Scott said while announcing the task force in April. I also want to make sure that we do not rush to conclusions about the Stand Your Ground law or any other laws in our state.

So its little surprise that the task force didnt shoot any holes in the law. It wouldnt have been hard to do.

For example, how about this recommendation?

Create a system to track self-defense claims in Florida. Floridians need to know the actual effects of the law and how it is working across the state. A system to track the number of self-defense claims and the case outcomes would assist in doing so.

The task force guided by the usual suspects didnt come up with that recommendation. That was a recommendation from a second task force convened by Sen. Chris Smith, who tried to get on the real task force but didnt get picked.

That recommendation was based on the sound notion that if you want to see the effect of the Stand Your Ground law, a law that emboldens citizens to shoot if they imagine their life is in danger during confrontations in public, just look at the seven-year history of cases in Florida.

Its not like the numbers are a mystery. Theyre just inconvenient to the supporters of the law.

David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, wrote a piece that summed up the findings of multiple studies showing that stand-your-ground gun laws dont deter crime and have a troubling racial component in the way they are prosecuted.

In the Stand Your Ground states, when white shooters kill black victims, 34 percent of the resulting homicides are deemed justifiable, while only 3 percent of deaths are ruled justifiable when the shooter is black and the victim is white, Hemenway wrote.

The Tampa Bay Times looked at the nearly 200 times this law has been invoked in Florida cases and found that most people who use this defense have a criminal arrest record and one-third have had an arrest for threatening someone with a gun.

The law has been used to free gang members, drug dealers fighting with their clients, and perpetrators who shot their victims in the back, Hemenway wrote. Indeed, in most of the Florida Stand Your Ground confrontations, the victim was not committing a crime that led to the confrontation, and was not armed.

Gov. Scotts right. You dont have to rush to conclusions about the law. But you do have to consider the regrettable carnage it has reaped during its seven-year history.

Unless of course, youre simply rounding up the usual suspects.

Somewhere, Captain Renault is smiling.

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Cerabino: Stand Your Ground panel does just that - Palm Beach Post

A bill clarifying that homeownersneed not wait to be attacked insidetheirdwellings before resorting to defensive force passed the Senate Thursday.

CS/CS/SB 1052 would reconcile conflicting statutes involving self-defense, correcting drafting errors muddying the legal situation made in 2014 legislation, bill sponsor David Simmons said.

Senators, this protects all of us in our own home. Its rational. Its reasonable. It brings us back to the way it was prior to the mistakes that were made in 2014, drafting errors, Simpson said.

The Senate defeated efforts by Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez to clarify that force would have to be used against an aggressor.

He cited the 2012 Trayvon Martin case, in which George Zimmerman shot the teenager after following him through a neighborhood.

You do have a duty to retreat if you provoke and you do not stand down, Rodriquez said.

A provision in existing law says one must wait to be attacked before using force. But other provisions hold that the right of self-defense begins when one reasonably believes it is necessary, according to a staff analysis of the bill.

They must actually believe not only reasonably, but subjectively believe that their lives are in danger, and they must reasonably act, Simmons said at one point in the debate. How much more do you want to impose upon a homeowner?

Democrat Audrey Gibson said she agreed with the bill in principle but couldnt vote for it on the floor even though she had in committee.

So much negative has gone on in various communities, particularly as it related to people of color, Gibson said. And if I stand here today and support what I do believe is right within your bill, there will be newspaper articles in district and across the state that say, Gibson supports stand your ground and that could not be further from the truth.

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Senate votes to clear up 'mistakes' in self-defense law for homeowners - SaintPetersBlog (blog)

Today is Tuesday, April 11, the 101st day of 2017. There are 264 days left in the year.

Todays Highlights in History:

On April 11, 1947, Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers played in an exhibition against the New York Yankees at Ebbets Field, four days before his regular-season debut that broke baseballs color line. (The Dodgers won, 14-6.) Monsieur Verdoux, Charlie Chaplins dark comedy about a Bluebeard-like figure, received a hostile reception at its premiere in New York.

On this date:

In 1689, William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln spoke to a crowd outside the White House, saying, We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. (It was the last public address Lincoln would deliver.)

In 1921, Iowa became the first state to impose a cigarette tax, at 2 cents a package.

In 1945, during World War II, American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany.

In 1951, President Harry S. Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.

In 1965, dozens of tornadoes raked six Midwestern states on Palm Sunday, killing 271 people.

In 1970, Apollo 13, with astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert, blasted off on its ill-fated mission to the moon.

In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan returned to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after he was wounded in an assassination attempt. Race-related rioting erupted in the Brixton district of south London.

Ten years ago: North Carolinas top prosecutor dropped all charges against three former Duke University lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting a stripper at a party, saying the athletes were innocent victims of a tragic rush to accuse. MSNBC announced it was dropping its simulcast of the Imus in the Morning radio program, responding to growing outrage over host Don Imus on-air reference to the Rutgers womens basketball team as nappy-headed hos. (CBS Radio followed suit the next day.)

Five years ago: George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. (He was acquitted at trial.) A California prison panel denied parole to mass murderer Charles Manson in his 12th bid for freedom. A University of California task force said that UC Davis police should not have used pepper-spray on student demonstrators in an incident that prompted national outrage.

One year ago: Secretary of State John Kerry visited the memorial to Hiroshimas atomic bombing, delivering a message of peace and hope for a nuclear-free world.

Ethel Kennedy is 89. Actor Joel Grey is 85. Actress Louise Lasser is 78. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman is 76. Movie writer-director John Milius is 73. Actor Peter Riegert is 70. Movie director Carl Franklin is 68. Actor Bill Irwin is 67. Country singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale is 60. Songwriter-producer Daryl Simmons is 60. Rock musician Nigel Pulsford is 56. Actor Lucky Vanous is 56. Country singer Steve Azar is 53. Singer Lisa Stansfield is 51. Rock musician Dylan Keefe (Marcy Playground) is 47. Actor Johnny Messner is 47. Actor Vicellous (vy-SAY-luhs) Shannon is 46. Rapper David Banner is 43. Actress Tricia Helfer is 43. Rock musician Chris Gaylor (The All-American Rejects) is 38. Actress Kelli Garner is 33. Singer Joss Stone is 30. Actress-dancer Kaitlyn Jenkins is 25.

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BC-History,ADV11 - Newton Daily News