PARENT'S RIGHTS NOW!

Herman Sammie Rigby Jr.was released from prison in October 2008.

A man wanted by Dorchester County sheriff's deputies turned himself in early Saturday, according to a statement from the Sheriff's Office.

They were looking for a man mistakenly released from prison more than a year ago.

Herman Sammie Rigby Jr. was released Oct. 9, 2008, from the S.C. Department of Corrections after he had served a sentence for robbery. In April 2008, Rigby was charged with a series of kidnappings and sexual assaults that occurred in the Summerville and Dorchester County area more than 20 years ago.

Rigby, 52, had been served with warrants and charged with the crimes and was placed under bond by a Dorchester County judge. He was returned to prison to continue serving his sentence, according to the Sheriff's Office. After completing his sentence on the robbery, he was to have been returned to Dorchester County to be held pending trial on the kidnapping and sexual assault charges. He was mistakenly released.

The Sheriff's Office learned of his release when an alleged victim called Summerville police and asked about Rigby's status. When police learned he was no longer in prison, they contacted the Sheriff's Office and a warrant was obtained.

A legislative committee will release a report by Feb. 1 that will call for changes in the punishments for dozens of crimes and will suggest using more alternative sentences for non-violent criminals.

The state's overcrowded prisons are a driving force behind the report, which is the result of more than a year of study by the S.C. Sentencing Reform Commission.

"I wouldn't say it's the number one reason, but it's an issue," said Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, the commission chairman. "In order to continue on the path we're headed, we're going to have to build more prisons, and we don't have the funds to do that."

The commission hopes its recommendations ensure public safety by sending high-risk, violent offenders to jail for longer terms, Malloy said. At the same time, the state will need to reduce the prison time for other crimes.

The commission also will recommend that the state beef up its Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services to better supervise criminals once they are released from prison.

The commission will present draft legislation based on the report, Malloy said. The challenge will be finding money in a strapped state budget to implement some of the recommendations.

"The real answer to this is to build a new prison," said Laura Hudson, S.C. Crime Victims Council executive director.

"Octomom" Nadya Suleman is defending the doctor who helpedher conceive 14 children, including her famous octuplets, after the California Medical Board accused him of negligence and violating professional guidelines.

In a video posted to RadarOnline.com, Suleman said Dr. Michael Kamrava did nothing wrong. She joked that, if the doctor loses his license, she doesn't know who she'll get treatment from if she wants more babies.

The state licensing board says Kamrava, a fertility doctor in Beverly Hills, acted "beyond the reasonable judgment of any treating physician" in treating Suleman, who's identified by her initials only in the complaint. According to the document filed Dec. 22, Kamrava displayed repeated negligence during his treatment of Suleman, beginning in 1997 and culminating in the Jan. 26, 2009, birth of her octuplets.

David Goldman and his supporters, as well as many commentators have expressed concerns that the Brazilian family has exercised enormous mind control over Sean Goldman and that the parental alienation he's experienced will create some difficulties for him in adjusting to life back in the United States. To get an idea of just how capable, how ruthless the Lins e Silva family might be in using parental alienation in this case, watch this 10-minute segment of a lecture delivered by Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, a lawyer specializing in family law in Rio de Janeiro. Lins e Silva delivered this lecture at a conference at The Hague. Then imagine him tutoring Bruna Goldman and her Brazilian mother in the techniques of parental alienation.

For the record Joao Paulo Lins e Silva is the father of Paulo Lins e Silva, also a family law attorney. The younger Lins e Silva married Bruna Goldman in Brazil even though she wasn't divorced from David. Below is Part I of "Parental Alienation Syndrome", available at YouTube. [Lins e Silva has to say that some folks at his luncheon table educated him about not calling this "a syndrome" anymore.]

December 30, 2004 - In a letter dated December 30, 2004, OCSE told DSS they would not approve the RFP because the RFP stated that allocation of child support collections for all case types must be based on state law. OCSE said state law conflicted with the federally mandated allocation hierarchy. To address the allocation issue, the State first sought to negotiate the issue with federal authorities. When this did not provide relief, the General Assembly amended state statute to conform with federal law during the 2004-2005 legislative session. This allowed DSS to amend the RFP and gain federal approval (emphasis added).

We do not know whether DSS has yet presented the South Carolina with "a detailed report on the status of the Child Support Enforcement System including actions currently being undertaken to become compliant with federal government requirements; the cost required to meet minimum federal guidelines; total funds spent so far on the system; the amount of fines assessed by the federal government associated with non-compliance; how much has been spent to satisfy actions taken by the state judicial system; and how much has been spent related to actions taken by any other entity which may have altered the amount required for meeting minimum federal guidelines." However, we remind everyone that this report was supposed to have been submitted to the General Assembly by August 31, 2008.

A South Carolina man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for stealing an $80 slab of meat.

The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg reports Thursday that 51-year-old Mark Zachary of Orangeburg received the maximum sentence after jurors found him guilty Wednesday of shoplifting.

Prosecutors said the sentence was justified because the Aug. 26 theft from Reid's grocery store in Orangeburg was his ninth offense.

Authorities said when a store manager approached Zachary about the missing New York strip and the big bulk under his shirt, he fled, right into the arms of an off-duty police officer.

Assistant Solicitor Glenn Justis asked jurors "Where's the beef?" in his opening argument.

Zachary testified he was "massaging" the meat, not stealing it.

So in their wisdom, the people of South Carolina will keep Mark Zachary in prison for ten years for stealing an $80 slab of meat. Understandably, the people are annoyed because this is his ninth offense. So the people are going to spend approximately $240,000 to protect themselves against one meat thief??? Well, the people of South Carolina are sure tough on crime, aren't they? Maybe the good people of South Carolina should reconsider their priorities.

Because of the State’s failure to have a certified statewide CSES operational by October 1, 1997, South Carolina became subject to federal penalties. The full federal penalties are severe. OCSE can disapprove the State’s Child support Enforcement (Title IV-D) State Plan because of the lack of the system. Disapproval would result in the OCSE’s withdrawal of all federal funding, about $22.8 million annually, for the State’s Child Support Enforcement program. The second level of penalty would be the potential disapproval of federal funding for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, potentially $99 million annually.

Congress made a less severe alternative penalty available to states that lacked a statewide system if the state was willing to work under federal oversight and under a corrective compliance plan designed to implement a system within a reasonable time.

In January 2001, OCSE notified the State that the alternative penalty was retroactive to federal fiscal year (FFY) 1998, and that continued availability of the alternative penalty to South Carolina is dependent on the State’s good faith efforts to develop and implement a federally certified statewide CSES. In January 2001, South Carolina elected to be subject to the alterative penalty and OCSE approved the corrective compliance plan.

The federal penalty is calculated by CSE for each federal fiscal year based largely on South Carolina's Child Support Enforcement program's actual expenditures, including system development expenditures, reported quarterly to OCSE by DSS.

The alternative penalties will be assessed until lifted by the federal authorities. When the State submits a letter to OCSE requesting certification of CSES, federal system penalties will be placed in abeyance while OCSE certifies CSES. Ninety percent (90%) of any system penalties actually paid for the federal fiscal year in which the letter was submitted are rebated by OCSE back to DSS once the CSES is certified.

For federal fiscal years 1998-2007, the amount of funding lost to penalties was $55,200,000. These penalties are paid with 100% state dollars.

Penalties will continue to be assessed until CSES is deployed and operational, currently projected for June 1, 2010. The amount of these projected penalties is $20,740,046, which includes a 90% reduction of penalties paid in the federal fiscal year in which statewide implementation is intended to occur.

The Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department says a program that allows specially trained sheriff's deputies to enforce federal immigration law is working well.

The program began on Nov. 16 when 18 deputies returned from training by federal authorities. The sheriff's department says 62 percent of the foreign-born population in the county jail has been found to be in the country illegally.

Deputies have placed immigration detainers on 286 inmates. The charges against them include aggravated assault, rape, child molestation, DUI, robbery, sex crimes and trafficking.

The program is called 287(g) after the section of immigration law that governs it. It has been championed by illegal immigration foes and decried by immigrant rights and civil liberties groups (emphasis added).

The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has about one-quarter of its prisoners. But the relentless rise in the nation’s prison population has suddenly slowed as many states discover that it is simply too expensive to over incarcerate.

Between 1987 and 2007 the prison population nearly tripled, from 585,000 to almost 1.6 million. Much of that increase occurred in states — many with falling crime rates — that had adopted overly harsh punishment policies, such as the “three strikes and you’re out” rule and drug laws requiring that nonviolent drug offenders be locked away.

These policies have been hugely costly. According to the Pew Center on the States, state spending from general funds on corrections increased from $10.6 billion in 1987 to more than $44 billion in 2007, a 127 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars. In the same period, adjusted spending on higher education increased only 21 percent.

In 2008, the explosion of the prison population ground to a near halt, according to data released last month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 739,000 inmates were admitted to federal and state facilities, only about 3,500 more than were released.

One factor seems to be tight budgets as states decide to release nonviolent offenders early. This can not only save money. If done correctly, it can also be very sound social policy. Many nonviolent offenders can be dealt with more effectively and more cheaply through treatment and jobs programs.

Michigan, which has been hard hit by the recession, has done a particularly good job of releasing people who do not need to be in prison. As the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project details in a new report, Michigan reduced its prison population by about 8 percent between March 2007 and November 2009 by taking smart steps, notably doing more to get nonviolent drug offenders out, while helping in their transition to a productive, and crime-free, life.

Not every state has gotten the message. Florida, for example, has a state law mandating that all prisoners serve a high percentage of their sentence, which is both dubious corrections policy and terrible fiscal policy.

For many years, driving up prison populations has been an easy thing for elected officials to do, popular with voters and powerful corrections officer unions. The new incarceration figures suggest, however, that in the current hard economic times, strapped states are beginning to realize that they do not have the money to keep people in prison who do not need to be there.

Lisa Miller, who was ordered by a court in Vermont to turn over her child to her former partner, has missed the 1pm EST January 1st deadline. A Vermont judge had ordered Lisa Miller to turn over daughter Isabella to Janet Jenkins at 1 p.m. Friday at the Falls Church, Va., home of Jenkins' parents.

This case has drawn worldwide attention as Miller and Janet Jenkins were lesbian partners. After a civil union ceremony in 2000, Miller was artificially inseminated and gave birth to a daughter. In 2003, the couple separated and Miller (the birthmother) renounced her homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian.

Years of court battles ensued with U.S. Supreme Court opting note to hear the case. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jenkins who argued that Miller had not allowed her to visit with their daughter and ignored the custody rules set down by the Vermont Family Court.

On November 20th, the Vermont court reversed a prior custody arranged ordering full custody to Jenkins. The court also ruled that on January 1st, Lisa Miller, the birth mother, must return the child over to Janet Jenkins.

It's no secret that the Legislature passes numerous pieces of legislation that have major constitutional issues, even ignoring opinions from the attorney general's office. For the most part, the time and expense involved allows these laws to stand unchallenged, with the efforts of Greenville's citizen-watchdog, Edward Sloan, a major exception. This time, more than 10 years after the fact, it took a highly controversial decision to rouse members of the legal community to look critically at the composition of the commission (emphasis added).