Free Republic

The City of Minneapolis has reached a tentative settlement with a man who filed a lawsuit after witnessing George Floyd's murder. Court documents obtained by WCCO show the city attorney's plans to present the agreement to the City Council on April 25. If the council approves, Mayor Jacob Frey then has seven days to approve or veto the settlement. The agreement is with Donald Williams. He can be seen on Tou Thao's body cam video asking the now-former officers to intervene. In the lawsuit, Williams said Thao and Derek Chauvin taunted Floyd, Williams and other bystanders who expressed concern and...

A man whose testimony helped send former police officer Derek Chauvin to prison for 22 years in the 2020 death of George Floyd allegedly threatened to kill police officers and come after their families while being arrested for domestic assault on Saturday. Donald Wynne Williams, 34, a mixed martial arts fighter and self-proclaimed expert on chokeholds, has been charged in Ramsey County with felony domestic assault by strangulation. Charges say Williams got into an argument with his ex-girlfriend over ice on Saturday while the two were setting up with their three children near the State Fairgrounds in St. Paul to...

George Floyd’s Friend and ‘Key Witness’ in Chauvin Trial Invokes 5th Amendment, Declines to TestifyA self-described key witness to the death of George Floyd—a longtime friend who was in the car with Floyd when police approached him—said through a lawyer that, if forced to testify about the incident, he’ll invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and remain silent. Morries Lester Hall, who in a June 2020 interview with The New York Times called himself “a key witness to the cops murdering George Floyd” and said he was “going to be his voice” going forward, has asked the court to...

Donald Williams, 33, the MMA practitioner who was present at the fatal arrest and called as an expert witness, faced questions over his training and conduct on the day, which was captured on a widely-seen video. Williams’s testimony on the first day of Chauvin’s trial painted a picture of the former police officer showing indifference to Floyd’s suffering, a key component of the charge of third-degree murder known as “depraved mind” or a “depraved-heart murder”. Michael Padden, a Minneapolis-based lawyer with 34 years’ experience trying cases, often involving the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), described Williams as a “[g]ood, solid witness...

On Monday, attorneys laid out their cases in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged in the death of George Floyd last spring.

Would this remain a local DC story if the accused had been staff director of an important committee in a Republican controlled Senate? >>>>A former senior congressional aide was indicted this week in D.C. Superior Court on charges that he sexually assaulted two women after drugging them with a sedative that he allegedly put in their drinks. Donny Ray Williams Jr., 36, who served as staff director for a Senate subcommittee and worked in the offices of several members of Congress, gave at least one woman Ambien and assaulted her while she was unconscious, according to court papers. Williams was...

Majority Democrats in the state Senate announced a multi-tiered initiative Wednesday to better safeguard electric service and to hold Connecticut's utilities accountable through new performance standards and penalties. The proposal includes a $300 million state investment over the next decade to create "microgrids" -- sections of community centers with extra safeguards to ensure electric service remains available for grocery stores, gasoline stations and other vital service providers during large-scale outages. "It is imperative that Connecticut's utility companies be prepared for the next storm so that our residents' health and safety are not needlessly put at risk and that (utilities) are...

A conservative group and several Republican lawmakers is filing a legal challenge to the newly adopted state budget, alleging that its assumption of $2 billion of yet-to-be-determined savings violates the Connecticut constitution."In 1992 the people of Connecticut overwhelmingly voted for [a] balanced budget amendment as a protection against the kind of shenanigans and abuse we saw this week at the state capitol," said Tom Scott, a former lawmaker who founded the Roger Sherman Liberty Center, the conservative think tank behind the lawsuit. The budget, approved by the state House and Senate earlier this week and signed by Gov. Dannel P....

The mainstream media have two complementary tactics in covering homosexual-related news: Flooding the zone with stories portraying gays as victims or heroes, and damming up the flow of information, when it would present gays in a less than favorable light. And sometimes both tactics are used within the same story.Consider coverage of the illegal same-sex “weddings” in San Francisco and New Paltz, New York. Several stories on the New Paltz “weddings” mentioned Tom Duane, an openly gay New York State Senator, who represents the Chelsea section of Manhattan.On March 2, Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams charged New Paltz Mayor...