Right around now, Blair Irvin Jr. was expecting the call from the Florida Tuskers of the United Football League inviting him to training camp.

Former Kansas State football standout and former minor league baseball player Blair Irvin, who was born in New Orleans, grew up in Marrero and then moved to Patterson,Louisiana for high school, was the victim of a savage beating as he was leaving a bar in Berwick, LA on August 15,2010. Two men and a woman are in jail charged with battery and hate crimes after they broke his jaw in two places.At the time, Irvin was awaiting a tryout with the United Football League's Florida Tuskers and this has dashed his chance for a football career. He was at his uncle's barber shop A Cut Above in Marrero. His initial medical bill was $6,181 and he has to have his jaw wired shut for eight weeks. His jaw constantly bothers him and he has to take pain killers to cope.

A star athlete at Patterson High School, Irvin was recruited in 2002 as a cornerback by LSU but ended up signing to play baseball with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. After four years in the minor leagues, Irvin decided to return to football, playing two years with Coffeyville Community College in Kansas and a year with Kansas State before returning to Patterson a few months ago to prepare for what he hoped would be a call to go pro.

"I'm pretty much not going to get that call," said Irvin, 27, speaking in the low mumble that is the best he can do since the early morning of Aug 15. That's when Irvin, who is African-American, said he was lured to a bar in nearby Berwick by a white woman of his acquaintance, jumped and beaten amid a hail of racial invective, leaving his jaw broken in two places and the woman, her half-brother and a friend of theirs charged with second-degree battery and hate crimes.

Denise Aucoin, 30, of Bayou Vista; her half-brother, Robert Taylor, 26, of Jackson, Mich.; and Bengie LaFleur, 29, of Patterson are being held in three different lock-ups in St. Mary Parish, where they are likely to remain at least until they are assigned lawyers and face their arraignment, now scheduled for Sept. 28. Bond is set at $150,000.

Irvin, who was born at Charity Hospital in New Orleans and grew up in Marrero before moving to Patterson in the seventh grade, said he believes the attack was premeditated and racially motivated.

But it will be up to the district attorney's office whether to stick with the hate crimes charges, and some friends and family of the accused say some racist words in the heat of battle don't necessarily mean it was a hate crime.

"I'm hoping they realize that this was just a fight that has gotten out of hand and gone really bad; I'm just hoping that they realize that this was not a hate crime," said Vincent Aucoin, Denise Aucoin's father. "They did not attack this man because he was black."

He said Irvin "was a friend of my daughter's. He had been at her house many a time ... and now, because in the middle of an argument in a fight, someone uses this word, and the law's going to call it a hate crime?"

Lemina Fabre, who is like a second mother to LaFleur -- her home is his legal address -- said she is even more puzzled
"They called it a hate crime, but he's (LaFleur) mixed, too -- his grandfather's black," Fabre said of LaFleur, who has told her and others that he was trying to break up the fight.

A judgment call

James Richard, the police chief in Berwick, a mostly white town of 4,500 just across the Atchafalaya River from Morgan City, acknowledged it was a judgment call whether to invoke the state's hate crimes statute.

"It's kind of a tough case to show that they specifically beat him just because he was black, but that was what we charged them with," Richard said.

As events in Jena proved a few years back, a story of race in a small Louisiana town can rivet and roil the nation.

When Rev. Aubry Wallace of Marrero heard about Irvin's beating from the young man's uncle, Kendel Irvin, at his barber and beauty shop, A Cut Above in Marrero, Wallace alerted the NAACP, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

But Irvin's father, Blair Irvin Sr. -- who lives in Opelika, Ala., since being displaced from Avondale by Hurricane Katrina -- says he does not think that is the way to go.

"I love my son. I want him to come through feeling as if justice has been served," he said. But he said he wants no part of a race drama.

"He don't need no Al Sharpton or none of that," Irvin Sr. said. "I know it's hard for him but I told him, 'We just got to pray and move on and let the law run its course.'"

Blair Irvin Jr. said he met Aucoin in July. He had visited her home in Bayou Vista, but she had warned him, "her brothers and cousins didn't agree with black and white" relationships.

It was 1:30 in the morning on Sunday, Aug. 15, when Irvin said Aucoin called from Charlene's Roadhouse in Berwick.

"She said she was intoxicated and she needed a ride," he said.
Irvin arrived to find Aucoin in a bar filled with white people, including her brother, who had returned from Michigan a few weeks before looking for work. Irvin asked Aucoin why she needed him to give her ride. She didn't answer, and while Irvin said he was puzzled, he stayed to shoot some pool.

After shooting two games, Irvin told Aucoin he was leaving, "but when I walked outside to leave, the whole bar came behind me."


"This guy Bengie comes up to me, shakes my hand and he says, 'Hey, are you Blair Irvin?' I said, 'Yeah,' and he said, 'Do you know me?' and I said, 'No,' and he said, 'Well you are about to get to know me cause I'm going to beat your tail.'"

Irvin said he thinks a few other people joined in the beating, but LaFleur, Taylor and Aucoin, who police say struck him with a motorcycle helmet, were the only ones he could identify.

A different version

Stephanie Sanders, a friend of LaFleur's who was there that night and made a statement to police, offers a different version of events.

She said only Aucoin and Taylor were involved in the attack, that LaFleur tried to pull Taylor off, and that only about five people watched. The other witnesses, she said, have made themselves scarce.

"Everyone's drinking, nobody wants to get in trouble, nobody wanted to deal with the police," she said.

The story she heard, said Sanders, is that the fight was ignited by Aucoin confronting Irvin at the bar about a purse with $400 in it that had gone missing the week before. Irvin said he never took her purse, and only heard about that version of events after the fact.

Irvin, who escaped from the scene in his car, said the attack remains what it was the night it happened: a racist hate crime.

Up until mid-August, Irvin had a plan. He would prove himself with the Tuskers, and in a year or two fulfill his promise and be playing in the NFL.

But now, with his broken jaw?

"His football days are over," said his father. "I hate what happened to him."

But, he said, "I'm just happy that he's not dead. I'm just grateful my boy's still alive. I want everybody to stay alive when all is said and done."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson found out just how rough things are in Detroit.

Several Detroit media outlets reported thieves stole Jackson’s ride — a 2009 Cadillac Escalade — from a parking lot near the city’s Doubletree Hotel.

The SUV was later recovered, but it was found without its rims and one of its windows had been broken, according to Detroit’s WXYZ-TV.

Jackson was in Detroit for a march and rally called “Rebuild America: Jobs, Justice and Peace.”

Just days after Jackson’s SUV was stolen, one of Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s vehicles also went missing. The GMC Yukon Denali was later found resting on bricks, also missing its rims.

A federal judge has approved Eastman Kodak Co.'s $21.4 million offer to settle class-action lawsuits by black employees who maintained white counterparts were favored for pay and promotion.

After almost seven years of litigation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Feldman signed off on a deal Friday that pays $1,000 to $50,000 to about 3,000 current and past Kodak workers.

Kodak had been accused of paying black employees less than white co-workers, passing them over for promotions and maintaining a racially hostile work environment.

Some workers had objected to the settlement, so adjustments were negotiated. The decision ends a 2004 class-action lawsuit and a similar suit filed in 2007.

The photography products maker is based in Rochester, N.Y.

Lab tests on suspected illegal drugs taken from rapper T.I.'s car Wednesday night should be completed by Friday, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's spokeswoman.

Police arrested T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris, and his wife, "Tiny" Tameka Cottle, during a traffic stop on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood on Wednesday night.

Harris, 29, and Cottle, 35, allegedly possessed a controlled substance, the spokeswoman said.

During the stop, police said, they smelled an odor of marijuana coming from the couple's car.

Harris and his wife were released Thursday morning on $10,000 bail, according to his lawyer.

Their mug shots will not be made public until investigators confirm through lab tests that the seized substance was an illegal drug, sheriff's spokeswoman Nicole Nishida said,.

Steve Sadow, the Atlanta, Georgia, lawyer who represented Harris in his federal firearms case in 2008, was coincidentally in Los Angeles, where he is the lead defense lawyer in the Anna Nicole Smith drug trial.

He and Christopher Smith, his Los Angeles co-counsel in representing Smith defendant Howard K. Stern, will also represent Harris and his wife in the newest case, he said.

"It was a late night," Sadow said at one point in the Smith trial Thursday morning.

Harris will have an initial hearing in November since he has already posted bond, Sadow said.

Sadow would not comment on what affect the drug arrest might have on Harris' probation in the federal conviction.

In 2008, Harris was sentenced on charges of unlawfully possessing firearms as a convicted felon. The charges came after an arrest by federal agents a year earlier while Harris was buying three machine guns in the parking lot of an Atlanta grocery store.

Harris was released after serving nine months in prison and three months in a halfway house.

A federal grand jury has indicted a Maryland state senator on charges of bribery, conspiracy, mail fraud and extortion in connection with a scheme involving Shoppers Food Warehouse.

State Sen. Ulysses S. Currie, 73, of Forestville, was indicted Wednesday on 18 criminal counts charging that he and executives of Shoppers took part in a scheme in which Currie was paid by the company in exchange for using his official position to influence dozens of matters that benefited the supermarket chain and its executives.

The scheme went on from 2002 to 2008, prosecutors said. In that time, Currie was paid from $3,000 per month in 2003 to $7,600 per month in 2007, but the payments were never reported on annual government ethics forms, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Currie lobbied state highway officials to get traffic signals installed at the site of two Shoppers stores -- one in Baltimore County, the other in Laurel.

The indictment said he also helped the company get $2 million in public funding for its project at Mondawmin Mall, and Currie smoothed the way for the company to transfer a liquor license in Prince George's County.

"Government officials cross a bright line when they accept payments in return for using the authority of their office, whether they take cash in envelopes or checks labeled as consulting payments," said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. "When businesses can obtain valuable government benefits by putting a senator on the payroll, it diminishes public confidence and disadvantages companies that refuse to go along with the pay-to-play approach."

The indictment follows a two-year long investigation that came to light in the spring of 2008.

Reached by phone on Wednesday by 11 News I-Team lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller, Currie said he had no comment on the indictment and no comment on whether he plans to stay in office.

However, shortly after making that statement, Senate President Mike Miller released a statement saying Currie told him he would step down from his position as chairman of the Budget and Taxation Committee until the matter is resolved.

"He believes that he will be unable to dedicate himself fully to serving as chairman of Budget and Taxation Committee as he works to prove his innocence," Miller said in the release. "I am saddened that the investigation of Sen. Currie has reached this point. Sen. Currie has confronted adversity throughout his life, and I am confident he will be exonerated." "When businesses can obtain valuable government benefits by putting a senator on the payroll, it diminishes public confidence and disadvantages companies that refuse to go along with the pay-to-play approach."
- U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein

Currie has been in the Legislature since 1987. He is currently running for re-election and is unopposed in this month's primary.

Two former grocery store chain executives are also charged in the scheme. They are William White, 67, of Annapolis, and Kevin Small, 55, of Lewisburg, Pa.

Gov. Martin O'Malley also issued a statement regarding the indictment.

"This is a sad day for the people of Prince George's County and Sen. Currie personally. People have the right to expect the highest ethical service from their public servants," he said.

Currie's lawyer told reporters that the senator committed no crime, calling the case an unusual bribery case because it doesn't involve cash payments under the table or a hush-hush deal.

Shoppers Food Warehouse has agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine.

A judge today decided to step down from the high-profile murder case against an Oklahoma City pharmacist.

Oklahoma County judge steps down from pharmacist's murder case Oklahoma County District Judge Tammy Bass-LeSure announced her decision this afternoon during a private 12-minute meeting with prosecutors and defense attorneys.

District Attorney David Prater asked her Monday morning to step down. Defense attorneys say they wanted the judge to stay on the case.

The televised jury trial for pharmacist Jerome Jay Ersland is set to begin Sept. 13. The pharmacist was charged with first-degree murder after he shot a masked robber six times in May 2009 inside the Reliable Discount Pharmacy in south Oklahoma City.

Ersland, 58, said he acted to defend himself and two female employees. Prosecutors say he went too far, shooting five more times after knocking out the unarmed robber, Antwun Parker, 16, with a shot to the head.

The change in judges means the trial could be delayed. Also, it probably will not be televised. The new judge on the case is District Judge Ray Elliott.

Prosecutors did not file anything in the case explaining their reasons for asking the judge to step down. Prosecutors said today they could not comment on the issue.

The Oklahoman has learned prosecutors are concerned about her dealings with Joe Brett Reynolds, one of the pharmacist's four defense attorneys. Prosecutors are expected to ask Bass-LeSure eventually to remove herself from any criminal case involving Reynolds.

To support their request, prosecutors have evidence gathered by someone "wearing a wire," a hidden microphone, during a conversation with the judge, The Oklahoman was told.

Box said Monday he is honored to have Reynolds on the defense team. Box also said Monday prosecutors are acting out of desperation because the case has shifted against them.

This morning, Box told reporters prosecutors "have a really bad case ... and for some reason they're trying madly to try to convict Jerome Ersland ... including, we believe, intimidating a judge to get her off the case."

Box today said Bass-LeSure is the second Oklahoma County judge prosecutors have tried to intimidate in the last six months. "Both of them have been African-American judges. We're upset about that," Box said.

Bass-LeSure met Monday with Jack Dawson, an Oklahoma City attorney. Dawson at one point Monday met with the district attorney. It was unclear if the judge hired Dawson to represent her. Dawson declined to comment Monday afternoon as he left the judge's chambers.

A Texas congresswoman has agreed to repay thousands of dollars in scholarship money to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, after acknowledging she gave awards to four relatives and a staff member’s two children, in violation of the group’s rules.

From 2005 through last year, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Democrat who was first elected to Congress in 1992, provided 23 scholarships totaling $25,000 to two of her grandsons, two of her great-nephews and to an aide’s son and daughter. The Dallas Morning News first reported the story.

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a nonprofit group that operates separately from the Congressional Black Caucus, provides $10,000 annually for each of the 42 caucus members to award in scholarships. The foundation, financed by corporate donations, sets the rules for who is eligible, but each member decides how to award the money.

The foundation’s rules make it clear that applicants cannot be related to any member of the caucus, foundation staff members, board members, sponsors or members of its corporate advisory council. Several caucus members serve on the foundation’s board; Ms. Johnson was a member when her relatives first received scholarships.

In a statement Tuesday, Representative Donald M. Payne, the New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the foundation, said the group had begun an audit of its scholarship program.

“There will be no self-dealing or nepotism in the awarding of college scholarships,” he said. Ms. Johnson’s press secretary, Dena Craig, said the congresswoman was recovering from major surgery and would not be able to comment. But in a statement, Ms. Johnson, who previously said she had unknowingly violated the rules, said she would repay the money by the end of the week.

It is unclear if Ms. Johnson’s actions violate Congressional rules. Neither the House Ethics Committee nor the House Office of Congressional Ethics would respond to questions.

Meredith McGhee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, a nonpartisan group that monitors campaign finance and ethics issues, said the ethics committee could investigate.

“The rules say members of Congress should not discriminate in any way in their actions while acting in an official capacity, and this clearly seems the case in giving scholarships to family and friends,” she said.

Anthony Carter was to begin his senior year at Crane High School next week.

Instead, his family plans a funeral.

"He was looking forward to graduating," said his grandmother, Donna Carr. "He was in his last year. He was a good boy. He went to school every day."

The 18-year-old Chicago Public Schools student was gunned down just after midnight Monday in the 4000 block of West Jackson. Police said he was talking with a group of people, a few doors from his home, when a gunman emerged from a vacant lot and opened fire. He was shot multiple times.

CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond confirmed it was the killing of a CPS student days before the Sept. 7 school year opening.

Carter's family said they did not know why he was shot. They said the young man was not involved with gangs. Police said there was no evidence of drugs being involved, but that the motive remained under investigation. The shooting happened as many people stood out on the street. "They're still trying to speak with witnesses," Police News Affairs Officer Daniel O'Brien said.

By midday -- long after Carter's mother, Nicole Carter, had arrived at the site of the shooting, falling to the ground in screams and woeful sobs of "They killed my baby! They killed my baby!" -- a memorial of cards, flowers, pictures and teddy bears was growing.

His grandmother said she and her grandson had just made a late-night trip to the corner store, when shots rang out. "We started running, and when I turned around, my grandson had been shot," she said.

Carter's aunt, Nina Carr, said her nephew -- the eldest of two brothers and three sisters -- was an honor roll student looking forward to prom, and to graduating.

Neighbors in their West Garfield Park neighborhood said they were used to such incidents, describing the area as drug- and gang-infested.

"I knew him a little bit. He was a good kid," said the family's next-door neighbor, Mario Emanuel. "But you know, kids today, there's a lot goes on at night. This type of incident is nothing new around here. They shoot and kill all the time."

Police and the family urged witnesses to come forward. "There were people out there," said his stepmother, Cashara Young. "We just want someone to come forward and at least say what they saw."

Anyone with information can call Harrison Area Detectives at 312-746-8252.

Almost 30 years ago, when Wayne Williams went on trial in two deaths that became known as the Atlanta child murders, DNA testing was not yet a staple of courtroom science.

Now it is. And new results have implicated Williams in the death of at least one 11-year-old victim.

When Patrick Baltazar's body was found dumped down a wooded slope behind an office park on February 13, 1981, a forensic scientist discovered two human scalp hairs inside the boy's shirt.

At trial, scientists from both the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police would testify that, under a microscope, the hairs were consistent with those of Wayne Williams. But that was only a matter of judgment, not exact science.

In 2007, defense lawyers for Williams raised the question of DNA testing on dog hairs which were on bodies of many of the 27 boys and young men found dead during the two-year murder spree.

At the same time, the judge decided to allow those two hairs found on Baltazar to be sent to the FBI's DNA laboratory at Quantico, Virginia.

The laboratory report found the scalp hairs had the same type of DNA sequence as did Wayne Williams' own hair.

"I don't think they said it was a match," Williams told CNN. "I think they said [they] could not rule out whoever the hairs were from as being the possible donor."

But retired FBI scientist Harold Deadman, who testified about the hair findings in Williams' 1982 trial and later became head of the FBI's DNA lab, said it was the strongest finding possible with this particular type of testing.

"It would probably exclude 98 percent or so of the people in the world," Deadman said.

Of 1,148 African-American hair samples in the FBI's data base, the FBI said only 29 had the same sequence -- in other words, only 2½ of every 100 African-Americans.

None of the Caucasian or Hispanic hair samples in the data base had this sequence. When those samples are added in the total, then the odds rise to almost 130-to-1 against the hairs coming from any person other than Wayne Williams.

The FBI report said this: "Wayne Williams cannot be excluded as the source of the hair."

The finding is not ironclad. Because the hairs were incomplete, the type of testing, called mitochondrial DNA, can trace only the maternal line. Only with nucleic DNA testing, which includes paternal lineage, could the results be absolutely conclusive.

When reporters showed the DNA results to victim Baltazar's stepmother, Sheila Baltazar, she said, "Without a shadow of a doubt, I really in my heart believe Wayne Williams killed Patrick Baltazar."

Williams not only has denied he killed Patrick Baltazar, but has said he never met the boy.

Yet testimony at trial established various fibers found on the Baltazar clothing could be traced to a bedroom carpet in Wayne Williams' home, his bedspread, a yellow blanket found under that bed, a leather jacket hanging in Wayne's closet, and a gray glove in his station wagon.

See a map that tracks victims' bodies

There were also dog hairs on the Baltazar body which prosecution witnesses testified probably came from the Williams family's German Shepherd, "Sheba."

When those dog hairs were sent to a genetics laboratory in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, in 2007, the report said Sheba had the same DNA sequence. It said that DNA chain would be found in only 1 out of 100 dogs.

The Baltazar case was included among 10 other deaths presented to the jury in Wayne Williams trial, although he was not charged in any of those, and was convicted of murdering two adults whose bodies were found in an Atlanta river in the spring of 1981.

Scientists considered the hair and fiber evidence in the Baltazar murder to be among the strongest of their cases. However, the trial took place in the courts of Fulton County, which includes the largest part of Atlanta. Baltazar's body had been found just over the line in the DeKalb County portion of Atlanta, and trying to include his death among the Fulton County charges would have raised legal issues.